Bonum Certa Men Certa

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) Do Not Run Windows

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 04, 2024

West gate of Liberty Plaza, Taipei, Taiwan

The projects that deal with ICBMs are extremely unlikely to involve Microsoft

Yesterday we published "Wikileaks Revelations About the History of IBM and Its Role in the Cold War" just to remind people of IBM's role in ICBM contracts. There's a reason we often call IBM "ICBM" instead.

Earlier on today, worldwide conflicts were mentioned (there are about two dozen; Ukraine is only one). It was noted in passing that China is dumping Windows and a conflict near Taiwan seems imminent (maybe Japan too will get dragged into it, at least judging by recent tensions in the strait and some intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests* on the eastern side).

I've attempted to find out what operating systems run on ICBMs, knowing that their development tends to be secretive. As they use navigation systems one can be sure there is some complex onboard system. Years ago it was reported in the mainstream press that due to American drones using Windows Iran managed to crack some of them and take them down (crash them). Then, the US moved to Linux and American drones have run Linux since. As for Iran, Stuxnet taught the autocracy what it means to use Windows in production of weapons.

Perhaps it will remain a mystery what China, India, Russia, the US, Iran and North Korea (among others) use in their long-range cruise missiles and ICBMs. I spent some time searching the Web for answers, to no avail. Pretty much as expected right from the start.

Windows is unfit for purpose. It kills people. An associate has just reminded us: "There are no longer any mainstream articles tying networks of compromised Windows units to DDoS and DDoS-as-a-Service attacks. The articles which do address DDoS seem to treat them as just forming out of the air rather than having an actual cause: the presence of Windows on the network."

Budgets allocated to military projects and especially nukes/ICBMs are enormous, so it seems highly unlikely that Microsoft is used in any of these operations in any country in the world. But we're mostly guessing here. These projects tend to be highly classified for understandable reasons and fast-moving weapons typically use some RTOS, which Linux isn't.

________

* Charts show that since 2017 China has had Mach 25 weapons, whose kinetic energy alone (not explosion) is immense; those can travel almost 10 kilometers per second or 500 kilometers per minute.

ypersonic speed

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Circular Funding
Passing around capital that does not exist (for PR's sake, but there are ramifications)
Y Combinator (YC) Funds Scams, Run by Scammers
Including Scam Altman
EPO People Power - Part I - Identifying Corruption
The EPO, at this stage, is a boat full of holes
Google Still Promotes Plagiarism From WebProNews and Prolific Slopfarms
Google News seems lost and hopeless sometimes
 
