DoD News Briefing on Year 2000

(its not clear who was being briefed)

Thursday, January 14, 1999, 1:30 p.m.

Presenter: Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. John J. Hamre

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan1999/t01151999_ty2k.html

I strongly recommend reading this testimony. The link also has the supporting presentation graphics.

An interesting titdbit: It seems that they are testing remediated things twice: once by the folks who fixed it, and then again by the warfighters who will die if doesnt work. Now that is an interesting methodology. As Arlin pointed out on an earlier thread, they should have had some NCOs there,too to say what is really going on. There is also a revealing discussion of theMission-Critical Systems Gap, which from my experience, is probably exactly what caused the wacky numbers.

Here are a few snippets:

*snip*

Hamre:Let me point out there's something new that we'll shifting our emphasis to now and that is consequence support planning. We don't know what problems might occur. We think they're actually going to be very modest because we think the bulk of the country is really doing what we're doing: getting on top of this problem. But not knowing that, we're going to go through a series of exercises to determine where would we be called to do supplementary support activities and how would we do that. And we'll be doing that over the next couple of months. This is a coordinated effort for the federal government. We are obviously the only part of the federal government that is not optimized for peacetime, day-to-day operations. We mobilize. So we can bring assets to the table that are qualitatively different the day before and the day after. We're the only part of the federal government that can do that. And so, we have things like power generation capabilities and air traffic control capabilities, water purification, things of this nature. And we'll be doing some tabletop exercises to find out what do we need to do and how will we command and control those activities.

Let me again emphasize, we have a lot of insight into what's going on in the private sector. And we are really very confident that we're not going to have the wide scale disruption that some people have been forecasting. We think it's not going to be nearly so significant, but we are prepared to do the detailed planning to be supportive where we have to.

And then finally, we will participate in the Year 2000 operations center that's going to be set up. We will probably provide a lot of the communications and things of that nature. And that will be starting up this fall.

*snip*

Q: You talked about a Y2K command center.

A: (Hamre): John Koskinen, who is the designated focal point for the President for Year 2000, is in the process of deciding how to set that up and what kind of a clearinghouse mechanism that will be. We're going to have a series of table top exercises to design that over the next couple of weeks.

Q: Is it going to be a DoD facility? Are you going to provide most of the computers and comm? Is it going to be run by FEMA? Is it going to be run by OMB?

A: (Hamre): Art, you may know better or Bill may know.

A: (Money): I think that's also part of the TBD [to be determined]. But DoD will in fact, have its own anyway. It plugs into the overall government, that's part of what Dr. Hamre just referred to. But DoD will have another one.

A: (Hamre): I think the center piece of it will largely revolve around FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and the emergency response plans in each of the states. But again, let me just emphasize again, everything we see is that American industry is really getting on top of this problem. We have very close ties, again, Mr. Money is responsible for this, with the telecommunications industry because we run the emergency telecommunications network for the United States and we have extensive contacts with the major tel-cos. They are going to be ready. We do not envision problems in telecommunications. We are hearing very reassuring things about the energy networks. And just yesterday, because the Secretary is out of town, I went to a cabinet meeting, and John Koskinen gave a report to the President that we feel the electric distribution, the power distribution system, is going to be fine. But we still need to do responsible planning. And we will be doing that. The best way to do that is through a series of exercises, to what if questions, as it were.

*snip*

Q: Just a system question. Could you speak to the capability and the projection for the ability of the Trident submarine command and control in the context of the larger Y2K issue here specifically?

A: (Hamre): As a matter of fact, we did talk about that on Saturday. And the Trident system right today is compliant.

Q: At least two states are going to have their National Guard standing by I guess the last two weeks of this year. Can American service members in other places or active duty people find that their Christmases are going to be ruined?

A: (Hamre): I'm glad you asked that because I have seen these reports. What I think has been mischaracterized is the sort of planning that's going on both at the state level and at the federal level that is in this category of consequence support. There is no mobilization plan right now for bringing the National Guard out or active duty military. We're not going to know the extent to which and how we should best support the civil sector until we go through some of this planning. People shouldn't be anxious about that. We will be ready to support whatever has to happen. But we're not going to know the dimension of that yet for another couple of weeks. Nobody's going to lose their Christmas, I don't believe, worrying about that problem.

