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30th March 2012: Reading List on War

Conceptual Foundations

Sun Tzu. The Art of Warfare. Trans. Roger Ames. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993. TS-4. This translation of Sun Tzu’s classic incorporates the Yin-ch’ueh-shan texts. Ames’ commentary situates the recently discovered texts in their archaeological and historical context.

Thucydides. The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to The Peoloponnesian War. Trans. Robert B. Strassler. New York: The Free Press, 1996. TS-4. An annotated translation to Thucydides’ classic, featuring an introduction by Victor Davis Hanson. For further background, see Donald Kagan’s Thucydides: The Reinvention of History (New York: Penguin, 2009).

Carl von Clausewitz. On War. Trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. TS-4. The influential translation of Clausewitz’s 1832 treatise on warfare. Jon Sumida’s Decoding Clausewitz (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009) offers a contemporary interpretation that is being discussed in politico-military circles.

William C. Martel. Victory In War: Foundations of Modern Military Policy (revised edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Martel is associate professor at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. This book considers how military theorists have interpreted victory and then proposes a United States theory of victory. The case studies include the 1990-91 Gulf War, the 1992-99 Balkans conflicts, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Martel has been criticized for not considering grand strategic or politico-military aspects — however, I like this study’s research design and theory-building approach.

Strategic History

Robert D. Kaplan. Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands A Pagan Ethos. New York: Vintage Books, 2002. TS-3. Kaplan contends that classicist sources can inform decision-makers about contemporary events. He revisits Churchill, Livy, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Tiberius and others for insights about the catalysts for war. In early 2012, Kaplan joined the Austin-based geopolitical publisher Stratfor as a writer.

Williamson Murray & Richard Hart Sinnreich. The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. TS-4. An anthology on how military historians actively use [strategic] history to shape training, reinterpret conflicts and deal with civil-military relations. Useful for understanding the continued interest in Sun Tzu, Thucydides and Clausewitz, and Colin S. Gray’s contribution to strategic studies and strategic history. For a military historian’s memoir of the post-Vietnam transformation in strategic history, see Roger J. Spiller’s essay collection In the School of War (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2010).

The Revolution in Military Affairs

Herman Kahn. On Thermonuclear War (2nd ed). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961. TS-4. Kahn was an influential Cold War civilian nuclear strategist and one of the first to ‘think about the unthinkable’ along with Bernard Brodie and Alfred Wohlsetter. This was an early, provocative attempt to think through the Clausewitzean logics of nuclear war, through Monte Carlo simulations. Kahn anticipated the mid-late 1990s debate on the Revolution in Military Affairs. For the historical and socio-political context, see Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi’s The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). For a comparison of Kahn and other civilian nuclear strategists, see Fred Kaplan’s doctoral dissertation The Wizards of Armageddon (revised edition) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).

Manuel De Landa. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines. New York: Swerve Editions, 1991. TS-4. The 1990-91 Gulf War popularized CNN and led to the fascination of the Revolution in Military Affairs and new technological systems. De Landa simultaneously evokes this period and represents its cybernetic, postmodern, theoretical excesses. Carl H. Builder’s The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Press, 1989) captures more effectively the pre-Gulf War climate and the Goldwater-Nichols Act reforms necessary for joint military operations.

Stephen Biddle. Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. TS-4. Biddle is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an influential military strategist. Military Power focuses on force employment as an essential variable in contemporary warfare. Biddle’s mixed methods design combines historiography, case studies, formal methods, statistical analysis, and the JANUS simulation experiment to develop a formal model of force capability.

Max Boot. War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History 1500 to Today. New York: Gotham Books, 2006. TS-3. From the mid-1990s, the Revolution in Military Affairs became an influential framework for military force transformation and renewal. Boot’s study of the intersection of war, technological innovation and history remains one of the more sophisticated contributions to the RMA debate. Worth comparing with Colin S. Gray and John Mueller.

Strategic Culture

Patrick Porter. Military Orientalism: Eastern War Through Western Eyes. London: Hurst & Company, 2010. TS-4. Porter is a reader in strategic studies at University of Reading. He examines the revival of strategic culture in United States counter-insurgency, and the attempts to understand adversaries such as the Japanese in World War II, the Mongol warrior myth, Hezbollah and the Taliban. Porter believes this is a reaction in part to implications in Sun Tzu’s war-fighting philosophy. For a similar critical study see Ron Schleifer’s Psychological Warfare in the Intifada: Israeli and Palestinian Media Politics and Military Strategies (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2006).

