Tag Archives: bias

Potential Futures for Syria in the Fog of War (1)

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FSA, rebels, AK47s, Syria, civil warThe Syrian civil war is more than two years old and, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, would have claimed the lives of more than 60.000 people (until November 2012), while 1.2 million fled to neighbouring countries and 4 million were internally displaced (AFP, 4 April 2013). The Syrian war is a challenging problem for strategic foresight and warning because, besides the humanitarian disaster, the risks to regional and global peace and stability continuously increase, because the conflict is redrawing the strategic outlook of the region while participating into the global paradigm shift, and, finally, because the fog of war makes our anticipatory task more difficult and complex. We shall address those issues in a series of posts on the war in Syria and  emerging potential futures.

We are facing three – related – sets of problems. First, we must deal with the war itself, where three, four or five types of Syrian actors and their “international backers” – or even more according to typologies, as we shall discuss below – and not two, fight for power. Second, we must prepare for the following peace while, third, evaluating and considering the still being redesigned strategic environment. Their specific characteristics will depend upon the length of the war, how it is waged and the way it ends. The peace should be prepared to be made constructive, positive, and lasting, and the strategic environment conducive to interests.* Getting ready for the second period and succeeding there starts with actions taken during the war and with the fate of the war itself, according to four general scenarios that will be presented in a forthcoming post and are grounded in the current state of play. Those scenarios would need to be regularly revised to include what is happening on the ground. Methodologically, ongoing monitoring of the situation and related updating of scenarios may be the only way forward to deal with the fog of war.

Understanding the current state of play and the actors

Before to present the actors (click here), it is necessary to make two preliminary remarks.

1- Interestingly, in many analyses and reports on the war in Syria, one finds mention of only two or three groups of actors: the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the insurgency, to which are sometimes added the Kurds in Syria, who initially sat in an almost neutral position. Save for a few more detailed studies, which show how much more complex the situation is, “the insurgency” tends to be taken either as a broad umbrella label, or, more worryingly, as a monolithic bloc. A few interacting factors are probably at work here to explain this approach:

  • We are faced with cognitive biases, or more specifically with the problem of enduring cognitive models in the face of new evidence, when the initial model was created early and with very few available evidence (Anderson, Lepper, and Ross, 1980). The tendency of our human brain to also overestimate “intentional centralized direction and planning” (Heuer, chapter 11, bias 2) is also probably at play.
  • The difficulty to get information on the ground makes it even more complex to obtain reliable evidences that would ease our understanding of the situation on the battlefield. We should nevertheless underline, as noted in a recent EAworldview article, that the civil war in Syria is redefining how we get to know what is happening in the case of war, and it is thanks to the dedication of many, to a real crowdsourcing effort, and to the web and communication technologies that knowledge of the situation emerges. Compare, for example, with our blindness in past situations such as Cambodia. However, this also casts everyone in the role of collector of information and analyst (intelligence and scientific research roles), for which s/he has not been trained and that must be learned by trial and errors.
  • Most probably, observers and analysts need to face conscious and unconscious deception and manipulation by fighting actors on the ground. Each group of fighters has an aim, as well as its own unconscious biases and partial vision and understanding of the situation. The story of each group, of each battle, be it told through written or video means or through interviews will reflect specific perceptions and goals, which must also be considered. The difficulty is very well underlined in the introductory paragraphs of a recent article by Matthew Barber on the excellent Syria Comment of Joshua Landis when he uses the new Syria Video facility to analyse “The Raqqa Story: Rebel Structure, Planning, and Possible War Crimes.”
  • As a result, analysts are also actors in the Syrian war.
  • Syria, civil war, mapFurthermore, most of the time, the maps available in open source – however impressive the amount of details found on them, which is furthermore regularly updated (as the Wikipedia map shown here which describes the situation in Syria as of 23 March 2013) – only communicate part of the picture and could lead to partial conclusions. They are nevertheless not only informative (and incredibly so most often) but also useful, as long as the reality of the situation is not forgotten, and one could build upon them to include the various broad types of fighting opposition.

2- Following Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi in his “Jihad in Syria,” and Phillip Smith, a central idea should be kept in mind regarding the Syrian civil war – and generally most civil wars: the situation is fluid, changing and much more complex to describe than any categorization could allow.

The Syrian battlefield involves more than 1000 factions and groups (Smith), some more powerful than others. It would seem we are at this stage when the length of the war has created enough havoc and chaos to allow every willing clan to create its own localised guerrilla group (Lund, 2013: 10), whilst the dynamics of the Syrian insurgency has not  – or not yet or not completely – allowed a few groups to take real pre-eminence. Thus, all classifications should be taken with the utmost carefulness and what is true one day may well change the next. Alliances and participation in one group or another must also be considered as temporary. Those warring dynamics, yet, need to be observed and understood, because it is finally on the battleground that the destiny of Syria is being played out, while the interactions between international actors and this battleground progressively and incrementally impact the region and shape potential futures. (Author: Dr Helene Lavoix – for Red (team) Analysis – posted on 15 April 2013).

Next post click here.

* Interests will vary according to actors, each trying to influence the overall situation to achieve its goals at best.

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Detailed bibliography and list of primary sources forthcoming

An Experiment in Assessing End of Year Predictions: How Did they Fare? (2)

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Here are the results of our experiment on the evaluation of a sample of 2012 end of year predictions, following up on the post explaining the methodology used (spreadsheet and an interactive version of the charts can be found here).

Let us start with the bad news. As a whole, the percentage of success is relatively low, 27%, i.e. 44 predictions were correct out of the 165 made. However, this global figure hides very different results.

In terms of method, as shown below, classical analysis (that may cover the use of other methods or not) obtains the whole range of results, from complete inaccuracy to excellent. The validity of the judgement on the future depends upon the knowledge, understanding and genius of the analyst.

predictions, 2012, success rate, evaluationRisk analysis fares better than overall sample, but is still below 50%. This might be related to the absence of differentiation between likelihood and impact as explained in the previous post.

Our sole example of scenario is relatively unsuccessful. However, this is also linked to the very specific form and place scenarios have in terms of foresight: fictionalized narratives mainly aim at making one plausible version of the future real for the target audience. They intend to break cognitive biases and other lenses. They must be built upon a coherent model, which can be seen as the principle, the essence, but the unfolding discrete events themselves are only one example of what might happen. In Kant’s understanding, a scenario is a phenomenon, built upon noumena.

Unsurprisingly, analysis that includes, more or less, a part of recommendation and advocacy, what we could see as normative predictions, do not fare very well.

This brief evaluation, however, tells only one part of the story. As explained in the methodological post, we can draw much more interesting conclusions out of an assessment that is less drastic and marks each prediction first according to the plausibility of the content and second to the accuracy of the timing, despite the inherent subjectivity of the approach.

Issues and countries: a conventional view of national security

The first very interesting result this experiment gives us is about the topic of the predictions itself, what was deemed as relevant and interesting enough to be the object of anticipation.

The overwhelming majority of predictions were made according to countries, be they focused on economics, political economy, geopolitics or politics. The map below shows the intensity of the number of predictions made, the brightest the colour, the more numerous the prediction. Some countries were off the radar, when, for example, coups in Mali and Guinea-Bissau happened, as correctly predicted by Jay Ulfelder, whose forecasts were not included in the experiment. This underlines the danger to leave some countries out when making judgements on the future, because one will automatically tend to focus on those countries where events or problems occurred in the recent past, or on those that were of interest for one reason or another. The limited character of resources however most of the time forces such initial selection, which thus must be made with great care and kept in mind.

nbre per countries scaled1Very few assessments concerned other global problems, when they belong to what is called unconventional national security. Among those identified in our sample, we find: oil, water, gold, the virtual and digital world (although hardly with a cyber-security dimension), augmented reality, and the environment (but only in terms of regime and debates, not in terms of actual natural events and their impacts). Many issues such as most transformational technologies, from nano to biosecurity, health concerns, cyber threats, extreme weather events or resources competition beyond oil were thus left out. One possible explanations is that we are still operating within specializations inherited from the last three centuries, and that for each new issue appearing on the agenda of national security, a new sector of expertise is created, with serious potential adverse consequences on our identification of threats. We may very well become perfect in terms of predictions on old topics, this will always remain insufficient if interactions and feedbacks with new threats are ignored. For example, International Relations – or geopolitical – analysis must fully include the cyber dimension, and cyber-security in terms of national security cannot be fully understood without the international, geopolitical and political dimensions.

