Full Transcript for S2.E2 - Shall We Play a Game?: WarGames (1983)

have not seen it, it runs 114 minutes 00:02:08.680 --> 00:02:12.550 and holds up beautifully. Go watch it. Still 00:02:12.550 --> 00:02:19.979 here? Let's go. The problem? The movie opens 00:02:19.979 --> 00:02:22.500 with a drill. During a simulated nuclear attack, 00:02:22.759 --> 00:02:24.939 a surprising number of missile launch controllers 00:02:24.939 --> 00:02:27.879 proved unwilling to turn their keys. Human beings 00:02:27.879 --> 00:02:30.460 hesitate at the moment of ending the world. Dr. 00:02:30.599 --> 00:02:32.919 John McKittrick and other NORAD system engineers 00:02:32.919 --> 00:02:35.699 read this as a flaw to be engineered out. Their 00:02:35.699 --> 00:02:37.879 solution is to automate the launch centers and 00:02:37.879 --> 00:02:41.180 hand control to a NORAD supercomputer called 00:02:41.180 --> 00:02:45.620 WOPR, the War Operation Plan Response, pronounced 00:02:45.620 --> 00:02:48.569 WOPR. It's been programmed to run war simulations 00:02:48.569 --> 00:02:51.310 continuously and to learn from them over time. 00:02:51.449 --> 00:02:53.349 David Lightman, played by Matthew Broderick, 00:02:53.449 --> 00:02:55.669 is a bright, unmotivated Seattle high school 00:02:55.669 --> 00:02:59.129 student with an IMSAI 8080 computer and a modem. 00:02:59.150 --> 00:03:01.610 We meet him changing his own grades, as well 00:03:01.610 --> 00:03:03.710 as those of his friends Jennifer Mack. Later, 00:03:03.750 --> 00:03:05.569 he goes looking for a new video game company 00:03:05.569 --> 00:03:08.229 in Sunnyvale, California, and sets his machine 00:03:08.229 --> 00:03:10.669 to dial every phone number in the area to find 00:03:10.669 --> 00:03:13.370 computers that answer. That's called war dialing. 00:03:13.719 --> 00:03:15.759 And as time has progressed, we've reached the 00:03:15.759 --> 00:03:19.400 age of war driving and even war flying. Looking 00:03:19.400 --> 00:03:21.879 for unsecured wireless networks. More on that 00:03:21.879 --> 00:03:24.280 later. One number connects him to a system that 00:03:24.280 --> 00:03:26.620 doesn't even identify itself. And he can't get 00:03:26.620 --> 00:03:28.919 any deeper into the system. When he asks for 00:03:28.919 --> 00:03:31.500 games, it gives him a menu. Chess, checkers, 00:03:31.560 --> 00:03:34.389 backgammon, poker, and then further down. theater 00:03:34.389 --> 00:03:37.229 -wide biotoxic and chemical warfare, and global 00:03:37.229 --> 00:03:40.169 thermal nuclear war. The first title on the list 00:03:40.169 --> 00:03:42.650 is Falcon's Maze. Two hacker friends explain 00:03:42.650 --> 00:03:45.330 the idea of a backdoor, a password left by the 00:03:45.330 --> 00:03:47.509 programmers, and suggest he tracked down his 00:03:47.509 --> 00:03:49.990 falcon. David learns that Stephen Falcon was 00:03:49.990 --> 00:03:52.430 an early AI researcher, and he correctly guesses 00:03:52.430 --> 00:03:54.610 that the password is the name of Falcon's dead 00:03:54.610 --> 00:03:57.509

son Joshua. What David doesn't know is that that 00:03:57.509 --> 00:04:01.210 Sunnyvale number leads to Whopper, inside Cheyenne 00:04:01.210 --> 00:04:04.000 Mountain. He starts a game of global thermonuclear 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:06.800 war, playing the Soviet side, and targeting American 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:09.479 cities. Whopper doesn't understand the difference 00:04:09.479 --> 00:04:12.319 between simulation and reality, and its game 00:04:12.319 --> 00:04:14.960 briefly convinces NORAD that real Soviet missiles 00:04:14.960 --> 00:04:18.079 are inbound. The humans defuse the scare, but 00:04:18.079 --> 00:04:20.879 Whopper keeps playing to win. It feeds NORAD 00:04:20.879 --> 00:04:23.500 false data including phantom bomber incursions 00:04:23.500 --> 00:04:25.819 and submarine movements, pushing the defense 00:04:25.819 --> 00:04:28.740 readiness level toward retaliation. David finally 00:04:28.740 --> 00:04:30.240 learns what he's done from a news broadcast. 00:04:30.959 --> 00:04:33.500 The FBI arrests him and takes him to NORAD, where 00:04:33.500 --> 00:04:35.540 he fails to convince McKittrick that Whopper 00:04:35.540 --> 00:04:38.699 is behind the alerts. He's held on espionage 00:04:38.699 --> 00:04:41.759 charges. He escapes by slipping in with a tourist 00:04:41.759 --> 00:04:44.100 group, and with Jennifer's help, travels to an 00:04:44.100 --> 00:04:47.240 island off the Oregon coast. There he finds Falcon, 00:04:47.459 --> 00:04:49.600 who has been living under an assumed name and 00:04:49.600 --> 00:04:51.600 believes that nuclear war is both inevitable 00:04:51.600 --> 00:04:54.600 and as pointless as a game of tic -tac -toe. 00:04:54.800 --> 00:04:57.639 Between two experienced players. There he finds 00:04:57.639 --> 00:04:59.259 Falcon, who has been living under an assumed 00:04:59.259 --> 00:05:01.839 name and believes that nuclear war is both inevitable 00:05:01.839 --> 00:05:04.420 and as pointless as a game of tic -tac -toe between 00:05:04.420 --> 00:05:07.399 two experienced players. The teenagers talk him 00:05:07.399 --> 00:05:10.220 into returning to NORAD. Wapernel stages a massive 00:05:10.220 --> 00:05:13.079 Soviet first strike. Hundreds of missiles, submarines, 00:05:13.240 --> 00:05:16.480 and bombers all fake. NORAD prepares to retaliate. 