WAS 9/11 A BLACK SWAN?

Nassim Taleb, a scientist-philosopher-businessman, makes the case that 9/11 was a black swan. A black swan is a unpredictable event that defies prediction. An outlier. I agree. He expands:

A vicious black swan has an additional elusive property: its very unexpectedness helps create the conditions for it to occur. Had a terrorist attack been a conceivable risk on Sept. 10, 2001, it would likely not have happened.

In their analysis of black swans (which by definition will likely never be repeated), human beings engage in what is called hindsight bias. This is the tendency to believe that the event was predictable based on knowledge gained after the event occured. In effect, people unknowingly substitute current knowledge of outcomes into the gaps of knowledge that were present when building earlier expectations of potential events. In regards to 9/11, Nassim points out the following (with additional analysis from this weblogger given the complexity of the topic):

• We will focus on specificity at the expense of the holistic. 9/11 analysis has unearthed specific facts (the Phoenix memo for example) that may have enabled the prevention of the event. These factual revelations have resulted in a useless blame game. The flaw is that specific facts taken out of context prevents sufficient consideration of the larger informational landscape. A better approach is to develop general knowledge that can be used to improve future responses (improvements in intelligence information flow for example).
• We won't compare the negligence in this single case to the normal rate of negligence. It is impossible to guard against everything. We don't have infinite resources. That is as true today as it was before 9/11. A real test of negligence during the pre-9/11 time period is to examine whether resources applied in other areas of security were ineffective too. If they weren't effective, there are major systemic problems that need to be fixed.
• We will assume that is possible to incentivize behavior that prevents future black swans. Prevention of uncertain events is almost impossible to quantify in any meaningful way -- a necessary step for the establishment of incentives. Notice how few people in the government lost their job due to 9/11. This is an example of the failure of incentives to guard against black swans despite assumptions to the contrary.

His recommendation: the government should hire creative thinkers that can imagine the impossible. The reason, unstated, is that these people will challenge existing expectations.

This analysis is smart. Here is my attempt at creative thinking. The attack on 9/11 was an outlier in scale, scope, and breadth in comparison to previous terrorist incidents. In many ways was a continuation of an existing pattern (see the Terrorist Deathmarch). That "Deathmarch" pattern should be considered an essential element of the general knowledge we can use to prevent future attacks. However, despite this knowledge, future attacks will likely be black swans too. The reason is that terrorism is in the process of evolving into a new forms. Strategy is a dynamic process, it evolves (sometimes quickly). This is because the collective minds of both warring parties are constantly innovating to best the other.

Creative thinking on what these new forms of terrorism will likely be is essential. This is the reason I created this weblog (and the reason I am writing my book).

Comments

[P. O'Neil]

As well as hiring "creative thinkers that can imagine the impossible", it is interesting to speculate whether other people's brains have been picked. The IRA, for example, has been pretty successful. They're on a ceasefire at the moment, so as well as visiting the FARC in Columbia, one hopes they are discreetly consulting for more legitimate authorities.

[John Stein]

The most significant problem with this approach (and by saying this I do not mean to imply that I think the approach is a bad idea -- I think it's a great idea) is that the creative thinkers will get treated like the creative wargamers (or other kinds of roleplayers gaming against an established system). The existing apparatus that is being gamed against always has an incentive (emotional as well as career) to avoid being embarrassed, and tends to press for rule changes that work against the creative elements. Inasmuch as we cannot even conduct honest tests of the proposed BMD systems, which have pretty high public visibility, I am not optimistic about our ability to conduct honest adversarial creative thinking of this type, which in order to be successful MUST find the embarrassing vulnerabilities in existing systems, and which by its nature will tend to be opaque to most of the public.

[John Robb]

This is a big problem John. However, I think there is a solution. The German general staff system used "wargamming" extensively to challenge established thinking. General staff officers were then assigned to operational line commanders to ensure the benefits of this thinking made its way into the rest of the military.

This system resulted in many advances in warfare and some excellent strategy. We could potentially build a system like this using the newly proposed national intelligence office. Intelligence officers, if put into "purple suits" (the classic way of describing the independence of a general staff type organization) could evolve to be a "general staff" for the war on terrorism. I would also add to their portfolio (beyond standard analysis): strategy development, psyops, and more.