Systematically including horizon scanning for emergence of novel dangers and pluri-disciplinary/multi-expertise work would be needed. Another possible explanation is that those unconventional security issues were left out because they were estimated as beyond the 2012 time horizon. We may only wish this latter hypothesis to be correct.

Inaccurate timing and relatively plausible content

If we now look at the countries, object of predictions, and colour them first according to the plausibility of content of the predictions, and second according to the accuracy of the timing, we have the two following maps. The averaged accuracy of the results goes from deep red (inaccuracy) to deep green (accuracy).

2012, prediction, evaluation 2012, prediction, evaluation

The maps confirm the hunch I wished to test: our capacity to predict timing is less good than our ability to understand content and thus foresee coming evolutions. We know quite well what will most probably happen, but we do not know precisely when.

Interestingly, China, Russia and the U.S. fare relatively badly for both content and timing. This could be explained by strong cognitive and ideological biases existing for those three countries, including, for the U.S., which also ranks first for the number of predictions, those biases related to partisan politics… and analysis. Regarding our initial conclusions on methodology, and considering the lack of explanations given by authors, this shows that we should, ideally, and as underlined by forecaster, futurist and strategist Scott Smith in his Year-end lists are hazardous to your health, identify precisely who the author is, his/her target audience, and in which context the predictions were made. The category mixing classical and normative analysis would most probably swell as a result.

Timing for Brazil is completely wrong, and this would be even worse if the prediction made for the BRICS (0 on all counts) had been added, while the results would have been less good for all the other BRICS. Again, we are seeing an ideological bias at work, a “pro-BRICS” bias, which is also the reflect of a global power struggle we can see enacted in any international fora.

These results point towards the absolute necessity to struggle against all biases when making judgements on the future, if proper decisions are to result from this foresight (which is of most probably not the case with our sample, but we have to consider that many decision-makers also read open source predictions and may be influenced by them, knowingly or not).

Novelty and pace

Finally, let us observe the evaluation for all predictions, without aggregation and average (click here to open the chart in full in another window).

results 2012 predictions scaled 1

Besides the points we already made, what is most striking is the way various water issues were erroneously foreseen. If, true enough, only one author is concerned – and he had the merit to select this issue when the corresponding U.S. ICA was not yet published - we can always learn from all mistakes. This erroneous judgements on water security may underline the difficulty of properly estimating issues when those are relatively newly integrated in assessments. First, there is an insufficient accumulated knowledge and understanding. Second, the eagerness to promote a topic that may still be debated and belittled may lead to overstatement.

The wrong timing on various European countries stems most probably from our very imperfect knowledge of internal political dynamics, as those last decades mainstream political science has tended to focus on elite politics and public policy – one of the major cause of the warning failure regarding the “Arab Spring” – even more so in the case of the so-called rich countries. Furthermore, time is very rarely an object of research. Finally, we tend collectively to forget that the political time is long – even very long – and that much of our (recent) habits, approaches and institutions do not accommodate for it… but this will not change the reality of political dynamics.

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Nota: The surprising, at first glance, cases when timing gets a better mark than content correspond to predictions that were accurate (or almost accurate) in terms of timing, accompanied by explanation of dynamics that were partly or fully wrong, illogical, or inaccurate.

An Experiment in Assessing End of Year Predictions (1)

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experiment, assessing, evaluating, foresight, forecast, prediction Evaluating predictions, or more broadly the end-products resulting from methodologies used to anticipate possible futures, should become the norm rather than the exception, as explained in a previous post. Such exercise should improve methods and processes and direct our efforts towards further research. We shall here make the experiment to assess a sample of open source predictions for the year 2012. This part will address the methodological problems encountered while creating the evaluation itself, and underline the related lessons learned. The second part (forthcoming) will discuss results.

Actually, there is nothing new here as estimating results for “predictions” is one of the fundamental principles of science (a scientific theory must have explanatory, descriptive and predictive power). If a theory does not fulfill the predictive criteria, then it must be disqualified. Things are relatively straightforward when dealing with hard science. They are much more complex when we are in he field of social science, and the very possibility to obtain predictive power is hotly discussed, debated and often discarded. If we consider the family of disciplines, sub-disciplines and methodologies – what we call here strategic foresight and warning (foresight for short) – that deal with future(s)-related analysis, then we are faced with even more challenges. Some methodologies will be considered as scientific, and among them, some are close to hard science, while others belong to the realm of social science. Other approaches will be seen as art and thus are considered as not having to be tested. Furthermore, everyone has her/his own vision of what constitutes good future(s) related analysis, what should be done and used, what is valuable and what is not.

Despite these difficulties, it is still worth our while evaluating those future(s) related efforts, which had the courage to make an evaluation for the future located on a timeline. This is, of course, a very small exercise and experiment, compared with what is done by The Good Judgement project, led by Philip Tetlock, Barbara Mellers, and Don Moore with funding by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) and explained in this article by Dan Gardner and Philip Tetlock, “Overcoming our aversion to acknowledging our ignorance.” Nevertheless, hopefully, it will also bring interesting results, and the reflection it imposes, the questions it brings are in themselves a very constructive practice.

For this experiment, the sample used is constituted of open source predictions for the year 2012 posted on the web from December 2011 to January 2012, as presented here.

The result of the evaluation, in a Google spreadsheet, can be downloaded here or viewed below. Explanations and discussion follow.

The sources used to evaluate the foresight are given in the seventh column (except when the answer is obvious or common knowledge, and thus does not necessitate reference to a specific source e.g. the European Union still exists).

The variety of format and methodologies, furthermore more or less explained, was a first challenge. How to evaluate consistently “predictions” delivered in ways as varied as classical analysis (e.g. The Financial Times – Beyond BRICS), scenarios (e.g. Tick by Tick Team), risks (e.g. CFR – Preventive Priorities Survey: 2012) or predictions mixed with policy recommendations and advocacy, what could be seen as a version of normative foresight (e.g. Foreign Policy with the International Crisis Group – 10 conficts to watch in 2012)?

The Council on Foreign Relations, risk and making likelihood explicit

The Council on Foreign Relations’ approach is a perfect example of this hurdle. Its risk list for 2012 was particularly difficult to evaluate considering the way it is formulated and the lack of information regarding the methodology (those challenges have been removed or to the least improved with the 2013 version, where we find more detailed explanations and where likelihood and impact are separated). To find out what the CFR exactly meant I had to turn to a companion article to the risk list published in the Atlantic, “Gauging Top Global Threats in 2012“. There we read:

“The contingencies that were introduced for the first time or elevated in terms of their relative importance and likelihood in 2012 included an intensification of the eurozone crisis, acute political instability in Saudi Arabia that threatens global oil supplies, and heightened unrest in Bahrain that spurs further military action.”

A contingency means “an event (as an emergency) that may but is not certain to occur”.

Thus we can deduce that the CFR saw all the events (their “risks”) listed as possible for the year 2012 – if not probable. This is on this basis that the evaluation was made. Hence, all the CFR “risk-statements” were mentally expanded as follows: “a mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally” means, for evaluation, “a mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally” in 2012 is possible and would have a major impact for US National Interest (according to the tier to which the risk belongs) or “a major military incident with China involving U.S. or allied forces” means ”a major military incident with China involving U.S. or allied forces” is possible in 2012 and would have a major impact etc.