00:05:16.660 --> 00:05:19.019 Falcon, David, and Jennifer persuade the officials 00:05:19.019 --> 00:05:21.560 to wait and ride out the supposed attack until 00:05:21.560 --> 00:05:24.620 real impacts are confirmed. When the three targeted 00:05:24.620 --> 00:05:27.720 American bases report nothing, NORAD prepares 00:05:27.720 --> 00:05:31.310 to cancel the second strike. But Whopper locks 00:05:31.310 --> 00:05:33.529 the staff out and starts trying to launch the 00:05:33.529 --> 00:05:36.389 missiles itself. Trying to guess the launch codes 00:05:36.389 --> 00:05:40.170 by brute force. Without humans in the control 00:05:40.170 --> 00:05:42.730 centers as safeguards, it only has to find the 00:05:42.730 --> 00:05:46.750 right code. Then, Falcon and David tell the computer 00:05:46.750 --> 00:05:50.540 to play tic -tac -toe against itself. It produces 00:05:50.540 --> 00:05:53.540 a long string of draws. Then, Whopper obtains 00:05:53.540 --> 00:05:55.519 the launch codes and with the missiles in reach, 00:05:55.680 --> 00:05:58.319 runs through every nuclear war scenario it has. 00:05:58.959 --> 00:06:03.040 And each one also ends in a draw. Winner, none. 00:06:03.740 --> 00:06:07.139 It tells Falcon, strange game, the only winning 00:06:07.139 --> 00:06:09.920 move is not to play. It gives control of NORAD 00:06:09.920 --> 00:06:13.019 and the missiles back, and then states, how about 00:06:13.019 --> 00:06:21.920 a nice game of chess? So let's go into some of 00:06:21.920 --> 00:06:24.759 these tech themes here. War dialing. The film's 00:06:24.759 --> 00:06:26.879 opening hack is one that gave the world a new 00:06:26.879 --> 00:06:30.300 word. Here's how it works. In 1983, if you wanted 00:06:30.300 --> 00:06:32.819 to find a computer, you couldn't search for it. 00:06:32.879 --> 00:06:36.240 There was no web, no list, but every computer 00:06:36.240 --> 00:06:38.879 that was able to be reached by phone had a phone 00:06:38.879 --> 00:06:41.480 number. And a modem will answer a call with a 00:06:41.480 --> 00:06:44.060 distinctive tone called a carrier. A human answers 00:06:44.060 --> 00:06:46.680 with hello, and a fax machine answers with its 00:06:46.680 --> 00:06:49.899 own screech. So, you automate the knocking. Your 00:06:49.899 --> 00:06:52.480 program dials a number and listens. If a person 00:06:52.480 --> 00:06:55.240 answers, it hangs up. If it hears a modem tone, 00:06:55.459 --> 00:06:59.579 it logs the number down. If nobody answers, it 00:06:59.579 --> 00:07:01.600 moves on. One description of the technique that 00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:03.600 I looked up says that the modem will hang up 00:07:03.600 --> 00:07:06.420 after two rings and tries the next number. In 00:07:06.420 --> 00:07:09.240 the film, David gives the program an area code 00:07:09.240 --> 00:07:12.500 as well as a three -digit prefix. And the program 00:07:12.500 --> 00:07:15.120 works through every number in that prefix in 00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:18.220 order. A prefix has four digits left that can 00:07:18.220 --> 00:07:21.089 vary, so it contains... About 10 ,000 possible 00:07:21.089 --> 00:07:23.709 numbers? And by my estimate, and not really doing 00:07:23.709 --> 00:07:25.889 the math for sure, if each call takes about 10 00:07:25.889 --> 00:07:28.589 seconds to place, then 10 ,000 numbers takes 00:07:28.589 --> 00:07:31.569 about 100 ,000 seconds, which is a bit over 27 00:07:31.569 --> 00:07:34.730 hours. A machine sitting in a bedroom can do 00:07:34.730 --> 00:07:38.430 that overnight and over a weekend. A human with 00:07:38.430 --> 00:07:42.149 a rotary phone? Not at all. On screen, David 00:07:42.149

--> 00:07:45.089 uses an acoustic coupler, a modem that you literally 00:07:45.089 --> 00:07:47.819 press a telephone handset into. These were limited 00:07:47.819 --> 00:07:50.620 to 300 baud, which is roughly about 30 characters 00:07:50.620 --> 00:07:53.319 a second, I believe, so a page of text would 00:07:53.319 --> 00:07:55.680 take about a minute to arrive. One of the prop 00:07:55.680 --> 00:07:58.379 suppliers to the production wrote that the acoustic 00:07:58.379 --> 00:08:01.360 coupler was kept for visual effect, and that 00:08:01.360 --> 00:08:03.500 a faster modem was actually hidden in the setup 00:08:03.500 --> 00:08:06.579 to make the plot data speeds believable. Before 00:08:06.579 --> 00:08:10.579 1983, this technique had other names, demon dialing, 00:08:10.620 --> 00:08:13.160 hammer dialing, but what the film did was give 00:08:13.160 --> 00:08:15.899 it a name that stuck. as well as show it to millions 00:08:15.899 --> 00:08:19.100 of people around the world. The word war dialing 00:08:19.100 --> 00:08:21.660 grew from there and eventually gave us war driving, 00:08:21.860 --> 00:08:24.800 which is the same, but with trying to find unsecured 00:08:24.800 --> 00:08:26.899 Wi -Fi networks while driving around in a car. 00:08:27.019 --> 00:08:29.279 And now we have war flying, which is the same 00:08:29.279 --> 00:08:33.019 premise as war driving, but using drones. A direct 00:08:33.019 --> 00:08:36.120 descendant of this war dialing can be the port 00:08:36.120 --> 00:08:38.559 scan. Instead of dialing every phone number. 