Space Summary
The Twitter Space The State of Surprise: Why DC Analysts Always Fail hosted by JoshuaSteinman. Delve into the challenges faced by seasoned DC analysts in forecasting surprises despite their expertise and experience. The discussion sheds light on the implications of analytical failures in the dynamic political landscape and emphasizes the need for flexibility, continuous learning, and collaboration to enhance predictive capabilities. Understanding the complexities of political forecasting and the importance of adapting strategies can provide valuable insights for analysts navigating unexpected events in the ever-changing political environment.
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Questions
Q: Why do seasoned DC analysts struggle with forecasting surprises?
A: Despite expertise, new variables and unexpected events constantly challenge conventional analytical methods.
Q: What are the implications of analytical failures in political forecasting?
A: Inaccurate predictions can lead to flawed decision-making processes with far-reaching consequences.
Q: How can analysts adapt to better anticipate surprises?
A: By fostering flexibility, continuous learning, and collaboration, analysts can enhance their ability to navigate unforeseen events.
Q: Why is it important to analyze surprises retrospectively?
A: Retrospective analysis provides valuable insights for refining forecasting methods and improving future prediction accuracy.
Highlights
Time: 12:05:29
Challenges of Political Forecasting Exploring the difficulties analysts face in accurately predicting surprises in the political arena.
Time: 12:15:17
Implications of Analytical Failures Discussing how failed predictions can impact decision-making processes and outcomes.
Time: 12:25:40
Adapting Analytical Strategies Strategies for analysts to adjust methods to better account for unpredictability and surprise events.
Key Takeaways
- Forecasting political surprises remains a formidable challenge even for experienced analysts.
- Experience and expertise do not always guarantee accurate predictions in the dynamic political landscape.
- Analytical failures in predicting surprises can have significant implications for decision-making processes.
- The presence of new variables and unexpected events can disrupt even the most well-informed analytical models.
- Adapting strategies to incorporate unpredictability is essential for analysts facing constantly evolving political scenarios.
- Overreliance on historical data or past experiences can hinder the ability to foresee unforeseen events.
- Flexibility in analytical approaches is crucial to better prepare for unexpected outcomes and surprises.
- Analyzing surprises retrospectively can offer valuable insights into improving future forecasting methods.
- Open dialogue and collaboration among analysts can enhance the collective ability to anticipate surprises more effectively.
- Continuous learning and adjustment are key factors in refining analytical processes and adapting to complex political environments.
Behind the Mic
Initial Greetings
Our channel. Close it. It. Hey, everybody, it's Josh. Mic check. Hey, Josh, Michael here. Hey, Michael, how are you doing? Great. How are you? Good, good. Ezra, Joel, Chris, you guys there? Yeah, we can hear you. Yep, loud and clear. How's the fancy mic sounding? Sounds great. Ezra, how's your mic? It's working fantastic. Hopefully. Ezra and I've talked about doing these things for months, and we bought these mics and we just never used them. $100 on Amazon. Big ticket item. All right, guys. Oh, hey, Derek. Hey, Derek. Maybe not. Hey, this is Derek. Yeah, Derek, we can hear you. Good. Thank you. Well, hey, guys. Hey, everybody. It looks like we've got. I can't see the people in the audience, but it looks like there's a bunch. So, you know, last week, me, Joel, and Ezra did a little after action off the VP debate, and I, a bunch of people listened, so we thought it'd be great to do another. And so here we are.
Setting the Stage
And, you know, we are in a really interesting time right now. Obviously, there's a lot going on, especially in the Middle east. And Ezra and I and everyone up here who's, who worked on the NSC and has had government careers at that intersection of the pointy end of things, we often talk about how, in many cases, folks that are deeply entrenched in the beltway rarely get out. They just don't have this ability to grasp what actually makes the world work. So Ezra and I were just sort of ideating on this idea and decided, hey, let's just do another spaces and just talk about this. Like, what is it in the culture of Washington that makes, you know, it's so hard for our so-called analytic class to just radically misunderstand how the world works. Ezra, do you have thoughts on how we want to frame up this conversation? I think we've gone back and forth on this a lot over the past few days. Yeah, I think the key point we really want to hit is this idea that, you know, sometimes you need to be a little bit escalatory. You need to take some action. Really. To avoid a future cost.
Exploring Issues in Policy
And a lot of the times when, you know, in the national security space, when we're considering whether or not to do this, there's this, you know, we just reflexively depend on advice of so-called experts. And these are people that are really permanent facets of the security state. And for the past 20 years, they've gotten it repeatedly wrong. And we wanted to talk about that today and really understand why they've gotten it wrong. And I think also look at what changes can be made. And I think that we have one candidate that can definitely bring around a lot of those changes. So I think just sort of kicking it off, I think. Joel, do you want to talk a little bit about the sort of state of play over the past 20 years with the Iranians? I think that we're seeing this play out right now. The Israelis have reached out and touched several thousand of their most prized proxy forces in southern Lebanon with the Hezbollah activities of the past few weeks. But do you want to sort of give folks a sense of the lay of the land over the past few decades in terms of, you know, what that Washington consensus was and how it sort of played out against expectation? Sure.
Analyzing Past Diplomatic Strategies
I mean, there's been, for quite some time, there has been, I think, an elite consensus that the way to handle the Iran problem was to get them into some sort of diplomatic deal and then to try to encourage the Iranian regime to open up its economy, which supposedly would lead to an opening of its politics. And also the idea that there was a battle over the soul of Iran or the future of Iran being fought out between hardliners within the regime and moderates within the regime, and that if we would take a conciliatory approach through a deal and through economic building of economic ties, that would enable the moderates inside the Iranian regime to win the internal debate, and then Iran would, you know, become a, you know, a potential partner or at least not a threat. And that idea has been tested and failed over and over again over the last, I would say 18 years. And. But it's. Where did it come from? Is a good question. And I think it came from a Washington political class or, you know, analyst class, intellectual class that forgot all the lessons of the Cold War.
