Sunday, December 24, 2023 at 6:00PM This is my old site.
The site for the book is https://www.americasnewmap.com
The site for my ongoing writing is on Substack is thomaspmbarnett.substack.com
Thursday, March 9, 2023 at 8:28AM The book, with its fabulous illustrations (52) and data visualizations (24) targets a non-expert and expert audience alike.
Visit the website americasnewmap.com
Pre-order the book now at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
GLOBALIZATION'S THROUGHLINES: RESTORING US GLOBAL LEADERSHIP IN A TURBULENT ERA <PREFACE>
Frankenstein’s Monster: Coming to Grips with Our Most Powerful Creation <THROUGHLINE ONE>
Climate Changes Everything: A Horizontal World Made Vertical <THROUGHLINE TWO>
Destiny’s Child: How Demographics Determine Globalization’s Winners, Losers, and Future <THROUGHLINE THREE>
Superpower Brand Wars: The Global Middle Seeks Protection from the Future <THROUGHLINE FOUR>
Globalization’s Consolidation Is Hemispheric Integration: America’s Goal of Stable Multipolarity Preordained This Era <THROUGHLINE FIVE>
The West Is the Best: Our Hemisphere Is Advantageously Situated for What Comes Next <THROUGHLINE SIX>
The Americanist Manifesto: Summoning the Vision and Courage to Remap Our Hemisphere’s Indivisible Future <THROUGHLINE SEVEN>
AN AMERICAS-FIRST GRAND STRATEGY: CROWDSOURCING THE RIGHT STORY, CHOOSING THE RIGHT PATHS <CODA>
I could say that America is at a turning point, but that would disguise a darker truth—namely, that we are at a turning-back point. Too many of us choose to resist the future and escape the present by retreating into the past. This hardly makes us unique. Many economic powers facing decline reject reinvention, instead embracing the fantasy of recapturing lost greatness by scapegoating “evil” internal forces deemed responsible for this “treasonous” outcome. And if democracy is hollowed out by this viciousness? That just tees up the authoritarian reboot.
The politically inexpedient truth is this: America has spent the last seven decades systematically promoting a liberal international trade order whose cross-border flows of goods, services, technologies, investment, migrants, information, and entertainment have methodically integrated the world’s major economies, creating profound levels of interdependence among nations, peoples, and cultures—what we now call globalization (Throughline One). Our goal was simple: preventing world wars through increasingly inclusive economic advance. America was fantastically successful in this world-shaping grand strategy, globally creating more wealth and reducing more poverty across those seven decades than had occurred in the previous five centuries.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a new world order emerged with America as sole superpower, a situation that naturally invited Washington’s overreach on its unilateral policing of regional crises. Our nation wisely remedied that imbalance by encouraging the peaceful rise of other great powers—most notably China. In the meantime, Washington vigorously wielded its unmatched power, toppling nefarious dictators, disrupting transnational terror networks, and radically speeding up globalization’s advance. When the Great Recession hit in 2008, our citizenry correctly perceived that America’s success in encouraging the rise of numerous economic powers had significantly diminished our ability to steer global developments. At this point, China and other rising economies helped sustain globalization’s transformation into an increasingly digitalized phenomenon defined less by the flow of goods than by services and content, giving lie to simplistic notions of de-globalization.
Even in the post–Cold War era, America’s grand strategy remained phenomenally successful, enabling the emergence of a majority global middle class long thought impossible. Now, because the bulk of humanity spends a growing share of its income on things beyond the bare necessities, the world enters an age of superabundance matched by super-consumption. That unprecedented achievement has turbo-charged three global dynamics that, in their daunting combination, caused Americans to recoil from our glorious creation (globalization) and demonize it as the cause of all our problems.
There is no denying globalization’s role in spiking these global crises, but we must reject the hindsight that their emergence invalidates America’s strategy of encouraging globalization’s poverty-eradicating advance. We made the world an infinitely better place that now faces new challenges. Who can argue that humanity’s economic betterment should have been denied—despite these costs?
The first of these tectonic forces set into motion by skyrocketing global consumption is accelerating climate change (Throughline Two), which, like globalization, began reshaping the planet soon after America took it upon itself to steer the world’s development following two world wars. Climate change now remaps the planet, tragically rendering much of Middle Earth—my term for the lower latitudes extending 30 degrees north and south of the equator—systematically unable to sustain, without outside assistance, their exploding populations, national economies, and ultimately their political systems. Climate change is also creating enormous new areas of economic opportunity across the North. Accommodating this vast poleward transfer of natural wealth—to include all manner of species and peoples—will test humanity’s ingenuity and empathy like no global dynamic before it.
The second force is the global demographic transition (Throughline Three) stunningly accelerated by globalization’s rapid integration of Asia, home to over half of humanity. Our species will collectively age across this century in a manner totally at odds with both nature and human history: the old surpassing the young in nation after nation. That demographic transformation will factor heavily in the superpower struggles now unfolding. Youth-bulging powers tend to be warlike and unstable (recall America’s violent 1960s), while elderly societies retreat into nostalgia and social rigidity (see Japan and Italy today). Even nations achieving a large middle class succumb to virulent bursts of nationalism (China and India already). The good news? There are ways to avoid extreme aging, and America is supremely endowed with such capacity. We just need a bigger Union and a new map to that destination.
The third of these global forces arises in how the first two dynamics—climate change and demographic transformation—will collide across this century (Throughline Four). That collision will dramatically redefine Middle Earth’s economic needs and political priorities, and the superpowers (US, European Union [EU], China, India, Russia) that most effectively meet those needs and address those priorities will see their global influence radically expand. In responding to Middle Earth’s increasingly dire plight, these five powers will invariably compete in propagating new models of North-South security, economic, and political integration. Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping have openly voiced such ambitions, imagining their own new maps. India’s minister of external affairs has declared his nation’s duty to serve as champion of the Global South on climate change and economic development. Washington, swept up in its political infighting, seems dimly aware of a competition already begun.
America’s economic future is on the line here: Much of the world’s consumer growth will be concentrated across Middle Earth, meaning the race to integrate North and South will simultaneously constitute a superpower brand war—an avowedly ideological competition to prove which economic model of trade and development best preserves and expands the global middle class amidst climate change’s destabilizing impact. Capturing the political allegiance of that ascendant middle class will determine which superpower’s definition of global stability reigns supreme in the decades ahead. If America wants to possess both power and influence in this remapped future, it cannot sit out this contest obsessively guarding its borders.
We have long framed superpower competition as which side (East or West) captures more of the other side’s players. In the future, we will define it as which Northern power most comprehensively integrates its respective South—ameliorating its climate-induced decay and preventing its virtual absorption by competitors. This new superpower competition will define our era, either seeding a second American Century or launching some other (Chinese? Indian?). No matter which superpowers prevail, regional and hemispheric integration will flourish (Throughline Five). This tightening of supply chains represents less a de-globalization than an optimization of material trade befitting the rise of multiple competing consumer blocs across the global economy. A generation ago, Asia manufactured goods for the rest of the world. Now, it manufactures largely for itself. On its own, this positive development has triggered a remapping of global value chains—an absolute good generating regional trade efficiencies. In this next iteration of globalization, those superpowers accumulating the most demand power will rule global consumer tastes in a way America once did—and now faces losing.
In this century, superpowers will prevail not according to the millions they field as lethal soldiers but the billions they attract as loyal subscribers. Size matters in this struggle to shape globalization’s future, which means America will be disadvantaged compared to far more populous China and India. These United States will be greatly incentivized to grow their ranks—as they have long done—by integrating hemispheric neighbors. By scaling its demand power, a once-again expanding American Union can constitute an economic center of gravity of equal or superior attractiveness to the global middle class whose brand loyalty we seek.
Rest assured, come midcentury, we will all be living in somebody’s world. I simply prefer our map over China’s for reasons I will make eminently clear.
To our great good fortune, America’s position as the dominant economic power of the Western Hemisphere clearly advantages us for the North-South integration to come (Throughline Six). Our true West enjoys several natural resource advantages over the far more crowded, diverse, and historically conflicted Eastern Hemisphere. The Americas also share culture and civilization worth defending on their own merits. By capitalizing on these advantages, America stands to benefit environmentally by managing climate change’s harsh equatorial impact, as well as economically by adding Latin America’s middle-class consumer power to that of North America. That larger union, however achieved, will then be able to extend its rule-setting power to significant portions of the Eastern Hemisphere, merging with regions not wholly lost to China or India’s economic orbits. For now, consider the entire board in play.
I understand why any call for hemispheric integration feels an inconceivable reach from where we stand domestically today, but our current bout of nativism and xenophobia highlights the powerful pull of this very path (Throughline Seven). In other words, what we now fear most is that which we sense is inevitable. Like comedy (tragedy plus distance), conceivability emerges with enough pain and time. With Central America’s environmental refugees already stressing our southern border, America is just beginning to feel Latin America’s pain on climate change.
I likewise understand the instinct to wish away the problem of climate refugees by insisting that technological solutions can spare us this path, but this book purposefully focuses on adaptation versus any such direct responses, which I stipulate will be made and will succeed to some extent—just not fast enough to forestall the global dynamics explored here.
Thankfully, we do not start from scratch. After all, America started out as a baker’s dozen of independent colonies. Today, hemispheric integration is likewise achievable through mechanisms and approaches already employed by both the EU in the political realm and China in the economic realm. Both carefully crafted integration schemes ultimately target security integration—the ability of superpowers to defend and optimally police their chosen spheres of influence. Meanwhile, America, lost to its intergenerational culture wars, satisfies itself with limp efforts to revitalize and extend military alliances focused on containing Chinese expansionism—a defensive and reactionary strategy more appropriate to retrograde Russia than the forward-leaning, world-shaping superpower we have long been.
Americans are modern globalization’s original networkers, wiring the world in our wake. By nature, we are a revolutionary force offering nations increased connectivity to all manner of economic opportunity and disruptive content. China and Russia, by comparison, offer control—namely, a model and means for national governments to surveil their growing middle-class ranks, restrict their access to disruptive content, and aggressively thwart their inconvenient tendency toward democracy.
This is where our national infighting becomes self-destructive: the world is watching how America navigates a future where our leadership is not a given, nor our ideals naturally preeminent. We witness Americans increasingly resenting—even as we increasingly resemble—a globalization originally made in our image but now no longer with our likeness. We ran this show for decades, but our success in creating this world cost us control over it—by design. Now, with climate change fueling the poleward movement of all life, globalization’s churning of races, species, and microbes lies beyond anyone’s control.
That intimidating reality transforms America’s global leadership while reaffirming its enduring source. Our nation has been—and always will be—a petri dish of globalization’s evolution. These United States remain the world’s source code for both integration (our immigrant nation’s fabled melting-pot dynamic) and disintegration (our institutional racism and chronic culture wars). We are globalization-in-miniature—its de facto proof of concept. America does not take its political cues from the likes of Hungary.
Americans do not endure history; we make it. This is our true superpower: reliably re-setting our internal rules in response to history’s punishing waves of change, and then spreading those new and better rules across the world. American grand strategy does not merely confront rivals but shapes a global environment that tames their—and our—worst impulses. We are the best thing to ever happen to our world.
Russia and China aggressively market their competing rulesets, exploiting vulnerable trade partners who distrust and dislike them. Yet both regimes, as internally brittle as they are, currently outpace America’s half-hearted attempts at global leadership. How is this so? It is because the stories we now tell of globalization do not envision a happy ending, much less a way ahead. No surprise there: when creators abandon their creation, monsters abound.
My task here is to propose that happy ending, one avowedly cast from an American perspective. Your task, as reader, is to maintain an open mind as to its feasibility and desirability. If, as our politicians love to proclaim, America’s best days lie ahead, then we citizens cannot merely await that future but must craft its story lines—both foreign and domestic. Given our truly revolutionary achievements, we must not allow our currently flat trajectory to determine the upper bounds of our ingenuity and ambition, both of which the world desperately needs now.
As such, this book is all about unearthing globalization’s throughlines and their constituent threads, operationalizing—through storytelling—that navigational knowledge across America’s political leadership, business community, and citizenry. Throughlines are those persistent national and global drivers that Americans will confront, balance, and trade off as we manage the national and global challenges laid out here. Think of them as history’s guardrails forcing us down a plausible range of pathways—certain inevitabilities that compel us to consider some version of the inconceivables we must in years ahead embrace. As for the connecting threads parsed within each throughline, consider them our protagonist’s inner dialogue about the fork-in-the-road decisions lying before us. Now, more than ever, the world needs America to stay in character—my overriding purpose in writing this book.
Let our storytelling begin, for therein we discover the contours of America’s new map.
Thursday, March 9, 2023 at 8:10AM 
Find the LinkedIn post announcing my joining Throughline here.
I could not be more grateful and excited for this opportunity.
Thursday, October 20, 2022 at 11:55AM Just settled on the title with publisher BenBella.
It will come out in Sept of 2023.
Will be about 55,000 words with 50 or so illustrations (hand-drawn) and about two dozen data diagrams.
Monday, January 17, 2022 at 3:11PM Collaborating with a design/strategy firm out of DC.
Almost done with the book proposal now.
Looking at about 80,000 words with custom illustrations (think AlphaChimp-style) and sophisticated data diagrams.
Tentative title is "America's New Map," but initial titles rarely survive the publication process.
As for why it took my so long to write another book? I simply needed down time and think time to accumulate enough material for one. I was never good at commenting on current events and found that to be a mind-drain, especially during the Trump years (What point to be the 1,342nd tweet to point out something as stupid or disastrous?).
But I am VERY excited to be moving again now.
Tuesday, November 2, 2021 at 11:26AM 
I’m a professional writer with over 500 publications spread over four decades, and yet, in this digital age, I can’t get my hands on electronic copies of probably 90 percent of them. All of them were originally created in digital form, but many found publication solely in print while others now live behind firewalls. I tried my darnedest to keep electronic copies of them all, but just try maintaining that kluged database over a dozen or so computers I’ve had over the years, the conflicting operating systems, the various websites, the hard drives that failed, and the file versions or programs that are no longer supported or even exist. Yes, I’m plenty grateful the cloud came along in my middle years, but even that is frankly nothing more than another file cabinet that’s largely unsearchable – at least in the ways I’d like to be able to manipulate it.
In many ways, my online blog has served as my primary professional memory. It’s where I’ve recorded just about everything I’ve ever written, and it’s crudely searchable. But it’s at best a pointer system, as in, look over here for that article you’re trying to remember! I can’t easily compile, for example, the hundreds or even thousands of times I’ve written something about China, the internet, the Defense Department, or really anything. Frankly, I am often reduced to Googling myself to find that one passage that I want to review and maybe update/repurpose in something new that I’m working on.
Frustrating, right?
Then realize that the vast majority of my writings were never published. They were filed away in all manner of proprietary systems. I’m talking about thousands of memos and reports and notes – often just to myself. Toss in the 15,000 blog posts and probably the same number of relevant and useful emails (heck, probably several times more), and you come to realize that, for someone in the writing business, I’ve produced a vast quantity of material – truly a uniquely useful knowledge base, to me at least – that I don’t really have that much access to, much less the ability to leverage and build upon.
Like a lot of writers, I want what I’m working on right now to be the best thing I’ve ever written, so I’m naturally wary of digging into my past too much – and yet, living and working in a world of Big Data has sensitized me to the notion that all content is pretty much an extension and synthesis of what’s gone before. This is my professional body of knowledge floating out there in the ether and I should be able to mine it – at will!
So, imagine that capability.
Imagine a cloud database that you have diligently fed over the course of your professional life: every email, every document, every article, every everything. You just always CC’d to it – within the law and your contractual obligations, mind you – a copy of everything you ever penned. It is your database, accessible to only you (or those you might wish to collaborate with) and always there for you to tap.
Say I need to write something on Iran and I know I’ve mentioned or described that state maybe thousands of times over the decades. I go to my personal cloud-situated knowledge base and type in the term on my content-review interface, along with a contextualizing pair of other terms to narrow down my search (e.g., nuclear weapons, terrorism). Seconds later I’m looking at scores of hits spread out over the past X years – stuff I forgot long ago, or no longer adhere to, or still adhere to but need to update.
