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> early this year they had learned that one of the warehouse's doors was broken, raising the risk that a malicious actor could steal dangerous explosives. The p
by gwern 6y ago
> early this year they had learned that one of the warehouse's doors was broken, raising the risk that a malicious actor could steal dangerous explosives. The port's welding contractors set off the cache while trying to repair the door to protect the cache.
I'm reminded of a maxim I heard somewhere about failures in complex systems: "the mechanisms you add to prevent failures are themselves a major cause of failure".
- FatalLogic 6y ago>... "the mechanisms you add to prevent failures are themselves a major cause of failure". When those failure-prevention mechanisms are bolt-on solutions that make a complex system even more complex, perhaps that's not surprising. In this case, for example, the complex system needed to be simplified, by removing the explosives. But instead it was made more complex.