Driving in the Dark: Ten Propositions about Prediction and National Security

In this monograph, Richard Danzig argues that national security planners should embrace the principle that their work takes place amid uncertainty rather than striving for unattainable predictive precision. Instead of focusing on improving long-term forecasts, strategy and policy should be inherently resilient to predictive failures. Too often, policy makers act as if their expectations about the future are infallible and lock in planning on that basis. In reality, those point predictions are often wrong, sometimes disastrously so. Danzig argues that we should not only use scenario-based planning that prepares for multiple possible futures but also prioritize developing systems that are flexible, capable of rapid response, and open to adjusting to new information.