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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   38178 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis

Gives a detailed explanation of how DEI initiatives since the 1960s are increasing the fail rate of complex institutions in American society due to higher baseline incompetence in AA, diversity quota, etc hirings.

The resulting norms have steadily eroded institutional competency, causing America’s complex systems to fail with increasing regularity. In the language of a systems theorist, by decreasing the competency of the actors within the system, formerly stable systems have begun to experience normal accidents at a rate that is faster than the system can adapt. The prognosis is harsh but clear: either selection for competence will return or America will experience devolution to more primitive forms of civilization and loss of geopolitical power.

While this has occurred for a multitude of reasons, the steel girders supporting the competency of the federal government were the first to be exposed to the saltwater of the Civil Rights Act and related executive orders. Government agencies, which are in charge of overseeing all the other systems, have seen the quality of their human capital decline tremendously since the 1960s. While the damage to an agency like the Department of Agriculture may have long-term deadly consequences, the most immediate danger is at safety-critical agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Recently, the tremendous U.S. record for air safety established since the 1970s has been fraying at the edges. The first three months of 2023 saw nine near-miss incidents at U.S. airports, one with two planes coming within 100 feet of colliding. This terrifying uptick from years prior resulted in the FAA and NTSB convening safety summits in March and May, respectively. Whether they dared to discuss root causes seems unlikely.

Damage is not only done directly by higher avg incompetence but through the knock on effects of un-meritocratic hiring practices - demoralization and disengagement from competent workers who are handicapped for diversity's sake.

Promoting diversity over competency does not simply affect new hires and promotion decisions. It also affects the people already working inside of America’s systems. Morale and competency inside U.S. organizations are declining. Those who understand that the new system makes it hard or impossible for them to advance are demoralized, affecting their performance. Even individuals poised to benefit from diversity preferences notice that better people are being passed over and the average quality of their team is declining.

...the imposition of an aggressive KPI [Key Performance Indicators (KPI) - tracks diversity] sends a message to the layer below them: no white man in middle management will likely ever see a promotion as long as they remain in the organization. This is never expressed verbally. Rather, those overlooked figure it out as they are passed over continually for less competent but more diverse colleagues. The result is demoralization, disengagement, and over time, departure...Promoting diversity over competency does not simply affect new hires and promotion decisions. It also affects the people already working inside of America’s systems. Morale and competency inside U.S. organizations are declining. Those who understand that the new system makes it hard or impossible for them to advance are demoralized, affecting their performance...This effect was likely seen in a recent paper by McDonald, Keeves, and Westphal. The paper points out that white male senior leaders reduce their engagement following the appointment of a minority CEO..

As older men with tacit knowledge either retire or are pushed out, the burden of maintaining America’s complex systems will fall on the young. Lower-performing young men angry at the toxic mix of affirmative action (hurting their chances of admission to a “good school”) and credentialism (limiting the “good jobs” to graduates of “good schools”) are turning their backs on college and white-collar work altogether.

This is the continuation of a trend that began over a decade ago. High-performing young men will either collaborate, coast, or downshift by leaving high-status employment altogether. [...] The combination of new employees hired for diversity, not competence, and the declining engagement of the highly competent sets the stage for failures of increasing frequency and magnitude.

The U.S. has embraced a novel question: what happens when the men who built the complex systems our society relies on cease contributing and are replaced by people who were chosen for reasons other than competency?

Patching the specific failure mode is simultaneously too slow and induces unexpected consequences. Cascading failures overwhelm the capabilities of the system to react. 20 years ago, a software bug caused a poorly-managed local outage that led to a blackout that knocked out power to 55 million people and caused 100 deaths. Utilities were able to restore power to all 55 million people in only four days. It is unclear if they could do the same today. U.S. cities would look very different if they remained without power for even two weeks, especially if other obstructions unfolded

The path of least resistance will be the devolution of complex systems and the reduction in the quality of life that entails. For the typical resident in a second-tier city in Mexico, Brazil, or South Africa, power outages are not uncommon, tap water is probably not safe to drink, and hospital-associated infections are common and often fatal. Absent a step change in the quality of American governance and a renewed culture of excellence, they prefigure the country’s future.

