Thinking About the Unthinkable¶
Kahn, H. (1962). Thinking About the Unthinkable. Horizon Press.
Cited by¶
2 citations across 2 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Scenario Planning
- A concrete case: the US Joint Staff in 2019-2021 developed scenarios for Indo-Pacific great-power competition with China, examining how military capabilities, alliance structures, and geopolitical alignments might evolve under different assumptions about Chinese military modernization, US technological advantages, and third-country (Japan, South Korea, Australia, Philippines) alignment patterns — a tradition of structured contingency analysis that traces back to Kahn (1962) and his RAND-era treatment of hitherto-unthinkable strategic conflicts.
This sourceRAND-era foundational work on systematic contingency analysis for nuclear and other strategic conflicts; established the practice of structured exploration of taboo or extreme scenarios in defense planning.
- A concrete case: the US Joint Staff in 2019-2021 developed scenarios for Indo-Pacific great-power competition with China, examining how military capabilities, alliance structures, and geopolitical alignments might evolve under different assumptions about Chinese military modernization, US technological advantages, and third-country (Japan, South Korea, Australia, Philippines) alignment patterns — a tradition of structured contingency analysis that traces back to Kahn (1962) and his RAND-era treatment of hitherto-unthinkable strategic conflicts.
- Sequencing
- Sequencing encompasses both, as Kahn (1962) demonstrates with his foundational topological-sort algorithm that admits any valid linearization—including parallel sub-sequences—of a precedence DAG.
This sourceRAND-era foundational work on systematic contingency analysis for nuclear and other strategic conflicts; established the practice of structured exploration of taboo or extreme scenarios in defense planning.
- Sequencing encompasses both, as Kahn (1962) demonstrates with his foundational topological-sort algorithm that admits any valid linearization—including parallel sub-sequences—of a precedence DAG.
Verification¶
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Registry ID ref:115b5ef7ca1c · see in the full table