 Thank you all very much and ladies and gentlemen if you would take your seats please and we get underway it's just just after one o'clock and you're all very welcome my name is Alex White Director General of the Institute of International European Affairs and I'm really really delighted to welcome you all and in particular. The colleagues colleagues for the day from Deloitte Ireland for working with us on planning and organizing with my colleagues here in the Institute, planning and organizing at this event, which I'm quite sure is going to be a, if it's some of the discussion we've had in the lead up to it, or entity to go by a really interesting and stimulating occasion and we have a terrific panel. Thank you for being here thank you in particular to Deloitte, and it's just my only other role is to introduce the chair for this session we've terrific chair, Liz Carlin is the tech and democracy strategist and advocate frankly we couldn't have a better chair and more appropriate chair for what we want to talk about today. Liz has held roles at the Open Data Institute, the African Governance Initiative and the Institute for Government we're delighted to say that she's on our digital strategy group here at the IAEA and we're delighted to have her in that context but in particular, delighted to have you today to chair this session and the floor is now yours. Thank you very much Liz. Thanks so much Alex and welcome everyone thank you for coming out on this absolutely miserable day. It's great to see a packed room for what I think is going to be a fantastic discussion, and I'm very excited about this topic. And in part because I have no expertise in it. So I get to learn along with the rest of you here so I'm going to be guiding us through the next 75 minutes making sure that we're all out the door at 215 and we've all got a lot going on. And I think, so I also recently kind of founded and led an organization that was looking at, as Alex said, tech and democracy. And I found in that kind of, you know, in these leadership roles like half your brain has to be on thinking, what's next, where is this going to go where's the next challenge coming from what are we going to be doing in five and 10 years time you know my board wanted a strategic plan I have to figure out how much money to be asking people for. And then the other half of my brain is, okay well whom am I going to hire, because it takes six months to get somebody in post. What am I actually going to put in the budget for next year. And how do I write this bloody strategic plan that everybody that everybody keeps asking me for and to me that dissonance I think between those two parts of any leadership role, and possibly even more so I think in the realm of security which is our which is our focus point here today is where I'm hoping that today's discussion will give us all some insight and hopefully I'm hoping to come away with some tools and practical tips as well as just some of these I think really interesting conceptual ideas, which I know that you are all at the heart of working on and it is as I said such an absolutely brilliant panel and if we look at you know what what's happening on security front on security front today. You know I don't need to tell this group, everything that's been happening in in in in in Russia's war of aggression aggression against Ukraine, we have all of the emerging technology threats, what's happening in AI and quantum computing. You know, like just like, and advances in robotics. And then there's obviously the, you know, the climate, the climate challenge, and what that will mean for for security and you know I was even thinking this morning about you know like listening, listening to the UK in the last few days talking but well actually do we need to tear up the entire approach that we have as a globe to displacement of people and to mass movement, because of what's coming down the line like these are very, very real discussions and debates which have people at the heart of them, and which I think are going to be a part of our lives for a long time to come. So I'm super excited to be hearing from this panel and I'll introduce them just just very, very briefly, and before I then kind of hand over so we have Dr. Luca. I was practicing that on the Lewis on the way here. And she's a she's a fellow of Carnegie Europe specializes in European security and defense and an emerging disruptive technologies which is exactly what we need as part of this debate today. She's also a professor of European security and counterterrorism at the Brussels School of Governance. And so we're going to be hearing from Dr. Luca first, and then we'll be hearing from Dr. Noonan of the EPRS policy foresight unit. And they've been involved in inter institutional ESPAS network, European strategy policy analysis systems since 2015. You've recently returned from a from a EU fellowship at St Anthony's over at Oxford, and as an Irish diplomat you're in Luxembourg and Norway. So again bringing tons of experience and I think a lot of that kind of European perspective for us as well, which is obviously a core part of all of our future and then Dr. Florianne Klein, you founded and lead and you now lead the Center for the Long View, which is part of Deloitte's global Center for excellence for scenario planning and AI enabled sensing. And so Florianne, you've ordered several books on mega trends and on designing strategic decision making systems. So I think we're really spanning the gamut here. Both of thinking domestically thinking Europe, European, I think globally and across some of those threats and Dr. Luca, but before I turned to you, you were talking a little before about how we have this triple thing of technological disruption, geospatial disruption, climate disruption. So I mean, I think for me that the technological bit is right love to love you to start and so like, I mean, are we already living in an AI disrupted future. And what is that going to mean. What does that mean for us what does that mean for for how we think about planning for what we're doing now in terms of planning for the future. Thank you