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Andrew Tobias
Andrew Tobias

Money and Other Subjects

Author: A.T.

Vote Forward

April 1, 2022March 31, 2022

If Tom Paine’s words stirred you yesterday, join the party Tuesday night to write letters and help save democracy.

Vote Forward‘s platform helps you send letters to voters in key places.  You select from a menu of options . . . want to write to low-propensity voters in North Carolina? to Hispanic Democratic-leaning voters in Florida? . . . you adopt 5 or 10 or 20 voters . . . and then download and print out their letters, adding a brief handwritten note to each.

Do the work whenever it’s most convenient; the letters sit ready to be mailed on dates that are chosen for maximum impact.

In high turnout elections, it’s been estimated that generating just one net incremental vote can cost as much as $1,500 or more.  Yet in 2020, Vote Forward’s letter writing program generated net new votes at just $14 each — mainly because volunteers contribute their labor and the cost of postage and envelopes, so the organization’s small budget went a long way.

“We can rely on this $14 estimated cost per vote with some confidence,” writes one fellow donor I respect. “Vote Forward conducted a rigorous randomized controlled trial — registered in advance with the Center for Open Science — to measure their impact, and they retained the well respected Analyst Institute to review their results. Analyst Institute replicated and endorsed their conclusions. They observed that every 100 letters sent generated 0.8 votes that would otherwise not have been cast. (In lower salience elections, Vote Forward turnout effect has historically been even larger, between 1-3 percentage points.)  So the 17.6 million letters sent to prospective voters by over 200,00 volunteers yielded about 126,00 votes from an overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning population, mostly in key states like Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona with tight margins. Even if you think they’re making some aggressive assumptions — and I believe if anything they’re conservative — few programs are in the same cost effectiveness ball park.”

(VF’s creation story can be found here in The Atlantic.  Founder Scott Forman personally wrote 1,000 “please vote” letters to a curated list of Alabama voters ahead of the US Senate race that sent Doug Jones to DC instead of Roy Moore. It was so effective, he institutionalized the model.)



 

Tom Paine Redux

March 30, 2022

Yes, he wrote Common Sense.

But he also wrote The American Crisis, whence this quote (thank you, Jamie Raskin):


December 23, 1776

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER” and if being bound in that manner is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God. . . .


It goes on from there, but even that much seems relevant to Putin and the other murderous autocrats around the world trying to defeat democracy . . .

. . . as it does to Zelensky and NATO and Finland and Sweden and Switzerland and the Biden Administration, et al, trying to preserve it.

That Trump and Tucker Carlson and so many others are on the wrong side of this is appalling.

That so many here in the U.S. have bought Trump’s Big Lie . . . and so many in Russia have bought Putin’s . . . is chilling.

Democracy, so hard won, is worth preserving.

Attempting to overthrow the results of “the most secure election in American history” is an attempted coup, also known as treason.

Why are Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger the only Republicans troubled by this?

 

Jared / Newt / PRKR

March 29, 2022March 30, 2022

Some of this strikes me as too strong — would more masking and PPE really have saved “hundreds of thousands” of lives?

But wow.

Shame Cometh: The Jared Kushner Story.

(A follow-up to:  Boy Plunder: The Many Crimes of Jared Kushner.)



Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has found a new gig helping to scare old folks out of $20/month.

Harry Harrison: “Home Title Lock purports to be a plan that protects homeowners from having their homes stolen by ‘crafty’ con men.  It is being pitched on TV constantly as a crime that the FBI says is rampant, when in fact there are disclaimers in the ads themselves — in nearly illegible print — debunking any FBI endorsement.”

Don’t waste your money.

Even FOX agrees.



PRKR issued its 2021 results.  They may lose all their cases and ultimately have nothing to show for all their patents.  Or they may win some or all of them, despite the recent setback, and be worth a lot more than the current $25 million market valuation.  Having the happy gene — and a zillion shares of the stock — I’m betting on the latter.  (With, of course, money I can truly afford to lose.)

