Russia a hedge against Y2K?? If you listen to General Sergeyev, who rebuffed the DOD's offer to share early warning information in order to prevent inadvertent missile launches, it is. If you listen to the spokesman for Russia's Atomic Energy Commission, which is not even going to consider doing anything until after January 1, 2000, because "we are not having any problems yet", it is.
But if you listen to Alexander Krupnov, head of the State Communications and Information Committee, you get a different picture.
Alexander Krupnov said...leaving the problem unresolved could trigger a collapse of banking, stock market, telecommunications, energy and national early warning defence systems.
Launching a public awareness campaign, he said some forecasts put potential losses due to the millenium bug at 0.5 percent of gross domestic product, the price Russia paid in the wake of the crisis in Asian financial markets.
"With the arrival of the third millennium, computer networks, which play an important role in the nation's infrastructure, are threatened with disruption," Mr. Krupnov said.....
It remained unclear how Russia's cash-strapped government, fighting its worst economic crisis in five years, would finance the program.
Mr. Krupnov said funds were unlikely to come from empty state coffers, and the industries concerned would have to finance their own solutions....
theaustralian.com.au
Again, one of the Gartner Group experts said this month that of all the countries facing the Y2K problem, Russia and China are the least prepared.
There are two (imagine, two!) websites in Russia devoted to the Y2K problem. One has not been updated for months. The computer scientist who set up the other one, is appalled by what he sees as official unconcern and public ignorance of the problem. For anyone who reads Russian, here is the URL:
eltech.ru
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