From Cassandra’s Curse to the Pythia’s Success

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli)

When delivering warnings, are we doomed to never be believed, sharing the same fate as Cassandra, the tragic character of Greek mythology? Or, on the contrary, can we hope to become as successful as the Pythia, the oracle priestess of Apollo at Delphi?

Her gift of prophecy becoming a curse, Cassandra lives thrice all tragedies: once when she foresees them, once when she fails to convince those who could prevent disasters and finally once when she herself suffers the dire events she foresees. She lives through Troy’s fall, is abducted and raped, taken as captive and then murdered (The Editors, “Cassandra“. Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Feb. 2019; Seth L. Schein, “The Cassandra Scene in Aeschylus’ ‘Agamemnon’“, Greece & Rome, Vol. 29, No. 1, Apr., 1982, pp. 11-16).

By contrast, the Pythia, the famous oracle priestess of Apollo at Delphi was an institution that was so successful it lasted from ca. 800 BCE to AD 390/91 (Julia Kindt, “Hidden women of history: the priestess Pythia at the Delphic Oracle, who spoke truth to power“, The Conversation, 22 janvier 2019). Her foresights were sought by kings and commoners on public and individual matters (Ibid.). They were believed, became advice, and were richly rewarded (Ibid.).

Thus, how can we emulate the Pythia’s destiny rather than Cassandra’s fate? We need to find out what can make strategic foresight and early warning a successful activity and not a curse, and apply our findings to our work.

To help us in this endeavour, we shall notably build upon Christopher Meyer’s research on warning and conflict prevention (“Beyond the Cassandra Syndrome: Understanding the failure and success of warnings“, King’s College Lecture, 26 February 2014). Indeed, Meyer, after having highlighted problems related to warnings and prevention, identifies three key elements that make a warning successful, from the point of view of prevention (Ibid.). He furthermore suggests ways to bridge the “warning-response gap”.

To make sure strategic foresight and warning is successful, we shall first highlight that proper strategic foresight and warning needs, intrinsically, to be actionable. It must also walk a thin line between being useful to decision-makers and interfering. We shall particularly emphasise the challenge of impact assessment and suggest that proper scenario tree is a key tool for offering policy alternatives to decision-makers, alongside involving policy-makers as stakeholders. We shall, second, turn to hurdles linked to the reception of warnings by policy-makers, as identified by Meyer, and to ways forward. Finally, carefully comparing Cassandra and the Pythia, we shall single out important keys explaining why warning can be either a curse or a successful activity.

A real warning is actionable

No, everything is not an early warning

Of course, first, to be able to deliver a successful warning, we need to make sure we communicate a real warning, and not any opinion, brief or piece of information.

As Grabo* reminds us, indeed:

A warning concerns a situation, an objective, an opportunity, a danger, a threat or a risk, which are specific and defined (the issue). 
“Warning” deals with the future. It tries to anticipate and predict dynamics and events which do not yet exist. 
An analysis explaining solely the past or present is NOT warning.
A warning is not made only of facts, data and information, but results from analysis and synthesis.

Cynthia M. Grabo, Cynthia M., and Jan Goldman. Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning. Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Joint Military Intelligence College, 2002, pp. 4-16.

Meyer’s research similarly highlights that any report, brief, piece of information, or even merely opinions, reinterpreted with hindsight does NOT constitute a warning (Ibid). Actually, it is because these warnings did not exist that we are faced with surprise, what we seek to avoid. Even broad generic statements, not backed up by proper analysis, and made before the events cannot qualify as warning. At best, they could be considered as “proto-warnings”, but would need to be substantiated and transformed into proper foresight and warning.

Proper warnings must be actionable. This means that they must be specific enough to allow for proper action. They must be detailed enough and include an evaluation of probability, as well as an impact assessment.

If we use a real life example, the beginning of a proper warning could look as follows:

As long as travel restrictions remain in place due to the COVID-19 situation, it is highly likely that production and sales of fake test certificates will prevail. Given the widespread technological means available, in the form of high-quality printers and different software, fraudsters are able to produce high-quality counterfeit, forged or fake documents.

Europol’s “Early Warning Notification: The illicit sales of false negative COVID-19 test certificates“, February 2021. My emphasis: in bold the likelihood assessment.

This warning, to be truly actionable and complete, would need to include an impact assessment, done according to the decision-makers receiving the warning.

The problem with impact assessment

To assess an impact may appear as first glance as something relatively easy to do. However, there are hidden traps in this apparently simple evaluation.

If we think about it, what do we need to do to assess impacts? Actually, we fundamentally need to judge and evaluate past and current policies and decisions, as well as those policies for the future, which have already been decided. This is what Meyer highlights when he stresses that, in an impact assessment, there is an implicit judgement on current policies and what should be done (Ibid.). We thus judge what policy-makers and decision makers are doing and have been doing and appear to be ready to do. This may easily lead to tension with our decision-makers, as they may not be ready for what they may perceive as a fault-finding exercise.

This potentially dangerous implicit judgement may contribute to explain the absence of impact assessment in Europol’s warning. The public quality of these warnings and the multinational character of the agency probably only enhance the difficulty of impact assessment. We may imagine that classified versions of Europol’s warnings include such impacts assessments, if member-countries gave the right signals to ensure they wanted them.

Furthermore, “simple” impact assessments, focusing on past and present policies and decisions, also invite criticism from decision-makers. They could complain it is easy to point out future problems while no other solution is offered or suggested. Indeed, Meyer underlines that, often, warnings do not make the case for the feasibility or existence of other course of actions, and that it is a flaw from the point of view of prevention (Ibid.).

Policy alternatives, scenario tree and decision-makers as stakeholders

Scenario tree and key decisions

If we want to consider alternative policies, then a solution – even the best solution – is to develop properly a complete scenario tree and to use it for our warnings. Indeed, a scenario tree considers critical uncertainties. This implies that, most of the time, we also assess a range of possible actions with key decision points. Thus, we look at other possible courses of actions, which should help policy-makers and decision-makers in their tasks. With a proper scenario tree, our strategic foresight and warning becomes truly fully actionable for prevention.

However, there, we also enter further into the realm of policy-making. This could be seen as contradicting, for example, the position of the intelligence community according to which the realm of action should be completely separated from all intelligence analysis, including strategic foresight and early warnings analysis (e.g. Fingar 2009, Meyer 2014). On the contrary, practitioners in the field of conflict prevention and in risk management are not so adamant on this separation (Meyer 2014,; ISO 31000:2018; for a summary on risk management, Helene Lavoix, “When Risk Management …“, The Red Team Analysis Society, 2019). They even see these two dimensions as linked, and, for them, policy options or alternatives must be attached to warnings.

Fundamentally, as long as the decision regarding policy choices remain with decision-makers, then there should not be any issue related to the blurring of responsibilities.

Including decision-makers as stakeholders in the strategic foresight and early warning process

Furthermore, in its final stages, the scenario tree related to our warnings could also be developed with members of the policy-making community. By making the latter stakeholders in the development of the final strategic foresight and warning products we could create conditions favourable to the acceptance of warnings.

To create such substantiated, precise yet encompassing warnings including the evaluation of probability and impact assessment, preferably under the shape of a scenario tree highlighting key possible decisions and impacts is difficult. It also demands a lot of work. It is however feasible and is a condition necessary but not sufficient to achieve successful warnings. As such, it should be seen as an investment.

Thus, one of the key to success is to consider decision-makers and the very object of strategic foresight and warning, i.e. decisions and actions, from the very start of the process. It will smooth the last steps of that process, the very delivery and communication of the warnings. Yet, we still have to face many hurdles.

Receiving early warnings

Over-warning or “warning fatigue”

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Notes and Bibliography

Featured image : Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli – Photos by Zack Jarosz from Pexels and from PxHere

Notes

* For some context on Grabo’s seminal work, see Hélène Lavoix, Communication of Strategic Foresight and Early Warning, The Red Team Analysis Society, 2021.

**The Dunning-Kruger effect: According to this bias, “the skills that engender competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills necessary to evaluate competence in that domain” (Kruger and Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It…”, 1999). In other words, the less one knows about something, the best one thinks one is in this field.

Bibliography

Bar-Joseph, Uri Bar-Joseph and Arie W. Kruglanski, “Intelligence Failure and Need for Cognitive Closure: On the Psychology of the Yom Kippur Surprise“, Political Psychology, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 2003), pp. 75-99.

Betts, Richard K., Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning, Brookings Institution Press, Dec 1, 2010.

Betts, Richard K., “Surprise Despite Warning: Why Sudden Attacks Succeed“, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 95, No. 4 (Winter, 1980-1981), pp. 551-572

Cancian, Mark, Avoiding Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts, A Report of the CSIS International Security Program, February 2018).

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.

Doyle, Andrea, “Cassandra – Feminine Corrective in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon” Acta Classica, vol. 51, 2008, pp. 57–75.

Fingar, Thomas, “”Myths, Fears, and Expectations,”  Payne Distinguished Lecture Series 2009 Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence and National Security, Lecture 1, FSI Stanford, CISAC Lecture Series, 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., and Jan Goldman. Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning. [Washington, D.C.?]: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Joint Military Intelligence College, 2002.

ISO 31000:2018 Guidelines (revised from the 2009 version), IEC 31010:2009, Risk assessment techniques, and ISO Guide 73:2009 Vocabulary.

Kindt, Julia, “Hidden women of history: the priestess Pythia at the Delphic Oracle, who spoke truth to power“, The Conversation, 22 janvier 2019

Kruger, Justin, and David Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments“, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 77, no 6, p 1121-1134, American Psychological Association (1999).

Lavoix, Helene, Why the Messenger Got Shot and how to Avoid this Fate, The Red Team Analysis Society, April 2021

Lavoix, Helene, “Communication of Strategic Foresight and Early Warning“, The Red Team Analysis Society, 3 March 2021.

Lavoix, Helene, “When Risk Management Meets Strategic Foresight and Warning“, The Red Team Analysis Society, 2019.

Lavoix, Helene, “Revisiting Timeliness for Strategic Foresight and Warning and Risk Management“, The Red Team Analysis Society, 2018

Lavoix, Helene, “Ensuring a Closer Fit: Insights on making foresight relevant to policymaking”, Development (2014) 56(4);

Lavoix, Helene, “What makes foresight actionable: the cases of Singapore and Finland”, confidential commissioned report, US government, November 2010.

Meyer, Christoph O., Beyond the Cassandra Syndrome: Understanding the failure and success of warnings, King’s College Lecture – 26 February 2014

Schein, Seth L. Schein, “The Cassandra Scene in Aeschylus’ ‘Agamemnon’“, Greece & Rome, Vol. 29, No. 1, Apr., 1982, pp. 11-16

Schelling, Thomas, foreword to Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decisions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962).

Strategic Foresight, Warning and Intelligence Products and Documents

You will find below public documents and products related to strategic foresight, warning, risk analysis and intelligence, published by countries, international organisations and private actors. Interesting documents are added progressively.

Latest, we added the video just published (28 April 2021) by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence to advertise their recently released (8 April) Global Trends 2040.

Continue reading “Strategic Foresight, Warning and Intelligence Products and Documents”

The Chinese Fishing Fleet, Influence and Hunger Wars

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli)

The Chinese fishing fleet is a gigantic organisation. It is composed of a mind-numbing number of ships, “somewhere” between 2.600 and 17.000 distant-water fishing ships (M. Guttierez, A. Daniels, G. Jobbins, G. Guttierez Almazor, C. Montengro, China’s Distant Water Fleet, Scale, Impact and Governance, ODI, 2020).

These myriads of ships operate in Asian, African and South American waters. The multiple operations trigger a growing number of violent incidents at sea. They happen during aggressive encounters with other fleets or with the coast guards that try to protect their national fisheries (Ian Urbina, “How Expanding Chinese Fishing Fleet is Depleting the World’s Oceans”, Yale 360°, August17, 2020).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2DPi2T6ZLc

Numerous analysts and commentators are focusing on the dual, i.e. civil-military, dimension of the Chinese fishing fleet. They observe how fishing operations are also mixed with the “fishing militia”. The latter is one of the arms of the Chinese Navy (D. Grossman and L. Ma, “A short history of the Chinese fishing militia and what it may tell us”, Rand Corporation, April 6, 2020).