*snip*

Q: But given their (Russias)intercontinental nuclear capability and hopefully, a lot of this is media hysteria, but we have seen a lot of reports about how things are going to go haywire and power grids will go down and communications will fail and who knows how computers are going to react or how people will react when their computers fail.

A: (Hamre): I think those are the same people trying to sell gold bouillon. (Laughter)

Q: How confident are you at this point that that's not going to be a serious issue? You can speak authoritatively about our Department of Defense, but...

A: (Hamre): And it took us a lot to be able to get to this level of confidence for us.

Q: How sure can you be that the Russian military will be up to speed when the moment comes?

A: (Hamre): Undoubtedly, they're going to have difficulties and undoubtedly, they're going to have problems that they don't anticipate right now. But as a military entity, they have been far more conservative for human intervention for control and have had far less of a dependence on strict automatic, automated command and control systems. So they will have back up and redundancy that we frankly have never engineered into our systems. Again, we're not forecasting that they won't have difficulties. But I think we should also not try to create frightening hypothetical scenarios that I don't think are in scale with the way we understood that they've organized themselves for 35 years.

Q: But there's still a lot of work to be done.

A: (Hamre): There's a lot of work to be done, absolutely. And we do, too. I don't want to overstate it. We're not finished yet here. We've got an awful lot of work ourselves.

*snip*

Q: Any area that does greatly concern you, any country or any area in this country that bothers you...

A: (Hamre): I think as I said, we have a good deal of insight into the telecommunications industry. And we feel fairly confident about the telecommunications industry. We don't have, because we, DoD, don't have an oversight or a liaison roll into the energy industry in America. And so, we are dependent on what we're being told by other organizations. We're hearing encouraging things, but we know less about that. And so, I think, therein lies -- as a matter of fact, on Saturday, almost invariably, one of the questions was, we still don't know about installation X. The power grid may be fine across the country, but what may happen in an individual locality. We have some uncertainties there and that's what we've got this year to work through.

We think the banking structure is going to be fine. Banking and finance structure is going to be fine. So we're not as anxious there. I'm talking largely of the United States.

Overseas, obviously, we look to see where people have been spending the greatest amount of attention. It has been almost to our level, I think, but based on Mr. Money's reports, you see comparable level of energy in Canada and in the United Kingdom and in Australia and in Germany and places like that. You will see very intensive activity. You see less intensive activity in Asia, but I don't know that that means that they aren't doing it. It may mean that we just don't have insights. But again, we need to separate our lack of knowledge from our fear that the worse case is going to occur. I think that's -- reassure people it's a very different situation, I think. But it took a lot of work for us to get to that phase.

Q: Have you got a handle on how the Chinese are doing?

A: (Hamre): No. I don't think we have too much insight [there]. Remember, the basic military posture doesn't cause us to be worried that they are going to be unacceptable, catastrophic consequences. We don't think that's going to be the case at all.

*snip*

Q: My final point here is that the number of mission critical systems appears to be growing since the OMB report in November. I could be wrong about this. Is there a fluctuation in the number identified?

A: (Hamre): It moves up and it moves down as you study a case. And you find out that one system is really a subroutine in another system or you'll find something that you thought was one system, turns out there are three variants. So the number does bubble around a little bit. But it isn't a dramatically different picture.

A: (Money): Let me just add that as time has gone along, back to your previous question, we know a lot more now then we did in the plan for October. Consequently, our confidence is heightened. So we -- I strongly believe this plan greater than I believed the October plan. So back to your first question. The number of mission critical systems is, in fact, declining because as you work through this, something that was once deemed to be mission critical, people say that's no longer necessary, especially since the CINC's involvement started to happen. And also, probably that other number you're referring to is 1,900 or whatever. This [figure] combined the intelligence programs that were needed in addition to all the others where we had kept that separate in a lot of the previous reporting. So this is total DoD. Roughly 500 intelligence systems are imbedded in those numbers.

Q: Is there a problem in that there's not a standard definition of what is mission critical system? Is that changing as you go along?

