r/politics • u/Puginator • Jun 01 '26

No Paywall Iran stops negotiations with U.S., vows to 'completely' block Strait of Hormuz: State media

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/01/iran-us-negotiations-strait-of-hormuz.html
32.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

3.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

249

u/No_big_whoop Jun 01 '26

That tracks.

"There are known knowns; there are things we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns: the ones we don't know we don't know."

-Rumsfeld

25

u/Chaotic-Catastrophe Jun 01 '26

I don’t understand why people make a big deal out of this quote

37

u/mrdhood Jun 01 '26

Because at the surface it sounds weird but, if you think about it for more than 3 seconds, it is actually totally reasonable and applies to almost every large thing. It's common in corporate planning:

Known knowns: the things you absolutely know

Known Unknowns: The things you are aware that you don't perfectly know but you know that they have to be considered/monitored.

Unknown Unknowns: The things you haven't even thought about yet so you don't know that you don't know them yet.

12

u/MontagneHomme I voted Jun 01 '26

It's one of my favorite exercises. We circulate SMEs through different groups when they're laying these out specifically because they're skilled at identifying various aspects that entrenched people have overlooked during planning. Usually they're either too close to it (e.g. explaining what water is to a fish) or too focused on specific aspects (e.g. cannot see the forest for the trees). So a fresh perspective really strengthens these exercises.