Killing People Through Corruption: More Examples from Aviation.
Some of the assault on governing institutions comes from ignorance and zeal. Some is just corrupt. Together this will lead to deaths. Here's why.
An illustration from the publicly funded Jet Stream site, which is NOAA’s “online school” about dangerous weather. This image depicts the way that powerful “micro-bursts” from a thunderstorm can overwhelm even big, modern airliners—in this case, through sudden updrafts and then downdrafts that can force a plane off its safe descent path. NOAA and its National Weather Service have produced ever-more precise tools to help aviators avoid these dangers. Now the Doge team has decided that their staffs must be cut. (From NOAA JetStream; a related, interesting micro-burst image is on the National Weather Service site.)
This is one more post about degradation of the nation’s aviation-safety network through the past six weeks. I keep coming back to this topic because it’s a vivid illustration of broader damage across the ‘soft infrastructure’ of modern life. Also, there are developments just in the past few days. [Update: And one minute after posting, I see in an Axios story that Doge/Musk/Trump are cancelling the leases on two major NOAA buildings.]
Airlines in the US are still the safest way you can travel. On average, around 75 people die every day in US traffic accidents. Even counting the recent helicopter-airliner collision over the Potomac, that’s more every 24 hours than have been killed in total through the past 16 years of US airline operations. More than 40,000 US airline flights take off and land every day. The odds of a safe journey are still strongly in a traveler’s favor.
But the odds are not as good as they were six weeks ago, and they will get worse. That is because of a change in the guiding mentality of the system as a whole.
For decades, the reigning outlook in the aviation world has been, “What’s our Plan C, in case Plans A and B go wrong? And what’s Plan D, after that?” This includes rigorous study of the accidents and close-calls that do occur, to reduce the chances of the same things going wrong. That, plus luck, is how you build up a near-perfect safety record.
Now the reigning Doge attitude has changed to, “I wonder what this wire does? Let’s snip it and find out.” Before the election, Russell Vought—leading force behind Project 2025 and now director of the Office of Management and Budget—said that he wanted federal employees to be “traumatically affected” by budget cuts and threats of layoff. Based on everything I hear, that part of the plan has already kicked in.
Why these new strains—on the overall system, and on the people who make it work? Some of the motivation is zealotry, like Vought’s. Some is cocksure ignorance. But a significant amount appears to be blatently corrupt. Let’s consider some examples.
1) Starlink for the FAA. Dangerous and corrupt.
Why this is dangerous: Because it is a rush to judgment, in a system that prizes cautious deliberation.
Nothing the FAA does well, is done in a hurry. That’s a limitation, in adding years of delay before innovative commercial technology is OK’d for airline use.1 But it’s also the basis of the FAA’s decades-long record of working with airlines, aircraft companies, pilots and flight crews, and others to make commercial flying so safe.
For instance, two years ago, after its typical testing and caution, the FAA announced that it had chosen Verizon for a major system upgrade. Completing the project would take several years, it would cost some $2.4 billion, and it would upgrade the FAA’s Enterprise Network Services—essentially, the operating system for air-traffic control.2
The heart of this upgrade was shifting the FAA’s systems from an outdated copper-wire network to the kind of fiber-optic backbone well established in commercial and home uses around the world. This is also the kind of network Verizon has specialized in for 20 years.
But starting six weeks ago, when Doge came to town, the FAA has by many accounts been pressured to switch from this long-planned transition, and instead buy something else. This sudden new alternative would be the satellite-based network Starlink, which has become widely popular but has not been subject to similar FAA vetting. Reporting last week in the Washington Post, Bloomberg, Rolling Stone and elsewhere has detailed the way Doge acolytes have been pushing backstage for this change. Meanwhile, in public on Xitter, Elon Musk has been recklessly and falsely criticizing Verizon’s technology as unsafe.
Why this is corrupt: Because it is naked self-dealing, favoring a company controlled by Elon Musk.
Starlink is Musk’s own company. It is part of SpaceX, of which Musk is CEO and largest shareholder.