[John Robb]

An analysis of IRA strategy would be interesting (the FARC is still active so it isn't an option). Although the IRA, in many ways, appears to represent an out-dated model of terrorism that may not apply today.

[P. O'Neil]

I'm not sure I understand why the IRA "appears to represent an out-dated model of terrorism that may not apply today". If they chose to end their ceasefire and resume the campaign, why do you think it wouldn't continue to work? I think one should we wary of thinking that 911 "changed everything". What it did do was confront the US with major terrorism, something that other states have lived with for years.
I suggest that studying how the US responded to terrorism against others would give valuable insights into how the US should now manage its relationships with other countries; it is always useful to put yourself in another's position. A specific question that might useful is "Would we have complained if the British had held people in similar conditions to Guantanamo Bay?

[John Robb]

I am in disagreement with the notion that terrorism is static and unchanging. There have been major innovations that indicate that terrorism is evolving rapidly. The IRA did produce many innovations such as: building a large international community of supporters (passing the hat in Boston bars for example) and international export of terror (taking the terror to the UK). There is a lot that can be learned from the IRA despite innovations that have occured over the last four years.

[Jason Lefkowitz]

John Stein's comment above is a pretty good description of how DoD reacted when confronted with an innovative thinker in the person of retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, who ran the opposing force in the 2002 Millennium Challenge wargame:

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1060102.php

The scenario of the wargame was a conflict involving US forces in a fictional Middle Eastern country, and Van Riper was tasked with defeating the US team. He proceeded to do so quite handily -- including sinking much of the US team's naval component, which would be seen as a major disaster in any real conflict.

The reaction of the DoD staff running the exercise was to countermand Van Riper's orders to his staff, ordering them essentially not to contest the Blue (US) team's operations. Van Riper eventually quit the exercise in disgust.

Afterwards, he had harsh words for Joint Forces Command, which ran the exercise (and which is a "purple-suit" command, like JRobb spoke of):

" 'There’s very little intellectual activity,' Van Riper said about Joint Forces Command. 'What happens is a number of people are put into a room, given some sort of a slogan and told to write to the slogan. That’s not the way to generate new ideas.' "

I've always been amazed that Van Riper's story didn't get picked up more broadly. It's a pretty scathing indictment of the groupthink that's endemic in the defense establishment. And it's not encouraging to those (like me) who agree that honest wargaming could be a key to defeating networked adversaries.

[Geoff]

I think it is interesting to apply boring old organisation theory to the problem of terrorism.

Terrorists: Small, nimble, "organic" organisations. Staffed by motivated, frequently well educated (e.g. doctors feature well!) and often well trained in their job. Capable of innovating at will.

Vs

States: Big, slow, "mechanistic" organisations. Staffed by poorly motivated public servants (gross stereo type!!!!) working 9-5, sometimes well educated, sometimes well trained, very often poorly lead and managed. Highly prone to politically directed myopia.

Net Result: Terrorists will almost always be the innovators or for want of a better term, the market leaders. States will always be the reactors, on the back foot and never able to truely control the situation.

Let's face it - a military intelligence office is never going to be able to second guess a female, PhD qualified, brain surgeon!

Possible Solution: States must apply their strengths (size and resources) to "thinking small". Fight cells with cells - build cells of cross disciplanary (don't laugh at my spelling!) , cross gender and trans national "innovators" to attempt to generate effective forward thinking and quality wargaming. These cells need to have a clear communication path to sensible folks that will listen patiently to "good ideas". Always the difficultly will be in vetting "good ideas".

Comments?

[Nathan]

John,
Have you read the autobiography, Rouge Warrior by Richard Marcinko? I assume you have, but will ask. In the book Marcinko is tapped to create "Red Cell" after he is finished being in command of the counter-terrorist group (which he also created)SEAL Team 6. Red Cell's job was to tesk naval facility defenses against terror/commando operations. They played terror cells and physically roleplayed their plans. Succeded brilliantly. The result was the team was almost disbanned, Marckinko made many enemies of Naval Brass and few of the acctual points in many of the ops were implemented.
Group-think is hard to overcome.

[Michael Turner]

I think you have to consider the possibility that al Qaeda *overestimated* the U.S. readiness for an attack like 9/11. Their idea of likely success might have been something like "one airliner not captured, two others shot down, and one near-miss of a target." The reported exultation in bin Laden's camp about expectations for the attack being exceeded lends some weight to this hypothesis. After all, the above scenario would still have been an attack on the U.S. mainland of unprecedented organization and casualty count. Even if the hijack teams had all been intercepted before they could board planes, it would have been a galvanizing event with some political uses for al Qaeda -- a "black gosling", shall we say?

