
Leadership
of Technological Change:
Ten Areas of Strategic
Disruption, Opportunity, and Threat
John
M. Smart, © 2012.
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Overview
A read ahead for some of my seminars on technological change,
for senior leaders and middle managers. A short list of useful books in
ten key leadership skills, and a brief overview of my current thoughts
on what could, will, and should happen (possible, probable, and preferable
futures) in ten key technology domains over the next ten to twenty years,
and further reading in each domain. I’ve tried to state my key biases
and assumptions where relevant. You likely have different biases and assumptions.
Let's discuss them in seminar. Each area brief ends with a few leadership
questions. As you consider all the choices available to you in organizational
and self-leadership, how can you better manage coming opportunities, disruptions,
and threats in each technology area?
Contact
me at: johnsmart@gmail.com | 650-396-8220 | Accelerating.org
| Blog: Ever Smarter
World
I. Senior Leadership: Ten Key Skills
and Useful Books
1.
Self-Diagnosis. Adaption-Innovation,
Kirton, 2003. Leading
the Leaders, Adizes, 2004. Strengths
Finder 2.0, Rath, 2007.
2. Self-Management and Health. Managing
Oneself, Drucker, 1999. Be
Excellent at Anything, Schwartz, 2004. The
Primal Blueprint,
Mark Sisson, 2009. Thinking,
Fast and Slow, Kahneman, 2011.
3. Learning/Evidence-Based Management. How
to Measure Anything, 2010. Building
the Learning Org, 2011.
4. Teamwork and Performance. Senior
Leadership Teams, Wageman, 2008. Strengths-Based
Leadership, Rath, 2009.
5. Budgeting and Procurement. High-Perf
Supplier Management, Moore, 2001. Beyond
Budgeting, Hope & Faser, 2003.
6. Strategic Management. 12:
The Elements of Great Managing, Wagner and Harter, 2006. Balanced
Scorecard Strategy, Hannabarger, 2007. On
Competition, Porter, 2008.
7. Innovation. The
Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen, 1997. Arms
and Innovation, Hasik, 2008. Creating
Innovators, Wagner, 2012. The
Immigrant Exodus, Wadhwa, 2012.
8. Change Management. Leading
Change, 1996. Turn
the Ship Around!, Marquet, 2012.
9. Ethics and Fairness. Meeting
Ethical Challenges of Leadership, Johnson, 2011. Controlling
Corruption, Klitgaard, 1991.
10. Foresight and Intelligence. Hard
Facts, Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense, Pfeffer and Sutton, 2006.
The
Well-Timed Strategy, Navarro, 2006. Analyzing
Intelligence, 2008. The
Signal and the Noise, Silver, 2012.
II. Technological
Change: Ten Areas of Strategic Opportunity, Disruption, and Threat
1.
Information Technologies
Main
Concept: Information technologies are becoming the “Steering
System” of accelerating global change.
Leader’s Challenge: Using IT to grow personal, organizational, and
global Intelligence and Interdependence.
“The conversational interface, due 2015-2020, may be the
biggest single tech change we will see in our lifetimes.”
Computing (Super, Enterprise, Personal, Mobile/Wearable, Web/Cloud).
Google, Amazon, Apple, MS, IBM. Bio-inspired computing, like IBM’s
SyNAPSE, will bring statistical and brain-like learning
to our computer hardware in 2020’s.
Communication and Networks. Mobile now reaches 60% of
humanity. 85% (50% 4G LTE) by 2017. 3B more folks will be online by 2020.
“One wearable smartphone per child.” 100Mbps broadband, internet
TV, telepresence. Social networks, crowd intelligence. Facebook now ‘third
largest country’ (1B). Google, Facebook largest platforms (>1.4B)
by 2014.
Big Data, Maps, and Algorithms. Big Data, Google Maps
are preconditions for AI. Many algorithms (sorting, compression, linear
optimization, signal processing) improve as fast or faster than our computer
hardware (eg., 10^4 in 15 years).
Conversational Interface. NLP: Watson, Siri, Google Now.
Avg. length of query we ask search engines doubles every seven years.
1998 1.3 words, 2005 2.6 words, 2012 5.2 words. 2019 10.4 words. Soon,
natural language sentences will work well. This enables biggest set of
learning and social change most of us will see in our lives, right around
the corner.
