Comment by gurneyHaleck

I can't help but stand this next to the Challenger Space Shuttle O-ring thread, without feeling a profound sense of resonance between these 2 scenarios.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13238346

Compare this passage:

  (U) Third, two weeks before Snowden began mass 
      downloads of classified documents, he was 
      reprimanded after engaging in a workplace 
      spat with NSA managers. Snowden was repeatedly 
      counseled by his managers regarding his behavior 
      at work. For example, in June 2012, Snowden became 
      involved in a fiery email argument with a 
      supervisor about how computer updates should be 
      managed. Snowden added an NSA senior executive 
      several levels above the supervisor to the email 
      thread, an action that earned him a swift 
      reprimand from his contracting officer for failing 
      to follow the proper protocol for raising 
      grievances through the chain of command. Two weeks 
      later, Snowden began his mass downloads of 
      classified information from NSA networks.

Compare to:

  2) The engineers actually knew the risk (~1% chance 
     of loss per launch, not specific to the o-rings, 
     compared with two actual losses of the shuttle 
     over ~130 missions). Management used entirely 
     invented numbers for the risk which were not 
     justified.

It's like, hey, Snowden tried to tell them to apply their updates. He tried to tell them the o-rings might blow. He warned them that there was a one-in-one-hundred probability of failure.

If he didn't blow the gasket on the launchpad himself, before launch, how disasterously awful might this have really been, if he had behaved like a good little cubicle drone, followed protocol, drank the Kool-Ade, and permitted this so-called "counseling" to brainwash him?