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The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

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Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#161

Post by JoshTriplett »

astrange wrote: post #113
stackskipton wrote: post #47

As someone who has some familiarity with this process, just like safety regulations are written in blood, Federal Acquisition rules are written in misuse of money, sometimes criminally. Yes, we have swung too much towards the bureaucrats but I'm not sure throwing out everything is solution to the issue. Move fast works great when it's B2B software and failures means stock price does not go up. It's not so great when…

[flagged]

> Among other things, elevators are much stricter and so less frequent than any other country

Speaking from experience with elevators in various countries: Let's keep the part where, for instance, elevators need a door. (And I'm sure I haven't experienced anywhere close to the long tail of bad elevators.) Some regulations make sense.

But if there are ways to make elevators substantially faster without being unsafe, that'd be lovely. What do US elevators fail to do that they could be doing?

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#162

Post by dangus »

themafia wrote: post #79
Alupis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-35 was Lockheed's entry in the Joint Strike Fighter program. The JSF has roots going back to 1996. The X-35 first flew in 2000. The F-35 first flew in 2006, and didn't enter service until 2015(!!). That's nearly 20 years to develop a single airframe. Yes, it's the most sophisticated airframe to date, but 20 years is not trivial. The F-35 had many issues during trials and early deployment - some are excusable fo…

> but rather massive layers of bureaucracy and committees that paralyzed the development pipeline. They decided to make one airframe in three variants for three different branches. They were trying to spend money they didn't have and thought this corner cutting would save it. > Something is very wrong if it takes 20+ years to field next-generation military technologies. It's the funding. The American appetite for new…

> The American appetite for new "war fighters" is exceptionally low when there's no exigent conflict facing us.

Isn’t this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Who would want to get into a conflict with someone who has guaranteed air supremacy?

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#163

Post by JoshTriplett »

Y-bar wrote: post #144
chiph wrote: post #41

> Design For Rapid Scale In a Crisis One of the things that I think Anduril (Palmer Luckey and other founders) is doing right is designing for manufacturability. The invasion of Ukraine has shown that future conflicts will use up weapons at a very high pace. And that the US capability to build them at the rate needed to sustain conflict isn't there anymore. But that one thing that could help is making them easier to…

What’s up with Maga people using LotR names for their military/panopticon companies? Anduril, Palantir, Lembas have I seen so far.

Lembas seems unrelated to the MIC, or is there some investor or board member in common?

(EDIT: thanks to a reply for researching; it is the same people.)

As for the rest, I think because it's many of the same people and the same VCs.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#164

Post by nradov »

gottorf wrote: post #153
nradov wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ban on windowless bedroom is at least partly about fire safety. A window provides an escape route for low floors, or a means for firefighters to rescue the occupants.

The GP's point is that levelheaded cost-benefit analyses on things like that seem to escape regulators, and everything is greatly skewed towards "it's worth it if it saves even one life". Sure, fire safety in homes is a good thing to have. But is it so good that we can't economically build buildings to meet them, and people end up with no home at all?

We can economically build buildings with windows on all the bedrooms. That has virtually zero impact on the final price to residents so complaining about it is a total red herring. The actual problem is high land prices, slow permit approval processes, and restrictive zoning codes.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#165

Post by astrange »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #161
astrange wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Among other things, elevators are much stricter and so less frequent than any other country Speaking from experience with elevators in various countries: Let's keep the part where, for instance, elevators need a door . (And I'm sure I haven't experienced anywhere close to the long tail of bad elevators.) Some regulations make sense. But if there are ways to make elevators substantially faster without being unsafe,…

Mainly the minimum size requirements are much larger (requirements related to stretchers).

Also, in some/all places the elevator union got basically all manufacturing processes banned so they have to be assembled on site by union workers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/opinion/elevator-construc...

And in the US, nobody in the relevant unions or regulators cares about cities - elevator workers and firefighters are all suburbanite pickup-truck-Americans. So they're rarely personally interested in anything that isn't about driving a big car around really fast. This has a big impact on road layouts and the outside of buildings, because of course everyone listens to firefighters, but all they want to do is drive a big red truck everywhere with nothing stopping them.

(Which sometimes leads to them eg shutting down pedestrian safety improvements, and always leads to big wide access roads.)

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#166

Post by Y-bar »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #163
Y-bar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s up with Maga people using LotR names for their military/panopticon companies? Anduril, Palantir, Lembas have I seen so far.

Lembas seems unrelated to the MIC, or is there some investor or board member in common? (EDIT: thanks to a reply for researching; it is the same people.) As for the rest, I think because it's many of the same people and the same VCs.

Lembas LLC is owned by Peter Thiel.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#167

Post by astrange »

nradov wrote: post #146
astrange wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the ban is because an architect thinks they're icky, sent in a request to ban it, and the building code people take any suggestion to ban anything that anyone sends them. Safety regulations are written in blood, you know! https://bsky.app/profile/stephenjacobsmith.com/post/3m3xpe3n...

The ban on windowless bedroom is at least partly about fire safety. A window provides an escape route for low floors, or a means for firefighters to rescue the occupants.

[flagged]

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#168

Post by astrange »

nradov wrote: post #164
gottorf wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP's point is that levelheaded cost-benefit analyses on things like that seem to escape regulators, and everything is greatly skewed towards "it's worth it if it saves even one life". Sure, fire safety in homes is a good thing to have. But is it so good that we can't economically build buildings to meet them, and people end up with no home at all?

We can economically build buildings with windows on all the bedrooms. That has virtually zero impact on the final price to residents so complaining about it is a total red herring. The actual problem is high land prices, slow permit approval processes, and restrictive zoning codes.

You can easily build them without windowless bedrooms, yes.

The problem is you can't easily convert office buildings to housing without these, because the floor plates are too different.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#169

Post by qchris »

Y-bar wrote: post #144
chiph wrote: post #41

> Design For Rapid Scale In a Crisis One of the things that I think Anduril (Palmer Luckey and other founders) is doing right is designing for manufacturability. The invasion of Ukraine has shown that future conflicts will use up weapons at a very high pace. And that the US capability to build them at the rate needed to sustain conflict isn't there anymore. But that one thing that could help is making them easier to…

What’s up with Maga people using LotR names for their military/panopticon companies? Anduril, Palantir, Lembas have I seen so far.

Here's a 2022 from Quartz article that might have some context on this. Anduril isn't on the list according to the footnote, but Thiel and Lucky have since had a history collaborating on projects with the same naming scheme.

[1] https://qz.com/1346926/the-hidden-logic-of-peter-thiels-lord...

[2] https://fortune.com/2025/07/07/peter-thiel-palmer-luckey-ere...

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#170

Post by LarsDu88 »

stackskipton wrote: post #47

As someone who has some familiarity with this process, just like safety regulations are written in blood, Federal Acquisition rules are written in misuse of money, sometimes criminally. Yes, we have swung too much towards the bureaucrats but I'm not sure throwing out everything is solution to the issue. Move fast works great when it's B2B software and failures means stock price does not go up. It's not so great when…

Back in the day, Lockheed could move very quickly. The P-38 went from proposal to working prototype between February 1937 and January 1939. But there was a cost. Test pilots died

The top American fighter pilot of WW2, Richard Bong was killed test piloting the Lockheed P80 jet fighter.

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