Collecting Expert Predictions about Terrorist Attacks
John Mueller has been collecting them:
Some 116 of these Very People were surveyed in 2006 by Foreign Policy magazine in a joint project with the Center for America Progress. The magazine stressed that its survey drew from the “highest echelons of America’s foreign policy establishment” and included the occasional secretary of state and national security adviser, as well as top military commanders, seasoned members of the intelligence community, and academics and journalists of the most “distinguished” nature. Over three-quarters of them had been in government service, 41 percent for over ten years. The musings of this group, it was proposed, could provide “definitive conclusions” about the global war on terror.
The Very People were asked to put forward their considered opinions about how likely it was that “a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11” would again occur in the United States by the end of 2011—that is, by last Saturday.
Fully 70 percent found it likely and another 9 percent proclaimed it to be certain. Only 21 percent, correctly as we now know, considered it unlikely.
I’ve never heard this particular quote before, and find it particularly profound:
In 2004, Russell Seitz plausibly proposed that “9/11 could join the Trojan Horse and Pearl Harbor among stratagems so uniquely surprising that their very success precludes their repetition”….
More predictions here.
Rookie • January 10, 2012 7:55 AM
It’s easy to find fault with people who have the job of trying to predict the future, whether it’s the weather, sports outcomes, or terrorism. Of course, they still need to be held accountable when their predictions drive public policy, but it’s an inexact science by definition.
What I would find more interesting is an analysis on why their predictions where wrong and there were no significant, coordinated terrorist attacks on US soil since 2011. I can’t believe it’s because they don’t want to strike the US. Are the US intelligence agencies doing so well at interdicting the plans and the planners? Have the wars successfully carried the terrorist fight to their front door? Are the terrorist group’s capabilities that degraded?
I have my opinions, but I think it would be valuable to have a definitive answer to that question to help drive policy for the next 10 years.