Devil’s advocacy and cyber space. In support of quality assurance and decision making

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses urgent information needs in today’s unsettled cyber domain. Dealing with complex cyber questions decision-makers will arguably benefit from an alternative analytical point of view. Academic research has shown that decisions benefit from assessments and advice based upon differing points of view. Devil’s advocacy, which criticizes established positions, and offers alternative perspectives to any given argument based upon the same inputs, is one established instrument to try to achieve this. The paper explores analytical lessons learned within the Israeli military system as a result of the Yom Kippur war of 1973. The unexpected outbreak of war showed the urgent need for improvements in assessment and decision-making processes. A ‘devil’s advocate shop’ was subsequently set up within Israeli military intelligence. The prolonged Israeli experience with devil’s advocacy might serve its purpose in the virtual world. This requires re-transformation of the Devil’s Advocacy concept into a Cyber tool in order to protect decision-makers from cognitive pitfalls and offering them a better perspective of complex cyber issues at stake.

KEYWORDS:

• Devil’s advocacy
• cyber
• decision support
• decision process
• Israel

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank S. Coulthart and two anonymous reviewers for their critical comments on an earlier draft. Their input was much appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Charlan Nemeth, In Defense of Troublemakers. The Power of Dissent in Life and Business (New York; Basic Books, 2018).

² NATO’s attention towards cyber issues pre-dates the mentioned summit. In 2008 the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence was established in Estonia’s capital Talinn. In 2014 the NATO Wales summit issued an agreement on cyber defence. Since 2010 large-scale cyber defence exercises, by the name of ‘Locked Shields’, have been held annually (Exercises, https://ccdcoe.org/exercises/.; A.D. Dijk, J.M.G Meulendijks, and F.G.J. Absil, “Lessons Learned from NATO’s Cyber Defence Exercise Locked Shields 2015,” Militaire Spectator 185, no. 2 (19 February 2016): 67–68).

³ Paul Meyer, “Seizing the Diplomatic Initiative to Control Cyber Conflict,” The Washington Quarterly 38, no. 2 (2015): 47–49; and Mathijs Veenendaal, Kadri Kaska, and Pascal Brangetto, Is NATO Ready to Cross the Rubicon on Cyber Defence? Issue brief, June 2016, https://ccdcoe.eu/uploads/2018/10/NATO-CCD-COE-policy-paper.pdf.

⁴ Jarno Limnéll and Charly Salonius-Pasternak, Challenge for NATO – Cyber Article 5, issue brief (Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies, 2016).; and NATO, “Wales Summit Declaration.”

⁵ John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “Cyberwar Is Coming!” Comparative Strategy 12, no. 2 (1993); and Jerry Brito and Tate Watkins, “Loving the Cyber Bomb? The Dangers of Threat Inflation in Cyber Security Policy,” Harvard National Security Journal 3, no. 1 (2011).

⁶ Rid, “Cyber War Will Not Take Place,” Journal of Strategic Studies 35, no. 1 (2012).

⁷ John Stone, “Cyber War Will Take Place,” Journal of Strategic Studies36, no. 1 (2013).

⁸ Thomas Rid and Ben Buchanan, “Attributing Cyber Attacks,” Journal of Strategic Studies 38, no. 1–2 (2014).

⁹ Jason Rivera, “Achieving Cyberdeterrence and the Ability of Small States to Hold Large States at Risk,” in 7^th International Conference on Cyber Conflict: Architectures in Cyberspace, ed. M. Maybaum, A.M. Osula, L. Lindstrom, (Tallinn: NATO CCD COE, 2015); Sean Kanuck on Deterrence and Arms Control in Cyberspace, 30 March 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7VgvPB-3DU.

¹⁰ Robert Litwack and Meg King, Arms Control in Cyberspace? Issue brief, 2015, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/arms_control_in_cyberspace.pdf.

