Re your picture of Colin Powell, I imagine it is to refresh our memories about the claims at the time that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, supposedly debunked later. It is a curious debunking in my mind. My next door neighbor was a chemical warfare specialist Colonel in the US Army and was sent to Iraq with a crew of his people to secure such weapons, and he assured my on his return they were indeed found. Iraq could not manufacture the extremely pure weapon precursor chemicals that are required to make poison gas weapons that will remain effective for months or years before hand. Instead they used what they could get or make. These were less pure precursors which, to be effective, that is kill lots of people, had to be mixed together to form the gas for no more than a couple of hours before use. To handle this issue, the Iraq army assembled at many small locations uncharged cannon shells, the necessary mixing and charging machinery to charge the shells and quantities of the precursors. His job was to locate and clean up these facilities. None of this information is classified yet the common thinking is that Iraq had none of the weapons Mr. Powell talked about. I suspect the Democrats pushed for such a viewpoint and the compliant press made it so. Iraq certainly did have chemical weapons of mass destruction, although not in the form that a more technologically advanced country would have.
I voted for Trump 2025. Do I trust that he will not twist facts to make himself look good - hell no. So far I'm ok with the job he and his cabinet are doing after the last effort of the "autopen" era. Who exactly, would you like to see as a leader of our country?
A wonderful example of the reason that intelligence may not be truthful or objective lies in the Penn State “independent investigation” of Michael Mann, as was exposed in the recent Mann v Steyn trial. Intelligence, or in this case, an intended unbiased investigation, serves a greater purpose within an organization, be it a university or government. Much as government supported science inevitably serves the funder’s purpose. Here the independent team of university administrators was set to censure Mann, but the University president intervened to rewrite the report and its conclusion and changed the report to exonerate Mann. We could add the New York Times’ narrative based reporting of climate and other woke issues and Donald Trump as yet another example. Alas, objectivity is hard to find but we must keep looking for it, right Roger?
In the case of Kennedy telling lies I think the end might justify the means. Fact is we in the USA are one unhealthy bunch that over uses our heath care system. Our food supply is a mess and big pharma has had their way with the FDA. One could also argue that that too much regulation stymies growth. How about open borders contributed to our deficit. How do you fix the mess where in? Perhaps an effective Congress might help Trump achieve his objectives. Not sure the CIA has been effective for years based on things I’ve read.
Thanks for an informative, yet hugely depressing article. Politicization of intelligence information has always taken place, regardless of political viewpoint .
What makes the article so depressing, in the current political context is that it has been taken to the extreme.
Was it politicization of intelligence that made the president and his VC verbally abuse and humiliate the Ukrainian president in the White House? How can a simple fact, known by any 12 year old kid, be turned 180 degrees around, claiming that Ukraine attacked Russia?
During the visit of the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, the president presented him with printouts apparently showing proof of killing and attacking white South African farmers, thus justifying immigration to the U.S. . The printouts did, however, come from DRC (The Democratic Republic of Congo).
The tariff spectacle, where the president presented a list of tariff percentages, based on a hitherto unknown method of calculation, in order to justify the tariff rates imposed on various countries "ripping off the U.S.", while failing to include the huge revenues due to total dominance of U.S. technical and social media (it would clearly destroy the skewed narrative he presented). I see a lot of similarities between the Russian and American oligarchs, being protected by the leadership.
This is just a small sample of the extreme politicization of intelligence (or, should I say, lack of intelligence)
It goes much further than simple politicization, decision making due to the inability to predict the future. That is why it is so depressing.
Of course, being a non-resident alien, I probably have, by virtue of fact that I post this message, forfeited myself the possibility of visiting the U.S., as I will be denied access due to my political views. Most people have no sense of what is really going on. Orwell's 1984 is creeping upon us. Slowly and surely.
My position is simply this. At a point or short period of time there is only one reality. There is no such thing as a Democratic reality and a Republican reality, or a left vs. right reality, or my tribe's reality vs. the other tribe(s) reality.
