Where We Spend Money
The US Government is willing to spend big money on helping humans stay alive in certain scenarios… with high-profile search-and-rescue (SAR) scenarios being one of them.
Why are we willing to spend millions to save a few humans in some situations, but refuse to spend comparably tiny bits of money on healthcare, housing, or food to rescue tens of thousands of others?
That’s a rhetorical question to a point… but this week’s high-profile ocean search and rescue/recovery operation for the submersible Titan is bound to raise questions.
We should ask questions. It’s good to talk about what we value, and how we have set up our government — or not — to support those values. Talking about those values is a key part of the work here at Shift the Country (it’s Thing 4). This post is one of a zillion examples out there about how we can talk more about values. We can all get better. It would help.
If we can talk more about our past and present choices about how government should operate, we can (theoretically) make better decisions about what to do with the future of our government. Talking about how we want government to operate to better serve us and how we can get government to work in those ways can help inspire Americans to get more engaged in government by doing basic stuff like voting. It can help counter cynicism, distrust, and a lack of faith in a functional government, too, which is part of why Americans have become disengaged and disenchanted.
We should talk about this values stuff because we have made choices in this country about what to fund. That’s how government works. Some legislators at some prior time made decisions about what the US has funded.
US Search & Rescue
We collectively (so far) seem to like having law enforcement, a quasi-military organization like the US Coast Guard (USCG), and assorted fire resources that can do search and rescue when we need it (sometimes: 2/3 of US firefighters are volunteers because Americans also don’t like to pay taxes whenever possible).
The most expensive SAR stuff tends to happen over/in water, out in woodsy wildland areas, and in urban collapse situations (referenced as Urban Search and Rescue, or USAR).
SAR operations can be highly technical and require special equipment to deal with water, to deal with structural engineering/safety, to provide sensors and communication technology, or to provide air support or other specialized capabilities. Local governments and interagency coalitions often conduct searches in urban, suburban, or exurban areas when kids, adults, older adults, or people of any age with mental health conditions get lost or are suspected to be kidnapped.
We’ve gotten pretty good as a country with SAR capabilities and protocols. There are some fantastic teams, plans, processes, and technology. It’s really quite something.
In some ways it’s a model of the best we can be as humans by being willing to go all out to find the lost, to rescue the floundering, and to free the trapped.
This Week’s High-Profile SAR Operation: Seeking a Submersible That Was Seeking the Titanic
And so we see a rather spectacular rescue operation this week.
The US Coast Guard (USCG) has ramped up a SAR operation and Unified Command to help an international coalition find the submersible expeditionary vehicle Titan that was meant to explore the iconic sunken vessel Titanic. Per CBS after today’s USCG press conference, “A sub that went missing while carrying five people to the wreckage of the Titanic has about 40 hours of breathable air left, the U.S. Coast Guard said Tuesday afternoon. The sub had about 96 hours of oxygen at most onboard, officials said. A Canadian research vessel lost contact with the sub during a dive Sunday morning about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and U.S. and Canadian authorities have been searching for it.”
Here’s video of the USCG regional press conference today featuring Rear Admiral John Mauger. It starts officially after the 9 minute mark:
The official USCG video is a bit shorter (same content); available here with a press release.
The missing submersible is owned by OceanGate Expeditions, “a team of explorers, scientists, & filmmakers dedicated to exploring the deep.” The company’s website is down today likely due to overloading from so much attention.
Media reports indicate that the five people on board the missing submersible include “Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman, British explorer Hamish Harding and French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet… Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the U.S.-based company that planned the voyage, was also on the [submarine] vessel.”
This is a high-profile SAR operation because it was a group of people trying to do a high-tech “impossible” thing in reaching the Titanic which always brings attention; it’s high-profile because it’s international; and it’s high-profile because of the sheer likely tragedy of more humans chasing the seemingly-evergreen Titanic tragedy.
Let’s be honest: it’s probably also high-profile because the missing persons are also possibly wealthy — or at least wealthy enough to be in the “in” crowd for such a cutting-edge tech-dependent expedition.
The two “explorers” on board likely also add intrigue that draws in attention as much as the word “expedition” does. Our colonially-driven Western society has always been drawn to and celebrated “explorers;” no matter how potentially fraught the context is related to whatever is being “explored.”
In this case, the exploration was for the far reaches of the bottom of the sea… an area in which modern-day technical expertise is still limited and evolving.
The deep sea is a frontier — and our culture reveres a frontier.
As such, finding such a lost submersible/submarine so deep in the ocean is no small feat.
And so here we are: the US Coast Guard stated in today’s press conference that this rescue is their highest priority within the region. The US is cooperating with Canada. France is sending specialized resources (one of their people is among the missing). And so on.
The money already spent is well into the millions… because of boats, ships, aircraft, high-tech sensing equipment, related correlating high-tech analysis, and the very high number of federal personnel, contractors, and leadership at every level actively coordinating resources for the overall international response. There is all kinds of involvement. It is likely that the US Departments of State, Defense, Commerce (due to weather + ocean), and Homeland Security are involved at a minimum.
Deep Water & Incident Management Expertise
I will say this: the US Coast Guard may be the best-positioned response agency in the world to lead this kind of highly complex operation.
There are six federal agencies that excel at incident management for big disasters. Five of them are federal wildland firefighting agencies; the sixth is the USCG.
The USCG is fantastic at handling this kind of emergency. They have helped build and shape the post-9/11 National Incident Management System (NIMS) that guides how we do day-to-day incident management in the US; and they are absolutely the best at water-related SAR operations.
