Those of you who watch CBS News may have seen their senior investigative correspondent, Catherine Herridge, formerly the Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel, give her prediction for 2024. It seems that she shocked many in the viewing audience when she offered her prediction that the country will suffer a “Black Swan Event” in 2024.
Herridge’s prediction raised some eyebrows on the CBS set; but, really garnered a number of comments on social media for being a dark prediction for the country.
So, what is a Black Swan Event? Britannica.com defines a Black Swan Event as: A high-impact event that is difficult to predict under normal circumstances but that in retrospect appears to have been inevitable. A black swan event is unexpected and therefore difficult to prepare for but is often rationalized with the benefit of hindsight as having been unavoidable.
We go on to learn that: The earliest known reference to the term black swan occurs in the Roman poet Juvenal’s poem Satire VI, in which he describes potential qualities of a woman worthy of marriage. His line “rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno” translates to “a rare bird in the world, very similar to the black swan.” At the time, black swans were presumed not to exist. All swans were presumed to be white because all historical records of swans showed them with white feathers.
The term black swan was thus used to describe any impossible event or circumstance. But in 1697 the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh encountered swans with dark plumage in Australia, a land largely unexplored by Europeans at that time.
The black swan thus came to be a metaphor for the reality that just because something has not happened does not mean that it cannot occur in the future. The metaphor is analogous to the fragility of any system of thought and a testament to the fallacy of assumption. A set of conclusions can be undone once any of its fundamentals is proved false. In this case, the observation of a single black swan negated the long-held presumption about the species. Any logic that followed the assumption that swans must be white was also invalidated by the discovery.
The term black swan was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a professor, economist, and writer. He initially explored black swan events in the context of financial markets in the early 21st century and then expanded his scope to include historical, scientific, and other events. Taleb argues that, while human beings are good at turning environmental stimuli into meaningful information, they tend to be narrow-minded in their beliefs about the world. Being dogmatic about beliefs makes humans blind to concepts that fall outside what is accepted as true. This creates a vulnerability to surprise events called black swans, which necessitate a change in worldview.
Now that we have a clear understanding of what a Black Swan Event can be, to what exactly was Herridge’s dark prediction in reference? I don’t believe it was in reference to the financial markets – although if the Biden Administration keeps screwing up in the Middle East, it could mean that the world no longer recognizes the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and turns to the Chinese Yuan and / or the Russian Ruble. Most of the Administration’s talking heads like Janet Yellen tell us that is an impossibility … sort of like there are no Black Swans in the world --- until there are!
However, given Herridge’s background in National Security affairs, I believe that she was predicting what we are told can’t happen here --- a terrorist attack on our country the likes of which we may have never seen. Remember the parameters that define such an event as a Black Swan: Being dogmatic about beliefs makes humans blind to concepts that fall outside what is accepted as true. This creates a vulnerability to surprise events called black swans, which necessitate a change in worldview. Could there be a clearer definition of what is taking place at the southern border and the peril that it poses for this county?
We know that millions of military age men have entered the country … and that they have not been vetted … yet they have been released into the country to locations from the east coast to the west coast and right in the middle. Counting the million or so “Got Aways” who can’t be accounted for because they did not want to be counted, there are four main groups with which we need to be concerned. First, the Latinos from places like Nicaragua, and Venezuela, both communist countries. Then we have Chinese men of military age.
One must be inquisitive and consider … who sent them … how many have already been in the Chinese military … could they constitute a trained and ready fifth column in this country just waiting for a signal to execute an unforeseen Black Swan Event?
As always, there is the existing threat posed by the third group … the Middle East terrorist … and that threat is exacerbated with the increasing numbers of those from the Middle East crossing the southern border. We have already seen a number of attacks across the country that were directly attributable to those who took their ideology or training from some well-known to us … Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban. We know that men on the terrorist watch list have been apprehended coming through the southern border. Now fast forward to 2023, and we have added more from the Middle East to the list. Consider the current war between Israel and Hamas with Iran pulling the strings. Is there any doubt that Hezbollah and Hamas would love to conduct the kind of attack in America that they pulled off in Israel? And let’s not forget the Houthis … they are attacking ships at sea … the US Navy is responding … so how long before they dispatch trained fighters to infiltrate the southern border?
And the fourth group … Most recently, there has been an enormous influx of Africans coming through the border. The US has been active in Africa assisting the government of Nigeria in dealing with their own internal terrorist threat … now, we must be alert to the threat some of these people may be to us. Do we know who is crossing our border that might have been recruited and trained by the extremist group Boko Haram - with the mission of creating a catastrophic event in America?
By opening up our southern border and telling the world that anyone can simply walk into our country, we have invited the Black Swan Event. It could be on a scale greater than 9/11 or on a scale as small as a group of terrorists taking an elementary school hostage … killing children just to punctuate their terror. We are witnessing this in Gaza and Israel. The question is: When will it happen here?
Joe Biden has sold out America. If there is an impeachable offense to be had, it should start with the monumental invasion occurring on the southern border. His failure to uphold immigration law and his oath of office must be a high crime and when American lives are lost on American soil through a Black Swan Event … that blood will be on Joe Biden’s hands.
I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of what can/will happen in the United States within a year or two. Also, those Chinese males coming in? I watched and rewatched the footage of them on the southern border and observed their demeanor. They gave me the impression that all of them have military experience by the way they stood and stared at the camera. That isn’t much to go on and I might be an alarmist but I feel given the other people pointed out in your article it is a bigger problem boiling.