In practice this is why it is abbreviated USSS, and not SS. I've never heard of anyone with a brain calling it just "SS."
4,075 karma · joined July 15, 2023
There are also loads of caveats about whether or not intelligence information can be used in prosecutions of US persons, again for very good reasons. The idea that the NSA or CIA is magically spying on all of America is a tinfoil-hatted myth.
"War/defense spending" != "law enforcement spending" and if you conflate these, you're either being ignorant or deliberately disingenuous.
(a) In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to:
(1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;
(2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;
(3) restrain competition; or
(4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.
The PPTs and emails are just means to an end. But at least you're able to sound all cool and edgy on the internet.
And the US has 11 carriers, not "over a dozen." And we do that to keep world trade flowing because it's good for business, Trumpian idiocy notwithstanding. We have 11 carriers so we can keep about 3 or 4 on patrol at any given time, because that's the level of maintenance and staffing that's required to do that.
You don't seem to have had any time in uniform, let alone seeing how things work on 4-star staffs. I have. The military does not tell the President what to do.
When you do that, a team can just go. Instead, in many places there's all this bullshit about "Application X is built by Team A, but Team B and C will do the QA." Or "Team D is in charge of Applications Y, Z, and Q, so they can't get to your feature request for Q this PI, because they've got high-priority work for Y and Z." So now you've self-blocked all work on Q just by screwing up your org chart. And we haven't talked about the fact that Team A is in the US, Team B is in Europe, and Teams C and D are in India, so now let's add time zone nonsense to all of the above stupidity.
You don't need as many of those ancillary roles if people involved actually understand Lean and how to run an SDLC, but in my experience, there are too many devs who don't care about anything other than slinging code and too many managers more interested in expanding their own rice bowls and looking important than in actually streamlining how stuff makes it to prod. And then you need a pile of PMs or Scrum Masters to sort out the mess.
There seems to be this belief since Desert Storm that the US military is this invincible fighting force that's an easy button for any kind of geopolitical problem, when it's an institution with capabilities and limitations that need to be taken into account, and that has to be integrated with all the other levers of national power. We're seeing now how much the most powerful military can spin its wheels and sputter when you don't have a proper strategy or a proper logistical plan behind what you're asking of it.
There also seems to be a belief both in government and the general public that warfighting is "just bombing things." Which does not help.
The only way you can protect a society is by being strong enough to intimidate the people in the world who would otherwise look at you and go "I want, I take." Wars are a great evil, but being prepared to fight one is a necessary evil.
The only teams where Markov Chain methods or messing with sampling dates would provide more accurate timelines were the teams whose delivery processes were the most borked and spiky.
That's literally why they invented Monte Carlo as part of the Manhattan Project.
1) The brewmasters of mass-market lagers are legitimate masters of their craft, because that style leaves absolutely no room for error and nowhere to hide mistakes. You can screw up an IPA and cover it in hops, at least to a point. You can screw up a porter or stout and cover it in malt. You have to nail a lager.
2) The product itself is still usually insipid, flavorless, and not worth drinking.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
One of these days the product managers who push these things thinking "oh, it's easy, you just . . ." are either going to be explaining it to confused Mom or Dad, or they're going to be elderly and irritated themselves. Until then I hope they stub their toe or step on random Legos regularly.
Even in a case where someone has drilled themselves into a mountainside, there's value in trying to see things like "were they distracted? Was there mechanical failure? Did they have a freak medical emergency and get incapacitated? Did unexpected weather crop up?" And in other cases, it's a "but for the grace of God go I" moment where you understand how they could have made the wrong decision in good faith. Even years out of the cockpit, I'm willing to give most aviators the benefit of the doubt, because God knows I screwed up enough in my day.
But the only thing I can think of that compares to this level of negligence was the F/A-18 pilot 20 or so years ago who lost his wings after booming his non-towered hometown airport at over 500 knots and below 500 feet with absolutely zero pre-authorization or waiver from the FAA for that kind of thing.
You fly an approach on airspeed and/or angle of attack, and on glideslope. Period. You're either there or you're correcting to get there, and you're correcting at a point that you don't need huge oh-my-God corrections in close. If you can't do that, sucks to be you, take your waveoff like a real man or woman, and next time suck less.
- a) Flying an unacceptably sloppy approach that put them on short final going that fast, high, and overpowered. Professionalism is being on airspeed and/or angle of attack and on glidepath . . . no excuses.
- b) Responding to a) by trying to force the jet onto the runway, when any aircrew member with half a brain should understand how badly you're going to float in ground effect when you're that fast and that overpowered. And what that's going to in turn do to your spoilers and thrust reversers that depend on weight-on-wheels before activating. Professionalism is recognizing a botched approach, swallowing your ego, and taking it the hell around.
- c) The pilot not flying sitting there like a coward and not taking the controls from the pilot flying. If someone hits a go-around criterion and isn't going around, YOU TAKE THE CONTROLS AND EXECUTE ONE. Professionalism is proper crew coordination and proper assertiveness in the cockpit.
This whole thing seems to just boil down to a complete failure of airmanship and a complete failure of professionalism all around. If I'd done that or allowed my pilot to do that, I'd expect to have had my wings pulled. If the investigation reveals more, I'll change my mind. But it ain't looking good.
One of CHR's service providers was conducting hiring shenanigans and not fully, legally screening their drivers. One of the service provider's drivers hit another vehicle and crippled that vehicle's driver, who sued. CHR argued all liability should fall on the trucking company who hired the driver. The Supreme Court said no, CHR could be held liable for negligence in vetting their service provider as well, because it was ultimately CHR's load being carried.
I'm not a lawyer, but under that legal precedent, it seems Amazon might not be off the hook for damages in this case, given it was their subcontractor who was carrying Amazon cargo in a jet with "Prime Air" on the side.
Sincerely, A former military aviator