So now I’m cherry picking the best bits by simply clicking and dragging pieces of text – the vast majority of which has already been edited to a hard polish – and within minutes I’ve compiled a career’s worth of professional knowledge (along with the citations) that jump-starts my current writing project on Iran.
What would I give for that convenience, speed, reach, and recollection? Like most professional writers, I’m pretty good at synthesizing, repurposing, updating, and extending existing content – except now I’m doing it at ludicrous speed, mining material that I inherently know and trust. So yeah, that would be worth something to me.
Well, that’s what my new company, Riverscape Software, is building and testing right now: a cloud-based document generator with dedicated document repository. Those are two of several modules in a SaaS designed to super-empower small businesses operating in the increasingly sped-up world of Federal contracting, where government-wide Indefinite Duration, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicles have transformed the public tendering landscape into a never-ending torrent of Task Order Requests (TORs) to which all firms – big and small – must reply at high speed with highly complex proposal volumes.
Riverscape Software will launch our SaaS, dubbed InfoSquirrelTM, in early 2022. It’s currently being field tested by a top-20 research university and one of its extension services as they collectively look to upgrade their capacity to respond to government solicitations – particularly grant proposals.
Meanwhile, we wanted to start an informal dialogue with what we believe to be a rather large market for this SaaS and/or its individual modules – like the document generator described in this post. As Riverscape Software’s Director of Strategic Communications, I just wanted to start this conversation with a writer’s viewpoint on what is – to me at least – the most exciting part of InfoSquirrelTM – namely, its ability to super-empower authors who, like me, typically operate under tight deadlines to produce large amounts of professionally complex content.
This is admittedly a bit of a product tease, but I wanted to start small. Other posts will follow in the weeks ahead. Please reach out to me (thomas.barnett@riverscapesoftware.com) with any reactions, thoughts, or interest. We know we’re onto something here, because we’ve spent the last year using InfoSquirrelTM to increase our proposal submissions 8-fold(!) over the past two years. But to be honest, we are just scratching the surface of what the entire InfoSquirrelTM module suite will ultimately be used for, so we’re looking for fellow-travelers on this fascinating journey of discovery.
Thursday, September 2, 2021 at 8:18PM 
Delivered 31 July 2021 at Immaculate Conception Parish, Boscobel Wisconsin.
On behalf of my family, I want to thank you all for joining us here to celebrate Colleen Ann Clifford Barnett. This space is - without a doubt - the spiritual center of gravity for our family, and you, her family and friends, are all she would have asked for today.
Our mother was born in Green Bay and grew up as Packer royalty thanks to her father’s seminal role in that franchise. The Packers were everything to Mom and, on that basis, remain everything to her family.
An example: my wife Vonne and I switched faiths for a time, during which we baptized our second child Kevin as Episcopalian. Mom attended but wept openly during the entire ceremony. On the way out she fiercely hugged me and declared, “It could have been worse, Thomas."
"How?" I said.
She replied, "You could have become a Bears fan.”
Colleen Clifford met and fell in love with John Barnett, her husband of more than 50 years, at the University of Wisconsin law school. Upon their marriage, she left law school – hold that thought – and moved with John to Boscobel.
Colleen bore John 9 babies in 15 years – a testament to her love of children, physical endurance, and, as she liked to brag over the years, her profoundly loving relationship with our Father.
Mom was a fiercely protective parent, and her feats of strength were legend within our family. Once, during a hot summer mass in this church, we were sitting in the last row to accommodate Mom’s weakened state – as she had just been released from the hospital following surgery. Our sister Maggie, feeling dizzy from the heat, got up to go to the bathroom. On her way, she bumped into the holy water tank, alerting Mom, who immediately vaulted over the pew and caught Maggie before she hit the ground!
As Colleen’s last child entered grade school here, she joined Grant County’s social services department, where she helped establish many important programs that persist to this day.
Retiring at 62, our mother was re-admitted to the UW law school, becoming a genuine celebrity among her classmates. There was a longtime UW law professor who – as legend had it - had never been bested by any student in a mock cross-examination – until Colleen.
Now imagine being 19 years old and entering our living room at midnight with … something … on your breath – only to see Mom squinting at you from her recliner. Like that professor, you never really had a chance.
After law school, Colleen spent a decade working as a lawyer, divorce mediator, and instructor at UW Richland Center.
If that wasn’t enough, Mom began her writing career in her seventies, methodically authoring the definitive three-volume encyclopedia of leading women characters in mystery fiction – triggering her celebrity within that literary circle, to include nominations for industry awards and presentations at national conventions.
Mom had an incredible drive and boundless curiosity – all of which she imparted to her children and this community by serving on boards, commissions, and councils.
Mom was brilliant at organizing things and people, setting goals, and motivating action. "Make your life an adventure," she would tell us. "Never regret your failures, for they are the making of you."
True to form, Mom constantly experimented as a parent, making us in the process
An antique cow bell called us home for dinner, on time and salivating like Pavlov's dogs.
Reading lights clipped to our beds made us all avid readers.
Our childhood was a never-ending series of challenges, competitions, and tests. I was introduced to public speaking well before kindergarten, thanks to Mom’s question of the day at our dinner table each night. The Barnett kids had to speech for their supper.
Tie your shoes for the first time? $5 from Mom.
Ride your bike - no training wheels - around the block without stopping? Another $5.
Let's be honest here: a lot of Mom's schemes were thinly devised efforts to get us kids out of the house. Her favorite way to dismiss us was to bark, "Now get out of here!"
When our brothers - first Andrew, then Jim, ultimately Ted - were diagnosed with dyslexia, thanks to Mom's persistence at a time before learning disabilities were even recognized, she had numerous experimental devices built to exercise their hand-eye coordination. Mom made those drills seem so cool that neighbor kids would line up to do them. To this day I brag about almost being dyslexic – I was this close to getting that badge!
Mary Poppins had nothing on Mom.
After Dad died, Mom left Boscobel to live with our sister Maggie in St Paul. There, she became in-house grandma to Maggie’s daughter Ally.
That transition softened up Mom quite a bit, but she was still Mom. Every year I’d get this gloriously worded birthday card: you are the best son in the world, and so on. Then I’d glance down and see, in her handwriting: “Don’t let it go to your head! …. Love, Mom.”
We'd ask Mom, "Who's your favorite child?" She'd reply, "The one who needs me most right now" - a promise she always kept.
It has been an incredible privilege to have Colleen in our lives all those 95 years – a blessing beyond calculation.
And so, I ask for your continued prayers – not for Mom and her soul; trust me, God skipped that cross – but for whatever you hold most dear and for our world at large. Nobody believed more in prayer than Colleen.
Every child grows up thinking that the world is just like their family.
All I can say, in conclusion, about Colleen Ann Clifford Barnett, is that she left her 7 surviving children – and by extension her two dozen grand and great-grandchildren – a wondrous, beautiful, adventure-filled world where parents live for children, marriage is for life, and love is forever.
All this ... because two people fell in love.
Mom, thanks for everything.
Dad, she's all yours.
Friday, August 27, 2021 at 1:07PM Kagan has consistently been the best analyst on the Global War on Terror.
Find his lengthy WAPO op-ed here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/26/robert-kagan-afghanistan-americans-forget
Nothing for me to add, except to highlight finall three grafs:
In fact, the “war on terror” has been successful — astoundingly so. If you had told anyone after 9/11 that there would not be another major attack on the U.S. homeland for 20 years, few would have believed it possible. The prevailing wisdom at the time was that not only would there be other attacks, but they would be more severe. In 2004, Harvard’s premier foreign policy expert, Graham Allison, predicted that it was “more likely than not” that terrorists would explode a nuclear weapon in the United States in the coming decade. What former Obama and current Biden officials Rob Malley and Jon Finer observed three years ago remains true today: “No group or individual has been able to repeat anything close to the devastating scale of the 9/11 attacks in the United States or against U.S. citizens abroad, owing to the remarkable efforts of U.S. authorities, who have disrupted myriad active plots and demolished many terrorist cells and organizations.”
That this fact is rarely noted as Americans argue about Afghanistan is remarkable. Does anyone think these efforts would have been as successful if after 9/11 the United States had left the Taliban and al-Qaeda in place for all these years? And it is interesting that so many Americans now believe the price has been too high. As often happens, the fact that the United States hasn’t been hit again tends to reinforce the idea that there never was a serious threat to begin with, certainly not serious enough to warrant paying such a price. But this is again the difference between living history forward and judging history backward. If someone had told Americans after 9/11 that they could go two decades without another successful attack but that it would cost 4,000 American lives and $1 trillion, as well as tens of thousands of Afghan lives, would they have rejected it as too high? Likely not.
When Americans went to war in 2001, most believed that the dangers of inaction had become too great, that threats of both international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction were growing, and that serious efforts had to be made to address them. Today, many Americans increasingly believe that those earlier perceptions were mistaken or perhaps even manufactured. With America’s departure from Afghanistan, we may begin to learn who was more right.
Sunday, August 22, 2021 at 12:03PM Entitled "Biden Pulled Troops Out of Afghanistan. He Didn't End the 'Forever War': Presidents since George W. Bush have fashioned a military strategy that knows no borders - and isn't dependent on boots on the ground"
Author is Samuel Moyn, Yale prof. Found here.
Years ago in The Pentagon's New Map I wrote that the "boys are never coming home."
And they still aren't.
Yes, their numbers will be much smaller because we'll fight very differently than in the past. We started the Global War on Terror with a Leviathan force but we're continuing it - forever - with the SysAdmin force that does not wage war on states but on individuals - the reality of US "war" going all the way to Noriega and Panama in the late 1980s.
That reality remains no matter how much we fantasize about high-tech wars with China - a total chimera for which we will still prepare (and waste untold sums - but not all) even as we continue to overwhelmingly operate with the SysAdmin force that does not seek to "win" so much as manage the world as we actually encounter it.
The key bits:
The hue and cry surrounding the collapse of the Afghan government and the fall of Kabul — the debate about who is to blame and whether President Biden erred in ending military support (and in how he did so) — should not distract from two important truths. The Afghan war, at least the one in which American troops on the ground were central to the outcome, was over long ago. And America’s ever-expanding global war on terrorism is continuing, in principle and practice ...
Biden’s withdrawal of those final troops is clearly significant. But setting aside today’s self-regarding American conversation — across mainstream media, Twitter and the like — about where and when “we” went wrong in our attempt to free Afghanistan, we should recognize that their departure in no way extricates America from its ongoing, metastasizing war on terrorism. When Biden declared in April, “It is time to end the forever war,” he was referring to a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. But the phrase “forever war” is better used to describe the expansive American commitment to deploy force across the globe in the name of fighting terrorism, a commitment that is by no means ending. In his extraordinary speech defending his actions Monday, Biden made this very clear, distinguishing the “counterterrorism” that the United States reserves the right to conduct from the “counterinsurgency or nation-building” that it is giving up.
The last bit oversells:
Beyond the genuine costs and humanitarian consequences of the fall of Kabul, which are not to be underestimated, the continuing reality is even scarier: The United States has over the past two decades created an all-embracing and endless war that knows few geographic bounds. Current events are likely to make that conflict even more permanent.
It's not "scarier" by any means. I think the author was just reaching for a punchy ending to his op-ed. Fighting a global, borderless war with the Leviathan force would be scary - and pointless. Doing the same with elements of the SysAdmin force, which pulls in technology and special forces and police and all sorts of other assets from allies around the world ... that is simply the reality born of 9/11, when we finally chose to embrace that global struggle years after it had embraced us.
Thursday, April 1, 2021 at 10:42AM 
Photo credit: Nadya Chikurova& Pablo FernandezEntitled, "Biden Must Clean Up the Trump Pardons," the gist is that the Constitution prohibts presidential pardons during an impeachment process because those acts are easily construed as buying-off jurors.
With the battle building over the filibuster, there’s another area that cries out for Senate reform: the impeachment process that led to the recent acquittal of Donald Trump.
No senator should be allowed to serve as a “juror” if they’ve benefited from a pardon issued by an impeached president. In this case 12 senators, including 10 Republicans, had sponsored Trump’s last round of pardons, creating the appearance of a conflict of interest and lack of impartiality.
Find the entire piece at Who.What.Why.
Saturday, August 1, 2020 at 1:07PM 
On May 1st, the nation’s war colleges received a brutal – if pre-emptive – failing grade from the Joint Chiefs, who declared that Joint Professional Military Education schools are not producing military commanders “who can achieve intellectual overmatch against adversaries.” Because China increasingly matches our “mass” and “best technology,” the Joint Chiefs argue that America will prevail in future conflicts primarily by having more capable officers. As for those “emerging requirements” that “have not been the focus of our current leadership development enterprise” (e.g., integrating national instruments, critical thinking, creative approaches to joint warfighting, understanding disruptive technologies), please raise your hand when you hear something new.
Brutal and timely ...
Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 6:06PM 
COVID-19 Outbreak World Map per Capita (Wikipedia)Some simple back-of-the-envelope calculations that came to me while on a long bike ride today ...
Question: which G20 members have suffered a smaller/larger percentage share of global COVID deaths relative to their share of global population?
G20 encompasses 63% of world population, but it's the more economically advanced share, so we should expect the G20 as a whole to suffer less than 63% of global COVID deaths.
In truth, for now, it seems that the G20 account for roughly 4/5th of global deaths, or 80%. So, as a whole, the G20 underperforms. With all that wealth, you'd expect a share far below 63%. Of course, as the pandemic hits the world's poorer areas over time, the G20's share will drop. Still, not a good performance.
Let's look inside the G20 to see who's outperforming their global share of world population and who is underperforming. In the latter case, that country's percentage share of COVID deaths would exceed its percentage share of global population.
NOTE: all the numbers here come from Wikipedia sites, which draw upon reputable sources. Again, these are back-of-the-envelope calculations in search of a reasonably fair assessment of government performance.
First, a list of the G20 members outperforming on COVID (defined as percentage share of global population being higher than percentage share of global COVID deaths):
Now the list of G20 members basically performing as expected, meaning the percentage share of global population is roughly matched by the percentage share of COVID deaths:
So, 13 of the G20 performing as expected or better - stipulating that some nations are under-reporting but unlikely to be doing so in such a way as to change their performance from positive/average to bad in any profound sense.
Now for the underperformers:
Now the underperformers ranked by severity (defined as the biggest gap in percentage shares):
If you translate that point gap into excess or preventable deaths, then it is expressed as follows:
If we fold UK, Italy, and France into the EU, then we're talking 383,000 lives in total.
We can debate the right adjective here: unnecessary, wrong, sacrificed, lost, etc.
I prefer to think of it as simply a rough estimate of what poor government performance - largely expressed in bad political leadership - actually costs in human lives during a disaster such as this.
Thursday, May 14, 2020 at 1:03PM Seems pretty obvious that, to do well, you craft and execute an aggressive national testing strategy replete with large-scale tracking corps.
The United States has done neither, with the Federal Government taking a pass and declaring it all up to the presently overwhelmed (in many instances) states.
So we are losing the COVID-19 "competition," as this chart makes clear.
There is no good reason for this failure, and it seems poised to ruin any large-scale re-opening of the economy, which is very sad for all involved.
Our national economy is experiencing an extinction-level-event in terms of households, jobs, skills, business models, and even entire industries. The "mammals" will get by, but loads of "dinosaurs" will disappear.
It did not have to be this way. We needed a strong and competent federal government for this crisis, and we did not get one.
Wednesday, May 6, 2020 at 10:58AM 
From NYT coverage.
Everything you need to know about where things stand right now.
Fair to compare NYC with entire rest of nation? When the former has accounted for roughly half the deaths so far ... yeah, sad to say.
Up to now, COVID19 has been rougher on Blue urban bastions, leaving the rural Red skeptical and prone to "magical thinking," as the story here implies.
We'll see how that changes as this pandemic grows a whole lot less fake news-y for a major swath of our nation.
Thursday, April 16, 2020 at 7:04PM 
Referencing the current Commandant's recent interview with War on the Rocks, summed up nicely here with General David H. Berger stating:
Our approach to that critique of, “You’re building a very tailored force for the high end, not applicable in the most probably anticipated or most probable kind of scenario”— here’s how I would characterize that. We’re building a force that, in terms of capability, is matched up against a high-end capability. The premise is that if you do that, if you build that kind of a force, then you can use that force anywhere in the world, in any scenario; you can adapt it. But the inverse is not true. If you build a low-end force, or a medium (however you want to characterize it), if you build that capability of a force, you cannot ramp up against a higher end adversary.
