Steve Davis has issued a response to Jim Lord's report. I basically agree with his position in this specific instance - I did not have to talk to Koskinen to decide the whole story is fairly bogus. Davis does say a couple of things that should not go unchallenged.

Complete Davis Response

I feel that we all have an overwhelming responsibility to make sure that only the best and most credible information gets wide distribution. I know all the arguments about share it all and let people figure it out for themselves - I don't buy them. Few people will take the time to ponder and understand these weighty issues

I profoundly disagree. Steve may know all the arguments about "share it all", but many people do not. I'm going to list five of them:

1) Exactly who is it who is going to decide what is the best and most credible for me, a guy who is willing to take the time to ponder? I rejected the Lord Report before the Koskinen response even though I am very pessimistic about the Y2k outcome.

2) The only rationale for avoiding the "Full Monty" is that the public will panic or overreact. I want someone to explain to me exactly what they mean by panicking or overreacting. The population will endure is what the population will do. There is no precedent for panic. We would face it just like people face every crisis. My parents faced WWII. Why do we mistrust the average North American so much?

3) We learn things from the worst and the incredible stories, too. I rejected this report based on incompetence. It was obviously so poorly done I couldn't take it seriously. I could easily believe it was official, but it was a dumb way to roll up data and a dumb idea to turn it into a report and a dumb idea to post the report. What do I learn from this? What do you think this group will produce for a contingency plan?

4) The report was inaccurate only in detail. Dallas may not have water problems, but there will be water problems somewhere. New York may get power, but there will be power outages somewhere.

The Naval report may have the wrong cities, but so what? It is news that sends the right message if we want communities and individuals to prepare for the datequake. Bad things will happen somewhere. Somebody is going to get unlucky. Get ready, get serious, it could be you.

5) The really stupid part of this strategy - trying to keep Y2k as a non-issue, managing the perception of the problem, trying to manage the population's reaction - is that it will not work. It breeds the mistrust Jim Lord expresses. Sooner or later the information gets out anyway and then it looks like a coverup.

The Navy now has to place the document in context which means a lot of people who missed the first story pick it up in the clarification. They have a plausible explanation, but it still sounds lame. They are in damage control mode.

Now about John Koskinen. I have had far more interaction and disagreement with John than with Jim. We have not always agreed on things - I would have liked to see the government take a much more proactive approach on preparedness. However, I have grown to trust John and know him to be a credible and trustworthy source of information. While recent and past Washington embarrassments make it hard to think that you can count on the government to give you the truth, I trust John as a source of information and I know that he has far better information than any of us do.

Past Washington (and Canadian) embarassments make it impossible to completely trust. I stopped completely trusting during the Vietnam years. We don't know - we could never know - enough to understand or predict what is going to happen. It is enough to understand that the threat is real. I am being told that the threat is real, but so quietly I have to be listening hard to pick it up. I have to read dreary reports to recognize how much is not done. The people who don't ponder the questions don't pick up that warning.

Unfortunately I think you are right in that John Koskinen probably does know more than we do. This does not reassure me. If he is holding back information, I don't think it is good news being withheld. It is news that might be misunderstood if it was widely known. I wish I did think all the information was being put on the table.

Another thing that is hardly reassuring in the Koskinen response is the phrase "Hardly the end of the world". Y2k is an internet issue. Joe Public gets his news from the TV. Hardly anyone believes the end of the world is nigh. Continually denying it provides credibility to a position that is incredible.

Forget doomsday. Let's try to deal with the fact that a threat exists and forget about trying to estimate the size. In our rush to manage the perception of the threat, we have killed the opportunity to mitigate the real threat with community action.

Tom

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

Answers

Tom,

Good commentary. As far as that "Hardly the end of the world" business, I am presuming that Koskinen once again knows what he is doing there, and that it was no slip of the tongue. Joe Public may not think that such a threat exists, at least right now, but *if* he has heard or seen this sort of "wild" prediction he will be calmed by Koskinen's statement. If he hasn't seen this said before, he is now storing up a subconscious position for any future mention of it, and his authority is from the highest level of government. Again, brilliant management of perception.

But Koskinen also speaks to Wall Street, and the Bankers, and the thousands who do the daily work there. I can assure you that many investment advisors are minimizing the threat down to a level 1 or less. I have had the calls from some of them, asked them about Y2k, and received the Koskinen type reassurance. Worse, they often are not doing any personal research, only repeating what comes across their desk as official company or government position.

I was watching a documentary on dams and flooding last night. One of the situations involved towns along a river in West Virginia. The coal mining company had built a series of dams upriver by dump millions of tons of slag across it. The dams were holding, but some concerned "experts" warned that it was a disaster in the making if they let go. The company reassured the people that "everything would hold just fine, quit worrying, they knew what they were doing." Then, some late February heavy rains overran the upper dam, it failed, and proceded to take out each lower level dam, and then the towns along the river. But, previous to this disaster, nobody *really* knew, or could prove, that it would happen that way. And information that was negative was suppressed and withheld. Sound familiar?

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

It's not the end of the world is the most vacuous statement anybody can make on Y2K. The next most vacuous is "the sun will come up, and the birds will sing, and life will go on."

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

Lane,

Gee, did you see that documentary too? I think that when some "alarmist" townfolk downstream of that dam system started asking for closer inspection and possible warnings being issued, the company said something along the lines of "don't worry, tomorrow morning the sun will come up, and the birds will sing, and life will go on." Imagine! And you know what? They were basically correct, except for some messy details in the "life will go on" area. Also, they had gotten away with this business practice for years, had always managed to "workaround" the problems, and didn't believe in any domino effect.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

Lane wrote:

It's not the end of the world is the most vacuous statement anybody can make on Y2K. The next most vacuous is "the sun will come up, and the birds will sing, and life will go on."

