How can we avoid being "addicted" to raw information in intelligence and startegy?

About 4 years ago, I started writing an academic article about lessons which can be learned from the Yom Kippur War. This article was tragically published just several months prior to the colossal Israeli failure of October 7th, 2023.

As we once again approach Yom Kippur, this is a good time to reflect about the conclusions of that article. I have conducted such reflection many times in recent years. But here I want to focus on one specific lesson, which unfortunately was also, I believe, one of the factors for the 2023 intelligence failure. The over-reliance on raw, intimate, high-resolution and high-quality information.

This challenge is relevant, naturally, for intelligence analysis. In government and in business. But I think this is also relevant for leaders and managers practice strategy. In government and in business.

In this "age of AI", technologies, and data, I think that many of us draw, explicitly or implicitly, a very common-sense concludion, i.e., that more data equals more knowledge. That data can solve, or at least minimize, the phenomenon of surprise. And since today, at least for intelligence and strategy professionals, data about the environment is not only abundant but also "intimate" (revealing many facets of the environment), it only natural to become "addicted" to this information. The more information you read, the more reliant you become on new information.

But this, of course, can also lead to paralysis. Leaders often refrain from making strategic decisions until they have raw and high-resolution about the past and the present, and high-resolution analysis (or simulation) of future developments. Intelligence professionals can also reach a phenomenon called "Analysis Paralysis", but not just because of an inherent modesty, but mainly since they wait for their analytical conclusions to "explicitly appear in the data".

I truly believe this is only natural. And I do not recommend adopting the complete opposite approach. From a more philosophical and epistemological perspective, I do not recommend abanding empiricism for complete rationalism.

But what I do recommend is being a little but more brave. In intelligence analysis, and in stategy. Relying on analysis, knowledge, and yes, even intuition. Revealing the "unkwown knowns".