Earlier in the interview Berger states that the USMC needed a redesign to correct the overt force "heaviness" it had embraced due to its lengthy ashore ops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why did it need to change over those years? Because its previous focus on high-end warfare had left it massively unprepared, woefully undertrained, and fatally ill-equipped to fight those smaller wars that had previously been dismissed as "lesser includeds" (the logic being, if you can go big war, you can go small war as a natural subset). It wasn't true back then and it won't be true with this planned redesign.
Simply put, the choice to go big is the choice to neglect and avoid the so-called lesser-includeds.
But Berger's words perfectly sum up how the Marines' clock has been reset on the Big One: build the big force and you can use it small, but you can't go the other way around.
How the general can argue that, when it was so clearly proven in Iraq and Afghanistan to be untrue, reflects the wider strategic realities truly driving this change:
Notice how the Commandant speaks of "great power competition" but not great-power war per se. That's the second great flaw of this argument: our competition with China ultimately ends up being in the small wars/grey zones/soft power realms -- not in the much-dreamt-of, Michael Bay Transformers-style, high-end war-over-the-rocks-of-the-South-China-Sea scenario. Same is proving true with Russia on Ukraine, Syria, etc.
With this redesign, the Marines retreat back into the bosom of the Navy, which is historically where they embed themselves during downtimes like this.
I get the instinct. I just wish they'd come up with a new rationale rather than retreading the past. Updating the 1980s Maritime Strategy for the PRC strikes me as anything but innovation, as the Marines won't be any more meaningful to that scenario than they would have been in that previously imagined WWIII.
Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 12:36PM 
Obtained, via WAPO "The Daily 202," from here.
The "cone of plausibility" is a graphical representation of a range of plausible downstream scenarios expanding outward from today's current reality. See here for a description.
What is presented here is the exhibited reality of numerous states, indicating that most, once trapped in the coronavirus dynamic, suffer a post-first-100-cases trajectory of rough doubling of cases between every 2-3 days. That's the cone.
Those who did better? For now, they are well-run Asian democracies (Japan and ROK), where collectivism trumps individualism (at least still when in crisis), so a mixture of social self-discipline, strong governments with extensive power and reach, and a high level of trust between leaders and led.
HK and Singapore appear to fall into that category, but I never put too much stock in city-states as exemplars. The scale is just too far off. China underperforms largely because government was looking out for itself for far too long in beginning, recovering only through fairly harsh measures - all very Chinese.
The West seems clearly clustered in that 2-3-day-doubling range, with probably speed-of-response being the key differentiator. We're on the high end in US because Red America blew it off until very recently, following the lead of POTUS and Fox News. With that dynamic hopefully muted for a while as vast majority of Americans now "come to Jesus" in taking this seriously, the big question looming is, How long can we continue doing what's needed, given the economic cost?
Already the speculation rises that POTUS will feel great personal financial pressures over his suffering properties (estimated to be losing 1/2M$ per day), and, while that's true, it's also indicative of the genuine economic pain, so maybe not the worst inpulse. Still, those external economic pressures would swamp any White House, so perhaps it would have been safer to have someone in charge right now with more financial "distance" from that dynamic (i.e., a traditional president). So now we watch Kudlow-vs-Fauci, with POTUS making comparisons to auto accident deaths, etc.
That's a natural tension in any crisis: When do we get to declare it's over? Americans are not a patient lot. And yet, the stakes here couldn't be higher. Right now the percent of Americans who've lost someone is tiny, but that will expand dramatically over the next month, making all this EXTREMELY personal to those affected. Loved ones die all the time from forces we cannot tame, but, as this chart shows, we CAN tame this dynamic, given the right balance between economic and human cost. Done well, maybe 2020 feels like a "double-cancer" or "double-heart disease" year (i.e., COVID-19 kills about 600,000), but done poorly - and given all the "war" talk, maybe a 60% infection rate, coupled with a 1% kill rate (both entirely plausible estimates), leaves 2 million Americans dead. That would be a slightly higher social cost than WWII was (or 2m of 330m as just 1/2 of 1% of Americans dying from COVID-19 versus 400k of 131m dying in WWII - or roughly 1/3 of 1%).
The experential data seems very clear on this: Even with a solid effort, the average country is looking at a peak-and-decline dynamic arriving in the range of 8-10 weeks after crisis onset. That is mid-to-late May for the U.S. We are getty antsy now, half-way through Week 2, so it's hard to imagine most citizens exhibiting the necessary self-discipline for another 6-8 weeks, even as the experience of other countries makes clear that is what is required if you want a semi-normal summer (hopefully) followed by a renewed battle in the fall, but one fought on far better terms.
Done right, POTUS pulls out a huge policy/leadership win even as the economic costs pile up and possibly ruin his re-election bid. George H.W. Bush did similarly with Desert Storm and the early 90s economic slowdown, but he took his fate like the real leader he was. I am far less hopeful in this current political climate.
Point of this chart SHOULD be: we know what we have to do, the only question is whether we value lives more than money.
I know, right? How very Bernie of a moment, but also a glimpse of our collective future. We hurtle toward Kurzweil's Singularity, reflective of our collective trajectory into the Age of Biology. Access to medical care/tech is already becoming THE human rights issue of this century, and experiences like this only accelerate those dynamics. By way of comparison, America's inevitable transformation into non-white majority status seems positively retrograde in terms of ideological stakes, even as it so clearly captures the political attention of so many citizens right now.
Per the adage about not wasting any crisis, we can hope that this pandemic alters our thinking here in America, reacquainting us with the emerging reality that this is the nature of crises in today's world (system perturbations, not fantasies of returning to strategic warfare with other great powers - much less the "grave danger" of invading immigrant hordes) and redirecting us off this racially-based identity politics and back onto issues of human rights concerning fair access to emerging health technologies and the care options they offer. With the rich and famous being treated so well (Your COVID test is in, Mr. Hanks/Mr. Gobert/Senator Paul!) while front-line healthcare workers jerry-rig protective gear, this crisis presents immense potential for another populist explosion in the upcoming election - likely to be our 8th "change election" in a row!
Here's hoping we come closer to the mark on this one.
Monday, March 16, 2020 at 11:45AM 
When I wrote my trilogy of books (Pentagon's New Map [2004], Blueprint for Action [2005], Great Powers [2009]), my primary purpose was to explore and explain what I thought was the new nature of crisis and conflict in the world.
In the first instance, it is about globalization's rapid and penetrating embrace of lesser connected countries, or what I dubbed the Gap. By and large that is a great thing (reduction of global poverty, creation of first-in-history truly global middle class), but it's very disruptive of culture and tradition and power structures, and conflict (largely in the form of state and non-state resistance to all this rising and intrusive connectivity) ensues. That's why I called it the Pentagon's new map, my argument being, this is the nature of crisis and conflict.
The terror strikes of 9/11 represented that sort of new crisis: actors targeting symbols of connectivity (trade, security) and hoping to trigger a self-isolating effect (West leaves the Middle East). West, instead, came in force, triggering all sorts of refugee flows, revolutions, crackdowns, civil wars, etc. West got tired and now it's mostly the East working this problem, but the connectivity continues and grows - both good and bad.
As my previous post indicated, Y2K was, for me and many others, a scheduled practice-like glimpse into these dynamics of system perturbation as the defining form of international crisis (vertical shocks followed by long horizontal waves of impact).
Since 9/11, we've had the Great Recession and a variety of lesser pandemics. Now we're finally confronting the long-anticipated killer pandemic that is coronavirus - the first great replay of a Spanish Flu-like transmission under the conditions of modern globalization.
How are we handling it? Actually, pretty much like expected.
Authoritarian countries seek to hide or minimize the situation, while democracies are slow to act despite mounting evidence. This is to be expected. Vertical power systems like China know how to handle horizontally spreading crises like this through traditional means of centralized control. Once the initial vertical shock passes (Wuhan for China), vertical systems tend not to fear horizontal dynamics. They are built to suppress such dynamics. Vertical systems really fear the out-of-the-blue stuff at the beginning because it triggers that popular emperor-has-no-clothes realization that all dictators fear so intently.
Instead, it's the horizontal political systems (like US and democracies in general) that tend to struggle more with the follow-on horizontal scenarios like this. We see the vertical shock of Wuhan in the distance and we blow it off (too far away, nothing to do with us). Then we start noticing the horizontally travelling shock waves approach through the world's many networks. But, given our system and culture, we fear the imposition of vertical controls ("evil Washington," "black helicopters," "take my guns" and other fantasies) that oftentimes work best right off the start, and so - over time - we suffer being the land of a 1000 different responses. Who's in charge? Hard to say. News comes in from all angles (POTUS, CDC, Congress, governors, mayors, school districts, etc.). The broken-clock preppers are right again! And the rest of us fight the inner panic urge.
While that decentralized approach, at first, seems to makes the problem worse (and it can alright), over time, our horizontally-defined strengths emerge. Our horizontally-structured system is free to experiment across the board, and our free press (even under conditions of political polarization) are adept at discovering, critiquing, and spreading best practices as they emerge (God bless them, one and all). In the end, our horizontal political structures will tighten up some (centralize), but not wildly so, and they tend to re-relax over time as the crisis fades in memory and legal remedies ensue.
But lessons will be learned, and we will structure aspects of our polity, economy, networks, etc., to account for what we've learned. And yes, it will make us better next time.
The larger lesson that remains is the same one we've been learning for two-to-three decades now, or since the end of the Cold War freed our minds to look at our connected/connecting world without the overlay of the superpower conflict/great-power war paradigm: our modern world is defined by connectivity, which grows over time and sets the parameters of all meaningful crises and how we respond to, and grow from, them.
Yes, we may think we can unilaterally withdraw from that world - however selectively or broadly, but that's a myth.
Yes, we may think we can renegotiate all the terms of our connectivity with the outside world, and, while we can certaintly adjust, that's a multi-sided game now with all sorts of great powers trying the same trick at the same time, so rule-set clashes proliferate. These clashes are far from traditional conflict, but they do represent those powers realizing that, now that globalization is here, that is the best way to fight for what you want - or believe in.
Since 2016 America has sought to withdraw from the world, and it hasn't gone all that well. Our ability to set agendas, dampen great power tensions, or steer developments has been hugely diminished. So has the global appeal of our rule-sets, which we spent the previous seven decades advocating for, and spreading, around the planet. We are a much smaller power in the world right now, and we're increasingly nervous about that, because the world hasn't grown any simpler as a result.
The coronavirus crisis exposes the folly of our recent approach (The Wall being our most hilariously sad example), more saliently than the still-dismissable (in too many minds) slow-mo climate change crisis (which certainly drives the uptick in zoonosis transmission events [animals-to-human disease vectors] by pushing humanity and wildlife together in more disruptive synergies).
And so corona does us this favor: it reminds us of how far we've come in this globalization and how going-your-own-way is a fear-threat reaction beneath our standing as a long-time global leader and - indeed - the primary architect of the world we still find ourselves in.
And so we learn again about the nature of our globalized world, the threats it poses and the crises it generates, and - hopefully - we once again reconsider our recent slide toward fantasizing about the return of conventional/strategic great-power war as a possibility (or, more insanely, as an inevitability) and we re-embrace what we re-learn everytime we endure one of these vertical-shocks-triggering-scary-horizontal-waves ...
Namely, that we are all in this together, and increasingly defined by our global connectivity.
We can try to shape that hardening reality for the better, or we can stick our fingers in our ears and scream nonsense in an effort to block this reality out. In our worst fears, we can always retreat to nostalgia, demanding that the homogenous world-of-our-youth magically return. But frankly, along that path lies not only self-delusion of the Osama Bin Laden sort but also the political violence that pathetic neediness begets.
But that world is gone, and that America is gone. What has replaced both is something far better, full of far more freedom, acceptance, diversity, and tolerance that what came before - yes, even despite our predictably frightened behavior of the past few years.
That new world/new America simply requires new and better skills. And the coronavirus is just another experience that will generate, teach, and codify those lessons and skills.
And it will make all of us, our nation, and this world stronger (or, if you must insist - greater).
System Perturbation, globalization | in Blast From My Past | Email Article | Permalink | Print Article Friday, March 13, 2020 at 12:09AM
Here's the chart:
Find the story about this chart here.
When I saw it, I thought, that looks like a lot of the charts I did way back when I ran a series of high-level USG workshops at the Naval War College (and elsewhere, like WTC1) for the DoD.
First, the notion of generically modeling the event:
A Process View of Y2K
"Y2K--The Event" will feature a distinct build-up phase (already begun), a peak period we consider "THE crisis," and an "end" phase in which the crisis unwinds either by its own accord or, more likely, by decree. Either governments will declare that the "crisis has passed" or some other crisis will arise and capture our attention. Slide 2 below presents another way of thinking through the process of Y2K's build-up, unfolding, and end.
Slide 2: A Process View of Y2K
The vertical axis of Slide 2 speaks to Network Instability/Failures, meaning the sorts of computer and network failures we've all experienced in our daily lives. The horizontal axis offers a timeline from 1998 to 2001.
As we move from left to right, the relatively low level of network instability and/or failures that we show for 1998 represents life as we know it--i.e., computers and networks break down with a certain frequency that we have come to know and accept. A big part of that acceptance is the "rule set" we have developed for dealing with these failures, such as "Always check by phone if the pager seems down," or "Always follow up with a phone call when the e-mail doesn't seem to go through." We'll call these familiar rules of thumb the "old rules," which we've developed as workarounds for familiar failures. These are our effective coping mechanisms, to use a psychological term.
The key uncertainty for 1999 is the extent to which the level of network instability/failures begins to rise over the course of the year as we get closer to dateline 010100 (six digit code representing the first day of January, 2000, as in, ddmmyy). If Y2K turns out to be a significant experience, then at some point in late 1999 or perhaps the first few days of 2000 the frequency and/or severity of the network instability and/or failures will reach some unknown threshold past which the "old rules" will no longer seem to apply. At that point, society would--in effect--develop a "new rule set," or "new rules" that apply to the dramatically altered parameters of the perceived crisis situation--however defined.
Our project is largely concerned with uncovering and understanding the potential "new rule set" that would ensue if Y2K, when combined with the Millennial Date Change Event, turns out to cause a significant and unprecedented rise in network instability for an extended period of time. Now, we can debate what the word "extended" means, but for our analytical purposes, it would be a length of time that exceeds what a reasonable citizen might expect in terms of network, economic, social, and government service disruptions arising from the "3-day snowstorm" measure that many advocate as a planning parameter for Y2K. Any unfolding of Y2K that doesn't create a lengthier array of significant disruptions for any area, country, or region, is unlikely to generate a "new rule set."
Finally, once the Y2K Event plays itself out (signified in the slide by the break in the chart line) and the failure/instability rate begins to decline, the question in terms of Y2K's long-term legacy is whether or not we return to the "old rules" associated with the previously understood standard of network instability, or whether we settle in on some "changed rule set" engendered by our experiencing of the Y2K Event. In large part, that will depend on the extent to which we come to understand Y2K as either a one-time event unique in human history or a preview of what "network instability" (and its associated crises) may evolve into as we move ever deeper into a period of history where individuals, communities, countries, and regions of the world become more interconnected and interdependent. In short, if globalization and networking represent the future, maybe Y2K has far more to teach us about that future than we might think if we view it as nothing more than the "last stupid act of the 20th Century."
The seriously unknown threshold on coronavirus, per the chart, is any nation's healthcare system capacity - a line drawn differently everywhere you go.
Then the models of Y2K onset:
III. A Series of Y2K Onset Models
Explaining Our X-Y Axis
Our X-Y Axis (shown below as Slide 4) begins with two simple questions:
- Horizontal axis asks the "What?" question: What is the nature of the Y2K Event?
- Vertical axis asks the "So What?" question: What is the impact of the Y2K Event?
There is a huge difference between these two questions, for the first question focuses on cause, while the latter focuses on effect.
