I'm gonna post this again, because I can't believe he said it and can't believe no one has commented on it yet...

"DR. HAMRE: Where you are likely -- where we are likely to see failure around the world, it's going to be in the -- in kind of the classic infrastructure -- power, water, waste water, things of that nature. And there it's directly related to how mechanized and automated the control systems are. Most countries still have manual intervention for most of their infrastructure. And manual intervention is going to be fine, and they'll find ways to work around that. It's probably places, like the United States, where things are so automated we have forgotten how to do it, you know, by hand, that are going to have problems."

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), December 17, 1999

Answers

link:

www.usia.gov/cgi- bin/washfile/display.pl?p=/products/washfile/latest&f=99121605.tlt&t=/ products/washfile/newsitem.shtml

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), December 17, 1999.

Cut and pasted the link, but no luck...document not found :-(

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), December 17, 1999.

This could be right.

-- Larry (cobol.programmer@usa.net), December 17, 1999.

No way. Us? Here?

Preposterous.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), December 17, 1999.

go to:

www.usia.gov/products/washfile/latest.shtml

The report is dated Dec. 17 and entitled "Transcipt: Hamre Breifing on DoD Planning for the Y2K Rollover".

Maybe someone more talented that myself can hotlink.

R.

-- Roland (nottelling@nohwere.com), December 17, 1999.

Sorry, it's dated Dec. 16.

Having a "bad brain" day...

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), December 17, 1999.

LINK

-- I'm (yours@tocommand.com), December 17, 1999.

Great Work Roland!

Goes against the mantra of just those foreign countries will have the utility problems lie, doesn't it?

-- PJC (paulchri@msn.com), December 17, 1999.

I thought of the Colorado Springs water treatment plant about all of the automation. This is worth a re-visit from mid-1998.

The Details From the Inside

More computerization = more potential problems

-- PJC (paulchri@msn.com), December 17, 1999.

Hamre Briefing on DoD Planning for the Y2K Rollover

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), December 17, 1999.

LINK

-- TM (mercier7@pdnt.com), December 17, 1999.

Roland, why are you surprised? The really important factual meaty threads and articles languish with few responses while the ridiculous threads attract troll swilling records.

Another sign of the times ...

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), December 17, 1999.

Ya got a point there, A&L...

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), December 17, 1999.

As to the rogue states . . .
For example, with Russia

Russia a rogue state? A bit chauvinist IMO.

where we are likely to see failure around
the world, it's going to be in the -- in
kind of the classic infrastructure -- power,
water, waste water, things of that nature.

. . .

Anyone who is currently involved in an
immediate operation that involves the safety
of the government' continuing operations --
for example, supporting the president of the
United States, supporting our ongoing
intelligence operations, supporting ongoing
military operations -- they may not divert any
resources without getting the permission of
the secretary of Defense.

. . .

then there is a series of priorities -- safety
of the country, for example; to support any
operations at the federal penitentiary system;
air traffic control, and things of that nature.
There is a gradation of priorities all laid out
and exercised

I wonder where help for the poor and dispossesed
lies in this 'gradation'.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), December 17, 1999.

Interesting, later in this transcript comes this dialogue:

Q: As you made you way over the past 18 months throughout our government, give me your considered opinion, how ready is the rest of the United States government as we close to Y2k?

DR. HAMRE: Well, I have attended four or five things during the last year, and of course it's impossible for anyone to know with the same kind of confidence that we have of our own systems. But when you ask them, "What have you been doing?" they all basically say the same things or they have the same sense of how they testing, organizations, the sort of testing protocols they went through, the outside reviewers that they brought in to look at it. Since most people have really talked about it with the same sort of discipline and the same sort of confidence, I think things are going to be fine. I think we all feel that the infrastructure that the country depends on is largely going to be okay. We clearly could have some point outages that we don't know of now. I think as John Koskinen has said, the biggest problem is going to be the normal outages that happen on a day-to-day basis will be interpreted on that day as being Y2k-related, and we'll just have to watch that and try to be careful about not misinterpreting.

Q: So the toilets will flush.

DR. HAMRE: The toilets will flush, I promise you.

-- Butt Nugget (catsbutt@umailme.com), December 17, 1999.