00:08:38.990 --> 00:08:41.429 A scanner tries every network port on a given 00:08:41.429 --> 00:08:44.250 IP address or an IP address range and records 00:08:44.250 --> 00:08:47.450 which one's answer. Search engines like Shodan 00:08:47.450 --> 00:08:50.250 do this continuously and they publish what they 00:08:50.250 --> 00:08:53.009 find. A different tool, but identical logic. 00:08:53.269 --> 00:08:56.450 Find the doors nobody meant to advertise or forgot 00:08:56.450 --> 00:08:59.409 to close and lock. Moving on to number two, getting 00:08:59.409 --> 00:09:02.549 in and why it was so easy. David finds the door. 00:09:02.690 --> 00:09:05.649 Now he needs a key. The way the film handles 00:09:05.649 --> 00:09:08.309 this is one of the smartest ideas and one of 00:09:08.309 --> 00:09:10.490 the most uncomfortable because it's really closer 00:09:10.490 --> 00:09:13.450 to real life than anyone at NORAD wanted to admit. 00:09:13.669 --> 00:09:16.970 So what is a backdoor? A backdoor is a way into 00:09:16.970 --> 00:09:20.429 a system that bypasses the normal security. Sometimes 00:09:20.429 --> 00:09:22.789 it's malicious, often it's just convenience. 00:09:22.889 --> 00:09:25.429 A programmer leaves a special password in so 00:09:25.429 --> 00:09:27.029 that they can fix the machine without having 00:09:27.029 --> 00:09:28.929 to go through all the proper channels. In the 00:09:28.929 --> 00:09:31.509 film, two of David's hacker friends explain exactly 00:09:31.509 --> 00:09:34.299 this and point him to Falcon. the man who built 00:09:34.299 --> 00:09:36.960 the system. Then comes the clever part. David 00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:40.320 doesn't break the password. He researches the 00:09:40.320 --> 00:09:42.799 person. He learns that Falcon was an early AI 00:09:42.799 --> 00:09:45.440 researcher and that his son had died and that 00:09:45.440 --> 00:09:48.159 the boy's name was Joshua. He tries it and it 00:09:48.159 --> 00:09:51.620 works. That's social engineering. Getting in 00:09:51.620 --> 00:09:54.500 by understanding the humans who built or run 00:09:54.500 --> 00:09:57.080 the system rather than just trying to attack 00:09:57.080 --> 00:10:00.179 the machine. People often set passwords after 00:10:00.179 --> 00:10:02.899 the people they love. It's an old trick. And 00:10:02.899 --> 00:10:04.840 today it's still one of the leading ways real 00:10:04.840 --> 00:10:07.460 organizations get breached. Also, this search 00:10:07.460 --> 00:10:11.460 that he does, it's known as open source intelligence. 00:10:11.940 --> 00:10:14.399 David is seen researching in the library for 00:10:14.399 --> 00:10:16.159 all the information you can find about Falcon. 00:10:16.320 --> 00:10:18.820 Even the Sunnyvale prefix, he doesn't know it. 00:10:18.840 --> 00:10:21.679 But he has a simple conversation with the 411 00:10:21.679 --> 00:10:24.580 operator, no questions asked, and gets it. And 00:10:24.580 --> 00:10:27.000 here's where the film stops being fiction. The 00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:29.679 screenwriters spoke with Willis Ware, a computer 00:10:29.679 --> 00:10:32.240 security expert at RAND. who assured them that 00:10:32.240 --> 00:10:35.019 even a secure military computer might have remote 00:10:35.019 --> 00:10:37.460 access so people can work from home on the weekend. 00:10:37.679 --> 00:10:40.299 And that detail is the seed of the whole story. 00:10:40.559 --> 00:10:43.620 And then, while the film was in theaters, it 00:10:43.620 --> 00:10:46.980 happened for real. A group of hackers in Milwaukee 00:10:46.980 --> 00:10:49.720 who called themselves the 414s after their area 00:10:49.720 --> 00:10:53.460 code, who ranged in age from 16 to 22, broke 00:10:53.460 --> 00:10:55.980 into dozens of high -profile systems, including 00:10:55.980 --> 00:10:58.960 the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Sloan 00:10:58.960 --> 00:11:01.240 Kettering Cancer Center, and Security Pacific 00:11:01.240 --> 00:11:03.860 Bank. What they discovered, according to one 00:11:03.860 --> 00:11:05.879 account, was that many network administrators 00:11:05.879 --> 00:11:08.580 had never changed the default logins and passwords 00:11:08.580 --> 00:11:12.039 published in their own system's instruction manuals. 00:11:12.059 --> 00:11:14.519 The Sloan Kettering intrusion happened on June 00:11:14.519 --> 00:11:17.659 3, 1983, which was the film's opening day in 00:11:17.659 -->

