On 13 July 2024, when a 20-year-old kid attempted to assassinate Donald Trump during a campaign rally—only inches away from doing so and taking the life of a rally-goer—it raised serious questions about the security around the former president.   How could such a young man surveil the area with a drone, get into such an obvious position for his intent, be seen by several members of the crowd, and fire off several rounds before being stopped?  Accusations that the instance was maliciously contrived by agents within the government are not implausible.  Alternatively, the event exposed a deep and pervasive incompetence in the planning and execution of the Secret Service and its external assets.  (For that matter, too, if it were a conspiracy, this too shows a certain incompetence.)

Six days later, on 19 July 2024, the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike pushed an update that crippled over 8.5 million computers, including many used by banks, airlines, hospitals, and government offices.  The fix required manually repairing the faulty code, and thus has taken considerable time to correct.  Recent reporting indicates that the update code was not tested before being pushed.  Few if any intentional efforts of hackers have had such a wide and disruptive an impact.

As a member of the Lyceum Institute writes:

On the surface, being incompetent is not evil or immoral.  No one is competent at everything.  And having the intention to do some evil is definitely immoral.  However, if I am tasked with ensuring the safety of someone, I should be able to perform this duty.  Any duty you are entrusted with and you yourself enlisted in, you should be able to perform. If you slack off or don’t operate at your best, any issues that occur are in some part attributable to you.  The greater the risk and the higher the likelihood of it happening means the issue is more likely to be attributed to you.  Is this necessarily worse than intentionally doing some harm though?  Is there a limit where overwhelming incompetence is greater than intentional malice or on par with it?

As failures become more and more obvious in our world, and especially in the United States of America, we have to ask: is the fallout of widespread incompetence more dangerous than the focused malice of a few?

The Crisis of Incompetence

First, let us consider another important background question: namely, why has incompetence become so common, today?  Many have pointed to the abandonment of universal standards for testing aptitude in the wake of affirmative action and other initiatives in the vein of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (as here, for instance).  Others point to the complexity of our world itself, in which increasingly more systems are integrated and overlap in the conduct of one’s job or duties.  Conversely, some point to the educational paradigm that has continued narrowing focus into ever-greater specializations, which leaves its students with no general skills or intellectual dexterity by which to handle unfamiliar situations.  Some may wish to blame the economic situation that has seen costs rise, leading to countless corners cut—in design, testing, training, and, yes, education too.  Others yet lay blame upon our digital environment, citing its continual drain upon focus and mental fortitude.

Is one of these causes more to blame than the others?  Are some more instrumental, rather than agentive or formal causes?  Is there a deeper root to our modern undoing?

Knowledge, Malice, Ignorance, and Incompetence

When speaking how voluntary sin is caused, Thomas Aquinas makes an interesting series of distinctions—far too many to tackle here—including a distinction between those committed from ignorance, those from passion, and those from malice.  He defines the sins from malice thus: “And thus, knowingly, one wills some spiritual evil—which is evil simply—through which he is deprived of a spiritual good, in order to attain a temporal good.  Whence it is said to be a sin ‘from a certain malice’ (ex certa malitia) or ‘from purposive intent’, as choosing evil (malum) knowingly.”[1]  The choice to orchestrate an assassination for the sake of political gain would, doubtless, constitute a sin from malice—even if the temporal good brings genuine benefit to many.  So too, hacking for the sake of collecting a ransom or simply to exercise one’s sense of agency and power.

By contrast, I would argue that incompetence belongs to those evils caused by ignorance; that is, by a certain lack of knowledge, specifically of practical knowledge.  What Aquinas says here, too, concerning ignorance, is very interesting. In brief, he says that ignorance is a certain privation of knowledge whereby one’s ability to direct his or her action is rendered imperfect—that is, incomplete.  This can happen insofar as the one committing the sin either does not know the truth about the universal or about the particular.  In the latter case, he is said to sin on account of ignorance; in the former, that he sins by unknowing (peccat ignorans); or as another translator renders it, “in ignorance”.  Not knowing the particular—say, that the shooter was on the roof—would be an error on account of ignorance.  Not understanding or attending to the importance of the roof as a tactical vulnerability would constitute an error by unknowing.  Both constitute a kind of incompetence, but this being “in ignorance” seems especially to characterize what we mean by the term.

Questions for Reflection

What I wish to raise by these considerations are the following questions:

• In what way is someone responsible for this ignorance (as distinguished from simply “not knowing”)?
• Are there other characteristics to incompetence besides ignorance?
• In what ways do we observe and judge someone to be incompetent?
• How do we do likewise with malice?
• And ultimately, our key question: can this incompetence be so grave as to render it, in some way or another, worse than malice?

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[1] 1269-70: ST Ia, q.78, a.1, c.: “Et secundum hoc aliquis scienter vult aliquod malum spirituale, quod est malum simpliciter, per quod bonum spirituale privatur, ut bono temporali potiatur. Unde dicitur ex certa malitia, vel ex industria peccare, quasi scienter malum eligens.”