It transforms the Chinese fishing fleet, through its size and interconnectedness with the military into a formidable tool of maritime and geopolitical influence. As it happens, the Chinese fishing operations are often heavily imposing their presence in exclusive economic zones. These maritime actions result in “marking” marine stretches as being under China’s influence. This is especially true in the South China Sea (Grossman and Ma, ibid).

The mammoth size of this fishing fleet dwarfs the U.S., European and Japanese fleets (S. Yozell, A Shaver, Shining a Light: the Need for Transparency across Distant Water Fishing, The Stimson Centre, 2019). De facto, the Chinese fleet has a unique character because of its very scale. In comparison, the U.S. fishing fleet is only 300 distant-water ships strong. From a geopolitical point of view, this means that China’s distant-water fishing fleet operates at the global scale.

This begs a massive question: in a time of ocean depletion and acidification, what is the strategic meaning of such a national fishing force projection capability (Ugo Bardi, The Empty Sea: the Future of the Blue Economy, 2021)? In other terms, is the Chinese fishing fleet “simply” a tool of influence and economic development, or is it a signal of the coming “hunger wars”?

Projecting the power of need

The über scale of the Chinese distant-water fishing fleet is totally out of proportions with other fishing fleets. In 1983, China had only 13 distant-water ships. In 2016, The Chinese fleet represents almost 40% of the total activities of the 10 top distant-water fishing fleets. It captures 15,2 million tonnes of fish annually (Gutierrez et al., ibid).

Those are roughly equivalent to 20% of global catches, while China consumes 38% of the global fish production (which includes aquaculture products as well as foreign purchases).  This fleet also contains very different kinds of ships, from long liners to trawlers, squid jiggers, and many more (Yozell and Shaver, ibid).

The Emperor Fisherman

Top 10 distant-water fishing fleet Proportion of fishing effort
China37,99 %
Taiwan21,49 %
Japan10,06 %
South Korea9,96 %
Spain9,77 %
USA3,33 %
Vanuatu2,59 %
France1,90 %
Russia1,50 %
Others1,42 %
Source : Stimson Distant Water Fishing Fleet – (based on AIS data from Global Fisheries Watch, 2016-2017)

Seafood plays a basic role in Chinese food security, considering Chinese culinary tradition and economy. In the 1980s, Chinese citizens started becoming richer. So they can afford a greater culinary diversity. One of the consequences is that the Chinese people eat more than 35 kg of fish annually. By comparison, the average global consumption is of 18 kg (“The consumption of fish and fish products in the Asia-Pacific region based on household surveys”, FAO, December 2015).

The South China Sea plays a major role as far as the Chinese food security is concerned. An important proportion of the Chinese fish production is caught in the South China Sea. Its natural resources also include its fisheries, with consequences in terms of food security.

The South China Sea is one of the richest maritime ecological systems on Earth. One can find there more than 3.365 different fish species, very important reef areas, as well as giant clams (Rachaele Bale, “One the World’s biggest fisheries is on the verge of collapse”, National Geographic, August 29, 2016).

The militarization of fishing

These biological resources attract the fishing fleets of more than seven nations, including Vietnam and the Philippines. In this regard, China is notably developing a system of joint operability between its coast guard fleet and its 50.000 strong fishing fleet that mixes ships of all size, types and range. By contrast, the distant water fleet is composed of the boats able to navigate international distances.

This mixed armada is dubbed the “fishing militia” (Megha Rajagopalan, “China trains “fishing militia” to sail into disputed waters“, Reuters, April 30, 2016). It is quite difficult to know its exact number because numerous captains turn off their transponders, turning their ships into “stealth ships” (Christopher Pala, “China’s Monster Fleet”, Foreign Policy, November 30, 2020 and Ian Urbina, “The Deadly secret of China’s invisible Armada”, NBC News, July 22, 2020).

The depletion of the fisheries near the Chinese coast is driving the fishing fleet farther and farther away in the South China Sea. This often triggers incidents between ships of different countries, because of the aggressive practices of Chinese ships (Brad Lendon, “Beijing has a navy it doesn’t even admit exists, experts say. And it is swarming parts of the South China Sea“, CNN, April 13 2021).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2Rk1wRCfnc

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is strongly supporting the modernisation of the fleet. This is done through heavy subsidies and the replacement of old ships by new ones, with a steel hull. In the meantime, the owners can equip their vessels with Baidu systems, the Chinese global positioning system, which puts them in direct contact with the coast guard fleet (John Ruwitch, “Satellites and seafood: China keeps fishing fleet connected in disputed waters”, Reuters, 27 July 2014). Fishermen also receive basic military navy training, especially on manoeuvering (Ibid).

Sea power on the Anthropocene ocean

Hence, the scale of this leviathan of a fleet, vastly superior to any other competitor. This scale reveals its singular function. As it happens, it is a de facto extension of the enormous need that drives the economic and material development of the 1,4 billion people strong “Middle Kingdom”. In the 1980s, an emergent Chinese middle class of 300 million people started discovering consumerism, while hundreds of millions of Chinese escaped from the clutches of poverty and hunger.

Need as Power

In other words, the Chinese fishing fleet is a sea power instrument. It projects the mammoth Chinese “power of need” throughout the ocean. The Chinese “power of need” is the immense and permanent need for different kinds of resources and products. Those are necessary to answer the basic and developing needs of a giant country going through a triple cycle of economic growth, consumerism, and very rapid urbanisation (Loretta Napoleoni, Maonomics, 2011).

This projection triggers numerous frictions and incidents when Chinese ships start operating in national maritime economic exclusive zones. Over the last years, those incidents have taken place not only in Filipino, North Korean and Vietnamese waters, but also in Cameroonese, Peruvian and Bolivian waters (Grossman and Ma, ibid). In Cameroon and Bolivia, the coast guards have arrested the entire crews of Chinese vessels for illegal fishing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMhQ5zmm-pI

In Mozambique, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, the Chinese ships are dangerously overfishing and depleting the sea (“China’s fishing fleet plundering African waters”, Farming Portal, 4 January 2019). By doing so they deprive coastal communities of their food and income sources (Jean-Michel Valantin, “Somali Piracy: a model for tomorrow’s life in the Anthropocene?”, The Red Team Analysis Society, 28 October, 2013).

The Chinese fishing fleet as a global power

The map of these tensions and incidents reveals that the Chinese distant-water fishing fleet is an actor that projects the Chinese power of seafood extraction at global level. However, there is a profound paradox at work with this singular Chinese power projection. Indeed, it aims at answering the exponentially growing Chinese demand for seafood. Between 1990 and 2010, the Chinese seafood consumption has been growing at a 6% annual rate. Consequently, China is responsible for 34% to 38% of the global fish consumption. This rate may grow by 30% by 2030 (Gutierez et al., ibid).

However, this fantastic fishing effort takes place on a warming, polluted and acidifying ocean. Indeed, as a matter of fact, the quickly heightening levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, among them CO2, which drive climate change, are also acidifying the seawater. (“Climate change indicators: Ocean Acidity“, U.S Environmental Protection Agency, 2021).

Dead zones

This process combines with the chemical and biological impacts of land industrial and agricultural pollution. This combination endangers the fisheries that are essential components of the food resources of entire maritime facades. These changes have direct geopolitical consequences. Indeed, they impact the most basic geophysical equilibrium upon which human societies and international relations are dependent. (Lincoln Paine, The Sea and Civilization, a Maritime History of the World, 2013)

An example, among multiple others, is the Indian Ocean (Jean-Michel Valantin, “The warming ocean as planetary threat”, The Red Team Analysis Society, July 2, 2018). There, 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).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA1ZxzkUHNI

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).

The Ocean and the shadow of the future

The problem is that plankton is the foundation for the whole ocean food chain (Callum Roberts, The Ocean of life, the fate of Man and the Sea, 2012). For example, in 2012, research unveiled a massive decline in the shoals of fish near the Kenyan and Somali coast. These declines were not solely the result of overfishing. They were also the consequences of the combination of overfishing 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).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgdlAt4CR-4

This trend is very likely to continue in the foreseeable future. The cause for this tendency is the warming of the ocean because of climate change (P. Beaumont and G. Readfearn, “Global heating supercharging Indian ocean climate system”, The Guardian, 19 November 2019). Thus, this evolution is going to alter the whole Indian Ocean. There is a growing risk that this biologically rich ocean may turn into an “ecological desert” (Amantha Perera, “Warmer Indian Ocean could be “ecological desert” scientists warn”, Reuters, 19 January 2016).

If we translate what is happening in the Indian Ocean elsewhere and apply to it the Chinese fleet’s operations, then we see that the giant Chinese fishing fleet is overexploiting the resources of a changing and rapidly depleting ocean. By so doing, the Chinese fleet also competes with other countries for access to food resources.

This changes the perspective on the Chinese fishing fleet as a medium of influence in terms of classical power games for dominant position.

Towards hunger wars on an empty ocean?

The singular strategic dimension of this fleet reveals itself through the state of tension that emerges from the current competition between the Chinese fleet and virtually all the other fishing fleets, as well as from its numerous infringement on economic exclusive zones. The final goal of the systematic confrontations created by this giant fleet is access to seafood on an emptying ocean.

From fishing to food security

This seafood is first for Chinese consumers. Then, it is to be sold on the international market by Chinese companies. Thus, it generates revenues for the development of China. In other terms, there is a growing Chinese and global demand for a rapidly shrinking resource (Charles Clover, The End of the Line, How overfishing is changing the world and what we eat, 2006 and Ian Urbina, The Outlaw Sea, Crime and Survival in the Last Untamed Frontier, 2019) .

Thus, the Chinese fleet is both an instrument of economic development, and of food security. Its goal is to ensure the constant and growing supply of seafood, i.e. of proteins, to mainland China, despite the competition and the state of the ocean.

This strategic goal explains why the Chinese fishing fleet is a civilian-military force. In other terms, the Chinese fleet is a food security force that possibly prepares China for maritime food resource wars, i.e. “hunger wars”, on a global scale.

High ground on an emptying ocean

It does so by prepositioning itself on the remaining biologically rich waters. In the same dynamic, Chinese food companies develop multiple infrastructures that secure Chinese access to those resources. Thus, they protect the whole fishing and processing process for themselves, despite the presence of other actors.

For example, Chinese distant-water fishing ships operate in the Gulf of Guinea. They are attracted by its biological abundance, while the riparian national coast guards capabilities of the different coastal states of Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon and Gabon are vey weak. In the same time line, Chinese companies are currently building the Andoni fishing port and processing zone (Mark Godfrey, “Chinese overfishing threatens development of West Africa fishing sector”, SeaFoodSource, June 26, 2020).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUClXFF2PKs

This will allow the Chinese ships to sell directly their catches to the local Chinese industrial zone. There, they will be processed and sent to China or other destinations. Meanwhile, the Chinese investment and infrastructures building in Africa are so numerous that they turn China into a major power broker in these countries (Farming Portal, ibid) .

Preparing the Hunger Wars?

So, in the case of the Andoni facility, we see the emergence of a Chinese “seafood access security zone” that efficiently overcomes its local competitors through the convergence of the Chinese fishing militia, coastal operations and influence.

Through this example, we can observe how the Chinese prepositioning system of fishing and processing may become of strategic importance. This process may maintain seafood extraction by Chinese actors while ocean depletion accelerates during the coming years. This process drives the growing violence for access to seafood by non-Chinese actors against Chinese actors. However, Chinese actors are ready to defend their major share, especially through their global civil-military prepositioning.

For example, between 2015 and 2020, more than 500 North Korean ships have been found drifting and lifeless in the Japan sea by Japanese coast guards. The North Korean crews were nothing but skeletal corpses, dead because of starvation. As it happens, those ships were pushed aside from their fishing waters by waves after waves of Chinese squid fishing ships.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PZzxF4hwVI

Those Chinese operations literally emptied the once squid abundant North Korean waters. This forced the North Korean crews to go farther and farther at sea, where they died. In other terms, if the “hunger wars” are still in the future, it appears that “marine hunger battles” are already ongoing. ( Ian Urbina, “The deadly secret of China’s invisible armada“, NBC News, July 22, 2020).

In other words, the way China is using its mammoth “fishing fleet and militia” may very well be a way to attain, as early as possible, the dominant position for the coming hunger wars on a rapidly emptying ocean.

Why the Messenger Got Shot and how to Avoid this Fate

“Shooting the messenger” is a popular metaphor to highlight that those who deliver warnings most often are blamed, as if they were responsible for the reason for the warning. Meanwhile and as a result, warnings are also not considered.