John W. Dower. Cultures of War: Pearl Harbour, Hiroshima, 9/11, Iraq. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010. TS-3. Dower is a Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning historian based at MIT. This strategic history focuses on the pathologies of civil-military decision-making and the collective delusions that lead to war. In contrast to Murray & Sinnreich, Gray, and Boot’s Clausewitzean approach, this is a Thucydidean analysis that reinterprets the rationale for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Robert Dallek. Nixon and Kissinger: Partners In Power. New York: Penguin Books, 2007. TS-3. Based on extensive, declassified documents, Dallek captures the dysfunctional leadership in the White House and the effects of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal on Nixon and Kissinger. A case study in the abuse of executive power.

Bruce Kuklick. Blind Oracles: Intellectuals and War from Kennan to Kissinger. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. TS-4. Kuklick is a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Blind Oracles shows how policymakers misuse and reshape the ideas of war intellectuals for their own Machiavellian agendas. Kuklick reassesses George Kennan’s grand strategy; the RAND think-tank; Henry Kissinger; Robert McNamara; Daniel Ellsberg; and the Harvard School of Government.

Contemporary Conflicts

Colin S. Gray. Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005. TS-3. Gray is a professor at University of Reading and an influential thinker in strategic studies and strategic history. Another Bloody Century re-evaluates the Revolution in Military Affairs and Clausewitz, and examines ‘medial’ trends in cyber-warfare, special operations, and irregular warfare. Worth comparing with Max Boot and John Mueller.

John Mueller. The Remnants of War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. TS-4. Mueller is a political science professor at Ohio State University who has had a ‘contrarian’ career on nuclear strategy, terrorism, and war. Remnants contends that developed nations have abandoned large-scale war but that problems still remain with peace-keeping operations. Worth comparing with Colin S. Gray and Max Boot.

David H. Ucko. The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the U.S. Military for Modern Wars. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2009. TS-4. Ucko’s doctoral thesis explores how the US Army rediscovered counterinsurgency theory and its organizational adaptation to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A case study in Peter M. Senge’s ‘learning organisation’ theory.

Carolyn Nordstrom. Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994. TS-4. Nordstrom is an anthropology associate professor at the University of Notre Dame. Her conflict anthropology documents the extra-legal networks that form during wars and that connect the front lines to contemporary, civilian lives. A glimpse of war as a total system and the academic controversies regarding the use of cultural anthropology in war-fighting.

Dexter Filkins. The Forever War. New York: Vintage Books, 2008. TS-3. Filkins’ reportage on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the September 11 terrorist attacks, captures the Thucydidean reality of war from multiple perspectives: combatants on both sides, civilians, foreign aid workers, and others. Comparable to Nordstrom’s conflict anthropology in its insight about war-zones.

Michael C. Horowitz. The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. TS-4. Horowitz is assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. His doctoral study is one of the best post-RMA books on the diffusion of innovations. Horowitz’s case studies include aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons, battle-fleets, and suicide terrorism.

Stephen G. Brooks. Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. TS-4. Brooks is assistant professor at Dartmouth College. Producing Security examines the pivotal role that multi-national corporations play in conflicts and how production economics can shape international security.

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30th March 2012: Reading List on Strategy

David Allen. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. New York: Penguin, 2001. TS-1. Allen’s GTD productivity framework is popular in Silicon Valley as a ‘medial’ trend. This book provides an overview to the GTD methodology and some insights into the cognitive psychology of how and why it works.

Peter Schwartz. The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World. New York: Currency Doubleday, 1991. TS-3. The classic guide to the Global Business Network’s methodology for scenario planning. Provides insights on generating scenarios and having strategic conversations. Schwartz’s follow-up book Inevitable Surprises (London: The Free Press, 2003) distilled his insights on ‘medial’ and global trends. For a comparator, on strategic inflection points, see Andrew S. Grove’s Only The Paranoid Survive (revised edition) (New York: Currency, 1999).

Peter M. Senge. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organisation (revised edition). London: Random House, 2006. TS-1. Senge popularized MIT research into systems thinking and his framework for the ‘learning organisation’ helped to shape knowledge management and organizational psychology. The other disciplines include ‘personal mastery’, ‘mental models’, ‘shared vision’ and ‘team learning’.

