[ajross]

You're arguing at the wrong side of the problem. Obviously yes, everyone can't be a perfect expert on everything and when doing anything complicated you should ask for help. Duh, as it were. I think I even said as much.

The point was at this level of expertise and size of market ("detection of iOS zero day rootkits"), there simply isn't a pool of "experts" you can draw on to do this a-la contract work. It's a tiny world and everyone is fumbling around and asking for help independently. And as a member of that tiny world, Gibson surely knew who he needed to call already.

But that's not the way the article framed the interaction, which implies to me that there's more context at work here.