The Machine that Won the War

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The Machine that Won the War is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the October 1961 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and was reprinted in the collections Nightfall and Other Stories (1969) and Robot Dreams (1986). It is one of a loosely connected series of such stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac.

Three influential leaders of the human race meet in the aftermath of a successful war against the Denebians. Discussing how the vast and powerful Multivac computer was a decisive factor in the war, each of the men admits that in fact he falsified his part of the decision process because he felt that the situation was too complex to follow normal procedures. The first admits that he altered the data being fed to Multivac, since the populace could not be trusted to report accurate information in the current situation. The second admits that he altered the data that Multivac produced, since he knew that the Multivac was not in good working order due to manpower and spare parts shortage. The story ends with the last of the three admitting that he had made the final decision purely on the toss of a coin.