¹¹ William Akoto, Paradigms of Foreign Policy and Political Decision Making: A Critical Review of Three Seminal Works, working paper no. 1012, University of South Carolina (BEP, 2014).; Leigh Buchanan and Andrew O’Connell, “A Brief History of Decision Making,” Harvard Business Review, January 2006, https://hbr.org/2006/01/a-brief-history-of-decision-making; Richards J. Heuer and Randolph H. Pherson, Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2011); Morgan D. Jones, The Thinker’s Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving. Revised and Updated. (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998); and A Tradecraft Primer: Structured Analytic Techniques for Improving Intelligence Analysis, March 2009, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/Tradecraft_Primer-apr09.pdf.

¹² Erik J. Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack: Failure and Success from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 and beyond (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013).

¹³ Shmuel Eisner, Lt. Col., “The Imperative of Criticism: The Role of Intelligence Review,” IDF Journal 2, no. 3 (May 1985).

¹⁴ Allison, “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” The American Political Science Review 63, no. 3 (September 1969); and Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971).

¹⁵ Eisner, “Imperative of Criticism.”

¹⁶ Micah Zenko, Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking like the Enemy (New York: Basic Books, 2015), ix–xii.

¹⁷ Heuer and Pherson, Structured analytic techniques.; and Tradecraft Primer: Structured Analytic Techniques, 17–18.

¹⁸ Stephen Coulthart, “Why Do Analysts Use Structured Analytic Techniques?: An In-Depth Study of an American Intelligence Agency,” Intelligence and National Security 31, no. 7 (2016); Jones, Thinker’s Toolkit: 14 Powerful, 217–223; and Guillaume Gustav De Valk, “Dutch Intelligence – towards a Qualitative Framework for Analysis: With Case Studies on the Shipping Research Bureau and the National Security Service (BVD)” (PhD diss., Proefschrift Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2005), 29, https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/33123453/thesis.pdf.

¹⁹ Kevin P. Stack, “A Negative View of Competitive Analysis,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 10, no. 4 (1997); and Gordon R. Mitchell, “Team B Intelligence Coups,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 92, no. 2 (2006).

²⁰ Nemeth, Minority Influence Theory, working paper no. 218–10, Berkely, May 2010, http://irle.berkeley.edu/files/2010/Minority-Influence-Theory.pdf.

²¹ Nemeth, In Defense of Troublemakers.

²² Eisner, “Imperative of Criticism,” 66; and De Valk, “Dutch Intelligence,” 29.

²³ English and American readers will probably be more familiar with the expression Type I and Type II instead of Alpha and Beta. The terminology is, however, interchangeable and expresses the same elements when used.

²⁴ De Valk, “Dutch Intelligence,” 66–68; and Thomas S. De Zoete, Alpha Proof, Beta Check?: De Mogelijkheid En Wenselijkheid Van Een Organisatorische Scheiding Tussen α- En β-kans Gerichte Activiteiten Binnen Politie Amsterdam-Amstelland Op Het Terrein Van Politiek Gemotiveerd Geweld, Gezien De Ethische Aspecten Die Bij Een Dergelijke Scheiding Tussen Inlichtingenwerk En Opsporing Aanwezig Zijn, Thesis, Leiden University, 2013.

²⁵ See, for instance, Pascal Brangetto, Emin Çaliskan, and Henry Rõigas, Cyber Red Teaming. Organisational, Technical, and Legal Implications in a Military Context, report, 2015, https://ccdcoe.org/uploads/2018/10/Cyber_Red_Team.pdf; and Heuer and Pherson, Structured analytic techniques.

²⁶ See De Valk, “Dutch Intelligence,” 67–68; and Giliam De Valk and Onno Goldbach, “To Explore the Unknown: Towards a Methodology of Not to Miss a Threat (Rumsfeld Matrix)” (NISA-Conference: Witness to Change: Intelligence Analysis in a Changing Environment. NISA 25th Anniversary Conference 1991–2016, The Hague, 28 October 2016).

²⁷ Tradecraft Primer: Structured Analytic Techniques, 3.

