DISSENT: Too Much Money, Too Late

U.S. actions regarding the Y2K crisis can hardly be seen as early or admirable. The U.S. did not fully address or acknowledge the problem until the latter part of the '90s--a good 20 years after the issue was first brought to light. As early as 1971, our nation's own official committee on data protocols was calling for a four-digit date standard in computers, rather than the two-digit standard that was commonplace at the time. To have tackled the problem then would have killed any Y2K worries forever.

However, such prescience was not to be. And so the world spent an estimated $600 billion to squash the bug that our great nation unleashed through its own programming ineptitude.

For those who like to keep count, that's $600 billion too much, too late. So why are we calling these efforts "precautions" when the problem was known to have existed long ago? Why are we lauding our government for spending even more money just to make sure its very own weaponry wouldn't accidentally launch? Why are we proud of the fact that many firms and even government institutions exposed themselves to security risks in their frantic race against the clock to fix the bug?

We shouldn't be patting our backs because we narrowly averted disaster; we should be screaming at ourselves for getting so close in the first place. Developed countries such as Italy spent far less than the U.S., and they did just fine. An Italian newspaper printed the apt headline, "The Bug Was a Dud; the Great Fear is Over; But Some Accuse: It Was a Bluff to Make Money."

If we truly believe that all of the money was well spent, and that action was taken quickly and efficiently, then perhaps we have a Y2K bug of our own. It's called gullibility.

--Robin S. Lee '03