Misunderstanding Historical Context
And it's really a post 1989, post Cold War phenomenon. It's sort of the embrace of the end of history that you can turn the page on the 20th century, and that includes turning the page on the hostile relationship between the United States and Iran. The only problem with that is that the Iranians, the hostility between the US and Iran really isn't something that the US just sort of generated as a side product of the Cold War. It came from the Iranians having an ideologically driven national security strategy that is antithetical to us material interests and those of our allies. So that idea has been mugged by reality again and again, and we're seeing it happen again, but I think that's the genesis of it, Josh. I mean, it's interesting because this kind of sounds a lot like the arguments that were made around bringing China into the WTO in the 1990s. Exactly. We'll just introduce them to our lord and savior, free market capitalism, and surely they'll change their ways.
The China and Iran Comparison
I mean, both of those ideas, both with respect to Iran and China, they might not have been crazy ideas initially. Right? Like recall when we went into Afghanistan in 2001, Iran was relatively favorable and supportive. Right. They weren't fans of the hardline Sunni extremists either. Right. And at the time, that was the preeminent national security challenge in the United States was fighting primarily Sunni Islamic terrorism. But once that idea was road tested and it failed, that's when you've got to reevaluate the assumptions and jolt to your point. That's what the DC foreign policy blob, as some people call it. That's what they never accepted. Right. Once the idea of maybe some sort of partnership with Iran could be fruitful, once that idea was tested and failed, they didn't let go.
Refusal to Accept New Realities
They didn't change their assumptions in response to new facts. They kept pressing forward, thinking maybe trying again under slightly different circumstances would lead to a better result. And as we've seen again and again, it doesn't because of the fundamental nature of the regime that you described. Yeah. And I think it's also since there was a bit of a falling off of. Let'S. Say, really deep expertise in national security affairs, if you remember, the whole academy of Russian strategic studies and Chinese strategic studies and so on that were Cold War phenomena. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, those really dissipated as fields of study. And I think after the Cold War ended, you really, in national security affairs gone into, I think, three different lines of action. One was generalists, another was the global war on terror, ultimately after 911. And the third was it became very lawyerly, not to, you know, no offense to the lawyers on the call, Michael and Ezra and so on.
Impact on National Security Analysis
Right. We love you guys. None taken, Joel. We deserve it. Yeah. But it became, you know, it became almost the national security affairs, I think, became really dominated by legal analysis and so on and sort of with the lawyers in the lead. No offense again. And I think because of that, our national security establishment, our national security expert community, fell away from a really deep understanding of the internal dynamics of these societies and political systems that were either allied with or are arranged against us as adversaries. And we fall into what do you do in that case? You tend you fall into the trap of mirror imaging and saying, well, if I were in their shoes, I would want the following. I would react in the following way. I would think the following, which really almost always leads you into a fallacy.
Dangers of Over-Simplified Thinking
I think the other thing, too, and a lot of the times there's just this kind of push, and I think we especially see this against Republican presidents. It's like the policy class basically presents the president with two options. Either you do nothing or you start a war. And the reality is, and we certainly saw, I think all of us who are speaking now saw this with President Trump, there was this curation of options towards kind of what the policy class wanted. And those really weren't the totality of options. There are a million, there are probably about a thousand steps for Iran, China, Russia between peace and war. And the reality is you need to know what all of those different steps are because some of them may actually make the chance of war go down. But all of us saw over and over again, you know, this presentation of, if you do something that, you know, seems very minor, this will immediately escalate into war.
Consequences of Poor Projections
And actually, because of that, and I think we saw that. We see that a lot with how we handled Hezbollah, because were told by the policy class, by this kind of expert class, that this would be catastrophic if we did x, Y or z. Certain things unfortunately, weren't done, and that's now led to a real war. And so I think that's something that we've all experienced. It is really interesting that, like, what we've seen is just the growth of a group of people that understand, like, never mind the issues, but, like, the process of framing issues. And it was like, one of these things that I found most interesting, you know, stepping back and then frustrating, you know, when in the seat, which is exactly what, Ezra, what you were saying, which is that you come in and be like, well, sir, we've got option a and we've got option b.
Critique of Limited Options
And it's like, well, there's a thousand other things you can do. Right? And, you know, I think it's one of the interesting reasons why the staffing process inside the White House is so critical because you have to have White House staff that are able to really drill down and understand, you know, what's in the realm of the possible as you surface issues up to the president and up to the cabinet, because otherwise basically gets snowed. And. We also attend, I think, for a long time. Certainly in the post 911 era, in DC, in the national security establishment slash community, expert community, we tend to favor conflict management as opposed to conflict, either as opposed to conflict resolution and as opposed to deterrence.
Prevalence of Caution in Analysis
And you get into, I think DC has gotten into a very cautious frame of viewing conflicts, which tends to. It can wind up being pennywise and pound foolish. That if we can contend, okay, there's a conflict of, well, if we can contain that conflict now and sort of manage it and try to control it through a rheostat, if you will, then we can just sort of, we can keep it in check when in reality, without addressing then serious roots of those conflicts. They can fester and then explode, which is, I think what, you know, October 7 was what in the current conflict is going on represents, but that what we're seeing right now is really, I think, the logical conclusion of a conflict management approach without ever addressing underlying causes.
Identifying the Issue
Derek? Yeah. Joel. Joel, I would agree with you. We've managed conflicts for 50 years or more to unacceptable outcomes at great cost of treasure and lives and casualties. And it's frustrated American citizens who have had to pay for it when they don't see objectives met that they can understand. And it's partially, we don't understand escalation. We don't understand deterrence anymore. And we've been driven by this. Managing the conflict, as you might, as you suggest, and this idea of proportionality. We don't think about winning and imposing our will war, fighting against an enemy that may be ideologically committed in a way that we don't understand.
Challenges in Intelligence
Because, again, we're mere imaging. And part of what feeds into this is, in fact, the intelligence community with, I would call it some milquetoast analytical conclusions that too often might be framed because they are politicized. They don't want to provide inconvenient facts or assessments to the political leaders. So there's that bias element. Their assumptions, they fail to challenge their assumptions, whether they're stated or unstated. The methodology and the way we approach things with tradecraft today, unless you have some actual intelligence message, some document that says x, it's difficult for analysts to say what they think is really going to happen in far too many cases.
Clarifying Mirror Imaging
Hey, Derek, just for the folks that aren't, you know, as well steeped as all of us are, do you want to explain to folks what mirror imaging means? It's. It's a term that we use in IC all the time. But, you know, maybe there's folks out listening who might note specifically, know what that means? Well, it's when we project onto the other side that they. Their assessment of risk reward is similar to ours, that their ideas about the value of human life and what they're willing to sacrifice to achieve an objective is similar to ours and that their worries and concerns are similar to ours.