Making the “risk-statements” more explicit for evaluation (however not transforming the statement itself) immediately underlines how the fusion of likelihood and impact existing most commonly in the idea of risk (until the concept itself was revised by the new ISO31000: 2009 norm) creates supplementary difficulties in terms of evaluation, hence my personal reluctance to use the concept, despite its fashionable character. What are we to judge: a likelihood? an estimation of impact? a timing? As already mentioned, the CFR Preventive Priorities Survey tackled indeed this problem and now (2013) gives detailed results in terms of impact and likelihood.

This underlines how crucial it would be, ideally, to always include, for all results of future(s)-analysis an estimation of likelihood, as done, for example, in the Intelligence Assessments (see p.14 of the ICA on Global Water Security).

In our sample, each prediction, or series thereof, corresponds to one or another methodology. Yet, rather than trying to standardize thoughts, for example transforming what the authors wanted to write in a sentence easy to evaluate, I chose to keep the text as it was, breaking it down in various paragraphs most of the time, sometimes expanding it mentally as explained above for the CFR, and in agreement with their methodology, but not altering it, and to evaluate it as such. The exercise was constructive in itself and led to interesting points. We shall see with the next post if the results will also say something about the foresight methodology itself.

When the text was far too removed from something that looked like a judgement on the future, for example when it was only an opinion on what was happening, or when it was a 50/50 possibility, I excluded the sentence or paragraph from the sample (in red in the spreadsheet).

Scenarios, timing and content

As I started the concrete phase of evaluating statements with the fictionalized scenario made by Tick by Tick Team (Finance), it very quickly became clear that I had to make two types of assessment: one regarding the plausibility and logic of the content of the prediction itself, the other the accuracy of the timing. Indeed, some of the predictions made still sounded plausible, had not happened in 2012 but could not be ruled out for the short to medium term, e.g. “Greece leaves the Euro, returns to the Drachma.” (3002 – this number corresponds to the identification given in the database, to facilitate reference). To me there is a large difference with a prediction that is plainly wrong in terms of content and thus impossible in terms of timing: e.g. Syria deals with the “initial post-Assad stages” (2011) or “Obama decides not to run for elections” (3011).

Furthermore, this approach will allow me to test a hunch according to which we are in general much better to explain phenomena than to time them, would it be only because we hardly ever work on timing (outside the hard science realm).

Evaluating content and timing: a difficult, uncertain, never-ending task?

Thus, columns 4 and 5 display marks for content and timing, ranging from 0 (completely wrong) to 1 (completely accurate). There is, however, a major hurdle with this approach. First, by judging the content in terms of plausibility of dynamics, I evaluate one understanding (the author’s) against another (mine). There is little we can do about it as this is the core of research and debates in social science, besides giving evidence (column 7, the sources), developing a coherent argument and/or pointing out flaws in the argument subjected to the evaluation. A commissioned report would need to be more detailed and specified than I could be in the framework of a volunteered experiment.

foresight, prediction, evaluationSecond, it implies that by evaluating the plausibility of something happening in the future, then I am myself making a judgement on the future, thus a prediction. Ultimately, those challenges should be resolved through the happenstance of events and facts, which suggests that evaluations should themselves be reviewed and followed in time. This is certainly not ideal, but still better than to lose the information on timing and content, which would happen if one chose with black and white, true or false, 0 and 1 answers.

Objectivity (as much as biases allow) of the person assessing the predictions is crucial, and the use of teams that would discuss and confront their analyses would be best. Furthermore, the latter would also allow overcoming plain lack of knowledge on one issue or another.

This leads us to a last challenge that is not easily overcome for some predictions: the information that is available to the person doing the evaluation. Still using the CFR example, and more particularly the risk of ”a mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally”, some actions taken throughout the year by authorities may have prevented a risk to materialize, thus the prediction could be seen as false. Certainly, had no intelligence, defense and diplomatic actions existed, then such risk would have materialised. Such state’s actions are ongoing, and, as an outsider, we can only estimate (without complete certainty) that it is because of them that the threat did not materialize, not because the risk was incorrectly identified. An evaluation made by an insider with access to all classified documents would be made with more confidence. Here, I could only estimate the reality of the risk to the best of my understanding and knowledge, for example with the use of counterfactuals.

Should all those challenges, the existence of uncertainty even in evaluation, lead us to conclude that trying to evaluate foresight products is useless? My first answer, at this stage, is no because all the questions one asks or should ask oneself and that are forced by the evaluation are crucial and may only lead to better methodologies and thus to better judgements on the future. It is thus a gage of quality. We shall see next what the results of the assessment, keeping in mind all their imperfections, may tell us.

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“Gauging Top Global Threats in 2012″ - Interviewee: Micah Zenko, Fellow for Conflict Prevention, 
Interviewer: Robert McMahon, Editor, 
December 8, 2011, The Atlantic.

Trial by Fire for Foresight: The 2012 Predictions of The Economist

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Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, predictions, foresight, warning, analysisThe Economist, with ”The prediction games: Our winners and losers from last year’s edition,” shows the lead in a courageous, crucial and yet hardly ever done exercise: going back to our own foresight and assessing, in the light of the present, what was right and what was wrong. This exercise is not about getting awards or apportioning blame, but about improving foresight. Thus, all results, be they right or wrong, should go with a detailed explanation for the success or failure. This approach is essential to obtain progress. Systematically implementing such a practice in all anticipatory processes should be a major goal for practitioners and a criteria of quality for users.

The Economist self-assessment provides us with a very interesting example of how such lessons learned could be endeavoured, underlines questions that should be asked and key challenges for anticipation, and exemplifies how biases can derail foresight.

Evaluating success

It is often said that it is impossible to validate success, because the very fact to have been accurate will change the world, thus the predicted events will not take place but be altered. This very logical argument depends actually upon the actor’s capacity to influence events. For actors that directly act on their foresight with sufficient might, this challenging problem can be overcome by a particular attention paid to the overall process, distinguishing analysis and anticipation from the response chain. In the case of media, as they are not meant to act but to inform, as their analysis should consider all actors involved and not depend upon the strategic aims of one specific player (see for an explanation Assessing the “Strategic” in Surprise), evaluating success is easier (or more difficult because the influence of mass media should be considered).

The fact is that The Economist underlines the accuracy of its predictions in many areas (and we shall take it at face value). Beyond polite modesty, it would actually be very interesting to understand why the analysts themselves are surprised by their success. Certainly, they were not betting, but relied on something to predict events, phenomena, and this something is what matters (even while betting we use some kind of model). This emphasises the importance of making models explicit, as only those give us the tools for precise assessment. If the model used (and, following Epstein, cognitive models belong to this category) led to successful predictions, then our reliance on this model should increase, and we should pay attention not to destroy it. Changes brought to the model should be documented and integrated cautiously.

Biases, the vexing problem of time and the case of Syria

“A more serious mistake was failing to foresee how bloody the conflict in Syria would become. We thought President Bashar Assad was unlikely to last the year in office.” The Economist, 21 November 2012.

The Economist’s sentence echoes a point made by anthropologist Andrew Turton in his work on Thailand and everyday politics, according to which we often tend to underestimate the power of coercion and violence. Considering the relatively peaceful and mild twenty or so last years, the general disinterest in war and politics (qua politics, not politician politics) because “only economy matters,” then it was – and still is – even more likely to see violence, war and politics grossly underestimated. As global tension is now rising, it would be crucial if we want to improve our foresight to revise the old models to integrate what should never have been forgotten, political dynamics, both international and domestic. This does not mean over-favouring them, but getting more balanced and thus adequate models.

In turn, this underestimation led to another mistake, an erroneous assessment of timing. Apprehending time properly is one of the most difficult problems of foresight and warning analysis (see for example Creating Evertime) and certainly one of the most neglected, as hardly anyone seems to be working directly on it. Here we might have one important element that should be integrated in research: time and timing depends on other variables and their interactions, which is congruent with one of the ways indications and warning deal with this challenge, through timeline indicators.*

Timing again

“A better call, for the progress of the Arab spring more broadly, was that Islamists would make ground but play a cautious and pragmatic game.” The Economist, 21 November 2012.