From the article:

In a span of fewer than six months in 2017, three U.S. Naval warships experienced three separate collisions resulting in 17 deaths.

This is actually one of my hobbyhorses - that the US Surface Navy is staggeringly incompetent. You don't see the Chinese Navy crashing into civilian freighters by accident. Nor do their warships burn down in port like the Bonhomme Richard in 2020. Most recently a Chinese Type-075 had a fire during construction - but this was dealt with pretty quickly and the ship was commissioned shortly afterwards. They didn't lose a small aircraft carrier like the US did! Forget about high-end naval warfare, shooting down hypersonic missiles, AirSea battle... if your ships can't reliably survive in open seas or in your own ports you're in dire straits.

The US investigated the Fitzgerald crash and found all kinds of astonishing details. Apparently bridge crew were using piss bottles. It's like a 4chan greentext:

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/14/worse-than-you-thought-inside-the-secret-fitzgerald-probe-the-navy-doesnt-want-you-to-read/

When Fort walked into the trash-strewn CIC in the wake of the disaster, he was hit with the acrid smell of urine. He saw kettlebells on the deck and bottles filled with pee. Some radar controls didn’t work and he soon discovered crew members who didn’t know how to use them anyway.

https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/uss-fitzgerald-destroyer-crash-crystal/

The warship’s state of readiness was in question. The Navy required destroyers to pass 22 certification tests to prove themselves seaworthy and battle-ready before sailing. The Fitzgerald had passed just seven of these tests. It was not even qualified to conduct its chief mission, anti-ballistic missile defense.

A sailor’s mistake sparked a fire causing the electrical system to fail and a shipwide blackout a week before the mission resulting in the crash. The ship’s email system, for both classified and non-classified material, failed repeatedly. Officers used Gmail instead.

Its radars were in questionable shape, and it’s not clear the crew knew how to operate them. One could not be made to automatically track nearby ships. To keep the screen updated, a sailor had to punch a button a thousand times an hour. The ship’s primary navigation system was run by 17-year-old software.

Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin was commander of the 7th Fleet at the time of the collisions. A Naval aviator who fought in the Balkans and Iraq, he made repeated pleas to his superiors for more men, more ships, more time to train. He was ignored, then fired.

Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. They were way behind on maintenance, crew were too junior and inexperienced, the fleet as a whole was overstretched... The admirals were shamelessly yesmanning the civilian commanders who wanted more presence, more 'freedom of navigation' exercises. That's what the Fitzgerald was supposed to do, before it crashed. Their operational tempo was higher than maintenance and crew could sustain - they knew this and ignored lower ranking officers who told them it was idiotic. And there's also the demoralizing emphasis on diversity training, which effectively takes precedence over combat training, which is the article's main point (and is backed up by a congressional report). The US navy is also short of sailors, thanks to all this nonsense.

This fleet is assigned to defend the Asia Pacific from China, the most important theatre in the world. This is the fleet that's supposed to bail out Taiwan, defend Japan and so on. There's a good chance that China will snap them in two like a twig. Nobody has fought a naval war since the Falklands. Nobody has any serious combat experience. All we have to judge capability on is general seamanship, in which the Chinese are superior.

And then there's the chaos and shambles that is US naval procurement. The Littoral Combat Ship was pure garbage from day 1. It isn't even obsolete, it just doesn't have any of the necessary capabilities for a serious warship, at all. The Zumwalt was incredibly expensive even by US standards and was cancelled. So the US is stuck building Arleigh Burke's, destroyers which were designed back in the 1980s (albeit upgraded). China is building warships designed in the 2010s. China has a large and serious shipbuilding industry, with plenty of capacity and talent from the civilian sector, room to grow. China is the biggest civilian shipbuilder in the world, while the US is something like 10th.