This saying underlines that the norm is the exact opposite of the objectives of early warning and strategic foresight. Moreover, it shows that we, practitioners of early warning and strategic foresight, may be blamed. We could be blamed even though we have at heart to improve the situation and even though listening to us would indeed allow for preparedness and best response.

Faced with such a conundrum, how can we improve the odds to see decision makers pay heed to our early warning and strategic foresight products. Accessorily, how can we also protect ourselves from “being shot”?

We saw previously that if we were carefully following necessary steps to deliver and communicate our early warnings and strategic foresight, then we were improving the likelihood to see decision-makers taking our warnings into account (Helene Lavoix, “Communication of Strategic Foresight and Early Warning“, The Red Team Analysis Society, 3 March 2021).

We also underlined that this apparently simple process was fraught with challenges. Among these hurdles, we find the many biases that may affect the cognition of decision makers and that potentially impact all steps of the delivery and communication process, and even the very delivery of warnings and strategic foresight.

In this article we thus focus on and explore a bias identified as “motivated ignorance” or “active information avoidance” (Daniel Williams, “Motivated Ignorance, Rationality, and Democratic Politics“, Synthese, 2020; Golman, R.et al. “Information Avoidance“, Journal of Economic Literature, 2017). This bias, alongside others, could contribute to derail early warning and strategic foresight or more broadly anticipation. Indeed, it could even prevent the very delivery and communication of warning and foresight products. We shall first explain this bias and the way it could operate in our case. Then, assuming it is at work, we shall suggest ways to mitigate it to improve the delivery of our warnings and foresight.

What is motivated ignorance?

When knowing is felt as too costly

According to Williams (Ibid), “motivated ignorance” means that an individual will purposefully refuse to know because the cost of knowing is too high. Here, we are concerned with the very act of getting and accessing the information. Thus, instances of “motivated ignorance” or “active information avoidance” can be: not opening a letter, not taking a test, not reading something, not listening to certain types of news. In some cases, it could be “shooting the messenger”. This refusal to know or intentional non-action can be both conscious and unconscious (Williams, ibid).

“Active information avoidance” (Golman et al., 2017, p. 97) must satisfy two conditions:

“(1) the individual is aware that the information is available, and

(2) the individual has free access to the information or would avoid the information even if access were free.”

The objective of the individuals engaged in motivated ignorance is to make sure they will not have to reach certain conclusions that they perceive as detrimental (Williams, Ibid).

How Tigranes came to cut off the head of the messenger

In the case of early warning and strategic foresight, motivated ignorance would mean that decision-makers make sure, consciously or not, they do not listen or do not have to listen to people who could give them knowledge, information and analysis they are seeking to ignore.

In the most extreme cases, decision-makers could decide to not-set up early warning systems or more broadly anticipation processes. If these systems already exist, then motivated ignorance could lead decision-makers to find various ways to not-listen to what they produce. Early warning systems and strategic foresight capabilities could even be destroyed, either directly or indirectly by making sure they cannot function properly.

More broadly, at the level of society, motivated ignorance could mean that those who may be perceived as holding knowledge, understanding or simply information one wishes to avoid will be excluded, whatever the way to achieve the exclusion can take. The knowledge, understanding and information produced will similarly be discarded through all possible means.

This goes a long way to explain the “Cassandra curse”, as well as ancient and popular metaphor such as “shooting the messenger”. We may recall here what Greek philosopher Plutarch told us in his Life of Lucullus:

“[25] Since the first messenger who told Tigranes that Lucullus was coming had his head cut off for his pains, no one else would tell him anything, and so he sat in ignorance while the fires of war were already blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him…”

Plutarch, “The Life of Lucullus“, The Parallel Lives, published in Vol. II of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1914, University 0f Chicago, p. 551.

The story does not stop there. Plutarch let us know about the fate of Tigranes, and of those unfortunate enough to serve such rulers, even those who struggle against their leaders’ motivated ignorance with the best possible intention:

“The first of his friends who ventured to tell him the truth was Mithrobarzanes, and he, too, got no very excellent reward for his boldness of speech. He was sent at once against Lucullus with three thousand horsemen and a large force of infantry, under orders to bring the general alive, but to trample his men under foot. … A battle ensued, in which Mithrobarzanes fell fighting, and the rest of his forces took to flight and were cut to pieces, all except a few.
Upon this, Tigranes abandoned Tigranocerta, that great city which he had built, withdrew to the Taurus, and there began collecting his forces from every quarter….”

Plutarch, “The Life of Lucullus“, The Parallel Lives, published in Vol. II of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1914, University 0f Chicago, p. 553.

Repeating many times the same mistake, Tigranes is vanquished. On the contrary, Lucullus, the Roman aristocrat, General and Consul, listens to the advice of those who understand and warn him and synthesise them. Lucullus then adds to these analysis his own genius and is victorious.

From our perspective, Plutarch’s story highlights the importance of proper early warning and strategic foresight contrasted to what happens if motivated ignorance comes into play.

Knowing little enough for avoidance and the Dunning-Kruger effect

Furthermore, the deleterious impact of motivated ignorance can become even worse and more entrenched, as motivated ignorance ends up favouring motivated ignorance. Let us see how this vicious cercle can take place.

To be able to engage in motivated ignorance, individuals must have an idea of what they want to ignore. They need to know enough to know what to avoid. Thus, individuals who are engaged in motivated ignorance have a general knowledge and understanding of the issue of concern. Yet, most of the time, their knowledge will remain generic and superficial. If they had a specific and detailed knowledge then they could not claim ignorance, or if they did, then we would be in the realm of lies, which is a different phenomenon.

As a result, in instances of motivated ignorance, another bias can come into play, the Dunning-Kruger effect. According to this bias, “the skills that engender competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills necessary to evaluate competence in that domain” (Kruger and Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It…”, 1999). In other words, the less one knows about something, the best one thinks one is in this field.

The Dunning-Kruger effect could thus act as a factor reinforcing motivated ignorance. Indeed, by practicing motivated ignorance, individuals would make sure their knowledge remains superficial and thus both ignore inconvenient truth while strengthening their beliefs in their superiority in this field. As a way to mitigate the Dunning-Kruger effect is likely to increase the knowledge of individuals prey to the effect, motivated ignorance would forbid this solution.

Are we thus faced with an inescapable fate? Are those who, as Plutarch’s Tigranes, engage on the path of motivated ignorance doomed to remain ignorant and then finally succumb to their enemy or whatever threat and surprise they proudly ignore? As practitioners of early warning and strategic foresight are we doomed to fail and be shot if destiny or lack of fortune gives us as decision-makers individuals favouring motivated ignorance, or locate us in a time and civilization where motivated ignorance reign?

Let us explore further motivated ignorance, looking at the causes that lead people to engage in such behaviour. We may then try to devise strategies to act on causes. Note, however, that because we are facing active ignorance, our means to reduce this bias are singularly small. We certainly need to make sure we do not provoke motivated ignorance for our next warning or our next foresight product, while going on “speaking truth to power”. However, more difficult, if it is our very activity that is actively avoided, we need to work around it. Thus it will not be so much our products that must have specific characteristics, but other things outside them, these other things remaining to be determined according to specific cases. We shall again build upon Williams’ research (Ibid.).

The reasons for motivated ignorance

As exemplified in Plutarch’s story about Lucullus’ victory and Tigranes’ fate, motivated ignorance is a bias that can be extremely dangerous in terms of consequences, both at individual and collective level. To struggle against this bias, we need to understand why people would wish to ignore something, even though it would appear, from an external point of view, that knowing and understanding would be best.

Avoiding negative emotional states and countering strategies

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Featured image: Photo by Harun Benli via Pexels, free of use.

Bibliography

André, Christophe, “Les émotions qui nous détruisent“, Chronique on France Inter, 14 février 2017.

André, Christophe, “La sérénité, ça s’apprend”, Conférence, MAIF, 12 march 2015.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “The Best of all possible worlds“. Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Jun. 2017.

Golman, R., Hagmann, D., & Loewenstein, G., “Information avoidance“, Journal of Economic Literature, 55(1), 2017, 96–135.

Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, 1651.

Kruger, Justin, and David Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments“, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 77, no 6, p 1121-1134, American Psychological Association (1999).

Lavoix, Helene, “Communication of Strategic Foresight and Early Warning“, The Red Team Analysis Society, 3 March 2021.

Lloyd, Sharon A. and Susanne Sreedhar, “Hobbes’s Moral and Political Philosophy“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, ed.

Marshall, G., Don’t even think about it: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change, (New York, London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

Nerdahl, Michael, Bowdoin College, Review of Manuel Tröster, Themes, character, and politics in Plutarch’s Life of Lucullus : the construction of a Roman aristocrat. Historia. Einzelschriften, Heft 201. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008, Bowdoin College, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2008.

Pham, Michel Tuan “Emotion and Rationality: A Critical Review and Interpretation of Empirical Evidence,” Review of General Psychology, 2007, Vol. 11, No. 2, 155–178, DOI: 10.1037/1089-2680.11.2.155.

Plutarch, “The Life of Lucullus“, The Parallel Lives, published in Vol. II of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1914, University 0f Chicago.

Voltaire, Candide ou l’Optimisme, 1759.

Williams, Daniel, “Motivated ignorance, rationality, and democratic politics“, Synthese, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02549-8

Williams, Daniel,”To communicate scientific research, we need to confront motivated ignorance“, LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog, 13 January 2021

Early Warning Systems & Indicators – Training for the ESFSI in Tunisia

We just finished providing one week intensive training on early warning systems & indicators, part of this year programme on “management of social conflict” of the Ecole Supérieure des Forces de Sécurité Intérieure (ESFSI) of the Home Ministry of Tunisia. This programme is supported by the European project “Counter-terrorism in Tunisia” via CIVIPOL. This is the second time we have the pleasure and honour to deliver training for the ESFSI, the first instance was in August 2020.

It was a great week, with incredibly rich and interesting discussions.

We could do everything with Zoom from classical lectures to practice and group work sessions through software tutorials. It worked perfectly well – we could even receive the awards and presents for trainers – thanks to the ESFSI, the great team operating for CIVIPOL in Tunis, and of course, to fantastic trainees!

Losing Texas to Climate Change and the COVID-19?

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli)

From Texas with Cold

In February 2021, a “polar vortex ” swept through the U.S. and triggered a “perfect (winter) storm” that ravaged Texas (Johny Diaz, Guilia Mc Donnell, Nieto del Rio, Richar Faussett, “ Texas extreme cold snap has killed residents in their homes, cars and backyards”, SBS News, 20 February 21).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGwPVEZLbCY&t=13s

During the two-week dire cold snap, more than 4 million households, i.e. 15 million people, lost electric power. The same cold front froze innumerable collective and domestic water pipes Their explosions triggered dozens of thousands of domestic inundations, as well as state-wide water transport problems (Hannah Dellinger, “Plumbers “haven’t seen the worst of it yet” as cold weather bursts pipes across Texas”, Houston Chronicle, 16 February 2021).

The Winter 2021 extreme weather event is not an isolated instance. It belongs to the chain of consequences of the climate hyper siege that hammers the very living conditions of Texas. This cold front is itself part of the cascading effects of the destabilization of the polar jet stream, resulting from the rapid warming of the Arctic (Jeff Berardelli, “Climate change and cold front: what’s behind the Arctic extreme in Texas”, CBS News, 20 February 2021).

Thus, this very strange catastrophe reveals the growing probability that Texas could become incrementally uninhabitable. That could emerge from the cumulative interactions between infrastructures, living conditions and climate change in this state. The Winter 2021 extreme event also has momentous international consequences, because Texas plays a major role in energy geopolitics.

A winter of mass destruction

Turning home into a trap

From prehistoric times, the defining character of a home, the place where the family lives, is artificial heat and protection. Fire generates heat. Walls are providing protection, while also keeping some of the warmth inside. These two conditions are the basic life support system of sedentary families (Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies, 1999).

The extremely violent cold snap that hammered Texas in February 2021 deeply subverts this multi-millennial order of things. The wave of Arctic air that cut across the United States and that froze Texas was so cold that millions of houses, built for the warm climate of Texas, consumed far more electricity for heating.

This collective drain on the grid generated immense power outages. The freezing cold did also impact the gas pipes that were feeding several power plants, shutting them down. This heightened the pressure on the power grid and had a multiplying effect on the outages.Those outages stopped house heating.