Consequences of Misrepresentation
And if you go into it when as a educated western elite person, but the other side is very ruthless like Saddam Hussein or their approach in a Middle Eastern society is more like the godfather in its approach. And their beliefs and value system is influenced by other factors, be it tribal communal dynamics, knowing that, you know, they can't compromise because of the nature of their society and what it might mean. We're missing the boat. So I think that's an element of it. And, Joel, you know, you and I both confronted this where we've had to do alternative analysis on countless national intelligence estimates dealing with the Middle East where the analysts had not been in the region.
Limitations of Understanding
They didn't really understand the culture, but the products were written in a compromised way across the IC that led to conclusions that turned out to be really wrong. And we've seen that historically, too, whether it's on China's not going to desire a blue water navy, that they're not going to want to modernize and expand their nuclear triad or was the Russian missile case. So if the intelligence is bad and being framed in a way that doesn't provide objective analysis based upon a deep understanding of the psychology of the leaders, an understanding of the culture, then you're prone to wind up with, you know, a wrong diagnosis.
Impact of Wrong Analysis
And if you get a wrong diagnosis can lead, it leads to strategic failure in the conception. I think, you know, that's pretty clinical, Derek. But also, you know, we can't forget, obviously, that, you know, there's the sort of unwilling blindness that sort of comes from the personal experiences of the folks that are doing it. But then there's also the fact that, I mean, we've seen very political, like, very deeply political, you know, analytic efforts within, you know, the US government, from the leaks and to the products that get released, unclassified stuff.
Political Influences in Analysis
You know, where you have these scenarios where it's like not only then are you bounded by experience, but then on some level, folks are definitely putting their finger on the scale.
Engagement in Combat Operations
So, Josh, if I may, we've consistently engaged in combat operations and intervened. Usually we go about it in a proportional way without the intent to actually destroy the enemy and come up with a strategic long term plan to make sure that they're destroyed and they don't regenerate, whether it's Afghanistan or someplace else. We do tit for tatinous and we do not do escalation, dominance, and we don't generally think about imposing consequences on the other side in a way that deters them because they understand the framework by which our national security leadership tends to approach these problems. And as Joel said, you know, it's about managing a conflict, not imposing our will or being clear about red lines. And if they crossed the red line, they're going to pay a heavy consequence, not just some missiles fired as a signal, and we're always signaling while they're doing much more graver things to impact our, you know, our interest in the region.
Reflections on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Yeah, well, it is, I mean, it's very interesting. You know, I think that the conclusion among many Americans, rightly, is that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were not worth blood, treasure and so on. Certainly not compared to the outcome. Right. And, but I think many people outside of this national security community don't understand why did those turn into forever wars? They shouldn't have been forever wars. And I think there are some major fundamental things about it which the DC national security establishment was unable to grapple with in Iraq. It's very strange. We were there for so long in two different stretches, including now, and have never accounted for the role of the Iranian regime and Syrian regime in Iraq on what were trying to do in Afghanistan. We were there for 20 years and never confronted the reality of the role of Pakistan and the way in which Pakistan could decisively essentially spoil whatever it was were trying to achieve there.
National Security Education and Geopolitics
And I think that's down to, again, as I mentioned, not being able to think strategically in the post Cold War era. It's almost as though our national security education systems, our national security community sort of took a holiday from geopolitics, and now we're right back in it. We're finding ourselves right back in it, where geopolitics came up and smacked us in the face with the Russia Ukraine war, with the China situation, etcetera. And so we're going to have to get back to basics pretty quick. And, Joel, you talked to. Oh, Derek, go ahead. I was going to say, you know, we don't study war. You know, I don't think Jake Sullivan understands war, what war really is and the human dimension of warfare, the psychological elements and how you impose your will or how you instill deep concern and fear on the other side and respect for our power. If it's just, if you're looking at it from just our perspective, and if we don't get back to really understanding, you know, the dynamic, you know, what war is, and we're just trying to manage it, as Joel said earlier, then we're bound to repeat the mistakes that we've had in the recent years.
The Trump Administration's Approach to Deterrence
I just, I would just add, you know, I think I, one of the key things is that we strive for in the Trump administration was to avoid war. And you know, what Derek and Joel are talking about is one you absolutely need to understand the worst case scenario, which is going to war. And within that, there are many bad potential scenarios that could evolve. But I think one thing that President Trump understood well was that there were many things that needed to be done pre conflict to avoid war. And really what you're hearing Joel and Derek talk about is how the bureaucracy tried to twist us into limiting what steps we could take pre conflict. For me, Josh, the biggest example of this is you look at Ukraine. President Trump, there was no war. There was no Russian invasion of Ukraine on President Trump's watch because he ran a very good campaign to create deterrence, and he pushed back on people that were saying x, y, and Z would be too escalatory.
Post-Trump Administration Actions and Costs
When Trump left office in 2021, we had a robust training program to prepare the Ukrainians for a potential Russian invasion, and that deterred the Russians. By the way, the cost of that was under 20 billion. Now the Biden administration comes in March of 2021. They canceled all of those programs because they said they were too escalatory. The expert, policy expert class took over, and look what we have now. We're spending billions, tens of billions of dollars to try to create some conditions that are supposedly more preferable for us. Had we just stuck with the small, minimal pre conflict investment, we could have avoided this entire mess. Well, perhaps to bring two of those threads together. As Derek mentioned, Jake Sullivan isn't someone with a military background. Jake Sullivan's a lawyer.
Background Differences Among Leaders and Analysts
In fact, fun factoid. Tim Waltz, I think, is the first member of a Democratic Party ticket since 1980, either president or vice president to not be a lawyer. Every other president and vice president on democratic nominee on a democratic ticket since 1980 has been someone who held a JD. So you've got a very analytic mindset coming from lawyers. And President Trump came from a very different background. Right. Came from the background of negotiating real estate deals in New York, which is a pretty tough environment. Blood sport. Exactly. Exactly. One that, obviously, you have to be mindful of facts and analysis, but also operate a lot on instinct and I. And on reading people, understanding people. So an action like providing Javelin missiles to Ukraine or the strike on Soleimani that the DC policy class viewed as escalatory and likely to lead to conflict.
