The Gray Zone with Kent Johnson

Parker Dillmann
Welcome to circuit break from Macrofab, a weekly show about all things engineering, DIY projects, manufacturing, industry news, and engineering ethics. We're your hosts, electrical engineers, Parker Dillmann. And Stephen Kraig. This is episode 413. 3.

Parker Dillmann
Circuit breaker from Macrofab. This week, we have Kent Johnson on the podcast.

Stephen Kraig
Kent Johnson is senior corporate adviser for the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation and a management consultant on religious diversity at work. With over 37 years of experience as a senior counsel at Texas Instruments, Kent is a seasoned legal expert who specializes in corporate law, ethics, product liability, antitrust, medical FDA law, and mergers and acquisitions.

Parker Dillmann
Since leaving Texas Instruments in 2018, Kent has been helping companies adopt best practices regarding religious diversity and inclusion in the workplace. He is also Steven's father-in-law, so we really hope this episode goes well.

Stephen Kraig
Thank you so much for coming on, Kent.

Kent Johnson
Glad to be here, guys.

Stephen Kraig
I do think it's funny because I think I mentioned bringing Kent onto the podcast. It's been over a year specifically for this topic, which we're talking about, the engineering ethics, and I always joke about it or laugh about it because it's just sometimes the people who are closer to you just end up being the hardest to get on and I don't mean that from Kent's side. I mean that more from my side. All it takes is sometimes sending out a text and being like, hey. Will you come on the podcast?

Stephen Kraig
And I don't know. But we finally made it happen, so thank you, Kent.

Kent Johnson
You bet. I listened to a couple of podcasts earlier, and my sense is that this topic is a little bit unusual for you all. Is that right?

Stephen Kraig
Well, I can tell you for sure this is the first time we've had an entire episode dedicated to engineering ethics.

Kent Johnson
Okay. Well, you know, in my practice with Texas Instruments over 37 years, I spent a lot of time helping influence the culture of the company especially it being an engineering company, electrical engineers are just about everybody in the company except for me. So I have to warning, I'm not a technical expert, but really spent a lot of time with people, talking about ethics, getting people to think deeply about what it means to apply the standards that are in the code of ethics of IEEE for instance. And I think they're a really good starting point here. Would you like to start on that or do you have another idea?

Stephen Kraig
No. I think that's great. Let's jump into that.

Kent Johnson
So the I triple e code of ethics includes this and you all, if you're members of that organization, said this. You certified to this or pledged it. It says, we the members of the IEEE do hereby commit ourselves to the highest ethical and professional conduct and there there are 5, actually 6 different categories under the list. We commit to do these things. 1st has to do with safety and I think that's sort of a historical look back to engineering being the type of engineering that builds bridges and make sure that everybody is safe when they travel over the bridges.

Kent Johnson
Another is advance the understanding of the capabilities of engineering and the social implications of emerging technologies. That's an interesting one. You pledge that you'll advance that understanding. Other things are avoid conflicts of interest, avoid unlawful conduct and bribery, seek, accept and offer. This is an interesting one.

Kent Johnson
Honest criticism of technical work, acknowledge and correct your own errors, and credit the contributions of others. Very important in my experience for engineers.

Stephen Kraig
That might be the first one that people fail at for sure.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. And the last one to maintain and improve their technical competence, and that is focused on the idea of of really promoting yourself as expert only in areas where you're really qualified by training or experience. But the question is, it seems to me, how should these principles they're good. I think they're really solid, but how should they play out in day to day engineering practice? Because there are a lot of issues that come up, ethical issues in electrical engineering.

Kent Johnson
When trust is broken in these areas, it's very difficult to regain it in a workplace and then outside of the company that you're working for, when the trust is broken, it's very difficult to earn back. And I'll just throw out a couple of areas that I've been engaged in, not necessarily with my employer, Texas Instruments, but certainly have advising other companies and in some cases with Texas Instruments. You know what is theft of ideas including plagiarism which erodes trust you know. Your episode 405, you mentioned Shaq GPT and talking about credit getting credit for ideas. Very interesting session by the way.

Kent Johnson
And from an ethical standpoint, at least one of the issues with chat gpt is pretending to be knowledgeable.

Stephen Kraig
Okay. Look at me. Am I I'm not

Kent Johnson
gonna tell anybody that I got the answer from chat gpt. Some of you are, you know, you guys are probably typing in right now a bunch of stuff, asking chat gpt for information about the code of ethics. But, yeah, the idea that you're putting yourself and that's a violation of the code of conduct, the ethics that I just mentioned. And I don't know if you have thoughts on that, the theft of ideas and and plagiarism, is is that an issue in workplaces to your, in your experience, or has that not been a big deal?

Stephen Kraig
Well, it's interesting because I was going to bring up the use of AI and, in terms of is it ethical to lean on AI to provide you information that you are not aware of or that you cannot generate yourself. Mhmm. Is it a useful tool, or is it a form of plagiarism to use AI? Parker and I have discussed it multiple times in the, well, in the recent past, but but even beyond that, it's been very useful for both of us, but Parker specifically has used it recently to generate some code for some projects that he's working on. Now, I mean, for the most part, they're they're personal projects and things like that, and they don't have any safety ramifications.

Stephen Kraig
It's not like, hey, chat GPT, build me a bridge, and then you just go and execute whatever it's gonna happen. Design me

Parker Dillmann
a bridge.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Design me a bridge.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. Sorry. Oh, no.

Parker Dillmann
For the safety factor of 5.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. But it gets to determine what safety factor means, and so I most of the things that we're talking about here are not they're gray zones. Everything is always a gray zone when it comes to this because it wouldn't be an issue if it was a gray zone. You would just know what it is. Right.

Stephen Kraig
Or you would know the answer or solution.

Kent Johnson
Mhmm. There's no reason why. I mean, I can't think of an ethical principle that would keep you from using track gpt a whole lot as a resource just like a calculator for Pete's sake. I mean, their computer or doing this Google search. The problem comes in when you pretend that it's your work product.

