Hum. Interesting. I have a personal angle on this. Many, many years
ago I was a military intelligence operative working a Middle East
mission. The duty station was in the highlands of northern Ethiopia,
now the new nation of Eritrea. Some of the lads and I, mostly out of
boredom, began digging a little more deeply than we actually were
supposed to in little piles of combined intelligence material that
were available. (None of this is breaking confidence now that James
Bamford has written all his books on codebreakers and NSA, etc.)
Sometimes these little analysis sessions took place over some good
Ethiopian, ah, weed, which, of course, broadened our horizons and
allowed us to _really_ think outside the box <g>. (At one point I
even got in trouble with my NCOIC for spending too much time on
research, and not enough time snatching communications out of the
air.) Eventually, our little band of pseudo-hippies in uniform (none
higher in rank than E-5) reached the conclusion that World War III,
when it came, would not be fought as NATO vs. Warsaw Pact, but rather
would be militant Islam against the West.
Just for fun, we began trying to sell our hypothesis to various NCOs
and officers charged with actually investigating stuff like this.
Does it surprise anyone that our efforts amounted to crashing a
motorcycle against a stone wall at 65 mph? In hindsight, the
brilliance of our analysis and insight was just effing breathtaking,
which is to say, I think we were right. <g> But no one would listen.
No one even _pretended_ to listen. the NATO/Warsaw scenario was writ
large and carved deep, and there was no displacing it.
And if there are enough key words in this to bring it to NSA's
attention: Listen up, Ft. Mead: WE EFFING TOLD YOU SO! THIRTY SEVEN
EFFING YEARS AGO!
Sorry for the OT rant.
--Bob
On Oct 30, 2007, at 5:43 AM, Andrew Fildes wrote:
> Taleb claims that we are simply incapable of predicting anything more
> than minor changes and problems that fit with our view of the
> scenario. Anything outside the box is just not conceived of.
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