BUT IT'S SCIENTIFIC!:

The Art of Intelligence (DAVID BROOKS, 4/02/05, NY Times)

The years between 1950 and 1965 were the golden age of American nonfiction. Writers like Jane Jacobs, Louis Hartz, Daniel Bell and David Riesman produced sweeping books on American society and global affairs. They relied on their knowledge of history, literature, philosophy and theology to recognize social patterns and grasp emerging trends.

But even as their books hit the stores, their method was being undermined. A different group rejected this generalist/humanist approach and sought to turn social analysis into a science. For example, the father of the U.S. intelligence community, Sherman Kent, argued that social science and intelligence analysis needed a systematic method, "much like the method of the physical sciences."

Social research - in urban planning, sociology and intelligence analysis - began to mimic the hard sciences.

A new paper by a Yale undergraduate, Sulmaan Wasif Khan, contrasts these two ways of looking at the world. Khan compares the C.I.A.'s 1960's-era National Intelligence Estimates on China, which have been recently declassified, with the work of generalist scholars like Donald Zagoria.

The C.I.A.'s intelligence estimates are what you'd expect: bloodless compilations of data by anonymous technicians. They do not draw patterns based on an understanding of Chinese history or make generalizations about the ethos of the Chinese elite.

Zagoria's approach was quite different. Relying on a deep understanding of Chinese history and society, he made novelistic judgments about the Chinese leadership's hopes and fears. He imagined how we must appear to the Chinese, and how different American moves would be interpreted.

The C.I.A. analysts concluded on Nov. 12, 1970, that there was little prospect of improvement in Sino-American relations. Zagoria said China would be open to a rapprochement.

Zagoria was right. Henry Kissinger was in China within months of the C.I.A. report.

But the scientific method used by the C.I.A., and its technical jargon, can seem to have more authority (used to justify bigger budgets). Academic analyses of society and world affairs are now often quantitative, jargon-laden and hyperspecialized. Historical works have gigantic titles and minuscule subjects - think "Power and Passion: Walloon Shovel Making, 1723-1724."

So we get decades of calamitous intelligence failures.

The CIA has old horse race bettor’s problem. The odds-on favorite to win is most likley to win and least likely to make you money. The way to make money is to bet against the crowd, but only when you are actually smarter than they are. The same is true in the stock market.

Politicians (now there is a group of outside-the-box-thinkers) are blaming the CIA for overestimating Saddam Hussein and for underestimating Osama. The CIA is like the crowd at the track. They pick the favorites. AND NO CONCEIVABLE GOVERNMENTAL BUREAUCRACY WILL EVER BE ANY DIFFERENT.

Neither bureacracy in the form of cabinet level officers, nor gimicks prediction markets, will solve the CIA problem, They can broaden the consensus, but it will still be a consensus. Case in point. The CIA consistently overestimated the economic and military strength of the Soviet Union. The only experts who saw a chink in the Soviet armor were demographers Murray Feshbach and Nicholas Eberstadt.

Cassandra was always right and no one ever believed her. If Cassandra had access to the NYSE, she could have retired rich, but she will never alter the consensus, which she will always oppose. Furthermore, the CIA or any similar bureaucracy will always spit her out because she opposes the consensus ("She is just not a team player”).

There you have it, a problem, not a solution. A contradiction in terms, a logical impossibility.

Posted by Robert Schwartz at April 5, 2005 1:26 PM