Jeffrey K. Liker. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From The World’s Greatest Manufacturer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004. TS-3. The first in Liker’s management book series on the Toyota Production System and lean management frameworks. This book bridges corporate strategy, operations and project management on how to avoid ‘muda’ or waste. Liker also adopted Peter Senge’s ‘learning organisation’ framework. Subsequent books in Liker’s series have dealt with culture, teams, innovation, and similar topics.

Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand & Joseph Lampel. Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management. New York: The Free Press, 1998. TS-4. Mintzberg is a provocative thinker who has influenced the craft of corporate strategy. Strategy Safari details ten different schools of thought and how they shape strategic thinking. If you plan to work in corporate strategy, all of Mintzberg’s books are highly recommended.

Richard A. Slaughter, Sohail Inayatullah, & Jose M. Ramos (Eds.). Knowledge Base of Futures Studies: Professional Edition. Indooroopilly: Foresight International, 2005). TS-1. A resource for futures studies and strategic foresight practitioners on the meta-discipline’s history, theorists, methodologies, and recent advances. This is used as introductory material in Swinburne University’s Masters program on strategic foresight. I contributed a couple of student essays on ‘Futures Studies As An Art’, ‘Business Intelligence’, and some personal GBM reflections (at the time).

Avinash K. Dixit & Barry J. Nalebuff. The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist’s Guide to Success in Business and Life. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. TS-3. A primer on game theory and how it can inform decision-making. Dixit and Nalebuff explore how to think ahead in competitive situations and outline decision trees and other methods. On game theorist John Nash, see Ron Howard’s film A Beautiful Mind (2001).

Alistair Cockburn. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game (2nd ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007. TS-4. This is a guidebook to agile software development that elaborates further on themes explored by Allen, Liker, and Senge. Cockburn reinterprets many different theorists and frameworks, notably Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings. Filled with insights on strategy, collaborative teams, and methodology design and implementation.

Peter Block. Flawless Consulting: A Guide To Getting Your Expertise Used (3rd edition). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011. TS-1. Block was a student of the organizational theorist Chris Argyris who popularized ‘double loop’ learning. This is the classic, influential guide to consulting and the steps usually taken in organizational contexts. Block reaches parallel conclusions to Senge on the role of humanistic philosophy and systems thinking in consulting engagements.

Peter Paret (Ed.). Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. TS-4. A classic anthology on military and grand strategy in the war college tradition. For a recent academic study, see Beatrice Heuser’s The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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30th March 2012: Reading List on Leadership

James Macgregor Burns. Leadership. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. TS-4. The classic study on charismatic, transformational and transactional styles of leadership which shaped research agendas over the next two decades. The meme of transformational leadership came from Burns’ study.

Jack Welch & Suzy Welch. Winning. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. TS-3. Winning can be read in several ways. It provides a snapshot of Welch’s coaching advice to potential corporate leaders. It is a ‘medial’ guidebook to the LBM attitudes that some MBA executives adopt (and thus what you are likely to encounter in the corporate jungle in Lean Six Sigma and Workout projects, which are both worth mastering). It is an LBM exercise that diverted attention from Welch’s divorce to his first wife. For a more skeptical view of Jack Welch’s GE tenure see Thomas F. Boyle’s At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric, and the Pursuit of Profit (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998) and the Welch/Tom Peters chapter in Jeff Madrick’s Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present (New YorkL: Knopf, 2011).

Robert N. Lussier & Christopher F. Achua. Leadership: Theory, Application, Skill Development (5th ed.). New York: South-Western/Thomson, 2012. TS-3. A best-selling university textbook on leadership frameworks and business applications. For current practices also see Jay A. Conger and Ronald E. Riggio’s anthology The Practice of Leadership: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007).

Joe R. Katzenbach & Douglas K. Smith. The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1993. TS-3. In the early 1990s companies such as 3M, Motorola and Apple focused on innovation through teamwork. This is the classic study that influenced the next decade’s research on knowledge management. It occurred just as American managers experimented with business process reengineering and quality circles.

Sydney Finkelstein. Why Smart Executives Fail: And What You Can Learn From Their Mistakes. New York: Portfolio, 2003. TS-1. If you aim to climb the corporate ladder then Finkelstein’s accessible study is TS-1 mandatory reading on the LBM patterns of failure, otherwise this is TS-3. Finkelstein conducted 197 interviews and examined 51 US and international companies on corporate failure. He provides diagnostic tools to recognize failure and suggests early warning signals in the common situations in which corporate failure occurs.