"In some cases they can wait for more information, but in others, waiting is itself a decision with irreversible consequences."
THIS is the ubiquitous main problem. Critics of other people's decisions post decisions are generally useless twaddle that are better ignored.
Wisdom, real wisdom, generally from a broad inventory of experience, supports real objectivity that increased the odds of getting it right. However, sometimes the risk of inaction is so profound, that a correct path is to decide quickly and be ready to pivot if proven wrong.
But myopic experts are never good sources to base any decision with broad implications. This is especially true considering incentives and conflicts of interests.
Among the best things I did in government (Trump 1.0) was to have a strong staff that knew more than I did, and then to have a “skunk works” that would look for off-the-radar problems. Listen to smarter people and look for blind spots, then decide.
The problem with relying on facts is that sometimes they aren't useful for predicting the future. What matters more for predicting the future is understanding what world leaders are thinking. A former CIA director memorably said 'You can't take a picture of an idea.'
Last evening, we watched the final episode of Wolf Hall, the demise of Cromwell. The politicization of intelligence, sometimes pathologically, has always been true. It surely pre-dates Henry VIII. We are humans, after all.
PS The Daniel Sarewitz paper that you cite focuses on climate sensitivity using a chapter by Rayner in a 2000 book edited not only but Sarewitz but yourself, Roger. Sarewitz mentions the oft cited (gazillion times) original estimate by Arrhenius, the magical mystical 5.5 deg. However, he does not mention the seldom, sadly, revised estimate by Arrhenius of 2.1 deg. I rest my case.
Excellent article. It seems that people always want to get to “the answer” when in fact that may not be possible. People are uncomfortable with uncertainty. But that is the world we live in.
By the way, it will be interesting to see the post mortems on the Biden border policy and their climate change policies. As harsh as people are on the war in Iraq and the rise of ISIS, I hope people are equally as harsh on these.
Do I detect bias in your selection of examples of intelligence failures? I think so.
In the Obama administration, these are failures I remember but you did not mention even one of them.
1. The intelligence community was "caught flatfooted" by the rise of ISIS.
2. They told Obama that Russia would not invade Ukraine, the very next day he did.
3. The CIA predicted the fall of Assad, didn't happen then.
4. They failed to predict China's military growth.
5. The CIA told Hillary Clinton that the Islamists were a threat to our people in Libya, she ignored them. This is mostly on her and not an intelligence failure.
My takeaway? The Intelligence community is too big to be effective, once an organization gets that big, failures are inevitable. It can only be fixed by getting rid of the bloat. It isn't Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden, or Trump, its the intelligence services themselves.
How can we spend that much money (what $100 billion/year) and get such poor results? It seems to me that the US IC and the politicians that believe them have many more expensive (in blood and money) failures than successes. I’d like to see a three column table listing IC successes, failures and outright lying.
One could (and some do) that Trump's leadership is strong. What we need is strong and truthful leadership. There are other words/phrases that could replace "truthful" ... such as "honest", "factually-based", etc. None is quite perfect.
• When I was in Military Intelligence in Viet Nam we saw this in spades. As analysts (or, in my case, as an interrogator), we would document our findings, along with uncertainties (The Army has a useful system that rates both the "facts" and the sources, including uncertainty.). These would then be reported – spun – to the higher-ups, generally to fit whatever the "reporter" thought was the official narrative.
• In terms of taking action, in general this is driven by capability and the decision-makers' Mental Model of the situation. What happened in Nam, and continues to happen all too often, is that the decision-makers' mental models were seldom updated as they clashed with reality. A relevant current example is those who continue to see Net Zero as a winning electoral issue even though it's clear that voters' real concerns are energy availability, reliability and cost.