Kent Johnson
In fact, that can really be, you know, it's one of those little lies, and it is a lie to, you know, if you put yourself forth as being so knowledgeable about something when in actuality you're sort of cheating. You know, somebody starts asking questions and you don't have chat cpt by your side, you're gonna be found out. They're gonna find out you're not an expert on this because you don't have that depth and that erodes trust. And that's that's a real problem. But using it and then citing it see, the problem with plagiarism really comes in when you don't have adequate or appropriate attribution.

Kent Johnson
You don't tell, okay. Well, this came from such and such a source. I'm not I'm not making it myself.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It's an interesting thing, especially with code and, open source projects. But let's just take a good example, Stack Exchange, which is, an online form where software developers help other software developers with questions and and Codes connect. That stuff. The one of the big, like, jokes about Stack Exchange is a lot of software development is literally copy pasting from Stack Exchange, which you can and, like, chat g p t can write code and a lot of it is based off of Stack Exchange kind of stuff.

Parker Dillmann
So it's, like, if you is it so much different than just copying something off Stack Exchange word from word? So what I do is because a lot of times with in Stack Exchange, there's no licensing or anything, like, someone doesn't paste what the license of their code block that they just put there on the website on the on the their thread. They don't have a licensing agreement or anything. So it's like, what I do is I use that code. I literally just take the URL and just put it as a comment and be like, this is where I got this block of code from.

Parker Dillmann
So that mostly it's for me so that later when something's broken, I can go You can

Stephen Kraig
return to it. I can turn to

Kent Johnson
it and

Parker Dillmann
see if there was, like, an update or anything. But, that it's one of those areas where, like, if there's no licensing, what's

Kent Johnson
Yeah. Well, open source stuff is is open source and you can use it and and there's an expertise involved in finding the right stuff and then knowing, how to kick the tires before you actually just implement it, cut and paste, and let her go. Right? So there are some things that this area, you know, is obviously morphing over time. And the question of attribution, do you have to attribute every single time?

Kent Johnson
That's it's more the spirit of the law rather than the the act. And which brings up, you know, the the grayness. There there are lots of gray areas here but some things are well for instance one gray area that we've experienced a lot is siloed cultures. This is an ethical issue, guys, because it tends to feed this disregard for the ultimate impact. In other words, if your responsibility is to make a widget that meets these specifications, and you say, okay.

Kent Johnson
That's me. And then somebody else is gonna use that widget in a automobile guidance system, and that's them. That's their problem. I'm gonna do the widget. We're gonna have the widget that'll meet all the specifications.

Kent Johnson
Everything will be great. But there is a gray area here where you have a siloed culture. And the, you know, the quintessential example of that, I think, is the General Motors faulty ignition switch situation. I don't know whether you're familiar with this, but back in 2016, GM got involved in a terrible recall. And it took 9 years for them to uncover what the problem was.

Kent Johnson
People were driving off the road and crashing, and the, airbags weren't deploying. So they thought first, maybe it's the airbag. Let's talk to the airbag people. No. It wasn't the airbag people.

Kent Johnson
And then they figured that a lot of these had the ignition switch on the accessory mode. And in accessory mode, the airbags don't deploy. But the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. They couldn't put this together, and the company self reported 13 deaths. Okay?

Kent Johnson
But later on, when they started peeling the onion, it was hundreds of deaths that were caused by a series of failures. The engineers had learned about these problems with ignition switches way back in 2005, but they didn't fix it because doing so is considered costly and time consuming. And in the silo, look, my job is I did my job perfectly. It makes the spec. You know, why do I worry about?

Kent Johnson
And so, yes, at first, they said that it's driver error because the drivers had switched it to accessory while they're driving, and so it's their fault. Right? But they didn't look at the specs for the torque on the ignition switch. There were specs that were not met. They were they're quite a bit less torque than should be to flip the detent.

Kent Johnson
You know what I mean? To go from

Parker Dillmann
On the accessory.

Stephen Kraig
It's just easy to get to accessories.

Kent Johnson
Accessory. Right. And they also fail to consider that in the end years, some people have long heavy key chains, and that can affect us as well. And there was also a spec problem with vibration. You put all these things together, and what was happening is people were going over bumpy roads with long key chains, and it would flip their thing onto accessory, and the car wouldn't act quite right, and people would get disoriented, and they drive off the road and the airbag wouldn't deploy.

Kent Johnson
This was a big deal. In 2014, Mary Barra came into power and GM and she hired an attorney to look into this to conduct an extensive internal investigation. They basically concluded there was no intentional cover up, But what they said was there was a pattern of incompetence and neglect at the company, and this related to the siloing of the organization. They said, if only somebody had stood up and said, wait. Maybe there's a connection here between the vibration spec and the torque spec and these accidents because they're but they didn't do that.

Kent Johnson
They didn't, even though the lawyers were informed, the lawyers didn't move over to the other department either to tell them, look, there's there's a problem here and maybe they're related. So I mean, that's a that's a cool example, I think, of, how that siloed culture in some companies and the pattern of just maniacal focus on meeting the specific components back rather than having the big picture as the code of ethics talks about, you know, the welfare of human beings, it creates a problem. So I've been talking a lot. I wanna get your guys' thoughts, if anything on that.

Parker Dillmann
It's interesting because around that time, 2016 because I I'm a big car nerd. Is that's when literally, like, where key ignition started going away. Yep. I think Chevy Chevy GM still kinda uses it in their, like, industrial stuff, but that's small volume compared to passenger vehicles. Yeah.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. Some of those are yeah. Some of the lower rates still have it. But your your point is well taken because that was part of it. So the Valucas report goes on for, like, 315 pages, and one of the things that they point out is that, oh, this was a lame duck technology.

Kent Johnson
So they're not gonna pour a lot of it.

Stephen Kraig
I've heard it. Yeah.

Kent Johnson
I mean, it's just that the torque is a little bit loose. No big deal. Right?

