STRATEGIC

Anticipation, Deterrence, and Resilience 109
cally integrated. The agencies and officials responsible for anticipation
are decidedly not those working on deterrence or resilience.
Working on the Anticipation Equation
Anticipation is a hard problem that arguably is getting harder. Current
complex and turbulent conditions make intelligence analysis even more
difficult than it was during the relative stasis of the Cold War. Unsettled
times make discontinuities more likely, yet tipping points are notoriously
hard to identify or anticipate. It is difficult to strike the right balance
between too many warnings, some of which are false alarms (or “crying
wolf”), and not enough warning, which leads to surprise.
The attention of top policymakers is a finite commodity facing
increasing demand. “Bandwidth” can be as critical a resource as money.
Policymakers understand the need for good intelligence, but say they
are too preoccupied with known problems of immediate consequence
to focus on nonspecific intelligence warnings that are not “actionable.”
Intelligence professionals say that policymakers are too busy to address
longer-term problems before they develop into crises—thereby increasing
the likelihood that crises will occur. Both sides of the intelligenceaction
relationship are well aware that the political consequences of
every bad outcome are all the more acute due to today’s round-theclock
media climate, which can make every urgent global crisis appear
to be an American problem, and the increasing polarization of U.S.
foreign policy, in which any presidential decision that can be depicted
as a mistake will be so portrayed.
Anticipation is not intelligence. Anticipation can begin when
the intelligence community collects potentially useful information,
analyzes it, decides what is important or actionable, and delivers that
assessment to policymakers. Or it can begin when a senior policymaker
asks a question. For example, when the President asks a question that
his morning briefer cannot answer, the intelligence community spends
a great deal of time on that question. The policymakers’ challenge is
to use intelligence, and a wide range of unclassified information, to
anticipate likely and possible developments and act upon this to U.S.