Global trends 2040: US intelligence report paints dark picture of world’s future
- Disease, rich-poor gap, climate change and conflicts will pose greater challenges in coming decades
- The Covid-19 pandemic already worsening some of those problems, US intelligence report says
US intelligence officials are painting a dark picture of the world’s future, writing in a new report that the coronavirus pandemic has deepened economic inequality, strained government resources and fanned nationalist sentiments.
Those assessments are included in a Global Trends report by the government’s National Intelligence Council. The reports, produced every four years, are designed to help policymakers and citizens anticipate the economic, environmental, technological and demographic forces likely to shape the world through the next 20 years.
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This year’s report focuses heavily on the impact of the pandemic, calling it the “most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come”.
Nations in different parts of the world set records on Thursday for Covid-19 deaths and new infections.
“Covid-19 has shaken long-held assumptions about resilience and adaptation and created new uncertainties about the economy, governance, geopolitics, and technology,” the report says.
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“Our intent is to help policymakers and citizens … prepare for an array of possible futures,” the authors wrote, noting they make no specific predictions, and included input from diverse groups, from American students to African civil society activists.
The report posed five scenarios for what the world might look like in 2040.
The most optimistic – a “renaissance of democracies” – found that democratic governments would prove “better able to foster scientific research and technological innovation, catalysing an economic boom,” enabling them to cope with domestic stresses and to stand up to international rivals.
The most pessimistic scenario – “tragedy and mobilisation” – posited how Covid-19 and global warming could devastate global food supplies, leading to riots in Philadelphia that kill “thousands of people”.
Though health, education and household prosperity have made historic improvements in recent decades, that progress will be hard to sustain because of “headwinds” not only from the effects of the pandemic but also ageing populations and “potentially slower economic growth”.
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Advances in technology have the potential to address problems including climate change and disease, but can also provoke new tensions, the report says.
The rivalry between China and a US-led coalition of Western nations likely will intensify, fuelled by military power shifts, demographics, technology and “hardening divisions over governance models”.
“State and nonstate rivals will vie for leadership and dominance in science and technology with potentially cascading risks and implications for economic, military, and societal security,” the report says.
The report also warns of eroding trust in government and institutions and of a “trust gap” between the general public and the better informed and educated parts of the population.
Associated Press and Reuters
