Latest news with #HolmanW.Jenkins
Wall Street Journal
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
The U.S. Should Keep Its Guard Up After ‘Signalgate'
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. writes in 'Leak Scandal Can Be GOP Lemonade' (Business World, March 29) that the high-level Signal-based discussion of an attack on Houthi positions 'didn't endanger U.S. forces.' While that may have been true for this particular attack, the overall assumption is somewhat of a post hoc ergo propter hoc variant. Perhaps we should consult the ghost of Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, who enjoyed significant success at Pearl Harbor despite U.S. access to some Japanese secret communications. Subsequent U.S. intelligence efforts against those same accesses helped produce the stunning Japanese defeat at Midway seven months later. You never know how enemy factors are combined against your military intentions until it all comes crashing down. As a postscript, it's worth mentioning that further exploitation of Japanese communications led to a U.S. attack on Yamamoto's plane as he was on an inspection tour in 1943. He didn't survive the attack.
Wall Street Journal
17-02-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
What Ails Our Air-Traffic-Control System?
In 'A Washington Air Crash and the 30 Years War' (Business World, Feb. 8), Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. reminds us of Al Gore's 1993 declaration of 'a much-needed overhaul of the nation's air traffic control system to permit better management and install modern technology.' This is exactly what Canada did in 1996 and the results are significantly better than forecast. Nav Canada's safety record has excelled, its cost of operation has declined over time and its technical leadership is stellar. The central reason the U.S. hasn't abandoned its dysfunctional Federal Aviation Administration air-traffic-control structure is that the primary stakeholders don't trust Congress to guide the process wisely. The airlines want complete control over the new entity. The unions believe their controllers' interests are paramount. The taxpayers want to be protected from industry profiteering. The military wants veto power over everything. And the small guys in the room, broadly known as general and business aviation, can't risk getting lost in the shuffle.
