I read Paula Gordons December assessment. She holds the president accountable but indicates that his level of inaction must mean he is misinformed or just doesnt get it.

I disagree. Bill Clinton gets it and is well informed. I think Bill has another agenda. Does Clinton hope to control the environment by grinding down industrial society at this opportune time. I really dont know. What makes sense to youI

Your thoughts. (sorry these punctuation marks are whacked)

-- earl (ejrobill@pcpostal.com), December 03, 1999

Answers

Paula is not saying this off the top of her head. She has spoken to people who are close to the White House who have told her this. Therefore, I think that it is the most likely case. He doesn't get it and most of his advisors didn't get it until it was too late.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), December 03, 1999.

It is my understanding that Clinton heard about this in 1995 and told his aides that he wanted to have people start prepping in April of this year. He was going to make it some type of National y2k Prep month. Anyhow, his aides nixed it because he would then be held fully accountable should the SHTF."...you knew and did nothing to protect us....".

This way he can say he didn't know and is/was as surprised as the rest of the leaders in this country and throughout the world.

Don't forget who the real culprets are - companies that sell preps and the people who want to prep. Please don't blame the leaders of our country who just want to keep us from panic. They really love us. Really.

-- mark (markmic@kynd.net), December 03, 1999.

That's RIGHT! And it's all for the CHILDREN! With little/no distraction from Y2K we can merrily spend the dollars that otherwise might be 'wasted' on preps. on the children's TOYS!!!!

-- Sceptic (GottaMaintain@SomeHumor.com), December 03, 1999.

I'll shift from the tenor of the last two posts and remove my tongue from my cheek. Was it FDR that said, "In politics nothing ever happens by accident."? Look at the blizard of executive orders that Clinton has been making. Where there is smoke, there is fire. Or at least somebody trying to burn something. Like the constitution perhaps? Question is, will Y2K fan the flames or blow them out?

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@earthlink.net), December 03, 1999.

Bill definitely knows what is going on. He and his New World Order buddies have been waiting for an opportunity like this to appear.

He bombed a medicine factory in hopes of getting a terrorist attack on the US. The even had the feds show those middle easterners how to make a bomb to destroy the World Trade Center. Oklahoma city building had bombs on the inside of the building. They keep trying.

Wait and see if more buildings get blown up. They are going to have to do it themselves to get the ball rolling. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

FEMA is already saying that he is going to declare a "state of emergency." That is when the fun starts.

Order out of chaos.

-- Villain (villain@thedoghousemail.com), December 03, 1999.

LOL!!! Clinton will just say: "Shazamm! I didn't know about y2k til I read it in the paper!" Wouldn't be the first time.

Indeed, I too believe he has another agenda....he wants to be "king" for life, and y2k disruptions may be just the vehicle he needs.

-- Birdlady (Birdlady@nest.net), December 03, 1999.

Clinton races around in jets and lives in mansions. He has a HELL of alot more to loose than the average Joe, me included. I believe Paula.

-- Hokie (nn@home.com), December 03, 1999.

IMHO,

The evidence points to Clinton NOT GETTING IT. Neither did His Y2K czar, until VERY recently.

Clinton probably relied on his Corporate buddies to "educate" him on such things as embedded chips and computer systems. As always when it's in their best interest, his corporate buddies lied to him. So for 3 or so years, Clinton thought it just was a "computer code" problem.

I believe John Koskinen only recently became aware of Bruce Beache's White Paper on embedded chips. Once he began to grasp the significance of Beache's paper, he call a meeting of his "experts" where he told them to discredit Beache's paper. They could not. This is why we are now hearing Koskinen sound an alarm to companies to re- check their embedded systems. Likewise, we'll probably hear Clinton reverse his "no problems" position very soon.

IMHO

-- GoldReal (GoldReal@aol.com), December 03, 1999.

Even Bruce Beach himself has backed off, saying his paper discussed a theoretical possibility and not a known commonplace problem.

The biggest problem with refuting Beach's paper is that embedded systems people are *still* trying to guess what he may have been talking about. His terminology was nonstandard and his description didn't seem to describe anything anyone could identify! Beach defended his terminology on the grounds that he was trying to be nontechnical so he could communicate with non-geeks. But Beach's convenient omission of so much as a single example of his "secondary clocks" has meant we still don't know what it is or how it works.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 03, 1999.

