The Tenth Man

Why Contrarians Are Crucial

Sometimes you learn about intellectual concepts in unexpected places. I learned about the Tenth Man from a zombie movie.

It’s a terse, two minute scene in the film World War Z. The world is suddenly overrun by feral zombies who can sprint. Only Israel manages to anticipate the threat and wall off Jerusalem before the zombie horde attacks. How did the Israelis achieve this? The Tenth Man. You can see the kinetic explanation from the movie here.

10th Man Israel's Strategy - World War Z

The concept of the Tenth Man is this . . . if nine people see the same set of information and agree on a particular course of action, the tenth person is assigned to be the contrarian. The tenth person must relentlessly pursue the contrary approach to prove the other nine people wrong so that all other possible alternatives can be considered.

In the fictional world of World War Z, Israeli intelligence intercepted an email from the Indian government saying they were fighting the “rakshasa” (Indian word for zombie), the Tenth Man immediately assumed it was not metaphor or hyperbole – they were actually fighting zombies and must prepare.

People might be uncomfortable inviting the Devil’s Advocate into their decision making. I argue it could guard against the failure of judgment on the smallest personal level scaled up to anticipating large scale black swan events. 

Black swans are extremely rare events that usually have widespread, dire consequences. They are notoriously hard to predict but seem obvious in hindsight. The Tenth Man could also guard against improper reactions to said black swan events. The perpetual Devil’s Advocate could prevent the disastrous stranglehold of groupthink. 

Put simply, embracing the contrarian can help guard against mistakes, personal and otherwise. Mistakes can cause immediate harm, or they can become secrets. Secrets usually metastasize to harms far greater than their original counterparts. 

So, why would Israel create an extreme version of the Devil’s Advocate, “a person who expresses a contentious opinion in order to provoke debate or test the strength of opposing arguments.” 

The state of Israel was established in 1948. It’s a very young country. It also has the unique (undesirable) privilege of being surrounded by other states that wish (openly or tacitly) to obliterate them: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

Leaving aside the Jew’s refusal to recognize the growing homicidal anti-semitism of 1930’s Nazi Germany, the Israelis ignored their own intelligence reports warning of potential slaughter at the Olympic games in Munich, 1972. The following synopsis is drawn from Wikipedia.

“Eight members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September infiltrated the Olympic Village, killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team, and took nine others hostage. The Black September commander was Luttif Afif, who was also their negotiator. West Germain neo-Nazis gave the group logistical assistance. Afif demanded the release of 234 Palestinian prisoners.  West German police ambushed the terrorists, and killed five of the eight Black September members, but the rescue attempt failed and all of the hostages were killed.”

The Israelis were so devastated in the aftermath, they authorized what was essentially a kill squad to track down and assassinate anyone associated with the attack, a macabre and morally challenged directive that lasted for years. 

What should the Tenth Man have picked up on? 

Again from Wikipedia, “Olympic organizers asked West German forensic psychologist Georg Sieber to create 26 terrorism scenarios to aid the organizers in planning security. His "Situation 21" accurately forecast armed Palestinians invading the Israeli delegation's quarters, killing and taking hostages, and demanding Israel's release of prisoners.”  Ultimately, the Olympic organizers (including the Israelis) balked against Situation 21. It was contrary to the goal of “Carefree Games.” 

Less than a year later came the surprise Arab attack known as the Yom Kippur War. 

“It was an armed conflict fought from 6 to 25 October 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. The majority of combat between the two sides took place in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, both of which were occupied by Israel beginning in 1967. Egypt wanted to regain control on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal to further negotiate the return of all Israili-occupied areas on the peninsula,” reporting again from Wikipedia. 

After ignoring intelligence reports of troop movements and enemy forces massing on their borders, the Israilis were caught completely off guard and nearly destroyed. Ultimately, they were able to push back the Arab assault, but at great cost. 

It was in the aftermath of these two events they decided to rethink their intelligence strategies, and the Tenth Man was created. As the Toronto Star reports from an excerpt of Why Dissent Matters by William Kaplan, “analysts search for information and arguments that contradict theses constructed by the intelligence community’s various production and analysis departments. One anomaly is sufficient to refute a thesis, or at least to warrant a re-examination.”

Others argue the Tenth Man is not a panacea. As historian Walter Laqueur writes, “Many seasoned intelligence professionals think it is ridiculous; more importantly, it is seen as unproductive because it doesn’t work.” Laquer concludes, “The Tenth Man was without conspicuous success.”

Kaplan continues, “In the intelligence world, the detractors criticize it as pseudo-intelligence, beginning with a preordained conclusion that the contrary of something is correct, instead of following the evidence no matter where it goes. There is also some reason to believe that the routine use of this mechanism ritualizes it and results in it being ignored.”

It’s a real see-saw of debate. Benny Gantz, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) chief of staff, observed: “We need an organizational structure that encourages all ranks to be critical, to cast doubt, to re-examine basic assumptions, to get outside the framework.” 

I side with Benny, on the grounds that the Tenth Man might occasionally penetrate the adamantine shell of groupthink. 

Think of the cavalcade of groupthink issues we’ve suffered within the past few years: covid lockdown policies, lab leak denial, vaccine mandates, assault on alternative treatments, gender and critical race theory edicts within academia, medicine and federal policy, the sudden and cataclysmic withdraw from Afghanistan, current energy policy, lack of immigration and border enforcement. This paragraph could go on at length. 

To have a built-in safeguard of the Tenth Man does not always mean the policy decisions of the other nine people are wrong. Often, the consensus is the correct decision . . . except when it isn’t, and the groupthink leads to catastrophe. 

We all make our mistakes. We all have our secrets born of those mistakes. By “we” I mean the individual, the group, the organization, the club, the church, the town, the city, the state, the government, etc. Mistakes and secrets always scale up. Imagine, if at every level there was the firewall of the Tenth Man? How many mistakes might we avoid?

I want that safeguard . . . just in case fighting zombies means actually fighting zombies.