Metallurgist Admits Faking Steel-Test Results For US Navy Subs (miamiherald.com) 196
schwit1 shares a report from the Miami Herald: A metallurgist in Washington state pleaded guilty to fraud Monday after she spent decades faking the results of strength tests on steel that was being used to make U.S. Navy submarines. Elaine Marie Thomas, 67, of Auburn, Washington, was the director of metallurgy at a foundry in Tacoma that supplied steel castings used by Navy contractors Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding to make submarine hulls. From 1985 through 2017, Thomas falsified the results of strength and toughness tests for at least 240 productions of steel -- about half the steel the foundry produced for the Navy, according to her plea agreement, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma. The tests were intended to show that the steel would not fail in a collision or in certain "wartime scenarios," the Justice Department said.
There was no allegation that any submarine hulls failed, but authorities said the Navy had incurred increased costs and maintenance to ensure they remain seaworthy. The government did not disclose which subs were affected. Thomas faces up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine when she is sentenced in February. However, the Justice Department said it would recommend a prison term at the low end of whatever the court determines is the standard sentencing range in her case. [...] Thomas' conduct came to light in 2017, when a metallurgist being groomed to replace her noticed suspicious test results and alerted their company, Kansas City-based Bradken Inc., which acquired the foundry in 2008. Bradken fired Thomas and initially disclosed its findings to the Navy, but then wrongfully suggested that the discrepancies were not the result of fraud. That hindered the Navy's investigation into the scope of the problem as well as its efforts to remediate the risks to its sailors, prosecutors said. In June 2020, the company agreed to pay $10.9 million in a deferred-prosecution agreement.
There was no allegation that any submarine hulls failed, but authorities said the Navy had incurred increased costs and maintenance to ensure they remain seaworthy. The government did not disclose which subs were affected. Thomas faces up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine when she is sentenced in February. However, the Justice Department said it would recommend a prison term at the low end of whatever the court determines is the standard sentencing range in her case. [...] Thomas' conduct came to light in 2017, when a metallurgist being groomed to replace her noticed suspicious test results and alerted their company, Kansas City-based Bradken Inc., which acquired the foundry in 2008. Bradken fired Thomas and initially disclosed its findings to the Navy, but then wrongfully suggested that the discrepancies were not the result of fraud. That hindered the Navy's investigation into the scope of the problem as well as its efforts to remediate the risks to its sailors, prosecutors said. In June 2020, the company agreed to pay $10.9 million in a deferred-prosecution agreement.
Only 10 years? (Score:4)
Re: Only 10 years? (Score:2)
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"she changed the tests to passing grades because she thought it was “stupid” that the Navy required the tests to be conducted at negative-100 degrees Fahrenheit (negative-73.3 degrees Celsius)."
She doesn't understand those temperatures are important when the rift opens.
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Re:Only 10 years? (Score:4, Informative)
sabotage can get death by firing squad ucjm (Score:3)
Improper hazarding of vessel or aircraft.
Espionage
Aiding the enemy
I remember being told a story (Score:5, Interesting)
About a precision shaft angle encoder manufacturer in the 80s or 70s. It was BEI or Itek or after they merged...anyway...
These things measure shaft angles to an accuracy of half a second of arc and they're non-contact optical encoders. Think of the little encoder wheels in an old timey ball mouse, but about the size of a frisbee and very precisely machined.
So anyway, back before LED light sources, these things had filament lamps to shine through the code wheel. And in order to be as accurate as advertised the illumination from the filament has to be flat and uniform so that squiggles or hot spots in the filaments don't mess up the precision and accuracy of the very accurately machined machined codewheels and photocell baffles.
Apparently, their quality assurance for selecting these lamps was *one guy* with magic eyeballs who would put the lamp into an overhead projector and eyeball the resulting light field for uniformity and stability. No instrumentation, no backup, just one guy's say-so.
The company, which used to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for angle encoders delivered to telescopes on top of Mauna Kea and to NASA isn't around anymore.
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You can find people with that kind of skill today, but I think only in Germany and Japan.
Re: I remember being told a story (Score:2)
I remember watching something on the Discovery Channel or the History Channel, back when it aired such material, about a Japanese swordsmith who eyeballed the color of the flame in his furnace for 72 hours straight to make sure he was heating his steel to the correct temperature.