One way we like to differentiate between the two questions is to employ a medical analogy. Think of the horizontal axis (What? question) as the nature of the trauma or illness and the vertical axis ("So What? question) as the patient's overall health. Two extreme examples show why this analogy is illuminating:
- Example 1 is an elderly man who is stricken with a very slow growing bladder cancer. While this elderly man could have lived with this cancer for several years, the stress of his hospitalization, exploratory surgery, and the frightening diagnosis stresses his already fragile system to the point where he suffers a stroke and is dead within two weeks as a result of major organ failures cascading throughout his system. To sum up, while the initiating event (bladder cancer) was more minor than major (placing it on the left side of the horizontal access below), the man's overall system robustness was weak (placing him on the lower side of the vertical axis). The medical outcome was--irrespective of its modest origins--disastrous.
- Example 2 is a two-year-old child struck with a very aggressive kidney cancer that--by the time of diagnosis--has spread to both her lungs. Other than that, though, the child is in excellent health, and as such, is more than able to survive the surgeries, radiation, and months of chemotherapy with no lasting negative effects of clinical value. To sum up the child's case, while the initiating event (kidney cancer) was more major than minor (placing it on the right side of the horizontal axis), the child's overall system robustness was strong (placing her on the higher side of the vertical axis). The medical outcome was--again, irrespective of its profound origins--quite positive.
These two very different medical case histories, drawn from the author's family history, highlight the importance of juxtaposing the "What?" and "So What?" questions to create the four quadrants of the X-Y axis, for it is not enough simply to ask how bad Y2K may be. Given how bad it may be (i.e., how many computerized systems fail), Y2K's ultimate impact will depend greatly on the targeted system(s) in question.
Looking at Slide 4, we then explain our X-Y Axis as follows:
- The horizontal axis, asking the "What?" question of the Y2K Event, posits the minor extreme on the left as being "Y2K events are discrete and episodic" and the major extreme on the right as being "Y2K event is widespread and sustained."
- The vertical axis, asking the "So What?" question of Y2K's impact, posits the minor extreme on top as being "Systems are robust," and the major extreme on the bottom as being "Systems are vulnerable."
Two caveats are in order:
- By "Y2K Event(s)," we refer only to network failures directly attributed to Y2K or those caused via subsequent cascading system failures, to exclude any social, economic, or political responses that exacerbate or reduce failure rates.
- By "Systems," we refer not only to a country's network systems (broadly defined to mean any network that moves something--e.g., bytes, people, electricity), but also its political, economic and social systems, with the key attributes of robustness being:
- Distributiveness
- Recovery capacity
- "Workarounds" capacity
- Trust "capital."
Having defined the extremes of our axes, we break down the four quadrants in the following manner:
- Best Case is when Y2K events are discrete and episodic and systems are robust
- Next Best Case is when the Y2K event is widespread and sustained, but systems are robust
- Next Worst Case is when Y2K events are discrete and episodic, but systems are vulnerable
- Worst Case is when the Y2K event is widespread and sustained and systems are vulnerable.
Slide 4: The X-Y Axis for Y2K Onset Models
Y2K Onset Model #1: The Ice Storm
The Ice Storm onset model is depicted in Slide 5 below.
In the embedded chart, the vertical axis defines a "field of Y2K failures," meaning we're not going to offer any percentages or "hard numbers" here, just a rough notion of overall failure saturation. Along the vertical axis we display the years 1999 through 2001, with the months of 1999 noted in solid-line marks and the months of 2000 noted in dashed-line marks. The difference between the two markings is meant to suggest that while we may feel we have a firm grasp of appropriate time units for the timeline leading up to 010100, perceptions of time's passing once we pass through the 010100 threshold may vary greatly depending on locale. For example, the subjective time unit of note for Wall Street at the beginning of January may be the first day of trading--a mere several hours' time, whereas the subjective time unit of note for a sheep herder in a less developed country may be as long as until the first time he brings his sheep to market--possibly several weeks.
Slide 5: The Ice Storm Onset Model
The Ice Storm onset model offers the classic, TEOTWAWKI view of Y2K: it hits en masse on or about 010100 and strikes virtually every aspect of society. To the extent that such a model may seem to hold true on a perceptual basis in any one locality or region (meaning, for all practical purposes, it seems as though all systems are impacted to some disabling degree), we posit that the Ice Storm's components are logically broken down into three categories:
- Direct Y2K failures
- Cascading system failures resulting from the direct failures
- Iatrogenic crisis management or social responses that exacerbate the cascading failures or trigger new threads.
While this model held implicit sway during much of the Y2K debate in 1998, it has receded in prominence over the course of 1999, as remediation efforts make clear that this is not a useful universal model. Having said that, however, we believe the model retains great validity for understanding pockets of significantly damaging Y2K impact that may occur around the world, meaning those areas where--for all practical purposes--the TEOTWAWKI notion may well emerge among significant portions of a population battered by widespread network failures.
Of course, even here we're still talking only about the perceived onset, and not some sustained environmental status that would realistically drag on for months. As such, the key question for the Ice Storm onset model is, "How fast can the society or economy in question recover by necking down the failure rate to some level commensurate with reasonably sub-optimal functioning (meaning, for many around the world, the return to "life as we know it")?"
Y2K Onset Model #2: The Flood
The Flood onset model is depicted in Slide 6 below.
Slide 6: The Flood Onset Model
The Flood onset model depicts a slow but inexorable bulge of network failures that first rises above the usual "background noise" level on or about 010100 and then expands for something in the range of the first six months of 2000, peaking near the end of the 2nd Quarter or at some point in the 3rd Quarter. In some ways, we could suppose the same breakdown of elements (direct, cascading, iatrogenic) here as with the Ice Storm model, but because of the greatly extended timeline (thus allowing for more effective crisis management and network triage), we limit our description here to direct and cascading network failures, thus positing a peak failure rate somewhere in the range of 50 percent of all networks.
As such, the Flood model gets nowhere near the TEOTWAWKI pain range, but instead describes something more akin to a significant economic downturn, most likely corresponding to popular perceptions of a recession or financial market "correction." In that manner, the Flood model possibly describes a more profound economic impact than the Ice Storm, which, while it is a shock to the system, is probably of shorter duration. So, like the Ice Storm, the Flood model involves an interrelated sequence of network failures, albeit with a far smaller immediate impact on the overall functioning of society.
In keeping with the weather analogy, the key question for the Flood model is, "What constitutes a 'low-lying area?'" One example of a potential low-lying area would be manufacturing, whose network failures would not likely be centered on the 010100 threshold, but rather build up over time as production continued throughout 2000. Another could be medical supplies, especially the production and distribution of key pharmaceuticals. Still another might be the processing and distribution of clean drinking water.
Y2K Onset Model #3: The Hurricanes
The Hurricanes onset model is depicted in Slide 7 below.
Slide 7: The Hurricanes Onset Model
The Hurricanes onset model presents a series of sectorally-limited (meaning unconnected across sectors) but relatively lengthy (meaning some cascading effect) constellations of network failures. In effect, this model is a hybrid of the Ice Storm and Flood models. The Hurricanes model packs the same immediate punch as the Ice Storm model, albeit in isolated "low-lying areas" (echoing the Flood model), thus limiting the overall impact on the functioning of a society.
The Hurricanes model speaks more to the "winners and losers" approach to thinking about Y2K's ultimate impact: some sectors of society will seemingly get off scot-free, while others will seemingly suffer great damage. The key difference with the Flood model is the lack of interrelation and simultaneity, so rather than employing the economic language of "downturns," we're more likely to describe "shake-ups" in one or another industry.
The same approach to identifying vulnerable sectors that one uses with the Flood model would apply here, although in an overall sense, the Hurricanes model is probably best used to think about countries whose remediation efforts have been weak, for here we run into the notion of over-confidence possibly leading to poor crisis management preparation. If such "poor remediators" turn out to be far more vulnerable than they realize, then the key question becomes, "How can coordinated triage and crisis management avert the appearance of a critical mass of substantial--yet still relatively isolated--network failure clusters?"
Y2K Onset Model #4: The Tornados
The Tornados onset model is depicted in Slide 8 below.
Slide 8: The Tornados Onset Model
The Tornados onset model refers to a "season" of sectorally- and temporally-limited Y2K-induced network failures. This model is the closest to a null hypothesis of Y2K's overall impact, for, in many ways, it describes life as we know it, albeit with a higher-than-average failure rate. The Tornados model can likewise be thought of as the "key dates" model, for the two go naturally hand-in-hand when one seeks real-world evidence of significant network failures that either produce serious disruptions of service or require extraordinary efforts at repair. For if such key dates come and go without displaying any significant failures, meaning they're so big they can't be hidden by the service providers in question, then these Y2K milestones pass by without registering significant values on any sort of TEOTWAWKI scale, becoming the Y2K equivalent of a "tree crashing in the forest when no one's there to hear it."
The "key dates" approach does correspond nicely with the Gartner Group's predictions of Y2K failure rates rising and falling over the course of 1999 and through the year 2001, but the big deficiency of this model to date has been the lack of any stunning failures on key dates that have already passed. For example, no failures featuring major negative impact occurred on 1 or 3 January, the first day and business day, respectively, of 1999. The start of many fiscal year programs on 1 April also failed to reveal any serious disruptions for the governments involved. The so-called "nines" problem that was slated to appear on 9 April likewise produced no failures of great societal value in any country around the planet. Most recently, the 1 July threshold came and went with no apparent damage to the 46 U.S. states whose fiscal years began that day.
Meanwhile, Cap Gemini America, the computer consulting firm, declares on the basis of their recent survey of Fortune 500 companies and a smattering of U.S. government agencies that close to three-quarters of the respondents report experiencing a Y2K-related failure through the first quarter of 1999. But if these firms are having these failures and none are making any headlines, how is that much different from everyday life as we know it? Aren't private firms and government agencies experiencing network problems on a fairly regular basis, and just as regularly keeping such failures under wraps? The key missing data involve how much different 1999 is turning out to be compared to any previous year, meaning what is the "instability added" from Y2K? And that's the data we haven't found anywhere yet.
Having said that, the key question for the Tornados model remains, "What constitutes good learning over time?" For example, should our confidence grow due to the lack of Y2K headlines stemming from the key dates already passed? Or should we ignore most if not all of that success, especially for a pure fellow traveler such as the "nines" problem? After all, we can get fixated on Y2K key dates all through 1999, get through them all quite nicely, and still suffer significant tumult on 010100. Uneventful key dates make that seem less likely, but don't rule out it out by any means.
So far, it seems like we're experiencing all four models to some degree:
Onset Models Leading to Generic Y2K Outcome Scenarios
Of course, none of the four onset models are likely to hold sway for any one region's entire Y2K experience, and in that sense, we are likely to see versions of all four models occurring simultaneously around the planet at various points in the Y2K Event. As ideal types, the four models are designed to help the reader disaggregate the complexity presented by Y2K's myriad of possibilities, rather than provide a "pick one of four" analytical choice that would invariably prove false and pointless.
Slide 9: The Onset Model Arrayed on the X-Y Axis
Slide 9 above arrays the four onset models on our X-Y axis, and the placement should seem fairly intuitive given our descriptions:
- Tornados represent the "Y2K events as discrete and episodic" and "systems are robust" quadrant, meaning a season of relatively isolated and concentrated damage that follows little rhyme nor reason to the extent that we can trace causality.
- Flood represents the "Y2K event as widespread and sustained" but "systems are robust" quadrant, meaning a rising tide or deluge of damage that follows the logic of systematic vulnerability, i.e., the low-lying areas analogy.
- Hurricanes represent the "Y2K events as discrete and episodic" but "systems are vulnerable" quadrant, meaning a season of somewhat isolated but wide-swath damage that follows the logic of either poor remediation or unforeseen vulnerabilities--basically one in the same.
- Ice Storm represents the "Y2K event as widespread and sustained" and "systems are vulnerable" quadrant, meaning a seemingly pervasive or all encompassing damage pattern that is inescapable, but one that at least reveals itself in its entirely with great speed, thus facilitating recovery.
Then we get to leadership issues:
IV. The M Curve of Influence
Understanding Where Opinion Leaders Can Influence Social Response
The strategic vision of Y2K we have encountered again and again, both in our Internet-based research and in our many discussions with experts and ordinary citizens from around the world, is that the event will unfold, peak, and then disappear--all with great speed--in a tight timeline surrounding the Millennial Date Change Event. In effect, what the majority expects is a very tall Bell Curve surrounding 010100, which we depict below in Slide 15.
Slide 15: The Y2K Bell Curve Too Many People Expect
In other words, the conventional expectation is that Y2K failures will:
- Ramp up dramatically along an asymptotic curve in the last couple of months in 1999
- Experience a rapid topping off in the first few days of 2000
- Decrease in a similarly steeped downward curve until basically disappearing as a phenomenon of note somewhere in the middle of the First Quarter of 2000.
The problem with this view is three-fold:
- It tends to draw off strategic resources from both mid-1999 and the rest of year 2000 (and beyond) and concentrates crisis management approaches on the 010100 threshold.
- It inaccurately reflects the likely spread of Y2K-related network failures, as predicted by the Gartner Group.
- It fools decision makers into thinking that not only will their influence be best used in a concentrated fashion around the 010100 threshold, but that it will likewise be effective during that specific period.
We believe one or more of these three mistaken assumptions are incorporated--to some degree--in much if not all of the strategic planning for crisis management of the Y2K Event around the world.
Instead of focusing on a Bell Curve perspective regarding Y2K's onset and unfolding, we argue that Opinion Leaders, whom we'll define as anyone with the power to influence the actions of others, should instead approach the Y2K timeline with the following three assumptions in tow:
- Your best time to influence social response is during the months leading up to Y2K's onset, with an emphasis on reasonable mass preparations, the establishment of crisis management arrangements, and the shaping of popular perceptions as to what will likely lie ahead.
- Your influence will disappear in the last few weeks and days leading up to the 010100 threshold, as the public will have largely made up its mind regarding individual preparations and strategies for experiencing--not to mention celebrating--the Millennial Date Change Event and the associated onset of Y2K; moreover, your influence will never be lower than on 010100, when your ability to control mass events will essentially approach zero.
- Your influence will reemerge once the Millennial Date Change Event expires and the true nature of Y2K's unfolding--however bad or minor that may be--makes itself apparent to you and society, for at that point you will have problems to solve, targets for resource allocation, etc.--in short, the battle will be joined.
Slide 16: The M Curve of Influence Explained
Thus our "M Curve of Influence" (Slide 16 above) describes both the utility of Opinion Leaders' efforts before (Schedule/Shape the Build-Up) and after (Define/Execute Exit Strategies) Y2K's onset, while emphasizing the loss of influence over societal actions and response during the actual onset (Slow Down the Abnormal Time). In short, our strategic advice mantra would be:
Organize . . . Relax . . . Attack
Explaining the First, or Pre-010100 "Hump" of the M Curve
We ascribe the first hump of the M Curve, or the bulge of influence we think Opinion Leaders enjoy over the summer and fall of 1999, to what we describe as the popular competition between awareness and fear regarding Y2K and the associated Millennial Date Change Event. Slide 17 below explains this competition.
Slide 17: The "Trigger Effect" Explained
The first thing to note on the slide is our humility. The vertical axis is labeled "Order of Magnitude," which is just a fancy way of saying we're theorizing about a very complex phenomenon and thus can only describe it in rather vague terms. The timeline, on the other hand, is fairly straightforward--namely, we're talking about 1999.
It's our general hypothesis that no matter what country you're talking about, awareness of Y2K will precede--and in some ways, trigger--fear about Y2K. In a generic situation, then, we're describing the rise of "Awareness and the Public Transcript" as occurring more in the first half of 1999 than in the second half, meaning most people heard and came to understand Y2K in the initial sense in early 1999. This happened primarily as a result of their being flooded with all sorts of Public Transcripts about the state of remediation efforts and the (typically) non-likelihood of Y2K-related failures come 010100. Public Transcripts can be described as authoritative statements by authoritative people. They typically highlight a rosier-than-average perspective on Y2K, quite often out of official fear of "alarming the public unnecessarily." Of course, much of the awareness-raising effort encapsulated in such Public Transcripts requires "scaring" the public enough to take action, and therein lies the rub.