²⁸ Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War (New York: Cornell University Press, 2010); and Erik J. Dahl, “Getting beyond Analysis by Anecdote: Improving Intelligence Analysis through the Use of Case Studies,” Intelligence and National Security 32, no. 5 (2017).

²⁹ Uri Bar‐Joseph, “The Wealth of Information and the Poverty of Comprehension: Israel’s Intelligence Failure of 1973 Revisited,” Intelligence and National Security 10, no. 4 (1995).

³⁰ Israeli casualties numbered more than 2,500, which was greater than the combined total of the wars fought in 1956 (Suez-Crisis), 1967 (Six-Day War), and 1969–1970 (the War of Attrition against Egypt) (Simon Dunstan, The Yom Kippur War 1973 (1): The Golan Heights (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2003).; Simon Dunstan, The Yom Kippur War 1973 (2): The Sinai (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2003).; and Rabinovich¸ Yom Kippur War.). Yom Kippur constituted an immense shock. Having experienced no comparable military challenge up till then, combined with the unforeseen surprise attacks, unanticipated early Arab successes, and unequalled number of casualties the myth of Israeli invincibility was shattered. The overarching sentiment in the following decades was to prevent – at all costs – a future situation resembling the events of 6–25 October 1973 (Rabinovich, Yom Kippur War, 497–98).

³¹ “Agranat Commission,” Knesset, 2008, https://www.knesset.gov.il/lexicon/eng/agranat_eng.htm; and Aryeh Shalev, Israel’s Intelligence Assessment before the Yom Kippur War: Disentangling Deception and Distraction (London: Sussex Academic Press, 2014), x–xvi.

³² Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East (New York: Schocken Books, 2004), 499–516.

³³ “Agramat Commission”; and Shavel, Israel’s Intelligence Assessment, xii.

³⁴ Yosef Kuperwasser, Lessons from Israel’s Intelligence Reforms, Analysis paper no. 14, October 2017, 3–4, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/10_intelligence_kuperwasser.pdf.

³⁵ Kuperwasser, “Lessons from Israel’s Intelligence,” 3; and Shalev, Israel’s Intelligence Assessment, 210–213.

³⁶ According to Zenko, Mahleket Bakara is sometimes also translated as “Research Unit”, or “Internal Audit Unit”. According to Zenko and Shpiro the unit within military intelligence itself is simply referred to as either “Control” or “Review” (Shpiro, “Devil’s Advocate: Controlling Israel’s”; Zenko, Red Team: How to, 250.)

³⁷ Kuperwasser, “Lessons from Israel’s Intelligence,” 4; Zenko, Red Team: How to, 63; Eyal Pascovich, “The Devil’s Advocate in Intelligence: The Israeli Experience,” Intelligence and National Security 33, no. 6 (2018); and Shlomo Shpiro, “The Devil’s Advocate: Controlling Israel’s Military Intelligence Analysis” (The NISA-Conference: ‘Witness to Change. Intelligence Analysis in a Changing Environment. NISA 25th Anniversary Conference 1991–2016ʹ, The Hague, 27 October 2016).

³⁸ Bar-Joseph, “Wealth of Information.”

³⁹ Allison, “Conceptual Models,” 690.

⁴⁰ Allison, Essence of Decision.; and Graham T. Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Pearson, 1999).

⁴¹ Allison, “Conceptual Models,” 690–691, 715–718.

⁴² Stephen D. Kranser, “Are Bureaucracies Important? (Or Allison Wonderland),” Foreign Policy 7, no. 1 (1972); David A. Welch, “The Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics Paradigms: Retrospect and Prospect,” International Security 17, no. 2 (1992); and David Patrick Houghton, “Essence of Excision. A Critique of the New Version of Essence of Decision,” Security Studies 10, no. 1 (2000).

⁴³ Jonathan Bendor and Thomas H. Hammond, “Rethinking Allison’s Models,” The American Political Science Review 86, no. 2 (1992): 301; and Jerel A. Rosati, “Ignoring the Essence of Decisionmaking,” review of Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis by Graham T. Allison and Philip Zelikow, International Studies Review 3, no. 1 (2001).

