Unlocking the Power of Known Unknowns

Then Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld introduced the concept of Known Unknowns (KUs) to America during a 2002 press conference. Rumsfeld was explaining the limitation of intelligence reports, and he defined a KU as “a thing that we… know we don’t know.” Eventually, his insights regarding what we know and what we don’t know became a standard topic for Risk Management courses, known as the Rumsfeld Matrix.

The purpose of this article is to answer the question, will understanding and handling my KUs with excellence help me to think more clearly and make better life decisions?

Many Americans have experienced a deteriorating quality of life over the last 15 to 20 years. According to Newsweek, “The U.S. has dropped to its lowest position ever in the 2025 World Happiness Report, ranking 24th globally, down from 11th in 2012. The Report considers key factors such as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and perceptions of corruption. Those under 30 ranked America in 62nd place.”

Determining why the quality of life in America has fallen is certainly a quintessential KU. We can begin to understand this KU by examining the role that the mass media has played in shaping life in America. For decades, mass media journalists have increasingly become active cheerleaders for more government spending and regulation as the simple one-size-fits-all solution for nearly all of society’s complex problems. National leaders of both political parties embraced this media advocacy for an ever larger government, because the additional spending increased their power and their odds of being reelected. The media’s advocacy for larger government was very effective. Total governmental spending as a share of America’s GDP grew by over 51% from 1960 to 2025, saddling us with insanely high levels of debt and inflation.

America now borrows money to pay the interest on our national debt, a frightening portent of things to come. And our personal finances aren’t in any better shape than our national finances. “A 2023 Forbes Advisor survey revealed that nearly 70% of respondents either identified as living paycheck to paycheck (40%) or—even more concerning—reported that their income doesn’t even cover their standard expenses (29%).”

Clearly, our margin for error is gone, and we need to begin making changes now.

What is America’s best path forward to a prosperous future? What can we do to increase our odds of finding a pathway to national and personal prosperity? How can we best handle these KUs?

We can begin answering these questions by acknowledging that most Americans fail to process their KUs well. Typically, when a KU presents itself, it’s ignored and whatever wisdom and benefits that KU may have added to our life are lost. We need to train ourselves to handle KUs better. Ideally, we will resolve to regard a KU as a sort of flashing warning light, which tells us to slow down, pay attention and invest some time and effort to investigate and understand the Unknown. It’s essential to avoid prematurely locking in conclusions that may need to be abandoned once you’ve ascertained all the relevant facts.

Martin Luther’s life offers some valuable insights about handling our KUs more adeptly. Luther was serving as a Catholic priest in Germany in the early 1500s, a time when the Church dominated society. Life was hard and almost everyone was extremely poor. Around 1517, the Church launched the practice of selling indulgences as a way to bring in additional income. Catholics were told that purchasing an indulgence would guarantee them a better life after death. Luther was very upset by this practice of selling indulgences, and it eroded his confidence in the validity of the Church’s teachings. He was depressed and angry, and felt trapped by his intense spiritual struggles. Luther’s all-consuming KU was whether he could find his way to the righteous and joyous life described by various New Testament writers such as Paul and John. Eventually, Luther experienced a profound transformation in his relationship with God when he realized that a righteous and joyous life is actually a gift from God. Luther described his revelation, “Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. Here a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me.”

Luther’s insights eventually spread widely across Europe, fueled by the fact that his translation of the Bible into German became one of the new Gutenberg Press’s most popular books.

Luther’s experience is just one of history’s many fascinating examples of individuals figuring out their KUs with spectacular results. In 1787, America’s Founding Fathers faced an all important KU. Could they create an enduring form of government which emphasized freedom and liberty, while fostering economic and spiritual prosperity? The Founding Fathers struggled greatly with this KU, sweltering in summertime Philadelphia while they argued and debated for months, endeavoring to create what we now know as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Notice that the Founding Fathers were able to come together, stay focused on what was absolutely essential, and that they persevered until they succeeded. Against tremendous odds, a tiny fledgling country was born which went on to dominate the Western world for many generations to come. This story of how America’s government was formed should encourage us to likewise be tenacious and relentless in handling our KUs.

On a macro level, we see that the result of Luther and the Founding Fathers successfully resolving their KUs improved life in the Western world for centuries. On a micro level, I believe that handling our personal KUs with excellence also offers tremendous life-changing benefits.

Many people in their 30s and 40s struggle with enormous financial challenges, such as student loan debt, credit card debt, high interest rates and absolutely sky high home prices. Nathan Haberstadt of New Founding recently posted a graph on X, showing that the percent of 30 year olds who are both married and are homeowners has fallen from about 52% in 1960 to under 15% in 2024. Getting married, buying a home and starting a family must seem to many young people to be no more likely than finding a winning lottery ticket.

How can struggling younger and older adults build a better life? Why not start by considering the words of Jesus, who promises the best life imaginable when he says in John 10, “I came that they might have Life and have it Abundantly.”

The late world-famous wrestling personality Hulk Hogan gave a strong personal testimony about this Abundant Life when he was baptized in December of 2023. “Total surrender and dedication to Jesus is the greatest day of my life. No worries, no hate, no judgment… only love!” he wrote in a December 2023 X post.”

Hulk Hogan’s powerful words will encourage some of us to seek after God. Others might be inspired to search for God by the natural wonder and beauty surrounding us. Consider that a healthy 10-week-old fetus weighs just 1.23 ounces and yet has everything he needs to eventually grow into an adult with 206 bones, and approximately 700 muscles and 900 ligaments. This amazing complexity doesn’t just hint at a Designer and a Creator, it shouts it from the rooftops. And if one is willing to acknowledge that he is a wonderfully designed and created being, then naturally some of the most important KUs are likely to surface. “Why am I here? Where did I come from? Is my life random, or do I have a purpose to search out and discover?”

As Mark Twain stated, “the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

As one endeavors to figure out these essential and foundational personal KUs, many will find comfort and inspiration from the promises written in Luke 11, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.”

A generation of legacy media journalists and their bosses faced a fundamental KU back in the 1960s and 1970s, when they had to decide if they would be better off practicing fact-based or advocacy journalism. If they had responded to this KU by committing to elevate truth and accuracy in all of their reporting, it is likely that America’s government today would be far smaller, and we would not be standing on the precipice of economic ruin.

Going forward, we can resolve to learn from the legacy media’s mistakes. Rather than preemptively dismissing anything we don’t fully understand or that doesn’t immediately appear to line up with our world view or our personal values, we can instead seize each opportunity to handle our KUs with tenacity, honesty, skill and humility. If we ignore just one new KU per week, that means we’re creating 52 gaps every year in our understanding of how we can live our best lives. Which brings us to our concluding KU: Are you willing to settle for an ever growing collection of costly missed opportunities or would you prefer your life to be guided by increasingly better decision-making skills?