Movie Review - Dr Strangelove
What a movie. Its hard to figure out what to analyse in this movie. Best I can do is the protocol used by the bombers to determine what to do.
In the film, the U.S. bombers were signaled by a base to initiate plan āRā. The coded signal was sent by radio, decoded on the plane through a codebook. Once intiialised they locked themselves out of any outside communication by switching circuits to a specialised receiver that would only accept specifically coded messages to prevent false messages. This protocol was concerned mainly with confidentiality and authenticity, that the message is not known to the enemy and that it is known to be from the correct source. Integrity is not a high concern as the film shows the radio operator requesting confirmation which maintains enough integrity for the protocol to work. Confidentiality was achieved despite broadcasting on radio through coded messages. Even if the russians had received the radio broadcast they would not have understood it without the codebook, assuming that the code is sufficiently randomised. However due to the need of a codebook and what I assume is the same transmission to multiple bombers there is a vulnerability in that the loss of a single codebook would lead to the compromise of all the messages to every bomber. This could be mitigated by providing every bomber with their own unique code however that would increase transmission time and physical overhead as the base would be required to keep track of every codebook for every plane and encode the message with each one rather than encoding once. Authentication was achieved through the radio lock-out and the 3 letter code. The hardware radio lock-out meant that once the plan was initiated, even if the codebook was compromised, there was no way of contacting the plane without knowing the code which would only be known by the issuer of the plan. This works based on the assumption that the issuer would not reveal the code to anyone else. The objective of that is to prevent inauthentic messages from being sent to the planes. However the film shows that because of the emphasis on authentication the protocol is vulnerable to Type 1 errors.
Additionally there is an element of self-interest near the end of the film where the leaders discuss on a plan to protect the human race. They use the crisis to their advantage, calling for a higher women to men ratio and prioritising themselves as the first people to be saved. This self-interest can be seen all throughout history as people use large issues to distract others from their self interest. For example, the National Rifle Associationās usage of mass shootings where they shame those calling for stronger gun control as using the tragic event for political purposes (which would affect gun sales) while promoting armed schools and for worried people to purchase a gun to protect themselves.
