I was rather loose with my terms.
The military can piss away millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of hours, and it is not an existential situation. Oh, we bought an airplane that is broken 1/2 of the time vs. the 10% of the time we budgeted for. No big deal. A business where an investment failed like that would be in trouble. In the military, they just take that as a lesson and move on (we shouldn't buy that again, or we should not use that process the next time).
Likewise with people. Hire someone, train them for 6 months, find out they cannot do the work. The military will retrain that person. Most businesses can deal with situations like that without going broke. If you ever have a spare hour, research how the Navy selects commanding officers for aircraft carriers. The select 5 for each future opening. All highly qualified pilots with demonstrated leadership potential. Then they send them to Nuclear school. 1 Year. Then another school for a year. One or two might get a carrier XO slot, one of those will get a command. The others, they just retire them. Crazy investment. No business would do that.