A few days ago Gary North posted about a site hosted by Thomas P.M Barnett who chaired a y2k conference at the Naval War College in Newport, RI. The attendees, officers, and agencies who received the conference report makes an impressive list. The document seems as if it were a suggested action recommendation based upon the famous previous Naval report of recent news. I was very impressed with the document and the action suggestions seemed very appropriate. It assumed the worst...at least for a short while. Almost every point made urged understanding, attempts to help the populace while protecting their bases and personnel and moderation in any interventions. It disavowed the use of the military by the executive in any unconstitutional way.

I have abeen surprised not to see it mentioned here. So I finally posted myself. I wonder if any of you know who Tom Barnett is and what the Naval War College is or does. It would seem to me that if this is a legitimate site Tom would be very unpopular with the executive branch and/or our FEMA/FBI/CIA spymasters.

-- Sand Mueller (smueller@azalea.net), September 04, 1999

Answers

Sand, North's references were discussed here. Since its been more than two days, its probably dropped off into the archives. As best as I can recall, the pollies made "old data" noises, the doomers made "so show me something more recent" noises, and it went downhill from there.

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), September 04, 1999.

Thanks King, I usually try not to miss much here, but sounds like this thread was fairly forgettable anyway.

-- Sand Mueller (smueller@azalea.net), September 04, 1999.

It's for real, and updated every month or two. Barnett used to stop by csy2k but was not very well-received.

Disregard the ominous undertones (and *overtones*!) on the Naval War College site at your own peril -- those people are for real!

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), September 04, 1999.

The Naval War College material was first posted months ago. It certainly is not a reaction to the most recent Navy facilities report.

My own opinion is that the only thing the Navy facilities report shows is that no one has good information. Koskinen and others are guilty of giving assurances based on nothing more than self-reported surveys with poor response rates. Even when the Navy tries to get real data, they get ignored by many utilities, and manage to get bad data for many others.

This doesn't mean it's the end of the world, it just means no ones knows or can know anything for sure before it happens. Even after the first, many failures will be concealed by organizations hoping to get their act together before it becomes noticeable.

As for the Naval War College slides, they describe themselves as the report of several one-day conferences where lots of fairly high-level people shoot the breeze about Y2K. There's almost no factual input into any of them. The gut feel of partiticpants isn't completely worthless of course, but it's not to be taken as a realistic assessment of the current situation either.

-- You Know... (notme@nothere.com), September 04, 1999.

Btu if you LOOK at the people on the panels, and follow the full program, you will be VERY concerned, because the people involved are a LONG way away from clueless.

chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), September 05, 1999.

Following up on Chuck's remarks, I think the most significant aspect of the NWC meetings is the list of participants. A lot of people in positions of considerable power and/or influence took the issue seriously enough to be there.

Some of the earlier threads on this are

Naval War College Discussions and Planning on Y2K

Disappearance of Naval War College page....

Year 2000 International Security Dimension Project Links (Long)

The NWC site itself is Year 2000 International Security Dimension Project Summary. It contains links to the workshops held earlier.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), September 05, 1999.

Sand

You may want to check out the history of the Naval War College Project on the forum. It was pretty interesting. I put together a collection of forum threads and links to the Project itself in the thread below.

 Year 2000 International Security Dimension Project Links
 

You Know

There is actually a source that confirms the Naval facilities report done by the GAO. They did a survey of the 21 largest cities in the US and found serious problems. It was verified by the city officials themselves. The problem with that report is it was scanned in so there is no text. Therefore it never hit the light of the internet. The press did cover the report but that is not the same as reading it. Of course the Naval report and the GAO report have differant backgrounds but it shows one that is done right and one that is done wrong.

The odd thing is the GAO report has always been found on the net and referanced in many of their following reports and testimony.

http:// www.gao.gov/corresp/AI99246R.PDF

Chuck

I feel that this forum in someways mirrors the Naval War College Project and that is why it doesn't recieve that much interest. Alot of bright people on this forum. And topics get ripped up and spit out faster than 3 days :o)

-- Brian (imager@home.com), September 05, 1999.

Sorry -- this should work:

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), September 05, 1999.

I really mean it this time --

Disappearance of Naval War College page....

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), September 05, 1999.