so much. Thank you for the invitation to be here. It's a very tough topic in the tough question. And I suggest it in a way the broader lines of this question, I do not have the answer. That's the, the, the first punchline. The fact that we are definitely witnessing disruptions disruptions when it comes to technology geopolitics climate, all sectors of society but my bread and butter of course is this nexus emerging and disruptive technologies and we already heard about all the buzzwords quantum AI big data. Now we are talking as well about chip semiconductors undersea cables critical raw materials. All these technologies that have been in a way framed as combining and engendering a mega trend, and we already have a name for that the fourth industrial revolution. And this is something that I'm really interested in but especially when it comes to the impact of some of these technologies on security and defense. When it comes to my work at Carnegie, I'm more interested in the current policy landscape and governance landscape at the level and NATO. And of course, both institutions have been focusing on emerging and disruptive technologies and we have laundry lists of emerging and disruptive technologies and prioritizing but in the last couple of six. Let's say in the last six months I focused a lot on artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence enabled disruption and when it comes to strategic foresight and artificial intelligence I would say that we are already dealing with a lot of the disruptive effects of how these technologies are being mainstreamed in every sector of our society. You all know about the recent hype about artificial intelligence at a large language models generative AI, who is leading this conversation of course and the fact that policymakers and governments are lagging behind or who are aligned with all these very fast-paced trends that are transforming, again, the way we produce knowledge, the way we communicate but this also deals with issues. For instance, when it comes to controlling the communication landscape who sets the agenda how are these types of technologies disrupting democratic processes how such technologies are enabling our general purpose. These systems of course are general purpose enabling technologies that can be deployed both in civil and military sectors. But for the purpose of this panel I was also reflecting about strategic foresight and I remember the stroll I had in Washington DC actually this spring on the Pennsylvania Avenue I was heading towards the museum quarter and I was passing by the National Archives building and there are two statues there one is the future and the other one is the past. The future is depicted as a young woman and under the punchline for the statue is the fact that the past is prologue. When it comes to the past, of course, past that you always need to learn the past to know the future so it's almost like a circular logic here but what strikes me as really interesting as well without necessarily being path dependent and being deterministic when it comes to trying to define how certain technologies will transform our lives from high politics to low politics from security and defense to educational system, democratic processes, I think that there is a lot of insight also into looking at the past and how other disruptive technologies have transformed various stages of industrial revolutions now we are witnessing actually the fourth one, supposedly. But when it comes to artificial intelligence of course, you and, as I said you and the NATO have been spearheading various initiatives other on the research and innovation side with Horizon Europe but we have also initiatives and projects under the European fund and its precursor programs that focus on AI technologies NATO as well but for me where interestingly at the moment is the conversation surrounding generative AI and the research actually development and deployment of generative AI systems and when it comes to their safety, ethics and accountability. So when it comes to strategic foresight we definitely always focus on the emerging disruptive aspects on the technical aspect of the conversation before me actually the the foresight or the strategic foresight conversation should be actually about broader resilience came up during our lunchtime actually. Again, other conversations surrounding emerging and disruptive technologies have been associated with the fact that Europe is lagging behind that we are experiencing gaps. And this these gaps of course manifest themselves in a lack of strategic autonomy we heard about technological sovereignty, digital sovereignty. Nowadays we hear about economic security. All these issues are really important because in terms of identifying gaps and dependencies is also a matter of trying to understand the state of play at the moment but also trying to project towards the future where to invest where to prioritize what to emphasize for when it comes to the hybridization of warfare the growing hybridization of warfare we see lessons learned also from Ukraine. We see a civilian technologies even AI of the shelf technologies being recollached used during times of conflict these types of present day insights also can be projected towards the future again leadership in advancing AI power technologies, again will be a significant step forward when it comes to security and defense capabilities, and also in terms of what to prioritize when it comes to European technological and industrial base. I have actually a couple of punchlines again when it comes to dual use security and defense AI, and some points to think about I think that when it comes to military I however you want to define it. You need first of all to explore the concept of disruption in the context of military affairs, how it might potentially incrementally change processes strategies tactics and operations. So, some experts say that it is already paradigmatically shifting and shaping the ways of doing warfare for me really understanding what is exactly emerging what is disruptive is very important and being clear on the definitions and the