Risk and complexity go hand-in-hand: complex systems are fertile ground for small, innocuous issues to collide and grow into larger incidents. We live in a world of complex systems so we can't simply avoid them. Then again, adding needless complexity is a great way to take on exposure to downside risks.

To understand, here's an excerpt from an O'Reilly Radar piece I wrote a couple years ago called "Structural Evolutions in Data."

It is still my favorite way to describe complex systems.

What makes a complex system troublesome isn’t the sheer number of connections. It’s not even that many of those connections are invisible because a person can’t see the entire system at once. The problem is that those hidden connections only become visible during a malfunction: a failure in Component B affects not only neighboring Components A and C, but also triggers disruptions in T and R. R’s issue is small on its own, but it has just led to an outsized impact in Φ and Σ.

(And if you just asked “wait, how did Greek letters get mixed up in this?” then … you get the point.)