Further, the USCG has both experience and expertise with very deep water operations… and in partnering with companies and organizations that have these deep water capabilities.
The USCG has this capacity because of deep water oil infrastructure and other underwater infrastructure that they have to deal with. Specifically, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2010 brought all kinds of expertise and experience in dealing with a very deep underwater crisis… as all kinds of deep water technologies and approaches were tried to get the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to finally stop pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico. That spectacular oil spill started when the well blew on April 20, 2010 and continued until the oil well was finally capped on July 15 that same year.
The USCG learned all kinds of stuff during the course of that active oil spill, and in the cleanup of it. I saw a tiny fraction of what the USCG worked on then as I ended up on an interagency response effort coordinated by the White House for active aspects of the spill and the response to it as I was working a detail to the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) Private Sector Office. As the USCG is within DHS, quite a bit of the coordination with the private sector included our office.
I can go on ad nauseam but I’ll save you the fuss. Bureaucracy is complicated and takes forever to explain because our government is complicated, too. As are the things we want government to do. Learning is always good, but maybe in small doses.
In short, the USCG should have a pretty good idea of what might work or not for deep water search, sensing, and rescue/recovery operations. Plus… we do have the US Navy if it comes to it. Classified sensing capabilities may also be being put to use, although we’re not likely to learn about those out here in the public. Perhaps foreign governments will be watching this rescue/recovery carefully to see what our capabilities are, and some operational security is likely due to that risk.
All of that is to say: if anyone can find this lost submersible vessel, it’s Team America.
Should we, though? Spend millions to find these five people and this missing vessel?
That’s a different question. I don’t know the answer, but I do know we refuse to spend millions to keep Americans alive every single day. Why the difference? Shouldn’t we talk about it?
Questions & Priorities: Who Do We Rescue?
The missing OceanGate Expeditions submarine Titan went off communications on Sunday afternoon. By this point it’s Tuesday night in the targeted rescue area. The US has mobilized and supported a robust interagency and international operation to address the rescue/recovery of the Titan. We’ve already spent millions on this operation.
To be fair, it seems like the right thing to do. Partly because it’s hard to imagine the US as the world’s technological and military superpower throwing up its hands to an international community, shrugging its metaphorical shoulders, and saying “Eh… nothing we can do.”
Also, high-profile rescue operations often seem to draw increasing levels of highly technical resources as people become invested in the rescue effort and in the fates of those who need help. The Chilean miner rescue (also in 2010) is an example of another incredible rescue effort that went on for 69 days. Humans love a rescue story.
More than that… when we know humans need help and we have the capacity to help them, we feel compelled to do so.
Sometimes.
Why is it that we feel compelled to rescue humans when it’s an unusual situation… and not when it’s every day?
Why do we feel compelled to spend millions on aircraft, boats, and engineering equipment to help people in high-risk search and rescue emergencies… but don’t necessarily feel compelled to help people have healthcare access that will keep them alive?
Why is it that we’ll go to great lengths to feed trapped miners underground, but not to house homeless people in any city in the US? Or to make sure Americans have enough food?
I would argue that it’s at least partly because we don’t talk enough about our values, and about the country we want to build that reflects those values.
I would argue that we also don’t talk enough about what we want to see out of our government at every level that lines up with those values.
If we are so fired up about taking care humans when they are struggling… why do we go all out and spare no expense when it’s a dramatic rescue, but cut corners and add extra requirements for getting help when it’s about the everyday struggle to stay alive?
We can do better.
Let’s Talk More About Taking Care of Humans
Talking about values (Thing 4) is part of how we plan to help bring widespread pressure to make shift happen up in this country. We can collectively put this country on a different path. We can make a moral shift and a policy shift.
We can advocate for humans and humanity and for taking better care of all of us — not just the few deigned by some subsection of us to be worthy of rescuing.
Join us on any upcoming Zoom call where we’re putting the pieces in place to ramp up pressure to help shift this country. We can start on these cutting-edge volunteer efforts now… and by 2024 we’ll have quite a movement. Come on in and help us shape what we build. We need big ideas, big brains, big creativity, and big love. We anchor everything in our values.
Let’s go.
Join a Zoom Call Online
Ramping Up Business Pressure to Make Shift Happen — June 27, Tuesday, evening. Brainstorming & ideas to start identifying & pulling together efforts to pressure/partner with business in preparation for pressure during the 2024 election season. There is time to build a plan & to implement it if we get going on it.
Team Call for Volunteers — June 29, afternoon. All are welcome. Working call to get into ongoing projects, to brainstorm, & to work through new ideas.
The Power of Stories to Bring Widespread Pressure — July 5, Wednesday, evening.
The Power of Stories to Bring Widespread Pressure — July 11, Tuesday, evening.
Americans are a compassionate people--we'll do anything we can to save those who are in immediate danger. That proves it. Key word: immediate. We don't do so well addressing chronic needs--especially those that result from systemic barriers. In those cases, we blame the victims--they should be able to, literally, save themselves! Yah, in some ways it's kind of bass akwards. But chronic needs aren't sexy in the same way that rescuing deepsea explorers is. We can turn our backs on chronic needs. We can't turn our backs when the whole world is watching to find out the fate of five privileged men. The stories of the Titanic and the Titan are the kinds of stories that capture our imaginations. That's not necessarily a bad thing--unless we devote so much mindspace to them that there's no room to address our real problems. I agree--it's long past time for us as a nation to have really deep, meaningful conversations about our values.
This is a thought-provoking piece. Thanks for creating and sharing.