To the Point
The secret history of cyber war
When President Ronald Reagan was relaxing at Camp David in 1983, he happened to see the film War Games, starring the young Mathew Broderick as a "tech-whiz teenager" who thinks he's playing a computer game. It turns out that the kid has unwittingly hacked into America's real-world defense system, and he almost starts World War III.
By Warren Olney • • 1 min readWhen President Ronald Reagan was relaxing at Camp David in 1983, he happened to see the film War Games, starring the young Mathew Broderick as a "tech-whiz teenager" who thinks he's playing a computer game. It turns out that the kid has unwittingly hacked into America's real-world defense system, and he almost starts World War III. President Reagan's reaction to that film begins the book, Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, by Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter and author Fred Kaplan, who's currently national security correspondent for Slate.
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The full episode
3 of 7Talking Points: About 2016- 1:19Police facial recognition databases may include you
- 7:54US aid is helping reduce gang violence in Honduras
- 14:42The secret history of cyber warYou’re reading this
- 15:00Terror in Europe
- 23:55State Department hero reflects on the 'Mirror Test'
- 34:08How the Right went wrong
- 43:05Siddhartha Mukherjee talks about the history of the human genome