The core mental shortcuts that shape how people interpret risk, evidence, and causality are clearly visible in human behavior, especially in politics, intelligence analysis, media narratives, and public opinion. From this week’s readings, including Latimer’s historical examples (Latimer 2001) and the scenario exercise, I found confirmation bias and the availability heuristic to be especially pervasive and damaging. Even in a controlled exercise, where I consciously tried to guard against these traps, I still relied on my bias toward HUMINT and on the availability of interpreters who seemed eager to help. Their narrative-based reporting felt more concrete and actionable than abstract SIGINT or ambiguous UAV imagery. On my first run-through, this led to a simulated tragedy. Although my decisions improved in later attempts, the experience showed how quietly confirmation bias can operate and still produce devastating outcomes.
Latimer’s example of Julius Caesar and Vercingetorix at the river crossing (Latimer 2001) illustrates these shortcuts clearly. After destroying all the bridges across the Allier River, Vercingetorix assumed that Caesar could no longer cross and interpreted any movement as confirmation of retreat. When he saw Roman troops marching away, he accepted this as confirmation of his belief and did not question the situation. Availability bias was also at work, as he treated the forces he could see as if they represented the entire Roman army. What was visible became “the truth,” while what was unseen was ignored. This example shows how deeply rooted these patterns are in commanders’ decision-making across history and raises questions about how education and national experience may shape such biases.
When applying these concepts to the June 2025 Israeli strikes on Iranian military and security sites, I saw the same shortcuts at work. Confirmation bias and framing appear central to how Iranian decision-makers interpreted the threat environment. Many commanders, who were caught off guard and eliminated in the early hours of the strikes, appeared to believe their missile and drone stockpiles, air defenses, and hardened facilities provided real deterrence, and that Israel was constrained by U.S. pressure, ongoing negotiations, and escalation risks. Normalcy bias also seems evident. For years, Iran and Israel operated in a cycle of cyber operations, sabotage, targeted killings, limited strikes, and proxy conflict. Over time, this pattern became the new normal. When signs of a qualitatively different threat emerged, it was cognitively easier to assume this was just more pressure rather than a major escalation. New warning signals were therefore filtered as routine rather than as preparation for a large-scale strike.
The Hitler quote about propaganda at the top of this week’s slides also seems relevant here. Years of repeated slogans about the supposed divine strength and deterrent power of Iranian forces, along with claims of Israel’s weakness and impending collapse, appear to have primed the cognitive environment in which officers and analysts operated. In effect, elements of the regime may have come to believe their own propaganda, shaping threat perception in ways that blunted their ability to recognize a truly abnormal shift. Only after the strikes have some analysts begun to acknowledge publicly that thinking like the enemy and using structured techniques such as diagnostic reasoning, analysis of competing hypotheses, and argument mapping might have altered the outcome.
Reference:
Latimer, Jon. Deception in War. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2001.