Someone told him Y2k IS going to be a problem. He said "it depends on what the meaning of the word IS, is."

-- tc (trashcan-man@webtv.net), December 03, 1999.

Bruce Beach was getting his information from an oil research facility. Perhaps he did not consider it proper during an interview to press them for model numbers, etc. The most important information to come out of the interview was that 25 percent of embedded systems had problems. Clinton and Koskinen do not have computer backgrounds and probably do not fully appreciate the scope of the problem. If they are beginning to understand it now, it is too late.

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), December 04, 1999.

GoldReal,

You wrote:

"The evidence points to Clinton NOT GETTING IT. Neither did His Y2K czar, until VERY recently."

I do not see the evidence that Mr. Koskinen has "Got It". The November 9, 1999 meeting and the subsequent statements about embedded systems indicate that he has made some important steps in beginning to understand the embedded systems part of the larger set of problems associated with Y2K. However, this increase in understanding does not appear to have been accompanied by any concerted effort to make sure that all possible attention and resources are focused on preventing problems involving the highest risk, highest hazard systems, systems, plants, facilities, sites, pipelines, etc., etc. Summits meetings should be called immediately to deal with each of these sectors at greatest risk. Nor does his increase in understanding appear to be accompanied by a recognition that we are in a crisis situation and that urgent preparedness measures are called for. Indeed, he seems to have taken a step backward in that regard by changing his call for preparing for a three day storm to a call for preparing for a long holiday weekend.

You also wrote:

"Clinton probably relied on his Corporate buddies to "educate" him on such things as embedded chips and computer systems. As always when it's in their best interest, his corporate buddies lied to him. So for 3 or so years, Clinton thought it just was a "computer code" problem."

While the President and the Vice President were given a technical briefing on Y2K as long ago as 1995, neither apparently really got it. According to one source, the Vice President got it even less than the President. I currently suspect that the President is no higher than a 2 or 3, if that, on the impact scale and that Mr. Koskinen is personally little if any higher than that.

You wrote:

"I believe John Koskinen only recently became aware of Bruce Beach's White Paper on embedded chips. Once he began to grasp the significance of Beach's paper, he call a meeting of his "experts" where he told them to discredit Beach's paper. They could not. This is why we are now hearing Koskinen sound an alarm to companies to re-check their embedded systems."

As far as I know, Mr. Beach's work is not at all new to Mr. Koskinen. At least Mr. Koskinen was sent copies at least 12 or 13 months ago. It is certainly possible that Mr. Beach's work was one of the factors that led Mr. Koskinen in April or May of this year to ask for a report on embedded systems from the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) of the Department of Commerce. However, I have many reasons to believe that it was by no means a principal factor. Many individuals were urging Mr. Koskinen to take a deeper look at embedded systems issues. Many raised issues that were far less esoteric than those raised by Bruce Beach. I believe that it was uncertainty and an apparent conflict of perspectives that resulted in Mr. Koskinen asking for the report.

If you have a look at the current thread on Embedded Systems, you will see additional comments of mine concerning some of the background leading up to the November 9 meeting. See:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001ucu

(Those comments may be about 2/3 of the way through the thread.)

You also wrote: "Likewise, we'll probably hear Clinton reverse his "no problems" position very soon."

It seems apparent that as of November 10, Mr. Clinton showed no awareness concerning the implications of what transpired during the November 9th meeting. The President has said nothing in recent days that I am aware of to indicate that he is aware of the implications of the subsequent NIST press release and article, or the more recent statement released by Mr. Koskinen. If the President is aware of the significance of the press release, the article, or the statement, he has not let the public in on how they might be factoring into any policy decisions that he has made or will soon be making on Y2K.

My latest information as of late October was that the President was quite consumed by other national security issues that he considered far more important and that he had truly delegated responsibility for Y2K to Mr. Koskinen. I have discussed this in my Comments and Impact Ratings for both November and December. They can be found at http://www.gwu.edu/~y2k/keypeople/gordon (click on "Comments, Essays, & Op-Ed Pieces.) The topic was also mentioned during the November 23, 1999 panel on National and Global Y2K Initiatives (a wide range of initiatives that are still needed) that took place at George Washington University and was broadcast by C-SPAN. (Information concerning the availability of that video and its accessibility for viewing in the C-SPAN archives is also available in my December Comments at the URL noted above.)