⁴⁴ Bendor and Hammond, “Rethinking Allison’s Models,” 303.

⁴⁵ Coulthart, “Why do Analysists Use”. Coulthart’s positive findings on the effectiveness of SAT’s are contradicted by other academics, whose research has not been able to validate SAT’s such as Richard Heuer’s Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (David R. Mandel, forthcoming. “Can Decision Science Improve Intelligence Analysis?”, in Researching National Security Intelligence. A Reader, ed. Stephen Coulthart, Michael Landon-Murray, and Damien Van Puyvelde (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, forthcoming)). Furthermore, scientific research has indicated the possibility of harmful effects when applied in particular circumstances. (Welton Chang and Philip E. Tetlock, “Rethinking the Training of Intelligence Analysts,” Intelligence and National Security 31, no. 6 (2016): 907–909, doi:10.1080/02684527.2016.1147164.; A. J. Murrell, A. C. Stewart, and B. T. Engel, “Consensus Versus Devils Advocacy: The Influence of Decision Process and Task Structure on Strategic Decision Making,” Journal of Business Communication 30, no. 4 (1993):, doi:10.1177/002194369303000402.; Charles R. Schwenk, “Devil’s Advocacy in Managerial Decision Making,” Journal of Management Studies 21, no. 2 (April 1984).)

⁴⁶ Asterios G. “Stell” Kefalas, “On Systems Thinking and the Systems Approach,” The Journal of Global Education 67, no. 4–5 (2011): 346–350, 358, 360.

⁴⁷ Allison, “Conceptual Models,” 716.

⁴⁸ These sources include Eisner, “Imperative of Criticism”; Kuperwasser, “Lessons from Israel’s Intelligence”; Shalev, Israel’s Intelligence Assessment; Zenko, Red Team: How To; Shpiro, “Devil’s Advocate: Controlling Israel’s”; Lieut. Col. S and V.I., Dr., “Intelligence Supervision: Creating Relevance in the Present Era,” Intelligence in Theory and in Practice, no. 2 (November 2017), https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/app/uploads/2017/12/Intelligence-in-Theory-and-in-Practice-no.2.pdf. Pascovich, “Devil’s advocate in intelligence”. In addition, over the years the author has interviewed three officers of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) that wish to remain anonymous (15 December 2009, 5 December 2017 and 13 June 2018) as well as Professor Shlomo Shpiro of the Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv (28 October 2016).

⁴⁹ Barbara Opall-Rome, “40 Years Later: Conflicted Accounts of Yom Kippur War,” Defense News, 6 October 2013, https://www.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/systemfiles/40YearsLater–ConflictedAccountsofYomKippurWar–DefenseNews.pdf.

⁵⁰ Kuppperwasser, “Lessons from Israel’s Intelligence,” 4; and Shpiro, “Devil’s Advocate: Controlling Israel’s”.

⁵¹ Personal conversation with Professor Shlomo Shpiro, 28 October 2016; and Shpiro, “Devil’s Advocate: Controlling Israel’s.”

⁵² Eisner, “Imperative of Criticism,” 68–69.

⁵³ Jones, Thinker’s Toolkit: 14 Powerful, 217–223.

⁵⁴ Shpiro, “Devil’s Advocate: Controlling Israel’s.”

⁵⁵ Shpiro, “Devil’s Advocate: Controlling Israel’s”; Pascovich, “Devil’s advocate in intelligence,” 6–8; Bouchnik-Chen, “The Intelligence Dimension of the IDF’s Flight from South Lebanon”; Harel, “Twenty Years after the Lebanon Withdrawal”; and “Intelligence and Decision Making. The IDF Leaving Lebanon.”

⁵⁶ Pascovich, “Devil’s advocate in intelligence,” 6.

⁵⁷ Pascovich, “Devil’s advocate in intelligence,” 6.

