 This morning, we have assembled a panel to discuss using foresight to improve decision making. And I won't introduce all the speakers. You have their bios in your materials. I will be introducing Leon later, but I think we should begin. I have asked each of the panelists to speak for 10 minutes, so don't be surprised if you see me handing a sheet of paper down the line. It's nothing unusual. It's just a little note that says you've got three more minutes. Wrap it up. So I think that the panel members represent an interesting group of thinkers in this area, and I'm really pleased that we have them all with us this morning. So what I'd like to do is start with Leon first, and then we're going to just go right down the line. Leon? Hello? That's really interesting. Is that better? Thank you. All right. I now have the traditional academic problem for middle-aged and beyond, and that is I can see you, but I can't see any of my notes. Sure. One of that, I have to say, is, so we say acapella, just me, no accompaniment. What is it that we mean by anticipatory, and why do we need it now, and how is it a response to complexity, which I think really is an accurate description of the way things are organized in the world that we live in? When one speaks of governance, I think the idea of anticipation or anticipatory governance simply means the capacity to experiment in the mind rather than to take an idea right to the street or to the battlefield. You may want to just talk into this. It might be better. Let's try it. Yeah. Okay. Turn that one off. Yeah. And I'll just scooch over here. All right. Do I have to back up and start all over again? No. Thank you. As I was saying, it's the capacity to experiment in the mind with alternative courses of action rather than do what unfortunately we have a tendency to do, and that is to take a policy straight to the street or worse, straight to the battlefield and learn that way how much it's going to cost us in treasure, time, opportunity, and worst of all, human life and suffering. We really do need the capacity to examine alternative futures and the consequences of alternative courses of action. My students ask me in the course that I've been teaching on this general subject, how do you know that anybody who will ever listen to you, will the president ever be interested in this? And my response has been if you don't organize to create this capability and you do suddenly become lucky enough to have a president who is responsive to it, that is not the time to begin to get the capability together. Start when you can. Hope that you get a presidency that does learn how to ask the right questions and does ask you to be responsible for the unasked questions as well and take it from there. To anticipate does not mean to have a fixed vision. Foresight is different than visionary politics. Visionary politics is associated with a single view of what is going to happen and a single view of how it should be brought about. Foresight on the other hand is interested in what is going to happen but it views all futures as conditional. And it accepts that the law of unintended consequences is the universal and unfixable human condition. It therefore takes a more modest approach to what can be done than most political leaders do at least before they are in office and seeks to understand the variability of the future but deals with it in a systematic way so that all others can participate and all others can test the clarity of the reasoning. Now I want to talk just briefly about the reason why the need for anticipatory governance is becoming more intense and then I think I'll fill my time. I come from a life concerned with national security but for most of the time that I was in government national security was essentially a synonym for national defense. National defense is a clear enough and concrete enough object it is the physical defense of the United States its assets its people its allies and its future. National against threat of violence national security on the other hand is and needs to become a much broader more embracing concept as Sheila has been saying and what I want to do is to make more concrete for you why that is so. To most practitioners of national security as national defense it is heretical to say that the subject must include let's say the economic strength of the United States. The response to such an assertion is that broadens the subject beyond our control we can't manage it it cannot be defined it cannot be handled I disagree I think history is full of nations that died armed to the teeth and bankrupt and we are heading in that direction wouldn't you say and so economics the economic future of the United States and everything that's required to promote that is a part of national security especially from the point of view of the president who seems to be the neglected party in all discussions of where and how national security policy should be should be made now what exactly is happening that intensifies this point well if you look at what has happened as the result of the economic collapse we've experienced what you see is a series of moves and most people regard as temporary and reversible I don't think so and so if you look let's say at the ability of government to influence executive pay at the financial reform bill and its consequences at EPA's regulatory power over entire industries including perhaps much of the end of the industry that uses our energy over government influence in the banking and investment field over cyberspace over the health care bill etc what you find is that government often for emergency reasons has been injected very deeply into the future of the national economy now the question is what are the institutional and organizational consequences of that and has anybody asked and the answer is I don't think anybody is is thinking that the government's role has expanded beyond the capacity of the existing system right three more minutes as much as that my problem is how to spill the time not how to end it okay I think that we need a an approach to governance that first of all uses foresight to help us claw back time for response reflection and reaction and one of our big problems is that as a democracy we debate what we think is happening and we debate what we think should be done about it and then after you think we've made a decision we really we re litigate that politically we need as much time as we can to think about what may happen in order to give us a shot and influencing the way things roll out for the best interests of the country and foresight is the only way to to to claw that time back from advancing facts and we need an organizational system that is able to take advantage of such time as we have military is pioneered I think in this it may think its job is incomplete but it is so far further along than is the civilian sector of governance and the direction it's taking is a flat networks which actually imitates where much of the best of American business has already gone as well so the legacy systems of governance that we have are in fact adapted to the pace and thinking of the 19th and early 20th century industrialized America we need to go along with a foresight mechanism a an approach that depends heavily on networked approaches to government organization both policy formation and also execution and administration the other thing we need that we don't have is a feedback system to gauge where things actually go as the result of the impulses that we give them when we make decisions if you put these three things together that equals what I would call anticipatory governance it's a system to look rigorously at what may happen and what our actions may do to those systems it is a system based on networking to speed our ability to move information and to make responses and a system to gather experience and learn what we did right or did wrong in order to apply it more rapidly to what we are in the process of attempting to do and above all we need what we don't have and what we're talking about today and that is the capacity to look deeper into the future and for that we need a dedicated system which has that as its function and that system needs to be operating within the aura of the presidency thanks Leanne Moana my name is Moana Erickson I'm at the Millennium