It’s lazy to think that a manufacturing process is better just because it’s automated. While the effort going on right now at the Tesla factory in Fremont is anything but lazy, it brings into the spotlight one of the core problems with the simplistic “automation for automation’s sake” strategy: processes that aren’t stable to begin with cannot be made stable with robots.

Three years into the Iraq war, facing a spike in casualties from roadside bombings, the Pentagon turned to a steel mill in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, to supply emergency armor for combat vehicles.

Every company uses software, obviously. There isn’t a technology industry keynote that passes without a besuited evangelist telling us that “every business is a technology business” — and they may even pepper in the old “hey Uber has no cars, Amazon has no bookstores” chestnut if they really want to check all the boxes.