 

We Have A Terrific President

March 28, 2022

Thirty NATO countries unite behind democracy . . . plus lots more, like Sweden and Finland, Australia, South Korea, Japan . . . a clear line drawn between light and dark, freedom and tyranny.

We have a terrific president.  No longer in Putin’s pocket.  No longer in love with murderers.

Watch or read his Warsaw speech, in case you missed it.

His budget speech today, likewise.

I say again: I wish he were younger (I’m guessing he does, too) and desperately wish Manchin and Sinema were on board (ditto).  But we have a terrific president.



Other reading that may be of interest:

Trump Is Guilty of ‘Numerous’ Felonies, Prosecutor Who Resigned Says

Federal Judge Finds Trump Likely Committed Crimes Over 2020 Election

Leaked Kremlin Memo to Russian Media: It Is “Essential” to Feature Tucker Carlson

Putin, a Chekist — is “pure evil”



New unemployment claims drop to lowest level since 1969.

As I’ve suggested previously — Why RCN’s Customer Service May Determine America’s Future — we need to embrace automation to free up workers to do work that can’t be automated.


. . . My point is that the U.S. faces two looming challenges:

  • a huge unemployment crisis, as more and more jobs are filled more by robots and artificial intelligence (read Andrew Yang’s The War On Normal People for a sense of how quickly this trend may accelerate)
  • a huge labor shortage as we look to spend trillions on labor to revitalize our physical infrastructure, provide more day-care and free pre-K, more eldercare, and so much more

The sharp-eyed reader will note that each looming challenge solves the other.

Granted, my RCN friend in Oklahoma didn’t sound as though she could instantly pick up stakes once replaced with a “suspend/resume” toggle and start installing solar panels or de-leading water pipes.  But she sure sounded like someone who’d be great as a teacher or elder-care aide, or pretty much anything else that required a good heart, a good mind, and people skills.




And finally:

Should we throw ourselves into recession?

Paul London:  “Larry Summers wants to fight inflation by slowing the economy because he is afraid low unemployment will lead to a wage price spiral. I believe the US and others ought to keep their economies running hot and pour private and public investment into alternatives to oil and coal, as well as into relieving other bottlenecks that are the source of inflation. Please check out my argument.”



 

 

Wonderful. Uplifting.

March 26, 2022March 27, 2022

You may have seen the angry Republicans, like Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham, basically disgusted at the thought of this child-pornography loving, critical-race-theory-advocating, terrorist-defending woman (none of which, she is, of course) sitting on the Supreme Court.

To me, the contrast in basic human decency between Judge Jackson and those senators is stunning.

For further contrast, here is Judge Jackson through the eyes of Cory Booker.

Wonderful.  Uplifting.

Straight white Christian males — who have contributed so much to building our great country — should not feel threatened by everyone else.  The wider the talent pool, the greater our competitive strength and collective prosperity.  The richer our culture.

It’s not a zero sum game.

How proud they should feel to have founded a country that lurches toward an ever more nearly perfect union, with liberty and justice for all.  Even women.  Even Jews.  Even people of color.  Even gays.  Even everybody.


Mitch McConnell — who flouted the Constitution by refusing to allow Obama to appoint a Justice upon the death of Antonin Scalia and then flouted his own precedent by rushing through a Trump nominee upon the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg — all in order to pack the Court with right-wingers — has announced he will vote against Judge Jackson for failing to denounce Court packing.

As long-time readers know, I don’t want to pack the Court. I want to depoliticize it.  Un-pack it.



BONUS

Twelve predictions on the bright side of this nightmare.


. . . 12. A Russian defeat will make possible a “new birth of freedom,” and get us out of our funk about the declining state of global democracy. The spirit of 1989 will live on, thanks to a bunch of brave Ukrainians.




 

A Note To Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill

March 24, 2022March 23, 2022

He backs Putin’s war.

(This puts the Ukrainian branch of his church in a tough spot.)

He  might want to read this: 


Long-buried Vatican files reveal a new and shocking indictment of World War II’s Pope Pius XII: that in pursuit of absolute power he helped Adolf Hitler destroy German Catholic political opposition, betrayed the Jews of Europe, and sealed a deeply cynical pact with a 20th-century devil. . . .


