/Nexus - 0505 - New Times Magazine/pages/0019/image.png)
Page Content (OCR)
where they are, and at the moment we know exactly the percent- Come 2000, on the subject of flying, most of the airlines are
age of the telecom network that will fail. We don't scream and going to have a 14-day period where the insurance companies will
shout this out because we don't want the world to know this. not let them fly. These are real figures.
Looking around the world, other countries are in an even worse The legal problem with the year 2000 is probably about US$2
mess. or $3 trillion in litigation. So far, there are 189 lawsuits being set-
But as far as communication is concerned, and I know there are tled out of court. Everyone is liable. Anyone with a name that
communications people in the room, the year 2000 problem will ends in "president" or "officer" is going to be sued; not may be
be the third problem between now and 2000. sued, is going to be sued. The lawyers today are forming task
First, there will be the peak of the micrometeorite shower as forces. They are set up like military task forces and they are
predicted by NASA. This event could seriously affect space going for class actions. They are going to retire on this.
assets such as telecommunications satellites. There is the possi- The year 2000 problem, as far as executive concern goes, is
bility that there could be no effect. Every piece of dust or debris straight negligence. You have known about this for 30 years, and
could miss the hundreds of orbiting satellites, or impact with little you've done nothing about it. Straight negligence. It's not an act
effect. The worst case scenario is that a number of satellites, with of God. It's man-made.
their data and voice circuits, could be destroyed or crippled. We Not only are communications and power affected. Alarm sys-
need to ensure that the vulnerability lessons learned from Galaxy tems are affected. Security systems are affected. If you want a
IV—which took out most of the pagers across the United States— real wake-up call, how about a look at the threat analysis at one
have not been forgotten. minute past midnight on day one of the year 2000. A lot of the
The next NASA-predicted event is "Solar Max 23", where the alarm systems in the banks and buildings will be neutralised.
Sun reminds us that it controls our life on Earth. This burst of Go back to your offices today and just sit and look around
energy could have tragic, or little effect on the satellites spared by where you have a date/time group; anything on your desk with a
the micrometeorite onslaught. This event, like earlier solar maxi- date/time group; communications.
mum events, could cause disruption in power grids. Every time you scan your card or put up a palm print, have a
Oh, we can use backup power. Problem: the fuel for the back- look at the printout that comes out on the log. You'll see a
up power is in the ground in tanks. date/time group. You request access,
We cannot pump fuel out of under- cipher, you access it and go. Denied.
ground tanks. If you don't believe Go back to the beginning with that
me on this, go around to your local date/time group and put two zeroes in
filling station. Ask them to take off there and see what happens. The
the panel and show you where the Anyone with a name that ends in chances are it will read as an error
old crank is In the old ump when "president" or "officer" is going to signal and wont let you in ;
the power failed you pulled up the . A ‘ome the year , the security
front panel, stuck in a starter handle be sued; not may be sued, IS systems in a lot of buildings will not
and you could pump tor the ambu- going to be sued. a you in. Passwords are normally
ances and the fire—whatever you or three months and then they're
wanted. They've taken those out. wiped out of the system if they're not
Going back to the rail system, used for three months, a month or
they've taken out manual points. I whatever—depends on how high the
talked to some of the major rail com- security system is. If you crank it
panies a few days back and said, "Go to manual." And they said, forward to 2000 and press the button, you find out no one can get
"All our manual points are in the warehouse up in New York State back into it. It won't let you in.
waiting to be disposed of. We cannot switch manually any more. We have created very sophisticated electronic locks on a lot of
We have taken out manual reversion systems on most of our key our communications and access things. They are going to come
communication, power and switching systems." back and bite us. We have created 2000. We have created a lot of
So, let's have a look at the communications. Without power problems.
and without communications, you can be totally compliant. You The communications stuff I don't want to go into too deeply. I
can have computer software. It doesn't matter. What can we do would love to do a presentation on communications. But, unfor-
about this? We need to start looking seriously and get some true tunately, it'll go out in the world. I don't want every 14-year-old
answers. hacker looking and saying, "Well, let's hit a bank. Hey, dude, let's
I met with John Koskinen of the White House yesterday, and go." That is going to happen. That is the threat side of 2000.
we were running through the problems that he had. And the prob- Back to the food chain. So we have a very fragile food chain
lems that he had are the same as Senator Bennett said [in his pre- that goes down. We have communications, we have infrastruc-
sentation]: no one is telling 100 per cent of the truth. Everyone is ture going across.
frightened about their stock position. Everyone is frightened So the last thing then is this: failure is not an option. Everyone
about their credit rating. in this room, from government to leadership, has to meet the
I look at the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]. They're deadline. Failure for year 2000 is not an option. oo
o da
A AWW AF tham in
Sat thaie mm
answers.
I met with John Koskinen of the White House yesterday, and
we were running through the problems that he had. And the prob-
lems that he had are the same as Senator Bennett said [in his pre-
sentation]: no one is telling 100 per cent of the truth. Everyone is
frightened about their stock position. Everyone is frightened
about their credit rating.
I look at the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]. They're
going to get their mainframes delivered—30 of them—in
November. They're going to install the software, and they're
going to have the system up and running by December. Wow.
Let's sell tickets and watch them! [Laughter]
It takes 18 months to put a mainframe on line. And these peo-
ple are going to do it in 18 days. And I'm going to fly in 2000?
Yeah, right. [Laughter]
Editor's Note:
For the complete transcript of the CSIS conference presenta-
tion, visit website