[Sean Kellythorne]

The organizational problems we are trying to address go back thousands of years to our savannah ancestors. We are still operating under the genetic programming inherent in the basic hunting group. My source is as interesting book called "Have Fun at Work" by Wm. Livingston published circa 1980.This man is an engineer and an apt student of human behavior.

It covers organizational behavior very accurately. The principles he espouses reflect the behavior I've observed for a very long time. Group think and group loyalty even in the face of insane behavior are the required behavior. The innovator, the realist or the out of the box thinker is the more the enemy rather than actual threat.

The examples are all round us: The FEMA collapse, Mark Felps, Enron,and to throw in a historical figure, Jesus.

The innovator to survive has to pretend to be a part of the main organizaton to survive long enough to get his or her project functioning and must be wise enough to work outside the the organization's supervision. ie a "Skunk Works."

If the idea works and makes the organization look good then the innovator is drafted back into the organization as one of the boys and the idea is coopted to enhance the organizations prestige.

In my opinion Livingston's ideas are a remarkable tool for understanding group behavion and more importantly to demonstrate ways that the innovator can function and be valuable to his group despite our genetic proclivities. Also to have Fun at Work.

[RE_Sean]

The web appears to being taking a set towards none group think behavior. Here is the book for sales at AMAZON and the GOOGLE search for it:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0937063053/

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Have+Fun+at+Work%22+Livingston

[jon c robb]

seems to me if black swans cant be predicted then
one must destroy the nest site. is there any other option?

[Shloky]

Proactively attempting to destroy an inherintly unpredictable event's point of origin just sounds like a bad idea to me.

9-11 was not at all a black swan. It was a
a black operation orchestred by George W. Bush the PNAC and the US Intelligence community.

America is facing her darkest hours ahead with the rise of the Nazi shadow government in this country and the creation of the Illuminati's New World Order, one world Fascist government.

9-11 was not at all a black swan. It was a
a black operation orchestred by George W. Bush the PNAC and the US Intelligence community.

America is facing her darkest hours ahead with the rise of the Nazi shadow government in this country and the creation of the Illuminati's New World Order, one world Fascist government.

My blog documenting much of this...
http://www.9-11themotherofallblackoperations.blogspot.com/

[Chris]

How exactly did Tom Clancy conceive of this in whatever book he wrote that has a jet airliner crashing into the State of the Union?

"Had a terrorist attack been a conceivable risk on Sept. 10, 2001, it would likely not have happened."

Was the poor chap's name John O'Neill who died at Ground Zero?

This sentence: "A black swan is a unpredictable event that defies prediction."

OK. Got it.

[rondoda1]

