On the eve of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, an intelligence overview was presented to the government, which included 37 articles describing the enemy’s intensive preparations on all fronts. The pinnacle of the overview was “Article 40” — which has since become synonymous with a severe intelligence failure. It stated that, “The probability that the Egyptians intend to go to war is low.”

The problem was not with the information, rather with how it was interpreted and how the Israel Defense Forces prepared as a result. The gigantic discrepancy between the facts and their analysis can be explained in many ways, but the most striking and important of them all was the sense of exaggerated overconfidence and the lack of doubt about what the enemy was planning to do, and under what conditions. This overconfidence, among other factors, stemmed from a series of prior successes.

Read this article in full at Israel Hayom.