I think too much is being made of this survey. I believe the document is genuine - Koskinen acknowledges that - but the Navy very probably did not do a serious audit. Quite frankly, I don't know how the Navy could arrive at these conclusions.

As Rick Cowle's perceptively noted, a probable failure is the same thing as a likely failure. To me this means if there was a survey it was a shoddy one. We can pretty much discount the specific information about this city or about that one.

I also think it is a stretch to call them the Pentagon Papers. Thousands of pages documented a lie. They were a smoking gun. This is a spreadsheet. My best guess on the spreadsheet is that they are part of an elaborate bureaucratic contingency plan that is 90% fantasy and 10% reality.

I think some kind of contingency plan was demanded from each base. Some poor schmuck of a staff officer has been told to complete a report on Form 17963-CP, and forward it to the Commander for signature forthwith. He did. If he is a real brown-noser or he had tons of time he assumed lots of problems and generated an inch of paper. If he is a lazy lout or he does not have any time, nothing in the town will fail.

This is not to say that governments are being honest with us. They are not. No one can predict which US cities will lose water, but you can bet that it will happen somewhere. No one can predict which US cities will lose gas, but you can bet that it will happen somewhere. No one can predict which US cities will lose power, but you can bet that it will happen somewhere. No one can predict which airports will be shut down, but you can bet that some will...

Could 30 million North Americans lose water? Sure. Easy. Probably will happen. That's only 10% or thereabouts. It probably will go higher than that since we can expect some blackouts and many water systems need power. Could large areas lose natural gas for a while? You bet. Will 911 go down in some places? For sure. This is to be expected. Even if everyone does a good job with remediation, there are too many possible points of failure to reasonably expect that there will be none will fail. This is so even if individual failures are by themselves, very improbable.

Would 1,000 outages (of some type) be very few outages? That would be hardly anything compared to the total number of critical systems. How about 10,000? Across North America is that very many? It isn't, not out of say, a million, at risk systems.

In that context, there is nothing surprising in the Lord papers even if they are fantasy documents.

Tom

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

Answers

We're in agreement about the Lord report, Tom. I think it's kind of ironic that this is what it took to send a little shock through the media when there have been other better documented assessments, particularly on the status of cities and water, which indicated the same thing or worse, and were pretty much passed over. And..um...it's the lady who looks like Susan Sarandon on a bad day that wrote on another thread that "probable" is the same as "likely". I think that duplication could well indicate the spreadsheets were a compilation of different input from various navy units, as you have surmised.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

Tom,

"If he is a lazy lout or he does not have any time, nothing in the town will fail." That doesn't make me feel better. Should it? Sounds an awful lot like some of the NERC reports. Drew Parkhill has posted the newer version of that report, expanded, on the CBN web site. It is a bit more optimistic, or perhaps there are more lazy lout updates.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

Bonnie,

Probable and Likely mean the same to you? I have no problem with that, but, what do these terms mean to the Navy? It isn't like you to put your own opinion out here without checking to see what was actually meant by the authors. I haven't seen any decoding of military jargon yet, have you? Why don't we see if these terms do, in fact, have rank and are used to differentiate levels of importance to the Navy itself.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

Gordon, the last I knew, after spending 22 years as a military wife and reading uncounted military reports and orders (sometimes on subjects so weird you'd laugh yourself silly) there was no specified difference in terminology between the words likely and probable in military jargon. Granted, this may have changed over the last decade, but I'm doubtful it has, mainly because not much really changes when it comes to military paperwork whether it's Navy, Army, Air Force, Marines or Coast Guard.

I'm just giving my opinions here, since the contextual background of the spreadsheets is something we don't have. (And wouldn't we all love to see it?) The only thing we can be fairly sure of is that certain Navy personnel are at this moment on the receiving end of political flak from their superiors over the press picking this up, that they're not happy about it, and that their displeasure will roll downhill to others under their command. THAT part of the military _never_ changes. (wink)

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

The report has about as much validity as any regular business y2k external dependencies survey. The fact that the survey originates from the US Navy, the US State Department, World Bank, UN, or whoever is meaningless in the context of Y2K information. None of these organisations have the resources or expertise or time to conduct a proper Y2K audit (whatever that is, beyond the event itself).

Even if they had 'secret' information, I would give it a lot less credibility than the technical expertise, information and argumentation found on forum's such as this one. I cannot believe that there somehow exists a parallel Y2K universe of knowledge, in Government or academia, or in the media whatever, that somehow has a superior knowledge and understanding of Y2K.

Regards,

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

Gordon wrote:

"If he is a lazy lout or he does not have any time, nothing in the town will fail." That doesn't make me feel better. Should it?

Nothing I write about Y2k should make anyone feel any better. I am about as pessimistic as they come. I am saying there is so much BS flying up and down evey large organization (particularly the military) about Y2k these days, I can't get excited about this report as information, because I don't think there is any meaningful information in this report.

