Source — AITW Ep086 — Global Trends 2040 (Part 2), with Heather Smith and Katherine Mansted¶
Episode Metadata¶
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Episode number | 86 |
| Title | Ep. 86: Global Trends 2040 (Part 2), with Heather Smith and Katherine Mansted |
| Publication date | 2021-10-29 |
| Recording date | Thursday, 14 October 2021 (same session as Ep085) |
| Guests | Heather Smith (ANU, National Security College); Katherine Mansted (National Security College / CyberCX) |
| Allan present | Yes — as moderator/participant, more analytically present than Part 1 |
| Format | Continuation of Ep085. Covers Emerging Dynamics (society, state, international levels) and the report's five 2040 scenarios. No reading segment — episode ends with guest farewell. |
Summary¶
Part 2 of the Global Trends 2040 panel. Allan is more analytically present than in Part 1, with three substantial contributions: his assessment of the international-level section; his scenario preference ("World Adrift"); and a closing reflection on the intelligence-policy boundary and the necessity of humility in long-range documents.
The most revealing moment is Allan's scenario choice. He selects World Adrift — "gloomily" — and his reasoning is pointed: "for all the rhetoric that we hear from our political leaders about the world facing unprecedented challenges, I'm not convinced that we have internalised those challenges in terms other than the shifting power balance between the United States and China." This is one of his bleaker assessments of Australian preparedness, consistent with "I feel gloomier as I look further outwards" (Ep061) but now attached to a specific scenario about institutional failure and directionless drift.
He also identifies what he calls "a great hole in the middle of this doughnut" — the report's elliptical treatment of the single greatest uncertainty: what happens to American domestic cohesion and will in the next 20 years.
Key Quotations¶
"World Adrift" — Allan's scenario¶
"Look, gloomily, I'm A World Adrift guy. I don't think as far as Australia is concerned that we're up for this sort of world at all. For all the rhetoric that we hear from our political leaders about the world facing unprecedented challenges, I'm not convinced that we have internalised those challenges in terms other than the shifting power balance between the United States and China. So the implications of climate change, fragmenting institutions, demographic shifts, the eroding of global norms, all of this I think are going to make it harder for Australia to prosper."
— [00:23:38.200 --> 00:25:07.700]
"Gloomily" is the tell — he does not endorse the scenario as desirable, only as probable. The critique of Australian political leadership is pointed: the discourse has narrowed to US-China, and the broader structural challenges of the report (climate, demographics, institutional erosion) have not been genuinely internalised. Compare with Ep061's "I feel gloomier as I look further outwards. And that's a new feeling for me." This is the same pessimism now attached to a specific institutional failure mode.
Designed for Australia — the 1990–2020 order¶
"If you had wanted to design a system perfectly suited to Australia's interests, you couldn't have done better than the international order between about 1990 [to now]... intensively to expand the space available to it in the international environment, so we can advance our interests and protect our values."
— [00:23:38.200 --> 00:25:07.700]
A compressed version of the foundational "size and location" argument from Ep001. Allan's core claim across the corpus is that the rules-based order serves Australian interests structurally — not because Australia is especially virtuous but because a small-to-middle power in a rules-governed system has more space to operate than in a power-governed one. "You couldn't have done better" is superlative conviction.
"A great hole in the middle of this doughnut"¶
"The world in 2040 looks only very elliptically at what may be the single greatest uncertainty of the next 20 years, which is whether the [US maintains its domestic cohesion and international will]. That's a great hole in the middle of this doughnut, I think."
— [00:17:51.840 --> 00:20:25.720]
The doughnut image names the structural gap: the report organises everything around US-China competition but can only gesture at its most consequential variable — whether the US holds together as a coherent actor. "Very elliptically" is precise: the NIC cannot speak plainly about the US's own domestic trajectory in a public document. Allan names the silence without accusing bad faith — it is a systemic constraint on what an intelligence agency can say about its own polity in a public document.
The international level — interstate conflict risk¶
"For me, the most interesting section of this part of the report was the way it identified the reasons why there is an increasing risk of interstate conflict that went beyond obvious Thucydides trap sort of stuff. It lists advances in more difficult deterrence and a weakening or lack of treaties and norms on acceptable use. All of that I thought was pointedly interesting. The report doesn't claim that war is inevitable. It says that major powers are going to want to avoid it. But there's not going to be much help from international organisations."
— [00:17:51.840 --> 00:20:25.720]
Allan reads the conflict risk analysis as going beyond the structural power-transition framing (Thucydides) to identify specific mechanisms: deteriorating arms control treaties, advancing technology making deterrence harder to maintain, eroding norms on acceptable use. Each of these is a discrete policy variable, not a structural inevitability. "Pointedly interesting" is his signal that the analysis is doing real work — more than just naming a pattern.
