David McCloskey

And

I would say we had an understanding of where those pillars were, but we didn't have an ability to forecast what was coming next, right?

Because it was just, it was a surprise.

And I distinctly remember as the protests are happening in Tunisia and Egypt, and then, you know, the Tunisian president, Ben Ali, famously flees, you know, Tunis, which that sets off another cascade because...

populations all over the Arab world look and they say, well, this could work, right?

It's that shift of that.

It's that private view shifting to become the public one.

But what was very fascinating, and it gets to kind of

you know, the anchoring bias that we all have after Ben Ali fled in, I think he left in late December of 2010.

And then in January of 2011, there were massive street protests in Cairo, famously, against Hosni Mubarak's rule.

And as we were all watching these, I remember thinking,

Everybody sat down, all these political analysts across the CIA sat down and started writing pieces that basically said,

It wasn't exactly this blunt, but it was kind of like, here's why that's not going to happen in my country.

And I remember one of my good friends was actually writing a piece about the significant hurdles to a protest movement in Cairo when protests broke out.

And then he was like, okay, well, I'm going to delete that draft.

Rip that one up.

Rip that one up.

in January and February of 2011.

And it was a country that was not experiencing unrest yet.

And I have distinct memories of sitting at restaurants and cafes and watching these protests in Egypt get bigger and bigger and bigger.