Paul C. Nutt. Why Decisions Fail: Avoiding the Blunders and Traps That Lead to Debacles. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc, 2002. TS-3. A collection of case studies from the Ford Pinto to the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas in 1993. Nutt identifies 10 different categories of blunders, decision errors and traps across his case study cohort. His solutions include understanding the ‘arena of action’, developing an ethical sense, insisting on learning, and identifying a range of options. For a more recent study incorporating behavioural finance insights, see Gary Klein’s Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).

Connie Bruck. The Predators’ Ball (revised edition). (New York: Penguin, 1989). Bruck’s reportage on junk bond maven and philanthropist Michael Milken has three parts. The first part is an LHP Adept manifesto on how Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert became the dominant United States market-makers for junk or high-yield bonds. It contains many lessons on the active use of university research; the design of investment vehicles; and how to deal with initiatory allies. The second part deals with the 1980s merger wave, the high-profile deals, and Milken’s role as a financier in it. The third part deals with Milken, speculator Ivan Boesky, and Drexel Burnham Lambert’s fall. This cautionary tale of leadership and ethics foreshadowed similar books on the demise of Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros, and controversy about Goldman Sachs, during the 2007-09 global financial crisis. For background on Milken and the 1980s merger wave, see the third and fourth episodes of the Adam Curtis documentary series The Mayfair Set (BBC, 1999).

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25th March 2012: J.G. Ballard’s Kingdom Come

Scott Bradfield sums up J.G. Ballard’s final novel Kingdom Come (2006) in this New York Times review:

 

Ultimately, the Metro-Centre’s new and improved, radically futurized citizenry do what most Ballardian characters do: hunker down in their prisons and embrace their chains, take themselves hostage and refuse to be set free, secretly conspire with their victimizers and worship just about anybody who comes along to tell them how. This is where the future really happens, Ballard reminds his readers — way out in the suburbs where everybody looks like everybody else or faces the consequences.

 

You can read my 1994 REVelation Magazine interview with Ballard here.

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25th March 2012: Margin Call

Margin Call (2011)

J.C Chandor’s debut film Margin Call (2011) depicts 24 hours in the 2008 blow-up of the Goldman Sachs-like, 107-year-old financial institution MBS. Risk manager Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) is fired and he warns rocket scientist Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) to “be careful” when Dale hands him a final unfinished project: a simulation model of MBS’s risk exposure to collateralised mortgage obligations. Sullivan and colleague Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) escalate the issue to boss Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) and trading floor manager Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), who is grieving about a dying family dog. Branch manager Jared Cohen (Simon Baker) and risk manager Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore) become involved, before MBS head John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) flies in at late night, and in a series of crisis meetings, decides to liquidate all of MBS’s fixed income portfolio. This action exposes other financial institutions to counter-party risk and a cascade that triggers the global financial crisis.

 

Margin Call’s subdued focus on risk managers differs from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street films on merger arbitrage and traders. Dale, Sullivan, Rogers and Robertson mention a range of risk management frameworks and tools, from Monte Carlo simulations and Gaussian Copulas to Value at Risk estimates and systemic risk. Margin Call’s dialogue and its all-hands crisis meetings are similar to footage of the 1987 stock-market crash and the April 2000 dotcom bubble. Bergman and Emerson convey how Wall Street is a status hierarchy obsessed with end-of-year bonuses and symbols of ostentatious wealth. Tuld floats above the chaos like a corporate philosopher, calmly questioning Sullivan and Robertson on their simulation models liasioning with Cohen to ensure action plans will unfold; and giving Rogers a list of historical stock-market crashes and panics. Dale and Robertson both had the strategic foresight a year in advance of the unfolding risks, and both are made expendable in a Machiavellian gambit.

 

Praised for its portrayal of the global financial crisis, Margin Call also illuminates the Power Lab simulations of systems thinker Barry Oshry. All of the characters are caught in vicious cycles. Dale disengages with human resources staff and faces off Emerson when forced to return to MBS during the crisis. Sullivan emerges as the hero and is promoted but he is also used as a pawn by others. Bergman and Emerson illustrate Oshry’s Bottoms: disempowered workers who play blame games. Rogers, Cohen and Robertson each represent different variants on Oshry’s Middles: Cohen collaborates with institutional power; Robertson is the victim of gender discrimination; and Rogers is the over-burdened conscience who has worked at MBS for 34 years, and who decides stay because he “needs the money.” In Margin Call’s closing scene, Rogers buries his dog and talks late-night with his divorced wife Mary Rogers (Mary McDonnell). Tuld is Oshry’s Top: single-minded in his focus on understanding the near-future and lobbying Rogers and Cohen to ensure MBS survives.

