This is a very useful article if you want to understand the technical language used by the UK and US intelligence communities, which is often parroted by the media reporting on topics using sources that leak intelligence from those communities. This language has been standardized within their respective communities so that all parties involved (from the President to the lowliest analyst) should be on the same page with respect to the intelligence.
According to the article there are two measures:
- a probabilistic measurement and associated language, which speaks to the assessed likelihood of an event occurring
- a confidence measurement and associated language, which speaks to the assessed quality of the source(s) of the intelligence
I read a book that touched on this called "super forecasters". Apparently there was a push to reduce ambiguity in briefings. I can't remember if it was Obama or a different president (may have been as far back as Carter), but they were told something by an intelligence advisor and they asked for what is basically a confidence interval. The advisor went back and found out what they were conveying as a sure thing was basically like 50:50 chance. At some point they then decided to come up with a system to make this clearer.
The Economist f'ed up completely on the Nord Stream explosion. They reported as though there was no doubt Russia did it, and told a story of Russia wanting to more permanently cut off Russian gas to Europe, which didn't make sense. They wrote off doubters as unpatriotic.
The vast majority of media did, and citizens as well. Here in Germany all mainstream media suggested Russia as the likely culprit. Which then of course made it into the canon as "Russia did it", when it was always one of the lowest-probability scenarios to begin with. Russia had no motive outside of a false-flag with extremely low probability of successfully blaming the US or Ukraine. Meanwhile, the US actually had a motive, and said they would do it. Ukraine had a motive, the ability and now some ICs are pointing the finger at them.
Still our media here suggests a Russian false flag as equally likely, and people are actually eating it up.
So if the "intelligence community" says something without these modifiers attached, does that mean it's probably bullshit?
As an example, I looked up Colin Powell's UN speech about WMDs in Iraq. There's nothing about something being almost certain or having a high confidence. He stated it was a fact based on solid intelligence.
Very helpful! I had previously mis-interpreted the “intelligence community”’s assessment of “high probability / low confidence” as meaning a 92.3% likelihood, whereas it actually means 75.8%.
If only I had been in possession of this arcane knowledge back when they were telling us about babies in incubators, WMDs, the domino theory, or any number of other hilariously inaccurate and/or dishonest narratives, I would have been much better informed.
Of course, the issue is that the intelligence community often assesses things as high probability when it later turns out 100% of that assessment was based on faulty intelligence planted by an adversary (counterintelligence), or informants lied because they would be paid more for better-sounding intel, or a bunch of intelligence was just completely mis-interpreted by analysts, or the intelligence agency themselves just lied because it was politically useful and they haven’t faced real consequences even for directly lying to Congress…
The point of my comment is that “intelligence community” is a euphemism for cabals of spooks - professional backstabbing liars. They are completely unreliable narrators and their word is not to be trusted. The quality of their supposed sources and supposed analyses is irrelevant.
I think the main point here is that while faulty intel is always a risk, the biggest problem is willful misinterpretation. For how things played out in Vietnam, Frank Snepp's book seems to be the most well known, perhaps because it came out early. A more forceful account and criticism by a CIA field analyst is Sam Adam's War of Numbers (1995). (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2471957.War_Of_Numbers)
This article is missing the point. On many of these issues it isn't a question of likelihood.
Eg, the COVID lab leak theory - which will likely never be settled in the positive or negative. Doesn't matter what the percent chance is. If there is a 10% chance it was a lab leak, that is still a massive concern. We can't afford to unleash COVID every so often; there are a lot of labs and accidents happen regularly.
And even if the Havana syndrome thing is real by some weird chance; there is nothing there. It is largely a non-issue that doesn't matter. Lots of weird things happen in international politics and it isn't a top issue even assuming one of the conspiracy theories is true. It is just a cute story that people read for fun.
>> If there is a 10% chance it was a lab leak, that is still a massive concern. We can't afford to unleash COVID every so often
I try to make that point often. There were people seeking funding to do "research" that would create a virus almost exactly like Covid19. We don't need to prove that they actually did it and it leaked. They need to open their eyes and stop making bad things that can ruin the world if their precautions fail. Because sometimes they do fail.
A virus research goes beyond lives saved or lost. COVID was a titanic shift in culture, economies, and foreign relations.
I’d probably take the position that lab leaks are some fraction as probable as novel animal to human transmission. However, virus mutation pressure in labs can take place significantly faster and in a preferred direction.