Links 10/12/2025: McDonald’s Latest Slop Gaffe (After Dumping IBM's Slop) and "Scam Altman’s Panic Sweats"
Links for the day
Links 10/12/2025: Ransomware (Windows TCO) Has Crippled Economies, Slop (Fake) "Videos Have Flooded Social (Control) Media"
Links for the day
IBM Has Become a "Plantation"
IBM is basically being destroyed for some cash at this point
It's Not Too Late to Send an E-mail to Your European Representative Regarding European Patent Office Abuses
If you live in Europe and have not done so already, please contact your national delegates, whose job is (at least on paper) to represent you
Almost a Thousand EPO Workers Have Voted for Industrial Action
Mandate given to SUEPO for action plan to stop the salary erosion of EPO staff
Why So Many Software Projects Are Quitting Microsoft and GitHub
Be more like LibreWolf. Move away from Microsoft and GitHub.
Many of the Attacks on Us Apparently Boil Down to Jealousy
Envy is a negative trait that leads people to self harm
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 09, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 09, 2025
Valuing One's Work by the Effort or Budget Taken to Undermine It
As long as what we publish is factual, nothing prevents its publication
IBM Says It Buys Another Company for "AI", So Why Does IBM Fire Its Own "AI" Experts?
As people rightly point out, this has nothing to do with "AI"
The Boundaries of Criticism
The harder the EPO will push back, the better the job we must have done
New EPO Series: Mafia Culture, Mobbing, Nepotism, and Illegal Drugs
The series shall start later today
Richard Stallman Was Right About "AI"
"Considering Stallman worked in the MIT AI lab in the era of symbolic AI, and has written GCC (an optimizing compiler is a kind of symbolic reasoner imo), I think he has a deeper understanding of the question than most famous people in tech."
With 3 Weeks Left (Sans Extensions) the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Already Raised About Half of the Money Set as Fund-Raising Goal
“Idiots can be defeated but they never admit it.” — Richard Stallman
Gemini Links 10/12/2025: Cranberry Juice and Gramophones
Links for the day
IBM: We Lay Off Tens of Thousands of People the Very Same Week We Spend 11 Billion Dollars (Debt) on "AI" Fantasies, Hiring About 8,000 People at Cost of 1.3+ Million Dollars Per Employee
Seems like IBM is run by fools
Links 09/12/2025: Tariffs Causing Great Harm and "How to Leave the U.S.A."
Links for the day
Links 09/12/2025: "After the Bubble" (of Slop), "The Internet Forgets"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/12/2025: Lunar Observations and Programming
Links for the day
Linux Foundation Has Found a New Business: Pyramid Schemes
Linus Torvalds should have known better
They Won't Tell You This ("Revolution Won't Be Televised"), But the Slop Bubble Already Burst
We already wrote about it twice this morning
UbuntuPIT Started Experimenting With LLM Slop and a Month Ago It 'Died'
This is the typical trajectory of slopfarms
LibreWolf Will Turn Six in March, It Already (Probably) Has Millions of Users
It's not possible to know the number of users LibreWolf has
The Year of the New Dark Age
Something isn't right
Slopwatch May be Doomed
Slop isn't changing the world, certainly not in a good way anyway
BetaNews Still a Dodgy Site, It Seems to be Partly Run by Chatbots
The company that took over apparently tries to "monetise" the domain with slop
Tomorrow the EPO Administrative Council is Meeting to Discuss the EPO, Contact Your National Representative Today
Final versions of the EPO Administrative Council photo gallery
IBM's Total Debt is About to Hit Almost 80 Billion Dollars, the Company Can Only Raise $14.8 Billion Within 3 Months
Route towards insolvency, not just irrelevancy
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 08, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, December 08, 2025
IBMers Impacted by the Mass Layoffs (Which IBM Tries Not to Talk About) Are Livid as the CEO "Spends 11 Billion He Doesn’t Have"
IBM dooms both its brand and its future
Consumerism and Christmas
Many of us yearn for prior decades when December was about family, not shopping
'Linux' Foundation 'Research' (Marketing) Has New Report About "Open Source" and It Was Made Using Proprietary Software and Not Linux
what 'Linux' Foundation 'Research' is
Links 08/12/2025: Cambodia-Thailand Air Raids, Japan/China Military Incident
Links for the day
The "Cut 10,000 Jobs" Clickbait and Microsoft Sites Now Speculating That Microsoft CEO Has Just Signalled More Mass Layoffs
by our tally, Microsoft had more than 30,000 layoffs this year, not 15,000
Canonical Outsourcing Ubuntu to Microsoft Results in Broken Ubuntu, Just as One Can Expect
State actors and Microsoft prefer it that way
Mocking a Software Developer for Using the Terminal or Programs Like Emacs
A decade ago someone asked RMS (Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement) to send a screenshot
OpenAI Traffic Collapsing (for 3 Months in a Row About 20% Down Per Month), Bankruptcy Likely Soon
How much time has OpenAI got before its massive debt is too much for anyone to shoulder or bear?
IBM + NDA = Laid Off Workers Saying "Thank You" for the Layoffs
The important thing is, for now, more people become aware of it
Monsieur Claude Sahl, Part of the Administrative Council of the EPO (Which Fails to Administer the EPO), Has Been There For Over 30 Years
They have basically built themselves a very expensive palace in Bavaria (Germany), in which to grant European monopolies to billionaires and companies that aren't even European
Open Letter to the Administrative Council of the EPO Calls For Action as Salaries Decrease (Just Like Patent Validity)
Based on what I heard and spoke about with journalists, they accept there is a substance abuse problem at the EPO's management
Links 08/12/2025: "Leaving Intel" (Exodus Continues) and Ways "to Civilize Digital Life"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/12/2025: Earbuds and Offline 'Smartphones'
Links for the day
Books About Bubbles
calling things "AI" and "AIs" can mislead the reader
Links 08/12/2025: Slop Failing and Windows Users Won't 'Upgrade' Due to Slop
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 07, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, December 07, 2025