Trump on Tech: Planes Are ‘Too Complex to Fly,’ and ‘What Is Digital?’

Is he dumb or just dishonest? I vote for a combination.

have to be einstein to figure it out? unexpected humility from trump who thinks he knows more than einstein. pretty soon he'll be claiming he only knows more than 99% of his generals.

President Trump's embrace of technology is selective - when it suits his political purposes. He issues Presidential orders and fires people via Twitter at all hours, rather than the "old fashioned" way of convening his staff, issuing memoranda after sober-minded discussion, and hiring/firing people in person. Of course he wants 5G (and 6G) - it's a technology he understands because he's glued to television and his phone. His "jokes" about renewable energy may score laughs with his base, but this is the technology that could potentially save our planet. And that's no laughing matter.

No you don't have to be an MIT graduate or Albert Einstein. You simp!y need an IQ over 50 and a willingness to read. He sounds like a third grader

DJT: Please explain how your SPACE FORCE is going to succeed using old and simple technologies.

"...you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out." My goodness, in the current PC environment, that sounds like an antisemitic trope to me.

I really think 2020 election debate moderators need to include questions about a candidate's fundamental understanding of 20th century math and science: see how-to-calculate-APR.

Remember, this is the guy who couldn't operate an umbrella.

In Jan. 2017 Virgin America, newly acquired by Alaska Airlines, was hacked. A "malicious threat actor" known to the Defense Department, they don't say who, used a loophole in Virgin America's security to gain access to the system. The hackers gained access to the ACARS system (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system). Used mostly for automated reporting of aircraft location and status and communication with pilots it also is integrated with aeronautical operational control, defined by individual aircraft manufacturers. Communication for this system is by VHF, line-of-sight, ground stations and has a general range of 200 nautical miles at high altitudes. If this system were hacked and controlled by ground it would explain why the two planes crashed shortly after takeoff. It's all speculation, but both locations of the crashes have another thing in common. Guess what it is.

"Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly" said the man who cannot close an umbrella.

"Aides say he is also adept at using his DVR systems to record television shows. " So happy our President is wasting our precious national resources for this important work.

Is 2019 airplane travel the safest form of transportation ever? Perhaps, but our president has decided that it's "too complex."

Trump has been constructing buildings, including his 58 story Trump tower for most of his adult life. The construction of skyscrapers, requires hi-technology design skills and the use of multiple checklists for building. It is the use of checklists which are key to airline safety, so Trump may have a better understanding of airline safety than your typical NYT reader. While those on the Left Coast of California in particular have a problem with Trump, it is the new San Francisco Millennium Tower that was built incorrectly and is leaning to one side. Say what you will about Trump, but at least Trump Towers and his other skyscrapers do not lean to one side. Someone who builds these tall buildings correctly can hardly be called a anti-technology Luddite.

Trump: "... I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot." Einstein didn't drive, because it was "too complicated for him". Source: "Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson (p. 438)

3 words: "Dumbest President Ever". Or in Trump parlance, "Dumbest Precedent Ever". I sometimes wonder, with all the hostility he has to endure, that he must feel so alone; as if he were on a desert island (surrounded by water).

“Often old and simpler is far better” says the old and simple Mr. Trump. Please wake me up when the nightmare is over - and not with a wind-up clock.

A total fool and endless danger to our democracy knows all about everything and everywhere because his super-human "gut" tells him what is real and what is not. What is not real is the "President" . The gas bag will never be empty and the excuse machine is cranking 24 hours a day but apparatus that reads, studies and decides have been scrapped by the divine Gut Feeling - you know the one that cries out for porn stars for comfort and toadies for endless adulation. Mr. I. Magination (his best friend) has managed to explain things so clearly that no one can question them - mostly because understanding the gibberish is next to impossible. Now let's all repeat the operating manual - facts are lies, love is hate, war is peace and Big Brother is your only friend.

