I sympathize with keeping one's mouth shut for political reasons. Having a boss who angrily shouts at anyone who dared use their own brain and offer an idea, I learned to keep my mouth firmly shut even if i saw countless problems coming down the road.

It's totally understandable, but it would have been good to have been given a heads up - I'm totally new at the company (new to the industry), assume one of these people knows what they're doing. In the end I got a new boss and convinced him to take a different approach once the first approach failed, but I would not have blamed my new boss for just binning the entire project and getting rid of me.

It is one thing to do that while you have that boss, but something completely different to keep acting that way even when you have a different boss. The more people you have on a team who keep their mouths shut, the less effective it will be.