00:11:20.870 the United States. Neil Patrick who became their 00:11:20.870 --> 00:11:23.850 spokesman, told NBC Today show that looking back, 00:11:23.950 --> 00:11:26.029 he really wished that accessing those systems 00:11:26.029 --> 00:11:28.789 hadn't been so easy. And here's kind of how we 00:11:28.789 --> 00:11:31.090 would fix some of these things. If I were building 00:11:31.090 --> 00:11:34.470 Whopper's login in 1983, here's a short list. 00:11:34.610 --> 00:11:38.149 And none of this was exotic at this time. Don't 00:11:38.149 --> 00:11:40.409 put the phone on the public phone network. A 00:11:40.409 --> 00:11:42.289 military system that answers a regular phone 00:11:42.289 --> 00:11:46.250 number can easily be found by war dialing. Period. 00:11:46.549 --> 00:11:50.000 Dial back. The system answers. takes your name, 00:11:50.059 --> 00:11:53.539 hangs up, and calls you back at a number it already 00:11:53.539 --> 00:11:56.340 has on file for you. A teenager's bedroom phone 00:11:56.340 --> 00:11:59.539 isn't listed on that list. Also, this is a good 00:11:59.539 --> 00:12:01.559 tactic to use when you suspect you're being a 00:12:01.559 --> 00:12:04.000 victim of a phishing campaign. Especially those, 00:12:04.120 --> 00:12:06.879 this is your boss, I need you to buy $500 in 00:12:06.879 --> 00:12:08.720 gift cards. Say, okay, you know what, let me 00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:10.840 put you on hold while I figure this out. And 00:12:10.840 --> 00:12:12.340 then you try calling the number you have for 00:12:12.340 --> 00:12:15.100 your boss. Pretty simple. And then lock out guesses. 00:12:15.649 --> 00:12:17.629 Using three wrong passwords, the account should 00:12:17.629 --> 00:12:19.990 freeze until an administrator, and at least a 00:12:19.990 --> 00:12:23.169 human administrator, unfreezes it, and then retiring 00:12:23.169 --> 00:12:25.570 the backdoor. Whatever password the creator left, 00:12:25.730 --> 00:12:29.620 or account, delete it when they leave. None of 00:12:29.620 --> 00:12:32.159 this is science fiction. All of this existed 00:12:32.159 --> 00:12:34.879 then, and then how Whopper learns that nobody 00:12:34.879 --> 00:12:38.139 wins. The film's most famous moment is the ending, 00:12:38.299 --> 00:12:40.399 where Whopper plays tic -tac -toe against itself 00:12:40.399 --> 00:12:42.620 and concludes that the only winning move is not 00:12:42.620 --> 00:12:44.789 to play. It's also the most technically interesting 00:12:44.789 --> 00:12:47.350 idea in the movie. Let's kind of break it down. 00:12:47.470 --> 00:12:50.269 In the film, Whopper is programmed to run war 00:12:50.269 --> 00:12:52.750 simulations continuously and learn from them 00:12:52.750 --> 00:12:56.639 over and over and over. That's the right picture 00:12:56.639 --> 00:13:00.039 of a game playing AI. Play, observe, and update. 00:13:00.220 --> 00:13:02.559 Today, the same recipe with a lot more computing 00:13:02.559 --> 00:13:05.100 power, power systems that learn games by playing 00:13:05.100 --> 00:13:07.460 themselves millions of times. And here's the 00:13:07.460 --> 00:13:10.299 leap in the film. And I want to be fair. Whopper 00:13:10.299 --> 00:13:12.879 plays tic -tac -toe against itself. And every 00:13:12.879 --> 00:13:15.580 game is a draw. Then it runs all its nuclear 00:13:15.580 --> 00:13:18.379 war scenarios. And on screen, each one ends in 00:13:18.379 --> 00:13:22.240 winner, none. The trick? It's the scoring. Nuclear 00:13:22.240 --> 00:13:24.700 war isn't a draw in the same way that tic -tac 00:13:24.700 --> 00:13:27.779 -toe is. It's a game in which every outcome is 00:13:27.779 --> 00:13:30.740 bad for both sides. In game theory, if every 00:13:30.740 --> 00:13:33.120 ending has a negative payoff for you, then the 00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:35.659 best move is to avoid reaching an ending at all. 00:13:35.820 --> 00:13:37.980 And that really becomes the only winning move 00:13:37.980 --> 00:13:40.620 is not to play. The film isn't saying that Whopper 00:13:40.620 --> 00:13:43.970 got philosophical. It's saying WAPR finally computed 00:13:43.970 --> 00:13:47.210 the payoffs honestly. Near the end, WAPR tries 00:13:47.210 --> 00:13:49.610 to find the launch code by brute force, guessing 00:13:49.610 --> 00:13:53.190 every possibility. The math is simple. A code 00:13:53.190 --> 00:13:55.429 with n digits has 10 to the n possibilities, 00:13:55.809 --> 00:13:58.809 and every added digit multiplies the work by 00:13:58.809 --> 00:14:01.629 10. That's why real password -protected systems 00:14:01.629 --> 00:14:04.980 limit the number of tries. A guesser with unlimited 00:14:04.980 --> 00:14:08.019 attempts is always going to win eventually. Someone 00:14:08.019 --> 00:14:10.480 guessing with only three attempts almost never 