Understanding Deterrence and Conflict
Trump understood that sometimes an escalatory action can actually restore deterrence and actually heads off conflict. Ezra, to your point that, you know, not making a decision. Right. Continuing along the status quo is actually a decision unto itself and one that does not necessarily make conflict less likely. Josh, I think we should. You know, I'd like to hear from kind of you and Chris about your experience. I think another domain of conflict where we've seen this play out is in cyberspace. Yeah, I mean, it's just insane how. How the chattering classes essentially took their framework of nuclear engagement and having never received the plaudits and promotions that they expected for being cold warriors, they and their. And their predecessors or successors, rather, they and their successors then tried to essentially transpose this framework onto the digital world and saying that, like, oh, you know, flipping a one from a zero is going to start a.
Misconceptions and Meta Negotiations in Cyber Conflict
Start a massive conflict, and, you know, it just wasn't true. Just. It just wasn't true. And, you know, we spent several years sort of tinkering with and changing the structure of how we do things, and it. It, in fact, was not true as soon as we got more active. And just. People don't understand that these things are all sort of meta negotiations. Like, this is what Clausewitz and what Sun Tzu and John Boyd all said was that the actions in between nations exist on this sort of very fluid spectrum between political power and force and economics and other mechanisms of coercion. And, yeah, it was one of the most frustrating things where everybody wanted to sort of conform their belief of reality into some type of academic exercise, when instead it was much closer to, you know, a fight on the street or a game of no limit Texas hold em.
Challenges in Communication and Technology
Chris, thoughts? God damn it. Porter, over to you if hotel Wi Fi will afford you the option. Yeah, we got you. Yeah, so I'm. I appreciate the invite, and I'm taking a hint from the title. Why do they always. Yeah, that's just clickbait. I think he's gone back on mute again. Yeah, Chris, we may have lost you again. Well, Chris, I say get off Wi Fi and go back to cell service if you can. And when you do, we'll be here for you. So. Josh? Yeah. Yeah. Derek? Yeah, just. Just a thought here. You know, we've all worked through a whole range of options, inventorying all the tools in the toolbox, the authorities that we have, whether it's from treasury or commerce or state or in the cyber realm, you know, to influence and shape our engagements in the international reading and with friends and allies and with our adversaries using carrots and sticks.
Bureaucratic Limitations and Strategies
And, you know, this is not always about hard power. Most everything we do is in the other arenas. And President Trump was, I thought, artful in, you know, working with, you know, the NSC and the interagency in trying to apply those. But he also wanted to create ambiguity and uncertainty for the, you know, particularly our adversaries, but also, you know, raise a level of concern about, say, in NATO to get them, to encourage them to increase their spending, which he accomplished, you know, very well. But there is a lot of, you know, naysaying and people are saying it's too much of a risk. And, you know, we're dividing things. Or moving the embassy would create, you know, massive unrest and the Arab street would threaten our embassies throughout the region. You know, these types of things. You know, these are, you know, these, the fear mongering that goes on sometimes about what could possibly happen, I think, paralyzed what should have been good decisions earlier.
Washington Echo Chamber and Foreign Influence
And it took Trump to, you know, believe in his agenda and actually move forward on it. You know, like the embassy moved to Jerusalem. And I think, you know, just to, I want to press down on this, Derek, is that, you know, the six of us are all sort of alluding to the echo chamber that exists in Washington. But I do want to just sort of press a little bit more on that and just say that obviously, we've got think tanks and, you know, university centers that pay, quote unquote, academics or, quote unquote, professors of practice from previous administrations or maybe even from foreign countries. But then those institutions themselves are getting money from people that have interests that might not be the interests of the nation.
Perceptions and Hidden Agendas
And it's very interesting because essentially people say the national conversation, but the folks that are talking, in fact, often do have very specific but non public or semi public agendas when it comes to trying to shape, you know, shape perception. And, you know, I think it's one of the things that people don't really understand that whether it's a talking head on CNN or someone writing an article in foreign policy blog or whatever, it is, like those folks are often getting paid or they have aligned interests that may not mean that their advice or their protestations are, you know, coming from a pure heart. Look at the influence of the Chinese influence effort at the local and state level, the think tanks, the universities, and I dare say certain elements within the national leadership.
Understanding Motivations in Policy Making
So it's a challenge to understand wherever, where the motivation comes from some of these groups. And secondarily, I would also say that at times we've got people that are locked into an approach. Think about the Arab Israeli peace process. When Joel and I first started at the NSC in January 17, we heard from a lot of think tank folks that we needed to just continue with the focus on the Palestinians and then work out. But you first had to get an agreement with the Palestinians. An outside in approach was doomed to failure from their perspective. Yeah. And I think that's really a prescient example because you not only had people who were sort of status quo types from places that were taking money from United Front Work department, CCP, aligned business people, you know, all sorts of interests explicitly pro China, but then also just the folks that had been involved in academia and the chattering class for decades who, you know, at a certain point it just becomes personal.
Resistance to New Strategies in National Security
Right? Like you don't want to see other strategies tried because you've been the one advocating for that strategy. And God forbid I, you know, what you believe to be the correct course of action. God forbid someone try something different and it works. These are people that make their entire lives over 750 word blog posts and the occasional 3500 word journal articles. And what happens when the words get proven wrong? I think we're getting to this, which is what's the underlying reason for this. And certainly one of the contributing factors is that all the countries we've been talking about today, China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, the Middle East, these are all languages that are very hard to learn. They're more foreign cultures in the bureaucracy.
Cultural Challenges in Understanding Global Affairs
Experts that are on those desks tend to stay in those positions for decades. It's very hard to learn Chinese. If somebody speaks Chinese, we're going to stick them there and keep them there. And so over time, in addition to their own kind of many times political bias against conservatives, they also are looking for so many decades at what the enemy is putting out. Right. The enemy's propaganda. So this is what China wants the US analyst that's looking at this problem set to believe, or this is what the Iranians want this analyst to believe. And over 10-20 years, they start losing perspective and they start buying into what the Chinese want them to believe. And of course, the Chinese want, or the enemy, really, any enemy wants the adversary to believe. That any action that's taken against them will lead to all out war.
