The Fifth Risk; Michael Lewis; 2018; W. W. Norton; 219 pgs; no index

Michael Lewis has written some great books (Moneyball, The Big Short etc). I cannot really count this one among them.  Nevertheless, it was interesting. Heavy leading and lots of white space make the 219 pages a short read.

This book a basically a collection of anecdotes about Trump taking power.

The first section focuses on the DOE. When Trump took power, he resented having to spend money on transitions (which he is required to do by law). He wanted to keep the money for himself! As a result, there was no smooth transition between administrations. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The first thing the Trump administration asked for was a list of DOE names that had attended any climate related discussions!

Like all departments, the DOE had prepared a primer on what the role of the DOE was. But no one showed up to see it! Rick Perry attended a meeting  to brief him. He spent mere minutes familiarizing himself with the department.  One official was ousted from her physical office by Eric Trump's brother in law who took it. No one knew why. 

The DOE does a lot of things, like making sure reactors don't melt down, and that no bomb material "gets lost". Over the years, the DOE has recovered enough material to make 160 bombs. It is populated by some very smart people. They made sure, for example, that Iran lived up to its part of the deal… until Trump killed the deal. Trump likes to do things in half measures. DOE interviewees point out the dangers of cutting corners, and the huge risks involved when you do.

It is hard to build a fence. It is easy to knock it down. And it is stupid to knock it down if you don't understand why it is there.    

The same story unfolded at the USDA (Department of Agriculture). Everyone was waiting to hand over power, and no one showed up… for a month. Soon, the USDA board was occupied by a long haul trucker, an AT&T clerk, a gas company meter reader and a cabana boy. The USDA is responsible for a lot of things, like crops, and nutrition, food stamps etc., and it is now being run by the least competent people imaginable who all hate climate change

The Department of Commerce sounds dull. It does have trade responsibilities, but mostly it is a data bank (data from agencies like NOAA and NASA).  Information is their currency. And they have a lot of it.  They got the same treatment as the other departments.  Wilbur Ross runs it. He and Trump are cut from the same cloth.

Fun fact: Really rich people do not want to be listed in the Forbes 500. Only three in the history of the magazine have fought to get on the list: Saudi Prince Alwaleed, Donald Trump and Wilbur Ross!

The problem is this: Scientific data can be used for many things. Like predicting weather to help farmers make timely planting decisions for example. Huge amounts of data were made public, and scientists used that data to make the world better (you will have to read the book for details), but Trump et al smelled climate change, removed all references to it from all web sites, and removed the aforementioned data from the cloud. 

There is an interesting conflict building. AccuWeather gets its data from the feds. But they make money selling that information and the feds give it away for free. So AccuWeather sought to stop the feds from doing that.

Soon, you can expect to see headlines like "Hurricane coming! If you want to know where and when, subscribe to AccuWeather now!".

It will take many years to undo the damage that Trump has done to the US and the world. 

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