How Do We Get Out of This Mess? Our process is just as much art as it is science, with the most important key ingredient: sound analytical judgment
By Ken Robinson
The United States entered the conflict with Iran under a familiar assumption: that overwhelming force, applied rapidly and decisively, could collapse a system before it had time to respond.
The concept was straightforward - shock and awe airstrikes across critical targets, coupled with a near-simultaneous decapitation strike against a rare concentration of senior leadership within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the clerical ruling class.
It was treated as a time-sensitive opportunity to end a problem in a single stroke. The judgment implied that Iran functioned as a centralized system - remove the head, and the body would fail.
That assumption was flawed at its core.
Iran is not a brittle hierarchy; it is a dispersed, resilient network shaped by forty years of war, sanctions, and adaptation. Authority is distributed. Commanders are conditioned to operate independently. The state’s military and proxy architecture is designed precisely to survive decapitation and continue fighting without guidance.
What was absent in the initial decision was a deep understanding of Iranian society, its cultural cohesion under external threat, and the operational doctrine that empowers subordinate actors to act decisively in defense of the nation without waiting for orders.
The result is a strategic trap.
Instead of collapse, the United States now faces a system built for endurance - one that has studied American doctrine for decades and prepared asymmetric responses across multiple domains. Iran is not attempting to win a conventional fight; it is imposing cost, time, and uncertainty.
Through distributed operations, calibrated escalation, and sophisticated information campaigns aimed directly at political leadership, Tehran is leveraging ‘will’ as a weapon - testing not just military capability, but our national resolve.
What remains is a high-stakes contest with no clear off-ramp.
Iran holds escalation levers that extend beyond the battlefield - energy flows, global markets, and vital global economic critical infrastructure on the seafloor, the fiber optic backbone of the global financial economy, running through two critical and easily accessible chokepoints in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.
One blink of an eye by the IRGC will cue proxy agents of disruption to disable the central nervous system of the modern interconnected world.
The longer the conflict persists, the more the advantage shifts to the actor prepared for a long war. And in that domain, Iran is not improvising. It is executing a strategy decades in the making.
These are the stakes
This is not a theoretical vulnerability. It is a known, mapped, and already partially demonstrated systemic risk to the global economy.
Below is a precise, intelligence-grade breakdown of who gets hit first, who gets hit hardest, and what the financial impact looks like if fiber optic cables in the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz are severed at scale.
1. The Core Reality: Who Actually Owns and Depends on the System
The global subsea cable network is not owned by governments.
It is owned by a small cluster of modern day tech Oligarch’s with enormous influence over domestic and international actors.
The dominant players:
Google
Microsoft
Amazon
Meta
These four firms control or lease roughly half of global undersea cable capacity
They are not just users. They are owners, operators, and architects of the system.
2. Immediate Tier-One Impact: Big Tech Infrastructure Collapse
These companies rely on subsea cables for:
Data center synchronization
AI compute distribution
Cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)
Real-time communications (WhatsApp, Instagram, Teams, etc.)
Cloud infrastructure is fully dependent on these cables
Real-world precedent:
Red Sea cable cuts already caused Microsoft Azure outages and rerouting failures
What breaks immediately:
Cloud services slow or fragment
AI training pipelines stall
Global SaaS platforms degrade
Enterprise systems lose synchronization
This is not inconvenience.
This is digital infrastructure degradation at planetary scale.
3. Tier-Two Impact: Financial System Shock
Directly affected financial institutions:
U.S. and Global Banks
JPMorgan Chase
Goldman Sachs
Citigroup
HSBC
Market Infrastructure
SWIFT
NASDAQ
NYSE
Why finance is vulnerable:
High-frequency trading requires millisecond latency
Cross-border payments rely on continuous connectivity
Liquidity flows depend on synchronized markets
Observed impact from partial disruption:
Financial systems already experienced latency spikes and transaction disruption during partial previous cable cuts
4. Tier-Three Impact: Energy and Trade System
The Strait of Hormuz carries:
~20% of global oil supply (widely accepted estimate)
Critical LNG flows
The Red Sea corridor carries:
~20% of global internet traffic
Major Europe–Asia trade data flows
Combined effect of physical + digital disruption:
Oil markets destabilize
Shipping insurance spikes
Supply chains stall
Energy trading platforms lose visibility
5. Estimated Financial Impact
From real-world cable disruption modeling:
~$5,600 per minute cloud downtime
~$3.5 billion immediate impact from a limited event
Scaled scenario: coordinated cuts in both chokepoints
Conservative estimate:
$10–25 billion in first 24–72 hours
Escalated scenario:
$100+ billion within weeks
Strategic-level disruption:
Trillions in economic risk exposure
Why?