Agents and Cybertwins. Personality Capture/Virtual Agents/Cybertwins,
Digital Identity, Quantified Self. Circa 2020. Agents become active extensions
of your personality, start managing what you read, how you connect, and
in a very empowering new development, what you buy and how you vote.
Books: Race
Against the Machine, McAfee, 2012; Age
of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil, 2000; Wired
for Thought, 2009
Leadership
Questions:
1. What are
your IT research, acquisition, R&D, hiring, training, measuring, and
management strategies?
2. What problems could be addressed and opportunities taken if you had
significantly better IT performance in your critical systems? How could
you get this performance?
3. What key disruptions or threats must you anticipate in a world of accelerating
IT performance?
2.
Nanoscience and Technologies
Main Concept: Nanotechnologies are the main “Engine”
of accelerating informational, social and technical change.
Leader’s Challenge: Growing critical Performance
and Efficiency via better use of miniaturization and
nanotech.
“Nanospace, where intelligence is headed, is orders of magnitude
faster, stronger, and efficient than human space.”
Small-Scale Physics. Engineering is inward bound. Distances
accessible to scientific manipulation have shrunk 100 millionfold
(10^8X) in 90 years. Intelligence community now uses encrypted quantum
comm. Demo of neutrino comm. through Earth (long term, to submarines).
Killer app for quantum computing is simulating quantum-molecular processes
(molecular machines, superconductivity). US needs strong STEM/Science
culture to continue these amazing advances.
Fission and Fusion. Fission is 10^3X more energetic per
mass than chemical reactions. Fusion 10^3X more than fission. We’ve
increased fusion energy output 10^12X since 1970. First commercial fusion
(ITER Demo) likely by 2030.
Nanochemistry. Rationally designed catalysts are 10^3
to 10^6X more efficient, productive, and fast than natural ones.
Nanopores allow cheap DNA sequencing. Protein engineering. Disassemblers.
Nanomedicine. Green chemistry. Expect further vast performance and efficiency
improvement in this space. Nano and IT engineering drives accelerating
change.
Nanocomputing. Moore’s law has given us a 10^11
(100 billionfold) performance/price increase, 1950-2007. Computing, comm,
storage performance/price doubles every 1-2 years. SoCs. FPGAs. Nanolasers.
Optical Computing. SETs. A hardware-based neural net is 10^7 faster than
a neuron. Brain simulation projects (Blue Brain, etc.) are now possible.
Nanodevices. Nanofabrication and lithography. Imaging.
Sensors. Nanoprobes. Nanofluidics. Nanowires. Motors. High-strength, self-cleaning,
self-healing materials. Nanobiomimicry. Nanopiezoelectronics. Nanocapacitors.
MEMS & NEMS.
Books: Nanotechnology,
Ratner, 2002; Engines
of Creation, Eric Drexler, 1987, Physics
of the Future, Kaku, 2011.
Leadership
Questions:
1. What are
your tech miniaturization research, acquisition, R&D, hiring, training,
measuring, & mgmt strategies?
2. What problems could be addressed and opportunities taken if you had
significantly better tech miniaturization or nanotech performance in your
critical systems? How could you get this performance?
3. What key disruptions or threats must you anticipate in a world of accelerating
miniaturization and nanotech?
3.
Resource Technologies
Leader’s Challenge: Ensuring resource Abundance
and growing Sustainability.
“Next
gen technology, enterprise, and policy will solve our Grand Challenges
(energy, water, food, CO2), but only under stress.”
Energy.
We’re swimming in it, and will continue to move slowly to cleaner
forms, barring climate disaster. Nat gas is cheap ($1.90 gal/equiv), and
will remain so (US has 2K tcf). We’re switching out coal for nat
gas. Home compressors(Phill) are an opportunity. Electric-NG-Gasoline
hybrids best transition solution. World has 1.2T bbls of proven oil, 38
yr supply, and 10T in shale and tar sands oil. We’ll never use most
of it. Oil will stay below $200/barrel to keep alternatives from outcompeting
it. “$100-200T of oil still to be sold.” Alternatives continue
slow advance. Solar half as cheap every 10 yrs, doubles base every 2 yrs.
Nanoengineered algal biofuels allow renewable transportation. H2 fuel
cells have 10^5X further future efficiency potential (Daniel Nocera, MIT).
Wind, geothermal have 10% niches. Solar and artificial photosynthesis
long term. 1/10,000th of solar flux addresses our entire current global
energy needs. Post 2030, Fusion could play a role.
