National Intelligence Council Officials Discuss Global Trends Report

Officials from the National Intelligence Council visited SIPA February 11 to discuss the upcoming version of the Global Trends Report—a declassified document that attempts to aid policymakers in long-term planning by predicting the major developments and the key issues that will shape the international sphere in the future.

Suzanne Fry, head of the NIC’s Strategic Future Group, directed a question at SIPA students in attendance: “What do you think are the key trends?”

“The more diverse our perspectives are,” Fry explained, “the more likely we will not be victim of strategic surprise.”

Published every four years, Global Trends is scheduled to arrive on the president-elect’s desk right after Election Day. Whoever is elected president in November 2016 will therefore receive Global Trends 2035 before he or she is inaugurated.

The long-term planning supported by the Global Trends Report is not a luxury, said Fry: “It is critical.”

Gregory Treverton, chairman of the NIC, said some of the longer-term projects for Global Trends 2035 include cyber estimates, Russia, China, and jihadi extremism.

The longer-term future of Jihadi extremism is a particularly hard project. “It’s very much a moving target,” Treverton said.

The report is meant to provide a larger framework: to be forward-thinking enough that continuity cannot be a rule, but not so far into the future that it would cease to be useful.

“We are trying to build bridges from the Global Trends back to a more proximate future,” said Treverton.

Professor Peter Clement, the CIA Officer-in-Residence at SIPA who moderated the event, started the Q&A period by asking how Global Trends 2035 would address differing perceptions of international law.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian premier, “has been saying the process by which the Russians are trying to present their moves is legitimate in international law,” said Clement, referring to the crisis in Ukraine.

It demonstrates that there is a national security dimension and an international law dimension, he added.

The Global Trends Report takes social, historical, and societal perspectives seriously, said Fry.

“Washington has its own world view, Moscow has its world view, Beijing has its world view about what the proper order should look like.”

These differing perceptions are “deeply consequential,” she said.

“How this issue looks to Putin and why he has such universal backing in Russia is not necessarily what [the U.S. government] likes to hear, but it’s our responsibility to show them how [Putin and his supporters] think,” added Treverton.

The Report  also reflects the fact that different parts of the U.S. government can have conflicting policy priorities. That’s one reason the document is declassified, said Treverton.

“Political counterparts will only pay attention if it’s in the news,” he said. “[You have to] make a little public splash.”

Another questioner asked about dealing with trends as they collide and evolve.

“We don’t have a lot of pretenses about being able to understand,” said Fry. She said physical interactions can be simulated, but that many technological developments are difficult to recognize and evaluate.

“In the world of disruptive technology,” she said, such trends are “very hard to get our arms around.”

— Tamara El Waylly MIA ’15