Over at RealClearDefense, Phil Wasielewski has thoughts on surprise attacks, what to watch for, how they succeed, and how to prepare for them. 

When an investigation of the Hamas surprise attack is completed, it will likely provide not lessons learned but lessons relearned regarding not only intelligence collection and analysis, but also military and political judgements. These judgements will likely have been clouded by four attributes of human nature that are a common factor in surprise attacks. If the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are Death, Famine, War, and Pestilence, then the four horsemen of surprise attack are Ambiguity, Misperception, Deception, and Preconception.

One could certainly apply all of those to the Pearl Harbor attacks, but those attacks have (rightly) been analyzed to a fare-thee-well already. Instead, let's apply Mr. Wasialewski's four tenets to our current situation here, in the United States, today. And as far as today's situation is concerned, it's troubling that much of our political and military "leadership" seems to be distracted by events in Eastern Europe, when the enemy that is far more likely to attempt a surprise attack springs from the Middle East and is almost certainly already among us.

Ambiguity. Ambiguity is the hobgoblin of strategic and tactical intelligence. When trying to analyze the possibility of actions by a group of people, one often has to rely on determining the motives of people whose worldviews couldn't possibly be more different than ours. We Americans (and Europeans)--civilized, comfortable products of centuries of Western civilization and Enlightenment values--are facing 11th-century monsters who commit mass rape, behead infants, and murder the elderly. Determining their motivations - other than that they want to kill who they see as infidels - is nearly impossible.

Misperception. The pro-Hamas "protests" in the United States seem to be happening primarily in our major cities and involve masses of people converging in public areas and governmental centers. But look at where the October 7th attacks in Israel happened; Hamas didn't try to take Tel Aviv. They attacked small settlements, peaceful places, where they could strike fast, meet little resistance, commit their atrocities, and get out quickly. Our civil authorities seem focused on our major cities, but a savvy planner - and there's no reason to think that just because Hamas and their ilk are savages, they are also stupid - may well be planning to strike somewhere else. Where else? I'll get to that.

Deception. This misperception, indeed, may be fomented actively in deliberate deception operations. The protests may be part of that deception, intended to make our civil authorities look the wrong way; the endless propaganda campaign by terror-state enablers and their sympathizers may be another aspect. It's a common tactic; pretend to negotiate, get your foe looking the wrong way, distract with actions away from the "schwerpunkt," and then strike.

Preconception. There's a saying in military circles, that the services always are training to fight the last war. Civil authorities are no less prone to this, and again, in our major cities, political leaders are doubtless looking back at the 2020 BLM/Antifa riots and planning for a repetition, which of course is prudent and worth doing; but should a surprise attack come on the scale of what happened to Israel, they won't be prepared.

It's as though these people were reading Sun Tzu, who, in "The Art of War," wrote:

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

What might happen? It's not at all unlikely that the United States will, eventually, suffer a similar attack to what Israel suffered last October. Sept. 11th, remember, was planned and executed by a small group of people, and it met all of the conditions described above, particularly the last; nobody expected attackers to use hijacked airliners as missiles. That caught our defense apparatus completely wrong-footed, and it was only due to quick reactions by passengers that the last hijacked airliner didn't strike its target.

The deception/preconception actions are already taking place. Our national leadership is weak and ineffective. If an enemy of the United States wanted to strike, to do us serious damage, to carry out something on the scale of October 7th, the time to do it would be before the next election, when (hopefully) someone stronger, more decisive, more capable will be sitting behind the Resolute Desk, serving as Commander in Chief.

It's troubling to think about, but the pieces are likely already in place.

The actors: Look at the pro-Hamas "Palestinian" protests taking place in our major cities. How many people are professing sympathy for the cause of murderers? Tens of thousands? More? Two-and-a-half million people have crossed our southern border in 2023, not to mention the millions prior; these people disappear into the cities and towns across America, and we have little or no idea who many of them are, why they are here, or what they intend to do.

The motive: Some people are dehumanizing Jews now; it starts by tearing down posters of kidnapped children, and it continues with Jews hiding, literally in fear for their lives -- here, in the United States. Think about where that leads.

The opportunity: Forget the big cities. Look at what happened in Israel. Then look at our country; in fact, forget the country, just look at the area within a hundred-mile radius of New York City. Look at all the small, peaceful, idyllic towns, all the scattered villages, the semi-rural communities - in structure, in inhabitants, in nature so much like the kibbutzes of southern Israel. Bear in mind that an attack on a little town in Connecticut or upstate New York may be quite a bit different than an attack on a small town in Alabama, Wyoming, or Alaska where the likely response would involve some of the best riflemen on the continent.

Consider the implications of all that. Yes, it could very easily happen here. And yes, our civil and military authorities are looking the wrong way.

Phil Wasielewski concludes:

The United States remains the “far enemy” for violent Salafist terrorists just as Israel remains their “near enemy.” While Russia and China may predominate American security horizons, there are deadly threats below that horizon still willing to do in the United States what was done in the kibbutz of Kfar Aza.

Deadly threats, yes. Below the horizon, for now. Willing, able, and likely already here.