It's both awe-inspiring and absolutely appalling. Yeah the dude has balls to stay up staring into a fire that long for the sake of quality. But he ain't beating no thermostat that's been around since the thermometer was invented. An
Re: I remember being told a story (Score:4, Informative)
But he ain't beating no thermostat that's been around since the thermometer was invented.
That is not the only point. It is oxygen level / carbon monoxide that influences the colour of the flame.
And it's a damned lie to say he could.
And why would anyone say that?
He makes traditional sword. You can not use a thermometer for that, or it is no longer a traditional sword
The concept of tradition is something you grasp right?
Or do you grasp the difference between:
a) fraud, selling a non traditional sword as a traditional
b) money, a traditional forged sword costs $40,000 upward. A fake one, and fake starts with using a thermostat, or hammering it with pneumatic hammers: start at $500 - depending how much fake you put into it. A somewhat traditional one, goes from $2,500 - $3,000 upward, but usually is far below $10,000
He probably would lose even his license if he switched to a thermostat. So no idea where you got this meme from, when it is not about claiming he is better than a thermostat. On the other hand: an oven is huge. Perhaps at the spot where it is important for him: he is indeed better.
P.S.
I practice martial arts where such swords are involved, and I'm a fan of Japanese Art, swords crafting is one of those arts.
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In the case of traditional Japanese swords "nihonto" it has to be that way for a few reasons, none of them practical or engineering. The first is because of the way weapons are regulated in Japan its difficult to own really anything. They don't have a 2nd amendment. But katana have a special exemption in the law because they are considered significant to the Japanese cultural identity. But to prevent the market from being flooded by swords manufactured by modern processes which have no "cultural" or "artist
Re: I remember being told a story (Score:2)
Yeah. But you couldn't get white lightbulbs. Because of the War. All they had was those big ugly yellow ones.
Dry Labbing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dry Labbing (Score:5, Informative)
When confronted with the doctored results, Thomas told investigators, “Yeah, that looks bad,” the Justice Department said. She suggested that in some cases she changed the tests to passing grades because she thought it was “stupid” that the Navy required the tests to be conducted at negative-100 degrees Fahrenheit (negative-73.3 degrees Celsius).
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Lol, that's one cold ocean! One now wonders if that spec might get raised up somewhat in the not too distant future.
Re:Dry Labbing (Score:5, Interesting)
While it is true that many of the so-called requirements for MilSpec are indeed idiotic, it doesn't change the fact that they are requirements, so falsifying them is a HUGE error of judgement. It's just safer to assume they exist for a reason, even if the reason is beyond your comprehension.
Part of the problem is that not knowing all the background decisions that went into making the spec., it is simply dangerous to assume they are nonsense. Even very smart people get caught up in this fallacy, much to their demise.
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Doesn't sound like Dry Labbing, sounds more that she performed the tests but changed the results of some of them when she thought that the requirements where "stupid"
When confronted with the doctored results, Thomas told investigators, “Yeah, that looks bad,” the Justice Department said. She suggested that in some cases she changed the tests to passing grades because she thought it was “stupid” that the Navy required the tests to be conducted at negative-100 degrees Fahrenheit (negative-73.3 degrees Celsius).
Regardless of her intent, we will see just how critical this is, if and when they recall and rebuild, submarines.
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Regardless of her intent, we will see just how critical this is, if and when they recall and rebuild, submarines.
Is that a standard practice? I would have imagined that they would build new ones because the tech would have advanced since the last time, and retrofits are nearly always suboptimal in at least one way.
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Maybe it was - but assuming she didn't know the application for the steel, maybe it wasn't. There are use cases at -100F (northern Greenland can get almost that col), or maybe the -100F test had intentional safety factor in it.
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Submarines like to surface. Especially through the ice to make fancy pictures.
As the outer hull as far as I can tell from pictures: is simple steel. It cools out to ambient temperature more or less instantly.
Now imagine an emergency dive to 300 feet, that is 100m, and that means pressure is 10bar, with a hull so cold that it snaps because of the swift change in temperature.
That would be awful.
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It shouldn't cool to ambient temperature because the bottom half of the submarine is still in the water.
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Well, then lets say: we have a steep temperature gradient from the water line to the top :P
Especially the tower. As you regularly can see Subs in harbours with snow on top, the temperature is certainly below the water temperature.
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Not necessarily because salt water has a lower freeze point
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Not necessarily because salt water has a lower freeze point
So?
