How to share just enough information

Satiate the need for transparency without causing chaos.

Donald Rumsfeld shakes hands with US Army soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade while on a visit to Kirkuk Air Base, Iraq. Photo from US Army Africa.

There are known knowns…

On February 12th 2002, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stood in front of journalists and the media at another U.S. Department of Defense news briefing.

Facing another probing question about the lack of evidence to link the Iraqi government with the provision of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, Rumsfeld began his reply, with little idea that he was about to coin the phrase that he would be remembered by.

“…because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

I remember watching the briefing on BBC News. My initial reaction was that Rumsfeld had said something tautological and utterly ridiculous, but, in retrospect, it has been labelled a smart distillation of complex matters. I think I now agree.

Although the public would declare this phrase as a Rumsfeld creation, the evidence points to it being previously used inside NASA, of which Rumsfeld likely heard a variant of when he worked…