Parker Dillmann
And I I can imagine too if you're driving down the road and so what would happen is, you know, I'm gonna try this tomorrow in my Chevy that's got key ignition still. What would happen is your engine would turn off, but your dash would still be on. So it would look like your car is still dry, like, working correctly, but you're not getting power steering or brakes or anything of that anymore. Yikes.

Kent Johnson
Yep. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
That's a serious problem. Very serious problem. And now, and especially when now cars are are so quiet, most of you don't even hear the engine run.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Kent Johnson
When you especially

Parker Dillmann
if you're moving down the road.

Kent Johnson
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
But for the ethics side, I was I'm actually surprised that sure they had, like, lawyers and stuff, but they didn't have, like, a technical person do a one person go through all the steps of, you know, going through each department. Because it sounds like they just went to each department and said, is this a problem? Can y'all replicate this in your silo? Instead of one person going through each one and collecting all the data, a technical person, and then putting it all together?

Kent Johnson
You absolutely nailed it there. They didn't have anybody looking over the entire process and putting the pieces together. And this happens this happens in maybe less dramatic ways. FMEA's, I think, are an area for ethics that relates to this, the whole concept. If you have a culture that is a gotcha culture, that the engineer who made the mistake gets blamed, okay?

Kent Johnson
You really foul this up and it cost the company a bunch of money. If you have that kind of a culture, then there will be a built in incentive to formulate your failure mode effects analysis in a way that deflect errors. For instance, some problems you guys are well aware can be solved by a software workaround, but really they they may be caused predominantly by a hardware problem. Well, okay, this is an FMEA, it's a failure of the software. So we're gonna tweak software, so I'm not to blame the designer of the hardware.

Kent Johnson
That I mean, super simplistic, but that is that is a problem. Problems go undiagnosed because engineers just don't wanna bear blame. And that's one of the one of the principles that I shared earlier from the from the code of, of ethics.

Stephen Kraig
You know, something that's going through my mind right now is all throughout college, engineers are judged on how they hit their specification. They this exam says, hit these specifications, and you get a number 0 to 100% on how well you did. And then you get into the real world, and you start getting projects, and at the beginning of the year, your boss says, hey, I need you to write goals for this year, and your goals, a lot of times tend to be like, I'm gonna prove how I hit all of these specifications and did it on time and under budget and blah blah blah. Yep. But what we're mentioning here is completely external to that.

Stephen Kraig
And in so many ways, there's there's a lot of these decisions that happened especially in design that we don't even know the impacts because we just discussed them in a meeting. Say, let's just say at GM, somebody was in a meeting and just like, oh, hey, guys. I noticed that the torque spec is a little low. Let's just bump it up a little bit. And everyone said, sure.

Stephen Kraig
And then they did it and they avoided this disaster. An engineer wouldn't necessarily get praised for that or that wouldn't get, you know, maybe there's an attaboy that shows up because you you suggested a higher torque spec. Whereas if you didn't do that, it could have resulted in the 100 of deaths. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Right. Well, now there is a flip side to that, Steven. What would happen is marketing would push back and say, hey, our users

Kent Johnson
Makes sense.

Parker Dillmann
Don't like how much it takes to turn this key.

Stephen Kraig
It doesn't it doesn't feel right.

Kent Johnson
And the beam counters will say, look. It just cost too much to revamp the the ignition switch. It's gonna gonna cost too much.

Parker Dillmann
Especially if it's end of life in terms of

Kent Johnson
End of life. It's a it's a minor problem. But yeah.

Stephen Kraig
It does make you think how many landmines do we miss that we're not even aware of. When we're just sitting in a meeting, we say, oh, let's change this or do this, and that could result in that change could have saved lives and you didn't even know it.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. Well Exactly. Well, Steven, you know, you you brought up the tyranny of the spec, and I think that's a big issue that raises ethical challenges for electrical engineers all the time. And another example, boy, I'm hard to sorry to pick on the automobile industry so much, but the Volkswagen Cheater device.

Parker Dillmann
Mhmm. Oh, yeah. The TVI diesels. Yeah.

Kent Johnson
This is an amazing thing. That, again, was 9 year period when Volkswagen was achieving results in its diesel emissions that were 40 times better than they should have been if you look at the system. And nobody else in the industry was able to achieve those results without extensive hardware, you know, a a special, blue Def. Text That the, you know, urine. Yeah.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. So how is it that nobody over that period of time, there must have been multiple people coming into the departments that were looking at this and then out and coming back and forth. How come nobody raised the question? How are we doing this? How is this even possible?

Kent Johnson
And the way it was possible is somebody intentionally in that case, boy, they were gonna meet that spec of passing the emissions test. That's the spec. We're gonna meet that spec. How can you do that? Well, you know, we can just do the software.

Kent Johnson
It's gonna be it's gonna mimic the thing actually driving in a certain way, and it's going to cheat. It's gonna trick the testing system in order to gain. That is an example where a lot of the commentators are saying it was driven by this maniacal focus on a gold, the cheap way to meet that speck of of emissions. So it went on 9 years. It only would have taken one person to stand up and say, wait a second.

Kent Johnson
This doesn't make any sense at all. Show me how this is being accomplished. They would have avoided enormous 1,000,000,000 of dollars of impact. Their CEO had to resign. It was just a mess for their reputation, Volkswagen's reputation, fines, reparations.

Kent Johnson
It was just a huge mess.

Parker Dillmann
I don't know There was something that basically that came out of the VW stuff where basically what was so, like, all the other companies were like, well, how is Volkswagen doing it? And they basically figured out at least this is what the allegations were. They basically figured out that they were cheating it, and they all just started cheating. I don't know if that ever went all the way through. That was back in

Kent Johnson
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
28 that was 2018, 2019. I don't know what happened to that yet because that, you know, that kind of stuff takes a lot of time to unravel itself.

Kent Johnson
But Well, there was there were allegations that BMW did as well.