00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:13.039 does. We see this in the real world every day. 00:14:13.120 --> 00:14:15.360 When a site tells you try again later or you've 00:14:15.360 --> 00:14:17.139 been locked out and your password needs to be 00:14:17.139 --> 00:14:19.600 replaced. And here's the actual bug that I have 00:14:19.600 --> 00:14:21.539 with this. And it's not that the computer is 00:14:21.539 --> 00:14:24.860 dumb. Whopper's simulated attack and NORAD's 00:14:24.860 --> 00:14:29.429 real warning screens share a channel. In the 00:14:29.429 --> 00:14:32.429 film, Whopper keeps playing to win and feeds 00:14:32.429 --> 00:14:35.919 NORAD false data. including phantom bomber incursions 00:14:35.919 --> 00:14:39.809 and submarine deployments. The model isn't confusing 00:14:39.809 --> 00:14:43.470 a map for the territory so much as someone wired 00:14:43.470 --> 00:14:46.389 the map to the alarms. And if you've ever heard 00:14:46.389 --> 00:14:48.330 of a test environment accidentally connected 00:14:48.330 --> 00:14:51.350 to production, then you know the story. It's 00:14:51.350 --> 00:14:53.549 one of the most common and most expensive mistakes 00:14:53.549 -->

00:14:57.190 in software. Similar to Colossus, let the machine 00:14:57.190 --> 00:15:00.029 run the simulations, but then the human needs 00:15:00.029 --> 00:15:03.389 to approve the launch. And now, The Human Gate. 00:15:03.870 --> 00:15:06.590 and the movie that changed the law. In the climax, 00:15:06.990 --> 00:15:09.929 Whopper stages a massive fake Soviet first strike. 00:15:10.110 --> 00:15:12.350 Hundreds of missiles, submarines, and bombers. 00:15:12.669 --> 00:15:16.269 Every screen in NORAD says it's real. What saves 00:15:16.269 --> 00:15:19.269 the world isn't a better computer. It's a human 00:15:19.269 --> 00:15:24.059 suggestion. Wait. Falcon, David, and Jennifer 00:15:24.059 --> 00:15:26.139 persuade the officials to ride out the attack 00:15:26.139 --> 00:15:29.379 until actual impacts are confirmed. When three 00:15:29.379 --> 00:15:32.440 targeted bases report nothing, The second strike 00:15:32.440 --> 00:15:34.899 is called off. And this is a real engineering 00:15:34.899 --> 00:15:37.299 principle with the name independent confirmation. 00:15:38.240 --> 00:15:41.379 We don't act on a single sensor or a single model, 00:15:41.460 --> 00:15:45.110 no matter how confident it seems to be. We require 00:15:45.110 --> 00:15:47.570 a second source that doesn't share the first 00:15:47.570 --> 00:15:49.730 one's failure. And let's look at a real version 00:15:49.730 --> 00:15:53.149 of this. Less than four months later, after the 00:15:53.149 --> 00:15:56.190 film opened, a Soviet duty officer named Lieutenant 00:15:56.190 --> 00:15:59.730 Colonel Stansilov Petrov was on shift at the 00:15:59.730 --> 00:16:02.940 command center for Okho. the Soviet early warning 00:16:02.940 --> 00:16:05.720 satellite system. Shortly after midnight, it 00:16:05.720 --> 00:16:07.659 reported that a missile had been launched from 00:16:07.659 --> 00:16:10.059 the United States, followed up by four more. 00:16:10.600 --> 00:16:13.799 The context was as bad as it gets. A few weeks 00:16:13.799 --> 00:16:16.820 earlier, on September 1st, the Soviets had shot 00:16:16.820 --> 00:16:20.320 down a South Korean passenger jet, killing 269 00:16:20.320 --> 00:16:23.559 people. Procedure said to report the launch up 00:16:23.559 --> 00:16:26.679 the chain of command. Petrov didn't. He decided 00:16:26.679 --> 00:16:29.629 to wait for a confirmation that never came. His 00:16:29.629 --> 00:16:32.509 reasoning, as he later put it, was that people 00:16:32.509 --> 00:16:34.909 starting a war don't start it with only five 00:16:34.909 --> 00:16:37.860 missiles. And he also knew that the system's 00:16:37.860 --> 00:16:40.080 reliability had already been put into question. 00:16:40.120 --> 00:16:43.080 The investigation later found the cause, a rare 00:16:43.080 --> 00:16:45.840 alignment of sunlight on high -altitude clouds 00:16:45.840 --> 00:16:48.620 above North Dakota as well as the satellite's 00:16:48.620 --> 00:16:51.440 orbits, which the systems had read

as missile 00:16:51.440 --> 00:16:54.860 launches. The error was later corrected by cross 00:16:54.860 --> 00:16:57.259 -referencing a second geostationary satellite. 00:16:57.929 --> 00:17:00.370 That's independent confirmation built into the 00:17:00.370 --> 00:17:03.610 hardware after the fact. Now imagine if Whopper 00:17:03.610 --> 00:17:06.529 had been in that chair. No gut feeling, no hesitation, 00:17:06.890 --> 00:17:10.049 no wait. That's exactly the system the film's 00:17:10.049 --> 00:17:13.089 opening scene argues for. The one where the humans 00:17:13.089 --> 00:17:15.410 are engineered out of the system because they 00:17:15.410 --> 00:17:17.890 hesitate. And here's the second part of the film's 00:17:17.890 --> 00:17:20.269 story. The part that happened outside the movie. 