Never let a crisis goto waste. Someone screws up and the first reaction is to say “we need more money”

[delayed]

Should probably have waited 48 hours for the news cycle to move on and ensure absolutely nobody knows the money is needed

When the system is held together with chewing gum and 1980s-era software, when it fails, "someone screws up" is not a fair reaction. Of course it fails! The wonder is that it still mostly works.

> The wonder is that it still mostly works.

A lot of very hardworking people getting too little pay for something so critical while their employers (some contracting company) take a lot of profit. Eventually they burn out waiting for help and a replacement system and retire or quit, then the systems really start failing because the knowledge leaves with them.

> first reaction

The FAA et al. have been working to modernize US ATC since ~2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transporta...

The next step is a ton of hardware upgrading, which always costs real money.

> working to modernize US ATC since ~2003

I was working on upgrading US ATC in 1995. As were lots and lots of other people.

Snark aside, this is actual advice in Crisis Engineering by Nitze, Weaver, and Dickerson, and largely matches my experiences as well. You can harp on and on and on at upper management about why budget or attention needs to be allocated to take care of something before it blows up into a much bigger problem, but they'll never move on it -- until it actually does blow up, and then suddenly you've got nearly a blank check to do whatever's necessary to make sure it never happens again.

If you don't take full advantage of that, you're missing out on possibly your only opportunity ever to fix whatever's needed fixing for years.

What is the cost of grounding all flights across the USA for one day?

I’ve seen figures that estimate the aviation industry to provide about $1.5 trillion worth of GDP for America, so 4-5 billion dollars. Feel free to double that for the cost of dealing with unexpected disruptions and loss of institutional trust.

All of the AI money discussions have broken me for being surprised by large amounts of money. The frontier companies spend that in what, 5 minutes?

Hold on, let me fire up Claude…

It's because air traffic control systems in the US haven't been significantly upgraded in like a century. Keep kicking the can it will get more and more expensive

The DOGE/OMB rampage didn't help either.