Boeing 737 MAX

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Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing by Peter Robison

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Airbus A320, airline deregulation, airport security, Alvin Toffler, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, call centre, chief data officer, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Donald Trump, flag carrier, Future Shock, interest rate swap, Internet Archive, knowledge worker, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, medical residency, Neil Armstrong, performance metric, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, stock buybacks, too big to fail, Unsafe at Any Speed, vertical integration, éminence grise

For marketing: “Boeing Introduces 737 MAX with Launch of New Aircraft Family,” August 30, 2011, https://boeing.mediaroom.com. Over the next two years: Final Committee Report, p. 47. The proposal they sent: Dominic Gates, “Boeing Pushed FAA to Relax 737 MAX Certification Requirements for Crew Alerts,” Seattle Times, October 2, 2019. Early testing revealed: Dominic Gates, “The Inside Story of MCAS: How Boeing’s 737 MAX System Gained Power and Lost Safeguards,” Seattle Times, June 22, 2019; Jack Nicas et al., “Boeing Built Deadly Assumptions into 737 Max, Blind to a Late Design Change,” New York Times, June 1, 2019.

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“You have to know”: “Status of the 737 Max,” Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Aviation of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, May 15, 2019, https://www.govinfo.gov/, p. 5. “Absolutely”: “Status of the 737 Max,” p. 36. But Elwell met: Author interviews with anonymous sources, October 2020. A PowerPoint presentation: 737 MAX Flight Standardization Board, “FAA/Operators Meeting: Return to Service/FSB Information Briefing,” April 12, 2019. “I’d say we come”: Dominic Gates, “Muilenburg Says Boeing Brings ‘A Tone of Humility and Learning’ over 737 MAX to Paris Air Show,” Seattle Times, June 16, 2019.

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Dickson said he’d look: Natalie Kitroeff and David Gelles, “At Boeing, C.E.O.’s Stumbles Deepen a Crisis,” New York Times, December 22, 2019. Boeing put out a statement: Boeing, “737 MAX Progress Report,” November 11, 2019, https://boeing.mediaroom.com. He sent a memo: David Shepardson and Eric M. Johnson, “U.S. FAA Regulator Head Tells Team to ‘Take Whatever Time Is Needed’ on 737 MAX,” Reuters, November 15, 2019. The next month: David Schaper, “FAA Chief Pushes Back on Boeing Pressure to Return 737 Max Jets to Service,” NPR, December 12, 2019. Muilenburg at last: Boeing, “Boeing Statement Regarding 737 MAX Production,” December 16, 2019, https://boeing.mediaroom.com. Walking away with $59 million: The executive compensation was detailed in a lawsuit filed by Seafarers Pension Plan against Boeing and other top executives in the U.S.

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy by David Gelles

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Adam Neumann (WeWork), air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Boeing 737 MAX, call centre, carbon footprint, Carl Icahn, collateralized debt obligation, Colonization of Mars, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, disinformation, Donald Trump, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fulfillment center, gig economy, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, income inequality, inventory management, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Milken, Neil Armstrong, new economy, operational security, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, QAnon, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, remote working, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, self-driving car, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Ballmer, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, TaskRabbit, technoutopianism, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, WeWork, women in the workforce

“You don’t want to”: Dominic Gates and Mike Baker, “The inside story of MCAS: How Boeing’s 737 MAX system gained power and lost safeguards,” Seattle Times, June 22, 2019, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the-inside-story-of-mcas-how-boeings-737-max-system-gained-power-and-lost-safeguards/. “The timeline was extremely”: David Gelles, Natalie Kitroeff, Jack Nicas, and Rebecca R. Ruiz, “Boeing Was ‘Go, Go, Go’ to Beat Airbus With the 737 Max,” New York Times, March 23, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html. “This airplane is designed by clowns”: David Gelles, “ ‘I Honestly Don’t Trust Many People at Boeing’: A Broken Culture Exposed,” New York Times, January 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/business/boeing-737-employees-messages.html.

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“This airplane is designed by clowns”: David Gelles, “ ‘I Honestly Don’t Trust Many People at Boeing’: A Broken Culture Exposed,” New York Times, January 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/business/boeing-737-employees-messages.html. “Frankly right now all”: David Gelles, “Boeing 737 Max Factory Was Plagued With Problems, Whistle-Blower Says,” New York Times, December 9, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/business/boeing-737-max-whistleblower.html. “That liberal asshole!”: Lane, Jacked Up, 130–131. “You’ve lost your mind”: Simone Foxman, “Twitter laughs at Jack Welch’s suggestion that the US jobs report was manipulated,” Quartz.com, October 5, 2012, https://qz.com/12540/twitter-laughs-at-jack-welchs-suggestion-that-the-us-jobs-report-was-manipulated/

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., 24–25, 212 Bertelsmann, 51 Bethlehem Steel, 165 Bezos, Jeff, 134, 171–74, 184, 185, 222–23 Bezos Academy, 134 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 133–34 Bin Hussain, Muath, 135 Black Monday (October 19, 1987), 53 BlackRock, 213–14 Blitzer, Wolf, 90–91 Bloomberg, Michael, 132–33 Blumenthal, Richard, 82 Blystone, John, 105 Boeing, 9, 75, 77, 86–90, 126–30, 137, 186–94, 203 bailout, 224 Business Jet Project, 102, 119 Dave Calhoun as CEO, 189, 190–94, 224 Congressional investigations of 737 Max, 156, 189, 194 Covid-19 pandemic and, 224 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash (2019), 187–89, 190, 194 headquarters relocation to Chicago, 88–89, 219 Leadership Center (near St. Louis), 87, 191–94 Lion Air Flight 610 crash (2018), 185–87, 190 Jim McNerney as CEO, 113, 127–30, 153–54, 194, 200 Dennis Muilenburg as CEO, 154–56, 187–90 pension plan elimination, 128 737 Max with MCAS (737 redesign), 153–56, 186–90, 192–94, 224 787 Dreamliner, 128–30, 153, 190–91 whistleblower complaints to the FAA, 130, 190 Boeing, William, 86 Boesky, Ivan, 54 Bork, Robert, 38 Bossidy, Larry “the Knife,” 78–80, 83–84, 120, 220–21 Boulware, Lemuel, 46–47 Boulwarism, 46–47 Brady, Tom, 121 Brito, Carlos, 179 Brokaw, Tom, 52, 53 Brooks Brothers, 169 Brown, Tina, 121 Buckley, George, 113 Budweiser, 177, 178 Buffenbarger, Tom, 128 Buffett, Warren, 8, 124, 145, 160, 179–81, 196, 222 Buntrock, Dean, 123–24 Burger King, 177, 179 Bush, George H.

Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions by Temple Grandin, Ph.D.

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, air gap, Albert Einstein, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 11, Apple II, ASML, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, defense in depth, Drosophila, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, GPT-3, Gregor Mendel, Greta Thunberg, hallucination problem, helicopter parent, income inequality, industrial robot, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, James Webb Space Telescope, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Jony Ive, language acquisition, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, neurotypical, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, phenotype, ransomware, replication crisis, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Robert X Cringely, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, space junk, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, TaskRabbit, theory of mind, TikTok, twin studies, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, US Airways Flight 1549, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, web application, William Langewiesche, Y Combinator

Sedimentology 55, no. 6 (2008). Koren, M. “Who Should Pay for the Mistakes on NASA’s Next Big Telescope?” Atlantic, July 27, 2018. Lahiri, T. “An Off-Duty Pilot Saved Lion Air’s 737 MAX from a Crash the Day before Its Fatal Flight.” Quartz, March 19, 2019. https://qz.com/1576597/off-duty-pilot-saved-lion-airs-737-max-the-day-before-its-fatal-flight/. Langewiesche, W. “System Crash—What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 MAX? A 21st Century Aviation Industry That Made Airplanes Astonishingly Easy to Fly, but Not Foolproof.” New York Times Magazine, September 22, 2019, 36–45, 57. “Lion Air: How Could a Brand New Plane Crash?”

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“A Systematic Review of Geological Evidence for Holocene Earthquakes and Tsunamis along the Nankai-Suruga Trough, Japan.” Earth-Science Reviews 159 (August 2016): 337–57. dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2016.06.011. Gates, D., and D. Baker. “The Inside Story of MCAS: How Boeing’s 737 MAX System Gained Power and Lost Safeguards.” Seattle Times, June 22, 2019. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the-inside-story-of-mcas-how-boeings-737-max-system-gained-power-and-lost-safeguards/. Gibson, E. J., and R. D. Walk. “The ‘Visual Cliff.’ ” Scientific American 202, no. 4 (1960): 64–71. Glantz, J., et al. “Jet’s Software Was Updated, Pilots Weren’t.”

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National Safety Council. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/. Jensen, A. R. “Most Adults Know More Than 42,000 Words.” Frontiers, August 16, 2016. Johnston, P., and R. Harris. “The Boeing 737 MAX Saga: Lessons for Software Organizations.” Software Quality Profession 21, no. 3 (May 2019): 4–12. https://asq.org/quality-resources/articles/the-boeing-737-max-saga-lessons-for-software-organizations?id=489c93e1417945b8b9ecda7e3f937f5d. Kaiser, J. “Key Cancer Results Failed to Be Reproduced.” Science 374, no. 6573 (2021): 1311. Kalluri, P. “Don’t Ask If AI Is Good or Fair, Ask How It Shifts Power.”

Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us From Citizen Kings to Market Servants by Maurice E. Stucke, Ariel Ezrachi

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Boeing 737 MAX, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cloud computing, commoditize, corporate governance, Corrections Corporation of America, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, delayed gratification, disinformation, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Chrome, greed is good, hedonic treadmill, incognito mode, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, information asymmetry, invisible hand, job satisfaction, labor-force participation, late fees, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Network effects, out of africa, Paradox of Choice, payday loans, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price anchoring, price discrimination, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, search costs, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Stanford prison experiment, Stephen Hawking, sunk-cost fallacy, surveillance capitalism, techlash, The Chicago School, The Market for Lemons, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, winner-take-all economy, Yochai Benkler

“Fatal Flaw,” 60 Minutes Australia; Dominic Gates, “Long before First 737 Max Crash, Boeing Knew a Key Sensor Warning Light Wasn’t Working, but Told No One,” Seattle Times, May 5, 2019, https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/long-before-first-737-max-crash-boeing-knew-a-key-sensor-warning-light-wasnt-working-but-told-no-one/. 12.“Fatal Flaw,” 60 Minutes Australia. 13.Boeing, “About the Boeing 737 MAX,” accessed May 10, 2019, https://www.boeing.com/commercial/737max/index.page; Boeing, “737 MAX: By Design,” accessed May 10, 2019, https://www.boeing.com/commercial/737max/by-design/#/max-reliability. 14.Dominic Gates, “Facing Sharp Questions, Boeing CEO Refuses to Admit Flaws in 737 Max Design,” Seattle Times, April 29, 2019, https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/facing-sharp-questions-boeing-ceo-refuses-to-admit-flaws-in-737-max-design/. 15.Laurent Belsie, “‘Too Cozy.’ Boeing Crashes Raise Doubts over FAA Certification,” Christian Science Monitor, March 26, 2019, https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2019/0326/Too-cozy.

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Feezell, Coaching for Character: Reclaiming the Principles of Sportsmanship (Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 1997), 15. 5.Brooksley Born, interview, Frontline, PBS, October 20, 2009, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/interviews/born.html. 6.The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 34. 7.Testimony of Alan Greenspan before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, April 7, 2010, https://fcic.law.stanford.edu/hearings/testimony/subprime-lending-and-securitization-and-enterprises, 92–93. 8.Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, xviii. 9.Theo Leggett, “Boeing Admits Knowing of 737 Max Problem,” BBC News, May 6, 2019, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48174797. 10.Dominic Gates, interview, “Fatal Flaw,” 60 Minutes Australia, Nine Network, May 5, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QytfYyHmxtc. 11.“Fatal Flaw,” 60 Minutes Australia; Dominic Gates, “Long before First 737 Max Crash, Boeing Knew a Key Sensor Warning Light Wasn’t Working, but Told No One,” Seattle Times, May 5, 2019, https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/long-before-first-737-max-crash-boeing-knew-a-key-sensor-warning-light-wasnt-working-but-told-no-one/. 12.

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-Boeing-crashes-raise-doubts-over-FAA-certification. 16.Leslie Josephs, “DOT’s Watchdog Says FAA to Improve Air Safety Oversight Procedures by This Summer,” CNBC, March 27, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/faa-boeings-737-max-to-face-heat-in-congress.html. 17.Government Accountability Office, Aviation Safety: FAA Efforts Have Improved Safety, but Challenges Remain in Key Areas, statement of Gerald L. Dillingham before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, April 16, 2013, https://www.gao.gov/assets/660/653801.pdf. 18.GAO, Aviation Safety, 3; Susan Webb Yackee and Simon F. Haeder, “Boeing 737 Max: The FAA Wanted a Safe Plane—but Didn’t Want to Hurt America’s Biggest Exporter Either,” The Conversation, March 22, 2019, https://theconversation.com/boeing-737-max-the-faa-wanted-a-safe-plane-but-didnt-want-to-hurt-americas-biggest-exporter-either-113892; Testimony of Daniel K.

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back by Bruce Schneier

4chan, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic trading, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Automated Insights, banking crisis, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Brian Krebs, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, computerized trading, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, dark pattern, deepfake, defense in depth, disinformation, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, driverless car, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, fake news, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, first-past-the-post, Flash crash, full employment, gig economy, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, late capitalism, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, money market fund, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, payday loans, Peter Thiel, precautionary principle, Ralph Nader, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Skype, smart cities, SoftBank, supply chain finance, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, union organizing, web application, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, WikiLeaks, zero day

At pickup, the driver and passenger agree to “go karura,” which means that the passenger cancels the ride and pays the driver the entire amount in cash. The Boeing 737 MAX debacle provides a particularly high-profile example of the regulatory negligence that results from overly close relationships between regulators and regulated industries. In this case, FAA regulators applied insufficient scrutiny to the 737 MAX’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which the company had modified. As a result of this failure of oversight, two 737 MAX airplanes crashed in Indonesia (2018) and Ethiopia (2019), killing 346 people. Let’s be explicit about the hack here.

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Labour subjectivities and contestation in Nairobi’s gig economy,” DSA2019: Opening Up Development, Open University, Milton Keynes, https://www.devstud.org.uk/past-conferences/2019-opening-up-development-conference. 117FAA managers took Boeing’s side: Natalie Kitroeff, David Gelles, and Jack Nicas (27 Jun 2019), “The roots of Boeing’s 737 Max crisis: A regulator relaxes its oversight,” New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/business/boeing-737-max-faa.html. 117The FAA even waived: Gary Coglianese, Gabriel Scheffler, and Daniel E. Walters (30 Oct 2020), “The government’s hidden superpower: ‘Unrules,’ ” Fortune, https://fortune.com/2020/10/30/federal-law-regulations-loopholes-waivers-unrules. 29.

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See AI hacking; AI systems ATM hacks, 31–34, 46, 47, 63 attention, 183–87 authoritarian governments, 174–75 AutoRun, 58, 68 Bank Holding Company Act (1956), 75 banking hacks, 74–78, 119, 260n Barrett, Amy Coney, 121 beneficial ownership, 86, 88 Berkoff, David, 42 Biden, Joseph, 129, 130 Big Lie technique, 189 biological systems, 19–20 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (2002), 169 Black Codes, 162–63 Boeing 737 MAX, 116–17 Bongo, Ali, 193 border closures, 126 Borodin, Andrey, 87 bots, 188, 210, 220, 221–22, 225–26, 274n Boxie, 218 brands, 194 Breaking Bad, 32 Breakout, 236–37 Briffault, Richard, 151 bug bounties, 56–57 bugs, 14–15 bureaucracy hacks, 115–18 Burr, Aaron, 155 business email compromise, 53–54, 192 buyers’ agency, 99 capitalism.

Risk: A User's Guide by Stanley McChrystal, Anna Butrico

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, airport security, Albert Einstein, Apollo 13, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 737 MAX, business process, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, cotton gin, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deep learning, disinformation, don't be evil, Dr. Strangelove, fake news, fear of failure, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Googley, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, inflight wifi, invisible hand, iterative process, late fees, lockdown, Paul Buchheit, Ponzi scheme, QWERTY keyboard, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, source of truth, Stanislav Petrov, Steve Jobs, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, wikimedia commons, work culture

newly installed automated control system: Michael Laris, “Changes to Flawed Boeing 737 Max Were Kept from Pilots, DeFazio Says,” The Washington Post, June 19, 2019, https://washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/changes-to-flawed-boeing-737-max-were-kept-from-pilots-defazio-says/2019/06/19/553522f0-92bc-11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html. pilots could have responded: Jack Nicas, James Glanz, and David Gelles, “In Test of Boeing Jet, Pilots Had 40 Seconds to Fix Error,” The New York Times, March 25, 2019, https://nytimes.com/2019/03/25/business/boeing-simulation-error.html. But the updated control system: Laris, “Changes to Flawed Boeing 737 Max Were Kept from Pilots.”

