Counterterrorism may be the most significant area of government policy where we still have no idea what the hell we’re doing.
Everywhere else, policymakers are at least trying to know what they’re doing. Development researchers and education wonks have become obsessive about running randomized controlled trials to evaluate interventions. Indeed, the popularity of charter schools is due in part to the fact that their frequent use of lottery-based admission makes them good ways to randomly test different school designs. Criminologists have run experiments on a variety of police tactics, probation designs,anti-gang initiatives, approaches to domestic violence, and more. And While there’s stillplenty we don’t know about what health measures work, the Affordable Care Act isdevoting millions to building up more evidence, and big-deal health policy experiments like the Oregon Medical Study receive the attention they deserve.
But terrorism? We have no idea. The Afghanistan war has cost $657.5 billion so far, we spend $17.2 billion in classified funds a year fighting terrorism through the intelligence community, and the Department of Homeland Security spent another $47.4 billion last year. And we have very little idea whether any of it is preventing terrorist attacks.
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