Prisoners of Preconception: The Problems of Bias in American Intelligence

... conceptions of power that are so multifaceted and multidimensional that they have no operational traction must be relied upon less. Experts, whether academic or practitioner, need to move beyond ‘factor wars’ designed to show that one favorite causal factor is more important than another, concentrating instead on the combined and interactive effects of multiple factors. The need to avoid hubris is tantamount for it afflicts both communities equally. Jervis’ seminal work on perception ...