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crash and burn ■ On October 29, 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 crashed less than thirteen minutes after takeoff—plunging into the Java Sea. Months later, on March 10, 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed only six minutes after takeoff. Both planes were Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft. Post-crash analysis placed great focus on the newly installed automated control system of the 737 MAX—when it malfunctioned, the planes were forced into irrecoverable nosedives. Subsequent examination found that the pilots could have responded effectively if they had been trained and familiar with all aspects of the new automated system.

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Based on the nature of your business, your organization will focus more on some Risk Control Factors than others. For example, a fast-food restaurant will focus on timing, while communication and adaptability will be more important for a highway safety authority. But resist the temptation to assess only factors that feel relevant—as Boeing did during the crashes of the 737 MAX. Pairing your quantitative and qualitative responses will give you a robust understanding of the strength of your organization’s Risk Immune System. Fine-Tuning the System The greatest risk to us is us. Our own weaknesses and vulnerabilities stand in our way to best respond to and counter threats.

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism by John Elkington

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, anti-fragile, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Attenborough, deglobalization, degrowth, discounted cash flows, distributed ledger, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Future Shock, Gail Bradbrook, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Google X / Alphabet X, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, Hans Rosling, hype cycle, impact investing, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, John Elkington, Jony Ive, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, M-Pesa, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, microplastics / micro fibres, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nikolai Kondratiev, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, placebo effect, Planet Labs, planetary scale, plant based meat, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, space junk, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, systems thinking, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tim Cook: Apple, urban planning, Whole Earth Catalog

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring. 9.Theo Leggett, “What Went Wrong Inside Boeing’s Cockpit?,” BBC News, May 17, 2019. See also: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/boeing_two_deadly_crashes. 10.Henry Grabar, “The Crash of the Boeing 737 Max Is a Warning to Drivers, Too,” Slate, March 12, 2019. See also: https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/boeing-737-max-crashes-automation-self-driving-cars-surprise.html. 11.John Gapper, “Boeing’s Hubris Blinded It to a Lurking Danger,” Financial Times, April 11, 2019. 12.Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Press, 2005.

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As it happens, Boeing had played a significant part in my family’s story, with cousins working with the company, the eldest of whom was Mr. Boeing’s personal lawyer for many years. It was one of those brands you trusted, literally, with your life. But what caught the world’s attention was that this crash was the second of its type involving Boeing’s commercially successful 737 Max 8 aircraft. I have never been afraid of flying, though I have certainly had frightening moments in flight. But reading the transcripts of the last words of the doomed crew certainly gives one pause. Here is how the BBC described the last moments of the Ethiopian Airlines crew: “As alarms sounded in their cockpit, the captain and first officer struggled to regain control of their stricken aircraft.

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Soon all that was left was a smoking crater. Boeing initially denied any connection between the crashes of Lion Air flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, but the evidence increasingly pointed to systemic defects in the aircraft’s anti-stall software. This was designed to point the plane downward to counterbalance the 737 Max 8’s heavy, forward-mounted engines.10 Confounding the expectations of the designers, of the crew of the doomed flights, and of the regulators whose job it is to make sure such things do not happen, it turned out that in certain conditions the software made fatal nosedives virtually inevitable. Software, you might conclude, with strong Black Swan characteristics.

How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World by Dambisa Moyo

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, algorithmic trading, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Bretton Woods, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, collapse of Lehman Brothers, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, deglobalization, don't be evil, Donald Trump, fake news, financial engineering, gender pay gap, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, hiring and firing, income inequality, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, long term incentive plan, low interest rates, Lyft, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, multilevel marketing, Network effects, new economy, old-boy network, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Pershing Square Capital Management, proprietary trading, remote working, Ronald Coase, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, surveillance capitalism, The Nature of the Firm, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade route, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, Vanguard fund, Washington Consensus, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture

“Global Investors Driving Business Transition.” www.climateaction100.org. Coase, R. H. “The Nature of the Firm.” Economica 4, no. 16 (November 1937): 386–405. www.jstor.org/stable/2626876?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. Cohan, Peter. “Delays in Boeing’s 737 MAX and 777X Could Weigh on Stock.” Forbes, June 6, 2019. www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2019/06/06/delays-in-boeings-737-max-and-777x-could-weigh-on-stock/#61de1af3e678. Cohn, Yafit. “Independent Chair Proposals.” Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, August 22, 2016. https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2016/08/22/independent-chair-proposals-2/. Collins, Jim.

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After all, the board-approved strategy will ideally withstand not just an ordinary economic downturn but also a significant crisis of unknown size and duration. The 2020 global pandemic is an example of such a crisis. One can imagine being on the board of Boeing, the US aircraft maker, in March 2019, as it was dealing with the fallout from two fatal crashes of their new 737 MAX 8 aircraft within the span of five months. These crashes led to the entire line of planes being grounded and precipitated a 20 percent decline in Boeing’s stock price. The causes and consequences of the crashes were shrouded in uncertainty, so the board was largely seen as impotent and unable to shape the company’s narrative.

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This could come from managing a global employee base, with multiple jurisdictions governing the employment rights, or from experience with the political and economic risks inherent in global trade. Achieving a balance of expertise in the boardroom is crucial. Often, in times of trouble, an imbalance in a board’s composition can help explain why a company is facing challenges. For instance, in 2019, when Boeing was dealing with two fatal 737 MAX crashes, the company was criticized for having too many board members with financial backgrounds and too few who had engineering or technological expertise and may have been better equipped to grapple with safety issues. As part of the company’s response to this criticism, in September 2019 Boeing created an aerospace safety committee on its board to oversee the development, manufacturing, and operation of its aircraft and services and to boost the transparency of engineering decisions.

Succeeding With AI: How to Make AI Work for Your Business by Veljko Krunic

AI winter, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, anti-fragile, anti-pattern, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, Bayesian statistics, bioinformatics, Black Swan, Boeing 737 MAX, business process, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, correlation coefficient, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, Gini coefficient, high net worth, information retrieval, Internet of things, iterative process, job automation, Lean Startup, license plate recognition, minimum viable product, natural language processing, recommendation engine, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, six sigma, smart cities, speech recognition, statistical model, strong AI, tail risk, The Design of Experiments, the scientific method, web application, zero-sum game

When it comes to gorillas, Google Photos remains blind. WIRED. 2018 Jan 11 [cited 2018 Jul 2]. Available from: https://www.wired.com/story/when-itcomes-to-gorillas-google-photos-remains-blind/ Gallagher S. UK, Australia, others also ground Boeing 737 MAX after crash [Updated]. Ars Technica. 2019 Mar 12 [cited 2020 Jan 8]. Available from: https:// arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/another-737-max-jet-crashprompts-groundings-by-china-indonesia-ethiopia/ Wikimedia Foundation. Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. Wikipedia. [Cited 2019 Sep 10.] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/ index.php?title=Maneuvering_Characteristics_Augmentation_System&oldid=9148 99059 Leggett T.

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title=Maneuvering_Characteristics_Augmentation_System&oldid=9148 99059 Leggett T. What went wrong inside Boeing’s cockpit? BBC News. [Cited 2020 Jan 8.] Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/boeing_two _deadly_crashes Wikimedia Foundation. Boeing 737 MAX groundings. Wikipedia. [Cited 2020 Jan 8.] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Boeing_737 _MAX_groundings&oldid=934819447 Wikimedia Foundation. Smart city. Wikipedia. [Cited 2019 Sep 10.] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_city Tesla Autopilot—Review including full self-driving for 2019. AutoPilot Review. 2019 Apr 23 [cited 2019 Sep 7].

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Building safety-critical software systems isn’t trivial, even if there’s no AI involved.a And it only gets more difficult when you add AI to the mix. Before you implement good AI-based control of a physical system, you must first master the development of good software for controlling physical systems. All the rules of good software engineering must be respected first. a The 737 MAX grounding is still an ongoing story as I’m writing this sentence—for example, the Wikipedia page covering it currently has 749 references [142], with more likely to be added by the time you’re reading this book. The events that occurred are tragic, and I’m not taking any position on MCAS development, or regulatory and certification processes.

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It by Azeem Azhar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, Citizen Lab, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deep learning, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, Diane Coyle, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, drone strike, Elon Musk, emotional labour, energy security, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, GPT-3, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, ImageNet competition, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, lockdown, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Mitch Kapor, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, NSO Group, Ocado, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, price anchoring, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software as a service, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, subscription business, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing machine, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, warehouse automation, winner-take-all economy, workplace surveillance , Yom Kippur War

We also need external parties to be given oversight of the outcomes of that process, such as the operation of the algorithms that shape what we do and don’t see on digital platforms. When two Boeing 737 MAX aeroplanes crashed in quick succession in 2018–19, Boeing was forced to redesign key aspects of the aircraft. The 737 MAX was not allowed to fly again until it had passed a number of safety inspections. Boeing did not decide when the revamped 737 MAX was safe to fly; the Federal Aviation Administration did. We might learn from this example when thinking about our digital infrastructure. The potential harms brought about by digital networks’ algorithms, and their wider processes of deliberation and judgement, need regular inspection – and not behind the closed doors of the companies themselves.

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This was assumed to hold true for Wright’s Law too: eventually, the market saturates, and the decrease in prices slows to a halt. Wright, who died in 1970, might have been disgruntled to discover what ultimately happened to the prices of the aircraft he studied. The original Boeing 737, first built in 1967, cost $27 million in 2020 terms. The latest variant, the 737 MAX which first flew in 2016, cost as much as $135 million – five times more. So much for price declines. Yet a striking feature of our age is that the hard limits to Wright’s Law seem much more distant – and in some cases they might not even exist. Today, the prices of new technologies seem able to drop endlessly.

Four Battlegrounds by Paul Scharre

2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, active measures, activist lawyer, AI winter, AlphaGo, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, artificial general intelligence, ASML, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business continuity plan, business process, carbon footprint, chief data officer, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, DALL-E, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, dual-use technology, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of journalism, future of work, game design, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, global supply chain, GPT-3, Great Leap Forward, hive mind, hustle culture, ImageNet competition, immigration reform, income per capita, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, Internet of things, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, large language model, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, new economy, Nick Bostrom, one-China policy, Open Library, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, phenotype, post-truth, purchasing power parity, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, smart cities, smart meter, Snapchat, social software, sorting algorithm, South China Sea, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, tech worker, techlash, telemarketer, The Brussels Effect, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, TikTok, trade route, TSMC

Mulvehill, Social Machines: The Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity (New York: Apress, 2016), 57. 230Failures in real-world applications: Sean Mcgregor, “When AI Systems Fail: Introducing the AI Incident Database,” Partnership on AI Blog, November 18, 2020, https://www.partnershiponai.org/aiincidentdatabase/. 230multiple fatalities: Jim Puzzanghera, “Driver in Tesla Crash Relied Excessively on Autopilot, but Tesla Shares Some Blame, Federal Panel Finds,” Los Angeles Times, September 12, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-20170912-story.html; “Driver Errors, Overreliance on Automation, Lack of Safeguards, Led to Fatal Tesla Crash,” National Transportation Safety Board Office of Public Affairs, press release, September 12, 2017, https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/PR20170912.aspx; “Collision Between a Car Operating with Automated Vehicle Control Systems and a Tractor-Semitrailer Truck Near Williston, Florida” NTSB/HAR-17/02/ PB2017-102600 (National Transportation Safety Board, May 7, 2016), https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Documents/2017-HWY16FH018-BMG-abstract.pdf; James Gilboy, “Officials Find Cause of Tesla Autopilot Crash Into Fire Truck: Report,” The Drive, May 17, 2018, http://www.thedrive.com/news/20912/cause-of-tesla-autopilot-crash-into-fire-truck-cause-determined-report; “Tesla Hit Parked Police Car ‘While Using Autopilot,’” BBC, May 30, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44300952; and Raphael Orlove, “This Test Shows Why Tesla Autopilot Crashes Keep Happening,” Jalopnik, June 13, 2018, https://jalopnik.com/this-test-shows-why-tesla-autopilot-crashes-keep-happen-1826810902. 231“dominate their local battle spaces”: Phil Root, interview, February 6, 2020. 232machine learning was “alchemy”: Ali Rahimi and Ben Recht, “Reflections on Random Kitchen Sinks,” arg minblog, December 5, 2017, http://www.argmin.net/2017/12/05/kitchen-sinks/. 232fatal crashes of two 737 MAX airliners: Jon Ostrower, “What Is the Boeing 737 Max Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System?” Air Current, November 13, 2018, https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/what-is-the-boeing-737-max-maneuvering-characteristics-augmentation-system-mcas-jt610/. 232failures can arise at multiple stages: Ram Shankar Siva Kumar et al., “Failure Modes in Machine Learning,” Microsoft Docs, November 11, 2019, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security/engineering/failure-modes-in-machine-learning#details-on-unintended-failures; Ortega, Maini, and the DeepMind safety team, “Building Safe Artificial Intelligence”; Amodei et al., Concrete Problems in AI Safety. 232three main types: Ben Buchanan and Taylor Miller, Machine Learning for Policymakers: What It Is and Why It Matters (Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, June 2017), https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/MachineLearningforPolicymakers.pdf; Greg Allen, Understanding AI Technology (Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, U.S.

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Air Force, August 30, 2021), https://www.safety.af.mil/Portals/71/documents/Aviation/Mishap%20Summaries/USAF_Aviation_Class_A_Summary.pdf. 255much higher accident rate: “Major Russian Submarine Accidents Since 2000,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 2, 2019, https://www.rferl.org/a/major-russian-submarine-accidents-since-2000/30033592.html; Peter Suciu, “Steel Tomb: The Worst Russian Submarine Disasters of All Time,” National Interest, May 12, 2020, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/steel-tomb-worst-russian-submarine-disasters-all-time-153216. 256Challenger explosion: Diane Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, 2016). 256desire to beat others to market: Charles Duhigg, “Did Uber Steal Google’s Intellectual Property?” The New Yorker, October 15, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal-googles-intellectual-property; David Gelles, et al., “Boeing Was ‘Go, Go, Go’ to Beat Airbus with the 737 Max,” New York Times, March 23, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html. 256“I’m less worried right now about autonomous weapons”: Shanahan, interview. 257United States demonstrated a swarm: Aaron Mehta, “Pentagon Launches 103 Unit Drone Swarm,” Defense News, January 10, 2017, https://www.defensenews.com/air/2017/01/10/pentagon-launches-103-unit-drone-swarm/. 257China followed with its own swarm: Xinhua, “China Launches Record-Breaking Drone Swarm,” China Daily, June 11, 2017, https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-06/11/content_29702465.htm. 257superhuman AI dogfighting system: Liu Xuanzun, “PLA Deploys AI in Mock Warplane Battles, ‘Trains Both Pilots and AIs,’” Global Times, June 14, 2021, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202106/1226131.shtml. 257“There might be an artificial intelligence arms race”: Brandon Knapp, “DoD Official: US Not Part of AI Arms Race,” c4isrnet.com, April 10, 2018, https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/04/10/dod-official-us-not-part-of-ai-arms-race/. 257“digital arms race with China”: Will Roper, “There’s No Turning Back on AI in the Military,” Wired, October 24, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-theres-no-turning-back-on-ai-in-the-military/. 257Security scholars define an arms race: Michael D.

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AI scientists struggle to fully understand AI systems because of the massive complexity of the contemporary systems they are building, such as neural nets with hundreds of millions of parameters. The complexity of AI systems means they can sometimes exhibit surprising behaviors. The fatal crashes of two 737 MAX airliners arose from rule-based systems interacting in unpredictable ways with the environment and human operators, who despite being highly qualified were baffled by the machine’s behavior. In machine learning systems, failures can arise at multiple stages of the learning process, including from flawed training data or a mis-specified goal.

The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do by Erik J. Larson

AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, Black Swan, Bletchley Park, Boeing 737 MAX, business intelligence, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, driverless car, Elon Musk, Ernest Rutherford, Filter Bubble, Geoffrey Hinton, Georg Cantor, Higgs boson, hive mind, ImageNet competition, information retrieval, invention of the printing press, invention of the wheel, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Hawkins, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Large Hadron Collider, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, Loebner Prize, machine readable, machine translation, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, PageRank, PalmPilot, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, retrograde motion, self-driving car, semantic web, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, speech recognition, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, superintelligent machines, tacit knowledge, technological singularity, TED Talk, The Coming Technological Singularity, the long tail, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Turing machine, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Yochai Benkler

Another reason deduction falls endlessly victim to relevance prob­ lems is that ­there are, invariably, many pos­si­ble ­causes for the occurrence of something in our day-­to-­day experience (and in science). Accidents like aircraft crashes, for instance, can typically be analyzed by pointing to proximate (close by) and distal (farther away) ­causes, together explaining the disaster. Take the recent Boeing tragedies. After two crashes of Boeing 737 Max planes occurred in the span of six months in 2018, investigators discovered a software glitch in an anti-­stall system, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAT). A redesign of the older Boeing 737–800 114 T he P rob­lem of I nference had enabled larger engines to be fitted, but only by placing them forward of and slightly above the wings.

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It was also discovered that pi­lots of the new Max received inadequate training. This was surely not helped by Boeing’s marketing pitch for its redesigned aircraft, claiming that the Max would not require expensive retraining of pi­lots already trained on the 737–800. Thus, the tragic crashes can be attributed to multiple ­causes. Inferring why Boeing’s 737 Max crashed involves considering a number of pos­si­ble ­causes, and perhaps no single cause by itself fully accounts for the catastrophes. Deduction ­can’t speak to ­these real-­world scenarios. By requiring that inferences must certainly be true, deduction invariably misses what might be true, in contexts where relevance is determined by a mix of ­factors that a­ ren’t necessary but still are operative in certain situations.

