Intelligence Incompetence and Probabilistic Terrorism

When news of Hamas' 10/7 attacks broke, one of the first things I wrote was straightforward: "a massive intelligence and operational failure the likes of which Israel's security services have never seen in my lifetime." Now, the New York Times has a blockbuster report detailing exactly the magnitude of these failures, including the fact that Israeli intelligence did have knowledge that such an attack was being planned but nonetheless dismissed it as infeasible and unlikely to actually occur.

As always, I bow to nobody in my utter contempt for the Netanyahu administration. And there's little question that no matter what curve you grade them on, this was a spectacular failure of Israel's intelligence and security apparatus. Nonetheless, even in these cases one can't claim too much benefit from hindsight. And the "lessons" that many are implicitly seeking to draw from these reports are ones that I worry are neither reasonable ones nor, ultimately, salutary ones.

Every potential event, until it actually happens, is a probability cluster. It's something that might happen, but also, might not. Proximity and evidence can make the probability more or less certain; and probability will also inevitably be contingent on the presence or absence of certain interventions (whose effects, again, can only be measured probabilistically). Most importantly, a prospective future event that is successfully forestalled by definition never happens, and so we can never know whether its probability cluster would have borne fruit. In these deliberations, we're always weighing the reality that did occur against a hypothesized alternative that never did, and so it's understandable and inevitable that the former is going to carry disproportionate weight.

Consider the oft-fantasized prospect of assassinating Hitler in 1933. Let's stipulate that doing so would have averted the worst horrors of the following decade: no World War II, no gas chambers, no Holocaust. Knowing what we know now, it's essentially indisputable that this would have been a justified and salutary act that could have forestalled incalculable levels of human misery. But the problem is that, if Hitler was assassinated in 1933, they wouldn't -- they could never -- "know what we know now." They would never know the horrors that would have been averted. All they would know is that the new leader of Germany was assassinated, as well as whatever fallout resulted from that act. Without knowledge of what happened in the prime timeline, it'd be virtually impossible to persuade anyone that killing Hitler meant averting the most destructive war and the most brutal genocide of the modern era. All of that would simply be a probability cluster that now wouldn't ever come to fruition. Indeed, imagine, as I think is plausible, that the assassination of Hitler resulted in a series of Kristallnacht style riots against Germany's Jewish population, but that things stopped there -- no World War II, no gas chambers, no Holocaust. The history books in our alternative-universe probably would treat the assassination of Hitler as a disaster for Germany's Jewish community. They'd never know differently.

And the problem is worse than that. I have a relative who periodically sends me emails regarding the latest emerging global leader who's spouted off some antisemitic nonsense. Typically, I do my best to assuage her that this person is fringe, is not actually that influential, and is not in a position to do anything especially dangerous. She then inevitably replies to me by saying "that's what they said about Hitler." And the thing is -- she's right! That is what they said about Hitler! The problem is that that's also what they said about a lot of people who didn't turn out to be Hitler. If we violently removed from power every person who possibly could become Hitler, that's a recipe for geopolitical chaos -- and most of the violence would be directed in cases where it wasn't necessary, where the threat would dissipate on its own. In any event, we'd never know which case was real and which ones were false alarms.

Return to the matter at a hand. Roll back the clock to October 1. Israel has intelligence suggesting Hamas is planning an attack like Al-Aqsa Flood. In our parallel universe, they do take this intelligence seriously. What results? Most likely, some sort of preemptive attack or assault into Gaza meant to degrade Hamas' military capacity so that the attack cannot be launched. Would that have been justified? With the benefit of hindsight, we know that such an operation would have forestalled a much greater evil, both in terms of stopping the Hamas attack but also almost certainly avoiding the blistering Israeli response that's occurred over the past two months. But that's the problem -- if the operation is successful, none of that future would ever come to past, so the only thing people would see would be the preemptive, "unprovoked" Israeli attack into Gaza, justified at most by a hypothetical probability that if they hadn't acted, Hamas would have launched a brutal terrorist attack of its own.

