It will be costly. It may cause a global depression. It may cause your lights to go out. There may not be any food on the grocery store shelves. And the government may respond with a form of “techno-fascism.”
Those are just some of the conclusions of a team of researchers commissioned to investigate the potential problems associated with the Y2K millennium bug. The results of their work are published as the cover story in the December issue of DISPATCHES magazine, the print sister publication of WorldNetDaily.
In response to the need to survive the crisis, many businesses are converting their research and development programs into Y2K programs. Because of this transfer in business expenditures from R&D to Y2K, the Year 2000 cost of damages for businesses alone could be $119 billion. But that total does not include the cost of lawsuits resulting from people suing over lost bank accounts, various types of malfunctioning safety equipment, or other post-Y2K problems. When these potential liabilities are also added, the cost could exceed $1 trillion, according to the report.
Gartner Research Group, a product development company based out of Arizona, estimates that the costs to the worldwide economy — just for dealing with the problem — could be somewhere in the vicinity of $300 billion to $600 billion. These costs keep going up, however, as the calendar approaches 2000.
The Office of Management and Budget reports that costs to the federal government to fix the Y2K problem could be up to $3.9 billion. However, it’s been announced that federal agencies have already spent up to $5 billion, and that cost will go much higher, says the DISPATCHES report. OMB warned the public that their initial estimate of $3.9 billion, which was based on the federal agencies’ estimates, could be as much as 90 percent too low once the increasing labor shortage and expected growing corrective costs are factored in.
Before you plan that New Year’s bash to welcome in 2000, you may want to consider a candle-lit party. Rick Cowles, who reports on the electric utility industry, said, “Not one electric company (that he had talked to) has started a serious remediation effort on its embedded controls. Not one. Yes, there’s been some testing going on, and a few pilot projects here and there, but for the most part, it is still business-as-usual, as if there were 97 months to go, not 97 weeks.” This was said last February. Now, there’s only about 56 weeks left.
And it still appears that everything in the electric industry is currently following standard procedures ignoring the Y2K problem, or at best, doing too little, too late.
After Cowles attended an industry trade show, he said, “Based on what I learned at DistribuTECH ’98, I am convinced that there is a 100 percent chance that a major portion of the domestic electrical infrastructure will be lost as a result of the Year 2000 computer and embedded systems problem. The industry is fiddling whilst the infrastructure burns.”
Another aspect of electrical power is nuclear power, and nuclear power plants are becoming yet another source of concern when the clocks within the old mainframe computers strike “00.” In one Year 2000 test at one of America’s nuclear power facilities, the facility’s computer failed and opened up areas of the plant that were normally locked. Jared S. Wermiel, leader of the Year 2000 effort at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that given the very definite need for testing and the complexity involved with testing, “it wouldn’t surprise me if certain plants find that they are not Year 2000-ready and have to shut down.”
Because Y2K is an international problem, global recession is an imminent possibility, the DISPATCHES report continues. Edward Yardeni, the chief economist of Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, currently believes there is a 70 percent chance of a deep global recession in 2000-2001. This is up from 40 percent at the end of 1997.
Chances of a deep global recession are due in large part to the lack of preparation of the rest of the world. Even though the United States is well behind schedule in their Y2K efforts, it is still six to nine months ahead of all other developed nations in addressing this issue.
A big concern is Asia. The Bangkok Post reports that Phillip Dodd, a Unisys Y2K expert, expects that up to 70 percent will either fail altogether or suffer major hardships because of Y2K. An analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency supports Dodd’s conclusions.
“We’re concerned about the potential disruption of power grids, telecommunications and banking services, among other possible fallout, especially in countries already torn by political tensions,” the CIA said. Given all of these problems surrounding Y2K, a possible scenario prior to the turn of the millennium is “techno-fascism.” “Techno-fascism” is described as a situation where “governments and large corporations would intervene to try to contain the damage rather than build for the future,” according to the report in DISPATCHES.
The DISPATCHES article continues to explain that techno-fascism would take place because the government, which didn’t exert any leadership in the crisis, sees the need to crack down on a society destined to fall apart. What would follow is the world’s citizens crying for distress as they see their world crumbling right before them and realizing that neither they nor their government can do anything about it.
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