WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.960 Welcome to today's deep dive. I'm your host. 00:00:02.040 --> 00:00:06.059 And today we are tackling something that is honestly 00:00:06.059 --> 00:00:09.919 a bit heavy, but incredibly fascinating. Hi, 00:00:09.980 --> 00:00:12.640 everyone. I'm the resident researcher here. And 00:00:12.640 --> 00:00:15.199 yeah, heavy is definitely the right word for 00:00:15.199 --> 00:00:17.079 the sources we are unpacking today. You know, 00:00:17.079 --> 00:00:19.760 when I hear the word imagination. my brain immediately 00:00:19.760 --> 00:00:22.800 goes to like a really specific place oh like 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:25.300 what well i'm thinking of kids in a sandbox or 00:00:25.300 --> 00:00:27.559 maybe an artist staring at a blank canvas or 00:00:27.559 --> 00:00:30.179 a writer trying to dream up some wild sci -fi 00:00:30.179 --> 00:00:34.259 world it feels um whimsical right it feels safe 00:00:34.259 --> 00:00:37.479 exactly but today we are looking at this huge 00:00:37.479 --> 00:00:39.570 stack of sources we've got Government reports, 00:00:39.969 --> 00:00:42.789 intelligence postmortems, major disaster investigations. 00:00:43.049 --> 00:00:45.369 And they turn that entire definition completely 00:00:45.369 --> 00:00:47.549 upside down. They really do. We are talking of 00:00:47.549 --> 00:00:49.789 a concept of a failure of imagination. And in 00:00:49.789 --> 00:00:51.829 this context, we are talking about writer's block. 00:00:52.090 --> 00:00:54.310 We are talking about a concept used in national 00:00:54.310 --> 00:00:56.770 security and emergency management where a lack 00:00:56.770 --> 00:01:00.109 of imagination is, it's actually lethal. It is 00:01:00.109 --> 00:01:02.649 a fascinating and somewhat terrifying inversion 00:01:02.649 --> 00:01:05.680 of the concept. In the documents we're covering 00:01:05.680 --> 00:01:08.659 today, failure of imagination isn't about artistic 00:01:08.659 --> 00:01:12.120 merit. It's a term of art. Right. It refers to 00:01:12.120 --> 00:01:15.159 a circumstance that is undesirable and unanticipated, 00:01:15.159 --> 00:01:17.920 yet, and this is the crucial part, seems entirely 00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:20.400 predictable in hindsight. That's the part that 00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:22.340 just kept jumping out at me while I was reading 00:01:22.340 --> 00:01:25.000 this material. Predictable in hindsight. I mean, 00:01:25.079 --> 00:01:27.379 it implies the clues were there right in front 00:01:27.379 --> 00:01:29.359 of everyone's face. But nobody could put them 00:01:29.359 --> 00:01:32.439 together precisely. The mission of this deep 00:01:32.439 --> 00:01:35.000 dive is to explore how some of the biggest disasters 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:37.480 in history weren't necessarily caused by a lack 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:40.019 of data. From the terrorist attacks of 9 -11 00:01:40.019 --> 00:01:42.219 to, you know, tragedies in space exploration. 00:01:42.620 --> 00:01:44.680 Exactly. They weren't caused by broken satellites 00:01:44.680 --> 00:01:47.420 or lazy spies. They were caused by an inability 00:01:47.420 --> 00:01:49.659 to conceive that the unthinkable was actually 00:01:49.659 --> 00:01:52.280 possible. It is just wild to me that imagination 00:01:52.280 --> 00:01:55.140 is a metric for national security. It sounds 00:01:55.140 --> 00:01:57.599 counterintuitive, doesn't it? Totally. You expect 00:01:57.599 --> 00:01:59.540 metrics to be about interception capabilities 00:01:59.540 --> 00:02:02.920 or troop numbers or firewall strength. But imagination, 00:02:03.219 --> 00:02:06.719 that feels so abstract. And yet, it's the common 00:02:06.719 --> 00:02:09.300 thread. As we go through these sources with you 