Intelligence
The World Is More Uncertain Than You Think: Assessing and Combating Overconfidence Among 2,000 National Security Officials
This article analyzes more than 60,000 assessments of uncertainty made by national security officials from more than forty NATO allies and partners. The findings show that national security officials are overwhelmingly overconfident and that their judgments…
Preparing the Cyber Battlefield: Assessing a Novel Escalation Risk in a Sino-American Crisis
Do cyber capabilities create novel risks of a future political crisis between the United States and China escalating into a conflict? This article outlines one potential pathway for interstate crises to escalate: the use of force in response to adversary…
Beacon and Warning: Sherman Kent, Scientific Hubris, and the CIA’s Office of National Estimates
Sherman Kent, the Yale historian who directed the Office of National Estimates from 1952 to 1967, is a legend at the CIA, revered for professionalizing U.S. intelligence analysis. His analytic doctrine, steeped as it was in a commitment to reason and method,…