Parker Dillmann
Oh, yeah. BMW, a Mercedes was so yeah. So the actually, I think, basically, they all got they figured out what VW was doing and then ended up all just kinda copying

Kent Johnson
What? Which is

Parker Dillmann
which is interesting.

Stephen Kraig
So they didn't even ring the bell, though. Their competitors didn't call them out for it.

Parker Dillmann
No. Well, because they were trying to meet the specifications. Yeah. And, what's interesting is it's all passenger vehicles whereas there's different emission standards for trucks, and trucks weren't really affected by this. So it's kinda interesting.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. It's real interesting. As your example is great. I mean, it's just the pressure was even on. Look.

Kent Johnson
VW is doing this, and they don't have all this extra equipment that they have to and and bothering consumers. Consumers don't wanna bother with, that blue what was it? Bluetech or something? Bluetech's the

Parker Dillmann
one of the brands. Yeah. It's urea.

Kent Johnson
Yes. Right. Yeah. And it normally don't.

Parker Dillmann
So, really side topic. So most vehicles in in United States, we don't have a lot of diesel besides, like, trucks, basically. And they usually just put the DEF filler is, like, it's a different size and it's, like, next to the gas tank. So you can, like, fill up your diesel and then you can fill up your DEF. Yep.

Parker Dillmann
So in in Europe, they have a lot of smaller diesels, and some of them, you put the DEF in, like, you open up your it's Europe so you're well, I guess Britain too. It'll be your boot. You'd open up your boot and you put your deaf in there. So you're pouring what's basically pee into your vehicle, and so spills happen and then it smells. For passenger vehicles, DEF is not a good

Kent Johnson
solution Right.

Parker Dillmann
Which is makes sense why they were trying to cheat it.

Kent Johnson
And that's another thing. I mean, it's the pressure of the buying public. Buying public doesn't wanna be bothered with certain things and engineers are prevailed upon by the management. Well, often it's the silo of sales and marketing versus the engineering folks where they're selling. Oh, yeah.

Kent Johnson
We can do that. We can do it cheaper than anybody else. Well, VW is doing it cheaper than we'll do it. We'll figure it out somewhere.

Stephen Kraig
The I

Kent Johnson
It's the tyranny of the spec.

Stephen Kraig
Those silos, sales and engineering, are so far apart from each other that they can't even see each other.

Kent Johnson
Right.

Stephen Kraig
And there's a Grand Canyon in between sales and engineering. I I don't know how it is. There's just something fundamental about the the human mind of sales and engineering that they just mix like oil and water, and I I I've never understood it, but every place I've worked has been the same.

Kent Johnson
Well, this is an ethical issue, frankly, and and it happens with the quality department as well. Large companies have their quality departments and, oh, no. We got a quality audit. Oh, gosh. And you know that principle that I just read to y'all that talks about accountability.

Kent Johnson
It really between the lenses, talking about accountability and the willingness to accept criticism and to change. The attitude of most well, I say most. I I shouldn't say that. Many engineering departments when the auditors when the quality auditors show up is, okay, don't tell them anything. Just give them the bare minimum to answer their questions.

Kent Johnson
So it's sort of like, you know, when you're a witness at a trial, typically the lawyers say, don't answer any question unless it's specifically asked, zip the lip. You know, that kind of an attitude is what leads to the kinds of problems that we're talking about with GM. You know, I don't wanna cast any aspersions on my colleagues, and I just wanna go along to get along. And the quality people come in, I'm just, I'm not gonna talk to them about the, you know, the minor miss on this torque spec or whatever. It's a real temptation.

Kent Johnson
And what it comes down to is, you know, if just a few this doesn't have to be the CEO of the company, although it sure helps if you have a CEO demanding a culture. But it takes one person to blow the whistle, and then the company up obliged to to look into it more deeply. You can avoid a lot of problems.

Parker Dillmann
So earlier, we were talking about AI and, like, autonomous vehicles and that kind of stuff. But what's interesting is there's a I think it's IBM. And IBM back in the eighties I have to find the the the they had a, basically, a document. I think it was it was, like, ethics for engineering. I don't know.

Parker Dillmann
It wasn't on ethics, but it was for the engineering team where it's a computer will never get sued. It's always the people. Like, a computer can't get sued because the computer's programmed to do what a human told it to do. Now we're getting into the realm of nowadays where chat gbt, AI, autonomous vehicles, but, like, AI in general where it becomes ethical problem that we still haven't really figured out yet.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the obligation of the human being, obviously, is as we said before to kick the tires of anything that comes out of AI. But as AI gets better and better, the, state of the art is getting so good and so superior to what we can fumble around and come up with ourselves that things are changing. You're exactly right.

Parker Dillmann
It's like what with the the current autonomous vehicles, they get around get around is not a right term for it, but the person needs to have their hands at least on the wheel. Right? That's, like, the idea. Right.

Stephen Kraig
But then there's the It's assisted.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. But there's the also the ethical is people sell defeat neck because it's upset detective your hands on the wheel. So if an engineers design those defeat methods because it, like, it uses, pressure sensors or something like that or, like, it detects the capacitance of the human body on the wheel or something like that. Right.

Parker Dillmann
But there's devices that basically clamp onto the wheel that defeat that detection.

Kent Johnson
Right. And

Parker Dillmann
so it's like, well Right. Whoever designed that, is that ethical or not?

Kent Johnson
You know, you can you can tape a bottle on your steering wheel with a little bit of water on it and it'll think that your hands are on it and everything. It'll go self driving firmly.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, it it it only takes that very

Kent Johnson
bad example. No. That's tongue in cheek. The yeah. Yeah.

Kent Johnson
Absolutely. This brings up the whole area of minimum viable product. I know you guys have talked about MVP before. Mhmm. What is a minimum minimum viable product?

Kent Johnson
You know? And actually, chat gpt could probably come up with a minimum depending on what your definition is. Is. And what are the criteria that ought to be applied to determine whether something's minimum? If the criteria is just the numbers, okay, it meets these, it's gonna pass the the test, you know.

