The Clown Prince of the Unthinkable
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008Herman Kahn was the “shock jock” of America’s Cold War nuclear strategists, who used irreverence and comedic gesture to hook America into deep thinking about the implications of thermonuclear war (something the editors of Scientific American, his bitterest critics, have yet to forgive Kahn). Wiggins at Opposed Systems Design recently pointed to a fantastic post on Kahn by a fellow 
Wohlstetterian blogger, Robert Zarate , “Kahn and Mann’s “Ten Common Pitfalls” (1957)”. Zarate commented:
Less known, though, are Kahn’s reports and memos, many of which are available on the RAND Corporation’s website. In my mind, one stands out:
Herman Kahn and Irwin Mann, Ten Common Pitfalls, RM-1937 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, July 17, 1957).
This research memorandum (hence its designation as “RM-1937”) was intended to be a very preliminary draft of a chapter in Kahn and Mann’s planned, but never completed, book, Military Planning in an Uncertain World. RM-1937 offers the book’s provisional table of contents.
Ten Common Pitalls examines a series of methodological problems that often hamper or distort the work of policy analysts. Kahn and Mann’s examination, however, is intended to be descriptive rather than analytical. In the introduction, they write that they hope RM-1937 will serve “as a sort of checklist” for analysts, or at least alert them “to the things to look for in an analysis.” As a bonus, the research memorandum illustrated (literally) each pitfall with a drawing by Kahn. These drawing, reproduced below, are quite humorous and give a sparkling sense of Kahn’s own wit and personality.
It’s interesting to me that both Kahn and John Boyd ( see the current Roundtable on Science, Strategy and War at Chicago Boyz) were intrigued by the implications of systemic, deep uncertainty, on military strategy and human cognition, with Kahn preceding Boyd in that regard by approximately a decade and a half. Both men frustrated and amazed their peers and were dedicated briefers who evolved their thinking through study, reflection, presentation and discussion who had difficulty getting their ideas into a final book format. Kahn less so than Boyd, as he is best known for On Thermonuclear War but there are many “unfinished symphonies” in Kahn’s intellectual legacy; important ideas, arguments and projections that were never developed to their full potential.