I understood what the President was communicating. To support his point: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pilots-rely-too-much-on-automation-panel-says-1384749188

Smart Seniors make a point to keep up to date with the latest in American culture—especially in the crucial fields of science and technology. Anyone exposed to Donald Trump’s tweets and utterances is instantly aware of the great gaps in his knowledge of either. The man barely has a grasp of 1950s tech, let alone our 21st century realities—witness his total ignorance of climate science. He has many faults, but his inability to learn and understand anything beyond the elemental workings of a family business is what makes him such a dangerous president. In short, The Donald is an egocentric Idiot in a well tailored suit and our generation and future generations will continue to suffer for it.

“Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly.” This remark - along with "Tim Apple" - by this dunce are evidence he's becoming increasingly demented. He's been willingly flying on Air Force One, likely one of the most "complex" aircraft currently in service. What's his plan now? To travel to his white nationalist rallies by pogo stick?

Our Luddite President probably prefers less complicated, less efficient, ineffective, and antediluvian to modern improvements. Under those circumstances he does less thinking, has to understand less, avoids simple confusions and does not look so confounded and dumb.

It's amazing and beyond disheartening that the best thing we can say about this neanderthal as regards technology is his mastery of his DVR system

The Presidency has become far too complex for a person of below average intelligence. Please, please, Mueller, SDNY, Congress, Mike Pence (well, maybe not him), someone, anyone, ground this severely challenged steam-punk and make the world a safer, saner place.

Ah the good old days of leeching and bleeding to cure disease.

We have known Trump is a Luddite for some time. During the 2016 debates, he repeatedly referred to internet security as protecting "the cyber."

Trump's whole approach to almost everything comes from a 1950s perspective. Sure, he know how to use Twitter, but he basically lacks tech savvy and any real understanding of the modern world except as it relates to him.

Ironically, Trump does just fine using new technology for self promotion. It's just that anything other than self promotion does not matter to him.

His lack of intellect and intellectual curiosity is a sad state of affairs. Sadder still is that this was the best that the Republican Party could come up with. His callous remarks have been deleterious to leading USA brands like Harley Davidson and General Motors, now he is giving advice to an industry he knows nothing about beyond his mindless texts. Explain MPLS, Mr. President.

OK I wasn't going to comment, BUT: "and (he) has masterfully re-engineered the presidential Twitter account to serve as his e-bully pulpit." Cut the purple prose. Trump couldn't engineer anything, not even the toy train at Coney Island. Twitter/Trump is happenstance and to our great chagrin.

Trump's intelligence is largely artificial. We don't need his advice on aircraft technology, or anything else for that matter. Self-driving planes are like self-driving cars, only as good as the humans who programmed their AI.

Houston, we have a problem, technology is "too complex".

Our president would be astounded, if not shocked, if he knew that schools and colleges operate on digital technology today. He would not have graduated from college -- let alone at the top of his class! -- had his tech expertise been limited to twittering.

"Aides say he is also adept at using his DVR systems to record television shows". Ahh, well that's reassuring.

Trump is right. Obsoleting, overriding and marginalizing humans has to stop.

The risk to this country of a president who is technologically illiterate can not be overstated. Clearly he can not even understand fundamental physics.

About the only thing that seems consistent about Trump is his total lack of consistency. Digital is good, digital is bad, what the heck is digital, totally mind boggling. As to his wall, we just intercepted a large shipment of Mexican drugs up here in Canada. They arrived, not by migrant caravan, but by rail. The goods were stashed inside extra tires that had been loaded at the factory and were discovered, not by police but mechanics who were prepping the cars for sale. Now please tell me, how would a wall stop that?

Trump is like the doddering uncle who knows very little while impressing on everyone his deep knowledge on everything. Tiresome, but his supporters seem to find his self-certainty reassuring.

Not really worried about people wanting to emulate the "president." Those that do already share his love of the 1950s, when women, gays, and minorities knew their place, and white men had the morality of Don Draper. He revels in his ignorance and without his born-into-wealth background would be one of those "poorly educated" screeching at his rallies that he purports to love so much.

A leader trying to sabotage the US could certainly do more than Trump is doing, but they were certainly do many of the same things. Destroy trust in institutions key to a functioning democracy; destroy those institutions themselves; terrify people with racial division; makes news blatantly partisan; and now turn Americans away from future industries. GOP, will you be happy running a backwater second rate nation? Maybe the whole US can be like Appalachia.