As we enter into the summer and fall of 1999, the Awareness and Public Transcript wave begins to give way (i.e., awareness has peaked) to the Fear and Private Transcript wave, which is likely to peak in the last few weeks and days of the year. The fear part of the equation is nothing more than anxiety over the uncertainty caused by the looming event, whereas the Private Transcript describes the "off-line," unofficial, or individual preparations and/or decision making regarding how a person, economic firm, national government, etc., plans on either enacting or following a particular rule set for what it perceives will be the crisis period surrounding Y2K. So, for example, the differences between a Public and Private Transcript could be as follows:
- An individual's Public Transcript could be that he or she is administrator of a small town and thus plays a prominent role in community preparations and perception management while simultaneously engaging in the Private Transcript of stockpiling food, water, and weapons at home.
- A firm's Public Transcript could be publicizing the success of its remediation effort while its Private Transcript could be its quiet stockpiling of key industrial material inputs, the cutting of ties with suppliers and vendors it does not deem sufficiently compliant, or the preparation and public announcement of new rule sets.
- A government's Public Transcript could be publicizing how all essential services will survive the Y2K Event intact and without any disruptions while quietly establishing all sorts of emergency procedures to deal with just such failures.
And you really get the feeling that POTUS has largely lost control of the situation with coronavirus.
But here's probably the closest match to the coronavirus scenario slide above. It's the one I drew to explore the US scenario, so same basic intent:
We describe the point in the year when the Awareness and Public Transcript wave is surpassed by the Fear and Private Transcript wave as constituting a Trigger Zone of sorts. This is where we believe the manic, or Mania Phase of Y2K begins. In short, this is when you will see individuals, firms, and perhaps even governments start to exhibit extraordinary behavior in response to whatever they believe "others" in society may do--i.e., the fear of fear itself.
Slide 18: What the Trigger Zone Might Look Like in US
Having said all that, we want to be careful not to leave readers with the impression that we're predicting a serious "freak out" factor for the United States come Labor Day, for it is by no means a given that the Fear and Private Transcript must overwhelm the Awareness and Public Transcript wave. In effect, if Opinion Leaders do their job correctly in terms of the Awareness and Public Transcript effort, the Fear and Private Transcript wave can be greatly reduced (see Slide 18 above). By way of analogy, think of how Wall Street spent much of the 1990s educating Baby Boomers about the dangers of yanking their money out of mutual funds at the first sign of trouble. Then think about how well that effort paid off during the Global Financial Crisis of 1997-98. In short, the better Opinion Leaders shape popular expectations, the less likely it is that Fear and the Private Transcript will balloon to dangerous proportions--not every knee has to jerk.
But here's my favorite slide to revist from all this modeling, or the one that explores the cast of characters and behaviors we can meet across this event's unfolding (my favorite being "islanding," which we're starting to see already):
V. The Scenario Dynamics Grid
Creating a Composite, "Black Box" Scenario
So far we've offered a series of "going in" and "coming out" scenarios for Y2K, with the Onset Models (Tornados, Hurricanes, Flood, Ice Storm) serving as the former and the Outcome Scenarios (Run of the "Mille," Humans 1 Computers 0, Houston We Have a Problem, Y2 KO!) serving as the latter. Again, we've constructed these bookend scenario sets less to predict than to frame the potential problem set presented by Y2K. In this section we'll tackle the "black box" in-between those bookend scenario sets, but rather than mechanistically trace Best Case Onset Model to Best Case Event Scenario to Best Case Outcome Scenario and so on, we're going to present a single composite scenario that is both phased and broken down into components sectors (Networks, Business, Social Response, Governance).
When we say "composite," we mean a single scenario that posits Y2K as both substantial and relatively drawn out. We won't offer any more detailed parameters than that, because we're not interested in debating those fine points that we can't really predict, but rather concentrate our analysis on the scenario dynamics we feel confident would appear in a reasonably stressing scenario. Having said that, we need to stress that this composite scenario is simultaneously about all countries and no one country in particular, meaning we strive for relatively generic content. Obviously, being Americans, our cultural biases will show through, but since we're writing first and foremost for U.S. decision makers, that's not the worst sin we could commit here.
By "composite" we also mean that no one should view this compilation of scenario dynamics as an all-or-nothing prediction (i.e., either we're right or we're wrong), for we don't think Y2K will go down exactly and completely like our scenario anywhere in the world. However, we do believe that many if not most of these dynamics will appear in an country suffering a dramatic Y2K experience, and we think that all of these dynamics will appear in some countries in various subsets and combinations. In short, this composite scenario should be viewed as a smorgasbord--i.e., all of these items will be laid out on the Y2K table, but not every guest will partake of every dish.
Breaking Down the M Curve Into a Six-Phase Composite Scenario
Slide 23 below breaks down the M Curve into six separate phases along a composite stressing Y2K scenario. We emphasize stressing because, if Y2K turned out to be a complete dud, then our M Curve of Influence would immediately go from being a Bactrian to a dromedary, or from a "two-hump" to a "one-hump camel."
As you view Slide 23 and read the explanation below, please keep in mind that the M Curve does not represent the course of Y2K failure rates, but only our sense of the peaks and valleys of Opinion Leaders' capacity to influence social responses to such failures.
Slide 23: The Six Phases of the Composite Y2K Event Scenario--Arrayed Against the M Curve of Influence
We explain the six separate phases as follows:
Mania refers to the phase during which public awareness, anxiety, and preparation for Y2K accelerates dramatically. For most countries, this will be across the summer and/or fall of 1999, with the "size" of the mania growing in direct relationship with the lateness of its onset (meaning the later in the year it starts, the more profound it will be). For the U.S., for example, we'd predict the Mania Phase to really kick in come Labor Day (i.e., end of summer and beginning of fall, when thoughts turn to preparing for the winter), but for a country like Russia, probably not until November.
In general, a good rule on start dates would seem to be: the more "crises" a country has on its plate, the later will be the start of the Mania Phase. Of course, it there's enough crises a country may well skip the entire concept for all the obvious reasons, but that would clearly be a special case outside of our generic model. One key assumption of this phase is that enough "evidence" (a very slippery concept here) surfaces by this time that says Y2K may well be significant and/or sufficient "public outcry" or "alarm" is orchestrated by Opinion Leaders (whether they come from officialdom or the public itself) to fuel the Mania in the absence of such "evidence."
There are probably several factors that will determine the intensity of the Mania phase. The first is the degree of obfuscation or denial associated with the Public Transcript. This can have two affects on the resulting mania:
- In cases where there is significant obfuscation/denial associated with the Public Transcript, once the Private Transcript (perceived truth) is revealed, there is likely to be a very large delta between the public and private positions (i.e., between what I’m told and what I see). The degree of discontinuity between the two positions is likely to be one of the primary determinants of mania intensity.
- The greater the obfuscation in the Public Transcript, the more evidence to the contrary (Private Transcript) will have to emerge before the public script is rejected by the masses. This might very well delay the emergence of the widespread concern until very late in the game.
This brings us to the second primary determinants of mania intensity, available preparation time. The later in the game the Private Transcript is revealed, the greater the Mania is likely to be for any particular delta between Public and Private transcripts. The Mania is most accentuated when large public vs. private discontinuities appear so late in the year that people feel they no longer have adequate time to prepare for an event that now seems will be very different from what they’ve been told to expect. Here we'd see the increased likelihood of shortages, panic, and generalized iatrogenic activity.
The third important factor is mass trust in the ruling elites. If you believe in your leader strongly enough, you’ll follow him or her right into a brick wall (or a spaceship hiding behind a comet). In extreme cases, trust in leadership could completely dissipate the mania. Of course, if the leader is overly optimistic, the Onset and Unfolding phases could provide a rude awakening.
Ultimately, frequent communication between the leader and the led, along with the most transparent possible information on Y2K preparations, seem to provide the best opportunity to mitigate the Mania.
Countdown refers to last few weeks and days of 1999, when individual and group preparation for the Y2K and associated Millennial Date Change Event takes on a life of its own, meaning the simultaneous actions of a substantial portion of the populace rapidly propels Y2K up to the level of a social phenomenon no longer easily made subject to any organizational control--private or public. On the face of it, that sounds pretty scary, but depending on the society and culture, it need not be.
Much will depend on the individual's sense of vulnerability in the face of a potentially destabilizing event, and that sense of vulnerability will depend proximately on his or her sense of achieved preparations but ultimately on his or her expectation of the event ahead. Preparations alone are unlikely to reduce uncertainty, thus the previously shaped expectations of the public at large will loom large at this point. But like riders traversing the first great drop of a roller coaster ride, few minds are likely to be changed in transit. Most people will turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to further entreaties or advice, as they steel themselves for the remainder of the "ride."
Onset refers to probably no more than the first week of January 2000, but is primarily concentrated on the 31 December 1999 (Friday) through 3 January 2000 (Monday) time frame. Y2K's overlap with the Millennial Date Change Event and all the associated angst, celebration, joy, and violence that milestone is likely to evoke from large numbers of people around the planet will make for a very confusing time period, during which far too many simultaneous local experiences will be processed for widespread consumption via a global mass media blow-out of epic proportions. Almost by definition, a crisis is a compression of time, during which "more things happen than usual," making societal response patterns unpredictable. So given all that's likely to be going on during Y2K's Onset Phase and the accompanying media saturation coverage, we will--by definition--experience a crisis atmosphere that will inevitably skew most people's perceptions of events.
Unfolding refers to the indeterminate length of time (depending primarily on a country's level of IT) that will have to pass before the private and public leadership circles within individual countries can ascertain the extent of Y2K-induced network failures they collectively face. Our assumption here is that more advanced IT countries will more quickly catalogue and analyze those failure events that have already transpired and thus generate more accurate estimates of what's left to unfold than will less advanced IT countries.
As a crisis management rule, this capacity for gathering intelligence and processing estimates should not be considered a predictor for the country's aggregate failure rates, so a shorter Unfolding Phase shouldn't be considered commensurate with a less traumatic Y2K Event, for the rush of failures is likely to be greater and thus more traumatic in a shorter phase. However, in terms of social response dynamics, it's fair to assume that the shorter the Unfolding Phase, the easier it is for Opinion Leaders to rebuild their influence over public perceptions. Correspondingly, the longer the Unfolding Phase (meaning the longer the sense of public uncertainty regarding the question, "How bad will this whole thing turn to be?"), the greater the potential for mass iatrogenic behavior that only confuses the situation further and complicates both direct recovery and broader crisis management efforts.
Peak refers to period during which a country experiences the maximum impact of its Y2K-induced network failures and whatever side effects those failures may create throughout the economic, social and political arenas. Naturally, the definition of "peak" is highly subjective, since it is very unlikely that countries or regions will experience Y2K in a collective, unifying sense. Y2K, if it turns out to be substantial for any one country, is likely to exhibit a strong "localizing" effect, meaning it will tend to cut communities off from one another, thus varying their individual experiences greatly. As such, any attempts to define or declare--on a country-wide basis--the "peak" of the Y2K Event will be highly contentious and politicized affair.
Exit Point refers to either an apparent or a self-declared end to the systemic Y2K Event and any associated crises. Like the definition of the "peak," this will be a highly contentious and politicized debate that will--assuming Y2K has been substantial--immediately segue into, and thus set many of the key judgment parameters for, the official and unofficial "score settling" that inevitably accompanies any crisis period. For example, in the United States the Y2K Exit Point is likely to overlap with the first few weeks of the 2000 Presidential primary season.
One key alternative scenario element for this phase is the emergence of a follow-on crisis--whether it be related or unrelated to Y2K--that effectively "ends" the Y2K Event by superseding it in national importance. Of course, in this instance, much would depend on the public's perception of the causality surrounding the "new crisis"--namely, did it truly arise "on its own" or was it "engineered" by "powers-that-be" to divert public attention from the continuing Y2K crisis (e.g., the "splendid little war" scenario, alternatively known as the "wag the dog" scenario).
The Scenario Dynamic Grid Explained
Slide 24 below presents our Y2K Scenario Dynamic Grid. The four-by-six grid is arrayed in the following manner:
- The four rows correspond to our four Y2K sector areas:
- Networks
- Business
- Social Response
- Governance.
- The six columns correspond to our six-phase composite scenario timeline:
- Mania
- Countdown
- Onset
- Unfolding
- Peak
- Exit Point.
- The main entry for each grid box represents our definition of the key scenario dynamic in play for that sector area during that scenario phase. For example, "F2Q," or "flight to quality" is the key scenario dynamic in play in the Business sector during the Countdown Phase.
- The secondary entry (in the smaller red box-arrows) for each grid box represents our definition of a key emerging scenario dynamic to look out for as the timeline moves from that particular phase to the next one. For example, "Answer Man" is the key emerging scenario dynamic to watch for as the timeline moves from the Unfolding Phase to the Peak Phase in the Governance sector.
We offer the same general caveat regarding the Scenario Dynamics Grid that we cited for the M Curve: we feel fairly confident that the first three phases (Mania, Countdown, and Onset) will occur regardless of how Y2K actually unfolds post-010100, so the dynamics we cite in those columns are essentially predictions that we think will come true in some combination for enough states around the world so as to serve as a useful generic model. As for the final three phases (Unfolding, Peak, Exit Point), there we're getting into hypotheses regarding an assumed Y2K Event that proves to be stressing and substantial. In that regard, the scenario dynamics listed for those columns do not represent predictions of what must happen--only estimates of what could happen given a particular stressing scenario. In other words, if Y2K is a dud, you can largely forget the last three columns.
Slide 24: The Y2K Scenario Dynamic Grid
The Network Timeline in Detail
Moving from left to right along the timeline:
In the Mania Phase you see the ramping up of the Stockpiling dynamic, with individual stockpiling attracting the most media attention, even though it's the stockpiling by economic firms and governments that will have far more profound market impact. Of course, stockpiling will occur in direct relationship to public fears concerning the interruptions of key network services (utilities and food distribution being the big drivers), and will reflect the strategic distance between the Public and Private Transcripts of business firms, i.e., the difference between what they're saying to reassure customers and the steps they're taking to deal with non-compliant suppliers and vendors. In both instances (individual and organizational stockpiling), it's the "little guy" who will suffer or fall behind, thus increasing "his" anxiety.
Thus the dynamic to watch as we go from Mania to Countdown is the emergence and increased agitation of the Most Vulnerable. On the individual basis, stockpiling is a middle-class (or better) phenomenon in that it requires disposable income that the poor do not possess. Since rural poor tend to have a better system of workarounds for these situations, the group to watch are the urban poor, who will likely be the first to feel any squeeze from stockpiling purchases and thus grow more anxious. In terms of economic firms, it's the Small/Medium Enterprises that will suffer, simply because they don't have the capital of larger firms to safeguard themselves against supplier disruptions.
In the Countdown Phase, Getting (It) There refers to two phenomena: 1) movement by people to locations where they may choose either to "celebrate" or "ride out" the millennial date-change event; and 2) a "topping off" of crucial supplies by individuals or organizations.
In the first sense, we expect to see a greater than average amount of travel in anticipation of the 010100-threshold. Rich people will want to travel somewhere exotic for fabulous celebrations. More religious-minded people will travel to holy meccas and shrines to celebrate Christendom's Third Millennium. Party-goers will pack urban areas for mammoth New Year's Eve extravaganzas. Apocalyptic-minded individuals will head to the hills or sanctuaries. Safety-conscious people may leave urban areas for rural ones. Families may gather with even greater frequency, either out of a simple desire to share the moment or out of concern for more vulnerable members. Governments may organize and move around security and/or crisis management forces. In short, a lot of movement may occur, with gross numbers linked to popular anticipation of the event as being historic or "once in a lifetime."
The "topping off" phenomenon in Networks will occur along a myriad of avenues, with one good example being the advice proffered by many authorities that it would be wise for everyone to have their cars' gas tanks filled up. If, for example, a large majority of a population attempts to actualize that advice in the last 2 to 3 days on 1999, it is quite possible that spot shortages will immediately appear (i.e., gas lines) and most nations' distribution networks aren't set up to handle that much volume in a concentrated time period. This, of course, would create a social dynamic all its own.
