A month or two ago, I wrote to you about Moneyball by MICHAEL LEWIS. Firstly, that’s a great book. Secondly, LEWIS’ writing is everything I want from a non fiction.
It makes me happy that I can talk about a bunch of his other books too. But let’s focus on his most recent: The Fifth Risk
There’s a law in America that commits Presidential candidates to creating a plan for a successful transition into government in the event of the People of the USA choosing them as the next President.
Guess what: there’s a whole lot of stuff you’ve got to have under control to run one of the most significant societies in the world.
Guess what else: Trump, no surprises, thought he didn’t need to do anything and resented his team for trying to do anything to plan for power.
For example: the Department of Energy, this book claims, nearly heard a peep from the Trump team before or after his inauguration. That must be ok right? After all, how bad could it be if the grid carried on as normal.
Only… in America, the department of Energy manages everything nuclear.
But who manages all of America’s nuclear capability if there isn’t anyone in post at the department of Energy?
If you can stomach astonishing levels of incompetence, this book and all of its mind blowing detail, is for you.
Enjoy!
Marc
P.S. For my own ‘experience’ of nuclear fallout, scroll all the way down.
SNIPPETS OF INCOMPETENCE FROM A STARTLING OPUS OF ERRORS
There are 500 jobs that need to be filled. Here is an account of Trump’s suggestion to Chris Christie:
With that, Christie went back to preparing for a Trump administration. He tried to stay out of the news, but that proved difficult. From time to time Trump would see something in the paper about Christie’s fund-raising and become upset all over again. The money people donated to his campaign Trump considered, effectively, his own. He thought the planning and forethought pointless. At one point he turned to Christie and said, “Chris, you and I are so smart [Editor’s note: 😂]that we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves.”
A stark contrast is made in this book between immigrants to America working in government and natural Americans (whatever that means). The indication is: everything is crumbling and the only people who can deal with it are the people who have grown up in already unstable societies.
Max knew an astonishing number of them. He’d detected a pattern: a surprising number of the people responsible for them were first-generation Americans who had come from places without well-functioning governments. People who had lived without government were more likely to find meaning in it. On the other hand, people who had never experienced a collapsed state were slow to appreciate a state that had not yet collapsed.
How does anyone work with the man?
Christie had made sure that Trump knew the protocol for his discussions with foreign leaders. The transition team had prepared a document to let him know how these were meant to go. The first few calls were easy—the very first was always with the prime minister of Great Britain—but two dozen calls in you were talking to some kleptocrat and tiptoeing around sensitive security issues. Before any of the calls could be made, however, the president of Egypt called in to the switchboard at Trump Tower and somehow got the operator to put him straight through to Trump. “Trump was like … I love the Bangles! You know that song ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’?” recalled one of his advisers on the scene.
What do you do if one day your employer leaves and the business keeps on running without anyone telling you to carry on coming to work? How long do you stay? A genuine dilemma for American civil servants between administrations.
There was actually a long history of even the appointees of one administration hanging around to help the new appointees of the next. The man who had served as the Department of Energy’s chief financial officer during the Bush administration, for instance, stayed a year and a half into the Obama administration—simply because he had a detailed understanding of the money end of things that was hard to replicate quickly. The CFO of the department at the end of the Obama administration was a mild-mannered civil-servant type named Joe Hezir. He had no particular political identity and was widely thought to have done a good job—and so he half-expected a call from the Trump people asking him to stay on, just to keep the money side of things running smoothly. The call never came. No one even let him know his services were no longer required. Not knowing what else to do, but without anyone to replace him, the CFO of a $30 billion operation just up and left.
Um.
Jenny Hopkinson, a Politico reporter, obtained the curricula vitae of the new Trump people. Into USDA (US Department of Agriculture) jobs, some of which paid nearly $80,000 a year, the Trump team had inserted a long-haul truck driver, a clerk at AT&T, a gas-company meter reader, a country-club cabana attendant, a Republican National Committee intern, and the owner of a scented-candle company, with skills like “pleasant demeanor” listed on their résumés.
If you’re not into spoilers (if that’s even a thing you can use to describe the closing lines of a non-fiction), then look away now:
While driving the man around Elk City, Lonnie spotted Miss Finley. Her house was a ruin and her barn was gone: surely she was eligible for relief. Lonnie stopped so the FEMA guy might speak with her. “You know,” said Miss Finley, “for the last ten years I prayed for a tornado to come and take that barn. I didn’t think it would take the house, too.” She seemed to think her reasoning self-evident. The FEMA guy said he didn’t understand: Why had she been praying for a tornado to take her barn? “Every time I pull out of the driveway I’m looking at that red barn,” she said. “And every time I pull into the driveway I’m looking at the red barn.” At which point Lonnie asked the FEMA guy if he was ready to leave. He wasn’t. He was still puzzled: Why did it bother the woman to look at her red barn? “That barn,” said Miss Finley, “is where my husband committed suicide ten years ago.” And so you might have good reason to pray for a tornado, whether it comes in the shape of swirling winds, or a politician. You imagine the thing doing the damage that you would like to see done, and no more. It’s what you fail to imagine that kills you.
BONUS
There’s a number of great songs about things atomic. But this is the best:
Fun anecdote
A few months ago, I had a dream that there was a mutually assured destruction event. In it, all of the countries of the world fired their nuclear arsenals at one another.
The only country to survive was Wales. It had been left off all of the maps in a printing error and everyone forgot to nuke it.
Suddenly, the First Minister was the leader of the free world.
I woke up laughing and started to think of all the funny, sad, tragic, weird scenarios that would be reality if this happened. I think I might turn this into a collection of short stories or something one day. Here’s a selection of my ideas:
MAB DAROGAN – the pro-independence parties in Wales have accidentally achieved their aim. They meet in Llandudno for a New Wales congress to decide on the best way forward
CONTROLLER CONTROLLER – Rail travels in Wales should be easy. It’s not. Going from North to South now requires a short period in a nuclear fallout zone.
PERFIDIOUS ALBION – An all English enclave attempts secession from Wales in Pembrokeshire
TWO SHADOWS HOLDING HANDS — re: the only two Welsh people to have died in the bomb
THE FARMERS ALMANACK 2023 — a guide to food production post apocalypse
FEMALE SPACE JAZZ DETECTIVE - we finally got interplanetary policy devolved, baby. Nice.
I’m willing to accept a hefty advance on my royalties. Just hit reply to get an automated response from my agent, Frank Sobatka.