OECD: Future Global Shock – Improving Risk Governance

July 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In this project, public and private experts explore how to increase resilience to Future Global Shocks. The Project will generate options for governments to enhance capacity to identify, anticipate, control, contain and/or mitigate large disasters.

The project recognises that shocks can provide opportunities for progress, not just negative consequences. Amongst the inputs from which the final report will draw are six background papers and case studies on the following themes: Systemic Financial Risk; Pandemics; Cyber Risks; Geomagnetic Storms; Social Unrest and Anticipating Extreme Events.

Read the entire report: “OECD Reviews of Risk Management Policies: Future Global Shocks“, PDF.

Filed Under: demography, economy, energy, future studies, global risk, habitat, infowar Tagged With:

Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk

January 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The report “Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk“ is part of OECD’s “Future Global Shocks” series, in which thinkers from various disciplines assess whether events in their fields might become as damaging to the world as the recent financial crisis or a global pandemic.

Single online events, such as a major DDoS attack, are unlikely to have such worldwide effects, but the combination of something like a botnet DDoS attack, a major EMP, and specific attacks on SCADA or other computer-controlled machinery, and some form of real-world “kinetic” attack might well shock the world.

Via Ars Technica. Download the report (PDF) “Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk” from OECD.

Filed Under: future studies, global risk, infowar, scenarios

Why you already live in a cyberpunk future

January 15, 2011 by 7 Comments

Our perception of a cyberpunk future is shaped by the foresight of luminaries like William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling. Their vivid scenarios of ubiquitous computers, high tech weaponry, corporate tyranny and social disintegration have never been closer to reality than in the world of 2011. Here’s a few facts that will make you question the very fabric of our contemporary existence and learn to embrace the promise and perils of an increasingly cyberpunk reality.

A reality filled with high technology run by low life.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: archives, future studies, global risk, habitat, infowar, military, nanotech, scenarios, space Tagged With:

How US strategic antimissile defense could be made to work

November 16, 2010 by Leave a Comment
The authors show that the United States has the ability to defend itself from long-range nuclear armed ballistic missiles if it builds the right systems defenses based on stealthy drones that could shoot down ballistic missiles in powered flight after they have been launched from fixed known sites.This same system could defend Northern and Western Europe, and Northern Russia from large and cumbersome long-range ballistic missiles that Iran might build in the future.

Source: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (PDF).

Filed Under: future studies, global risk, infowar, military, robotics, space Tagged With: ,

Stuxnet worm heralds new era of global cyberwar

October 1, 2010 by Leave a Comment

That attack took place in 2008 and was acknowledged by the Pentagon only this August. It was strikingly similar to the recently disclosed cyber attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities using the Stuxnet worm, which also appears to have used contaminated hardware in an attempt to cripple Iran’s nuclear programme.

Like the attack on Centcom’s computers, the Stuxnet worm, which Iran admits has affected 30,000 of its computers, was a sophisticated attack almost certainly orchestrated by a state. It also appears that intelligence operatives were used to deliver the worm to its goal.

Its primary target, computer security experts say, was a control system manufactured by Siemens and used widely by Iran, not least in its nuclear facilities.

Source: The Guardian. Also read the analysis of the attack by Symantec; W32.Stuxnet Dossier (PDF).

Filed Under: global risk, infowar, military

What Kind Of Top-Secret Assassination Tech Does $58 Billion Buy?

September 18, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Every year, tens of billions of Pentagon dollars go missing. The money vanishes not because of fraud, waste or abuse, but because U.S. military planners have appropriated it to secretly develop advanced weapons and fund clandestine operations. Next year, this so-called black budget will be even larger than it was in the Cold War days of1987, when the leading black-budget watchdog, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), began gathering reliable estimates. The current total is staggering: $58 billion—enough to pay for two complete Manhattan Projects.

Source: Popular Science.

Filed Under: economy, infowar, military

Debating Space Deterrence

August 12, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite [KE ASAT]

Lessons from the Schriever X space wargame, which took place at Nellis AFB in May, are driving some hard thinking among deterrence strategists. In the second US Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium in Omaha this week, panel speakers explored what turns out to be a nightmarishly complex issue.

One big lesson from Schriever X, which simulated the world of 2022, is that “it’s hard to do attribution”, according to Lt Gen Larry James, boss of Stratcom’s Joing Functional Component Command for Space. “It’s easy with an ASAT” (anti-satellite weapon) “but it is not easy with an object that has been there for years.”

Source: Avation Week.

Filed Under: future studies, global risk, infowar, military, space

Wikileaks: War Diary of Afghanistan

July 27, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Daniel Ellsberg, a former US military analyst, has described the disclosure of the Afghan war logs as on the scale of his leaking of the “Pentagon Papers” in 1971 revealing how the US public was misled about the Vietnam war.

“An outrageous escalation of the war is taking place,” he said. “Look at these cables and see if they give anybody the occasion to say the answer is ‘resources”. He added: “After $300bn and 10 years, the Taliban is stronger than they have ever been … We are recruiting for them.”

However, the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers on Afghanistan – top secret papers relating to policy – had yet to be leaked, he said.

Source: The Guardian. View the Kabul War Diary from Wikileaks. Also see “Hypnotic illusions at the Wikileaks Show” from The Register.

From the perspective of a futurist this story tells everything about the future of the news media. The giants of news distribution are loosing their relevance to independent meta-sources like Wikileaks. The recent introduction of “pay-walls” by Murdoch on several general news services is a strategy of making themselves obsolete. Adding to the demise of mainstream news media comes the ereader.

Also read “Data, diffusion, impact: Five big questions the Wikileaks story raises about the future of journalism” from Niemanlab.

Filed Under: ereaders, future studies, infowar, media, military Tagged With: , , ,
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