“The result -- arithmetic delinquencies and confused systems. Imagine the confusion when computers define Jan 1 2000 as 01/01/00 and regards the year as 1900. This will leave us 99 years behind time! Scarier still, a credit card charged on Jan 1 2000 would have to bear the interest of 99 years because the computers assume that the same transaction took place on 01/01/1900. The bug would render every calculation involving a date to provide wrong answers and interrupt public services, bank transaction, loan interest calculations, among others, causing formidable loss of billions of ringgit. The effects can be deadly, expensive and extensive as the bug affects hardware (real time clock), embedded firmware, languages and compilers, operating systems, random numbers generator, database management, transaction-processing, banking, flight scheduling and any system that deals with dates. Are Malaysia's computerised systems ready to stand this possible Y2K quake capable of trembling the world to its core?”

- Bernama News Focus, 16 December 1999



Amid the roar of power saws and tangle of computer cable, workers put the final touches Wednesday on a Y2K command center to monitor Malaysia’s transition to the new millennium.

Come New Year’s Eve, technology gurus, police and National Security Council officials will gather at the million-dollar National Y2K Operations Center for a round-the-clock vigil over the Southeast Asian nation.

``If the Internet shuts off, we go to fax and phones. If that fails, we’ve got radio communications. Short of that, messenger boys will be on standby,″ Noriyah Ahmad, chief coordinator of the National Y2K Project Team, said during a tour of the facility.

``Ideally, they wanted a place with a helipad. That’s the only thing we couldn’t provide,″ Noriyah said. ``The VIPs will have to land in the parking lot.″

Malaysia has enlisted an American public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton, to spin its messages to the press.

``It’s either going to be a mess or a big party,″ Khairul Azmy Kamaluddin, a health ministry official, said above the noise of a power drill. ``We just hope it’s not going to be havoc.″

- Associated Press News, 9 December 1999



“I had to sit through so many damn briefings about that Y2K nonsense. It was mandated by the Securities Commission. We had drills and training sessions and were told to prepare for a total shutdown on all electronic trading, so we were prepared to trade stocks via phone line and shouting at each other. My colleague even told me to stop wearing my Casio digital watch because come the new millennium, it would stop working!”

- My father, a former stockbroker



The LRT would break down. The KLSE would become static, unable to execute any trades. Phones would lose signals. Water would cease to flow through pipes. The Tenaga Nasional grid would experience a prolonged blackout. Pumps at petrol stations would refuse to work. Malaysian Airlines flights would fall out from the sky. This was to be the result of the digital calendars of the world turning from 99 to 00. It was a picture painted by the most fearful and pessimistic of the technological world standing still, an exposure of how intertwined computers had become to the day-to-day of the nation. Many feared Y2K would precipitate the total collapse of modern society as we knew of it, an electronic cataclysm that signalled the end of times. In America, doomsday preppers made a mad dash for food, water, and firearms, barricading themselves into their own homes. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad cautioned against panic, tasking Communications Minister Leo Moggie to head up the National Y2K Command Centre, a war room where the nationwide situation would be evaluated, where press conferences were to be held at the stroke of midnight.

If true, it seemed a cruel fate to have the entire mad dash of the 1980s and 1990s towards “developed status”, towards a “knowledge society”, “an IT economy”, with its fanciful acronyms come crashing down, simply because most computers were not built to handle the year 2000. The flaw was that when programs were first written, engineers used a two-digit code for the year, as in “68” for the year 1968, leaving out the “19”. Thus, it was feared that come the new millennium, computers would believe that “00” would be interpreted as 1900 instead as 2000, causing major glitches in the system. In the worst-case scenario, banks would calculate rates of interest for minus 100 years, power plant maintenance routines would be completely thrown off (and precipitate nuclear meltdowns), the transportation schedule would go awry. 

It was perhaps, the worst timing for Malaysia. 1997 had seen the Asian Financial Crisis, where ringgit to the US dollar fell by nearly 50% from 2.42 in April 1997 to an all-time low of 4.88 in January 1998. Meanwhile, the KLSE, which was then the third largest stock exchange in Asia after Tokyo and Hong Kong, saw a plummet of 60% from June 1997 to September 1997. In 1998, UMNO had split in two, with Anwar Ibrahim fired from his position of Deputy Prime Minister. The International Monetary Fund’s offer of a loan for financial recovery had been firmly rejected. On 20 September 1998, the Reformasi movement staged a massive rally where nearly 60,000 protestors demanded the resignation of the prime minister. Amid the Commonwealth Games and Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Kuala Lumpur, riot police ran down tear-gassed protestors in the streets around Dataran Merdeka.

