Dictionary definition of “7,000-mile screwdriver”

7,000-mile screwdriver

n. micromanagement of a situation from afar. Subjects: English, Military, Slang

Editorial Note: The number of miles used varies depending upon the speaker and the situation.

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Citations: 1991 Lee Sproull, Sara Kiesler Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization (June) p. 117: Military command-and-control systems are said to provide commanders with six-thousand-mile screwdrivers. 1996 Usenet: rec.autos.4x4 (Nov. 12) “Re: Gas Pig—Where To Start?”: How about some detail of the engine? EFI? Q-jet? or what…3000 mile screwdriver with no details. 1999 Mike McDuffie Political Transcripts by Federal Document Clearing House (May 28) “Lt. Gen. Mike Mcduffie Holds Defense Department Briefing On Refugees”: Well, we don’t know yet. I mean, that is—and again, we’re not going to apply the 6,000-mile screwdriver on that. 2000 Bernard Rostker (MW Presswire) (June 1) “DoD News Briefing”: We run largely a decentralized system, and it’s important that we continue to do that. I once worked with a person who talked about the 3,000-mile screwdriver making those fine adjustments. We trust our base commanders. 2001 Steve Pietropaoli CNN (Feb. 15) “Pentagon Holds News Briefing on Submarine Collision”: As I think most of you know from our efforts on the USS Cole, the chief of naval operations, secretary of the navy, both for good, legal reasons of not interfering with ongoing investigations from Washington, and for practical reasons of the difficulty of adjusting things with a 7,000-mile screwdriver, do not reach out into the midst of the investigation and pull back information prematurely. 2003 Arthur K. Cebrowski Military Technology (May 1) “Network-centric warfare” vol. 27, no. 5, p. 16: Whether filters will or should be installed, and whether this encourages the use of the proverbial three thousand mile screwdriver : that is, command and control from very far afield—are matters for research and doctrinal development. 2003 Chris Kridler Florida Today (Sept. 21) “Goodbye Galileo” p. 1: “Sometimes fixing it is hard at this distance,” said Cox, who is now deputy team leader for the Mars Exploration Rovers. “You find a way to work around it,” what she calls the “million-mile screwdriver.” 2005 Jeffrey Goldberg New Yorker (May 9) “A Little Learning”: When people say, ‘You screwed up the postwar plan,’ what people don’t understand is that we had all kinds of plans. But when Bremer”—Paul Bremer, who was appointed by President Bush to oversee the rebuilding of Iraq—“went over there, he was given autonomy over all kinds of plans that he didn’t implement. The Secretary didn’t want to use the five-thousand-mile screwdriver.” 2006 David Ignatius Daily Star (Lebanon) (Nov. Iraq claims its most senior casualty10) “Iraq claims its most senior casualty”: Senior military officers referred to it as “the 7,000-mile screwdriver.” That was their way of describing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s penchant for micromanaging aspects of the Iraq War that interested him.

Posted 13 Nov 06 | Permalink | Tell a Friend

PACAF (Pacific Air Command) uses this phrase frequently. Their headquarters is in Hawaii, but the bases are all over the eastern pacific rim. I first heard it used in the mid 80s.

by Alice 01 Oct 07, 0934 GMT