4 ms·

It's our punishment for allowing national security to function as a get-out-of-congressional-debate-free card.

tyre 2y ago
I understand why all of this happened in the first place. 9/11 was truly shocking. Maybe more so because I was a kid, but watching those planes hit the buildings, the buildings collapsing, the Fallen Man, the recordings for United 93…it was a lot. It really broke the spell that America could fuck around in the rest of the world without finding out. It seems like there are two problems: 1. No one wants to be the person who rolls back regulations, because they’ll be blamed the next time something goes wrong. Even if the previous regulation wouldn’t have stopped it (again, TSA internal tests of people getting knives and guns through), that person is getting blamed. 2. There is simply a ton of money in this crap. Those companies have lobbyists and donate to campaigns. Given (1), these congresspeople aren’t going to change it anyway so I don’t actually think corruption plays as much into it. They’d never vote to remove the regulations; campaign donations are free money. Engineering orgs have similar problems. I remember at Stripe seeing the 12 years of accumulated processes. Every bug or incident needed a new process or automated checker to ensure it couldn’t ever happen again. None of these were ever reviewed or removed. As an EM, even if I knew something was a net-negative when comparing dev velocity vs. risk x magnitude of a bug, no chance my manager would let me remove it. It takes confident, independent leadership willing to make tough trade-offs to change these things. That’s pretty rare in my experience.
- psunavy03 2y ago
  > It really broke the spell that America could fuck around in the rest of the world without finding out. That's . . . a take, considering that OBL's main beef with America was infidel troops on the soil of Saudi, because the Saudi royals were the guardians of Mecca. And the Saudis asked us to intervene against Saddam. 9/11 wasn't some coherent beef with US foreign policy; it was bog-standard religious extremism of the Salafist Islamic flavor.
  - Muromec 2y ago
    >9/11 wasn't some coherent beef with US foreign policy; it was bog-standard religious extremism of the Salafist Islamic flavor. Why would he bomb US and not SA then? At least in his own words it was about foreign policy and Palestine among other things.
    - dinkumthinkum 2y ago
      I'm just being honest but I think you are missing an gigantic point here. Why would a Muslim terrorist not bomb the holiest place in Islam? That is basically your question. They already viewed the U.S. as infidels, the "Great Satan", or kuffaar (unbelievers), I don't see why its not obvious that someone like that would choose to attack the U.S. instead of Saudi Arabia.
      - Muromec 2y ago
        But that's not how terrorism works. Terrorism works by inflicting pain on your adversary, not on random infidels half the world away.
        dinkumthinkum 2y ago
        What I wrote is exactly how terrorism works, for evidence, I submit the real world. Again, they aren't going to bomb Muslims in their holy land, I don't see how this would be surprising.
      - whatshisface 2y ago
        There have been a huge number of terror attacks in SA. It's worthwhile to look this stuff up first because these theories are not always concordant with reality.
        dinkumthinkum 2y ago
        In fact, these theories comport quite well with reality. I'm aware of attacks in Saudi Arabia but there have been no attacks on Saudi Arabia of the scale of 9/11. Sure, there are attacks all over of the Middle East but not any of these large scale shocking attacks.

tyre 2y ago

I understand why all of this happened in the first place. 9/11 was truly shocking. Maybe more so because I was a kid, but watching those planes hit the buildings, the buildings collapsing, the Fallen Man, the recordings for United 93…it was a lot. It really broke the spell that America could fuck around in the rest of the world without finding out. It seems like there are two problems: 1. No one wants to be the person who rolls back regulations, because they’ll be blamed the next time something goes wrong. Even if the previous regulation wouldn’t have stopped it (again, TSA internal tests of people getting knives and guns through), that person is getting blamed. 2. There is simply a ton of money in this crap. Those companies have lobbyists and donate to campaigns. Given (1), these congresspeople aren’t going to change it anyway so I don’t actually think corruption plays as much into it. They’d never vote to remove the regulations; campaign donations are free money. Engineering orgs have similar problems. I remember at Stripe seeing the 12 years of accumulated processes. Every bug or incident needed a new process or automated checker to ensure it couldn’t ever happen again. None of these were ever reviewed or removed. As an EM, even if I knew something was a net-negative when comparing dev velocity vs. risk x magnitude of a bug, no chance my manager would let me remove it. It takes confident, independent leadership willing to make tough trade-offs to change these things. That’s pretty rare in my experience.

psunavy03 2y ago
> It really broke the spell that America could fuck around in the rest of the world without finding out. That's . . . a take, considering that OBL's main beef with America was infidel troops on the soil of Saudi, because the Saudi royals were the guardians of Mecca. And the Saudis asked us to intervene against Saddam. 9/11 wasn't some coherent beef with US foreign policy; it was bog-standard religious extremism of the Salafist Islamic flavor.
- Muromec 2y ago
  >9/11 wasn't some coherent beef with US foreign policy; it was bog-standard religious extremism of the Salafist Islamic flavor. Why would he bomb US and not SA then? At least in his own words it was about foreign policy and Palestine among other things.
  - dinkumthinkum 2y ago
    I'm just being honest but I think you are missing an gigantic point here. Why would a Muslim terrorist not bomb the holiest place in Islam? That is basically your question. They already viewed the U.S. as infidels, the "Great Satan", or kuffaar (unbelievers), I don't see why its not obvious that someone like that would choose to attack the U.S. instead of Saudi Arabia.
    - Muromec 2y ago
      But that's not how terrorism works. Terrorism works by inflicting pain on your adversary, not on random infidels half the world away.
      - dinkumthinkum 2y ago
        What I wrote is exactly how terrorism works, for evidence, I submit the real world. Again, they aren't going to bomb Muslims in their holy land, I don't see how this would be surprising.
    - whatshisface 2y ago
      There have been a huge number of terror attacks in SA. It's worthwhile to look this stuff up first because these theories are not always concordant with reality.
      - dinkumthinkum 2y ago
        In fact, these theories comport quite well with reality. I'm aware of attacks in Saudi Arabia but there have been no attacks on Saudi Arabia of the scale of 9/11. Sure, there are attacks all over of the Middle East but not any of these large scale shocking attacks.