Richard Clarke: Why everyone warned about Trumps Russia ties couldnt believe their eyes

[kentuck]

https://qz.com/989368/richard-clarke-why-the-journalists-spies-and-politicians-warned-about-trumps-russia-ties-couldnt-believe-their-eyes/

<snip>
First, the warning is often about something that had never happened before. And so decision makers exhibit “First Occurrence Syndrome,” the failure to take seriously a warning about a possibility with which they had no prior experience. The dikes in New Orleans had never failed, but when they did, the whole city was flooded. No foreign power had ever tried seriously to change the outcome of a US election with their own concerted intelligence operation, but if Russia did indeed try, well, they may have soaked some voters, just like Katrina’s waves topped the New Orleans levees.

The second factor we have repeatedly found is that the person giving an accurate warning is often an expert armed with data, but who is also an outlier in their field. Other experts were not giving the same warning. What we found in most of the disasters we reviewed was that the expert exhibited “Sentinel Intelligence,” meaning that they had a unique ability to spot an approaching problem well before others.

<snip>
Former US ambassador Robert Ford accurately predicted the rise of ISIL two years before it happened and well before other analysts. Winston Churchill foresaw the threat of the Nazis and was mocked as a war monger by other British leaders. Roger Boisjoly and other Morton-Thiokol engineers screamed warnings that the space shuttle Challenger would explode on take-off on a cold January morning in 1986. And indeed, many experts on Russia and cyberattacks now agree with what Steele said a year ago, that Russia systemically interferes in democratic elections using sophisticated data analysis, amplified phony news stories, and false on-line identities in social media.

The third factor is that the disaster being foretold sounds “outlandish,” more like the plot for a Hollywood movie than something that would happen in the real world. NASA astrophysicist David Morrison has warned for years about the danger from large asteroid impact with Earth, but often had difficulty being taken seriously because two popular science fiction movies were the first most people heard of this risk. What Steele described in his “dossier” sounded like a plot outline for an updated version of the movie The Manchurian Candidate.

...more

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

1. K&Fuckin'R

[rzemanfl]

2. K&R n/t

[Blue_Tires]

3. Clarke is missing the elephant in the room

which is the media already had their pre-cooked, easily digestible post-election narratives...

1. Hillary erred by not going to the rust belt states she assumed were safe, Hillary was a bad candidate who ran a bad campaign, she was dull and nobody really liked her anyway.

2. Trump's populist rhetoric and unvarnished authenticity resonated with the almighty white working/rural classes (who are the only voting block that really matters) because the Dems have abandoned them and are out of touch.

3. Racism/Sexism/Voter Suppression/Bernie-or-Busters/Greens/The Comey Letter/WikiLeaks were non-factors...


I've worked in media... We hated ever admitting we got something wrong, and that was back in the day when you HAD to do it out of professionalism... But in the so-called 'new media', nobody ever admits to anything... And not only would the media have to admit being wrong, they would have to confront their own appalling lack of diligence in how they covered Trump the candidate versus how they covered Clinton... So far, aside from some brief lip service in January I've seen nothing to indicate the media is willing to take a long look in the mirror and come clean about their culpability being so hellbent on ratings and manufacturing a down-to-the-wire horse race... This failure was *intentional* and created by willful ignorance after the fact. Clarke is being way too kind to these people.

[kentuck]

4. However, he makes an interesting observation...

...that we have difficulty assimilating or understand events that we have never experienced before. When there is no precedent, we tend to not believe it. It is too incredible. That may be the situation with the Trump/Russia connection?

[longship]

6. Yup! I trust Clarke. His book on Iraq was great.

He is a truth-teller, and is sharp as a tack.

[Blue_Tires]

7. Yes, that's a valid point

Just like how deep down, many Americans secretly thought "Wouldn't it be cool if Trump had a snowball's chance of winning? He'd be a laugh riot!" -- Because their minds never let them fully comprehend how Trump the candidate is different from Trump the cartoon character, and what life would be like if the really DID win...

