The ghost of Y2K just struck back

The predicted Y2K computer disaster never happened. But the latest CrowdStrike glitch shows similar widespread outages are still possible.

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.

NEWSWORTHY

Blue Screens of Death. CrowdStrike’s share price dipped 10% in mid-day trading after the cybersecurity firm appeared to play a central role in a massive IT omnishambles that spread across the globe today, affecting everyone from airports and hospitals to banks and broadcasters. There were two big issues: An update to CrowdStrike’s widely used antivirus software apparently caused Windows PCs and servers to crash, and Microsoft suffered connectivity failures that knocked out many of its 365 cloud productivity services. The former seems to have caused the latter, but either way, the impact has been catastrophic. Even though CrowdStrike has advised customers how to fix the problem, IT administrators will likely take days to revive all their machines.

OpenAI chips. OpenAI has spoken to Broadcom about making a new AI server chip and is hiring former staffers from Google’s chip team, The Information reports. It has previously been reported that CEO Sam Altman was exploring a new AI chipmaking venture to overcome the global shortage, but this appears to be an in-house OpenAI effort. Meanwhile, OpenAI has released a new light model called GPT-4o Mini that is replacing GPT-3.5 as the engine in ChatGPT.

Fandango cofounder dies. J. Michael Cline, who cofounded the online movie ticketing pioneer Fandango, died by suicide in Manhattan yesterday, according to the New York Times. Cline was the executive chairman of venture fund Juxtapose and leaves a wife and six children.

Trump shooter phone access. The FBI used an unreleased version of Cellebrite’s phone-cracking software to access the Samsung handset of the man who shot former President Donald Trump in an apparent assassination attempt last weekend, Bloomberg reports.

IN OUR FEED

“Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

—Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is impressed by former President Trump’s reaction to his attempted assassination, but still won’t endorse him or anyone else in the coming election.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Netflix vanquishes doubts about its ability to keep growing just about every profit metric, by Paolo Confino

Tim Cook gifted Donald Trump a $6,000 Mac Pro after he lowered tariffs on parts Apple needed from China, by Paolo Confino

Tech elites supporting J.D. Vance are ‘not here to save you,’ warns Kara Swisher, by Jessica Mathews

Tech billionaires’ Trump-Vance dance is missing the point: You can’t always get what you want, by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Anthony Scaramucci (Commentary)

DeepL, long a leader in translation tech, finally embraces LLMs, by Sage Lazzaro

Russian duo confess to cyber heist that forced $500 million in ransom payments, by Bloomberg

BEFORE YOU GO

‘Low-quality’ app purge. Google, which already bans Android apps that are broken, will from the end of next month also start purging its Play Store of apps with “limited functionality and content.” As Android Authority reports, Google already nixed the publication of 2.3 million policy-violating apps last year.

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