Understanding Deterrent Effects and Misconceptions
That's the enemy's deterrent effect, and they lose this perspective to be able to spot that. And I think that's really one of the large things that's kind of going on here. Yeah, I mean, the same could be said, Ezra, of look at the way in which the reaction to the custom Suleimani strike that President Trump ordered at the beginning of 2020. Remember, there was a torrent of warnings that was going to lead to a massive war, maybe even world war three and so on. I don't think those people necessarily, I think the people who said that, which included at that time, you know, now President Biden and now Vice President Harris, I think they probably actually believe that. But it's because they misunderstood the principles of deterrence and the idea that sometimes you have to be less likely to go to war or that if you do show that you're willing and ready to go to war, it will make it less likely that you'll have to go to war.
Misunderstanding Deterrence and Consequences
To them, that appears paradoxical. They have a hard time understanding that. Well, Joel, I mean, Joel, I mean, you know, it's kind of unbelievable, and I won't reveal my source, but on the night of the Qasem Soleimani strike, in the Pentagon cables, that's like the version of the Pentagon's version of the sit rooms. A bunch of very, you know, embedded policy experts were sitting in a conference room there, and literally around the table, the discussion was how horrible it is and how it's potentially illegal that President Trump ordered this type of strike and that this was almost surely going to lead to this unjustified escalation. So it's there. It's very present. Think how those people would have acted before and after to try to shape and control the president's thinking.
Consequences of Key Decision-Making
I think what's unbelievable, though, well, what's really important to point out is, Derek and Joel, had Soleimani been alive today, let's think about how much worse this conflict would have been in the Middle East. Yeah. Though I will say, Ezra, I mean, there has always been a disparity in power between Israel one side with the US and the Iranian regime and its axis of resistance on the other. And yet I think for many years, the United States, the national security establishment, has behaved as though the Iranian regime and its axis of resistance proxies were a peer, almost a strategic peer or a near peer competitor to the United States. And that came from, I think, a failure to understand power, both our adversaries power, but also our own, and to be able to recognize that power disparity and then to be able to use it to establish, maintain deterrence.
Lessons Learned from Regional Dynamics
And we're seeing it exploded right now. I mean, you have to say, for the last 15 years, I would say the United States has been essentially, with the exception of the Trump administration, has been essentially restraining Israel from exposing the relative weakness of the Iranian regime and its allies. And that's why it's astonishing after 18 years of sort of this perception, worldwide perception, that at least Iran and Israel, and certainly essentially Iran and the United States in the Middle East were peers and our side was essentially deterred by a much weaker adversary that's been exploded in the space of three weeks. It's really astonishing, but it's been a reality reset. And I think, and I think there's some lessons to be drawn there about why we continue to get those analytic, those analyses.
Conclusion and Call to Action
We've got Porter and he's got some signals. So I just want to hop over to him real quick, and then we'll take questions in just a few minutes. Hey, can everyone hear me now? Yeah, we got you. Yeah, let's not jinx it. We'll strike while the iron is hot. Yeah. So we've talked a lot about the psychology and the sort of different professional backgrounds that some of the chattering class has. That sort of maybe doesn't make them unsuitable to be analysts, but makes them perfectly suitable to overconfidence.
Understanding Systemic Failures
I wrote down just a couple of things preparing for today's discussion that I think lead to these sort of systemic failures. Right. Because it's not personal. These are smart people, generally well meaning experts in different fields. But we're getting these failures over and over again. So what is leading to that? It's got to be things that are systemic, right? The first one I had written down was, intelligence work is about helping the people in charge, answering their questions and giving them context to make better decisions. But if you've spent your whole career in either academia or, say, the intelligence community, and you've never worked in the real world, it's not that they maybe wouldn't, but they can't imagine how a private sector decision maker makes decisions.
Anticipating Cyber Threats
So you can see this playing out spectacularly in the salt typhoon hacks of China, getting access to us lawful intercept backdoors throughout all of our telecommunications companies. Well, who could have anticipated this? Yeah, who could have anticipated this? Well, we've heard from years, you know, from the folks who do countering counter cyber for the government that they've got the situation well in hand and, you know, there's nothing to worry about. Just give them more budget and people, and everything will be fine. Completely predictable. And. But a big part of the failure isn't that they're pro China or, you know, naive about the threat. It's that they don't understand how telecommunications communications networks work, or they don't understand how private builders build things out.
Private Sector Experience in Cybersecurity
So, you know, cyber is a. Maybe a special case, but when the battlefield is in the private sector, and none of the people working in the intel community have those backgrounds, they can't even conceive of what type of questions, you know, they could provide answers to. So that's how you get these sort of slow simmering IP theft. Huawei, you know the percentage. A trillion dollars of IP theft. It's a trillion dollars before it ever made it to the president's desk, right? It's. It's no problem. No problem, no problem. And then suddenly it's an emergency. But if you were in the real world, this was your everyday life for ten or 15 years, and you wondered where your government was, they didn't have a way to conceive of it.
Lack of Real-World Experience
So that's, you know, the. The lack of sort of private sector, real world experience, I think, just kind of closes off an entire. And when we start thinking about things like artificial intelligence, where the positive aspects are being developed almost entirely in the private sector, you're going to have a problem not only of missing threats, but of missing growth opportunities. How are we going to outcompete China when our national security establishment doesn't have any background in the relevant technology that we're competing over? So that's one area. The second area I had written down Washington. You know, if you're in the intelligence community, like I was, you tend to specialize over time, either in a region or a country or a functional issue.
Analysis Bias and the Intelligence Community
And if you're a functional person, like counter proliferation or weapons or cyber, as was the case with you and me, Josh, you know, you tend to start thinking of whatever it is that you have in your tool bag, whatever you understand and are an expert in, that surely must be what the other side is doing, right? You start seeing the things that you know a lot about, and again, not even worrying about aspects of the problem that maybe you're not an expert in. So, you know, a good example would be, you know, all of cyber threats being filtered through the lens of either a counterintelligence problem or a traditional military deterrence problem. Like you said, that's because the generation of analysts who spent decades getting those skills, you know, are actively looking for threats that they can describe because that's their work product, is those kinds of threats.
