Publications
Publications
- Texas National Security Review
Beacon and Warning: Sherman Kent, Scientific Hubris, and the CIA's Office of National Estimates
By: J. Peter Scoblic
Abstract
Would-be forecasters have increasingly extolled the predictive potential of Big Data and artificial intelligence. This essay reviews the career of Sherman Kent, the Yale historian who directed the CIA’s Office of National Estimates from 1952 to 1967, with an eye toward evaluating this enthusiasm. Charged with anticipating threats to U.S. national security, Kent believed, as did much of the postwar academy, that contemporary developments in the social sciences enabled scholars to forecast human behavior with far greater accuracy than before. The predictive record of the Office of National Estimates was, however, decidedly mixed. Kent’s methodological rigor enabled him to professionalize U.S. intelligence analysis, making him a model in today’s “post-truth” climate, but his failures offer a cautionary tale for those who insist that technology will soon reveal the future.
Keywords
Citation
Scoblic, J. Peter. "Beacon and Warning: Sherman Kent, Scientific Hubris, and the CIA's Office of National Estimates." Texas National Security Review 1, no. 4 (August 2018).