kzt wrote:If you want to blow up the ship and have high-level access a minor code change to the reactor should accomplish this.
No, that is NOT the case. As I stated, in
A Rising Thunder Chapter Eighteen where Honor is talking to Chien Lu she
explicitly referred to the problems & limitations that the Nanotech faced. The relevant passages are as follows:
A Rising Thunder
“McBryde said- I’ve seen the recording he provided to Captain Zilwicki, and I’ll see to it you get a copy, as well- that the nanotech has to be specifically engineered for its target. They have to get their hands on a sample of the target’s genetic material, then build the nannies around that material. If McBryde’s right about that, that’s almost certainly the primary reason no forensic examination has turned up any evidence of it. It breaks down almost instantly after completing its function, and it’s all tagged as a legitimate component of the target’s own body.
“McBryde either didn’t know or didn’t say exactly how sophisticated the nanotech’s ‘programming’ can be, but our best estimate based on what he did say is that it has to work something like transferred muscle memory.”
...
“Transferred muscle memory.” Honor repeated. “ONI consulted my father as one of the Star Empire’s leading neurosurgeons as soon as they started trying to evaluate McBryde’s claims.” She did not add that he had also been called in because of his personal connection with her and the monumentally high security clearances which went with it, but she really did not have to. “And I’ve discussed it personally with him. He doesn’t like the implications one bit, but he says it’s at least theoretically possible. In fact, he thinks there are probably some similarities between the way the nanotech works and the way this works.”
She held up her artificial left hand and flexed its fingers.
“When I was learning to handle this, I had to relearn all the muscle memory using the new neural connections- connections which were significantly different from the organic ones I’d always had. Apparently, if my dad’s right, what they do is to use a human…call her a ‘host,’ for want of a better word, to ‘train’ the nanotech pretty much the same way I trained my prosthesis and my own brain. Again, assuming he’s right, they can only train it to carry out limited and probably very specific physical actions. That doesn’t mean the physical actions can’t be complex, according to my dad, but that they can probably only put them together in specific combinations, and there’s a data storage limitation- probably a pretty severe one- on what they can actually pack into the nanotech. For example, I’ve viewed the bridge imagery of the day Tim was killed.”
...
“I’ve viewed the bridge imagery.” Her soprano was almost as clinical, as detached, as before when she went on once more. “And aside from drawing Simon’s pulser and opening fire, he never moved from the instant whatever was controlling him took over. He simply stood in one place, held the trigger down, and swept his fire across the bridge. Looking at the security imagery of the Havenite ambassador’s chauffeur shooting Admiral Webster, you see very much the same thing. He draws his weapon, he opens fire- hitting three other people, not just the Admiral- and simply stands there until he’s shot in turn. No attempt to escape, no effort to take cover or evade return fire, nothing. We haven’t had the opportunity to look at any imagery your security people may have of Colonel Hofschulte, so I can’t say how consistent that is in his case, but that’s the pattern we’re apparently seeing.
“Now, according once again to my dad, there has to be another component, some sort of organic AI, you might say. His best guess is that it probably sets up residence in some corner of the target’s brain, but it wouldn’t necessarily have to be located there as long as it has access to the central nervous system. Presumably the AI is issued with a set of triggering criteria that it looks for before activating whatever ‘muscle memory’ may have been installed in the nanotech. Obviously, the criteria can’t be too complex.”
...
“At any rate, if my dad’s right about this, the AI only triggers under very specific circumstances. In fact, they probably err on the side of not triggering when they set up the original programming, even when that means missing possible opportunities, in order to avoid the sorts of accidents which might have started someone wondering what the heck was going on. And the specific actions which can be triggered are only those which have been ‘muscle transferred’ to the target. So, assuming he’s right, this stuff couldn’t force someone to, say, enter a computer code that’s in his memory, not the nanotech’s. And it can’t access his knowledge or make his conscious brain do what it wants- force him to make up a lie in order to penetrate security, for example, or come up with his own plan for some assassination or act of sabotage. Daddy says it would probably be theoretically possible to…pre-record, let’s say, a lie, although he doesn’t know whether it would sound like the target’s voice or the voice of whoever provided the muscle memory to the nanotech. But it’s not like…oh, like hypnosis or adjustment. It couldn’t trick its victim into supplying the proper code word response to a challenge- or even force him to respond in the first place- unless whoever programmed it had the proper challenge ahead of time.”
