What Strategic Analysts and Planners for National Security Need to Know

Abstract:

Strategic analysts and planners need distinct capabilities to include extensive disciplinary expertise and a broad understanding of the world and methodological expertise for dealing with innovation, discovery, and surprise. Specifically, the analyst needs to evaluate the robustness of a policy to the uncertainty of an assessment. The analyst must have both topical expertise in the disciplines underlying the analysis, as well as decision-theoretic expertise in managing uncertainty. This is demonstrated by applying info-gap decision theory and the concept of robust-satisficing to the analysis of policy in response to al-Qaeda prior to 11 September 2001, which illustrates the combination of topical and decision-theoretic expertise.

Notes

1 Richard K. Betts, Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 50.

2 Michael Evans, “A Usable Past: A Contemporary Approach to History for the Western Profession of Arms.” Defense & Security Analysis, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2019), pp. 133–146, here p. 134.

3 Ibid., p. 138.

4 Ibid., p. 141.

5 Ibid., p. 142.

6 Mark Phythian, “Intelligence Analysis and Social Science Methods: Exploring the Potential for and Possible Limits of Mutual Learning,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 32, No. 5 (2017), pp. 600–612.

7 Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (Hart, Schaffner and Marx, 1921; re-issued by Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1965), pp. 46, 120, 231–232; Frank H. Knight, The Economic Organization (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1951), p. 120.

8 G. L. S. Shackle, Epistemics and Economics: A Critique of Economic Doctrines (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1972), pp. 3–4, 156, 239, 401–402; Karl Popper, “The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism.” From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Routledge, 1982 ), pp. 80–81, 109.

9 Yakov Ben-Haim, “Peirce, Haack and Info-Gaps,” in Susan Haack, A Lady of Distinctions: The Philosopher Responds to Her Critics, edited by Cornelis de Waal (New York: Prometheus Books, 2007).

10 The CIA was thoroughly surprised when missiles where discovered by U-2 spy plane flights over Cuba in October 1962. See Milo Jones and Philippe Silberzahn, Constructing Cassandra: Reframing Intelligence Failure at the CIA, 1947–2001 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014).

11 Douglas Macgregor, Margin of Victory: Five Battles that Changed the Face of Modern War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2016), p. 71.

12 Mark Erbel and Christopher Kinsey, “Think Again—Supplying War: Reappraising Military Logistics and Its Centrality to Strategy and War,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4 (2018), pp. 519–544.

13 Ibid., p. 522.

14 Jones and Silberzahn, Constructing Cassandra.

15 Betts, Enemies of Intelligence, p. 101.

16 The relation between predictive optimization, positivism, and info-gap analysis of robustness is discussed in Yakov Ben-Haim, “Positivism and Its Limitations for Strategic Intelligence: A Non-Constructivist Info-Gap Critique,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 33, No. 6 (2018), pp. 904–917.

17 To satisfice means “[t]o decide on and pursue a course of action that will satisfy the minimum requirements necessary to achieve a particular goal.” Oxford English Dictionary, www.oed.com (accessed 7 April 2016).

18 Further discussion of these ideas is found in Yakov Ben-Haim, Info-Gap Decision Theory: Decisions Under Severe Uncertainty, 2nd edition (London: Academic Press, 2006); Yakov Ben-Haim, “Strategy Selection: An Info-Gap Methodology,” Defense & Security Analysis, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2014), pp. 106–119; and Yakov Ben-Haim, “Dealing With Uncertainty in Strategic Decision-Making,” Parameters, the US Army War College Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Autumn 2015). References to work of many scholars using info-gap robust satisficing can be found at info-gap.com.

19 Awareness by the analyst of the goals of higher-level authorities raises issues of policy neutrality of the analysis. This is discussed in Yakov Ben-Haim, “Policy Neutrality and Uncertainty: An Info-Gap Perspective,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 31, No. 7 (2016), pp. 978–992.

20 Many examples of quantitative analysis of robustness, based on info-gap theory, have been published. See info-gap.com. See also Yakov Ben-Haim, Info-Gap Decision Theory; and Yakov Ben-Haim, Info-Gap Economics: An Operational Introduction (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010).

21 See Yakov Ben-Haim and Maria Demertzis, “Decision Making in Times of Uncertainty: An Info-Gap Perspective,” Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/journalarticles/2016-23; and Yakov Ben-Haim, Dilemmas of Wonderland: Decisions in the Age of Innovation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

22 Ecclesiastes, 4: 9–12.

23 Jones and Silberzahn, Constructing Cassandra.

24 A redacted version of this PDB was made available on 10 April 2004.

25 President's Daily Brief, 6 August 2001. Redacted version released 10 April 2004, https://www.sourcewatch.org/images/3/37/Whitehouse.pdf (accessed 17 May 2018).

26 Betts, Enemies of Intelligence, p. 107.

27 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, based on the 1832 edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), Book 2, Chap. 2, p. 134.

28 Clausewitz did not use the word “psychological,” although, in modern parlance, that was his intention. The German original of this sentence is: “Sie richten die Betrachtung nur auf materielle Grössen, während der ganze kriegerische Akt von geistigen Kräften und Wirkungen durchzogen ist.”

29 Ibid., p. 136.

30 Ibid., Book 2, Chap. 3, p. 149.

31 Ibid., p. 136.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yakov Ben-Haim

Yakov Ben-Haim initiated and developed info-gap decision theory for modeling and managing severe uncertainty. Info-gap theory is applied by scholars and practitioners around the world in engineering, biological conservation, economics, project management, climate change and natural hazard response, national security, medicine, and other areas (see info-gap.com). He has been a visiting scholar in many countries and has lectured at universities, technological and medical research institutions, public utilities, and central banks. He has published more than 115 articles and six books. He is a Professor of mechanical engineering and holds the Yitzhak Moda'i Chair in Technology and Economics at The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. The author can be contacted at [email protected].