October 7 was not only an intelligence failure, but also a failure of strategic risk governance
Purpose: To explain how Israel’s failure to identify Hamas’s invasion capability as a catastrophic RED risk—and to apply disciplined DoD 5000 risk-governance principles—enabled the October 7 massacre.
The phrase “intelligence failure” has become a familiar explanation for October 7. It is accurate, but incomplete.
Israel possessed fragments of warning. Hamas trained for a coordinated assault. Personnel close to the Gaza border raised concerns. Indicators emerged that did not fit the prevailing assessment that Hamas was deterred and primarily interested in preserving its rule in Gaza.
The catastrophe occurred not simply because information was unavailable. It occurred because Israel’s national-security system failed to identify and characterize a Hamas invasion as a strategic risk and then convert uncertainty, warning, and dissent into protective action.
Probability is only half the equation
During more than four decades working in national-security research, systems engineering, and defense risk management—including as a RAND researcher and on major American defense programs—I repeatedly encountered a basic principle: risk depends on both probability and consequence.
Organizations naturally concentrate on probability. If experts consider an event unlikely, leaders tend to assign it a lower priority. But an event with an uncertain or seemingly low probability may still require urgent action when its potential consequences are catastrophic.
Under disciplined risk management, the most dangerous threats are classified as RED risks. A RED risk is not necessarily the event most likely to occur. It is a risk whose combination of probability and consequence makes passive acceptance unacceptable. Hamas’s capacity to conduct a coordinated invasion of southern Israel should have been treated as precisely that kind of risk.
The questions that should have been asked
Whether senior officials believed Hamas intended to execute its plan was only one part of the required analysis. Leaders also needed to ask:
- What would happen if the prevailing assessment proved wrong?
- Who owned the invasion risk and was responsible for reducing it?
- What warning indicators would require immediate escalation or reconsideration?
- What practical and reversible measures could reduce the danger?
- Which senior official had authority to accept the remaining catastrophic risk?
Without answers, the assessment that “Hamas is deterred” could quietly become a substitute for risk management. Once embedded, that assessment became the lens through which new information was interpreted. Evidence supporting the concept was readily absorbed; contrary evidence could be explained away as deception, posturing, aspiration, or noise.
Uncertainty required mitigation, not inaction
A functioning risk-governance system does not require leaders to abandon their best estimate whenever a dissenting report arrives. It requires them to define the alternative hypothesis, measure the consequences if it is true, establish indicators that trigger reconsideration, and assign someone responsibility for monitoring those indicators. Most importantly, it forces the institution to confront the cost of delay.
Had Hamas’s invasion capability been classified as a catastrophic RED risk, the discussion could not have ended with a judgment that the attack was unlikely. Leaders would also have had to consider inexpensive, reversible precautions: reinforcing border positions, changing holiday and weekend staffing, increasing readiness, testing communications, rehearsing rapid-response plans, and ensuring that forces could reach threatened communities immediately.
Uncertainty was not permission for inaction. It was itself a condition that had to be managed.
Warnings do not reduce risk
One of the most important concepts in structured risk management is risk burn-down: an identified risk must be reduced measurably over time. If engineers discover a dangerous crack in a bridge, they do not merely place it on a watch list. They assign responsibility, investigate its cause, allocate resources, implement corrective measures, and determine whether the danger is shrinking.
National-security risks should be governed in the same manner. Intelligence does not, by itself, reduce risk. Technology does not, by itself, reduce risk. Warnings do not reduce risk. Only organized mitigation reduces risk.
Dissent must produce a decision
A warning system is not effective merely because a junior analyst, observer, or soldier may report a concern. It is effective only when the warning is recorded, evaluated against established criteria, answered by an accountable official, and preserved for later review.
Independent challenge is equally important. The officials responsible for an assessment should not be the only officials empowered to test it. Regular red-team reviews should examine how an adversary might exploit Israel’s assumptions, technological dependence, reduced staffing, force posture, and predictable routines.
The governing failure
October 7 demonstrated the terrible distance that can exist between possessing information and governing risk. Closing that distance requires clear ownership, documented challenge, escalation thresholds, funded mitigation, recurring senior review, and leaders who understand that the most dangerous risk may be the one an institution has become too comfortable to see.
The central lesson is not simply that Israel needed better intelligence. The deeper lesson is that Hamas was not adequately identified and characterized as a strategic risk, and the system did not force leaders to reduce that risk before catastrophe occurred.
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Moshe (Murray) Kamionski is an attorney, former RAND researcher, systems engineer, and national-security risk-management professional with more than four decades of experience. Born in Israel and raised in the United States, he lives in Jerusalem. He is the author of Ignored Warnings: How Israel’s Failure to Apply DoD 5000 Risk Governance Enabled the October 7 Massacre, available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGB88TL4 He can be reached at mkamionskiauthor@gmail.com.
