Schelling Traps as Drivers of Intelligence Failure

Abstract

A model suggests that Schelling salience through social traplike processes can generate dysfunctional organizational mindsets that increase the likelihood of intelligence failure. Schelling salience refers to how certain aspects can spontaneously and tacitly become collectively cognitively prominent, and thus, coordinate behavior. Short-term benefits of a predominant mindset may generate long-term biases in analysis, collection, and decisionmakers’ responsiveness. Strong mindsets do not inevitably generate intelligence failures. However, a particular organizational state, referred to as a “pleasant attractor,” where sustained strategies produce satisficing outcomes and alternative strategies are more uncertain and/or costly, is conducive to biased mindsets causing intelligence failures. Findings from an examination of nineteen historical cases of intelligence failures and successes, with an emphasis on four sequences of cases with an initial intelligence failure, supported the model.

Notes

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3 Uri Bar-Joseph and Rose McDermott, Intelligence Success and Failure: The Human Factor (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

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5 Erik J. Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack: Failure and Success from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 and Beyond (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013), pp. 2–3, 22–23.

6 Ibid., pp. 2–3, 22–23.

7 Davis, “Why Bad Things Happen to Good Analysts,” pp. 130–131; Arthur S. Hulnick, “What’s Wrong with the Intelligence Cycle,” Intelligence and National Security 21, no. 6 (2006), pp. 967–968; Arthur S. Hulnick, “Intelligence Producer-Consumer Relations in the Electronic Era,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 24, no. 4 (2011–2012), pp. 748–751; Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails, pp. 157–179.

8 Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails, pp. 9, 179; Gregory F. Treverton and Renanah Miles, “Unheeded Warning of War: Why Policymakers Ignored the 1990 Yugoslavia Estimate,” Intelligence and National Security 32, no. 4 (2017), pp. 506–522.

9 Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails, pp. 174–175.

10 Uri Bar-Joseph, The Watchman Fell Asleep: The Surprise of Yom Kippur and Its Sources (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), p. 2; Cf. Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack, pp. 1–3, 22–23.

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12 Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1960), pp. 54–58; see also Neil Martin, “Strategy as Mutually Contingent Choice: New Behavioral Lessons from Thomas Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict,” SAGE Open 6, no. 2, (2016), pp. 1–12; Judith Mehta, Chris Starmer, and Robert Sugden, “An Experimental Investigation of Focal Points in Coordination and Bargaining: Some Preliminary Results,” in Decision Making Under Risk and Uncertainty, edited by John Geweke (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), pp. 211–219; Judith Mehta, Chris Starmer, and Robert Sugden, “The Nature of Salience: An Experimental Investigation of Pure Coordination Games,” The American Economic Review 84, no. 3 (1994), pp. 658–673; Judith Mehta, Chris Starmer, and Robert Sugden, “Focal Points in Pure Coordination Games: An Experimental Investigation,” Theory and Decision 36, no. 2 (1994), pp. 163–185; John Platt, “Social Traps,” American Psychologist 28, no. 8 (1973), pp. 641–651.

13 Compare to Ralf Lillbacka, “The Finnish Intelligence Failure on the Karelian Isthmus in 1944,” The International Journal of Intelligence, Security, and Public Affairs 21, no. 1 (2019), pp. 25–48.

14 See, for example, Steven W. Semler, “Systematic Agreement: A Theory of Organizational Alignment,” Human Resource Development Quarterly 8, no. 1 (1997), pp. 23–40; Isabel Quiros, “Organizational Alignment. A Model to Explain the Relationships between Organizational Relevant Variables,” International Journal of Organizational Analysis 17, no. 4 (2009), pp. 285–305; Jorge Walter, Franz W. Kellermanns, Steven W. Floyd, John F. Veiga, and Curtis Matherne, “Strategic Alignment: A Missing Link in the Relationship between Strategic Consensus and Organizational Performance,” Strategic Organization 11, no. 3 (2013), pp. 304–328.

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20 Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict; see also Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap, David Rojo Arjona, and Robert Sugden, “Coordination When There are Restricted and Unrestricted Options,” Theory and Decision 83, no. 2 (2017), pp. 107–129; Mehta et al., “The Nature of Salience,” pp. 658–662; Mehta et al., “Focal Points in Pure Coordination Games,” pp. 163–164; Martin, “Strategy as Mutually Contingent Choice,” pp. 1–3; Mehta et al., “An Experimental Investigation of Focal Points in Coordination and Bargaining,” pp. 211–213; André Orléan, “What is a Collective Belief?” in Cognitive Economics: An Interdisciplinary Approach, edited by Paul Bourgine and Jean-Pierre Nadal (Berlin: Springer, 2003), pp. 200–204.

