The Strategic Foresight Analysis 2023 – commonly called the SFA23 – provides a shared understanding of the evolving security environment to 2043, building out the context for Allied Futures thinking. The years to come will likely be defined by further strategic upheavals and structural disruptions, driven by state and non-state actors.
The methodological foundation of the 2023 Strategic Foresight Analysis is based on Framework Foresight Model. Research utilized extensive scenario development and Artificial Intelligence-assisted horizon scanning tools and expansive collaborative dialogue with Allied and Partner nations. The research started in October 2022 and encompassed a series of workshops and the inputs of 800 participants.
The conclusion of the Strategic Foresight research is that the competition and adversarial intent of major state actors and terrorist non-state actors will endure amidst disruptions, and will aim to shape and contest the Alliance, as well as challenge the rules-based international order. The research identified 170 trends, and their confluences were assessed with a view of the most demanding outcomes reduced to the most relevant groupings. These seven primary drivers shaping the evolution of the security environment are:
- Climate breakdown and the loss of biodiversity is the most consequential and, in the long-term, the most likely existential challenge.
- Resource scarcity driving instabilities is expected to increase and drive further instability, competition and conflict.
- Age of Artificial Intelligence emerging and disruptive technologies will reshape states, societies and armed forces as well as the character of competition and warfare with unprecedented speed.
- Geoeconomics enabling polarization causing significant implications for trade, technology, demographics, and the global financial system, potentially weakening globalization.
- Human networks empowered through the rise of networked non-state actors, technological empowerment, urbanization challenges, changing values, and information/disinformation overload is highly certain.
- Scramble for the commons expands due to resource needs, strategic competition and the rapid advancement of technology.
- International order in transition by means of accelerating changes, strategic shocks, pervasive instability and autocratic states will substantially challenge and further fragment the rules-based international order, intensify strategic competition as well as the emergence of new forms of security cooperation and military alliances.