But taking a risk regarding an unknown or to expand knowledge or actually accomplish something is one thing. Ignoring known and mitigable risks just to save money, save face, meet a deadline or please a bureaucrat is another.

Anyway these clowns even fail your criterion, because by covering up the results of the first launch/experiment, they are not being up front about a risk.

In my opinion this is a top-down, human hierarchy thing. CEOs and agency administrators create and set an organization's culture and expectations.

The irony is that a faulty heat shield is an engineering challenge that real engineers would love to tackle; all you have to do is turn them loose on the problem, let them fix it. They live for that. I find it actually aesthetically offensive that the organization and its culture has instead taught them venal, circumspect careerism, which is cowardice of a different kind.

The boiling frog thing is a myth - most frogs realize the water's too hot at some point, and jump out.

Edit to say: Yes I did think of drawbridges. And Batman is a scientist. But drawbridges are simply "opened" or "raised," and the implication always is that it's temporary and they will soon be "closed" or "lowered." Though they can be sabotaged in the open position.

All right fine, OP please change your title to "The drawbridge to wealth is being raised and then permanently damaged so it can't be lowered, by AI."

There's no substantive difference between directing an intern and directing people on a movie, by the way, except the number of people. If you never aspired to direct people, it's all kind of the same, and if you actively dislike it, I imagine directing more people would probably be worse!