Devil's Advocate Unit

There's a story in Bloomberg today about the IDF's Devil's Advocate Unit ...

The October 7 Massacre happened because Israel succumbed to groupthink: we underestimated our enemy Hamas and overestimated our deterrence.

The IDF is now upgrading its "devil's advocate unit" to challenge conventional thinking. https://t.co/MuzIeIfP91

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) April 2, 2025

But I'm not a subscriber so I couldn't read it. Wikipedia has a page on the unit, though.

What made me notice the story was actually a zombie movie. Remember World War Z starring Brad Pitt? I really liked it, enough to buy it, but hated the book.

But anyway, there was a part in the movie where Pitt's character, trying to discover the origins of the zombie apocalypse, visits Israel, the only country that seemed to anticipate the coming nightmare, and speaks with a high ranking member of the Mossad (played by Ludi Boeken). The Israeli tells him about "the 10th man theory". Until I saw the story about the Devil's Advocate Unit today, I thought that was a made-up thing. Apparently not. I think every country could use a unit like that.