This also deserves repeating because I think you are 100% wrong. Whatever business you ran...finance, building, manufacturing...whatever it is...it wasn't a new frontier. I guarantee it. Not only is this a renewed or new(for practical purposes) frontier in the US, it is a new frontier on the silk frontier itself. You are misapplying standards and business practices. Not predicting this cocoon issue tells me that you or anyone in any country could have predicted the outcome. Did the vendor ask what size the cocoons were? No. So if the professionals made assumptions, why would you seek to apply established business principles to a developing technology?
There is no one here that is closed to detailed predictions of failure. There will be excuses and they will be as legitimate as business principles. Until you get there, this is an experiment. And you can ask Dr. Frasier how many failures he had before success. So there is zero room for setting up an expectation of success the first time. There are only best guesses, and no guarantees speaking strictly to the route to success... not that there will BE success. I have little doubt of ultimate success. This will happen on its own timeline. Get use to excuses or you are in for the most miserable investment time of your life.
Obviously I am willing to listen and hear any arguments to the contrary....so long as I don't have you on ignore.