00:02:09.300 --> 00:02:11.580 today, you'll see it links the sinking of the 00:02:11.580 --> 00:02:15.139 Titanic to the 9 -11 attacks and even to modern 00:02:15.139 --> 00:02:17.400 geopolitical conflicts. It's really about the 00:02:17.400 --> 00:02:19.939 limits of the human mind to accept worst case 00:02:19.939 --> 00:02:22.860 scenarios. It is. So let's unpack this. We have 00:02:22.860 --> 00:02:24.680 to start with the big one. The 9 -11 Commission 00:02:24.680 --> 00:02:28.000 Report. This phrase, failure of imagination, 00:02:28.379 --> 00:02:30.539 is practically the headline of their findings 00:02:30.539 --> 00:02:33.180 regarding the intelligence failures leading up 00:02:33.180 --> 00:02:35.560 to the attacks. It's explicitly quoted in the 00:02:35.560 --> 00:02:37.960 report. When the commission looked at the intelligence 00:02:37.960 --> 00:02:42.520 community, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, they found 00:02:42.520 --> 00:02:45.259 plenty of bureaucratic hurdles. And that siloing 00:02:45.259 --> 00:02:47.120 of information, right, where agencies weren't 00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:48.719 talking to each other. Right. The siloing was 00:02:48.719 --> 00:02:51.159 a huge issue. But they stated clearly, and I 00:02:51.159 --> 00:02:53.259 quote, the most important failure was one of 00:02:53.259 --> 00:02:55.439 imagination. And here's where it gets really 00:02:55.439 --> 00:02:57.680 interesting to me, because there was a very specific 00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:00.979 defense mounted by the Bush administration in 00:03:00.979 --> 00:03:03.879 early 2004. Then nobody imagined defense. Yeah. 00:03:03.919 --> 00:03:05.919 You see quotes from officials basically saying, 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:08.819 look, be reasonable here. Nobody could have predicted 00:03:08.819 --> 00:03:12.120 this. The specific claim was nobody could have 00:03:12.120 --> 00:03:14.599 imagined that hijackers would intentionally crash. 00:03:15.770 --> 00:03:17.889 The prevailing logic at the time, the script 00:03:17.889 --> 00:03:20.069 everyone was following, was that hijackers use 00:03:20.069 --> 00:03:22.889 planes as bargaining chips. The negotiation script. 00:03:23.129 --> 00:03:25.590 Exactly. The assumption was that they want to 00:03:25.590 --> 00:03:28.930 land. They want to make demands, get money, get 00:03:28.930 --> 00:03:31.770 prisoners released. But most importantly, the 00:03:31.770 --> 00:03:33.990 assumption was that hijackers want to survive. 00:03:34.210 --> 00:03:36.310 The quote in the source material is literally, 00:03:36.509 --> 00:03:39.349 hijackers usually want to live. Which is a very 00:03:39.349 --> 00:03:41.909 logical assumption to make. And honestly, if 00:03:41.909 --> 00:03:44.250 you look at the history of hijacking in the 70s 00:03:44.250 --> 00:03:46.500 and 80s. Yeah. That was the pattern. You fly 00:03:46.500 --> 00:03:48.740 to Cuba, you demand a ransom, you sit on the 00:03:48.740 --> 00:03:51.020 tarmac. But our sources point out that this defense, 00:03:51.259 --> 00:03:53.780 this idea that a suicide crash was unimaginable, 00:03:53.840 --> 00:03:56.199 actually falls apart completely when you look 00:03:56.199 --> 00:03:58.639 at the history leading up to 2001. It crumbles 00:03:58.639 --> 00:04:01.419 so quickly under scrutiny. I was actually shocked 00:04:01.419 --> 00:04:04.219 by how many specific examples there were. I kind 00:04:04.219 --> 00:04:06.699 of assumed 9 -11 was the absolute first time 00:04:06.699 --> 00:04:09.099 a commercial airliner was used as a weapon. A 00:04:09.099 --> 00:04:11.340 lot of people assume that. But the timeline tells 00:04:11.340 --> 00:04:13.500 a very different story. Yeah, let's list these 00:04:13.500 --> 00:04:15.020 out for you listening because the data points 00:04:15.020 --> 00:04:16.939 were there if you're an analyst paying attention 00:04:16.939 --> 00:04:19.959 to the outliers. Yeah. Take December 7, 1987. 