The CIA thought the USSR would overtake the US as the world’s largest economy in 1992. The article tries to understand how such a tremendous intelligence failure could take place. Part of the reason was because the wrong estimates were ‘secret knowlege’ and therefore they must be true. It was secret baloney. Errors do not become truth by classifying them.
Secrecy: the American Experience
To be fair there was a lot of unclassified baloney as well. According to the predictions of 1970 Earth Day the world should have ended by now. Unlike classified baloney this sort of error derives its authority from virtue. We believe it not because it is secret but because it sounds high minded. However it can be wrong just the same.
Intelligence failures have not stopped. The world institutions want to forget how ISIS rose because it was yet another case where they didn’t — or wouldn’t — see it coming.
Watch the video. The scale of destruction. The multitudes of victims. It was quite a show and a reminder that “won’t see” has the same effect as “cannot see”.
We all move on because what else can you do but shamble toward our new certainties, secret forecasts, virtuous predictions. But the future is uncertain, full of marvels and terrors unforeseen but nobody wants to tell you that.