I apologise to Sus-er-Bonnie for crediting Rick with her perceptiveness, but the point is not the definition of probable and likely and what the words meant or didn't mean in the military.

The point is the clumsiness. The words aren't clear. To me this signals incompetence, something I would expect from a bureaucrat completing a meaningless impossible assignment. That is where I think this report is coming from, and no, that should not make you feel good. It is a wasted effort so that someone, somewhere can say "We have a contingency plan in place."

The irony is that it really is meaningless information but it is attention getting meaningless information. It is news. That is why it is interesting. News does not have to be true. That is the thing that makes this story interesting.

Issues in our society today are discussed and positions developed according to sound bites. One says black, the other says white and people choose. In the Y2k world it is Polly versus Doomer, but in the real world it is all Polly. All white is a bore equals no coverage at all.

Y2k will not hit the radar screen until there is Doomer chest thumping too. Some cities won't get water is not a story. Dallas will not get water is a story even if it is not true. (Doomer soundbites will be just as misleading as Polly soundbites.)

The Greenpeace quotes about the Nukes is another recent example as to how meaningless information counts. No one who is Y2k aware learned anything from the story and in fact, I could easily quibble with what they said. Whether the information was accurate or not doesn't matter. The sound bite said "Aah-ooga!" and the anti-nuclear lobby won't let this go.

This is how the climate will change over the next few months. Eventually the large environmental groups will start chest thumping about chemical plants and the possibility of oil spills too. There will be plenty of misinformation flying in the soundbites, but they will be news, and the news will say "Aah-ooga."

It is the quantity of the message that counts in the soundbite war, not the quality.

Tom

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

Tom and Bonnie, et al:

I find it totally amazing that you folks can reach conclusions about a chart that has absolutely no back up data. Tom, you think the report is somehow tied into a contingency plan. I find it interesting that Koskinem insinuated the same thing. If this was the case then why wasn't the ports of San Diego and Los Angeles included in it? These are huge Navy ports, I'm sure if the Navy was doing contingency planning they would have included these also.

You folks question the ability of the Navy to even produce a comprehensive audit. I think that an organization as large as the United States Navy has the technical skills to do just about anything that it wants to do. However, having just said that, I must also state that I don't know the skill profiles of the individuals that prepared the report. I don't know the basis of the report. However, there is enough inconsistancites in it to assume that it must have had some selection criteria.

The reality of the situation, for me, anyway, is that until we have more information, it is extremely dificult to extropolate much from three charts.

Regards

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

Tom, you think the report is somehow tied into a contingency plan. I find it interesting that Koskinem insinuated the same thing. If this was the case then why wasn't the ports of San Diego and Los Angeles included in it?

Why else would the Naval base be doing the study? The base is as dependent on the infrastructure as anyone else. I don't know why San Diego and Los Angeles were not included. Perhaps because the base commander did not bother. There were not 500 bases included.

I have no doubt the Navy has the ability to do a good audit, but if I was in charge I would have all the people qualified to do the audit workling on the Navy's Y2k problems, not doing an assessment for anyone else. Why would the Navy create a report like this?

I think it is genuine. I just don't think it is important.

Tom

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

I guess I pretty much understand and agree with most of the opinions stated above. The fact that the report has received so much attention, and created such a swift reaction from Koskinen is the larger issue, along with the unfortunate obvious disconnects regarding when it was issued, to whom it was *really* available, and what the terminology is trying to convey. Couple this with the official governmnet statements that we are coming along just fine, no need to worry, versus the statements from within the various government or business areas that say things are not looking all that good, and we have the makings of a frustrating standoff. From where I sit, I want to know why the military is doing so many of the things I hear they are doing in preparation for Y2k. They won't say, at least not in detail. So we go looking for evidence of the "coverup" we believe is behind the public posture.

It is the very fact that there is a coverup going on that fuels this intense search for the truth. If the military were reporting on all kinds of contingency plans in every branch, and the federal government as well, then we could look at this report and either agree with the Navy assessment or ridicule it, based on how it compares with literally hundreds of others. We are not given that option. We are forced to try to make sense of bits and pieces. This report, right or wrong, sense or nonsense, is one of the few pieces of official inside information we get. Should there be any wonder, on the part of Koskinen, or anyone else, that it is jumped on and run with? It's like throwing a piece of meat, fresh or rotten, to a pack of hungry meat eaters. (or meat bees, as Cory would say) There is bound to be a huge reaction if they have not been previously well fed.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

Rick,

Sorry, but I should have mentioned in my comments just above that my personal interest is in the Y2k effect on the electric utilities. Since I have well, septic, and no natural gas, electric is my biggest concern. :-)

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

If you compare the "Pentagon Papers" to the GAO report of July 15, 1999 you could surmise the Pentagon Papers as being just a bit more blunt than the GAO report.