As a result, millions of houses became cold traps for their inhabitants (Benjamin Storrow, “Why the deep freeze caused Texas to lose power”, Scientific American, 18 February, 2021). The sub-zero temperatures also froze the water in the house plumbing. The pipes’ explosions set off innumerable interior floods, turning houses into glacial and flooded traps (Laetichia Beachum, “Texas is in desperate need of plumbers. Two brothers-in-law drove more than 20 hours straight to help”, The Washington Post, 26 February, 2026).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=689nDiplmIk

Development as vulnerability

In other words, the Texan “Suburbia” became a gigantic trap because of its fundamental vulnerability to a freezing extreme weather event.

This means that the very paradigm of the U.S. urban development induces a very large set of “invisible” vulnerabilities, such as the state-wide mass destruction of plumbing and of warmth keeping.

My kingdom for a plumber

Furthermore this domestic mass destruction event becomes a longer term issue with a wider scope.

For instance, first, it led to a massive need for plumbers in Texas with consequences elsewhere.

The Texan government called for skilled workers from all around the United States. The government even accelerated the validation of the out-of-state plumbers’ application documents (Tyler Durden, “Texas desperate for out-of-state plumbers amid broken water pipe chaos”, Zero Hedge, 26 February, 2021).

This was all the more urgent that the plumbing crisis was rapidly becoming a massive and lasting water crisis. As it happens, millions of Texas citizens were thus deprived of access to fresh water for daily domestic and sanitary uses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dYgcXEqAsU

However, attracting thousands of plumbers from all over the U.S. is also likely to trigger a national tension in the plumbing field. When plumbers leave their own cities and states, needed repairs will be delayed and thus will worsen (Chaffin Mitchell, “Accuweather estimates economic impact of winter storms to approach 50 billions“, Accuweather, 18 February, 2021) . This will impact in turn insurance companies.

Then, back in frozen Texas, domestic electricity consumption skyrocketed. The direct consequence was a rapid and steep increase in electricity prices, because of the growing demand in a deregulated energy market. Then, because of automated payments, people lost hundreds or thousands dollars in a few days.

The Texas Attorney General is even suing power company Griddy, LLC for “violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act through false, misleading, and deceptive advertising and marketing practices”. Indeed, the electricity prices of the Griddy power company went from 50$ to 9000$ per megawatt (Press Release, Consumer Protection/Scams, AG Pax­ton Sues Grid­dy, LLC Ener­gy Com­pa­ny: Cus­tomers Hit with Exor­bi­tant Ener­gy Bills, March 01, 2021; Tyler Durden, “Texas AG hits electricity provider Griddy for “deceptive practices””, Zero Hedge, 01 March, 2021).

In other terms, in a few days, millions of people lost their domestic, water and financial security because of a jet of Arctic air. Furthermore, the financial toll is certainly going to worsen, because homeowners are going to have to pay for repairs, while their property is losing value. Meanwhile, a lot of them are also going to have to keep on reimbursing their mortgage.

In the same time, insurance companies are also going to have to pay for damages.

Overall, these dynamics show that the Texan plumbing, water and home crisis is literally propagating all over the U.S.. Entire sections of the U.S. urban and suburban network will feel the impact of the 2021 February cold snap on Texas.

Texas Hyper Siege

From a strategic point of view, this winter sequence is in the continuation of the “hyper siege” that climate change imposes on Texas. This means that Texas is being literally “immersed” into the new and adverse geophysical conditions that are besieging it. (Jean-Michel Valantin “Hyper Siege: Climate change versus U.S National security”, The Red Team Analysis Society, March 31 2014, and Clive Hamilton, Defiant Earth, The fate of the Humans in the Anthropocene, 2017).

Geophysics under steroids

This new condition was highlighted, for example, in 2017, when the titanic hurricane Harvey surged in Texas. From 29 August to 5 September 2017, hurricane Harvey poured a staggering 22 cubic kilometres of rainwater across the South Eastern littoral of the U.S. It inundated also the coast and the hinterland of Texas.

The sheer weight of the quantity of water could create a two centimetres depression on the affected region. It took more than five weeks for all this extra water to flow to the sea (Mark Lynas, Our Last Warning: 6 Degrees of Climate Emergency, 2020).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzQGgyrxXiI

A deluge has costs

This extreme event imposed immense economic costs, because of the direct damages to the infrastructures, cities, homes, fields and industries. To these costs one must add those of repairs and of business interruption. Indeed, for example, a lot of oil extraction and transaction operations were suspended by the hurricane, with impact on related companies (Matt Egan and Chris Isidore, “Tropical storm Harvey threatens vital Texas energy hub”, CNN Money, August 26).

Then there were the costs of necessary detoxification 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).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IskFK0QyRS8

If we take a look at just the 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. This means that, potentially, millions of people found themselves brutally projected in very precarious situations.

In other terms, the very conditions of life in Texas become the medium for vulnerability to climate change. This has profound geopolitical implications, because of the importance of Texas on the international energy markets, in a Covid-19 world.

Texas and the shale oil revolution in a Covid-19 world

A plague in Texas

The turning of Texan infrastructures and urban development into a medium for social vulnerabilities combines itself with other cascading effects, those of the Covid-19 pandemic. Since March 2020, 44.000 out of 29 million Texans died of the Covid-19. The Texas Government attitude went from delegating decisions about masks and lockdown to city councils to state government measures, often reversed. However, each easing of the sanitary measures induced a contamination spike.

In the context of the global pandemic and, as Hélène Lavoix puts it, of the emergent international Covid-19 order (Hélène Lavoix, “The emergence of a Covid-19 International Order”, The Red Team Analysis Society, June 15, 2020), Texas installs itself in the Covid-19 World.

This takes a direct toll on the economy. Consequently, the unemployment rates reaches 8%. The slowing down of the economy is also deeply altering the trade and service activities. This situation triggers numerous public anti-masks and anti-lockdown protests.

Those certainly result from the combination of the collective economic and social anguish specific to pandemic economics and of the fiercely individualistic and liberal culture of the “Lonely Star state” (David R. Baker, Brian Heckhouse, David Wette, “California and Texas fought Covid their own, suffered just the same”, Bloomberg Business Week, 18 January 2021).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TqnRJmkG6g

The Texas economic woes have a deeper layer. They are related to the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Texas energy “renaissance” through the extraction of shale oil and gas.

All revolutions end

Since the beginning of the 2000s, Texas is the centre of the unconventional U.S. shale oil and gas revolution. This revolution is made possible by the fracking technology breakthrough. So, the exploitation of the huge Permian basin went from a paltry 850.000 barrels in 2007 to 2 million barrels in output in 2014. This was then almost 25% of the U.S. crude oil output (Daniel Yergin, The New Map, Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations, 2020).

Since 2014, Texas is a major oil and gas producer. The two Permian basin Spraberry and Wolfcamp giant fields are among the five first oil fields in the world. The shale revolution turned again the U.S. in a net and major oil and gas producer, as it was until the end of the 1970s. (Michael Klare, Blood and oil, the dangers and consequences of America’s growing dependency on imported petroleum, 2004). This reinstates the U.S. at the table of the oil and gas producers, alongside the OPEC and Russia. This U.S. oil and gas resurgence also generates important tensions on the international energy market (Yergin, ibid).

However, with the COVID-19, oil and gas prices have known a brutal contraction during the 2020 Spring. They even plunge to -37$ during a few hours in April 2020.  Since then, the U.S. shale oil and gas industry is in dire straits. Indeed, its massive costs and weak profits makes it very sensitive to energy low prices (“Oil price crashes below 0$ for the first time in history amid pandemic”, CGTN, 21 April 2020).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFWHxZpF9rc

This deep fragility became a massive loss of 60.000 jobs in the Texas oil industry (David R. Baker, Brian Heckhouse, David Wette, ibid). So, the Covid-catastrophe turns the Texas shale oil and gas extraction into a major economic and financial vulnerability.

Texas as a warning to the World

In other words, through hurricane and winter extreme weather events, climate change is transforming the very development of Texas into unlivable conditions. In the same time, the Covid-19 World literally ruins the shale revolution and Texan workers and activities networks that depend on it.

As a result, from a strategic foresight and warning point of view, Texas and its situation underline serious questions that need to be asked about the near future of the United States.

Indeed, if climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic keep on hammering the Texan infrastructures, urban and economic development and sanitary conditions, the state will rapidly become literally unlivable for its 29 million strong population. However, if people start leaving Texas, where they will go? And where will such a large population be welcome? This is all the more complex that numerous U.S. states are also under their own version of the hyper siege.

The Texas hyper siege has also an international dimension. Indeed, the risk of a wreckage of the shale oil and gas U.S. revolution will rewrite the international energy order. But, at a more fundamental level, what can happen in such a very rich and developed region as Texas shows that the famous “resiliency” capability of an old industrialised region may have very real limits.

This should be a very strong warning for each and every country, especially in the rich, developed, and astonishingly vulnerable, Western world.

Communication of Strategic Foresight and Early Warning

A warning does not exist if it is not delivered. This is a key lesson highlighted by the famous expert in warning Cynthia Grabo, who worked as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. government from 1942 to 1980 (Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning, Editor’s Preface). Similarly, a foresight product such as scenarios, for example, has to be delivered or communicated. Actually, Cynthia Grabo’s point is true for any anticipatory activity, whatever its name, from risk management to horizon scanning.

Furthermore, if strategic foresight and early warning are to be actionable, if they are to allow for true preparedness, then clients – the decision-makers and policy-makers to whom the product has been delivered and communicated – must pay heed to the foresight, or to the warning. What decision-makers then decide to do with those warnings is another story.

Thus, from our point of view – i.e. the perspective of those who are in charge of doing early warning and foresight – decision-makers must receive the warning or foresight product, know they have received them and, as much as possible, consider them.

This part of the process of early warning, strategic foresight, futurism or more broadly anticipation, which handles delivery and communication, tends to receive less attention than other dimensions such as analysis or collect of information. Yet, if we want decision-makers to pay heed to our work, if we want societies to move from reaction to anticipation and action, then delivery and communication are as important as analysis and collect.

This article presents fundamentals for the delivery of early warning and strategic foresight products and the origin of this knowledge. It then suggests that if we were adding a user-centric approach to our understanding of delivery and communication, then we could improve this part of the strategic foresight and early warning process.

Lessons learned

The most famous strategic surprise or warning failure is the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941. This attack was indeed a surprise that dealt a devastating blow to the American fleet, even though the fleet recovered. It also overcome the reluctance of the U.S. to enter World War II beyond support of allies. War was formally declared against Japan on 8 December, bringing truly America into World War II (e.g. a Bibliography on Pearl Harbour, from the point of view of strategic surprise, Imperial War Museum, “What happened at Pearl Harbour“).

This event may be considered as the starting point for the study of warning. Indeed, Pearl Harbour and other strategic surprises led intelligence officers and analysts to study how surprise could happen, so as to avoid these very warning failures. Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962) is considered as the first famous instance of such studies. Cynthia Grabo’s classified A Handbook of Warning Intelligence (three volumes published in 1972 and 1974), which gave the unclassified 2003 Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning, is another fundamental textbook for understanding and avoiding warning failures.

https://youtu.be/PhPK2wUar04?t=327

We can thus use more than fifty to sixty years of knowledge and understanding gathered in the field of indications and warning, that became strategic warning and early warning. Utilising these lessons learned from strategic surprise and warning failure we can highlight key points for delivery and communication of strategic warning and foresight.

  • “Clients” or “customers” for our warning or foresight must be identified. We can actually map these clients.
  • Warning officers and more broadly early warning and strategic foresight practitioners must learn to know their decision-makers, their “clients”. They must develop, overtime, a trusting relationship with them.
  • Warning and foresight products can, as a result, be adapted to customers in terms of:
    • format: making sure the format is right for each decision-maker receiving the product
    • understanding: making sure each decision-maker can understand the product (I mean really understand it fully, not getting only a superficial vision of it).
  • Products must be delivered to customers. Related necessary channels of communication must be created if need be.
  • Strategic foresight and especially early warnings must be delivered in a timely fashion (see Hélène Lavoix, “Revisiting Timeliness for Strategic Foresight and Warning and Risk Management“).
  • Feedback on delivery and products must be asked from customers, hoping the latter will have time to provide them.

If we pay attention to these steps and follow them, then we have improved the likelihood to see our customers pay heed to foresight and early warning products.