There's no getting around this. Perhaps, you say, Israel could release the intelligence showcasing Hamas' plans. But again, try to rewind your mind to October 1. How likely is it that Israel would be believed? Many would dismiss the intelligence as warmongering propaganda. There's rampant denialism about the atrocities Hamas actually did commit; can you imagine how likely people would be to accept the proposed destruction of a hypothesized Hamas attack that never occurred? And even persons who did not believe that Israel was flatly lying might be quite likely to be dismissive of Hamas' actual capacity to launch the attack -- sure, they might fantasize about it, the argument would go, but it's rank fear-mongering to act as if they could actually pull it off against the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East. I've seen more than a few commentators suggest that it was "racism" on the part of the IDF to assume that Hamas was not operationally capable of successfully conducting Al-Aqsa Flood; but if we had publicly pitched this scenario on October 1, realistically it's Palestine sympathizers who would have been most dismissive of the prospect. The right-wing hawks, whatever their other sins, are not typically known for understating Hamas' threat; it's the left that has long treated Hamas' military capacity as essentially a null entity against the Israeli juggernaut, its rockets as glorified sparklers and its calls for antisemitic annihilation as slightly-overwrought rhetoric from impassioned revolutionaries. The uncertain probability of a future Hamas attack -- one that, in our alternative universe, never would happen (because it was successfully forestalled) -- will have little persuasive power against the reality of the Israeli intervention.

I don't want to suggest, however, that this is merely a PR problem. Again, the troubles run deeper than that. I have to assume that Israeli intelligence gets reports on the daily of incipient Palestinian militant activity, including desires for large-scale, major operations. Most, it's almost certainly the case, fizzle out without ever reaching fruition; just as most potential-Hitlers never actually become Hitler. For that reason, it is both good and necessary that Israel not respond to every one of these incipient threats as if it is the next October 7, for the same reason why it's good and necessary that we not preemptively assassinate every global politician who "could be Hitler". An Israel which is single-mindedly determined to stop the next 10/7 would be beyond aggressive, it would be lashing into the Palestinian territories with overwhelming force every week -- way beyond even the baseline levels of military activity and suppression that occur as part of the occupation, and in most cases it'd be in response to intelligence about activity that would have never led to a 10/7 anyway. Such behavior, in addition to its catastrophic impact on the Palestinian population, would have unpredictable (or perhaps all too predictable) knock on effects on Israeli security -- it's not sustainable, which is a good thing, because if it was sustainable it'd be horrifyingly dystopian.

Again, I'm not trying to downplay the magnitude of the intelligence failure in this case. The inevitable uncertainties and probabilistic reasoning I identify above is an inherent feature of life; one has to make better or worse choices within that uncertainty, and the Israeli security apparatus made a terrible choice. That assessment is not, I think, merely a product of hindsight. But recognizing that Israeli intelligence could have made a better choice knowing what they did at the time doesn't mean the problem of hindsight isn't real. A "good" choice by Israel likely would have been met with harsh condemnation, because (thankfully) people would never know what hell had been averted. And even that stipulation is too generous, since in the real world where we don't know and never will know what events we've averted, we can't actually know if we're killing the metaphorical Hitler or just unnecessarily engaging in superfluous preemptive violence.

The Wages of Crying Wolf

Israel's Supreme Court has overruled the Defense Minister's attempt to block Palestinian participation in a joint memorial day ceremony hosted by the group "Combatants for Peace". This is the third time the Defense Ministry has sought to block Palestinians from entering Israel to participate in this event, each time citing "security" concerns. Each time the Court has overruled the ministry, and each time there have been no security incidents of note. The Court this time was reportedly sharper with its words than normal, calling out the Defense Minister for ignoring the prior rulings.

It seems pretty obvious that the putative "security" concerns are in fact a fig leaf for the actual rationale for trying to bar Palestinian participation in this event, which is political opposition by the Israeli right to anything that suggests parity or unity amongst Israelis and Palestinians. In that register, the attempt to bar Palestinains from participating is just another iteration of the right's attempt to leverage state power to censor messages and causes it disapproves of; yet another marker of the Israeli right's embrace of thuggish illiberalism.

But we should also take note of this case for another reason: It is relatively decisive proof that, at least some of the time, the Israeli government lies about its security needs.