Granted, there are other discrepancies, i.e. one says Dallas is ready, the other says it isn't. But take this into account and follow along for a moment.

The GAO report is on the 21 largest cities in the nation. The Pentagon Papers is on a broader mix of cities.

The GAO report says "10 cities expected to complete their preparations by December 31". The Pentagon Papers simply says "failure probable, or likely".

Who here really believes "ready by December 31" is any different than "probable failure"? I have no qualms equating this with "total failure is likely", (I've never had a partial computer crash).

How about "Fully Y2K Ready between October 1, 1999 and December 31,1999"? Is that really much different than "ready by December 31? Remember we're talking about the 21 largest cities in the nation here. Saying "partial failure is likely" is no big stretch here.

From the GAO report: "Few cities reported completing work on their portions of water and wastewater treatment systems..." (sounds like failure could occur there too, eh?)

For electric power the GAO lists San Antonio and Detroit as NOT ready. (again, this is out of 21 cities, and only city-operated systems are addressed in that table). Take a broader mix of cities such as the Pentagon Papers does and it seems very reasonable to come up with a lot more "probable or likely" failures. Especially if we don't limit the survey results to city owned or operated systems.

The GAO report is pleasant, cordial, factual, reasonable, kinda bland actually. The Pentagon Papers is more blunt. If you took out the "ready by December 31" statements in the GAO report and put in "failure probable" you might think they came from the same source.

When you come down to it these are hard pills to swallow but for people who have been following the issues it shouldn't be very surprising news.

However; Some other reports say things are coming along fine and those do clash with BOTH the GAO report and these "Pentagon Papers".

The trouble I have with the information is it still isn't straight-forward enough to show to family, friends and neighbors to convince them to make their own personal contingency plans f

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

Tom,

You know, I really get a sick feeling about this matter and the reactions to it. For well over a year now we have heard some educated opinions that if the truth was withheld until the end, there would be horrible reactions on the part of the public. Paula Gordon has just said the same thing again in part 4 of her white paper. This buzz and flurry over the Jim Lord article, including some buzz and flurry by a few major news branches, points to that prediction. Koskinen has put this fire out, but what did it show us? Truly, the government has chosen to "play with fire" in dealing with the public. I dread the final reaction to the news, when it hits, when it is undeniable. Even Koskinen warns of the potential failures "overseas" but still smiles and hush-hushes the stirrings of the natives. Not a smart move. What is now the official posture will guarantee a crisis management scenario in the end.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

You know, I really get a sick feeling about this matter and the reactions to it. For well over a year now we have heard some educated opinions that if the truth was withheld until the end, there would be horrible reactions on the part of the public.

I think this depends on what you mean by horrible. Some people will behave very badly, but some people always do even without Y2k. Most people will react with shock, dismay, anger, cynicism, and a further loss of faith. The real price we pay for successfully managing the perception of the problem will come after the problem actually hits. The planning is for the best outcome instead of for the near worst.

They are planning for the best, because anything worse than that is unimaginable.

Koskinen has put this fire out, but what did it show us? Truly, the government has chosen to "play with fire" in dealing with the public.

That is his job. His job is to manage the perception of the problem. The perception of this problem has been managed brilliantly. The actual problem is so widely distributed nobody can manage it. Koskinen is managing perceptions, not reality.

By any definition at all, Koskinen acknowledges that it will be bad. He has explicitly told the States that there will be too many emergencies for an effective Federal response. "It will be bad, but not too bad. Not bad enough to really worry about. Except for maybe in other places."

Step on the gas. Slam on the brakes. The most interesting quote in the Koskinen response was the reference to the end of the world. Where does that come from? The story is about an apparently leaked Naval document and outages and Kosky is responding "Not Armageddon!"

That does not fit with my picture of a man a who is confident that the problem is under control. That fits with my picture of a man who is very worried.

Not a smart move. What is now the official posture will guarantee a crisis management scenario in the end.

Y2k has been a March of Folly. Almost nobody has made a really smart Y2k decision from day one, forty years ago. Eighteen months ago Yardeni was calling for the Full Monty, and we still don't have it. A crisis management scenario is guaranteed. It was a crisis that was set up years ago.

Tom

-- Anonymous, August 21, 1999

Tom,

Yes, you are right, we are in the tail end of a game of Folly. And you are also right that Koskinen is brilliantly managing the perception. Johnny Cochran brilliantly managed the perception in the OJ trial, as well. Perhaps that is the bottom line for "idealist" old me. Always dreaming it could be better than this, could be, why not? Dreaming. Yet, there is another part of me that knows there is no predictability to most things in life, let alone something as slippery as the Y2k situation. Perhaps I should just sit back, try to smile, and say what a friend of mine used to say when asked the unanswerable question: "Don't ask me, I'm just the piano player in this **oar house." :-(

-- Anonymous, August 21, 1999