Project and I'm here this morning on the panel on behalf of Jerry Glenn who is out of town and is the executive director of the Millennium Project just briefly by way of introduction the Millennium Project is a global futures research think tank of futures scholars business planners policymakers etc who have come together in local and global perspectives via regional nodes and there are 35 nodes around the globe that the Millennium Project is connected to and interacts with in a very highly participatory way so I'll jump right into the PowerPoint presentation it's comprised of two components the first is looking at connecting the dots between futures research and decision-making number one there the integration of success stories in a checklist for making futures research more effective in decision-making and I'll go through that checklist in just a minute it was pulled primarily from the Millennium Project study which was completed for the Army Environmental Policy Institute and the second component of the PowerPoint is collective intelligence as a new tool of foresight being applied at the Prime Minister's office of Kuwait and that the global climate change situation room in South Korea so part one connecting futures research to decision-making this is really a compilation of an A plus checklist so to speak next slide please an A plus checklist of the Millennium Project's sort of best practices as it were on how to connect futures research to decision-making and decision-makers I will go if you could please just click down to the first 13 yeah it's the first page I'll just highlight I'll quickly run through it really and highlight a couple one make sure leaders know what futures research is and is not number two include decision-makers in the process connect to strategic planning include workshops and training for decision-makers include interest groups and actors if goals are lacking included as an issue determine who has the responsibility to act balance long-term and short-term views use at least one formal method that all understand provide information that demonstrates a crisis include knowledge about what is possible make options clear demonstrate feasibility of recommendations include subjective descriptions of alternative futures next slide please and just yeah down to 26 connecting costs to benefits suggested ways of making decisions and uncertainty including intended actions of others developing indicators using the testimony of eminent scientists looking at how projects affect action or non-action in scenarios show technical feasibility to overcome fear of failure the integrated use of computer models linking those models to similar activities avoiding information overload allowing time for individuals to integrate concepts including media and making work integrative and cumulative hopefully this PowerPoint will be made available to all of you but this is really this checklist even though I've gone through it quickly for purposes of time you know it really represents the Millennium Projects sort of the go-to checklist as it were for really how to connect to decision-makers and sort of best practices learned from all around the globe from our 35 nodes next slide please this is the second component of their PowerPoint which is on the applications of collective intelligence is used currently being developed and used by the Millennium Project number one is the global climate change situation room in South Korea where Jerry Glenn the executive director currently is today second is the early warning system we're developing for the Prime Minister's office in Kuwait and the third is a work we're doing through our state of the future report 15 global challenges at the University of Science Malaysia next slide so here is the working definition of collective intelligence it is an emergent property it's not static as an emergent property there must be continual feedback it is an emergent property from synergies among three components data information knowledge software hardware experts and others with insight that continually learns from feedback in a synergistic way to produce just in time knowledge for better decisions than each of these three components would acting alone next slide here is the diagram illustrates the previous slide as you can see each can change the other it's not static it's dynamic it's synergistic experts this this particular definition of collective intelligence groups of experts are feeding from and into data information and knowledge which is feeding into and changing the hardware software platform which is feeding into and responding to feedback from the group of experts each can change the other next slide please this this is a snapshot of the global global climate change situation room in South Korea this is a practical application of how of collective intelligence at work to support the situation room there are four elements climate science energy mitigation and adaptation next slide this slide shows the main user interface for the global climate change situation room which is a portal to all the software tools and information of the collect of the collection intelligence site it includes all external systems experts that refer to earlier and databases that have agreed to connect this portal is based on the Drupal platform a software platform this platform has storage tagging annotation and search capabilities this portal also acts as a beginning place okay for users to gather and organize data and to subsequently conduct initial analysis that is then further reviewed by situation room staff who will enter their analysis into a Wikipedia like system there's an aggregator feature you'll see at the top it'll have it has a home etc aggregator resources etc aggregator feature constantly searches the web for relevant content as programmed by topics and modified by more specific keywords it has over 200 RSS feeds and and is exhaustive staff can also use an additional piece of software called bookmarklets to collect information from the internet and use it and enter it into the global climate change situation room so this is this is the live portal this is this is the practical you know real-time application of collective intelligence that the morning project has applied in South Korea next slide this is an overview of a user interface for policy advisors and decision-makers this is the kind of information that collective intelligence can produce for decision-makers on the left hand column you have a current situation on the far right column you have the desired situation in the middle you have the policies that would address the gap from current to desired situation next slide this slide shows a collective intelligence system that we're currently enacting for the Prime Minister's office in Kuwait I think I won't go into detail but you can see the top line press releases Google alerts expert groups conference seminars key persons it's all scanning into analysis and synthesis collective intelligence system is feeding back in you can see the arrows feedback and new requirements it's working synergistically it's live that you know this is sort of the future of how collective intelligence system and technology will interface next slide this is just have two more slides this is a sort of a microcosm slide of the next slide I'm going to show you this shows sort of the software platforms you have real-time Delphi which collects and synthesizes expert opinions through an online questionnaire the results of the questionnaires are then fed into the local private federation server you have Drupal there on the far right social portal Drupal which is a software platform that allows an individual or a community of users to manage and organize content on an online website you have media wiki I won't you all aware with Wikipedia so you know that wiki websites allow users to collaboratively create and edit into a website using a web browser it's all feet knowledge harvesters everything is feeding into a local private federation server which then will have a synergistic relationship with the global federation server next slide please that's showing the software platform so here's the ultimate goal of how we get to a global federation server we have the collective intelligence system I described in South Korea with the global