From a putative but so far mostly just imagined series "Reading The Economist During Pandemic Confinement"
The Schumpeter column in the July 18, 2020 issue of The Economist, entitled When bits bite enumerates several problems with enterprise software, illustrated with recent examples.
The through-line example is VW's problems with the software in its electric "Tesla killer" car, the ID.3. Curiously, no where is mentioned that it was through emissions-control software that VW allegedly defrauded customers, regulators, and investors, and that current electric-car efforts are part of its recovery from that episode.
Beyond that omission is misstatement: The Boeing 737 MAX problems are blamed, albeit with the hedge 'partly', on software, alongside the claim that the then CEO Dennis Muilenberg was 'forced rightly to resign' over the scandal. Nevermind that Muilenberg was the last of the old-school, engineering-focussed Boeing long-timers to ascend to that level of management and that, with his resignation, the management takeover of Boeing by Jack Welch acolyte GE alumni is now complete. Short-term investors, amongst whom The Economist undoubtedly counts many readers, rejoice. Anyone relying on long-term investment in research and development, including that which brings competitive products to market without the sorts of fudges that seem likely to have killed hundreds of people in these several crashed Boeing aircraft, despair.
That software could not compensate for the airframe changes Boeing made to the 737 MAX without requiring its customer's pilots to seek expensive new training. It could not compensate for the now obviously penny-wise, pound-foolish decision to sell redundant stall-warning features as upgrades rather than as part of the base package. The line here is that software (but to be sure, perhaps only 'partly'!) is to blame for various costs, not that too much is expected and asked of software by those ill-prepared or unwilling to consider its limits.
Having read The Economist off and on for decades now, I recall a time when the theme of a set of recurring questions it asked of corporate IT was "when will the huge amounts of money spent begin to reap rewards?". Efficient market hypothesizing held that huge expenses "rationally" undertaken must begin to bear fruit. Now, several global economic crises later, it seems not only to have stopped asking the question, but has turned on IT for disappointing.
The answer, in short, is "never". Like so much of the bright shiny new future the market promises, "investments" are often merely expenses. When products are delivered and bills comes due, we see it's mostly expensive dross.
For that, The Economist need not look so far in placing blame.