Movies rarely influence public policy, but Washington’s policies on cyberattacks, computer surveillance and the possibility of cyberwarfare were directly influenced by the 1983 box-office hit “WarGames.”

电影很少能够影响到公共政策，但是华盛顿对于网络攻击、电脑监控和可能的网络战争的政策，却直接受到1983年票房大片《战争游戏》(WarGames)的影响。

The film — starring Matthew Broderick as a tech-whiz teenager who unwittingly hacks into the computer of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and nearly sets off World War III — opened nationwide that June 3. The next night, President Ronald Reagan watched it at Camp David. And that is where this strange story — culled from interviews with participants and Reagan Library documents — begins.

该片于当年6月3日在全国公映，片中马修·布罗德里克(Matthew Broderick)饰演一个天才技术少年，无意中侵入了北美航空航天防御指挥部(NORAD)的电脑，差点发起了第三次世界大战。上映第二天，罗纳德·里根(Ronald Reagan)总统就在戴维营看了这幅片子。于是本文讲述的这个奇怪的故事（来自相关人士的访谈和里根图书馆的档案）就从那里开始了。

The following Wednesday, back in the White House, Reagan met with his national-security advisers and 16 members of Congress to discuss forthcoming nuclear arms talks with the Russians. But he still seemed focused on the movie.

接下来的星期三，回到白宫的里根与国家安全顾问们以及16名议员开会讨论即将与俄国人开展的核武器谈判。但他的心思似乎还在那部电影上。

At one point, he put down his index cards and asked if anyone else had seen it. No one had, so he described the plot in detail. Some of the lawmakers looked around the room with suppressed smiles or raised eyebrows. Three months earlier, Reagan had delivered his “Star Wars” speech, imploring scientists to build laser weapons that could shoot down Soviet missiles in outer space. The idea was widely dismissed as nutty. What was the old man up to now?

后来他推开面前的资料卡，问其他人看没看过那部电影。其他人都说没看过，于是他就把故事情节详细讲述了一遍。几名议员不禁忍着笑，扬起眉毛环视四周。三个月之前，里根刚刚做了“星球大战”讲演，要求科学家们开发激光武器，从外太空击落苏联的导弹。很多人都觉得这个想法简直太疯狂了。这个老家伙现在又想干什么？

After finishing his synopsis, Reagan turned to Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and asked: “Could something like this really happen?” Could someone break into our most sensitive computers? General Vessey said he would look into it.

讲完剧情，里根转向参谋长联席会议主席小约翰·W·维西将军(Gen. John W. Vessey Jr.)，问道：“这种事真的会发生吗？”也就是说，真的会有人侵入我们最敏感的电脑中去吗？维西将军答应调查一下。

One week later, the general returned to the White House with his answer. “WarGames,” it turned out, wasn’t far-fetched. “Mr. president,” he said, “the problem is much worse than you think.”

一周后，维西将军带着答案回到白宫。调查结果表明《战争游戏》并非不着边际。“总统先生，”他说，“这个问题比你想的还要严重得多。”

Reagan’s question set off a series of interagency memos and studies that culminated, 15 months later, in his signing a classified national security decision directive, NSDD-145, titled “National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security.”

里根的问题引出了一系列各部门协作的备忘录与研究，15个月后，这些研究达到了顶峰，里根签署了机密的国家安全决策指导方案NSDD-145，名为《电子通信与自动化信息系统安全国家政策》。

The first laptop computers had barely hit the market; public Internet providers wouldn’t exist for another few years. Yet NSDD-145 warned that these new machines — which government agencies and high-tech industries had started buying at a rapid clip — were “highly susceptible to interception.” Hostile foreign powers were “extensively” hacking into them already; “terrorist groups and criminal elements” had the ability to do so, too.

当时，第一批笔记本电脑几乎还没上市；公共互联网服务商还要过一两年才会出现。但是NSDD-145提出警告，这些新机器——当时政府部门和高科技产业已经开始大量采购了——“很有可能被侵入”。恶意的外国势力已经“广泛地”黑入了这些机器；“恐怖组织与犯罪分子”也有了这个能力。

General Vessey could answer the president’s question so promptly — and national-security aides could compose NSDD-145 in such detailed language — because, deep within the bureaucracy, a small group of scientists and spies had been concerned about this looming threat for more than a decade.

