Seven Percent Chance Of Another 9/11 In The Next Decade, Panel Tells Pentagon

The chance of another terror attack on the scale of 9/11 happening anywhere in the world is only 7 percent, according to a new report to the Pentagon from a defense advisory panel -- though the authors emphasize caution when it comes to predicting such events.

JASON, an independent scientific advisory group that regularly advises the government, states that such predictions should be discouraged because "it is simply not possible to validate (evaluate) predictive models of rare events that have not occurred, and unvalidated models cannot be relied upon," in a report obtained by Steven Aftergood's Secrecy News blog.

Yet the panelists justify their own prediction by engaging in an extended critique of Nassem Taleb's "Black Swan" thesis, which says that rare events are beyond the realm of normal expectations.

They argue that Taleb's famous argument doesn't really apply when it comes to far-reaching events such as 9/11:

"Taleb is wrong that a terrorist event of 9/11's magnitude was fundamentally unforeseeable...

This suggests that another 9/11-scale event in the world is unlikely but not improbable in the next ten years, with a probability of about 7%."

Read the report:

rare -

Comments

[SlithyTove]

01:42 PM on 11/05/2009

There is an entire body of literature on rare event probability, and it has been built upon for decades in analyzing cataclysmic, close-to-zero probability events for which there is no historical precedent (as in a planet-destroying meteor collision with Earth).

Taleb may be unorthodox, but he is a scholar and his Black Swan paradigm is not convincingly dismissed by this Mitre document.

The mathematical principles the JASON/Mitre document is based on are sound, but this particular case may be an instance of not seeing the forest for the trees -- a case in which in game theoretic terms the core is hard to define, the set of relevant predictive data is hard to circumscribe, and in which the outcome (loosely '9-11 like event') can be brought about in a frightening multiplicity of ways other than ramming commandeered jets into tall buildings.

The JASON report even includes a note on entropy, but tellingly fails to include any reference to the literature on heuristics (as in Daniel Kahneman's work on Prospect Theory), which I think is far more relevant.

Lastly, the "7% solution" is oddly redolent of the stuff Sherlock Holmes mainlined...it's clear that the confidence interval one would have to put around that number would be wide enough to sail an aircraft carrier through.

I'd love to see John Allen Paulos comment on this document -- it's right up his alley.

[Nunnya]

12:57 PM on 11/05/2009

What's the percentage of us catching the guy who did the first one?

[sposton]

01:06 PM on 11/05/2009

.00000000001% ? ;-)

[ray01]

01:05 AM on 11/06/2009

It's gonna take some work to get Bush. He's protected by the Secret Service.

[sposton]

11:12 AM on 11/05/2009

There is a .0001% chance I will become a millionaire within ten years. ;-)

Higher precision does not mean higher accuracy.

[rissole]

11:32 PM on 11/04/2009

They must have had Karzai's election team working on that figure. 7% hey. That's between 6% and 8% isn't it?

[phute]

09:25 AM on 11/05/2009

Are we supposed to take this seriously?

[TheBaffler]

10:44 PM on 11/04/2009

Now there's a figure pulled straight from someone's steaming bottom.

[JustADumbFireman]

10:26 PM on 11/04/2009

I'd say the chances are a whole lot less than 7%, as Dick Cheney isn't in a position to orchestrate such events any more.

[blueskybigstar]

11:43 AM on 11/05/2009

fanned

[Hirnlego]

07:04 PM on 11/04/2009

Well, perhaps mostly because neocons are no longer in power, a group of people who's foreign policy largely depended on a large scale attack a la Pearl Harbor.
And of course.. the air defense is not normally that crippled like on 9 1 1

[Hirnlego]

07:05 PM on 11/04/2009

So 7% still sounds way too high.

[LincolnBrigader]

05:34 PM on 11/04/2009

Actually, I imagine the percentage is even less than that. Now that Bush/Cheney are no longer in power, they are therefore incapable of having foreknowledge of an attack, and enabling danger ("Able Danger") so it can be carried out and exploited in order to wage aggressive warfare under false pretenses.

[ray01]

04:19 PM on 11/04/2009

Ridiculous headline & waste of electrons.

9/11 was 'Made in the USA' for a reason. To manufacture consent to complete the encirclement of
the Persian Gulf & control the oil in the Middle East.

[poster1122]

04:13 PM on 11/04/2009

I'm sorry, but I can't help but chuckle at that 7% number. One wonders how they come up with that number? It smells of something pulled out of someone's arse.

I mean, really, what variables could you possibly assign to make such a calculation? Number of terrorists out there? Number of plans they have in the works? Likelihood of selecting that plan? Number of volunteers for such an operation? percentage likelihood someone can get past security? Likelihood such an individual can gain entry into a cockpit?

Really, if you knew these and other pieces of information to get to a precision of 7 percent, shouldn't you then reasonably be able to round these guys up?

[deepintheheartoftejas]

12:12 AM on 11/10/2009

It makes me think of a generic Star Trek episode, where Spock says something like "The chance of us escaping from this situation is exactly 1 in 4983."

[nexxtep54]

03:42 PM on 11/04/2009

Oh, Please ! 9-11 wasn't even a 9-11. All self sabotage is unpredictable except to those in the loop.

Taguchi is a War College and a Duke graduate and has chosen a career as a lifetime warmonger.

[Spencaa]

03:47 PM on 11/04/2009

cuckoo alert

[ray01]

04:30 PM on 11/04/2009

Spencaa

Are you sure you haven't been mind controlled by the MSM?

Here's a quck test.

Do you believe the official 9/11 story?
Do you believe those 19 Arabs could have highjacked something other than a falafel stand?
Do you believe jet fuel which burns at approx 700 degrees F can melt steel which requires temperatures of approx 2500 degrees?
Do you believe one of the highjackers passports survived the crash & fire & just happened to be found on the sidewalk at ground zero?

If the answer to any of the above is yes, you are in serious danger of being mind controlled.