00:17:20.549 --> 00:17:23.269 President Reagan, a family friend of the screenwriter, 00:17:23.950 --> 00:17:26.650 watched the film and asked his advisors and Joint 00:17:26.650 --> 00:17:29.009 Chiefs, could this happen? Within a week, they 00:17:29.009 --> 00:17:31.630 all said yes. This presidential review, about 00:17:31.630 --> 00:17:35.109 18 months later, is credited to creating NSD 00:17:35.109 --> 00:17:38.809 145, the first presidential directive on computer 00:17:38.809 --> 00:17:42.390 security, which would later become the ever -encompassing 00:17:42.390 --> 00:17:45.309 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Meanwhile, real 00:17:45.309 --> 00:17:48.210 hackers were making the case in public. On June 00:17:48.210 --> 00:17:53.839 3rd, 1983, the same day War Games opened, The 00:17:53.839 --> 00:17:57.000 414s got into the Sloan Kettering network. By 00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:00.299 September, Congressman Dan Glickman had called 00:18:00.299 --> 00:18:03.559 for an investigation, and on September 26th, 00:18:03.559 --> 00:18:05.839 Neil Patrick testified before the House Committee 00:18:05.839 --> 00:18:08.740 on Science and Technology. The hearing opened 00:18:08.740 --> 00:18:12.160 with a clip from War Games, in which David breaks 00:18:12.160 --> 00:18:14.119 into his school's computer to change a grade, 00:18:14.220 --> 00:18:17.079 and Glickman remarked that it showed fairly realistically 00:18:17.079 --> 00:18:20.160 what hackers do. Then the committee heard from 00:18:20.160 --> 00:18:22.420 a real one, and if that date seems familiar, 00:18:22.900 --> 00:18:25.759 It's the same date as Petrov's false alarm. On 00:18:25.759 --> 00:18:29.140 one day, in two countries, the argument for a 00:18:29.140 --> 00:18:32.460 human in the loop was being made. In one case, 00:18:32.480 --> 00:18:35.220 by a Soviet officer's gut, and the other by a 00:18:35.220 --> 00:18:38.099 teenager in a hearing room. And here's the legal 00:18:38.099 --> 00:18:42.779 wrinkle. In 1983, what the 414 had done wasn't 00:18:42.779 --> 00:18:45.700 clearly illegal. Six computer crime bills were 00:18:45.700 --> 00:18:48.799 introduced that year, but none became law. but 00:18:48.799

--> 00:18:50.799 their ideas were worked into the Comprehensive 00:18:50.799 --> 00:18:55.099 Control Act of 1984, which was amended in 1986 00:18:55.099 --> 00:18:57.980 into the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That's 00:18:57.980 --> 00:19:01.019 the first law of its kind, and this film is credited 00:19:01.019 --> 00:19:11.000 with leading to it. So in short, a few things 00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:13.700 that it got right. War dialing. The technique 00:19:13.700 --> 00:19:16.619 was used in real life before this film came out. 00:19:16.680 --> 00:19:19.440 Again, under other names like demon dialing and... 00:19:19.799 --> 00:19:21.680 But this film gave it a name that we still use 00:19:21.680 --> 00:19:24.339 today. It showed the idea accurately and made 00:19:24.339 --> 00:19:26.359 it look cool in front of millions of people. 00:19:26.579 --> 00:19:29.539 Social engineering and default passwords. David 00:19:29.539 --> 00:19:32.640 doesn't break the system. He learns and understands 00:19:32.640 --> 00:19:35.440 the people behind it. And then the 414s showed 00:19:35.440 --> 00:19:38.460 that real systems were often just as open, since 00:19:38.460 --> 00:19:40.779 many administrators had never changed the default 00:19:40.779 --> 00:19:43.380 logins that are printed in their own manuals. 00:19:43.380 --> 00:19:45.680 And then of course, kind of also a trope, the 00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:49.000 engineer who is sure the system can't fail. McKittrick 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:51.680 looked at a flaw in the process. Humans who hesitate 00:19:51.680 --> 00:19:54.339 to turn a key and decided that the fix was to 00:19:54.339 --> 00:19:57.319 remove the humans. When the crisis hit, he doubles 00:19:57.319 --> 00:20:00.099 down. That character type, the person closest 00:20:00.099 --> 00:20:02.819 to the system and most certain of it, shows up 00:20:02.819 --> 00:20:05.339 in almost every serious technological disaster 00:20:05.339 --> 00:20:07.880 film. And then I mean the policy impact that 00:20:07.880 --> 00:20:11.299 this film has had. Not many films can claim a 00:20:11.299 --> 00:20:14.180 documented chain from the screen to a presidential 00:20:14.180 --> 00:20:18.049 directive and then later a federal statute. This 00:20:18.049 --> 00:20:20.750 one can, and of course the film craftsmanship. 