U.S. intelligence services take a crack at predicting 2020

AP ^ | Dec 04, 2003

[witnesstothefall]

McLEAN, Virginia -- It's 2020 and America, Europe and Japan struggle to maintain a decent quality of life for masses of elderly people. China faces a choice between belligerence and joining Western nations as an economic superpower. India, Brazil and Indonesia are emerging powers.

That's one future being contemplated by U.S. intelligence officials as part of a long-range forecasting endeavor just getting under way. The effort, called the National Intelligence Council 2020 Project, aims to come up with a range of scenarios the world could face.

The product will be unclassified, which is unusual for the U.S. intelligence services. Council Chairman Robert L. Hutchings, in a recent interview at CIA headquarters, said he expects to publish the paper in December 2004, timed between the presidential election and the beginning of either President George W. Bush's second term or a new administration.

"It's a time when people inside government are more ready to think very broadly," Hutchings said.

With so much of the nation's intelligence community focused on the next car bomb, Hutchings said looking years ahead would help policy-makers navigate what he described as a "period of profound flux in world affairs."

The council is made up of senior analysts who advise Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet. It is not part of the CIA but is located at the agency's headquarters.

The project held its first conference in November. Over the next year, it will bring together experts on demographics, technology and regional affairs. Foreign scholars will be consulted for their views on their home regions as well as the United States.

At the start, Hutchings and his colleagues have mostly questions:

-Will mass retirements in North America, Europe and Japan strain national economies to the point there's a global slowdown?

"That's not inevitable," Hutchings said. "It's possible that these creative societies will be able to take policy measures to accommodate an aging work force and move toward a new era of economic growth."

-What countries are most likely to fall apart and become potential terrorist havens?

-Will poorer nations create a backlash that undermines the global trading system?

-Will economic forces lead to major change in China, the world's most populous nation?

"What would it take for the Chinese Communist party to evolve so much that it could accommodate all these new political, economic and social forces that have been unleashed by economic growth?" Hutchings said. "What other forms of political expression might pop up? Greater regional identity? New social movements? Even new political parties?"

Whatever happens, Hutchings said the nation is unlikely to be just like the China of today.

"I'm personally attracted by the theory that China can either become aggressive or powerful, but not both," Hutchings said. "A China that was reverting to threatening behavior would be a closed China that wouldn't be open enough for economic growth."

The aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq will still be felt in the Persian Gulf region in 2020, he predicted.

And Hutchings, a Europe specialist, believes the emerging division between the United States and Europe will not go away.

"In a way, Iraq has just brought into full view changes that were already taking place and exposed how far we are from the bipolar world of the Cold War," he said.

Other possible events are true wild cards - a 21st-century plague, a nuclear exchange in Asia or some advance in energy technology that makes fossil fuels obsolete.

The 2020 project is a follow-on to two earlier projects, Global Trends 2010, which was finished in 1997, and Global Trends 2015, finished in late 2000.

Some of the predictions from those earlier projects have ben borne out:

- 2015: "Between now and 2015 terrorist tactics will become increasingly sophisticated and designed to achieve mass casualties. We expect the trend toward greater lethality in terrorist attacks to continue."

- 2010: "In Iraq, Saddam Hussein will be gone and the challenge will be to see whether a modern, secular successor government emerges that does not threaten its neighbors."

Other predictions have not yet come to pass. The 2010 report, for example, predicted North Korea would no longer be a threat.

[witnesstothefall]

I recall in the seventies much was made of the population bombs that would shatter the comfortable Western societies.

To some extent the global war on terrorism can be seen through the demographic explosion lens. The Muslim nations from which terrorism arises most (Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq) all have bottom heavy demographic maps. Lots of yoots, and the quickest out is jihad.

[tet68]

2020.
Radiation levels continue to decline in the former city of Mecca.
Radiation levels remain high in areas of North Korea.
Fighting on the mainland of china reaches new levels of violence after attack on Taiwan fails.
Bill Clinton indicted for molestation of office worker.
Jimmy Carter endorses Arab peace plan.