Now the US Naval Air and Submarine arms are somewhat better off than the Surface fleet. But the US definitely needs a surface fleet! If you have no capable surface fleet, then the carriers become vulnerable to just about everything, while the subs can be picked off by helicopters and aircraft.

The importance of this military deficiency is hard to overstate. This fleet is in charge of protecting the AI-chip fabs, trade that the US needs, a good chunk of world trade, Western prestige in the world, deterring WW3... It's like watching a train crash, seconds before disaster!

The best thing that could possibly happen to the US would be a resounding naval defeat to China in the SCS. The state’s credibility would collapse. Institutional reform would be forced rather than merely proposed. Nuclear war / MAD would be avoided, since America would run home with its tail between its legs. Japan would re-arm seriously, which would be a good thing.

Yes, South-East Asia would be lost to the Chinese, but that’s a reasonable price to pay. In the collapse of American identity and self-confidence, there would be (for the first time in a long, long time) the opportunity for radical political change.

Quite true but this prospect is Not Good for Australia. Is there any chance for Japan or the other islands/quasi-islands? If the Chinese control the West Pacific (which admittedly would be a rather big win), they control food and energy trade Japan and South Korea need. They can dictate terms of trade with us, even though we're more resource secure. They can choke East Asia to death. Japan might be capable of food security with some hardship but energy is impossible from domestic supplies. Hence the Pacific theater of WW2. If the US does get decisively beaten, what if they just switch sides? Or get crushed?

Australia has doubled down again and again on allying with the US and spurning China. Our military is pretty useless in the grand scheme of things since we're so small. Yet we show up to every single US war - Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan... We're buying enormously expensive US nuclear submarines for the never-never land of the 2040s. We provide all kinds of intelligence and bases and so on. We do everything a good ally should do and more. It's ridiculous that the US is so dysfunctional that they might lose to a country they were so far ahead of. The Tortoise and the Hare indeed.

And let's not forget that it was the US and Britain who sabotaged and suppressed our nuclear weapons program back in the day, with the Non-proliferation treaty. The US did the same thing to Taiwan, amusingly.

Australia also needs radical political change away from being a housing ponzi-scheme sitting on top of mining rents - yet I'm not eager to live through such a massive crisis.

I think Australians get a little hysterical about China. The Chinese have never had grand overseas territorial ambitions, certainly not as far as Australia. I don’t even think they’re particularly concerned about US/UK/allied military bases in Australia, since they have so many potential foes much, much closer.

Also, it’s very unclear that a limited military defeat in a South China Sea confrontation over Taiwan results in a full withdrawal of American forces from the Pacific. In fact, I think it’s very unlikely such a thing happens. I don’t think the US would pull nuclear weapons from South Korea, or that the Koreans would ask them to leave. I don’t think they’d withdraw from Japan either. Even though it would be a major blow to US authority and influence, these countries don’t have better options and kowtowing to China would still be worse.

The domestic blow to American identity would be more severe than the geopolitical implications.

China is about 60x more populous than Australia, they have nuclear weapons and the allies we rely on for security are all even further from us than China is. A little hysteria is not unreasonable.

Sure, a limited US defeat wouldn't be so bad. But a resounding defeat for the US, as you said, (or a rather big win for China as I said) would cause significant political changes in the US. Are we talking coups, civil war, prolonged insurrections, a decade of disaster like Russia's 1990s? I guess the big question is how decisive this war is and how resilient the US is.

Is it tenable to keep nukes in South Korea if Korea is effectively cut off from the US? The Soviets didn't manage to keep nukes in Cuba.

Furthermore, China is and should be concerned about Australia. Australia is where the iron ore is, where the coal is, where a non-trivial amount of surplus food production is.

Yes, South-East Asia would be lost to the Chinese, but that’s a reasonable price to pay. In the collapse of American identity and self-confidence, there would be (for the first time in a long, long time) the opportunity for radical political change.

Every Reagan Revolution has its Iran Hostage Crisis.

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