{"id":12758,"date":"2016-05-31T09:35:46","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T13:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=12758"},"modified":"2016-05-31T09:35:46","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T13:35:46","slug":"the-u-s-nuclear-program-still-uses-eight-inch-floppy-disks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2016\/05\/31\/the-u-s-nuclear-program-still-uses-eight-inch-floppy-disks\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Nuclear Program Still Uses Eight-Inch Floppy Disks"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Where does the United States store data for its nuclear systems? If the question brings to mind visions of high-tech storage centers, cloud computing or solid-state drives, think again\u2014as Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports for the Associated Press, the U.S. Department of Defense still uses floppy disks for its Strategic Automated Command and Control System.<\/p>\n

The system, which serves as the primary means for transmitting emergency messages to the country\u2019s nuclear missile forces and other worldwide offensive and defensive systems, still relies on eight-inch floppy disks that hold 80 kilobytes of data. According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the program relies on an IBM Series I computer from the 1970s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe system remains in use because, in short, it still works,\u201d a Pentagon spokesperson told the Agence France Presse. She added that by 2017, the disks will be replaced by \u201csecure digital devices\u201d and that, by 2020, the Pentagon will fully replace the command system.<\/p>\n

And at this point, floppy disks offer something else to the defense industry: security. Since the technology is so old and few modern machines can handle them, floppy disks are strangely secure. In 2014, General Jack Weinstein told 60 Minutes\u2019 Lesley Stahl that DOD \u201ccyber engineers\u201d had determined that \u201cthe system is extremely safe and extremely secure the way it\u2019s developed.\u201d At the time, Smithsonian.com tracked the growth of the nuclear stockpile, much of which is as old as the disks themselves.<\/p>\n

When it comes to critical government functions, floppy disks may be just the tip of the obsolete tech iceberg. The GAO report also reveals that the U.S. Treasury has systems that are 56 years old, and ancient IBM mainframes can be found in other agencies. And then there\u2019s the Social Security Administration: Its retirement benefits systems run on COBOL\u2014one of the first programming languages ever written.<\/p>\n

Source: <\/span>The U.S. Nuclear Program Still Uses Eight-Inch Floppy Disks | Smart News | Smithsonian<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where does the United States store data for its nuclear systems? If the question brings to mind visions of high-tech storage centers, cloud computing or solid-state drives, think again\u2014as Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports for the Associated Press, the U.S. Department of Defense still uses floppy disks for its Strategic Automated Command and Control System. The system, which serves as the primary means for transmitting emergency messages to the country\u2019s nuclear missile forces and other worldwide offensive and defensive systems, still relies on eight-inch floppy disks that hold 80 kilobytes of data. According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the program relies on an IBM Series I computer from the 1970s. \u201cThe system remains in use because, in short, it still works,\u201d a Pentagon spokesperson told the Agence France Presse. She added that by 2017, the disks will be replaced by \u201csecure digital devices\u201d and that, by 2020, the Pentagon will fully replace the command system. And at this point, floppy disks offer something else to the defense industry: security. Since the technology is so old and few modern machines can handle them, floppy disks are strangely secure. In 2014, General Jack Weinstein told 60 Minutes\u2019 Lesley Stahl that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-arcana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}