“But if the programmer had the challenge, knew the computer code, he could cause the ‘target’ to enter it?” Rabenstrange asked, eyes narrow.
“Probably. Well, possibly, anyway.” Honor shrugged. “We’re shooting in the dark, Chien-lu. As you say, we’ve had more time to think about this and more complete information, but without the kind of specifics McBryde either never had or at least never gave us, all of this is theoretical.”
“Understood.” Rabenstrange leaned back in his armchair once more, right hand stroking Nimitz’ spine, and grimaced. “Understood, but it poses almost as many questions as it ‘theoretically’ answers, doesn’t it?”
“You might say that.” Honor smiled without a trace of amusement. “On the other hand, I personally think Dad’s onto something. If they could actually reach into someone’s mind and memories with this stuff, they wouldn’t need assassins. They could simply program people in key positions- like a prime minister or a president- to start doing whatever it was they wanted them to do. Or they could simply have targeted someone else on Imperator, someone besides Tim, who had access to a fusion reactor or a hyper generator or any of a dozen other critical systems I can think of right off hand. Someone who could have destroyed the entire ship, not just killed me. But getting anyone into a position to do any of that, to initiate the proper procedures, would have required access to information the programmer didn’t have and couldn’t build into the muscle memory transfer.”
As you can see there are
explicit limitations on what the nanotech can do. It can be programmed to force the host to do some complex tasks but
only what the
programmer knows about. It
cannot force the host to do something
that relies on the host's own memory. Detonating the bomb that destroyed the flag bridge was easy; they had set up the bomb & the detonating sequence themselves so the nanotech could force Daniels to key in the sequence without too much trouble. With regards to Daniels triggering the missile salvo that also could be easily arranged. It was the sort of last ditch, gone to hell, hope never have to the damn thing contingency that all navies operations officers did as a matter of course, especially when going into battle. Whilst that was something that Daniels himself had set up it would have been relatively easy for the MA to have found out. As Alfredo Yu said in Chapter Twenty Four he could think of at least ways a Peep admiral could have found that information back in the bad old days. The relevant passage is;
“Why, Madam President? If you assume they could get to Filareta’s ops officer at all, why not set up something like this? Especially if there was some way for the people who programmed him to know or to guess how he’d go about setting up a gone-to-hell fire plan? Maybe they had access to recordings of simulations where he’d set up plans like that. For that matter, maybe they had someone else inside Filareta’s staff passing them that kind of information, probably with no idea at all what the Alignment meant to do with it. I can think of at least three ways, right off hand, a Peep flag officer back in the bad old days could’ve gotten that information about any operations or tactical officer in the People’s Navy anytime he’d wanted to, and the SLN’s at least as badly riddled by patronage and ‘favour buying’ as the Legislaturalists ever were. And if Filareta’s tac officer did have a pattern, did have a standard way of setting up for that kind of plan…”
The limitations of this were also pointed out when White Haven suggested that they could have launched three aimed salvoes with better targeting:
“Possibly,” White Haven agreed. “But that doesn’t change the fact that Filareta could have used the time Honor gave him to set up a sequenced, targeted, controlled launch, and he didn’t. Why not?”
“Because that would have required a series of actions?” Yu murmured, then nodded slowly. “They’d have to select the pods to be enabled. Then they’d have to choose the targets, feed the coordinates, enable at least the first salvo’s telemetry links, update their electronic warfare plan. It would have taken more than one man, and it would have taken a complex series of commands and keystrokes. Whereas...”
To reiterate, as you can see from the above passages the nanotech can only force the host to do something the programmer has knowledge of. It cannot force them to do something that relies on the host's own memory which the programmer does not know about. It was probably programmed to kick in only if Filareta ordered Eleventh Fleet to stand down & surrender.
And all of that does not even include my second point that Filareta's flagship blowing up immediately after firing off the massive salvo
without any Manty fire would have been suspicious enough to penetrate even the densest Battle Fleet admiral's skull.
