Signals: Peak Youth... Fish Forecasting... Rise and Fall of Intelligence... and more

Vol. 1, No. 4 | December 15, 2014 | AAI Foresight 

Inside Foresight SIGNALS

> Peak Youth: Preparing Now for an Aging Planet

> Fish Forecasting: New Methods for Monitoring Marine Life

> Book Note: The Rise and Fall of Intelligence

> Signals from the Foresight Community

Peak Youth: Preparing Now for an Aging Planet

The majority of countries around the world are graying, due to the so-called demographic dividend: Improved educational attainment and economic empowerment are lowering birthrates, and individuals are living longer, healthier lives.

As a result, we may soon reach “peak youth,” wherein the number and proportion of young people in the world are as high as they will ever be. Without investment in their futures, these young people could be burdens to society rather than assets, warns a new report from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

There are currently 1.8 billion humans ages 10 to 24, but those numbers are expected to drop as more countries benefit from the demographic dividend. Only six countries, five of which are in sub-Saharan Africa, are “youthening” rather than aging, but even these countries are expected to reverse the trend by 2020.

For societies to benefit from the demographic dividend, young people need opportunities to thrive; this means not just creating jobs for them, but also improving education and health, especially for girls, the report urges.

The time to make these investments in youth is now, UNFPA report editor Richard Kollodge told IRIN News: “Eventually a very young population will become a very old population, and you have to plan for that too. Unless steps are taken right now, then the opportunity for a demographic dividend will be squandered.”

Sources: IRIN News; State of World Population 2014 (UNFPA).

Signals: aging, birthrates, development, education, health, population, youth

Fish Forecasting: New Methods for Monitoring Marine Life

The cold waters off Peru and Chile are richly productive, yielding between 5% and 10% of the world’s fish. Researchers are now learning more about why this ecosystem, known as the Humboldt Current, is so productive, aiming to predict the impacts of environmental disturbances on these waters’ productivity.

Life in the Humboldt Current is nourished by the constant upwelling of more nutrient-rich waters from the deep, according to researchers from the Institute of Research for Development (IRD) in France. Using high-resolution sensors, they have modeled the circulation of oxygen content in these churning waters, monitoring how variations in the intensity of seasonal, low-oxygen currents from the equator affect the Humboldt’s ecosystem.

With additional modeling work, these studies will help improve forecasts of the health of important fish resources, particularly anchovy stocks.

Bioluminescence—the flashes of light generated by tiny marine organisms such as dinoflagellates—offers another unique tool for monitoring fish stocks, believes Dr. Charlotte Marcinko of Britain’s National Oceanography Centre. When fish move through the seas, the churning water disturbs the dinoflagellates and triggers the chemical reactions producing the telltale glow.

Modeling changes in the seasonal abundance of the bioluminescent organisms may better inform researchers monitoring the size and movements of fish populations.

Sources: Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and National Oceanography Centre.

Signals: ecosystems, fish, models, oceans, resources

Book Note: The Rise and Fall of Intelligence

Defense Department historian Michael Warner’s timely book The Rise and Fall of Intelligence: An International Security History (Georgetown University Press, 2014) offers an academic but accessible overview of a topic naturally veiled in secrecy and cloaked in misconceptions. The author eschews sensationalism, unlike the still-trending reactions to reactions to the so-called #TortureReport recently released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Executive Summary: PDF).

In fact, the details and findings of the SSCI report ought not to be a surprise, as the CIA inspector general’s own review of the “enhanced interrogation program,” which occurred at about the same time that the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke, was stomach-turning (and policy-questioning) in its own right: “Not a few American officials believed the legal rationale for those techniques could not be defended,” Warner writes.

Historically, what Warner refers to as the rise of intelligence is the long-term professionalizing of the endeavors of states … to advance or protect their own interests—vital for preventing wars or winning them efficiently. …

Now, the Information Revolution has generated vastly more intelligence and more entities anxious to use or abuse it, while overwhelming analysts. “The digital revolution compounded the [analysis] problem many times over,” Warner writes. Today, we are seeing the fall of intelligence and perhaps the end of secrets.

Adapted from Foresight SIGNALS Blog. Read the review. Purchase the book. 

Signals: governance, information, intelligence, security, torture, war, world affairs

Signals from the Foresight Community

Association of Professional Futurists: Nominations for Most Significant Futures Work for 2015 are open until January 31, 2015. The awards recognize the work of foresight professionals and others engaged in advancing our understanding of the future. The work may be text (e.g., books, dissertations, reports) or digital (Web sites, games, videos, software), produced between 2010 and the end of 2014. Winners will be announced at the APF Annual Reception in San Francisco on Saturday, July 25, 2015. Details: APF (Signal via Andy Hines) 

International Society for Information Studies: Call for papers— "The Global Brain and the Future Information Society," part of the IS4IS 2015 Summit Vienna to be held at the Vienna University of Technology, June 3-7, 2015. Featuring keynote speaker Francis Heylighen, director of the Global Brain Institute, the track aims to cover the multifaceted impacts of information technology on society. One-page abstracts with links and references should be submitted by February 15, 2015, through the conference submission page. Details: IS4IS 2015 Summit Vienna (Signal via Francis Heylighen)

Club of Amsterdam: The Future Now Show is a monthly video series exploring current affairs and the visions they inspire, and sparking discussions for strategies to shape the future. Recent webisodes have covered changing universities, political transition in the Middle East and North Africa, 3-D printing and medicine, climate change and food, and more. Tune in: The Future Now Show (Signal via Felix Bopp) 

Gordon Report: Despite an encouraging figure of 5.8% unemployment in the United States, all is not well for either job seekers or employers, according to the December 2014 issue of Imperial Consulting Corporation’s monthly newsletter. The official unemployment figure does not include individuals working part time but hoping for full-time jobs with benefits, nor those who have become too discouraged to continue seeking work. Meanwhile, employers are struggling to find workers with the high-level skills they need. This is a problem that employers may need to address more aggressively themselves by investing in training. Learn more or subscribe: Gordon Report (Signal via Edward Gordon) 

Send us your signals! News about your work or other leads, tips, and ideas are welcome. Contact Cynthia G. Wagner, consulting editor. 

