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and improved intelligence, so nations hopefully don't underestimate each other... ?
by asah 3y ago
and improved intelligence, so nations hopefully don't underestimate each other... ?
- dpflan 3y agoRight, there is no question that today intelligence is better / more capable.
- ejb999 3y agoIs it though? It seems many countries are too busy surveilling their own citizens facebook postings, emails and iphones than actually preventing bad things from happening around the world - one failure after another.
- dpflan 3y agoSure, still, humans in the loop making decisions on where to spend their attention and time. One example of improvement, there are satellites surveilling the entire globe continuously, that did not exist in the past -- very limited ability to get this information without flying planes and risking resources.
- defrost 3y agoDoes that actually help in preventing conflict though? Consider that both sides of US politics receive the same intelligence briefs on Russia V Ukraine, on alleged interference in US elections, on alleged US civil insurrection attempting interference in election results, etc. Does todays "unquestionably better intelligence" result in different sides being aligned wrt interpreting this better intelligence?
- mrighele 3y agoIf it was true, Russia wouldn't have started war with Ukraine. More less the plan was to capture Kyiv in 3 days, and complete the job in a few weeks
- dpflan 3y agoCapabilities vary by nation/bloc.
- ethanbond 3y agoMuch of the EU misjudged Russia too, even having presumably much of the US intelligence on the matter available to them. I think the takeaway is that the raw intelligence is much much better, but humans are fallible and made stupid by their priors nonetheless.
- somenameforme 3y agoI don't understand which nation is supposed to have competent intelligence? Just look at the predictions made for Ukraine, Afghanistan, etc. and how they turned out. In general it seems to me that we've largely replaced the prior eras of on-the-ground intelligence and entrenched spies working their way up institutions, with digital and satellite surveillance. If anything modern tech and widespread surveillance in many nations may make it much more difficult to have those high level entrenched spies. The times of things like a spy dressing up in disguise to make his way to the telegram station and sending an encoded message are long since gone. Our modern means "feel" so much more private, yet in reality are paradoxically surveilled and broadcast to a million times more people. It could go a long way towards explaining many things.
- ethanbond 3y agoThe October 7th attack being another truly obscene intelligence failure. Also the west’s inability to understand (or at least act on) COVID from the early effects in China. I have to imagine intelligence is much much better, but it certainly hasn’t fully closed the cone of error.
- dpflan 3y agoFailure, intention, malice, strategy -- not sure, but bellicose people will look for ways to be bellicose. And yes, humans are still involved, so human failure is always a possibility.