Plus ça change . . .




PRKR

The judge threw out our big case against Qualcomm.  He wouldn’t let it come before a jury — which was most odd because he had ruled overwhelmingly in Parker’s favor in the claims construction hearing.

Years ago, a different judge did allow a case against Qualcomm to go to a jury — which awarded Parker more than $100 million — but then, months later, tossed out the jury’s award.

I don’t think this is the end of the PRKR story.  Parker says it will appeal.  And, at least in theory, damages continue to accrue.

 

Only We — Not Merrick Garland — Can Save Democracy

March 23, 2022March 23, 2022

Read it.  Weep.  Click here.


Not sure what stocks to pick?  Just buy an index fund — you’ll do better than 90%+ of everyone else and with much less effort.

As I’ve argued before, the DNC is like the index fund of political investing.

Per their report yesterday:

“The DNC has used our record fundraising success to make historic investments earlier in this midterm cycle than ever before. So far, the DNC has made almost $48 million in commitments and contributions to states for party-building and electoral programs, and we have fully funded over 400 staff on coordinated campaigns and state parties. In February, the DNC transferred $15 million to the DSCC and DCCC to help Democrats win across the country.  The DNC expanded its voter protection work with a $25 million investment targeted at voter education, voter protection, targeted voter registration, and technology to make voting more accessible and to fight back against Republicans’ unprecedented voter suppression efforts. We also announced a $5 million program to register voters, reintroducing an aspect of party building the DNC has not directly engaged in for numerous cycles.  Donors are enthusiastic and the DNC’s donor base is strong.”

So, again:


Read it.  Weep.  Click here.

I’ll see whatever you do, to say thanks.

 

“Have You MET My Former Party?”

March 21, 2022March 21, 2022

Bravest woman in the world.

Is her bet that Putin won’t imprison her, to prove dissent is allowed in Russia?  That makes zero sense when thousands face 15 years in prison simply for marching for peace.  Whatever she’s thinking: hurray for Marina Ovsyannikova!



Have you seen these 7 colorful minutes from Britain?  (Not mentioned: the Brexit vote that I suspect Putin helped push over the top.  Anything to dis-unite Europe.  Dis-unite NATO.  Dis-unite  Americans.)



Have you seen former GOP ad maker Rick Wilson’s prediction?  (“The GOP is about to come after Biden on Ukraine.”)


. . . Republican leaders are desperately trying to find a weak spot in Biden’s handling of this war. Even if there is unity for a moment, they will soon lay any mistake, or misstep, or outcome where the Russians prevail at Biden’s doorstep.

If that sounds cynical, I would ask: Have you met my former party?

It wants to play the most beloved game in the GOP playbook: that the Democrats are weak on defense. In my decades as a GOP ad maker and strategist, I made some pretty notorious ads about it. And I can tell you they work.

. . . GOP leaders don’t care about reality; their audience doesn’t care about the truth, and their political media apparatus always stays on message.

Trump bungled the 2020 negotiations ending the war in Afghanistan, freeing the Taliban at scale and setting a date certain for U.S. withdrawal. When Biden stuck with that commitment to exit, Republicans leveraged the inevitable chaos in Kabul into a cataclysmic political fable; if only the weak Democrats had held on for another year, victory was ensured.

Similarly, the terrorist attack on the Benghazi facilities in 2012 was another faux scandal-in-a-box because it gave Republicans — me included — a populist tale to be weaponized, embedded in the right’s mythos and deployed repeatedly. I distinctly recall being in a focus group that year and watching the pollster tease from participants how Benghazi could be used to offset the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden under Barack Obama and transformed into a political millstone for Hillary Clinton.

The go-to notion that “Democrats have endangered your family” in every international moment from Vietnam to 9/11 is not about altering Democratic foreign policy or improving our national security; it is about peeling off White, working-class (and lately, Hispanic working-class) voters and turning them into reliable Republicans. The idea that Democrats are overcommitted to diplomacy and international institutions became standard GOP messaging long ago.