I just think Clarke is giving WAY too much credit to people attributing this to shock or cognitive dissonance... And my shock isn't that the Russians tilted the election, because they've done that in countless places before... My initial shock is that I TOLD everyone this was going to happen and was ignored... Greenwald was saying back in '14 that he had a moral duty to kneecap Hillary, Assange/Greenwald/Snowden tried to rig the races in New Zealand for KimDotcom (which I'd said here on DU was going to be a dress rehearsal for '16) and multiple times in '15 Assange guaranteed he'd sabotage the race if Hillary was the nominee...

My secondary shock is not that the Russians were successful seeing how many useful idiots are at their disposal, it's that they were able to be THIS brazen and THIS obvious without invalidating the results and six months in we still don't have the articles of impeachment scratched out yet...

[CousinIT]

8. Same situation w/ climate change. Many won't believe it's real

until a huge climate catastrophe (drought, stronger storm than any previously seen, rain levels that flood everything, food or water shortages, pestilence) directly affects THEM or buries their house, town, or city under water. And that could happen suddenly or gradually so many won't even believe it then.

Humans are frankly collectively too stupid for their own good.

[uponit7771]

16. +1

[Pluvious]

21. Let's hope more ppl read Kim S. Robertson's novel "2140"

There will come two "pulses," and it won't be pretty.

From the narrative: "They must not have liked their grandchildren."

[Blue Meany]

17. Yes, and I think it was true of the 2000 election, as well. Someone called it

"to bad to be true." The so called "normalcy bias" is that we don't expect anything to occur outside of our range of experience.

[WinkyDink]

11. Nothing precludes the possibility that Hillary's campaign made mistakes. Win or lose legitimately,

she STILL COULD HAVE visited economically-hurting areas, no matter if they were Red or Blue.

[athena]

14. No matter what Hillary did,

it was not going to be enough for some people. It's easy to criticize mistakes made by someone who is actually out there, trying to get something done, while you sit comfortably in front of a computer, not taking half the risks that the person you're criticizing is taking. As Theodore Roosevelt might have said:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the (one) who points out how the strong (woman) stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the (woman) who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends (herself) in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if (she) fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that (her) place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

[Blue_Tires]

18. Hindsight is always 20/20

And if she did that and still lost there would have been a million Monday Morning Quarterbacks pointing out some other grave error in her campaign...

I'd have much rather those economically-hurting areas started using their collective brains to ask WHY they became "economically-hurting areas" because I'm fairly certain that the Mexicans, ISIS, Black Lives Matter, the Clean Air Act, the Clinton Foundation, the so-called "establishment", transgender bathrooms, Anthony Weiner, etc. didn't cause their jobs to evaporate... I'm also betting there's a better-than-average chance that these "economically-hurting areas" have lived multiple terms under Republican mayors/county executives/governors, and not only has life not gotten better for them, they still keep voting to re-elect them and send even more GOP roaches to congress... But no -- It's much better to strictly focus on all the reasons why the Dems are the party that is supposedly indifferent and out of touch.

[KPN]

19. Yup.

Talk about elephant in the room.

[ProfessorPlum]

5. Richard Clarke would know about warnings that go unheeded

[dalton99a]

9. Bingo.

[FailureToCommunicate]

13. Indeed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22231-2004Mar24.html

[Kentonio]

10. Good article but..

You have to also consider how many 'warnings' arrive about events that never happen or indeed may just be nonsense. I'm always a little loathe to jump on the hindsight wagon without considering the full picture.

[WinkyDink]

12. Thus, the Story of Cassandra.

[Baitball Blogger]

15. "First Occurrence Syndrome"

I'm not sure that always applies or, should ever be allowed to turn into an Affirmative Defense. Just think about 9/11 and that "Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S." memo. What was the Bush team's excuse? "No one knew, no one told us, no one could forsee this happening." Aren't they trying to use the First Occurrence Syndrome?

Good thoughtful article . As a local Cassandra, it resonates.

[KPN]

20. To me the sad part is our leaders did nothing about it before the election.

They simply refused to believe and act on it (Congress, Justice Dept, etc) -- for all the reasons Clarke points out. Had they, media/journalists would have followed suit and we wouldn't be dealing with this shit.

Admittedly, hindsight is 20-20 and it's easy to point fingers. Just wish someone, somewhere had gotten more traction early on. How different the world would be today.