Nuclear war, energy rationing, pirate-nation on floating barges... Throughout the summer, Challenges publishes around thirty breaking scenarios, with the collaboration of experts and the Defense Innovation Agency's Red Team of science fiction writers.
Think the unthinkable. Consider the worst to be ready to face it. For decades, think tanks, staffs and intelligence services have been competing in scenarios to anticipate crises. The French army even works with science fiction authors, gathered within the "Red Team" ,
whose mission is to destabilize the armies with extreme scenarios, of which we publish a selection in full. The initiative is part of the great tradition of what the Anglo-Saxons call "What if", scenarios which attempt to anticipate strategic surprises with devastating effects.
It is obviously a question of detecting the famous "black swans", theorized by the statistician Nassim Taleb . But not only. "We talk too much about the famous "black swans", these extremely rare events with massive consequences but very difficult to predict, and not enough about what have been called.
"gray rhinos", events with low probability but whose consequences are sufficiently important so that we have to prepare for it, underlines Bruno Tertrais, Deputy Director of the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS).The typical case is of course that of a viral pandemic of the COVID-19 type, mentioned in all the geopolitical foresight exercises for twenty years. Including in White Papers on Defense and National Security. ”
For the first time, Challenges lends itself to this very serious game of foresight, with the support of its partner The Economist, but also of experts and authors from the Red Team. Throughout the summer, we will publish, on a daily basis, around thirty rupture scenarios, on geostrategic, societal, economic, technological and ecological subjects.
What do these scenarios look like? Much of it makes you dizzy. Demonstration with a first story, which could happen tomorrow 2,000km from Paris.
Nuclear escalation in Ukraine
October 2022. In charge of a Russian army S300 air defense system in southern Ukraine, Commander Sergei K. does not like what he has just seen on his radar. As his unit targeted two Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jets, the salvoes of interceptor missiles.
Fired on the decision of a 21-year-old conscript, went off in different directions. The first did destroy one of the Sukhoi. But the second deviates to the west. Way too far west. “The kid screwed up,” the officer mutters under his salt-and-pepper beard. A few minutes later, the radio confirms the unthinkable: the missile destroyed a US Air Force E-8 reconnaissance plane, which was patrolling along the Romanian border. None of the 34 passengers survived.
The unthinkable has actually happened. Over a span of barely four years, the subcontinent and its military and political leadership seem to have moved seamlessly from an obtuse nuclear capability and a doctrine of nuclear deterrence to the present state of nuclear weaponisation.
1 As a million soldiers face each other across the volatile line of control and the border between India and Pakistan, the arguments have shifted from no use of nuclear weapons to their potential use in the event of conventional war, to the current state of actual deployment.
To a large extent the numerical superiority of the Indian army and air force translates into a no win situation for Pakistan in the event of a conventional conflict. Faced with the potential of humiliation and dismemberment in such a scenario, a nuclear first strike becomes a frighteningly real possibility.2
The debate and outcry on this reckless brinkmanship in South Asia has remained confined to the peace groups, and the vernacular press has largely been jingoistic and indifferent to the disastrous consequences of nuclear war. While one can understand that the illiterate masses in both countries may have no concept of the awesome power of nuclear weapons.
The apparent resignation of the educated elite and intelligentsia to their fate and a possible nuclear conflagration is most surprising. In contrast to the nuclear disarmament appeals from a few years ago,3 most of the medical associations on both sides of the border have maintained an ominous silence (see also p 1412). This apparent apathy can be interpreted in one of several ways: one that there is widespread disbelief that a conflict will take place.
The other that no level of preparedness can mitigate a nuclear conflagration. A third and more plausible explanation is that few among the health professionals are even remotely aware of the true meaning and consequences of a nuclear conflict. The fact remains that apart from a few calculations,4,5 almost all the estimates of the human and material costs of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, or even a nuclear accident, are from Western sources.
The current nuclear imbroglio in India and Pakistan is a direct consequence of a lack of human and social development in the region. Malnutrition rates in the region are among the highest in the world, and successive generations have been fed a daily gruel of intolerance, jingoism, and religious fervour by political and military governments.
The current military standoff must also be viewed in the context of the growth of religious intolerance and lack of social development in both countries.12 A conservative estimate of the costs of nuclear weaponisation in India placed it at well over $10bn (£6.8bn; €10.6bn),13 and although modest by comparison, it is sobering to note that Pakistan's recent ballistic missile tests alone could have funded the entire health budget of several districts.
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