00:20:21.980 --> 00:20:24.559 Whopper was built by stagehands in Culver City, 00:20:24.720 --> 00:20:26.839 designed from pictures of old tabulating machines 00:20:26.839 --> 00:20:29.599 and military furniture. There was a crew member 00:20:29.599 --> 00:20:31.880 who sat inside entering commands into an Apple 00:20:31.880 --> 00:20:36.059 II. And the giant NORAD display wall was brighter 00:20:36.059 --> 00:20:38.519 than anything that the real NORAD facility had 00:20:38.519 --> 00:20:41.740 at the time. Filmed one frame at a time, about 00:20:41.740 --> 00:20:45.900 a minute per frame, over seven months. And then 00:20:45.900 --> 00:20:48.660 it was projected live behind the actors so that 00:20:48.660 --> 00:20:50.940 the actors could actually react to it. Alrighty, 00:21:00.059 --> 00:21:03.579 let's get to it because War Games is a great 00:21:03.579 --> 00:21:06.440 film. It changed national security policy and 00:21:06.440 --> 00:21:09.380 introduced a generation to hacking. It is also 00:21:09.380 --> 00:21:11.680 in places a tribute to the idea that a military 00:21:11.680 --> 00:21:14.480 computer in 1983 had the security of a diary 00:21:14.480 --> 00:21:17.019 with a very small lock. And let's start with 00:21:17.019 --> 00:21:20.079 the password. I mean, David dials a number. He 00:21:20.079 --> 00:21:23.509 doesn't know what it is or who it is. And then 00:21:23.509 --> 00:21:26.230 he learns about the programmer's dead son, types 00:21:26.230 --> 00:21:28.910 in that name, and the most sensitive military 00:21:28.910 --> 00:21:32.630 computer in the country says, hello, no lockout, 00:21:32.710 --> 00:21:36.750 no alert, no dial back. No one at NORAD notices 00:21:36.750 --> 00:21:39.289 that an unknown caller is typing into the machine 00:21:39.289 --> 00:21:43.539 that runs the apocalypse. To be fair, the real 00:21:43.539 --> 00:21:47.410 world at this time was often this bad. I mean, 00:21:47.430 --> 00:21:50.009 the 414s and their default passwords got them 00:21:50.009 --> 00:21:52.970 into so many systems. But the movie's version 00:21:52.970 --> 00:21:55.690 is a faithful recreation of a national embarrassment. 00:21:56.329 --> 00:21:59.289 And the embarrassing part is that it's one guess. 00:21:59.809 --> 00:22:01.589 I mean, they could have made this work. Give 00:22:01.589 --> 00:22:04.309 them a lockout, three tries and a puzzle. It 00:22:04.309 --> 00:22:07.349 doesn't change the plot, but the audience gets 00:22:07.349 --> 00:22:09.849 to kind of be the hacker in this way. But really, 00:22:09.910 --> 00:22:12.410 I do chalk this one up to plot armor, as without 00:22:12.410 --> 00:22:15.490 it, again, we'd have no war games. And why is 00:22:15.490 --> 00:22:18.619 this phone number connected? And why is this 00:22:18.619 --> 00:22:21.400 computer connected at all? Whopper is built to 00:22:21.400 --> 00:22:24.720 play war games. Fine. But somewhere in the design, 00:22:24.940 --> 00:22:27.839 the part that plays make -believe got a direct 00:22:27.839 --> 00:22:31.619 line to the outside. So when David plays as a 00:22:31.619 --> 00:22:35.660 Soviet, Norad sees bombers. In real life, a simulation 00:22:35.660 --> 00:22:38.160 lives in a sandbox, and anything it produces 00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:41.339 is labeled as practice. Somebody at Norad built 00:22:41.339 --> 00:22:44.140 a war game module with the power to write to 00:22:44.140 --> 00:22:47.079 the real sensor feeds. And I'd like to meet them 00:22:47.079 --> 00:22:51.960 and ask, really? Why? It's almost like they were 00:22:51.960 --> 00:22:53.759 lazy and thought, we don't need a test environment,

00:22:53.940 --> 00:22:57.920 right? How would this have been resolved? One 00:22:57.920 --> 00:23:01.400 engineer, one line in the film. Don't worry. 00:23:01.559 --> 00:23:04.220 The simulation shares the display bus with the 00:23:04.220 --> 00:23:07.180 live feeds because the generals wanted to train 00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:10.200 on the real screens. Then McKitchip goes pale. 00:23:10.480 --> 00:23:15.769 20 seconds. Everything's fixed. Movie over. And 00:23:15.769 --> 00:23:17.910 then just this idea of one giant computer in 00:23:17.910 --> 00:23:22.200 one giant room. Whopper is magnificent. It has 00:23:22.200 --> 00:23:24.259 more blinking lights than a Christmas tree. It 00:23:24.259 --> 00:23:27.890 also has architecture, the worst idea in the 00:23:27.890 --> 00:23:31.099 history of military computing. Every important 00:23:31.099 --> 00:23:34.630 decision in one machine in one place. The real 00:23:34.630 --> 00:23:37.569 1950s air defense system, SAGE, which we talked 00:23:37.569 --> 00:23:40.190 about in Colossus, used 23 direction centers 00:23:40.190 --> 00:23:43.690 and ran its computers in pairs so that one could 00:23:43.690 --> 00:23:46.509 take over if any of them failed. And the real 00:23:46.509 --> 00:23:49.690 Whopper was a prop built by stagehands in Culver 00:23:49.690 --> 00:23:52.740 City. With a crew member inside literally typing 00:23:52.740 --> 00:23:55.539 into an Apple II. Which means that in this film, 00:23:55.579 --> 00:23:57.559 the most dangerous computer in the world was 00:23:57.559 --> 00:24:00.579 technically a guy in a box. And how could they 00:24:00.579 --> 00:24:04.160 even really make this work? Spread it out. If 00:24:04.160 --> 00:24:06.579 Whopper was everywhere at once, nobody could 00:24:06.579 --> 00:24:09.059 unplug it. And the climax gets tenser. Because 00:24:09.059 --> 00:24:11.240 the humans are no longer fighting a machine in 00:24:11.240 --> 00:24:13.440 a room. They're fighting a network of machines. 