As we move from Countdown to Onset, the dynamic to watch involves efforts by authorities to encourage both individuals and organizations to go off-line as much as possible in the last few hours of 1999 and during the first 24-72 hours of 2000 (i.e., through the holiday weekend). Going Off-line means doing whatever is possible to reduce loads on utility networks. For example, it means encouraging large-scale celebrations to be as low-tech as possible to reduce electricity loads. It may mean also that authorities encourage more distributed celebrations to reduce stress on mass transit networks. Much of any government's success in encouraging this conservation will depend greatly on previous public education campaigns. For example, in the U.S. the FCC has already begun asking the public not to use telephones or modems on 31 December and 1 January to avoid overloading the public telephone system. In effect, the FCC fears some combination of the "Mother's Day" effect (i.e., everyone calls family members to note the historic occasion) and a "testing the system" effect (i.e., everyone checking to see if the phones and Internet are still working). Of course, if everyone tests or calls Mom at the same time, the stress on the telephone network can become a self-fulfilled prophesy. In countries around the world with less robust public utility networks, this dynamic is all the more important.
A particular subset of the Going Off-line dynamic refers to the possibility that some energy power plants--namely nuclear power plants--may be taken off-line for some indeterminate period of time surrounding the 010100 threshold due primarily to safety concerns. If this were to happen, then obviously a country's energy power grid would suffer diminished load capacity. At this time, however, predictions regarding such actions are highly speculative. For example, earlier this year there was a lot of loose talk about airlines and ports shutting down for some period surrounding 010100, and although some isolated declarations of intent have been made (e.g., Virgin Airlines giving employees New Year's Day off for "family reasons"), widespread shutdowns in either industry seem ever more unlikely as time passes and confidence regarding Y2K grows.
Once we get to the Onset Phase, despite the best efforts by authorities to encourage low-voltage celebrations, we nonetheless foresee great potential for the overloading of network systems. Again, we're talking the world's largest party, plus it's the middle of winter in the northern hemisphere. Factor in all the additional activity--and thus added network load--associated with Y2K, and we're looking at a possible spiking of demand for network services (e.g., electricity, phones, Internet access, mass transportation). The key element here is obviously electricity, for if that keeps flowing, then whatever additional demands emerge in other network areas can probably be handled in "rush hour" modes.
As such, it only makes sense as we move from Onset to Unfolding to watch out for Black Outs, or the disruptions of basic utilities, "downing" of the Internet in places, spotty phone service, etc. Current predictions for such disruptions range from the "Three-Day Snowstorm" analogy in the U.S. to predictions of far longer outages in places such as China or Russia. The key question for any country, though, is not whether the outages will happen, for some inevitably will, nor how long they last, as many countries deal quite nicely with such disruptions (thinking of Russia), but rather whether or not these blackouts represent the first of many interrelated waves of failures, or simply the early flame-out of the Y2K phenomenon.
If Y2K proves to be substantial and long-lasting, it will reveal itself in the Unfolding Phase, which in the Networks sector would lead to the dynamic of Rationing, meaning anything from rolling brownouts/blackouts in some utilities, to possible restrictions on access to mass transit or thoroughfares, to even the distribution of basic foodstuffs by authorities. The key point is that either non-market mechanisms will arise by government fiat and/or market prices will rise high enough to cause de facto rationing by wealth of items typically viewed as basic.
Since transportation of goods into areas where shortages exist is the primary means of relieving the rationing dynamic and thus ending the "localizing" phenomenon of Y2K-related network failures, it would be precisely a broad and continuing slowdown in this sector that would signal a movement from the Unfolding to Peak Phase--hence we cite the dynamic of Traffic Jams as the key indicator in this transition. A good example of the type of transportation slowdown would be the dozen or so global mega-ports through which flows the vast majority of goods shipped over the high seas. Substantial slowdown in several of these mega-ports would exacerbate the Y2K Event, with the most likely culprit in this equation being neither the ships themselves nor the off/on-loading networks, but rather the recording keeping--i.e., the paper work.
A Peak Phase in the Network sector would feature the dynamic of Haves vs. Have Nots, caused simply by the disparities in deprivation engendered by network failures. Reasons for this would include:
- Better preparations for deprivation by some
- More disposable resources for some to deal with deprivations once they appear
- Some areas will feature a higher percentage of vulnerable populations (e.g., very young, very old, sick or disabled)
- Localizing effect will mean some communities are better situated in terms of basic supplies than others (e.g., southern areas will be in growing season while northern areas will not)
- Remediation efforts will have varied greatly by area
- Failures will not be evenly distributed or evenly timed.
In short, because some people and/or areas will do better than others, tensions will inevitably rise between groups suffering varying levels of "pain" or varying rates of recovery. Note, this is not the same as saying "people tend to freak out" during disasters, for here we're past the initial "disaster" and deep into the painful aftermath. By analogy, the Onset would correspond to the "people coming together when disaster hits" notion, whereas the Peak corresponds to the period weeks later when tempers begin to flare as people start realizing that although "we were all in the same boat in the beginning," that initial leveling phenomenon has given way to serious differences in rates of recovery and the ultimate resumption of "life as we knew it."
Getting us from the Peak to Exit Point, which we define as Metropolis Saved, meaning that if the cities are back to near-normal then the crisis is largely over from a Network perspective, may require some extraordinary efforts by some extraordinary actors. These efforts must either solve the problem of "things not moving" by fixing the networks themselves or by generating and supporting sufficient workarounds to get things moving by alternative means. We have dubbed this dynamic Network Leviathans, meaning super-empowered organizations that can somehow make things move even when it seems that normal network pathways are hopelessly disabled. By definition, we're first and foremost talking about militaries here, for it's the military that specializes in creating logistical networks where none have previously existed--typically on a battlefield. The down side to this is that no military in the world comes even close to matching the logistic capabilities of the U.S. Military. The up side is that most militaries around the world have some real experience in providing these functions within their own countries during times of natural disasters. So if it's a ragged capability in many countries, at least it's one that's familiar. Given that the U.S. Military is unlikely to get deeply involved within the United States, given the relatively robust nature of our distributed police, emergency response, and National Guard networks, one of the main roles it may play will be that of Network Leviathan overseas in conjunction with international and foreign national relief organizations.
We end our discussion of the Network sector by positing the legacy issue of New Faultlines. By this we mean humanity discovering divisions among itself that were not apparent before the Y2K Event. In effect, we're taking about divisions based on information technology that have arisen during the past couple of decades but have not yet made themselves as obvious in a popular sense as they might be after a traumatic Y2K experience. The two obvious extremes of this equation are:
- Those "too dependent" on information technology will have their "comeuppance" while those more "self sufficient" will emerge from this experience more confident about a future that inevitably features an ever increasingly frequency of this sort of IT "disaster."
- Those "too slow" on information technology will have their "comeuppance" while those who adapt themselves with greater speed will emerge from this experience more confident about a future that inevitably features an ever increasing IT quotient.
The Business Timeline in Detail
Moving from left to right along the timeline:
In the Mania Phase we see the phenomenon of firms Taking Options, meaning business firms setting up and/or implementing alternative supplier/vendor arrangements in anticipation that some portion of their existing supplier/vendor base will not perform well in the coming Y2K Event. This is a variant of life-as-we-are-coming-to-know-it in the New Economy, with its rapidly shifting alliance strategies and frequent market-share quakes, and yet, it may take on an added dimension here because of the (potential) simultaneous actions of many firms focused around a single date in time. But in the end, all it really says about business and finance is that when managers look ahead to Y2K, they see winners and losers, and therefore plan accordingly. Nothing personal, mind you, just business.
As we move from Mania to Countdown, a compelling dynamic becomes the appearance and use of Leper Lists, which finger those suspected of not performing well in the coming Y2K Event. They are definitely a double-edged sword, for, on the one hand, they represent a great motivator for remediation laggards while, on the other hand, they can bring the same sort of self-fulfilling prophesies that one associates with rumors about a bank's liquidity--namely, bank runs. So if a supplier gets a bad wrap as "non-Y2K compliant" and then sees orders dry up as it is shunned by long-time business partners, then problems are bound to ensue regardless of the firm's ultimate Y2K vulnerability. The recent experience of the Global 2000 Coordinating Group and their near-publication of a Y2K-readiness rating of major trading nations (they backed off at the last minute for fear of sparking capital flight) speaks volumes about the dangers involved with such lists, and yet appear they will, for they represent serious intelligence about potential market failures by competitors. Firms will naturally want this information and--once they have it in hand--will naturally use it to their own advantage.
Flight to Quality is the natural dynamic of choice for the Countdown Phase, for it speaks to the notions of last-minute panics and the desire for safe haven. Recent history has given us plenty of examples of what Thomas Friedman would call "stampeding" by the international "Electronic Herd" of global investors. Moreover, there's plenty of good history to back up the concern, as the Economist pointed out in its September 1998 survey of Y2K (19 September 1998, p. 4):
Since the start of modern times, the end of a century has been a time of economic unease. The British and Dutch stock markets in 1699 and 1799 and the Dow in 1899 all saw sharp falls in prices, according to ING Barings, a Dutch bank; between December 2nd and 18th 1899, the Dow fell by 23%. A millennium, even more than a centennial, would be spooky enough without the fear of computer failure. Perceptions, rather than reality, may turn out to be the most dangerous aspect of that pesky millennium bug.
Of course, none of this says anything about the mid-term stability of global financial markets, nor about Y2K, but only about the psychology of investors and their periodic tendency to engage in fear-fulfillment.
So where does the money go? Gold prices are at historical lows. The U.S. stock market is overvalued already by the measure of many experts, and yet would seem to offer a great place to park cash in the short run since the U.S. should come through Y2K okay. Or do Internet stocks come tumbling down, bearing the brunt of the technology fear? In short, you ask enough questions and fairly soon you're back in the life-as-we're-coming-to-know-it territory that one associates with the emerging New Economy, again begging the question of whether or not Y2K represents something fundamentally unique in history or a harbinger of the future.
The dynamic to watch as we move from Countdown to Onset is what we refer to as Cash On Hand, meaning both the issue of liquidity in markets (e.g., everyone trying to sell bonds at once in a certain small-country market and finding no buyers) and the issue of paper money in circulation. Both issues revolve around panic and the desire for fungible assets during a perceived time of great uncertainty. So cash on hand may be an important safety cushion for a country's central bank in terms of protecting themselves from both outside forces (e.g., foreign currency reserves to ward off speculators) and inside forces (e.g., sufficient money in circulation to ward off bank runs). A rule we might propose for this dynamic would be, the more control you have over your country's cash reserves (having more is obviously better) and money in circulation (to include the printing of money), the safer you are regarding Y2K-induced financial panics. Again, there's nothing terribly particular to Y2K about this advice, rather it's simply the occurrence of Y2K that highlights a capacity that countries are increasingly coming to value in a globalized New Economy.
With the Onset of Y2K, we expect to witness the dynamic of an economic Dead Zone that will encompass both retail and financial transactions. In retail, we're talking about a consumer that's already spent his or her available disposable income either on Y2K preparations or end/beginning-of-year holidays or some combination thereof. In the financial world, we're talking about companies--far more than usual--working to move transactions away from the end of the calendar year, meaning "earlier" into December or "later" into January. Again, neither of these dynamics is particular to Y2K or the Millennial Date Change Event, but are part of the normal end-of-calendar-year business cycle. All we're predicting here is a larger than normal effect. For example, we'd expect extra market "holidays" around the 010100 threshold in many countries around the world, as markets there attempt to ease their financial sectors past the date change in as relaxed fashion as possible (possibly phasing them in over several days before reaching full working volume). Even if markets or governments didn't take these extraordinary steps, the wariness of individual firms and investors to play in those first few days might well do the trick all by itself.
Of course, at some point, financial markets have to come back online completely, and here's where our more speculative material kicks in. If Y2K turns out to be widespread and substantial in impact starting in January, the dynamic we look for in financial circles are what we'd call Market Quakes. This refers to Y2K-induced or related network failures that either directly disable financial market operations or create cascading investor panic about broader economic dynamics (including disabled market operations) that find their reflection in wild market swings. Such quakes, of course, can start anywhere on the planet, but once started, tend to move with time zones from one global super-market to another (e.g., from Tokyo to Hong Kong to Europe to London to New York and then all over again). Rather than labeling this dynamic a "financial contagion," it's really more a matter of copied behavior: investors in one market fear that what they're watching in another market is a clear indicator of their own future, thus eliciting similar defensive responses. For the business timeline as a whole, this is probably the key single dynamic, for if Y2K is going to kick into a larger economic downturn, the first real signs probably appear here. Conversely, if Y2K is going to turn out to be a financial non-event, the lack of any market instabilities here will go a long way toward killing any potential downturn in its tracks.
Moving in the Unfolding Phase, here is the time for the Internet-based economic "doombrooders" such as Edward Yardeni either have to fish or cut bait, meaning either we see the dynamic of Fortressing and Islanding rise up in a serious way or these theories of economic back stabbing decimating social trust and destroying business chains will need to be quickly discarded. Of course, some of this dynamic may have already unfolded during the previous phases, especially the Mania one, but it's really in this phase, when the supply chain failures pile up that this dynamic should rear its ugly head in a broad-scale manner if Y2K is going to unfold in a truly dramatic and destructive manner. And again, what's dramatic and destructive about islanding and fortressing is the loss of social trust and what that will do to aggregate economic behavior. If individuals see great numbers of long-standing trust relationships evaporate overnight in response to Y2K-related failures, then perceptions of the future will change drastically and for the worse. In short, we'll clearly be in a new and largely unknown rule set.
The key dynamic to watch regarding popular perceptions of an emerging rule set is what we call Personal GDP—namely, the depletion of financial resources set aside to weather the Y2K Event. Everyone—every person, firm, government, etc.—will enter into the Y2K experience with certain expectations regarding how much this is going to cost them. When this threshold is reached, meaning the money (and/or other assets) set aside is gone, perceptions of economic loss can escalate dramatically and result in a significant skewing of individual and collective decision making. Of course, the more individuals and organizations plan for a “tall” Bell Curve, but instead find themselves riding the stretched-out “far side” of a curve that never seems to end, the worse this dynamic becomes.
The Peak Phase in the Business timeline is defined as a de facto Cash Economy, meaning a virtual de-creditization of the economy as social trust evaporates and almost nothing gets done unless cash or other hard "currencies" (depending on what society you're talking about) are involved. Realistically speaking, within the hardest hit pockets of a country, we'd see cash economies sprouting up, without the country as a whole devolving to a cash-on-demand status (meaning the semblance of normality tends to be preserved in official circles). The obvious model for this type of situation would be Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Having said that, we'd note the Russian tendency to muddle through--with great day-to-day effectiveness--what advanced Western countries would consider a state of almost complete economic collapse; in other words, our worst nightmares are often many countries' normal operating procedure.
To go from the Peak to Exit Point, countries may well have to face the task of some sort of SME Triage, meaning some sort of economic or political response to substantial numbers of Y2K-related business failures among Small and Medium Enterprises. We don't have any simple answers on this one; we just note the potential rapid loss of jobs connected with SMEs and the tendency of many governments around the world to consider that a serious threat to political stability. For SME failures to occur in great numbers, one would imagine the confluence of three dynamics over a substantial length of time:
- Direct Y2K failures leading to failed business operations
- Islanding and fortressing of extant business partners by firms in response to failed business operations
- Increased exposure to litigation liability for breached contracts or product liability issues.
We define the Exit Point as Winners Crowned, meaning the identification of individuals or firms that are perceived as having flourished during the Y2K-induced economic crisis and who, by doing so, set the tone for whatever New Rules characterize the resulting economic legacy of Y2K. This, of course, will be greatly determined in most countries by the accompanying political legacy to be discussed below in the Governance timeline. A good way to think of this dynamic is to reflect on how Wall Street periodically crowns some new set of financial "giants" every X years as defining what seems to be a new model of market activity (e.g., the "quants" or "professors" after 1987). Of course, if Y2K is substantial for a country, we could see the "winners" emerging with a far greater concentration of wealth, particularly if many SMEs are to die off or be absorbed by larger firms. If this occurred, one could easily consider--yet again--that Y2K fits well within the paradigm of the New Economy, which is described by many as featuring a high SME failure rate and a winner-takes-all playing field.