Many challenges, however, are lurking behind those apparently simple steps, potentially hindering the best completion of each of them. Here we shall focus on an approach that could constructively help us in carrying out these steps.

Moving from classical customers to users?

Usually, chains of command and hierarchical structures define who gets early warnings and strategic foresight products, such as scenarios, for example. They have been established over time, exist and are either necessary or inescapable or both. Most of the time, those who receive warnings and foresight analysis are set policy-makers and decision-makers.

Yet, it could be also of interest to move from the idea of existing pre-determined “customers” or “clients” to a slightly different notion, the idea of users.

Meteorologist at work at the Storm Prediction Centre de Norman, Oklahoma Source: NOAA

A user-centric approach would imply, for example, that we provide those receiving the results of our warning or foresight analysis with tools and instruments, be they concrete or immaterial, that are first and foremost useful and of value to them. This could be any device – including in terms of format – that would be helpful to users for moving from the reception of our products to action and the accomplishment of their mission.

With the idea of users, the emphasis is set on a long-term relationship, on the consideration of the other and his or her needs.

If we adopt a user-centric approach, then we can start our process of identification of the recipient of our early warning and strategic foresight analysis again, with a fresh mind:

  • Are we sure that all the necessary, actual and potential users have been identified?
  • Would other people, potentially not belonging to the usual chain of command or hierarchy benefit from using the early warning or the foresight product?

For each type of users and even each user, we would then need to follow the steps related to the delivery and communication of warnings identified above. Each user could receive specific warning products tailored to its needs.

This approach would certainly be most useful, for example, in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic for example, as each and every human being is a whole theatre of operation and entire battlefield for the virus and where actions must be taken by each individual very quickly in series of instants. It would deserve further detailed research as we could find more efficient approaches that only considering if a person is positive or not, contact case or not and needs to isolate or not. Again, this would help moving from reaction to anticipation.

However attractive a user-centric approach may appear, it may also be difficult to implement because, for most actors, having foresight, being able to anticipate, also touches upon hierarchy and ultimately upon power. Thus, within an organisation, care will be taken to clear the question first at the highest level of decision-making.

Moving from “product” and “delivery” to “tools” and “reception”

Classically, once all policy-makers and decision-makers are known, then, ideally, the final result of the analysis is formatted to be adapted to policy-makers and decision-makers and delivered. The aim is to get their attention and raise their awareness.

By National Weather Service Aviation Weather Center (http://aviationweather.gov/products/swm/), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

If we move to the user centric approach, we can start thinking about usage of early warning or foresight analysis rather than just products and switch from an emphasis on delivery to reception.

We could ask questions such as:

  • In which circumstances and how would users use the warning or foresight analysis?
  • What are the best channels of communication for transmitting efficiently and timely the warnings or strategic foresight analysis that will give the best possible reception by the user?
  • Which form should the early warning and the foresight analysis have for best usage by each user or type of user?

The questions above are particularly important as they will also lead us to find out how users think, the dynamics behind cognition, the opportune moments for communication, what and who has influence on the users’ thinking. They will demand we consider the various biases that alter the understanding of any human being (e.g. Heuer, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, 1999). These indeed do not only affect analysts and analysis, as usually considered. They also impact people receiving our foresight and early warnings and, as Woocher points out, the relationship between analysts, officers and to customers. Answering these questions properly thus will help us changing mind-sets a difficult and constant hurdle strategic foresight and early warning must always overcome.

If we keep in mind that useful recipients of early warning and strategic foresight analysis are not only set clients in a hierarchy but also, first and foremost, users, then we can imagine, design and implement an overall strategy centred on the actionable use of early warning and strategic foresight, for best delivery and communication of our analyses. 

A short bibliography

Grabo, Cynthia M., and Jan Goldman. Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning. [Washington, D.C.?]: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Joint Military Intelligence College, 2002.

Heuer, Richards J. Jr., Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1999. See also access through Homeland Security Digital Library.

Lavoix, Helene, Ensuring a Closer Fit: Insights on making foresight relevant to policymaking. Development 56, 464–469 (2013), https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2014.27

Meyer, Christoph O., et al. “Recasting the Warning-Response Problem: Persuasion and Preventive Policy.” International Studies Review, vol. 12, no. 4, 2010, pp. 556–578. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40931357. 

Nolan, Janne E., and MacEachin, Douglas, with Kristine Tockman, Discourse, Dissent and Strategic Surprise Formulating U.S. Security Policy in an Age of Uncertainty. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 2007.

Wohlstetter, Roberta. Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962.

Woocher, Lawrence, “The Effects of Cognitive Biases on Early Warning,” Presented at the International Studies Association Annual Convention (2008).

Featured image: by ArtTower, Pixabay, Public Domain.

China, the “Health Silk Road” of Vaccines, and Security

Beyond the proliferation of the Chinese vaccine

Enters Sinopharm

On 14 January, Hungary’s government signed an agreement with the giant company Sinopharm in order to purchase millions of doses of the Chinese CoronaVac (CCV) (“In EU first, Sinopharm Coronavirus vaccine approved by Hungary”, Nikkei Asia, 31 January, 2021). One week before, it had made a deal with Russia to buy doses of the vaccine Sputnik V.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysVRI-M8hYA

    Turkey, Serbia, and Bosnia, for example, signed similar agreements (Hamdi Firat Buyuk, Danijel Kovacevic, Edit Inotal and Milica Stojanovic, “Turkey, Serbia, Bosnia, Hungary put trust in Russian, Chinese vaccines”, Balkan Insight, January 22, 2021). Their health authorities are approving the Russian and Chinese vaccines, while deploring the too slow imports of the Pfizer vaccine by the EU.

    On 10 December 20, Egypt received its first cargo of Sinopharm vaccine (“Egypt starts vaccinating medics with Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine”, Xinhuanet, 25 January 2021). On 9 January 21, Jordan similarly approved the Chinese vaccine (“Coronavirus: Jordan approves China’s Sinopharm vaccine”, Al Arabya News, 10 January 2021). Then, on 20 January, Iraq’s health authorities followed the same path (Ahmed Asmar, “Iraq, Egypt purchase Covid-19 vaccine”, Anadolu News, 25 December 2021). The same day, the United Arab Emirates approved it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HwM5Doec3g

    In Lebanon and Morocco, governments are also buying dozens of millions of doses of the Chinese vaccine. In Iran, health authorities are importing the Russian Sputnik V, while exploring the possibility to buy the Chinese CoronaVac (CCV) (Reid Standish, “Appeal grows for Russian, Chinese serums, as Western vaccine effort get bogged down”, Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, February 4, 2021).

    Its neighbour, Pakistan, follows a more diversified approach. The Pakistani government approved both the Chinese Sinovac and the Russian Sputnik V for people under the age of 60. However, Pakistan also ordered the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine in order to inject people aged 60 and older (Asif Shazad, “Pakistan to approve Russian Sputnik Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use – Pakistan has not yet rolled out a vaccination campaign, waiting for the first shipment of the Sinopharm vaccine at the end of this month”, Zawya, 25 January 2021).

    The emergence of a new pattern… and its correlated risks?

    A pattern emerges here. The countries of the Middle East and the Balkans that are buying the Chinese and Russian vaccines are members of the “Chinese Belt and Road initiative / New Silk Road”.

    In other words, as we shall see, numerous member-states of the Chinese Belt and Road initiative are going to vaccinate their population or part of it with the CCV. This fact bestows new layers of geopolitical meaning to this “Health Silk Road” (HSR). In fact, the HSR appears as a mean to insure the continuity of the countries that are part of the B&R.

    It also appears as a driver of the “international Covid order” that Hélène Lavoix identifies and defines (“The emergence of a Covid-19 International Order”, The Red Team Analysis Society, June 15, 2020).

    Then, we shall see how the international distribution of the Chinese vaccine may turn China into a strange new kind of “sanitary power”. Reciprocally, China needs to support the health of its partner countries.

    However, the Health Silk Road is also potentially dangerous for China, because it could backfire, if the Chinese CoronaVac was not efficient enough, especially on the British, South-African and Brazilian variants that are rapidly spreading .

    From the “Health Silk Road” to the “Belt and Road Initiative”

    Since Fall 2020, the Chinese medical supplies exports are also dubbed as the “Health Silk Road” (HSR). As it happens, this notion of “Health Silk Road” has been a dimension of the “Belt & Road initiative” since 2015 (Elizabeth Chen, “Chinese vaccine diplomacy revamps the Health Silk Road amid Covid-19”, The Jamestown Foundation, 12 November 2020). 

    At first, it was a fluid and inclusive notion. It was aiming at qualifying bilateral talks and deals about the exports of Chinese traditional medicine to B&R members. But the recent exports of the Sinopharm vaccine literally transcend this notion.

    From the Covid-19 pandemic to the full Health Silk Road

    The “Health Silk Road” truly materialised with the transition from a Covid-19 Chinese epidemic to a worldwide pandemic, during the first quarter of 2020 (Hélène Lavoix, “Dynamics of Contagion and Covid-19 Second wave”, The Red Team Analysis Society, June 3, 2020).

    Those exports travel along the land and sea transport infrastructures that incarnate the B&R (Jean-Michel Valantin, “China and the New Silk Road – From oil wells to the moon … and beyond”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, July 6 2015). Since March 2020, those exports are notably made of masks, gloves, surgical gowns, pharmaceutics, etc.. They reach more than 120 countries. Among them many are members of the Belt and Road initiative, such as Pakistan, Egypt or Italy (Elizabeth Chen, ibid).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTXc5Of5-j8

    Then, as we write this article, numerous African countries are considering buying the Chinese vaccine. This decision process is gearing up because of the difficulty for African countries to buy significant quantities of the American and Americano-German vaccines, such as Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s. This is the consequence of the massive purchases made by the U.S. and the EU (John Campbell, “Vaccine Diplomacy: China and Sinopharm in Africa”, Council on Foreign Relations, January 6, 2021).

    The Chinese vaccine as a “global public good”

    As it happens, China proposes massive discounts on its Sinopharm vaccine. This follows the May address by president Xi Jinping, stating that Covid-19 vaccines should be a “global public good” (“China’s Covid-19 vaccine to become global public good when available: Xi”, Xinhuanet, 2020-05-18).

    Consequently, China would propose it at an affordable price. This offer is all the more alluring that the Chinese vaccine is the result of the decades-old vaccination method of injection of an inactivated virus. Thus, it does not need the impressive logistics that necessitates the recent ARN messenger technologies (Hélène Lavoix, “Covid-19 Vaccinations, Hope or Mirage?”, The Red Team Analysis Society, January 27, 2021).

    We must also note that more than 42 African countries out of 54 are part, at a degree or another, of the B&R. As such, they integrate the multiple transportation infrastructures that constitute the different segments of the “Road” (Jean-Michel Valantin, “The Chinese New Silk Road in East Africa”, The Red team Analysis Society, 30 January 2017). The development of these infrastructures is making it easier for the countries to import their purchases of medical supplies from China.

    One may note that the multiple medical supplies that China sends to African, Arab, Asian and European countries since March 2020 are obviously going hand in hand with a massive diplomatic and “soft power” effort. It was especially true during the 2020 spring. That was when the U.S. Donald Trump administration was particularly vocal about the responsibility of China in the pandemic (Jean-Michel Valantin, “Chimerica 3: the Geopolitics of the US-China Turbo-Recession”, The Red Team Analysis Society, June 29, 2020).

    From the Health Silk Road to China’s geo-economic security

    The HSR and the Covid-19 World

    However, we must keep in mind that the “Health Silk Road” is not “simply” a geopolitical opportunity for China, forcefully seized by Beijing in the midst of a profound global crisis. As it happens, it is a necessity for the “Middle Kingdom”, because its rapid and mammoth development generates immense needs.

    In the context of the global pandemic and, as Hélène Lavoix puts it, of the emergent international Covid-19 order, the “Health Silk Road” appears to many commentators as a diplomatic tool. It may even be a new form of soft power (Hélène Lavoix, “The emergence of a Covid-19 International Order”, The Red Team Analysis Society, June 15, 2020).

    Indeed, this international system of exports is a powerful display of the Chinese industrial and biopharmaceutical capabilities. Furthermore, the Sinopharm vaccine provides China with a formidable mean to create a sphere of “health geopolitics”.

    The Chinese CoronaVac and China’s geo-economic security

    However, from a Chinese point of view, the “Health Silk Road” has a deeper geopolitical function.