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Review: The Rise and Fall of Intelligence

Historian Michael Warner's timely new book The Rise and Fall of Intelligence: An International Security History (Georgetown University Press, 2014) offers an academic but accessible overview of a topic naturally veiled in secrecy and cloaked in misconceptions. The author eschews sensationalism, unlike the still-trending reactions to reactions of the so-called #TortureReport recently released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Executive Summary: PDF).

In fact, the details and findings of the SSCI report ought not to be a surprise, as the CIA inspector general's own review of  the "enhanced interrogation program," which occurred at about the same time that the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke, was stomach-turning (and policy-questioning) in its own right: "Not a few American officials believed the legal rationale for those techniques could not be defended," Warner writes.

Historically, what Warner refers to as the rise of intelligence is the long-term professionalizing of the endeavors of states to gain strategically useful information from enemies (or to use false information to mislead them). These activities were conducted by entities (predominantly nation-states) to advance or protect their own interests, and were key to preventing wars or winning them efficiently. The rise of intelligence accelerated with technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution; the need for intelligence, with the repressiveness of regimes with conflicting ideologies.

It is enlightening to view the three great crises of the twentieth century--the two World Wars and the subsequent Cold War--through the intelligence lens. Rather than describing the great military battles, Warner focuses on the invisible machinations, the science, that made them successful or not.

World War I had linked science to intelligence. World War II ensured that science would forever be an element of all aspects of the intelligence field. The most important technicians--after the physicists who designed the atomic bomb--were the Allied mathematicians and engineers who delved into the secrets of Axis codes and ensured that the best codes of the Western Allies were impregnable. But other scientists and technicians played important roles on both sides, devising unprecedented new weapons, seeking methods to counter those of the enemy, and gleaning military intelligence reports for clues to what new deviltries the other side was brewing. (p. 103)

A key advantage for the Western Allies was the cooperation between the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the highly developed skills of analysts "and also decision makers who would listen to them," Warner notes. By contrast, the Soviet Union had more spies in more places, but less willingness than Allied leaders "to consider unpleasant hypotheses." This trait would prove fatal as the Cold War came to an end, when the Soviet economic crisis had been so secret that the CIA actually knew more about it than Gorbachev did when he was a member of the Politburo.

The end of the Cold War was not the end of the need for intelligence, though there would be calls to slash national intelligence budgets, leaving the world vulnerable to new threats. Tools and techniques for intelligence gathering had improved--and spread to more users, including the growing revolutionary movements in Latin America and the Middle East. Drawing inspiration from European anarchist movements earlier in the century, some Arabs "added torture to their toolkits" in addition to surveillance and insurgent penetration.

The rise of jihadists in the aftermath of the Cold War saw more individuals infiltrating the United States and blending in. In 1993, targets included the CIA employees who were on their way to work in Virginia and the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.

Al-Qaeda had taken the Leninist strategy of provoking the West to overreaction, the goal being to unite the Muslim world, according to Warner. If one such overreaction was the "enhanced interrogation techniques" adopted with the post 9/11 Guantanamo detainees, it was because "Al-Qaeda constituted a threat that gave no warning of its attacks, sought to inflict mass casualties, and could not be deterred by the threat of death or any strategic concessions that civilized nations could offer."

Thanks to another technological revolution--the computer and the Internet--nonstate actors were gaining as much power as states. The Information Revolution has generated vastly more intelligence and more entities anxious to use or abuse it, while overwhelming analysts. "The digital revolution compounded the [analysis] problem many times over," Warner writes.

As a result, we are seeing the fall of intelligence and perhaps the end of secrets. At the same time, more people have the ability and motivation to "watch the watchers," as exemplified by not just the uprisings resulting in the 2011 Arab Spring, but also Julian Assange's WikiLeaks and NSA contractor Edward Snowden's choice in 2013 to disseminate classified files that forced U.S. officials to defend their collection of information on individuals. Warner's own views on such behavior are expressed diplomatically:

I should explain that I finished this book just as the recent spate of leaks about US intelligence and allied efforts broke in the media. . . . First, I wondered why so many seemed shocked, given the many leaks over the last decade. My second sensation was a curious regret; I would rather have been mistaken about the trend toward the unilateral declassification of sensitive intelligence matters in democratic nations. (p. ix)

Part of the rise of intelligence had to do with an understanding of its value to do good: to prevent wars, to avert deaths and destruction. But the loss of the superpowers' monopoly on intelligence has not made the world less dangerous. Warner concludes:

Intelligence still assists both the spread and the resistance to oppression, but now that assistance occurs in homes and board rooms as well as in government agencies. That might be seen as progress, but it implies consequences that we can barely begin to appreciate. (p. 334)

Future historians may judge the "goodness" or "badness" of intelligence by its relationship with truth.

Cynthia G. Wagner (@CynWag1) is the consulting editor of Foresight SIGNALS.