The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – An Obvious 21st Century Conundrum – 11 October 2018

Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals for political and geopolitical risk of interest to private and public actors.

Find out more on horizon scanning, signals, what they are and how to use them:

“Horizon Scanning and Monitoring for Anticipation: Definition and Practice“.

Welcome to the now obvious 21st century conundrum: The already impacting (we told you so) climate change entails huge costs. To reduce them – to put it mildly – immense and rising might and expenses would be necessary. As a result, profits and use of what is at the heart of our current civilisation – fossil fuels – appear to be necessary, but then climate change and its costs will heighten… How is that for an interesting riddle?

The solution out of this mad and accelerating vicious spiral could be in thinking and acting out of the box, including by being powerful and smart enough to entice outdated elite and power players in not derailing efforts. Expect nonetheless unavoidable direct and collateral damage.

Read below our latest complimentary Weekly horizon scanning. 
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – An Obvious 21st Century Conundrum – 11 October 2018”

The U.S. Economy, between the Climate Hammer and the Trade War Anvil – the Soybean Case

On 24 September 2018, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce imposed new tariffs on 200 billion dollars worth of Chinese goods, thus widely escalating the “trade war” initiated by president Donald Trump against China in April 2018. Beijing immediately retaliated with tariffs on 60 billions worth of American goods (Will Martin, “China Hits Back at Trump with Tariffs on $60 Billion of US Goods”, Business Insider, 18 September, 2018). Some analysts and commentators are worried that the new tariffs could backfire and may impact the prices of consumption goods on the domestic market, and thus the U.S. consumer (Scott Lincicone, “Here are 202 Companies Hurt by Trump’s Tariffs”, Reason.com, September 14, 2018).

However, these analyses do not take into account the “unseen” but intensifying stress that climate change is exercising on the current geo-economic conditions and how its impacts combine nationally and globally with the way the U.S.-China Trade war unfolds and triggers unintended consequences.

Continue reading “The U.S. Economy, between the Climate Hammer and the Trade War Anvil – the Soybean Case”

The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – US-China tensions escalate – 4 October 2018

Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals for political and geopolitical risk of interest to private and public actors.

Find out more on horizon scanning, signals, what they are and how to use them:

“Horizon Scanning and Monitoring for Anticipation: Definition and Practice“.

Read below our latest complimentary Weekly horizon scanning. 

Each section of the scan focuses on signals related to a specific theme: world (international politics and geopolitics); economy; science; analysis, strategy and futures; AI, technology and weapons; energy and environment. However, in a complex world, categories are merely a convenient way to present information, when facts and events interact across boundaries.

Read the 4 October 2018 scan→

The Weekly is the complimentary scan of The Red (Team) Analysis Society. It focuses on political and geopolitical uncertainty, on national and international security issues.

The information collected (crowdsourced) does not mean endorsement but points to new, emerging, escalating or stabilising problems and issues.

Featured image: Antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two companion galaxies to our own Milky Way galaxy, can be seen as bright smudges in the night sky, in the centre of the photograph. This photograph was produced by European Southern Observatory (ESO), ESO/C. Malin [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Revisiting Timeliness for Strategic Foresight and Warning and Risk Management

[Fully rewritten version v3] To exist, risk and foresight products as well as warnings must be delivered to those who must act upon them, the customers, clients or users. These anticipation analyses must also be actionable, which means that they need to include the right information necessary to see action taken.

Yet, if you deliver your anticipation when there is no time anymore to do anything, then your work will be wasted.

Yet, even if you deliver your impeccable strategic foresight or risk analysis, or your crucial actionable warning to your clients in time to see a response implemented, but at a moment when your customers, decision-makers or policy-makers cannot hear you, then your anticipation effort will again be wasted. Let me give you an example. If you look at the picture used as featured image, what you see is the Obama government in a situation room as it awaits updates on the 2011 Operation Neptune’s Spear, the mission against Osama bin Laden. Imagine now that you have another warning to deliver (and the authorisation to do so) on any other issue, one with high impact but meant to happen in, say, 2 years time. Do you seriously believe that anyone in that room would – or rather could – listen to you?  If ever you nonetheless delivered your warning, you would not be heard. Obviously, as a result, decisions would not be taken. Your customer would be upset, while the necessary response would not be implemented. Finally, endless problems, including crises, would emerge and propagate.

Delivering an anticipation analysis or product must thus obey a critical rule: it must be done in a timely fashion. Timeliness is a fundamental criterion for good anticipation, risk management and strategic foresight and warning.

In this article, we shall look, first, at timeliness as a criterion that enables the coordination of response. We  shall explain it with the example of the controversial “Peak Oil”. Second, timeliness means that customers or users will not only have enough time to decide and then implement any necessary course of action as warranted by your strategic foresight and warning or risk analysis, but also be able to hear you. This is the problem of fostering credibility and overcoming other biases. We shall explain this part using again the examples of Peak Oil and taking as second example Climate Change. Finally, we shall point out a synthetic approach to understand timeliness and ways forward to achieve it.

Timeliness: enabling the coordination of response

timeliness, timely, credibility, cognitive biases, the Red (Team) Analysis Society, risk management, strategic foresight, strategic warning, anticipation, scenario, peak oil, climate change

Most often, the challenge of timeliness is 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 decisions and the 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. Hirsch underlined that the problem of timing, i.e. identifying when oil will peak is complex

“When world oil peaking will occur is not known with certainty. A fundamental problem in predicting oil peaking is the poor quality of and possible political biases in world oil reserves data. Some experts believe peaking may occur soon. This study indicates that “soon” is within 20 years. ” (Hirsch, 2005, 5)

Thus, according to Hirsch, oil should peak before 2025.

In 2018, the idea of Peak Oil may be thought as being outdated or plainly false, grounded in mistaken false science as exemplified by Michael Lynch, “What Ever Happened To Peak Oil?“, Forbes, 29 June 2018. Note that these arguments were already used prior to a phase of relatively wide recognition of the Peak Oil phenomenon around 2010, 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 in 2006, Michael Klare or Jeff Rubin in 2010), to web resources such as the now defunct The Oil Drum and 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 then a shrinking number of actors. Since then, notably, the shale revolution took place, while climate change allowed an easier access to northern oil and gas fields (e.g Jean-Michel Valantin, “The Russian Arctic Oil: a New Economic and Strategic Paradigm?”, The Red Team Analysis Society, October 12, 2016).

Peak oil is thus not very much on the agenda, although some still argue that it will happen, as, exemplified by the websites Peak Oil Barrel or Crude Oil Peak, which suggests that the oil will peak when the U.S. shale will peak (“What happened to crude oil production after the first peak in 2005?“, Sept 2018.) The peak in U.S. shales thus becomes a significant issue (e.g. Robert Rapier, “Peak Tight Oil By 2022? EIA Thinks It’s Possible, Without Even Accounting For This Risk“. Forbes, 20 February 2018; Tsvetana Paraskova, “Peak U.S. Shale Could Be 4 Years Away“, OilPrice, 25 Feb 2018).

