Infernal engines (Hรถllen-machine) that are allowed to age gracefully, the surplus stuff of the commissariat, into a complex and convoluted bureaucracy, have a strong sense of self-preservation. This is especially apparent during the once-a-decade exercise of fleecing the US military through what’s called Reduction in Force (RIF), when the community, courtiers and panderers put to test all mandatory trainings and contingencies and the full encumberment of the offices’ arsenal of red-tape. This sort of impossible dragnet, a Gordian knot, is rather clever, since it justifies ones job, sticking to protocol and procedure and knowing how to unlace the mess with proper ceremony.
The cost savings measures, I think, are not the most sincere—even counting backwards from nonsense, too much seems ventured for naught: maintaining a standing army is woefully expensive and discipline is threatened with institutionalization; old fronts and occupations ought to be remembered in perspective, honouring peace and maturing partnerships, but neither by inventing new threats nor propping up an failing network that used to connect all points on the map, a compliment to Church hierarchy and ambassadorial missions; slicing the budget in favour of the defense-contractors (another form of insincerity) and withholding that military mother-love that makes careers but also breeds dependency and the sense of entitlement that’s reflected by the bureaucrats. 
A soldier dismissed or a career official made redundant have, in many areas, had their ways paved and might find it difficult to operate outside that framework. I am sure that any and every workplace in environment has the potential for attracting and retaining individuals with certain core-competencies and can be an expensive terror all around—I just find it a little frightening that my laudable organization won’t always be so concentrated and quarantined in an archane little corner of Germany and those particular talents are exploding out into the world. Special powers, I think, and prowess don’t get diluted once dispersed, and instead there’s more than enough personality to share. It would be ashamed, still, to break up the band—the routine and the selectivity, gossip, problems kept hidden and very vocal tattling and the suspension of disbelief (Aussetzen der Zweifel). Most days, work is like an immense Rube Goldberg contraption but the gears hit a snag in the same spots every time, but sometimes it does work, happily, and the chain-reaction comes to its conclusion. 