Sins of Omission in Reporting
And the final thing I'll point out, you know, not to whistle past the graveyard, but there is editorial bias as well. I think it's rare that analysts are intentionally putting their thumbs on the scales of analysis. But the way you do it is if there's an issue that you can see, there's, say, a potential threat or an opportunity, and you don't like the policy that would result, you can just say nothing. You can just choose not to cover it. So they won't necessarily change their answer, but maybe they just won't give answer at all. We can see that with the COVID lab leak origins. Right. You know, the entire public discussion is about how this is a ridiculous theory and no know, no sane person would believe in it, and it's just this completely conspiratorial explanation.
The Impact of Narrative on Analysis
But it turns out, you know, the FBI and the energy Department were investigating that hypothesis, right. And maybe even seeing that it was likely or plausible scenario. So why wasn't that part of the public discussion early on, that they were investigating it? They didn't change their answer or lie about their answer. They just hid it from the public discussion because they didn't perhaps like the policies that would result. So, Chris, we call these sins of omission. Yeah, absolutely. But the first word is still there. Sins. No, no doubt not disagreeing. I'm just saying I think there's, that if you've never worked in that world, you tend to think, well, if they don't like, for example, a Trump administration policy, that they would change their answer, that, you know, that's difficult to do and very rare, but everyone seems to accept just not seeing the problem.
Misunderstanding the Threat Landscape
That was certainly my perspective in 2020 on Chinese interference in the election. I thought there was plenty of evidence that China was doing that to try and hurt President Trump's reelection chances. And some analysts lied about their views, but most analysts just sort of preferred not to see it. They just said, well, yeah, it's happening, but it's not a big deal. And essentially, we just won't write about it either way. We won't cover it the same way we do Russia, for example. So that's how a lot of the deep state shapes policy, is not by necessarily altering their answer, but it's kind of like the mainstream media coverage.
Executive Insights and Agency Shortcomings
They just editorially choose what issues to cover or not cover, and that way they're never wrong and never, you know, doing anything unethical from their point of view. But, yeah, when you talk about surprise and why we're having these failures, sometimes they do see it coming and they just don't like the policies that would result from having to prepare for it. So it's not that they failed to see it's that they failed to speak truth to power, I think. Yeah. Great points. Any other. Could I ask, could I ask a question at this point, Josh? Yeah. I was wondering what Chris's thoughts were on the intelligence community and the challenge of understanding what the president or the administration is actually trying to do in the operational, I'll use the term lines of effort to do it.
Operational Intelligence Needs
It could be in the financial arena with treasury, it could be in cyber, it could be in trade, economic, it could be legal. But each of those authorities and tools requires different intelligence to enable them to be successful. But if the intelligence analysts or the teams don't grasp what those tools and authorities and what those operations really are and what's required, how do you empower? How do you enable it? Because to me, it's my experiences. I've found, you know, that there's been a deficit in understanding, you know, the operational capabilities that we have and what's needed to make those viable. You know, the types of specific intelligence you need to do, financial sanctions, for example, and how you get after them. Chris, thoughts?
Challenges in Input and Analysis
I think he's at a deep state conference. They're throttling his ability to provide input. Yeah, they attack him. Well, hey, folks, I think, any other closing thoughts? And then from people in the audience, if you do have questions, feel free to raise your hand and we'll try and get through a few. We are coming up on an hour, so we might step off. But until then, if you do have questions, feel free to raise your hand and we'll hopefully bring a few up. Any closing thoughts? Look, while we're waiting for people to ask questions, I do want to point out that the way to solve this is really these people that have just been embedded way too long and have kind of lost sight of the fact that they're there to carry out the policy prerogatives of the commander in chief is really to circulate and rotate some of these people to different positions because we have lost that sort of perspective and we do need new eyes on these problem set.
Perspectives on Policy Changes
And I think that, you know, look, the current team that's in the White House, you know, they're very much a product of kind of the academia policy expert think tank class, and they are never going to turn over their own people. It's just not going to happen. Right. Because they don't see a problem. They think that what's happening, this kind of like, decline of American deterrence, this inaction, this status quo, is very much what they think is good. And so I think just to put out there, why is President Trump uniquely positioned to do this? Let's face it, he doesn't have those types of connections to these groups.
Analyzing Intelligence Community Actions
And so there's just not really, he sees something is wrong. Right? The fact that he's just being brought this kind of status quo, stale options, that he sees that as wrong and he wants to take action to change it. Well, let's not forget the intelligence community's own analytic ombudsman. The China 2020 election stuff is just very illustrative. They found that the intelligence community actively opposed his policies and changed their answers to prevent sort of giving him an intelligence win. So it wasn't the most impactful operation. It's on its own merits. It's not worth making a big deal about, but just the principle of it.
The Politics of Analysis
I say that this isn't normal, and it's rare that they would do this, but it is showing a willingness from some parts of the IC to interject politics into their analysis. And we need to remember, it's not normal. Right? It's not normal. That's not what most of their colleagues are doing, but it's a live possibility. My experience, also, even when people are playing it straight, President Trump has a businessman's savvy, right? He asks sort of baseline review questions, what if we did a lot of x? Or what if we did none of x at all?
Communication Between Intelligence and Leadership
And he wants to sort of probe the thinking of the intelligence people who are working for him to think through all of his policy options. And as other speakers have pointed out, most of that community is more experienced with managing problems than solving them. Right? So they just don't think that way at all. So even though most people are not actively for or against any policy, they also don't know how to provide intelligence to someone who is seeking solutions of problems. They want to work with someone who knows how to manage them sort of very gracefully over time.
Challenges in Private Sector Thinking
And that kind of what if we did more of this, less of that thinking? That's very common in the private sector. That's how every CEO thinks about their business, is what if scenarios and opportunity cost, trade offs. But it's a kind of decision making that I think people are not accustomed to. So the challenge in another Trump administration is going to be, I think, getting a critical mass of people with private sector backgrounds in it still might mean giving the boss answers that he doesn't like. It doesn't mean, you know, producing intelligence that has a particular answer.
Importance of Business-Language Intelligence
But having people who speak the language of business, who are intelligence management roles will be important to, you know, getting the boss the kind of context that he needs to be successful. And also, you know, dealing with these edge cases where people are using their discretion. The American people give them to actively oppose policies. Right? Nobody elected them to anything. And they're being given a lot of discretion in their work. There should be some accountability for that when people fail to do it.