00:04:20.699 --> 00:04:24.160 PSA Flight 1771. This is the one involving the 00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:26.240 disgruntled employee, right? Correct. David Burke. 00:04:26.680 --> 00:04:28.699 He was a former airline employee who had been 00:04:28.699 --> 00:04:30.939 fired. He didn't hijack the plane to go to a 00:04:30.939 --> 00:04:33.519 destination or demand ransom. He just wanted 00:04:33.519 --> 00:04:36.500 revenge. Exactly. He bypassed security using 00:04:36.500 --> 00:04:39.579 his old credentials, boarded the flight, shot 00:04:39.579 --> 00:04:42.399 his former boss who was on board, shot the pilots, 00:04:42.579 --> 00:04:45.540 and pushed the control column forward. He drove 00:04:45.540 --> 00:04:47.439 it straight into the ground. Everyone on board 00:04:47.439 --> 00:04:50.420 died. He didn't want to live. That is a clear 00:04:50.420 --> 00:04:52.920 suicide crash using a commercial airliner. And 00:04:52.920 --> 00:04:55.540 that was 14 years before 9 -11. Then you have 00:04:55.540 --> 00:04:58.500 Egypt Air Flight 990. Which was much closer to 00:04:58.500 --> 00:05:02.180 the event, October 31st, 1999. Right. The relief 00:05:02.180 --> 00:05:04.560 first officer, Gamil Albatudi, intentionally 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:06.839 crashed the aircraft into the Atlantic Ocean. 00:05:07.079 --> 00:05:09.879 Again, a suicide scenario. And there was another 00:05:09.879 --> 00:05:14.870 case, AFR 8969, an Air France flight. The intelligence 00:05:14.870 --> 00:05:17.509 there suggested the terrorists who hijacked it 00:05:17.509 --> 00:05:20.589 planned to crash it over Paris, possibly right 00:05:20.589 --> 00:05:22.670 into the Eiffel Tower. So we have these data 00:05:22.670 --> 00:05:25.410 points. We have literal crashes where the person 00:05:25.410 --> 00:05:27.889 at the controls had zero intention of landing 00:05:27.889 --> 00:05:30.709 safely. Exactly. The dots were there. The failure 00:05:30.709 --> 00:05:33.370 was in connecting them to form a picture of a 00:05:33.370 --> 00:05:36.759 coordinated attack on American soil. It wasn't 00:05:36.759 --> 00:05:39.079 that the event was impossible. It was that the 00:05:39.079 --> 00:05:41.519 observers couldn't imagine the shape those dots 00:05:41.519 --> 00:05:43.879 formed. They treated these events as anomalies, 00:05:43.980 --> 00:05:47.040 tragic one -off events, rather than a trend or 00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:49.639 a new tactic. That's the trap. And it wasn't 00:05:49.639 --> 00:05:52.060 just old historical data either. There were flashing 00:05:52.060 --> 00:05:54.759 red lights right before the attacks. We have 00:05:54.759 --> 00:05:56.459 to talk about the president's daily brief from 00:05:56.459 --> 00:05:59.500 August 6, 2001. This is a critical document. 00:05:59.980 --> 00:06:02.439 It was declassified by President Bush following 00:06:02.439 --> 00:06:04.699 intense criticisms from the 9 -11 Commission. 00:06:04.899 --> 00:06:06.660 Do you remember the title of that brief? I do. 00:06:06.779 --> 00:06:09.680 It was titled, Bin Laden Determined to Strike 00:06:09.680 --> 00:06:12.459 in U .S. That seems pretty unambiguous. It really 00:06:12.459 --> 00:06:15.120 is. And the content indicated that hijackings 00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:17.800 were a possible mode of attack. Plus, there were 00:06:17.800 --> 00:06:20.560 reports coming out of field offices about foreign 00:06:20.560 --> 00:06:22.959 nationals taking pilot training inside the U 00:06:22.959 --> 00:06:25.699 .S. And the detail that gives me chills, honestly, 00:06:25.920 --> 00:06:28.439 every single time I read it, is that they were 00:06:28.439 --> 00:06:30.899 notably