A libertarian’s murder-suicide pact
By 
The Coast Guard report on the OceanGate implosion is a tale of a guy getting to live out a DOGE fantasy of putting his own random whims over the rules and knowledge of experts, in a life-or-death context:
The U.S. Coast Guard determined the implosion of the Titan submersible that killed five people while traveling to the wreckage of the Titanic was a preventable disaster caused by OceanGate Expeditions’s inability to meet safety and engineering standards.
A 335-page report detailing a two-year inquiry from the U.S. Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation found OceanGate failed to follow maintenance and inspection protocols, operated without third-party oversight and disregarded analyses, investigations and assessments for the deep-sea submersible.
Stockton Rush, co-founder and chief executive of OceanGate who died in the implosion, showed negligence and could have faced criminal investigation if he were alive, the report said.
OceanGate avoided regulatory review and managed the submersible outside of standard protocols “by strategically creating and exploiting regulatory confusion and oversight challenges,” the report said. The deep-sea exploration company also fostered a “critically flawed” culture of safety and operational practices that created “glaring disparities between their written safety protocols and their actual practices,” the report said.
The Coast Guard opened its highest-level investigation into the event in June 2023, shortly after the implosion occurred.
“There is a need for stronger oversight and clear options for operators who are exploring new concepts outside of the existing regulatory framework,” Jason Neubauer, the chair of the Marine Board of Investigation for the Titan submersible, said.
The catastrophic implosion of the Titan submersible garnered worldwide attention. A dayslong search-and-rescue operation was launched after the submersible lost contact during its June 18, 2023 dive.
The implosion killed all five people on board: OceanGate’s Rush; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, considered a leading authority on the Titanic; Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, members of one of Pakistan’s richest families; and Hamish Harding, a British aviator and explorer.
It seems unfortunate we’re headed in precisely the opposite regulatory direction, and most of the corporate actors freed from corporate oversight will only be inflicting harm on others rather than going down with their own death traps.