People are not going to believe the end of the world is upon us unless the media keeps insisting that it won't be.

The average guy thinks Y2k is a bunch of nonsense, but he is not going to fly, he is not going to be in an elevator, and he will have a pocket full of cash. Why? Because he has been repeatedly told that airplanes won't fall from the sky, elevators won't crash, and that ATM machines will work okay.

Does that say something about how little trust there is around these days or what?

Tom

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

If you look at a list of the worst (i.e. highest number of fatalities) in earthquakes around the world in this century, the one in Turkey is not even in the top five. Believe it or not, the sun has come up in Turkey this week. Birds in Turkey are singing. Yet nobody would deny the horrific stench of death or the grief caused by such a tragedy as this. For a person anywhere in the world who will not have water, electricity, heat, or sewage treatment next January, it won't matter that the outage may affect "only" 10% (or 1%) of the population. What will matter is that someone may die if their ventilator stops working, or if their toilet has not flushed for a week, or if there is no water. The people in Turkey are not thinking about all of the people who are missing in the rubble--they are thinking about that one particular person whom they love who is missing. They are thinking about the weak building that is on top of their loved one, and the non-existent or unenforced building codes which allowed the construction of that building which fell on their loved one. Five months from now, when the American (and Canadian) people may have spent 3 weeks in their cold homes, drinking the water supplied from tank trucks down the street, they are going to be thinking about the all-too-positive spin placed on Y2K by the government, and wondering why nobody REALLY told them to prepare. Birds singing and quotes about "the end of the world" are meant specifically to put the citizens of our countries back to sleep. How unfortunate for Mr. Koskinen that the baby's pacifier fell out. Fortunately, Mr. K and the Navy were able to find it under the crib and stick it back in the baby's mouth before he was fully awake!

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

Tom, I think you nailed it. I heard a similar analysis recently put forth on, of all things, Ollie North's radio show (hey we don't get much good radio down here). It was regarding Bush and all this cocaine garbage. His point was, if he were to come out and tell the truth (which probably includes some bad behavior in the past), he would get hammered to death by the press. Instead what Americans really want is a lie.

I think it's exactly the same with Y2K. Especially with regard to infrstructure industries. People want the lie. They need the lie. It's because we've completely turned our value systems inside out. One of the things that has consistently struck me about Y2K is HOW WELL EVERYTHING SEEMS TO BE GOING. I mean, I've been in business for a few years and seen how IT really works. This happy faced stuff just isn't real. Never was. Never will be. Neither is the extreme doom stuff either. The answer is in the truth, you just have to find it for yourself. These days you won't see it in print in any newspapers, that's for certain.

I have attended several industry group functions within my own industry and was struck by the rather cavalier attitude toward this problem and it's ramifications. I would venture to say that if the general public were privvy to these meetings, there would be a lot more serious attitudes about Y2K. Not panic mind you, but sincere concern that would cause people to at least prepare a little. It struck me as quite ODD that we in the industry were allowed to know the truth, but the general public is not. In fact a great deal of time was spent making certain we were doing enough as an industry to ensure that the general public had "the right kind of information".

Ah, but most would rather listen to the NY Times who called him a "Y2K Doomsayer, which I believe puts him in Ed Yardeni's company which is to say, good company"

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

Gordon, heck no. "The sun will come up, life will go on, it's not the end of the world" is the kind of crap one reads about Y2K on the 'Net every day. Whether on forums or in columns or quotations in news articles. I'm amazed that people who say such things seem to think that they have actually said something of substance.

Tom, I must agree with you. Y2K has been pooh-poohed, BUT there's still this nagging doubt in the back of many minds. Did you notice how the media jumped on GPS this past week? Does anybody think the media isn't going to do the very same with Y2K the last week or two of the year? Then, all at once, Y2K will come to the forefront in all those minds, and many others, who haven't given it a second's thought. The government and the media will have caused what they tried to prevent by the very strategy they employed in prevention.

Ann, you are quite right about how poorly the trite platitudes fit life in dire circumstances.

Jim, I mean, I've been in business for a few years and seen how IT really works. This happy faced stuff just isn't real. Never was. Never will be. You got that right.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

The sun will come up, only question is whether computerized systems will come up, that's the one I'm less certain of.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

LOL, Good one PD :) Lane, Gordon, the statement may be "vacuous", but it IS true... don't you Like to hear birds singing Lane....lol:)

Regards,

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

Thanks, "Sunshine", for making Gordon's and my point for us. LOL. :-)

-- Anonymous, August 23, 1999

Koskinen's "Hardly the end of the world" was hardly a "vacuous" statement.

vacuous: 1. showing no thought or intelligence 2. having no meaning or direction

Steve Davis says: "I trust John as a source of information and I know that he has far better information than any of us do."

I would argue that Koskinen's comment is a reflection of the "far better information" that he has, and also has great "meaning and direction". It is a continuation of the effort to ridicule any serious discussion of the threat of Y2K, and to keep the populace from paying the issue any attention... thus avoiding panic. Never underestimate the power of ridicule, and recognize when it is used.. when the facts don't support the direction you want the discussion to take. Koskinen knew EXACTLY what he was saying.. and why.

-- Anonymous, August 23, 1999

Paradoxically, I agree with you, Linda. :-) "It's hardly the end of the world" is carefully chosen vacuous statement. It says a hell of a lot by implication without directly saying anything at all of substance.

-- Anonymous, August 24, 1999

Yup Lane.. I think we are both saying the same thing. -g-

When someone of Koskinen's level says the equivalent of "the sky is not falling", better grab your hardhats.

-- Anonymous, August 24, 1999