Surprise Attack: The Victim's Perspective Book

Great book on common pitfalls when analyzing the probabilty of surprise attack.

Kam hits on all the key problems and his prose is very clear. He writes like an intel analyst, leading paragraphs with a summary sentence and then supporting that sentence below. This makes some parts dry, but very useful when wanting to use the book as a reference aid.

I especially liked his look on how we look at an adversary's risk calculus. Often people use the verb "risks" to really mean could/might/may--weasel words. Kam implores analysts to not comment on "increased risk" but to look at the key drivers which play into the risk calculus of an adversary, and assess how changes to those drivers would affect their decisionmaking.

I applaud Kam for not trying to use the book to claim he has "found the answer" for why we continue to be surprised by world events. His overall message is simple: we will be suprised despite our best efforts, but our "best efforts" could be much better (I wanted to say "bester").