The millennium bug would come hot on the heels of both political and economic crises. It presented an immovable deadline, the strike of 12am on 1 January 2000. To some, it threatened to undo what little recovery Malaysia had made and could be the death knell to an already stricken country. Moreover, it was deeply ironic, a kind of twisted fate that Malaysia, in its drive towards Wawasan 2020, that the very thing that had been hailed as a great catalyst towards not only material prosperity, but societal harmony, would become the very thing that undid it.

To prevent the millennium bug, the pepijat alaf, from destroying society, the entirety of Malaysia was galvanised to action. A National Y2K Committee was formed, with representatives from key portfolios such as Transport, Water, Health, and Telecommunications. The media constantly reported the dangers of Y2K, with op-ed after op-ed decrying the lack of awareness and complacency in Malaysians that would inevitably lead to catastrophe. Many companies appointed Y2K Heads, crafted contingency plans, and overhauled their IT infrastructure as best they could. In the financial industry, the Securities Commission mandated that all public listed companies were to undergo Y2K training, reviews, and announce their efforts to the public. Borrowers and investors were advised to mitigate their risk by diverting their money to Y2K compliant companies. Among financial institutions regulated by the central bank alone, a whopping 585 million ringgit had been spent to prepare for the looming cyber-disaster. Each industry went through a similar process, with hundreds of man hours, and millions of ringgit spent to become “Y2K Ready”.

The preparation for Y2K was an all-of-government approach to deploy all the apparatus of the state whether through regulators, ministries, or agencies, galvanize the private sector, as well as create consciousness among the public through a persistent and pervasive media campaign. It took the form of cross-industry committees chaired by the respective ministries; impressive command centres built with giant press conference halls; flows charts detailing Y2K committees at the ministry, industry, state, and even district level. It presented a form of centralized technocracy, one that adopted the structures of UMNO machinery in its attachment to committees, to appointing division chiefs, to integration from the smallest unit of the MSME to the public listed company. In other words, it was an exercise in mass mobilization, the latest in a long series of “movements” from Look East to Buy British Last to Wawasan 2020 itself that required an all-of-society approach.








We may sound very ambitious for a small country, but America itself was a small country in the 19th Century. At that time, England launched the Industrial Revolution, but America won it. Why? Because the technology could be moved to an environment much more conducive to realising its full potential. Malaysia has come late to industrialisation, and this has given us the will and skill to make sweeping changes that others cannot because we have much less to lose. The MSC provides all the critical components required to create the perfect environment to achieve the promise of the Information Age. Today, it is much easier to move technology and knowledge than it was 100 years ago. This is why we believe we can build the global bridge needed to move beyond the limits of the Industrial Age. While I may be an optimist, I believe this path to prosperity will be chosen over the alternative of hegemony and win-lose economic relationships. The globalising and harmonising forces of the Information Age will prevent a clash of civilisations or the Century of Asia. It will create the World Century, the true Commonwealth of the World.

…

We realise you are more advanced and that we have much to learn, but precisely because you are so developed there are very important things, we can do that you cannot. Malaysia is offering the world a special greenfield environment designed to enable companies to collaborate in new ways and reap the rich rewards of the Information Age. There are no legacies of artificial constraints created and perpetuated by entrenched interests. We offer the Multimedia Super Corridor as a gift to the world -- a global bridge to the Information Age that will enable genuine mutual enrichment for our partners possessing the vision to participate.

-Mahathir Mohamad, speech at Stanford University at the Silicon Valley Conference for Investors on the MSC: Global Bridges to the Information Age




In the Mahathirist lens of history, Malaysia, and every single country suffering under colonialism, was trapped in a cycle of debt, resource extraction, and economic powerlessness. Two World Wars and the result of the Cold War had resulted in near absolute American supremacy in the UNSC, IMF, and World Bank. While a country could try to break out of the cycle of anti-imperialism, efforts too strident in nationalization or even seizing foreign assets, especially in the climate of the Cold War, could trigger foreign intervention.  