taxonomies is again a priority area for which actually the European defense ages it has worked on with European taxonomy on AI military AI. And then we need to also try to understand the realities and myths related to algorithmic driven warfare from fielding such technologies to impact but also when it comes to issues of international governance and international law what does it mean for instance to deploy such systems when it comes to human humanitarian law and human rights for that matter. Then we also need to explore the vectors for international and European confidence building measures for AI, and for dual use AI not only civilian conversations but also military conversations, and also to include a different stakeholders in this conversation so it shouldn't be just state led but we have to also engage with civil society academia, and also the private sector, and trying to understand what do we mean by the so called arms race in AI and why the US lagging behind and now we are pitted against this you know American competition when it comes to such systems, then not to mention other buzzwords that were the realm of science fiction before but we see now more and more as a reality lethal autonomous weapons systems, the so called killer robots and finally assessing the ethical implication the human rights standards, legal frameworks and public perceptions and this came up also during our lunch in terms of the public discourse when it comes to deploying dual use AI systems. So this is more the military side of the conversation and maybe I will turn really quickly on the current hype surrounding generative AI, and I must confess that I have been very puzzled about this hype, and I will just read to you a couple of titles that were secreted in popular media surrounding generative AI like chat GPT or barred and now we have Amazon and Claude and anthropic. So I quote chat GPT poses an existential threat and the window for gaining control over it is small. How can an AI with no concept of right or wrong be allowed to make moral decisions without explicit guidance says the title in the Irish So here note the existential threats framing in the same apocalyptic vein New York Times reports that AI poses risks of extinction, noting that industry leaders from open AI, Google's deep mind, anthropic and other air labs warn that future systems could be as deadly as pandemics and nuclear The Washington Post no less states that chat GPT maker open AI calls for AI regulation. So industry calling for AI regulation, warning of existential risk. Of course we have other voices from the future AI Institute warning again against the existential nuclear level extinction level risks of generative AI such such titles for me are really indicative of the current state of play and really disentangling between hype, buzz, but also in a way a very very dangerous apocalyptic catastrophic type of imagery and narrative and I think that here in terms of trying to also navigate the fog of the future. Another term that I really liked because I hear a lot, the fog of war class of it's being complicated by emerging technologies. When it comes to kind of trying to navigate that we also need to try to understand or try to make sense of the noise. We have a lot of noise surrounding us. When it comes to deploying some of the systems for instance in military in military settings you need to have technological readiness that level cybersecurity a really a strong due diligence testing out of such a technologies even if they're off the shelf for instance. There are other conversations of course related yet again to more the governance issue the human rights issue and so on, but maybe I will just close with actually again to quotes. Last week we had the speech from President of the Commission was stood out on the land that actually mirrored almost identically this catastrophic risk existential risk framing that we have seen in popular discourse, and for me that's very again indicative how some of these imaginaries are now going into governance and policymaking. So our quote here mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war. So, it's very fascinating to see so how to see how an AI disruptive future actually is more and more painted, not in beneficial terms, but actually in very negative and dire doom and gloom scenarios and it comes as no surprise but because Godfather, so called Godfather of AI and former former Google Vice President, Geoffrey hint, actually noted, yet again, the dangers of potential super intelligence. And this is the last word and my quote from the Godfather of AI, it's quite conceivable that is just a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence. So this is open for conversation and whether we want that intelligence to decide life and death during the battlefield and in combat situations so thank you very much and looking forward to to the questions. Thank you so much. And thank you for keeping perfectly to time. And it just, I have one nagging question in my head which is who did the PR for that letter, like the coverage and the impact that that open letter has had has been absolutely phenomenal. And also this is why political computer computer science and undergrads need to study philosophy and humanities and social sciences but that's my, that's my book. Amen. We're going to hand over to you and I think we had some nice sideways into what you're going to talk about. I mean, I think you're, you're going to help us around a lot of this in what is already happening at at European level. And how is this all starting to relate into into the security realm and field. And also I think you're going to help us kind of understand like well okay so what is the strategic foresight thing. I think we have all come in here today to have a think about so I'm going to have to do and likewise I'll give you a little warning when we're getting towards the end. Yeah. Thanks very much. So it's, I'm not at all intimidated by the breadth and depth of expertise that he in front of me, and I have some cheat sheets here so you'll forgive me for referring to them from from time to time. I'll start