Water. 1 billion people presently without safe, clean
water, 2.5B have poor sanitation. Cellphones are now more prevalent than
toilets. Leapfrog tech: Composting, desalinating, plumbing-free toilets.
DEKA’s Slingshot water purifier.
Food. Agrobiotech, GMOs, aquaculture. Longer term: Cultured
meat, vertical farming, aquaponics, aeroponics.
Population. Simon’s “Ultimate Resource.”
World pop is flatlining. We reach 8.5 to 9B in 2040 (Next 30
yrs for 1.5 to 2 billion more, half in Asia, half in Africa) then we either
stay flat or shrink. We’ve already hit “Peak Child”
(Peak Births, 135M/yr total, in 1990 and Peak Fraction of Children, <15yrs,
as % of Society, 1.9B, just 27% of population, in 2011). Better sanitation,
water, and basic public health (lower infant mortality) greatly reduce
birth rates in the last two growth areas (Asia, Africa). Growth of human
population is almost over. Growth of robots and machine minds is just
beginning.
Climate and Ecosystem Resources. We’ve overfished
and acidified the oceans, overfarmed our soil, killed off and threatened
many species. But deforestation isn’t accelerating, it’s saturating.
CO2 will saturate as well beginning mid-century, as next gen energy emerges.
All our raw materials supplies are greater than ever, and the smart mining
and drilling robots have barely gotten started. Sustainable resources
management is also emerging everywhere. Environmental issues are serious,
but they are also overstated. We are innovating and legislating our way
back to sustainability. Europe leads the way, the US is being dragged
along, as we prioritize freedom/innovation over sustainability. Like individual
vs. society, innovation vs. sustainability is our central tension. Both
are key.
Books: Abundance,
Diamandis etal, 2012; Rational
Optimist, Ridley, 2011; Skeptical
Environmentalist, Lomborg, 2011.
Leadership
Questions:
1. What are your critical resource research, acquisition, R&D, hiring,
training, measuring, & mgmt strategies?
2. What problems could be addressed and opportunities taken if you had
more resource abundance or sustainability? How could you get this outcome?
3. What key disruptions or threats must you anticipate in a world of regular
critical resource shortages?
4.
Engineering Technologies
Leader’s Challenge: Solving problems of Urbanization,
and growing Automation.
“Smart,
networked, virtualized, secure, productive, sustainable urban space is
key to every country’s future.”
Smart Cities. 50% of us live in urban areas. 60% by 2025.
By 2050, 70% will live in megacities (>10M). 1/3 of urbanites (850M)
now live in substandard slums (“shadow cities”).
2B by 2050. Must participate in global workforce. Keep Infrastructure
and slums working, and crime, gridlock, pollution from growing, and the
options, money and efficiencies in cities beat everything else. Major
drop in violent urban crime in the US from 1990-2010 had many causes:
planned parenthood, unleaded gas, urban renewal, policing upgrades,
growth of digital entertainment. Sustainable, walkable, smart cities
are growing. We can expect a return to the 1950’s in this regard,
cities as a desirable place to live.
Dematerialization and Efficiency. We are dematerializing
our economies. This is a key to sustainability. Learning how to substitute
digital products and processes for physical ones (think
of telepresence vs. physical travel , or all the physical products an
iPhone and intelligent household robot will replace). Beyond $25K
per year people consume sharply less energy per salary (World Bank,
Shell). They have their house and key appliances, and they increasingly
share them, use them on demand. Efficiency drives our sustainabiility
initiatives, which get increasingly intelligent.
Greentech and Pollution. Greentech is growing, but slowly.
Carbon will likely never be sequestered. Carbon taxes are smarter
and cheaper than carbon markets. We will increasingly decarbonize, but
even more we will dematerialize.
Transportation and Logistics. Robocars will
save 1.2M deaths/year, $230B in lost productivity. 2% of GDP. Expect collision
avoidance, autovalet, commercial first (2015?) then public robocars, giving
us back 5% of work time now lost to commuting (100 of 2100 hrs/yr), HOV
lanes for robocars. Internet of things will allow even smarter,
just-in-time logistics. 9B people, each with ~1-5K sensors and other connected
objects per person will create “smart environments”
after 2020.
