David Kay Quotes

Policymakers have to make judgments based on the best intelligence they get.

And I argued with that intelligence estimate and I think it is a responsibility of policymakers to use their best judgment on the basis of the intelligence they've received.

At a very young age I was predicting outcomes, trying to take all the information and find the best route to wherever I was going. I avoided a lot of pitfalls because of that.

As an intelligence analyst you have to tell the president what you know, what you think you know and what you don’t know.

History is the best guide to the future.

We need to be able to make decisions even though part of the information that we have is incorrect and wrong.

The manner in which intelligence indicators were handled in the Cuba situation may well be the most serious flaw in our intelligence system, and one which, if uncorrected, could lead to the gravest consequences

The great problem now is that we don’t know what to do.

One is to ensure that the war fighters and the intelligence analysts get the information that they need when they need it, in a format that's useful to them.

Here's the teaching point, if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions, and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions.

How do Ferrari know what I'm doing next year when I don't know what I'm doing next week?

Are the things that now, in retrospect, with what I've seen happen to my company, would I have done some things differently? I think - I think we all would do - we would do a number of things differently.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.

You need to carry out very careful pre-feasibility and feasibility studies before you enter any crisis situation.

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

Game management is accomplished by staying constantly alert and then reading and reacting to potential problem situations before they materialize. It all boils down to paying attention to details.

Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.

One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.

I must analyze, from what I do now, what will be the impact two or three or five years in the future. What is the statement I want to make?

I really try at least to come back and answer the question as to whether that was really the best way to do that and was I really thinking straight and how did my opponents behave and how did the judges behave was needed.

Successful organizations, including the Military, have learned that the higher the risk, the more necessary it is to engage everyone's commitment and intelligence.

Intelligence collection has its place—no question—… But no matter how important collection is, in the short and even the long run, it just doesn’t cost very much.

We… need to recalibrate our expectations for what we access as actionable intelligence. We need to lower that threshold to the appropriate level and we need to have a higher threshold tolerance for pain in the event that we miscalculate or things go wrong or people get caught or something happens.

Sometimes we have to think very clearly about the unthinkable because the unthinkable sometimes happens.