Systemic Failures, by Design

In each of these cases, data had been collected by US government agencies that contained a high probability of either entirely preventing or substantially mitigating each event, if only the information had been recognized and acted upon within the window of time allowed by circumstances. In case after case, repeated warnings by recognized experts, sourced internally and externally, were ignored or suppressed.

Concurrent with this series of historic failures, advances in the multi-disciplinary area of knowledge systems has dramatically improved our ability to predict and prevent crises. In the specialized field within computer science generally known as semantics, digital files are embedded with pre-defined meaning and executed in an automated or semi-automated manner that can reduce or eliminate common human failures, regardless of cause.

This technology is successfully deployed today in other large-scale data environments where human errors, conflicted decision-making, lack of interoperability and misinterpretation of data have long been associated with systemic failures. When combined with rich meta data in each digital file describing the interrelationships of topics, organizations and people, these types of human-caused systemic failures simply need not occur.

For example, if a state-of-the-art semantic architecture had been deployed prior to 9/11, the Phoenix Memo would have contained sufficient embedded intelligence to automatically elevate the red flag warning - not just within one agency where internal conflicts are common - but also to notify pre-selected decision-makers in partner agencies with built-in tracking to ensure accountability as well as instant audit reporting. This would have significantly increased the probability of preventing two wars.

In the Fort Hood massacre, a logical semantic system should have required an alert to the base commander and appropriate security personnel about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently displayed a red flag warning on a continuing basis.

In the most recent incident, on Christmas Day, a properly designed system would have profiled not just another youth succumbing to militant religious extremism, but the quality and relationship of the information source, which would then have automatically placed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabon on the no-fly list.