IP: Wired News: Y2Kaboom?

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

From: believer@telepath.com
Subject: IP: Wired News: Y2Kaboom?
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 02:27:52 -0600
To: believer@telepath.com

Source:  Wired News
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/16217.html

Y2Kaboom?
 by Declan McCullagh 

 12:27 p.m.12.Nov.98.PST
 WASHINGTON -- America and Russia should
 shut down their nuclear arsenals rather than risk
 Armageddon because of Year 2000 glitches, a
 military research group says in a report released
 Thursday. 

 Y2K errors could cause the systems to go
 haywire, leading to erroneous early warning
 reports or even triggering an accidental launch of
 a nuclear missile, the British American Security
 Information Council warned in a 36-page report. 

 Both superpowers keep their arsenals in a
 constant state of readiness -- a Cold War-era
 strategy that could backfire with devastating
 results if the computer gremlins strike. 

 "If Y2K breakdowns were to produce inaccurate
 early-warning data, or if communications and
 command channels were to be compromised,
 the combination of hair-trigger force postures
 and Y2K failures could be disastrous," said the
 author of "The Bug in the Bomb: The Impact of
 the Year 2000 Problem on Nuclear Weapons." 

 Nuclear weapons systems are laced with
 embedded systems -- controlling functions such
 as ballistics and sensors -- that have not been
 declared free from Y2K worries, the report says.
 Most missles also keep track of time since the
 last monthly or yearly servicing, which could
 transform weapons into plutonium-packed
 paperweights if the systems shut down on 1
 January 2000. 

 A Defense Department official, who spoke on
 condition of anonymity, said nuclear weapons
 systems have received the Pentagon's full
 attention and will be in good shape. He added
 that military leaders are already discussing Y2K
 issues with their Russian counterparts. 

 Those assurances are not enough to allay the
 fears of Michael Kraig, the report's author. 

 "There are two problems together that make up
 one big problem: The sorry state of the
 [Russian] program and the fact that they don't
 know information about it," said Kraig, a BASIC
 fellow. "They're still committed to
 launch-on-warning and hair-trigger alert status.
 That, combined with the fact that their program
 is in such a sorry state, makes us worry." 

 BASIC lobbies for international agreements
 restricting arms sales and supports complete
 nuclear disarmament. 


 The Defense Department has been battling
 accusations that it lags behind other federal
 agencies in making Y2K repairs, something the
 agency's top officials are acutely aware of. 

 "I think we're probably going to be the poster
 child for failure," John Hamre, deputy secretary
 of defense, told Fortune 500 executives in July.
 "Nobody cares if the Park Services computers
 don't come on. OK? But what's going to happen
 if some do in the [Department of Defense]?" 

 The Clinton administration's September quarterly
 report on federal agencies says: "The
 Department of Defense has a massive Year
 2000 challenge which must be accomplished on
 a tight schedule. The Department has improved
 its rate of progress in addressing the challenge,
 but the pace must be increased to meet
 government-wide milestones." 

 The administration's report says that as of this
 summer, 42 percent of the Pentagon's most vital
 systems -- 2,965 in all -- have been Y2K
 cleared. 

 But numbers alone don't reveal the complexity of
 the Defense Department's Y2K woes, Kraig
 argues. 

 "There are severe and recurring problems across
 the entire DOD Y2K remediation program,
 including ill-defined concepts and operating
 procedures, ad-hoc funding and spotty
 estimates for final costs, lax management,
 insufficient standards for declaring systems 'Y2K
 compliant,' insufficient contingency planning in
 case of Y2K-related failures, and poor
 inter-departmental communications," Kraig
 wrote. 

 In the preface, Paul Warnke, BASIC's president
 and chief arms-control negotiator under
 President Carter, says: "The only prudent
 course may be to de-alert those nuclear
 systems where date-related malfunctioning in
 associated command, control, and
 communications systems poses even a remote
 possibility of accidental launch." 

 Copyright � 1994-98 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.
-----------------------
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-----------------------


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