Adapting to Intelligence Needs
But again, let's give most people the benefit of the doubt, say they're trying their best and just don't know how to present intelligence. There's going to be folks like maybe Josh and others with those backgrounds who need to come in and help translate deep state ease for business leaders. All right, so look, we're almost at the hour. We do want to take some questions. So just for folks that are going to ask some questions, no introductions, just fire the question, keep it brief, and we'll try and then go around the horn for folks up here to, you know, ruminate on what you've asked.
Discussion of Current Events
So let's go to Utsav first. Thank you so much. My question is, so we've seen in. Bangladesh, the removal of Sheikh Hasina. Now we're seeing Jamaati Aslami come back to the streets. We're seeing al Qaeda affiliates come back on the streets. Given the precarious situation of that country in terms of, know, stability, it's, you know, our interests in wanting to see, you know, a strong Indo Pacific in our interests. What do you make of this government? Of Mohammad Yunus and this new security. Environment and climate with these Islamist Muslim Brotherhood actors? Thanks.
Engagement with the Audience
You know, I'm just going to step in here and just frame this out, which is that, you know, all of us served in the Trump administration, but at the same time, we in no way, shape or form represent the campaign or anything else. I think it's really hard to have these conversations at the abstract level and then at the specific level. And obviously, this is a very specific question. So, you know, I'll open it up to folks on the panel if you want to fire at it. But, you know, I think what we're here to discuss is how the apparatus, you know, itself is really unable to provide leadership with.
Seeking Honest Analysis
I think what we'd all want the apparatus to provide leadership with, which is clear and honest analysis. So if anyone want to take a stab at that. But otherwise, I think we'll, maybe we could modify the question a little bit, because, again, we don't want to talk about the specific of any country. But I think Joel and Derek and Michael, I'm sure, and all of us would be able to, would be happy to talk about why are we seeing a resurgence of Islamic terrorism globally.
Positioning Towards Terrorism
Right. I mean, you know, you mentioned some specific things in Bangladesh. But again, I mean, this is just, you know, I saw somebody the other day comment that Hezbollah and Iran were at their height of aggression, that they were act. And, you know, like, there's this kind of, like, surprise within the Kamala Biden administration that Iran, which is a terrorist state, is at its height of aggression, that its proxies are acting more aggressive than they ever have, including in the United States, and that this was like, something very surprising to them.
Understanding the Geopolitical Landscape
I think to most people, you kind of see, like, wait. We took the pressure off of them. We gave them this incredible leeway. We have sent every possible signal that we will restrain our response to their terrorist acts. And, you know, do we think that other terrorist groups aren't looking at that? I mean, we've literally sent every signal.
Terrorist Threats and Border Security
We have opened the door wide open for all sorts of terrorist groups overseas to start taking shots at us. Well, we've. We've opened the door for them to come across the southern border, too. Yeah, it's a great point. Anyone else want to just take a quick swing on this and then we'll go to the next question? I mean, Derek, Joel, I know you guys have a lot of experience with islamic terrorism. Well, I think militant Islamism, which is. I mean, yeah, it's islamic terrorism. It's also militant islamism, which is sort of. It's a political ideology. I think it always gets oxygen from a political conflict. Where you see political conflict in, across the muslim world, you have the opportunity for islamic terrorism because it's a political phenomenon, unless you really. So you have to address it both as a militant threat, which has an operational aspect to it.
Understanding Political Conflicts and Terrorism
You also have to look and say, okay, what are the political conflicts that are giving rise to this, and where do our interests lie in those? And again, so you wind up with a festering problem. Again, if you're just doing conflict management, if you're not looking at where are there political conflicts that are operating against us interests or those of our allies, and let's see what we can do about those. Yeah. Yeah, good point. All right, let's move on to the next question. We've got. Ashley, feel free to again, please keep it brief. No introductions. Just fire away. Thanks. Appreciate the space. You guys spoke a lot about the. Behavior of the analysts within the bureaucracy. And I'm curious, you know, specifically to Chris's point of people are just doing their best and, you know, it's misdiagnosis, it's mismanagement. What role do incentives play and where do you see a misalignment of incentives? Thanks. Yeah, it's a great question.
Career Incentives and Political Influence
I'm going to take the first swipe at this just because I've written about it very publicly. And I think, Ash, your point is really important. And so just to sort of dig into the career incentives we saw, and he's been very public, John Brennan went in and put people into leadership positions across the intelligence community that were politically aligned with him. And then at the same time, he leaves government supporters, you know, essentially set up a whole bunch of landing pads across a host of, you know, think tanks, universities, et cetera. And then, you know, at the same time, you have Obama administration alumni. And this happens to some degree, but really it accelerated under the Obama folks who then, you know, are rewarded with big jobs syndicate, as one might describe. And so we've essentially observed the creation of a vacuum of political supporters out of the apparatus and into these post government jobs.
Accountability in Intelligence Agencies
And certainly, I think, and maybe this is a disagreement between me and Chris, but I certainly think that it does absolutely create career incentives for folks to, I think uncharitably what you say is shut up in Colorado from this sort of deep, entrenched bureaucracy that has risen to a place where they have some measure of insulation from the political winds. Right. These are the very senior career staff. But, you know, I think it's a real problem. I don't know. Other folks may have other things. And I think that there's a simple explanation, too, which is that there's no individual accountability. Right. You get promoted, you know, really to the below the political appointee level. You can get promoted to the senior most ranks in the intelligence community by what they would say, mastering your trade. Right. So that these skills of doing the job, but you're not really measured on the outcomes, you know, so nobody ever asks the question like, yeah, you're doing a great job at the task we assigned you to do, but nobody ever asks, is it the right thing to do.
Critique of Intelligence Outcomes and Management
And if you're a mid level, you know, working stiff, maybe that's okay. But as you move into leadership roles, at some level, there should be somebody who says, well, wait a minute, this analytics shop, you know, is wrong kind often, or they're blowing the big calls or they are answering questions, but it's not the president's questions. And so they're completely off topic, following some niche issue that they care about, but they're not actually helping the decision makers make decisions, you know, because they're misaligned in what they're interested in. You know, there needs to be some accountability the way there is in the State Department or in the military. You know, you can't, you know, lose too often as a military leader or in the State Department, if you are below a certain percentage stack ranking every year, they eliminate senior people and they rotate them through. Right.
