tl;dr

I stopped because of threats. “They are coming after you,” I was told. It also showed me who I worked for clearly and the necessity of distance from them. I don’t have enough life left to tolerate people like this. They have little or no integrity. That said, today our leadership is full of low integrity and untrustworthy conduct. Behind this lack of integrity are incentive and permission structures that encourage bad behavior. I could not tolerate being silencedany longer. I have already lost too many days to this.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”― Ernest Hemingway

Why did it disappear?

In brief, I needed to find a safe space to speak. I could not speak safely while working. Sad, but true. My useful work is about thinking and speaking clearly. Writing is a means to do this, and I was being denied it. I was threatened bymy employer. It is a fairly pathetic stance of a weak and fragile controlling management. It is also a broad and common situation in corporate America. Workers are weak and powerless. Management is tightening its grip on institutions. Management is too often characterized by low-integrity behavior. They have a permission structure for this from the corporations, and they act on it. This itself is damning. This fact forced me to choose retirement. The censorship, explicit or implicit, feels like a very modern American tale. You would think it is un-American.

We see the same phenomenon nationally on both the left and the right. It takes different forms, all of which are toxic. Both sides practice “cancel culture” that weaponizes shame. The government is increasingly censoring via power and punishment. Corporate governance is the same.  They fear the voice of the voters or the workers. Social media and the Internet should give everyone a voice. Corporate interests, the government, and power all fear this. Instead, social media is a way to make money. It is a way to sell us shit. It is a way to create outrage that divides us. All because anger and outrage drive engagement and profit. All of this damages us. Under this sort of leadership, our collective future is grim.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou

Where does the blog go from here? We need to discuss current events!

“The purpose of an organization is to enable ordinary humans beings to do extraordinary things.”– Peter Drucker

First things first, I am retired as of now. So the blog is back. Rather than forcing you to read between the lines, the reasons for each of these developments will be explained in detail in the coming days. Stay tuned! The details of what happened will be explained. I will get to exactly what happened.

That said, there are themes that thread my personal reality with the national shit show. Part of this is the desire of those in power to kill the voice of the common man. True, whether it’s the public or the employee. You see people being executed by federal officials for the offense of filming their public conduct. This alone shows the raw power of video evidence. That power is something that those in control want to take away because it threatens them. This is far more brutal than my personal experience, but entirely consistent with my manager’s behavior.

One of the things I hated the most about my colleagues at Sandia was their giving in to the basic assumptions of their lack of power. That, of course, employees don’t have a voice. Of course, managers will lie to us about the state of work. It seems to me that the rank and file in society have turned away from any active part in their own lives. They are simply surviving. They simplyaccept their lack of power and actually become accomplices to the authoritarian impulses. These impulses emanate from corporate America and the government itself. The message is like the Borg’s “resistance is futile.” If it is, we are fucked.

I’ve been spending a lot of time since the middle of September, when I took the blog down, trying to figure out what happened. There’s a lot to analyze there. I made mistakes for sure, but I also acted with integrity. That integrity was not matched by the management. I grossly misread the situation. My management was committed fully to mediocrity. I am happy stop resisting the pull of their incompetence. I am glad to be away from where I was and no longer under their heels. Worse yet, is the realization that the terrible management has implicit permission to act with little or no integrity.

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

There is a profound symmetry between those expressions of societal power. This provides the basic permission structure that gives the management the right to act with low integrity. Our national leaders seem to embrace the same permissions provided by the electorate. In both cases, their behavior only corrodes any institutional trust. All this means is that everyone in a position of leadership is fundamentally untrustworthy. It leads to a society that is devoid of trust, which is where we are today. It is only getting worse. We are at the point where most of us expect to be lied to or bullshitted.

The thing that sticks with me the most is that underlying all of this damage is a lack of trust. This lack of trust pervades society and has been replaced by a focus on money. Thus, the trust in the labs as high-integrity arbiters of technical and scientific quality is gone. The same can be said of each branch of government. Whether it is the court, the congress or the President, money is ruling and swamping trust. In its place is a simple subservience to money and no earned trust from the nation.

The way we are treated by those in leadership is frankly insulting. As adults in our regular lives, we have to confront real problems directly. We can’t paper them over or bullshit our way through them. We have to act on reality and deal with it. Then you go to work, and you’re treated like a child. The same is the treatment of us as citizens. You see crimes on the news and are told that what you can see is false. You’re told total bullshit and obvious fictions about what’s happening. You are never offered the truth. In the process, these leaders escape all accountability. I saw it for years at work, and now every day on the news.

These “leaders” treat us like children. As an example, it is similar to parents who try to give some euphemism around a pet’s death. Sort of the ‘Buster went away to live on the farm’ instead of making the child face the realities of life and death. In that example, the child is denied learning and growing opportunities needed later in life. The leaders do the same to society or institutions. Progress and innovation needed to overcome the reality are sacrificed along with the truth. This dynamic is driving our society and its institutions backwards.

The irony in this is that the subservience to the dollar will yield a continued decline in trust. This will lead to something that breaks the system completely. In the final analysis, we’ve created a system that undermines the best in people and draws out the worst in them. Taken together, the lab violates its (sacred) responsibilities to the nation in the name of money. This mantra is thrust upon the labs by the nation. Therefore, the outcome is simply preordained. The work will have technical or scientific integrity that is sacrificed at the altar of the dollar.

