[MUSIC] By now you've read the case, and I want to stress that the case, so called, is really just four articles from the New York Times. The same kind of news articles you might encounter when you're trying to analyze an issue that's more important to you than rare Earth elements, although I find that difficult to believe, as interesting as rare Earth elements are. Look, it started with the first article, Amid Tension, China Blocks Vital Exports to Japan. And you'll note the date on that, September 22nd, 2010. About three weeks later, along came the next article, China Said to Widen Its Embargo of Minerals. Well, a week after that, the next article, China is Said to Resume Shipping Rare Earth Minerals. And then the last article appeared about ten days after that, and it was China Still Bans Rare Earth to Japan. And the questions that the case asked you were pretty simple. Why is there an apparent stoppage of Chinese rare Earth element exports? Who or what is responsible for the apparent stoppage? And how might you explain their actions? These are just the kind of questions you as a business analyst might have to answer. And no matter how good AI gets in the foreseeable future, it is not going to answer those sorts of questions for you or your business. So let's get good at it. How do we get good at it? We use a new tool kit. What's that new tool kit look like? Frankly, it looks a lot like new theories and new ways of approaching the world, just like before. The first element of our new tool kit are timelines and chronologies. And just to let you step back a little bit from the case you were given, there's one other element that wasn't talked about, but was referenced in the articles. But it wasn't directly talked about. And that is that there are these disputed islands that I'm not even going to name because Chinese people call them one thing and Japanese people call them another. And I'm not going to take sides. But there was an incident on September 7th, 2010, that appeared to set off this exchange, and that wasn't named in the article. Now, the first tool I want to give you is very simple, and they're used a lot in intelligence analysis. And that is chronologies and timelines. Now, a chronology is simple, it just organizes events in time. If I create a chronology of our four articles I have 22 September, China blocks vital exports to Japan, just using the headlines. 19 October, China widens its embargo to the US and the EU. 28 October, China appears to resume shipping rare Earth elements, story 3. 10 November, China's still banning the shipping of rare earth elements to Japan. A chronology is just arranging the things you know in the order they occurred, nice and simple. But if you start using that chronology as a skeleton for your analysis, you can start slotting in other facts. Some time in September, there was some sort of a maritime incident that I mentioned. It's mentioned in story 1, but no date is given. But definitely in story 1, it's mentioned that the day before the story, 21 September, the Chinese Prime Minister called for Japan to release a fishing boat captain who got captured. So, dates form the analytic skeleton you're starting with, and your headlines fill in. And then you add new facts to flesh out that skeleton you're creating. It sounds very basic, but it's done a lot in intelligence work. And even a simple chronology can start to reveal a story. If you add to the story we are creating a fact from story 2 that the Chinese officials were denouncing US trade actions on the 18th of October. Or that on 27 October, Secretary Clinton met the Japanese foreign minister and called the embargo a wake up call to both countries, you see a story start to form. And you can start to create an analysis of what's going on here and who might be responsible, just with that simple analytic tool. A timeline is a little different, a timeline organizes events where they happened in time, and these are used a lot at CIA. In fact, CIA has giant printers that print what's called butcher paper, huge rolls of paper. These can be so big that the final timeline for 9/11 actually stretched for over four kilometers, and it was done in a classified field house. So, you could walk along and say, this person called this person on that date. Two days passed. They then called this person, etc, etc. Let's look at these. Here are the same New York Times stories organized on a timeline, rather than a chronology. You see the first headline, about amid tensions, China blocks. You then move on a little while longer, where it widens its embargo. About a week after that, it loosens the embargo, but lo and behold, it would appear ten days after that about they're still restricting exports to Japan. The problem with timelines is they get very busy, you can't create a four kilometer timeline unless you're the CIA trying to figure out 9/11. But just using the facts I added to the chronology, you can see how busy a timeline gets. But let's return to our simple questions. Do you think you're any closer to answering these questions? Why is there an apparent stoppage of rare Earth exports from China? Who or what might be responsible? Or how might you explain all the actors' actions? Just using the simple tools of chronology and timelines, you can begin to create a coherent analytic narrative. That's your first tool. [MUSIC]