climate change situation room the work we're doing in Malaysia etc the work in the UK you'll see how real-time Delphi Drupal software platform wiki etc all feeds into local federation servers each of these collective intelligence systems then feeds into a larger global global federation server again the idea is this is live this is real-time we're using software we're using hardware we're drawing upon experts we're drawing upon information data and knowledge to really produce real-time results and collective intelligence last slide please this is the report that came out last last month it's the Millennium Projects 2010 state of the future this is our our our flagship publication those are the chapters in it the 15 global challenges state of the future index collective intelligence which I've just gone through briefly today very most security Latin America 2030 other futures research it has a 7,000 page CD in the back of the of the publication it's in its 14th year of publication and the last slide is our contact information if you're learning would like to learn more and much greater detail about the Millennium Projects and the work we're doing to advance collective intelligence systems through the use of technology we have two websites www stateofthefuture.org and www WMP MillenniumProjectcollab.org we also have a presence on Second Life so thank you very much for your time thank you Moana. Clem. Hi I'm Clem Beasel the chairman and founder with Alvin Toffler and Jim Dater of the Institute for Alternative Futures it's great to be here let me ask you how many of you know about the House foresight provision great I get to tell some of you something new but first I want to say congratulations to PNSR for the work that you've gone through to say how things should work as Leon said it's really important to have foresight mechanisms and have design and ready to be in place when someone wants to use them and I think that's significant and in particular for Sheila as as we've heard in terms of the leadership for this the question of what do you do with this design of this organization putting it in the White House the the significance and some of the questions that have been raised are relevant to the House foresight provision the House foresight provision sprung from an effort of the bowling committee house reforms in the 1970s then congressman John Culver was on the committee congressman Sarbanes then congressman Sarbanes ran that effort there were a few members who were committed enough to the way the process worked the institution of Congress worked to go through this reform effort the significance of and they had two parts to the reforms that came out in the 70s one was reorganizing the stove pipes of the committees and the other thinking about how Congress works administrative and operational activities the reform committee the committee structure was shot down in the 70s the administrative reforms were accepted one provision of those reforms was an overhaul of the oversight section of the House rules the next slide and so that that 15 Congresses ago there was included in the oversight section a requirement that House committees other than appropriations do futures research and forecasting and I'll walk you through what that is that came again from John Culver's insistence that Congress not be surprised that Congress the congressional committees understand what's going on so next slide that's the House rule I'll give it to you in detail it's in the it's in the House rule rules and what you should know is what happens no one cares enough about the House rules to make any changes so they are accepted verbatim at the beginning of each Congress with minor exceptions if like we created an energy committee or the Homeland Security Committee just minor changes so this rule has been there since then next slide so in effect the section that deals with oversight that's rule 10 section to be basically says that Congress congressional committees need to consider whether programs should be continued to tell or eliminated and it exempts the appropriations committee because in their appropriations hearings they have a somewhat different task it's similar but they ask in effect about the functioning of programs so next slide so in that context of oversight they also say that a committee should look at any conditions or circumstances that may indicate the necessity or desirability of an acting new or additional legislation addressing subjects within jurisdiction of the committee whether or not a bill or resolution has been introduced with respect there too so they are the subject matter domains or the subject matter keepers of what's in the jurisdiction of the committee and future research and forecast within its jurisdiction so they should know what's going on the and so the next slide and it's interesting you know that that has sat there it turns out I'm a political scientist I did my dissertation on foresight in Congress one of my three case studies was this provision so so I was around at the time it was being considered but nobody knows about it and Walter Olasek a senior person at the Congressional Research Service who testified to the PNSR process raised this and basically said that you know repeated what I've just said but saying that that you know little is known about how congressional committees apply house committees reply with a requirement and because they no doubt do it in multiple formal and informal ways I'll say more about that in a minute and in particular about the ways that the security and defense community could do more to reinforce foresight on the on the hill the next slide and then the rationale which was part of the original history that Olasek raised and it parallels the concern for the PNSR conversation about bringing foresight to the White House is that basically understandably lawmakers and committees focus on major issues of the moment in a complex world however it's important that for Congress to be sensitive to long-term threats challenges and changes so it's not caught unprepared and so that you know that's a classic issue the question is what do you do about it and I should make the observation that I think there was probably more foresight and more consistent foresight in the 70s than now on the hill in large part because of the polarization in Congress and it's in part of the challenge one of the questions earlier was what's the issue about politics and there is a cultural phenomenon that drives out foresight that foresight's about uncertainty you can't get into the right kind of arguments if you acknowledge uncertainty so there's a challenge but the question then and I'd argue that this community should consider is how do we encourage foresight next slide in House committees and so each committee and subcommittee I'd argue should develop an oversight and foresight agenda at the beginning of each Congress it's mandated develop this agenda at the beginning of the Congress it should include a foresight component asking you know are there are there will there be changes in the factors that current policy or legislation assumes or is based on are there or will there be emerging issues that will change the nature of the problem consider developing scenarios of the future in the policy area looking out 10 or 20 years use those scenarios and monitoring trends and update those and determine the topics where early warning information must be developed by or for the committee I think that's sort of a every Congress that should happen at the beginning of the Congress next slide in terms of I'd also argue that for implementing this have committee members and staff and key interest groups focus on the future include forecast and scenarios in the committee orientation retreats and policy sessions when they get trained on what we're doing sort of what's the policy area committees make request routinely to GAO CRS the National Academy of Sciences either directly or through them CBO include foresight questions in those assignments some committees do this some House committees do this on a routine basis likewise in dealing with agencies reviewing policy areas or specific programs ask for forecasts for key factors potential surprises or emerging opportunities that might alter the the current approach and I'd argue that given the