The deeper point here - what the article is actually about but which has now been obscured by Musk's spectacular Twitter meltdown - is one about different kinds

The deeper point here - what the article is actually about but which has now been obscured by Musk's spectacular Twitter meltdown - is one about different kinds of technical culture. Silicon Valley culture has transformed our world, but it brings with it downsides and dangers. One of which is the "Engineer's Disease" - the overconfident assumption that expertise in one field gives us the ability to wade into some other domain and whip up quick technical solutions to complex problems. It's not a sin to suffer from Engineer's Disease. I fall victim to it occasionally myself. But we need to collectively get better at recognizing the symptoms, taking a deep breath and asking "do I really understand this, or do I just believe I understand it." Musk's submarine was an almost perfect example. Take some "rocket parts" (his words) and a dash of SpaceX magic dust, put some smart engineers together in a room, save the kids and take home the glory. Except it doesn't actually work that way. To a diver who had actually been in the cave, it was so clearly unworkable: it was a rigid metal cylinder and it just wasn't going to fit round tight corners. The expertise that mattered was that of the rescue divers, combined with specific knowledge of the cave - a completely different technical culture that is safety-oriented and in which untested innovation is generally a quick route to an unpleasant death. I'm just glad that the latter culture was the one that prevailed in this case. Otherwise things might have ended rather differently.