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By requiring that inferences must certainly be true, deduction invariably misses what might be true, in contexts where relevance is determined by a mix of ­factors that a­ ren’t necessary but still are operative in certain situations. In Plato’s universe of unchanging forms, triangles must have three sides, and some ­things are True with a capital T. In messy experience, few ­things we witness or analyze are like triangles. Th ­ ey’re like the Boeing 737 Max—or an ordinary conversation (as ­we’ll see). Intelligence—­ whatever it is—is more than deductions. We are cognitive systems ourselves, and it’s clear that ­we’re not only deductive systems. Successful human-­level AI, this suggests, c­ an’t be wholly deductive e­ ither. P rob­lems with D eduction and I nduction 115 ­A fter the failure of what critics dubbed “good old-­fashioned artificial intelligence,” which dominated AI before the modern era (up through the 1990s), AI scientists abandoned deductive approaches to inference en masse.

The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal by Duncan Mavin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Neumann (WeWork), air freight, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, democratizing finance, Donald Trump, Eyjafjallajökull, financial engineering, fixed income, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Kickstarter, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Masayoshi Son, means of production, Menlo Park, mittelstand, move fast and break things, NetJets, Network effects, Ponzi scheme, private military company, proprietary trading, remote working, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, rolodex, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, supply chain finance, Tim Haywood, Vision Fund, WeWork, work culture

These could have all been different loans, though most likely each Atlantic 57 loan was simply paid off with a new one.) Haywood had also invested $430 million in six deals brokered by Greensill tied to aircraft leasing payments. Five of those deals related to Norwegian Air, for whom Greensill had arranged the purchase of several Boeing 737 Max 8s. Lex had said in a press release at the time that the aircraft deals showed how Greensill combined ‘capital, technology and expertise’. Greensill was particularly proud of the transactions, which were developed from a new insurance-based aircraft leasing programme established by Lex’s insurance brokers at Marsh.

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The consultants suggested that the investment decision by Haywood was made too quickly, with no time for adequate due diligence. They found that the deals didn’t pay enough, given the risks involved, and that the investment decision was likely entirely dependent on the associated insurance policies. Later, when aviation authorities around the world grounded all the 737 Max 8s because of a series of crashes, those Greensill press releases disappeared from the top of Greensill’s site. Another aircraft investment also raised some red flags. This time, Greensill had set up a special purpose entity, in Ireland, called ‘Panamera Aviation Leasing XII DAC’. Panamera bought a Boeing cargo jet on behalf of a US-registered leasing group called Intrepid Aviation, which leased it on to a Russian air freight company that was part of the Volga Dnepr Group – an air transport operator with close ties to the government in Moscow.

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Index Aar Tee Commodities ref1 Abengoa ref1, ref2 Accenture ref1, ref2 Agritrade ref1 Ahearn, John ref1 AIG ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Aigis Banca ref1, ref2 Allesch-Taylor, Stefan ref1, ref2 Allin, Patrick ref1 anti-money-laundering (AML) questions ref1 ANZ ref1 Apollo Global Management ref1, ref2 Apple ref1 Aramco ref1 ArcelorMittal ref1 Archegos ref1 Arthur Andersen ref1 Asda ref1 Atlantic 57 Consultancy ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Auditing Association of German Banks ref1 Augustus Asset Managers ref1 Austin, Jason ref1, ref2 Australia ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19 Australian Taxation Office ref1 Aviva ref1 BAE Systems ref1 Baer, Julius ref1, ref2 BaFin ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 Bailey, Andrew ref1 Bank of America ref1 Bank of England ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Barclays ref1, ref2 Barnes, Rob ref1, ref2, ref3 Barrell, Neil ref1 Barron’s ref1, ref2, ref3 Bates, Chris ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Battershill, William ref1, ref2 Baylis, Natalie ref1 BBB see British Business Bank BBC News ref1 BBVA ref1 BCLP see Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner BDO ref1, ref2 Becker, Arthur ref1 Berkshire Hathaway ref1 Bethell, Richard, 6th Baron Westbury ref1, ref2 Bingera ref1 Bishop, Julie ref1, ref2 BlackRock ref1, ref2, ref3 Blackstone ref1 Blair, Tony ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Bloomberg ref1, ref2, ref3 Bloomberg News ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Bluestone Resources Inc. ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Blunkett, David ref1, ref2 BNP Paribas ref1 Boeing ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 737 Max 8 aircraft ref1 Bond and Credit Company, The (TBCC) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Borbely, Barnabas ref1 Borneo ref1 Breedon, Tim ref1 Breedon report ref1 Brereton, Greg ref1 Brexit referendum ref1 Brierwood, David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 Brighthouse ref1 British Business Bank (BBB) ref1, ref2, ref3 British Gas ref1 Brown, Eliot ref1 Brown, Gordon ref1, ref2 Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) ref1 BSi Steel ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Buckingham Palace ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Buffett, Warren ref1 Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 Bunge ref1 Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee ref1 Cabinet Office ref1, ref2, ref3 Caillaux, Gabe ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Callahan, Mark ref1 Cameron, David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 ‘Big Society’ policy ref1 and Earnd ref1 Greensill remuneration ref1 and Greensill’s collapse ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 hired as Greensill adviser ref1, ref2 lends credibility to Greensill ref1 and Lex ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 and Mohammed Bin Salman ref1 and the pharmacy plan ref1 role at Greensill during the Covid-19 pandemic ref1 and The Bond and Credit Company ref1 Cameron, Samantha ref1 Cameron administration ref1, ref2 Cantor Fitzgerald ref1, ref2, ref3 Carillion ref1, ref2 ‘early payment facility’ ref1 Carlyle Group ref1 Carna ref1 Carnell, Kate ref1, ref2 Carney, Mark ref1 Carrington ref1 Carson Block ref1 Carusillo, Mickey ref1 Casey, Dame Louise ref1 ‘cash-less rolls’ ref1 Catfoss group ref1, ref2, ref3 central banks ref1 Chap (magazine) ref1 Charles, Prince ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Chase Manhattan ref1 CHBG Limited ref1 Chehaoduo ref1, ref2 Chelsea Group ref1 Chelsea Village ref1 Chicago Police Pension Fund ref1 Chilean mining ref1 Chubb ref1 Chuk ref1 CIMIC ref1, ref2 Citibank ref1 Citigroup ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13 City, the ref1 Clarke, Tracy ref1 Clearbrook Capital ref1 Cleland, Robert ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 coal mining ref1, ref2, ref3 Coca-Cola ref1, ref2 CoFace ref1 Comerford, Robert J. ref1, ref2 Commerzbank ref1 Companies House ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Confederation of British Industry (CBI) ref1 Conservative government ref1, ref2 Copenhagen ref1 Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) ref1, ref2 Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS) ref1, ref2 corporate espionage ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Coupe, Mike ref1 Covid-19 Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF) ref1, ref2 Covid-19 pandemic ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 government loan schemes ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 restrictions ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Crain’s (magazine) ref1 Credit Suisse ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 and the Covid-19 pandemic ref1 and Greensill Capital ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33 and Sanjeev Gupta ref1 Crothers, Bill ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Crown Representatives programme ref1 Cunliffe, Sir Jon ref1 CWB ref1 de Botton, Alain ref1 de Botton, Gilbert ref1 de la Rue, Tom ref1 Deal Partners ref1, ref2, ref3 Degen, Michel ref1, ref2, ref3 Dell ref1 Deloitte ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Demica ref1 Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy ref1, ref2 Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ref1 Department of Health ref1 Department of Health and Social Care ref1 Department of Work and Pensions ref1 Deutsche Bank ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Deutsche Börse ref1 Doordash ref1 Doran, James ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 dotcom boom ref1, ref2 Dow Jones ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 Downes, Brett ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Dragon Technology ref1, ref2, ref3 Eadie, Al ref1 Earnd ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Ecclestone, Bernie ref1 Edelman ref1 1860 Munich ref1 Ellis, Brett Easton, American Psycho ref1 Enterprise Investment Schemes (EISs) ref1 equity warrants ref1 Ernst & Young ref1 see also EY Euler Hermes ref1, ref2 European Banking Association ref1 Ewing, Fergus ref1 EY ref1, ref2 see also Ernst & Young Eyjafjallajökull ref1 factoring ref1, ref2, ref3 see also supply chain finance Fair Financial ref1, ref2, ref3 Fairmac Reality ref1 Fairymead ref1 Fan, Colin ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Farrell, Maureen ref1 FCA see Financial Conduct Authority ‘fee ramp agreements’ ref1 Feeney, Chuck ref1 Ferrin, Ronald ref1 Fidelity ref1 5th Finger ref1 Finacity ref1 Financial Accounting Standards Board ref1 Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 Skilled Persons Reviews ref1, ref2 financial crisis 2008 ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 aftermath ref1, ref2, ref3 and central banks ref1 and fintechs ref1 tougher regulations following ref1, ref2 Financial News (banking publication) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Financial Reporting Council ref1 Financial Times (newspaper) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Finews (Swiss news site) ref1 ‘fintechs’ ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Fitch ref1 ‘flash title’ ref1 Fleetsolve ref1 Food Revolution Group ref1 Forbes (magazine) ref1 Ford ref1 Ford, Bill ref1 Formula One ref1 ‘Four Eyes Principle’ ref1 FreeUp ref1, ref2 Friedman, Alex ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Galligan, Shane ref1, ref2 GAM Greensill Supply Chain Finance fund (GGSCF) ref1, ref2 Gapper, John ref1 Garrod, Neil ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 GBM Banca ref1 General Atlantic (GA) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20 General Mills ref1, ref2, ref3 Gentleman’s Journal (magazine) ref1 German Deposit Protection Authority ref1 Global Asset Management (GAM) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26 Absolute Return Bond Fund (ARBF) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 regulators ref1 Global Supply Chain Finance Forum ref1 Global Trade Review (trade finance publication) ref1 Goldman Sachs ref1, ref2 Gorman, John ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Gottstein, Thomas ref1, ref2 government loans ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 ‘GovTech’ firms ref1 Grant Thornton ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Gray, Sue ref1 Green, Philip ref1, ref2 Greenbrier hotel ref1 Greene, Stephen ref1 Greensill, Alexander ‘Lex’ David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 ambition ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 ascent ref1 Australian property investments ref1, ref2 Australian tax obligations ref1 awards ref1, ref2, ref3 CBE ref1, ref2, ref3 birth ref1 and Carillion ref1 celebrity status ref1 childhood ref1, ref2 at Citigroup ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 on the Crown Representatives programme ref1 CV ref1 and Daniel Sheard ref1 and David Cameron ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 directorships ref1 double down strategy ref1, ref2 and Downes ref1 dresses the part ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and Duncan Mavin ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 eager to own bank ref1, ref2 education ref1 legal studies ref1 MBA at the Alliance Manchester Business School ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 and 5th Finger ref1 and Greensill Bank AG (formerly NoFi) ref1 and Greensill Capital ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 acquisitions ref1, ref2 aircraft leasing deals ref1 attempts to raise emergency finance ref1, ref2, ref3 avoids toughest regulators ref1 BaFin probe ref1 Bluestone ref1, ref2 BSi ref1 Covid-19 pandemic ref1, ref2, ref3 Credit Suisse involvements ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 demise ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 Dragon Technology ref1 expansion ref1, ref2, ref3 ‘flak’ (PR advisers) ref1 General Atlantic ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Global Asset Management ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 harmful effect of SCF on small businesses ref1 insurance ref1, ref2, ref3 malpractice ref1 multi-obligor programmes ref1 National Health Service venture ref1, ref2 new category of loans ref1 payroll finance ref1 perilous state ref1 premier ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 sells company private jets ref1 Softbank dealings ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 start-up ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Tower Trade ref1 Tradeshift Networks ref1, ref2 and Jeremy Heywood ref1 and John Gorman ref1 legal work ref1 marriage ref1 and Masayoshi Son ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 mentors ref1 mission statement, ‘helping out the little guy’ ref1 and Mohammed Bin Salman ref1 at Morgan Stanley ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 remuneration ref1 moves to the UK ref1, ref2 at OzEcom ref1 and politics ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 ‘rewilding’ project ref1 risk-taking ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 and Sanjeev Gupta ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 and Saudi Arabia ref1 sits on Bank of England committee on SCF ref1 skiing ref1 spending ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 takes loan from the Greensill family ref1 and Tim Haywood ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 at TRM ref1, ref2 wealth ref1 billionaire status ref1, ref2 hits the big time ref1, ref2 Greensill, Andrew (Lex’s brother) ref1 Greensill, Judy (Lex’s mother) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Greensill, Lloyd (Lex’s father) ref1, ref2, ref3 Greensill, Peter (Lex’s youngest brother) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 Greensill, Roy (Lex’s grandfather) ref1, ref2 Greensill, Victoria (Lex’s wife) ref1, ref2 Greensill Bank AG (formerly NoFi) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 and the Atlantic 57 loan ref1, ref2 and the BaFin probe ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and the end ref1, ref2 and General Atlantic ref1 and government loans ref1 and Gupta ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 private aircraft ref1 regulation ref1 and Softbank ref1, ref2 technology ref1 and trade credit insurance ref1, ref2 whistle-blower at ref1 Greensill Capital ref1, ref2 aircraft leasing deals ref1 allegations of corruption at ref1 and the Atlantic 57 loan ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 avoids toughest regulators ref1 and the BaFin probe ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 and Bill Crothers ref1 billion dollar plus valuation ref1 and Bluestone ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 and BSi ref1 business cards ref1, ref2 cash burner ref1 client list ref1 collapse ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 corporate events ref1 corporate governance ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 and the Covid-19 pandemic ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 and Credit Suisse ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33 Credit Suisse’s investigation into ref1, ref2, ref3 crisis mounts ref1, ref2, ref3 and David Cameron ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 and David Solo ref1, ref2, ref3 defaults ref1, ref2 and Dragon Technology ref1 early backers ref1 early struggles ref1, ref2 evergreen loans ref1 ‘everyone wins’ pitches ref1 expansion ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 external public relations ref1, ref2 EY investigation into ref1 fault lines ref1 as ‘fintech’ company ref1, ref2 fraud and misconduct allegations ref1 and General Atlantic ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15 and Global Asset Management ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22 gossipy culture ref1 and Greensill Bank ref1 and Griffin Coal ref1 and Gupta/Gupta Family Group ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14 harmful impact on small businesses ref1 headquarters on the Strand ref1 ‘High Risk Franchise Names’ document ref1 hits the big time ref1, ref2 illiquid investments ref1 insolvency ref1, ref2 investment protection ref1 investors abandon ref1, ref2 IPO ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 and John Gorman ref1 and Katerra ref1 and the Lagoon Park SPV ref1 launch ref1, ref2 lavish spending at ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Lex’s claims about ref1 liquidity ref1, ref2 and Lloyds ref1 loan book ref1 losses ref1 and Maurice Thompson ref1 Morgan Stanley employees ref1 and the NHS ref1, ref2, ref3 obligors ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 offices ref1, ref2, ref3 and payroll finance ref1 and Pemex ref1 perilous state ref1 and the pharmacy plan ref1 pre-IPO funding (‘Project Olive’) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 profitability issues ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 ‘reasonably permanent’ funding ref1 reducing the early risks of using ref1 remuneration ref1, ref2, ref3 retrenchment ref1, ref2 risk team ref1, ref2 risky ventures ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 and Roland Hartley-Urquhart ref1 and Saudi Arabia ref1 as ‘shadow bank’ ref1 and SoftBank ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24 SPAC talks ref1 start-up style management ref1, ref2 takes loan from the Greensill Capital family ref1 technology ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and Tim Haywood ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 and Tower Trade ref1, ref2, ref3 and trade credit insurance ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 ‘Unicorn’ status ref1 and the US capital markets ref1 whistle-blower allegations emerge ref1 and the Wickham SPV ref1 Greensill Corporation Pty ref1 Greensill Farming Group ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Greensill Trust ref1 Grenda Investments ref1 Griffin Coal ref1, ref2 Gross, Bill ref1 Guazi ref1 Gulf Petrochem (GP Global) ref1 Gupta, Nicola ref1 Gupta, Sanjeev ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17 Australian property ref1 and Bluestone ref1 and the demise of Greensill ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and German steel ref1 and Grant Thornton ref1 and Greensill Bank ref1 Gupta Family Group (GFG) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 and Bluestone ref1 and government loans ref1 and Greensill ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 and Greensill Bank ref1 Guttridge, Jane ref1, ref2 Guy, Toby ref1 Gymshark ref1 Haas, Lukas ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Hambro, Jay ref1 Hanafin, Dermot ref1 Hanafin, Sean ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Harris, Piers ref1 Harry, Prince ref1 Hart ref1 Hartley-Urquhart, Roland ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 Havens, John ref1, ref2 Haywood, Tim ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18 Henkel ref1 Hewlett Packard ref1 Heywood, Jeremy ref1, ref2, ref3 Highways Agency ref1 HM Revenue & Customs ref1 HM Treasury ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Hobday, Neil ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Holmes, Elizabeth ref1 House of Lords ref1 HSBC ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Huawei ref1, ref2, ref3 Hutton Inquiry ref1 IAG see Insurance Australia Group ICBC Standard Bank ref1 Indonesia ref1 Industrial Cadets ref1 Inflexionpoint ref1 ING ref1 Insurance Australia Group (IAG) ref1, ref2, ref3 International Chamber of Commerce ref1 Intrepid Aviation ref1 ‘Iran Notices’ ref1 Iraq, UN weapons inspectors ref1 Isle of Dogs ref1 Jacob, David ref1, ref2, ref3 Jahama Highland Estates ref1 Jain, Anshu ref1 Jakarta ref1 Jardine Matheson ref1 Johnson, Boris ref1 Jones, Karen ref1 J.P.

