As I sit here typing in San Francisco, things seem pretty normal. My laptop and Wi-Fi connection are working, and I’m chatting with colleagues via Slack. For the past 12 hours though, a huge swath of the planet was not so lucky.
The outage, which apparently stemmed from a faulty software update from security provider CrowdStrike, set off a chain reaction that took down PCs and servers at airlines, TV stations, banks, hospitals, and countless other organizations. As Ars Technica noted, “the problems started in Australia and followed the dateline from there.”
For those affected, it must have seemed like a scene straight out of one of the dystopian "End of Times" movies we love to watch.
But this was the scene we all prepared for IRL on New Year's Eve 24 years ago, as the clocks on our computers struck midnight, and the last two digits of the year 1999 went back to zero to mark the start of a new millennium. If you think back to the Y2K prep days, the scenarios envisioned were very much like what happened today.
“The Year 2000 problem could result in a stunning array of technological failures. Air traffic could be delayed or even grounded; telephone service could be interrupted; breakdowns in the production and distribution of electricity could bring widespread power failures; automatic teller machines might malfunction; traffic lights could stop working,” reads a 1998 report by the Congressional Committee on Government Reform and Oversight.
Among the vast number of guides and prep kits at the time were recipe books for preparing meals that don’t require perishable foods, guides for “community readiness,” and even a special card game to help players better prepare for the doomsday scenario. According to the Charles Babbage Institute, which has a fascinating online collection of Y2K memorabilia, the object of the card game “was to build relationships that would better weather the consequences of Y2K than people could do individually. Players were instructed to respond to potential Y2K scenarios such as ‘The telephone system is down, no one knows for how long. How could you check to see if your mother is okay?’”
In the end, Y2K didn’t happen. Perhaps the disaster was averted by the billions spent retrofitting computer systems ahead of time. Or perhaps it just wasn’t the danger we thought it would be. The upshot though, is that today, Y2K is remembered as a panic—an irrational hysteria that gripped the world.
There are still tons of questions about why today’s outage was so potent and widespread. But one thing it showed is that the scenario of a Y2K-style outage is not the stuff of science fiction or irrational panic. We live in a connected world, and we’re automating ever more with AI. It never hurts to be prepared.
Alexei Oreskovic
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Today's edition of Data Sheet was curated by David Meyer.