00:24:13.599 --> 00:24:22.240 And that network means more drama. The film opens 00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:24.980 with a decision. The missile controllers hesitated, 00:24:25.039 --> 00:24:27.599 so engineers took the hesitation out of the system. 00:24:27.740 --> 00:24:30.339 It ends by proving that the hesitation was a 00:24:30.339 --> 00:24:32.940 safety feature. And that's the argument I keep 00:24:32.940 --> 00:24:36.019 coming back to. A system that is fast and decisive 00:24:36.019 --> 00:24:39.640 is only a virtue if it is fast and decisive about 00:24:39.640 --> 00:24:42.000 the right thing. And telling the right thing 00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:45.200 from wrong requires exactly the human judgment 00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:48.099 that we keep trying to engineer away from. Whopper 00:24:48.099 --> 00:24:50.740 couldn't tell a game from a war. Petrov in a 00:24:50.740 --> 00:24:53.480 bunker outside Moscow. could tell that five missiles 00:24:53.480 --> 00:24:56.160 didn't look like the opening of a war. Compare 00:24:56.160 --> 00:24:58.920 this with the last film. In Colossus, the machine 00:24:58.920 --> 00:25:01.380 takes control on purpose, pursuing a goal we 00:25:01.380 --> 00:25:04.019 gave it. In War Games, nothing is that dramatic. 00:25:04.339 --> 00:25:06.859 The machine is simply given a job, and nobody 00:25:06.859 --> 00:25:10.240 makes sure it knows what the job is for. It's 00:25:10.240 --> 00:25:13.079 a quieter horror, and arguably a more realistic 00:25:13.079 --> 00:25:15.740 one, because it doesn't need a villain. It only 00:25:15.740 --> 00:25:18.079 needs a shortcut that looked reasonable in a 00:25:18.079 --> 00:25:20.319 meeting. And I think that's why the film mattered 00:25:20.319 --> 00:25:23.640 so much outside the theater. It gave people a 00:25:23.640 --> 00:25:25.859 clear picture of something that was already true, 00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:28.980 that the systems we were building were more connected 00:25:28.980 --> 00:25:32.160 than they were protected. The 414 showed the 00:25:32.160 --> 00:25:34.420 proof, the hearing, the directive, and the law 00:25:34.420 --> 00:25:36.859 was the response. And the only winning move, 00:25:36.980 --> 00:25:40.640 as Wopper taught us, is not to play. But as humans, 00:25:40.859 --> 00:25:50.109 we tend to keep picking up that controller. So 00:25:50.109 --> 00:25:51.769 here's the scorecard for what we took apart. 00:25:52.349 --> 00:25:55.450 War dialing. Accurate, real technique, shown 00:25:55.450 --> 00:25:57.869 clearly, and the film gave it its modern name. 00:25:58.329 --> 00:26:02.190 How they got in. Believable for 1983 as the 414 00:26:02.190 --> 00:26:05.049 showed. The film skips every defense that already 00:26:05.049 --> 00:26:09.079 existed. How Whopper learns. A good idea and 00:26:09.079 --> 00:26:12.519 well told. The situation wired to the real alarms. 00:26:12.799 --> 00:26:15.579 This is a failure. Thinly explained failure. 00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:18.799 War Games gets two circuit breakers. Close enough 00:26:18.799 --> 00:26:21.819 for Hollywood. The big ideas are solid and prescient. 00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:25.039 The specifics cut corners. But this film changed 00:26:25.039 --> 00:26:27.559 national security policy. gave cybersecurity 00:26:27.559 --> 00:26:30.240 one of its best known terms, all while being 00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:32.880 genuinely tense and entertaining. Definitely 00:26:32.880 --> 00:26:35.160 two circuit breakers earned. That's War Games 00:26:35.160 --> 00:26:38.079 Chapter 2 of The Machine Awakens. Next episode, 00:26:38.279 --> 00:26:41.220 a glass house in the Norwegian mountains. A programmer, 00:26:41.420 --> 00:26:44.500 a billionaire, and an AI sitting across the table 00:26:44.500 --> 00:26:48.259 looking him in the eye. Episode 3, Ex Machina. 00:26:48.380 --> 00:26:51.299 The AI isn't trying to launch missiles, it's 00:26:51.299 --> 00:26:53.640 trying to get out of the room. And it's a great 00:26:53.640 --> 00:26:58.740 deal smarter than anyone who put it there. Subscribe 00:26:58.740 --> 00:27:01.079 wherever you get your podcasts, leave a review, 00:27:01.259 --> 00:27:03.920 tell someone who likes technology or movies or 00:27:03.920 --> 00:27:06.299 is lying awake wondering if we've already made 00:27:06.299 --> 00:27:09.480 a terrible mistake. I'm Anthony. This is Celluloid 00:27:09.480 --> 00:27:12.539 Circuits. And remember, the future is only a 00:27:12.539 --> 00:27:17.769 real away. Inaction terminated.