The Great Post Office Scandal: The Fight to Expose a Multimillion Pound Scandal Which Put Innocent People in Jail by Nick Wallis

Asperger Syndrome, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business process, call centre, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Dominic Cummings, forensic accounting, Internet Archive, Kickstarter, lockdown, paper trading, social distancing, Wayback Machine, work culture

To respond, a pilot can input further instructions, but if the code implementing those further instructions has one dodgy line in it, and it is now trying to override an instruction in some code which itself isn’t doing what it should, the new instruction could fail, or have the opposite intended effect, or not be told it is succeeding. Planes rarely fall out of the sky just because of dodgy lines of code. In 2019, two Boeing 737 Max crashes led to the worldwide grounding of the 737 Max fleet. The crashes were not caused by bugs in source code but by fundamental errors in the software design, which, when combined with sensor failures, in specific circumstances, caused disaster. These were bad back-end inputs at a different level to coding inputs, but they were bad inputs which had terrible outputs – in this case, pilots not being in control of what they were flying.

…

It therefore became an article of faith within the Post Office that Horizon errors were (depending on your technical aptitude) either a thing of fantasy, or spotted and fixed before they caused any problems in Subpostmasters’ branch accounts. All discrepancies were considered the Subpostmasters’ fault, and their responsibility. It was the equivalent of Boeing blaming the 737 Max pilots for crashing their own planes.3 The alternative was too reputationally toxic to contemplate. As well as the IT, another key part of the Subpostmasters’ bind is the contractual situation they were forced into on taking over a Post Office branch. We’ve covered some of these already, but to summarise: – Subpostmasters were contractually liable for all cash and stock losses caused by ‘negligence, carelessness or error.’