uninterested in learning how to take 00:06:30.899 --> 00:06:33.540 off and completely uninterested in learning how 00:06:33.540 --> 00:06:36.259 to land. A glaring anomaly. If you're learning 00:06:36.259 --> 00:06:39.600 to fly a Boeing -class aircraft, landing is generally 00:06:39.600 --> 00:06:42.139 the most critical skill you want to master. It's 00:06:42.139 --> 00:06:44.660 the hardest part. Not caring about landing should 00:06:44.660 --> 00:06:47.019 have been a massive alarm bell. It's like going 00:06:47.019 --> 00:06:49.139 to driving school and saying, don't teach me 00:06:49.139 --> 00:06:51.579 how to park or use the brake, just show me how 00:06:51.579 --> 00:06:54.139 to floor it on the highway. That's a great analogy. 00:06:54.379 --> 00:06:57.620 But because the mindset was still hijackers want 00:06:57.620 --> 00:07:00.920 to live, the system dismissed that signal. It 00:07:00.920 --> 00:07:04.000 was seen as weird, maybe suspicious, but it didn't 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:06.220 trigger a red alert because it didn't fit the 00:07:06.220 --> 00:07:08.779 mental model they were comfortable with. So after 00:07:08.779 --> 00:07:10.759 the declassified report comes out in the summer 00:07:10.759 --> 00:07:14.300 of 2003, Senator Bob Graham, who was deeply involved 00:07:14.300 --> 00:07:16.639 in the intelligence oversight, comes out and 00:07:16.639 --> 00:07:18.779 says, look, this wasn't some mysterious event. 00:07:19.279 --> 00:07:21.639 Right. He stated the attack might have been easily 00:07:21.639 --> 00:07:24.379 predicted and even prevented. And that brings 00:07:24.379 --> 00:07:26.620 us back to the core concept of the deep dive. 00:07:27.180 --> 00:07:29.639 It wasn't a failure of intelligence in terms 00:07:29.639 --> 00:07:32.899 of gathering raw facts. It was a failure to believe 00:07:32.899 --> 00:07:35.160 the facts were pointing to a catastrophe. Which 00:07:35.160 --> 00:07:37.000 brings up the broader issue of institutional 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:40.100 blindness. Our sources mentioned the Gore Commission 00:07:40.100 --> 00:07:42.959 from 1997. Created by President Clinton, right? 00:07:43.079 --> 00:07:45.519 Correct. This was in response to the crash of 00:07:45.519 --> 00:07:49.459 TWA Flight 800. The mandate was to look at aviation 00:07:49.459 --> 00:07:52.100 security shortcomings. So you have this high 00:07:52.100 --> 00:07:54.680 -level commission, tons of resources, looking 00:07:54.680 --> 00:07:57.000 specifically at how to make planes safer. And 00:07:57.000 --> 00:07:59.759 what did they focus on? Bombs. They were entirely 00:07:59.759 --> 00:08:02.920 focused on the danger of placing explosives on 00:08:02.920 --> 00:08:04.899 aircraft. Which makes sense if you're looking 00:08:04.899 --> 00:08:07.339 at the past, Lockerbie, things like that. Yeah. 00:08:07.399 --> 00:08:09.939 They were fighting the last war. Precisely. The 00:08:09.939 --> 00:08:12.600 report did not mention suicide hijackings. It 00:08:12.600 --> 00:08:14.720 didn't mention the use of aircraft as weapons, 00:08:14.860 --> 00:08:17.300 even though, as we just discussed, the Gore Commission 00:08:17.300 --> 00:08:20.019 was meeting 10 years after the PSA suicide crash. 00:08:20.300 --> 00:08:23.259 The precedent existed, but the institution was 00:08:23.259 --> 00:08:25.959 designed to look for bombs. So it only saw bombs. 