>the goal that it must never fail

That's a good way to put it

If the goal of a system is to never fail, then the bureaucrats in charge of running that system will just game the metrics and cover up all the issue, while it fails first very slowly then very suddenly.

In fact that's why nothing ever gets done to improve things in the EU/west, because we expect perfect outcome in every new change and we want potential risks to be zero before something new is implemented, so it's easier for leaders to just never do anything, never change anything, just sit and maintain the status quo while we go through managed decline complaining things keep slowly getting worse.

I'd prefer to just accept the reality is it fails sometimes and not try to get a 100% foolproof solution. That lies the way of madness.