We often hear arguments to the effect of "we can't second-guess Israel's own assessment of its security situation." There are, to be sure, good reasons to show this sort of deference (American courts, too, tend to be deferential to the political branches on questions of military or national security). Yet this deference is dependent on good faith -- that the invocation of "security" is a genuine one, not just political cover.

The Combatants for Peace event is a crystal-clear example that this trust cannot be taken for granted. It's not just that the "security" invocation always rang suspect on its face, given the raging right-wing attacks on the event which made no bones about their political character. But also, the event keeps happening notwithstanding the alleged "security threat" it poses, and the threat keeps on not panning out. We are seeing, in real-time, the falsification of the claim. And yet the government keeps on making these frivolous and disproven cries of "security"!

Such wolf-crying can and should diminish the government's credibility when it makes similar cries in other contexts. That's unfortunate, because there are absolutely are still wolves about. But it nonetheless is the case that the Combatants for Peace case is absolutely a measure of proof that Israeli assertions of security necessity cannot always be taken a face-value. They can and sometimes must be second-guessed.

Bill To Prevent Election Tampering Stalls Under White House Pressure

A bipartisan bill (sponsors include hard-right Oklahoma Senator James Lankford as well as liberal stalwarts Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar) to strengthen American election security has stalled as Republican committee chair Roy Blunt of Missouri apparently caved to White House pressure to block the bill.

The "dilemma" Republicans are facing right now, if you can call it that, is that they seem to believe that the people most likely to try and tamper with our elections are going to do it for their benefit. So the question is whether they'll cede that improper "advantage" for no tangible gain other than a piddling "preserving the integrity of the democratic system".

It's party versus country, yet again. And so far, for this GOP Congress, country has never fared well in that engagement.

You've Got a Friend in Me

Michael Flynn, of late the National Security Advisor to President Trump, has resigned. Many are cheering, but Flynn still has some backers outraged that Trump cut Flynn loose so quickly -- including the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

To be sure, it's the chair of the Russian Foreign Affairs Committee. But it's still nice to see that Flynn still has some friends in high places.

Followers

One of the nice things about being a politics junkie in DC is that everyone else is a politics junkie too. Even the muggers:

An attempted mugging on Capitol Hill was thwarted Monday night by a quick-thinking victim — one who apparently keeps an eye on national security news.

The victim was walking home to her Capitol Hill townhouse when she was violently confronted by a man in the dark, grassy area between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Heritage Foundation.

The assailant grabbed the victim's arm and demanded her wallet and phone. "I said the first thing I could think of," the victim, who asked to remain nameless, told the Washington Examiner.

The victim, who weighs a petite 95 pounds, explained to the assailant she was an intern with the National Security Agency. As an intern, she said, she had no cash to fork over (she is actually a staffer at a D.C. nonprofit, and in fact did have cash on her).

[...]

The victim elaborated further, warning the would-be mugger that the phone she held in her hand — complete with a pink-and-blue Lilly Pulitzer case — would be tracked by the NSA if she were to turn it over.

"I told him that the NSA could track the phone within minutes, and it could cause possible problems for him," the victim recounted.

The NSA has been in the spotlight this year due to controversial and far-reaching intelligence-gathering programs it had kept hidden from public knowledge.

Perhaps wary of just how far the NSA would go to keep its assets safe, the assailant just "looked at me and ran away," the victim said.

Well played. And good on the criminal too, for staying abreast of the news.

The Truman Show

Tablet Magazine has a neat profile up on Rachel Kleinfeld, founder of the Truman Project. The Truman Project is a left-of-center national security think tank meant to provide a counterbalance to conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, and it has quickly established itself as a hot-spot for progressive national security thinkers.

Interestingly, Kleinfeld, an Alaska native, is the daughter of Andrew Kleinfeld, a federal court judge on the 9th Circuit. I know of Judge Kleinfeld, because he is a favorite amongst Federalist Society folk, and is a popular clerkship destination for truly devoted young conservative lawyers willing to spend a year in Fairbanks, Alaska. Judge Kleinfeld is conservative with a libertarian streak, albeit (like most Republican Jews) one whose familial roots are deeply Democratic. And now his daughter has returned to those roots as a doyen of the left's national security establishment. In a sense, it is reminiscent of Catherine MacKinnon, whose father was also a prominent conservative appeals court judge. And (heart-warmingly), in both cases from what I've heard father is quite proud and supportive of daughter, in spite of (presumed) political differences.