The Economist article was published on 21st November, just before Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s President, and “a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood” decided to issue “a decree… granting himself broad powers above any court as the guardian of Egypt’s revolution” (New York Times, 2 Dec 2012; 22 Nov 2012), which led to concern and widespread domestic protest. It was also published before demonstrations flared again in Tunisia on 27th November, for reasons similar to those that triggered the Jasmine revolution (Sarah Mersch, Deutsche Welle, 2 Dec 2012; Amnesty International via Bikyamasr, 1 Dec 2012).

This questions the assessment of success for this specific prediction. On the day of the evaluation, The Economist was indeed successful. However, can a forecast be right one day and wrong the next day, when it is about political dynamics, and especially considering the types of decisions that could be taken according to the prediction?

It is the very framework that we use to evaluate the success or failure of prediction that is at stake here, and this framework is calendar time. We need this framework because all our activities, thus the responses we would design and implement, are planned according to it, but there is also an element of absurdity if we limit ourselves to specific dates. A more interesting way to put predictions when dealing with political dynamics would be to point those out, assessing the patterns at work, the rise or decrease of tension and, more difficult, their estimated timing, which brings us back to the challenge previously underlined.

Black swans or biases?

“As ever, we failed at big events that came out of the blue. We did not foresee the LIBOR scandal, for example, or the Bo Xilai affair in China or Hurricane Sandy.” The Economist, 21 November 2012.

In those cases, the explanation given for the failures shows cognitive biases, most probably the same ones that were at work during the analysis and led to the incapacity to foresee, thus we may expect the same mistake to be reproduced.

Starting with Sandy, the storm did not come out of the blue; it is neither a black swan event (a concept Nassim Nicholas Taleb borrowed from Karl Popper to describe an unpredictable event, which is, with hindsight, re-imagined as predictable) as suggested by The Economist sentence, nor even a wild card (a high impact, low probability event). Any attention paid to climate change, to the statistics and documents produced by Munich-re (e.g the video below on North American weather) or Allianz, for example, to say nothing about the host of related scientific studies, show that extreme weather events have become a reality and we are to expect more of them and more often, including in the so-called rich countries, whatever ideologists say.

It may be impossible to predict the exact event, the day and precise path of a storm, but the likelihood to see “Frankenstorms” in the Eastern part of the US at this time of the year is high and in no way can be seen as an unpredictable surprise. How many similar events and related signals need to occur before we start considering them as likely and thus integrating them systematically in our various forecasts, foresight analyses and warnings.

A similar logic may be applied to the LIBOR scandal and even to the Bo Xilai affair. In a world where the financial establishment believes (rightly because political authorities let it do it) it is all-powerful, where most shy away from the shadow banking liability, where regulation is seen as cumbersome at best, then financial institutions and those working for them can easily conceive of themselves as being above the laws, which means that manipulating the LIBOR becomes completely plausible and not surprising.

The methodological problem we are facing here is as follows: Are we trying to predict discrete events (hard but not impossible, however with some constraints and limitations according to cases) or are we trying to foresee dynamics, possibilities? The answer to this question will depend upon the type of actions that should follow from the anticipation, as predictions or foresight are not done in a vacuum but to allow for the best handling of change.

In an ideal world, it would thus be logical to start with the second goal, that would then allow for the creation of proper mitigating policies, as well as for the design of further directives in terms of surveillance of problems, specific intelligence requirements, etc.

Then one could move to the prediction of discrete events (within the dynamics previously identified), with resources and analytical methodologies correctly allocated and designed according to the nature and characteristics of the potential events. In many cases such as the LIBOR or Bo Xilai, this would imply systematic investigation and intelligence collection, and those have traditionally been part of the media role. In the case of Sandy, we are in the field of warning of natural events, which is handled by the scientific community, by state’s (e.g. meteorological offices) and international governmental organisations.

The Economist courageous and interesting self-assessment of last year’s predictions has thus pointed out the need to make explicit and revise our analytical models (including cognitive ones), notably to fully integrate political dynamics, violence and wars, the importance and difficulty of time’s evaluation, the necessity to think about the use various clients could make of foresight when endeavouring and then phrasing a forecast, while the struggle against all biases must remain constant.

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*See, for example, Grabo chapter 6, “‘Timing and Surprise”, who underlines the particular difficulty to foresee timing in the case of military attacks. Grabo, Cynthia M., Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning, edited by Jan Goldman, (Lanham MD: University Press of America, May 2004).

Epstein, Joshua M. “Why Model?” Santa Fe Institute Working Papers, 2008.

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable (Random House (U.S.) Allen Lane (U.K.), 2007).

Turton, Andrew “Patrolling the middle ground: methodological perspectives on ‘everyday peasant resistance,’” in Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance in South-East Asia, ed. James C. Scott and Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, (London: Frank Cass & Co.; 1986), pp. 36-48.

RussiaToday (RT): New Media for a Polarizing World?

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Triggered by the financial and economic crisis, protests movements have spread, notably in Europe and in the U.S., be they famously named and democratic (Los Indignados/Real Democracy Now, Occupy, etc.) or not. We call them here the “new opposition nexus.” Despite much dismissal and their inner difficulties (intrinsic to new movements), they are now worrying enough, at least in Europe, to prompt the Swiss military to conduct exercises on the theme of “violent instability in Europe,” called Stabilo Due (6 to 21 September 2012).

If you follow those movements, then an interesting trend, source-wise, has been emerging over the past months. People are increasingly referring to and using RT for information.

RT is the acronym for Russia Today, a state-sponsored yet editorially independent Russian Television Network created in 2005. Since then, it has elicited its share of criticism for biases, promoting conspiracy theory like viewpoints, and efforts to spread pro-Russian views, as described, among others, on Wikipedia, or as echoed by Zwick, ”Pravda Lite: Why are liberals lending credibility to a zany Russian TV station?” in The New Republic, trying to obtain an objective judgement (2012).

Yet, this does not deter the audience, as shown by the various social networks’ subscriptions measures, which can be taken as proxy indication for influence on the World-Wide-Web, where the new opposition nexus thrives and organises itself.

RT arrives well before VOA, or the Chinese Xinhua (and CNC World) and CCTV in terms of Twitter followers, yet is still dwarfed by mainstream CNN and BBC World, and much less followed than Al Jazeera English and Bloomberg News. The results are inverted on YouTube, where RT obtains its most amazing results. This October 2012 measure confirms the trend observed by the Pew Survey conducted from January 1, 2011, through March 30, 2012 (“YouTube and News,” July 2012) and pointed out by Jennifer Martinez on the Hill Technological Blog. We are witnessing 12,8% increase in 10 months (the Pew Survey counted more than 280.000 subscribers for RT, compared with today 315.940 subscribers).

Initially, as the RT archives show when consulted between Mars and June 2011 both for RT.com and for Actualidad RT (RT Spanish channel), the network did not follow more the rise of a new opposition movement in Europe than other media. This birth, in Europe and not in the U.S. with Occupy, continues being ignored by otherwise very interesting timelines of events such as the Guardian “Eurozone crisis: three years of pain.”
However, when the movement spread, this time, to the U.S. with Occupy, and notably when clashes with the NYPD made it famous, RT started an in-depth coverage that won it a nomination for the 2012 International Emmy Awards.

More importantly from the point of view of the new opposition nexus, since then, RT is not only part of those media that follow closely the various protests, but one of the few that tend to focus on protests first, sometimes indeed looking for more extreme events (for example, compare RT video below on the 20 October London demonstration with Al Jazeera one), over the mainstream business, economics and one-sided political elite approach. Despite in-depth reporting done by some, such as The Telegraph “Debt crisis: as it happened” or The Guardian Eurozone Crisis Live, RT is sometimes the only one (or the first one) to report on some pieces of information: for example, the participation of Greek reservists of the Special Forces in the 9 October 2012 anti-Merkel demonstration. Without blowing incidents out of proportion, those must also be considered, because, when accumulated, they are an indication of rising tension, here in Greece. In this specific case, involvement of reservists might be a weak signal indicating that the very means that allow the state to preserve its monopoly over violence could potentially be starting to fracture. More generally, if incidents are, in effect, taken out of context and rehashed by political actors, then the perception they create becomes escalating in itself.