维西将军之所以能够如此迅速地回答总统的问题，国家安全部门的工作人员之所以能够以这样详细的措辞起草NSDD-145，这都是因为在官僚机构内部，有一小群科学家与间谍，十几年前便已经开始关注这个即将到来的威胁。

In the 1960s, the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency undertook a program called the ARPAnet. The idea, a precursor to the Internet, was to let Pentagon labs and contractors share data and research on the same network.

20世纪60年代，国防部的高级研究计划署(Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency )开展了一个名叫ARPAnet的项目。它是互联网的先驱，目的是令国防部的实验室与承包商分享数据资料，在同一个网络内进行研究。

Just before the program’s rollout, in April 1967, an engineer named Willis Ware wrote a paper called “Security and Privacy in Computer Systems.” A computer pioneer dating back to the ’40s, Mr. Ware headed the computer science department at the RAND Corporation, the think tank in Santa Monica, Calif.

这个项目于1967年4月启动，在此之前，一个名叫威利斯·威尔(Willis Ware)的工程师写了一篇论文，名为《电脑系统的安全与隐私》。早在40年代，威尔便已经是电脑领域内的先驱，他在加利福尼亚州圣塔莫尼卡的智库——兰德公司(RAND Corporation)领导着一个电脑科技部门。

In his paper, he lauded the goals of the ARPAnet but explained some risks of what he called “on-line” networks. As long as computers sat in isolated chambers, security wasn’t a problem. But once multiple users could gain access to data from unprotected locations, anyone with certain skills could hack into the network — and, once inside, roam at will, pilfering unclassified and secret files alike. Mr. Ware’s warnings went unheeded for decades, though he remained a frequent consultant. (He died in 2013, at the age of 93.)

在论文中，他赞美了ARPAnet的目标，但也解释了他所谓的“在线”网络系统中的一些危险。只要电脑是孤立的，安全就不成问题。但是一旦许多用户都可以从未经保护的地址获取信息，有些具备某些特殊能力的人就可以黑进网络，一旦他们进入网络随意漫游，就可以窃取公开或机密文件之类的东西。几十年来，威尔的警告都没有受到重视，尽管他仍然是一位经常受到资讯的顾问（他于2013年逝世，享年93岁）。

In 1980, Lawrence Lasker and Walter Parkes, former Yale classmates in their late 20s, were writing the screenplay for “WarGames.” (It would be nominated for an Oscar but would lose to Horton Foote’s “Tender Mercies.”) A hacker friend had told them about “demon-dialing,” in which a telephone modem searched for other modems by automatically dialing each phone number in an area code and letting it ring twice before proceeding to the next number. If a modem answered, it would squawk; the demon-dialing software would record the number, so the hacker could call back later. In their screenplay, this was how their hero broke into NORAD. But they wondered if this was plausible: Didn’t the military close off its computers to public telephone lines?

1980年，耶鲁的同班同学、快30岁的劳伦斯·拉斯科(Lawrence Lasker )与沃尔克·帕克斯(Walter Parkes)写了《战争游戏》的剧本——它后来获得了奥斯卡最佳剧本奖提名，但最终败给霍顿·福特(Horton Foote)的《温柔的怜悯》(Tender Mercies)。一个黑客朋友给他们讲了“魔鬼拨号软件”的事情，意思是，一个电话调制解调器会通过自动拨打一个地区内的其他电话号码找出其他调制解调器。它会让对方电话响两声，之后拨打另一个电话号码。如果对方调制解调器应答了，就会发出粗糙的声音；这个魔鬼拨号软件就会记下这个号码，黑客过一会儿再拨回去。在剧本里，主人公正是这样闯入了NORAD。但是两个编剧不知道这种事情是不是真能实现：军方难道不应该把自己的电脑隔离在公共电话线路之外吗？

Mr. Lasker lived in Santa Monica, a few blocks from RAND. Figuring someone there might be helpful, he called the public affairs office, which put him in touch with Mr. Ware, who invited the pair to his office.

拉斯科当时住在圣塔莫尼卡，距离兰德只有几个街区。他知道那个公司有人可能能够帮助自己，于是就给该公司的公共事务办公室打了电话，就这样联系上了威尔，威尔请两人去自己的办公室见面。

They’d come to the right man. Not only had he long known about the vulnerability of computer networks, but he’d also helped design the software for the real NORAD computer. And Mr. Ware proved remarkably open, even friendly. Listening to the writers’ questions, he waved off their worries. Yes, he told them, the computer was supposed to be closed, but some officers wanted to work from home on weekends, so they’d leave a port open. Anyone could get in, if the right number was dialed.

