Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not arguing with your overall conclusion. However, the hardware situation you described sounds very brittle to me. If the machine shop is so tightly constrained and error-phobic, that sounds like there's very little space of tinkering, exploration or innovation. Unless that was your overall point, that capacity in hardware manufacturing has rotted away to the point where things are hanging on by a thread.
> If the machine shop is so tightly constrained and error-phobic, that sounds like there's very little space of tinkering, exploration or innovation. for many machine shops the level of physical risk is > 0, often by a large amount. making widgets for X means handling large quantities of red hot metal; even simple stuff that's easy to get your hands around often shoots tons of oil, gas, and metal shavings in volumes…
I was on the implementation end of a considerable amount of industrial automation and technological advancement about 10 years ago. When we were on site the result of making mistakes started at the death of a team member. There were a plethora of things that could kill you horribly, falls, hazardous environment, rotating equipment, etc.
Yet we all survived overhauling processes in hundreds of plants. Working in hazardous environments isn't untenable, or even particularly difficult to do safely. In fact we worked at a much faster pace (with fewer mistakes) than corporate world I work in now.