I think it would be cool if someone wrote a post about Bob Purifoy. He’s mentioned several times in Command and Control; briefly, he was an engineer and then manager at Sandia National laboratory, who was influential in nuclear security basically by just being extremely stubborn and motivated by safety. He gave a huge number of briefings (I want to say the number was in the thousands, but I can’t find the reference right now) to policymakers, and occasionally stretched the rules to make nuclear weapons technology more secure.
I think it might provide a helpful model for how people can promote safety within large bureaucracies, even if they are not a top executive.
(I thought at one point I had found a eulogy which gave more information about his work, but I can’t find it now. Possibly someone could reach out to Eric Schlosser, the author of command and control, to see if he has more information.)
I think it would be cool if someone wrote a post about Bob Purifoy. He’s mentioned several times in Command and Control; briefly, he was an engineer and then manager at Sandia National laboratory, who was influential in nuclear security basically by just being extremely stubborn and motivated by safety. He gave a huge number of briefings (I want to say the number was in the thousands, but I can’t find the reference right now) to policymakers, and occasionally stretched the rules to make nuclear weapons technology more secure.
I think it might provide a helpful model for how people can promote safety within large bureaucracies, even if they are not a top executive.
(I thought at one point I had found a eulogy which gave more information about his work, but I can’t find it now. Possibly someone could reach out to Eric Schlosser, the author of command and control, to see if he has more information.)