Updated October 12, 1999

Give this your best thoughts and feelings. This work represents the keenest of high-level thinking.

Published on the Naval War College site at http://www.nwc.navy.mil/y2k/y2kproj.htm.

-- Critt Jarvis (critt@critt.com), October 13, 1999

Answers

Final Report is at http://www.nwc.navy.mil/ y2k/y2krep.html.

-- Critt Jarvis (critt@critt.com), October 13, 1999.

http://www.nwc.navy.mil /y2k/y2krep.html

-- Critt Jarvis (critt@critt.com), October 13, 1999.

Here's the chase--but do go to the site to read the rest.

(VERY BIG SNIP)

Which countries go where? Well, we obviously see the U.S. and countries close to it in overall appearance and functioning to end up in the Best Case box. On the far extreme of that, we'd expect mono-political, mono-economic, mono-cultural, centralized states like an Iran or North Korea to be potential Worst Case situations, remembering our constant admonitions about asking the "So What?" question.

The in-between cases, of course, present the most intriguing situations.

A country like Japan or France could well end up in the Next Worst Case box as countries that are fairly distributed in terms of their networks, economies, etc., but are not yet adept at the playing the "New Economy" game that stresses rapidly shifting business relationships.

Most difficult to select are examples of countries that exhibit a lot of New Economy potential or capacity, but still have fairly centralized or collective economies married to unitary political states. These Next Best Case countries will inevitably be surprises, since they will be hit hard by Y2K, and yet seem to emerge stronger and more confident for the experience. In this light, one thinks of possibly South Korea or even China.

Conclusion #1--How You Describe Y2K Depends on From When You View It

People who describe Y2K as "different in kind" from anything humanity has ever experienced, or something that is unique, tend to look at the event from the perspective of the past century. But those who look at Y2K from the perspective of the coming century, exhibit the exact opposite tendencies: they tend to describe Y2K as only "different in degree" from the sort of system perturbations humanity will increasingly face as we become more interconnected and interdependent on a global scale. In their minds, then, Y2K is a genuine harbinger of next definitions of international instabilities or uncertainty, in effect a new type of crisis that leaves us particularly uncomfortable with its lack of a clearly identifiable "enemy" or "threat" with associated motivations.

Our bottom line (paraphrasing Rick in Casablanca): We'll always have Y2K . . ..

Conclusion #2--Y2K Moves Us From Haves-vs-Have Nots to Competents-vs-Incompetents

Success at dealing with Y2K has a lot to do with resources, and anyone who believes otherwise is painfully naive. And yet, defeating the challenge of Y2K says as much or more about one's competency than it does about one's wealth. The rich can survive Y2K just fine, but only the truly clever can thrive in Y2K, which IT competents tend to view as a sped-up market experience within the larger operational paradigm of the New Economy. The rise of "virtual tigers" such as India's software industry, Ireland's high-tech manufacturing, or Israel's Wadi Valley, tell us that it doesn't necessarily take a wealthy country to succeed in the New Economy, just a very competent one. Y2K may well serve as a microcosmic experience that drives this new reality home to many more around the planet: it's less about what you have than what you can do. For in the end, Y2K is less about vulnerability and dependency, then dealing with vulnerability and dependency. You can buy your way toward invulnerability and independency, but you can also work around vulnerabilities and dependency.

Our bottom line: Competents will thrive, while incompetents nosedive.

Conclusion #3--Y2K As A Glimpse Into the 21st Century: Divisions Become Less Vertical and More Horizontal

The 20th Century featured an unprecedented amount of human suffering and death stemming from wars, and these conflicts came to embody humanity's definition of strife--namely, state-on-state warfare. The divisions that drove these conflicts can be described as "vertical," meaning peoples were separated--from top to bottom--by political and geographic boundaries, known as state borders.

If the 20th Century was the century of inter-state war, then the 21st is going to be the century of intra-state or civil strife. Divisions of note will exist on a "horizontal" plane, or between layers of people that coexist within a single state's population. These layers will be largely defined by wealth, as they have been throughout recorded history. But increasingly, that wealth will depend on competency rather than possession of resources.

Y2K will help crystallize this coming reality by demonstrating, in one simultaneous global experience, who is good at dealing with the New Economy, globalization, the Information Revolution, etc., and who is not. And these divisions will form more within countries than between them, as borders will become increasingly less relevant markers of where success begins and failure ends. The coming century of conflict will revolve around these horizontal divisions.

Our bottom line: We have met the enemy, and they is us.

Conclusion #4--Y2K Will Demonstrate the Price of Secrecy and the Promise of Transparency

Those who are more open and transparent and share information more freely will do better with Y2K than those who hoard information, throw up firewalls, and refuse outside help. Secrecy will backfire in almost all instances, leading to misperceptions and harmful, stupidly self-fulfilling actions. Governments must be as open with their populations as possible, or suffer serious political backlashes if and when Y2K proves more significant for their countries than they had previously let on. People's fears about "invisible technology" will either be conquered or fed by how Y2K unfolds. This is a pivotal moment in human history: the first time Information Technology has threatened to bite back in a systematic way. In a very Nietzschean manner, Y2K will either "kill" us or make us stronger, and the balance of secrecy versus transparency will decide much, if not all, of that outcome.

Our bottom line: The future is transparency--get used to it!