    Indeed, it is an extension of the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). This grand strategy aims at ensuring a constant flow of energy resources, commodities and products towards China. As it happens, those flows are necessary to the current industrial and capitalist development of the 1,4 billion strong “Middle Kingdom” (Jean-Michel Valantin, “China and the New Silk Road – From oil wells to the moon … and beyond”, The Red Team Analysis Society, July 6 2015).

    Since 2013, China has been deploying this “initiative”. Its success attracts the interest and commitment of numerous African, Asian, European and Middle Eastern countries.

    The B&R is de facto a new expression of the Chinese philosophical and strategic thought (Valantin, “China and the New Silk Road: the Pakistani strategy”, The Red Team Analysis, May 18, 2015). It is grounded in an understanding of the spatial dimension of China.

    The HSR as a “safe bubble”

    In this civilizational context, space is conceived not only as a surface, but also as a support. The Chinese influence and power spreads from this support to the “outside”. It also allows the Middle Kingdom to “aspirate” what it needs from the “outside” to the “inside” (Quynh Delaunay, Naissance de la Chine moderne, L’Empire du Milieu dans la globalisation, 2014).

    This is why we qualify some spaces as being “useful” to the deployment of the BRI. It is also why each “useful space” is related, and “useful” to other “useful spaces”. In the same dynamic, the different countries involved in the B&R deployment are “useful spaces” for the Chinese “Initiative”. 

    Thus, the Chinese vaccine could turn the members of the “B&R” into a chain of what Hélène Lavoix qualifies as “safe bubbles”. Thus, these “safe bubbles” would define the new international hierarchy of the “Covid-19 World” (Hélène Lavoix, “The emergence of a Covid-19 International Order”, Ibid.).

    The Health Silk Road: grand strategy and high strategic risk

    Grand strategy and the creation of useful spaces

    Hence, the string of member-states of the “Health Silk Road / B&R” vaccine distribution system constitutes a “geographic useful space” for China. As a result, supporting the health condition of these countries is of paramount importance for China. Indeed, China needs its partners to be “in good health” in order to answer the gigantic “China’s need”. Thus, the B&R member-states will remain “useful spaces”. As such, they will be able to maintain the flow of resources that the “China’s Empire of Need” attracts.

    In other terms, the “Vaccine Silk Road” is also the equivalent of an international life support system for China.  This means that the vaccine is now part of a new definition of national security, or national safety (Hélène Lavoix, “Covid-19 Vaccinations, Hope or Mirage?”, The Red Team Analysis Society, January 27, 2021).

    It also means that the international system of interdependency it creates is all the more important in a time of deep geopolitical crisis between China and the U.S. This system may help to alleviate the effects of this crisis. And reciprocally, providing vaccines to Arab, African, Asian and European countries will also reinforce the international legitimacy of China.

    Backfire and the paradoxical logic of the Chinese vaccine success

    However, the Health Silk Road is also carrying a high potential of backfiring. As it happens, the Chinese vaccine needs to be sufficiently efficient to contain the pandemic in the different nations that buy it (note that the latter shows mixed results, including a low 50.4% effectiveness, Smriti Mallapaty, “China COVID vaccine reports mixed results — what does that mean for the pandemic?“, Nature, 15 January 2021). It also has to be efficient against the new variants, especially the British, South-African and Brazilian ones.

    If not, the “Health Silk Road” may become a case study in “the paradoxical logic of strategy”.

    Indeed, developing a project, be it political, commercial, military, or of any other nature, creates the emergence of situations that are driven by a paradoxical logic: the implementation of a given project attracts opposing forces, which can even use violence, or difficulties. Those opposing forces threaten with failure the very project that created them (Edward Luttwak, Strategy, the Logic of War and Peace, 2002).

    Failure, in this case, would have several intertwined dimensions. It would mean a continuous state of pandemic for the concerned countries, and probably a high level of resentment. A weakening of the international status of China would follow that would certainly become an opportunity for its adversaries, especially the U.S..

    And, at a fundamental level, it would undercut the ability of numerous countries to answer the mammoth “Chinese needs”. This would have massively dangerous economic, social and political repercussions in China. Indeed, the current regime could loose “the Mandate of Heaven”, i.e. its legitimacy.

    When a crisis of legitimacy happen, the Chinese society usually knows very profound and violent disruptions, while the regime topples (see John King Fairbank, Merle Goldman, China, a New History, Enlarged Edition, Harvard University Press, 1998; Andrea Janku, “‘Heaven-Sent Disasters’ in Late Imperial China: The Scope of the State and Beyond,” in Christ of Mauch and Christian Pfister, eds., Natural Disasters, Cultural Responses: Case Studies Toward a Global Environmental History, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books), 233–64; Chris Courtney, “The Dragon King and the 1931 Wuhan Flood: Religious Rumors and Environmental Disasters in Republican China,” in Twentieth-Century China, April 2015 and Cohen, Paul A., Paul A. Townsend, History in Three Keys, Columbia University Press, 1997).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slgz5P2b_3o

    In this context, we shall (soon) have to see the geopolitical role that Russia and its Sputnik V vaccine are going to play alongside China, in the midst of the evolving pandemic.

    Are your Strategic Foresight Scenarios Valid?

    Scenario building, also known as scenario analysis, is a crucial methodology to anticipate and prepare for the future. This is a method used from risk management to strategic foresight through early warning systems. More broadly, it is a key tool for all anticipation that needs to be actionable.

    The higher the uncertainty, the more important it is to be able to mitigate risks to develop winning responses. Thence, it is crucial to use good scenarios to be truly prepared. It is thus key to build valid scenarios.

    scenario building, scenario, strategic foresight, online course, risk management, future
    Check our new online course on scenario-building for Geopolitical Risk and Crisis Anticipation

    Good scenarios are sound methodologically and include knowledge and understanding of the issue at hand.

    In this article, you will find a list of points – necessary conditions for the validity of scenarios – that you can easily check to verify the scenarios you are about to use are correct methodologically. If they are not, if they include methodological errors, then this means that the scenarios are flawed. Thus, you cannot use them to build robust answers, even if the content of the scenarios shows state of the art knowledge of the issue. For example, you can have invalid scenarios that nonetheless reflect great understanding of China, the U.S., quantum technologies, the Islamic State or the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though the understanding related to the subject matter is good, the scenarios may be useless if they are incorrect methodologically.

    Below you will find first an online test for evaluating the methodological validity of your scenarios. We shall suggest possible ways forward according to the test result.

    Second, you will find each point of the check list explained. We shall highlight why each point matters to users. Then, we shall explicate why making sure that each necessary condition is respected is most often a guarantee of methodological soundness, or, alternatively, why not respecting a condition is a warning signal for users.

    This check list will be useful to both users and practitioners.

    If you are a user of scenario

    As user of scenarios, if you did not build the scenarios, and especially if you do not master the intricacies of scenario-building, the check list will help you evaluating easily the methodological validity of the scenarios.

    If you are a scenario-builder

    As practitioner, this check list will help you verify your work as early as possible in the process of scenario-building. As a result you will make sure you are building proper, state of the art scenarios.

    What if you do not use scenarios?

    Your strategy, policies, actually the whole array of your responses, depend on scenarios. This is true even if you think you are not using scenarios. When you decide upon something, it is because you already have and use, mentally, a model of how the future will unfold (eg. Epstein, ‘Why Model?‘, 2008). This model is a set of scenarios of a sort. It is, however, implicit and created without any methodology. Notably, being implicit, it may be prey to many biases (see online course on modeling, module 2).

    As implicitly you use a kind of set of scenarios for the decisions you are taking, then you may also use the test for your vision of the future.

    Test your scenarios

    Nota: We only take your email address so that you can receive the test results by email. We do not use them for anything else. If you want to subscribe to know when we publish new article, use this form. If you want to become a member, access is here. We shall use anonymised statistics about results to improve understanding on scenarios and their use.

    Once you have completed the test, click on submit and read the answers for each question. We suggest what to do with your set of scenarios if it is not valid, according to the type of problem met. You will also get your overall score.

    Check list for valid scenarios

    1- Are the scenarios covering the whole range of possible futures?

    Scenarios must cover the whole range of possible futures. Rutz, McEldowney and Taylor depicted this very well in the drawing on the right hand side (1986, quoted in Taylor, 1993: chapter 1 & fn 7).

    Plausible or possible futures?

    Rutz, McEldowney and Taylor in Taylor, 1993: chapter 1 & fn 7

    Taylor focuses on plausible futures. We prefer looking at possibility rather than plausibility.

    Indeed, the idea of plausibility incorporates many biases (see online course on modeling, module 2). In other words, if you focus on what appears to you as plausible, you may very well fall prey, for example, to political correctness, to group think or to normative judgements, among others.

    As a result, your scenarios could depict how you would like the future to be rather than consider all futures. This would then increase the likelihood of surprise, when our aim is to reduce the odds of surprise.

    Why does it matter to you?

    It is truly crucial for you that your scenarios cover the whole range of possible futures, because you do not want to prepare responses that would completely forget one scenario or more.

    If we take the example of the Brexit before the vote, imagine that your experts considered that Brexit was impossible. As a result, they gave you a set of scenarios that did not include the possibility for Brexit (e.g. it was thought as implausible). They could have built a couple of scenarios focusing on new rules between Britain and the EU (they could create more than one scenarios), another scenario describing similar rules between Britain and the EU, and finally a last scenario depicting a new love story between Britain and the EU. As a result, you started creating a whole range of answers, made corresponding investments, developed policies etc.

    Then, the vote took place, and people chose… Brexit. And you found yourself completely unprepared.

    This anecdote is exactly the reverse of what we want to obtain with scenarios.

    The brief history of scenarios on the COVID-19 pandemic is also replete with instances of scenarios that did not consider the whole range of possible futures. Indeed, the people and firms creating the scenarios at the time focused wrongly on what they thought was possible. As a result, many times, governments and actors were given invalid scenarios that forbid preparedness.

    We want to have scenarios that show us the whole range of possible futures so that we can be ready for any future.

    Why is it a methodological guarantee?

    As you know, scenarios are built from the combination of the values or attributes of the variables selected to “represent” your initial question. The why and how these variables are selected is outside the scope of this article (see our course on scenario-building).

    Mathematically, the attributes or values of a variable must be exhaustive, i.e. cover all the possible values the variable can take in reality, as in the quantitative example on oil prices on the right hand side.We covered this in detail in the online course on modeling, module 4, explaining how to identify factors and drivers for a question and how to make sure these were variables.

    Thus, if you build scenarios out of a combination of values (of variables), which are exhaustive, and if you selected properly your variables in a way that is representative, then, as a result, the set of scenarios you obtain covers the whole range of possible futures.

    If the experts that built the scenarios use a proper methodology, automatically, the scenarios they obtain covers the whole range of possible futures.

    If the scenarios do not cover the range of possible futures, then you may ask them why it is not so. They may have a very sound answer, but it is better to check with them. If they do not have a sound answer, then be wary.

    At best this set of scenarios will help you think out of the box, and provide you with new ideas. However, you have to be very careful before using the set of scenarios to develop strategy and policies.

    The potential for surprise is not as mitigated as it could have been.

    2- Are the scenarios mutually exclusive?

    Mutually exclusive scenarios mean scenarios that cannot take place at the same time. You can have one or another, but not both at the same time.

    Why does it matter to you?

    This condition is necessary to cover the range of possible futures. This is necessary so that you are prepared across uncertainty.

    Imagine that you are an emergency NGO preparing your budget and material for the next year for, say Afghanistan. If experts, in the set of scenarios they give you, present you with one scenario for war, one for epidemic, and one for earthquake, but not with one scenario for epidemic and earthquake, one for war and epidemic, one for earthquake and war, and one for war, epidemic and earthquake, then you may run into serious problems. You will not be prepared for complex emergencies. You will have neither the material nor the funding for such cases.

    On the contrary, what we want to achieve with scenarios is to be ready for any circumstances, including complex emergencies. We want to be able to develop policies that are robust across all possible futures.

    Why is it a methodological guarantee?

    As previously, this characteristics of scenarios derives from those of the attributes of the variables. The attributes of a variable must be mutually exclusive. As a result, your scenarios will also be.

    If the experts use a proper methodology, then their scenarios will, automatically, be mutually exclusive.

    If their scenarios are not mutually exclusive, then it means that there is a serious flaw with their methodology. Actually, I cannot truly imagine a way to salvage such scenarios.

