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A New Explanation of the Trump Assassination Attempt

 Trump Assassination Attempt: Conspiracy, Incompetence, or Something Else?

The recent assassination attempt on Trump's life at a rally was a shocking and horrific event. Various explanations have been suggested, from a sudden turn of Trump's head or a bad aim to the US Secret Service's (USSS) inadequate coverage of the event. This has lent credence to conspiracy theories. Another popular theory is that the USSS has become lazy and incompetent under the Biden administration.

However, there's a third possibility: induction. The USSS covers numerous events for high-ranking government officials and former presidents, with almost nothing untoward ever happening. This repeated uneventfulness can lull agents into a false sense of security, leading them to assume that no problems will arise at future events. This principle of induction is something we all use constantly. We generalize that the sun will rise every morning, the tides will come in every day, and the weather will change with the seasons. Similarly, when no security incidents occur at presidential events repeatedly, it can lead to complacency. Eventually, a catastrophe occurs.

The great physicist Richard Feynman observed this principle when he was appointed to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster commission in 1986. Feynman identified that the shuttle directors made the mistake of thinking that this flight was just like all the others. They didn't account for the freezing ambient temperature at blast-off, which caused the failure of the primary and secondary O-ring seals in a joint in the shuttle's right solid rocket booster. Induction can be a slow train to disaster that eventually arrives.

Remedy: All future USSS events should have a detailed checklist to be completed before, during, and after the event. This way, radio/text/phone communication, personnel coverage, visualization, intelligence, security coverage, and other conditions will be fully documented, serving as constant reminders to the in-situ security teams. While the consequences of human induction can never be completely eradicated, this could help mitigate the risks.

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