Manufacturing & Farm Automation and Robotics. Specialization,
Trade and Automation are the top drivers of economic growth. GWP
has grown 15X from 1950-2010, $4T to $60T. Trade growth drove
our 2002 switch to a steeper GWP growth rate. Hi-tech
family farms are resurging. Local mfg will resurge as advanced
robotics emerges, and China’s wages grow faster than US wages. Some
(New Balance, etc.) are have already brought a few offshored factories
onshore again. Local on-demand mfg and making are growing too, but “desktop
mfg” and “3D printing” are much harder than boosters
claim.
Books: Triumph
of the City, Glaeser, 2011; In
Praise of Hard Industries, Fingleton, 1999; Reinventing
Fire, Lovins, 2011.
Leadership
Questions:
1. What are your equip. and engineering research, acquisition, R&D,
hiring, training, measuring, & mgmt strategies?
2. What problems could be addressed and opportunities taken with better
engineering innovation capabilities?
3. What key disruptions or threats must you anticipate in a world of increasing
urbanization and maker abilities?
5.
Health Technologies
Leader’s Challenge: Managing Costs,
addressing Diseases of Affluence.
“Digital
health is the health that’s accelerative. Public health is the health
that matters. The rest is oversold.”
Digital
Health and Diseases of Affluence. IT is the big story
of health care, the accelerative part. Watson for oncology, then “Google,
Apple, Facebook, Amazon health.” Genomic data, microsensors, wireless
monitoring. New global health options, such as medical tourism. The medical
and insurance professions will slow industry change, but there’s
great opportunity to use sensors, smart homes, smart toilets, smart environments,
networks for preventive medicine (cancers, toxins) and diseases
of affluence (obesity, diabetes, addictions). Lifestyle diseases,
still rising today (just like urban crime 1960-1990) will saturate
once Watson-level health advice, symbiont networks, and nanodiagnostic
prevention arrives.
Public Health and Disease Control. Clean water and
toilets have the greatest marginal impact on global infant mortality.
Lab on a Chip (LoC) nanodiagnostics will bring increasingly effective
preventative medicine. Most infectious diseases are solvable problems
in diagnostics, cellular and nanomedicine. See Lincoln Lab’s DRACO
for the future of pandemics.
Medical Biotech, Implants, HMIs. Nanomedicine
and nanosurgery will give us new kinds of implants, sensors, interfaces.
Drug and sensor implants will greatly improve health management
and addiction medicine.
Cellular and Regenerative Medicine and Longevity. Gene
Regulatory Networks (GRNs) and epigenome science will greatly improve
tracking and management of disease. Stem cells and tissue engrg will advance
transplants, but will have little effect on the brain. Expect only incremental
advances in longevity. Squaring the curve. Superhard 120-yr limit.
Big Pharma and Enhancement. Drugs are huge business.
Usu. marginal physiologic value, but great psychological value. We’ll
pay for any easy fix promise, and biotech is an “industry driven
by hope.” It’s never made a net profit as an industry, since
1960’s. We keep giving it billions, and there are big disease cures
coming with GRN-based drugs, but don’t expect a profoundly better
baseline memory, concentration, energy, longevity, or other such hype.
The system is too complex, ethical barriers too high. Almost all human
performance enhancement in next 20 years will be environmental and
digital.
Books: Creative
Destruction of Medicine, 2012; Truth
About the Drug Companies, 2005; Innovators
Prescription, 2008.
Leadership
Questions:
1. What are your health and wellness research, acquisition, R&D, hiring,
training, measuring, & mgmt strategies?
2. What problems could be addressed and opportunities taken if you had
much better health care programs?
3. What key disruptions or threats must you anticipate in a world of increasing
heath care costs and complexity?
6.
Social Technologies
Leader’s
Challenge: Simultaneously growing Individual Rights/Freedoms
and Evidence-Based Behavior.
“Values maps, symbiont networks, and conversational web will drive
learning, productivity, diversity, and activism.”
Social Freedom and Creativity. The primary wealth enabler. Why
the West (US and Europe) will continue to drive global services
and entertainment industries. Our laws and social norms are a “generation
or more ahead” of the rest of the world. The great new social advances
the West can gain right now are based on freedoms of connection, information
creation, digital augmentation, just-in-time education, collaboration,
commerce, and specialization.
