The Russians Are Crashing! The Russians Are Crashing!

The Russians are scrambling to get their missile systems ready for Y2K. The war in Yugoslavia isn't helping

FROM MONDAY, MAY 3, 1999

In Russia, the Y2K problem isn't about embedded chips in microwaves, it's about nuclear bombs. The specter of a Y2K-induced nuclear apocalypse is so terrifying, and real, that earlier this year Russia came to the U.S. and the IMF for help in controlling its arsenal through the turn of the millennium.

The U.S. formed a delegation of technicians to send to Russia, but before work could begin the war in the Balkans heated up, and diplomatic relations cooled down to Cold War temperatures. Now all bets are off, and the clock is ticking...

The Russian missiles have safeguards preventing self-launch, regardless of how badly their computers crash, but the Russian military early warning system, which provides command and control information to the people with their fingers on the button, is extremely vulnerable to Y2K-related malfunction.

In January, the Russians raised Western eyebrows when they threw up their hands and asked for technical assistance from the United States (and money from the IMF) to fix their Y2K-unready machines.

Needless to say, the vision of the Russian military command staring at "cannot find file: strategic missile data" on their frozen computer screens while poised to launch missiles capable of destroying all life on Earth was a big motivator for the U.S. Plans were hatched to send a delegation to Russia to discuss Y2K cooperation.

In mid-February a group of U.S. computer specialists and military people, led by Assistant Secretary of Defense Ted Warner, traveled to Russia and reached a cooperative agreement with the Russians to stave off disaster. The plan was to send technical experts to assist the Russians in updating their computer systems and to exchange observers at key military posts over the date change to avoid any misunderstandings.

But now, with Russian-U.S. relations at a post-Cold War low because of the Balkan war, the U.S. is struggling to show that this crucial agreement has not suffered. When a Pentagon spokesperson announced on April 19 that Y2K cooperation with Russia was continuing as planned, TIME Moscow correspondent Andrew Meier took it with more than a grain of salt.

"The April 19 announcement was damage control by the U.S. Any real progress in the Y2K cooperation agreement would have been much more highly publicized, and they would have mentioned something about when the technical teams could begin their work."

So where does the agreement stand?
"As far as we can tell, the cooperation is on hold."

Will the Russians back out for real? It seems unlikely. For the Russians to prevent U.S. experts from upgrading their computers would be like kicking the firefighters out of the house for leaving the toilet seat up.

Unfortunately, rationality has been in scarce supply ever since the war in the Balkans began, and nobody knows what might happen, especially if NATO deploys ground troops. The future of the Balkan war is also uncertain, and global nuclear security has been added to the list of issues hinging on its outcome.