Air-gapped floppy drives as a feature: why nuclear and FAA systems stayed offline
AccBalanced · x · 2026-11-06
Economist Lyn Alden explains why seemingly absurd headlines about nuclear codes and air traffic systems running on offline floppy drives actually make sense: the nuclear systems kept this tech until around 2019, and the FAA is only now phasing it out.
In an era of escalating hacking, super-secure slow-update infrastructure like nuclear control, air traffic and core banking deliberately avoids touching the outside world for as long as possible — a security trade-off, not mere obsolescence.
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