🚢 Before the Descent: Privilege, Ego, and the Illusion of Control

Before Stockton Rush became a household name associated with one of the most infamous maritime disasters in modern history, he was already swimming in privilege. A descendant of two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Rush graduated from Princeton and Stanford with degrees in aerospace engineering and business. He was part of America’s elite—financially, socially, and educationally.

This elite positioning didn't just inform his confidence—it fueled his audacity.

Rush often compared himself to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, describing the Titan project as his own version of commercial space travel. In interviews, he was clear: deep-sea tourism was the final frontier—and he intended to dominate it. But unlike Bezos or Musk, who built enterprises around layers of redundancy and technical peer review (however flawed), Rush viewed regulatory oversight as unnecessary red tape.

“There hasn’t been an injury in the commercial sub industry in over 35 years,” Rush boasted. “It’s obscenely safe because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn’t innovated or grown because they have all these regulations.”

—Stockton Rush, quoted in Smithsonian Magazine, 2019

Innovation, for Rush, became a euphemism for bypassing safety. And the true motivator wasn’t exploration—it was market capture. Deep-sea tourism at $250,000 a seat was, quite literally, a high-stakes gamble driven by the promise of wealth and legacy.

🗞️ The Initial Media Frenzy: Adventure, Not Accountability

When the Titan submersible first went missing in June 2023, the media treated it like an adventurous mystery. News anchors breathlessly tracked the vessel’s remaining oxygen, and billionaires on board were framed as daring pioneers.

The global public tuned in, gripped by a dramatic countdown. What if they survived? Could there be a miraculous rescue?

Only later—after debris confirmed a catastrophic implosion at depths of nearly 12,500 feet—did the narrative shift. Journalists and industry experts began to uncover the trail of ignored warnings, dismissed engineers, and regulatory circumventions. The media pivoted from glorifying the adventurers to questioning why this voyage was ever permitted.

What had been painted as a tragic accident was, in fact, a preventable catastrophe.

As deep-sea expert Tony Nissan declared in the Netflix documentary:

“It’s culture that caused this to happen. It’s culture that killed the people. 100%.”

—Tony Nissan, Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster (Netflix, 2025)

The rest of the story—and the devastating failure of psychological safety—unfolds below.

In the chilling 2025 Netflix documentary Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster, the tragic implosion of the submersible Titan becomes more than an engineering failure—it emerges as a cautionary tale about the catastrophic cost of ignoring psychological safety.

At the heart of the story isn’t just flawed carbon fiber, dubious certifications, or risky innovation. It’s something much more human, yet equally structural: a culture that punished dissent, glorified recklessness, and ignored warning signs.

Let’s examine what went wrong—not just from a technical or procedural standpoint, but through the lens of psychological safety, the cornerstone of high-performing and ethically grounded teams.

🚨 Suppression, Not Safety: A Culture That Silenced Voices

OceanGate’s former Director of Marine Operations, David Lochridge, raised alarm bells about the Titan’s hull safety as early as 2018. He specifically warned that the carbon-fiber structure was untested and could suffer from microfractures at extreme depths. Instead of initiating an independent investigation, the company fired him.

“[Lochridge] was terminated after raising safety concerns.”

—Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster, Netflix (2025)

This is not an isolated incident—it is an organizational pattern. Psychological safety, as defined by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson, is “a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.” It means people feel free to speak up with concerns, questions, or dissent without fear of punishment or humiliation.

OceanGate failed spectacularly here.

Rather than valuing whistleblowers as internal safety mechanisms, OceanGate’s leadership treated them as threats. While many organizations boast about their whistleblower policies, the Titan disaster is proof that policy is useless without culture.

"There were whistleblower protections on paper. But in practice, anyone who spoke up was cut out."

—Anonymous engineer, paraphrased from the documentary

The lesson? Whistleblower policies are not safety nets—they’re legal disclaimers. They only work when supported by a culture that listens.

🧠 Psychological Safety Isn’t Soft—It’s Structural

Stockton Rush, the OceanGate CEO and pilot of the doomed Titan, embodies the anti-pattern of psychological safety. His words are telling:

“At some point, safety is just pure waste. If you want to be safe, don’t get out of bed.”

—Stockton Rush, as quoted in The Guardian, June 2025

This statement wasn't motivational—it was delusional. It encapsulated a dangerous bravado that permeated OceanGate’s internal culture. Risk wasn't just tolerated—it was glamorized.

This mindset rewarded compliance, not conscience. Speaking up was not part of the culture. In a psychologically safe organization, the loudest voice isn't the most powerful—it’s the most courageous truth-teller who gets heard.

At OceanGate, that person was fired.

🔇 The Cost of Fear: When Engineers Stay Silent

In several interviews, engineers admitted that while they harbored doubts, they didn't speak up out of fear. Fear of being fired. Fear of being labeled difficult. Fear of being the next Lochridge.