The Social Response Timeline in Detail
Moving from left to right along the timeline:
In the Mania Phase we cite the Truth is Out There dynamic signifying large amounts of popular distrust of the Public Transcript put forth by government and business leaders regarding Y2K potential impact. By some estimates, for example, there are more than 100,000 web sites currently devoted to "surviving Y2K." Clearly there's a significant market for this sort of material, meaning that the "good cop, bad cop" approach pursued by many authorities (i.e., Don't worry! But get ready!) tends to drive a percentage of the populace to non-traditional sources of crisis-related information. In short, many people "out there" assume that the "full story" is somehow being "kept from them," while the "official story" is not to be fully trusted. It's not hard to see why there's so much mistrust. It is very hard to determine who is an "expert" on Y2K, much less what good data is, and very little of the material you see on the subject expresses anything close to ambivalence. In the end, the fine line between proper preparation and overreaction is almost impossible to pin down. Meanwhile, advocates on both sides of the argument constantly deride the other's attempts as "misinformation" of some sort or another.
Not surprisingly, the dynamic to watch as we move from Mania to Countdown are Rumor Mills, for when people don't feel that authorities are being fully transparent in terms of information sharing, then they tend to seek out and respond to whatever informal information they can get their hands on. The Internet naturally plays a huge role in this, as does the mass media, but it is really the face-to-face communication that tends to hold the greatest sway over popular actions as uncertainty rises. That's only natural, since people tend to turn to others close to them for advice and collaborative thinking during crisis periods. So, as a general rule, the greater the popular perception of looming crisis, the greater the role played by rumor mills in particular, and informal communication channels in general, with the most dangerous situation being when authorities have effectively lost the attention of the public regarding preparations for crisis management. It is also fair to say that rumor mills tend to work more effectively in less developed economies than in more advanced ones, where access to mass media is virtually universal. Finally, it's probably accurate to say that rumor mills will generate increasingly wilder stories (e.g., urban legends) as the 010100 threshold looms, therefore many of the activities of authorities near the end of the Y2K build-up will be focused on stamping out "bad information" vice spreading "good information."
When the Countdown Phase ensues, Information Overload seems inevitable for all societies not undergoing some greater sort of "crisis," whatever that could be. Mass media coverage of the Millennial Date Change Event and "looming Y2K crisis" is likely to reach epidemic and epic proportions, in large part because the latter presents almost everything one could ask for in terms of a global media event: great uncertainty, great danger, great debate, lots of conflicting expertise eager to sway public opinion, a worldwide "playing field," and a worldwide audience. Toss in the world's largest party and we're talking some high ratings, especially for news programs which increasingly specialize in releasing frightening bits of information to the public over a stretch of time as a way to ensure continued loyalty. Since bad news sells better than good, it goes without saying that much "bad news" will be "found" by the mass media during the last few weeks of 1999. The effect of all this "bad news" can have one of two effects on the public: scare them into action or numb them into inaction or indifference. Much will likely be determined by individual exposure to network failures prior to 010100 that can be causally linked to Y2K: if no to little exposure happens, the heavy media coverage is likely to incite indifference, whereas significant exposure may incite some level of panic among those "convinced" by their experiences.
Moving from Countdown to Onset, we watch for the dynamic we entitle, Final Solutions, by which we mean individual citizens and organization actively engaging in "endgame" strategies decided upon weeks or perhaps even months earlier. This aggregate pursuit of what could be highly idiosyncratic coping (or simply celebratory) strategies may well be disorienting for society as a whole, for it may appear to all that significant segments of the population are clearly "going their own way" at the last moment, thus decreasing social trust as a whole as the 010100 threshold looms. Since, in many cases, the exhibited behavior may be the first public expression of that which up to now has been a strictly Private Transcript, the sudden shift in behavior by many may ratchet up the level of uncertainty and fear for the society as a whole. Of course, the classic story here is the one concerning survivalists or apocalyptics "heading for the hills" at the last moment, determined to "escape the chaos." Another variant that may wreak serious social harm is that small minority of mentally unbalanced individuals who may seek to "go out with a bang" on their own terms, raising the potential for a cluster of Jamestown-like mass suicides, Littleton-like shooting tragedies, and/or Waco-like stand-off between authorities and heavily-armed religious cults. In this regard, we'd argue that special security attention be given to religious shrines or meccas, or any place with strong significance for typically marginal social elements with a history of acting out violently during times of stress.
When the Onset finally hits, there will simply be a Will to Party that is both inescapable and profoundly powerful. To a great extent, the public desire for mass celebration should be accommodated to the greatest degree possible while seeking to reduce network pressures and limit unmanageable concentrations of people. Typical celebrations magnets, such as religious meccas, capital cities, and cultural landmarks, are likely to be packed to the breaking point, and while that presents significant security problems, attempts by authorities to block access are likely to be counterproductive. Naturally, the "world's largest party" is likely to produce a corresponding large amount of personal injuries, sporadic low-level violence, spontaneous riots, alcohol- and drug-related crimes and medical situations, and so on and so on. Almost none of this will have anything to do with Y2K in and of itself, but instead will simply reflect the nature of the Millennial Date Change Event in the country in question. If Y2K failures do disrupt such celebrations, there should be cause for alarm and yet, most people "trapped" in such situations respond quite nicely by rising to the occasion according to the spirit of the celebration. This is not to say that riots, violence, etc., won't happen, but that the additional burden of Y2K-related failures is unlikely to exacerbate their normal course to any significant degree. In short, it will be a wild party no matter what, and if Y2K "joins in," its immediate effect is likely to be negligible.
As we move from the Onset to Unfolding, an inevitable dynamic will be one of Panic Release, meaning social expressions of exasperation, anger, fear and loathing. The possible angles are many, with the following being just a few:
- Some will be exhausted by all the recent uncertainty, build-up, and celebration
- Others will be angry that Y2K turned out to be a "sham"
- Still others will be angry that Y2K turned out to be "far worse" than authorities "let on"
- Some will be angry at the lack of the "apocalypse," "rapture," or supernatural intervention in human affairs
- Others will be convinced that such "end times" are indeed unfolding
- Still others will be frightened by all the "odd behavior" they seem to be witnessing.
In short, the Millennial Date Change Event, along with the threat of the Y2K Event, is likely to elicit a strong build-up of social tension, not all of which will be spent in the celebrations surrounding 010100. There will be burn-out, a sense of let-down, along with heightened anxiety that Y2K "has finally begun." Many, if not most of the population will take all this in stride, but a significant minority will not. The big question will be whether that minority's actions will trigger broader social responses that authorities cannot control or simply be contained by authorities and written off by the larger public as the "typical nonsense of the extremists/troublemakers/wackos."
Assuming a significant Unfolding of the Y2K Event, the next dynamic of note is the Iatrogenic Zone, or what we like to call, "average people doing stupid things under duress"--something we're all familiar with. This is not so much panic, as the purposeful attempt to "fix things" that only leads to making them worse. Tackling real and identifiable problems is only a small portion of this dynamic (e.g., "experts" who attempt to "fix" things, armed only with their blinding ignorance), because the real damage tends to be done by those individuals or groups that target the imaginary, insignificant or unrelated "Y2K problems" with great gusto and, by doing so, create follow-on failures and clouds of confusion about actual Y2K causality. This dynamic is a key one for extending the Y2K Event beyond its minimal boundaries and into the realm of an unanticipated disaster, with the paradigm being the stunned local official staring into the news reporter's camera stammering, "We had no idea that people were going to . . .."
As we watch for a transition point from Unfolding to Peak, the crucial social dynamic is what we call the Trigger Effect (referencing the 1996 Amblin Entertainment movie of the same name noted earlier in this report). As stated before, most people do not panic during disasters, but rather rise to the occasion nicely, with only a very small minority succumbing--temporarily--to so-called disaster shock (i.e., a massive mental reordering of priorities following a cataclysmic event). The Trigger Effect doesn't refer to either of those two realities, but rather to one that appears much further down the road in a crisis--namely, when "battle fatigue" sets in. A particularly acute trigger of this sort of "crossing-the-line" behavior is the perception that either the crisis is being artificially drawn out by uncaring authorities ("Why don't they fix things faster?") or that recovery rates are unequal "for a reason"--meaning preferential treatment is being afforded by authorities. Nothing brings on the "short fuses" faster than the sense that "we're no longer in this together," whether the "they" are those receiving preferential treatment or the slow-footed authorities suspected of tending to their own needs first.
The Peak situation is obviously the most volatile phase in the social sphere, for it is here that group anger boils over and looks for ways to express itself. Typically, that means the targeting of small, easily identifiable demographic groups toward whom long-standing resentments have been harbored by the majority, usually over a sense of economic injustice ("They have exploited us long enough!"). Scapegoating, or the dynamic of targeting relatively weaker groups for persecution, is nothing more than the age-old practice of human sacrifice in light of "unexpected" and "unexplainable" disaster (meaning, in a practical sense, that those truly "guilty" are unreachable, so instead, "you hate the one you're with"--with apologies to Stephen Stills). In effect, disaster seems to rain down on you from on high, and since there's nothing you can do about the "source," you appease the anger within by striking out against those nearby that you've always resented anyway. In Indonesia, for example, during the 1997-98 Global Financial Crisis, it was the ethnic Chinese that often served as scapegoats, although sporadic reports of "ninja witches" being hunted down by villagers in remote areas made for the most compelling reportage. No matter what the idiosyncratic explanations by locals for this violent behavior, it remains nothing more than the inherent human tendency to look for someone to blame and target for persecution whenever "hard times" suddenly appear and the causality seems unclear or complex.
Of course, Scapegoating lies not only in the realm of mass behavior, but often serves as a political tool by those already in, or vying for, power. For example, an embattled regime is well served by blaming the society's ills on some small demographic group and then arranging for their state-sponsored persecution (think of Rwanda, for example). Then there's the targeting of political opponents or rivals (e.g., Malaysia following the financial crisis) designed to buttress the sagging political fortunes of a leader perceived to have done poorly by his or her people. In short, "hard times" breed harsh attitudes, and harsh attitudes make for absolute solutions, which in turn make for excellent political tools for those leaders with the will and way to divide and conquer (or typically, reconquer) their own populations during conditions of internal crisis. Think of Lenin in Russia during World War I, or Hitler in Weimar Germany, and you get the picture of the potential for political tumult under the right conditions.
Can Y2K create such dire circumstances in any country? Assuming the right set of truly disastrous proportions, anything is possible. In short, our planet's recent good fortune in seeing unrest lead to greater political freedom shouldn't blind us to the potential for equally negative outcomes. One true bright spot, though, is our hypothesis that Y2K will probably present greater political unrest potential for authoritarian states than for democracies. Why? Again, distributiveness equals robustness with regard to network failures, and democracies are simply more distributed than authoritarian regimes.
The dynamic to which authorities may have to resort to move their societies out of the Peak Phase and into the Exit Point is proving to their public that the Guilty Will Pay. Now, this probably sounds a bit hypocritical following the previous paragraphs on scapegoating, but the reality is that a key motivation for scapegoating is the perception that the truly guilty are out of reach and therefore untouchable, so instead you reach for what's at hand. When authorities act to demonstrate to the public that rules still matter and those who break them will not get away with it due to the perception of unusual circumstances ("All bets are off!"), they send a strong signal that while a new rule set may be emerging, the old one still operates in familiar ways, forcing accountability in the end. Accountability is what keeps vigilantism and scapegoating at bay, for it says that--ultimately--those who break the rules will pay for their crimes. Hopefully, authorities can convince the public that state-directed retribution will remain within legal parameters, but it's entirely possible that in certain extraordinary situations, extraordinary (meaning, extra-legal) measures will have to be taken. That can sound fairly sinister from an American perspective, because we have relatively high legal standards, but in many countries around the world, definitions of extra-legal means are highly dependent on the circumstances or the crisis and cultural (in)sensitivity to losses of political liberty.
The Exit Point for the Social Response timeline is easily defined--namely, the broad perception that the "Worst is Over!"
Once the perception takes hold that the Y2K Event has crested and we're on a downward glide path back toward "life as we knew it," the crisis effectively ends in terms of social response. Naturally, attempts by authorities to will this view into popular acceptance will probably be met with significant resistance if the gap between rhetoric and reality is too much for the populace to bear. In the best possible path, a freely operating mass media senses this spontaneous mood shift among the citizenry and "declares" victory on their behalf.
The legacy issue for the Social Response realm is the potential for New Faiths to emerge from Y2K's ashes. These faiths can be either secular (i.e., political movements) or religious based, with the key attribute being their self-perceived "birth" under conditions of great crisis. Along these lines, we cite the emergence of the revolutionary Marxist group Tupac Amaru in Peru following a tremendous natural disaster (earthquake). In short, disaster can bring people together in all sorts of ways, with political or social activism--be it peaceful or violent--a frequent long-term outcome. Given the tumultuous global changes of the 1990s, it's only natural to assume that new faiths will rise up in challenge to, or support of, new definitions of the status quo. If Y2K triggers enough social tumult, it may crystallize a larger moment in history in the minds of those either happy or unhappy with the recent transformations wrought by the end of the Cold War, the Information Revolution, and the emergence of Globalization and the New Economy.
The Governance (aka, Political) Timeline in Detail
Moving from left to right along the timeline:
In the Mania Phase we focus on the dynamic of the Credibility Gap, referring to the tendency of populations to distrust "official truths" put forth by government agencies on the subject of Y2K. This gap extends in both directions, meaning it includes both those who believe the state is too lax in tackling the issue and doesn't warn the public enough about its potential effects and those who believe the state is unnecessarily hyping the issue and scaring the public. The later any government began its efforts to raise public awareness and push remediation efforts, the greater the gap will be, for the public tends to respond in one of two ways:
- People assume the government "blew it" by not tackling the subject earlier, and hence is covering up its "mistakes" now.
- People assume the government is "caving in" to Y2K "fear mongers" and doesn't really have a good grasp of the actual situation or resulting vulnerability.
Outside of the U.S., the dynamic carries the additional burden of potential anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism, anti-capitalism, and/or anti-technologism, for the Y2K "problem" is easily identified as stemming from any or all of those quarters and thus remains suspect in terms of actual causality ("Is it a real problem or an American scam?"). Additionally, tied to both these variants is the sub theme that either the government or the U.S. Government in particular really knows how to "make Y2K go away" but isn't "coming clean with us" for some selfish reason (e.g., profit motive, "plot" to derail the Euro's introduction).
Given this substantial level of distrust of government leadership on the issue, a crucial dynamic as we move from Mania to Countdown is any public or private sector efforts to educate the public about how to prepare for the Y2K Event, aka Y2K & U-type promotional and educational material or campaigns. Obviously, the earlier and more aggressive the campaign, the better. Likewise, the more transparent and honest the campaign, the better. Sounding too ominous only scares the public either into hyperaction or inaction, while sounding too optimistic only makes people think you're holding back the "bad news." Emphasis should be on the universality of the effect and the universality of the response--"we are all in this together." Since IT-awareness is relatively scarce in many countries around the world, while work-arounds for network failures are a fact of daily life, these campaigns in many parts of the world can focus more on explaining causality than the provision of "survival information." In other words, in most places people know what to do already in response to Y2K-induced failures (i.e., the same old, same old), so authorities should focus their educational campaign on dampening any potential social backlash that could be fueled by disparities in suffering or recovery times, as well as ignorance of causality leading to the propagation of conflict-triggering "explanations" ("Let me tell you why this really is happening to us and why you shouldn't take it anymore!").
Once the Countdown Phase begins, our dynamic comes more in the form of advice, as in, "Go with the Authority on Tap." By this we mean that governments should not seek to introduce special leaders, authoritative bodies, or new rule sets in the waning days of 1999, but rather should stick with the architecture of authority they (hopefully) have already put in place during the previous months. If new authorities and rules are introduced at this late date, governments are likely to trigger more distrust than trust, and more rule-breaking than rule-abiding than if they simply went with what they already have--no matter how deficient. Why? Any last-minute introduction of new authority only fuels popular suspicions or fears that the government is ill-prepared and/or now is finally "coming clean" on its "secret plans" to use Y2K as a pretext for some sort of reordering of political relations either within the government or between the government and the population. The positioning or use of military and/or security forces becomes a highly volatile issue during this phase, for it represents the worst fears of some regarding the government's "true motives" vis-a-vis Y2K.