9/11, Y2K Source Code and Black Swan 1987
Go to Window's Task Mananger and go to Performance. You see on the right where it says CPU Usage History? What if you could right a program that looks like that but for every stock on the market and correlate it to the usage that a user might attempt to bring the stock up or down. That user would be able to predict the stock market because he is the one using the computer. If he wants the market to go up he increases usage of the computer, if he wants the stock market to go down, or log into a particular stock for it to go up or down it would at his choosing. Hey if I had the power to predict the market I would think twice in religuishing that power or at least get some of my friends together and collaborate. Lets look at some interesting facts about the stock market.
The stock market, according to Adam Hamilton's theory posted in his editorial at 321gold.com, hit fair value on Friday which is the midpoint of the 17 year secular bear market that began in the year 2000. The bull market which lasted from 1982-2000 includes,as wikipedia states, "a degree of mystery associated with the 1987 crash, and it has been labeled as a black swan event.[4] Important assumptions concerning human rationality, the efficient market hypothesis, and economic equilibrium were brought into question by the event. Debate as to the cause of the crash still continues many years after the event, with no firm conclusions reached. In program trading, computers perform rapid stock executions based on external inputs, such as the price of related securities. Common strategies implemented by program trading involve an attempt to engage in arbitrage and portfolio insurance strategies. The trader Paul Tudor Jones predicted and profited from the crash, attributing it to portfolio insurance derivatives which were "an accident waiting to happen" and that the "crash was something that was imminently forecastable". Once the market started going down, the writers of the derivatives were "forced to sell on every down-tick" so the "selling would actually cascade instead of dry up".[8]Economist Richard Roll believes the international nature of the stock market decline contradicts the argument that program trading was to blame. Program trading strategies were used primarily in the United States, Roll writes. Markets where program trading was not prevalent, such as Australia and Hong Kong, would not have declined as well, if program trading was the cause. These markets might have been reacting to excessive program trading in the United States, but Roll indicates otherwise. You guessed it, in 1987, Roll was elected President of the American Finance Association, the advocate for computer program trading. It gets better...
In the wake of the crash, markets around the world were put on restricted trading primarily because sorting out the orders that had come in was beyond the computer technology of the time. This also gave the Federal Reserve and other central banks time to pump liquidity into the system to prevent a further downdraft. The black swan events are inevitable yet knowing the time in advance of a black swan event such as 1987’s crash that is unexplained to this day, would allow government to add confidence to the people two fold by planning socio and geo political events at the time the black swan was to occur or just before it. The wealthy would benefit from the shut down in the market, sort of like pulling the TV plug out of the wall because it is sparking, because when it was plugged back in the world would be a different place, the black swan 1987 esque event would not be as bad if nothing was done, government’s could advance their interests, and wealthy men could stay wealthy. Everybody wins, except for the people who died on September 11, 2001.
Enter the fix, Y2K...the reason they know when the next black swan stock market event will be and the reason they knew the stock market was going to inevitably have a black swan event on september 11, 2001 is this. ""How the European Union is Tackling the Year 2000 Computer Problem," the EUROPEAN COMMISSION has concluded that Europe's "efforts to bring systems in line with the Year 2000 problem simply aren't sufficient -- particularly in the electricity and road transport sectors and the local and regional government levels." The commission says there is "considerable uncertainty in Europe" due to "a total lack of information available about certain sectors and administrations," and urges that "considerable emphasis be placed on information disclosure" in the coming year. On Dec. 12, the commission met in Vienna with European Union heads of state and government officials to "draw attention to the situation" and ask heads of state to "form a working group of national officials to provide high-level co-ordination" of Y2K efforts. (JG)nhne.com"
The fact that the reaction to the market in 1999 was unbelievable at best, and that nothing happened to world markets leading up to Y2K is astounding considering the nervousness and uncertaintly that led up to it. Now if an official opens his mouth about Iran the stock market plunges. "Gerry Cauley, Y2K Project Manager for the NORTH AMERICAN ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL, (NERC), said reassuringly, "We don't feel there are any types of failures that will jeopardize our ability to provide electricity to our customers." But 500 power distribution companies -- about one sixth of the total -- have not joined in the industry-wide Y2K project NERC began earlier this year. And of those that have signed on, 35 percent still have not even written Y2K project plan. "We also face a huge coordination problem in the distribution area," Cauley admitted.
And now the government's take on the situation. This is from the FEMA FOR KIDS WEBSITE...(i didn't know there was a FEMA for kids website, enjoy this) "Well, here we are several years after Y2K and we now know, that at midnight, January 1, 2000, very little changed. Many computer companies spent the last few years of the 20th century fixing the glitch that panicked the world. An interesting side effect from all of this effort came as a large increase in computer service companies. These companies moved from being small businesses started to repair a potentially frightening computer problem, to the bright technological future we see ahead of us. Some people feel that the integrated technology companies in India started with this one computer problem being addressed. Many feel that the New York Stock Exchange was able to reassemble its systems shortly after the 9/11 disaster because of the related Y2K repair work they had done. January 1, 2000 marked a very important date in the history of the world. It moved into the 21st Century with technology designed to make our lives easier and let us work smarter, all because of Y2K.FEMA FOR KIDS WEBSITE LINK
Look at the underlined sentence. Read it to yourself 3 times, then re-read this article. We just figured out 9/11, you're welcome by the way. This sentence makes no sense at all unless you know...and now you do.

[rondoda1]

Many feel that the New York Stock Exchange was able to reassemble its systems shortly after the 9/11 disaster because of the related Y2K repair work they had done.

Excuse me FEMA, How the Y2K repair work IS RELATED to 9/11 is a question that needs no answer my friends. And will go down in history as your biggest embarrassment.