During the panel on November 23, several us on the panel shared our views concerning how the President and Mr. Koskinen were viewing the Y2K and embedded systems crisis. Certainly, neither currently appears to be viewing our current situation as a crisis.

*******

Mr. Koskinen is to speak at the National Press Club on Tuesday, December 14. If anyone would like to submit a question, please feel free to do so on this thread. I will make a point of printing out the questions and submit a selection of them in person in writing at the time of the event.

-- Paula Gordon (pgordon@erols.com), December 04, 1999.

Once again, the concept of "getting it" comes under the microscope. This is a slippery phrase. Paula Gordon writes:

[Nor does (Koskinen's) increase in understanding appear to be accompanied by a recognition that we are in a crisis situation and that urgent preparedness measures are called for.]

A large and growing body of knowledgeable (and reasonably objective) observers would invert this phrase. In their view, Koskinen "gets it" that we are in fact NOT in a "crisis situation" and that urgent preparedness measures are NOT called for. By some estimates (Gartner, for example), we've already encountered half of all y2k problems (counting new implementations) without economic impact. A full order of magnitude more impact than we've see so far would still be a small bump in the road, and that increase fails to accord with even the research intended to emphasize problems.

If we were in a "crisis situation", surely a LOT more people would be sounding and acting concerned than a tiny group of people who make some or all of their living by issing warnings. We'd be slamming into such problems today, every time we turned around. Yet we must comb carefully for sources of warnings (no problems yet), and even then we must interpret them carefully to conclude that they said things were bad even when they didn't. Some "crisis".

Yes, yes, I know, it's not 2000 yet. There are now two splinter schools among the pessimists -- that embeddeds are the real problem and will cause catastrophe in the immediate vicinity of rollover, and (failing that), that IT date problems will prove intractable enough to grind us down into a deep recession or worse over the course of months following rollover.

But both these positions are based on the observation that nothing has happened yet, combined with the conviction that things will be bad. Therefore, things must be bad later. And the groundwork is being laid to maintain that conviction until MUCH later, just in case. Our "crisis situation" is invisible. Can it be that surprising that someone might recognize that the emperor has no clothes?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 04, 1999.

It doesn't matter how much Clinton or Gore got or didn't get. As "leaders" of the free world and at the top of the administration they are responsibile. They could have had advisors from a huge array of non political experts who would gladly have discussed this with them over time until they did "get it". We all had to do the same thing. I am no expert and I have had to study a lot to try to understand all this. I may have a different take on this than they do, but they are definitely responsible for strongly and consistently trying to lead us in one direction when much of the evidence lead us in the other. I have no idea if this was premeditated. They have had a moral obligation to know more, and keep their minds more open than they have. It isn't as if others haven't been bringing contradictory information to them.

Charlie

-- Charlie (cstewart@ime.net), December 04, 1999.

Charlie:

I'm sure they did listen to hordes of experts. In real life, there are 100 experts who feel little will go wrong, for every expert who expects bigtime problems. Everyone here is complaining that they didn't listen to the tiny minority and ignore everyone else. That's the smart thing to do, since that's what most of us here do, see?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 04, 1999.

I have to agree w/ Dr. Gordon, only to a more extreme measure. She has left out his extreme arrogance in his own infailability. He didn't "GI" because it would have been a perfect RUSE to build up the country during last year's impeachment. It could've taken heat away from him AND done some good at same time. He never thought of it, because he never "GI."

He delegated the problem and forgot about it, IMHO.

-- RJ (LtPita@aol.com), December 04, 1999.

Flint...........said..........."I'm sure they did listen to hordes of experts. In real life, there are 100 experts who feel little will go wrong, for every expert who expects bigtime problems. Everyone here is complaining that they didn't listen to the tiny minority and ignore everyone else. That's the smart thing to do, since that's what most of us here do, see?"

I believe you are grasping here Flint old boy. I suppose International Monitoring is among your "tiny minority". Oh and what about the very "small minority" of SME's out there that have done little or no remediation? Oh oh oh, and then theres the UK gov, that are so worried about possible malfuctions with embeds etc. in Nuclear facilities, they released a statment urging the Nukes be brought down for the roll..........and on and on and on.

-- (karlacalif@aol.com), December 05, 1999.