quadrennial reviews and the other sort of major policy statements within defense and security that there is more formal opportunities for cycling foresight through the eyes of in front of the eyes of the the defense and security commit committees also the recommended then the last slide basically have cross committee multiple committee assignments for scenarios in other words the committee should get together with others on topics that clearly transcend their jurisdiction and cover multiple areas and those should be multiple committee scenarios or futures efforts and there's a tricky one this last one and I'm very open to comments and that is what do you do when the Republicans and the Democrats are so in disagreement and one possibility is to create parallel and competing scenarios in terms of looking out in the future we often argue that going out 20 years lets people sort of gets beyond the the politics and arguments of the moment and that as often the case but another option is to say recognizing that that they won't go anywhere have have them develop have both minority majority develop scenarios so there's this provision out there it shows the history of good intentions not being applied it shows the history that no one enforces the rules on congressional committee so so nobody cares nobody even knows that they're not doing this and so there is a lesson in the sense of that that often happens for foresight like adjustments so that needs to be paid attention to as as any of the options coming out of the PNSR move forward but there is this opportunity to enhance foresight by using this this house foresight provision thanks thanks clam okay Eric good morning all thank you let me add my my kudos to Sheila she and I go back over 20 years and looking at these kind of efforts and we probably are going to be added another 20 years and I hope I'm able to be there with her when she gets there and also to Jim for his efforts I've been dealing with inter agency coordination collaboration planning reform since before PDD 56 so in a biblical way PDD 56 the Old Testament of PNSR the New Testament put them both together and you have the guiding roadmap for the future if we're if we're very lucky I come from the National Defense University I'm the director of the Center for applied strategic learning it used to be the old national strategic gaming center that used to be the old war gaming center we don't do war games anymore gaming trivializes so now center for applied strategic learning we're now obfuscating but what we really do is is look at the mission of teaching research and outreach for national security affairs I just came back from middle Tennessee and to back up one of the things that Sheila said this morning about the American people need to understand and are not very well educated in these kind of things I didn't realize there were three Tennessee's that's why there are three stars in the state flag of Tennessee middle Tennessee is about 1956 right now and it was great to walk back into that area I was taken to task in my lecture on on current national security challenges and answering the question are we the new Rome I was taken to task by a gentleman who was very upset that Hillary Clinton was spending all of her time overseas traveling around the world when she was in fact the secretary of state and I said yes she's she is the secretary of state and he said yes the state of America and she needs to be in Washington and I realized at that point that if we're dealing with that level of understanding there's not a whole lot of forecasting or forethought involved what we do at N. D. U. is not only use foresight in our gaming activities and I am not I see many of my friends and colleagues out there I'm not going to give you a gaming primer what I am going to do is plant some ideas and thoughts in your head as to the challenges that we in the gaming and simulation environment use when it comes to alternate scenarios and forecasting and forethought we not only are dealing with that but we're also in the business of trying to create people who are for thinkers the critical decision makers of the future and as you all know we train for certainty and we educate for uncertainty so as we look at that from our point of view what exactly is it that we do and how is it that we are challenged when I began in the business of gaming my mentor told me there are three different types of games there are educational there are analytical and there are operational and there are three levels of games strategic operational and tactical and for our purposes if it's educational and it is strategic then we at National Defense University will engage in that activity that was in 1986 and that world in those days allowed us to remain in the strategic educational environment what was pointed out this morning and what Mona showed was the new complexity and and I understand from the world of adult learners that the average attention span of the adult learners 13 minutes which is about five minutes into Mona's pitch you guys tuned out so back again what what we realize now is that the world is as complex as she demonstrated with all of those circles put yourself in the position of King Arthur all he needed was a round table 12 nights a lady in the lake and a Lancelot and he had it resolved our world is much more complicated so in order to deal with the realities of our world from and the use point of view looking at the educational components in the wider policy community the two groups that we support what is it that we are trying to do what we are trying to do and the reason that we really do support this whole idea of strategic assessment actionable foresight and a center with a focus along those lines is that it really would I think help us tremendously in preparing these future strategic leaders because one of the things that bedevils us in this gaming environment slide that you have here is that when you act current ask current leaders to look into the future one of the regrettable things that normally happens is that they revert back to their state of most comfortable past that's why in the gaming world when you have people sitting around the table in tabletops many of them begin their interactions by saying well when I was assistant secretary deputy I said well they gone backwards that's not what we really want to do we really want to look into the future so our challenge is to break that line that goes to the past next slide and in order to do that we use a couple of things that that have worked to our advantage if we are in fact going to look into the future there are potentials some linear some non when you start at the point of departure of today and look into the actual future and project yourself along those lines you may or may not be satisfied where is the center that can come together and in one very timely I think concrete some of the other words that were used this morning to describe the center that Sheila is talking about either validate or question whether the end point of this process of thought analysis gaming is where you want to be look at the arc if that's not where you want to be and you really want to be at x1 or the desired future how do you get there what is that desired future what are the conditions that differ from the linear future that is where you're going to end up if you just continue to do what you're doing right now which is basically muddle along if you then project yourself into that desired future how do you work yourself back to the current reality because the sooner today you begin to get along the new line to your desired area this is the value of gaming because you can project resourcing you can project time you can project capabilities you can project all of the various components that we've talked about dime pull hazy whatever you want to use what you end up with is an ability to begin now closer to the bone so that it's cheaper less costly more effective and actionable again support for the actionable future center last slide I go back to a good buddy of mine from the army war college Charles Taylor came up with this cone of plausibilities can you project the future we went through a huge debate in the late 80s early 90s about can you can't you the utility well it isn't no it can't be well we've got technologies