It's not so impossibly complex. After all, even for a typical big corp like Google a dozen people or so will be respectively responsible for understanding the f

It's not so impossibly complex. After all, even for a typical big corp like Google a dozen people or so will be respectively responsible for understanding the functioning of each of their sub-organizations. They will have to understand it in and out -- especially the business/human consequences, if not the technical details. Any new member (at "vice president" level or something) will be on-boarded in this matter in a matter of weeks to months. So it's definitely possible for someone to go in now and get to the bottom of some of these questions. That doesn't require exceptional "intelligence", but it does require a tenacity in finding information and the integrity to relentlessly ask questions till you understand what's going (without prejudice regarding the outcome), without being prematurely satisfied that it's "too complex". And of course, it will be a when team of people, who would have developed a similar understanding of other comes situations, and they will have significant help, and the authority to ask questions. If you want a more explicit and hands on understanding of the process, look up narratives of major investigations, eg: the Challenger disaster investigation, or the investigation that led to the breaking up of AT&T.