ABSTRACT
The study of intelligence failures is perhaps the most academically advanced field in the study of intelligence.1 This is particularly true of strategic surprise, that most dramatic and consequential of intelligence failures. Michael Handel, who made a major contribution to the study of this issue, once listed the various disciplines that had made contributions to its study:
It is related to, and dependent on, earlier research in psychology (problems of perception); communication and information theory (the problems of signal-to-noise ratio, information bottlenecks, improved processing procedures of information, etc.); theories of organizational and bureaucratic behavior (for example, problems of overlapping and duplicate intelligence work by a number of different intelligence agencies, ways to improve interagency coordination); statistics; disaster theory; mathematical theories (the study of cryptanalysis, the optimal timing of surprise, etc.); anthropology (the study of the influence of different cultures and their impact on mutual perceptions and misperceptions, different attitudes toward risk acceptance); and history (the basic information needed for detailed case studies).2
