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Discussion on: The Hawaii Missile Alert Was the Software Developer's Fault

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Luke Westby • Edited

The discussion here seems focused on the responsibilities of developers and designers, so I feel obliged to make a different point:

The fault for causing panic and fear over an incoming nuclear attack lies with the existence of a system in which one must fear an incoming nuclear attack. It's technology's biggest mistake as an industry and a collection of people that we look at this situation and conclude that, in an ideal world, the design of the nuclear warning system would prevent accidental false alarms. In an ideal world there would be no nuclear warning system and no nuclear weapons. Let's stop asking how we can make terrible, monstrous things more user-friendly and instead ask why we are building terrible, monstrous things.