How We Decide (29 page)

But something interesting happens when scientists ask a split-brain patient to explain the bizarre response: the patient manages to come up with an explanation. "Oh, that's
easy,
" one patient said. "The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed." Instead of admitting that his brain was hopelessly confused, the patient wove his confusion into a plausible story. In fact, the researchers found that when patients made especially ridiculous claims, they seemed even more confident than usual. It was a classic case of overcompensation.

Of course, the self-assurance of the split-brain patient is clearly mistaken. None of the images contained a chicken shed that needed a shovel. But that deep need to repress inner contradictions is a fundamental property of the human mind. Even though the human brain is defined by its functional partitions, by the friction of all these different perspectives, we always feel compelled to assert its unity. As a result, each of us pretends that the mind is in full agreement with itself, even when it isn't. We trick ourselves into being sure.

DURING THE LAST
week of September 1973, the Egyptian and Syrian armies began massing near the Israeli border. The signals picked up by the Mossad, the main Israeli intelligence agency, were ominous. Artillery had been moved into offensive positions. Roads were being paved in the middle of the desert. Thousands of Syrian reservists had been ordered to report for duty. From the hills of Jerusalem, people could see a haze of black diesel smoke on the horizon, the noxious exhaust generated by thousands of Soviet-made tanks. The smoke was getting closer.

The official explanation for the frenzy of military activity was that it was a pan-Arab training exercise. Although Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, had boldly declared a few months before that his country was "mobilizing in earnest for the resumption of battle" and declared that the destruction of Israel was worth the "sacrifice of one million Egyptian soldiers," the Israeli intelligence community insisted that the Egyptians weren't actually planning an attack. Major General Eli Zeira, the director of Aman, the Israeli military intelligence agency, publicly dismissed the possibility of an Egyptian invasion. "I discount the likelihood of a conventional Arab attack," Zeira said. "We have to look hard for evidence of their real intentions in the field—otherwise, with the Arabs, all you have is rhetoric. Too many Arab leaders have intentions which far exceed their capabilities." Zeira believed that the Egyptian military buildup was just a bluff, a feint intended to shore up Sadat's domestic support. He persuasively argued that the Syrian deployments were merely a response to a September skirmish between Syrian and Israeli fighter planes.

On October 3, Golda Meir, the prime minister of Israel, held a regular cabinet meeting that included the heads of Israeli intelligence. It was here that she was told about the scale of Arab preparations for war. She learned that the Syrians had concentrated their antiaircraft missiles at the border, the first time this had ever been done. In addition, several Iraqi armored divisions had moved into southern Syria. She was also informed about Egyptian military maneuvers in the Sinai that weren't part of the official "training exercise." Although everyone agreed that the news was troubling, the consensus remained the same. The Arabs were not ready for war. They wouldn't dare invade. The next cabinet meeting was scheduled for October 7, the day after Yom Kippur.

In retrospect, it's clear that Zeira and the Israeli intelligence community were spectacularly wrong. In the early afternoon of October 6, the Egyptian and Syrian armies—a force roughly equivalent to the NATO European command—launched a surprise attack on Israeli positions in the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. Because Meir didn't issue a full mobilization order until the invasion was already under way, the Israeli military was unable to repel the Arab armies. Egyptian tanks streamed across the Sinai and nearly captured the strategically important Mitla Pass. Before nightfall, more than 8,000 Egyptian infantry had moved into Israeli territory. The situation in the Golan Heights was even more dire: 130 Israeli tanks were trying to hold off more than 1,300 Syrian and Iraqi tanks. By that evening, the Syrians were pressing toward the Sea of Galilee, and the Israelis were suffering heavy casualties. Reinforcements were rushed to battle. If the Golan fell, Syria could easily launch artillery at Israeli cities. Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defense minister, concluded after the third day of conflict that the chances of the Israeli nation surviving the war were "very low."