Building upon the unorthodox financial views of the Kaiser report series, started in November 2009, this makes RT a media of choice for proponents of the protests, for people looking for and interested in non mainstream, thus alternative world-views, as well as for students of those movements.

An increasing influence of RT is also indicating the rising relative importance of interest in those alternative views. As more people experiment in their everyday life the violent impact of an unrelenting crisis, become aware of a multiplication of problems, and yet are offered by mainstream channels only old recipe, explanations and reassurances, they look for meaning and answers elsewhere.

As mainstream media continue having a strong influence, then we could be witnessing the start of a rising polarisation, notably within Western society, with RT playing a crucial role in terms of information, choice thereof, and ideas. Should this pattern be confirmed, then, ironically, it would not be without recalling, everything being equal, the role some Western radios (RFE, RFL, VOA, and BBC World) played for the Soviet dissidence during the Cold War.

Creating a Foresight or Warning Model: Mapping a Dynamic Network (I)

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Map, graph or network as model:

Once an initial question is defined – in our case, what will be the future of the modern nation-state for the next twenty years – most strategic foresight and warning methods start with building a model that will describe and explain the issue or question at hand. In other words, we construct our underlying model for understanding. As Epstein underlines, making explicit models is nothing else than explicating the hidden model we, as human beings, are using when thinking. Furthermore, in terms of analysis and more specifically intelligence analysis, making the model explicit will help first identifying various unconscious biases, thus allowing minimising them. It will then help defining areas of uncertain understanding, which can then be marked for further research.

What is a map, graph or network?

Most futures or foresight methods start looking for variables (also called factors or drivers) that are part of their model. A variable is a symbol or symbolic name that stands for a value that may vary. Some methodologies then link those variables. The link between two variables represents an influence (A influence B), most often causality. For example, in a model on demographics, one might have as variables birth rate and total population, and a link from birth rate to total population.

Whatever the question at hand, the construction of the model must be grounded in science, i.e. accumulated knowledge and understanding. Brainstorming sessions are crucial but should not dispense with using what others have understood beforehand, even if debates exist. Ideally the model should also be regularly updated to consider new findings.

One may see such maps, for example, in the British foresight product, Dimensions of Uncertainty done by the Foresight department of the Government Office for Science (2010?), notably Annex A.

Actually, maps are nothing else than graphs or networks – in our case directed graphs - and thus will benefit from the long scientific history that is attached to them, from Graph Theory, as graphs started being studied in mathematics with Euler in 1735 to the more recent Network Science. The development of the field has seen the emergence of new tools, such as network visualization software that greatly facilitate working with and on networks. Gephi, open source software, has been used here for the development of the underlying model, considering both its ease, its flexibility and yet its power.

The map and its use

Once the model is built, it is used to develop the scenarios that will constitute the history of Everstate, notably thanks to ego networks as will be explained in a few weeks. It will also give the indicators that are necessary for warning. Were capabilities available, it could be a step towards developing proper simulations that could then be mixed with the narratives.

The map itself, if it is seen as a whole by neophytes, may appear as complicated and difficult to use. It is however not so. It is just a tool and as all tools it demands understanding and training. Computers or mobile phones are far from being simple and yet they are now almost universally used. Once mastered, working with networks greatly facilitates the task of the analyst. It can be used as reference and give support to analytical conclusion, as statistics, trends or indications do. It is indeed one of the purposes of the Chronicles of Everstate to show how simple using a map for strategic foresight and warning is.

In terms of analytical management, a map is an investment. Indeed, once a graph has been properly built for a specific issue, it will most likely remain valid for a large period of time, especially if it is regularly updated with scientific findings. It can thus be used again each time the issue it covers comes into play. For example, if one wanted to do some foresight and warning on pandemics, the future of nuclear energy, of weapons of massive destruction (WMD), or cybersecurity, then at one stage or another the dynamics linked to state and government would have to be introduced and thus the map constructed here for the future of the state could and should be used again.

Constructing the initial model

The core ideal-type model

Rather than attempting to build from scratch the overall graph in all its complexity, it is easier to start building a minimalist core ideal-type model. This core graph will allow understanding the fundamental dynamics at work and then will be used as basis for developing the full model.

In the case of the future of the nation-state, I have started from Weber’s ideal-type, which gives the following graph.

This approach to understanding politics, which, obviously must include the population, a variable so often forgotten, would have helped understanding the 2011 uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East as well as the more recent protests in Europe and the Americas. We may only assume, with hindsight, that, had it been applied to classical F&W countries’ analysis, the likelihood to have been able to foresee the events would have been greatly heightened.

Including dynamics

As the graph shows, s0 (“step 0”) and s1 (“step 1”) have been added to variables, so as to include a dynamic dimension. Indeed as the model was being constructed, tested and revised, it appeared that using uniquely broad static conceptual variables was inadequate. The system constituted by the polity evolves; each action has consequences; the aggregation of all actions, reactions and consequences, as well as creativity, lead to evolution and change…. Read more next post.

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Image: The Seven Bridges of Königsberg, by Bogdan Giuşcă (Public domain (PD), based on the image, GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Creating a Foresight or Warning Model: Mapping a Dynamic Network (II)

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[From Part I: Including dynamics

As the graph shows, s0 (“step 0”) and s1 (“step 1”) have been added to variables, so as to include a dynamic dimension. Indeed as the model was being constructed, tested and revised, it appeared that using uniquely broad static conceptual variables was inadequate. The system constituted by the polity evolves; each action has consequences; the aggregation of all actions, reactions and consequences, as well as creativity, lead to evolution and change.]

Actually, any SF&W model as it primarily deals with time should be a dynamic network. How can we expect obtaining any potential outline for the future if our model for understanding is static?

Our map thus aims at representing the potential dynamics of polities. We shall notably use Ertman’s work on past state-building, but making it adaptable to present and future conditions.

Steps s0 and s1 will be used for the initial, simpler model. Then, what happens during s0 and s1 leads to the “evolution of society,” which thus starts the second step, s2. The hypothesis here is that we have a successful political organisation that provides the necessary security to the people. As a result, various developments take place, notably involving creativity, innovations, etc. The variable “evolution of society” (in red in the graph) is thus a cluster variable for all those developments that are not included in the graph. With s2, we shall build a more advanced model, representing the modern state. However, s2 will not display potential domestic escalation and stabilization. The underlying hypothesis for s2 is that at the end of s2 the overall socio-political model has not changed but starts showing signs of increasing inadequacies.

For s3 (step 3), we shall have the same model as for s2, but here we shall include variables related to potential domestic escalation or stabilization. Indeed, if the existing socio-political organization finally proves itself to be adequate or if it is changed in a timely fashion, then it will be possible to stop escalation, solutions can be found and finally there are possibilities to stabilize the situation.

Finally, s4 will focus on a potential failure of the s2s3 type of socio-political organisation. Actually, with s4 we shall also change scale as not all variables existing in s2 and s3 are replicated, for the sake of simplicity and clarity.

Ideally, if we had a simulation in mind, or if we wished to insert agent based modelling inside our larger conceptual framework, then n steps should be included and all variables used for each step.

Furthermore, network software give us the possibility to add a time component to a graph, as time can be attributed to each link between two variables.

The possibility to work in this direction is a very promising way forward to improve SF&W analysis and sufficient interest and funding should be made available to allow including this component. However, social science in general, international relations and political science in particular have not focused upon time. Effort should thus be made here, explicating the time factor when it is there, complementing existing findings when it has not been considered to allow for the proper, scientific inclusion of the time factor.