Mental Health and Corrections. Consider what a symbiont
network (SN) can do for a parolee. Or a schizophrenic. Scary potentials
for abuse, but powerful new therapies too. Countries with corrections
focused on rehab (eg., Scandinavia) will use SN’s first. Both SN’s
and cybertwins will advise us on better ways of talking to others. Nonviolent
communication.
Privacy. There are many types of legal privacy in society.
They must be better protected, but anonymity will disappear.
Media, Entertainment, and Positive-Sum Games. Internet
TV (millions of channels, user control of content and commercials)
will be a major edutainment disruption. The telcos can delay 100Mbps,
but can’t stop it. MS, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook TV. Then
Open iTV, with its ability to remix, tag, and personalize content. Many
say digital media in the 1980’s drove Eastern Bloc discontent with
communism. Circa 2020, expect “serious games” for education
and personality assessment. Bookstore and film, fiction vs nonfiction
ratio analogy.
Values and Values-Mapped Web (Valuecosm). Increasingly,
our contacts and values mediate consumption, entertainment, education,
collaboration, political action, conflict. This “valuecosm”
will greatly increase subculture diversity, connect the like-minded, and
disrupt. Eg, Sweden’s Pirate Party, Anonymous, other activist groups.
Books: Privacy
in Context, 2009; Nonzero,
2001; Master
Switch, 2011; Better
Angels of Our Nature, 2011.
Leadership
Questions:
1. What are your social technologies research, acquisition, R&D, hiring,
training, measuring, & mgmt strategies?
2. What problems could be addressed and opportunities taken if you had
much better social/networking tech?
3. What key disruptions or threats must you anticipate in a world of greater
freedoms, networks, and Big Data?
7.
Cognitive Technologies
Leader’s
Challenge: Aiding Personal and Group Differentiation
and Development.
“Our
symbiont networks (group “self”) and cybertwin (digital “self”)
begin to reshape our conception of self.”
Education
and Specialization. Again, specialization, free trade, automation
create wealth (Adam Smith, Hayek). Digital “teacherless education”
will allow vast new specialization and trade. Wearables, augmented reality.
Google ed. Global English. Civics. Finland became #1 in OECD
in STEM and Innovation, using a 50% state-directed, 50% student-freedom
model. Free Ed. & HR platforms of 2020’s, built by
business, not govt, will drive, pay for these changes. Remember 1998-1999,
when an MCSE was worth more than a BS degree? That will return. Expect
LinkedIn, G+, Facebook as skill certifiers.
Personal and Group Differentiation. Freedom, creativity,
risk-taking, education, specialization all play into personal differentiation/individuation.
2020’s Web helps us find our useful uniqueness, our “difference
that makes a difference.”
Personal Development, Ethics, Higher Purpose. Metrics
of individual and social progress will become better quantified
and visualized. Different groups, cultures, religions, have unique
measures, yet they have many commonalities and convergences. Technology
assessment and ethics, measuring whether tech ennobles us or debases
us, become key. Consider European vs. US values toward sustainability
and privacy, there is more of each in Europe, by political choice. Expect
more awareness of others, planet. Sustainability, religious ecumenicalism,
political moderation continue to grow.
Social and Symbiont Networks. Symbiont Network (SN):
5-150 cognitively diverse people, intimately teleconnected 24/7,
outperforming nonsymbionts. Vast new productivity, activism. FB, Twitter,
G+, Arab spring are just a warmup to SN. Folks will use SN’s for
entertainment, education, productivity, and activism/lobbying, regulated
by both corps and government.
Human Performance and Extended Cognition. Cybertwins,
circa 2020, are our digital agents and servants. Eventually our “digital
self.” Conversational web, wearables, lifelogs, quantified self
will allow new levels of evidence-based, networked, and gamified/incentivized
behavior. Our biology isn’t accelerative, but our cybertwin
is. Productivity of our biology and our agents together keeps us competitive,
in an accelerating world. Will you run a lifelog? Will you let your cybertwin
augment your conversations w/ memeshows? To suggest words during
a “senior moment”? To keep learning and interacting with
loved ones after your death? These will be important social choices
for us, much sooner than we think.
Video: Finland
Phenomenon, 2011; Books: Free
Culture, Lessig, 2005; Cognitive
Surplus, 2011; Supersizing
the Mind, Clark, 2010.
Leadership
Questions:
1. What are your cognitive technologies research, acquisition, R&D,
hiring, training, measuring, & mgmt strategies?