Finally, I would be remiss in linking to this profile without offering one of the funniest lines in it, provided by a leftist Truman Project skeptic critiquing their alleged MO: "It's a very testosterone-heavy approach, very, 'Fuck you, I'm a retired general and I have killed people with my bare hands and I will tell you that torture is bad.'" Partial to that type of epistemic credibility myself, I will nonetheless concede it made me smile.

Grumpasaurus Roundup

I was feeling grumpy all day today, but I started to snap out of it tonight.

* * *

A Wisconsin prosecutor is threatening legal actions against teachers who follow a recently passed state law providing for comprehensive sex education. "Safe sex" apparently constitutes "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" (Via).

A Qatari diplomat was brought into custody after an incident on an airplane. Early reports indicated he might have tried to set off a shoe bomb, but now it sounds as if the situation was sparked by a misunderstanding about smoking on airplanes. Massive international crisis averted, minor diplomatic incident likely still ahead.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R) has apologized for leaving out mention of slavery from his Confederate History Month proclamation, and added a paragraph stating "that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights."

However, at least one prominent Black Virginia Democrat is not accepting the apology, citing a pattern of similar behavior from Governor McDonnell. On the other side, Ta-Nehisi Coates has a characteristically gracious, and insightful, post.

Assholes abound in the case of the small Southern town which went to extreme lengths to avoid having a lesbian student sully their prom (faux-lesbianism for the titillation of male students was, if prom photos are to believed, quite permitted).

The free speech analysis may be on target, but I think it's beyond clear that having inflammatory anti-Muslim messages posted on American military bases is precisely the sort of thing that poses a genuine threat to the security and well-being of the nation.

The TSA Game

Eric Posner explains TSA strategy, once we rule out impossible extremes:

Once you eliminate the implausible corner solutions—the TSA undertakes body cavity searches of every passenger, or security screenings are abolished—a number of consequences follow.

1. The TSA must randomize (play a “mixed strategy,” in game-theoretic parlance). Otherwise, terrorists can predict some of its precautions and evade them. The same principle explains why police vary patrol routes and road blocks. A NYT article today makes clear that the TSA is self-consciously randomizing to keep terrorists off guard.

2. At the social optimum, the number of successful terrorist attacks will be greater than zero. It might be argued that we have had too few successful terrorist attacks over the last few years rather than too many. The question is whether the implicit statistical valuation of life in TSA programs is too high. I suspect that the answer is yes, as is generally the case with airline safety.

3. Profiling is an effective strategy when, as here, terrorists come from a small group of (relatively) easily identifiable people. One suspects that this explains Israel’s success. But profiling places a large portion of the cost of deterrence on a small group, which makes some people morally uneasy.

4. Once the implausible corner-solutions are ruled out, any security policy or threshold will seem arbitrary because you have to draw the line somewhere, which means that it will be easy to point to some permitted activity that is only slightly different from what is forbidden (for example, carrying on 100 ml of liquid rather than 101 ml).

5. As for the “security theater” claim–

a. If ordinary people are fooled into thinking that the TSA is doing more than it is really doing, then at least some potential terrorists will be fooled as well, and so will be deterred from engaging in airplane-terrorism.

b. Ordinary people will also fly more often, which means that one of the goals of terrorists—to terrorize people so that they will pressure their government to make concessions to terrorists—will have failed.

How Chicago was that post? But he's right, though I'll note a tension between numbers 1 and 3. A profiling regime is by definition not random, so terrorists can construct an "anti-profile" to beat the system -- the so-called "carnival booth" (because it encourages terrorists to "step right up and see if they're a winner").

I also think that 5(a) is maybe overstated, as the point is that the facial security measures might fool us average rubes, but not anybody actually intent on breaching airport security. I suppose there might be some aspiring terrorist who is awestruck by the festival of it all, but I have to think that anybody who is intent on breaching TSA security won't give up that easily.

On the other hand, while I don't accept 2 whole-heartedly, I do think it is important to note that pretty much any feasible screening system we come up with will not be fail-proof. Terrorists might get through even if we do everything right. It's really annoying when people act as if pretty well random and unpredictable acts are examples of outrageous bureaucratic incompetence. The TSA isn't the Green Lantern -- it doesn't protect us just by willing it hard enough.