21 Hargreaves Heap et al., “Coordination When There are Restricted and Unrestricted Options,” Mehta et al., “The Nature of Salience”; Mehta et al., “Focal Points in Pure Coordination Games”; Mehta et al., “An Experimental Investigation of Focal Points in Coordination and Bargaining.”

22 Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, pp. 58–74, 112; see also Vincent P. Crawford, Uri Gneezy, and Yuval Rottenstreich, “The Power of Focal Points Is Limited: Even Minute Payoff Asymmetry May Yield Large Coordination Failures,” American Economic Review 98, no. 4 (2008), pp. 1443–1458 regarding the impact of asymmetric payoffs.

23 Hargreaves Heap et al., “Coordination When There are Restricted and Unrestricted Options.”

24 Martin, “Strategy as Mutually Contingent Choice”; Orléan, “What is a Collective Belief?” pp. 199–212; Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, p. 74.

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30 Platt, “Social Traps.”

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32 Miller, The Icarus Paradox, p. 185.

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34 Miller, “The Architecture of Simplicity,” pp. 119–121; Miller, The Icarus Paradox, pp. 16, 177–179.

35 Bar-Joseph and McDermott, Intelligence Success and Failure, p. 3.

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40 Compare to the notion of “data immersion” by Heuer, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, pp. 40–41.

41 John R. Boyd, A Discourse on Winning and Losing: Air University Press (Maxwell AFB, AL: Curtis E. LeMay Center for Doctrine Development and Education, 2018), pp. 383–385, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress /Books/B_0151_Boyd_Discourse_Winning_Losing.PDF (accessed 14 October 2020).

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44 For a discussion, see, for example, Richard K. Betts, “Surprise, Scholasticism, and Strategy: A Review of Ariel Levite’s Intelligence and Strategic Surprises,” International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 3 (1989), pp. 329–343; Ariel Levite, “Intelligence and Strategic Surprises Revisited: A Response to Richard K. Betts’s ‘Surprise, Scholasticism, and Strategy,’” International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 3 (1989), pp. 345–349; James J. Wirtz, “Review of Ariel Levite, Intelligence and Strategic Surprises,” Survival 30, no. 5 (1988), pp. 478–479.

45 Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack, pp. 48–50.

46 See, for example, Vic Hasselblad and Lokhnygina, Yulia, “Tests for 2 × 2 Tables in Clinical Trials,” Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods 6, no. 2 (2007), pp. 456–468; Cyrus R. Mehta and Pralay Senchaudhuri, “Conditional versus Unconditional Exact Tests for Comparing Two Binomials” (Cambridge, MA: Cytel Software Cooperation, 2003), pp. 1–5, https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/1670/file-686659455-pdf/Blog_Article_April_2014-1.pdf (accessed 28 October 2020).

47 Adam Claasen, “The German Invasion of Norway, 1940: The Operational Intelligence Dimension,” Journal of Strategic Studies 27, no. 1 (2004), pp. 114–135; Olav Riste, “Intelligence and the ’Mindset’: The German Invasion of Norway in 1940,” Intelligence and National Security 22, no. 4 (2007), pp. 521–536.

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57 For a review, see, for example, Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack, pp. 29–33.

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59 Bar-Joseph and McDermott, Intelligence Success and Failure, pp. 19–20; Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack, pp. 29–31, 36–45; Krebs, “Signal Intelligence in the Pacific War,” p. 151; McDermott and Bar-Joseph, “Pearl Harbor and Midway,” pp. 950–952; Pearl Harbor Hearings, Vol. 8, pp. 3384–3385; Pearl Harbor Hearings, Vol. 14, pp. 1061–1062, 1083, 1335–1338, 1363, 1368, 1371–1372, 1377–1382, 1783, 1825, 1839–1842; Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor, pp. 40–50, 55, 385–393.

60 Carl Cavanagh Hodge, “The Key to Midway: Coral Sea and a Culture of Learning,” Naval War College Review 68, no. 1 (2015), pp. 121–122; Krebs, “Signal Intelligence in the Pacific War,” p. 158; Frederick D. Parker, A Priceless Advantage: U.S. Navy Communications Intelligence and the Battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and the Aleutians (Fort George G. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2017), pp. 3–5, 10, 15–27; Milan Vego, Major Fleet-versus-Fleet Operations in the Pacific War, 1941–1945 (Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College, Historical Monographs 22, 2016), pp. 1–9, 35–44, 47, 51–66, 72.

61 Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack, pp. 47–67; Michael I. Handel, “Intelligence and Military Operations,” in Intelligence and Military Operations, edited by Michael I. Handel (Oxon: Frank Cass, 1990), pp. 34–39; John Keegan, Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), pp. 201, 205–209, 211, 215–220; Krebs, “Signal Intelligence in the Pacific War,” p. 158; McDermott and Bar-Joseph, “Pearl Harbor and Midway,” pp. 959–961.