2. What problems could be addressed and opportunities taken if you had
much better cognitive technologies?
3. What key disruptions or threats must you anticipate from accelerating
web education and tech augmentation?
8.
Economic Technologies
Leader’s
Challenge: Incentivizing Innovation and maintaining Moderate
(not Extreme) Economic Inequality.
“1995-2002,
US lost 2M mfg jobs. China lost 15M jobs, to machines. Disruptive TP,
not GDP, drives global economy.”
West
vs. the Rest. For 40 years, the US has produced ~25% of gross
world product. This will continue for the forseeable future. The
US has serious problems (governance, finances, education, workforce),
but they are problems of stagnation (stitching sideways, relative
to past growth and rise of the Rest), not of capacity decline.
A critical difference. Our relative share of capital markets
will decline, but the absolute wealth, culture, and innovation of the
West (US 1st, Europe 2nd) remains the aspiration of the world, and global
tech productivity will hit astounding new levels in coming decades.
Moderate Economic Inequality/Incentives. When there’s
too little income and asset inquality, there is no innovation incentive
(Socialism, Communism). When there’s too much, top players
capture markets and governments, rewrite the rules ("Crony Capitalism"),
middle class electorate becomes undereducated and unproductive, votes
its government into insolvency ("Idiocracy"). We need fair tax
law, biz law, antitrust, policy, institutional pluralism to avoid
this (Acemoglu).
Productivity, Collaboration and Employment. Technical
productivity (TP) underlies all GDP. In turn, our STEM/technical
abilities and infrastructure underlie all TP. Online education, physical
and virtual immigration will keep STEM and TP strong. Github. oDesk. Wikinomics.
DIY and open source culture. Tech-caused unemployment will continue
to disrupt. Education must adjust to this, support a perennial startup
culture. Expect smart global HR platforms, 2020 and beyond.
Finance, Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Financial
innovation always leads TP, AI and value creation. Trillions of dollars
daily in in foreign exchange, but regulation remains lax, as
we saw in the Global Financial Crisis. Small business support also
lags, and is critical to technical productivity. Accelerators, Seed
Funders, Crowdfunding (Kickstarter, J.O.B.S. bill) are among the best
new financial innovations. These are analogous to Credit and Mortgages
of 1940’s-60’s, VC’s of 1980’s-90’s. Entre-
and intrapreneurship need not just funding but freedom, problem awareness,
incentives, passion, purpose.
Development, Economic Freedom, Tech Disruption. Development
brings both freedom and security, after a predictable period of initial
new instability (see J-Curve,
Bremmer). Core vs. Gap development choice. 18% of world lives in extreme
poverty ($1.25/day) today. At current development rates this will be <5%
by 2035. TP is job disruptor and wealth creator.
Books: Revolutionary
Wealth, Toffler, 2007; Immigrant,
Inc., Herman, 2009; The
Great Divergence, Noah, 2012.
Leadership
Questions:
1. What are your economic technologies research, acquisition, R&D,
hiring, training, measuring, & mgmt strategies?
2. What problems could be addressed and opportunities taken if you had
a better financed department, and better financial planning, budgeting,
and cost accounting systems?
3. What key disruptions or threats must you anticipate from accelerating
wealth, deregulation, and globalization?
9.
Political Technologies
Leader’s
Challenge: Balancing Plutocratic and Democratic Control,
growing Pluralism and Globalism.
“Plutocracy
& democracy are on a pendulum. We need both. Network tech will swing
us back toward democracy.”
Military
Power. Classic issues of force development, management, deployment.
New Scenarios: Peer China, Resurgent Russia, Failing States, Recurrent
Nationalism/Fundamentalism, Counterinsurgency, Terrorism, Transnational
Crime.
Political Freedom and Representation. Levels of institutional
and political pluralism (competitiveness) must be kept high (Acemoglu).
Post 2020, social networks and lobbytwins will likely bring much
greater participatory/inititive politics, mass actions, reform.
Developing nations will push through J-curve of initial instability to
security via reciprocal
transparency.
Globalism, Openness, and Power Politics. Vision, comparative
political science, competitive intelligence, rulesets, policy flexibility
are leadership assets. US must maintain strength on multilateral issues
(nonproliferation, state aggression, terrorism, civilian rights) and perception
of fairness (e.g., agreed criteria for drones and transnational security
ops). Democracy must be championed to limit opportunistic autocratic actors
(Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Small States).
