Trident missiles can be hacked. Should we be worried?

Trident submarines can be rendered obsolete by hackers.  The two weathermen looked at the red button.

Weatherman  1 : Lord Browne, a once Defence Secretary, says hackers can mess with our nuclear weapons and make them malfunction. When the Prime MInister says “destroy so and so country now,” the submarines may not be able to.

Weatherman  2 :  Isn’t that a good thing?

WM 1 : It’s great for the country we wanted to destroy. Malcolm Rifkind said it was okay if the deterrent  didn’t work – just as long as others thought it could.

WM 2 : So it’s a bluff?

WM1 : Yes. The world turns on bluffs and double bluffs.

WM 2 : I know a guy in the pub who never offers to buy a round of drinks. He fears that someone will say “yes please” so he doesn’t risk it. Maybe no-one will say yes, but he doesn’t know that – so it’s safer to skulk off to the bar on his own.

WM 1 : Did he confess that? Do the others look so likely to accept?

WM 2 : No, but his reluctance to even share his peanuts tells you he doesn’t trust anyone.

WM 1 : Does another country think we can fire a nuclear missile at them?

WM 2 : They must do, otherwise we would have been destroyed ages ago. It’s a good ploy. Pretend to have something that you don’t have at all.

WM 1 : Are the missiles hollow?

WM 2 :  They are probably more like fireworks. You get a colourful star in the sky and little wooden rocket sticks fall gently back to earth. They make for good kindling on my wood burning stove.

WM 1 : And that’s it?

WM 2 : Yes. But sshh, don’t confess anything.

WM 1 : Why is it such a worry if a hacker gets to interfering then?

WM 2 : Well at the moment, we are working hard to convince the world that we have big muscles. The defence spending review is increasing the size of our armed forces...or so it says. That’s probably just a bluff too. But if a hacker messes things up, our biceps and triceps could look puny.

WM 1 : So do mine, my girlfriend tells me – but she doesn’t hit me.

WM 2 : The hacker has to convince us he has hacked.  “ha ha fools, your missiles will turn left instead of right when the button gets pushed.” And if the world believes the hacker, we are vulnerable.

WM 1 : How can the hacker show off his digital muscles?

WM 2 : You’ve seen all those Red Square military displays full of synchronised marching and weapons to scare the willies out of you...it’s time to do that with computers. North Korea should put lots of computer desks on the back of trailers painted in camouflage paint. Then they put computers on them with BIG screens, and to finish it off, have men with a white coats AND spectacles pretending to hack. Tow that around Kim Il-sung Plaza, and the world will be cowed.  

WM 1 : Yes, especially if there are no wires showing. Then we will know they have wireless capability. That’s really scary.

WM 2 : The hacker presses PRINT , an instruction pops out of a printer and a soldier runs across the Plaza and hands it to Kim Jong-un who adopts an evil smile.

WM 1 : Did it tell him North Korea had successfully hacked into Britain’s missile system?

WM 2 : Probably not, it’s more likely the computer hacker’s offer to buy the first round of drinks tonight, lest he gets executed – but as long as we think we are hacked then they win.

WM 1 : It’s all a bit silly isn’t it?

WM 2 : If it wasn’t that all this bluffing cost so many billions, it might be funny.