Mahathir was not, by any means, a socialist. His instrument of choice in the Dawn Raid was a takeover of Guthrie on the London Stock Exchange, coordinated by the famous Jewish banking company, N.M. Rothschild and Sons. Buy British Last, was a campaign aimed at reducing Malaysian dependence on British companies while hitting them in their coffers. His logic was more that of a CEO eliminating his rivals, than that of a nationalizing hero in the mould of Nasser, or Sukarno. By appropriating the tools of the master, he believed the master would lose the moral right of accusing them of having broken the system; he would instead beat them at their own game.

Wawasan, unlike these early jousts with the British, was not a policy defined by opposition. It was, however, a policy that accepted the game of globalization, embraced it and wanted to become its new centre. Technology was at the heart of this. He believed, as many did, that technology was the one thing capable of breaking the cycle, and truly liberating Malaysia from the boundaries of geography, of history, and even of race and culture. Like many Silicon Valley technologists, the realm of the knowledge worker, where they believed they could upend America's staid, oppressive social hierarchies between nerd and all-star jock, Mahathir placed his faith in the power of technology to disrupt the status quo.

This was not a plan without antecedent. The Meiji Revolution, as Japan emerged out of centuries of Tokugawa isolationism and the humiliating Unequal Treaties, was one that emphasized the rapid adoption of Western technology, dress, and political structures. This was not only a physical transformation, or a simple technology transfer. Farmers' children were forced to go to national schools, even though in some provinces, these triggered riots and arsons. The government established a "standard language" replacing the various dialects as the official language of the country. A new constitution was written, to completely reorganize the political structure of Japan to have an Imperial Diet, a Privy Council, and to restyle the Emperor as a head of state in the fashion of other European monarchs. Of course, Japan also pursued a vast policy of expanding imperial power, often brutally suppressing ethnic minorities, annexing neighbouring peoples such as Ainu. To ensure they would never again need to bow to the Imperial West, they would need to be more Imperial than the original Imperialists. There was no in between - only supremacy or destitution; coexistence was, in the long run, impossible. But it was also a logic that laid the seeds of its own destruction.

Wawasan 2020 was somewhat "fortunate", in that it had alternatives to the Western imitation game of the Meiji Restoration. It was believed that Malaysia, could remain, distinctly still Malaysian (whatever that means), while achieving the goal of ultimate freedom. Japan itself had showed a path; the Look East campaign was a way of pointing out viable alternatives beyond abandoning one's own roots to become "a white man". Malaysia did not need a supreme, or even dominant power to ensure its freedom; it simply needed to become a crossroads, a meeting point of a borderless world where there were non-zero-sum games, where there could be multiple winners. But Wawasan too, in its fetishization of technology, was leaving fault lines in its own logic.

To some, the draw of technology, of the "knowledge economy", was in its lack of physical form. In cyberspace, identity was fluid and geography mattered little. Possibility brimmed. But Wawasan was not a policy that was ethereal in this sense; in its emphasis on infrastructure, on cables and grids and chip foundries and on location, location, location ("Malaysia lies at the crossroads of the world"), it was acutely aware that the digital was inextricably tethered to the physical. Cyberjaya, Putrajaya, Petronas Twin Towers; these were the manifestations of this desire to be "placed on the map" - Mahathir himself wryly remarked in a Wall Street Journal interview: "A country needs something to look up to...When one is short, one should stand on a box to get a better view...The twin towers is to our ego what the box is to a shorties."

Instead, the draw was the idea of leapfrogging, of sustainability, and of cultural change. Unlike oil, technology was not a finite resource bound to run out. The more one exploited oil reserves, the faster the country hurtled towards a swift collapse; technology promised a future unbounded. Unlike rubber, there would be diversity, a Malaysia that would not be at the mercy of fluctuating commodity prices or cartels. And crucially, unlike palm oil, technology had the potential to create opportunities where the workforce could escape from the labour of toiling in the fields, the agriculture, rural "provincialism" which Mahathir so condemned in his 1969 manifesto. To galvanize the country, a year, a specific time upon which this technological utopia could come to fruition, was essential. Without a year, it would remain nebulous, the object of lofty rhetoric; with a year, it took shape as a plan, a goal, and most importantly, a deadline.