Laws, Justice, Corruption. The better the web can visualize
and benchmark performance of key actors, the more overlap of services,
and the more the client public can give feedback and steer
resources to favored actors, the easier it is to control corruption
(Klitgaard). Empowered prosecutors can eliminate mid-level corruption
(The Singapore Story)
Social Services, Fiscal Policy, and Debt. US has a large
(bloated) social safety net, with low personal responsibility. We’ve
had poor fiscal policy (no countercyclical saving). Federal debt is nearly
in runaway. We’ll have to keep devaluing to avoid default.
Strengthening our alliances and agreements will be key, as this problem
is faced by most of the developed world.
Books: Pentagon’s
New Map, 2004; The
J-Curve, 2007; Future
of Power, Nye, 2011; Why
Nations Fail, Acemoglu, 2012;
Leadership
Questions:
1. What are your political technologies research, acquisition, R&D,
hiring, training, measuring, & mgmt strategies?
2. What problems could be addressed and opportunities taken if you had
better political relationships with key partners in other departments,
government, media, and the public? How can you build those relationships?
3. What key disruptions or threats must you anticipate from increasing
pluralism, competitiveness and globalism?
10.
Security Technologies
Leader’s
Challenge: Growing Local, National, Global Transparency
and Resiliency, Bottom-Up far over Top-Down
“Security's
like an immune system. Need redundancy, transparency, memory, fast learning,
proportionate response”
Reciprocal
Transparency and Intelligence. Reciprocal transparency and intel
involve a mix of top-down, centralized intel, sensors, drones (“surveillance”),
and bottom-up, decentralized intel (“sousveillance”).
As we move to internet of things, souveillance grows fastest.
Improving both creates the best foresight, predictive analytics,
scenarios, and simulations.
Immunity, Decentralization, and Resilience. Security
can be done in a top-down, centralized way (think DHS) or a bottom-up,
decentralized way, empowering each state, county, city, and public
(cultivation of confidential informants) to fish for their own terrorists,
build their own immune systems, learn from each other. We need both, but
empowering the bottom-up approach delivers a far more proportional, swarm-like
response, creates more useful variety, and is more resilient. This
is true for the tech too. Think of the ‘spiderbots’ in Minority
Report. Sensors, DRACO, quarantines, vaccines for bioterrorism. Create
speedbumps for AVLIS, bioweapons, IEDs. Artificial immune systems, network
transparency, “fireman’s keys” for autonomous systems.
Reciprocal transparency and symbiont networks are both critical to managing
coming superempowered individuals.
Physical Security, Networks, and Openness. Physical security,
dashboards, scopes, sensors, maps, biometrics, networked SALWs, networked
LWs and Less-Lethal W’s, arms control, nuclear nonprolif. Riding
the J-Curve of openness.
Cybersecurity and Simulations. Digital transparency, big data, next gen
internet, local guarding, secure digital ID, end of anonymity and
darknets, telepresence. Internat’l consortia of blue and red
teams in classified world simulations, trying to break and protect security.
These will be major activities of the soldiers and DoD of 2020: “Global
Security Games”.
Machine Ethics and Autonomy. Drones and robots need world models,
ethical architecture (Ron Arkin). We’ll use artificial selection
on evolutionary robots, just like domestic animals. Teleop hub and spoke
will give way to autonomous swarm.
Books: The
Transparent Society, Brin, 1998; Wired
for War, Singer, 2009; Moral
Machines, Allen & Wallach, 2010.
Leadership
Questions:
1. What are your security technologies research, acquisition, R&D,
hiring, training, measuring, & mgmt strategies?
2. What problems could be addressed and opportunities taken if you had
much better and more resilient departmental and public security technologies?
How can you grow organizational and public transparency?
3. What key disruptions or threats must you anticipate from greater local,
regional, national and global transparency, and efforts to avoid transparency?
Foresight
Education: Interested in doing and improving foresight work?
There are now several
universities around the world where you can get a graduate degree
in foresight methods. Four of these are in North America. There are also
a few great certificate programs, like Singularity
University, that will give you foresight experience in a multiweek
or multiday format. There is also an organization, FERN,
that networks and supports global foresight students, alumni, faculty,
and employers of these programs. Find out more at:
www.FERNweb.org
www.GlobalForesight.org
Thanks for reading.
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