Adding nodes and sub-graphs

Having now our core fundamental model on the one hand and our broad dynamic structure on the other, we must progressively add the variables or groups of variables that are missing. For example, the core interactions take place within a milieu and against a normative backdrop that must both be considered. We now obtain the following graph, which is still considerably simple, with the nodes representing the milieu in green and the normative variables in violet.

One may also realise that some variables are actually generic and represent cluster of variables. For example, the variable “ruler,” which was indeed very convenient when starting our model, needed to be developed to be representative of our current polities. Thus for s2 and s3, to be as accurate as possible, the ruler was replaced with its corresponding nodes, using notably Susan E. Scarrow’s work, which gave the following subgraph.

There is no best or easiest way to add nodes, sub-graphs or develop a cluster: variables existing in both core graph and subgraph will serve as pivot and care will be taken not to have twice the same variable, then all links and dynamics must be rechecked.

Decision to detail or not a node will remain with the foresight analyst and depend upon the question as well as upon the resources available. A map that is too simplistic will lead to erroneous foresight and thus should not be favoured. A map that would take too long to construct would also deny foresight. Thus a middle ground must be found.

Considering potential structural changes in the future

It is now time to envision what might happen to the ideal-type model of polity with time, and why, as this is the purpose of foresight.

Scientific historical knowledge tells us that war and the timing of its onset were some of the major causes for changes that led to state-building and, if we take the case of the fall of the Roman Empire, to collapse. However, political history, international relations and security studies have generally tended to focus on external military threats, while as a pendent, in the state security apparatus, security has by and large be seen as equal to external military threats.

Now, if we want to be able to envision the future as well as possible, we need to consider not only conventional variables but also unconventional ones. To be able to determine those supplementary variables, we need first to understand what they cover. Here, starting from the importance of war and its onset for prompting change, we may deduce that any type of pressure threatening the security of the polity will be cause for change, as, indeed, the society and its political authorities must adapt to face those pressures. Capability to adapt or not, which will vary according conditions, will lead to one or another type of outcome or plausible future. Using imagination, research, horizon scanning and, in a collaborative setting, brainstorming, will allow identifying various types of pressures that will then be included in the graph as new nodes. For example, the variable “evolution of society,” which starts s2, as seen previously, is a first intrinsic cause of pressure on the polity, as new phenomena must be integrated. The pressure is increased because evolution goes in the direction of an increasing complexity that political authorities must learn to harness. Each pressure identified is a cluster variable or group node that could – and ideally should – become a graph. Here, as our focus is the nation-state, we shall leave them as such.

Now, we also need to introduce the possibility for the appearance of new variables. For example, if we consider complexity theory, we know that complex systems generate emerging properties. Something that did not exist in the past emerges. For example, if we follow the modernist school of thoughts on nation and nationalism, as is done here, nationalism and nations in their current acceptance are a modern phenomenon that did not exist previously.

Such novelties correspond to a change of structure for a map. If the possibility for such new variables were not included, then the map created would most probably fail to envision some plausible futures. Only changes happening while the structure is fixed could be foreseen. For example, any foresight done during the Cold War – a stable period structurally – which would have focused only on Cold War related variables would have been unable to foresee the end of the Cold war and potential post Cold War futures. Indeed, if it had not included those “new variables” and processes, then it would have been unable to foresee changes once the structure changed. This is why it is much easier to practice foresight – and warning – when the structure is stable than when it is in transition as now.

How can we introduce the possibility for structural changes? One way is to add a node labelled along the line of “other types of,” then to explain the type of variable one refers to, and to fully include it within the map, with all necessary linkages. This generic variable may then be refined and divided into various more specific variables, still always allowing for something we did not think of at the time of the design of the graph and that may appear later, in one day, one month or one year, or that may be found somewhere else in the world.

In our case, we thus have a model that evolves under different kinds of pressures: previous pressures, cumulated and acting from a global level, new external military threats, new unconventional threats (those direct threats that have already been identified, such as cyber threats or bio weapons of mass destruction), cumulated/global unconventional threats (those unconventional threats that act at a global level), other kinds of pressure for survival (direct potential pressures that are generally not yet accepted or even identified). Known pressures such as peak oil (the end of cheap oil), global warming, biodiversity loss, etc. are covered by the cluster nodes. If need be, they can be detailed as subgraphs and the linkages previously identified for the initial cluster node will help integrating the subgraph into the overall map.

The potential for various changes of structure must be permanently kept in mind when constructing the map.

Conclusion

The overall dynamic map that is progressively constructed is the foundation for the entire strategic foresight and warning analysis and conditions the success of the next steps, and the quality of the various products that will be delivered.

In our case, the dynamic map looks as follows, and we shall see with the next posts how to work with it.

References

Epstein, Joshua M. “Why Model?” Santa Fe Institute Working Papers, 2008

Ertman, Thomas. Birth of the Leviathan : Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Zellman, Ariel Review: Birth of the Leviathan by Thomas Ertman, 2008.

Scarrow, Susan E. “The nineteenth-century origins of Modern Political Parties: The Unwanted Emergence of Party Based Politics,” in Richard S. Katz, William Crotty (eds), Handbook of Party Politics, London, Sage, 2006.

The Chronicles of Everstate: foreseeing the future of the modern nation-state

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As riots and protests have been progressively, and in an accelerating way, occurring in many countries, starting with France in 2005, as public deficits have become structural and entrenched, made more acute by the financial and economic crisis triggered in 2007 by the sub-primes, it became increasingly clear that something was happening at the very heart of our societies. The political systems in which we live are under stress and changes are in the making.

The end of the modern nation-state?

by photographer Yiannis Biliris C.C. 3.0

Those very real events reflect a concern that has been underlined and debated in social sciences, notably international relations theory and political science for a long while, and most often expressed as the impending demise of the modern nation-state and related system. Already in 1977, Hedley Bull in his masterful The Anarchical Society was, among other, testing various hypotheses related to possible future evolutions of political systems. Meanwhile, most foresight products underline the end of the modern nation-state without investigating it. Furthermore, the strength or fragility of the state generates a lot of interest as a growing fragility could lead to civil war, state collapse and generalized warfare. The state is this political entity that is so difficult to define precisely and universally, and yet that we immediately recognize when we deal with it or when it is not there anymore. It is Hobbes’ Leviathan, and, without it, “the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

The type of state that is prevalent nowadays is described as modern (the modern state), centralized and rational. It is linked to the nation (the nation-state). The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia marks the birth of the modern state system.

As we, human beings, all live under one form or another of state, as it is the guarantor of security writ large, from the protection of foreign enemies to domestic peace to the foundation for material and immaterial security, as fragile states could mean strife and death, we are all primarily concerned by its potential disappearance or by foreseen changes in its form. We must be able to envision its plausible futures.

The question is absolutely crucial because from the answer will depend how we shall deal with all other issues facing us, from climate change to geopolitics through food and energy security among others.

The Chronicles of Everstate: foreseeing the future(s) of the modern nation-state

As Strategic Foresight and Warning (SF&W) is the best analytical method to envision changes and imagine possible futures, it was high time to apply SF&W to this debated and complex issue:

What will be the future of the modern nation-state this ideal-type form of polity into which most of us live nowadays, for the next twenty years?

Developing a specific foresight analytical methodology and an adequate product

The overall project evolved relatively slowly as I also wanted to use the future of the state as a case study to develop and test a foresight methodology that would be built on existing tools and overcome some existing methodological difficulties. This method had to be specifically adapted to national security issues and to incorporate science findings. Meanwhile, I also had to find a way to make it as simple of use as possible, yet without simplifying it to the point that it would lead to erroneous results. Finally, the methodology had to be testable and replicable.

Furthermore, as foresight and warning does exist only in as much as it is delivered, I had to identify who were the customers or clients for the final product, and imagine the best form the product needed to take for those customers. With time, it became increasingly obvious that those clients and users were the contemporary rulers, i.e. the nation and the citizens as well as the civil servants working for the state apparatus that supports the ruler, as explained in detail in concept and philosophy behind Red (team) Analysis.