. . . But let’s also be honest about the landscape: A not-so-secret faction of the GOP is rooting for the bad guys in this one. We’ve already heard that from the Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) wing of the party. Many Republican base voters are dictator-curious and believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is the savior of White, straight, law-and-order Christianity; the virus of Trumpian hyper-nationalism, with its constant call to reject alliances, diplomacy, smart power and multilateral action, has deeply infected the GOP.

Not long ago, the two parties worked together to face down, contain and repudiate Russian aggression and Moscow’s oppression of free peoples. From Truman to Eisenhower, from JFK to Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the Soviets respected American resolve. A few Republicans might yet hear the call to that unity in the face of Putin’s war, aware that Biden is leading the fight about the shape of the world in the coming century.

But if you think the majority of today’s GOP will leave politics at the water’s edge much longer, think again.


Nine Minutes That Could Change The World

March 18, 2022

Here is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s full appeal to the Russian people.

Could any nine minutes be more powerful?


As you’ve doubtless heard, Arnold is big in Russia — and, apparently, one of 22 people Putin follows on Twitter.


One of my fantasies years ago was a Constitutional amendment to allow Bill Clinton (or any other president) to run for a third term.  Paired — to make it bipartisan — with a provision to allow for presidents not born here (i.e., Arnold).  Wouldn’t that have been great?



So that’s plenty for today.  Have a great weekend.




If you do have more time, here are two additional items on Ukraine . . .

. . . from two different Josephs I have investments with . . .

. . . the second of whom concludes with an interesting observation about (what else?) WheelTug.




Trusty.care CEO Joseph Schneier writes:


As many of you know, I spent my high school years in Ukraine, primarily in Odessa. My family was bringing in medical supplies and setting up a synagogue. Ukraine became home, and it was a wild time to be there. Women were wearing ball gowns to McDonalds, but in Odessa we were still shopping with an abacus. It was a time that felt like right before the sun is rising, a country that was finding its way. For those of you that know Ukraine, Odessa was a free trade zone. A city known for laughter and the Black Sea. I went on to marry a Muscovite and my two older children are Russian citizens so needless to say, the brutality of this moment is hitting close to home. It is just heartbreaking. Like many of you,  I have been looking for somewhere to donate to where I would know the funds were getting to those in need.

A dear friend has organized groups traveling to Warsaw weekly to bring refugees to Germany. This is a grassroots team that has galvanized to meet the moment.  It is so hard to tell what will make a difference, but I know for certain that these people are doing real work that is needed and could do more with more funds.

Her message:


We are focusing on picking up Ukrainian refugees from Warsaw and bringing them to Western and South-Western Germany, where they already have someone waiting for them. Even though there are free train tickets for Ukrainians in Poland and in Germany at the moment, the trains are often sold out, and such trips often involve navigating several transfers to the final destination.

The refugees we are driving are often working-class people, they usually have no language skills other than Russian and Ukrainian, no foreign travel experience, sometimes not even a passport (just a Ukrainian ID document), and are simply too overwhelmed to know what exactly to do. Many are mothers with children, pregnant women, teenagers, and elderly women. All the men age 18-60 are drafted under the martial law signed by Zelensky, so one can imagine the level of distress these women are under.

Here is the breakdown of approximate costs for each trip:

  • 500 euros van rental
  • 400 in gas
  • 120 euros for driver lodging and van parking in Warsaw
  • 100-1000 euros in lodging costs for the refugees, before pickup, or on drop-off, if they continue their journey further
  • 100 euros per person or per family in cash, if we are dropping them overnight – for dinner at hotel and other incidentals
  • 50 euros for food and incidentals while on the road both driver and refugees themselves

The more funds we can collect, the more trips we can make. At the end of it all, if we still have funds left, we will distribute the funds to the refugees we have brought over or an organization helping with the refugees.

Please feel free to donate any amount via Venmo, Wise, or Paypal in USD – all accounts are linked to roudakova@gmail.com If Venmo asks for it, the last 4 digits of the phone linked to the account are 7245.