Conclusion #5--Our Final Take on Y2K: As It Becomes Less Frightening, It Becomes More Profound

The more you accept the notion that Y2K represents the future and not some accident of the past . . . the more you see it as different in degree than in kind from the challenges we will increasingly face . . . and the more you realize that it's part and parcel of the globalized, IT-driven New Economy than some exogenous one-time disaster, then the more profoundly will Y2K loom in your psyche even as it becomes less frightening with regard to the 010100-threshold. Why? Because the more it becomes associated with the broader reality of our increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, the more inescapable it becomes. In short, you can sit out the Millennium Date Change Event and all the hoopla surrounding it, but there's no avoiding Y2K in the big-picture sense, because the skills it demands from humanity are those same skills needed for our not-so-collective advance into the brave new world of the 21st Century.

Our bottom line: There's no escaping Y2K.

Note that the War College has moved further away from a "them" perspective; that is, they have made it plain that the United States is included herewith.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), October 13, 1999.

Sorry, but unless we are referring to some inclusivity, I didn't see an update/change here. this is about what they were saying when we "found" or "were led" to the site....

Or I'm blind at 0530.

Chuck

Been a long ugly night when nobody could fly in and........I got to meet a VERY late late night flight.....

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), October 14, 1999.

Chuck,

I meant to refer to the report summary only.

With special reference to the M-Curve of Influence at:

http://www.nwc.navy.mi l/y2k/y2krep4.html

[snip]

...with an emphasis on reasonable mass preparations, the establishment of crisis management arrangements, and the shaping of popular perceptions as to what will likely lie ahead.

[/snip]

-- Critt Jarvis (critt@critt.com), October 14, 1999.

See also Complex systems and risk management

"The risk assessors, then, have a narrow focus that all too frequently (but not always) conveniently supports the activities elites in the public and private sector think we should engage in. For most, the focus is on dollars and bodies, ignoring social and cultural criteria. The assessors do not distinguish risks taken for private profits from those taken for private pleasures or needs, though the one is imposed, the other to some degree chosen; they ignore the question of addiction, and the distinction between active risks, where one has some control, and passive risks; they argue for the importance of risk but limit their endorsement of approved risks to the corporate and military ones, ignoring risks in social and political matters." (Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents, publ. 1984)

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), October 14, 1999.

From http://www.nwc.navy.mi l/y2k/y2krep4.html:

...we think authorities should concentrate their activities in the following three-pronged manner:

Prior to 010100, do as much as you can to prepare the population for inevitable disruptions, with a strong emphasis on shaping expectations and delineating personal crisis management strategies.

In the U.S., up to now, this leg of the stool is pretty flimsy. Expectations? "3-day blizzard." Personal strategies? "3-day blizzard." With the inevitable connotations that only a particular region is vulnerable, and help readily available from unscathed regions.

When the 010100 threshold looms and then passes, do not try to control events that cannot be controlled, but seek to "ride out the wave."

This is a recommendation to government. As for the rest of us, "do not try to control events that cannot be controlled" evokes some pretty grim scenarios in large metro areas.

Post the initial wave of high-frequency failures, engage in aggressive triage to drive down the impact of the remaining failures as they continue to unfold.

A corollary of the second leg, this "aggressive triage" is ambiguous to a fault -- think about it.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), October 14, 1999.

At least the U. S. Navy has the realism to say the following in this report...which our Great Leader does not do for us...

We explain the six separate phases as follows:

Mania refers to the phase during which public awareness, anxiety, and preparation for Y2K accelerates dramatically. For most countries, this will be across the summer and/or fall of 1999, with the "size" of the mania growing in direct relationship with the lateness of its onset (meaning the later in the year it starts, the more profound it will be). For the U.S., for example, we'd predict the Mania Phase to really kick in come Labor Day (i.e., end of summer and beginning of fall, when thoughts turn to preparing for the winter), but for a country like Russia, probably not until November.

In general, a good rule on start dates would seem to be: the more "crises" a country has on its plate, the later will be the start of the Mania Phase. Of course, it there's enough crises a country may well skip the entire concept for all the obvious reasons, but that would clearly be a special case outside of our generic model. One key assumption of this phase is that enough "evidence" (a very slippery concept here) surfaces by this time that says Y2K may well be significant and/or sufficient "public outcry" or "alarm" is orchestrated by Opinion Leaders (whether they come from officialdom or the public itself) to fuel the Mania in the absence of such "evidence."

There are probably several factors that will determine the intensity of the Mania phase. The first is the degree of obfuscation or denial associated with the Public Transcript. This can have two affects on the resulting mania:

In cases where there is significant obfuscation/denial associated with the Public Transcript, once the Private Transcript(perceived truth)is revealed, there is likely to be a very large delta between the public and private positions (i.e., between what Im told and what I see). The degree of discontinuity between the two positions is likely to be one of the primary determinants of mania intensity. The greater the obfuscation in the Public Transcript, the more evidence to the contrary (Private Transcript) will have to emerge before the public script is rejected by the masses. This might very well delay the emergence of the widespread concern until very late in the game.

This brings us to the second primary determinants of mania intensity, available preparation time. The later in the game the Private Transcript is revealed, the greater the Mania is likely to be for any particular delta between Public and Private transcripts. The Mania is most accentuated when large public vs. private discontinuities appear so late in the year that people feel they no longer have adequate time to prepare for an event that now seems will be very different from what theyve been told to expect. Here we'd see the increased likelihood of shortages, panic, and generalized iatrogenic activity.

The third important factor is mass trust in the ruling elites. If you believe in your leader strongly enough, youll follow him or her right into a brick wall (or a spaceship hiding behind a comet). In extreme cases, trust in leadership could completely dissipate the mania. Of course, if the leader is overly optimistic, the Onset and Unfolding phases could provide a rude awakening.

Ultimately, frequent communication between the leader and the led, along with the most transparent possible information on Y2K preparations, seem to provide the best opportunity to mitigate the Mania. -------------- So I ask: Could those in positions of authority in this nation not have seen this truth and acted upon it?

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), October 14, 1999.