Viewed in some ways, Y2K was an existential threat to Wawasan. Firstly, it flipped the narrative of technology; now, being overly dependent on technology could expose one to a total collapse of systems that were now digitized. Secondly, it brought forward the deadline of 2020, 20 years earlier to the year 2000; Malaysia had to act fast, upgrade their systems, or any outdated, non-Y2K-ready tech would end up harming, not helping the nation’s quest towards developed nation status.

If it could not be overcome, it would also reflect poorly on the Mahathir administration and its grand ambition of becoming the new centre of the tech world. The preceding years had already seen deep challenges to its hegemony in the Asian Financial Crisis and Reformasi, but these crises could always be attributed as the result of agent provocateurs whether they be a seemingly all-powerful George Soros, or a lecherous, corrupt, CIA-affiliated caricature of Anwar Ibrahim. There was no figure to blame for Y2K and every country faced a similar spectre of impending disaster; arguably even more so for developed countries with vast swathes of legacy systems that needed updating. It was thus a test, a race against time, a moment of do or die.

MYR 800 million had been allocated to the public sector while private sector spending was estimated to be around MYR 1 billion to address Y2K. Tens of thousands of outdated computers had been replaced with new hardware, online reporting and monitoring systems had been implemented across dozens of industries, business processes and supply chains had been evaluated and contingency plans drawn up in the event of their failure. A new generation of technology firms had sprung out of seemingly thin air to service the needs of the hundreds of companies that needed to become Y2K ready.

Leo Moggie, in an open letter on 3 March 2000, went on to say: “If we think about it, even without the Y2K issue, processes are reviewed, and equipment upgraded from time to time. This is an integral part of the continuous improvement process in most organisations…The fact that as a country we were serious in handling the Y2K issue pushed us up in the ratings and this gave confidence to both the international and domestic investors…. improved efficiency in organisations contribute to a more efficient nation.” The mass mobilization had proved to be an invaluable way of rallying the country to take a technological step forward.

The millennium bug, while at first seemingly an existential threat, was also an opportunity. It promised a race to become upgraded, where nations with less legacy infrastructure could leapfrog into the new era while those encumbered with decades of now outdated computers would suffer the most. In Malaysia and South Korea, economic zones with a heavy emphasis on electronics, especially semiconductors, received a massive boost. Economist K.S. Jomo even posited that “the stronger recoveries in Malaysia and the Republic of Korea can be attributed to stronger fiscal reflationary efforts as well as increased electronics demand (probably in anticipation of the Y2K problem come the year 2000).” Semiconductor stocks such as MPI and UNISEM on the KLSE doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled over the course of a few years in the flurry of upgrading. In 2000, Malaysia was one of the world’s largest producers of integrated circuits and electronic components, with a 19.1% share of total global exports, easily dwarfing China (2.1%), Japan (8.9%), while edging out South Korea (14.3%) and Taiwan (14.7%). Y2K was potentially accelerating Malaysia’s progress towards liberation.

Jan 1,1999, Kuala Lumpur -- Malaysia is seeking World Bank funding to remedy its Year 2000 problem, but experts fear it may already be too late.

World Bank spokesman Graham Barrett confirmed the government was now applying for a loan specifically to address the Y2K problem which will only likely be approved in early 1999.

The allocation is believed to be in excess of US$100 million.

…

The economic crunch make matters worse for ailing companies already struggling to keep their businesses afloat amid a recession, the country's first in 13 years.

"Most companies have not budgeted for Y2K solutions and are reluctant to acknowledge that the expense is unavoidable, and the deadline is non-negotiable," said Billy Chia, managing director of Y2K solutions provider Future Connections Sdn Bhd.

He said the problem is exacerbated by lack of public awareness and general apathy by some smaller companies that still do not see the date roll-over problem as critical to their businesses.

"These companies are still waiting for the traditional silver bullet, something they can download free from the Internet, but this will not happen," said Chia, whose company sells the Australian-made Uniwell Millennium Bug Toolkit.

He estimates that 80 percent of Malaysia's small and midsize companies running older generation PCs, up to speeds of 100Mhz, are affected and may need fixes.