we've got artificial intelligence well it wasn't intelligent and it certainly was artificial but therefore what so this cone of plausibilities gives us a mechanism one of many many mechanisms and I just throw it out today just for for for thought because along this line of if you in fact understand the forces that get you to where you are today then where you're going to be tomorrow is not that hard to predict and where you're going to be a little bit further into the future is actually a little bit more comfortable now 2020 2040 2060 then it starts to get a little bit vaguer out there but not beyond the realm of possibilities so if you are analytical and you in fact do use some of the tools that are available in the gaming medium it's not unreasonable as project horizon and some of the other millennium challenge project and whatever have have shown it's not unreasonable to figure out what you need to do in these contrasting and alternate futures bottom line to all of this is do we need a center do we need some kind of a focal point a center of gravity a hub certainly from an educational point of view we feel it would be very synergistic from an analytical point of view it might be redundant but if you can empower it as close as it might be to the office of the presidency it certainly would be very very useful we're all in favor of it and we would look forward very much to collaborating and cooperating with you in that regard thank you thanks Eric Tim hello I will there we go I will try to avoid death by PowerPoint in the audience by just hitting some of the high points in these slides first oh how about this there we go essentially this slide just says I agree with Sheila Sheila I see the words that I heard used this morning systemic complex and next slide the point I want to make about the question I was given what can the greater foresight community have to offer is that when we talk about the foresight community I think we often talk about it in obvious terms and it's not obvious it's not obvious because it's evolving and it's a much wider community people who are functionally interested in foresight and are internally making commitments to resources in that direction should be part of the foresight community we think about when we think about a center like this one it is a real question about how the world is becoming more complex it's not just faster it's not just more populated it's not just geographically more global but there are people out there that weren't there before I mean Friedman's simple mind a relatively simple mind is super power individuals are part of that and what he really meant at the time as I understand it was people like the Taliban etc but the idea that individuals can make a difference in a global sense is a very important issue the idea that NGOs are really getting involved in policy and not just a voice to be heard or ignored the idea that the global economy comes in from nowhere and makes a change in your own backyard all very important points and finally the role of business in how government is administered has become completely transformed slide please there's the problem the problem is that when you talk about how to look at these complex and systemic world who is it that can look at it in a whole not of government a whole of globe context who has the authority to speak knowledgeably in that area and second who has the ability to respond functionally we're really talking about a matrix approach and that's what I see as the response to the question about who should be involved and of course there is a culture within at least what is traditionally been known as the security community and you know you can you can say oh I know that or you can smile internally but you know the whole idea of hoarding or classifying information fighting over who gets to do what certainly who should be top dog would be a good term in a situation all of those have a history that we're all familiar with slide NGOs are very very important private sector is very very important but the real question is are those people not going to be just involved in what we call the stakeholder strategy of implementation you make an analytical decision you come up with a policy and then you sell it but are they going to be involved in the analytical dance from the get-go that's I think the most important question slide tools to deal with this we've talked a little bit about it we talked about new things that are coming out we saw some examples but when you talk about chaotic chaotic interfaces I'm not talking about you know breakdown I'm not talking about incomprehensibility I'm talking about the basic mathematical fact that when systems that are different interface they cause unexpected consequences you know 1990s thinking but still not night not 2100 action people still don't understand how complex systems work and they don't know how to make them work in a way that's beneficial next please and the way to respond to that in my mind is that you have to have a robust and I mean something that produces long lasting and functional analysis analytical system and you have to have a system that helps leadership understand what it is that's being said when you're working in you know Bayesian algebraics or if you're working in enormously complex models you're having at one time the challenge of bringing people who need to know what you're talking about up to speed that's a big challenge it isn't an easy thing to help non-systemically trained individuals come to systemically complex and sophisticated decisions slide please the whole business of the cloud very very interesting but you know the cloud has a flip side quality to it it's pretty foggy in there it's very difficult to see what goes in and go out it is the classic black box when you start thinking about new and sophisticated ways of crunching data new and sophisticated ways of looking at how you can tell the leadership and your colleagues on the analytical team that don't come from the same discipline as you do what it is that you want to accomplish and what it is that you hope will be the action items that come out of your analysis you really need to have a new set of skills last slide where there's new citizen skills going to come from I would say essentially to finish up my theme they're going to come from a wide range of sources from the private sector there are enormously interesting things being done in defense on gaming but you know there are like for example and as I say on this slide I was recently a witness on a on a gaming program for national the panel for national Academy of Sciences that was almost entirely based on my past experience on a new experience for me because it was it was private sector a lot of very interesting things being done it was being done for the Defense Department but it was a new mix of players and what that new mix of players and we're really talking about HR issues which are brought from the floor for this center what that mix of players needs to be able to do is to drill down in detail and systems and to look up in the mega sense across interactive complexities what they need to have is an enormously wide range of skills and backgrounds and I don't mean just somebody who's been an analysis but actually out in operations and they need to be able to translate the judgments that they come to which is I want to use that word judgment I agree completely about the art form part of analysis to people who haven't had the same backgrounds as they are essentially they need to speak foreign languages to leadership thank you I'm done thank you Tim Jonathan thank you good morning the failure of governance economic and social systems easy to forecast what people find hard is to imagine surprising success the way in which the vision and foresight that the pnsr and vision working group are calling for means that that's how we could actually meet this challenge of helping people imagine the surprising success of our governance economic and social systems and that's quite critical right now vision and foresight offer creativity and hope that can restore public faith in our government if you look at the surveys you see that's missing you see that's been declining and eroding so the idea that governance will sustain our dreams that America will make the 21st century even