Overview

The world may be fast approaching the perfect storm, with the intersection of two major global trends. At a moment of historic transition, when the post-WWII and post-Cold War international order is eroding amid competing visions of world order and renewed geopolitical rivalries, the world is also in the early stages of an unprecedented technological transformation. It promises to be a period of exponential change, the second-and far more disruptive-chapter of the digital revolution that began with the Internet in the 1990s. Historically, technology usually races ahead of institutions, rules, and norms. The extraordinary magnitude of change at a time of global institutional fraying and disorder, however, portends a particularly dangerous gap in global governance impacting economies, societies, and the future of war.Substantially more technology-driven change will take place during the coming two decades than in the first ICT (information and communications technology)-based revolution, with profound social, economic, and geopolitical ramifications.