Trumped by a costly ‘computer glitch’

Like many Australians, I had just finished watching a live telecast of Donald Trump’s inspiring speech at the US Republican Conference following his miraculous survival of an assassination attempt, when suddenly the screen pixelated then died.

Trump recounted how he had survived a sniper’s bullet which nipped his ear just as he turned his head to look at a screen showing illegal immigration numbers, but the commentary immediately afterwards suffered the equivalent of a sudden cardiac arrest.

We didn’t know why, but at the same moment, other news channels also went on the blink, along with supermarket checkouts, banking systems, a wide range of commercial enterprises and health systems.

Lines formed at airport checkouts as flights were cancelled globally and aircraft  at some international airports were placed on holding patterns as runways were occupied by planes unable to take off. 

We were soon informed by a couple of stalwarts on Sky News that it was all the result of a “glitch” with a Microsoft systems update by US-based cyber security firm CrowdStrike.

Chaos reigned, but we were assured it was not the result of a cyber attack. What the —- How could this be?

My mind works in strange ways but it tripped back more than a quarter century in its own version of the Tardis to New Year’s Eve, 1999, when we were all warned that what had just happened was about to happen.

The Y2k Bug, or Millenium Bug, was about to bite and civilisation as we knew it was about to crumble - planes would drop out of the sky, public utilities such as water, sewerage, power, food supplies would suddenly be disrupted as clocks ticked past midnight.

This was all supposed to happen because computer programmers had abbreviated years to the last two digits - 1999 was 99 and 2000 was just 00 and “experts”  predicted that the computers wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the end of the previous century and the dawning of the new millennium.

Governments around the world invested billions in attempts to offset or cope with possible after-effects and many gullible citizens stocked up on canned food, water, cash, weapons and other necessities. But when midnight had passed it was quickly obvious that nothing bad was happening.  Civilisation survived along with its computers, and governments claimed credit for their “preventative action”.

According to the University of Queensland’s John Quiggan: “Despite an expenditure estimated at $A12 billion in Australia (Campbell 2000) and as much as $US 500 billion for the world as a whole, no serious ex post evaluation has been undertaken. In this paper, it will be argued that, although some relatively minor problems were prevented, and some collateral benefits were realised, most money spent specifically on Y2K compliance exercises was wasted. Moreover, it will be argued, evidence available early in 1999, should have been sufficient to justify the adoption of a less costly strategy of ‘fix on failure’...”

That was then, this is now. A much used quote from the new likely US Democrat Presidential candidate Kamala Harris following Joe Biden’s highly anticipated withdrawal, “What can be, unburdened by what has been,” might actually have a glimmer of sense in this context. But I’m sure she wouldn’t have known that in between fits of the laughter which would put Queensland Premier Steven ‘Giggles’ Miles to shame.