alt Hacker NewsThe thing missing from these briefs is the context. We're not seeing the hundreds or thousands of other daily reports that are mixed in and have to be acted on. It's easy to cherry pick after the fact.
Case in point, just going off of the reports here it would have been hard to predict what happened. They were concerned about Bin Laden starting civil wars, taking embassies, launching a biological attack, cells in Europe, etc. And even their preliminary reports about a possible plane hijacking in the US presumed it would be a simple quid pro quo for prisoner releases.
I'm worried this release is being thinly veiled as an attack on previous administrations. But it should be pointed out that the current administration eschews intelligence entirely and has no qualms about worsening the country's current security posture.
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Yeah, its a bit like a medical test that promises to detect cancer 100% of the time, but actually just says everyone has cancer.
To be useful, information doesn't just have to have a good false negative rate, it also has to have a good false positive rate, and be specific. Otherwise its useless as you can't persue every possible lead.
The New York Times summary noted that there was a fear of "alert fatigue" coupled with a lack of confidence about the strength of the signals they were getting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/us/politics/cia-sept-11-i... (gift article)