with definition and purpose a little bit and then I'll talk about the EU experience. I'm nervous to a little bit nervous about moving on to the domain of security and the ins and outs security policy again considering the expertise that's not my area of expertise. But I can share at least some perspectives based on a kind of a secure strategic foresight point of view that might help inform the emerging debate in Ireland. So the strategy comes from Greek strategy guy who was a strategy guy was a member of the Athens War Council. So strategy in its origins comes from the military domain. One of the members of this council so one of the first strategy guy was Tuesday days, the great historian great hero of mine. So, just as a by the way, definition of security of strategic foresight is, and it's a structured consideration of different possible outcomes. So we accept immediately, there are several different ways paths, things can go. There's not one that would be a fundamental mistake to think there's we're going in one direction that's where we're going, we have to account for and consider several different outcomes, and a structured consideration that is using analytical tools and techniques. The, the purpose of it. There's a clever expression there, foresight it's an effort to relate today's events to yesterday's facts in a way that can help enlighten tomorrow's pathway. The purpose is therefore to kind of cast light on the future and so much in so much as we can. All our data is from the past all our decisions are about the future and this is a big bridge between those two domains. I would make one suggestion at this point one is that don't do strategic foresight if you don't mean it. That means, particularly I'd like to draw a distinction between strategic foresight and strategic planning we touched on this a little bit earlier, and strategic planning is finding the right path to your desired goal. But you've already made your decision about strategy, you've already determined your strategy, strategic foresight is about strategy preparation. If you have already made your decision about what you're doing, then you then that's not the time for strategic foresight. So strategic foresight has to be early in the policy process early in the strategy process because you're preparing strategy and a bunch of policies that you hope will mesh mesh together. It needs to be very early in the in the stage of policy design and preparation. The, the next point is that what is going on and what has been going on at the EU level. So, we hear the expression perma crisis poly crisis omni shambles. And that's been going on for a while from at least the financial crisis 2008 and before that as well. The EU, every time has been in a process of responding to the latest crisis, the EU actually can point to a quite a good record on how it responds to crisis it manages to stick together it manages to pull together when it's really important. It manages to get through that's been the historic record might and always be the case but that's been the record. There is a strong sentiment and there has been at least since the financial crisis that we need to move to anticipatory governance and that's trying to think what is the next crisis, what can we, what do we need to do to prepare for future crisis so that we have plans and responses that are perhaps rehearsed and resource that we can then roll out in the event of a future crisis. Again, the track record isn't especially great from that because we had a pandemic that we were under prepared for now with the invasion of the full scale invasion of you train that we weren't prepared for. So we're still playing catch up a lot of the time but there is an effort and a determination to get to better anticipatory governance. So, one dimension of that has been the S past network and audience participation how many of you have heard of the S past network. Yeah, I was afraid, I was afraid so. Yeah, very few. This is an inter institutional informal network so it doesn't have a legal entity or basis it's an agreement among the institutions to come together and dialogue and discuss things from a four side perspective. So going into some extent, or other since 2011 became more formal in 2015, and it's still going in fact the present commission innovated in an arm in important respects for the first time it designated a commissioner who had responsibility for strategic that would be Vice President chef to fit better known here as as the Brexit, the man the man who helped resolve issues around the protocol. And it also instituted an annual strategic four side report issued by the Commission, which is a 30 paid document which is extremely well worth reading it comes out in the early summer and it's designed to feed into the state of the union address. So when we hear the state of the union we kind of go back and see what what elements were there and what what are not there that fed into the to the address. And it also involves a much larger and more scientifically based and elaborate report prepared by the joint research Council, also well worth reading both these documents or public documents. And the process includes the different institutions to a greater or less degree that is the Parliament Commission and the Council, and also the external action service. Other bodies the constitutional committees and the IB are associated, as is the Institute of strategic of strategic studies in Paris. And we discuss matters informally on a regular basis we were we run an annual conference that takes place now on the 14th of November next, where we try to include high level speakers to inform a debate about what what's coming towards us from an EU perspective. And we prepare a report every five years. That's inspired to some extent by the National Intelligence Committee National Intelligence Council report of the US, which is delivered to the desk of the incoming your US president every four years. That's been going on for something like 30 years, and this has been a model or at least an inspiration for what we try to do at European level. Now the most recent report was 