Introduced by a trusted connector?
On paper, airspace is neat. Lines on a chart. Numbers. Altitudes. Clearances. In the real sky, the envelope is shaped by weather, workload and human limits. I learned this the day a very experienced rotor wing pilot looked at a cross country route I had been given and said three words that stayed with me:…
There are only two kinds of gates in a system: The first kind produces compliance.The second kind produces safety. I learned that two different ways. When The Task Book Actually Means Something In wildland fire, the task book is more than a form. If you want to be: you carry a task book. The book…
Every messy mission system has one reliable pattern:The interfaces break first. They break: You see it clearly any time you try to connect worlds that were never designed for each other. When Systems Touch Without Consent At DHS I saw this in several places: In each case, someone tried to treat the boundary as if…
High tempo systems live or die on one simple question: “Which data do we treat as the truth when opinions differ?” If everyone has their own private truth, you do not have a system. You have a debate club with better screens. In my world, that has shown up as: In an air picture context,…
In architecture circles, “decouple data from the application” often gets repeated like a spell. Say it enough times and you start to believe that separating data from applications is always good and never painful. In real systems, it is more complicated. Separation can unlock federation, resilience and swappability. It can also introduce new failure modes…
When people talk about “federated systems,” it can sound abstract. In reality, federation is what you reach for when you cannot force anyone to do anything. Before systems like iCAV matured, I saw the cost of non-federation up close (or rather, an integrated system trying to operate in a federated environment). During Hurricane Katrina, data…
There is a quiet failure mode in complex systems. It happens when every risk becomes a gate. A gate is a hard stop. You may not proceed until you satisfy this checklist, this committee, this form. Gates have their place. Nobody wants to remove all gates from an air traffic control system or a nuclear…
On paper, compliance sounds like a strength. The system is compliant. The team is compliant. Audits are passed. Boxes are checked. In practice, compliance is table stakes. It keeps you out of trouble. It does not get hard things done. The teams that actually deliver are committed. They understand the mission, believe in the intent…
So far we have talked about federation as a positive pattern. Respect sovereignty. Allow variety. Federate data instead of forcing everyone into one box. There is a darker version. That is federation without clear ownership and without clear standards. It is slow failure. You can see hints of it anywhere multiple systems are stitched together…
Most talk about AI in systems work falls into two extremes. At one extreme, AI is treated as a magic fix that will somehow unify everything without hard choices. At the other, it is treated as a threat that must be kept away from critical infrastructure until it is perfectly safe and fully understood. Neither…
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