…

INDEX A Abdulla, Naushad 329 Abraham, Ann 409 Adedayo, Teju 316, 450 Allan, Lucy, MP 387 Allen, Nigel 147, 230, 236 Allen, Roger 450 Altman, Brian, QC 194, 431–436, 437–438, 447, 459–461, 465, 473 Andre, Dionne 391 Apparent bias 348 Appeals system in England & Wales 345 Arbuthnot, Lord (James) 86, 100–101, 101, 158, 168, 171, 175, 177, 186–190, 191, 198, 205, 211, 214, 215, 240–246, 271, 333, 381, 423, 434, 438, 474, 476 accuses the Post Office of lying 435 appears on Inside Out 158 asks David Cameron to intervene 271 calls for judge-led inquiry 423 calls on Paula Vennells to resign 291 gets involved 100 goes on Today 241 leads parliamentary campaign 171 role in the Chinook campaign 86 secures adjournment debate 241 tells Alice Perkins about Horizon 168 writes to the CCRC 333 Arch, Nicki 354–363, 355, 376, 403, 457, 471 Aria Grace Law 400, 425, 428, 430, 432 Ashraf, Kamran 62–68, 83, 396, 425, 440–442, 471 conviction quashed 441 Aujard, Chris 206–208, 240, 412 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) problems with 196, 219 training 196 B Bailey, Adrian, MP 256 Bajaj, Amar 89 Baker, Colin 32, 146, 148 Baker, Mark 128, 146–148, 225, 243, 249, 256, 257, 331, 344, 453, 454 appears at BIS Select Committee hearing 256 appears at the inquiry 453 concerns over Horizon 146 helps Pete Murray 249 helps Taro Naw 93 helps Wendy Buffrey 128 is described by the High Court as ‘redoubtable’ 344 is snubbed by Alan Bates 243 Baker, Simon (former Post Office project manager) 172–176, 180–182, 187, 197, 206 Baker, Simon, QC (barrister for Post Office) 441 Baker, Sue 363 Balancing to zero 40 requirement to 47 Barang, Jasvinder 316, 440 conviction quashed 441 Bardo, Matt 281, 394, 398 Bates, Alan 58–61, 83, 88, 89, 100, 151, 155, 159, 169, 171, 177, 186, 188, 190, 198, 203, 213, 217, 221, 240, 243, 247, 252, 256, 269–271, 273, 285, 290–295, 309, 338, 345, 366, 369, 386, 392, 398, 404, 408, 419, 420, 421, 423, 436, 469, 474, 475 becomes a Subpostmaster 51–54 cross-examination in Common Issues trial 325–327 founds the JFSA 97–99 given notice by the Post Office 59 launches legal action 295 launches Parliamentary Ombudsman complaint 408 settles legal action 372 snubs Mark Baker 243 Bates v Post Office 306 case management conference 335 Common Issues judgment 343–346 appeal against 349 dismissal of appeal against 367 Common Issues trial 309, 315–334, 343–346 Group Litigation Order hearing 298 Horizon trial 335–341, 346–349, 364–365 judgment 376 recusal application 348 appeal 352 hearing 350 settlement agreement 372, 383, 419 Steering Committee 419 strikeout judgment 313 BBC News website 218 BBC North East 218 BBC Radio 4 218, 378, 406 BBC South West 225 BBC Surrey 155 Beal, Nick 329, 344 cross-examination in Common Issues trial 330 BEIS Select Committee inquiry 411–419 Fujitsu’s written evidence 415 Nick Read’s written evidence 413 oral evidence hearing 392 Paula Vennells’ written evidence 411 Bell, Peter 419 Benefits Agency 8 Bentwood, Richard 434 Binley, Brian, MP 266–267 BIS Select Committee inquiry 49, 254–269, 273 Angela van den Bogerd 260–266 George Thomson 254–259 Ian Henderson 260–266 Paula Vennells 260–266 Blackstone’s ratio 397 Blakey, David conviction quashed 473 Bloom, Detective Sergeant Hayley 434 Boeing 737 Max crashes 45 Bourke, Patrick 289 Branch Focuses 258 Branch suspense account 37 Branch user forum 260 Brennan, Lisa conviction quashed 472 Bridgen, Andrew, MP 177, 240, 244 Bristow, David 100, 155, 158 Brooks, Richard 170 Brown, Alan 89 Brown, Tom 190, 224 Buffrey, Doug 125 Buffrey, Wendy 125–131, 355, 376, 392, 396, 425, 426, 427, 470, 471, 474 conviction quashed 472 Burden of proof 122 Burgess-Boyde, Sarah 278 Burgess, Tim conviction quashed 472 Busch, Lisa, QC 444–448, 455, 460 Butoy, Harjinder 474 conviction quashed 473 C Cable, Sir Vince 273 Callanan, Lord 390, 435 Callendar Square bug 46, 89 Cameron, Alisdair 24, 313, 391 Cameron, David, former PM 173, 271, 273 Capon, Barry conviction quashed 472 Carter, Julie 277, 391 Carter, Kevin 391 Cartwright King Sift Review 192–193, 209, 224 Cash, Andy 193 Castleton, Lee 78–84, 89, 97, 383 Castleton, Lisa-Marie 78 Caveen, Jayne 382 Cavender, David, QC 323–329 Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) 238 Chatur, Mahebub 471 Chinook helicopters 85–87, 100–101, 160 Chip and pin machine 71 Clark, Nicholas conviction quashed 472 Clarke Advice 191–193, 224, 430–436, 444, 459–461 disclosure management document 432 first Advice 191, 459 second Advice 193, 459 Clarke, Simon 191–193, 410, 432, 459 Cleife, Julie 440 conviction quashed 441 ‘Clint’ 3, 11–16, 192 Coffey, Jonathan 273 ‘Colin’ 173–174, 183, 187, 212–213, 274 Collins, Tony 88 Collinson, Patrick 18 Common Issues trial 309, 315–334, 343–346 Alan Bates’ evidence 325 first day 315 judgment 343 Pam Stubbs’ evidence 327 Post Office witness evidence 329–333 Communication Workers Union (CWU) 30, 148, 254, 258, 401, 453 Compensation payments, receipt of 403 Computer Weekly 86, 88–92, 101–102, 118, 134, 151, 155, 282, 430, 469 breaks the story 88 Contempt of court 430–436 Convictions, quashed 426, 472 Coomber Rich 119 Cooper, Joe 284 Cormack, Lord 423 Coulson, Lord Justice 352 Court of Appeal hearings 428–435, 457–467 Flora Page stands down 434 judgment day 470–474 limb 2 argument (affront to the public conscience) 428, 444–449 Paul Marshall stands down 444 Post Office alleges contempt 431 Cousins, Wendy 466 Coyne, Jason 336–337, 364–365 Craddock, Jenny 155 Credence system 166 Crichton, Susan 171, 176, 179, 180, 182, 193, 196, 206 Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) 292, 311, 333, 387, 396–400, 423–425, 440, 450, 466, 472 grounds for referral 424 Croft, Jane 318 Crowdfunding 309 Kickstarter 311 Crown Post Offices 4 losses at 83 Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) 20 D Daily Mail 76, 277, 382, 398 Darlington, Scott 316, 421, 426, 458 conviction quashed 472 Dar, Louise 329, 371 Davies, Mark 240, 254, 271, 354, 363 appears on Today 241 meets the Panorama team 289 Davies, Olivia 445, 471 Davison, Margaret 16, 56 Debt notices (debt recovery letters) 38, 347 de Garr Robinson, Anthony, QC 299, 307, 338, 339, 341, 349, 350 Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) 386 Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) 135, 243, 254, 273, 274, 330, 331, 386, 413, 435, 470 Detica Report 195–196 Dickinson, Helen 332 cross-examination in Common Issues trial 332 Dickson, John 167 Dinsdale, Mark 236, 237 Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) 378 Disclosure 120, 140, 307 Horizon error logs 416 Discrepancies acceptance of 37 access granted to Subpostmasters 53 balance to zero 40 debt notices 38, 347 Settle Centrally 38, 109, 347 in dispute 347 Settle to Cash or Cheque 37, 109 suspected or unreported 49 Transaction Acknowledgements 56 Transaction Corrections 38, 56 applying for 56 challenging 56 Donnelly, Kathleen 307, 309 Duncan, Lord 387 Dunks, Andy 417 E Edwin Coe 279 Ernst and Young audit 166 F Falconer, Lord Charlie 433 False accounting 39, 132–133 definition 133 plea bargaining 42, 222, 268, 458 strict liability offence 132 Theft Act 1968, section 17 132 the trap 222, 268, 458 Farbey, Mrs Justice 431, 437 Fed, The See National Federation of Subpostmasters (NFSP) Fell, Stanley 465 Felstead, Tracy 4–6, 27–30, 280, 355, 376, 392, 396, 425, 426, 428, 444, 457 conviction quashed 472 Flinders, Karl 318, 338, 373 Fontaine, Senior Master 298–300, 424 Ford, Julie 89, 147 Fowles, Dr Sam 445 Fraser, Mr Justice 306–307, 313, 314, 319, 323–324, 330, 336, 339, 341, 343, 377–378, 387, 417 recusal application 349–354 Freeths 293, 474 French, Jane 155 commissions first Inside Out investigation 155 commissions second Inside Out investigation 220 Fujitsu 320, 323, 348, 365, 366, 378, 379, 382, 411, 413, 415–418 accountability 417 cross-examination of Richard Roll 336–342 evidence to BEIS Select Committee inquiry 415 headquarters 156, 181 ICL takeover 8 judicial criticism 417 provision of witness evidence 416 Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC) 85 Furey, Andy 256, 314, 392 Furniss, Gill, MP 391 G Gahir, Rajinder 231 Galaxy software 195 Garrard, Roch 88 Gilhooly, Donna 302 Gill, Bal 363 Gill, Kashmir conviction quashed 472 Glover, Amanda 159, 166 Goddard, Jane 220 Godeseth, Torstein 348 Gordon, Ben 461 Gould, Nick 400 Grabiner, Lord 350–352 Graham, William conviction quashed 472 Grant Funding Agreement (GFA) 330, 331, 344 Greenhill, Sam 318 Greenhow, Calum 382, 392 Green, Patrick, QC 294, 298–299, 323, 330–333, 338, 346–353, 366, 370–371, 378, 384, 420 addresses Master Fontaine 299 cross-examines Post Office witnesses 329 explains the mediation process 384 responds to the recusal application 351 sets out the claimants’ case 319 Griffiths, Gina 199–204, 247–248 withdraws from the mediation scheme 247 Griffiths, Martin 199–204 Group litigation/Bates v Post Office first judgment 306 Group Litigation Order (GLO) 295, 305 H Hadrill, Keith 141 Hall, Alison 428 conviction quashed 472 Hamilton, David 70 Hamilton, Jo 70–77, 83, 88, 89, 95, 97, 100, 118, 143, 158, 159, 162, 179, 221, 241, 252, 271, 290, 310, 316, 333, 338, 343–345, 350, 371–372, 376, 425, 426, 428, 458, 470 appears in Computer Weekly 89 appears in Taro Naw 95 appears on BBC Inside Out South 159 appears on BBC Panorama 290 attends Bates v Post Office 310 attends founding JFSA meeting 97 conviction quashed 472 finds out her conviction will be quashed 426 has her conviction quashed 472 helps Seema Misra 118 is prosecuted and sentenced 77 is referred by the CCRC 396 meets James Arbuthnot 100 takes on a Post Office 70 Harrison, Sian 318 Hartley, James 294, 298, 305, 309, 325, 345, 348, 349, 369, 370, 372 attends mediation 369 defends the settlement 383 putting the case together 306 reacts to Common Issues judgment 345 reacts to the recusal application 349 teaming up with the JFSA 294 Head, Andy 214 Head, Chris 390 Head Postmasters definition 23 Hedges, Tom 413, 439, 475 conviction quashed 472 Henderson, Allison 428 conviction quashed 472 Henderson Chambers 293 Henderson, Ian call for a judge-led independent inquiry 392 contradicts Paula Vennells 263 is told about remote access 181 Second Sight appointed 176–179 starting the Second Sight investigation 179–185 Henry, Edward, QC 437 Herbert Smith Freehills 370, 389, 401 Higginson, Andrew 439 Hill, Max 378 Historical Shortfall Scheme 401, 421, 425 application window 401 eligibility criteria 401 History of the Post Office 18 Hogg, Issy 77, 97–99, 118, 133, 155, 159, 171, 177, 245 Hollinrake, Kevin, MP 400 Holmes, Marion 475 Holmes, Peter 252, 458 conviction quashed 472 Holroyde, Lord Justice 431–436, 437, 444, 447–449, 459–464, 471–472 Hooper, Sir Anthony 197, 206, 208–209, 213, 215, 245 Horizon system arrival of Horizon Online 98 back-end data input 55 balancing the books 35 bugs Callendar Square bug 46, 141 one-sided transactions 184 Receipts and Payments Mismatch 139, 143, 188, 320, 458 Reversal bug 46 Riposte Lock/Unlock bug 46 business impact analysis 16 cash account 14 Clint’s involvement 11 dealing with a surplus 36 development of EPoS system 12 discrepancies 37, 38, 49, 109 auditors’ visit 49 level of access granted to Subpostmasters 53 early days 3 fixing bugs by Fujitsu 160 helpline 35–41, 49, 53, 55, 63–64, 71–73, 78–80, 98, 107, 111–112, 126, 136, 143, 147, 164, 169, 180, 216, 229–230, 278, 347, 356 balance to zero option 40 Software Support Centre 40 Horizon Online 136, 140, 167, 171, 172, 188, 192, 299, 379 Legacy Horizon 379 length of time data kept 56 locating errors 36 logging on and off 4 logistics 9 NFSP endorsement 32 prototype 14 Riposte message store 13, 46, 342 rolling discrepancy over into next trading period 36 rollout 22, 134, 136 Sio Lohrasb 22 training 4, 35, 43, 71, 104, 105, 110, 112, 126, 164, 187, 216, 257, 258, 356, 465 Transaction Acknowledgements 56 Transaction Corrections 38, 55, 72, 105, 110, 126, 127, 139, 180, 184, 236, 422 applying for 56 challenging 56 Transaction Information Processing (TIP) 16 upgrades and patches 45 Horizon trial 335–341, 346–349 Howard, Gillian conviction quashed 473 Howe and Co 49, 50, 269 submission to BIS Select Committee inquiry 470 Hudgell, Neil 400, 402 Hudgells 400, 474 Humphrys, John 241 Hussain, Neelam 466 Hutchings, Lynette conviction quashed 472 I Information technology (IT) 11, 44 Boeing 737 Max crashes 45 Callendar Square bug 46, 89, 141 classification of 12 fixing of by Fujitsu 160 Horizon upgrades and patches 45 logging of by Fujitsu 416 Receipts and Payments Mismatch 139, 143, 320, 458 Reversal bug 46 Initial Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme 197 application window 198 BIS Select Committee inquiry 254–269 Angela van den Bogerd 260 Paula Vennells 260 Case Questionnaire Response (CQR) 198 Case Review Report (CRR) 198 eligibility criteria 198 Post Office Investigation Report (POIR) 198 Post Office’s Final Report 271 refusal to allow convicted claimants 241 suitability for 213 Westminster Hall adjournment debate 241, 243–246 Working Group 197 terminated 271 Inquiry first evidence heard 453–455 first oral evidence session 453 MPs call for 393 review announced 423 review made into statutory inquiry 476 scope 423 Sir Wyn Williams appointed 423 Inside Out South 155, 158, 163, 214, 220, 234 International Computers Ltd (ICL) 8 Irranca-Davies, Huw, MP 241 Ishaq, Khayyam conviction quashed 472 Ismay report 136–137, 166, 410, 457 Ismay, Rod 136 J Jackson reforms 370 Jenkins, Gareth 124, 138, 181, 191, 348, 430 Johnson, Boris, PM 390 Jones, Bryn 92 Jones, Darren, MP 411, 455 Jones, David, MP 100, 101 Jones, Dylan 95 Jones, Kevan, MP 244, 393 Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) 102, 134, 136, 151, 166, 169, 174, 177, 181, 186, 190, 194, 197, 198, 205, 213, 217, 220, 234, 242, 245, 251, 252, 254, 256, 258, 279, 286, 291, 292, 294, 305, 309, 313, 314, 346, 373, 383, 385, 401, 402, 408, 436, 454, 471 approves Second Sight 178 is formed 99 joins forces with Kay Linnell 177 jointly launches the Mediation Scheme 197 makes complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman 408 meets MPs at Portcullis House 171 reacts to dissolution of the Working Group 273 settles High Court litigation 372 starts working towards a High Court litigation 292 K Kalia, Parmod 321–323, 450 conviction quashed 450 reply from Angela van den Bogerd 322 Kamran, Siema 62–68 Kickstarter campaign 311 Kit swapouts 217 Knight, Nigel 316 Knight, Sue 190, 224, 252, 316 L Latif, Adrees 381 Law Commission 121–122, 455 Lawrence, Patrick, QC 437 Legacy Horizon 192, 379 Legal aid 292 Legal presumption of reliability in computers 455 Letwin, Oliver, MP 101, 175 Lewell-Buck, Emma, MP 391 Lewis, Julian xiii Lilley, Peter, MP 32 Limb 2 428, 444–449 Linnell, Kay 177, 206, 208, 209, 211, 214, 256, 257, 258, 292, 298, 338, 343, 369, 384, 404, 408, 420, 421, 474 Litigation funding 293, 294, 305 ‘Local’ Post Offices 168 Lock, Pamela 451 conviction quashed 473 Lohrasb, Sio 22 Longman, Jon 115 Lyons, Alwen, OBE 182, 188, 412 M Machines and Artificial Intelligence 455 Mahmood, Tahir conviction quashed 472 Malicious prosecution 420, 421, 426, 428 Mandelson, Peter, MP 100 Manning, Frank 227, 319 Marshall, Paul 400, 420, 428, 430–435, 437–438, 444, 459, 476 McCormack, Tim 16 McDonald, Jackie 143, 145, 458 conviction quashed 472 McFadden, Pat, MP 134 McLachlan, Professor Charles 123–124, 134, 138–142, 144, 218, 283, 332, 336 Media coverage BBC News website 218 BBC regional programmes 218, 225, 252 BBC Surrey 155 Computer Weekly 86, 88–91, 92, 101, 102, 118, 134, 151, 155, 282, 430, 469 Daily Mail 76, 277, 382, 398 Inside Out, other regions 220 Inside Out South 155, 158, 163, 214, 220, 234 Panorama 281, 290, 393, 400 Private Eye 166, 170, 171, 218 Radio 4 218, 378, 406 Taro Naw 92–96, 155 The One Show 238, 242, 245, 298, 302 Today 241 Mediation 369–375 See also Initial Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme Meggitt, Graham 92 Membury, William 418 Merritt, Tracey 101, 179, 252, 316 Message store 13 See also Riposte message store Metropolitan Police Service 387, 430, 479 Miliband, Ed, MP 433 Miscarriage of justice 86, 120, 137, 194, 214, 268, 277, 278, 282, 323, 393, 411, 413, 435, 451, 477 Misra, Davinder 102 first meeting with Nick Wallis 151 Misra, Seema xi, 102–119, 123, 138–145, 151–154, 162, 178, 179, 221, 290, 336, 350, 376, 396, 425, 426, 428, 444, 457 conviction quashed 472 Moloney, Tim, QC 431, 447, 455, 457–461 Murray, Ian, MP 244 Murray, Pete 249–250, 453 N National Federation of Retail Newsagents 81 National Federation of Subpostmasters (NFSP) 30, 31–34, 51, 60, 115, 127–128, 146, 156, 254, 291, 321, 330, 344, 363, 382, 392, 451, 458, 477 Baker, Colin 148 Baker, Mark 146 denials of problems with Horizon 32–33, 51, 60, 96, 146, 291 formation of 24 Grant Funding Agreement (GFA) 330, 344 Greenhow, Calum 382, 392 Rudkin, Michael 156 Thomson, George 148, 256 National Lottery 110 Network Transformation scheme 173, 330 Nicholson, Bob 406 Norris, Adrian 114 Noverre, Keith 106, 114 NT event log 141 O Oates, Graham 97 O’Connell, Dawn 461–464 conviction quashed 472 O’Connell, Mark 462 O’Connell, Matthew 462 Official Secrets Act 1989 25 One Show, The 238, 242, 245, 298, 302 One-sided transactions 184 Osborne, Kate, MP 390, 393 Overnight Cash Holding 69 Owen, Albert, MP 244 Owen, Damien conviction quashed 472 Owens, Les 171 P Page, Carl conviction quashed 472 Page, Flora 401, 425, 428, 432–435, 437–438, 459, 474–475 Page, Lewis 431–435 Panorama 281, 393, 400 Scandal At The Post Office (2020) 408 Trouble At The Post Office (2015) 290 Parekh, Vijay conviction quashed 472 Parker, Stephen 417 Parker, Tim 345, 427 Parliamentary Ombudsman complaint 408, 423, 436 Patel, Sandip, QC 425 Patel, Varchas 441 Patel, Vipin 440 conviction quashed 441 Pathway 8 Perkins, Alice 168, 172, 175, 186, 412 Peters and Peters 425, 458 Phillips, Dawn 346 Phillips, Steve 225, 245, 252 Picken, Mr Justice 431, 437, 460 Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) section 69 121 Pooler, Michael 318 Post Office annual reports 367 apologies to Subpostmasters 373, 475 attitude to MPs xiii, 190, 197, 240, 244, 266, 271 attitude towards Subpostmasters 81 audit function 21, 50, 195, 231 automation of the network 7–16, 32 belief in Horizon 50, 120, 121, 187 board sub-committee 411 concerns over Horizon 410, 457 debt recovery process 347 dependency on government 173, 274, 293 document shredding 192, 457, 459, 473 enforcement of the Subpostmasters Contract 194, 388 estate 15 evidence to select committees 260, 411, 413, 435 history 18 inability to function as a going concern 425, 468 interpretation of the Subpostmasters Contract 83, 309, 345 Investigation Branch (IB) 19 investigation function 184, 189, 217, 267, 276 Investigations Department (POID) 20 joins Time to Change 354, 363 lack of concern over Horizon 79, 136, 410, 471 number of prosecutions xiii, 30, 155, 158, 171, 397, 398, 408, 466, 500, 501 publicly defends Horizon 95, 175, 178, 477 recusal attempt 346 relationship with Fujitsu 10, 120, 161 relationship with the NFSP 32, 96, 330 responses to media 89, 158, 189, 299, 478 response to CCRC 397 Security and Investigation Services (POSIS) 20 Security Group 20 services available 7 strategy for litigation 312, 313, 314, 415 PostOfficeTrial.com 311 Post Office Victims website 60 Pre-action letters of claim 169 Private Eye 166, 170, 171, 218 Richard Brooks 170 Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) 42, 117 orders under 333 Prodger, Matt 178, 189, 221 Prosecution statistics 397, 466 Putland, Rob 411, 415 R Ramms, Joseph 23 Rasul, Mohammed conviction quashed 472 Read, Nick 371, 411, 413, 468 Reasons to Urge (RTU) meeting 80 Receipts and Payments Mismatch 139, 143, 320, 458 Recusal application 348 apparent bias 348 appeal dismissed by the Court of Appeal 352 halts the Horizon trial 349 hearing 350 refusal 352 Rees-Mogg, Jacob, MP 387 Remote access 181, 299, 341, 366, 413, 414, 415 Gareth Jenkins’ confirmation of 181 Post Office denial of 183 Richard Roll’s confirmation of 341 Robert Worden’s confirmation of 366 Reversal bug 46 Ridge, Elaine 332 Riposte Lock/Unlock bug 46 See also Callendar Square bug Riposte message store 13, 341 Robinson, Anna Marie 92 Robinson, Della 354 conviction quashed 472 Robinson, Tim 220, 282, 394 Rodgers, Shann 454 Rolfe, Martin 156 Roll, Richard 159, 181, 338 at Fujitsu 160–162 cross-examination in Horizon trial 339 Panorama 290 the recorded conversation 285–289 Royal Mail 19 Rozenberg, Joshua 350 Rudkin, Michael 156, 252 Rudkin, Susan 252, 426, 440 conviction quashed 441 S Sabir, Mohammad 329 Sayer, Siobhan conviction quashed 472 Schedule of Sensitive Material 121, 458 Scott, John 136, 192 Scully, Paul, MP 390, 477 Second Sight 175, 176–191, 205–209 appointment 177 Briefing Reports 215 Post Office’s reply to Briefing Report 2 218 summit following the Post Office’s reply to Briefing Report 2 240 evidence to 2015 select committee 260 Final Report 276 Post Office’s response 276 Interim Report 186, 188 launch of 190 Spot Review SR05 189 notice of termination 271 Post Office board sub-committee 412 Security Group 20 Service level agreement between the Post Office and Fujitsu 161 Settlement agreement announced 372 finally revealed 419 Sewell, Lesley 182 Shaheen, Mohamed 222 Shaheen, Rubbina 222, 458 conviction quashed 472 Shaikh, Eleanor 376 Shepherd, David 354 Shoosmiths 159 withdrawal from case 206 Shredding of documents 192, 459 Sidhpura, Chirag 376 Simpson, Alan 140 Singh, Jarnail 124, 138, 144, 180, 192 Singh, Nippi 100 Skinner, Janet 393, 396–398, 403, 428 conviction quashed 472 Smith, Dave 136 Smith, Jacqui 134 Smith, Martin 191 Smith, Sandy 238 Software Support Centre (SSC) 40, 160, 338 Spackman, Conor 282 Stanley, Peter 172 Stein, Sam, QC 455, 458 Stockdale, Liz 329 Stock units 5 Storey, Susannah 412 Strict liability offence 132 Strikeout application by Post Office 311 Stubbs, Martin 226 Stubbs, Pam 225, 226–238, 252, 319, 371 cross-examination in Common Issues trial 327–334 gives evidence 327 is suspended 232 moves into a temporary branch 228 Sturgess, Geoffrey 26 Subpostmasters appointment of 61 definition 21, 23 Subpostmasters Contract 25, 47, 293, 309, 319, 323 Section 12:12 25, 59, 324 Suspense accounts, branch 37 removal of 37 Suspense accounts, internal 208 Sweeney, John 281 Sweetman, Stuart 32 Swinson, Jo, MP 188, 245 T Taro Naw 92–96, 155 Tatford, Warwick 142, 143 Taylor, Andrew 474 Tecwyn, Sion 92 Theft Act 1968 section 17 132 Therium 293, 383 Thomas, Eira 34 Thomas, Noel (Hughie) 34–43, 89, 252, 426 conviction quashed 472 Thomas, Sian 95 Thomson, George 148, 256 Thomson, Pauline conviction quashed 472 Thomson, Rebecca 88 Time to Change 354, 363 Tobin, Sam 459 Tolhurst, Kelly, MP 386 Training 4, 35, 43, 71, 104, 105, 110, 112, 126, 164, 187, 216, 257, 258, 356, 465 Branch Focuses 258 Transaction acknowledgements 56 Transaction corrections 38, 55, 72, 105, 110, 111, 126, 127, 139, 180, 236, 422 applying for 56 challenging 56, 110 Transaction Information Processing (TIP) 16 Trousdale, Chris 440 conviction quashed 441 Turner, Karl, MP 394 Tweedie, Neil 277 U ‘Unders and overs’ tin 36 V Valters, Jon 155 van den Bogerd, Angela 180, 197, 208, 218, 240, 254, 256, 289, 318, 322, 331, 332, 338, 344, 346 cross-examination in Common Issues trial 331 cross-examination in Horizon trial 346 questioning at Select Committee hearing 261–266 Vennells, Paula 174, 175, 176, 178, 188, 273, 291, 297, 322, 330, 335, 368, 382, 385, 393, 411, 476–479 apologises 382, 475 call to be stripped of CBE 476 gives evidence to BIS Select Committee 260–265 incentive payments 368 is appointed as Post Office CEO 172 is doorstepped 382, 478 meets James Arbuthnot 175 meets the JFSA 178 resignation boards of Dunelm and Morrisons 476 Cabinet Office 393 Chair of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust 438 Church’s ethical investments advisory group 413 response to BEIS questions 410–414 Short Term Incentive Payments (STIP) 368 Verity, Andy 273 W Wagstaff, Caroline 372 Wakely, Mike 58 Walker, Janet 187 Ward, Gail conviction quashed 472 Warman, Matt, MP 455 Warmington, Ron 474 call for a judge-led independent inquiry 392 frustration at lack of progress 208 querying destination of ‘missing’ money 381 Second Sight appointed 176–179 starting the Second Sight investigation 179–185 Warren, Ian conviction quashed 472 Westminster Hall adjournment debate 243–246 Post Office’s response 251 Wildblood, Mark 354 Williams, Margery conviction quashed 472 Williams, Paul 329 Williams, Rachel 252 Williams, Sir Wyn 423, 453–454 Wilson, Julian 97, 169, 252, 296–297 conviction quashed 472 Wilson, Karen 98, 169, 252, 316 Wilson, Rob 140 Winn, Andrew 237 Witherow, Tom 382, 398, 438 Withers, Jim 278 Wood, Mike, MP 177 Worden, Dr Robert 336–337, 364–365 Wyllie, Kym 190 Y Yates, David conviction quashed 473 Z Zahawi, Nadhim, MP 261–264 Alan Bates A Horizon terminal in 2003 Jo Hamilton and Seema Misra Noel Thomas Lee Castleton Pete Murray outside Hope Farm Road Post Office Ron Warmington Lord Arbuthnot Kay Linnell Kamran Ashraf and Siema Kamran Mark Baker Nicki Arch Pam Stubbs Chirag Sidhpura Julian Wilson David Hill, Emma Jones, Karen Wilson and Trevor Wilson Henry Warwick, Patrick Green, Ognjen Miletic, Deirdre Connolly, Kathleen Donnelly and Reanne Mackenzie Cheering Subpostmasters and their supporters on 16 December 2019 Seema Misra with the Horizon trial judgment Jayshreeben Patel, Varchas Patel and Vipin Patel Richard Roll Sue Knight Victorious Subpostmasters celebrate after their convictions were quashed on 23 April 2021 Tom Hedges and Marion Holmes Wendy Buffrey Scott Darlington and Steve Darlington Seema Misra, Janet Skinner and Tracy Felstead Peter Holmes and Marion Holmes Chris Trousdale, Neil Hudgell, Vipin Patel, Varchas Patel, Jayshreeben Patel, Siema Kamran, Kamran Ashraf, Jasvinder Barang and family Parmod Kalia and Teju Adedayo Martin Griffiths Photo credits: Nick Wallis, Erika Baker, Marion Holmes, the Wilson Family, the Griffiths Family, Pete Murray, Nicki Arch, Unknown.

Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road by Matthew B. Crawford

1960s counterculture, Airbus A320, airport security, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, British Empire, Burning Man, business logic, call centre, classic study, collective bargaining, confounding variable, congestion pricing, crony capitalism, data science, David Sedaris, deskilling, digital map, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, Fellow of the Royal Society, Ford Model T, gamification, gentrification, gig economy, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Herbert Marcuse, hive mind, Ian Bogost, income inequality, informal economy, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, labour mobility, Lyft, mirror neurons, Network effects, New Journalism, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, planned obsolescence, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, Ralph Nader, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, security theater, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social graph, social intelligence, Stephen Hawking, surveillance capitalism, tacit knowledge, tech worker, technoutopianism, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, time dilation, too big to fail, traffic fines, Travis Kalanick, trolley problem, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban planning, Wall-E, Works Progress Administration

These character dispositions of pilots are formed through long bodily practice and cognitive formation. Of course, confidence and assertiveness are desirable only if the pilot (or driver) really does have an adequate grasp of the situation—a better grasp than the automation does. In October 2018, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed in Indonesia, and then another plane of the same model crashed in Ethiopia in March 2019. As it happens, the 737 is one of those legacy designs that has been kept viable through iteration, as new systems get retrofitted to an airframe that never anticipated their necessity. In particular, it has been fitted with newer engines that are more fuel efficient, to keep the plane competitive.