more successful than the 20th century for people around the world around the world well that's a critical idea and the vision working group foresees a way in which our government can actually fulfill that promise what would that look like well our government would begin to attract in the very bright young people who would want to work for our government before they would go out to industry we'd see the integration of our government with business and NGOs as Tim is speaking to and that's going to be around strategy as well as solutions for these very big problems that are emerging in the 21st century we could see the dreamers working with the doers the people who bring the operational and tactical intelligence who are very very good in the now being able to learn from the people who work as futurists who are very very good at working decades far into the future so it's that bringing together that we have seen occurring in islands in the government in DoD in state department with horizons we see it certainly in the business sector where Clem and I have worked for decades and you can see tremendous work in simulations and scenarios the marrying up of that highly conceptual and abstract work with the futures with a very pragmatic and tactical and operational capacity that you find in groups like local law enforcement in the military that's the key and that's what I believe could be turned by the project on national security reform recommendations so if we can move this agenda forward we will provide a governance capability that you could see coming in Kuwait you can see it's well developed in Singapore you can see it in the UK and you can't see it here in the US so vision working group has described a first step towards this vision and I said let's take it thanks Jonathan Warren thank you Sheila my name is Warren fishbine I work at state INR where I coordinate the global futures forum which is a multinational partnership of intelligence and security organizations looking at transnational security challenges in an unclassified way what I want to do in this presentation is to talk a bit about foresight from the perspective of intelligence organizations which obviously have an important role to play in developing any type of initiative government wide initiative in anticipatory governance foresight has been traditionally part of the of the brief of the intelligence world through estimative or strategic intelligence and also things such as the global trends study that studies that the NIC has put out over the over the past several years but the the gold standard in intelligence has always been short-term warning learning us to the next Pearl Harbor or 911 and what I want to do here is make an argument that in the security environment that is developing that looking longer term or looking more strategically is is actually critical to doing short-term warning and that this actually also involves a major organizational changes in the way intelligence has done it's not simply a question of adding some some new tools now the reason for this relates to the change in the global security environment which Sheila and Tim and others have already talked about the the emergence of a very complex environment of of of interactions among smaller actors of obscure players and super empowered players and novel technologies and when you put these all together it leads to greater potential for nonlinear outcomes you know black swans as become popular to call them and this has two very significant implications one is that the scope for doing traditional intelligence analysis using evidence and logic and trying to build a case and trying to see how things can can logically unfold is becoming smaller simply because the environment is just too complex we don't know who the players are as we could in in the cold war when we're looking at at major state threads and secondly and and correspondingly the the scope for foresight for doing a broader thinking for horizon scanning scenarios and gaming that is becoming much much larger you know the the right brain side of the brain is growing and the left side is has a little less to do although both both are continue to be very important the second major implication is that we need to be continuously alert for major surprise because nonlinearities can pop up at any time as as we saw and as Ray had been mentioned in the case of the of the global financial crisis now again this is not simply a question of bringing in tools there are plenty of these tools out there they're they're used in the intelligence community it's a need to develop a systematic approach to linking foresight with ongoing intelligence processes because let's face it we we forget we do scenarios and I bet after we leave an exercise most of us have forgotten what some of the key findings were you know within two days after after doing it we're affected by cognitive biases which make it difficult to see nonlinear effects and of course there's just the the tyranny of the inbox that we're focused on answering the mail and we just don't have the time to to continuously think about to draw upon what we've learned to think about how things might suddenly change so what this requires in my view is that we need to move to to a concept that is actually being developed in networks center of warfare com so called cognitive readiness that we need to develop processes whereby intelligence analysts are are inculcated in in in situational awareness in processes from remembering what they what they've learned before in various exercises in being intellectually adaptive what we need is that they have a rich mental library of things that could happen that they can draw upon to see weak signals and that's what they're going to be in a complex world of possibly of things that could possibly change and and seeing these signals strengthen and become significant and something that they should alert policymakers to now this is not necessarily an easy thing to do within the current structure of intelligence because we're focused on production we're focused on on again logic and evidence we have a very rigid account structure where we tend to look at our individual you know countries or issues and we don't really necessarily engage in the continuing dialogues and I'm thinking how how things might change how how things might interact and so I think what we need to do is to have a processes and individuals of foresight specialists who are there not not primarily to do analysis that not to be subject matter experts but to be experts in bringing analysts together to think about alternative possibilities to recalling what has been done in in the past and helping them to look at incoming information to look how do these apply to what they're seeing how could they be looked at through a different lens what might they be telling us that if we were just doing it on our daily basis we may not be seeing so that is what I think is the real challenge that we face and I think we need different incentive structures we need to to really take some of the lessons that that organizations organizations such as what are called high reliability organizations such as nuclear power plants and an aircraft carriers where they they are continually focused on how they might be be wrong and there is their incentives not just to do things in the in the old in the traditional way but to really challenge what's going on to collaborate very closely to get different perspectives involved and so what I'm saying is that we need to in order for foresight to really have an impact in intelligence organizations and in the way they feed into a broader intelligence process we need to move away from sort of the the academic type organizations that we have and the very you know stove pipe organizations in various ways to these these more organizations that that that are really focused on bringing people together on on challenging what they what they think that are very introspective and it's a big challenge but I think if what we're talking about today is going to work it cannot it cannot be the intelligence world and reform and it cannot be isolated from creating a national ability to to look ahead thank you thank you Warren we have time for questions and I'm sure you have many for the panelists yes biology is the new