From: Matthew Gaylor (freematt@coil.com)
Date: Sun Dec 26 1999 - 07:54:43 MST
[Note from Matt: Les is a retired computer scientist from Stanford.]
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1999 22:28:48 -0800 (PST)
From: Les Earnest <les@Steam.Stanford.EDU>
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: E2A is worse than Y2K
Forget about the Y2K Armageddon. The two digit year bug likely will
cause minor inconveniences to some and will benefit others, who will
have a paid vacation until their software gets fixed. Deaths or
serious injuries? Not likely, aside from deliberate acts by
terrorists or dimwits. The main Y2K threat is the absurd hype
generated by the media, government agencies and "experts" selling
fixes.
As you may recall, when serious discussions of the programming bug
began several years ago it was called the "Year 2000" bug, which
quickly shrank to "Y2000," then "Y2K." In a few days this shrinking
acronym will go "Poof!" and disappear. The media will likely then
turn on the "scientists" who they will claim misled them into
believing that something awful was about to happen. More bogosity.
Though Y2K and other shinking acronyms pose no long term threat to
mankind, there is a real threat from Ever-Expanding Acronyms (E2A).
After tracking this phenomenon for the last 45 years I can confidently
predict what the U.S. military-industrial establishment will be
working on in the year 3000 if it doesn't self-destruct in the
meantime. Unfortunately the picture isn't pretty.
This story begins in the mid-1950s when a tortured acronym was
assigned to a project called SAGE, for "Semi-Automatic Ground
Environment." This alleged defense system was a technological marvel
that integrated radar systems with computers operating in real time
that were supposed to direct manned interceptors and ground-to-air
missiles against any invading bombers.
However, SAGE was an operational fraud in that it worked only in
peacetime demonstrations and would have disintegrated under a real
manned bomber attack, not to mention the ballistic missiles that had
been developed before SAGE was fully deployed. However, neither the
U.S. Congress nor the taxpayers figured out that they had been
hoodwinked by collaborators from MIT and the U.S. Air Force, with help
from IBM, RAND and its spinoff, SDC.
The elegant lifestyle that SAGE provided for Generals in the Air
Defense Command soon induced envy in the Strategic Air Command
inasmuch as a number of SAGE computer facilities were placed at SAC
bases. Not to be outdone, General Curtis Lemay initiated development
of his own computerized system, called the SAC Control System. Given
that transistorized computers had become practical just after SAGE was
developed, SAC managed to one-up the Air Defense Command by purchasing
a more reliable (though equally useless) system.
When the full name of SAC's system was written out as "Strategic Air
Command Control System," the chance juxtaposition of the middle words
"Command Control" somehow took on mystical meanings in the Pentagon
and elsewhere that convinced senior officers that they had discovered
a new paradigm that would transform warfare. They set up new
organizations devoted to developing additional "Command-Control
Systems," sometimes affectionately called "C2 Systems."
The development of C2 Systems became a major growth industry even
though they were nearly all operationally inferior to the manual
systems that they were supposed to replace. The focus of those
running these development programs was on spending all funds allocated
to them within each fiscal year, so that they would qualify for an
increase the following year. Nobody was expected to meet any
particular performance objectives inasmuch as everyone knew that
computerizing their command functions would improve performance.
By the early 1960s there was a World Wide Military Command Control
System (WWMCCS) being developed for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who
could not afford to be out-computerized by their subordinate military
units. By the 1970s a new generic term was created for systems of
this type, namely "Command-Control-Communications" or "C3."
Though the military intelligence community had been developing their
own useless C3 systems from the beginning and had been subject to even
less Congressional scrutiny than others by virtue of getting some of
their projects funded in the "black budget," they felt left out of the
mainstream until the Pentagon coined the term "Command-Control-
Communications-Intelligence Systems" or "C3I," which I believe came
into vogue in the 1980s.
A major C3I project of that era was called the "Strategic Defense
Initiative" or "Star Wars" and managed to surpass all of its
predecessors by expending several billion dollars without producing
anything tangible, courtesy of President Reagan's rampant imagination,
as reportedly stimulated by the bogus advice of Edward Teller.
Earlier this year the government announced the next version of their
ever-expanding acronym, as reported in the electronic newsletter
Edupage on March 23:
TRENCH WARFARE IN THE INFORMATION AGE
The National Research Council has issued a report warning that
military forces are not giving sufficiently serious attention to
their Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence
Systems (known as C4I). "The rate at which information systems are
being relied on outstrips the rate at which they are being
protected. The time needed to develop and deploy effective
defenses in cyberspace is much longer than the time required to
develop and mount an attack." Military analyst Kenneth Allard
says, "Twenty-first century combat is the war of the databases, in
which information flows must go from the foxhole to the White House
and back down again." (AP 22 Mar 99)
It is interesting to note that even though computers have been a
central element of the Command-Control- . . . systems from the
beginning, the word "computer" was not incorporated into the generic
name until more than 40 years after this line of development began.
The fact that it is now included suggests that computers have somehow
become respectable, even though most modern C4I systems appear to be
about as useless as their ancient predecessors.
Given that the C2 acronym expanded to C4I in just 40 years, we can
calculate the average expansion interval as 40/3 = 13 1/3 years.
Based on this history and assuming that the field continues evolving
at about the same rate in the "C" direction, we can expect that by the
end of the next millenium the generic acronym will be "C79I." Writing
out the full name and explaining it will substantially increase the
paperwork required to document these projects, which will further
enlarge the taxpayers' burden.
Alternatively if there is a more balanced evolution involving the
addition of both "C" and "I" terms, with the next step possibly being
to append "Internet" to the name, then in another thousand years the
military-industrial complex will be building C41I39 systems. These
programs and their documentation will ensure full employment for our
nation, so that our descendants and their corporate employers can look
forward to an increasingly prosperous future as long as nobody attacks
us with real weapons.
However, if anything goes wrong with this projection, Y2K will look
like a picnic by comparison. Have a Happy New Year and a Marvelous
Millenium!
Les Earnest (les@cs.stanford.edu) Phone: 650 941-3984
12769 Dianne Drive; Los Altos Hills, CA 94022 Fax: 650 941-3934
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