>the Soviets may be reacting to similar false alarms
>> themselves or to their surveillance of the U.S.

Yes they do: I once read an article about how Putin himself and high-level military advisers were intently watching the progress of a rocket that had been launched off the polar coast of Norway: the launch had not been announced, the rockets' signature was close to that of a military missile and, most ominously, its trajectory fell entirely within a cone over which the russians had limited monitoring abilities due to the failure of one of their antiquated satellites. In the end it was shown to be a scientificpayload from a small nordic research organization that had not cleared the launch through the appropriate channel.

I am not sure what this has to do with cryptography, though...

-- O.L.

Excellent example!

The above discussion has *nothing* to do with cryptography, this is the software engineering layer - how we build financial cryptography systems with dollaps of software engineering practices. In the whole FC concept, one could say that the point is that it isn't really about cryptography... but that's hotly disputed by some, including RAH who invented the term!

though the Soviets may be reacting to similar false alarms themselves

In 1983, Russian Lt. Col. Petrov chose to ignore alarms of incoming US missiles and spared us a great deal of pain. http://www.worldcitizens.org/forgottenhero.html