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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jwk who wrote (1970)	6/5/1998 8:49:00 PM
From: Urlman	Respond to of 9818

U.S. to quell Russia Y2K fears By Reuters Special to CNET NEWS.COM June 5, 1998, 11:45 a.m. PT WASHINGTON--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 yesterday. 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, as many systems may fail worldwide. 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, radar, and other sensors, are used by Russia and the United States to monitor impending threats such as missile launches and unidentified aircraft. He 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 rewriting old computer code to cope with the date switch. Hamre said Russian forces lacked a program to deal with the 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 microchips, 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. 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 cyberthreat 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 (R-Utah), who heads a new nonpartisan 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. Calling the Y2K glitch the electronic equivalent of El NiAñe weather pattern, Hamre said: "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 said.