physics complex adaptive systems react to the interact locally and in real time that brings into up the question of the possibility of evolving systems that enable us to make the system respond in a better way it will respond as it responds and the minute this center is created the system will adapt to the fact that it exists it is therefore imperative that we're clear on what it is we're trying to accomplish I think Sheila was was was excellent in defining the role of the center as an information source and an analytical source and that kind of thing so my concern is the guy in middle Tennessee because it all starts with him and I don't I don't even know how to formulate a question in the context of this of this discussion about that guy because when I talked to Leon about what we're doing to in his mind if I may if I may represent it we are figuring out a way to empower that guy to participate in this governance system in a way that makes it more responsive you talk about a black box well a car is a black box to me have no clue how it works but I'm really competent at driving it and I you know so is there a way we can formulate our process such that we taking all of that into consideration that guy in middle Tennessee becomes a more effective participant in our democracy I'm gonna take a first step what I'd like to ask you to do is when you respond please give us your name and your affiliation I think at least from the center's standpoint that we have an opportunity to use technology and social media and wikis to to get the hopes and the dreams and the wishes of the people of the United States pulled together give them a forum would we need to monitor it yes because obviously we have to be cautious simply because we're gonna have you know children reading you know some of this and and even within a freedom of speech because it will be an educational process I think we'd have to be a little a little careful about having things posted but I do think it could give a new outlet to educate people and I mean the person in middle Tennessee and having lived in Oak Ridge I understand a lot about how different I felt those people were from the people certainly who I was raised and educated with and yes there are three tenancies and and they're all so different but I think it's representative of the cultural pluralism of the United States and no there is no one vision of the future but there are probably three hundred some odd million visions of the future and they are unique to the people of the United States and that's exactly one of our greatest strategic strengths and we need to find mechanisms to build on that it doesn't change the fact that we still need to be much more prepared as a nation when we are cohesive to address the issues that are going to come our way can I take a crack Sheila absolutely I concur with both of you I'm not really that concerned with the guy in middle Tennessee quite frankly as a as a teacher you're going to encounter that kind of and this is not a pejorative ignorance ignorance is not that bad stupidity is different this is an ignorant individually wasn't stupid very successful businessman my concern and I'm speaking specifically about the idea of the center is that I'm a realist I've been in this town since 82 I've seen the way the systems work the system of systems the systems of systems work if there is not a specific orientation what you end up with is one more center of gravity that is in competition with systems and centers that already exist and and the concern it goes back to I think the question about locality where is this located and what does it become a function of if you take policy planning in state that's where long-term policy is supposed to be planned what do they do they're the speechwriters for the secretary because they're brilliant they're close they're easy and they're productive if we're not careful this particular center becomes much the same it becomes the center of the dirty little job office because none of the other centers that already do this are willing to give up their Bosnia or their Iraq or their Haiti or their or water or their petroleum and you end up with as Carlos Pascual fine found and John Herbs found with this center that they start started the the stabilization and reconstruction folks is that that the traditional established centers don't give up anything and you end up being marginalized and that and I'm being very honest here and I will work with Sheila and Jim on on trying to do this but boy that really scares the heck out of me Middle Tennessee doesn't scare me it's this town that scares me okay right here Patty Morsi from ODNI strategy and going in and out I think it's sort of one of the most important things that's striking me from today's discussion relates or I'm trying to relate your work Sheila in your committee's work in describing the functions of this center to what I remember one of the core recommendations of pins or was which is we have this gaping hole in the middle of our national security establishment in terms of managing across the agencies and in coordination with the intelligence community supporting that and a DNI that's our constant where we're wrestling with where do we plug in where the intelligence community we're not the we do everything related to knowledge community we are a critical component of helping understand the national security implement implications of information from various agencies and we feed that into an inner agency structure that has a critical support to the president for policy both near term and long term so I guess my question is I've been wrestling with how this center is it part of that management structure and the the other part does more of the day-to-day fills the gap of pulling day-to-day various pieces across the interagency together to respond for example to a emerging bio threat that's one of the things we're wrestling with anyway I'll stop there well as far as the center as it's currently conceived remember the deep battle exercise issue and I think the I think we have to have a place where deep battles can be fought so to speak whether the issue is economics whether it's a large messy issue with Iraq or Afghanistan whether it's preparedness for major hurricane season that is approaching and I think the issue is one where functionally it needs to be in a in the interagency space so it has to be in the executive office of the president so in fact it can look across the spectrum of the intelligence community the Department of Defense the State Department agriculture energy all the different arenas that have to play and it needs to have the flexibility to interface with our allies and partners abroad non-government at organizations all over the world probably the private sector a lot of different stakeholders are going to have to interface with this center so that it has a complete systems view of issues and I don't know any other way to do that but I do want the filters that end up going to the president to be off when it comes to this center and that will not change when you look at the president's daily intelligence brief that goes through the filters of the intelligence community when the secretary of defense speaks it's through a filter from the Department of Defense it's those filters that somewhere in the government somewhere actually in the presidency we have to remove those filters so that a president has an opportunity to do some of the learning I think that perhaps Eisenhower was our last president who understood this in depth possibly because he was the ally the supreme allied commander in World War two but I think more just as importantly he had the mind in the education and the training of of joint professional military education which is what we call it now and very few of our presidents come to the presidency with that perspective this has to be at one of the primary missions even though it may be an unstated mission is to ensure that the president doesn't have all these other political filters sometimes they have he has to have an outlet for that this would be a good way to do that as you know there's a distinction between foreign intelligence and domestic policy and in fact there's a distinction between intelligence and policy which I hope is still respected namely that intelligence analysts