But, to judge from Mr Sabbagh's book, most mathematicians would incline more towards Hilbert's view that a solution will one day be found for even the most difficult mathematical problem.
Like all vicious cycles, the relationship between the declining fortunes of news outlets and the shrinking of their audiences is a difficultone to untangle, a chicken-and-egg problem.
Oneproblem is that the CIA's strict internal security policies make it very difficult to grant security clearances to people who have spent many years overseas or have close family members living in target countries.
The new Counter Fraud Service ran into a slight hitch initially: no-one knew just how big the problem was, and without that kind of information it was difficult to demonstrate that anti-fraud work is actually worth the money.
She said it was "a hugely difficultproblem" to break the "grim" cycle of abuse and violence that carries on "from one generation to the next" and social workers needed to take a more hands-on approach and focus more intensely on the lives of individual families.