Youse gotta remember Trump's past associations, perfectly legit and legal, with the mob. Deez guys don't use the telephone. Can you possibly imagine a Sicilian lieutenant saying the words, "Hey boss, you want I should check the email?" Security like that is not accidental. It was Obama who mandated and stipulated the deadline that all medical records be put in digital form by 2015. He said it would reduce expense and make health care administration a little bit cheaper. How wrong he was. It made it much more expensive and less secure. Where access to a patient's medical chart once was restricted to the doctor and maybe a few nurses it is now routinely scanned by ancillary office clerks looking for items and procedures to charge to the insurance. There are software programs that automatically scan medical records for every conceivable item that can be charged making heath care hugely more costly. Everything has a billing code, even your blood pressure, two separate codes! One for systolic, the other for diastolic. And then there are those national security investigation files of millions of federal employees that were hacked and compromised by the Chinese. When I applied for a national security job, including the background investigation, it was all on paper sent in by snail mail. But in later years it was all scanned and digitized. Now the Chinese have it. I know they do. They told me so themselves. Obama was a pawn.

“What is digital? And it’s very complicated; you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out.” Modern science is still riding Einstein’s coattails. I think the guy has contributed enough.

If one could wrest themselves from time and look at this moment it would be so easy to see one of the greatest human failings exposed in all its glory. We so fear being seen as ignorant or inferior that we cling to outdated and archaic ideas, technologies, and understandings. This is just another prime example of embracing our ignorance and trying to turn it into a virtue. The simple fact is we are all ignorant and inferior in some capacity and there is nothing wrong with that. We, as a society, have failed to help our fellow Americans accept this reality and build bridges to come to some universal understanding of truth. But what is so remarkable is that the Right has chosen to champion ignorance to gain and maintain power. They have weaved and supported a narrative that the Left thinks they are stupid and gullible and openly make fun of them. This lie has been told so often that resentment clouds their rational thought and they blindly support and defend anything that hurts the left. Science is not a religion as the Right has claimed. It is based on observation and experimentation and does not need faith in order to divine a truth. Science is a tool for understanding and not oppression. It is divorced from feeling and only wants to serve knowledge. There is nothing negative about being wrong if you are willing to see the errors of your ways. We are all on the same journey of understanding and need to recognize that we are all somewhere on that same continuum.

Digital is what you use when you Tweet, Mr. Trump. Is it all bad now?

There’s a middle ground between dismissing science and assuming that all technology is good. Republican refusal to accept climate change as reality is dangerous. On the other hand, our reliance (over reliance?) on technology does make us vulnerable to cyber attacks. I do think we should use paper ballots in elections. Call me a Luddite if you want, but I fail to see how an internet connected refrigerator is worth the potential security issues it creates on a home network. I’m typing this on my phone, but I have real concerns about how our collective addiction to our various screens. Even on the rare occasion that the President is partially correct, he almost always exaggerates. That said, there’s certainly some evidence that the technology in this plane is the cause of the crashes. I don’t know enough about catapult systems on aircraft carriers to know, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility that a lower tech, less expensive option works just as well and is more robust. Don’t let your justified dislike of this President cause you to forget the deep flaws in the military-industrial complex.

I agree with President Trump on this issue. I used to be a mountain climber, and relied on my climbing skills to scale a peak, not on fancy knots, carabiners and pitons. I have heard stories of drivers who rely on GPS gadgets instead of their own sense of place and direction, and wind up in a ditch. I would rather rely on a skilled pilot and crew rather than fancy software to take off and the land the plane I am on. As General Eisenhower said in 1948: "There will be no software in this man's army."

Ease of use is critical, as software engineers know. Do the controls/defaults present as apparent and logical? Sensible design priority is also important. From what I've read, certain features increased of the wing increased fuel efficiency, but created an increased tendency for the plane nose to position itself in an unsafe way. And so a programming "fix" was designed to fix the nose position problem. If this is true, the wing design itself should have been changed. Changes to the autopilot program are not an acceptable way to remedy an life-threatening condition, especially one that may present in seconds after takeoff. If investigation shows that the above scenario is basically correct, it seems to me (liberal arts major) that the human beings in charge of design and testing made a grievous mistake in logical thinking and reasonable evaluation.