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> Nevertheless, Hamas’s devastating attack on October 7 caught Shin Bet and the rest of Israel’s multibillion-dollar defense system entirely by surprise. The in
by tivert 3y ago
> Nevertheless, Hamas’s devastating attack on October 7 caught Shin Bet and the rest of Israel’s multibillion-dollar defense system entirely by surprise. The intelligence disaster was even more striking considering Hamas carried out much of its preparations in plain sight, including practice assaults on mock-ups of the border fence and Israeli settlements—activities that were openly reported. Hamas-led militant groups even posted videos of their training online. Israelis living close to the border observed and publicized these exercises with mounting alarm, but were ignored in favor of intelligence bureaucracies’ analyses and, by extension, the software that had informed them. Israeli conscripts, mostly young women, monitoring developments through the ubiquitous surveillance cameras along the Gaza border, composed and presented a detailed report on Hamas’s preparations to breach the fence and take hostages, only to have their findings dismissed as “an imaginary scenario.” The Israeli intelligence apparatus had for more than a year been in possession of a Hamas document that detailed the group’s plan for an attack.
> Well aware of Israel’s intelligence methods, Hamas members fed their enemy the data that they wanted to hear, using informants they knew would report to the Israelis. They signaled that the ruling group inside Gaza was concentrating on improving the local economy by gaining access to the Israeli job market, and that Hamas had been deterred from action by Israel’s overwhelming military might. Such reports confirmed that Israel’s intelligence system had rigid assumptions of Hamas behavior, overlaid with a racial arrogance that considered Palestinians incapable of such a large-scale operation. AI, it turned out, knew everything about the terrorist except what he was thinking.
That sounds a lot like a company that's implementing data-driven "best practices" from some expensive management consultants.
It truly is the best system, regardless of how bad the results are. It's best by definition.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wpietri 3y agoOoh, very interesting point: > That sounds a lot like a company that's implementing data-driven "best practices" from some expensive management consultants. > > It truly is the best system, regardless of how bad the results are. It's best by definition. Well that rings some bells. It's as if there's a religion where the sacred totem is a graph that goes up and to the right. Some question for the crowd: How do systems like this insulate themselves from failure? Before something goes wrong, what prevents seeing the problem? And after something goes wrong, what are the words and behaviors used to avoid fundamental change?
- chasd00 3y ago> what are the words and behaviors used to avoid fundamental change in my experience it's one of two things. 1. it's declared the process is what was wrong and so immediately everyone is off the hook. Then a year is spent refining or adjusting the process but it's still the same people making bad decisions and underperforming and then, eventually, leadership changes and the "well, what we have seems to be working" will start. The process changes fade into the sunset. 2. someone will leave, retire, resign, or be fired. Then all the blame leaves with them and any additional discovery of what went wrong will also somehow be their fault. It's assumed all the problems left with this person and so no change is needed. I sound pretty jaded and cynical but i'm actually not, it's just that's the way i've seen it go down before.
- danlugo92 3y agoThis is pretty much it yeah...
- hackerlight 3y agoPrecautionary principle and defense-in-depth would have prevented this. You plan for the worst, but most importantly you plan for multiple different versions of what "worst" could entail, and you have uncorrelated redundancy such that the probability of disaster reduces from p to p^3. Ukraine made the same mistake by not putting mines along the border. Just taking it for granted that an invasion wouldn't happen. Hedge your tail risks with cheap real options, folks.