“You learn to stay in your lane. And staying in your lane meant not asking questions about safety.”

—Anonymous OceanGate contractor, Netflix documentary (2025)

This is how cultures of silence form—not because people don’t care, but because they don’t feel safe.

As psychological safety researcher Timothy R. Clark notes in The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety (2020), without a culture that encourages contributor and challenger safety, organizations suffer from intellectual atrophy. When people withhold concerns or insights, the organization becomes blind to its own weaknesses—until it’s too late.

🔄 Normalization of Deviance: The ‘Cracking’ Sound That Was Ignored

The documentary reveals that each descent of the Titan was accompanied by cracking sounds—indicative of strain on the hull. Instead of investigating, Stockton Rush reportedly called it “the carbon fiber seasoning itself.” 

“They heard sounds. They heard warning signs. They normalized them.”

—Director Tom Monroe, Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster 

This echoes NASA’s famous downfall with the Challenger disaster, where engineers similarly “normalized” unsafe conditions because the previous missions hadn’t failed—yet. As author Diane Vaughan describes, normalization of deviance occurs when warnings are routinely ignored because “nothing bad has happened so far.”

It’s one of the most dangerous cultural dynamics possible—and it’s born from silence, not stupidity.

🛑 Why Whistleblower Protections Aren’t Enough

Tony Nissan’s quote about culture being the killer also casts light on the futility of whistleblower policies without an aligned culture. Many organizations hang signs about compliance hotlines and retaliation protections, but:

• Do they actively seek dissenting views?
• Do they honor the courage it takes to speak up?
• Do they follow through transparently?

OceanGate had none of these. Instead, dissent was treated as sabotage. The company sued Lochridge for “improperly disclosing confidential information” rather than engaging his safety concerns.

In the absence of psychological safety, policy is a paper sword. Without culture to back it, protections are performative.

🌍 From Submersibles to Boardrooms: The Universal Message

Though Titan focuses on a high-risk expedition, the implications stretch to boardrooms, hospitals, tech teams, startups, and schools. Anywhere people work together, psychological safety either protects or imperils them.

The consequences of lacking psychological safety include:

• Unreported problems until they become disasters
• Withheld innovation due to fear of failure
• Low morale, burnout, and turnover
• Erosion of trust, internally and with customers

Psychological safety doesn’t mean eliminating risk—it means giving people a voice in how risk is managed.

🔐 Lessons We Must Not Ignore

1. Psychological safety is the foundation of operational safety.
You cannot have a truly safe system if people are afraid to tell the truth.

2. Culture eats whistleblower policies for breakfast.
You must live your values. It’s not enough to have policies—you need a culture that listens and learns.

3. Risk and innovation require robust dissent.
Contrary to popular belief, the most visionary leaders aren’t the loudest—they’re the ones who know how to make room for challenge and curiosity. 

4. Hero culture is a liability.
Organizations that idolize lone visionaries often marginalize the wisdom of the collective. This makes them vulnerable, not agile.

🕊️ Final Reflection: Psychological Safety is Not Optional

The Titan sub didn’t fail because no one knew better. It failed because the people who knew better were ignored, silenced, or removed.

Tony Nissan said it clearly:

“It’s culture that killed the people. 100%.”

If that doesn’t jolt organizations to revisit how they treat truth-tellers, what will?

The antidote is not just better engineering. It’s better listening. It’s fostering cultures where the smartest person in the room is the one who makes others feel safe to speak.

That must start today—long before we dive into unknown depths.

If you want to bring psychological safety into your organization but aren't sure where to begin, start here by reading this InKNOWnative Insights: How to Use InKNOWnative’s Step-by-Step Training to Build Sustainable Psychological Safety. 

Learn More:

"The Titan was entirely preventable, but also predictable." 

~Titan Marine Board of Investigation

 🎥 Watch the latest from Channel 4 News, August 5, 2025: Here

Citations

• Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley.
• Clark, T. R. (2020). The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
• Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster. Directed by Tom Monroe. Netflix, 2025.
• Ohlheiser, A. (2019, July 9). This CEO is offering a $100,000 trip to the Titanic. But is he a visionary or reckless? Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-ceo-offering-100000-trip-titanic-he-visionary-or-reckless-180972701/ 
• “Absolutely shocking”: The Guardian
• “Biggest Takeaways from Titan”: EW.com
• OceanGate Lawsuit Coverage: Business Insider
• Vaughan, D. (1996). The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. University of Chicago Press.

✨ Brought to you by InKNOWnative 

The spark of innovation & knowledge is native to each of us. Empowering organizations to build fearless, high-performing, learning cultures through psychological safety, inclusion, and innovation.

📩 Contact: https://www.inknownative.com/contact
🌐 Website: www.inknownative.com
📱 Instagram: @inknownative