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According to news sources, the plant manufacturered TNT, among other things.
TNT has several relevant attributes here: compared to most high explosives, it is considerably cheaper, which means it can be produced in comparatively large quantities. Compared to most high explosives, it is also very unstable and dangerous (C4 famously can be burned without detonation, other military-grade HEXs are similar). TNT is also very dirty to manufacture, and has been mostly been banned from production in the US, with defense concerns only recently restarting production (AES appears to be one of those concerns). As a result, there is limited current experience in the US with best practices for safety measures.
While I am not a certified demolitions and ordnance engineer, I've dealt with them in the past, and this whole thing reeks of: "small industrial producer trying to make many metric shit-tons of TNT without grizzled old guys missing fingers to pass on the important lessons, goes about how you expect." Like the amount of safety precautions we had to take for explosives in the double-digit grams was both immense and sadly very necessary (an improperly sodered inflator squib blew up in an inspectors face killing him, shit is hazardous).
So I guess my point here is this seems like the logic of hoofbeats and zebras- malicious intervention from a foreign power is a possibility, certainly, but it seems vastly more probable this was an industrial accident.
Well, it was a Certified Women-Owned Small Business gaming the system for government contracts. Personally saw that shit all the time on contracts we were bidding for.
9 times out of 10 I assume it is "woman owned" because the owner gave 51% of ownership to his wife specifically for the purpose of gaming such contracts. My brother-in-law works at a factory where the owner did just that, and I have similar plans if I start a business.
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It's never been entirely clear to me how much of that was actual "feminist interpretive dancer-turned-defense contractor exec" and how much was "well we'll put General So-and-So's son's wife down as the President of the LLC for compliance purposes, but everyone knows the General still calls the shots"
All of the above, and the more contracts get diverted to small, minority owned businesses, the sloppier it gets. I saw my share of Certified Women/Minority Owned Businesses that just bid on contracts, any contract, and then aggressively staff up with questionable contractors to meet the letter of the contract. More or less the only permanent employees they have are project managers. Everyone else is from temp firms, H1B, and maybe a few private contractors with actual experience for the lead roles.
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