It's hardly their fault, I'm sure if anyone had asked them about counting on their stuff to keep 5 people alive they would have reacted with horror like anyone else.
I see nothing wrong with using a Logitech controller for this purpose. They kept spares so even if they died somehow, you could just swap in another. And even if the batteries died, and you were a complete asshat and didn't bring any extras, you could likely just plug it in.
It's just hilarious that people are constantly talking about this controller and not the myriad of other legitimate safety red flags.
The F710 doesn't have a USB connection. It won't work without batteries. The F310 would have made more sense, since it's wired and I doubt that rumble is needed for piloting a submarine. It'd be cheaper, too.
The idea of stick drift seemed like a reasonable concern to me. If the controller simply stops operating, that's only a little bit of an annoyance in favor of using a spare. But, if the controller starts forcibly inputting X: 0.5 at a standstill, that could do something really bad like have the sub constantly trying to turn right. If the system pairs with no easy on/off switch, they could have difficulty working out a way to disconnect it to get a working one in place.
To me, using a Logitech controller is a red flag. Not that they used a controller, but that they used a cheap knockoff controller, not an official one. (I had a Logitech controller when I first got a gaming PC; I could not get a different one fast enough). It’s a red flag because if you cheaped out on the controller, what ELSE have you cheaped out on?
That was one of my first thoughts when I saw they used one, and it turned out they cheaped out on a lot.
They cost slightly less than the Xbox/PS ones and used to cost more. I used to own one and they're not the most comfortable but are built like tanks. My guess is the reason for choosing them was something other than cost.
The now-deceased CEO of OceanGate was proud of having bought carbon fiber to use that was half price because it was past the shelf-life for airplanes. So I’m sticking with he was doing things on the cheap.