RUMSFELD / KNOWNS
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN links it as the original footage of the famous framing of knowledge and ignorance.
What it is
A CNN clip from February 2002 of Donald Rumsfeld explaining the idea of known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns at a press briefing.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2019 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Cites ronilan · 2019-12 · on “The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions”
What is a sensitive question? Not the examples provided. Here’s an alternative. Former Secretary of Defense for two presidents Donald Rumsfeld once framed (brilliantly actually) the possible things we know. ... there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know [1] A while after someone (which I can’t trace back) made an interesting (and equally brilliant) observation - there is a fourth option - unknown knowns - that is, things we don’t know we know. In most cases, that person pointed out, the category contains,
Cites killjoywashere · 2023-08 · on “Squeeze the hell out of the system you have”
As a military officer who was watching CNN live from inside an aircraft carrier (moored) when he said that, being in charge of anti-terrorism on the ship at the time, it was absolutely foundational to my approach to so many things after that. Here's the actual footage: [this video] Rumsfeld was complicated, but there's no doubt he was very effective at leading the Department. I think most people fail to realize how sophisticated the Office of the Secretary of Defense is. Their resources reel the mind, most of all the human capital, many with PhDs, many very savvy political operators with stunning operational experiences. As a small example, as I recall, Google's hallowed SRE system was developed
Cites mk_stjames · 2026-01 · on “The five orders of ignorance (2000)”
... And here's the first three orders mentioned in a famously quoted press conference from 2002: [this video]