I apologize in advance if I am not able to send a thank you note to every donor right away with the confirmation that we have received the funds.

If you are worried if your funds have made it, drop me an email at roudakova@gmail.com and I’ll respond more quickly.

We have been, and will continue to document every trip on Facebook. If you would like to be included in an email message at the end of this project, where we will send out a final report with full donation and spending amounts, just let me know.

Thank you enormously!

Natalia Roudakova, PhD

Author of Losing Pravda: Ethics and the Press in Post-Truth Russia

Twitter: @roudakova





WheelTug Quality Assurance & Systems Manager Joseph Cox writes:

Deep Dive – Incentivizing Quality

In January 1937, the USSR commissioned a census. It was the first census conducted since 1926. The census was not intended for public dissemination. Instead, it was developed purely for leadership decision-making purposes. When the data was collected and reported, it showed a massive level of mortality due to the famines of 1932-3. The data, while accurate, was unacceptable. As a result, all of the statisticians involved with the project were arrested and executed. Again, the data was never intended for public consumption. The leadership themselves could not allow themselves to be exposed to data that contradicted what they wanted to hear.

The 1937 census was a powerful illustration of the most corrosive effects of autocratic management: the loss of real-world feedback in the service of effectively closed-loop management ambition.

There are many other examples of this effect. In periods leading up to government personnel decisions in Chinese provinces, GDP figures are routinely inflated — when measured against harder to fudge information such as electricity and rail car usage. In fact, when comparing official GDP vs. nighttime electric light visibility, researchers have discovered a clear pattern: the more autocratic the government, the higher the deviation between GDP growth and the observable economic signal of electric light usage. In fact, authoritarian regimes inflate their GDP growth by a factor of 15 to 30%. Normally, this inflation is seen as a side effect of regimes wanting to maintain their own legitimacy. Sort of like Bernie Madoff reporting consistent earnings growth to keep clients.

But there is another possible reality, hinted at again by the 1937 census. There is the possibility that bad data is produced because the leadership themselves want to hear it. As a leader, largely blind to what is happening far below you, you want to reward the successful. Top-line data becomes a means of doing exactly this. Data is fudged in the service of ambition. In the absence of other feedback mechanisms (whether through a truly free press, elections, or market acceptance) that data metastasizes into a cancer that can threaten an entire state apparatus.

I believe we are seeing a side effect of this in the Ukraine war. Russian equipment is proving to be far less effective than almost everybody believed possible prior to the conflict. Russia had spent heavily on modernization and was considered to have the second-most powerful conventional military in the world — ahead of China. And yet they are facing tremendous problems in Ukraine. Compare their loss of thousands of soldiers and the verified loss of hundreds of tanks and even dozens of aircraft with the U.S. invasion of Iraq. During the conventional part of those conflicts, the US lost very few soldiers and almost no equipment.

So, what has gone wrong for Russia?

There are many answers to this question, from weather to logistics. As an aerospace quality manager, I want to focus on one particular answer: autocratic quality management.

Setting aside any justifications for this conflict, Vladimir Putin had to weigh the possible outcomes of the decision to go to war. I imagine there were three fundamental beliefs that drove his decision-making:

1) He had far superior military technology.

2) He had a truly professional army.

3) He had broad support from Russian speakers in Ukraine — and perhaps even from Ukrainians fed up with their own incompetent government (though that apparent incompetence might actually have reflected a far more functional system built on the exposure of faults — like a somewhat free press).

All three statements could have been mirrored by US planners prior to the second Iraq War. Except that in the US case, the first two would have been true. In Russia’s case, none have been conclusively borne out.

So, what went wrong? One possible answer is that the Russian leadership was effectively self-deceived. They succeeded at deceiving everybody else, too. Everybody knew the Russian military was superior in every way. This sort of self-deception has been endemic in Russian history. Certainly, we can look at Stalin. But Czar Nicholas II believed he could crush the Japanese army and navy. He believed he was destined, arguably as G-d’s chosen bulwark against the Yellow Peril, to do so. Bad data (based on a show army that marched impressively with shiny weapons) probably played a role. However, we don’t need to go all the way back to Stalin. Two of the most frightening Soviet fighter jet programs were similarly cursed.

