Here it comes again. I thought we put this monster away in the late ’80s.
President Reagan wanted a Star Wars missile defense system for North America. Computer experts and defense experts shot the idea up so badly it died. Defending the whole of North America from missile attacks was a concept that could not convince the people who knew the most about it.
Now another ignoramus has proposed another boondoggle that will earn defense contractors billions and fail to deliver on his promise. Déja vu.
I reread an article I wrote in 1987 for MIT Technology Review, “The Limits of Software Reliability,” on why Star Wars was a bad idea. I enjoyed this walk down the lane of primitive software development. I had a scary thought that some of the software written then and sent to the field may still be running now. The development and test technology have evolved, but the fundamental problem hasn’t changed. We are error-prone humans, but we demand our computer systems perform flawlessly, and we depend on that.
The Golden Dome could turn out to be brass, or worse.
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