IP: Washington, Moscow Ponder Y2K Nuclear Danger or do you really sleep better

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ts/story.html?s=v/nm/19990221/ts/ 
millennium_2.html

Sunday February 21 4:40 AM ET

Washington, Moscow Ponder Y2K Nuclear Danger

By Adam Tanner

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States has offered to set up a missile 
early-warning center with Russia from December 1999 to reduce the 
risk of
accidental war stemming from the millennium bug, a senior U.S. 
defense official said Sunday.

Edward Warner, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and 
Threat Reduction, outlined the suggestion in two days of military 
talks that ended
Friday on how the millennium computer bug might affect Russia's 
nuclear arsenal.

Experts have expressed fear that the millennium bug, or Y2K problem, 
caused by outdated computer software that may mistake the year 2000 
for 1900
could cause Russian radars to believe mistakenly that an attack was under way.

``One of the possibilities that we are discussing and will discuss 
further is the possibility of a jointly manned center with 
early-warning information
available to provide an additional buffer against that problem,'' 
Warner told Reuters.

``One of the components of our proposal is the specific area of some 
sharing of early-warning data at the time of the transition, that is, 
the time of late
December moving onto January of the year 2000.''

Warner led a U.S. delegation of the Defense Consultative Group of 
U.S. and Russian military officials. The Y2K problem was one of 
several issues
considered in the talks.

Russia has begun to acknowledge that its military may be affected by 
the millennium bug, but it is unclear where the cash-strapped country 
would get the
funds it would need to tackle it, or how it could do so in only 10 
months' time.

``There is a problem and we are dealing with it,'' said a spokesman 
for Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces.,,,,,,,]