Kent Johnson
It's gonna it's got the specs that'll pass the test. It really bears on that question. You know, ISO 26262 in the, automotive realm is a terrific resource for forcing engineers, electrical engineers especially, to think about the systems into which their components are being used. But that's not a, that's not a one time thing because a lot of the things that you guys create, the boards that you put together, they can potentially be used for other purposes as well. They might meet the minimum viable product criterion for you know I don't know an entertainment device but they don't meet the minimum viable product requirement for a pacemaker or for a guidance system, you know?

Kent Johnson
So a part of it is training ourselves to think bigger picture. What might this be misused in? And if you learn that it's being misused and it's a huge market, boy, you can sell it good chilling as these things for this other use. And then you've guard banded the testing, right? So it probably ought to work, you know, sort of.

Kent Johnson
So are you gonna blow the whistle? Are you gonna say wait or not? It's a gray area. And we need to be, you know, we need to be circling our engineers, especially in major companies, but small ones too. Gosh.

Kent Johnson
Just let's think about these things. Not saying that there's an absolute right or wrong answer, but we at least need to be giving some thought to the peripheral impact of, you know, what we're calling a minimum viable product. Does that make sense?

Stephen Kraig
It does, but it brings up the question. Thinking about that doesn't get us to the deadline of the project that we're having to get to right now. And I've got and I've got sales banging on my door. I've got the president saying, hey. Where is this?

Stephen Kraig
I've got I've got everyone questioning it, and and thinking about that, although, you know, it sounds fantastic, it it it doesn't move the ball forward on the project. I'm not saying don't do it. Just saying practically, it's difficult to do this.

Parker Dillmann
And and

Kent Johnson
Yeah. You're being realistic.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Being realistic because it's I think a good example is, drones with, like, let's say the Ukrainian war right now and hobby drones. No one thought that decide to put a claymore on 1 until about 2 years ago. And is that something that, like, now you have to if have to decide what happens if someone decides to strap a is that is that something that we should be worried about or think about when we're doing the MVP, or is that just way too far out?

Kent Johnson
Well, I don't know. It's a it's a good question. Right? I mean, we're how speculative do we have to be? I mean, somebody can you know, you make semiconductors with sensors that are really good at creating blasting caps that could go off exactly the right time to implode a building.

Kent Johnson
Well, boy, that for sure can be used by terrorists. Does that mean you don't manufacture the product? No. But it it does mean that you think about these things and how they might be misused. And maybe, you know, the big one of the big questions is, and, Steven, you're probably familiar with this, probably Parker as well, is the whole question of how a semiconductor product or a board will be classified for export control purposes.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah, ITAR.

Kent Johnson
Well, you ITAR, yeah, International Traffic and Arms Organization. So, boy, do you wanna, you're an engineer. Do you wanna even raise that that possibility to anyone that, gee, maybe this thing could be misused? If so and then you're demonstrating you wanna demonstrate commercial use so so as to avoid the, possibility it's an ITAR listed item. Well, if you know that it's very readily used for nefarious purposes, It's a it's a question.

Kent Johnson
I'm not giving you the answer, but I don't have the answer.

Parker Dillmann
The gray area.

Kent Johnson
But it ought to be thought about. Somebody ought to think about it.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It it's another funny idea on that is the Tesla Roadster. And one of those became a satellite and is around like the sun right now.

Kent Johnson
Right.

Parker Dillmann
And it's like, who does did the engineers decide or when they were originally designing the Tesla Roadster ever envisioned one being strapped to a rocket and being sent up. Not as nefarious purposes, but it's kind of like a, it's just a weird, I bet you, I bet you, Steven, none of those components would are satellite grade.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, guaranteed not. Not not even slightly.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. They're probably not gonna be doing a lot of driving of that vehicle in space though, I guess.

Parker Dillmann
I don't know.

Stephen Kraig
Did they think that perhaps someday that might strike something and be a problem?

Parker Dillmann
Well, that that was at the time when that happened, a lot of people were complaining about that possibility.

Stephen Kraig
I mean, imagine if if if the road are, you know, plowed through the ISS and just completely destroyed the the space station. That the the I don't know. The blowback from that would have been monumental.

Parker Dillmann
I'm going to assume the FAA well, they have to first clear the rocket launch, but I bet you they got clearance on what the trajectory of the roadster would have been from, like, this 100%. And got it cleared. So it makes sure it wasn't You can't

Stephen Kraig
you can't just shoot random stuff in the space, like, yeah, from your backyard.

Parker Dillmann
I mean, that would be cool if we got to that point as a as a society and human race.

Stephen Kraig
Although didn't didn't Virgin Galactic get in trouble for doing that? Something similar to that. Sending up their ship, which was technically classified as at least its altitude was low space, and they didn't get authorization from the FAA. I I I believe that there were some pretty significant issues with that, And and, I guess the issue is that they didn't clear it even though there wasn't any problems. In fact, that's an ethical thing to to really consider.

Stephen Kraig
You do something, it doesn't cause any problems, so what? Who cares? It, you know, I didn't hurt anyone. Nothing bad happened about it.

Parker Dillmann
And if anything, it was good marketing.

Kent Johnson
Well, but that's a good that's a good example of the way that you can lose trust. Yeah. In other words, if you're skirting the rules, even if there wasn't anything wrong in your end, it could have been could have been something wrong. So you really really are losing trust there.

Stephen Kraig
Well, most most of this rolls up into could have been. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Right. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
It this is all avoiding probability.

Parker Dillmann
A bigger, probably more practical example would be vehicles where they almost every single vehicle that's made manufactured can go faster than, like, any speed limit on the on the planet Earth.

Kent Johnson
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And so it's like, is that a problem

Stephen Kraig
as a

Parker Dillmann
designer to build a, let's say, from let's say you work at Ferrari. You're you're an engineer at Ferrari, and you're building that car that can go 200 miles an hour. There's no legal road in the entire planet that you can drive down except for, like, a private roads. Right? But you're selling it to just people.