A: (Hamre): Part of it is what mission critical is in the eye of the beholder. If you had a program manager that came forward and said my system isn't mission critical, you'd probably fire them. You want them to believe that what they're working on is critical. And so a lot of it was definitional. In the earlier phases, we were letting other people define for themselves whether what they were working on was critical or not. That led to overpopulation of the list of mission critical systems. We feel very confident that these systems have to work on the 1st of January if we're going to be able to carry out our composite mission here in the department.

Q: Do you know how many systems were considered mission critical at the beginning of this process that are no longer considered mission critical?

A: (Hamre): I don't remember how many scrubbed out. A couple hundred, I suppose. Or more.

Q: It's more than just weapons transportation, communications --

A: (Hamre): The little thing that makes labels in the grocery stores and our commissaries. You know, it's all that kind of stuff. In our building, you don't say you're not mission critical. It's like people not saying they're not mission essential when we have government shutdowns. Everybody wants to be here. It has taken outsiders looking at it to say do we have to have this system or not? Does it have to function the way it currently functions or not on the 1st of January? That became the criteria.

-- Lewis (aslanshow@yahoo.com), February 05, 1999

Answers

Q: But given their (Russias)intercontinental nuclear capability and hopefully, ***a lot of this is media hysteria,*** but we have seen a lot of reports about how things are going to go haywire and power grids will go down and communications will fail and who knows how computers are going to react or how people will react when their computers fail.

A: (Hamre): I think those are the same people trying to sell gold bouillon. (Laughter)

This is what reallllllllly bothers me... the characterization of the media as hysterical??? and we sit back and are still waiting for some hard hitting, honest, straightforward reporting of the facts. The media is still groggy from their long sleep and muttering about planes, microwaves, and elevators... I can remember in days past when the media tended to revolt against these kinds of undercutting plays to present them in adverse light...wonder if there is enough awareness left in the media corp to spot what's happening here. More to the point, how many of them bother to read this type of report? Thanks for the link...now I'll go finish reading....

-- Shelia (shelia@active-stream.com), February 05, 1999.

But Shelia, you need to keep reading. When pressed he did state it took a lot to reach his level of confidence and he further explained his concern over Russia and pointed out some level of reasoning. Yeah ok, he made light of selling gold (I thought it was funny) but he did end up giving more of his views.

Thanks for the post. I wondered what NORAD was doing. It was interesting to find out.

Troll Maria

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), February 05, 1999.

Also I thought his explanation of the "moving" numbers on critical systems was a good one.

TM

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), February 05, 1999.

Forgot to include: my experience after having been out looking at the coin and bullion dealer sites, was that most don't even mention Y2K and the one that did, did so in a 'no need to panic but maybe you'd like to hedge your financial bets' manner... no big deal... that's what gold buyers have been doing for a very long time.... I think it's called diversification?! now being characterized as hysterical hoarding. I'm beginning to get P.O.! You see I'm just an ordinary 52 yr.old college educated (computer science) married, two children, three grand-children, modest home in a suburb, just enough money to pretend there might be some future security if nothing tilts the boat, person.... I'm also astute enough to research the probabilities... take the money out of stocks put it somewhere temporarily safer... stock up on extra food, water, wood stove, and lighting supplies... talk to the neighbors, family members (just secured the attention of the last DGI member a few weeks ago -- what a success -- he's already completed some significant preps in the past two weeks) and look into diversifying our limited portfolio into some hard metals... I do not consider any of this to be hysterical, over some imaginary edge of sanity, or as bucking any system (i.e., radical or revolutionary -- see I'm old enough to remember those labels and the polarization they created in this country). I am therefore dismayed when I begin to see the same old labels repackaged of course: radical/revolutionary = hysterical/hoarding/fear-mongering.

OK, off the soap box....

-- Shelia (shelia@active-stream.com), February 05, 1999.

Did anyone look at the first slide in the presentation? It shows that according to their October forecast of remediated systems, they anticipated having 2002 done by mid-December 98, though actual remediation fell short by over 300 systems. In the new December forecast, they plan to make most of that up, but in three months, how realistic is that? And why didn't any reporter catch that?

I will say that their new December projections are more realistic than the very steep October projections, but why would they not "miss" again?

-- Sniff Jones (Is_It_Just_Me@wondering.com), February 05, 1999.

That "gold bouillon" must be some new health fad. Wonder what it tastes like? Oh, well, I couldn't afford it anyway...

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), February 08, 1999.