What If Nuclear Terrorism Were Just a Mouse Click Away?

Excuse the sensationalistic head: the subject lends itself to hyperbole both because of its urgency and the imperative to draw reluctant readers. Of course, the "What if" doesn't actually figure to materialize any time soon. Still, it hints at what a Pandora's box the development of nuclear weapons has been for over six decades. Actually, it's starting to look more like a clown car -- an evil-clown car.

At Politico, Laura Rozen monitored the engineering failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that knocked 50 nuclear ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) offline. She referred us to fellow Politico reporter Gordon Lubold, who wrote:

Tony Cordesman of CSIS told Morning Defense that, based on preliminary reports, there was not a crisis: "Unless something is released that somehow indicates that you broke through every known barrier to a system that is not connected to the Internet or outside command-and-control, it is a warning that you need to look at the particular system failure, but that is as far as it goes,"

Cordesman's words that we've highlighted are an allusion to hacking. Ms. Rozen also cites Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic Monthly:

It is next to impossible [emphasis mine] for these systems to be hacked, so the military does not believe the incident was caused by malicious actors.

However reassuring it is to hear that a nuclear launch system can't be hacked, it nevertheless plants the seed of a fear in us that most never knew existed. The worm Stuxnet that infiltrated Iran's nuclear program is considered a state-supported project. But what if a terrorist group were to take a shot at the impossible and attempt to hack into a nuclear launch system?

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