The Intelligence of Stupidity: Understanding Failures in Strategic Warning

This analysis discusses the implications of some cognitive and organizational factors for the evaluation and avoidance of failures in strategic warning. It advances three major arguments. First, efforts to assess and improve warning forecasts must take into account the policy context in which they are made and used. They cannot be based on concerns with the accuracy of forecasts alone. Second, important biases are present in retrospective case studies. Therefore, we should accept post hoc explanations of warning failures with appropriate caution. Third, a pluralistic intelligence community, as it is presently proposed for some non-U.S. systems, is unlikely to resolve the problems thought to be responsible for past strategic surprises. It may in fact compound these problems.