So there is literally no seawater that would necessitate testing the metal at such temperatures. What about ice? Its temperature is 32 ÂF, actually warmer than the coldest seawater measured. So there is no ice that would necessitate testing the metal at those temperatures either. "The lowest officially recorded tempera [wikipedia.org]
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That was actually my point.
Snow on top of the submarine doesn't mean that it is below freezing point of salt water.
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Snow on top of the submarine doesn't mean that it is below freezing point of salt water.
Temperature below freezing point of salt water, what would be the problem? I think the problem is that very cold metal can become brittle. And they obviously wanted to test that the material is not to brittle for the intended purpose. I doubt it has anything to do with the freezing point of salty water.
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And the inside is at room temperature. Hopefully.
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"It cools out to ambient temperature more or less instantly"
If it cools so quickly to ambient temperature, it will revert even quicker to sea temperature when submerging.
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If it cools so quickly to ambient temperature, it will revert even quicker to sea temperature when submerging.
Yes. And that exactly is the problem. The hull jumps from extreme cold to moderate cold - aka, quite warm.
Re:Dry Labbing (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't her privileged ass greater than 400 ft underwater under the arctic ice cap either. It's not her call as to what is and is not stupid.
Fracture toughness is not to be taken lightly. My former employer had to build things special just for Butte MT. Regular steel gets brittle when it's cold. And welds can be even worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That's the picture that launched my post-Navy education and career.
And by the way, if you have to surface though the ice in winter, the air temperature, and therefore at least the sail could be -70 F.
Sounds fishy (Score:5, Interesting)
So according to the story a single employee is solely responsible for testing and certifying steel, which is going to be used for the US nuclear submarines' hulls and nobody checks it, no random additional tests, no supervision, nobody noticed for 10 years, was there any other human being involved in such important tests - really?
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... sorry, not 10, but for more then 40 years not other human being was ever involved in doing these important tests to notice anything wrong?
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They might have checked and steel came with ok result, although likely different in detail then faked data - but who would normally compare specific result between different passing tests? The problem here is not a production method and crappy output, but nonexistent QA - unless something went wrong any random sample should easily pass the requirements. Finding this random bad batch with random additional tests is pretty unlikely.
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... sorry, not 10, but for more then 40 years not other human being was ever involved in doing these important tests to notice anything wrong?
Uh, HOW many submarines were built and deployed under her "specs"?
HOW many are still in use, like right now?
I wouldn't exactly say "not other human being was ever involved" here...sounds like we've literally been doing live field validation, for near four decades. So here's a question after 40 years; Is there anything wrong? One would think everything from minor design annoyances to massive disasters would have surfaced by now.
Re:Sounds fishy (Score:5, Interesting)
No no no no. It was a single ISO9001 certified employee. The paperwork is what makes all the difference. /s
3 weeks ago I received a 304 SS valve body. We PMI'd it on site and it was 304 SS. We compared it to the order and it was 304 SS. All good right? Well the vendor material traceability certificate said 316L SS but otherwise had all correct details of the valve. We literally paid for something which according to the process should have failed and never been delivered to the customer, except the process was so wrong that we actually got the right part with the wrong documentation. There were 3 signatures on the certificate.
That's the kind of shit you deal with. And I'm happy to name and shame Emerson here, a large American mega provider to industry, not some fly by night workshop.
Re:Sounds fishy (Score:4, Insightful)
The point about ISO9001 is not to improve quality. It is to have a paperwork trail to make sure the right person gets fired when there is a cock-up. Welcome to the modern world, where we spend more money blaming people for problems than we do actually solving problems.
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1. Quality as fitness for purpose.
2. Quality as value for money.
3. Quality as excellence.
4. Quality as consistency.
This is why, for example, two people can both look at an iPhone 13 pro and one might say, this is high quality (thinking quality as excellence) while the other might say this is low quality (thinking value for money). And they can both be right.
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You seem to think high quality means good. High quality means something is consistent, not good or bad.
Don't knock consistency. It makes my life as an engineer much easier if I know what performance to expect out of the components I use. Some of the components I use are crappy in some respects, and I could get better performance if I bought a more expensive product. But as long as the crappy parameters are defined and reliable, then I get the job done, at a reasonable cost.