⁵⁸ Shalev, Israel’s Intelligence Assessment, 213–216; Eisner, “Imperative of Criticism,” 66–67; and Shpiro, “Devil’s Advocate: Controlling Israel’s.”

⁵⁹ Eisner, “Imperative of Criticism,” 70.; and Zenko, Red Team: How to, 64.

⁶⁰ Personal conversation with Professor Shlomo Shpiro, 28 October 2016.; Personal conversation with an IDF officer, 15 December 2009.; Eisner, “Imperative of Criticism,” 70; Kuperwasser, “Lessons from Israel’s Intelligence,” 4; Shpiro, “Devil’s Advocate: Controlling Israel’s”; and Zenko, Red Team: How to, 63–64.

⁶¹ Zenko, Red Team: How to, 64.

⁶² Personal conversation with Professor Shlomo Shpiro, 28 October 2016.

⁶³ Bendor and Hammond, “Rethinking Allison’s Models”; and Rosati, “Ignoring the Essence of Decisionmaking.”

⁶⁴ Shpiro, “Devil’s Advocate: Controlling Israel’s.”

⁶⁵ Personal conversation with IDF officers, 15 December 2009 and 5 December 2017; and Zenko, Red Team: How to, 263.

⁶⁶ Personal conversation with IDF officer, 13 June 2018; and Lieut. Col. S and V.I., Dr., “Intelligence Supervision: Creating”.

⁶⁷ Alexander Claver, “The Big Data Paradox. Juggling Data Flows, Transparency and Secrets,” Militaire Spectator 187, no. 6 (2018):, https://www.militairespectator.nl/sites/default/files/teksten/bestanden/MilitaireSpectator6–2018Claver.pdf.

⁶⁸ Claver, The Big Data Paradox; M. Räsänen and J.M. Nyce, “The Raw is Cooked. Data in Intelligence Practice,” Science, Technology and Human Values 38, no. 5 (2013): 655–577.

⁶⁹ Jones, Thinker’s Toolkit: 14 Powerful, 217–218; Tradecraft Primer: Structured Analytic Techniques, 1–2.

⁷⁰ See for example the 16 examples elaborated upon in the UK Red Teaming Guide (2013) among which devil’s advocacy, defined on page A-9 as challenging a single, strongly and widely held view or consensus by building the best possible case for an alternative explanation.

⁷¹ NATO defines alternative analysis as the deliberate application of independent critical thought and alternative perspectives to improve decision making (UK Ministry of Defence, Red Teaming Guide 2013, 1–3). Devil’s advocacy sits easily within this approach.

⁷² Brangetto, Çalişkan, and Rõigas (2015). On page 11 the authors define a cyber red team as an element that conducts vulnerability assessments in a realistic threat environment and with an adversarial point of view on specified information systems, in order to enhance an organisation’s level of security.

⁷³ Jones, Thinker’s Toolkit: 14 Powerful, 219.

⁷⁴ Personal conversation with Professor Shlomo Shpiro, 28 October 2016; Kuperwasser, “Lessons from Israel’s Intelligence,” 3–4; and Zenko, Red Team: How to, 263.

⁷⁵ Andrea Little Limbago, “The Great Divide: Closing the Gap in Cyber Analysis,” Endgame, 14 June 2014, https://www.endgame.com/blog/technical-blog/great-divide-closing-gap-cyber-analysis.

⁷⁶ Benjamin Mishkin, “Filling the Oversight Gap. The Case for Local Intelligence Oversight,” New York University Law Review 88, no. 4 (2013): 1426–1438.

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A. Claver

A. Claver studied history at Utrecht University, specializing in economic history and entrepreneurship, and cyber security at Leiden University and Delft University of Technology. He holds a Ph.D in Social Sciences from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. His doctoral research focused on trade finance and commercial relations between Europeans and Chinese in colonial Indonesia. His research interests include the study of entrepreneurship, company policy, cyber security and governance. At present he is working on cyber governance issues as well as the history of the Armenian population in Indonesia. Dr. Claver works for the Dutch Ministry of Defence and may be contacted at [email protected].