Anticipatory intel

How IARPA predicts the unpredictable
One of the problems IARPA works on is anticipatory intelligence. Oftentimes national security decision-makers are looking for judgments about what will happen in the next day, or the next week or the next year in geopolitics, in public health, in weapons treaties. In order to deliver forecasts to decision-makers we have to continuously monitor the environment for indicators of change. That might be indicators of political unrest in a region, indicators that a disease outbreak is occurring or indicators that a cyberattack is under way. In order to develop methods that are good at forecasting, we run forecasting tournaments in which teams made up of universities and industry labs are actually forecasting real-world events before the occur. And then we keep score – who got it right, who got it wrong, what distinguished the good forecasts from the bad forecasts.