If the remaining proponents of peak oil are right and if some of the hypotheses of the EIA are correct, then Peak Oil could take place around 2022. This is not that far away from Hirsch estimates according to which Peak Oil could occur by 2025.

We should nonetheless allow for the considerable evolutions that took place over the last 13 years, notably in terms of technology, including Artificial Intelligence, consuming behaviour, global consumption, and climate change. We should also allow for coming revolutions such as Quantum technologies which could completely upset many estimates.  As long as all these developments with their complex feedbacks have not been considered, without forgetting that Hirsch addressed availability of cheap oil, not availability  of expensive oil, then we must remain conservative and treat 2025 as only a possibility (a probability of 50%) for Peak Oil.

timeliness, timely, credibility, cognitive biases, the Red (Team) Analysis Society, risk management, strategic foresight, strategic warning, anticipation, scenario, peak oil, climate change, energy security

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, 65).

Thus, assuming that oil peaks in 2025, if we want to have an energy mix of replacement for the soon gone cheap oil, then we should have decided implementing and then coordinating a response… back in 2005. Note that, interestingly, this corresponds to the time when Hirsch published his report, and the time when the world started being worried about Peak Oil. We can thus wonder if, in specific countries, as well as collectively, SF&W on this issue was not actually delivered.

To answer more precisely this question, further research, when archives are declassified, will need to be done. Meanwhile, it will be useful to follow precisely the delivery process, notably, according to countries and actors, to know where exactly the warning was delivered and to whom.

If we now assume that Hirsch estimates of the time needed to develop mitigation and a new energy mix is correct, then we may consider that Hirsch, as well as the “peak oil” interest of the second part of the first decade of the 21st century, delivered a timely waning, as far as the time needed to implement answers is concerned.

If and where the right decisions were taken and the right responses implemented would need to be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Let us turn now to other criteria that condition the timeliness of the delivery of a risk or foresight analysis or of a warning.

Timeliness, credibility and biases

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

timeliness, timely, credibility, cognitive biases, the Red (Team) Analysis Society, risk management, strategic foresight, strategic warning, anticipation, scenario, peak oil, climate change, intelligence

“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.”

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.

For Davis, credibility is the provision of “hard evidence” to back up strategic foresight, or actually any anticipation analysis. 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. This is why, building an excellent model (see our online course), grounded in science is so important, as this will be key in achieving the credibility criterion.

Credibility is, however, also something more than hard evidence. To obtain credibility, people must believe you. Hence, the 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. The possibility to deliver the SF&W or risk 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 or risk management if those who must act cannot hear the warning or analysis we seek to deliver.

If the SF&W product or the risk analysis 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 or risk analysis cannot even start in the specific sectors of society where this analysis needs to be done.

If we use again our example of Peak Oil, the 2005 warning could have lost part of its timeliness, because of debate regarding its credibility, which remains nowadays and is exemplified in the Forbes article above mentioned. On the other hand, the decision by the International Energy Agency (IEA) to finally recognise the peaking of Peak Oil in 2010 (e.g. Staniford, 2010) lent an official character to the phenomenon, that was very likely extremely important in finally allowing for the credibility of the warning.

We face very similar stakes and challenges with Climate Change, as shown once more by the latest debates presiding to the October 2018 IPCC report (Matt McGrath, “IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report“, BBC News, 1 October 2018). Tragically, in that case, the ongoing attacks on the credibility of the various warnings regarding climate change over years, has also finally most probably endangered the timely possibility of response to remain below a 1.5C warming:

“For some scientists, there is not enough time left to take the actions that would keep the world within the desired limit.
‘If you really look seriously at the feasibility, it looks like it will be very hard to reach the 1.5C,’ said Prof Arthur Petersen, from University College London and a former IPCC member.
‘I am relatively sceptical that we can meet 1.5C, even with an overshoot. Scientists can dream up that is feasible, but it’s a pipedream.'” (MacGrath, “IPCC: Climate scientists …)

This shows how the credibility issue is absolutely crucial for a warning to respect the timeliness criterion.

Timeliness as the intersection of three dynamics

To summarise, timeliness is best seen as the intersection of three dynamics:

timeliness, timely, credibility, cognitive biases, the Red (Team) Analysis Society, risk management, strategic foresight, strategic warning, anticipation, scenario, peak oil, climate change
  • 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, including biases resulting from interests) – 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 the case of climate change, having been unable to truly even properly think collectively the possibility of climate change in its dire reality and with a more accurate timeline before the turn of the century – despite multiple efforts in this direction (e.g. Richard Wiles, “It’s 50 years since climate change was first seen. Now time is running out“, The Guardian, 15 March 2018), 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 or risk assessment delivered on this issue now, as shown by the October 2018 IPCC Panel discussions (Ibid.), is quite different from what was delivered previously.

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 or risk management. Answering the “timeliness challenge” with a “what is the point to do it now as we did not do it when things were easy/easier” is at best childish, at worst suicidal.

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 policies with adequate tools to improve the timeliness of SF&W and risk management, thus making it more actionable and efficient:

  • Creating evolving products that will be adapted to the moment of delivery;
  • Using the publication of groups, communities, 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;
  • Keeping permanently in mind this crucial issue in anticipation to seek and implement adequate strategies to overcome it, according to the ideas, moods, science and technologies available at the time of delivery.

——–

This is the 3rd edition of this article, considerably revised from the 1st edition, 14 Sept 2011.

Featured image: Situation Room, Pete Souza [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

About the author: Dr Helene Lavoix, PhD Lond (International Relations), is the Director of The Red (Team) Analysis Society. She is specialised in strategic foresight and warning for national and international security issues. Her current focus is on Artificial Intelligence and Security.

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.

Winning the Race to Exascale Computing – AI, Computing Power and Geopolitics (4)

This article focuses on the race to exascale computing and its multi-dimensional political and geopolitical impacts, a crucial response major actors are implementing in terms of High Performance Computing (HPC) power, notably for the development of their artificial intelligence (AI) systems.  It thus ends for now our series on HPC as driver of and stake for AI, among the five we identified in Artificial Intelligence – Forces, Drivers and Stakes: the classical big data, HPC and the race to quantum supremacy as related critical uncertainty, algorithms, “sensors and expressors”, and finally needs and usages.

Related

Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics (1): the connection between AI and HPC

Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics (2): what could happen to actors with insufficient HPC in an AI-world, a world where the distribution of power now also results from AI, while a threat to the Westphalian order emerges

High Performance Computing Race and Power – Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics (3): The complex framework within which the responses available to actors in terms of HPC, considering its crucial significance need to be located.

This final piece builds on the first part, where we explained and detailed the connection between AI and HPC, and on the second part, where we looked at the related political and geopolitical impacts: what could happen to actors with insufficient HPC in an AI-world, a world where the distribution of power now also results from AI, while a threat to the Westphalian order emerges. The responses available to actors in terms of HPC, considering its crucial significance need to be located within the complex framework we explained in part three. Accordingly, first, decisions regarding which HPC capability to develop must be taken in relative terms, i.e. considering others’ HPC and AIs. Second, each actor engaged in the race must consider how fast other actors will develop stronger HPC capabilities. Finally, the longer the lead time investing actors have over the next revolutionary advance in HPC, the longer they delay the loss of value of their investment, and the more performing the AI-systems they can create, which gives them a window of opportunity to take full advantage of their superior AI.