Might Starlink be the technology of the FAA’s future? Sure. Once its downtime and glitches are resolved and it has demonstrated that its reliable “uptime” record can meet the FAA’s “what if things go wrong?” standards.3
What are the chances that the FAA would consider this last-minute switch under normal circumstances? Zero.
This kind of direct payoff would be a little too obvious even for today’s China. There the ruling powers would arrange some kind of cut-out or middle-man recipient. The proposed Starlink arrangement would be more suitable for today’s Russia. Or, it appears, the America of Doge.
Should this happen? No.
2) Defunding NOAA and the National Weather Service. Dangerous and corrupt.
Why this is dangerous: Because (among other consequences) it jeopardizes probably the biggest single advance in aviation safety, which is ever more-accurate weather awareness.
Cloud Warriors, an excellent upcoming book by veteran reporter Tom Weber, details ways in which today’s precise weather forecasting saves lives, properties, and billions of dollars in public and private costs. Mayors and governors have a clearer idea of who needs to evacuate before floods and hurricanes. Firefighters have a clearer idea of where wildfires might spread. Farmers have better information about when to plant, and when to reap. Even college-football officials can know whether they need to evacuate tens of thousands of people from an outdoor stadium, if there might be lightning strikes at game time.
And in aviation, almost everything about safety is tied to the weather. Likely turbulence, which has caused some recent fatalities. Locations and likelihood of “airframe icing,” which was a cause of the Colgan crash in Buffalo back in 2009. Gusty crosswinds and wind-shear, very low cloud layers, and so many more factors that affect when and where planes can safely fly.
The readings and data for these assessments ultimately come from the National Weather Service, which is publicly funded and is part of the Commerce Department and NOAA. Its offerings are stupendous.4
Last week, hundreds of forecasters at NWS and NOAA were laid off by the Doge team. Reportedly this could be as much as 10% of the work force. Just today the American Meteorological Society put out a public statement saying that these and related cutbacks are “likely to cause irreparable harm and have far-reaching consequences for public safety, economic well-being, and the United States' global leadership.”
And for aviation in particular? No one at Doge has thought to ask this, but sooner or later here is what will happen with the airlines:
A plane will run into unanticipated icing, and find it difficult or dangerous to land. It might need to turn back to its origin or land someplace unexpected. Passengers will be stranded. Cross-winds or wind-shear will be worse than anticipated on landing, and pilots may be caught by surprise, leading to a “hard landing,” a go-around, or worse. A band of thunderstorms will pop up where not foreseen. Planes will be delayed or re-routed; passengers will miss connections or events. A shift in the jet stream will bring turbulence in unusual places. Because pilots and airline dispatchers will lack some of today’s pin-point knowledge, they will need to err on the side of caution. They will have to cancel, postpone, or re-route flights that could have been completed, if the weather reports had been reliable enough. Aviation will either become more dangerous, or it will slow down. Or both.
Why this is corrupt: Because it extends a personal vendetta by Donald Trump, and fits a long-term pattern of weakening public weather organizations to favor private competitors.
Why will NOAA, NWS, and the public have to go through all this?
-One reason is personal grievance. By several reports, Donald Trump bears a lasting grudge against the National Weather Service because of “Sharpiegate.” That is when Trump sketched out the future path of Hurricane Dorian with one of his Sharpies, only to be ridiculed when NWS forecasters said, “Well, actually…” These things matter with Trump.
-Another is political zealotry. The Project 2025 manifesto5 said that NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated,” because it had become “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
-Another is commercial interest, specifically the goal of privatizing weather information. There is a long history of private companies, notably AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, wanting to limit NWS’s or NOAA’s ability to present its data directly to the public. The whole business model for these companies is taking data produced at public expense, and then selling it with their shows or apps or proprietary forecasts. You can read more here.6
It’s a sign of how extreme the Project 2025 cutbacks at NOAA and NWS are that even AccuWeather now opposes them.
Should this happen? No.
3) Ongoing cuts at the FAA. Dangerous and corrupt.
Why this is dangerous. Because it will turn the aviation infrastructure from something we take for granted into something we need to worry about.