In February 2019, during the Saudi Arabia-China economic forum, the two countries signed for more than 28 billion dollars deals (“Saudi-Chinese Investment Forum Signs 35 Deals During Crown Prince’s Beijing Visit”, Ashark Al Awsat, 22 February, 2019). These gigantic deals are part of the growing Saudi-China relationship. They are the economic and political continuation of …
Continue reading “Saudi Arabia and the Chinese Belt and Road: the Great Convergence”
(Rewritten and revised edition) Horizon scanning and monitoring for early warning are part of the family of activities used to foresee the future, anticipate uncertainty and manage risks. Their practice is crucial for successful strategic foresight and warning, risk management, futurism or any anticipatory activity. While monitoring is a generic and common term used for …
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Risk management is codified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It is aimed at any organisation concerned with risk, be it public or private (Sandrine Tranchard, “The new ISO 31000 keeps risk management simple“, ISO News, 15 Feb 2018). Its forebear is actuarial science, i.e. methodologies to assess risk in insurance and finance (e.g. …
Continue reading “When Risk Management Meets Strategic Foresight and Warning”
Horizon scanning on Quantum Information Sciences and technologies and their use. As a result we publish the Quantum Times, a daily scan and news brief on everything related to the emerging Quantum world. The Quantum Times is updated daily before 9:00 ECT. You can access it here Being informed and keeping up with what is …
From the corporate world to governments, we seek to escape uncertainty and surprises. This is crucial to survive and thrive. It is also necessary for the protection from threats, dangers and risks. As a whole and generally, our abilities – if not willingness – to identify threats has improved with experience and practice. Notably, we became relatively efficient in …
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Since 2017, quantum information and technology science (QIS), and especially quantum computing, are quickly emerging as central in Hollywood and its movies, TV series and novels. Their scenarii emphasise the link between quantum power and national security situations. Hollywood and the U.S Strategic Debate This is a crucial indication, considering that the relation between the …
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Beyond hype and hatred, this article focuses on the way Artificial Intelligence (AI) – actually Deep Learning – is integrated in reality, through sensor and actuator.* Operationalisation demands to develop a different way to look at AI. The resulting understanding allows highlighting the importance of sensor and actuator, the twin interface between AI and its …
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Strategic Foresight and Warning (SF&W) is at once process and analysis. By SF&W analysis we mean all methodologies and related issues allowing for the development of an understanding grounded in reality that will generate best anticipatory products, useful to decision-makers and policy-makers for carrying out their mission (to find your way within the myriad of labels …
The purpose of this article is to define a framework within which the Race to Quantum can be understood, to present an adequate tool to handle the multiple characteristics of this race, namely dynamic mapping – for mathematicians dynamic graphs – and to uncover parts of the dynamic map thus achieved as example of what is happening and what can be done to understand. The mapping presented here progressively includes the EU and the Netherlands, Germany, the U.S., China, then, moving to private actors, IBM and Vision Fund. read more…
On 3 December 2018, i.e. two days before the opening of the 2018 UN Climate Change Conference – its 24th meeting (COP 24), in Katowice, at the very heart of Poland coal country, Jair Bolsonaro, the new president of Brazil, announced that his country would not organize the following round of negotiations, i.e the COP …
Continue reading “Understanding (or not) the Nature of Climate Change as a Planetary Threat”