...Secrets Are For Everyone

The state secrets doctrine was no fun when the Bush administration used it to cover up American complicity in torture, and it remains equally vile when it's the Obama administration doing the same thing. I'm really ticked off about this. Even though the crimes Obama's administration is helping cover up through the invocation of this "principle" were perpetuated by the Bush administration, I agree with David Luban and Andrew Sullivan: by helping bury these crimes against humanity, you become complicit in them.

Yay Competence!

Phone companies drop FBI wiretaps due to unpaid bills. That's our national security apparatus at work!

And let's also hear it for the phone companies: they'll work with the federal government on spying programs of dubious legality without batting an eyelash, but deprive them of their thirty pieces of silver, and they're out the door faster than you can say "retroactive immunity."

Note: I have no idea whether the wiretaps at issue here overlap with the one's which are the subject of controversy. It's entirely possible all the wiretaps in question are perfectly warranted and legal.

Safety and Symbolism

I liked this NYT editorial (H/T) on the former principal, Debbie Almontaser, of a proposed Arabic immersion school in New York City, who was hounded out of her job by right-wing extremists lobbing disingenuous attacks. Though there were a lot of scurrilous charges hurled about ("She goes by Debbie, but her given name is Dhabah! It's a terrorist alias!"), the one that eventually did her in was a seemingly insufficient condemnation of a t-shirt saying "intifada NYC." Almontaser committed the apparently fatal mistake of trying to explain the literal meaning of the word "intifada", and how it's entirely possible that--being worn by an Arab-American woman, it might have nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (indeed, apparently, "intifada" is more often a reference to an uprising by the Arab underclass against other Arabs who are oppressing them). She later clarified that she was in no way countenancing Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, but too late--the sharks smelled blood.

Unsurprisingly, it's PG who has the best response to the controversy, drawing an analogy to a Hindu wedding invitation that has a swastika on it:

At least according to Wikipedia, "intifada" seems to be the word Arabs use to describe rebellion, and commonly it's a rebellion against fellow Muslims, as in Bahrain, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Lebanon and Morocco. That these rebellions are less well known to Elder than Palestinians' strikes against Israelis does not mean that "intifada" means the same thing to ethnically Arab-American girls -- the population to which the T-shirt was targeted -- that it does to Elder or the majority of non-Arab Americans.

Whether it is wise to wear a shirt that communicates something wildly different and potentially offensive to the viewer than to the wearer is another question. I probably wouldn't wear a Tshirt with the Hindu swastika on it in my hometown, because the vast majority of people there would misinterpret as a Nazi symbol. However, most Hindu wedding invitations do bear the symbol, and one assumes that anyone close enough to get an invite, who doesn't already know this much about Hinduism, will nonetheless assume a lack of knowledge on her own part rather than Nazi tendencies on the couple's.

Certainly if someone tried to say that my defense of the symbol made me "a poor choice as a role model for Hindu Americans," I would dispute that claim. And if it were made a ground to oust me from an educational position, I'd get really pissed. I have a responsibility to explain my culture to others when it could be misunderstood, but they also have a responsibility not to be rush-to-judgement jerks.

I probably would be a bit startled if I received a wedding invitation with a swastika on it, but I hope I'd keep my wits about me enough to remember that the meaning I associate with the swastika is not the situation it's being used in. This sort of cultural agility is crucial if we're to live in a pluralistic, diverse world where not everything means the same thing in every context.

Speaking more broadly, I support the creation of such a school, for the simple reason that America needs more people who are deeply familiar with Arab culture and language. It's a diplomatic necessity, and it's national security necessity. I wish this was a moot point, but the attack on Almontaser was merely the front-line of a more concerted effort to get the school shut down entirely. Unsurprisingly, it's much the same people who are willing to discharge military translators crucial to our national interest because they're homophobic that are trying to sabotage the creation of this school because their xenophobic. In either case, their prejudices are making America less safe, and I'm really tired of having to deal with it (and apoplectic that I then have to listen to babbling about they're the ones who are taking American security seriously).