Revolt of the Brains

Taylor knew Earth faced its darkest hour; man was prepared to fight against any invaders, except—ironically enough—those he had created!
Harry Taylor knew it was going to be a big one—a really big one—the moment he saw the Chief.
Come in, Taylor. Come in, the Chief said. He was a three-star general in the United States Air Force and he stood in front of a map of the Western hemisphere. The map covered the entire rear wall of the room with certain areas—like the White Sands complex and the central Everglades and a portion of the Mojave Desert—marked off in red.
I'll come right to the point, the Chief said. He looked haggard, not merely as if he lacked sleep but as if he might never sleep again. As you know, Taylor, all of our guided missiles are missing. That means—
I'd heard the rumors, Taylor said grimly. But then—we'd be helpless! If the enemy finds out that we are unable to retaliate....
Wait, Taylor. Let me sketch in the history for you briefly. Last Sunday, as you've probably heard via inter-agency scuttlebutt, every inter-continental missile in the weapons arsenal of the Free World disappeared.
But how?
All we knew at the time was that they simply—blasted off. Our radar tracked them as far as the upper reaches of the atmosphere, or rather, the ionosphere. We lost them there. It had been assumed that the enemy somehow infiltrated our defenses with trained agents, who activated all the missiles at once, thus rendering us helpless.
We had five thousand I.C.B.M.'s, Taylor. During the 1960's and 70's, as you know, the missiles became more and more automatic, especially after the Parkinson feedback device was developed—
That's the one in which an H-bomb missile plots its own course to correct for winds and the jetstream and the likelihood of dodging enemy ground-to-air defense weapons?
Right. Except for the necessity of blastoff at human hands, the missiles were all but self-sufficient. Almost—well, alive.
Taylor, we couldn't hide the fact that five thousand I.C.B.M.'s blasted off—those were the rumors you heard. The Chief's haggard face was suddenly lit by a broad grin. And neither could the enemy.