A former OceanGate advisor said everyone was drinking the Kool-Aid even though 'there were multiple points of failure' with their sub

• Rob McCallum told the New Yorker he was disturbed when he visited OceanGate's workshop.
• McCallum said no one seemed to be concerned about what he viewed as major safety issues.

An expert in deep sea expeditions said when he visited the workshop of OceanGate Expeditions, everyone seemed to be on board with the operations — despite what he saw as clear problems.

"Everyone was drinking Kool-Aid and saying how cool they were with a Sony PlayStation," Rob McCallum, a co-founder of EYOS Expeditions, told the New Yorker's Ben Taub, referring to the use of a video game controller in the company's submersibles — one of which eventually became the ill-fated Titan submersible.

McCallum is also an expedition consultant who had given OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush advice on marketing and logistics before visiting the workshop, located outside Seattle.

McCallum said he was disturbed by the visit, during which he examined the submersible known as Cyclops I. OceanGate's next iteration was still in planning: Cyclops II, eventually renamed the Titan.

"And I said at the time, 'Does Sony know that it's been used for this application? Because, you know, this is not what it was designed for.' And now you have the hand controller talking to a Wi-Fi unit, which is talking to a black box, which is talking to the sub's thrusters," McCallum said. "There were multiple points of failure."

McCallum said he was also concerned when Rush told him the system ran on Bluetooth, telling the New Yorker "every sub in the world has hardwired controls for a reason — that if the signal drops out, you're not fucked."

Neither OceanGate nor McCallum responded to Insider's request for comment.

When OceanGate's Titan lost communication with its surface ship less than two hours into a dive to the Titanic on June 18, it was also being piloted by a video game controller — a modified Logitech gamepad controller. Four days later the US Coast Guard said debris from the Titan was discovered, suggesting the submersible had catastrophically imploded, killing all five people on board.

McCallum would go one to express his many concerns with OceanGate's operations to Rush, who largely rebuffed him. He told The New Yorker he finally cut ties with OceanGate when he learned Rush was not going to have his vessel classed by a marine-certification agency. McCallum was among the dozens of industry experts who sent a letter to OceanGate expressing concerns about their planned Titanic voyages.

While some OceanGate employees can be seen in promotional videos touting the safety of the company's operations, others who worked at or closely with OceanGate also expressed safety concerns.

David Lochridge, former director of marine operations for OceanGate, has said he was fired after expressing safety concerns about the Titan. And the company's former finance director told The New Yorker she quit shortly after Rush asked her to become the Titan's chief pilot despite not having any experience manning submersibles.