In this dynamical framework we look at the obvious policy response actors designed: having more and better HPC, earlier, than the others. This is translated as the ongoing race to exascale computing, i.e. bringing online a computer with as capability a thousand petaflops or 1018 floating point operations per second, knowing that, currently, the most powerful computer in the world, U.S. Summit, shows a performance of 122.3 petaflops (TopList 500 June 2018). We start with a state of play on the ongoing “race to exascale”, which involves chronologically Japan, the U.S., France, China and the EU. We notably includes latest information on the indigenous European Processor Initiative (4-6 Sept 2018). The table summarizing the State of Play below is open access/free.

We then point out linkages between this race and economic, business, political, geopolitical and global dynamics, focusing notably on the likely disappearance of American supremacy in terms of processors.

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Finally, strategically, if this race means going quicker than others developing better machines, it may also imply, logically, slowing down as much as possible, by all means, one’s competitors. Disrupting the very race would be an ideal way to slow down others, while completely upsetting the AI and HPC field, relativising the race to exascale and thus changing the whole related technological, commercial, political and geopolitical landscape. Thus, we underline two major possible disruptive evolutions and factors that could take place, namely quantum computing and a third generation AI. We shall detail both in forthcoming articles as quantum computing is a driver and stake for AI in its own right, while a third generation AI can best be seen as belonging to the driver and stake constituted by algorithms (“Artificial Intelligence – Forces, Drivers and Stakes”, ibid).

The Race to Exascale

Access for non-members is limited to the table summarising the state of play of the race to exascale. The complete text is a premium article. To access this article, you must become one of our members. Log in if you are a member.
A pdf version of the complete article (EN and FR) is available for members
ARTICLE 3951 WORDS – pdf 17 pages

State of Play

As of September 2018, the state of play for the race to exascale is as follows:

The Race to Exascale – Full State of Play – 24 September 2018
  Japan U.S. China EU France
Pre-ES and prototype   2013-2020 June 2018 Sunway exascale computer prototype
July 2018 Tianhe-3 prototype		 2021 2015, 2018 Tera1000
Peak-ES and Sustained-ES 2021 Post-K 2021 Aurora – Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)
2021 Frontier -Oak Ridge National Laboratory  (ORNL)
2022 El Capitan – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
2022-2023 Aurora upgrades		 2020 – Tianhe-3

 

2d half 2020 or first half 2021 – Sunway Exascale

  2023-2024 (EPI)

 

(Initially 2022-2023 -Official) 

 2020-2021

 

BullSequana X
Energy Efficiency Goal   20-30 MW 20-32MW 20-40 MW 20 MW by 2020
Initiative Flagship 2020 Project ECP 13th 5 Year Plan EuroHCP CEA
Budget $0.8 to 1 billion*** $ 1.8 billion for the 2 ORNL and LLNL machines ? € 1billion+ by 2020** ?
Vendors Japan U.S. Chinese Europe France
Processor, Accelerator, Integrator Japan

 

Fujitsu-designed Arm

 U.S.  Chinese ARM based, Sugon: x86 European Processor Initiative (EPI)  (Arm, RISC-V) RHEA, First generation processor for pres Exascale – CRONOS for Exascale
Bull integrator BXI		 Intel, ARM, Bull Exascale Interconnect (BXI)
Cost per System   Aurora:$300 to $600 million.
Frontier and El Capitan: $400 to 600 million		 $350 to 500 million*** $350 million*** ?
Research by The Red (Team) Analysis Society – Detailed sources in the text.

Feedbacks and impacts

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Notes and Additional Bibliography

*”does not manufacture the silicon wafers, or chips, used in its products; instead, it outsources the work to a manufacturing plant, or foundry. Many of these foundries are located in Taiwan and China…” (Investopedia)

**€486 million matched by a similar amount from the participating countries plus in kind contributions from private actors (“Commission proposes to invest EUR 1 billion in world-class European supercomputers“, European Commission – Press release, 11 January 2018)

***Hyperion Research, “Exascale Update“, 5 Sept 2018.

CEA, Atos et le CEA placent TERA 1000, le supercalculateur le plus puissant d’Europe, dans le Top 15 mondial, 25 June 2018

CEA, TERA 1000 : 1er défi relevé par le CEA pour l’Exascale, 12 Nov 2015

Collins, Jim, “Call for Proposals: Aurora Early Science Program expands to include data and learning projects“, Argonne National Laboratory, 18 January 2018

e-IRG, “Interview of EPI’s project coordinator Philippe Notton from Atos“, 10 April 2018

ECP, “SECRETARY OF ENERGY RICK PERRY ANNOUNCES $1.8 BILLION INITIATIVE FOR NEW SUPERCOMPUTERS“, 9 April 2018

Lobet, Mathieu, Matthieu Haefele, Vineet Soni, Patrick Tamain, Julien Derouillat, et al.. High Performance Computing at Exascale: challenges and benefits. 15ème congrés de la Société Française de Physique division Plasma, Jun 2018, Bordeaux, France.

Thielen, Sean, “Europe’s advantage in the race to exascale“, The NextPlatform, 5 September 2018

Valero, Mateo, European Processor Initiative & RISC-V, 9 May 2018

Featured image: Computational Science, Argonne National Laboratory, Public Domain.

Intelligence, Strategic Foresight and Warning, Risk Management, Forecasting or Futurism?

The focus of this website is anticipation for all issues that are relevant to political and geopolitical risks and uncertainties, national and international security, traditional and non-traditional security issues, or, to use a military approach, conventional and unconventional security[1]. In other terms we shall deal with all uncertainties, risks, threats, but also opportunities, which impact governance, and international relations, from pandemics to artificial intelligence through disruptive technology, from energy to climate change through water to wars. This activity may be called more specifically strategic foresight and warning (SF&W) or risk management, even though there are slight differences between both. The definition we use builds upon the practice and research of long time experts and practitioners Fingar, Davis, Grabo and Knight.

Definition of Strategic Foresight and Warning – Risk management for strategic uncertainties

“Strategic Foresight and Warning (risk management for strategic uncertainties) is an organized and systematic process to reduce uncertainty regarding the future that aims at allowing policy-makers and decision-makers to take decisions with sufficient lead time to see those decisions implemented at best.” (Fingar, Davis, Grabo and Knight)

Broadly speaking, it is part of the field of anticipation – or approaches to the future, which also includes other perspectives and practices centred on other themes.

SF&W can and does borrow ideas and methodologies from those approaches, while adapting them to its specific focus. For example, a country like Singapore with its Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning – RAHS Programme Office, part of the National Security Coordination Secretariat at the Prime Minister’s Office, uses a mix of most of those perspectives, reworks and combines them for its own needs, while creating and designing original tools, methodologies and processes. Furthermore, various actors also use different names for SF&W, or very similar approaches. It is thus important to clarify what various labels and names mean, even if borders between categories are often fuzzy.

