Y2K Report Card

AGENCIES GET NEW REPORT CARDS ON Y2K READINESS


Saying "the picture is a gloomy one," Congressman 
Stephen Horn, chair of the House subcommittee 
responsible for overseeing government progress on
averting the Y2K problem, has given out new report 
cards to federal agencies.  Three departments 
flunked:  Justice; Health & Human Services; and 
State.  The Defense Department gets a D-minus.  
Three departments get A grades:  Small Business 
Administration;  Social Security Administration;
and the National Science Foundation.  The Social 
Security Administration began working on the 
problem in 1989, eight years before most other 
government agencies. 


- USA Today, Nov. 24, 1998

At 11:45 PM -0800 11/24/98, Jim Burnes - Denver wrote:

>How many nukes are going to be checking the number
>of days since they last talked to launch control?
>What are the chances they are date sensitive?
>What happens if they should lose contact for
>greater than a certain number of days?  Do they
>assume we've been nuked? How about the russians?
>The Chinese?  What if the entire US DOD C&C network
>goes down.  Is it an EMP?  Is it infowar?  Is it
>Y2K?


(in best Dr. Strangelove German accent)

Ah, but vat vud be ze point of a system designed to automatically respond
to a decapitation of command attack, you see, if it could not independently
decide that it must implement its emergency war orders? Vy vud ve have
programmed them if not to let their processors decide?

Zat ist der beauty von dem system, mein fellow Cypherpunks!

(Dr. Strangelove can no longer restrain his excitement and rolls out of the
room in his wheelchair.)

Hundreds of missile silos, dozens of submarines...all with densepacked code
written in the 60s by persons long retired or dead.

All potentially set for Launch on Warning under the Emergency War Orders.

Worse, the Sovs had more primitive systems, more fragile systems, with at
least a couple of accidental launches that we know about (exploded in their
silos). And no money to even maintain their systems, let alone upgrade and
remediate their flawed code.

(There is much evidence that the Sovs also are using this "we may not be
able to control all of our systems" ploy as more leverage for more
bailouts, more handouts, more buyouts of their obsolete technology. "Send
us another $50 billion and we'll promise to spend some of it hiring
programmers to start looking at our Y2K problems...the rest we'll of course
deposit in the Swiss bank accounts set up for our KGB, GRU, Red Army, and
Party apparatchniks. And our Mafia...mustn't forget our Mafia.")

As I have been predicting for most of this year, the smartest thing our DOD
may do is to use the information chaos of Y2K to go for a DECCOM
(Decapitation of Command) strike as the clock hits midnight in Moscow.
Knock out their sub pens on the Kola Peninsula, hit the missile facilities
in Semipalatinsk, knock out Vladivostok, and do a lay down over Moscow.

A one-way ticket back to the 19th century. A few megadeaths may be a
reasonable price to pay, esp. Russkie megadeaths. As the potato chip ad
puts it, "they'll make more."

In any case, the nuclear accident/counterforce strike scenario is just one
of many reasons I plan to be safely at home as Y2K unfolds, with certain
friends and family, stocked up with various supplies and prepared to watch
the fun unfold.

Safely away from large cities and targets.

--Tim May

"I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, just the way the President did."
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.

Tim May wrote:
> Worse, the Sovs had more primitive systems, more fragile systems, with at
> least a couple of accidental launches that we know about (exploded in their
> silos). And no money to even maintain their systems, let alone upgrade and
> remediate their flawed code.
...

> As I have been predicting for most of this year, the smartest thing our DOD
> may do is to use the information chaos of Y2K to go for a DECCOM
> (Decapitation of Command) strike as the clock hits midnight in Moscow.
> Knock out their sub pens on the Kola Peninsula, hit the missile facilities
> in Semipalatinsk, knock out Vladivostok, and do a lay down over Moscow.
> 
> A one-way ticket back to the 19th century. A few megadeaths may be a
> reasonable price to pay, esp. Russkie megadeaths. As the potato chip ad
> puts it, "they'll make more."

I don't quite understand this.

Look at this from the standpoint of the person in control of the American
arsenal. The goal of this person, to me, seems to be prevention of American
deaths (perhaps by a threat of mutual annihilation).

You say that there is a possibility of a scenario A that some Russian
missiles may be launched accidentally, without a first attack from the US.

To prevent this, you suggest scenario B: a preventative attack against
Russia. I think that your scenario has a higher mathematical expectation
of the number of american deaths than waiting to see if Russians attack
first.

Under scenario B, attack on Russia is a 100% probability event. The
conditional probability of a counterattack is high as well, with the
probability higher (in my judgment) than the probability of a _accidental_
unprovoked attack in scenario A. The conditional expectation of the number
of warheads reaching their targets, assuming that it is a authorized
retaliatory strike, is again higher (in my opinion) than the number of
warheads that would be launched accidentally.

What his means is that scenario B has a higher expectation of american
fatalities. I do not see a point in doing this.

	- Igor.

On Wed, 25 Nov 1998, Anonymous wrote:

> Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 13:55:01 +0900 (JST)
> From: Anonymous <nobody@nowhere.to>
> To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
> Subject: Y2K Report Card
> 
> AGENCIES GET NEW REPORT CARDS ON Y2K READINESS
> 
> 
> Saying "the picture is a gloomy one," Congressman 
> Stephen Horn, chair of the House subcommittee 
> responsible for overseeing government progress on
> averting the Y2K problem, has given out new report 
> cards to federal agencies.  Three departments 
> flunked:  Justice; Health & Human Services; and 
> State.

Wonder what the implications of this are?

>  The Defense Department gets a D-minus.  

So this means they flunked too.  Since having the
DOD non compliant could be a national security risk.
That means they flunked, but we couldn't say so.

How many nukes are going to be checking the number
of days since they last talked to launch control?
What are the chances they are date sensitive?
What happens if they should lose contact for 
greater than a certain number of days?  Do they
assume we've been nuked? How about the russians?
The Chinese?  What if the entire US DOD C&C network
goes down.  Is it an EMP?  Is it infowar?  Is it
Y2K?

> Three departments get A grades:  Small Business 
> Administration;  Social Security Administration;
> and the National Science Foundation.

Was this graded on a curve? ;-O

I thought SSA was still two years off target.

>  The Social 
> Security Administration began working on the 
> problem in 1989, eight years before most other 
> government agencies. 
> 

This A/B/C/D/F stuff worked in school, but on a
complex remediation effort doesn't really mean
anything.

Is that an 'A' for effort?

jim

At 12:45 AM 11-25-98 -0700, Jim Burnes - Denver wrote:
>> cards to federal agencies.  Three departments 
>> flunked:  Justice; Health & Human Services; and 
>> State.
>
>Wonder what the implications of this are?

HHS? Think Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

-Declan