Why Battlestar Galactica Is the Only Ship That Can't Be Hacked

Eighty-nine of you brought up Battlestar Galactica in our comments, the first back in July. So here it is: every famous spaceship computer, from HAL to the Death Star, run through the three rules from Battlestar Galactica's own series bible: no master computer, no network, dumb on purpose. The twist: the show's whole first hour is a cyberattack. Every networked warship in the fleet switches off in the middle of a fight, and the only one left flying is the old battlestar whose commander refused the upgrade. Then Galactica breaks her own rule twice, once to survive and once to win, and the second time is her last mission. Plus the prefix code that beat Khan, the Enterprise that turned itself off and on again, the Death Star's wall socket, a real 8-inch floppy that ran America's nuclear command until 2019, SolarWinds, and Stuxnet's USB stick. Every name that asked for it is in the roll call at the end. Thank you. So say we all. Spoilers for the whole series, including the ending. CHAPTERS 00:00 The only warship with no Wi-Fi 01:16 89 of you asked: the series bible's three rules 02:59 HAL 9000: the ship is the computer 04:13 Mother: a door from the company side 05:32 The prefix code 16309 (and the Enterprise turned it off and on) 07:08 The Death Star: a wall socket 08:16 Independence Day: the upload 09:04 The Cylon attack: a back door in every ship 10:47 Galactica: Adama's casualty list 14:17 The day Galactica networked (and the virus) 16:59 Resurrection Ship: the enemy's network 18:05 The end: the old girl plugs in 20:13 Roll call: so say we all Narrated by: Me :) SOURCES Battlestar Galactica series bible, Ronald D. Moore, 17 Dec 2003: networking removed, no master computer (io9 on the bible): https://gizmodo.com/the-original-batt... SolarWinds Form 8-K, 14 Dec 2020: 'fewer than 18,000' customers installed the affected Orion versions (SEC): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da... GAO-16-468 (2016): the nuclear forces' command system on an IBM Series/1 with 8-inch floppy disks: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-16-468 The Register (2019): SACCS drops the floppies; the machine 'cannot be accessed with conventional network protocols': https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/1... ISIS (Albright, Brannan, Walrond, 2010): did Stuxnet take out about 1,000 centrifuges at Natanz?: https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/... Stuxnet reached the air-gapped plant on removable media (CSO Online): https://www.csoonline.com/article/321... The bible's lines on screen are quoted from the full text of the 2003 bible as it circulates online (generalstaff.org archive). FOOTAGE Battlestar Galactica (2003 miniseries; 2004-2009 series; Razor, 2007), NBCUniversal. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Warner Bros. / MGM. Alien (1979), 20th Century Studios. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Paramount. Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Contagion" (1989), Paramount. Star Wars (1977) and Rogue One (2016), Lucasfilm. Independence Day (1996), 20th Century Studios. All used for commentary and criticism. Images: Ronald D. Moore (Xuthoria, Worldcon 2026, CC BY-SA 4.0); Stanley Kubrick (Warner Bros. publicity photo, public domain); Apple II (Rama & Musee Bolo, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr); IBM Series/1 (Btx-Museum, CC BY-SA 2.0); 8-inch floppy disks (public domain); gas centrifuge cascade, Piketon, Ohio, 1984 (U.S. Department of Energy, public domain). The 3D scenes, the network diagrams, the resin network and the ship-yard paperwork were made for this video (drawn in code).