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:28.120 It's like they were wearing blinders that only 00:08:28.120 --> 00:08:30.220 allowed them to see ticking luggage. They looked 00:08:30.220 --> 00:08:33.360 at the right problem, aviation security, but 00:08:33.360 --> 00:08:36.179 the wrong specific threat. That is the absolute 00:08:36.179 --> 00:08:39.679 hallmark of a failure of imagination. You mitigate 00:08:39.679 --> 00:08:42.879 the risks you know and understand while leaving 00:08:42.879 --> 00:08:45.159 yourself wide open to the risk you refuse to 00:08:45.159 --> 00:08:47.899 consider. Now, this concept isn't limited to 00:08:47.899 --> 00:08:50.500 terrorism. The sources take us into some totally 00:08:50.500 --> 00:08:52.899 different arenas, which helps show how universal 00:08:52.899 --> 00:08:56.549 this problem is. Let's talk about space. Specifically, 00:08:56.769 --> 00:09:01.409 Apollo 1. This was the tragedy in 1967, where 00:09:01.409 --> 00:09:04.409 three astronauts, Grissom, White, and Chaffee, 00:09:04.470 --> 00:09:06.529 were killed in a fire during a launch pad test. 00:09:06.850 --> 00:09:08.230 And for anyone who doesn't know the history, 00:09:08.389 --> 00:09:10.289 this wasn't even a launch. It was a plugs -out 00:09:10.289 --> 00:09:12.409 test on the ground. Right. The rocket was sitting 00:09:12.409 --> 00:09:14.750 on the launch pad. The engines weren't lit. And 00:09:14.750 --> 00:09:17.009 because it was just a test on the ground, the 00:09:17.009 --> 00:09:19.610 mental model of danger wasn't the same as if 00:09:19.610 --> 00:09:21.620 they were blasting off. During the investigation 00:09:21.620 --> 00:09:24.440 hearings, astronaut Frank Borman spoke up. He 00:09:24.440 --> 00:09:28.000 explicitly invoked failure of imagination. It's 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:29.860 interesting you mentioned Borman. For any listeners 00:09:29.860 --> 00:09:32.299 who are fans of HBO, this was actually dramatized 00:09:32.299 --> 00:09:34.120 in the miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. 00:09:34.200 --> 00:09:36.139 Oh, really? Yeah. You see that moment where they 00:09:36.139 --> 00:09:39.139 realize they never imagined a fire could move 00:09:39.139 --> 00:09:41.519 that fast in a pure oxygen environment while 00:09:41.519 --> 00:09:44.600 still on the ground. They knew oxygen was flammable. 00:09:44.700 --> 00:09:46.759 They knew there were sparks in the cockpit wiring. 00:09:47.500 --> 00:09:49.659 But they couldn't imagine a scenario where a 00:09:49.659 --> 00:09:52.679 test on the launch pad would result in the rapid 00:09:52.679 --> 00:09:55.419 asphyxiation and burning of the crew before anyone 00:09:55.419 --> 00:09:57.399 could get the hatch open. They didn't design 00:09:57.399 --> 00:09:59.980 for it because they didn't imagine it. They assumed 00:09:59.980 --> 00:10:03.240 the ground was safe. Space is dangerous, but 00:10:03.240 --> 00:10:05.620 the ground is safe. Exactly. And going back even 00:10:05.620 --> 00:10:08.320 further, and this is the classic example of hubris, 00:10:08.419 --> 00:10:12.460 we have the RMS Titanic. The unsinkable ship. 00:10:12.620 --> 00:10:15.080 The sources mentioned that design flaws in the 00:10:15.080 --> 00:10:17.519 Titanic are often categorized under the same 00:10:17.519 --> 00:10:20.440 heading. It was an inability to imagine the specific 00:10:20.440 --> 00:10:22.919 conditions that would lead to its sinking. But 00:10:22.919 --> 00:10:24.860 they had watertight compartments. They clearly 00:10:24.860 --> 00:10:26.740 thought about sinking. They thought about certain 00:10:26.740 --> 00:10:29.700 types of sinking. They imagined a head -on collision 00:10:29.700 --> 00:10:32.940 or a breach of maybe two compartments. They built 00:10:32.940 --> 00:10:34.840 the ship to survive the accidents they could 00:10:34.840 --> 00:10:37.240 predict. They didn't imagine the perfect storm. 