    At best this set of scenarios will help you think out of the box, and provide you with new ideas.
    It would, however, be dangerous to use exclusively this set of scenarios to guide strategy and policies.
    The potential for surprise is not truly as mitigated as it could have been.

    3- Are the scenarios dynamic?

    Scenarios, to be more easily actionable, i.e. to allow you to develop a proper set of responses and actions to handle coming changes, must respect the previous characteristics – exhaustivity and mutual exclusivity – and ideally should also be dynamic.

    Why does it matter to you?

    Scenarios are also there to help you identify crucial key points, where decisions are needed. In these cases, scenarios may develop into sub-scenarios.

    “A scenario is a story with plausible cause and effect links that connects a future condition with the present, while illustrating key decisions, events, and consequences throughout the narrative”.

    Glenn, Jerome C. and The Futures Group International, “Scenarios,”

    As a result, scenarios unfold as a story about the world, which is often presented as a narrative (see Scenarios: Improving the Impact of Foresight thanks to Biases). Stories and narratives are essentially dynamic.

    Why is it a methodological plus?

    Here we are less in the realm of a methodological necessity and guarantee. Dynamic scenarios enhance the actionability characteristics of scenarios.

    If your scenarios’ expert was able to point out causal dynamics, then this is a guarantee of his or her skill at scenarios building and knowledge and understanding of the issue at hand. It means that those who built the scenarios truly thought through them, stress-tested their understanding and endeavoured to explore as many areas as possible.

    If your set of scenarios does not explicitly show dynamics, even though this set of scenario may not be as actionable as hoped for, it may nonetheless, according to other answers, be used to guide strategy and policies.

    4- Are the scenarios on the same time horizon?

    In a valid set of scenarios, you should get scenarios that each depict the same period of time. The authors of the scenarios may choose to develop more or less this or that part, but, nonetheless, all timeframes must be covered for each scenario of your set of scenarios.

    Sometimes, you will be given scenarios that are not on the same “time plane”. This is not right.

    Why does it matter to you?

    If scenario A, for example, depicts a situation starting from now until the end of year 2, and scenario B depicts what happens between year 2 and year 4, and you are given only these two scenarios, then you have no way to know if you are given two scenarios… or just one.

    Scenario B may just be the continuation, in time, of scenario A.

    What you should get, in this example, is scenario A and scenario A1 (and probably A2), the last two portraying what is happening in the case of scenario A from year 2 to 4. You should also be given scenario B0 that tells the story of what is happening from now to year 2 and led to scenario B. This would be a proper set of scenarios time-wise.

    Why is it a methodological guarantee?

    It shows that your experts truly master both methodology and subject matter. They are able to articulate processes and causal links.

    Incidentally, this is why having a proper model for your issue is so important for scenario-building (see online course on modeling).

    If the scenarios are not all on the same timeframe, you have to be very careful before using this set of scenarios to develop strategy and policies.
    This set may be completely useless, or it can help you think out of the box, and provide you with new ideas.
    The potential for surprise is not as well mitigated as it could have been.

    5- Is there a likelihood estimate provided for each scenario?

    This means an evaluation of likelihood accompanies each of the scenarios of the set. As a result, you should know which scenario is more or less likely.

    We are here, of course, in the realm of estimates. Furthermore, these estimates will vary with time, with your decisions and your actions. Yet, it does matter that each scenario has an estimate of its likelihood.

    Why does it matter to you?

    Knowing if scenario A has a 80% chance of being actualised, scenario B has a 19% chance of being actualised and scenario C a 1% chance of occurring is a crucial information for you.

    It does not mean that you should disregard scenario C, especially if it is a high impact scenario. In that case, you should make sure you have hedged against this scenario, or developed policies that are robust enough across all scenarios.

    One of the rationale behind scenario-building is that it should help actors envisioning the future beyond “business as usual” trends. Thus, presenting all scenarios (including, if relevant, a “business as usual” one) with likelihoods that are spelled out will help actors considering all possibilities. With likelihoods, scenarios-builders do not have to hide a scenario – the “business as usual one” – because they fear that biases will lead users to discard other, less comfortable, scenarios, even though those are more likely. Thus, ethically, this is much better for everyone as scenarios-builders do not end up taking decisions for scenarios-users.

    As a user, you should always be aware of what is likely and unlikely. Knowing this will allow you to design proper responses, according to what you want to achieve. It may imply that you would need to deploy an immense amount of power to achieve an unlikely scenario, for example. Ultimately this is up to you to decide, and knowing what to expect is crucial for success.

    Finally, with probabilities, if ever you were offered a set of indicators for each of your scenario and sub-scenarios, then you could also use the scenarios for monitoring, for early warning and for steering policy. As a result, your scenarios would be even more useful and they would also last longer.

    If you are not given likelihoods for your scenarios, then to be able to use this set of scenarios to develop strategies and policies, you need to make sure these strategies and policies are robust across all scenarios.

    Without probabilities, a set of scenarios is less actionable than with probabilities.

    6- Did I provide the right means for the building of this set of scenarios?

    Here the question is about you and not about the set of scenarios you received.

    Scenarios-building is a demanding methodology. It demands “deep understanding and knowledge” of the issue at hand (Mietzner and Reger, 2005: 236). It also asks to master the methodology and to know how to apply it. As a result, it is also considered as “time-consuming” (Ibid.). Actually, obtaining not only valid but also good scenarios is an investment, as scenarios can – and should – be used over time. Scenarios are more than a consumer good.

    Thus, if ever you asked an expert or a team of experts, be they external or internal, to develop scenarios without giving them the means to do so in terms of resources (time and money), then it is highly likely that you will get bad scenarios.

    The conditions you set frame the outcome you obtain.

    Global Result and score

    If you have answered yes to each and every question above, your set of scenarios is most probably methodologically sound as well as actionable.

    Assuming the knowledge of and understanding on the subject matter is also good, then you can use it to develop strategies and policies.

    You should however not forget that foresight, what we do with scenarios, is not prediction. There is always a possibility for a black swan event, for example (see Taleb’s Black Swans: The End of Foresight? and Useful Rules for Strategic Foresight and Risk Management from Taleb’s The Black Swan).

    With this set of scenarios, nonetheless, you can be quite confident that, methodologically, you will mitigate as best as possible the risk for surprise.

    On the contrary, the lower the score the more wary you should be of your set of scenarios. Questions 1,2,4 (60 points all together) are the most important methodologically and negative answers there should make you very cautious indeed. Questions 3 and 5 (30 points) are necessary for scenarios being truly actionable.

    Some references

    Epstein, Joshua M. (2008). ‘Why Model?‘, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 11(4)12.

    Glenn, Jerome C. and The Futures Group International, “Scenarios,” The Millennium Project: Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0, Ed. Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. 2009, Ch 19.

    Ritchey, Tom “General Morphological Analysis as a
    Basic Scientific Modelling Method    “, Technological Forecasting & Social Change: Special Issue on General Morphological Analysis, 2018.

    Taylor, Charles, Alternative world scenarios for a new order of nations, US Army War College, 1993.

    COVID-19 Vaccinations, Hope or Mirage?

    (Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli
    Photo: torstensimon)

    The world has started a race for immunisation against the COVID-19. Vaccines are now perceived as the universal panacea, the miracle that will save us all from the pandemic. We shall, finally, be able to find back our old life. Are we right to hope? Or are we likely to discover it was a mirage?

    Our objective here is to estimate roughly when, considering current vaccination rates, the countries most advanced in terms of immunisation campaigns could reach herd immunity. In other words, when will our hopes become reality?

    First, we highlight that our hopes are grounded in reality because of the success of past vaccination campaigns. However, our perception of the timeframe necessary for vaccination success is likely distorted. Second, we highlight six major uncertainties we still face regarding the vaccination against the COVID-19. We use here a “red team” approach, i.e. we ask all questions, even or rather especially disruptive ones.



    Number of months needed to achieve herd immunity for COVID-19 – using daily vaccinations – 7 days rolling average 25/26 January 2021 – See below for a larger image – Data from: “Our world in data“

    Finally, we estimate how long selected countries, from the U.S. to Israel through Russia, China or the U.K., Germany and France, need to reach herd immunity at current daily vaccination rates. Results are very contrasted, and for many countries, the time to herd immunity must be counted in years rather than in months.

    This estimate tells us if it is realistic to hope or, on the contrary, if we are facing a mirage. Different strategies and planning will need to be designed accordingly.

    A hope grounded in reality

    Vaccination successes

      Certainly proper vaccines, those to which we are used and stemmed from the research of Jenner, Pasteur and Koch over the 18th and 19th century have done exactly what we hope. They saved humanity from some deadly diseases (Agnes Ullmann, “Louis Pasteur“, Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Jan. 2021).

      Vaccination eradicated smallpox (Edward A. Belongia and Allison L Naleway, “Smallpox vaccine: the good, the bad, and the ugly”, Clinical medicine & research vol. 1,2, 2003). Poliomyelitis is almost also a disease of the past. In 2020, the wild poliovirus type 1 only still affects two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, while type 2 and 3 are apparently eradicated (WHO/OMS Poliomyelitis (polio)).

      Thus, our hope is grounded in this vision of vaccines and immunisation and their real success.

      Eradication campaigns are long processes

      Our hope seems also, implicitly, to think that the return to normal will happen tomorrow. At worst, we think we shall move back to our old life within maybe six months.

      Yet, as far as eradication is concerned, decades were needed for the mass vaccinations’ campaigns achievements, not months.

      The modern vaccine against smallpox was developed in the 1950s and the first global eradication effort started in 1950. In 1966, smallpox still remained endemic in 33 countries (DA Henderson, “The eradication of smallpox“, Sci Am. 1976 Oct; 235(4):25-33). The WHO launched a new global effort in the early 1970s (Belongia and Naleway, Ibid.). The last case of smallpox occurred in 1977 in Somalia (Belongia and Naleway, Ibid.). Thus, it took 27 years to eradicate smallpox.

      The vaccine against polio was licensed in 1955, after a massive trial in the U.S. involving 1.3 million children in 1954 (Immunology and Vaccine-Preventable Diseases – Pink Book – Polio – U.S. CDC). In the U.S., immunisation started in 1955 (Ibid.). The last outbreak in America occurred in 1979 (Ibid.). By 1994 polio was eliminated from Western countries (Ibid.). Thus, in this case, and only for Western countries, it took 40 years to eliminate polio.

      Mass immunisation and eradication campaigns are not small matters but, on the contrary, complex endeavours (e.g. WHO “Aide Mémoire – To ensure the efficiency and safety of mass immunization campaigns with injectable vaccines“).

      Furthermore, up until the COVID-19 pandemic, to develop a new safe vaccine – i.e. also considering as much as possible longer term effects – demanded between 10 and 15 years (The History of Vaccines by The College of Physicians of Philadelphia: “Vaccine Development, Testing, and Regulation“, January 2018).

      Now, faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, a threat with completely novel characteristics, we want the disease to disappear very quickly. We want to go back to business as usual. So, we rush and we hope, regardless of reality. And we rush so much that we run the risk of reaching a mirage rather than salvation.

      Certainties and uncertainties

      Here, we shall consider the various major certainties and uncertainties we face regarding the vaccine. They constitute our framework.

      We set aside the critical question regarding the middle and long term safety of the vaccines. This question cannot be answered with certainty. Indeed, humanity does not have the temporal depth necessary to give such an answer. The precautionary principle should certainly have demanded that time be allowed to consider safety. The early twenty-first century globalised, financialized, and libertarian consumerist society chose otherwise.

      Certainty: Number of injections required

      Approved vaccines protect with various efficacy against severe forms of COVID-19, if the tested posology is respected (number of doses and time between two shots). Details on the various vaccines used at the start of 2021 can be found on various official websites, such as the WHO, the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

      In the estimate below, we shall not differentiate between vaccines according to efficacy. We shall consider the two doses required in the original posology. Indeed, all COVID-19 vaccines used at the start of 2021 demand two injections: Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Russian Sputnik V, Chinese CoronaVac (note that the latter shows mixed results, including a low 50.4% effectiveness, Smriti Mallapaty, “China COVID vaccine reports mixed results — what does that mean for the pandemic?“, Nature, 15 January 2021). Further studies should definitely include variations in terms of efficacy, according to the types of vaccine delivered.