Labs that make medical breakthroughs through viral research reap the rewards. Shouldn’t they also bear the responsibility of making the world while when there are leaks?
Are intelligence leaks a faction trying to get the word out? Someone trying to CYA? An attempt to manipulate public opinion by essentially speaking out of both sides of their mouths? All of the above?
When it comes to intelligence stuff conclusions are more of a probability cloud. Everyone is lying, so the question is which scenarios are more or less likely?
Instead of COVID let's take Lyme Disease as an example. Lyme Disease is named after Lyme, CT, where the stuff was first diagnosed/discovered. That's interesting. What's also interesting is that there was a biological weapons research facility across the Long Island Sound from there.
Well, if you didn't know anything else about Lyme disease it wouldn't be a stretch to believe, at some level, that the origin was some kind of bio weapon that escaped. New disease near a weapons lab? Sounds within the realm of possibility.
Now you add some more information: namely, that Lyme disease is a worldwide problem, and they've been found in ticks all over the world. Well that makes the lab origin theory substantially less likely (probably 0%), because it's unclear how ticks would have spread to Asia, Europe. Nobody is going to go around infecting ticks as a bioweapon.
So your analysis really comes down to how much information you have. You have a bunch of guys walking around randomly, not a big deal. You have a bunch of random guys meeting in random places really often, well, maybe that's something that needs to be watched.
Readit News
According to the article there are two measures:
- a probabilistic measurement and associated language, which speaks to the assessed likelihood of an event occurring
- a confidence measurement and associated language, which speaks to the assessed quality of the source(s) of the intelligence
> In 1964 Sherman Kent, a cia analyst, coined the phrase “words of estimative probability”.
So that must have been even before Carter
Still our media here suggests a Russian false flag as equally likely, and people are actually eating it up.
As an example, I looked up Colin Powell's UN speech about WMDs in Iraq. There's nothing about something being almost certain or having a high confidence. He stated it was a fact based on solid intelligence.
If only I had been in possession of this arcane knowledge back when they were telling us about babies in incubators, WMDs, the domino theory, or any number of other hilariously inaccurate and/or dishonest narratives, I would have been much better informed.
Eg, the COVID lab leak theory - which will likely never be settled in the positive or negative. Doesn't matter what the percent chance is. If there is a 10% chance it was a lab leak, that is still a massive concern. We can't afford to unleash COVID every so often; there are a lot of labs and accidents happen regularly.
And even if the Havana syndrome thing is real by some weird chance; there is nothing there. It is largely a non-issue that doesn't matter. Lots of weird things happen in international politics and it isn't a top issue even assuming one of the conspiracy theories is true. It is just a cute story that people read for fun.
I try to make that point often. There were people seeking funding to do "research" that would create a virus almost exactly like Covid19. We don't need to prove that they actually did it and it leaked. They need to open their eyes and stop making bad things that can ruin the world if their precautions fail. Because sometimes they do fail.
Either way viruses are going to continue to jump from animals to people.
I’d probably take the position that lab leaks are some fraction as probable as novel animal to human transmission. However, virus mutation pressure in labs can take place significantly faster and in a preferred direction.
Labs that make medical breakthroughs through viral research reap the rewards. Shouldn’t they also bear the responsibility of making the world while when there are leaks?
When it comes to intelligence stuff conclusions are more of a probability cloud. Everyone is lying, so the question is which scenarios are more or less likely?
Instead of COVID let's take Lyme Disease as an example. Lyme Disease is named after Lyme, CT, where the stuff was first diagnosed/discovered. That's interesting. What's also interesting is that there was a biological weapons research facility across the Long Island Sound from there.
Well, if you didn't know anything else about Lyme disease it wouldn't be a stretch to believe, at some level, that the origin was some kind of bio weapon that escaped. New disease near a weapons lab? Sounds within the realm of possibility.
Now you add some more information: namely, that Lyme disease is a worldwide problem, and they've been found in ticks all over the world. Well that makes the lab origin theory substantially less likely (probably 0%), because it's unclear how ticks would have spread to Asia, Europe. Nobody is going to go around infecting ticks as a bioweapon.
So your analysis really comes down to how much information you have. You have a bunch of guys walking around randomly, not a big deal. You have a bunch of random guys meeting in random places really often, well, maybe that's something that needs to be watched.