“And Then What?” and “What If We’re Wrong?”: Intelligence Questions That Comms Don’t Ask

Elie Jacobs:

Former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates was known to say that the 3 most feared words in Washington D.C. are: “and then what.”

Those three words forced second-order thinking in every policy discussion. If we impose sanctions, and then what? If we launch this operation, and then what happens next? The question exposed assumptions, revealed blind spots, and prevented catastrophic errors before they happened.

Intelligence professionnals ask a companion question with equal discipline: “What if we’re wrong?” Not as self-doubt, but as professional skepticism about their own analysis. What if we’re wrong about this signal? What if we’re wrong about their intent? What if our core assumption is flawed?

These two questions separate amateur from professional intelligence analysis. And they’re questions that would make communications teams substantially better at the intelligence work they’re already doing through media monitoring, stakeholder feedback, social listening, and competitive research.

The problem isn’t that communications professionals are naive. Communications training optimizes for different outcomes than intelligence training. Communications professionals respond quickly within news cycles, all too often assume positive intent from stakeholders, default to transparency, and focus on crafting the right message. These principles work brilliantly for routine communications with aligned stakeholders.

Intelligence professionals operate under opposite assumptions. They prioritize accuracy over speed, compartmentalize information on a need-to-know basis, verify even when sources seem trustworthy, and think through second and third-order consequences before acting. They assume adversaries are actively trying to deceive them.

This isn’t about paranoia. It’s about professional skepticism—the same discipline doctors use when they ask “what if this diagnosis is wrong?” or auditors use when they verify clean financial statements. It’s about recognizing when standard communications approaches need to be supplemented with deeper questioning, and knowing which questions to ask in those moments.

The intelligence community learned this lesson catastrophically with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The Intelligence Commission’s 2005 report concluded that the assessment was “an analytical process that was driven by assumptions and inferences rather than data.” The entire intelligence apparatus convinced itself that Saddam Hussein was hiding active WMD programs. They never seriously asked “what if we’re wrong about his intent?”\

The assumption was that Saddam’s denial and deception operations were hiding WMD he possessed. The question they should have asked was: what if he’s hiding weakness instead of strength? What if he doesn’t have WMD but wants Iran to think he does? That single unasked question led to an invasion based on flawed intelligence. The analysts saw the signals they expected to see, relied on fabricated sources like “Curveball,” and never challenged their core assumptions until it was too late.

Communications professionals face similar risks with different stakes. Consider Ford’s $19.5 billion mistake with the all-electric F-150 Lightning. When Ford announced the vehicle in 2021, they were reading policy signals that seemed clear: Biden administration’s $7,500 EV tax credit, strict emissions standards, and federal incentives for EV production created what looked like stable regulatory environment favoring electrification. Ford invested accordingly, building battery factories and retooling plants for full EV production.

The assumptions seemed reasonable. Policy momentum toward electrification appeared irreversible. Government incentives would continue supporting EV demand. But the questions went unasked: What if we’re wrong about policy stability? What if the next administration reverses these incentives? And then what happens to demand if the tax credit disappears?

Those unasked questions cost Ford dearly. When the Trump administration stripped the $7,500 EV tax credit in early 2025, Lightning sales fell 72% in a single month. Ford halted production in December 2025 and announced a $19.5 billion write-down. CEO Jim Farley acknowledged that “the operating reality has changed.” The next-generation Lightning will be a hybrid with a gas generator, not the pure EV they’d committed billions to developing.

When government relations falls under communications’ leadership, then reading policy signals is fundamentally an intelligence function. Ford’s communications and government affairs teams should have red-teamed their policy assumptions. They didn’t, and it cost them $19.5 billion.

The question isn’t whether to adopt intelligence questioning broadly. It’s knowing when these questions become necessary. For routine communications with employees, trusted partners, or aligned stakeholders in low-stakes situations, communications defaults work well. Speed, transparency, and assuming positive intent serve you with people who share your goals.

Apply intelligence questions when stakeholders have conflicting incentives—when a board member has portfolio companies in your competitive space, when an investor holds stakes in multiple competitors, when navigating sensitive M&A negotiations, in crisis situations with coordinated attacks, or when making major decisions based on policy or regulatory signals. Apply them when you notice unusual patterns: timing that seems too coincidental, behavior changes in trusted relationships, or information requests that don’t make sense.

The specific scenarios matter. When an investor with ties to a competitor asks detailed questions about your burn rate: what if we’re wrong about their intent? And then what if they share this with the competitor? When media coverage seems coordinated across multiple outlets: what if we’re wrong that this is organic criticism? When betting billions on current policy remaining stable: what if we’re wrong about policy durability?

You don’t need elaborate new intelligence systems. Add two questions to your existing decision-making process. Before major communications decisions: what if we’re wrong about this key assumption? And then what happens next? Take ten minutes to red-team your analysis. Have one person play adversary and challenge your interpretation. Have another think through second and third-order effects. That ten-minute investment catches errors that five-minute responses miss.

After significant communications events, conduct brief post-mortems asking what assumptions proved wrong. Build pattern recognition over time.

Collecting intelligence systematically about what’s happening around you, protecting your sensitive information from leaking to adversaries, and questioning rigorously by challenging your assumptions and thinking through consequences before you act.

Intelligence thinking isn’t paranoia. It’s professional skepticism about when standard approaches aren’t sufficient. The question isn’t whether communications teams need to adopt these questions. The question is whether you’ll ask them before the $19.5 billion mistake, or after.

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Elie Jacobs is a strategic communications and public affairs advisor with more than two decades of experience helping organizations build credibility, navigate risk, prepare and respond to crises and communicate with clarity.