Applying Calculus in Intelligence Calculations
(The Question of a Coup)
Coups in Africa
Let's examine some well-documented coups in Africa where post-event investigations, memoirs, and expert analyses exactly show the slow-burn patterns of coups:
Elite whispers
Performative loyalty
Silence from insiders, and
Danger being misjudged rather than unseen.
Here are specific, widely studied cases, with the pattern made explicit:
AI-generated image. The image of the military officer is for illustrative purposes only and does not represent any real person or country.
Ghana
The 24 Feb 1966 Coup (Overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah)
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, former president of Ghana
What the “whispers” looked like:
A year-plus of recurrent coup talk: U.S. intelligence reporting noted “periodic build-ups of coup rumors,” especially during moments of economic tension—i.e., the rumor-cycle itself was a political signal, not noise.
The plotting was open enough inside elite circles that intelligence reporting repeatedly tracked specific clusters of officers and their “tentative dates and occasions.”
What “performative loyalty/hedging” looked like in practice (who drifted):
The reporting points to senior figures inside the coercive apparatus (army brigades; police commissioner) as potential engineers—meaning the very institutions meant to guarantee regime security were implicated in the drift.
It describes vacillation among senior plotters and frustration among younger officers “chafing” at delays—classic “smiles + hedging” behavior: outward discipline, inward coalition-building, and waiting for the safest moment.
What warnings were ignored/misjudged (not unseen):
The intelligence record is explicit that the coup was not “out of the blue”: it was “apparently postponed several times” due to countermeasures and plotter indecision—meaning the regime had signals and even acted, but misread the resilience and timing problem.
One key misjudgment: Nkrumah’s counter-move (neutralizing senior officers) is described as temporarily stopping plotting—yet the underlying coalition regenerated and waited for the “Nkrumah out of the country” window that earlier reporting had flagged.
Common patterns in the coups
Across these cases, experts consistently identify the same sequence:
Elite discontent becomes private, not public
Rituals of loyalty continue, but substance disappears
Advisers hedge, delay, or fall silent
Leaders mistake formality for fidelity
The coup appears sudden—only in retrospect
One day an administration stands; the next, it is gone.
This is why many coup experts argue that coups are not shocks but revelations: the moment when invisible shifts finally become undeniable.
Other Countries
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About the tool book
This free introductory manual starts where conventional intelligence analysis grows uncomfortable—and grinds to a screeching halt—and that is, sophisticated mathematics. No one likes maths, but it's maths that saves the day, every day. This manual takes a turn most intelligence analysts never expect: Calculus. This is not just equations; it's not academic maths, but a discipline designed to reason under uncertainty, thresholds, and hidden coordination.
Yes, many intelligence failures are driven less by missing information and more by a false sense of certainty.
Calculus accounts for what you do not know! In this case, calculus may be the missing tool leaders never realized they needed.
What intelligence analysts will get from this manual:
A disciplined way to treat coup risk as a continuously evolving process rather than a binary outcome.
A method for preventing repeated signals from masquerading as independent confirmation
Practical tools for integrating noisy, incomplete, and deceptive intelligence without forcing premature conclusions.
A calculus-based framework for handling hidden coordination, thresholds, and nonlinear escalation.
Protection against false certainty created by consensus, narrative dominance, or analytic momentum.
Clear guidance on when confidence is warranted, conditional, or unjustified.
An approach that strengthens judgment without replacing experience or tradecraft.
Techniques for briefing senior leaders that explain not just what you assess, but why that level of confidence exists.
Earlier warning without alarmism, even when visible indicators remain weak.
A way to stay analytically ahead of surprise rather than explaining it afterward.
Explore our other recent projects:
The Question of a Coup: Applying Calculus in Intelligence Calculations: A practical intelligence manual showing how calculus-based reasoning can prevent false certainty, expose hidden coordination, and reduce strategic surprise in coup analysis.
National socio-digital early warning and strategic foresight architecture: a computational intelligence ecosystem to anticipate mass sentiment shifts before coordinated unrest and destabilization emerge.
Understanding the Lockwood Analytical Method for Prediction (LAMP): my firsthand experience applying one of the intelligence community’s most rigorous forecasting methodologies.
Self-disruption research: Applied Whitney Johnson's four principles of self-disruption in addressing unconscious bias among intelligence analysts.
Intelligence training manual: Self-disruption as analytic tradecraft
Self-disruption as analytic tradecraft: Classified-style analytic vignettes and tradecraft alignment
Not Intelligence-Related:
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Nwankama Nwankama
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nwankama@nwankama.com
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