If the history of warfare has taught us anything, it's that any sufficiently large population will contain individuals at the tail of the bell curve for smarts, out of the box thinking and technical brilliance.
The big challenge is for those people to be recognised, brought along and their insights acted upon. AQ was a good example of this (9/11 in particular). The Houthi insurgency? Who knows (but the Iranians are no slouchs, that's for sure...).
The enemy are not idiots (usually). Cemeteries are overflowing with those who underestimated the opposition...