Convergent thinking is when two people approach the same problem and arrive at the same solution independently. Morgan Robertson famously predicted the sinking of the Titanic in his novel "The Wreck of the Titan" in great detail. The fictional Titan also sinking after striking an iceberg. Morgan had no great clairvoyance, he simply drew on his experience as a sailor and extrapolated trends in the shipping industry he was seeing at the time.
"Star Trek" also correctly predicted numerous computing trends that were "Science Fiction" at the time but quickly became staples later. Handheld computing devices, natural language interfaces, touchscreens, but the writers were simply integrating the academic research they were finding at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory).
The writers of "The Lone Gunman" seem to have taken the same approach and inadvertently predicted the events of 9/11 with eerie precision.
In it's debut episode of "The Lone Gunman" our protagonists, a group of conspiracy theory cranks, uncover a real plot by the government to commander an airliner via remote control and crash it into a high rise as part of a false flag attack to begin a new "War on Terror". The motivation is explained as being that since the end of the Cold War, the military industrial complex has seen it's budgets slashed as the enormous spending on weapons is seen as superfluous in a world without the Soviet Union. To scare the public into once again committing massive amounts of money to military spending, the shadow government wants to present a new existential threat to the public, terrorism. And with the spectacle of a airliner smashing into the side of an skyscraper, the shadow government behind the plot is confident the public will once again demand the same pork barrel spending on weapons that the military industrial complex had enjoyed during the Cold War. Thus enriching themselves on war profiteering once again.
The writers of "The Lone Gunman" looked at the problem of justifying the staggering military spending in the US without a clear enemy, and came to the same conclusion as potentially real life nefarious actors.
Even if you don't believe that 9/11 was some kind of government conspiracy, the events that followed all played into the dark interests that "The Lone Gunman" outlined. There was a long "War on Terror" that followed 9/11. And it was a bonanza for the military industrial complex. Halliburton, which VP Dick Cheney was the former CE
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