How the future of conflict will transform business in a fragmented world
Imagine it’s 2034 and the world is more fragmented than it’s been in generations. AI-driven cyberattacks, disinformation, nationalism and polarization drive wedges between friends and enemies alike. How do you do business in that world? How do consumers react?
While in the final stages of producing this issue, the world shifted around us again with the war between Israel and Hamas. We considered many ways to present this content, which is as relevant as ever. It’s an issue about conflict and preparedness in many forms, including armed conflict both abroad and at home. Our focus is always how people and businesses react to the world around them and how that shapes our path forward.
According to Bloomberg, the term “geopolitics” has come up in earnings calls in 2023 three times as often as it did two years ago. Goldman Sachs launched a new division to advise clients on these risks. Why? Because we live in uncertain times, when the world order and narrative we have lived under for generations feels tenuous. That’s apparent in the news and in the C-suite.
We live in a landscape of a global economy reeling from the shockwaves of a pandemic, wars in Ukraine and Israel, ongoing conflicts in Africa, and tensions among all the major global superpowers. Those massive events have brought numerous business issues to the forefront, including the resiliency of supply chains and the complex web of economic dependencies that nations have on their allies and adversaries alike. We see changing relationships with systems and governments, a growing component of mental health in discussions of healthcare, and challenges in recruiting and training a properly skilled workforce, as well as with cybersecurity, disinformation and the impending reinvention of nearly everything by advances in artificial intelligence. Oh, and climate change.
That prompts even staunch globalists into talking about nationalistic tendencies such as reshoring of manufacturing, at least for critical goods and components.
But as many of the experts in this issue say, solving these problems requires coordination and agreement across a wide range of policy objectives. With polarization and dysfunction being the dominant governing states these days, getting to solutions seems less and less plausible.
As a result, we’re left with a near-term future based on fragmentation, polarization and perhaps rising and spreading conflicts. How do we navigate it?
When there is conflict, it doesn’t affect everyone equally, but it does affect everyone. Perhaps it’s in a region where you have employees or offices that need support. Or you need to provide aid. Or it affects the mental health of those who might not be directly affected but are dealing with resulting stress and uncertainty. How do you plan for an uncertain future?
Foresight is being employed more and more by governments and businesses alike to plan for increasingly complex, high-stakes scenarios.
Formally thinking about the future is required in a world like the one we’re seeing today. The traditional definitions of conflict and war have moved beyond one country declaring another the enemy and sending troops into the battlefield. We’re seeing that in many regions, sure. Some conflicts employ more “traditional” ways of fighting, with tanks and landmines and missiles. But we are also seeing more futuristic conflicts waged with everything from off-the-shelf drones and cell phones to cutting-edge satellite communications disrupting ideas about how war is waged or even defined.
Conflict is taking on new forms: tactical strikes on foreign soil, intentional disruption of trade routes, blocking access to resources, like hunting grounds or minerals used for raw materials or even fresh water.
Conflict can be a cyberattack or a disinformation campaign attempting to disrupt an election. How do you even determine who is behind attacks like that? And how much harder (or easier) is the rise of AI going to make it to answer all these questions?
Answering questions of conflict seems easier in the world where the conflict is with external forces. Yet in the U.S., we’re also experiencing so much internal conflict in creating policy that it’s easy to imagine a world where military solutions become easier to agree on than political ones.
That internal conflict is proving every bit as disruptive as the external conflict all around us, including how to respond to conflict in the broader world.
Businesses can’t afford to wait for governments to solve all these problems. They need to be thinking about not only plausible solutions, but a very plausible world with no solutions. Here is some intelligence to get you started.
|
← Read previous |
Read next → |