Parker Dillmann
Is that that that's a is that an ethical problem?

Kent Johnson
Yes. Mhmm. Mhmm. You know, this reminds me so much of the product liability cases that I've counseled and I've been involved in. I never was a litigator, but I was there, you know, in the courtroom and that kind of thing.

Kent Johnson
And the big emphasis is on, you know, what did you know? When did you know it? And what did you do about it, of course. And in that, there's a recognition. The law recognizes wisely that nothing is perfect.

Kent Johnson
That there is some degree of risk in everything. And it's part of the job of an engineer is to risk assess. There are things that can go wrong. And you guys were talking recently about end of life, where there's aging process and it goes back to entropy. You know, that happens.

Kent Johnson
But the callous disregard of those types of issues is what gets you most in trouble. That's where you have punitive damages of 1,000,000,000 of dollars against GM, for instance. Just caught it's that catalyst disregard, which drives me to the the proposition that we need to do more thinking, I think, in the engineering community about about these things. About how do you create a culture that communicates and doesn't blame? Like, okay, where I feel free to say, well, you know, I've neglected to identify this potential failure mode, and it could be catastrophic.

Kent Johnson
You know, I'm sorry, but okay. You're blackballed. You have raised a big issue. We don't wanna hear about that. That's exactly the wrong culture.

Kent Johnson
Right? A culture of respect and listening. And then the other side of it is where you get the sky is falling guys who come out and say, oh my gosh. Everything's gonna crash and burn, and and they're so you have to have a degree of balance there. You're not required to come out with a space grade component for a Tesla.

Kent Johnson
I mean, yeah. I mean, I think the culture is a big issue, and engineers don't talk much, in my experience, about culture.

Parker Dillmann
You know, that's actually an interesting point because it's the it's kind of the exact opposite in software development where if there is a, you know, you didn't think about something and there's an exploit. A software developer is like, oh, we need to fix that, like, right away

Kent Johnson
Right.

Parker Dillmann
And roll out fixes and get everything and, notify the right party most of the time. Sometimes that doesn't happen. Especially with, like, security breaches, that's a different problem.

Kent Johnson
Yes.

Parker Dillmann
But, like, actual software bugs, like, there was a SSH bug a while back, etcetera etcetera. Where kinda like the software engineering and development community work really hard on fixing those problems as fast as they can. Yes. And it's kind of like the opposite in in in engineering in terms of, like, just most engineering disciplines. It's it is different.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. And it's difficult. That's a really good point, Parker, though. I do I think you're right that there is a difference of culture when you're dealing with software to an extent. But add this to the equation and tell me what you think.

Kent Johnson
You produce a product that goes to an OEM and the OEM incorporates it. You identify a software problem that could have bad results. Do you tell the customer that? Well, boy, yeah, you better. So you tell the customer that, customer tells you, I don't wanna hear that stuff.

Kent Johnson
No. Go away. I'm gonna continue to produce these things. So you say, okay. But I've got to do a recall on my component.

Kent Johnson
But if I do the recall on my component, people are gonna learn that you have potentially dangerous or faulty or whatever components in your systems. So I'm just saying a situation like that adds a layer of complexity that's difficult. And unless you have that culture that goes not just within the software community, but that expands out to the wider community, you're gonna have problems.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. Oh, and you're just talking about a situation with one one layer of hierarchy, one one subcontractor. Think of if it goes many layers deep, you you start getting lots of people involved.

Kent Johnson
That's right. That's right. And what we're calling for is sort of a a revamp of human nature. Yeah. Okay.

Kent Johnson
Well, I'm just That's everybody. Park your thicks have thick skin, but tender heart. You know? Just snap your finger, and there you go. It's been remade.

Parker Dillmann
It reminds me of the example of, let's say, microcontrollers. And let's say microchips or anyone. I'm not gonna name, company a. They go, well, we got a hardware problem, so we're gonna at least release an errata datasheet. And then they literally just don't tell anyone that that datasheet even exists at all.

Parker Dillmann
They don't tell anyone. Oh, no. And you'll be struggling for a long time trying to figure out why you have this weird bug, and you go, oh, it's a nerada. But it'd be nice if, like, if you had the part and then they'd let you know, hey, there's a problem with this thing. Here's the new data sheets.

Parker Dillmann
They never tell you.

Kent Johnson
That's an excellent example. I've seen that happen. Time and again, you're just issuing, oh, we'll we'll fix this. We'll technically go on the record to that it's there's an errata, you know, under these circumstances, and here's the workaround or something, but nobody notices a errata.

Stephen Kraig
No. That sounds like washing your hands. You washed your hands. You're clean. I'm pure.

Parker Dillmann
I've Yes.

Stephen Kraig
I've I've fixed the problem. It's up to you.

Parker Dillmann
It goes back to the siloing problem. That's right. Oh, yeah.

Kent Johnson
That's right. Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah. And it's not quite as fast as we said, are we well, no.

Kent Johnson
We won't say that. We'll just issue an errata. Oh, that was a mistake. It was just a an error. And that brings up the whole question of what's intentional and what is just a mistake?

Kent Johnson
Because it can be legitimate, just oops scotches. But if you try to hide the solution, it looks like you were, you know, I mean, a cover up is worse in some cases than the actual perpetrated event. You know, you look at Bill Clinton and, you know, his cover up was what destroyed him. If he had fessed up and said that he was, you know, doing illicit activities in the Oval Office, it wouldn't have been as bad as when he was, you know, covering it up and say, I did not this and that. You know what I mean?

Stephen Kraig
Depends on what you mean by is. Right?

Kent Johnson
Depends what the definition of you is.

Stephen Kraig
The definition Yeah. That's what it is. You know, okay. So so what I'm kind of gathering is your posture, your mentality, and your actions matter the most as opposed to necessarily the outcome when it comes to how ethical issues are handled. How you approach them and how you solve them is more important than necessarily the solution itself.