The MIG-25 so frightened the US that they forced a complete re-engineering of the F-15. The MiG had been observed flying over Israel during the 1973 war at 63,000 feet and up to Mach 3.2. The U.S. spent $1.1 billion (real money in those days) to counteract the dreaded Foxbat. In fact, the aircraft’s performance was almost laughable. Effective combat range was 300 kilometers. And those very scary Israeli runs? They actually destroyed the engines, which had to be swapped out afterward. The whole aircraft was window dressing. It is quite possible the senior leadership of the USSR believed some of what the West did.

In a way, the MiG-29 was even more revealing. It performed wonderfully in some ways, particularly mechanically. But the avionics were woeful. The Soviet war-fighting methodology was top-down and so MiG-29 pilots weren’t given the systems necessary to make decisions on their own. Targets had to be effectively called out for them by radar operators. The US was considering using its own stock of M-G-29s in Kosovo but decided against it because they were more trouble than they were worth.

Both aircraft looked almost impossibly good. Senior management could easily believe they were. On parade and demonstration, they were stars. Who would think they needed to dig deep down and actually witness the full-scope of performance? It can be hard to even understand where to start? Are you going to fly alongside to see range? How are you going to assess avionics? The leadership is blind to the reality due to a simple truth: the higher you climb, the less detail you know. If you are in a culture that encourages lying upwards, the national leadership can be presented with a completely inaccurate picture.

Yes, these are old aircraft. The MiG-25 was introduced in 1970 and the MiG-29 in 1982. Then again, the F-15 was introduced in 1972 and the F-16 in 1974. It is not hard to imagine that the management problems have persisted, just as some of the aircraft have.

Of course, design is only one stage in which quality can have an impact. The same sorts of problems can persist through manufacturing, maintenance, and usage (e.g., actual fighting). American gun enthusiasts have long praised the survivability of the AK-47 and its elegant simplicity. The reality is that the gun had to be elegant and simple because manufacturers and soldiers were simply not dependable!

So, how do Western aerospace and military equipment avoid these problems? Why have Javelin missiles worked? Why did the US military so completely overwhelm Saddam’s tanks and artillery? How can Israel routinely intercept Iranian drones while Iran and Russia seem incapable of dealing with Israeli – and even Turkish – drones? Just yesterday, several hundred Iranian drones were apparently destroyed by three Israeli drones, while last week two Iranian drones were downed on their way to Gaza.

The answers, again, have to do with quality and culture. Western military contractors, for all that their cost structures are routinely mocked, approach quality in a fundamentally different way than the Russians do. Israelis have yet another path, which is also effective.

The modern American quality process has its genesis in World War II. During the early 1940s, Bell Labs came up with a “systems engineering” practice in order to connect military planning with research and development decisions. RAND (a contraction of “Research ANd Development”) was founded as a result. It promulgated systems engineering processes. A key part of it is often represented via the graphical “V-model”. You start with a rigorous project definition, including extensive validation of requirements. Sometimes the top-level requirement process is ridiculous (see The Pentagon Wars).

But design is only a small part of the actual process. Validation of requirements, and then their verification (“are the requirements met?”), dominate the process. You combine this with an audit of the process itself, as well as continual risk assessments and change controls, and you can produce highly complex quality products. Sure, you’ll often overshoot your budget in surprising ways – but you will produce a quality product. Unless the management process is undermined by senior leadership (e.g., 737MAX), it will produce quality.

The Israeli (and SpaceX) process is a little different. Instead of vast development projects, their method is more agile-like. Small iterative steps are taken with quality verified at each stage. This process allows for failures; but keeps them within scope. SpaceX blows up lots of rockets, but rarely with actual payloads. There have been two or three payload failures since 2010 (one possible failure is classified). Only 1.4% of their actual payloads have suffered partial or complete failures. The agile-like learning process has kept the failure impacts largely within the testing environment. The agile-learning process again emphasizes learning and improvement.