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64 Lillbacka, “The Finnish Intelligence Failure.”

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid., pp. 31–32; see also Niilo Lappalainen, Ihantala Kesti (Porvoo: Werner Söderström Oy, 1994), pp. 11–19, 205–207, 229–231, 271–279, 283–285, 328–330; Lauri Lehtonen, Timo Liene, and Ohto Manninen, Sanomansieppaajia ja koodinmurtajia (Jyväskylä: Docendo, 2016), pp. 344–349.

68 Bar-Joseph and McDermott, Intelligence Success and Failure, pp. 124–143; Central Intelligence Agency, Weekly Summary Excerpt, 13 January 1950, Far East: Soviet Relations; Korea: Troop Buildup, 20 July 2020, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/assessing-the-soviet-threat-the-early-cold-war-years/5563bod3.pdf; Central Intelligence Agency, ORE 18-50 Excerpt, 19 June 1950, Current Capabilities of the Northern Korean Regime, 20 July 2020, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/assessing-the-soviet-threat-the-early-cold-war-years/5563bod4.pdf

69 Bar-Joseph and McDermott, Intelligence Success and Failure, pp. 145–183; Michael E. Bigelow, “Disaster Along the Ch’ongch’on: Intelligence Breakdown in Korea,” in U.S. Army Military Intelligence History: A Sourcebook, edited by James P. Finley (Fort Huachuca, AZ: U.S. Army Intelligence Center & Fort Huachuca, 1995), pp. 224–229; Douglas A. Borer, Stephen Twing, and Randy P. Burkett, “Problems in the Intelligence-Policy Nexus: Rethinking Korea, Tet, and Afghanistan,” Intelligence and National Security 29, no. 6 (2014), pp. 811–836.

70 Bar-Joseph, The Watchman Fell Asleep, pp. 42–58, 81–111, 134–139, 141–174, 179–186, 236–251; Bar-Joseph and McDermott, Intelligence Success and Failure, pp. 184–215; Yoav Gelber, “The Collapse of the Israeli Intelligence’s Conception: Apologetics, Memory and History of the Israeli Response to Egypt’s Alleged Intention to Open War in May 1973,” Intelligence and National Security 28, no. 4 (2013), pp. 520–546; Ephraim Kahana, “Early Warning Versus Concept: The Case of the Yom Kippur War 1973,” Intelligence and National Security 17, no. 2 (2002), pp. 81–104; Khalid Sindawi and Ephraim Kahana, “The Yom Kippur War: The Successes of Israeli Intelligence,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 28, no.4 (2015), pp. 762–774.

71 Bar-Joseph and McDermott, Intelligence Success and Failure, pp. 185–187, 190–191, 217–229; Sindawi and Kahana, “The Yom Kippur War,” p. 771.

72 “Barnard’s Test Calculator,” SciStatCalc, https://scistatcalc.blogspot.com/2013/11/barnards-test-calculator.html (accessed 2 October 2020).

73 “Bayes Factor for a Binomially Distributed Observation,” Perception and Cognition Lab, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, http://pcl.missouri.edu/bf-binomial (accessed 2 October 2020).

74 See, for example, Vic Barnett, Comparative Statistical Inference, 2nd ed. (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1982), p. 217.

75 Levels are “anecdotal” (1/1–3/1), “moderate” (3/1–10/1), “strong” (10/1–30/1), “very strong” (30/1–100/1), and “extreme evidence” (>100/1). see, for example, Emma Beard, Zoltan Dienes, Colin Muirhead, and Robert West, “Using Bayes Factors for Testing Hypotheses about Intervention Effectiveness in Addictions Research,” Addiction 111, no. 12 (2016), p. 2231.

76 This is consistent with the notions presented by Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack, pp. 66–67.

77 The distances between the targets and the group centroid were calculated with the aid of the web page “Latitude/Longitude Distance Calculator,” National Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center, https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gccalc.shtml (accessed 2 October 2020). The location of the centroid was determined by means of the web page “GPS Coordinates on Google Maps,” MAPS.ie, https://www.maps.ie/coordinates.html (accessed 2 October 2020).

78 For northeast Australia the city of Cairns was used for approximation, and Vladivostok for southeastern USSR; otherwise country capitals or regional capitals (as Unalaska for the Aleutians) were used.

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Ralf Lillbacka

Dr. Ralf Lillbacka is a Senior Lecturer at Novia, the University of Applied Sciences, Vaasa, Finland. Previously, he was a researcher at Åbo Akademi University in Finland, where he earned his Ph.D. degrees in Political Science. He has published extensively on issues of intelligence and military science, primarily on matters concerning intelligence and security in Northern Europe. The author can be contacted at [email protected].