Manufacturing guy-at-large.

The Devil's Advocate Office

Added on by Spencer Wright.

The Israeli Directorate of Military Intelligence, AMAN, has specific roles dedicated to advocating for contrary points of view. From a 2007 paper by Yosef Kuperwasser, of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy (emphasis mine):

...But the key reason that AMAN has not become an arm of the military is that it has in place a number of tools to ensure the promotion of diverse views. First, in order to make sure that different and opposing opinions are heard within the Israeli intelligence community, AMAN has a culture of openness, where individuals are expected to voice dissenting opinions. The organizational slogan that reflects this openness is, “Freedom of opinion, discipline in action.” AMAN has two other tools that promote diversity: the “devil’s advocate” office and the option of writing “different opinion” memos. 
The devil’s advocate office ensures that AMAN’s intelligence assessments are creative and do not fall prey to group think. The office regularly criticizes products coming from the analysis and production divisions, and writes opinion papers that counter these departments’ assessments. The staff in the devil’s advocate office is made up of extremely experienced and talented officers who are known to have a creative, “outside the box” way of thinking. Perhaps as important, they are highly regarded by the analysts. As such, strong consideration is given to their conclusions and their memos go directly to the office of the Director of Military Intelligence, as well as to all major decision makers. The devil’s advocate office also proactively combats group think and conventional wisdom by writing papers that examine the possibility of a radical and negative change occurring within the security environment. This is done even when the defense establishment does not think that such a development is likely, precisely to explore alternative assumptions and worst-case scenarios.

While the devil’s advocate office is an institutional level safeguard against group think, there is also an individual-level safeguard. The analysts themselves are given venues for expressing alternate opinions. Any analyst can author a “different opinion” memo in which he or she can critique the conclusions of his or her department. Senior officers do not criticize analysts who choose to write such memos.

This is smart.