are not supposed to make themselves factors in the formulation of policy because the moment they do so they can no longer be trusted to be searching for objective views about what is going to happen or what is underway they have to be looked at as advocates for a particular response on the part of the United States government and that is not their job it's the job of those who have been elected or appointed by those who have been elected to actually make the policy so when we're talking about a whole of governance response to complex global issues in which the United States is irrevocably intertwined you need an entity which can absorb the output of an OD and I which is doing foreign intelligence but capable of integrating those with all sorts of other issues that are going to be reciprocal drivers in what the world does the way in which intelligence operates is it masks deliberately the interaction between American decisions and international consequences I don't believe it would be appropriate for example to send the president a report analyzing how the world's financial remarked markets are going to react to his fiscal policy when it's announced and there are many other issues involving what we do and what is going to happen reciprocally elsewhere in the world where it is difficult for the intelligence community to engage because that in fact pushes it into the realm of telling the president what it the intelligence community thinks should be done you need some organization that can fill that hole in the donut and that's what we're talking about sorry tempting the bridge of foreign and domestic and it is very difficult and it is related to the struggle of how do we pull that together and not overstep the bounds that you are just getting at I I also think that OD and I will be one of the primary customers and users of the center it will not only be the presidency it will be many of the cabinet secretaries themselves who are going to say you know my department is about to make this recommendation to the president but you know maybe I ought to get some more input from my colleagues and we'll go to the center and have them do a game or an activity that will help us more effectively integrate in a coherent way what we bring to the president I think some of this will provide more of a forum for that sort of thinking yes sir thank you Robin Dorff with the strategic studies institute army war college I'm reminded of a long-standing discussion I've had there are long running one and I think the issue of distinguishing between the policy and information whether it's intelligence or not as important here your comments about getting these filters away from the president lots of those filters are chosen by the president they happen to be part of the policy making process and I'm struck and maybe going back to Eric's comment that the way to get this organization lost in the rest of Washington and in government is to presume that somehow it's really going to produce this perfectly neutral and analysis that is devoid of policy implications and therefore it can stand above the policy fray not just politics in terms of partisan politics but the fact that presidents and their appointees are going to come in with pre-existing agendas and I think that's a big piece that I haven't yet heard an answer to that how is it going to fit in that way and not become I think is Eric's alluding to just another competitor for the president's time some of which and I think I go back to work I'm currently doing again back on Iraq the president didn't want to hear certain things there was certain information that could have flown and could have been acted on but was not so that's a comment and then the question back to earlier how is this how are the people up is this a presidential appointment since it's part of the executive branch is there a confirmation process for anyone in this is it stand alone and if so what powers does the president have to decide Robin you did great service for the country you're fired and then go look for somebody who will head the center and provide the strategic analysis and assessment that essentially the president and their national security folks want to hear thank you I'm sorry the pause is characteristic for me I'm thinking I'm just slower to marshal the words the goes back to this question about do you wait until the magic moment comes and you have a president who is intellectually disposed to try to look at the world this way or do you take any and every opportunity that you have to build this capability a component at a time hoping that it will be able to be used when it's opportunity or opportunities come and I vote for the latter I think the United States is insufficiently great difficulty now in part because we have not thought well enough and in part because others are thinking better than we are about where they want to go so there we don't have years to spend waiting to evolve a consolidated and perfected answer to these questions I really think we have an emergency of governance on our hands and need to to find ways to proceed in bits and pieces and I guess I'll be addressing that after after after lunch you're describing thing and things as they are are as they are we can't reinvent the system we have to figure out elegant ways to work with the system that we've got and in some cases what you call a patch to handle the obstacles that it continuously throws in the way of its own survival my run I'd like to direct this to Leon and Eric identify yourself oh this is my run stokes global part of my microphone which isn't quite right could you speak a little louder okay I'd like to direct this to you and Eric this is an old and maybe a rare discussion that might come dangerously close to the realm of mere semantics but war department versus department of defense there has been some concern over the years when this was discussed about discussed for that a shifting of focus or even an erosion of the psychological advantage conveyed by war department psychological advantage more refined or defined an implication of strategic and tactical superiority you know on by those individuals under the designation war department there I just wanted you to that had been discussed before the change from war department to department of defense and Sun Tzu would have a field day with that I believe did you know that what is now called the well what used to be called the old executive office building the one that looks so strange because it's out of the out of the 19th century on the White House compound that that used to be the war department of the United States and if you walk around there you will find holes in the marble floor because that's where the gates used to be to physically separate the different departments if you look at the doorknobs you will find that they carry the discussions of the original components of the war department it's and if you go back further there's a picture of Lincoln and the White House he's standing with his other members of of cabinet around a little table that was the cabinet so you have the evolutionary change the effort of the United States as a governing system to adapt to an increasingly complex environment and so the war department to the Department of Defense and the Department of Defense into its modern morphologies this is really a response to the increasing complexity of the of the problems that the place had to deal with where I think we are is is at the limiting extent of what you can do by colluding together totally distinct and and self-mandated components I don't think you can melt the system down and recast it into something else but I think you need a patch to help the elements of the system to help the people are running this system have an idea of where it is it is going it will take and I think you can do that sooner rather than later and we'll get into that after lunch it would take the Congress to to bring about a deeper integration and I guess my point to your question is I think we've reached a point in the life of the country where a deeper integration is needed or the systems we got we have will not be able to manage the problems that are coming to us so there's another stage out there beyond Department of Defense Department of State etc etc and that's what we're talking about