The Governor was not involved in the design of the rescue device. He is not a subject matter expert in cave diving, underwater rescue, or the operations inside

The Governor was not involved in the design of the rescue device. He is not a subject matter expert in cave diving, underwater rescue, or the operations inside the cave during this event. Elon states this in his tweets. The BBC chose to interpret the correction (“that’s GOVERNOR to you”) as a perjorative against the Governor (“he’s only a governor, not a rescue chief”), and the rest of the media circus ran with that interpretation. The governor’s area of expertise was more likely how to go about convincing third parties to accept the fallout (rice farmers whose fields were damaged, parents whose kids might not be coming home) rather than a deep technical understanding of the activities. Also the governor’s statement about the device not being a good fit seems more likely aimed at the device being a Plan C fallback, rather than the device not being useful at all. The extraction mission was already in progress, involving a hundred people or so. Anyone who has managed a large team knows that a team this size working under stress should not be changing horses mid stream. Given that the kids were being sedated, it also stands to reason that putting them in a sealed tube was not a good fit since that would preclude monitoring vitals with the available tools eg 1 stethoscope. A future revision could be switching from bolt-on lid to clip-on lid so that rapid egress or access is possible.