In terms of method on the one hand, and product delivery, on the other, I soon faced a few major challenges: if the method itself was relatively simple, it could look otherwise if not explained properly, and thus lead to adverse reactions and rejection. Meanwhile, the product itself, the scenarios, stories or narratives, as they evolved, became soon too long to be conveyed through a conventional medium, apart from a book, which would mean a very long delay before publication. Last but not least, events started unfolding at an accelerated pace showing the pertinence of the foresight experiment, but also putting a supplementary time pressure on the whole project.

The Chronicles of Everstate, as will be published here, are an answer to those various concerns. Regularly, every two weeks, Red (team) Analysis will now post a new part of the Chronicles of Everstate, the fictional state created to imagine and tell the story of potential futures for our – very real – states or countries. The new post will be displayed on the home page, then will be accessible, as all posts through the menu (some categories of the menu are currently empty but will be populated with posts as times goes by).

The first post will explain precisely the rationale behind the Chronicles of Everstate, why Everstate, and how to use the concept. As it will be relatively short, the next post will be published the week after. It will open a series of posts that are methodological in focus, dwelling more in-depth into technical intricacies, somehow the nuts and bolts of the methodology, always using the future(s) of the state as example. Then, we shall finally start telling the Chronicles of Everstate; all other posts being at the same time a didactic practical application of the methodology and the development of the various scenarios for the future. In the course of the story, each scenario will be stress-tested against the same set of pressures and events.

Blog post, active reading and struggling against the persistence of beliefs

The regular publication under blog post format and thus the possibility for users and readers to interact is a specific feature that I wished to introduce in the project. Indeed, as human beings we are all prey to many cognitive biases, and it is one of the many challenges of SF&W to try to mitigate them. Among those biases, the persistence of beliefs and erroneous information may be one of SF&W’s chief enemies (Anderson, Pepper & Ross, 1980). Anderson, Pepper & Ross suggest two ways to overcome this persistence of beliefs: “Would such perseverance effects be eliminated or attenuated, for example, if subjects could be led, after debriefing, to consider explicitly the explanations that might be offered to support a contention in opposition to their initial beliefs? Alternatively, could subjects be “innoculated” against perseverance effects if they had been asked, at the outset of the study, to list all of the possible reasons they could imagine that might have produced either a positive or a negative relationship between the two variables being studied (cf. Slovic & Fischhoff, 1977)?“

Building upon those two ideas, it is crucial to include within the foresight product itself an element that create and prompt active reflection. Futurists, when they develop future scenarios for businesses underline the necessity to engage decision-makers during the analytical process, through brainstorming for example, for the same reason.

However, with strategic foresight and warning for national security, it is hardly possible to use the same device. Policy-makers have tight agendas and little time available for participating in analytical processes. Furthermore, models, as we shall see soon, are too complex to allow for such an approach. To try doing it would be similar to ask users to learn programming and then participate in software development before to use a word processor. Finally, addressing also citizens forbids small groups brainstorming at analytic level for the sake of speed, cost and efficiency. Meanwhile, the fact that most people never interact, including over the world wide web, had to be considered

Something else had to be imagined, which is experimented here: to give clients – fundamentally readers – the possibility to interact directly with the product itself – but at their will and without letting the project depend upon those interactions – through:

  • comments;
  • active reading made possible by the way the method works and the narrative is developed (as will be seen with the next posts);
  • the format of accumulated blog posts that will allow, with time, navigating at will among various parts of the stories and thus develop other scenarios, according to the specific needs of users.

Finally, the blog posts/website format also aims at preserving the experimental, flexible and evolving character of the Chronicles of Everstate that has become one of the features of the project and could very well be a necessary characteristic of a Strategic Foresight and Warning analysis adapted to our contemporary world.

Welcome to the Chronicles of Everstate!

References

Anderson, Craig A., Mark R. Lepper, and Lee Ross. “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1980, Vol. 39, No.6, 1037-1049.

Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. London: MacMillan, 1977.

Gross, Leo (January 1948), “The Peace of Westphalia“, The American Journal of International Law 42/1 (1): 20–41, doi:10.2307/2193560.

A few thoughts regarding #OccupyWallStreet

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More than a structured post, here are a few thoughts regarding the #OccupyWallStreet movement, including the arrests in NYC on Saturday 24 September 2011, related effects on the treatment by media, and the articles and blogs I have read lately not only on this specific operation but also on linked previous movements and protests. Indeed, for this episode of the age-old struggle against those who hold the key to liquidity (cash), the origin of the idea to fight bankers and the power of markets can be traced back to the Spanish Manifesto of the Indignados (published at the latest by May 17 2011), and to the recent events in Iceland.

Media, attention and … “martyrs”

It is good that mainstream media start paying attention to what is happening, but, as previously underlined, where were they in May, June, etc. for Spain, Greece, and the various movements that started then, not only Europe but also throughout America?When the #occupywallstreet demonstration started on #sept17, only CNNmoney and Al Jazeera were there and reported. Again, where were they for Europe? Obviously arrests in a symbolic place were needed to see wider coverage. As any student of political mobilization and revolution knows, getting “martyrs” – everything being equal – is a crucial time for movements to develop, getting support, coverage, attention, etc.

Thomas Jefferson against Leftist labels?

It seems that an interesting – still – low key struggle is emerging, at the level of ideas and legitimacy.

Some – the majority? – absolutely want to categorize the operation with what could be qualified of usual categories: anti-capitalist, left, leftist, etc. Yet, shouldn’t we wonder if those categories are not also or rather old, corresponding  to the word of the end of the 19th and 20th century and to the Cold War, and thus most probably outdated? Note that this categorization, very interestingly, is done both inside and outside the movement – the most vocal being maybe Tea Party supporters and established Marxist/leftist elements.

Meanwhile, within the “movement,” other participants either do not pay attention or start looking for legitimating references, e.g. Jefferson on private banks (legitimacy is seen here in the American framework, but Jefferson, as a child of the Enlightenment, could very easily be adopted elsewhere, notably in Europe). The stream of tweets on Jefferson started on September 17 with some favored quotes and also sometimes with mention of  blog posts, e.g. “A Den of Vipers and Thieves“ by Scott Johnson, Sept 15, with no direct affiliation between posts and “movement.”

Towards an emerging new normative setting?

My take is that we are seeing here many things unfolding and coalescing: recuperation and hope for a renewal, thinking habit, fear to see part of one’s rhetoric and thus partisans stolen away, plain fear of what is happening, and, first and foremost, something new being created. We are most likely witnessing the first weak signals of the making of a new normative system. Hence, this ideological evolution must be followed. Even if this specific protest recedes, it does not mean it will completely die. It is most likely to come back again, transformed, stronger, better and differently defined, elsewhere. This is exactly what has already happened with the European movements of the Spring and Summer (although hardly documented), which, after the Arab (Winter-)Spring, and in conjunction with the markets’ evolution create the right conditions for transmission and mutation of ideas and their corollary, actions.

Very interestingly, right now, it would seem that all actors (from movements to institutions, including governments and international organizations) are unable to think clearly anything else than “less state” – in American parlance “less government,” although to think in these terms is fraught with complication. If this hypothesis is correct, then it would mean that all, probably unconsciously, abide, on the one hand, by the ultra-liberal ideology according to which less state is needed and that has dominated the world since the end of the Cold War and, on the other, have an ultimate faith in a Democracy that would not need a state (despite all the research done depicting a much more complex picture).

Shall we see with real life and concrete threats, with practical needs for mobilization and organization, with interactions within the “new opposition nexus” and between the latter and political authorities, ideas change, evolve and being re-imagined?

Revisiting timeliness for Strategic Foresight and Warning

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To exist, foresight products as well as warnings must be delivered to those who must act upon them, the customers, clients or users. Furthermore, they must be provided in a timely fashion. This criterion of timeliness is extremely important. It means that customers or users will have enough time to decide and then implement any necessary course of action as warranted by foresight.

