Powell credits the Israeli military with a mindset that naturally viewed damaged tanks as soon-to-be-repaired tanks, rather than the irredeemable flotsam of battle. The fact that [Israeli] commanders thought in these terms gave purpose and direction to the maintenance-related technical and tactical skill their crews possessed.

In almost every plant I worked at, QA was seen as a hindrance to hitting productivity metrics. We never got credit for a well-maintained manufacturing capability, but QA almost always got blamed when things went wrong.

I will just say it: I wish the author was more woke. The book is very male-coded. The main chosen areas of investigation are: motorcycles! tanks! guns! wars! There are moments towards the end where Elon Musk and Bill Gates are talked about as if it was still 15 years ago and we haven’t actually learned anything since. (No word of Cybertruck, either.) We know maintenance tends to be unrewarded and forgotten come promotion time. We know that tedious tasks are often assigned to women and people of color while white men go around doing “genius things.” It’s hard to imagine women not being present in a book about maintenance, and yet — and I wish I was joking — the only woman of any significance in the entire book is… The Statue Of Liberty.

Based on my research, here's what I can tell you about when Stewart Brand has written substantively about women across his books and magazine work. The short answer is: remarkably rarely, and this absence has itself become a subject of scholarly attention.

And the facts which we have just extracted from biography seem to prove that the professions have a certain undeniable effect upon the professors. They make the people who practice them possessive, jealous of any infringement on their rights, and highly combative if anyone dares dispute them. Are we not right then in thinking that if we enter the same professions we shall acquire the same qualities? And do not such qualities lead to war? (Woolf, Three Guineas, page 249)