I don&#x27;t fully understand this line of thinking.  To me, it&#x27;s like saying &quot;The belief that seat belts save lives might come as a surprise to these people who died in automobile accidents while wearing seat belts.&quot;<p>It may indeed be that this kind of signals intelligence isn&#x27;t actually helpful, but I don&#x27;t think this is a very good argument either way.  If there was a massive disruption of planned terrorist attacks, it is not useless just because there wasn&#x27;t a complete elimination of terrorist attacks.