Because:
99% of global internet traffic flows through subsea cables
Europe–Asia financial connectivity is heavily concentrated in this corridor
Rerouting capacity is limited and slower
6. Who Gets Hit First vs. Hardest
Immediate shock (hours)
Cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)
Trading firms and exchanges
Short-term (days)
Banks and payment systems
Logistics and shipping networks
Medium-term (weeks)
Energy markets
Global manufacturing supply chains
Long-term (months)
GDP contraction
Market confidence collapse
Capital flight
7. Strategic Bottom Line
This is not just a communications issue.
This is systemic vulnerability in the global economic architecture.
A coordinated attack on subsea cables in:
The Red Sea
The Strait of Hormuz
Would not just slow the internet.
It would:
Disrupt global finance
Stress energy markets
Fracture digital infrastructure
Force emergency rerouting at reduced capacity
Final Assessment
The United States—and the world—has built a trillion-dollar digital economy on infrastructure that is physically thin, geographically concentrated, and strategically unguarded, and exposed:
Four companies carry half the load.
A handful of cables carry the rest.
And a few narrow choke points—most notably the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz—hold the entire system at risk.
This is not hypothetical.
It is the pressure point the IRGC has named as the consequence - if the United States attacks its civilian infrastructure of power, water, and bridges.
There is a difference between knowing something and understanding something.
That difference lives inside how intelligence professionals, supporting military decision-makers, produce their analytical judgments.
Policy makers must have the wisdom to listen carefully to advanced analysis. But the primacy of responsibility rests with one individual, the US President, and the National Command Authority to make the judgment to take the nation to total war.
In intelligence, national security, and leadership, failure rarely comes from a lack of information.
It comes from flawed reasoning.
Bad assumptions.
Rushed conclusions.
The quiet confidence of being wrong.
Henry Ford captured it plainly: “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.”
This essay is about that work. Not what to think - but how to think
The Foundation: Induction and Deduction
All disciplined thinking begins with two tools: inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning:
Inductive reasoning moves from observation to probability. You collect fragments, identify patterns, and build a likely explanation. It is never certain. It is always conditional.
Deductive reasoning works the other way. It starts with a known principle and applies it to a specific case to produce a logically certain outcome.
Induction suggests.
Deduction confirms.
Both are essential. Both are dangerous when misused.
The danger is not in the tools - it is in the thinker, and ultimately the President.
Stephen Hawking warned: “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
The Trap: When Thinking Fails
A simple experiment illustrates the problem.
A scientist teaches a frog to jump. He removes one leg, then commands the frog to jump. He repeats this process until all legs are removed - then the frog no longer moves.
He concludes: “Frogs with no legs cannot hear.”
The conclusion is wrong. The logic appears clean.
The thinking is flawed.
This is the essence of analytical failure: confusing correlation with causation, forcing evidence to fit expectation, and mistaking process for truth.
This failure is not theoretical.
It is historical.
At Pearl Harbor, warning signs existed but were misinterpreted. Before September 11, intelligence fragments pointed toward an attack but were never properly connected. In Iraq, flawed assumptions about weapons of mass destruction demonstrated how bias can shape national decisions.
In each case, the problem was not information.
It was thinking and flawed judgment.
The Real Discipline: How to Think
Advanced intelligence analysis is not a checklist. It is a discipline of thought.
The core principle is simple:
The constant challenge is to avoid being told what to think - and instead learn how to think.
This requires more than logic. It demands a structured mental process grounded in context, history, and self-awareness.
From an advanced analysis framework , several core requirements emerge:
Understand the full operational context - actors, motivations, capabilities, and relationships
Recognize that reality is nonlinear - small inputs can create disproportionate outcomes
Identify assumptions and aggressively challenge them
Think like the adversary, not like yourself
Distinguish between cause and effect, and identify the links that connect them
Anticipate second- and third-order consequences
Recognize and mitigate bias, including confirmation bias and mirror imaging
This is not casual thinking.
This is disciplined cognition.
It requires what practitioners call deep think - the deliberate effort to step back, slow down, and examine a problem from multiple angles before acting.
The Operating Environment: Complexity and Nonlinearity
The Iranian theater of operation is a modern intelligence environment that is not linear. It is dynamic, adaptive, and often chaotic.