…

At this point, he is not feeling deference. He is engaged in an intense mental effort to diagnose the situation. Maybe he also suffers panic, which makes thinking difficult. He oscillates between a determination to seize control back from the automation, and second-guessing himself. Maybe the computer knows best? In the case of the 737 MAX, this second-guessing was in fact appropriate, because pilots were underinformed—and for reasons that in retrospect are not surprising, given the business logic of selling airplanes. (The deployment of driverless cars on public roads has in some cases revealed a similarly cavalier attitude about public safety, likely due to the imperative of being “first to market.”11) How much trust does the pilot place in things beyond his own comprehension?

…

See also driverless cars; semiautonomous cars; Uber efficiency of, 246–247 experimental designs for, 246 predictive problems of, 259 programming local social norms, 259 safety of, 86–87, 301 virtues of, 122 autonomous intersections, 21, 245–246 Autosteer, 86–89 Barbe, Emmanuel, 226 Basic Rider course, 236–237 behavior constraint, 258 behavior modification, 309 behavioral data, 304 behavioral surplus, 273, 302 behind the Martin’s, 1 being scared, tonic effect in, 15 Belgium, 267 Bennett, Bob, 290 Bergson, Henri, 169 Berkeley High School, 108 Berlin Auto Show, 139 Berlinski, Claire, 226 better self, 170 bicycle moralists, 179–183 bicycles, 12, 182–183 big data, 303 Bills, John, 221–222 The Black Box Society (Pasquale), 286–287 blueprinting an engine, 148–149 Boeing 737 MAX 8, 124 Bogost, Ian, 9–10 Boyle, T. Coraghessan, 299–300 braking, automated, 97 Brexit, 271–272 Brin, Sergey, 292 British Ford Escort, 80 brittleness of navigation systems, 99–100 Brooks, Rodney A., 113 Brown, Arthur Roy, 176 Bruges, Belgium, 267 Bulgaria, 250 Burke, Edward, 221 Cadogan, Garnette, 2 Caliente, Nevada, 200–202 Caliente 250, 22–23.

Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age by Brad Smith, Carol Ann Browne

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, air gap, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boeing 737 MAX, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Celtic Tiger, Charlie Hebdo massacre, chief data officer, cloud computing, computer vision, corporate social responsibility, data science, deep learning, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, Eben Moglen, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Hacker News, immigration reform, income inequality, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invention of the telephone, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, national security letter, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, operational security, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, precision agriculture, race to the bottom, ransomware, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, school vouchers, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tim Cook: Apple, Wargames Reagan, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

To the contrary, the reaction to the FAA’s delegation of some regulatory certification to Boeing during the 737 MAX certification process has reflected official and public unease. The response quickly focused on requiring that the FAA base its assessment of the plane’s safety fixes on additional outside review. Steve Miletich and Heidi Groover, “Reacting to Crash Finding, Congressional Leaders Support Outside Review of Boeing 737 MAX Fixes,” Seattle Times, April 4, 2019, https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/reacting-to-crash-finding-congressional-leaders-support-outside-review-of-boeing-737-max-fixes/. Back to note reference 10. Ballard C.

Your Computer Is on Fire by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, Kavita Philip

"Susan Fowler" uber, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, affirmative action, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, An Inconvenient Truth, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, British Empire, business cycle, business process, Californian Ideology, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, dark matter, data science, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, digital divide, digital map, don't be evil, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, fake news, financial innovation, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, game design, gentrification, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, Grace Hopper, hiring and firing, IBM and the Holocaust, industrial robot, informal economy, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Landlord’s Game, Lewis Mumford, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, mobile money, moral panic, move fast and break things, Multics, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, new economy, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, old-boy network, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), packet switching, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, pink-collar, pneumatic tube, postindustrial economy, profit motive, public intellectual, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, Reflections on Trusting Trust, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Salesforce, sentiment analysis, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, smart cities, Snapchat, speech recognition, SQL injection, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, tacit knowledge, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, telepresence, the built environment, the map is not the territory, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, undersea cable, union organizing, vertical integration, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks, wikimedia commons, women in the workforce, Y2K

Increasingly, as corporations have been able to place themselves in the role of arbiter of their own products and value, it has meant that democratic input into the process of deciding which technologies are safe, useful, or worthwhile has been short-circuited. Even with established technologies with good safety records, like commercial airliners, this can create a disaster surprisingly quickly. Before the automated MCAS system forced two Boeing 737 Max airplanes to drop out of the sky in quick succession in 2019, killing hundreds of people, Boeing engineers had argued that the system was unsafe. But they were overruled by management. Boeing was able to force the dangerous new feature through, undetected, because the government agency meant to regulate them was instead letting the corporation largely call the shots.

…

After the first crash, Boeing’s CEO continued to insist the system was safe, blaming the crash on pilot error even though Boeing had removed the relevant parts of the manual that might have allowed the pilots to recover from the malfunction. Had it not been for whistleblowers and dedicated investigative journalists, Boeing may have gotten away with this, and more. The larger lesson, however, is that regulatory agencies that should have prevented disasters like the 737 Max tragedy had been stripped of their ability to do so, and whole sectors that require regulation, like web technologies and online communication platforms, effectively have no external oversight bodies. In the US since 2016, instead of more regulatory safeguards put into place by a democratically elected government, we have seen runaway centralization and the destruction of regulatory and safety agencies under an increasingly authoritarian federal government.

…

See also Accent, bias algorithms, 121, 127–128 antisemitic, 265 class, 4–6, 88, 136, 161–162, 174, 184, 265 class in India, 299, 302–303, 308 data, 66, 205 design-value, 81 discrimination (see Discrimination) facial recognition, 118–119 hiring, 256–257, 260–263, 267 implicit, 257, 262 societal, 152, 179–180 speech technology, 180–181, 190–191, 193 technical training, 253–254, 265 technology, 214, 218, 232 unconscious, 6, 256 Big tech, 12, 87, 191, 254–255, 257 Biometrics, 121, 128–129, 208 Bioshock, 237–238 Bioshock Infinite, 238–239 Bitcoin, 5, 44–45 BITNET, 323–324 Black. See African American(s) Black Girls Code, 255, 263 Block switching, 83 Blockchain, 44–45 Body economic, 79 national, 77–78, 86, 86t Boeing, 19–20, 23 MCAS, 19 737 Max tragedies, 19–20 Bolivia, 45 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 39 Borsdorf, Johannes H., 168–169 Boston Marathon Bombing, 120 Business Process Management, 308 Brandenburg v. Ohio, 373 Brazil, 103–104, 234, 324 BSD (programming language), 273 Bug. See also Thompson hack feature, not a, 4, 7, 18–19, 148–151, 153, 214, 223, 262, 303 Bureaucracy, 78, 80, 86t, 88, 109, 150, 175 Burmese, 339, 344, 354 Bush, Randy, 324–326 Bush, Vannevar, 348 C (programming language), 273–277, 279, 281–284, 286 backslash, 279, 281–282 commands, 279, 282–283, 285, 287 C++, 273, 275, 290 C#, 273 Objective C, 273 Cable, 5, 100–102, 104, 107, 111, 321 infrastructure, 103–104 internet, 95, 98–99 materials, 94 networks, 5 television, 315, 317 undersea, 72, 93, 99 Caldwell, Samuel Hawks, 348–350 Call centers, 5, 56 Amazon, 37 Indian, 105, 298, 302, 305, 307 Cambridge Analytica, 118 Capital, 6, 31, 202, 316, 378, 380 cultural, 299 global, 88 intensive, 277, 313–314 investment, 44, 301, 314–315, 332 physical, 46, 107 venture, 15–16, 53, 175, 255–256, 267 Capitalism, 46, 87, 171, 368 welfare, 160–161, 167, 170–174 Carceral state, 206, 208 Carlin, George, 59 Carnegie Mellon University, 257 Cart Life, 241 Cartography, 95–96, 107 Catholicism, 171, 173–175 CCM (Commercial content moderation), 56–58, 62, 66, 122 CDC (Center for Disease Control), 20 CDU (Christian Democratic Union), 170 Cellular phones (cell), 7, 306, 317, 332, 365, 378 and M-PESA, 7, 322, 326–328, 333 Safaricom, 326–328, 333 SIM card, 326–328 Chex Quest, 237 Child pornography, 6, 117–125, 127–130 limit case, 129 server storage, 383 Child Victim Identification Program, 122–123, 125 China, 7, 45, 104, 227 accent bias, 188, 189t apps, 332 Communists, 348 IMEs, 351, 357 Input Wars, 351 language, 188 People’s University (Beijing), 357 rising superpower, 153 writing interfaces, 381 Chinese keyboard, 345, 345f, 348–350, 353, 367 Chinese typewriter, 346, 350 dian, 351, 352f, 352 difficulty score, 344–345 MingKwai keyboard, 346–349, 347f, 353 and QWERTY keyboard, 338–339, 342, 346, 350–351, 353–354, 357 retrieval system, 346–347, 349–350, 353 script, 221 search writer, 350 Christian, 161, 170–171, 187 Central Intelligence Agency, 80 Cisgender, 154 Clark, David D., 71 Class bias, 4–6, 88, 136, 161–162, 174, 184, 265 capitalist, 171 dominant, 180–181, 190 equality, 80, 86t exposure, 301–302 India, 299, 302–303, 308 investor, 53 lower, 162 management, 142 Marxist, 171–173 meritocracy, 138, 150 middle, 73, 80, 86, 139, 241 technocratic, 21 upper, 300- 302 upper-middle, 18 working, 79, 141–142, 288, 301, 309 Cloud definition, 33–34 and electricity, 33–34, 44 enables other industries, 46 as factory, 7, 35–36, 42–43, 45–46, 321 and infrastructure, 33–35 kilowatt-hours required, 34 physical, 31–32, 34, 44–46 supply chain, 45 Code Arabic, 191 Assembly, 275, 277, 281, 286 Black Girls Code, 255, 263 breaking, 138–139 (Colossus) Code.org, 253, 255, 259 Code2040, 255, 260 Coding, Girls Who Code, 253, 255, 263 cultural, 302 digital, 284, 289 dress, 145, 164–165, 298 education, 6 empire, 76 #YesWeCode, 253, 264–266 HLL (high-level language), 275, 277–278, 284, 290 Hour of Code, 253, 263–264 is law, 126 platforms, 321 robotics, 201, 203, 205 social media, 59 source, 273–292 passim (see also Source code) switching, 184, 190 typing, 188, 351 writers, 24, 145, 256–259, 262–267, 300, 381 Yes We Code, 255 Code.org, 253, 255, 259 Code2040, 255, 260 Coding, Girls Who Code, 253, 255, 263 Cold War, 137, 152, 169 computer networks, 75–76, 83–84 network economy, 87 technology, 17–18, 94, 137 typewriter, 227 Collision detection, 242–243 Colonialism, 19, 91, 93, 105, 109, 245 cable networks, 93, 99, 101 colonization, 186, 378 digital, 331 Europe, 110, 147–148, 343 internet, 111, 129 language as, 186–188 metaphors, 94 stereotypes, 96, 102, 104 technocolonialist, 103–104 Colossus, 17, 139, 143 Comcast, 35 Commercial content moderation (CCM), 56–58, 62, 66, 122 Commodity computational services, 33 Common sense, 73, 96 Communications Decency Act, 60–61 Compaq, 318 Complex scripts, 188, 222, 344–345, 350 CompuServe, 320, 325 Computer anthropomorphized (see Robots) conservative force, 15 control and power, 23 critiques of, 5 men, 142 utility, 35, 320 humans as, 43, 140, 384 Computer science, 18, 58, 66, 112, 367 artificial intelligence, 58, 66 education, 256, 263 Thompson hack, 275, 291 women in, 254 Computing, 135–155 passim artificial intelligence, 56 Britain and, 21, 138, 148–152 Chinese, 350–351, 353–354 and class, 142–143 cloud, 78, 87 companies, 13, 18–19 devices, 40–41, 45 education, 368 and empire, 147–148 environment, 382 global, 350, 377 hacking, 289–291 history of, 7, 17, 35, 38, 43, 46, 137, 153–154 Latin alphabet, 357 masculinity, 263 management, 23 manufacturing, 39 media, 4–8, 377–380 meritocracy narratives, 137, 153–154, 381 networks, 77, 199, 320–321 personal, 354 power, 328 software, 318 typing and, 220, 226, 337, 339, 341, 344 underrepresented groups and, 253, 255–256, 264, 266 and women, 17, 43, 135, 139–142, 144–147 Concorde, 145, 146f Congress, 11–12, 82, 154 Content antisemitic, 265 app, 319, 321 child abuse, 118–119, 122, 125 commercial content moderation (CCM), 56–58, 62, 66, 122 filtering, 57 illegal, 62 internet, 317, 319 moderation, 54–57, 123, 126, 380–382 moderators, 5, 380–382 review, 121, 128–130 social media, 59, 61–63, 66, 232, 321, 329–331 terrorism, 57, 66, 130 violent, 117 web, 317 Contractor, 35, 53, 56, 266 CorelDraw, 298 COVID-19, 14, 20, 377 Cox, Chris, 61 Creating Your Community, 266 Creative destruction, 4 Crisis, 4, 6, 16, 21, 150, 235, 297, 383–384 Covid-19, 20 identity, 58–60 point, 13 Y2K, 104 CSNET, 81 Cybernetics, 75, 78–80, 83, 86, 86t, 88 cyberneticist, 77, 81–82 Cyberpunk, 100–101, 107, 110 Cybersyn, 75, 79–80, 85, 86t CyberTipline, 125 Dalton gang, 287–289 DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), 383 Dartmouth College, 235 Data biased, 66, 205 due process, 206 objective, 205 processing, 38, 40–41, 119, 206, 300 socially constructed, 205 value-neutral, 372 Data broker Salesforce, 87 SAS, 87 Data entry, 5, 104, 150, 367 David, Paul, 337–338, 351, 353, 357–358 Davies, Donald, 83 Death, 15, 120, 186, 371, 373, 379 Covid-19, 12 gaming, 233–234, 236 life-or-, 6, 206, 266 technology and dying well, 378 Decolonization, 91, 104, 111–112 Deep Blue, 7 De Kosnik, Benjamin, 108–109, 110 Dell, 318 Delphi, 290 Democratic Republic of Congo, 45 Denmark, 44, 128–129 de Prony, Gaspard, 39–40 Design values, 73–76, 84–88 American, 81–84 Chilean, 79–81 Soviet, 77–78 state, 75, 78, 80, 83, 86, 86t Devanagari, 339, 342, 344, 350, 354 Developing world, 93, 103, 105, 180, 325, 330–332 Devi, Poonam, 304 Diamond, Jared, 338, 351, 353, 357–358 Difference Engine, 40 Digital coding, 284, 289 colonialism, 91, 93–94, 103, 331 computers, 38, 41, 138 connectivity, 379 economies, 13, 22, 29, 31, 33, 35, 45, 145 forensic work, 123, 126, 128, 354 future, 101 gaming, 241 imperialism, 186–187, 191 inclusion, 303 infrastructures, 126, 151, 155 invisibility, 98, 100, 204 labor, 6, 147, 101, 354 materiality, 5 networks, 83 platforms, 66, 118, 199, 201 politics and, 110, 112 predigital, 96–97, 152 revolution, 29, 32 surveillance state, 119, 130 technology, 40, 64, 123–124, 200, 382 vigilantism, 120 Disability, 12, 15, 160 Disasters, 11–15, 19–20, 22–24, 54, 204, 338, 364 Discrimination.

The Crux by Richard Rumelt

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, air gap, Airbnb, AltaVista, AOL-Time Warner, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, biodiversity loss, Blue Ocean Strategy, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, creative destruction, crossover SUV, Crossrail, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, double entry bookkeeping, drop ship, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, financial engineering, Ford Model T, Herman Kahn, income inequality, index card, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Just-in-time delivery, Larry Ellison, linear programming, lockdown, low cost airline, low earth orbit, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, meta-analysis, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, packet switching, PageRank, performance metric, precision agriculture, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, search costs, selection bias, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, software as a service, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stochastic process, Teledyne, telemarketer, TSMC, uber lyft, undersea cable, union organizing, vertical integration, WeWork

Microsoft’s high current earnings come because its software products have become standards that almost everyone must have to be productive and to work with others. In the same vein, costs borne today may well be the key to future harvests of profit. And, of course, it works the other way around. Once great Boeing has been struggling with design flaws in its 737 MAX, with an overenthusiasm for international outsourcing, with overheating lithium batteries, and more. All of these depress earnings, but the lower earnings are not due to how hard or skillfully today’s managers, engineers, and employees work. They are almost all due to the culture brought in by its “merger” with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

…

If investors are to stay with you through ups and downs, they must have trust in you as a person, in your strategy, and in your management system. Trust is hard to gain and all too easy to lose. If you are running Boeing, the market has trusted you for years to make long-term investments. If you betray that trust by approving a 737 MAX design that puts the front stairway in the wrong place just to satisfy Southwest Airlines, the trust built up over decades can evaporate in months. One radical way of escaping the 90-Day Derby is to run a very simple business or set of businesses. When the accounting results are an accurate picture of performance, things get easier.

