Assessing and Communicating Uncertainty Effectively in a Rapidly Changing World

Abstract

Command and policy decision-making alike depend on timely and accurate intelligence. As Sherman Kent had noted in the 1950s and 60s, intelligence assessments are seldom cold, hard facts but rather judgments made by experts under conditions of uncertainty. Since Kent, history has taught us that misjudging and miscommunicating uncertainties threaten prospects for operational and strategic successes. Nevertheless, NATO and its members' intelligence communities have persisted in using inadequate methods for assessing and communicating uncertainty, which rely on vague linguistic probabilities (e.g., “likely” or “unlikely”). Here, drawing on recent scientific evidence including from NATO SAS-114 and other research, I describe the principal reasons why the intelligence community should change course and consider using numeric probabilities for estimates that support important decisions. This is arguably more important now than ever since changes in the global security environment, which augment the importance of non-munitions targeting, call for characterization of deep uncertainties related to second- and higher-order effects.