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Strategies & Market Trends : Bob Brinker: Market Savant & Radio Host -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Whirlwind who wrote (5400)	6/4/1998 7:38:00 PM
From: wooden ships	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42834

(off-topic) Alan: It appears that X-ray may have, in a fashion perhaps serendipitous, brought to our lenses the perfect term to describe the feigned humility and "assumed solemnity" of our illustrious leader. Thank you, X-ray. For more on our po-faced "Manchurian Candidate," please see the following item of possible interest: worldnetdaily.com

To: Alan Whirlwind who wrote (5400)	6/5/1998 10:22:00 PM
From: wooden ships	Respond to of 42834

Devotees of Dr. Pangloss and those others in pursuit of comfortable nights of blissful sleep are advised to skip over this posting, drawn from Reuters and brought forward here. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"? WASHINGTON, June 4 -The United States is drawing up plans to keep Russia and others from being spooked into millennium bug-related "nightmare" military scenarios, a top Pentagon official said Thursday. In a stark warning about the Year 2000 computer glitch threat, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre cited a need to calm Russian nuclear forces in particular if the "bug" caused their computers to crash. He told the Senate Armed Services Committee that cash- strapped Russian forces were relying more and more on nuclear weapons "as a safeguard for their national security. And their early warning system is fragile," he said. Such systems, heavily reliant on computers to mesh data from satellites, radars and other sensors, are used by Russia and the United States to mon- itor impending threats such as missile launches and unidentified aircraft. Hamre said Defense Secretary William Cohen ordered plans drawn up for sharing early warning information so "we don't enter into a nightmare condition where everybody is all of a sudden uncertain, and their screens go blank." "That would be a very worrisome environment for all of us," he said, adding the idea was to share data not only with Russia, America's old Cold War foe, but with other, unspecified nations. A formal proposal was to be ready later this summer, he added. He said Asian countries and nations of the old Soviet bloc were lagging the most in re-writing old computer code to cope with the date switch. RUSSIA LACKS Y2K PROGRAM Hamre said Russian forces lacked a program to deal with the so-called Year 2000, or Y2K, problem - the inability of many computers to interpret correctly the century that dawns in 18 months. The hitch stems from the past practice of expressing years in two-digit shorthand. As a result, many computers will read 2000 as 1900, a hitch compounded by embedded micro- chips, most of which contain timers. The Pentagon itself will have spent some $2.9 billion on the most pressing aspects of the problem by mid 1999 but still expects some "nasty surprises," Hamre said. Although the Cold War has been over for years, the United States and Russia each still keep ready to deliver on short notice roughly 2,500 nuclear- tipped weapons on missiles, bombers and submarines. Arms control experts questioned whether Russian commanders, in a pinch, would take at face value word from Washington that no attack was imminent if Moscow feared otherwise. On the other hand, "if they were concerned about a Chinese attack then they might be reassured that Washington saw no such evidence," said Tom Collina, arms control director at the Boston-based Union of Concerned Scientists. COMPLICATING THE 'CYBER-THREAT' Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan of the Air Force, head of the ultra- secretive National Security Agency, told the panel that the Y2K problem would complicate an already-constant cyber- threat to the U.S. information infrastructure. "Peace, as we've traditionally thought of it in the industrial era, really doesn't exist," he said. "Like our body's immune system ... we're just constantly under attack" from those seeking to exploit network vulnerabilities. Sen. Robert Bennett, a Utah Republican who heads a new non- partisan Senate panel studying the millennium problem, predicted widespread turmoil as a result of possible disruption of essential services such as power grids and water supplies. "What kind of unrest will occur around the world is of great concern," he said, echoing the view of the Central Intelligence Agency office studying the issue. Hamre agreed: "This is going to have implications in the world and in American society we can't even comprehend." "I will be first to say we're not going to be without some nasty surprises," he added.