      Uncertainties

      1/ Delay between required injections

      If the delay between the required two injections is increased, we do not know what can happen. We could only make hypotheses and scenarios, each with different likelihoods. Nothing may change regarding efficacy, but efficacy may also be lowered. Other less palatable scenarios can be imagined, according to which people may become more susceptible to other variants, or the delay may favour the occurence of variants.

      Here, we shall consider that the time required between two injections, as planned by the laboratory, is not stretched but respected.

      2/ It is likely that the vaccines do not stop contamination.

      We do not know with certainty if the vaccines stop infection. However, because it does not seem that most vaccines stop asymptomatic types of COVID-19, then it is likely that contamination will continue, even after vaccination (e.g. EMA, “COVID-19 : Le vaccin rend asymptomatique mais rend-il moins infectieux ?” Santélog, 4 January 2021).

      A study from Israel, which is massively vaccinating its population, gives us further indications, for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (Clalit study: decreased infection in the corona due to the vaccine. 13 January 2021; Elisabeth Mahase, “Covid-19: Reports from Israel suggest one dose of Pfizer vaccine could be less effective than expected“, BMJ 2021;372:n217). People over 60 who received one dose remained as susceptible to infections for 13 days. Then the likelihood to become infected dropped by 33% between day 14 and day 17. In other words, after one vaccine shot and after 13 days, the likelihood to become positive to the COVID-19 is 67% of what it was without vaccination. Thus, after one dose, the potential for contagion remains unchanged for almost two weeks, then remains very high compared with no vaccination.

      We do not have further indication about what happens after the second dose.

      Vaccines may reduce infection but, fundamentally, we do not yet know.

      Thus, for the time being, people who will have been vaccinated will need to go on wearing masks, and using protective social distanciation, at least until the famous herd immunity is reached.

      As a result, if your main interest is to go back to the global world we knew before the COVID-19 pandemic, you need to wonder when all countries in the world will reach herd immunity thanks to developed vaccines. Because, for the time being and considering current vaccines, before then there will be no return to “normal”.

      You may be more modest – as well as cynical – and only hope to see some countries, yours and these countries that are your major partners – to reach herd immunity. You would then start creating this international COVID-19 world with COVID-19 safe bubbles that we see possibly emerging (Helene Lavoix, “The emergence of a COVID-19 international order“, 15 June 2021). You may even change partners according to their sanitary situation, of course to a point, the point to which you need specific countries for various reasons.

      3/ Immunity

      We know more on immunity than we knew at the start of the pandemic in January 2020. According to a large study the British NHS carried out, people who have had the COVID-19 have a 83% lower risk of infection for at least 5 months and a 94% lower odds of symptomatic infection (Public Health England, Press release, “Past COVID-19 infection provides some immunity but people may still carry and transmit virus“, 14 January 2021; V Hall, et al., “… Large multi-centre prospective cohort study (the SIREN study), England: June to November 2020“, medRxiv 2021.01.13; Heidi Ledford, “COVID reinfections are unusual — but could still help the virus to spread“, Nature, 14 January 2021).

      However, the next stage of the study also shows that it is likely that the reinfected individuals can also continue infecting others.

      Unfortunately, we do not know if the immunity obtained with one variant of the virus protects from another variant, and if this varies according to variants.

      We may hope that the immunity induced by vaccines is better than natural immunity, but again this is an unknown.

      Thus, considering this still imperfect knowledge, if we want to stop or, more humbly, control the pandemic with certainty, we would need to obtain a herd immunity in 5 months. If a longer lasting immunity can be obtained, then the time to reach herd immunity can be lengthened.

      4/ Herd immunity and the SARS-CoV-2

      If we use the WHO definition,

      “‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.

      …Vaccines train our immune systems to create proteins that fight disease, known as ‘antibodies’, just as would happen when we are exposed to a disease but – crucially – vaccines work without making us sick. Vaccinated people are protected from getting the disease in question and passing on the pathogen, breaking any chains of transmission.”

      WHO, “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Herd immunity, lockdowns and COVID-19“, 31 December 2021

      Thus here, a critical unknown appears considering what we saw on immunity and contamination after vaccination. It would indeed appear that, for the COVID-19, neither natural immunity nor vaccines fully break the chain of transmission. The efficacy of the way the chain of transmission is stopped seems to be varying and complex.

      In other words, considering contamination is not stopped or imperfectly stopped by the vaccine, do we need to rephrase statement of the WHO according to which “We think it needs at least 60 to 70% of the population to have immunity to really break the chain of transmission”? Indeed, in the case of the SARS-CoV-2 the chain of transmission is not broken or imperfectly broken by the vaccines.

      If we contrast, for example with the vaccine against polio, here is what we read from the WHO website, contrasting between two types of vaccines, IPV and OPV:

      “Inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) … prevents infection, but it does not stop transmission of the virus….The oral polio vaccine (OPV)… After three doses of OPV, a person becomes immune for life and can no longer transmit the virus to others if exposed again. Thanks to this “gut immunity”, OPV is the only effective weapon to stop transmission of the poliovirus when an outbreak is detected. “

      WHO Europe, “Poliomyelitis (polio) and the vaccines used to eradicate it – questions and answers“, 8 April 2016

      IPV is increasingly used only in countries where eradication of polio has taken place (Ibid.).

      To come back to the COVID-19, the vaccines we develop are similar, everything being equal to the IPV. And thus not that good for outbreaks…

      Hence, is the way herd immunity is planned to be applied still valid? Can we apply the same objectives as thought?

      We shall still use the current approach to herd immunity in our rough assessment below but it is critical to think that a different approach may be sought.

      5/ Manufacturing and delivery

      Manufacturing and delivery problems, as well as logistical difficulties are a major uncertainty. This is all the more so that competing interests exist. For example, we may wonder if the American policy promoted by new President Biden, with first his pledge to administer 100 million shots in his first 100 days then his willingness to boost further vaccination in the U.S., did not have and will not have direct consequences on European delivery problems (e.g. Josh Wingrove and Mario Parker, “Biden Team to Buy 200 Million More Doses, Speed Up Vaccinations“, Bloomberg, 26 January 2021; Raf Casert, “EU demands that vaccine makers honor their commitments“, AP, 25 January 2021).

      Manufacturing and delivery challenges are partly included in the current daily rates of vaccination we use below. Further detailed research would, of course, be needed to improve estimates, to finely identify specific chokepoints and thus to design efficient strategies and vaccination campaigns.

      6/ Vaccines and SARS-CoV-2 variants

      Variants and Vaccines efficacy

      Some of the vaccines currently injected may not be efficient or as efficient as expected against some variants.

      It would seem that the UK variant – known as 20B/501Y.V1, VOC 202012/01, or B.1.1.7 lineage (CDC) does not question the current vaccines, to the least those by Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca. However these tests have been carried out mainly in vitro.

      Things look less good for the South African variant – 20C/501Y.V2 or B.1.351 lineage (CDC). For example, Moderna, after in vitro tests, found that “The samples’ neutralizing antibodies were … only about one-fifth to one-tenth as effective at neutralizing 501YV.2” (Nature News, “COVID research updates: Moderna vaccine vanquishes viral variants“, 26 January 2021 update).

      We do not know for the Brazilian variants – one, known as P.1 (CDC), while another variant could exist too.

      Another study, carried out by the Rockefeller University and not by vaccines manufacturers, looking at main vaccines and various possible mutations found that “Some of these neutralizing antibodies [produced after injections] … were only one-third as effective at blocking the mutated variants” (Ibid., 21 January 2021 update).

      In the middle of these uncertainties, what we know is that if three identified and challenging variants could emerge, then others will too. We must thus include these emergence in the way we plan ahead. For example, the speed with which variants appear and become prevalent would be a key data to obtain for immunisation campaigns. According to the ECDC, the UK and South African variants needed between 1 and 4 months to spread and become prevalent (Risk related to the spread of new SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern in the EU/EEA – first update, 21 January 2021). But how often will how many variants appear per year and where?

      Furthermore, we may wonder if the way and the speed with which the current vaccines will be injected within the population could possibly favour new variations of the SARS-CoV2. We are here in the classical action-reaction dynamic.

      Multiple vaccines injections?

      If new versions of the vaccines are necessary against new variants, we do not know what could happen to the immune system of people having received the “old” vaccines. Can they receive the new vaccine? Will it be dangerous? Will it be efficient? What could be the long term side-effect? How many different injections and how often can be safely handled by people’s systems?

      Increased manufacturing challenges

      Companies developing ARN messenger vaccines may assert that they can change their formula rapidly to adapt to the new variants if need be. Nonetheless, this means throwing away doses already produced and starting manufacturing everything from the start. The manufacturing challenges are thus heightened.

      Manufacturing boosters, as Moderna suggested may be a way forward, but only if this is a sufficiently efficient approach (Nature, 26 January, Ibid).

      How long to obtain herd immunity?

      Now we have all these uncertainties in mind, let us look at the time needed to vaccinate the population of various countries to obtain herd immunity.

      Using “Our world in data: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations“, we obtained the number of months that would be needed to reach herd immunity, considering cumulated vaccinations and current daily rates of vaccination. We look at three hypotheses for herd immunity: 70%, 75% and 80%, to consider potential changes stemming from variants.

      Number of months needed to achieve herd immunity for COVID-19 – using daily vaccinations – 7 days rolling average 25/26 January 2021 – Data from: “Our world in data: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations“

      Incidentally, as is obvious from the chart above, the sheer size of population matters. The countries faring the best are also those with a small or smaller population, apart from the U.K. and the U.S.. The price the world must possibly pay to see the U.S. being able to vaccinate its population relatively rapidly needs however to be pondered.

      Nonetheless, at current rates, i.e. assuming there is no supply problems, and considering all the uncertainties above, only Israel and the U.A.E. can reach herd immunity within 6 months. The U.K. will have to wait between 8 an 10 months, while the U.S. will need between 13 and 16 months to reach herd immunity. This is easier to see on the following figure enlarged to focus on 24 months only.

      Number of months needed to achieve herd immunity for COVID-19 – using daily vaccinations – 7 days rolling average 25/26 January 2021 – with a focus on 24 months – Data from: “Our world in data: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations“

      If ever immunity were to drop after 6 months, or if a new variant defeating current vaccines were to appear within 6 months from the start of the vaccination campaign, then, at current vaccination rates, all countries apart from Israel and the U.A.E. would see their efforts reduced to naught. They most probably would have to restart everything without have time for respite. Those countries that would have reached immunity would have had some time with a normal life, until they too had to start vaccinating everyone.

      Furthermore, it is likely that to see variants stop emerging, then we would need to stop contagion globally and see herd immunity taking place worldwide. We are obviously even further away from this goal. Thus, most probably, new variants will go on emerging. We are thus in a vicious circle where inability to stop contagion increases the likelihood to see variants appearing, which, in turn lowers our ability to stop contagion.

      If disrupting variants were to appear every six months, then daily vaccination rates would have to be greatly increased to reach herd immunity for one variant.

      If we do not find vaccines that stop contagion, and if new variants appear every six months, then we may find ourselves in the case shown in the figure below. We may have to vaccinate a staggering amount of people daily forever, or rather until a better solution is found.


      Number of people to vaccinate per day forever to reach herd immunity for the COVID-19 for a 6 months immunity – Data from: “Our world in data: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations“

      The cost to societies, just in terms of vaccines, would be considerable. The logistics and organisation needed may also involve deep changes.

      It would thus seem that, with the current approach, considering the SARS-CoV2 variants, the specificities of the vaccines available, and all the known uncertainties, we may not be close to find our old life back.

      If we do not want our hopes dissolving into a mirage, we need to further innovate strategically and supplement vaccination with other measures, waiting for better and more efficient vaccines to be found.

      Further detailed reference

      V Hall, S Foulkes, A Charlett, A Atti, EJM Monk, R Simmons, E Wellington, MJ Cole, A Saei, B Oguti, K Munro, S Wallace, PD Kirwan, M Shrotri, A Vusirikala, S Rokadiya, M Kall, M Zambon, M Ramsay, T Brooks, SIREN Study Group, CS Brown, MA Chand, S Hopkins, “Do antibody positive healthcare workers have lower SARS-CoV-2 infection rates than antibody negative healthcare workers? Large multi-centre prospective cohort study (the SIREN study), England: June to November 2020“, medRxiv 2021.01.13.21249642; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.13.21249642

      Featured image: Design by Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli – Photo by torstensimon, Pixabay – Public Domain.

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