The Strategic Foresight Initiative and the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) held a joint Red Team Exercise on June 12 to inform and improve the NIC’s Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds report. The exercise explored whether the report identified the correct trends, how these trends were applied to different countries and regions, and whether the NIC’s predictions were consistent with current developments as well.
The red team exercise, which featured high ranking individuals from the think-tank, intelligence, policy-making, and business communities, explored many topics of significance today and in the future. The group discussed the interconnected nature of US-Europe-China relations in shaping the world of tomorrow, the changing nature of international institutions, and the influence technological developments and highly empowered individuals will have two decades from now.
NIC’s Counselor Mathew J. Burrows briefed the group on the draft report before the discussion. Members of the Red Team included John Gannon (BAE Systems), Jessica Matthews (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Michèle Flournoy (US Department of Defense), Walter Slocombe (Atlantic Council), John McLaughlin (Johns-Hopkins University), among others.
This Red Team Exercise follows in a series of workshops convened by the Atlantic Council and the NIC to discuss the upcoming Global Trends 2030 report. The Strategic Foresight Initiative has brought together prolific thinkers in Washington, DC, to examine trends in urbanization, pandemics, and global migration, and traveled with the NIC to Brazil and China in the past few months to gather international input for the final report.