In a double episode recorded on Thursday 14 October, Allan and Darren welcome the ANU National Security College's Heather Smith and Katherine Mansted to talk about the future. The basis of their discussion is the publication “Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World”, which was released by the US National Intelligence Council in March. This is the 7th edition of Global Trends, which has been published every four years since 1997. As explained in the document’s Foreword:

“Global Trends is designed to provide an analytic framework for policymakers early in each  administration as they craft national security strategy and navigate an uncertain future. The goal is not to offer a specific prediction of the world in 2040; instead, our intent is to help policymakers and citizens see what may lie beyond the horizon and prepare for an array of possible futures”.

Part 1 begins with Allan and Heather describing the context for Global Trends and why it is a worthwhile exercise, while Katherine and Darren offer initial thoughts from the perspective of those outside of government on what the publication represents and how they would go about doing a equivalent futures exercise themselves.

The report has three sections--“Structural Forces”, “Emerging Dynamics” and “Future Scenarios”--which are used to organise the rest of the conversation. The remainder of Part 1 covers four “Structural Forces”: demographics and human development, environment, economics and technology. These were identified by the authors on the basis that they will be foundational in shaping future dynamics and are relatively universal in scope, while also having sufficient data available now to make projections with some confidence. Heather tackles demographics and economics, Katherine addresses technology and Darren offers some thoughts on the environment.

In Part 2 to come, the conversation will turn to the second and third sections of the report: “emerging dynamics” and “future scenarios”.

Heather Smith is a Professor at the ANU’s National Security College, following a distinguished career in the Australian public service including serving as Deputy Director-General of ONA, Deputy Secretary of DFAT, and Secretary of the Departments of Communications and of Industry, Innovation and Science.

Katherine Mansted is a Senior Fellow in the Practice of National Security at the ANU’s National Security College, and also the Director of Cyber Intelligence at CyberCX.

We thank Mitchell McIntosh for his help with audio editing and Rory Stenning for composing our theme music.

Relevant links

“Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World”, a publication of the National Intelligence Council, March 2021: https://www.dni.gov/index.php/gt2040-home