Blackwater Worldwide, the company of mercenaries responsible for shootouts in Iraqi traffic jams and general mayhem-for-hire around the world, has announced it is changing its brand name to "Xe." Rarely is branding used to make a business effectively disappear, but that's what's happening here.
Blackwater is a manifestation of two current trends: outsourcing, and the privatization of government. It is to killing people what IBM is to running IT departments; its policing and training capabilities much like an Indian call-center, or far-flung corporate supply chain.
Our government annually paid it almost $500 million over the past few years, so that it could do a lot of the fighting and logistics work that used to get done by the U.S. Army and Air Force.The problem is that both trends are falling out of favor these days.Outsourcing is one of those concepts that looks absolutely brilliant and obvious on paper (or in a glossy slide presentation), but often wrecks utter havoc when put into practice. Steps in a supply chain, not just the items or ingredients themselves, should get done wherever in the world the work can be best accomplished. The technology exists to virtually manage a distributed manufacturing process, whether assembling airplane parts, or artists creating a movie.
A lot of marketing money (and the work-hours of thrilled journalists) has promoted the idea to execs looking for ways of looking smarter, while paying for the privilege.So when an outsourced fastener maker misses a deadline for its step in assembling Boeing's new 787 airplane, it doesn't just grind a factory floor to a halt, but rather throws businesses around the world into disarray. Lots of production schedules get whacked instead of oneA six degrees of separation approach to manufacturing lets distant factories skimp or skip entirely on safety compliance, and deliver lead-painted toys to Mattel and other toy brandsAnybody old or wise enough to remember the bad old days of making things would have known that the risk exposure inherent in outsourced manufacturing was possibly greater, or more dangerous, than even the best insurance policy might hope to mitigate.
In the instance of Blackwater, outsourcing gave the American people -- its ultimately employers -- contractor behavior in Iraq that wasn't always accountable to the rules our military are supposed to follow. Perhaps they were hired for that very quality, which is a frightening proposition in and of itself.Privitization of government services is another bugaboo for the Blackwater brand.The premise that for-profit endeavors can do a better job of handling public responsibilities begs the question of to whom, or what, are they accountable?
We all know that government is inefficient, bloated, and wasteful...but at least we know where their offices are located, and have some leverage to unelect the leadership should we get too fed up. Government processes are somewhat transparent, which is one of the reasons we know how screwed up they are. Giving up that involvement in the name of better efficiencies means giving up some modicum of authority, not to mention our very citizenship.
That's not to say that outsourcing can't work, or that there's something wrong with every privatization scheme, but the combination of the two trends -- outsourcing government responsibilities -- puts Blackwater in a very difficult position, however high the profit potential might be in it. It's in risky businesses that we really don't want to hear about, or we're probably going to insist that our government not abrogate its responsibilities.
Hence the branding change...from a well-know, and mostly disliked name, to something that is short, has no associations, and is impossible to pronounce. Xe was picked because it had "the best potential for brand identity," according to a company spokeswoman quoted in the Wall Street Journal.Yup. Just watch these modern-day Hessians go invisible. Once out of sight, the potential is endless.
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