We find, by alphabetical order (the “Early Warning System” item is under the “Warning” section):

Futures Studies (also futurology)

Futures Studies (also futurology), practiced by futurists, have been developed since the 1960s. It has, initially, as main market for-profit organisations, i.e. companies and businesses, although it also increasingly tends to provide services to territorial collectivities and state agencies, generally in fields unrelated to security (e.g. urbanism, education, the future of work etc.). Considering the outlook of its founding fathers and related texts, it tends to be characterised by a pro-peace utopian outlook, an emphasis on human intent, a specific multi-disciplinarity focusing on economy and business, technology, some parts of sociology and anthropology, literary criticism, and philosophy. It also tends to have been influenced by post-modernism. It is most often taught in business schools or part of business programs, such as the Wharton School, Turku’s Finland Futures Research Centre, or the University of Houston. Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies seems to be an exception to the rule as it is part of the department of political studies. It tends to be heavily grounded in a post-modern approach.

Forecasting

Forecasting usually refers to the use of quantitative techniques, notably statistics, to approach the future. This is however not always the case and, for example, Glenn and Gordon in their exhaustive review, Futures research methodology, tend to use indifferently forecasting, futures methods and foresight. Understanding forecasting as quantitative techniques seems, nevertheless, to be the most generalized and clearer meaning. It is a tool that is or may be used in any discipline, for example demographics. It is also sometimes considered as the only proper way to anticipate the future. It then tends to ignore what has been developed in other fields and the reasons for this evolution such as the complexity of the world. Many approaches to forecasting are mostly business and economics oriented, although some parts of political science – notably those dealing with elections – or more rarely parts of international relations also use forecasting. Here, we may notably refer to the work of Philip Schrodt, or of the Political Instability Task Force – PITF (funded by the CIA).

Foresight

Foresight, notably in Europe, tends to be used for approaches to the future focused almost exclusively on science and technology, innovations and research and development e.g. the European Foresight Platform which replaces the European Foresight Monitoring Network (EFMN), but also elsewhere in the world. If foresight is meant to be used for other issues, then it is spelled out: e.g. Security Foresight.

Horizon Scanning

Horizon Scanning is used mainly in the U.K. and in Singapore – see the post “Horizon Scanning and Monitoring for Anticipation” for more details.

Intelligence

For the CIA, “Reduced to its simplest terms, intelligence is knowledge and foreknowledge of the world around us—the prelude to decision and action by U.S. policymakers.” (CIA, 1999: vii). Note that Michael Warner (2002) references eighteen different definitions of “intelligence.” It is thus broader than SF&W and should ideally include it, although the SF&W function may or not be part of the intelligence system. A major difference that may be underlined between intelligence on the one hand, SF&W on the other, is that the first starts with and depends upon decision-makers or policy-makers’ requirements while the second does not (see the SF&W cycle).

National Intelligence Estimate

In the US, “National Intelligence Estimates or NIEs “represent a coordinated and integrated analytic effort among the [US] intelligence enterprise, and are the [Intelligence Community] IC’s most authoritative written judgments concerning national security issues and estimates about the course of future events” (ODNI, 2011: 7). NIEs are produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC).  The NIC is heir to the Board of National Estimates created in 1950, that was morphed into National Intelligence Officers in 1973 and finally became the National Intelligence Council, reporting to the Director of Central Intelligence, in 1979. It is part of the ODNI, Mission Integration (MI) led by the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration, Edward Gistaro. They, however, result from a collective effort and process. “The NIEs are typically requested by senior civilian and military policymakers, Congressional leaders and at times are initiated by the National Intelligence Council (NIC)” (National Intelligence Estimate – Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities, November 2007 – pdf). They may use or not Strategic Foresight & Warning methodologies, and usually are concerned with a medium term (up to ten years) timeframe. Most of the time NIEs are classified, however some are public and can be found in the NIC (public) collection. For more details on the NIEs process, read, for example, Rosenbach and Peritz, “National Intelligence Estimates,” 2009.

National Intelligence Assessment

National Intelligence Assessments or NIAs are products such as the US Intelligence Community Assessment on Global Water Security (Feb 2012), or the 2008 National Intelligence Assessment on the National Security Implications of Global Climate Change to 2030. In the words of Tom Fingar, former chairman of the NIC, “The short explanation of the difference between an NIA and the better-known National Intelligence Estimate or NIE is that an NIA addresses subjects that are so far in the future or on which there is so little intelligence that they are more like extended think pieces than estimative analysis. NIAs rely more on carefully articulated assumptions than on established fact.” (Fingar, 2009: 8). Both the NIEs and NIAs emphasize and rate the confidence they have in their own judgements and assessments, which is rarely done elsewhere and should be  widely adopted.

La Prospective

La Prospective is the French equivalent, broadly speaking, for both futures studies approaches and strategic foresight (or Strategic Futures). We can notably refer to the work done by Futuribles, which is focusing on futurism for businesses, as well as teaching done at the CNAM, notably focused on innovation.

Risk Management

Risk Management 

Risk Management (initially known as risk analysis[2]) is an approach to the future that has been developed by the private sector in the field of engineering, industry, finance and actuarial assessments. It started being increasingly fashionable in the 1990s. The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) now codifies it through the ISO 31000 family under the label of Risk Management.[3] Risk management remains primarily a tool of the private sector with its specific needs and priorities, however those approaches are now widely referred to, incorporated and used within governments. Risk management includes monitoring and surveillance, as  intelligence, strategic warning and SF&W.

Risk Assessment

Risk Assessment is, as defined in risk management, the overall process of risk identification, risk analysis and risk evaluation. It tends also to be used in a looser sense, as in Singapore RAHS, or in the US DIA five-year plan, when the latter mentions that it will “Provide strategic warning and integrated risk assessment” (p.3).

Political risk

Political risk is most often practiced by many consultancies as a “classical” analysis of the political conditions in a country without much methodology, on the contrary from what should be done.
Consultancies dealing with risk and political risk quite often actually deal with “risks to infrastructures” and direct operational risks. Here we are more in the area of tactical risks and daily collection of intelligence to prevent, for example, terrorist or criminal attacks on offices or exploitation sites.

Risk governance

Risk governance is the label used by the OECD to address risk management. Although they started with a focus on economic and infrastructural risks, they now address all-hazards risk. (See also Strategic Crisis Management below).

Science

Although this tends to be forgotten in “anticipation circles” – or refused by part of the academia in the case of social sciences for various reasons – the first discipline to deal with the future is science as it can qualify as such only if it has descriptive, explanatory and predictive power (of course with all the necessary and obvious specifications that must be added to the word “prediction,” considering notably complexity science and the need to forget the 100% crystal ball type of prediction for the more realistic probabilistic approach).

Strategic Analysis

Strategic Analysis is a term that can be used by various institutions, for example by the Situation Awareness unit of the Finnish Security Police (SUPO), and is defined by them as a “general assessment of changes in the operational environment, incidents, phenomena or threats” for decision-makers.” We find it also mentioned in the DIA five-year plan as part of the strategic warning responsibilities. It can thus be seen as a part of SF&W.

Strategic Anticipation 

Strategic Anticipation is a loose term that can be used to cover all strategic activities related to the future.