-Nikkei Electronics Asia, 1 Jan 1999



It seemed for a moment that the millennium bug was going to derail the narrative of progress, and that threat had triggered a kind of mass hysteria or frenzy of activity. However, as the year in question approached, the government seemed to adopt an increasingly dispassionate, even unconcerned attitude.   

In the tabling of the 1999 national budget, Mahathir only routinely mentioned the millennium bug once in a matter-of-fact sentence simply stating: “To handle the problem of the millennium bug in the computer systems of government departments, a sum of 100 million ringgit has been allocated for the year.” For the 2000 budget presented by then Finance Minister Daim Zainuddin, there was much fanfare of the coming millennium, but not a single mention of the bug itself.

When interviewed about it 3 days before the new millennium, Mahathir simply dismissed it saying: “I believe even if there will be problems, they will not be big ones…But steps have been taken to solve the Y2K issue.” He went on to nonchalantly address the (clearly) much more pressing issue of the rising prices of essential goods.

Only Leo Moggie, the Minister of Energy, Communications, and Multimedia, continued to make frequent public statements about the “catastrophe”, mostly to reassure the public that he had full confidence that Malaysia was sufficiently prepared to weather the coming storm.

And then the New Year came and went. Nothing really happened, aside from a few calendars displaying the wrong year. The committee remained on alert until 1 March 2001, when fears that computers might encounter a second Y2K bug due to the leap year failed to come to fruition.

The passing of the millennium, and then the leap year, was first greeted with relief as well as some measure of disbelief. John Koskinen, head of the US President’s Council on Y2K Conversion, said in surprise: “We literally are unable to find any significant Y2K-related incident as the world has gone into the year 2000.” In Malaysia, it became a point of pride. Leo Moggie announced: “The fact that we were operating ‘business as usual’ during the rollover and through all the critical dates brings about an elated sense of pride, achievement and confidence in ourselves as a nation. Malaysia Boleh!”

Sceptics and naysayers soon followed, calling the whole Y2K fiasco much ado about nothing. Some went as far as to say the entire thing was grossly exaggerated by so-called IT experts to manufacture demand for their services.

Regardless, Malaysia had seen a vast upgrade of its computer systems, dragging many departments and companies kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It had solidified its place in the world of semiconductor manufacturing. The Petronas Twin Towers, Putrajaya, Cyberjaya stood.

But these advancements were transitory, at least viewed through the lens of the ultimate Wawasan 2020 vision. A strong manufacturing base and upgraded infrastructure could ensure the transformation of Malaysia to a middle-income country, but it would still not be nearly enough to bring about the lofty liberation and immunity to the whims of geography that the Vision looked to. Implicit in the rapid ascension of Malaysia was a need to continue courting the interest of US and Japanese tech companies, in the hopes there would be enough technology transfer, enough expertise imparted, that Malaysia could ascend the value chain. This was similar to the strategy South Korea took almost in parallel. If not, Malaysia would simply be yet another convenient playground for multinational corporations; a shift in policy, geopolitics, and costs could see Malaysia easily supplanted. The ensuing years would see not a Malaysia that was boosted by Y2K into the utopia envisioned by Wawasan, but an altogether more humble, gradual growth. Y2K turned out to be much ado about nothing.

In an alternate, if fanciful history, Y2K could have been a turning point. In this tantalizing vision of a world upended, the US and Europe would have been hit hard by cascading failures in the wake of Y2K. Malaysia, as the supplier of their lifeline: semiconductor chips to resolve such failures would have become the world’s most valuable resource. Having mobilized, centralized, and technocratized to rally the entirety of Malaysia’s collective will towards staving off digital apocalypse, Malaysia now stood as one of the few nations that had successfully prepared for the disruption of the new millennium and had reaped the rewards as a result. Cyberjaya and the Multimedia Super Corridor, supercharged by superior infrastructure, would be the “brains” the nation, an imagination that visualised Malaysia as the CPU in the computer system of an ASEAN linked by networks undersea internet cables. Having secured this commanding position in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Malaysia would be, in Mahathir’s words: “a gift to the world -- a global bridge to the Information Age”. Such a dream remained the realm of delusion, not reality.

At the end of it all, the millennium had come and gone; the world, whether virtual or not, had not been ended nor had it been upended.