00:10:37.759 --> 00:10:40.299 A glancing blow along the side of the hull that 00:10:40.299 --> 00:10:42.600 opened up five or six compartments at once. And 00:10:42.600 --> 00:10:44.139 because they couldn't imagine that much water 00:10:44.139 --> 00:10:46.740 coming in, the watertight bulkheads didn't go 00:10:46.740 --> 00:10:48.620 all the way to the ceiling. They assumed the 00:10:48.620 --> 00:10:51.379 water would never get that high. It was a failure 00:10:51.379 --> 00:10:53.879 to imagine the scale of the failure. It seems 00:10:53.879 --> 00:10:56.220 like there's a pattern of confidence, masking 00:10:56.220 --> 00:10:58.659 vulnerability, we've built this great ship, or 00:10:58.659 --> 00:11:01.220 we have the best Air Force. Which leads us right 00:11:01.220 --> 00:11:04.299 to Pearl Harbor. Donald Rumsfeld, the former 00:11:04.299 --> 00:11:06.600 Secretary of Defense, discussed this in the documentary 00:11:06.600 --> 00:11:09.320 The Unknown Known. He suggests that the U .S. 00:11:09.320 --> 00:11:11.740 failure to anticipate the Japanese attack on 00:11:11.740 --> 00:11:14.200 Pearl Harbor was, at its heart, a failure of 00:11:14.200 --> 00:11:17.320 imagination. They couldn't imagine that the Japanese 00:11:17.320 --> 00:11:20.679 fleet could move that far, that quietly, and 00:11:20.679 --> 00:11:23.519 strike that hard without being detected. Or they 00:11:23.519 --> 00:11:25.100 couldn't imagine that a nation would be bold 00:11:25.100 --> 00:11:27.059 enough to attempt it, knowing the potential U 00:11:27.059 --> 00:11:30.080 .S. response. In intelligence circles, it's called 00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:32.940 mirror imaging. Meter imaging. That's an interesting 00:11:32.940 --> 00:11:35.539 term. It's when intelligence analysts project 00:11:35.539 --> 00:11:38.320 their own values and logic onto the adversary. 00:11:39.309 --> 00:11:41.309 We wouldn't take a risk that big, so they won't 00:11:41.309 --> 00:11:43.629 take a risk that big. Ah, so you just assume 00:11:43.629 --> 00:11:45.570 everyone plays by your rulebook. Exactly. And 00:11:45.570 --> 00:11:47.509 when you assume the enemy follows your logic, 00:11:47.570 --> 00:11:50.570 you are setting yourself up for a massive surprise. 00:11:50.889 --> 00:11:52.690 And just to show that this isn't just history 00:11:52.690 --> 00:11:54.529 buffering, unfortunately, this term is still 00:11:54.529 --> 00:11:57.370 very much in use today. The sources bring up 00:11:57.370 --> 00:12:00.470 a very recent conflict. The 2023 surprise attack 00:12:00.470 --> 00:12:03.730 by Hamas on Israel. Yes. And just to be clear 00:12:03.730 --> 00:12:06.429 to you listening, we are reporting on this. Strictly 00:12:06.429 --> 00:12:09.490 through the analytical lens of our sources regarding 00:12:09.490 --> 00:12:12.490 intelligence and preparedness. We are not taking 00:12:12.490 --> 00:12:15.070 any political sides here. Absolutely. The phrase 00:12:15.070 --> 00:12:17.809 failure of imagination has been applied by analysts 00:12:17.809 --> 00:12:20.490 to describe Israel's lack of preparedness for 00:12:20.490 --> 00:12:23.269 that specific event. Right. Despite having incredibly 00:12:23.269 --> 00:12:25.929 sophisticated surveillance and intelligence satellites, 00:12:26.309 --> 00:12:30.070 cyber warfare, the Iron Dome, the specific scale 00:12:30.070 --> 00:12:32.009 and method of that attack caught them off guard. 00:12:32.429 --> 00:12:34.769 The analysis suggests that the defense establishment 00:12:34.769 --> 00:12:38.110 was looking for high tech threats, rockets, cyber 00:12:38.110 --> 00:12:41.149 attacks, sophisticated tunnels. They struggled 00:12:41.149 --> 00:12:44.309 to imagine a low tech physical breach on that 00:12:44.309 --> 00:12:47.409 scale. Bulldozers and hang gliders. Precisely. 00:12:47.429 --> 00:12:49.590 If you were looking for advanced weaponry, you 00:12:49.590 --> 00:12:51.830 might not be watching for bulldozers tearing 00:12:51.830 --> 00:12:55.330 down a fence. That specific method wasn't in 00:12:55.330 --> 00:12:57.429 the threat library in a way that triggered a 00:12:57.429 --> 00:12:59.909 defense. It mirrors the other examples perfectly. 