if you are Boeing the company that would be stupid sure

but what about some specific arbitrary high level figure from Boeing?

One which if the person says certain things might lose their job because of this or which is afraid to lose more then their job (e.g. due to them knowingly acting in gross negligence for personal gains).

This was a silly suggestion.

Did you not realize that almost all crimes that have ever been committed, very much including by smart accomplished people with a lot to lose, violated and belied this theory of rational behavior?

It's keep your job and your freedom if you're not caught.

Call me back when the US prison population is full of corporate executives.

One thing I've been realising over the last few years is that that prison population is almost completely unrelated to actual crime rates.

My standard example is heroin, which is in the most severe rating category of illegal drug. In the UK, the number of users of just that drug on its own is close to triple the entire prison population.

You don't end up in prison if there isn't anyone to testify against you.

Reminds me a bit of Death Note.

This is the calculus for every crime, and yet somehow crimes happen.

> this doesn't make the problem go away

what if they have bigger problems in the pipeline. It could estimated to be worth exacerbating this issue if it discourages the next.

All that means is that the murder wouldn't be rational. Do you expect rationality from the executives that gutted one of America's best companies?

You're talking about a company that shipped MCAS in its new planes without training pilots on what it was or how it worked, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people.

So, an argument that this murder wouldn't be rational, gives me zero confidence that it didn't happen.

Pilots were trained in how to deal with runaway stab trim. There were three MCAS incidents. The first one you never hear about because the crew followed the runaway trim procedure and safely completed the flight. The second one did not and they crashed. The third received an Emergency Airworthiness Directive that reiterated the procedure, apparently forgot about it, and crashed.

Yes, the MCAS design was defective. The crews didn't follow their training, either.

Like it or not, it's the truth.

For the long game, Boeing has just increased the price of whistleblowing for any would be blowers.

You shouldn't be convinced, no one has presented any evidence of anything happening or not happening. Being suspicious means the situation warrants investigation.

If there were foul play, the person who made the decision may not agree that this is worse for Boeing, or may not even care about what effect it has on Boeing at large. Being accused of something no one can prove might be greatly preferable to having specific evidence come to light, especially if the scrutiny will fall on a massive company instead of on you in particular.

Boeing doesn't order assasinations. If he was assasinated, it might have been someone at Boeing, who still has a clean slate but knows that the whistleblower knows something he did, and has the right connections from working for a defense contractor.

I wouldn't be so sure. It's well documented that the CIA take a "keen interest" in Boeing (and indeed that European security services do so with Airbus), undertaking corporate espionage and sabotage on their behalf. They consider aerospace to be "strategic" or some such.

> Boeing doesn't want more attention

The US also doesn't want Boeing carried through the mud.

Who says it was Boeing? They're a publicly traded company; many would stand to lose a great deal of money should they go under.

Then there are those that stand to gain from added chaos.

Time may never tell, but let's not pretend people aren't motivated to do worse for less.