The Therac-25 was the result of layer after layer of utter incompetence. They assigned a programmer who wasn't qualified to write a javascript button-click handler, to write life-critical sofware. Then no one else even looked at his code. There was no design review, no QA or bug tracking, and very little testing. Even after the defect was reported, there was no review or followup, or realization that it could even be a software problem. But the problem went much deeper. The hardware design was just as defective. There were no interlocks, in either hardware or firmware, to prevent defective software from killing patients. Many books on mission critical embedded system design devote an entire chapter to all the stupid mistakes that made up the Therac-25. If you make a list of the rules of sane system design, the Therac-25 design will have violated nearly every one of them.

There are a number of countries that spend even less. Most countries have no disputed borders, and no hostile direct neighbors. Most military spending in the world is out of tradition or political calculation rather than any real security need. Even countries that need to keep their military, often have more than they need, and they focus on the wrong skills and capabilities. For example, two decades after the end of the cold war, Germany's military is built around heavy armored divisions, when there is no plausible scenario where they would be useful. On the eve of the 9/11 attacks, the US Army's top priority was the Crusader Artillery, a 99 ton monstrosity what would have proved nearly useless in the the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even GWB had enough sense to kill that.

You don't put the backdoor in your code. Too many people would check that. Instead, you put it in the toolchain: you hack the compiler to insert the backdoor when it detects a certain innocuous pattern in the source code. Likewise, if you want to put a backdoor in an IC, you hack the Verilog/VHDL compiler to insert it.

The definitive description of this technique is Ken Thompson's talk, Reflections on Trusting Trust.

Because she/he doesn't know about the back doors.

Or poorly managed. Business 101: If your business is turning away customers, you should either raise your prices or expand your capacity.

As a low level engineer, why do you assume that you would know about the back doors?

This statement contradicts everything I have ever read or watched about WWII. There is no support for this on Wikipedia (which clearly states that the emperor interceded after the second nuke), or anywhere else that I can find. Do you have a citation for this claim that "surrender talks were already underway"?

In July, the Japanese had tried to enlist the Soviets as an intermediary to negotiate an end to the war. But no talks were started because the Soviets were already making secret plans to abrogate the friendship pact and attack the Japanese in Manchuria and Sakhalin.

Even after the second nuke, a majority of the Japanese cabinet supported continuing the war. In his memoirs, Mitsumasa Yonai, the Japanese naval minister and close adviser to the emperor, described the bombings as a "divine gift" because they gave the emperor a face saving way to end the war. He felt that otherwise the war would have otherwise dragged on, with disastrous consequences for the Japanese people.

So we should have instead continued incinerating Japanese cities with conventional firebombs? That was killing far more people than the nukes. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria, beginning on August 9th, also killed far more Japanese than the nukes. That might have been prevented if we had used the nukes a few weeks earlier.

How many lives were saved by sending a clear message to Joseph Stalin? The history of Manchuria, as well as Europe, might have been very different. Prior to the dropping of the nukes, Stalin was pushing for the Soviet Red Army to participate in the occupation of Japan, including Hokkaido and northern Honshu. That could have ended in a "north" and "south" Japan, just like we have today in Korea.

Because there is evidence that psychopaths actually make better leaders. There was an article about this a couple months ago in the Economist. By ignoring the suffering of individuals, psychopaths are able to focus on bold action for the greater good. This is especially apparent in war time, where compassionate leaders are often dithering and indecisive, leading to a prolonged war and many more deaths and wounds than needed.

As they should be. The problem with any automated system is they treat middle class white people the same as the blacks and teenagers that the cops are supposed to be focusing on. We can't allow that.

Or because they want him to get away. Of course they have to put on a show of trying to get him, but do they really want to? The "Snowden Affair" is quietly fading away, with all the NSA spying intact. Bringing him back to the USA for a trial would put the issue back on the front page. The government prefers that we all focus on Will and Kate's new baby instead.

DC voters don't like to get pushed around by the federal government, and they get pushed a lot. Marion Barry was a scoundrel, but he was sent to prison in what was a clear case of entrapment by federal agents. They were almost certainly targeting him because of his politics. How many other citizens have been handed free unsolicited cocaine by the US government? His reelection was just DC voters giving congress the finger.

Baloney. IQ tests may not precisely measure "intelligence", but they are clearly measuring something. IQ scores are strongly correlated with economic success (higher salaries and lower unemployment), reduction in criminal behavior, and better health. Things that lead to higher IQ scores tend to raise these correlated factors as well, whether it is better nutrition, less lead exposure, or even coaching on the thinking skills required for the test (which seems to indicate that good "test taking skills" are actually broadly useful critical thinking skills).

IQ scores tend to be correlated with a history of urbanization and economic specialization. In a primitive society, innovation and original thinking are unlikely to lead to any benefit, and might lead to a disaster such as a crop failure or empty snares. But in an urbanized society with specialized jobs, successful ideas can be leveraged for disproportionate benefit. East Asia had large urban populations long before the West. In Europe, Jews were urbanized during the middle ages when almost everyone else was a rural serf. East Asians have average IQ scores about 5 points higher than Europeans, and Ashkenazi Jews are higher still.

A number of energy and grown sapping diseases, such as malaria and yellow fever, were common in the American South in the 19th century, but uncommon in the North. But the biggest culprit was probably hookworms, which cause "intellectual, cognitive and growth retardation". Average IQ in the South increased significantly as hookworms were eradicated in the early 20th century.

We might get another gain if we eradicate toxoplasmosis, a parasite spread by cats. It is believed by some to depress intelligence and novelty seeking behavior in humans.