00:13:00.149 --> 00:13:02.259 It suggests that even with modern technology, 00:13:02.399 --> 00:13:05.179 if you cannot conceive of the enemy's plan because 00:13:05.179 --> 00:13:07.860 it seems too audacious or too primitive, you 00:13:07.860 --> 00:13:10.480 will be blind to it until it happens. It is unsettling. 00:13:10.559 --> 00:13:13.039 It makes you realize that preparedness is a state 00:13:13.039 --> 00:13:15.899 of mind, not just a checklist of equipment. You 00:13:15.899 --> 00:13:18.340 have to actively fight your brain's desire to 00:13:18.340 --> 00:13:21.019 normalize the world. To help us, and to help 00:13:21.019 --> 00:13:23.340 you listening, fight that normalization, the 00:13:23.340 --> 00:13:25.539 source material actually provides a bit of a 00:13:25.539 --> 00:13:28.549 vocabulary toolkit. There are related concepts 00:13:28.549 --> 00:13:30.669 that help explain why our brains do this. These 00:13:30.669 --> 00:13:32.490 are great mental models to have. Yeah, let's 00:13:32.490 --> 00:13:34.610 run through these. I think having names for these 00:13:34.610 --> 00:13:37.029 mental traps is actually really helpful. The 00:13:37.029 --> 00:13:39.870 first one is hindsight bias. This is the phenomenon 00:13:39.870 --> 00:13:43.009 where everything looks obvious after it has happened. 00:13:43.269 --> 00:13:46.190 When we look back at 9 -11 or the Titanic, we 00:13:46.190 --> 00:13:48.929 say, how could they miss that? It's so clear 00:13:48.929 --> 00:13:51.409 the guys didn't want to learn to land. But we 00:13:51.409 --> 00:13:53.710 are looking at the puzzle with the picture already 00:13:53.710 --> 00:13:56.289 on the box. In the moment, it was just noise. 00:13:56.769 --> 00:14:00.730 Exactly. An analyst in 2001 is seeing thousands 00:14:00.730 --> 00:14:03.409 of reports a day. Picking out the one that matters 00:14:03.409 --> 00:14:06.169 is incredibly difficult. Hindsight bias makes 00:14:06.169 --> 00:14:08.289 us overconfident that we would have seen it coming. 00:14:08.490 --> 00:14:10.570 Then there's the black swan event. I feel like 00:14:10.570 --> 00:14:12.110 this term gets thrown around a lot in business 00:14:12.110 --> 00:14:14.149 meetings. Oh, the printer broke. It's a black 00:14:14.149 --> 00:14:17.230 swan. It is often used incorrectly. A true black 00:14:17.230 --> 00:14:20.279 swan. is a rare, unpredictable event that has 00:14:20.279 --> 00:14:22.299 severe consequences. Where does the name come 00:14:22.299 --> 00:14:24.740 from? It comes from the old European belief that 00:14:24.740 --> 00:14:27.740 all swans were white. For centuries, all swans 00:14:27.740 --> 00:14:29.899 are white wasn't just an opinion. It was considered 00:14:29.899 --> 00:14:32.679 a biological fact. Until they went to Australia. 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:36.940 And saw a black swan. The idea is that if you 00:14:36.940 --> 00:14:40.539 have only ever seen white swans, you cannot imagine 00:14:40.539 --> 00:14:43.659 a black swan exists until you see one. And once 00:14:43.659 --> 00:14:45.700 you see one, your entire understanding of the 00:14:45.700 --> 00:14:48.700 world changes. 9 -11 was a black swan. Exactly. 00:14:48.940 --> 00:14:53.620 And then there's the scariest one. Unknown. Unknowns. 00:14:53.860 --> 00:14:56.740 This is a concept Rumsfeld famously popularized, 00:14:56.759 --> 00:14:59.320 though it exists in decision theory. You have 00:14:59.320 --> 00:15:02.860 known knowns things we know we know. Like gravity. 