他俩可真算找对了人。威尔不仅早就了解电脑系统有多么容易受到攻击，而且还参与设计了现实生活中NORAD的电脑软件。威尔知无不言，非常友善。听了两个编剧的问题，他一口就打消了他俩的顾虑。没错，他告诉他们，军方的电脑本应是关闭的，但有些军官希望周末回家工作，所以他们就让端口开着。任何人如果拨对了号码都可以连接进来。

“The only computer that’s completely secure,” Mr. Ware told them with a mischievous smile, “is a computer that no one can use.”

“唯一彻底安全的电脑就是根本没有人使用的电脑，”威尔带着顽皮的微笑说。

Ware gave the writers the confidence to go ahead with their project. It’s fitting that the scenario of “WarGames” — which aroused Reagan’s curiosity and led to the first national policy on reducing the vulnerability of computers — owed a crucial debt to the man who’d first warned that they were vulnerable.

威尔给了两个编剧信心继续写下去。《战争游戏》中的情节引起了里根的好奇心，结果就是第一个强化电脑安全性的国家政策出台，而这些情节很大程度要归功于那个第一次提出警告，说电脑非常容易遭受攻击的人，这是非常适宜的。

Meanwhile, Reagan’s directive hit a roadblock. It put the National Security Agency in charge of securing all of the nation’s computer servers and networks — government, business and personal. The agency had been established in 1952 to intercept foreign communications; it was expressly barred from spying on Americans. Representative Jack Brooks, a Texas Democrat and a fiery civil-liberties advocate, wasn’t about to let a classified presidential decree blur the distinction. He sponsored and got passed a law overriding that directive.

与此同时，里根的指令遇到了困难。它让国家安全局(National Security Agency)负责国家电脑服务商与网络的安全，其中包括政府网络、商用网络与个人网络。国家安全局1952年创立时，是为了拦截外国通讯；它特意被禁止侦查美国公民。得克萨斯州民主党众议员杰克·布鲁克斯(Jack Brooks)是一位坚决的公民自由拥护者，他不愿让一纸秘密的总统命令模糊了其中的区别。他提起一项法律，推翻这条指令，最终获得了通过。

The main author of Reagan’s NSDD-145 was Donald Latham, the Pentagon’s liaison to the National Security Agency — and a former N.S.A. analyst himself. General Vessey had assigned him to answer Reagan’s question on “WarGames” (Could something like this really happen?). Mr. Latham answered as he did (The situation is much worse than you think.) because he knew that the N.S.A. had long been hacking into the communications systems of the Soviet Union and China — and what we were doing to them, they could someday do to us.

里根的NSDD-145指令的起草者是国防部对国家安全局的联络员唐纳德·莱瑟姆(Donald Latham)，他本人之前在国家安全局担任联络员。维西将军派遣他去回答里根关于《战争游戏》的问题（“这种事真的会发生吗？”）莱瑟姆照实回答了这个问题（“这个问题比你想的还要严重得多”），因为他知道，国家安全局一直都在侵入苏联和中国的通讯系统——我们对他们做的事情，他们有一天也可以这样对我们做。

Mr. Ware had been among the first to draw this conclusion. Mr. Latham knew about it early on because the two were longtime friends, Mr. Ware having served on the N.S.A.’s scientific advisory board. The N.S.A. was the most secretive branch of the American intelligence community. Reagan’s screening of “WarGames” brought Mr. Ware’s concerns into high policy-making circles for the first time. And it sparked the first public controversy over the tensions between security and privacy on the Internet, as well as the first public power struggle about the subject between the N.S.A. and Congress — a debate and a struggle that persist today.

威尔是最早得出这种结论的人之一。莱瑟姆也早就知道，因为两人是老朋友。威尔曾经在国家安全局的科学顾问委员会工作过。国家安全局当时是美国情报部门中最隐秘的一个分支。里根对《战争游戏》的关注令威尔的忧虑得以第一次进入最高决策圈。引发了关于互联网安全与隐私之间紧张关系的第一次公开讨论，以及国家安全局与议会之间的第一次公开权力斗争——这样的讨论与斗争一直延续至今。