I'm skeptical of placing too much importance on the historical record. Examples of preventions gone wrong are legible in ways that successful interventions would not be. What are the consequences of developing atomic and hydrogen weapons in secret? Who knows, but it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where a different decision could have led to catastrophe. Yet the lack of a real historical counterfactual limits how persuasive that can be. Prediction uncertainty applies in both directions. You can't retroactively predict the disasters that would have happened if proper design thinking and scenario planning never happened.
I'm skeptical of placing too much importance on the historical record. Examples of preventions gone wrong are legible in ways that successful interventions would not be. What are the consequences of developing atomic and hydrogen weapons in secret? Who knows, but it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where a different decision could have led to catastrophe. Yet the lack of a real historical counterfactual limits how persuasive that can be. Prediction uncertainty applies in both directions. You can't retroactively predict the disasters that would have happened if proper design thinking and scenario planning never happened.