Strategic Foresight

Strategic Foresight covers strategic anticipation for conventional and unconventional strategic issues as we do, however without the warning component. One example is the Clingendael Institute, a leading International Relations and Security think-tank uses the term Strategic Foresight for its corresponding department and research.

Strategic crisis management

Strategic crisis management is the label used by one department of the OECD risk governance section. It seeks to address the management of crisis as it happens, but not only. It also covers exactly the same process and issues as the one we tackles here, however, doing it as crisis has happened or while it is happening. As a result, it does consider the rising tendency of policy-makers and decision-makers to wait until crisis has hit to start thinking about anticipation. We were proud to deliver one of the two keynote speeches of their 2015 workshop focused more particularly on anticipation

Strategic Futures

Strategic Futures is a term that is used in the American intelligence system, for example with the Strategic Futures Group of the NIC. Prior to 2011 the Strategic Futures Group was named the Long Range Analysis unit. It contributes, besides the National Intelligence Offices, to the overall process that produces the Global Trends series of the NIC (latest Global Trends: The Paradox of Progress). Global Trends uses all available methodologies according to needs.

Intelligence, warning,

Strategic Futures may be considered as synonymous with strategic foresight, in its exploratory dimension. It may also integrate a warning dimension, and in this case, would be equivalent to SF&W. Indeed, it is interesting to note that the National Intelligence Council used to have among its National Intelligence Officers a National Intelligence Officer for Warning (as shown here in the cached version of its public website for 22 August 2010 – This office had been created by the Director of Central Intelligence Directive NO. 1/5, effective 23 May 1979). This Office then disappeared (compare for example with cached version for 10 April 2011), while the Long Range Analysis Unit was renamed in Strategic Futures Group.

Strategic Warning

If the National Office for Warning disappeared from the NIC, Strategic Warning (also known as Indications and Warning), and which aims at avoiding surprises, remains nonetheless crucial within the US Intelligence system, as reasserted notably by the DIA in the 2012-2017 plan (read also Pellerin, DoD News, July 2012). The strategic warning mission of the DIA was reasserted in June 2018 in “Defense Intelligence Agency Bringing Forewarning into 21st Century” (DoD News).  Strategic warning covers notably “necessary collection and forward-looking analytic methods and techniques, … to ensure warning is conveyed accurately and in a timely manner.” (p. 6). It is very similar if not identical to SF&W, but emphasises the warning aspect.

Also in the warning section, one finds the appellation that is promoted notably by the European Union, as Early Warning Systems (see 2011 Council Conclusions on Conflict Prevention building on the Treaty of Lisbon – Article 21c), and which tends to be focused essentially on conflict prevention. Note that the four steps of the process (1/ scan for high risk and deteriorating situations, 2/identify ‘at risk’ countries that require further EU analysis and action, 3/analysis including setting explicit objectives in preparation for early preventive or peacebuilding actions, 4/monitor the resulting actions in terms of impact on conflicts (see EU factsheet on EWS), on the contrary from what is promoted in intelligence notably for ethical reasons including those relative to the democratic mandate held only by policy-makers (e.g. Fingar, Lecture 3, pp. 1-2, 6-7) quite largely integrate early responses within its system. meanwhile, the available types of actions are pre-determined and consist of “preventive or peacebuilding” actions, although the broad appellation may leave some leeway in terms of establishing an efficient strategy then operationalisation of the answer. Also contrary to other approaches, EWS deal exclusively with conflict as issue.

The very specificities of the European Union in terms of its evolving institutions, the way decisions are taken and the competences  (see EU competences) and prerogatives of each of its institutions according to areas, has strong influences on the approach promoted for Early Warning Systems. Notably the specificity of the Common Foreign and Security Policy – CFSP (see EU Special competences) is highly constraining on the design and then practice of early warning. Finally, the possibility to see the CFSP evolve towards more common defence notably, considering changes in the EU and international context – post Brexit, election of U.S. President Trump, election of France staunch EU supporter President Macron – (e.g. Paul Taylor, “Merkel’s thunderbolt is starting gun for European defense drive“, 30 May 2017, Politico), is highly likely to lead to changes in the EU approach to “Early Warning”.
The November 2017 document on the EU conflict EWS explains objective and process: EU conflict Early Warning System: Objectives, Process and Guidance for Implementation – 2017

Strategic Intelligence

Strategic Intelligence is a widely used but rarely defined term that Heidenrich (2007) describes as “that intelligence necessary to create and implement a strategy, typically a grand strategy, what officialdom calls a national strategy. A strategy is not really a plan but the logic driving a plan.” According to the way intelligence and security are understood, strategic intelligence and strategic foresight, or rather in this case strategic foresight and warning will more or less largely intersect; to the least they will need each other.

[1] “Unconventional,” from a Department of Defence perspective, connotes national security conditions and contingencies that are defense-relevant but not necessarily defense-specific. Unconventional security challenges lie substantially outside the realm of traditional war fighting. They are routinely nonmilitary in origin and character.” Nathan Freier, Known Unknowns: Unconventional “Strategic Shocks” in Defense Strategy Development (Carlisle, PA: Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute and Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2008), p.3.

[2] Note that the Society for Risk Analysis considers risk assessment and risk management as part of risk analysis.

[3] The ISO31000 was first published as a standard in November 2009. The ISO Guide 73:2009 defines the terms and vocabulary used in risk management. A new version of the guidelines, ISO 31000:2018, Risk management – Guidelines, was published in February 2018. The other ISO documents related to risk management remain unchanged.

Selected Bibliography

Central Intelligence Agency (Office of Public Affairs), A Consumer’s Guide to Intelligence, (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1999).

Davis, Jack “Strategic Warning: If Surprise is Inevitable, What Role for Analysis?” Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis, Occasional Papers, Vol.2, Number 1 https://www.cia.gov/library/kent-center-occasional-papers/vol2no1.htm;

Fingar, Thomas, ”Myths, Fears, and Expectations,” Payne Distinguished Lecture Series 2009 Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence and National Security, Lecture 1, FSI Stanford, CISAC Lecture Series, October 21, 2009 & March 11, 2009. 

Fingar, Thomas, “Anticipating Opportunities: Using Intelligence to Shape the Future,” Payne Distinguished Lecture Series 2009 Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence and National Security, Lecture 3, FSI Stanford, CISAC Lecture Series, October 21, 2009.

Grabo, Cynthia M. Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning, edited by Jan Goldman, (Lanham MD: University Press of America, May 2004).

Glenn Jerome C. and Theodore J. Gordon, Ed; The Millennium Project: Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0, 2009.

Heidenrich, John G.  “The State of Strategic Intelligence”, Studies in Intelligence, vol51 no2, 2007.

Knight, Kenneth “Focused on foresight: An interview with the US’s national intelligence officer for warning,” September 2009, McKinsey Quarterly.

Pellerin, Cheryl, DIA Five-Year Plan Updates Strategic Warning Mission, American Forces Press Service, WASHINGTON, July 18, 2012.

Rosenbach, Eric and Aki J. Peritz, “National Intelligence Estimates”, Memo in report Confrontation or Collaboration? Congress and the Intelligence Community, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, July 2009.

