Aviation is a dark place full of secrets. I think this is because those who fly - pilots, mechanics, the do-ers - know that aviation is, at its core, the last cowboys... a place where there is actual danger and actual passion and it's not all just corporations fucking each other sideways constantly. Once you are up in the air, it doesn't matter what the suits are doing: You are FLYING. So there is a brotherhood (sorry for gendering that... but "siblinghood" is dumb) of aviators that all know each other, and chat behind the scenes. And when shit gets wiggly with one company, there are always a few aviator friends who can be called on to do a little back-office shenanigans to keep shit flying. Sure: Maybe there is an Evil Mastermind at work, coordinating all this shit from behind the curtain to Eric Prince can make even more money. But I'm more inclined to believe that a group of aviators are dedicated to keeping these crazy machines in the air, so they do whatever it takes. And there are just some businessmen snooping around the edges of the hangar, listening in, and figuring out how to make money off the aviators' plans of passion.
Matt Stoller argued that Boeing is the dumpster fire it is now because it's actually McDonnell-Douglass. Actually he's hardly the first to make that argument but he's the one who most cogently argues that Boeing was a commercial aircraft manufacturer that served civil aviation and made products for companies that were buying based on value, while McDD was a bloated defense contractor that basically laundered pork barrel money. The world didn't need the Boeing 2707. But for reasons of national pride, we poured a lot of money into the 2707. And then when we decided that really, we didn't actually need the 2707, Boeing ate shit. And so did Seattle. Other than that, Boeing used to make planes people actually needed and they mostly got sold on their merits. That Chinese wall has come down now, though, and Boeing is flying fuselages through space and time. I think this is a lot more about the military industrial complex than those magnificent men in their flying machines.