The US is a signatory of the Geneva Convention on Road Traffic; so just an IDP and a drivers' license from another signatory state(or a Vienna Convention on Road Traffic signatory) would probably do at least in the short term. Not sure that the question of ongoing operation on US roads by someone who remains subject to a different state's licensing requirements has been addressed; since historically it would have been purely hypothetical.

Because, as we all know, part 129 requirements for foreign airliners are totally equivalent to whatever hiring standards waymo feels like using for their offshore call center. Clearly equivalent situations.

I don't doubt that the previous requirements were effectively impossible for nontrivial portions of the industry and their customers; though, given the wall-to-wall dumpster fire that is IT and IT security; I can only see the attempt to treat that as evidence that the regulations were unrealistic and unduly burdensome as either myopic or deeply cynical.

Commercial software and both commercial and institutional IT operations are much more an example of the fact that you can absolutely run on dangerous and unsustainable shortcuts so long as there are no real consequences for failure than it is a case of a competent and successful industry at risk of being stifled by burdensome regulation.

The reasoning is honestly just baffling. Apparently the old requirements "diverted agencies from developing tailored assurance requirements for software and neglected to account for threats posed by insecure hardware." by requiring that people keep track of what software they were actually using.

Aside from the...curious...idea that knowing what your attack surface looks like is a diversion from developing assurance requirements; the claim that the old policy about SBOMs is being revoked for not focusing on insecure hardware is odd both on the obvious point that basically anything with a sensible scope only focuses on certain issues and leaves other issues to be handled by other things and the only slightly less obvious issue that most 'insecure hardware', unless you've qualified for a really classy covert implant or have high sensitivity TEMPEST issues or something, is not actually hardware problems; but firmware problems; which are just software problems that aren't as visible; exactly the sort of thing that SBOMs help you keep an eye on.

Not like anyone expected better; but this is exceptionally poor work.

The usual term with things like plumbers is "rollup". Even the most delusional excel jockey probably doesn't believe he has 'operational alpha' vs. a veteran plumber in matters of plumbing; but he(correctly) knows that local plumbing outfits are a fairly heavily fragmented industry with a lot of relatively small players; the sort of quaint folksy thing that looks like one of those competitive free markets they told you about in EC101. And, if you, purely hypothetically, can borrow money for a pittance, you don't need to improve operations when you can just buy a bunch of the small players, consolidate them, and then raise prices to match the newly reduced level of competition.

Same deal works with more or less any business with a lot of mom 'n pop operators; as well as things like rental housing. Maybe there are some marginal efficiency improvements in back office functions because it's not eleventy zillion individual copies of quickbooks; but most of the actual margins come from the higher prices you can command from customers and the lower prices you can offer to suppliers and employees once you consolidate a given sector in a given area. The effect is particularly lurid when it comes to thinks like small medical and dental practices; or care homes; since there it's about the money; but being about the money is also about pushing your employees to recommend unnecessary implant surgery and cutting patient/staff ratios as hard as you can without anyone noticing too many bedsores. Fantastic stuff, really.