The "subtle" hacking is removing the regulations requiring safe maintenance and procedures, removing people responsible for maintaining and implementing the regulations, and removing the people responsible for controlling the traffic safely.

In a highly complex system, all the hacking you need is to allow the ordinary chaotic systems to run more wild and stochastic errors will degrade the system with less traceability than "subtle hacking" — it's hiding in plain sight.

When Facebook or Twitter "Move Fast and Break Things" the consequences are a few users can't use a feature for a while until they notice the issue and patch it.

Do the same with the air transport or health care systems and you start filling morgues.

So are you saying that the root cause of this crash (and the others I suppose) is something that happened in the last 4 weeks?

Only that that is a more likely explanation than "subtle hacking".

It could of course all be coincidence, or it could have to do with consequences of 1) election of a wrecking-ball administration hell-bent on destroying all regulations, and 2) terrorizing the entire federal workforce including the Air Traffic Controllers.

The heaviest-casualty US crash in 16 years happened shortly after a "you should all resign now" memo went out along with news of plans to massively fire federal workers AND a manager in the control tower had one controller handling multiple types of flights so another could go home early, in this case including the military helicopter and the AA5342 flight. A significant discrepancy between ATC and helicopter altitude was seen in the conversations and not followed-up. It is so far-fetched that a controller handling the duties of two and worried about his job would miss something, and the root cause being chaos at the top?

Similarly, initial reports mention maintenance issues as possibly implicated in today's Delta crash; considering the wrecking-ball-to-regulations of the incoming administration, it is no stretch to think Delta mgt might well have started cutting maintenance expenses shortly after 05-Noveber-2024. Who is going to notice and fine them?

In any case, both coincidence and a wrecking-ball administration are more likely than "subtle hacking".

Fair enough, stressing out the ATC workforce at least seems plausible. I thought you were referring to some regulation changes which I was assuming haven't actually happened yet.

I cannot imagine the logic of that, so not sure why that response.

What I was referring to, is the potential for state actors to breed fear re: air travel. It would be crushing economically, and create general disarray via distrust of core services.

Ah, well state level actors are another thing altogether, and would definitely have the effect you mention; a general distrust of air travel would be quite disruptive, and not in a good way. It is certainly worth considering.

But the simplest cause I see so far is piling-on job-termination stress onto an already stressed-near-the-limit air traffic control workforce, and near-eliminating enforcement of maintenance regulations. Better yet, the results will be totally stochastic.

I wasn't replying to your comment. I don't think hacking is out of the question. I do think regulation changes in the last 4 weeks are an unlikely cause (were there even any?).

Sorry, I meant why the person you responded to meant that.

I cannot imagine it would affect anything so soon, and am unsure how it will affect anything. But certainly too soon.

Which specific regulation that was recently removed do you think contributed to this crash?

Of course it would not be any specific regulation at this point — it is the drastic cutting of overall enforcement by gutting the agencies.

This planned gutting of agencies and regulations was widely advertised by the current administration in the campaign, and post election, and post-inaugration, they have made every move possible to fire, distract, and terrorize any federal employee who might be enforcing regulations.

In this new anti-regulation environment, it's easy to see how a mid-level manager could decide he can now cut spending on maintenance to make his department's numbers improve without fear of regulatory action. There will be no regulators breathing down his neck (they are all fired or distracted), and they'll soon cut the regs anyway. It doesn't matter which regulation it is. That decision to cut maintenance could have been made as early as November or recently as last week.

So, maintenance gets cut, something gets missed, a part fails under the stress of a hard landing on a cold windy day, and we've got a wrecked aircraft.