Schrodt, Philip A., “Forecasts and Contingencies: From Methodology to Policy,” Paper presented at the theme panel “Political Utility and Fundamental Research: The Problem of Pasteur’s Quadrant” at the American Political Science Association meetings, Boston, 29 August – 1 September 2002.

Warner, Michael, “Wanted: A Definition of “Intelligence”, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2002.

Featured Image: Morris (Sgt), No 5 Army Film & Photographic UnitPost-Work: User:W.wolny / Public domain

$2 Billion for Next Gen Artificial Intelligence for U.S. Defence – Signal

Impact on Issues and Uncertainties

Credit Image: Mike MacKenzie on Flickr
Image via www.vpnsrus.com – (CC BY 2.0).

Critical Uncertainty ➚➚➚ Disruption of the current AI-power race for private and public actors alike – The U.S. takes a very serious lead in the race.
➚➚  Accelerating expansion of AI
➚➚  Accelerating emergence of the AI-world
➚➚ Increased odds to see the U.S. consolidating its lead in the AI-power race.
➚➚ Escalating AI-power race notably between the U.S. and China.
➚➚ Rising challenge for the rest of the world to catch up
➚ Potential for escalating tension U.S. – China, including between AI actors

Facts and Analysis

Related

Ongoing series: Portal to AI – Understanding AI and Foreseeing the Future AI-powered World
★ Artificial Intelligence – Forces, Drivers and Stakes
Militarizing Artificial Intelligence – China (1)
★ Militarizing Artificial Intelligence – China (2)

Articles starting with a ★ are premium articles, members-only. The introduction remains nonetheless open access.

On 7 September 2018, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Department of Defense (DoD) launched a multi-year investment of more than $2 billion in new and existing programs to favour and let emerge “the third wave” of Artificial Intelligence (AI). According to DARPA, this next generation AI should notably improve and focus upon “contextual adaptation,” i.e. “machines that understand and reason in context”.

The goal is to enable the creation of machines that “function more as colleagues than as tools” and thus to allow for “partner[ing] with machines”. As a result, the DARPA wants to create “powerful capabilities for the DoD”, i.e.:

“Military systems that collaborate with warfighters will
– facilitate better decisions in complex, time-critical, battlefield environments;
– enable a shared understanding of massive, incomplete, and contradictory information;
– and empower unmanned systems to perform critical missions safely and with high degrees of autonomy.”

The last point is highly likely to include notably the famously feared Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) aka killer robots.

Even though the USD 2 billion announcement includes existing programs, DARPA’s new campaign indicates the importance of AI for the American Defence. The U.S. shows here again its willingness to remain at the top of the race for AI-power, by breaking new ground in terms of “algorithms” as well as “needs and usage”, to use our five drivers and stakes’ terminology. It also thereby adopts a distinctively disruptive  strategy as it intends to go beyond the current Deep Learning wave.

Disruption would impact both public and private actors, states and companies alike.

In terms of power struggle, we may also see the launch of the DARPA campaign as an answer to the call by Alphabet (Google), Tesla and 116 international experts to  ban autonomous weapons.  With such an amount of funding available, it is likely that more than one expert and laboratory will see their initial reluctance circumvented.

Should the U.S. succeed, then it would take a very serious lead in the current race for AI power, notably with China, as it would deeply shape the very path on which the race takes place.

Sources and Signals

Darpa: AI Next Campaign

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O01G3tSYpU&rel=0

DARPA Announces $2 Billion Campaign to Develop Next Wave of AI Technologies

Over its 60-year history, DARPA has played a leading role in the creation and advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that have produced game-changing capabilities for the Department of Defense. Starting in the 1960s, DARPA research shaped the first wave of AI technologies, which focused on handcrafted knowledge, or rule-based systems capable of narrowly defined tasks.

Elon Musk leads 116 experts calling for outright ban of killer robots

Some of the world’s leading robotics and artificial intelligence pioneers are calling on the United Nations to ban the development and use of killer robots. Tesla’s Elon Musk and Alphabet’s Mustafa Suleyman are leading a group of 116 specialists from across 26 countries who are calling for the ban on autonomous weapons.

Impacts of Chinese Baidu new no-code tool to build AI-programs – Signal

Impact on Issues and Uncertainties

➚➚ Accelerating expansion of AI

➚➚ Accelerating emergence of the AI-world

➚ Redrawing of the power map of the world along AI-power status lines

➚ Escalating AI-power race notably between the U.S. and China.
➚ Rising challenge for the rest of the world to catch up

➚ China  influence and capability in terms of A.I.
➚ U.S. feeling threatened, which is possibly a factor of global instability

➚ Potential for escalating tension U.S. – China, including between AI actors

Facts and Analysis

Related

Our ongoing series: The Future Artificial Intelligence – Powered World

Artificial Intelligence – Forces, Drivers and Stakes

One of the drivers we identified as powering AI, its development and spread is “needs and usage”. We then noted that this driver was particularly active in the case of China.

The deployment of a beta version of Baidu EZDL is one more evidence in this direction. In a nutshell, Baidu EZDL is a platform for machine learning, which may be used by anyone and notably small and medium size companies without AI capabilities (we have not yet tested its ease of use or its claims). It is currently limited to object recognition, images and sound. It is likely, nonetheless to vastly spread the use of AI among first Chinese small and medium-sized companies, and then globally.

This enhances China – and Baidu – positions in the AI-world in construction, while promoting globally the expansion of AI. It also escalates competition in terms of AI between China and the U.S., when tensions between the two countries is high because of the U.S. declared trade war.

Source and Signal

Baidu EZDL website

Michael Feldman, Baidu Launches ‘No-Code’ Tool for Building Machine Learning Models, Top500, 4 September 2018:

Baidu Launches ‘No-Code’ Tool for Building Machine Learning Models

Baidu Launches ‘No-Code’ Tool for Building Machine Learning Models Search giant Baidu has released EZDL, a software development platform for non-programmers who want to build production-level machine learning models.

 

High Performance Computing Race and Power – Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics (3)

This article explores three major challenges actors face when defining and carrying out their policies and answers in terms of high performance computing power (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI), considering the political and geopolitical consequences of the feedback relationship linking AI in its Deep Learning component and computing power – hardware – or rather HPC. It builds on the first part, where we explained and detailed the connection between AI and HPC, and on the second part, where we looked at the related political and geopolitical impacts: what could happen to actors with insufficient HPC in an AI-world, a world where the distribution of power now also results from AI while a threat to the Westphalian order emerges.

Related

Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics (1): the connection between AI and HPC

Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics (2): what could happen to actors with insufficient HPC in an AI-world, a world where the distribution of power now also results from AI, while a threat to the Westphalian order emerges.

Winning The Race to Exascale Computing – Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics (4): The race to exascale computing, state of play, and impacts on power and the political and geopolitical (dis)order; possible disruptions to the race.