2019. And again, it's a public document so that constraints perhaps a little bit. The, the, the contents, but it was interesting to note that the seven themes we identified and the or indeed the order in which we identify them corresponds quite well with the six priorities of the Van der Leyen Commission. This is correlation is not causation, but it does show a kind of an identity of thinking that the thinking in Brussels was, yes, the climate issue is now the major, the first priority, and other issues followed technology, and the issues that have been a focus of the Van der Leyen Commission ever since. And the present reports will be delivered next next spring for in time for the elections to inform the incoming office holders and the parliament and subsequently the commission. And it is an opportunity to draw on a wide variety of perspectives, gather information and insight from very large number of stakeholders and presented in digested form to future decision makers. And this is, it's a worthwhile process for all that it's relatively low profile and it operates more at an official level rather than a political level. One of the, yep. Three minutes good. And one of the points involved is that the leader leadership have a decisive role in this but it's an ambiguous role leadership must step up to create capacity and scope for four side thinking. They must step back and let it work. So they must authorize it, but at the same time give it agency. If you don't have these two elements, you're struggling already, you need the leadership engagement, because you're essentially trying to inform their decisions, but you need freedom to discuss things beyond what's in the program for government and beyond what are the existing elements of one or other political group. This is a difficult balancing act. A safe space is an important part of this dimension. You need to be able to bring people together to discuss different points of view outside of the political arena in the political arena We seem to be locked into a combative structure but it's a sterile combat. I have my position you have viewers. I'm not going to admit any weakness in my position. I'm not going to admit any uncertainty anything I don't know about, and neither are my opposition. In the foresight process you have to begin with uncertainties and what you don't know, and you have to acknowledge that other people's viewpoints need to be taken into consideration. And then here to the it was a Swedish report the Neiman report on the banking crisis one central conclusion of that was that one of the gaps and one of the factors that contributed to the scope of the banking crisis in Ireland was the lack of a space where professionally expressed issues could be considered. And that's such a fundamental conclusion is a fundamental aspect of any element of strategic foresight and developing a genuine process for looking into future options to move on quickly to security issues in the future. And a discussion that's based on a polarity between neutrality here and NATO there will very quickly become locked. And so it would be good to reframe the issue in a broader way, what shades of a broad range of defense policy directions that are the my take that's appropriate to the current realities and future realities. And an important point there is that there are several possible futures NATO itself is in the process of changing, trying to understand whether its role will expand from the North Atlantic theater to some global role. That's that would have fundamental significance for NATO's day to day operations and its future reality. And we need to take account the different possibilities. We should also consider what a more active role or a more greater dedication of resources to defense activities in Ireland would have for other areas of budget. Consider a debate on soft power and hard power do these can these complement each other. Is it a choice if you're going to spend more on on hard power are you necessarily spending less on soft power. How do you balance these things from a point of view of making the world safer and representing Ireland's position in the world. If we have. If we're moving to increase defense expenditure as a percentage of GDP, should we have an equal upper movement in spending money on defend on overseas assistance overseas assistance in itself is a contribution to making the world safer. So, how do these things mesh together. Can you do both do what trade offs exist, what trade offs exist with other areas of policy. I think a fascinating question for Ireland is, what is the role of Ireland's technological industry base in this whole area. Given the presence of high technology companies of every kind in Ireland. And certainly it's an issue to to consider how that how they would operate or how they could potentially contribute also to making the world safer and developing both defensive and other capabilities. And certainly, mainly Ireland has particular needs that were in a world that we know is more joined together undersea cables, can we be better at detecting eventual threats to undersea cables, for example, cybersecurity can we do better at protecting our health service from the kind of hack that that had experienced a couple of years ago. So there's certainly a key role for technology and Ireland has a very advanced industrial base in the technological area that needs to be drawn into this discussion to. Many questions. I'll just end with one point, if I may, drawn from Aristotle. So there are circumstances where, you know, you almost any option you choose is a good one if things are going well if the weather is fine, you know, almost all your choices will have a good outcome. This is not the kind of world we're living in today. So what Aristotle said was that there are, and I did, I did change the quote, but I want to, I want to get the get the get the wording right to miss the mark is easy to hit it is difficult. There are many ways to fail. There's one way to succeed. This is where we need to develop a foresight process which will at least give us the best possible basis to get our aim