Has American strategic warning improved since Pearl Harbor?

How much has the United States improved at reading strategic warning signs?

It varies over time; success depends on balancing expertise and context while preserving a culture willing to question assumptions.

American strategic-warning performance ebbs and flows rather than improving in a straight line. Budgets and competing domestic and foreign-policy priorities affect the attention intelligence receives. Deep specialists supply knowledge, while generalists help restore the wider context that specialization can obscure. Both need a working culture that continues to ask questions. Confidence in national power can instead encourage efforts to prove a preferred answer. That distinction helps explain how a powerful state can collect information and still misjudge what it means.