Failures and Senior Leadership in Organizations
And that's how they. I know, Chris, we regret to inform you that in many of those organizations, in fact, failure can. I mean, I think the senior leader ranks in many of those institutions are filled with people that, in fact, you get it wrong all the time and are responsible for gross failures. This is one of. Derek wants that, Josh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Josh, I agree with Chris. But also the intel community, a lot of the analysts, a lot of the organizations reward descriptive, headline news type intelligence production. We've gotten away from the net assessments. The deeper analysis, in my view, and part of that is, in part, political leaders, military leaders, etcetera, don't have the bandwidth. They don't want the deep dives and the net assessments.
Changing Dynamics in Intelligence Production
They want the headline news. And there's a couple other parts of this. The demand signal, often from political leaders, is they want stuff that reinforces what they're interested in. You know, when I was on house permanent select committee of intelligence, we're tracking what is being produced across the IC. And, you know, no surprise when, you know, Biden comes in, you start getting more climate, more migration, more CI two stuff, less on some other issues. And the demand signal can be different. You know, Obama didn't want bad news coming up from the intel channels on China. The Bush administration, from zero three to zero six, didn't really want to hear how things were going off track. Both democrat and republican administrations have had that problem, and I'll just stop there.
Need for Reform in Intelligence Community
I think it's a great, I think it's a great point. So, look, I know we're sort of over time. I do want to invite Alden Young, professor here at UCLA, Princeton PhD, true. Dyed in the wool Arabist. I mean that in the best way. If you have any thoughts or a question, feel free to fire, I think, after all, then we'll call it, no, thank you guys so much. I mean, it was very helpful. I wanted to ask, how much do. You think we have to rotate the. Senior leaders in order to get different responses? I don't know if it's my perception, but I perceive that Biden's foreign policy team has remained fairly static at the most senior levels. And I wonder if you guys think that's a problem.
The Political Appointees and Oversight
I think just to quickly jump in here, there's two problems there. And, Alden, it's good to hear from you again. It's been a while. First of all, there is no difference between Biden's political appointees and their kind of like career foreign policy establishment within these departments and agencies. Right. They're kind of one and the same. And so that means there isn't really, like this political oversight. It's kind of just like a blob. I think either Michael or Joel described it as kind of the DC blob, and that's really what's in charge now. Right. And that basically just means we're on autopilot, but our enemies know we're on autopilot, so they're acting more aggressively, and the plane is just kind of flying closer and closer into the ground or into a mountain.
Control Over Strategic Decisions
And that's kind of my perception of it. I think that, you know, I think if there is a Trump administration, you won't see this blob control, and so that will make a difference. I mean, Ezra, the point that you make all the time about, you know, civilian control over the Department of Defense, I think applies here in spades, which is that, you know, we have this scenario where the, I mean, you know, the inmates are running the asylum. So I don't know. Derek, Joel, Michael, you guys want to jump in on this one? Well, I'm sorry, Michael. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Michael. I'll add that I think you've got it right. All I'd add, though, is Chris outlined correctly, I think, many of the structural incentives for the behavior that we see.
Structural Changes and Necessary Accountability
So changing the leadership and having effective civilian control, as you note, of these agencies, is important. I don't think it's sufficient, though, because I think until you change some of the structural incentives, the underlying behavior won't change. I think Chris put it well earlier. These are all smart people who are rational actors within their system. So if you don't change the system, then you will see variations of the same behavior. Go ahead. I just like to make a comment here. I argue for continuity and experience because I think it's valuable. It is tough to lead and manage these large agencies, whether it's intel or the Pentagon.
Challenges of Leadership Transitions
It's tough to control the bureaucracy for sure. But I'd point to, in contrast, leaders in Russia, Jordan and stuff, or Iran. Soleimani was in charge for 30 years or more. Right, Joel? And so they understand how to deal, how to work all these issues because they've been around the block and they know everything about the region, and we are constantly exchanging parts of our leadership system. I mean, in fairness, they do. Every country you mentioned, Derek, has a one party state. Yeah, true. But in Europe you have similar situations in some cases.
Political Views in Intelligence Agencies
Thinking about the US case, I think one thing that comes to mind for me is when you think about the closeness between the senior ranks of all these different agencies we've been talking about and the political leadership class on in particular, you know, let's say in the current administration, you can't underestimate the degree to which theoretical kind of views, the political views of the leadership can filter back down into the people who are supposed to be objective. So, for example, Jake Sullivan has been for a long time someone who believes in encircling Russia and sort of containing them as a big picture US grand strategy, and that is divorced from any particular facts on the ground.
Influence of Leadership on Intelligence Assessment
Right. He has held that view as being a good strategy for the US, regardless of the situation. Well, as the Ukraine, you know, invasion developed, I, you know, completely, you know, provoked on the russian side for the most part. But. So I'm not undercutting that, but I think there's a danger of having political leadership filter into the objective intelligence views who then start filtering all of the facts on the ground of a particular situation. Through that, I. So suddenly Ukraine becomes a situation that's live or die for the west because we have to stop russian expansion, et cetera.
Objectivity and Intelligence Analysis
Is that actually backed up by anything objective in terms of intelligence assessment, or is that something that is being filtered through a political lens of your leadership? We've worried a lot today about the intel community and DoD sort of having intelligence to serve going up, but I think also it goes the other way as well. The theoretic views of the leadership class can also influence what those professional analysts, how they interpret the facts that they see. And that could be a whole separate discussion on Ukraine. But I think there is an incentive to make the facts on the ground match up to what the bosses want to see in those situations.
Need for Timely Intelligence Reform
Thanks, Chris. All right, we've got people have to jump. So real quick, avi, one shot question, and then maybe we'll get one or two responses, but super quick. Yeah, thanks for doing this. Question is, are we in need of another reform of the intelligence community similar. To how the ODNI was stood up. Through the legislation after 911? Are we coming at a point in time? Do you guys think that we're in. Need of another sort of reset in terms of how the intelligence community operates and the NIC and all those other entities in terms of progressing and getting. Accurate and timely intelligence to policymakers? Over.
Final Thoughts on Intelligence Reform
Thanks. Thanks, Avi. Ezra, any closing thoughts? Derek? Chris? Yes, I think we're going to need another spaces on that question alone. Yeah, that sounds like. I think Michael's right. Like reforming the intel community, maybe. That's our topic for next week. Look, the biggest thing for me and people need to go, so I'll just give you one word. Accountability. There is no accountability right now. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. All right, well, let's end it there.