Re your picture of Colin Powell, I imagine it is to refresh our memories about the claims at the time that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, supposedly debunked later. It is a curious debunking in my mind. My next door neighbor was a chemical warfare specialist Colonel in the US Army and was sent to Iraq with a crew of his people to secure such weapons, and he assured my on his return they were indeed found. Iraq could not manufacture the extremely pure weapon precursor chemicals that are required to make poison gas weapons that will remain effective for months or years before hand. Instead they used what they could get or make. These were less pure precursors which, to be effective, that is kill lots of people, had to be mixed together to form the gas for no more than a couple of hours before use. To handle this issue, the Iraq army assembled at many small locations uncharged cannon shells, the necessary mixing and charging machinery to charge the shells and quantities of the precursors. His job was to locate and clean up these facilities. None of this information is classified yet the common thinking is that Iraq had none of the weapons Mr. Powell talked about. I suspect the Democrats pushed for such a viewpoint and the compliant press made it so. Iraq certainly did have chemical weapons of mass destruction, although not in the form that a more technologically advanced country would have.
I voted for Trump 2025. Do I trust that he will not twist facts to make himself look good - hell no. So far I'm ok with the job he and his cabinet are doing after the last effort of the "autopen" era. Who exactly, would you like to see as a leader of our country?
A wonderful example of the reason that intelligence may not be truthful or objective lies in the Penn State “independent investigation” of Michael Mann, as was exposed in the recent Mann v Steyn trial. Intelligence, or in this case, an intended unbiased investigation, serves a greater purpose within an organization, be it a university or government. Much as government supported science inevitably serves the funder’s purpose. Here the independent team of university administrators was set to censure Mann, but the University president intervened to rewrite the report and its conclusion and changed the report to exonerate Mann. We could add the New York Times’ narrative based reporting of climate and other woke issues and Donald Trump as yet another example. Alas, objectivity is hard to find but we must keep looking for it, right Roger?
In the case of Kennedy telling lies I think the end might justify the means. Fact is we in the USA are one unhealthy bunch that over uses our heath care system. Our food supply is a mess and big pharma has had their way with the FDA. One could also argue that that too much regulation stymies growth. How about open borders contributed to our deficit. How do you fix the mess where in? Perhaps an effective Congress might help Trump achieve his objectives. Not sure the CIA has been effective for years based on things I’ve read.
Thanks for an informative, yet hugely depressing article. Politicization of intelligence information has always taken place, regardless of political viewpoint .
What makes the article so depressing, in the current political context is that it has been taken to the extreme.
Was it politicization of intelligence that made the president and his VC verbally abuse and humiliate the Ukrainian president in the White House? How can a simple fact, known by any 12 year old kid, be turned 180 degrees around, claiming that Ukraine attacked Russia?
During the visit of the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, the president presented him with printouts apparently showing proof of killing and attacking white South African farmers, thus justifying immigration to the U.S. . The printouts did, however, come from DRC (The Democratic Republic of Congo).
The tariff spectacle, where the president presented a list of tariff percentages, based on a hitherto unknown method of calculation, in order to justify the tariff rates imposed on various countries "ripping off the U.S.", while failing to include the huge revenues due to total dominance of U.S. technical and social media (it would clearly destroy the skewed narrative he presented). I see a lot of similarities between the Russian and American oligarchs, being protected by the leadership.
This is just a small sample of the extreme politicization of intelligence (or, should I say, lack of intelligence)
It goes much further than simple politicization, decision making due to the inability to predict the future. That is why it is so depressing.
Of course, being a non-resident alien, I probably have, by virtue of fact that I post this message, forfeited myself the possibility of visiting the U.S., as I will be denied access due to my political views. Most people have no sense of what is really going on. Orwell's 1984 is creeping upon us. Slowly and surely.
My position is simply this. At a point or short period of time there is only one reality. There is no such thing as a Democratic reality and a Republican reality, or a left vs. right reality, or my tribe's reality vs. the other tribe(s) reality.