 

Margin Call will resonate deeply with anyone who has been fired, dropped from a deal, or who has compromised their personal integrity in order to facilitate corporate strategy.

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24th March 2012: European Commission Antitrust Investigation on EMI

Vivendi SA (Universal Music Group)

I’m working on an academic journal article about Terra Firma‘s unsuccessful private equity acquisition of EMI. Terra Firma defaulted to Citigroup, which agreed to sell EMI’s record labels in November 2011 to Universal Music Group (Vivendi SA) and EMI’s publishing to a Sony-led consortium. Now, the European Commission will investigate Universal’s acquisition for antitrust implications, given the planned market size of the combined group. Vivendi SA’s shares traded sideways in a choppy market on Friday, 23rd March 2012, possibly in relation to the antitrust announcement and the possibility of regulatory arbitrage on the Universal-EMI deal.

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23rd March 2012: Disney’s Writedown on John Carter of Mars

Disney

The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) announced on 20th March 2012 that it was taking a $US200 million writedown on the film John Carter of Mars and would book a $US80-120 million loss for the March quarter. Analysts expected a $100-150 million loss on the film. DIS stock initially rose on 21st March before short-selling, panic selling by day traders, and portfolio stop-losses pushed DIS lower. John Carter of Mars had several problems: director Andrew Stanton was new to live action; its audience was unfamiliar with Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels (in contrast to The Hunger Games); Disney’s management had changed; and marketing staff and budgets had been cut. DIS pins its 2012 film portfolio on DreamWorks, Pixar and Marvel Studio releases.

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23rd March 2012: Today’s Trade: ENZL

Global macro theme: the Gillard Government’s Asia Century whitepaper and the Reserve Bank/People’s Bank of China currency swap.

Monitor IShares MSCI New Zealand Investable Market Index Fund (NYSEARCA:ENZL) on New Zealand’s macroeconomic outlook.

Monitor Global X Social Media Index ETF (NYSEArca:SOCL) on possible Facebook IPO.

Monitor GM Holden on Greens MP Adam Bandt’s plans for an Australian electric car and Australian Government industry support.

Short TYO:6758 (Sony) on leadership transition and operations problems (recalculate intrinsic value).

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22nd March 2012: Today’s Trade: QAN

QAN (22nd March 2012)

 Qantas (ASX:QAN) had an Australian Financial Review story on regulatory prevention of grounded fleets. QAN rose immediately in early morning trading, went through several support and resistance levels, and peaked at $1.795 (1:12pm) before afternoon profit-taking and shorting occurred (enabling institutional investors to take money from day traders who had bought mid-morning and were forced to sell at a loss).

 

Other trades:

 

Short ASX:JBH due to poor retail outlook.

Pairs trade: Hold ASX:MYR and short ASX:DJS on poor earnings announcement.

Pairs trade: Short LON:HMCD and buy NYSEARCA:FXI (China ETF and China FTSE/Xinhua 25) on China’s macroeconomic outlook.

Short NYSE:CVX on Brazil’s prosecution of environmental disaster and consider hedging upside exposure with a Brazil ETF.

Scalp trade REMX (rare earths ETF) on intra-day volatility.

Monitor NASDAQ:ZNGA on reaction to mobile acquisition deal: possible event arb and merger arb opportunities based on pre-market rally.

Monitor NSE:SATYAMCOMP to see if intraday rally continues from merger announcement with Tech Mahindra Ltd.

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22nd March 2012: Predictions & National Security

Driving In The Dark (2011)

 

The US-based Center for a New American Security has a 2011 report on prediction and national security:

 

In Driving in the Dark: Ten Propositions About Prediction and National Security, Danzig examines the nature of prediction in national security and offers strategic recommendations for how the U.S. Department of Defense can improve its predictive capabilities while also preparing for predictive failure. Danzig recommends that the Department of Defense adopt new strategies to improve its predictive abilities while also preparing to be unprepared. He suggests narrowing the time between conceptualizing programs and bringing them to realization; building more for the short-term and designing operationally flexible equipment; and valuing diversity and competition. Policymakers will always drive in the dark, but by adopting these recommendations, they may better respond to unpredictable conditions and prepare the United States for unforeseen threats.

 

The report will interest program managers and strategic foresight analysts.