Intelligence vs policy — "someone has to"¶
"It is right and proper to have a difference between intelligence and policy. But I think what we're butting up against in analysing this document is that sometimes you want that intelligence to go further and to be more actionable and more persuasive... but someone has to."
— [00:36:12.100 --> 00:37:50.460]
A practitioner's foundational axiom stated in a new context. The intelligence-policy boundary is there for good reason — analytical independence requires it. But the gap it creates (rigorous assessment that stops short of actionable recommendation) is itself a problem that someone must bridge. "Someone has to" is Allan's recurring formulation for the applied work that theory and analysis decline to do (cf. Ep024: the work of practitioners; Ep085: "someone has to do that job").
Humility in long-range documents¶
"One of the things ultimately in any document like this is the importance of humility and to acknowledge fallibility. This isn't supposed to be a prediction of what the world will look like. It's supposed to be something that we can navigate towards the best story and avoid the worst story."
— [00:36:12.100 --> 00:37:50.460]
A meta-point about the proper use of scenario analysis. Allan is not defending the report against all criticism; he is identifying what it is legitimately trying to do. "Navigate towards the best story and avoid the worst" is the correct frame — not prediction, but orientation. Connects to his general epistemic practice: he holds conclusions provisionally and values documents that acknowledge their own limits.
Separate Silos as second preference¶
"I think that there is a lot to be said that the fragmentation that is the theme, the watchword of this report will continue and that we'll see the emergence of, as the scenario says, different economic and security blocks. I think technology will not be a [unifying force]... We see countries that once advocated for a free and open Internet increasingly, and Australia is part of this, asserting the need for there to be more control and more domestic law and policy asserted over the Internet and over data."
— [00:48... / see full context at 00:23:38+ ]
Allan endorses fragmentation as a structural tendency, with technology as a driver of silos rather than integration. The Australia inclusion ("Australia is part of this") is his characteristic self-implicating move — he does not exempt Australia from the trend he is describing. The internet/data point connects to his earlier analysis of cyber sovereignty as an emerging norm.
Biographical Fragments¶
Evidence type: Nil new — Part 2 contains no biographical fragments not already captured in Part 1 or prior episodes. Allan's contributions are analytical throughout.
Style and Method Evidence¶
- Scenario preference as confession: "gloomily, I'm A World Adrift guy" — states pessimism plainly without dramatising it.
- Doughnut image: "a great hole in the middle of this doughnut" — vivid geometric image for a structural gap in an analytical document. One of the more memorable metaphors in the corpus.
- "Someone has to": recurring phrase for the applied/bridging work between analysis and policy.
- Self-implication: "Australia is part of this" when discussing internet sovereignty trends — does not exempt Australia from criticism.
- Humility as principle: he endorses the document's own framing of itself as navigation, not prediction — consistent with his general epistemological practice.
Guest Contributions (Selected)¶
Katherine Mansted — Societal Dynamics: - Identity as the vector through which disinformation spreads most effectively. - Fragmentation as the dominant trend: people finding niche communities online rather than common citizenship. - States will attempt to exploit identity fragmentation — sometimes strengthening authority, sometimes triggering backlash.
Heather Smith — The State: - Democratic erosion: the gap between public expectations and government capacity to deliver is widening globally. - Australia relatively advantaged: small enough for coherence, large enough for weight. - Edelman Trust Barometer: pandemic created brief window to restore trust; Australia partially used it. - Past Global Trends reports were prescient on US power retreat (Trump) and pandemic risk — consistency of foundational drivers across 20 years of reports.
Darren — Scenarios: - Closest to Competitive Coexistence (Scenario 3) and Separate Silos (Scenario 4). - Sceptical of Renaissance of Democracies: information flows and political power between elites and publics still being worked through. - Technology enabling bottom-up mobilisation changes the power balance inside democracies in ways still unclear.
Open Questions¶
- Allan's "World Adrift" pessimism — does this deepen or shift as the Albanese government takes office (Ep097+) and Australia's China relationship begins to recover?
- The "doughnut hole" — the US's domestic trajectory as the single greatest uncertainty. Does Allan revisit this framing when discussing the 2024 US election prospect in later episodes?
- "Australia is part of this" on internet sovereignty — does Allan develop Australia's specific contribution to cyber-sovereignty norms in later episodes?
- No reading segment in Ep086 (episode ends directly). Was there a planned reading segment deferred or simply omitted for length?