The tide shifted gradually. By October 8, the newly arrived Israeli reinforcements began to reassert control in the Golan Heights. The main Syrian force was split into two smaller contingents that were quickly isolated and destroyed. By October 10, Israeli tanks had crossed the "purple line," or the pre-war Syrian border. They would eventually progress nearly forty kilometers into the country, or close enough to shell the suburbs of Damascus.

The Sinai front was more treacherous. The initial Israeli counterattack, on October 8, was an unmitigated disaster: nearly an entire brigade of Israeli tanks was lost in a few hours. (General Shmuel Gonen, the Israeli commander of the Southern Front, was later disciplined for his "failure to fulfill his duties.") In addition, the Israeli air force had lost control of the skies; its fighter planes were being shot down at an alarming rate, as the Soviet SA-2 antiaircraft batteries proved to be much more effective than expected. ("We are like fat ducks up there," one Israeli pilot said. "And they have the shotguns.") The next several days were a tense stalemate, neither army willing to risk an attack.

The standoff ended on October 14, when Sadat ordered his generals to attack. He wanted to ease the pressure on the Syrians, who were now fighting to protect their capital. But the massive Egyptian force was repulsed—they lost nearly 250 tanks—and on October 15, the Israelis launched a successful counterattack. The Israelis struck at the seam between the two main Egyptian armies and managed to secure a bridgehead on the opposite side of the Suez Canal. This breach marked the turning point of the Sinai campaign. By October 22, an Israeli armored division was within a hundred miles of Cairo. A cease-fire went into effect a few days later.

For Israel, the end of the war was bittersweet. Although the surprise invasion had been repelled, and no territory had been lost, the tactical victory had revealed the startling fragility of the nation. It turned out that Israel's military superiority was not a guarantee of security. The small country had almost been destroyed by an intelligence failure.

AFTER THE WAR
, the Israeli government appointed a special committee to investigate the
mechdal,
or "omission," that had preceded the war. Why hadn't the intelligence community anticipated the invasion? The committee had uncovered a staggering amount of evidence suggesting an imminent attack. For instance on October 4, Aman learned that, in addition to building up Egyptian and Syrian forces along the border, the Arabs had evacuated Soviet military advisers from Cairo and Damascus. The day after that, new reconnaissance photographs had revealed the movement of antiaircraft missiles to the front lines and the departure of the Soviet fleet from the port of Alexandria. At this point, it should have been clear that the Egyptian forces weren't training in the desert; they were getting ready for war.

Lieutenant Benjamin Simon-Tov, a young intelligence officer at the Southern Command, was one of the few analysts who connected the dots. On October 1, he wrote a memo urging his commander to consider the possibility of an Arab attack. That memo was ignored. On October 3, he compiled a briefing document summarizing recent aggressive Egyptian actions. He argued that the Sinai invasion would begin within a week. His superior officer refused to pass the "heretical" report up the chain of command.

Why was the intelligence community so resistant to the idea of an October attack? After the Six-Day War of 1967, the Mossad and Aman developed an influential theory of Arab strategy that they called
ha-Konseptzia
(the Concept). This theory was based largely on the intelligence of a single source in the Egyptian government. It held that Egypt and Syria wouldn't consider attacking Israel until 1975, at which point they would have an adequate number of fighter planes and pilots. (Israeli air superiority had played a key role in the decisive military victory of 1967.) The Concept also placed great faith in the Bar-Lev line, a series of defensive positions along the Suez Canal. The Mossad and Aman believed that these obstacles and reinforcements would restrain Egyptian armored divisions for at least twenty-four hours, thus allowing Israel crucial time to mobilize its reservists.

The Concept turned out to be completely wrong. The Egyptians were relying on their new surface-to-air missiles to counter the Israeli air forces; they didn't need more planes. The Bar-Levline was easy to breach. The defensive positions were mostly made of piled desert sand, which the Egyptian military moved using pressured water cannons. Unfortunately, the Concept was deeply ingrained in the strategic thinking of the Israeli intelligence community. Until the invasion actually began, the Mossad and Aman had insisted that no invasion would take place. Instead of telling the prime minister that the situation on the ground was uncertain and ambiguous—nobody really knew if the Egyptians were bluffing or planning to attack—the leaders of the Mossad and Aman chose to project an unshakable confidence in the Concept. They were misled by their certainty, which caused them to ignore a massive amount of contradictory evidence. As the psychologist Uri Bar-Joseph noted in his study of the Israeli intelligence failure, "The need for cognitive closure prompted leading analysts, especially Zeira, to 'freeze' on the conventional wisdom that an attack was unlikely and to become impervious to information suggesting that it was imminent."

