Re: IP: Wired News: Y2Kaboom?

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

I hope that in the future, "Believer" would see fit not to distribute Wired
News articles in full. Not only does it violate civil and criminal
copyright law, but it's also just plain rude.

-Declan


At 06:53 PM 11-15-98 -0800, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
>
>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.
>-----------------------
>NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
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>educational purposes only. For more information go to:
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>-----------------------
>
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