correct, because we're living in a time where we need to make the right decisions. And we need all the tools that can help us to make those decisions that we can mobilize. Fantastic game. Thank you. I like even from very practical considerations of both process and things we should be thinking about some of that broader philosophical context which again I think are some of our computer science friends could benefit from a little bit of a little bit of our Aristotle. And I love the idea of like professional express brace for contrarian sort of space for professional express contrarian contrarian views. I think that that could be a good title and Alex for the IEA. Great. And so I mean, Florian, I'm going to come to, I'm going to come to you as our last panelist and then we will be opening up to Q&A both from here in the room, and we are also being broadcast hello everybody at home in the warmth of their own, Oh, their own home on Zoom. And so just so you know that that is going to be on the record when we have the Q&A as this discussion here is. So Florian, so you run the center for the long view, for the long view exactly when and when I first read that I was thinking of like psycho history. I don't know if anybody is into Asimov's foundation and the exactly the perfect mathematical formula and you see you could tell what was happening in the future. I'm going to imagine that that's not what you do. Not yet. If you if you have that thing I got what it's called. And, but so so what exactly is it that that that you do what to somebody who is a professional and strategic for say what do you, what do you do. Yeah, what do you. First of all, it's a pleasure to be here. Sometimes when I get introduced, I get introduced as a futurologist. Now, who of you have worked with futurologists. Was it good. Yes, I'm surprised. I hate them guys. And why, because they're making a living selling simple truths about the future, in my opinion. Right. So they give you these five things that you have to take to keep in mind if you do that, then you'll find. And in my opinion, that's the equivalent to populism in what we do. So the second quote or the second description of what I do. I received that from the leader of our legal services in the Lloyd in a global level in a high level discussion with CEOs. And he said, you know what you are, you are the gesture of this group. You are allowed to ask the question that nobody else is asking because their middle management, the executives. They are receivers of. This is where we go. And now I have to implement it. And again, I was not sure whether I like this or not I kind of like this description, but I would rather put forward the third description. I'm a prompt engineer, who is familiar with this term prompt engineer for for the front row here is, you know, when you work with generative AI, you have to ask the machine the right question. If you do, you get smart answers. If you don't, it's bullshit. Right. And I'm not a prompt engineer for AI, but I'm a prompt engineer for the decision makers. That's my job. My job is to ask them the right questions. Now, I would like to, you know, just make three points about strategic foresight. Well, what is it? What is it not in my opinion and our opinions vary. I noticed. Secondly, what is happening in, you know, around Ireland with regards to the security context that, as far as I can see, and I have a very limited picture is going to be important for you guys. And the third thing is, how can we use these new tools in making better strategic foresight. So number one. The difference between forecasting and foresight forecasting is, I take the data of the past. I extrapolate into the future. I build the best case around it, I build the worst case around it. But basically I'm predicting the future from what I learned from the past. And I respect politically disagree. Knowing about the third industrial revolution doesn't give us much clue about the fourth industrial revolution. Unfortunately. But what foresight needs to do is actually to take the step back and consider what are the elements of which we are certain what's going to happen which are the trends that I can objectively measure. And which ones are the uncertainties where all the experts that I get in the room couldn't agree on what on what's going to happen. It is those uncertainties that we have to work with that we have to dance with that we have to embrace, because it's admitting that we don't know everything about the future that then leads to a productive discussion where I can actually admit that the other person in the cabinet room, or the other person in the board room has a point with their point of view, right. And therefore, building scenarios about the future having a productive exchange is first of all, take the stack step back, being humble about Yes, I know a lot, but I don't know at all. And therefore, I have to admit that there's a lot of uncertainty out there. So that's the first point. The second point is when we talk about the future. We are coming here from the security community so military aspects technology politics is going to be top of mind and that's fine. That's fair. However, there is also societal questions. There is the environment related set of questions that will become more and more important. So when you think about foresight and the future, think holistically about it, and make sure that you have a system to get evidence and evidence from all these quarters. Right. The trick that we use in foresight is we build stories about the futures, not excel sheets with numbers and probabilities we say this could go this way, or that way, or that way. And therefore, we're building a logical model, how those uncertainties could interact with each other going forward. And in those narratives, you have at least two big advantages. First of all, you can put together apples and oranges, you can put different elements that come from totally different quarters in the discussion and put them into a logical relationship because it's not numbers. You can say, hey, if something happens in a technology field that has an impact on African