This Friday, Maria Langan Riekhof and fellow intelligence community alumni share lessons learned from a contrarian analytical unit formed within the CIA the day after the 9/11 attacks; Elizabeth Economy discusses the Chinese perspective on the Trump-Xi summit; and Steven Davis speaks with distinguished economist Kenneth Rogoff about the risks of high levels of government debt.
Intelligence and National Security
In a piece for The Cipher Brief, Distinguished Visiting Fellow Maria Langan Riekhof and coauthors recount the formation of a “Red Cell” within the Central Intelligence Agency on September 12, 2001. George Tenet, then director of central intelligence, tasked a new team to “tell me what others don’t” and “to challenge conventional wisdom on terrorism.” The Red Cell intentionally brought in analysts who had not previously worked on Middle East terrorism issues and tasked them with “stretch[ing] their imaginations to consider the full range of plausible next events” following the 9/11 attacks. “The first Red Cell analysis was published two days later on 14 September,” the authors note. “Tenet took it directly into the Oval Office, and President George W. Bush asked for more.” As the scope of its mission evolved over the course of the War on Terror, the Red Cell gained a reputation for checking assumptions, asking “what if” questions about various contingencies, and crafting “point/counterpoint papers” that explored “opposing explanations or arguments about the future.” The essay explores various other organizational and cultural factors behind the success of the Red Cell unit. Read more here.
Confronting and Competing with China
Appearing on the Amanpour program on CNN, Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy discusses the Trump-Xi summit in Washington this week. Economy argues that Xi is seizing the opportunity of a high-level direct engagement with a “disruptive” president to press his interests across trade, security, and domestic politics. She also comments on Xi’s ongoing purge of high-level military officials, noting that it’s a “sign of weakness” to at least some extent. Economy then discusses China’s science, technology, and space strategy and how it connects to Beijing’s attempts to reshape the rules of global institutions. Watch here.
Economics
In this episode of Economics, Applied, Kenneth Rogoff joins Steven J. Davis at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium to discuss our limited understanding of real interest rates, the risks associated with high government debt levels, and what it all means for the conduct of fiscal policy.
Get the Story: Davis and Rogoff (a professor of international economics at Harvard, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, and chess grandmaster) also discuss how the external political environment and incentives within the economics profession can lead, and has led, to imprudent advice about fiscal policy from leading professional economists. Watch or listen here.
Freedom Frequency
Climate policy debates often blur the line between what science establishes and what public discourse assumes it says, Senior Fellow Steven E. Koonin argues at Freedom Frequency. The underlying scientific record, including model uncertainty, emissions scenarios, and the economic assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he says, displays that gap and its costs. The world has grown wealthier and safer even as it has warmed: Koonin shows that extreme-weather mortality has fallen sharply, while the IPCC’s projections put the economic toll of continued warming this century at a few percent of global GDP. Taking climate change seriously means engaging honestly with what science actually shows, Koonin maintains, rather than defaulting to the most alarming reading. That distinction matters as America and other free societies weigh emissions policy against the growing demand for reliable, affordable energy. Read more here.
California Policy & Politics
A new California-focused episode of Matters of Policy & Politics explores several timely stories in the Golden State: the settlement of the state attorney general’s antitrust suit blocking the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger; an audit exposing consultants’ expenses and the troubled financial state of the High-Speed Rail project; and a river-wading Gavin Newsom fishing for attention in Montana with his claim that he would not pursue the presidency should former Vice President Kamala Harris choose to run again. Distinguished Policy Fellow Bill Whalen and Senior Fellow Lee Ohanian also consider what’s at stake in the upcoming gubernatorial debate between Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton amid a California governor’s race that’s been mostly quiet since a contentious June primary. Watch or listen here.
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