Can your project survive this regime? (Issue #13)

Are you sure?

Author

Chris Musei-Sequeira
May 06, 2025

This photograph shows seven men in suits standing in a brown dirt field. Each man holds a shovel down toward the ground. A number of construction vehicles sit in the mid-ground of the photo. In the background are green-gray mountains and an overcast daytime sky. AUTHOR FROM SOURCE: Julia Brownley. DESCRIPTION FROM SOURCE: Recently, #TeamBrownley joined Ventura County Fire Chief mark Lorenzen to break ground at the Upper Ojai Fire Station, which will replace the old station and will be better equipped to house more firefighters in a zone where firefighting efforts are critical for the county. SOURCE: File:Upper Ojai Fire Station ground-breaking ceremony.jpg - Wikimedia Commons. (2020, February 25). Last accessed May 3, 2025 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Upper_Ojai_Fire_Station_ground-breaking_ceremony.jpg. Licensing: This United States Congress image is in the public domain. This may be because it was taken by an employee of the Congress as part of that person’s official duties, or because it has been released into the public domain and posted on the official websites of a member of Congress. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

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The risk calculus of building various partnerships with the United States of America (USA) Federal Government is changing… and perhaps changing significantly, depending on your sector of business.

Here's an example: When I was a graduate student, I was working on an aviation environmental study that was funded by the USA Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). I didn't know anything about how Federal money works; all I knew was that I was fortunate enough to get my tuition paid by an entity other than my own pocketbook. Instead, it was my thesis advisor’s job to know about money. It was his responsibility to find funding, to understand the rules for that funding, understand when the money comes in, when it has to be spent, how one is supposed to report on it, and so on. I’m truly grateful to my thesis advisor because he was very good with money, but I heard about other graduate students who lost their funding halfway through their thesis and had to do other things.

Now imagine you're a professor running an environmental research lab that uses Federal money (like the lab where I was a graduate student). Then in the middle of somebody's thesis, a new administration comes in that believes climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. What happens to your graduate student? What happens to your laboratory’s work? And of course: if you're a graduate student in such a situation, what happens to your life? Especially given the fact that there will be millions of people, including people in the current Presidential regime, who will be laughing at your misfortune and saying, "Oh, well; should never have taken that money. Taxpayers are taking their country back!"

This is just a narrow example of the changes in risk associated with a regime that is insistent on destroying the status quo for numerous reasons that I don't need to get into here. Some folks will say, “well, you know, risk changes and funding priorities change when governments change.” Yes: when you get a different President, you get a different different set of Federal priorities. But that’s exactly my point: there is a such thing as risk, and risk is based on numerous factors. Risk analysis and risk management are good ideas.

And so: in circumstances where the risk profile associated with your work can change rapidly and perhaps significantly every two to four years, how will you adjust your planning methodology? How will you change your planning time horizon? What kind of work even makes sense to do on timelines longer than two to four years? Maybe you're making an investment for a 10-year project, for instance; maybe a wind turbine field or an oil-and-gas extraction project. Energy projects are particularly good examples because they’re the kinds of projects that are affected by Federal rules and regulations even if they don't take one dime of federal money. For example, Norway company Equinor’s offshore wind project was halted by the regime two weeks ago, even though the project was approved by the Biden Administration several years ago.

Can you pull off your 10-year project in 2 to 4 years? You might give it a try… or else, who knows what's going to happen to your project? Who knows what's going to happen to your crew, your clients, your customers, your subcontractors…

What domain do you work in, and have you done a risk analysis lately? Is your work affected by the Federal government even if you don't take one dime of federal money?

If you haven't done a risk analysis lately, well… you should.

(This post adapted from my video channel, available on YouTube and TikTok.)

Where to find the perspectives you’ve been missing

FIRST: Subscribe to the Morning Tinto podcast, where my friend Heather Luna and I use the lenses of oppression and resistance to talk about events that happen right before recording.

SECOND: Subscribe to our professional offers-and-needs networking events announcement list. Heather and I regularly host FREE online events where professionals can offer help (free or paid) and ask other professionals to meet their needs.

THIRD: Follow these awesome folks on LinkedIn:

FOURTH: Forward this issue to people you know who are doing decolonial and anti-oppression work.

Got something to say to me?

I’m Chris, the Principal of CJSC, LLC, and I’m (un)learning along with all of you — so hit the “reply” button and give me a piece of your mind!

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My name is Chris Musei-Sequeira, and I use he/him pronouns. My mother was born in Trinidad and Tobago as a descendant of African slaves brought to the islands during the time of European colonization. She came to the United States of America (USA) at the age of 10. My father is Goan and was born in India, in Mumbai, and raised Catholic and English-speaking. He came to the USA for his graduate studies, where he met my mother.

My sister and I were born in the USA and lived a middle-class life in the suburbs of multiple American cities. I studied aeronautical engineering and technology policy in university, then worked at the Federal Aviation Administration and as an aviation consultant. I've lived in cities up and down the USA East Coast since the age of 18; I now reside in Queens, New York with my wife.

I thank Heather Luna and Lavinia Muth for showing me the importance of publicly expressing our positions. Because of our positions, all of us are very familiar with some aspects of the world while having no idea of other aspects. Positionality expresses how our individual positions affect our relationships with other people and with the world as a whole.

Introductory image: File:Upper Ojai Fire Station ground-breaking ceremony.jpg - Wikimedia Commons. (2020, February 25). Last accessed May 3, 2025 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Upper_Ojai_Fire_Station_ground-breaking_ceremony.jpg. Licensing: This United States Congress image is in the public domain. This may be because it was taken by an employee of the Congress as part of that person’s official duties, or because it has been released into the public domain and posted on the official websites of a member of Congress. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.