Faced with the hurdles and threats stemming from inadequate HPC for the creation of AI-systems for AI-governance and AI-management, and, in a lesser way, for the training of these AI-systems, actors must devise responses. As they decide upon objectives and then ways to practically carry out responses, actors will face three supplementary challenges.First, objectives, planning and implementation regarding HPC must be thought in relative terms. Second, they must be envisioned dynamically. Third, the actors must consider that the very HPC field and thus the capabilities that need to be acquired are profoundly evolving because of the very feedback relationship between hardware and deep-learning we identified in the first part of our series “Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics”.

Below we explain further each of these elements, while giving concrete examples for each. Using latest available data, the cases of Russia, with possible consequences for its intelligent android robot FEDOR, and of Saudi Arabia, illustrate the significance of understanding relative HPC for AI. The importance of the dynamic element involved in the relationship between HPC and AI leads us to take a deep dive, including in terms of cost, into the race for HPC, which involves notably the U.S. and China. We underline how this very race is a strong instrument of influence, wealth and power for those at the very top of the competition: the U.S. and its companies, with China trying to catch up. Yet, as a result, the contest also works hand in hand with the AI quest for optimisation to create an overall very fluid and revolutionary HPC environment.

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We are thus faced with a series of feedback loops or rather spirals involving HPC and AI-systems and their developments, foreign policy, national interest and balance for power, defence, trade, ideology, business strategy and quest for profit, which, permanently, impact the field. The easy and apparently neat categorisation of the past are being erased. Similarly, possible responses, including one’s own, must increasingly be included within the foresight and warning, risk management or anticipation process when the main issue is AI and not separated from it. This is necessary to be able to properly consider how one’s strategy and action will impact reality and thus change the very range of future possibilities the initial foresight analysis considered. If we think about this two-fold evolution, there is nothing new, actually, but the speed at which events and dynamics unfold question the tidy distinction and especially the slow processes that were once presiding to polities and companies’ organisation. This is also one way AI fundamentally impacts AI-governance and Ai-management.

Now we have defined the complex framework within which actors must design their HPC policy, we shall look with the next article at the possible responses they may devise.

—–

About the author: Dr Helene Lavoix, PhD Lond (International Relations), is the Director of The Red (Team) Analysis Society. She is specialised in strategic foresight and warning for national and international security issues.

Featured image:  U.S. Army Acquisition Center – Nongkran Ch, Public Domain.

The Warming Ocean as Planetary Threat

This article looks at the way the warming ocean exerts a growing pressure on food security and the economy. It is a follow-up to “The U.S. Navy vs Climate Change Insecurity” (Jean-Michel Valantin, June 15, 2018), where we focused on the current climate and ocean change becoming a major strategic threat, because of the rapid rise of the ocean level.  However, as we shall detail here, the ocean change threat has also other dimensions.

As a matter of fact, the quickly heightening levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, among them CO2, which have triggered climate change, are also acidifying the seawater (“Climate change indicators: Ocean Acidity“, U.S Environmental Protection Agency, 2016). This process combines with the chemical and biological impacts of land industrial and agricultural pollution, which endanger the fisheries, essential components of the food resources of entire maritime facades. These changes have direct geopolitical consequences, because they impact the most basic geophysical equilibrium upon which human societies and international relations are built (Lincoln Paine, The Sea and Civilization, a Maritime History of the World, 2013).

This threat can only be understood through the scale of the current planetary change. The massive strategic problem linked to this new era is that the planetary present and future are now dominated by complex dynamics of global change, signals of the new and current geological epoch named the “Anthropocene”, i.e the geological epoch defined by the consequences of human development, which creates its own stratigraphic signal (Jean-Michel Valantin, “The Planetary Crisis Rules, Part.1 and Part. 2”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, January 25, 2016 and February 15, 2016). In this regard, the planetary crisis has become a major generator of friction, i.e., according to Clausewitz, a system of pressure and constraint. This “planetary friction” exerts itself upon every kind of activity related to the ocean.

warming ocean, threat, strategy, food resources, acidification, Red (Team) Analysis Society, risk analysis, geopolitics

These global changes must be understood for what they are, i.e. a strange bonding between the current state of societies and globalization with an emerging new state of permanent change of the planetary environment. In other words, the ocean upon which our globalized world depends is becoming a strategic threat matrix.

First, we shall look at how ocean change has started threatening food resources in the Western Indian Ocean. In a second part, we shall focus upon the economic dimension of the ocean, through the consequences of the intensification of extreme weather and ocean related events. Then, we shall wonder about the strategic consequences of the dangerous evolution of the relationship between human development and the world ocean.

The warming ocean as a massive resource threat

The rise of the ocean level, the heightening rhythm and intensity of ocean related climate weather events, the acidification of seawater, and the reactions to agricultural and industrial land pollution are composing a planetary nexus. This nexus threatens both the extraction of food resources and the social, economic and political stability of the littorals. The nature of the threat of this process is particularly alarming considering the gigantic scale of some of these crises.

As we saw in The Planetary Crisis Rules (2) (The Red (Team) Analysis, February 15, 2016), a mammoth crisis may well be currently unfolding in the western Indian Ocean rim. A study shows that an alarming loss of more than 30% of the phytoplankton in the western Indian Ocean took place over the last 16 years (Koll Roxy and al., “A reduction in marine primary productivity driven by rapid warming over the tropical Indian Ocean”, AGU Publications, 19 January 2016). This loss is most certainly due to the accelerated warming of the surface water, where the phytoplankton lives. This warming is blocking the mixing of the surface water with deeper and cooler subsurface waters, where the nutrients of the plankton – nitrates, phosphates and silicates – come from and remain blocked (K. S. Rajgopal, “Western Indian Ocean phytoplankton hit by warming”, The Hindu, 29 December 2015).

Indian ocean, warming ocean, threat, strategy, food resources, acidification, Red (Team) Analysis Society, risk analysis, geopolitics

The problem is that plankton is the foundation for the whole ocean feed chain (Callum Roberts, The Ocean of life, the fate of Man and the Sea, 2012). For example, the researchers unveiled that there is a massive decline in the shoals of fish near the Kenyan and Somali coast. These declines are not solely the result of overfishing, but also the consequences of the combination of this practice with the loss of plankton (David Michel and Russel Sticklor, “Plenty of fish in the sea? Food security in the Indian Ocean”,  The Diplomat, 24 August 2012). This trend is very likely to prolong itself in the foreseeable future, because of the ocean warming due to climate change, and is going to alter the whole Indian Ocean, with the risk of turning this biologically rich ocean into an “ecological desert” (Amantha Perera, “Warmer Indian Ocean could be “ecological desert” scientists warn”, Reuters, 19 January 2016).

This means that the decline of marine life due to anthropogenic climate change is a direct threat to the food security of the whole Western Indian Ocean ecosystem, thus to the lives of the populations of eastern African societies – i.e South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, as well as archipelagos, such as Comoros, Maldives, Seychelles, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte – and to their economies (Johan Groeneveld, “The Western Indian Ocean as a source of food”, in The Regional State of the Coast Report: Western Indian Ocean, Chapter: Chapter 20, Publisher: UNEP-Nairobi Convention and WIOMSA, 1 May 2015). This is most likely to happen despite the rapid development of fish farming, which induces its own cascade of issues (Michel and Sticklor, ibid).

