The 1983 film WarGames is a teen film, but it showed us what can happen when you combine the widespread availability of computer technology with the dangers of the Cold War. A young hacker finds his way into the US military's system for simulating, detecting, and executing nuclear attacks. What could possibly go wrong? WarGames was the first time I had ever seen Matthew Broderick, and I thought "This kid is going places." He was 21 at the time, but looked much younger.
Later we heard a story about the production. The filmmakers couldn't get any access to the Pentagon's facilities, so they used their imaginations to build the set that housed the program. Later, military officials said that the state-of-the-art computers portrayed in the movie were just a dream to them, as the real thing was quite obsolete.
WarGames is the reason I've never liked Matthew Broderick. Being familiar with how things really worked in the missle threat monitoring area, that movie was a big piece of crap. Had a hard time sitting through the whole thing and I've never watched it again.
ReplyDeleteI was suprised to read that up until 2019 the US military had more than a few critical systems that still relied on the old 1970s 8" floppy discs.
ReplyDeleteSuch archaic hardware has one legitimate advantage over modern equivalents; the old stuff is FAR less susceptible to interference from electromagnetic pulses generated by nuclear weapons. Also, "if it ain't broke don't fix it."
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