When it comes to more important stuff such as beer, I would not apply such pragmatic criteria of quality. I have brewed some excellent be
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It's really not THAT surprising. (Score:2)
I mean, we just went through that whole thing where Facebook and other sites were trying to ban people from screaming, "Stop the steel!" (Oh, wait....)
What? (Score:2)
Thomas faces up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine ...
that's all?
considering how many Navy service personnel are being put at risk and the very real possibility that some of those subs using lower grade steel may be nuclear powered and a hull failure could be a minor environmental disaster, plus the factor that the affected subs will need to be replaced sooner than expected at a huge expense to the taxpayers I would have hoped her sentence would be a lot heavier.
$10.9 Million fine... (Score:2)
Swell, so they paid for the paperwork man-hours necessary to straighten it all out.
Well that was AUKUSward... (Score:4, Funny)
Looking at the fines, fraud pays well (Score:2)
I mean, a 10M for fine for the company? That is ridiculous.
Now, I wonder. Did these people also make steel for nuclear reactors?
This isn't a problem with a person, it's... (Score:4, Insightful)
...a problem with a system.
Any rule set for which there is critical life-ending consequences if not followed, must be redundant in its application in some way (multiple tests or multiple eyes on a single test).
Why was this test not redundant? It would have cost more money or time.
Why did cost win out over safety? Profit and speed was valued more than human life as codified into the rule-set, by the foundry and the Navy.
Why the company would behave this way is clear; profit motive.
Why would the Navy failed to have implemented rule for redundancy? I do not see them as naive. To me the answer is almost certainly some form of capitalist influence on the process.
Wars are capitalist in nature. So long as much of the production of war machines is ultimately geared toward the end goal of giving capitalists more money and power, we will always have more wars and war-footing, with war machines made with maximum grift by the wealthy.
This woman's career was allowed to exist, and it benefitted the bottom line of the owners of the foundry for decades, for a dollar value far more than the cost of the fine.
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Re:She's a patriot (Score:4, Insightful)
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She's a Capitalist (Score:3)
This is Capitalist thinking. Always do the least for maximum gain. This is what the American experiment is all about. And don't you hate it when bad things happen. Well, don't use pure capitalism. Give people more secure jobs and Universal Income. Then this sort of thing won't happen (as much).
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How do sane civilizations defend themselves?
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How do sane civilizations defend themselves?
By sharing technology with their neighbors so that they don't need to invade other nations to meet their needs.
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The first civilizations had to defend themselves from their neighbors. Wealthy city states with large tracts of arable land and plentiful wealth and resources either had means of defense, or they fell. The Sumerian city states, for instance were under constant threat from surrounding barbarian peoples, and some of the first standing armies in human history were ultimately needed to protect the cities, the irrigation systems and the populations outside the city walls.
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The world includes leaders and future leaders who believe conquest for personal profit and power is a sane activity (and it actually is sane if there are no negative repercussions such as a few submarine launched nuclear warheads exploding in your immediate vicinity).
Do you think Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-un, and whatever nutjobs are ruling Iran or Afghanistan today have no desire for conquest and that if the rest of the world was defenseless, they wouldn't take advantage of that? I guess in the best case there w
Re: She's a patriot (Score:2)
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Why is it that the US and Europe get to do all the conquering, while the rest of the world gets conquered simply for existing with resources the US and Europe want.
That's a kind of limited point of view and clearly unaware of how Tibetan's have been conquered by Chinese people, Georgians by Russians, Afghans by Pakistanis, Kurds by Turks, various people by Indonesians, Biafrans by Nigerians and so on. You shouldn't just limit yourself to nation state things. Marsh Arabs suffered honorifically under attack from other Iraqis. Yemenis are suffering under attack from other Yemenis with Saudi-Arabian and Iranian backing.
If we go back just a little in history, Europeans
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Who do sane civilizations need to defend themselves from?
People who attack them.
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Valid point.
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"and those were barely inhabited remote islands"
I'm sure the Hawaiians have a different take on that.
"Americas actual defense "needs" are near minuscule"
You don't really understand the concept of defense do you. Your logic is "I'm not getting wet holding up this umbrella so therefor I don't need it".
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Christ you're fucking naive. You think Japan wouldn't have invaded Hawaii given the chance? Why do you think they took out that fleet, for a laugh? And as for being surrounded by "friendly nations", you ever looked at a map? I suggest you google the Bering Strait.