In both of these approaches, especially within the aerospace industry itself, there is a further incentive to quality. If there are failures (for example, errors made by a pilot), data is collected, root causes are analyzed, and changes in process are rolled out. What is not carried out is punishment. Unless there was actual malfeasance, nobody is punished. This encourages the sharing of data and enables a culture of continuous improvement. There is no 1937.

Contrast that with the Russian space program: In 2016, the Planetary Society reported that Russia had 15 launch failures from 2011 to 2016 ranging from explosions of satellite-ferrying rockets to placing satellites in the wrong orbits. There were 207 launches for a failure rate of 7.2% – five times as high as SpaceX. As a result of one of these failures, the Russian government put three managers on trial due to mishandling a change request. Numerous others were named and shamed. This approach fails to identify process issues while encouraging the falsification of data through an organization. “Cover Your A–” becomes far more important than trying to figure out what went wrong, and how to do it better.

For its part, Israel has rolled out missile defense not in one great leap forward but through a process of constant upgrades. Getting something in the field fast was worth absorbing the resulting imperfections (the greatest of which has been a high rate of cancer among operators). The general principle has been: the systems being built are better than anything else out there and they will meet more and more requirements soon. This process also yields quality. Not through an overwhelming V-model, but through iterative and continual test and improvement. The tolerance for error inherent in this approach can be very effective for design. However, it is not great for manufacturing (see Tesla’s somewhat-infamous build-quality). Israel manufactures actual Iron Dome interceptors in the US for a reason.

The Russians have a method of minimizing their own quality issues. Go to the Boeing Museum and you’ll see a space shuttle next to another launch vehicle, the Soyuz. The Soyuz was extremely simple and got the job done. The other was far more complex (disastrously so). The Americans developed the wrong requirements, while the Russians kept their requirements tightly defined and thus had a human launch system that far outlasted the space shuttle. (Almost poetically, regarding quality problems, the only Russian space shuttle was destroyed in a snowstorm in 2002 when its hanger collapsed due to poor maintenance. Sadly, a number of staff were also killed.)

The problem is that there are limits to simplicity when dealing with highly complex avionics, active protection-systems for tanks, anti-aircraft interceptor systems, and the like. In these cases, there is no simple solution and so elegant engineering and tight requirements aren’t enough for an effective piece of hardware. This is especially true when headline performance (speed, rate of fire, radar range) is treated as more important than meeting real-world requirements. As with the fall of the USSR, a grand facade was exposed. $40,000 Javelin missiles are routinely taking out $2 million tanks while $1 million Turkish drones can destroy a $50 million anti-aircraft system – and then repeat the performance again and again. Yes, the Russian method is faster and cheaper. But if the equipment doesn’t end up working – especially when going up against better-designed and manufactured systems – then it is entirely useless.

Looking at the conflict through a systems quality lens, it is entirely possible that Russian failures may well be centered on problems of management and culture. Only good news flows uphill and for all the famous Russian bureaucracy, the essence of systems engineering had not been internalized into the design, manufacturing, training, maintenance or deployment of military forces. The result is a “paperwork army”. A paperwork army Putin himself could have thought was far more capable than it actually was. Culture begets process which begets culture. But if only good news is rewarded, the very possibility of a positive cycle is short-circuited.

We may be witnessing the result of exactly that in Ukraine.

In the longer term, the impact of autocracy on quality – particularly of complex systems – may well end up undermining other autocratic geopolitical players.

One can, at least, hope this will be the case.


