We’re kind of just fucked, really. Our government has no idea what it’s doing and the only reason we haven’t fucked things up worse or been attacked again is just sheer chance. What has inspired my pessimism? Well, 2 years ago our weaponry customer Taiwan (oh, yes, by the way, the U.S. is the biggest arms dealer in the world) ordered up a couple of helicopter batteries for the helicopters we sold their military that they’re totes not supposed to use to attack China or anything. And some lackey walked into the parts room, picked ‘em up and shipped ‘em out. Only, it turns out they weren’t helicopter batteries.They were classified motherfucking fuses for nuclear warheads. And I’m not talking about a fuse that operates the little blink-y light or something, it’s the fuse that apparently actually triggers the explosion of the warhead. Four of them actually sat in Taiwan on a shelf for 2 years and we probably never would’ve know that they were missing except that a Taiwanese helicopter had a dead battery and they finally opened the boxes and realized that were looking at TOP SECRET NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY and so they returned it. We’re going to check and make sure no one else noticed or fucked with it or re-engineered it or anything before we return them to the shelf.

But, yeah, we basically have a warehouse somewhere in Wyoming full of random parts and absolutely zero modern inventory control systems in place to make sure that the wrong things (like, say, sensitive nuclear technology) aren’t getting shipped to any of our other weaponry customers. Who needs Russian or Pakistani scientists to train nuclear wannabes to make weapons when we can just ship them the classified parts ourselves? I’m pretty much marking the fastest way out of D.C. as we speak and making sure the biohazard suit in my trunk is still good. Yes, I carry a biohazard suit around in my trunk. My apartment balcony faced the Pentagon on September 11th and I watched it burning that night.

U.S. mistakenly sent missile parts to Taiwan [MSNBC]