Prediction is Hard, Especially about Confidence Levels

Net Assessment

Chris, Melanie, and Zack discuss the confidence problem among national security experts. As Jeffrey Friedman shows in a recent Texas National Security Review article, experts are often right but almost always overconfident in their predictions. What does this mean for the national security community? And how can experts address this systemic problem? Chris laments the Pentagon’s in-person gathering of military leaders and Melanie condemns misguided economic policymaking, while Zack commends President Trump’s support for a tougher NATO response to Russian incursions.

Links:

• Jeffrey Friedman, “The World Is More Uncertain Than You Think: Assessing and Combating Overconfidence Among 2,000 National Security Officials,” Texas National Security Review, Fall 2025.

• “Ask The Experts,” Foreign Affairs.

• Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, Princeton University Press, 2017.

• Drew FitzGerald and Lara Seligman, “Pentagon Pushes to Double Missile Production for Potential China Conflict,” Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2025.

• Derek Scissors and Zack Cooper, “Is Trump Capitulating to China,” AEIdeas, September 25, 2025.

• Zack Cooper, “Rethinking the Rebalance,” IDSS Paper, September 5, 2025.

• Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias, “The Incompetence Dodge,” American Prospect, October 23, 2005.

• Tara Copp, Dan Lamothe, Noah Robertson and Alex Horton, “Trump to attend gathering of top generals, upending last-minute plans,” Washington Post, September 28, 2025.

• Adam Goldstein, “Why our critics’ whataboutery over Jimmy Kimmel is wrong,” FIRE, September 22, 2025.

• Tom Karako, A Marie Kondo Moment for MTCR: Tidying Up the US Approach to Missile Proliferation, CSIS, September 23, 2025.

• Elisabeth Buchwald, "Trump Vows to Enact 'Substantial' Tariffs on Imported Furniture," CNN, September 29, 2025.