1537
Is Boeing in big trouble? World's largest aerospace firm faces 10 more whistleblowers after sudden death of two
(www.hindustantimes.com)
this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
1537 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
72764 readers
1790 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Funny, just yesterday probably I was arguing with someone in another thread that was saying the people here don't actually think Boeing had these whistleblowers killed, it was just making "implications and jokes."
And here, very clearly, with a massive number of upvotes we have someone claiming that Boeing had them killed and that resulted in brave souls coming out afterward. lol
However, this also exposes another huge complaint I have with your typical lemmy-er (lemming? lemmite? what do you call a user of lemmy?): Almost no one reads the fucking article.
This isn't about new whistleblowers coming out, but their lawyer claiming he is afraid that current whistle blowers will be "scared away."
But, of course, what I've learned on reddit and even more so on lemmy is that the facts don't matter, only the narrative.
You are describing the human species. Through its entire history.
Agreed. Although I will say.... While people not reading the articles was extremely common on reddit... Sadly, I feel like Lemmy is even worse about it.
When I first started on reddit many years ago, while it was clear some people didn't read the article, usually the top comment in the thread usually showed that they read the article, unless it was some kind joke. Over time it definitely got worse.
I was hoping when jumping to Lemmy that I would be able to recapture some of that magic.
Lemmy has a lot of good things going for it, but what I got in that regard is the top comment, with 100% upvotes, clearly not having read the article and spewing some unsubstantiated conspiratorial claims. It's like being in r/conspiracy sometimes.
Yes, varying people have different opinions on subjects. It is easy to think a comment with upvotes is the way the hivemind goes, but the hivemind has multiple factions.
I, personally, have no opinion on the matter. The dude was septic and had a stroke. While it seems unlikely that was murder, I guess it is possible if you have infinite resources to make it look natural. But that is one HELL of a coincidence to have two whistle-blowers die . .. like. .. pretty fucking insane. Watch these next ten all die and no one important bats an eye.
Same as it ever was
Yes but our current society vests power in the corporation doing the killing. It's a problem as old as civilization, but one we still haven't solved. The problem is that these institutions and the technology they wield has never been greater.
We need an impartial lawnmower. Something external to the species that comes in and cuts the biggest ones in half. And it needs to be incorruptible and powerful enough to do this.
Damn, I think I just invented god again.
I invite to read history. Roman generals, European kings...
sadfsdfasfasf
Well isn't there a ruling in aircraft design and safety, that you calculate the probability of a certain failure and judge by its reoccurence if it was just random, or more than likely systematic?
I think i read this in context to the two MAX planes crashing in the exact same way. The first one was ruled as maybe just being some very very freak thing to happen, but it happening twice made it entirely implausible to be without systematic cause.
And well now it is happening twice in a few years with Boeing that weird things happen twice in a row with little time in between in relation to critical security flaws.
*after agreeing to testify
I don’t know if that’s a rule of thumb or not, but it certainly makes sense.
First, the world of reliability runs on data and math. Lots of statistics, of course.
And second, aircraft are over-engineered for safety margins on top of safety margins. The test data might say you need a part that’s X thickness of aluminum in order to be 99% sure to never fail in the field. So let’s just make it 3X thickness to be safe!
So from that standpoint, back to back failures should pretty much always draw a bunch of attention in this industry.
I did do the math on it and the second guy only had a 1 in 3630 chance of dying of natural causes in that time window.
sadfsdfasfasf
Yes. What you are listing are coincidences.
Also understand that it is pretty rare for a whistleblower to have any future in the industry they are blowing the whistle on. That is throwing away years of schooling and often decades of experience. People tend to not do that if they aren't already ill and not expecting a long life.
As for "if I die, it is not suicide": Gonna get real dark for a moment. A lot of people are just looking for a way to make their life, or death, matter. Someone realizing they don't want to put themselves and their family through a very long trial might very well use that as an excuse to take the easy way out.
All that said: Obviously these need to be investigated. But there is a big difference between investigating a suspicious death and immediately jumping to conspiracy.
And suicide rates go up drastically when people are overly stressed and think they have no future. Sort of like... having contributed to incredibly dangerous air travel and burning bridges with an entire industry.
