Critical infrastructure and the unknown: A methodological quest

Sa？etak At the the Ad de Jonge Centre, University of Amsterdam, over a period of almost ten years there was experience in Red Team experiments of, among others, the Dutch critical infrastructure. The tests regularly started with the outcomes of the National Advisory Centre Vital Infrastructure (NAVI), to see if any residual threat had been overlooked. The project also encompassed a more methodological approach of how to deal with the unknown. This article starts with a tool of how to deal with the unknown. The tool is a specific Rumsfeld matrix that was developed in cooperation with the Dutch Intelligence and Security Institute of the Dutch defense forces (DISI). The Ad de Jonge Centre used this tool to cope with the different types of unknowns. A focus will be on the so-called unknown-unknown – in which it is both unknown of how to retrieve data, as well as the data themselves. By using this framework, it will be evaluated of how the Centre came to a more methodological approach in dealing with residual threat. First, the Ad de Jonge Centre took over the already more established technique of Red Team experiments. Secondly, it enriched these experiments, by looking at the β aspects – in order not to miss a threat – of so-called Structured Analytic Techniques. Thirdly, it dealt with the issue of logic – reasoning – in the context of not missing threats. And finally – in an intelligence setting that is dominated by positivistic Empiricism – it turned to continental philosophy, to assess if this would lead to new insights in the dealing with the unknown. Eventually, the Ad de Jonge Centre developed its own approach in dealing with the unknown and residual threat. This article is meant to share this approach, and to inspire those working in the field of securing the critical infrastructure and working with the unknown