Kent Johnson
Yep. How you think about them, how you seek to anticipate problems and document them, And that's a tricky thing. You know, lawyers say, oh, gee, don't put it in writing. But really in this arena, it's good to demonstrate that you thought about it and considered it.

Stephen Kraig
Unless you want a paper trail of you thinking about it. Right?

Kent Johnson
Very interesting, isn't it? I mean, all of this is risk reward kind of you know, what is the magnitude of the bad event that might happen and weigh that against the likelihood. The likelihood is extremely small. I mean, like, infinitesimally small, but the the outcome, very devastating. Those are the difficult cases.

Kent Johnson
Right? But having having done that, some defense lawyers will tell you, oh, gosh. Never put a dollar sign on a an issue that relates to safety. Well, that's ridiculous. Everything relates.

Kent Johnson
I mean, there's so much now that relates to safety. They have you shouldn't put a dollar amount on it as much as you should put demonstrate that you've thought through the implications. You've done you the question is reasonable care, and that's the ethical question as well because perfection is not achieved in this life. It's a matter of did you exercise reasonable care under the circumstances as a company? And then if something goes wrong, it's despite the exercise of reasonable care you should not be held liable.

Stephen Kraig
Say, Honestly, sounds like a decent bit of legalese there.

Kent Johnson
Oh, it is.

Stephen Kraig
Sounds like a lot of a lot of words that have explicit definitions behind them.

Kent Johnson
That's true. But, this is one of the rare cases where the legal profession actually has something to offer in the area of risk assessment, I think.

Stephen Kraig
You know, one other thing I wanted to touch on is actually the ethics of not being aware of something. We mentioned, previously, in fact, the words you used, I believe, was the tyranny of specifications. I wanna touch on the the idea that you may not know all the specifications that you need to know, and you still trudge forward. What happens when you do find out that these things become a specification? How do you handle those situations?

Kent Johnson
That's that's an excellent point because then things change. The whole landscape changes when something comes to your attention that you hadn't thought of before. Now you have that knowledge And again, as I said in the product liability question is when did you learn about it and what did you do about it? And when in GM's case, they heard about it in 2005, they didn't do a blame thing about it until 2014. This is a big problem.

Kent Johnson
It changes the equation when you learn more information. Of course, over time, you're gonna learn more and more. If you don't know, you know what, the idea, the the framework is exercise reasonable care under the circumstances. So the reasonable care is anticipating as best you can, writing down the safeguards, the, you know, building in redundancy in the system in order to avoid, you know, to dramatically lessen a risk and things like that. But then something comes up out of the blue, you just didn't know.

Kent Johnson
That's when you need to, address these questions. Are you gonna have a recall? Are you gonna force your customer to have a recall? Is your reputation gonna be enhanced if you do it straight up? Or if you just presume I'll tell you the probabilities are small that maybe we'll just be quiet and hunker down and hope nobody notices that we're doing nothing in spite of being informed of a problem.

Kent Johnson
I submit to you the latter is a is a ticket to distrust and disaster in the long term for a company. Companies need to have a long term perspective on this. They're building a reputation, and that can be destroyed very easily. Fessing up to your mistakes is a terrific way. You think about it with your relationship with your spouse.

Kent Johnson
If you fess up quick, you're gonna be she's gonna be mad mad at you or he he's gonna be mad at you for for a while, but it's much better than having the spouse find out about it later. That that destroys a relationship.

Parker Dillmann
You know, it brings up the classic, the Ford Pinto issue with the gas tanks where Right. That was the famous putting a dollar amount on a safety item. Yeah. And that's and that that was what kinda ruined Ford's reputation for a while. It took him a long time to get

Kent Johnson
around that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that was a a blatant case where I mean, it was just pennies. If I remember correctly, it was pennies.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. Maybe a buck or $2 to put the gas tank in a position where it wouldn't be so explosive.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Well, it's I mean, the fix was, they will put a rubber liner basically in the gas tank. You know? Yeah. Okay.

Parker Dillmann
And it was the someone at at Ford made the decision. Well, the lawsuits cost this much, but the rubber liner cost this much. And that was and that that got leaked out, and that was the end of it.

Kent Johnson
Well, at the at the end of the day, you know, discovery is an amazing thing in the legal process. You get all the paperwork, all of the emails, all of the communications, texts, everything that's that's retrievable they get. And what kind of character is gonna be exhibited in your engineering department when all that comes to light? I think it's healthy to think of your communications as being as if you were putting them out into the blogosphere. It ensures or it kind of keeps you from doing some things that you wouldn't otherwise do.

Parker Dillmann
Well, we see how people act on social media, so it doesn't stop some people.

Kent Johnson
That's true. Good point.

Stephen Kraig
So so I have a bit of an example I wanna I wanna give. Just maybe in our last few minutes, we can talk about this. Because I think this is a practical example, that I've seen actually quite a few people run into, and it's it's issues with your product that you're designing in the FCC. I've run into people who have a successful business, they've built multiple products, and they are actively selling these products, and then they find later on that they were supposed to have FCC testing on all of these products.

Kent Johnson
Oh, yeah.

Stephen Kraig
And then going and doing research on it, they realize if I have to go through this, this will bankrupt my company if I go and actually get this. Now they know just generally general engineering principles, their product would pretty much pass. So the stuff they've been selling hasn't been an issue, And their clients don't care whatsoever if it has an FCC stamp on it or not. What is what is their course of action? Do they give up their company and bankrupt their company because because it's an ethical issue that they Or do they just continue on selling it knowing that it's probably not an issue?

Kent Johnson
If you're asking me, that's a really that's a really tough one. I gotta gotta admit. That is a very tough tough situation. You're postulating that if tested, it would not be interfere so much that it would be a problem. But that usually is a guesstimate and that's therein lies the biggest ethical problem.

Kent Johnson
There's a legal problem, but there's also the ethical problem. You know, how sure are you that it would meet the requirements if you went through the process? The fact that all that stuff is out there, yeah, I mean, that's a tough I'm not gonna really venture on that.