"In some cases they can wait for more information, but in others, waiting is itself a decision with irreversible consequences."
THIS is the ubiquitous main problem. Critics of other people's decisions post decisions are generally useless twaddle that are better ignored.
Wisdom, real wisdom, generally from a broad inventory of experience, supports real objectivity that increased the odds of getting it right. However, sometimes the risk of inaction is so profound, that a correct path is to decide quickly and be ready to pivot if proven wrong.
But myopic experts are never good sources to base any decision with broad implications. This is especially true considering incentives and conflicts of interests.
Among the best things I did in government (Trump 1.0) was to have a strong staff that knew more than I did, and then to have a “skunk works” that would look for off-the-radar problems. Listen to smarter people and look for blind spots, then decide.
The problem with relying on facts is that sometimes they aren't useful for predicting the future. What matters more for predicting the future is understanding what world leaders are thinking. A former CIA director memorably said 'You can't take a picture of an idea.'
Facts aren’t the problem. Predicting the future is.
Last evening, we watched the final episode of Wolf Hall, the demise of Cromwell. The politicization of intelligence, sometimes pathologically, has always been true. It surely pre-dates Henry VIII. We are humans, after all.
PS The Daniel Sarewitz paper that you cite focuses on climate sensitivity using a chapter by Rayner in a 2000 book edited not only but Sarewitz but yourself, Roger. Sarewitz mentions the oft cited (gazillion times) original estimate by Arrhenius, the magical mystical 5.5 deg. However, he does not mention the seldom, sadly, revised estimate by Arrhenius of 2.1 deg. I rest my case.
Excellent article. It seems that people always want to get to “the answer” when in fact that may not be possible. People are uncomfortable with uncertainty. But that is the world we live in.
By the way, it will be interesting to see the post mortems on the Biden border policy and their climate change policies. As harsh as people are on the war in Iraq and the rise of ISIS, I hope people are equally as harsh on these.
Roger,
Do I detect bias in your selection of examples of intelligence failures? I think so.
In the Obama administration, these are failures I remember but you did not mention even one of them.
1. The intelligence community was "caught flatfooted" by the rise of ISIS.
2. They told Obama that Russia would not invade Ukraine, the very next day he did.
3. The CIA predicted the fall of Assad, didn't happen then.
4. They failed to predict China's military growth.
5. The CIA told Hillary Clinton that the Islamists were a threat to our people in Libya, she ignored them. This is mostly on her and not an intelligence failure.
My takeaway? The Intelligence community is too big to be effective, once an organization gets that big, failures are inevitable. It can only be fixed by getting rid of the bloat. It isn't Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden, or Trump, its the intelligence services themselves.
Available evidence suggests that intelligence spending has been pretty constant at ~11% of national defence for the past few decades:
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R44381
How can we spend that much money (what $100 billion/year) and get such poor results? It seems to me that the US IC and the politicians that believe them have many more expensive (in blood and money) failures than successes. I’d like to see a three column table listing IC successes, failures and outright lying.
Oops ... . "One could say (and some do) ...".
One could (and some do) that Trump's leadership is strong. What we need is strong and truthful leadership. There are other words/phrases that could replace "truthful" ... such as "honest", "factually-based", etc. None is quite perfect.
Two comments:
• When I was in Military Intelligence in Viet Nam we saw this in spades. As analysts (or, in my case, as an interrogator), we would document our findings, along with uncertainties (The Army has a useful system that rates both the "facts" and the sources, including uncertainty.). These would then be reported – spun – to the higher-ups, generally to fit whatever the "reporter" thought was the official narrative.
• In terms of taking action, in general this is driven by capability and the decision-makers' Mental Model of the situation. What happened in Nam, and continues to happen all too often, is that the decision-makers' mental models were seldom updated as they clashed with reality. A relevant current example is those who continue to see Net Zero as a winning electoral issue even though it's clear that voters' real concerns are energy availability, reliability and cost.