Even on the morning of October 6, just a few hours before Egyptian tanks crossed the border, Zeira was still refusing to admit that a mobilization might be necessary. A top-secret cable had just arrived from a trusted source inside an Arab government, warning that an invasion was imminent, that Syria and Egypt weren't bluffing. Meir convened a meeting with her top military officials to assess this new intelligence. She asked Zeira if he thought the Arab nations were going to attack. Zeira said no. They would not dare to attack, he told the prime minister. Of that he was certain.

THE LESSON OF
the Yom Kippur War is that having access to the necessary information is not enough. Eli Zeira, after all, had more than enough military intelligence at his disposal. He saw the tanks at the border; he read the top-secret memos. His mistake was that he never forced himself to consider these inconvenient facts. Instead of listening to the young lieutenant, he turned up the static dial and clung to the Concept. The result was a bad decision.

The only way to counteract the bias for certainty is to encourage some inner dissonance. We must force ourselves to think about the information we don't want to think about, to pay attention to the data that disturbs our entrenched beliefs. When we start censoring our minds, turning off those brain areas that contradict our assumptions, we end up ignoring relevant evidence. A major general shrugs off the evacuation of Soviet military personnel and those midnight cables from trusted sources. He insists that an invasion isn't happening even when it has already begun.

But the certainty trap is not inevitable. We can take steps to prevent ourselves from shutting down our minds' arguments too soon. We can consciously correct for this innate tendency. And if those steps fail, we can create decision-making environments that help us better entertain competing hypotheses. Look, for example, at the Israeli military. After failing to anticipate the 1973 war, Israel thoroughly revamped its intelligence services. It added an entirely new branch of intelligence analysis, the Research and Political Planning Center, which operated under the auspices of the Foreign Ministry. The mission of this new center wasn't to gather more information; the Israelis realized that data collection wasn't their problem. Instead, the unit was designed to provide an assessment of the available data, one that was completely independent of both Aman and the Mossad. It was a third opinion, in case the first two opinions were wrong.

At first glance, adding another layer of bureaucracy might seem like a bad idea. Interagency rivalries can create their own set of problems. But the Israelis knew that the surprise invasion of 1973 was a direct result of their false sense of certainty. Because Aman and the Mossad were convinced that the Concept was accurate, they had ignored all contradictory evidence. Complacency and stubbornness soon set in. The commission wisely realized that the best way to avoid such certainty in the future was to foster diversity, ensuring that the military would never again be seduced by its own false assumptions.

The historian Doris Kearns Goodwin made a similar point about the benefits of intellectual diversity in
Team of Rivals,
her history of Abraham Lincoln's cabinet. She argues that it was Lincoln's ability to deal with competing viewpoints that made him such a remarkable president and leader. He intentionally filled his cabinet with rival politicians who had extremely different ideologies; antislavery crusaders, like Secretary of State William Seward, were forced to work with more conservative figures, like Attorney General Edward Bates, a man who had once been a slave owner. When making a decision, Lincoln always encouraged vigorous debate and discussion. Although several members of his cabinet initially assumed that Lincoln was weak willed, indecisive, and unsuited for the presidency, they eventually realized that his ability to tolerate dissent was an enormous asset. As Seward said, "The president is the best of us."

The same lesson can be applied to the brain: when making decisions, actively resist the urge to suppress the argument. Instead, take the time to listen to what all the different brain areas have to say. Good decisions rarely emerge from a false consensus. Alfred P. Sloan, the chairman of General Motors during its heyday, once adjourned a board meeting soon after it began. "Gentlemen," Sloan said, "I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here ... Then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about."