Analysts operate inside complex adaptive systems - networks of actors, systems, and influences that are constantly interacting, evolving, and reacting.
In this environment:
Causes and effects are often separated by time and distance
Small actions can trigger large consequences
Patterns emerge, disappear, and reappear
Competitors adapt in real time
This is why prediction fails:
Russia believed Ukraine would collapse in days.
The United States believed Iran could be collapsed in weeks.
Prediction assumes a straight line.
Reality rarely cooperates.
Anticipation, by contrast, accepts uncertainty and prepares for multiple outcomes.
Prediction vs. Anticipation
Prediction seeks a single answer. Anticipation explores a range of possibilities.
Prediction narrows. Anticipation expands.
In intelligence, the goal is not to be right once. It is to avoid being surprised.
That requires asking better questions:
What could happen?
What is most likely?
What is most dangerous?
What conditions would make each scenario possible?
What are the second- and third-order effects?
These questions form Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIR) - critical gaps that drive collection and analysis.
Collection gathers data. Analysis transforms data into understanding. Judgment determines action.
There is no shortcut.
Thinking as a Competitive Advantage
At every level - tactical, operational, and strategic - the same discipline applies:
A squad leader anticipates movement.
A commander anticipates maneuver.
A president anticipates consequences.
Different scale. Same thinking.
Dwight D. Eisenhower said it best: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”
The value is not in the answer.
It is in the process.
The Human Factor: Judgment
New Artificial Intelligence tools are now depended on to instantly process data at two-billion rules a second:
It can identify patterns.
It can generate answers.
It cannot exercise sound judgment.
Judgment requires experience, context, and accountability. It requires understanding human behavior - motivation, fear, culture, and belief.
Advanced analysis emphasizes one critical factor: will - the combination of motive, capability, and determination that drives human action:
Artificial intelligence can calculate probability.
Only humans can weigh consequence.
If we confuse the two, we become confident without comprehension.
That is where strategic surprise lives.
How the Intelligence Process Can Still Make a Difference
A fresh reboot of advanced intelligence analysis forces a fundamental shift:
Stop asking, “How do we make Iran surrender?”
Start asking, “What outcome can Iran accept without appearing defeated?”
That is the diplomatic opening.
First, map leadership as a living system, not a target list. Iran’s power structure is distributed across clerical authority, the IRGC, provincial commanders, intelligence networks, economic interests, and proxy relationships.
Second, identify pressure points that double as face-saving exits. Iran may reject humiliation, but it may accept structured de-escalation framed around sovereignty, maritime stability, and reciprocal restraint.
Third, understand will. Iran can absorb pain if the conflict reinforces national survival. U.S. strategy must separate resistance from escalation.
The opportunity remains:
Restore maritime flow.
Reduce attacks.
Stabilize energy markets.
Reopen a pathway to negotiations.
Not surrender.
Stabilization.
The victory is not proving the original assumptions were correct.
They were not.
The victory is recovering strategic judgment before tactical failure becomes national defeat.
The Final Lesson
The intelligence profession is often misunderstood as a dark, fog filled maze of two way mirrors, slippery floors, and the building is on fire, a world of top secrets and information warfare.
It is not.
It is a discipline of thought:
Inductive reasoning builds probability.
Deductive reasoning establishes certainty.
Analysis challenges assumptions.
Anticipation manages risk.
Judgment determines action.
Everything else is noise.
Closing
In a world flooded with disinformation, the advantage no longer belongs to those who know the most.
It belongs to those who think the best.
Because in the end, the most dangerous failure is not what we do not know.
It is believing we understand - when we do not.
It is time for Track II diplomacy - conducted quietly, professionally, and away from the pressures of public posturing - followed by a serious recalibration of who represents the United States at the negotiating table.
Experience matters.
Judgment matters.
And now, more than ever, disciplined thinking matters most.
Summary - How do we get out of this mess?
The responsibility for negotiating on behalf of the United States must rest with the Secretary of State—the nation’s chief diplomat—because diplomacy at this level is not improvisation; it is a disciplined craft built on experience, credibility, and strategic judgment.
High-stakes negotiations require mastery of history, culture, signaling, and consequence, where a single misstep can escalate conflict or close off viable exits.
Political appointees without deep diplomatic experience lack the institutional knowledge, continuity, and trust relationships necessary to navigate adversaries who have spent decades studying our system and exploiting its weaknesses.