That most developed countries, and therefore most liberal democracies, are getting significantly worse over time at building physical things seems like a Big Problem (see e.g. here). I’m glad this topic got attention on LessWrong through this post.
The main criticism I expect could be levelled on this post is that it’s very non-theoretical. It doesn’t attempt a synthesis of the lessons or takeaways. Many quotes are presented but not analysed.
(To take one random thing that occurred to me: the last quote from Anduril puts significant blame on McNamara. From my reading of The Wizards of Armageddon, McNamara seems like a typical brilliant twentieth century hard-charging modernist technocrat. Now, he made lots of mistakes, especially in the direction of being too quantitative / simplistic in the sorts of ways that Seeing Like a State dunks on. But say the rule you follow is “appoint some hard-charging brilliant technocrat and give them lots of power”; all of McNamara, Kelly Johnson, and Leslie Groves might seem very good by this light, even though McNamara’s (claimed) effect was to destroy the Groves/Johnson type of competence in US defence. How do you pick the Johnsons and Groveses over the McNamaras? What’s the difference between the culture that appoints McNamaras and one that appoints Groveses and Johnsons? More respect for hands-down engineering? Less politics, more brute need for competence and speed due to a war? Is McNamara even the correct person to blame here? Is the type of role that McNamara was in just fundamentally different from the Groves and Johnson roles such that the rules for who does well in the latter don’t apply to the former?)
(I was also concerned about the highly-upvoted critical comment, though it seems like Jacob did address the factual mistakes pointed out there.)
However, I think the post is very good and is in fact better off as a bunch of empirical anecdotes than attempting a general theory. Many things are best learnt by just being thrown a set of case studies. Clearly, something was being done at Skunk Works that the non-SpaceX American defence industry currently does not do. Differences like this are often hard-to-articulate intangible cultural stuff, and just being temporarily immersed in stories from the effective culture is often at least as good as an abstract description of what the differences were. I also appreciated the level of empiricism where Jacob was willing to drill down to actual primary sources like the rediscovered Empire State Building logbook.
I was referring to McNamara’s government work, forgot about his corporate job before then. I agree there’s some SpaceX to (even pre-McDonnell Douglas merger?) Boeing axis that feels useful, but I’m not sure what to call it or what you’d do to a field (like US defence) to perpetuate the SpaceX end of it, especially over events like handovers from Kelly Johnson to the next generation.
That most developed countries, and therefore most liberal democracies, are getting significantly worse over time at building physical things seems like a Big Problem (see e.g. here). I’m glad this topic got attention on LessWrong through this post.
The main criticism I expect could be levelled on this post is that it’s very non-theoretical. It doesn’t attempt a synthesis of the lessons or takeaways. Many quotes are presented but not analysed.
(To take one random thing that occurred to me: the last quote from Anduril puts significant blame on McNamara. From my reading of The Wizards of Armageddon, McNamara seems like a typical brilliant twentieth century hard-charging modernist technocrat. Now, he made lots of mistakes, especially in the direction of being too quantitative / simplistic in the sorts of ways that Seeing Like a State dunks on. But say the rule you follow is “appoint some hard-charging brilliant technocrat and give them lots of power”; all of McNamara, Kelly Johnson, and Leslie Groves might seem very good by this light, even though McNamara’s (claimed) effect was to destroy the Groves/Johnson type of competence in US defence. How do you pick the Johnsons and Groveses over the McNamaras? What’s the difference between the culture that appoints McNamaras and one that appoints Groveses and Johnsons? More respect for hands-down engineering? Less politics, more brute need for competence and speed due to a war? Is McNamara even the correct person to blame here? Is the type of role that McNamara was in just fundamentally different from the Groves and Johnson roles such that the rules for who does well in the latter don’t apply to the former?)
(I was also concerned about the highly-upvoted critical comment, though it seems like Jacob did address the factual mistakes pointed out there.)
However, I think the post is very good and is in fact better off as a bunch of empirical anecdotes than attempting a general theory. Many things are best learnt by just being thrown a set of case studies. Clearly, something was being done at Skunk Works that the non-SpaceX American defence industry currently does not do. Differences like this are often hard-to-articulate intangible cultural stuff, and just being temporarily immersed in stories from the effective culture is often at least as good as an abstract description of what the differences were. I also appreciated the level of empiricism where Jacob was willing to drill down to actual primary sources like the rediscovered Empire State Building logbook.
McNamara was at Ford, not Toyota. I reckon he modelled manufacturing like an efficient Boeing manager not an efficient SpaceX manager
I was referring to McNamara’s government work, forgot about his corporate job before then. I agree there’s some SpaceX to (even pre-McDonnell Douglas merger?) Boeing axis that feels useful, but I’m not sure what to call it or what you’d do to a field (like US defence) to perpetuate the SpaceX end of it, especially over events like handovers from Kelly Johnson to the next generation.