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You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.
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National Security as Managing Consequential and Catastrophic Risks.
Today, Americans,as well as citizens from many other countries of the world, find themselves living under a stateof exception.
Normal 
is suspended. The unexpected almost always occurs. But withuncalculable probability and consequence. It appears that the links among risk assessment,risk mitigation, and the methodologies for establishing adequate budget have not yet been fullyexplored or developed. Many initiatives are so compartmentalized and fragmented that it isunclear with whom, or even where, responsibility resides, much less accountability for results.We appear to be fighting point source threats on many fronts, but non-point, systemic threatmitigation may still be under-focused on. Getting our arms around strategic issues ofconsequential and catastrophic systemic risks may assist in developing the methodologies weneed to analytically establish prioritization and global budgets for risk mitigation initiatives.Otherwise, its just more shoot from the hip, spend broadly, and hope for the best. Hardly arecipe for success. My thoughts on thinking strategically about consequential and systemicrisks are at:http://www.scribd.com/doc/22163392/ .
THINKING STRATEGICALLY ABOUT NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Lyle Brecht Draft 1.1 Thursday, December 3, 2009
Page 1 of 6
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Italio Calvino,
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler 
(1979) inWilliam Poundstone,
Prisoner’s Dilemma
(NewYork: Doubleday, 1992), 53.
 
National Intelligence as Identifying and Analyzing Consequential and Catastrophic Risks
.What, most of all, defines this discourse of exceptionality is the suspension ofa willingness toquestion the status quo of policy. Policy establishes much of our analytical frames of reference.Policy also delimits our ability to identify risks and to mitigate these risks. Examples of policiesthat, when analyzed, make no sense at all are legion today. Today, maybe the most immediateglobal consequential and catastrophic threats are from nuclear war and from global warming.
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 The risk probability of a nuclear war is directly determined by policy. This policy is a 60-year oldpolicy of nuclear deterrence based on an out-dated and largely disproved economic theorycalled rational choice theory that was incorporated into the game of mutual assureddestruction.
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Is it rational to continue to play a game of nuclear deterrence that is out-of-dateand unwinnable? In the past 64-years, the world has allocated approximately $60,000 billion to
 military defense
. The world will spend $1,500 billion (U.S.) this year alone for
 military defense
.The overdetermining belief is that
 military defense
primarily renders a nation safer. Is this beliefrational, given the constellation of risks that constitute national security today?Scientists have proven with ever more detail and preciseness that global warming is occurringtoday. Few members of the public would decide to challenge physicists concerning the detailsof quantum physics. Claiming that the theory of quantum physics was a hoax would be hard toswallow. Unfortunately, this questioning of basic physical reality (global warming and is effectscan be demonstrated as clearly as the effects of a nuclear explosion) has been used to forestallpolicy development. The longer policy decisions are delayed and appropriate mitigation doesnot occur, the more expensive the consequential effects. Today, if 350 PPM CO2 is the tippingpoint (latest MIT studies), the cost of mitigation may exceed $20,000 billion. However, theglobal consequences of doing nothing may result in the morbidity of as many as a few billionhumans, large numbers species lost and a worst case economic impact of $200,000 billion.May I ask, how is it rational to continue to delay policy decisions when so much is at stake?What are the intelligence requirements for an analysis of the national security ramifications?Potentially, the largest national security threat to the nation’s functioning integrity most recentlywas from the 2008 financial crisis. This was a glaring instance of markets (or anyone else) not managing
 systemic risk.
Trillions of dollars in CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) derivatives based on the underlying asset values of mortgages on real property were sold. Hundreds ofbillions of dollars in salaries and bonuses were paid to Wall Street executives and traders for
THINKING STRATEGICALLY ABOUT NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Lyle Brecht Draft 1.1 Thursday, December 3, 2009
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See “Consequential and Catastrophic Risks” athttp://www.scribd.com/doc/22163392/ .
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See “The Economic Games Behind Nuclear Deterrence” athttp://www.scribd.com/doc/20228926/ .
 
selling these insurance contracts. Yet, as the CDO market collapsed, U.S. taxpayers wereasked, via the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury to put-up approximately $17,489 billion in
 reserves
(potential future taxes).
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From an economic risk perspective, thisevent was of greaterconsequence to the nation’s security, for example, than any war since WWII, or potentially alarger threat than any anticipated terrorist attack from outside our borders. Was our IntelligenceCommunity(IC) up to speed in identifying and analyzing this systemic risk to the nation?Risks to cyberspace are getting a lot of attention today. It is evident that a lot of work andsound thinking are occurring. New, rich frameworks for public-private collaboration are beingexplored, as well as some innovative market-based incentives. However, to-date, the thinkingregarding cyberspace security has primarily been a tactical-level exercise with many goodideas focused mostly on conventional, malicious threats to cyberspace. Lacking is strategicthinking and the methodology to set levels of capital allocation/budget for mitigating differentlevels of risk
.
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___________________________________________________________________________________Below, are some comments on two recent public reports dealing with the threat of a terroristattack. The comments are illustrative of some of the larger risk identification, and risk mitigationissues that I attempted to briefly explicate in my arguments above:
Preliminary Thoughts on “How Terrorist Groups End”
RAND report.
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 1) Page 3, Definition: “definition of terrorism, this monograph argues that terrorism involves theuse of politically motivated violence against noncombatants to cause intimidation or fearamong a target audience.” Potential problems:(a) frame for what conventionally constitutes terrorism is based on hindsight bias and may beambiguous and/or too narrow. I am thinking, for example, of Germany under Hitler Russia,under Stalin, Chile under Pinochet, Iraq under Sadam Hussein, etc. which are essentiallyterrorist-run governments, exacting torture and “politically-motivated violence against
THINKING STRATEGICALLY ABOUT NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Lyle Brecht Draft 1.1 Thursday, December 3, 2009
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Estimate of reserves fro
m Nomi Prins & Christopher Hayes, “Meet the Hazzards,”
The Nation 
(October12, 2009) athttp://www.thenation.com/doc/20091012/prins_hayesbased on the analytical workpublished in Nomi Prins,
It takes a Pillage: behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deal from Washington to Wall Street 
, (New York: Wiley, 2009).
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See “Thinking Strategically aboutCNCI” athttp://www.scribd.com/doc/15769323/ and “National Cyber Systems Security Review Discussion” athttp://www.scribd.com/doc/12659947/ .
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Seth G. Jones and Martin C. Libicki, “How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qaida,”RAND Corporation National Security Research Division (2008).
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