Missing the Big Surprises

Marc Ambinder: “When it comes to nation-states, you’d think that the smaller an event is, the more likely the U.S. intelligence community will miss it. If something big is going to happen, lots of moving parts are going to change from a state of rest to a state of action. There will be chatter. There will be activity. The big intelligence dragnet will surely pick up something and send a pulse up the food chain.”

“But historically, the opposite has been true: Huge events, events that should have been predictable (we think), seem to take us by surprise, over and over.”