Stephen Kraig
It's it's tough too because it's really easy to go on Amazon and just find some random Chinese PCB and incorporate it into your product because it solves all of your problems and it's a dollar and it but it's not tested. And how do you handle those kinds of situations?

Kent Johnson
And that comes up in a number of places where you don't agree with the requirements. You think the requirements are are superfluous and ridiculous. Why should I have to jump through a hoop on this thing? You know, why should I test it with 1 foot lifted and then my hand up in the air? It doesn't really make any difference, but the requirement says to do that.

Kent Johnson
And those situations raise ethical questions concerning the requirements, but they're tough. I don't have all the answers. I'm sorry, Parker. You were gonna say something.

Parker Dillmann
No. Is, that would be a very interesting market to this is the me this is me being a cofounder right now. Very interesting market to disrupt would be like FCC testing and being able to figure out how to provide that service for cheaper so you don't bankrupt these all these OEMs.

Kent Johnson
I love it. You're exercising your engineering know how to to deliver something that's valuable to humanity and everything. Oh, good job. Yeah. Because I because

Parker Dillmann
I've done a lot of FCC testing, and it's it's really expensive. I know. And especially if you don't get it right the first time because you never do. Mhmm. And that's that goes back to Siemens thing.

Parker Dillmann
It's like, if you think it's okay, but if you actually and we know because, see, because you got some FCC tested. How many times have you got it on the first shot?

Stephen Kraig
I can't think of a time.

Kent Johnson
But you know it's not a problem. But you know

Stephen Kraig
yeah. Well, I I mean, I think there are there are some situations. I mean, the FCC rules in terms of what is required to be tested can involve things where you have a really high confidence level that your product would pass because, yes, it doesn't yes. It passes the threshold of it must be tested, but it doesn't emit. It's it's really low power.

Stephen Kraig
It's blah blah blah. All of these things that that would that that you're very confident it would pass. Yeah. Is it an ethical issue to sell that product without testing? My argument is absolutely, 100%.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. I think it is.

Stephen Kraig
But,

Kent Johnson
it is. And if it comes to light, it can look bad for the company. But then, you know, there are always corner cases. You know, I sit in the airplane and they say, turn all your things to airplane mode. Wonder how many people actually put it to airplane.

Kent Johnson
If they don't put it to airplane mode, is the plane gonna have a problem? Are they gonna have any parts really?

Parker Dillmann
You lose your door.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. No. I don't think so. I questioned the causality connection there.

Stephen Kraig
I I've actually heard that they implemented that rule, not necessarily for the airplane, but for cell towers, just so as you're flying by, you're not pinging cell towers over and over and over very, very rapidly, which causes could cause issues. Now I may be completely wrong with that. I've just heard that before. I think the Mythbusters had a whole episode about would it affect airplane controls and and systems, and they concluded no. But also that's just a show on discovery.

Stephen Kraig
It's not an official test.

Kent Johnson
Yeah. Well, I hope this has been helpful, guys. And I know I threw a number of things that are in the gray area up there, but I do think what's important is that engineers wrestle with those kinds of questions. That they're not just, you know, go after the spec and, and meet the tyranny of the spec. And, if we do that in a reasonable way, we'll be much better off.

Parker Dillmann
It does sound like a really good potential solution or helpful solution is when you do have problems, let's say, like GM, for example, is it might especially if a company that big is you might have a either a third party or a, I'm always a big fan of third parties or reducing my biggest thing is is reducing conflict of interests. Yes. I think I've talked to Steven about that all the time. Yeah. It's my number one thing is is reducing that and, hiring a third party to investigate or having a dedicated team whose goal is that.

Parker Dillmann
Because that's again, I'm going back to software development is or insecurity is you have certain teams like red team, blue team who are there to break systems and those and people there to detect intrusions.

Kent Johnson
Mhmm. But

Parker Dillmann
when you look at, like, the bottom line, those people are just burning money. They don't sell products. So, it's really hard to justify that kind of expense for companies.

Kent Johnson
And when you do it, you have to watch out for the rivalry and the distrust And they'll be, oh, no. The quality guy's here again. They're gonna audit me, and, oh, what a pain in the neck is a waste of time. Oh, yeah. It's not easy.

Parker Dillmann
Thank you so much, Kent, for coming on our podcast. This was a great discussion.

Kent Johnson
My pleasure. It's good talking with you guys.

Stephen Kraig
For those interested in learning more about Kent, you know, we actually didn't even get into this topic. Maybe maybe this is something for the future, but, please visit religious freedom and business dot org, all one word. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yep. Yep.

Stephen Kraig
So perhaps in the future, we'll have you back on to talk about that because that's a completely different aspect of your life, a completely different form of things.

Kent Johnson
That it's related.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. The whole, diversity part of your career, we didn't touch. So No. We'll have you back on definitely to discuss that kind of stuff.

Kent Johnson
Happy to do that.

Stephen Kraig
Great. Thank you so much.

Parker Dillmann
Alright. So also also, Kent, if, we have a form where we will have our listeners discuss the podcast. If people have questions, post them in there. It's circuithyphenbreak.macrofab.com, I think.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. That's right.

Parker Dillmann
We need something easier for that.

Stephen Kraig
We we really do.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And we'll pass them along to Kent, or Kent, if you want to just show up there and discuss it as well. It's totally awesome.

Kent Johnson
I'll do it.

Parker Dillmann
Yep. So thank you everyone for listening to our podcast. Thank you, Kent.

Stephen Kraig
So that was circuit break from Macrofab. We were your hosts, Steven Craig.

Parker Dillmann
And Parker Dillman. Later, everyone. Thank you. Yes. You are listener for downloading and listening to our podcast.

Stephen Kraig
If you

Parker Dillmann
have a cool idea, project, or topic, let Steve and I know. We have circuit hyphenbrake.macfab.com. Come join the discussion.