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It by Robert B. Reich

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, business cycle, Carl Icahn, clean water, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, financial deregulation, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, job automation, junk bonds, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, peak TV, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, stock buybacks, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, union organizing, WeWork, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Wells Fargo’s Carrie Tolstedt departed with a $125 million exit package after being in charge of the unit that opened more than 2 million unauthorized customer accounts. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg raked in $23 million in 2018, up 27 percent from the year before, notwithstanding the corporation’s deadly, defective 737 Max airliner. McDonald’s CEO Stephen Easterbrook, fired in 2019 for having an inappropriate relationship with an employee, received a severance package of nearly $42 million—more than double the $15.9 million he made in 2018. In 2019, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma sought bankruptcy protection from lawsuits seeking to hold it accountable for its role in the nation’s opioid epidemic.

Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making for an Unknowable Future by Mervyn King, John Kay

Airbus A320, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, algorithmic trading, anti-fragile, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, Arthur Eddington, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, banking crisis, Barry Marshall: ulcers, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, bitcoin, Black Swan, Boeing 737 MAX, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, Brownian motion, business cycle, business process, capital asset pricing model, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, DeepMind, demographic transition, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Dutch auction, easy for humans, difficult for computers, eat what you kill, Eddington experiment, Edmond Halley, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, Ethereum, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, experimental subject, fear of failure, feminist movement, financial deregulation, George Akerlof, germ theory of disease, Goodhart's law, Hans Rosling, Helicobacter pylori, high-speed rail, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income per capita, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, Johannes Kepler, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Kōnosuke Matsushita, Linda problem, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, market bubble, market fundamentalism, military-industrial complex, Money creation, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Monty Hall problem, Nash equilibrium, Nate Silver, new economy, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, nudge theory, oil shock, PalmPilot, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, Pierre-Simon Laplace, popular electronics, power law, price mechanism, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, railway mania, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, sealed-bid auction, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Socratic dialogue, South Sea Bubble, spectrum auction, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Suez crisis 1956, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Chicago School, the map is not the territory, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Davenport, Thomas Malthus, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, ultimatum game, urban planning, value at risk, world market for maybe five computers, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Struggling fifty years after that launched to compete with the more modern Airbus A320, Boeing chose not to design a new plane but to fit fuel-efficient engines to its ageing blockbuster. This modification proved more difficult than anticipated, requiring complex adjustments to the aircraft’s handling, and the two crashes of the 737 Max in 2018 and 2019 were uncannily reminiscent of the Comet disasters of 1954 – the result of unforeseen consequences from the decision to adapt an earlier design to new circumstances. Unk-unks are inevitable in aviation, and understanding of systems does not necessarily keep pace with their complexity.

…

(2019) which reviews several of the puzzles and paradoxes in the early chapters of this book. ____________ * Ronald L. Wasserstein, Allen L. Schirm and Nicole A. Lazar, ‘Editorial: Moving to a world beyond “p <0.05”’, American Statistician , Vol. 73, No. 51 (2019), 1–19. INDEX 10 (film, 1979), 97 737 Max aircraft, 228 9/11 terror attacks, 7 , 74–6 , 202 , 230 Abbottabad raid (2011), 9–10 , 20 , 26 , 44 , 71 , 102 , 118–19 , 120 , 174–5 ; reference narrative of, 122–3 , 277 , 298 ; role of luck in, 262–3 ; and unhelpful probabilities, 8–19 , 326 abductive reasoning, 138 , 147 , 211 , 388 , 398 ABN AMRO, 257 Abraham (biblical character), 206 Abrahams, Harold, 273 Abramovich, Roman, 265 accountancy, 409 aeronautics, 227–8 , 352–6 , 383 Agdestein, Simen, 273 AIDS, 57 , 230 , 375–6 Airbus A380, 40 , 274–6 , 408 Akerlof, George, 250–1 , 252 , 253 , 254 , 382 Alchian, Armen, 158 alien invasion narratives, 295–6 Allais, Maurice, 134–5 , 136 , 137 , 437 , 440–3 Allen, Bill, 227–8 Allen, Paul, 28 , 29 Altair desktop, 28 Amazon, 289 , 309 Anderson, Roy, 375 ant colonies, 173 anthropology, 160 , 189–91 , 193–4 , 215–16 antibiotics, 40 , 45 , 284 , 429 Antz (film, 1998), 274 apocalyptic narratives, 331–2 , 335 , 358–62 Appiah, Anthony, 117–18 Apple, 29–30 , 31 , 169 , 309 Applegarth, Adam, 311 arbitrage, 308 Archilochus (Greek poet), 222 Aristotle, 137 , 147 , 303 Arrow, Kenneth, 254 , 343–5 , 440 artificial intelligence (AI), xvi , 39 , 135 , 150 , 173–4 , 175–6 , 185–6 , 387 ; the ‘singularity’, 176–7 Ashtabula rail bridge disaster (1876), 33 Asimov, Isaac, 303 asteroid strikes, 32 , 71–2 , 238 , 402 astrology, 394 astronomical laws, 18–19 , 35 , 70 , 373–4 , 388 , 389 , 391–2 , 394 AT&T, 28 auction theory, 255–7 Austen, Jane, 217 , 224–5 , 383 autism, 394 , 411 aviation, commercial, 23–4 , 40 , 227–8 , 274–6 , 315 , 383 , 414 axiomatic rationality: Allais disputes theory, 134–5 , 136 , 137 ; Arrow– Debreu world, 343–5 ; assumption of transitivity, 437 ; and Becker, 114 , 381–2 ; and behavioural economics, 116 , 135–6 , 141–9 , 154–5 , 167–8 , 386–7 , 401 ; capital asset pricing model (CAPM), 307–8 , 309 , 320 , 332 ; completeness axiom, 437–8 ; consistency of choice axiom, 108–9 , 110–11 ; continuity axiom, 438–40 ; definition of rationality, 133–4 , 137 , 436 ; definition of risk, 305 , 307 , 334 , 420–1 ; efficient market hypothesis, 252 , 254 , 308–9 , 318 , 320 , 332 , 336–7 ; efficient portfolio model, 307–8 , 309 , 318 , 320 , 332–4 , 366 ; and evolutionary rationality, 16 , 152–3 , 154–5 , 157 , 158 , 166–7 , 171–2 , 386–7 , 407 ; and ‘expectations’ concept, 97–8 , 102–3 , 121–2 , 341–2 ; extended to decision-making under uncertainty, xv , 40–2 , 110–14 , 133–7 , 257–9 , 420–1 ; and Friedman, 73–4 , 111–12 , 113–14 , 125 , 257–9 , 307 , 399–400 , 420 , 437 ; hegemony of over radical uncertainty, 40–2 , 110–14 ; implausibility of assumptions, xiv–xv , 16 , 41–4 , 47 , 74–84 , 85–105 , 107–9 , 111 , 116–22 , 344–9 , 435–44 ; independence axiom, 440–4 ; as limited to small worlds, 170 , 309–10 , 320–1 , 342–9 , 382 , 400 , 421 ; and Lucas, 36 , 92 , 93 , 338–9 , 341 , 345 , 346 ; and Markowitz, 307 , 308 , 309–10 , 318 , 322 , 333 ; maximising behaviour, 310 ; ‘pignistic probability’, 78–84 , 438 ; and Popperian falsificationism, 259–60 ; Prescott’s comparison with engineering, 352–6 ; ‘rational expectations theory, 342–5 , 346–50 ; and Samuelson, xv , 42 , 110–11 , 436 ; and Savage, 111–14 , 125 , 257–9 , 309 , 345 , 400 , 435 , 437 , 442–3 ; shocks and shifts discourse, 42 , 346 , 347 , 348 , 406–7 ; Simon’s work on, 134 , 136 , 149–53 ; triumph of probabilistic reasoning, 15–16 , 20 , 72–84 , 110–14 ; Value at risk models (VaR), 366–8 , 405 , 424 ; von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms, 111 , 133 , 435–44 ; see also maximising behaviour Ballmer, Steve, 30 , 227 Bank of England, xiii , 45 , 103–5 , 286 , 311 Barclays Bank, 257 Barings Bank, 411 Basel regulations, 310 , 311 Bay of Pigs fiasco (1961), 278–9 Bayes, Reverend Thomas, 60–3 , 66–7 , 70 , 71 , 358 , 431 Beane, Billy, 273 Bear Stearns, 158–9 Becker, Gary, 114 , 381–2 Beckham, David, 267–8 , 269 , 270 , 272–3 , 414 behavioural economics, 116 , 145–8 , 154 , 386–7 ; and Allais paradox, 442 ; ‘availability heuristic’, 144–5 ; biases in human behaviour, 16 , 136 , 141–8 , 154 , 162 , 165 , 167–8 , 170–1 , 175–6 , 184 , 401 ; and evolutionary science, 154–5 , 165 ; Kahneman’s dual systems, 170–1 , 172 , 271 ; Kahneman–Tversky experiments, 141–7 , 152 , 215 ; ‘noise’ (randomness), 175–6 ; nudge theory, 148–9 Bentham, Jeremy, 110 Berkshire Hathaway, 153 , 319 , 324 , 325–6 Berlin, Isaiah, 222 Bernoulli, Daniel, 114–16 , 199 Bernoulli, Nicolaus, 199 , 442 Bertrand, Joseph, 70 Bezos, Jeff, 289 big data, 208 , 327 , 388–90 billiard players, 257–8 bin Laden, Osama, 7 , 8–10 , 21 , 44 , 71 , 118–19 , 120 , 122–3 , 262–3 , 326 Bismarck, Otto von, 161 Bitcoin, 96 , 316 Black Death, 32 , 39–40 BlackBerry, 30 , 31 blackjack, 38 Blackstone, Sir William, 213 BNP Paribas, 5 , 6 BOAC, 23–4 Boas, Franz, 193 Boeing, 24 , 227–8 Boer War, 168 Bolt, Usain, 273 bonobos, 161–2 , 178 Borges, Jorge Luis, 391 Borodino, battle of (1812), 3–4 , 433 Bortkiewicz, Ladislaus, 235–6 Bower, Tom, 169–70 Bowral cricket team, New South Wales, 264 Box, George, 393 Boycott, Geoffrey, 264–5 Bradman, Don, 237 , 264 Brahe, Tycho, 388–9 Brånemark, Per-Ingvar, 387 , 388 Branson, Richard, 169–70 Brearley, Michael, 140–1 , 264–5 Breslau (now Wrocław), 56 Brexit referendum (June 2016), 241–2 ; lies told during, 404 bridge collapses, 33 , 341 Brownian motion, 37 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 143 , 147 Buffett, Warren, 83 , 152 , 179 , 319–20 , 324 , 335 , 336–7 Burns, Robert, 253 Bush, George W., 295 , 407 , 412 business cycles, 347 business history (academic discipline), 286 business schools, 318 business strategy: approach in 1970s, 183 ; approach in 1980s, 181–2 ; aspirations confused with, 181–2 , 183–4 ; business plans, 223–4 , 228 ; collections of capabilities, 274–7 ; and the computer industry, 27–31 ; corporate takeovers, 256–7 ; Lampert at Sears, 287–9 , 292 ; Henry Mintzberg on, 296 , 410 ; motivational proselytisation, 182–3 , 184 ; quantification mistaken for understanding, 180–1 , 183 ; and reference narratives, 286–90 , 296–7 ; risk maps, 297 ; Rumelt’s MBA classes, 10 , 178–80 ; Shell’s scenario planning, 223 , 295 ; Sloan at General Motors, 286–7 ; strategy weekends, 180–3 , 194 , 296 , 407 ; three common errors, 183–4 ; vision or mission statements, 181–2 , 184 Buxton, Jedediah, 225 Calas, Jean, 199 California, 48–9 Cambridge Growth Project, 340 Canadian fishing industry, 368–9 , 370 , 423 , 424 cancer, screening for, 66–7 Candler, Graham, 352 , 353–6 , 399 Cardiff City Football Club, 265 Carlsen, Magnus, 175 , 273 Carnegie, Andrew, 427 Carnegie Mellon University, 135 Carré, Dr Matt, 267–8 Carroll, Lewis, Through the Looking-Glass , 93–4 , 218 , 344 , 346 ; ‘Jabberwocky’, 91–2 , 94 , 217 Carron works (near Falkirk), 253 Carter, Jimmy, 8 , 119 , 120 , 123 , 262–3 cartography, 391 Casio, 27 , 31 Castro, Fidel, 278–9 cave paintings, 216 central banks, 5 , 7 , 95 , 96 , 103–5 , 285–6 , 348–9 , 350 , 351 , 356–7 Central Pacific Railroad, 48 Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, 39 Chabris, Christopher, 140 Challenger disaster (1986), 373 , 374 Chamberlain, Neville, 24–5 Chandler, Alfred, Strategy and Structure , 286 Chariots of Fire (film, 1981), 273 Charles II, King, 383 Chelsea Football Club, 265 chess, 173 , 174 , 175 , 266 , 273 , 346 Chicago economists, 36 , 72–4 , 86 , 92 , 111–14 , 133–7 , 158 , 257–8 , 307 , 342–3 , 381–2 Chicago Mercantile Exchange, 423 chimpanzees, 161–2 , 178 , 274 China, 4–5 , 419–20 , 430 cholera, 283 Churchill, Winston: character of, 25–6 , 168 , 169 , 170 ; fondness for gambling, 81 , 168 ; as hedgehog not fox, 222 ; on Montgomery, 293 ; restores gold standard (1925), 25–6 , 269 ; The Second World War , 187 ; Second World War leadership, 24–5 , 26 , 119 , 167 , 168–9 , 170 , 184 , 187 , 266 , 269 Citibank, 255 Civil War, American, 188 , 266 , 290 Clapham, John, 253 Clark, Sally, 197–8 , 200 , 202 , 204 , 206 Clausewitz, Carl von, On War , 433 climate systems, 101–2 Club of Rome, 361 , 362 Coase, Ronald, 286 , 342 Cochran, Johnnie, 198 , 217 Cochrane, John, 93 coffee houses, 55–6 cognitive illusions, 141–2 Cohen, Jonathan, 206–7 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 411 Cold War, 293–4 , 306–7 Collier, Paul, 276–7 Columbia disaster (2003), 373 Columbia University, 117 , 118 , 120 Columbus, Christopher, 4 , 21 Colyvan, Mark, 225 Comet aircraft, 23–4 , 228 communication: communicative rationality, 172 , 267–77 , 279–82 , 412 , 414–16 ; and decision-making, 17 , 231 , 272–7 , 279–82 , 398–9 , 408 , 412 , 413–17 , 432 ; eusociality, 172–3 , 274 ; and good doctors, 185 , 398–9 ; human capacity for, 159 , 161 , 162 , 172–3 , 216 , 272–7 , 408 ; and ill-defined concepts, 98–9 ; and intelligibility, 98 ; language, 98 , 99–100 , 159 , 162 , 173 , 226 ; linguistic ambiguity, 98–100 ; and reasoning, 265–8 , 269–77 ; and the smartphone, 30 ; the ‘wisdom of crowds’, 47 , 413–14 Community Reinvestment Act (USA, 1977), 207 comparative advantage model, 249–50 , 251–2 , 253 computer technologies, 27–31 , 173–4 , 175–7 , 185–6 , 227 , 411 ; big data, 208 , 327 , 388–90 ; CAPTCHA text, 387 ; dotcom boom, 228 ; and economic models, 339–40 ; machine learning, 208 Condit, Phil, 228 Condorcet, Nicolas de, 199–200 consumer price index, 330 , 331 conviction narrative theory, 227–30 Corinthians (New Testament), 402 corporate takeovers, 256–7 corporations, large, 27–31 , 122 , 123 , 286–90 , 408–10 , 412 , 415 Cosmides, Leda, 165 Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, 32 , 39 , 71–2 Crick, Francis, 156 cricket, 140–1 , 237 , 263–5 crime novels, classic, 218 crosswords, 218 crypto-currencies, 96 , 316 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 140 , 264 Cuba, 278–80 ; Cuban Missile Crisis, 279–81 , 299 , 412 Custer, George, 293 Cutty Sark (whisky producer), 325 Daily Express , 242–3 , 244 Damasio, Antonio, 171 Dardanelles expedition (1915), 25 Darwin, Charles, 156 , 157 Davenport, Thomas, 374 Dawkins, Richard, 156 de Havilland company, 23–4 Debreu, Gerard, 254 , 343–4 decision theory, xvi ; critiques of ‘American school’, 133–7 ; definition of rationality, 133–4 ; derived from deductive reasoning, 138 ; Ellsberg’s ‘ambiguity aversion’, 135 ; expected utility , 111–14 , 115–18 , 124–5 , 127 , 128 – 30 , 135 , 400 , 435–44 ; hegemony of optimisation, 40–2 , 110–14 ; as unable to solve mysteries, 34 , 44 , 47 ; and work of Savage, 442–3 decision-making under uncertainty: and adaptation, 102 , 401 ; Allais paradox, 133–7 , 437 , 440–3 ; axiomatic approach extended to, xv , 40–2 , 110–14 , 133–7 , 257–9 , 420–1 ; ‘bounded rationality concept, 149–53 ; as collaborative process, 17 , 155 , 162 , 176 , 411–15 , 431–2 ; and communication, 17 , 231 , 272–7 , 279–82 , 398–9 , 408 , 412 , 413–17 , 432 ; communicative rationality, 172 , 267–77 , 279–82 , 412 , 414–16 ; completeness axiom, 437–8 ; continuity axiom, 438–40 ; Cuban Missile Crisis, 279–81 , 299 , 412 ; ‘decision weights’ concept, 121 ; disasters attributed to chance, 266–7 ; doctors, 184–6 , 194 , 398–9 ; and emotions, 227–9 , 411 ; ‘evidence-based policy’, 404 , 405 ; excessive attention to prior probabilities, 184–5 , 210 ; expected utility , 111–14 , 115–18 , 124–5 , 127 , 128–30 , 135 , 400 , 435–44 ; first-rate decision-makers, 285 ; framing of problems, 261 , 362 , 398–400 ; good strategies for radical uncertainty, 423–5 ; and hindsight, 263 ; independence axiom, 440–4 ; judgement as unavoidable, 176 ; Klein’s ‘primed recognition decision-making’, 399 ; Gary Klein’s work on, 151–2 , 167 ; and luck, 263–6 ; practical decision-making, 22–6 , 46–7 , 48–9 , 81–2 , 151 , 171–2 , 176–7 , 255 , 332 , 383 , 395–6 , 398–9 ; and practical knowledge, 22–6 , 195 , 255 , 352 , 382–8 , 395–6 , 405 , 414–15 , 431 ; and prior opinions, 179–80 , 184–5 , 210 ; ‘prospect theory’, 121 ; public sector processes, 183 , 355 , 415 ; puzzle– mystery distinction, 20–4 , 32–4 , 48–9 , 64–8 , 100 , 155 , 173–7 , 218 , 249 , 398 , 400–1 ; qualities needed for success, 179–80 ; reasoning as not decision-making, 268–71 ; and ‘resulting’, 265–7 ; ‘risk as feelings’ perspective, 128–9 , 310 ; robustness and resilience, 123 , 294–8 , 332 , 335 , 374 , 423–5 ; and role of economists, 397–401 ; Rumelt’s ‘diagnosis’, 184–5 , 194–5 ; ‘satisficing’ (’good enough’ outcomes), 150 , 167 , 175 , 415 , 416 ; search for a workable solution, 151–2 , 167 ; by securities traders, 268–9 ; ‘shock’ and ‘shift’ labels, 42 , 346 , 347 , 348 , 406–7 ; simple heuristics, rules of thumb, 152 ; and statistical discrimination, 207–9 , 415 ; triumph of probabilistic reasoning, 20 , 40–2 , 72–84 , 110–14 ; von Neumann– Morgenstern axioms, 111 , 133 , 435–44 ; see also business strategy deductive reasoning, 137–8 , 147 , 235 , 388 , 389 , 398 Deep Blue, 175 DeepMind, 173–4 The Deer Hunter (film, 1978), 438 democracy, representative, 292 , 319 , 414 demographic issues, 253 , 358–61 , 362–3 ; EU migration models, 369–70 , 372 Denmark, 426 , 427 , 428 , 430 dentistry, 387–8 , 394 Derek, Bo, 97 dermatologists, 88–9 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), 27 , 31 dinosaurs, extinction of, 32 , 39 , 71–2 , 383 , 402 division of labour, 161 , 162 , 172–3 , 216 , 249 DNA, 156 , 198 , 201 , 204 ‘domino theory’, 281 Donoghue, Denis, 226 dotcom boom, 316 , 402 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 34 , 224–5 , 253 Drapers Company, 328 Drescher, Melvin, 248–9 Drucker, Peter, Concept of the Corporation (1946), 286 , 287 Duhem–Quine hypothesis, 259–60 Duke, Annie, 263 , 268 , 273 Dulles, John Foster, 293 Dutch tulip craze (1630s), 315 Dyson, Frank, 259 earthquakes, 237–8 , 239 Eco, Umberto, The Name of the Rose , 204 Econometrica , 134 econometrics, 134 , 340–1 , 346 , 356 economic models: of 1950s and 1960s, 339–40 ; Akerlof model, 250–1 , 252 , 253 , 254 ; ‘analogue economies’ of Lucas, 345 , 346 ; artificial/complex, xiv–xv , 21 , 92–3 , 94 ; ‘asymmetric information’ model, 250–1 , 254–5 ; capital asset pricing model (CAPM), 307–8 , 309 , 320 , 332 ; comparative advantage model, 249–50 , 251–2 , 253 ; cost-benefit analysis obsession, 404 ; diversification of risk, 304–5 , 307–9 , 317–18 , 334–7 ; econometric models, 340–1 , 346 , 356 ; economic rent model, 253–4 ; efficient market hypothesis, 252 , 254 , 308–9 , 318 , 320 , 332 , 336–7 ; efficient portfolio model, 307–8 , 309 , 318 , 320 , 332–4 , 366 ; failure over 2007–08 crisis, xv , 6–7 , 260 , 311–12 , 319 , 339 , 349–50 , 357 , 367–8 , 399 , 407 , 423–4 ; falsificationist argument, 259–60 ; forecasting models, 7 , 15–16 , 68 , 96 , 102–5 , 347–50 , 403–4 ; Goldman Sachs risk models, 6–7 , 9 , 68 , 202 , 246–7 ; ‘grand auction’ of Arrow and Debreu, 343–5 ; inadequacy of forecasting models, 347–50 , 353–4 , 403–4 ; invented numbers in, 312–13 , 320 , 363–4 , 365 , 371 , 373 , 404 , 405 , 423 ; Keynesian, 339–40 ; Lucas critique, 341 , 348 , 354 ; Malthus’ population growth model, 253 , 358–61 , 362–3 ; misuse/abuse of, 312–13 , 320 , 371–4 , 405 ; need for, 404–5 ; need for pluralism of, 276–7 ; pension models, 312–13 , 328–9 , 405 , 423 , 424 ; pre-crisis risk models, 6–7 , 9 , 68 , 202 , 246–7 , 260 , 311–12 , 319 , 320–1 , 339 ; purpose of, 346 ; quest for large-world model, 392 ; ‘rational expectations theory, 342–5 , 346–50 ; real business cycle theory, 348 , 352–4 ; role of incentives, 408–9 ; ‘shift’ label, 406–7 ; ‘shock’ label, 346–7 , 348 , 406–7 ; ‘training base’ (historical data series), 406 ; Value at risk models (VaR), 366–8 , 405 , 424 ; Viniar problem (problem of model failure), 6–7 , 58 , 68 , 109 , 150 , 176 , 202 , 241 , 242 , 246–7 , 331 , 366–8 ; ‘wind tunnel’ models, 309 , 339 , 392 ; winner’s curse model, 256–7 ; World Economic Outlook, 349 ; see also axiomatic rationality; maximising behaviour; optimising behaviour; small world models Economic Policy Symposium, Jackson Hole, 317–18 economics: adverse selection process, 250–1 , 327 ; aggregate output and GDP, 95 ; ambiguity of variables/concepts, 95–6 , 99–100 ; appeal of probability theory, 42–3 ; ‘bubbles’, 315–16 ; business cycles, 45–6 , 347 ; Chicago School, 36 , 72–4 , 86 , 92 , 111–14 , 133–7 , 158 , 257–8 , 307 , 342–3 , 381–2 ; data as essential, 388–90 ; division of labour, 161 , 162 , 172–3 , 216 , 249 ; and evolutionary mechanisms, 158–9 ; ‘expectations’ concept, 97–8 , 102–3 , 121–2 , 341–2 ; forecasts and future planning as necessary, 103 ; framing of problems, 261 , 362 , 398–400 ; ‘grand auction’ of Arrow and Debreu, 343–5 ; hegemony of optimisation, 40–2 , 110 – 14 ; Hicks–Samuelson axioms, 435–6 ; market fundamentalism, 220 ; market price equilibrium, 254 , 343–4 , 381–2 ; markets as necessarily incomplete, 344 , 345 , 349 ; Marshall’s definition of, 381 , 382 ; as ‘non-stationary’, 16 , 35–6 , 45–6 , 102 , 236 , 339–41 , 349 , 350 , 394–6 ; oil shock (1973), 223 ; Phillips curve, 340 ; and ‘physics envy’, 387 , 388 ; and power laws, 238–9 ; as practical knowledge, 381 , 382–3 , 385–8 , 398 , 399 , 405 ; public role of the social scientist, 397–401 ; reciprocity in a modern economy, 191–2 , 328–9 ; and reflexivity, 35–6 , 309 , 394 ; risk and volatility, 124–5 , 310 , 333 , 335–6 , 421–3 ; Romer’s ‘mathiness’, 93–4 , 95 ; shift or structural break, 236 ; Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, 163 , 254 , 343 ; social context of, 17 ; sources of data, 389 , 390 ; surge in national income since 1800, 161 ; systems as non-linear, 102 ; teaching’s emphasis on quantitative methods, 389 ; validity of research findings, 245 ‘Economists Free Ride, Does Anyone Else?’