Timeliness: enabling the coordination of response

Timely reflections (Image by Stanley Howe – CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Most often, the challenge of timeliness is thus understood as stemming from the need to conciliate on the one hand the dynamics which are specific to the issue, object of anticipation, and on the other the related decision and coordination of the response.

Let us take the example of Peak Oil, i.e. the date when “world oil production will reach a maximum – a peak – after which production will decline” (Hirsch, 2005, 11) which implies the end of a widespread availability of cheap (conventional crude) oil. The phenomenon is now well documented and relatively widely recognized, from scientists’ reports, associations, institutions and books (see, for example, the creation of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas in 2000 , Robert Hirsch report (2005), the Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP), Thomas Homer Dixon, Michael Klare or Jeff Rubin), to web resources such as The Oil Drum or Energy Bulletin to finally the International Energy Agency (IEA – it recognised the peaking of Peak Oil in 2010, e.g. Staniford, 2010), despite still some resistance by a shrinking number of actors.

By azrainman http://flickr.com/photos/azrainman/991225765/ – CC-BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Notwithstanding other impacts, Hirsch estimates that 20 years of a “mitigation crash program before peaking” would have allowed avoiding “a world liquid fuels shortfall” (Hirsch, 2005). Assuming that oil peaked in 2006, as evaluated by the IEA, if we had wanted to have an energy mix of replacement for the now gone cheap oil, then we should have decided implementing and then coordinating a response… back in 1986. Thus SF&W on this issue should have been delivered some time before 1986.

Obviously, this did not happen, even if one starts finding rare articles regarding Peak Oil earlier (e.g. the 1974 miscalculated warning for a global Peak Oil happening in 1995 by M. King Hubbert (Wikipedia ‘Predicting the timing of Peak Oil’) and much later Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrere, “The end of cheap oil,” Scientific American, March 1998). Why?

Timeliness, credibility and biases

Jack Davis, writing on strategic warning in the case of US national security, hints at the importance of another criterion linked to timeliness, credibility:

“Analysts must issue a strategic warning far enough in advance of the feared event for US officials to have an opportunity to take protective action, yet with the credibility to motivate them to do so. No mean feat. Waiting for evidence the enemy is at the gate usually fails the timeliness test; prediction of potential crises without hard evidence can fail the credibility test. When analysts are too cautious in estimative judgments on threats, they brook blame for failure to warn. When too aggressive in issuing warnings, they brook criticism for “crying wolf.”

For Davis, credibility is the provision of “hard evidence” to back up foresight. Of course, as we deal with the future, hard evidence will consist in understanding of processes and their dynamics (the model used, preferably an explicit model) added to facts indicating that events are more or less likely to unfold according to this understanding.

Credibility is, however, also something more than hard evidence. To obtain credibility, people must believe you. Hence, biases of the customers, clients or users must be overcome. Thus, whatever the validity of the hard evidence in the eyes of the analyst, it must also be seen as such by others. The various biases that can be an obstacle to this credibility have started being largely documented (e.g. Heuer). Actually, explaining the model used and providing indications, or describing plausible scenarios are ways to overcome some of the biases, notably out-dated cognitive models. Yet, relying only on this scientific logic is insufficient, as shown by Craig Anderson, Mark Lepper, and Lee Ross in their paper “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information.” Thus, other ways to minimize biases must be imagined and included, that will most probably involve time. The possibility to deliver the SF&W product will be accordingly delayed.

Credibility and more broadly overcoming biases are so important that I would go further than Davis and incorporate them within the very idea of timeliness. This would be much closer to the definition of timely, according to which something is “done or occurring at a favourable or useful time; opportune” (Google dictionary result for timely). Indeed there cannot be timely SF&W if those who must act cannot hear it.

If the SF&W product is delivered at the wrong time, then it will be neither heard nor considered, decisions will not be taken nor actions implemented.

More difficult, biases also affect the very capability of analysts to think the world and thus to even start analysing issues. We are there faced with cases of partial or full collective blindness, when timeliness cannot be achieved because SF&W analysis cannot even start in the specific sectors of society where this analysis is meant to be done.

This is most probably what happened for our example of Peak Oil. If a model existed, created by M. King Hubbert, the initial miscalculation led to some loss of credibility as those denying peak oil underlined and still emphasize, even though King Hubbert model was not wrong. Analysts in SF&W in the early 1980s were more preoccupied with the Cold War than concerned by anything else. Afterwards, the system that had won against the Communist world could not even be thought not being perfect. Such highly disturbing threats that could question the prevalent worldview could not be envisioned. Had they been, they would most probably have been discarded first by policy makers then by political leaders. Furthermore, a host of actors had interest in a permanence of the ideological setting, which would have made the possibility to see a very early foresight work on peak oil develop very remote indeed (I am emphasizing here unconscious reactions and “deafness,” not hidden maneuvers).

Timeliness as the intersection of three dynamics

Thus, to summarize timeliness is best seen as the intersection of three dynamics:

  • The dynamics and time of the issue or problem at hand, knowing that, especially when they are about nature, those dynamics will tend to prevail (Elias, 1992)
  • The dynamics of the coordination of the response (including decision)
  • The dynamics of cognition (or evolution of beliefs and awareness) – at collective and individual level – of the actors involved.

To understand each dynamic is, in itself, a challenge. Even more difficult, each dynamic acts upon the others, making it impossible to truly hope to achieve timeliness if the impact of one dynamic on the others is ignored.

For example, if we continue with our initial case of Peak Oil, having been unable to even think the possibility of Peak oil in the early 1980s has dramatically changed the current possible dynamics of the response, while both the cognitive delay and the absence of previous decisions and actions have orientated the dynamics of the issue towards some paths, while others are definitely closed. Any SF&W delivered on this issue now is quite different from what would have been delivered 20 years ago, assuming it could have been heard.

To acknowledge the difficulty of finding the timely moment, and the impossibility to ever practice an ideal SF&W in an imagined world where everyone – at individual and collective level – would have perfect cognition is not to negate SF&W. Answering this challenge with a “what is the point to do it now as we did not do it when things were easy/easier” is childish. On the contrary, fully acknowledging hurdles is to have a more mature attitude regarding who we are as human beings, accepting our shortcomings but also trusting in our creativity and capacity to work to overcome the most difficult challenges. It is to open the door to the possibility to develop strategies and related tools to improve the timeliness of SF&W, thus making it more actionable and efficient:

  • Creating evolving products that will be adapted to the moment of delivery;
  • Using the appearance of groups, communities, even single scholarly or other work on new dangers, threats and opportunities as potential weak signals that are still unthinkable by the majority;
  • Developing and furthering our understanding of the dynamics of cognition and finding ways to act on them or, to the least, to accompany them;
  • Participating fully in the current effort, which has just started within societies, at re-designing decision systems and response capabilities.

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References

Anderson, Craig A., Mark R. Lepper, and Lee Ross, “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1980, Vol. 39, No.6, 1037-1049.

Campbell, Colin J. and Jean H. Laherrere, “The end of cheap oil,” 
Scientific American, March 1998.

Davis, Jack, “Improving CIA Analytic Performance: Strategic Warning,” The Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis Occasional Papers: Volume 1, Number 1, accessed September 12, 2011.

Dixon, Thomas Homer, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of civilization, (Knopf, 2006).

Elias, Norbert,  Time: An Essay, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)

Hirsch, Robert L., SAIC, Project Leader, Roger Bezdek, MISI, Robert Wendling, MISI Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation & Risk Management, For the U.S. DOE, February 2005.

International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Outlook 2010.

Klare, Michael, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004; paperback, Owl Books, 2005).

Klare, Michael, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated, 2008).

Rubin, Jeff, Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, Random House, 2009.

Staniford, Stuart, “IEA acknowledges peak oil,” Published Nov 10 2010, Energy Bulletin.