The Critical Moment: How a Single Failure Can Unravel a Complex System
The Critical Moment: How a Single Failure Can Unravel a Complex System By Paul Garnica In Kathryn Bigelow’s recent Netflix film A House of Dynamite , we are confronted with an unsettling warning: global destruction might not begin with a declared war, but with a single misread signal . An unidentified missile — no one knows from where — appears on the radar, and within minutes, the world’s most powerful defense system is set in motion. What follows is not a heroic narrative but a raw portrayal of how technological overconfidence, misinformation, and human ego can unravel a system designed to be infallible . Every command room, every console, every political voice is wired into a network so tightly coupled that any error is instantly magnified until it becomes irreversible. 🧩 Engineering, Uncertainty, and Complex Systems Bigelow’s message goes far beyond geopolitics. In engineering — and especially in infrastructure — we live surrounded by similarly fragile structures:...