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{{a|systems|{{image|bad apple|jpg|}}}}{{dpn|/bæd ˈæpl/|n|}}One of those mischievous human imps occupying unobserved crevices in the great steampunk machine who, by their human frailty, ruin the best-laid plans of the machines. | {{a|systems|{{image|bad apple|jpg|}}}}{{dpn|/bæd ˈæpl/|n|}}One of those mischievous human imps occupying unobserved crevices in the great steampunk machine who, by their human frailty, ruin the best-laid plans of the machines. | ||
On the conventional wisdom, [[bad apple]]s are the remaining fly in the ointment | On the conventional wisdom, [[bad apple]]s are the sole remaining fly in the ointment separating us from the sunlit uplands of [[financial services utopia]] that our patient labours have earned. Once the last bad apple has been rooted out all will be well in perpetuity. | ||
The JC wonders whether we should be quite so | It’s not clear what we'll all then ''do'', but this is but a quibble. | ||
The JC ponders human nature and wonders whether we should be quite so credulous. For ''bad apples gonna be bad''. | |||
Perhaps we would be better worrying less about ''curing'' humans of their nature, and more about ''neutralising'' its unwanted effects. | |||
There will always be bad apples, and they will always seek out, find and exploit [[Zero-day vulnerability|zero-day flaws]] in the system. We should expect this, because it is in their — ''our'' —nature. what ''which is [[Air crashes v financial crashes|This is what bad apples do]]''. | |||
Bad apples will find [[Zero-day vulnerability|zero-day vulnerabilities]] exactly where the system least expects them, and is therefore paying least attention: ostensibly harmless, sleepy backwaters. [[LIBOR]] submissions. [[Enron|The accounting department]]. The [[Kweku Abodoli|Delta-one index swaps desk]]. In a [[Archegos|family office]]. | |||
Leaving it to “the system” to detect and destroy bad apples — by policy attestation, outsourced compliance personnel in Manila reading from [[playbook]], “A.I.-powered” software applications — is the Bond villain’s preferred method of despatching Bond: tying him up and leaving him unattended while a nasty-looking but plainly fallible clockwork machine counts down from a thousand. | |||
These risk control systems often trip up peaceable, but ignorant, citizens as they go about their quotidian day. Wised up bad apples have already worked out the flaws and work-arounds. | |||
===How to spot a bad apple=== | |||
The regrettable thing about bad apples is their habit of looking like boring functionaries, and sometimes even good guys, right up to the moment they reveal their rottenness. | |||
This is another way of saying a bad apple that doesn’t ''look'' like a bad apple, and that no one ''believes'' is a bad apple, isn’t really a bad apple. | |||
It won't really due to say we must be better at spotting bad apples — thereby spreading by association the stigma of bad appledom on those who failed to spot. ''Why'' did they not notice perfidy going on around them? Are they on commonly stupid, or or have their bullshit detectors been somehow disarmed? | |||
Might they have been disarmed by ''process''? | |||
To test this hypothesis consider what happens to those who do call bullshit. | |||
But ''who'' the bad apples are depends on who is asking, and, critically, ''when''. | But ''who'' the bad apples are depends on who is asking, and, critically, ''when''. | ||