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Does US embassies count as US territory? International law would suggest so - and in this case, US (and not only) embassies were invaded in several cases.
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Who do sane civilizations need to defend themselves from? Insane aliens?
...and the Lizard People, Killary Clinton, George Soros and the legions of the deep state, the world Jewish conspiracy, the world Communist conspiracy, the world Socialist conspiracy, the DNA re-sequencing nano-bots being beamed into your head from Chinese Communist 5G antennas, the tentacle monster in the Covid vaccine, the demonic legions of Satan summoned every Sunday by the Democrats in their vile tabernacles in the tunnel network under Washington, ... dude the list of threats is endless.
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The Sack of Rome (410 AD) was a mostly peaceful affair.
The Siege of Baghdad: a week or murder and destruction by the Mongols.
USA and the Indians
African slaves and Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference of 1889-1890
Afghanistan and the Talibans
Piracy on the coast of Somalia (pirates taking ships of sane civilizations)
If we consider USA a sane civilization, the World Trade Center.
Kuwait and the Irakian invasion.
Examples abound.
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Who do sane civilizations need to defend themselves from?
I'll get you started with a relatively recent example: Poland, 1939.
Open a fucking history book, and witness the story of conqueror and conquered.
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Attack submarines (688, Seawolf, Virginia) hunt enemy ballistic missile submarines which could literally save the world and your life.
Re: She's a patriot (Score:2)
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Right there in the post "enemy ballistic missile submarines"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: She's a patriot (Score:2)
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Who's submarines? I don't know of any country trying to destroy the world, or dominate it besides the US and maybe France or the UK.
Countries which have actually, recently, invaded other countries and which use nuclear weapons to ensure their military actions have little consequences for them:
Pakistan (Afghanistan)
China (India)
Russia (Ukraine)
Countries which are actively threatening to invade other countries
Russia (Ukraine)
China (Taiwan).
China, in particular, has a fairly solid history of aggression in Tibet, India, Hong Kong and (less unjustifiably) North Korea. We can come to all sorts of discussions about whether the US is an aggres
Re: She's a patriot (Score:2)
Call the RAND Corporation, we got a new Johnny von Neumann over here!
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In that case "sane civilization" must be an oxymoron.
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Pretty much every civilization ever have done that
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While I have no doubt your sobriquet was obtained at a lumber-chopping contest in Torvaldsland and has definitely nothing to do with decapitating people with the might and fury of Thor, the vast majority of military submarines—particularly American ones—haven't been involved in combat since World War II. Wikipedia notes four exceptions: a trade of two vessels between Pakistan (submarine-on-surface-ship) and India (ship-on-sub) during the Bangladesh Liberation War, the sinking of an Argentine cru
Re: She's a patriot (Score:2)
Sane civilizations don't build machines designed for the sole purpose of killing other humans.
The irony of that statement in this context is ironic. Sane people don't sabotage machines in ways that makes them likely to kill hundreds of people.
I'm on the fence about working in industries which build weapons, but I'm smart enough to know that the country who choses to forego building weapons of war will be made short work of by the next tin shit pot dictator who invades.
Tl;dr: people suck, weapons of war are sadly necessary :(
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Sane civilizations don't build machines designed for the sole purpose of killing other humans.
Unfortunately we live in a world where this is exactly what all sane civilizations do.
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An unfortunately every civilization has its share of childishly naive idealists (see CND) who think everyone in power is at heart a pacifist just like them and would never make an unprovoked attack so there's no need for defense.
I often wonder if these people are mentally deficient in some way or they've simply led such a sheltered life that they never even encountered a school bully or pretty crime, never mind anything worse.
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The "Mutually Assured Destruction" doctrine was to not kill any other humans (the "if you start, we all die" method).
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Re: She's a traitor (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile the navy should have performed their own tests to verify the quality.
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Of course it adds tremendous friction and cost to everything if you can't go on the prevailing assumption that companies are generally delivering on the specs they contracted to deliver.
A company that sells the government a motor is trusting the company that sold them the wire which is trusting the company that sold them the copper. Is the bottom-line customer (the government) supposed to disassemble and sample ever
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However you don't have to test every item/batch, only initially and then at random.
Re: She's a traitor (Score:5, Insightful)
However you don't have to test every item/batch, only initially and then at random.