The plankton and sea food crisis is particularly worrisome given the profound economic and social inequalities known by the region, and the political, confessional and military tensions that arise, for example in Kenya and Somalia (Jean-Michel Valantin, “Somali Piracy: a model for tomorrow’s life in the Anthropocene?”, The Red Team Analysis Society, 28 October, 2013 ). This means that, nowadays, a giant biodiversity and geophysical crisis is unfolding on such a scale that it concerns numerous countries and dozens of millions of people at the same time. Moreover it combines itself with political and strategic current crises.

India satellite image, warming ocean, threat, strategy, food resources, acidification, Red (Team) Analysis Society, risk analysis, geopolitics

Since the discovery of this giant dead zone, and as was foreseen in The Planetary Crisis Rules (2), the chemical and biological situation of the Indian Ocean has continued to deteriorate, because of the multiplication of two other giant dead zones in the Indian Ocean (Harry Pettit, ‘The ocean is suffocating’: Fish-killing dead zone is found growing in the Arabian Sea – and it is already bigger than SCOTLAND”, Mail on Line, 27 April 2017. One has been identified in the Gulf of Oman and threatens marine life and fisheries in this part of the Arabian Sea. Another giant one, that spans at last 60 000 square km has been discovered in the Bay of Bengal, and threatens the food resources of the 200 million people installed on the littoral of the eight countries that surround the Bay (Amitav Gosh and Aaron Savion Lobo, “Bay of Bengal: depleted fish stocks and huge dead zone signal tipping point”, The Guardian, 31 January 2017) . In other terms, climate and ocean change is directly threatening the food security of hundred of millions of people in Africa, in the Arabian Sea area and in South Asia.

As a matter of fact, it must be remembered that the rise of Somali piracy at the start of this century has been largely triggered by the depletion of the Somali fisheries and that turning fishermen into pirates has proven it was an efficient way for littoral endangered communities to adapt to their dangerous new socio-environmental conditions of life (and death) (Andrew Palmer, The New Pirates: Modern Global Piracy from Somalia to the South China Sea, 2014).

Littorals and economy under siege

Another dimension of the ocean change threat is the way it literally puts under “economic siege” the littorals. As a matter of fact, the littorals are at once the most attractive space because of their economic development and the interface between countries separated by the ocean. Those regions are heavily impacted by the rise of the ocean and by the rising power and violence of climate-related extreme weather events.

Hurricane Harvey, warming ocean, threat, strategy, food resources, acidification, Red (Team) Analysis Society, risk analysis, geopolitics

For example, let us look at the U.S. and the mammoth disasters wrought by hurricane Harvey in Texas between the 25 August and 2 September 2017. “Harvey” killed 68 people and wrought immense damages, which costs amount to 125 billion dollars, making it the costliest hurricane after “Katrina” that destroyed New Orleans in 2005 and did cost 161 billion dollars (“Fast facts Hurricane Costs”, The Office for Coastal management-National Ocean and Atmospheric Agency and Insurance Information Institute, 2018). These damages alone put a massive pressure on economic activities and on the insurance sector, because of the direct destructions wrought to the infrastructures, cities, homes, fields and industries.

To these costs have to be added those of repairs, of business interruption, and of detoxification made necessary because of the massive industrial chemicals and sewage spillage (Erin Brodwin and Jake Canter, “A chemical plant exploded twice after getting flooded by Harvey – but it’s not over yet”, Business Insider, 30 August, 2017). These human and economic costs are multiplied to consider those incurred by Houston and the whole state of Texas, as well as by Louisiana during the same week. It must also be remembered that a lot of oil extraction and transaction operations were suspended, and thus impact the companies involved in these activities (Matt Egan and Chris Isidore, “Tropical storm Harvey threatens vital Texas energy hub”, CNN Money, August 26, 2017).

If we take a look at just the littoral counties of Harris and Galveston in Texas, for example, we see that “Hurricane Harvey has damaged at least 23 billion dollars of property…” (Reuters, Fortune, 30 August 2017). 26% of this sum is land value, the remaining part is being constituted by dozens of thousands of houses, buildings and infrastructures. Some of those were insured but a lot more were not, which means that, potentially, millions of people found themselves brutally projected in very precarious situations. (“Tallying Massive Costs of Harvey to Victims, Insurers, Taxpayers and Economy“, Insurance Journal, 31 August, 2017).

To these tremendous costs were added those resulting from the heavy damages wrought by the giant Hurricane Irma in Florida and the Keys to infrastructures, cities, business and agriculture, especially to the orange production (Berkeley Lovelace Jr, “Irma could be “the last straw” for the Florida orange industry, commodities expert says”, CNBC, 8 September 2017). (Rob While, “The estimated costs of hurricanes Irma and Harvey are already higher than Katrina”, Money, September 11, 2017).

All in all, the 2017 hurricane season did cost more than a staggering USD 220 billion in economic damages. Out of these, 80 billion were supported by the re-insurance industry (Matt Sheehan, “Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria cost re/insurers $80bn: Impact Forecasting », Reinsurance News, 5 April 2018). In other terms, the ocean-related extreme weather events of the end of the summer 2017 were a massive economic, social, infrastructural and human blow to the US.

Bonding with Chaos: opening a window on the future

The Western Indian Ocean case and the Harvey and Irma cases are a few examples among many of the emerging reality defined by the installation of contemporary societies on the “Defiant Earth” of the Anthropocene Era (Clive Hamilton, Defiant Earth, The fate of the Humans in the Anthropocene, 2017). Ocean change is defined by the way its thermal, chemical, biological and volumetric parameters are changing and are becoming hostile to current forms of infrastructural, economic, social and human development. In other words, all the countries in the world, not only those that are directly linked to the ocean, but also those in the hinterlands of neighbouring countries with a mesa facade, are literally bonding with the growing climate-ocean rising chaos.

In strategic terms, this means that the ocean is becoming a potential planetary factor and driver of violence. It deprives immense populations of a large quantity of food through its own complex biological collapse. It repeatedly and endlessly directly impacts infrastructures. It is thus a social threat for littoral communities and all the stakes vested in them. We are faced with issues ranging from the sustainability of the littoral development, to the very survival of entire populations. Studying the current development of dead zones in the Indian Ocean and their consequences on food security, as well as the infrastructural and financial costs of hurricanes such as Harvey opens up a window on a short and middle term future when the forces of the climate ocean change will besiege and endanger the different forms of human development as well as social, economic and political cohesion.

In other words, the violence stemming from ocean change demands new ways to control violence on a changing planet bonding with chaos. This phenomenon emerges while the relation between artificial intelligence and security is starting to be explored (Jean-Michel Valantin, “The Chinese Artificial Intelligence Revolution”, The Red Team Analysis Society and Hélène Lavoix, “Artificial Intelligence, Computing power and Geopolitics” (2), The Red Team Analysis Society, November 13,  2017 and June 25, 2018, or more generally our ongoing series on Artificial Intelligence: The Future Artificial Intelligence – Powered World).

In other terms, will artificial intelligence be a means to inject some measure of control in the emerging planetary chaos?

Featured image: ISS-52 Hurricane Harvey by NASA/Randy Bresnik [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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