economies, this will do something on my migration picture that I have here in Ireland, right, you can build this logical bridge between things that are really not very related if you think about it. Secondly, narratives are powerful narratives, enhance the chances that this is the north star, we have considered where we need to go. This is the choices that we make. And now I explain it to my people to my constituency to the people that are executing my orders. By doing so, first of all, you increase the chances that they actually do what you want them to do. And secondly, you give them purpose, right. And therefore, there's also an element of bringing this polarized society together by having an exchange and therefore it's important to have in these four side exercises diversity of opinion in the room. The more diverse the opinions are in this initial phase where you say, let's figure out how the world around me is changing. The more robust the insights will become afterwards, when it comes to, so what do we do with this, and what are the policy recommendations or the orders or whatever. And then you get into the closer circle and you think about and you talk, you know, straight so what do you know the pros and the cons and here's our decisions, but in the assessment phase, think broadly. Now, I talked about, you know, thinking holistically about what is happening around Ireland. And here's my personal top five list. It's representative. It's just what I picked up in my bits of the word. So, when you talk about the social dimension, what speaks most to me right now is the impact of everything that is that is digitization on society. Right. There was the need about critical thinking. The fear is that the more artificial intelligence we get the more stupid the people will become, actually, right, we are de skilling and I'm already seeing it in my consultant colleagues as we speak. They're getting lazy. They're getting think lazy they, they say, Hey, I can ask jet GPT. Great. So I don't need to write this summary anymore. And I think that's a, you know, there's a trend. If that continues, we really have a problem because our society is aging plus it is the skilling. No good. Right. So secondly, when we talk about technology, there's plenty of technologies and the important bit for me here is that we are right now in a big transition from one set of infrastructure that was critical to us. Say oil and gas, for example, to a new set of infrastructure that will be critical to us, say this electricity grid that we have to have to have renewable energies. And this changes the rules of the game. Right. This changes what I, you know what functions and what infrastructure I need to protect. I think we just started to realize that, you know, I need a European electricity market but can I count on the Norwegians to actually sell me electricity when I really need it, or on the Swiss, or on the French, right. So there's a whole new set of rules of the game. And this is where I think strategic foresight really comes in handy not to predict what is the black swan that is going to bite us next, but to discover the shadow if you want of that black swan. What are the impacts of something like this hits us. Then, in terms of economic uncertainties and trends around island I you have a really strong digital sector, but you need to protect it it's going to be your key economic sector. Right. So subsea cables is a big topic. And I think in order to protect and enhance your competitiveness as an economy. These are questions that you need to address urgently. And now, okay, now you're I'm going to lose you now. But if you really think far out. And if we believe that climate change is happening. And if we agree that sudden shifts in carrying capacity will be an issue if climate zones change. I would say, have you ever considered what happens if the Gulf Stream ceases to be. It would be a good time now to start thinking about this, even if this is a low probability or you don't want to think about it. So that's the kind of thinking I would encourage. And then, in terms of politics. It was somebody from the strategy department in NATO, 10 years ago that started to talk about the threat to liberal democracies and really scared me. Because they were right on my on the money. Right. And this topic is going to continue there. Right the polarization in our society what is truth. How can I make my society resilient to these new forms of exchange of ideas and what this does to parties is I think a topic that will keep us busy for the next couple of years. Okay. The last enclosure. The good news is that our world is getting apparently more and more complex I would actually argue no we just realize how complex it is it has always been complex. However, now, you know if something happens in the state of Taiwan it has direct implications in Ireland. Right so we need to realize the good news is, we have sensors we have big data, and we have artificial intelligence to actually help pick this up, get the early warning signals, anticipate get ahead of the game. Right. So I would disagree that artificial intelligence is an existential threat, at least as far in my little part of what I do just voting. Okay, okay. Fair point. Fair point. I would say it is the threat and it is also the solution, we just need to get ahead of the game. And with this I think I'm going to close my last reflection is who is the audience of strategic foresight. Is it you, the decision makers. Is it the government. Is it the public is it the parliament. I think the most fundamental question we need to ask is who do we need to convince right. So strategic foresight can be an amazing tool to make this argument. We need to embark in this journey of transition I don't know when it comes to migration or whatever big complex topic you want to choose. And here are the things that could happen. We have thought it through here are the scenarios. And here is my plan what I want to do. If we manage to do that. We need to finally get out of this really stupid populist way of discussing. And that's my hope. And that's my motivation I do. Thank you.