This has become unfashionable. It's exactly the same idea of "self verification" that Boeing used in the 737-Max and that has caused all government laboratories to be sold off and privatised in the UK and to a large degree in the US. "Small government" idiots who say government doesn't work and then make sure they get into power so they can prove it.
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And that's how the civilization collapses.
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Government employees are no more immune to deviance than private ones. Ultimately its all very difficult and becomes a who watches the watchers situation. The Navy hired this metallurgist to verify that the vendor providing the steel was actually fulfilling the contract. Were they also supposed to hire another metallurgist to validate the work of that metallurgist? What about verifying that one? You act as if making them a government employee would fix the problem yet there are well known cases of governmen
Re: She's a traitor (Score:5, Insightful)
Government employees are no more immune to deviance than private ones.
You state it as if it was some rule of nature when actually it's simply and generally just not true. There are a number of reasons for this
1) Government workers don't tend to have the profit motive as their primary motivation. More generally they are often people who are choosing lower pay specifically for a sense of achievement so they tend to be directly motivated by achievement in their job rather than indirectly by money.
2) Government workers tend to be controlled by law in their duty to do their job. If they fail to do that it's often illegal, where with private workers it tends to be just a matter of
3) Government workers are directly answerable to those that hired them - the people - acts like the freedom of information act mean that rather than a manager covering up their failure to maintain company profits, outsiders are often able to see exactly what they did and demand correction
The problems with government workers tend to be different. Especially in poor countries they can often be underpaid and thus subject to easy bribery. Since they have a duty to do their job but no duty to profit they often work less efficiently than could be the case. Also, due to fear of outside supervision they tend to be overly conservative. These problems mean that a government / private partnership is mostly better than pure government work. They don't mean that the government can just hand everything over.
Ultimately its all very difficult and becomes a who watches the watchers situation. The Navy hired this metallurgist to verify that the vendor providing the steel was actually fulfilling the contract. Were they also supposed to hire another metallurgist to validate the work of that metallurgist? What about verifying that one?
You act as if this is some kind of difficult problem that has never been handled before. Whole systems grew up during the war through to the 70s able to do that. Verifying a lab is extremely simple - within your varied real samples, which should be numbered but not otherwise identified, you include known bad samples of various kinds. If the lab doesn't pick them up then they aren't doing their job. Its not elephants all the way down. Two comparative labs and a unified sampling process is all you need. Random testing of a few tens of samples in thousands is fine.
This entire pretence that we're suddenly suprised by these problems, that the FAA could never have known about Boeing is tiresome. How do you think plane safety improved so much from the 20s through to the 1990s? Government quality inspectors inspected and did their jobs. Why do you think it's failing now? The government has stopped doing that job and handed over to purely private industry. It's a bunch of ideologically based lies.
You act as if making them a government employee would fix the problem yet there are well known cases of government owned labs falsifying data before. At some point you have to trust that people are doing their job and let the justice system act as a deterrent and control for fraud and deviance.
"Trust but verify" - it's an actual slogan of the US defence complex from arms control. You do not have to just "trust that people are doing their job and let the justice system act as a deterrent". If you check a thousand samples (out of hundreds of thousands of samples a year) and find that the measurements are within the margin of error then you know that the level of fraud is below worth worrying about. The cost of this is trivial compared to the safety it gives you. If you don't do that then your justice system never becomes a deterrent. Everyone just expects to get away with anything and eventually "bad money pushes out good" - the companies that cut corners inevitably undercut the others and force them from the market.
That's what has happened there.
You sug
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dropped an ending:
with private workers it tends to be just a matter of breach of contract and at most financial penalties
Re: She's a traitor (Score:5, Insightful)
Throw the book at this bitch and make an example.
This stuff doesn't fly....they get a LOT of $$ to do this work, and it is critical to the safety of our men and women at sea.
Re: She's a traitor (Score:2)
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the navy is gay
And it has famous for that for millennia. Your point?
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This is nothing compared to the Fat Leonard scandal of bribery for millions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Loose lips sink ships, well we would have had a lot of sunk ships had we been at war.
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All that would be relevant if we were turning submarines into spaceships. If we are doing that then these specifications matter. If not, probably not. Are we turning submarines into spaceships?
I'm not defending these actions as such, if you agree to a business contract then you should follow the terms of the contract or suffer consequences, that's how law works. But if the discussion is about whether these specifications matter, I suspect that they do not.
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