Such popular suspicions only highlight the government's need to get it's security "house in order" substantially prior to the 010100-threshold. This is especially true in relation to the key dynamic we cite for the transition period from Countdown to Onset--the danger of the First Strike. First Strike refers to the high probability that significant numbers of activist groups will seek to mark the Millennial Date Change Event by engaging in some high-profile activities--both malevolent and benign, but focused foremost on garnering mass media attention--in support of whatever cause they espouse. Most political causes or movements--not just the extreme, apocalyptic ones--tend to be very date sensitive, meaning history and the milestones of time's passage play a great role in motivating action and determining its timing. The 2000 threshold will simply be too great a target for most such groups to pass up, regardless of their motives (i.e., anything from simple self-celebration to catastrophic violence). Moreover, the rise of the Information Revolution provides new avenues for such strategies, most notably the Internet and the World Wide Web, which are likely to see explosions of released viruses and various expressions of hacktivism (i.e., politically-oriented hacking). In short, authorities should expect all sorts of groups standing up at this point and declaring, in so many words, that either "We rule!" or "We're not going to take it anymore!"
Once the Onset hits, the government's key task is Keeping Up Appearances, meaning maintaining normal routines to whatever extent possible as Y2K emerges and millennial celebrations/activities are played out so as to avoid fueling any popular fears regarding the potential for social disorder. Those elements looking for opportunities to foment greater levels of popular uncertainty or fear will likewise be watching closely for signs that things are amiss. So to this end, governments must be prepared to see through to completion whatever normal routines exist for marking the beginning of the new year, with special emphasis placed on the safety of notable figures--both public and private--who may participate or attend. For example, imagine the potential uncertainty and fear engendered by the missed or failed (for whatever reason) appearance of an important religious leader at a long-scheduled and highly-attended public celebration. Following this line of reasoning, governments should avoid overloading themselves with too many events and their attendant security requirements. Better to do less and do it well than do too much and risk unintended consequences. In short, stay with what you know.
Moving out of the Onset and into the Unfolding, be aware that Opportunists Abound. For the same reason why we advise authorities not to overextend themselves right at the 010100 threshold, many political opportunists such as terrorists and others looking to take advantage of a decreased security environment under conditions of "chaos" will likewise probably adopt a wait-and-see attitude regarding Y2K's unfolding. Unlike the First Strike types who are so eager to make their mark with an eye toward history, these typically more malevolent actors will look to piggy-back their destructive or criminal actions on Y2K-related failures so as to maximize their impact and/or rewards. A variety of strategies can be imagined:
- Spoofing Y2K failures to induce more network uncertainty and increase popular fears
- Striking to take advantage of security failures caused by Y2K
- Taking credit for Y2K failures they had no part in producing.
Naturally, those who normally seek to play "outside the rules" are at a distinct advantage during periods when rule sets are either suspended or unclear, so authorities must assume that such elements are actively planning to exploit Y2K's unfolding in any way possible.
The Unfolding Phase witnesses the dynamic of Backlash, meaning the potential for some segments of the population to lash out at authority over perceived failures to address whatever Y2K-related difficulties emerge and linger. Again, we're not talking about the immediate popular reaction to any potential difficulties, but rather the tendency for negative emotions to emerge as the period of suffering drags on. Obviously, the Most Vulnerable segments mentioned above are most likely to serve as "tinder" for any such backlash, highlighting once more the great utility in assuring their basic needs during the Y2K's unfolding. Governments should focus crisis management and response efforts on Y2K causes vice symptoms, although the latter requires special efforts if more vulnerable segments of the population are affected. Public relations efforts are paramount here, especially any efforts by leaders to show that they are aware of and responding to public "pain." The key goal of the government, though, should be on gathering sufficient intelligence so as to manage public perceptions of the "time remaining" in the Y2K "crisis." Obviously, honesty is the best policy here, so transparency in all matters should be the top priority in all state-public information flows.
The dynamic to watch out for as we move from Unfolding to Peak is the appearance of the Answer Man, or the political and/or military leader who promises a rapid reduction in disorder and uncertainty if only he (or she) is allowed to amass--albeit on a "temporary basis"--extraordinary power and institute certain strong measures that typically involve a drastic loss of civil liberties for the population as a whole. Of course, history teaches us that this "temporary basis" often turns out to be a great number of years, usually ending with the "great leader's" death and the plunging of the political system into great turmoil. If such an individual is to appear under Y2K's peak conditions, his or her ideological appeal is likely to be based on anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism, anti-capitalism and/or anti-technologism. Thus the "cure" offered will likely involve sort level of detachment from the global economy, or a firewall strategy of sorts. In this way, the likely outcome of any state's Y2K "disaster" is likely to be one of systematic withdrawal versus striking out in anger against one's neighbors or the West in general. The regions where this outcome is most likely are those with the lowest development levels, i.e., the least to lose in such a strategy.
The Peak Phase dynamic of greatest importance is the state's Mobilization Capacity in the face of an onslaught of popular demands for government services and general redress under conditions of social stress and perhaps open disorder. If all of the dynamics outlined above are occurring in the Network, Business and Social spheres, then the government is likely to inundated with a flood of trouble calls, appeals for disaster relief, anger and resentment, etc. Only the most advanced states have historically exhibited a great capacity to effectively channel such a broad array of public demands in a short period of time under crisis conditions, and even there capabilities are occasionally found to be greatly lacking (e.g., the slow response of the Japanese government to the Kobe earthquake). Even in these advanced states, however, the potential universality of the Y2K Event presents a huge challenge, for crisis management of natural disasters, for example, is based on the principle of attacking the problem through a huge and rapid in-flow of out-of-area help. Outside the rather small circle of advanced economies with strong mobilization capacity, the vast majority of states around the world exhibit far more meager skill sets. A good indication of this is the exceeding thin nature of local police in most developing states. Just like individual regions within advanced states, less developed countries face the additional burden of possibly being denied out-of-area help from those very same advanced states too preoccupied with their own Y2K problems. In short, many may dial their version of 9-1-1, only to receive a "busy signal."
Again, taking into consideration all the different Peak Phase dynamics presented in other timelines, it's easier to understand the notion that--in the political realm--desperate times often require dramatic acts be taken by those in power to maintain social control. We call this dynamic, Killer Apps, referring to bold political actions that serve to erase popular uncertainty and restore public faith in government control. At its most benign, a killer app can be nothing more than a Churchillian speech by a national leader that calms the public and draws people together in the "common cause" of recovery. At its most malevolent, a killer app can be nothing less than an authoritarian leader's liquidation of a troublesome opposition party through mass arrest and imprisonment or executions. It can be the calculated, top-down direction of ethnic conflict designed to unleash maximum violence or the imposition of martial law to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. In effect, it can be almost anything so long as it's bold and redraws the lines of uncertainty and disorder set in motion by the Y2K Event. But as with any attempt to "seize the bull by the horns," unintended consequences can abound. In short, it can be a very wild ride.
We define the Exit Point dynamic as the beginning of the Legal Deconstruction, meaning anything from letting the lawyers "go at it" to the collapse of a coalition government and the resulting special election, to the passing of new laws, to the resignation of top government officials, to special government investigations as to "what went wrong," and so on. In short, the legal deconstruction is nothing more than the resumption of standard government procedures for "digesting" a crisis experience and moving back to "life as we knew it." Obviously, this is where many of Y2K's legacy issues will be dealt with. Likewise, this is where the great social debate will be held as to whether Y2K represented a unique, almost exogenous event akin to an Act of God, or the harbinger of what instability and crises will look like in the next century.
The legacy issue of the political realm is Y2K's potential to alter leadership rosters. Obviously, Y2K will occur on someone's "watch," so popular perceptions of the current government's handling of its crisis management duties will determine the likelihood of turnover by either legal (e.g., elections) or extra-legal (e.g., revolts) means. New Rulers are likely to arise on the basis of:
- Popularity untainted by the crisis (e.g., leaders in exile or out of power)
- Popularity achieved during the crisis (e.g., military or technically-focused leaders)
- Popularity on the basis of representing a stark alternative (e.g., so-called Green or anti-technology/development leaders, those advocating a "simpler lifestyle" or a "less Western lifestyle, those advocating a return to "better values")
- Willingness to take advantage of disorder through bold political means (e.g., revolutionaries, dictators).
Looking across the other legacy issues defined earlier (New Faultlines, New Rules, New Faiths), it's not a great stretch of the imagination to say that Y2K, if it were to unfold as a global event of significant disturbance, has the potential to represent a turning point in human history, coming as it does on the heels of the end of the Cold War, the rise of Globalization, and the unfolding of the Information Revolution. Then again, history is rarely scheduled as neatly as Y2K.
Whenever I look back on this report, I always think what an incredible privilege it was to visit the future of crises in this manner, and how much it taught me.
See the entire Y2K report here.
Saturday, February 22, 2020 at 8:57PM 
The above slide is from my state-of-the-world brief of the last decade: The basic argument being: Trump will outsource U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East to the Saudis, Emiratis, Israelis, and Russians (all of whom played major meddling roles in our 2016 election [and own our POTUS in various financial ways] and are doing the same this time around), leaving the Europeans to handle North Africa on their own. The US-less NATO thus tries a "sea wall" strategy to keep bad things from coming across the Med, but essentially takes a strategy of limited regret regarding the continent, which corresponds to Trump pulling U.S. troops from the continent (well underway). With radical Islam largely crushed in PG and no great escape possible to Central Asia (too many regional powers RWA to do a "Chechnya" on any situations [as Putin did to both Chechnya and now Syria]), then the path of least resistance for the AQs and Islamic States of radical Islam is to come together at create the new caliphate(s)/radical Islamic sanctuary in the Trans Sahel - the least governed territory in the world.
Going back further to a Battleland blog post I wrote in 2011 ("An Explosive Glimpse of the Future of the Long War in Africa"):
As the radical Islamic pulse continues to fail/peter out in the Middle East and North Africa, this is where it comes next.
Why? Globalization is penetrating Africa big-time, mostly driven by ravenous Chinese resource demands, and the socio-economic churn creates potential conflicts that radical Islamists will seek to exploit. So yeah, AFRICOM becomes more important over time.
Finally, from the pre-AFRICOM Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating (2005), which, BTW, predicted the establishment of an Africa Command in its final chapter):
CENTCOM’s AOR encompasses the Persian Gulf area extending from Israel all the way to Pakistan, the Central Asian republics formerly associated with the Soviet Union, and the horn of Africa (from Egypt down to Somalia). This is clearly the center of the universe as far as the global war on terrorism is concerned, and yet viewing that war solely in the context of that region alone is a big mistake, one that could easily foul up America’s larger grand strategic goals of defeating terrorism worldwide and making globalization truly global. Here’s why: CENTCOM’s area of responsibility features three key seams, or boundaries, between that collection of regions and the world outside. Each seam speaks to both opportunities and dangers that lie ahead, as well as to how crucial it is that Central Command’s version of the war on terrorism stays in sync with the rest of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
The first seam lies to the south, or sub-Saharan Africa. This is the tactical seam, meaning that in day-to-day terms, there’s an awful lot of connectivity between that region and CENTCOM’s AOR. That connectivity comes in the form of transnational terrorist networks that extend from the Middle East increasingly into sub-Saharan Africa, making that region sort of the strategic retreat of al Qaeda and its subsidiaries. As Central Command progressively squeezes those networks within its area of responsibility, the Middle East’s terrorists increasingly establish interior lines of communication between themselves and other cells in Africa, as Africa becomes the place where supplies, funds (especially in terms of gold), and people are stashed for future use. Africa risks becoming Cambodia to the Middle East’s Vietnam, a place where the enemy finds respite when it gets too hot inside the main theater of combat. Central Asia presents the same basic possibility, but that’s something that CENTCOM can access more readily because it lies within its area of responsibility, while sub-Saharan Africa does not. Instead, distant European Command owns that territory in our Unified Command Plan, a system constructed in another era for another enemy. Those vertical, north-south slices of geographic commands were lines to be held in an East-West struggle, but today our enemies tend to roam horizontally across the global map, turning the original logic of that command plan on its head.
Central Command’s challenge, then, is to figure out how to connect these two regions in such a way as to avoid having Africa become the off-grid hideout for al Qaeda and others committed to destabilizing the Middle East. By definition, such a goal is beyond CENTCOM’s pay grade, or rank, because it’s a high-level political decision to engage sub-Saharan Africa on this issue—in effect, widening the war. And yet solving this boundary condition is essential to winning the struggle in the Middle East. What the Core-Gap model provides Central Command is a way of describing the problem by noting that transnational terrorism’s resistance to globalization’s creeping embrace of the Middle East won’t simply end with our successful transformation of the region. No, that struggle will inevitably retreat deeper inside the Gap, or to sub-Saharan Africa.
Why is this observation important? It’s important because it alerts the military to the reality that success in this war won’t be defined by less terrorism but by a shifting of its operational center of gravity southward, from the Middle East to Africa. That’s the key measure of effectiveness. Achieving this geographic shift will mark our success in the Middle East, but it will also buy us the follow-on effort in Africa. You want America to care more about security in Africa? Then push for a stronger counterterrorism strategy in the Middle East, because that’s the shortest route between those two points.
And from the Washington Post today:
Fighters appear to be coordinating attacks and carving out mutually agreed-upon areas of influence in the Sahel, the strip of land beneath the Sahara desert. The rural territory at risk is so large it could “fit multiple Afghanistans and Iraqs,” said Brig. Gen. Dagvin Anderson, head of the U.S. military’s Special Operations arm in Africa.
“What we’ve seen is not just random acts of violence under a terrorist banner but a deliberate campaign that is trying to bring these various groups under a common cause,” he said. “That larger effort then poses a threat to the United States.”
The militants have wielded increasingly sophisticated tactics in recent months as they have rooted deeper into Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, attacking army bases and dominating villages with surprising force, according to interviews with more than a dozen senior officials and military leaders from the United States, France and West Africa.
To avoid scrutiny from the West, the groups are not declaring “caliphates,” officials said, buying time to train, gather force and plot attacks that could ultimately reach major international targets.
A coalition of al-Qaeda loyalists called JNIM has as many as 2,000 fighters in West Africa, according to a U.S. report released this month. The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, which staged the 2017 attack that killed four American soldiers in Niger, is also thought to be hundreds strong and recruiting combatants in northeastern Mali.
“This cancer will spread far beyond here if we don’t fight together to end it,” said Gen. Ibrahim Fane, secretary general of Mali’s ministry of defense, whose country has lost more than 100 soldiers in routine clashes since October.
The warnings come as the Pentagon weighs pulling forces from West Africa, where about 1,400 troops provide intelligence and drone support, among other forms of military help. About 4,400 American troops are based in East Africa, where the U.S. military advises African forces fighting al-Shabab ...
Monday, September 9, 2019 at 9:15AM 
The article was posted to the online journal Friday. I wrote it at the end of winter, updating it as it went through the peer-review and editorial-board processes. It is based - in part - on analysis I did for Creek Technologies out of Dayton OH. Creek is a prominent DHS contractor and is naturally always looking to understand the evolving needs of its government clients. The company is also very forward-looking and innovative on workforce development issues.
I found the work fascinating for a lot of reasons, but specifically because:
CBP is clearly not enjoying its "time in the barrel" right now, and needs help.
This is how HSAJ's editor introduced the article:
The September issue of Homeland Security Affairs marks the rollout of a new recurring feature called Policy Perspectives. From its founding, CHDS has had twin missions of educating and informing policymakers as well as furthering scholarship in the discipline of Homeland Security. In order to better serve both constituencies, HSA will begin to provide its readers with occasional policy-focused analyses and position papers in addition to peer-reviewed scholarly articles and book reviews. With the addition of the new Policy Perspectives features, Homeland Security Affairs will now serve as an enhanced platform for the discussion and debate of important policy ideas and proposals while it continues to serve as an outlet for outstanding scholarship designed to further the growth of knowledge within the developing discipline of homeland security.
Our first Policy Perspectives feature will be an analysis of key capability gaps at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) by Thomas P.M. Barnett. In addition to our inaugural “Policy Perspectives” feature, the August issue also contains an essay which reviews an important new book on domestic intelligence in the U.S., and an essay which presents an andragogical approach for learning homeland security.
In “Capability Gaps Threatening CBP’s Present and Future Operations,” Thomas P.M.Barnett analyzes key operational shortcomings at Customs and Border Protection and recommends targeted reforms for the agency.
