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How We Diagnose Change

[Case Study: Bombs & Networks, September 5, 2000]

Inference Reading

We start by filtering masses of information and focusing only on actual events and specific actions in order to identify anomalies and critical facts (symptoms of change).

Inference Reading: Picking up the Critical Facts

[Bombs & Networks, September 05, 2000]

In August 2000, we picked up news of 14 different bomb attacks within roughly three weeks in such diverse places as Germany, Spain, China, Moscow, India and South Africa.

The media treated these attacks as discrete events. Public officials said nothing.
This triggered a question: Are the bombings connected?

Then this popped up:
A Philippine terrorist group kidnapped Americans and insisted on exchanging the hostages for those imprisoned for the 1994 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Finally, New Zealand police arrested members of a crime syndicate prepared to bomb the Sydney Olympics and found links between the gangsters and the Arab Afghans (a term used then, which soon became synonymous with al Qaeda).

The U.S. government issued a report in that same month saying al Qaeda operatives were in Jordan and Lebanon and had made contact with Hamas.

Deductive Inference

We then discover a pattern in the anomalous events and critical facts, defining the characteristics of and providing a context for the new situation.

Deductive Inference: Diagnosing the Change

[Bombs & Networks, September 05, 2000]

In early September 2000, one year before the terrorist attacks of September 11, we issued a Briefing outlining the following inferences:

• The series of bombings was related.

• The terrorists were globalized and increasingly interconnected.

The organizations' members had various motivations, but they shared an interest in disrupting the economies and lifestyles of developed countries.

The network was escalating its violence, and these bombs were a classic military tactic of softening the field "prior to a wider assault" - that is, the terrorists were "setting the stage for bigger events."

Inductive Interference

Finally, we infer and evaluate what the identified change will do to an existing technological, political, economic or social situation, and follow the change as it spreads.

Inductive Interference: Identifying Areas of Impact

[Bombs & Networks, September 05, 2000]

Western intelligence, which had traditionally used a model of finding the leader of a threat and "decapitating" that head, was not thinking in network terms. "All-channel networks no longer have a clear central control or a single all-powerful leader."

This led us to a question:
Who is evolving faster - networked terrorist organizations and their communications systems or Western intelligence services?"

We suggested security issues would become more critical; network models would become more important; and more attacks would be occurring.

Summary: How We Diagnose Change

Step 1: Inference Reading

Filter masses of information and focus only on actual events and specific actions in order to identify anomalies and critical facts (symptoms of change).

Step 2: Deductive Inference

Discover a pattern in the anomalous events and critical facts, define the characteristics of and provide a context for the new situation.

Step 3: Inductive Inference

Infer and evaluate what the identified change will do to an existing technological, political, economic or social situation, and follow the change as it spreads.

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