DEI is not a scapegoat but the culmination of the corporate culture that infested Boeing. It is usually a symptom rather than the pathogen.
On my list of symptoms, it's way below things like moving the HQ away from engineering and close to financial centres.
I think people like the corporate culture theory more because it is less controversial. After all, nobody likes those greedy capitalists anyway. They are the most convenient scapegoat. Pointing out problems with DEI, on the other hand, makes you seem like a Bad Person who is possibly racist, i.e. evil. But facts are what they are, they don't care about whether we call them evil.
Pilots not needing retraining is good for business.
Getting lawmakers to give you an easy time, and give your competitors a hard time, is good for business.
Getting the product out on time and on budget is good for business.
Simplifying things so you can use low-skill labour instead of expensive highly skilled labour is good for business.
Getting your grounded planes given the OK by regulators ASAP is good for business.
Getting the widget install guy to install 50% more widgets per shift is good for business.
Getting rid of that expensive, middle-aged, unionised widget installer and replacing them with a cheaper, younger, non-unionised widget installer is good for business.
Dealing with defect reports efficiently and not holding up deliveries to customers is good for business.
Avoiding costs and delays caused by excessive perfectionism where it isn't warranted is good for business.
Promoting people who deliver business value - i.e. increased revenue or lower costs - and putting them in charge of important projects is good for business.
Making a good profit margin is good for business.
Paying out to investors consistently in dividends/stock buy-backs is good for business.
Hell, ex-McDonnel-Douglas engineer at Boeing explicitly called out financial "engineering" that looks good on stock market but doesn't work well long term with explicit example of DC-10.
This horrifyingly played out with 787 (which also had design issues, some that FAA smacked them about - fortunately as a new plane and one of the first with AFDX in US market, FAA could assign enough people to checking twice what Boeing did). A lot of the subcontractors were companies that used to be part of Boeing - but which now could be squeezed for cheaper prices.
And the thing you're missing is that the capitalist aren't sacrificing their capital if they can cash out the gains - for example thanks to only playing on the stock market and pushing publicly traded companies towards practices that enable better returns for them. While Boeing managed to keep considerable amount of shares under corporate ownership, it's less than enough to veto anything.
And Vanguard (biggest individual owner of Boeing stock) or any other big fund thanks to stock market can get benefits from short-term planning and get positive returns. In fact, it's arguably beneficial to not hold out too long and always be ready to cash out.
And the same kind of thinking led to a lot of cutting at IBM (the principal guideline was EPS value) and Digital in 1990s (where many units were sold off despite turning profit or being profit-drivers for other units).
This is the basis of how considerable portion of financial markets operate, with total reduction to "game of numbers" being the ultimate form of capitalism - i.e. capital making more capital.
If you don't see evidence you might need to widen your media bubble, just an idea....
Multiplying shareholder capital through short-term dismantling of existing businesses while ensuring the shareholder do not have negative effects from it is very much a rewarded operation.
CEOs are required to maximize shareholder's value, and only some rare funds need the value to stay high for long.
The way to have a short CEO career is to let moral concerns interfere with shareholders' returns.
You're not going to look evil for firing someone who undercuts FAA regs on quality. Those same regs also do not care about how an applicant looks other than being able to do the job mentally and physically (I'd argue you could slip a non-human being into some roles if you could prove they can follow the regs!)
And FWIW, there is rather simple causal relationship between cost cutting and benefits for the top managers. And quality controls cost money. So does corporate culture that rewards quality.
Believe me, DEI or no DEI, every regulatory body in the world would stand up and support you if you show that someone didn't get a job or lost a job because they couldn't ensure the required quality is kept.
Especially when you consider that this is yet another SNAFU at Boeing involving quality, design, or actual production - and sometimes other companies dealing with the same supplier (Spirit) do not have the same issues. Despite sometimes having even more "social responsibility" rules over them (compared to, let's say Germany, DEI pushes in USA have no teeth)
And the regulation mean that Boeing can loose even the ability to sell what they have if they do not maintain quality as necessary.
Just like Turkish Airlines Flight 981 was indirectly, but very very strongly, related to policy set by another american president - it just happened that TAF 981 managed to crash before the president who set that policy left the office.
P.S. neither of american tribes are mine