[pdonis]

> Sentences like "about two weeks after the system’s unthinkable stupidity drove the two-month-old plane and all 189 people on it to a horrific death" should raise alarm bells in any reader's mind.

Yes, exactly: that's the point. Yes, a lot of technical detail is left out, but the average lay person doesn't care about the technical detail. They just want the bottom line. And as someone who has spent quite a bit of time digging into the technical details, I have a hard time quarreling with the language this author chose to describe the bottom line. This is not a case of "well, it's complicated". This really is a simple case at bottom: an unthinkably stupid system, a product of a frighteningly common managerial and corporate outlook, killed everyone on board two airplanes. And the author wants that to raise alarm bells in every reader's mind--so that maybe those readers will start wondering whether letting such a system continue unrestrained is a good idea.