This piece analyzes a critical failure in strategic foresight—the Tenth Man Rule—and why the lack of internal dissent during Vietnam’s early COVID-19 success led to profound tragedy.
Part I: The genesis of the tenth man rule
The “Tenth Man Rule” emerged from the catastrophic failure of Israeli military intelligence during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. For years, the Israeli defense establishment held an unshakable belief—known as the “Concept of Arab Intentions”—that Arab nations would never launch a coordinated attack without the prerequisite of Egyptian air superiority. This theory was utterly proven wrong when Egypt and Syria launched a massive, coordinated surprise attack in October 1973, nearly leading to the destruction of the state.
The fallout was immense: Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned, and Israeli military intelligence faced a radical overhaul.
The Tenth Man Rule was born from this failure. It mandates that if nine individuals in a strategic meeting agree on a course of action or an assessment of risk, the tenth person is obligated to adopt the role of the “devil’s advocate.” Their job is to challenge every assumption, seek out cognitive biases, and courageously articulate the worst-case scenario. The other nine must then seriously consider this dissenting view. This principle became paramount for strategic decision-making, designed to prevent catastrophic institutional consensus.
Part II: The deadly cost of consensus in Vietnam
Returning to Vietnam’s COVID-19 management, the tragic reality is that had we embraced a “Tenth Man” culture and dared to envision the worst-case scenarios, the outcome could have been drastically different.
There was a time when we were—myself included—overly self-congratulatory about Vietnam’s containment success. That luck felt statistically improbable. As my colleagues and I discussed over coffee, we wondered: How could we be immune when the entire world was sinking into disaster? Even those of us who championed critical, scientific thinking failed to conceive of the catastrophe that unfolded.
During that period of self-congratulation, few, if any, mainstream media outlets challenged the notion that our “luck” would last forever. Any effort to critically question the containment strategy was dismissed or suppressed as “sensitive” material. We were too complacent and self-satisfied to maintain a sober perspective.
The consequences of this aversion to bad news are heartbreakingly evident:
- The cremation warning: In April 2020, during the first lockdown, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh My, Vice Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Natural Resources and Environment, called for plans to rapidly establish cremation facilities in case the outbreak became uncontrollable. She was met with public outcry and officially reprimanded. Today, that horrific prospect has become reality; HCMC did not have the resources to cremate victims fast enough.
- The vaccine denial: Four months before the major outbreak, I tried to publish an article warning of Vietnam becoming an “unvaccinated island” and urgently recommending that the government procure vaccines by all means necessary. Three major Vietnamese newspapers refused to publish the piece, citing its “sensitive” nature. Only one platform was eventually courageous enough to publish it.
We were institutionally afraid to speak the worst-case scenario into existence. We actively avoided thinking about the deepest pitfalls and lacked the courage to hear dissent and consider alternative assumptions.
Part III: The lessons we failed to heed
It is too late for these reflections to change the past, but the lessons must define the future. I desperately wish that, in the early days, we had officially and publicly listened to a “Tenth Man” who dared to say three things:
- Our luck will expire. We cannot rely on chance forever.
- A major COVID-19 crisis is inevitable, and we must prepare resources now.
- Vaccines are an existential necessity, and we must secure them at any cost.
We needed a “Tenth Man” with the courage to voice the potential for disaster. The failure to cultivate a culture where dissent is not only tolerated but mandated is a failure of leadership with devastating consequences.
Source:
- https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/10/8/the-october-arab-israeli-war-of-1973-what-happened
- https://ttbc-hcm.gov.vn/tphcm-se-lo-toan-bo-chi-phi-hau-su-cho-nguoi-mat-vi-covid-19-1010016.html
- https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/how-israeli-intelligence-failures-led-to-a-devils-advocate-role/