00:15:03.080 --> 00:15:05.200 Right. Then you have known unknowns things we 00:15:05.200 --> 00:15:07.159 know we don't know, like specific gaps in our 00:15:07.159 --> 00:15:09.960 data. But unknown unknowns are the things we 00:15:09.960 --> 00:15:12.679 don't even know we don't know. That's the failure 00:15:12.679 --> 00:15:14.879 of imagination territory. It's the threat you 00:15:14.879 --> 00:15:16.659 haven't even written down on the list of things 00:15:16.659 --> 00:15:18.940 to check. Precisely. It's the asteroid you didn't 00:15:18.940 --> 00:15:21.460 know was coming. And finally, the argument from 00:15:21.460 --> 00:15:24.019 ignorance. This is a logical fallacy where you 00:15:24.019 --> 00:15:26.159 assume something is false just because it hasn't 00:15:26.159 --> 00:15:28.600 been proven true yet. For example, we haven't 00:15:28.600 --> 00:15:30.519 seen any evidence of a plot to use planes as 00:15:30.519 --> 00:15:32.940 missiles. Therefore, no such plot exists. Which 00:15:32.940 --> 00:15:35.299 is a deadly assumption. Just because you haven't 00:15:35.299 --> 00:15:37.279 seen it doesn't mean it isn't happening. It is 00:15:37.279 --> 00:15:40.149 the comfort of silence. We mistake silence for 00:15:40.149 --> 00:15:43.570 safety. So what does this all mean for us? We've 00:15:43.570 --> 00:15:47.490 looked at 9 -11, space disasters, sinking ships, 00:15:47.610 --> 00:15:50.929 and war. It seems like the takeaway is that being 00:15:50.929 --> 00:15:53.549 smart isn't enough. Intelligence and data are 00:15:53.549 --> 00:15:56.169 necessary, but they were insufficient. You can 00:15:56.169 --> 00:15:58.429 have all the dots, but if you lack the mindset 00:15:58.429 --> 00:16:00.909 to believe the unbelievable, you will never connect 00:16:00.909 --> 00:16:03.309 them. It feels like we need to actively train 00:16:03.309 --> 00:16:06.169 ourselves to be a little bit... I don't want 00:16:06.169 --> 00:16:08.330 to say paranoid, but maybe creative. Critical 00:16:08.330 --> 00:16:10.669 thinking requires questioning your own bedrock 00:16:10.669 --> 00:16:13.210 assumptions. You have to look at a rule like 00:16:13.210 --> 00:16:15.789 hijackers want to live or this ship is unsinkable 00:16:15.789 --> 00:16:19.179 and ask. Under what specific circumstances is 00:16:19.179 --> 00:16:21.000 this statement false? You have to be willing 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:23.659 to sound a little crazy in the meeting. You have 00:16:23.659 --> 00:16:24.940 to be the one to raise your hand and say, hey, 00:16:24.940 --> 00:16:26.500 what if they don't want to negotiate? Exactly. 00:16:26.500 --> 00:16:29.039 The cost of social awkwardness in a meeting is 00:16:29.039 --> 00:16:31.559 far lower than the cost of a failure of imagination 00:16:31.559 --> 00:16:34.360 in the real world. We need to create cultures 00:16:34.360 --> 00:16:38.320 where asking what if isn't punished. That is 00:16:38.320 --> 00:16:40.700 a very powerful way to put it. We must recognize 00:16:40.700 --> 00:16:42.500 that the world is not limited by our ability 00:16:42.500 --> 00:16:46.220 to predict it. Reality has a nasty habit of outpiecing 00:16:46.220 --> 00:16:49.379 our imagination. So here is where we leave you 00:16:49.379 --> 00:16:52.259 today. We've talked about the past, about things 00:16:52.259 --> 00:16:55.139 that are now obvious in hindsight. But if a failure 00:16:55.139 --> 00:16:58.399 of imagination is about missing what seems impossible 00:16:58.399 --> 00:17:02.279 until it happens, what is the impossible scenario 00:17:02.279 --> 00:17:04.819 that we are currently ignoring right now? That's 00:17:04.819 --> 00:17:07.140 the real challenge. What is the black swan swimming 00:17:07.140 --> 00:17:09.960 just out of sight that we refuse to imagine simply 00:17:09.960 --> 00:17:12.819 because it scares us? What happens if the global 00:17:12.819 --> 00:17:15.000 Internet backbone just permanently goes dark 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:18.339 tomorrow or a synthetic virus targets our agriculture 00:17:18.339 --> 00:17:20.519 instead of people? That is the question that 00:17:20.519 --> 00:17:23.000 keeps intelligence analysts and should keep us 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:24.980 awake at night. Thanks for diving deep with us. 00:17:25.059 --> 00:17:26.380 Keep questioning those assumptions.