What about WheelTug? How do WE deal with quality challenges? WheelTug, despite being small, faces a hybrid situation. WheelTug is modifying highly complex commercial aircraft. While our system has been designed to be simple in a Russia-like model, the systems we interface with are incredibly complex. Because we don’t control those systems, we can’t just try things out, SpaceX style. In addition, due to the lives at stake with every flight, the occasional error cannot be allowed. We can’t ‘sometimes’ blow up on the launch pad or lose 1% of payloads. This is why WheelTug has embraced the classic V-model process. We can’t be ‘agile.’ Nonetheless, perfect systems don’t simply burst into being. Our process development is agile. Every time we adopt a new process – even one as simple as receiving, logging and storing goods – we go through a learning process. We iterate through execution, audit and process repairs. We fix past mistakes. And we improve – all the while ensuring that nothing escapes our quality process that does not meet requirements.

What about bullsh-t flowing uphill? Here, WheelTug’s size is a tremendous advantage. All our internal correspondence is shared with the CEO and a few other observers (myself included). There is a firehose of information that allows us to at least encounter the details. There is an opportunity to spot failures in the gears of the organization. For that same reason, we also share an enormous amount of information with our shareholders. Quality processes can effectively be combined with in-depth insight from the very top of the organization, and beyond. Is it perfect? No. But it improves continually, and we are extremely confident our systems will never pose a threat to aircraft or passengers.

The baseline of our culture is further established by our termination policies. WheelTug has fired people and separated from partners for failing to be transparent or trying to paper over errors. What WheelTug doesn’t do is fire people or partners for making mistakes. Management needs to know about mistakes and proper reporting, sharing and follow up is a key part of the quality process and culture.

In true Western defense contractor style, WheelTug is over-budget. We have taken longer to get where we are than we expected. But when we get there, we will have a world-beating product and one that airlines around the world will be able to confidently adopt.

—

Joseph Cox lives in Modiin, Israel and has written 11 books. For a broader (and funnier) look at Joseph’s approach to the world, read A Multi Colored Coat.


Will we ever get there?

I don’t know.

But if not, it won’t be for lack of trying.

 

Of Hummingbirds And Switchblades

March 17, 2022March 19, 2022

Biden Answered The 3AM Call


. . . It’s a quietly bravura performance—and it’s hard to imagine that any of Biden’s rivals from the last election, not just Donald Trump but also the Democrats, could have come close to matching it. If anything, it is reminiscent of how George H. W. Bush led the world through the end of the Cold War, a similarly chaotic moment that could have easily exploded into nuclear conflict. In the middle of Joe Biden’s 3 a.m. call, I find myself grateful that he’s the one answering the phone.


Me, too.



Former G.O.P. Chair on His Party’s Leader


. . . I’m certain that remaining silent is the wrong course for me, and for all of my fellow citizens regardless of political party.


And so he speaks out, in a most compelling way.



I own half of a “boutique digital agency” in Kyiv.  (Long story.)

Last month, my co-owner arranged for a safe house out in the countryside.

Last week, I offered to put up employees here.


I’ve passed on your offer.  Believe me, if there were no obstacles you’d have almost everyone (and their extended families) at your door tomorrow.

But — all of our male employees are between 18-60 and therefore not allowed to leave the country. Of our four female employees, one can’t leave Kyiv because she has so many pets.  The others have moved to Budapest, Poland and Romania.  On top of that, there’s no functioning U.S. consulate in Ukraine to grant visas. And although Europe has accepted close to three million Ukrainians, the U.S. has taken in fewer than 1,000. Some are even showing up at the Mexican border.

The good news is that our project manager was able to leave Mariupol yesterday in a humanitarian convoy. His apartment was hit earlier in the fighting and he spent the last 10 days in the basement of his apartment  building while the city was encircled and bombed. He texted us that us he would have been shot of he went outside. Bodies of civilians and soldiers lay in the streets.  And he kept a machete to defend his food supply.

He can’t travel to our safe house but is on his way to Odessa to stay with a friend.

As a company, we are still functioning and covering our costs, but the work is slower and has more errors than usual.

I saw a hummingbird outside my house on the weekend.  Took that as a good omen.


Between that hummingbird, my happy gene, Switchblades, and common sense (including the common sense one hopes China will display), I like to think a negotiated settlement could be near.

Ukraine does seem to be sort of winning — if such a nightmare can in any sense be called a win.

It can’t hurt to hope.



Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

 

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