In this essay, Nancy Leveson argues that using conservative techniques and avoiding unnecessarily complex software in critical functions in NC3 systems circumvented nuclear catastrophe in the past. Today, she concludes, a new approach is needed that avoids gratuitous complexity; emphasizes less, not more technology; and improves NC3 systems by developing “more powerful, socio-technical and system engineering and risk management approaches that involve paradigm changes from the approaches that are no longer working. These are only now coming into existence and will need technical advances and refinement.”
About the author: Nancy Leveson is a professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a professor of Engineering Systems at MIT.
This report is accompanied by a Fourth Leg Podcast: The Curse of Flexibility.