Juan, I tell you what....thees crazee Y2K has me worreed ver badly! Weel de cheekins stop laying dere eggs, and, Aye, carumbah! The well....Juan, do you thing that the well will run out of water? No, I don' thing so eether, but....perhaps the beans weel stop growing, no? Hmmm...I don' know, Juan, what do you suppose we should be worrying about? There must be something, for sure....Mebbe Mommacita cannot call her seester in Tiajuana every Sunday, no?

-- Jay Urban (Jayho99@aol.com), December 17, 1999.

Maybe someone can come up with the quote from Hamer a few months ago where he said that he wakes up in a cold sweat at night realizing all that could go wrong in DoD at the rollover.

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), December 17, 1999.

Another buried goodie with lots of hidden tidbits, is Koskinen's l-o- n-g speech...

Koskinen Talks to National Press Club

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 0021AE

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 17, 1999.

Hamre may be getting grey hairs over this. I no longer have the links, but at one time I printed out some of his earlier comments. They were terrifying. He said something along the lines of it would be better if screens went blank as that way everyone would know there is a problem and that he woke up on average about once a week in a sweat over the possibilities. Don't have the links available now, if neccessary could try and dig out some documentation. Safe to say if there is something to Get, Hamre has Gotten it. Of course this was also around the time Dodd was saying, he was going to go out and buy four cases of soup. Times change.

-- PD (PaulDMaher@att.worldnet.com), December 18, 1999.

From Air Force Magazine, July 1999

"Midnight Crossing"

...Deputy defense secretary John J. Hamre, the Pentagon's point man on the Y2K problem, referred to uncertainty in a press interview. "Probably one out of five days I wake up in a cold sweat, thinking [Y2K] is much bigger than we think," said Hamre, "and then the other four days, I think maybe we really are on top of it. Everything is so interconnected, it's very hard to know with any precision that we've got it fixed."

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), December 18, 1999.

Here's two more Hamre quotes. Unfortunately, I didn't note the URL's.

"I would be the last person to suggest were not going to have some nasty surprises, because I definitely think we will. This is going to have implications for American society and the world that we cant even comprehend Im startled to see how little thought our allies have given to the security aspects of Y2K."

"We know the time and place this enemy will attack. It has the capability to shut down our fuel system, command and control, logistics and resupply -- everything an enemy would go after."

-- Steve (hartsman@ticon.net), December 18, 1999.

A&L:

"The really important factual meaty threads and articles languish with few responses while the ridiculous threads attract troll swilling records."

I've been thinking about that statement, have read it repeated several times since I lurking here about a year ago and y'all stated virtually the identical same thing to me when I started posting a month or so ago. Finally realized WHY it is true!

IMHO: Truth stands on its' own. It requires no justification, amplification, or discussion. It is self-sufficient and self-explanatory.

-- hiding in plain (sight@edge. of no-where), December 18, 1999.

Ashton & Leska, your observation is very truth--I've noticed that phenomenon time and again. People seem to enjoy bombast on the Net, and the really sobering quotes we've seen offer little purchase for the plethoric. Recall, too, SomeFamousGuy's quote: "people can't bear too much reality." (I think it was Eliot)

Of course, at this point, debate becomes virtually pointless. Anyone who hasn't figured out that something significant is going to happen to computer systems on Jan. 1 is deluded. Of course, in large part, the delusion has been Bank/Gov sanctioned, feeding into a deperate desire on the part of people to believe in happy endings (to use Bonnie Camp's construction). We've all suckled at the teat of fantasy, and many don't want to tear away. We are History's Chosen, don't you see, and our little party will never end.

Ah, well. It has been said that History has no voice, only humans. But this is a special case, a one-time event, and the consequences of technological failure may outstrip our ability to respond. The electronic fantasy we've carefully constructed may come crashing down. If that happens, human voices will re-emerge, and, I earnestly hope, the world will be refashioned out of love. This Pope speaks of "structures of sin" that trap humans in evil, and that must be dismantled: perhaps we are about to see the beginning of this process of dismantling.

Hope Always,

-- Rider (Wake@Dawn's.Smile), December 18, 1999.

Roland, hiding in plain sight, and Rider, thank you for discussing this weird phenom. Your insights have helped us; we've been bugged seeing many very interesting and substantial threads of real-failure incidents go tumbling into the archives with seeming empty cognition. We come to this Forum to read thoughtful, earnest, well-informed and well-experienced debate and examination of the Y2K Puzzle. After all the conjecture, we find the reality vital, immediate, instructive, and imperative.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), December 18, 1999.