Encyclopedia Geopolitica

The Geopolitical Reading List: “We Never Expected That: A Comparative Study of Failures in National and Business Intelligence”

Colin Reed reviews Avner Barnea’s "We Never Expected That," which links national‑security intelligence failures with corporate competitive‑intelligence lapses. Barnea introduces a two‑part taxonomy—diffused surprise, where threats are ambiguous, and concentrated surprise, where known adversaries are mis‑read. The book applies this framework to cases such as the September 11 attacks and IBM’s 1993 near‑collapse, highlighting shared cognitive biases. Reed argues the analysis is vital as governments and firms increasingly intersect in geopolitical risk‑management.