Similarly, like I said, a lot of whistleblowers are ill to begin with. Because, again, it is throwing away your future in an industry. It is a lot easier to consider that when your future on this planet is measured in years or even months.
A LOT of documentaries/youtubes/whatever love to point out "the big evil company is ruining this man's life when he is just trying to get his chemotherapy so that he can have a few more months with his family". Which is indeed horrible (and why any good lawyer gets the testimony on record ASAP because people ARE pushed to suicide). But also kind of ignores that said company didn't give them cancer... Unless we are having a repeat of the COVID conspiracy theories too.
How is your take also not a conspiracy theory? You just pinned it on the little guy instead of a megacorp
Well, for one thing, the definition of "conspiracy" is "a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act". So... you can't have a one person conspiracy.
There's 2 kinds of evidence.
The guy saying he won't kill himself requires inferring that he's being truthful when he said it and that he didn't change his mind. It's not non-evidence, it does point to suicide being less likely. But it's far from conclusive. If there's no sign of entering the vehicle or that a struggle occurred, then I'd argue that far outweighs his prior statement.
That's also a common misunderstanding, at least regarding the first (I'm not as familiar with the second). I'm a bit unclear on the details of the deposition - which side wanted it and was asking the questions, etc. (detailed here) but whatever the case, it was Boeing that demanded he come back for one more day. So if Boeing wanted him to not testify that day, they'd just send him home as originally planned. The only reason they'd do it then was to silence him generally...but doing it in a way that draws so much suspicion to them seems like an implausibly bad decision. Then again, it is Boeing. (Note that this is also circumstantial evidence, and requires assuming that Boeing isn't so dumb as to kill a witness in the middle of their own deposition, which may not be warranted).
Edit: corrected my own misunderstanding of deposition
Its also inferring his friend is being truthful when he said that's what the guy said.
That guy also had a history of mental issues and anxiety. He was away from home experiencing high stress environments, like a court room, and he was looking at another court appearance that day.
It doesn't take a genius to see that maybe, just maybe, this is a coincidence instead of murder. He had already given the bulk of his testimony, so I really don't see the motive here.
There is plenty of evidence of foul play you smartass. They willingly risked lives over many years and are still currently flying many planes with defective unsafe parts. Going from that to assasination is not a big leap.
Multiple of the whistleblowers and their colleagues have also independently said that their workplace was directly and deliberately sabotaged in order to continue using defective parts.
Yes the last one doesnt really look like a typical assasination but it doesnt matter in the slightest if it was or not.
Well...the first dude did say something about Boeing killing whistleblowers and the bravery of others to step up in defiance of that.
So that whole line of thinking is conspiracy theory stuff with no real proof and it is being parroted here. Granted, usually the assassination stuff is usually tongue in cheek, but the top comment seems a bit crazy.
Even if the dude that "killed himself" did do it to himself, he did so because he was harassed by a company for doing his job. Even in the non conspiracy version of the story, the corporation still acted in bad faith and should be held liable for it's actions. Why is this the hill you want to die on?
OK, but that's a pretty big difference from hiring a hitman to explicitly murder him.
Yes, it is different.
No one is saying Boeing execs shouldn't be prosecuted.
It's very naive to think that a weapons dealer who also kills it's commercial airline passengers for profit isn't also killing whistleblowers.
Nice try Boeing
I'm on your side dude, the response here is kinda nuts.
I needed to see this, just in general, today
I mean If it was an organized thing then I'm not sure it's so dumb
They can kill two people but if ten more people die it would look really bad on there part and would become undeniable
It already looks really bad
Anyone saying humans suck and are terrible is likely a terrible person themselves. Decent people tend to see the better aspect of humanity.
This is a leap. You can be a good person and also see that people as a whole can be both wonderful and absolutely terrible. This is a story about a mega corp murdering two whistleblowers, so far. In this case, the people involved in making this a headline suck and are terrible.
I was talking to someone the other day who was really bent out of shape over an extremely unpleasant customer. The kind of interaction that sticks with you for years.
I told my perspective on people. We tend to remember remarkable things - stuff that really stands out from the normal. The news media does the same thing. Normal, everyday stuff isn't "newsworthy."
So when an asshole customer stands out that much, it's because it's such a rare experience. People are mostly good, so the goodness doesn't stand out.