Podcast Summary: Nudge – "When Schiphol Airport Shredded 400 Squirrels (and Why No One Was to Blame)"

Host: Phill Agnew
Guest: Dan Davies (Author, "The Unaccountability Machine")

Episode Overview

In this episode of Nudge, Phill Agnew and Dan Davies explore the real-life tragedy of 400 pet ground squirrels that were destroyed at Schiphol Airport in 1999 due to missing paperwork. Instead of focusing solely on this shocking event, the episode delves into the broader theme of how large organizations create "unaccountability machines": systems that allow decisions to be made without any individual bearing responsibility. The discussion unpacks why these systems emerge, how they operate, and the unintended, sometimes disastrous, outcomes they create across industries—from aviation to marketing, media, and education.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Schiphol Squirrel Incident: A Case Study in Unaccountability

• [00:00–08:22]
  • Background: In 1999, 400 pet ground squirrels were imported into Europe, but missing paperwork meant they couldn’t travel onward or be returned. Schiphol Airport authorities disposed of them using an industrial shredder.
  • The case caused international outrage, but ultimately, no one was held accountable.
  • Phil Agnew: “KLM absolved itself from responsibility while still managing to show a bit of ethical remorse. They seemed saddened, but not responsible.” [07:49]
  • Dan Davies: “No one really seems to have done anything wrong… Everyone was just following rules. Everyone was doing what they were told to do.” [08:22]
  • The KLM press release became a business school example of effective crisis PR that acknowledges ethical regret without accepting culpability.

2. How Large Organizations Create “Unaccountability Machines”

• [08:23–13:34]

  • Dan Davies defines "unaccountability machines" as systems where responsibility is so diffused that no one can be blamed when things go wrong.
  • Employees act as cogs, bound by protocols, unable to deviate even when outcomes are clearly wrong or harmful.
  • Davies: “You can create a system in which nobody is really making the decisions… Decisions have been made a very long way away, often just coming out of an algorithm or a computer.” [09:49]

• Accountability Sinks:

  • Illustrated through travel/airline experiences where frontline staff lack both power and agency to address customer issues, leading to frustration and a sense that one is battling a ‘faceless system.’
  • Davies: “There is no individual human being who is accountable for it… That’s something you really need to analyze...” [12:14]

3. Systemic Failure Across Industries

• [13:35–19:15]
  • Fox News & Dominion Lawsuit:
    • Fox News lost a record libel lawsuit for airing baseless conspiracy theories about voting machines.
    • Organizational incentives and the desire to maintain audience ratings perpetuated a system where staff acted against their better judgment.
    • Davies: “Bad ratings make good journalists do bad things.” [15:58]
    • Davies: "They’d created this group of people who were angry...and then at times, time came when Fox found itself having to tell them something they didn’t want to. And they’d created this system that they couldn't control anymore." [16:26]
  • Old Systems in a New World:
    • Many damaging companies are merely outdated systems operating in a changed reality (e.g., oil companies struggling with climate change, old management paradigms in the face of shifting evidence).

4. When System Logic Defeats Purpose

• [19:16–23:44]
  • Boeing Case Study:
    • Post-merger, Boeing’s culture shifted from engineering-led to finance-led, sacrificing safety and quality for short-term profit.
    • Led to the 737 Max crisis—two crashes, 346 deaths, and ongoing reputational and financial damage.
    • Davies: “Each one of those decisions might have looked great on a spreadsheet, but eventually...resulted in Boeing putting into production an aircraft with a fundamental design flaw...Boeing still hasn’t recovered.” [21:19]
  • The pattern: financial logic overrides core mission, resulting in self-destruction.

5. Marketing & Brand Missteps from Following Broken Systems

• [22:24–25:29]
  • Burberry’s Check Pattern:
    • Overexposed their luxury check design through mass-market items, undermining their high-end brand positioning for short-term gains.
    • Davies: “You’ve done serious damage to your ability to position that as a high-end luxury brand.” [22:55]
  • Agnew relates this to exclusive clubs (e.g., The Ivy, Groucho) suffering when system incentives undermine original appeal.

6. Other Systemic Incentive Problems: Football, Education & Ratings

• [25:30–31:48]
  • Football Clubs:
    • Chasing glory at all costs leads to unsustainable debt cycles and collapse (chasing winning, not financial health).
  • UK Education Appeals System:
    • Designed to be unbiased, the appeals process inadvertently amplified social inequality, benefiting those with more resources and savvy.
    • Davies: “The combination of an unbiased exam system and an unbiased appeal system creates an extremely biased system...” [28:35]
  • Online Reviews & Goodhart’s Law:
    • Incentivizing good reviews distorts the original measure's purpose.
    • Davies: “If you’re using that measure as part of someone else’s reward system, then you have to take into account the feedback...” [30:59]

7. Artificial Intelligence: Promise, Peril, and Systemic Risk

• [31:48–34:34]
  • AI is a tool: it can increase the efficiency of both “problem solvers” and “problem creators.”
  • Davies: “It improves the productivity of people who create problems as well as ...solutions.” [32:10]
  • Drawing from Stafford Beer, Dan worries that AI (like computers before) will be wasted on optimizing trivial processes (e.g., sending more emails), rather than fundamentally rethinking and improving organizational systems.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the human tendency to oversimplify:
  • Dan Davies: "The only people in the world who try to pay attention to every single thing that's happening around them are babies....Being an adult and functioning in the world is always a matter of trying to simplify things.” [05:33]
• On accountability in faceless systems:
  • Davies: “There’s no individual human being who’s done that...when you see that kind of social institutional arrangement in place, it’s often interesting.” [12:14]
• On organizations outliving their logic:
  • Davies: "Many of the most damaging companies today are simply old companies with systems that made perfect sense 50, 20 or 100 years ago, but now function in a very different world." [17:59]
• On Goodhart’s Law and measurement:
  • Davies: “If you’re using that measure as part of someone else’s reward system, then you have to take into account the feedback from that to what you’re measuring.” [30:59]
• On AI and systemic risk:
  • Davies: “With AI, we’ve got a technology that…could be used to help us process more information, to help us make better decisions. It’s also possible for it to create chaos…What worries me is we’re using it to send more emails.” [32:10–34:09]

Important Timestamps

• 00:00–08:22: Schiphol squirrels story, PR, and organizational absolution
• 08:23–13:34: How “unaccountability machines” work in practice and travel
• 13:35–19:15: Fox News, Dominion lawsuit, consequences of system incentives
• 19:16–25:29: Boeing, cultural shifts, and failures of system-first logic
• 25:30–31:48: Marketing/brand blunders, football club debt, education appeals bias, review systems and measurement distortion
• 31:48–34:34: AI’s dual potential; historical context of organizational underuse of technology

Conclusion

Phill Agnew and Dan Davies draw powerful parallels between infamous organizational failures—whether the tragic destruction of squirrels, TV network scandals, or the downfall of trusted brands and companies. They show that the root cause is rarely individual malice, but instead the rise of complex, self-perpetuating systems that absorb accountability, incentivize the wrong actions, and respond poorly to unexpected events.

The episode ends with a sober view on technology like AI: its danger is not that it will take over, but rather that organizations will once again squander its potential by using it as a crutch to entrench old, broken systems.

For more insights, Dan Davies’ "The Unaccountability Machine" is recommended—find the link in the show notes.