It comes down to the proposition of who and what is in control. Is it the managers? Is it the executives? Or is it our principles and values? Today, it’s the managers, and it’s the executives. They are violating our principles and violating our values to achieve their aims. This gets to one key conclusion that I have about how our management behaves today: The reason is that the incentives are all wrong. The incentives are all about money. It demands the regular and complete violation of principles and values. Today, successful management opposes the proper execution of the Lab’s mission if it gets in the way of money.

“An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation”― Steven D. Levitt

One of those things that I value deeply is the prospect of exposing our work to peer review. In fact, the episode that catalyzed the end of my career was all about peer review. The problem is that the incentives our management has today do not align with peer review. The management can only deal with a peer review that is unremittingly positive and only nibbles around the edges of problems. If the management gets a peer review that exposes problems and is negative, their reaction is deep, emotional, and often retributive. That retribution fell on me, and it was the thing that caused me to decide to retire. I can no longer work with people whose principles and values are so completely divorced from my own.

I want to be clear. Not everyone who is a manager or executive is the problem. The problem is that far too many managers and executives are encouraged by the incentive structures to do the wrong thing.  They are rewarded for doing the wrong thing. As a result, more and more managers and executives now behave in ways that are counterproductive to our basic principles and values. In that direction lies the seeds of disaster. One final bit I want to be perfectly clear about: this is not a condemnation of Sandia National Laboratory. This is a condemnation of the system that the laboratory exists in and the system we have created in this country. What happened to me and what is going on at Sandia National Labs is a reflection of what is wrong with this country.

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”― Laurence J. Peter,

Part of writing in the era of AI is to make sure that what I write is seen as authentic. So part of that authenticity is to say a fair number of not safe for work things. Things that are anti-establishment, anti-institution, and just generally shit that an AI wouldn’t say. As you probably know, AIs are tuned to provide words and text that feel like it’s appropriate for our corporate overlords. As a result, the humanity and authenticity is drained out of its output.

The issue is that the non-technical topics are addressing things in the way of progress. Good technical and scientific focus is inhbited bythe actions of those managing us. In retrospect, I can see how it did for me. Now, I can explore some of the bigger ideas. In my time at Sandia, I did not pursue ideas because it was not work-related. The lack of innovation at Sandia is a direct result of how the Lab is run. The culture of Sandia is antithetical to progress. Judging by the state of American science this may be everywhere, not just Sandia. The frightening thing is that other places are much worse. Few places are better. With the advent of AI the lack of progress and focus is potentially catastrophic for society. In the process of our collective incompetence, we have been surpassed by China across the scientific enterprise. Togethe,r these are the recipe for disaster.

Closure and Path Ahead

“You’d think solving mysteries would bring you closure, that closing the loop would comfort and quiet your mind. But it never does. The truth always disappoints.” ― John Green

This post is going to seem very angry because I am very angry. Frankly you, dear reader, should be angry too! The reasons for my anger actually affect the entire citizenry of the United States . We all depend on these institutions I’ve worked at for a safe, reliable, and effective nuclear deterrence. At a time when our nation needs more expertise and better execution of scientific and technical work, we are getting systematically worse. The mediocrity of our premier research institutions is about to have a huge real-world impact. The importance of AI for our economy and national security is growing. We are not at a state that is capable of meeting the moment we are in. Today, it’s merely a footnote in a tidal wave of societal decline and dysfunction.

The institutions that I’ve spent my entire professional career at are in free fall. They are in free fall because of mismanagement that focuses on the wrong things. They are not delivering to the nation the responsibilities to which they’ve been charged. Unfortunately, the nation itself is at fault. Our national culture is extremely broken and the culture at the labs reflects this. We have a lack of trust for all our institutions, and from what I’ve seen, where I’ve worked, that lack of trust has been earned. It has been earned because they don’t do the hard things they need to do to fulfill their responsibilities. In fact, what I see is a management system that marches us steadfastly towards mediocrity. Excellence should be demanded by the citizens.

To be clear, the assault on these institutions is bipartisan. There is an attack on excellence and efficiency from all quarters of society. On the Left you have over-regulation and an assault on risk-taking that has destroyed innovation. From the Right you have an attack on knowledge and a governance that focuses on money. This is a society-wide problem, not something that falls into the simple narrative of Left versus Right. Much of the lack of focus on continued excellence is due to arrogance, a belief in the supremacy of American science. That supremacy has evaporated in the face of this incompetent governance. My contributions can actually get better now that I’m retired!

  I don’t think the tenor or content will change. I do expect the amount of technical content is likely to increase. Perhaps this is logical. Perhaps it’s paradoxical. I still have great interests and ideas. I want to keep myself busy with passion projects involving physics and math.  Over the long term, this is sure to change, albeit slowly. I won’t have the day in and day out “inspiration” from work. A lot of the reason for retiring is that work was thoroughly uninspiring technically.  The rest of the world and the American carnage will provide plenty of great themes to work on. I am sure that I’ll rapidly have over 400 posts total.  It’ll be at 385 total as of today since 2013.

“Write even when the world is chaotic”– Cory Doctrow

In the coming week, I will be far more expansive on the reasoning and the backstory around my decisions. I have a short post on my plan for the near future. I also have a relevant post I wrote back in September while on vacation in Spain. For now, I hope some of you welcome my return to the public square.

Writing is essential to me, and I won’t stop again.