Don't know if you have been in the business world, but capital is depreciated over the usable life of the investment. Wheeling out a ton of cash now in the build up for something in the future would be a footnote on current earnings. Now the accountants can be playing games with writedowns and accelerated depreciation, but I think you are missing the point - a loss is a loss in Wall Street reported earnings. Special one time stuff is often very well called out.

I truly admire this (or any other EM) company's ability to say "look over here, don't look at reality".

Isn't that a synonym for suspected but without evidence?

Just so we're on this front, I think that aliens have shadowy ties to the Egyption pyramids. I heard one of those pyramids has a weapon that can destroy planets. Maybe I'm thinking of the death star and its shadowy connections to the Empire.

Think about the risk that has transferred over to your personal devices. You take ownership of a BYOD as your own, even if you receive a stipend for its purchase. So now a BYOD affects you personally, and not only the company. For example, if you work in an environment where your BYODs could be damaged. This could range from the basic (spilled coffee) to the extreme (working outside in a harsh environment). What if its cosmetic damage?

Obviously I have some personal experience in this. I took a BYOD (Macbook Retina) on a business trip, and we were making coax cables. My colleague dropped his end and the center conductor whipsawed onto my brand new screen, leaving a scratch. So now my supposedly best in class screen has a smiley face scratch on it. You could argue it is cosmetic. So how you handle this? I talked with my boss and it became clear that having a BYOD means accepting some liability. To be clear, my job is fairly office environment-esque, just general IT tasks for the most part. I use my laptop for email, programming, office suite etc. But I could see days where I need to bring it on a man-lift or in a harsh environment. Not a great prospect.

There are certainly extremes where you can expect some company liability, but it opens many questions about how determine if/when risk of BYOD damage is a customer issue.

I'm not going to spend this much money, stipend or not, and have it get all jacked up. I'm leaning towards letting the company carry the risk going forward...

The only measuring stick I have is if a successful terrorist attack has taken place inside the United States. Ultimately, that was our goal following 9/11 - not let it happen again.

WTC 1993, Oklahoma City 1995, WTC 2001 - all of these are examples of what I don't want to see happen here again. In my estimation, I can find no example where attacks of this magnitude have taken place inside the US. The cliche goes: you can't argue with results.