[dts32041]

Maybe they should start with LTC Peters book War in:2020

[Lazamataz]

2020:

• Hillary Clinton finally relents; buys new black pantsuit.

• Monica Lewinsky gets surgery for dislocated jaw.

• Bill Clinton dies after eating too many viagras in a Brazilian sex romp.

• Jerrold Nadler now actually bends the space-time continuum. Scientists predict a black hole in Nadlers navel by 2030.

[U S Army EOD]

Although it was science fiction, remember the movie 2001. With the exception of limited space travel and the large space station, we are much more advanced than the movie predicted. This is especially true in computers and communication.

Even though we didn't achieve the space travel the movie predicted, we could of if we had been willing to spend the money. Our space technoligy is better than the movie prodicted and the only hold back is money and the national will to do it.

Of course the movie predicted the Soviet Union would still be around even up to 2010.

But putting science fiction aside, we may be getting ourselves into a world situation prior to WWI. We had all these emerging nations as a power shift due to the technoligy of the industrial revolution and the changes it brought about such as the start of mass production and travel by steam both land and sea.

I just hope there is room for everybody and enough to go around.

[tet68]

2020.

Hillery! Rodham denied parole at first hearing, incarcerated since 2004 in the murder and coverup of Vince Foster's death, the former Mrs. Bill Clinton became abusive of the hearing committee and had to be restrained.
Indicted and tried in 2004 due to the efforts of A. Favish
in getting crime scene photos released and the case reopened, Ms. Rodham has been serving time at the Supermax facility in the western United States.

[U S Army EOD]

You forgot:

Hilary is elected dog catcher in Nome, Alaska. She is still in politics.

And France surrenders unconditionally to Upper Volta.

[McGavin999]

First of all, I don't believe we're going to have that much of an aging population. I think people are going to continue to work and be productive into their 70's. Young people are going to re-discover the joys of family life and I expect the number of children per couple to be 3.4.

[Joe Bonforte]

Barbra Striesand enters a psychiatric hospital for treatment of persistent delusions.

The Prescription Drug Plan costs $300 billion a year instead of the $40 billion it was supposed to cost.

Bill Clinton stars as Voldemort in Harry Potter 7.

[witnesstothefall]

You sir, are that most rare of creatures, the conservative optimist. I hope you are correct.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Funny how they completely gloss over the possibly of law and order collapsing in American before 2020, and a possible armed revolt by then.

[witnesstothefall]

Say whaaaaa?

How did they gloss it over, and what makes you think it likely?

[Paul C. Jesup]

Jerrold Nadler now actually bends the space-time continuum. Scientists predict a black hole in Nadlers navel by 2030.

Ah. I see you were watch TLC last night also. Interesting that a ladus work of a lasers can be used to bend time and space.

[Paul C. Jesup]

I was talking about the article posted at the top of this thread.

[U S Army EOD]

If they declared open season on boom boxes, I volunteer to fire the first shot.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

It's 2020 and America, Europe and Japan struggle to maintain a decent quality of life for masses of elderly people.

In 2020 and America, Europe and Japan struggle to maintain ANY quality of life for masses of ORDINARY PEOPLE. Free Trade having decimated the USA, it struggles with poverty, hunger and the homeless believed to be in the millions. Meanwhile debate continues on whether we should give liscenses to Illegal Aliens.

[Uncle Miltie]

It's 2020 and America, Europe and Japan struggle to spend as much money as they make. The shores of tourist havens covered with masses of elderly people. China faces a choice between CNN and FOX. India, Brazil and Indonesia are great manufacturing centers taking over China's leavings. Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, and Afghanistan are free, capitalist, democratic pluralist and prosperous. Recent revolution in Saudi Arabia killed millions. Egypt trending towards pluralism. Global cooling is the major environmental issue. V12 Engines in trucks are the norm. Proven oil reserves triple. Wind energy and clean coal is so vastly available that electricity prices drop like a rock. Heart disease cured for over 50% of the affected population. Cancer deaths in dramatic decline. Hunger only known among despotic African dictatorships.

Julian Simon Lives!

[adam_az]

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I LOVE YA MAN!!!!!!!!!