Intellectual Property

After the planes take off to Moscow and fail to follow orders to stand down, when the U.S. are working with each-other to stop the plans, the U.S. government must give up details of the planes and the mission parameters such that the Soviet government can respond accordingly to them. In doing so, the U.S. must reveal specifics regarding their intellectual property, which could lead to issues in the events that would follow those of the film as tensions likely skyrocket between both nations.

While directly, intellectual property does not directly play a role in Fail Safe, there were a number of important things that the U.S government would be trying to keep Russia from gaining access to. In our modern world, as technology develops and is getting more and more dangerous, governments across the world are trying to protect their plans and developments, because once it's out, every nation could have access to it. This includes the U.S jet flight patterns, as the President in Fail safe had to tell the Russians of their fail safe plans in order to explain the issue,  along with the U.S helping the Soviets to trigger group 6's defense missiles and avoid further destruction.

What this could mean in todays world

As the U.S government in Fail Safe had several secret plans that they were keeping from the rest of the nation, the military developments of today are of a similar nature. Classified plans within the U.S government need to be protected, as if our important documents regarding our political scheme, economics, military,  etc, were leaked to the world, it would render us helpless as we would no longer have the edge on other countries.