Similar claims are often made after accidents, especially by people sympathetic to engineers an scientists (such as at HN). Given a large enough population, you can always find people who predict disaster. Every leader (of a large enough population) has to decide which predictions to trust and which not to; there isn't enough money and time in the world to listen to them all, and to perfect any machine - especially large, highly complex ones.
The question is not 'was this one prediction accurate?', but 'how reliable is that population of predictions?'
The question is not 'was this one prediction accurate?', but 'how reliable is that population of predictions?'