Clean Agile: Back to Basics by Robert C. Martin

Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Boeing 737 MAX, c2.com, cognitive load, continuous integration, DevOps, disinformation, double entry bookkeeping, en.wikipedia.org, failed state, Frederick Winslow Taylor, index card, iterative process, Kanban, Kubernetes, loose coupling, microservices, remote working, revision control, scientific management, Turing machine

I certainly have. To understand just how severe this problem is, consider the shutdown of the Air Traffic Control network over Los Angeles due to the rollover of a 32-bit clock. Or the shutdown of all the power generators on board the Boeing 787 for the same reason. Or the hundreds of people killed by the 737 Max MCAS software. Or how about my own experience with the early days of healthcare.gov? After initial login, like so many systems nowadays, it asked for a set of security questions. One of those was “A memorable date.” I entered 7/21/73, my wedding anniversary. The system responded with Invalid Entry.

One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, assortative mating, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business logic, carbon footprint, carbon tax, classic study, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, congestion charging, congestion pricing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cross-subsidies, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, drive until you qualify, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, gentrification, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Induced demand, industrial cluster, Kowloon Walled City, low interest rates, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, Mercator projection, minimum wage unemployment, moral panic, New Urbanism, open borders, open immigration, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, secular stagnation, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, Silicon Valley, social distancing, superstar cities, tech worker, the built environment, Thomas Malthus, transit-oriented development, white flight, working-age population, Yogi Berra

But the Chinese are in a position to know, broadly speaking, what kinds of airplanes there is a robust market for. They also knew from the start that the 737 wing design, which was originally developed in the 1960s, is too low to the ground for the bigger, more fuel-efficient modern engines that Boeing tried to stick on the 737 MAX with infamous results. Today’s developing countries are aware of what a modern rich country looks like—and they even have the example of past catch-up success stories to look to, whereas the original industrializers were flying blind. Because the United States is already rich, it has trouble growing quickly, particularly in a sustained way.

The Last President of Europe: Emmanuel Macron's Race to Revive France and Save the World by William Drozdiak

Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, centre right, cloud computing, disinformation, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, reserve currency, Silicon Valley, Socratic dialogue, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, UNCLOS, working poor

China agreed to buy up to three hundred new Airbus passenger planes, nearly twice as many as China intended when the contract was first discussed during Macron’s visit to China. The aviation deal came as a huge boost to the fortunes of Airbus, a French-German-led consortium that had been lagging well behind its American rival Boeing until two fatal crashes resulted in the grounding of all 737 MAX planes, once Boeing’s most profitable aircraft. Xi also announced that China would lift its previous import restrictions on French beef, poultry, and cheese products. (China had banned imports of Brie, Camembert, and Roquefort because they contain bacteria that the Chinese thought were harmful, until the French proved otherwise.)

Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut by Nicholas Schmidle

Apollo 11, bitcoin, Boeing 737 MAX, Charles Lindbergh, Colonization of Mars, crew resource management, crewed spaceflight, D. B. Cooper, Dennis Tito, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, game design, Jeff Bezos, low earth orbit, Neil Armstrong, no-fly zone, Norman Mailer, Oklahoma City bombing, overview effect, private spaceflight, Ralph Waldo Emerson, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Scaled Composites, Silicon Valley, SpaceShipOne, Stephen Hawking, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, time dilation, trade route, twin studies, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, X Prize

The board hired an outsider, Dennis O’Donoghue, to review the program in search of weaknesses and vulnerabilities. O’Donoghue was a former marine and NASA test pilot. He had spent a decade at Boeing before retiring in Oregon to grow pinot noir grapes. He was the right guy at the right time for the job. Boeing’s 737 Max was having all kinds of problems—two recent accidents that killed hundreds of innocent people, grounding the fleet—and O’Donoghue, who had not conducted the safety review of that jet, felt somehow responsible; according to one Virgin employee who spoke with him, O’Donoghue felt confident that had he done the review, he would have caught the problem and those people would still be alive.

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case, Angus Deaton

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Boeing 737 MAX, business cycle, call centre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, company town, Corn Laws, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, crack epidemic, creative destruction, crony capitalism, declining real wages, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial engineering, fulfillment center, germ theory of disease, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Ken Thompson, Kenneth Arrow, labor-force participation, Les Trente Glorieuses, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, meritocracy, Mikhail Gorbachev, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pensions crisis, pill mill, randomized controlled trial, refrigerator car, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, working-age population, zero-sum game

Pain is also highly correlated with the risk of serious mental distress—a correlation that is twice as large for those without a four-year degree. As the summer fades, along with happiness and joy, “pain stalks in to plunder.” 8 Suicide, Drugs, and Alcohol IN 2017, 158,000 Americans died from what we call deaths of despair: suicide, overdoses, and alcoholic liver disease and cirrhosis. That is the equivalent of three full 737 MAXs falling out of the sky every day, with no survivors. In this chapter and the next, we look at the background of these deaths, at what is known about how and why they happen, and whether this can help us understand why they have risen so rapidly among less educated Americans in the last two decades.

The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats by Richard A. Clarke, Robert K. Knake

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, business cycle, business intelligence, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, computer vision, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DevOps, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Exxon Valdez, false flag, geopolitical risk, global village, immigration reform, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kubernetes, machine readable, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Morris worm, move fast and break things, Network effects, open borders, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, quantum cryptography, ransomware, Richard Thaler, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Schrödinger's Cat, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, software as a service, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, The future is already here, Tim Cook: Apple, undersea cable, unit 8200, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day

What the Stuxnet attack, the hack of the Saudi petrochemical facility, and many other incidents demonstrate is that what sensors think is happening may not always be accurate and what control boards show is the condition may not always reflect reality. When simple artificial intelligence applications are given too much autonomy to act with too little verification of the readings they are employing, bad things can happen on the Internet of Things. They can happen without malicious activity, as may have been the case in the crashes of the 737 Max aircrafts (where a bad sensor reading may have caused an AI program to take control of the aircraft without telling the pilot), or they can be the result of hacking, as in the case of the two Ukrainian electrical power grid blackouts (where the control boards were hacked to indicate all was well, even after the GRU hackers had thrown the breakers on transformers all across the region).

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America by Victor Davis Hanson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, bread and circuses, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, defund the police, deindustrialization, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, El Camino Real, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, George Floyd, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Nate Silver, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, old-boy network, Paris climate accords, Parler "social media", peak oil, Potemkin village, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, school choice, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, tech worker, Thomas L Friedman, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Or that the international containment and quarantine protocols of the World Health Organization (WHO) would make something like the coronavirus outbreak virtually impossible—or at least allow a united world to combat its global spread. Or that the world would shrink as tens of millions flew on identical American Boeing 737 MAX jets. History does not end in one something. It is erratic, unpredictable, and heads in lots of directions rather than following a single fated trajectory. Tribalisms, nations, empires, and globalizations grow and collapse—not unlike natural long-term, cyclical changes in climate. Or, as the Greeks believed, societies are like the endless natural phases of birth, aging, and decline of humans themselves.

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth

4chan, active measures, activist lawyer, air gap, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boeing 737 MAX, Brexit referendum, Brian Krebs, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commoditize, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Vincenzetti, defense in depth, digital rights, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, failed state, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, gender pay gap, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Hacker News, index card, information security, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Ken Thompson, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, lockdown, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Menlo Park, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral hazard, Morris worm, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, NSO Group, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, open borders, operational security, Parler "social media", pirate software, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, rolodex, Rubik’s Cube, Russian election interference, Sand Hill Road, Seymour Hersh, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, South China Sea, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, web application, WikiLeaks, zero day, Zimmermann PGP

If the next 9/11 struck tomorrow, the first question we would ask ourselves is the same question we asked some two decades ago: How did we miss this? But in the two decades since 9/11, the threat landscape has been dramatically overhauled. It is now arguably easier for a rogue actor or nation-state to sabotage the software embedded in the Boeing 737 Max than it is for terrorists to hijack planes and send them careening into buildings. Threats that were only hypotheticals a decade ago are now very real. Russia proved it can turn off power in the dead of winter. The same Russian hackers who switched off the safety locks at the Saudi petrochemical plant are now doing “digital drive-bys” of American targets.