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All around the government, the Trump administration failed to fill crucial Asia-related diplomatic and professional posts in its first year, leaving huge gaps in embassies and agencies that were meant to deal with the China challenge and manage the alliances around the region. There’s no real explanation for this except gross negligence and broad dysfunction and a disdain for the bureaucracy writ large by some in the White House.
Chaos Under Heaven
Josh Rogin
Even a Washington conference was free in 1939. Fermi and Bohr were among those attending the spring meeting of the American Physical Society there, and Bohr went to the lectern to report on their work. He stated flatly that a projectile armed with a tiny fragment of U-235 under bombardment from slow neutrons could blow up most of the District of Columbia. As he lectured, delegates slipped in and out of the hall, placing long-distance calls to their campuses, and one young American, Robert Oppenheimer, was scrawling furiously away on a yellow pad, roughly calculating what the critical mass would be. There was a New York Times reporter at that meeting, but either he or his editors failed to grasp the full weight of what had happened. The Times did carry a brief account on the achievement of uranium fission. The next morning Dr. Luiz W. Alvarez was getting a haircut at the University of California when the story caught his eye. He leaped right out of the barber’s chair, swirled the sheet around him like a toga, and dashed into the Radiation Laboratory to spread the news.
The Glory and the Dream
William Manchester
And ever since, I’ve made a policy of trying to hire people who are smarter than I am. The obvious payoffs of exceptional people are that they innovate, excel, and generally make your company—and, by extension, you—look good. But there is another, less obvious, payoff that only occurred to me in retrospect. The act of hiring Alvy changed me as a manager: By ignoring my fear, I learned that the fear was groundless. Over the years, I have met people who took what seemed the safer path and were the lesser for it. By hiring Alvy, I had taken a risk, and that risk yielded the highest reward—a brilliant, committed teammate.
Creativity, Inc.
Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
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