I am Caleb Temple, the new Vice President for Intelligence and Analysis at the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). I would like to take a moment to offer a few observations about myself, the world, and the future of TRC.
I’ve spent more than 14 years as an US intelligence officer. I’ve been involved in numerous unheralded intelligence successes and a few very significant intelligence failures; both experiences invariably accompany the privilege and burden of performing intelligence work. The best part of the job was the camaraderie, the sense of urgency, and the satisfaction of attacking the enemy before he (or they) attacked us. The worst part was losing friends and colleagues and experiencing the aftermath of tragic, life-changing events.
This kind experience has given me a healthy dose of knowledge and skills that I will apply to TRC’s already robust analytic capability. I’ve been aware of TRC for several years, collaborated with its leadership, and consumed its output. I can’t think of any other place I’d rather be.
And for good reason. As the security requirements of the US and foreign governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the global marketplace increase, TRC and organizations it like will become increasingly relied upon to deliver the knowledge and capabilities necessary for organizations to be effective in an increasingly challenging world.
Increasingly Challenging World
In the future, private and public organizations will face an increasing array of challenges. The world is in the final stages of transitioning from its structured, predictable but temporary Cold War period to a more natural—and deconstructed—state of nature. Nations, economies, technologies, peoples, religions, corporations, and politics will interconnect and form strong but temporary dependencies. Dynamic collaboration between these diverse activities and peoples will produce significant benefits. Disruption and conflict, conversely, will produce considerable suffering and produce unintended consequences and widespread negative effects. The result is a mixed bag of opportunities and risks.
People worldwide will identify themselves increasingly with their clan, tribe, religion, ethnicity, political party, or even corporation rather than their country. These “identify groupings” will develop and break apart easily. The result will be new economic opportunities and new political dynamism as social complexity rises in countries around the world. New groupings will come into conflict that will be poorly understood by national authorities. Many countries will risk social Balkanization that could lead to degraded economic conditions, instability, or even civil war. Finally, “identity groupings” will find and affiliate with like-minding groups across the globe, creating transnational networks that can both stabilize and challenge countries and regions.
Migrations will increase as transportation improves, but these migrations—both large and small—will be rapid, abrupt, and often isolating experiences. Nations will struggle to ingest new workers or alternately cope with population depletions while preserving local social values and customs. The result will be an increased opportunity and living conditions for millions, accompanied by a surge in xenophobia, ethnic violence, brain-drain in developing countries, and isolationist sentiment in the developed world.
Powerful technologies will impact nation and sub-national actors nearly equally. Communications, computing power, and biotechnology will improve peoples’ lives around the world. These same technologies will outpace governments’ abilities to understand or control them. Some societies will be unable to integrate future technologies into prevailing political and ethical frameworks and risk being left behind by more socially and politically adaptable peers. The result will be increased prosperity and convenience for millions accompanied by both intercommunal conflict and the possibility of an accidental or malicious misapplication of a well-intended technology that results in devastating consequences on a people, region, or natural resource.
Developed nations will harness efficient economic activity to improve their societies’ well-being. Reliance on advanced technologies, energy, and intellectual capital will deepen critical dependencies. Enemies will target each others’ dependencies regardless of the effect on populations or infrastructures. Underdeveloped nations or groups with little to lose will have the advantage over more powerful but complex and enfranchised adversaries. Starvation, migration, and even climate will be used as weapons.
Overall, violence will increase but manifest itself in sporadic, limited, and often grisly ways through crime, racism, terrorism, and insurgency. Wars between nations will be coalition-based, regional, violent, one-sided, and brief and will be followed periods of prolonged instability that will be costly and will negatively affect both victor and vanquished.
Finally, time—or more accurately the sense of time—will increasingly compress, as technologies deliver both speed and efficiency and as challenges become more complex and require more data to understand and correct. As a result, governments, organizations, and groupings will respond to more problems from more diverse sources, face more pressure, and require more tailored solutions faster to be effective and achieve their objectives.
The Way Ahead
In my view, the future opportunities and challenges require every organization that wants to be successful to leverage two basic capabilities: intelligence and action. Intelligence predicts rather than describes. Action leverages intelligence to force change in the right way, at the right place, at the right time, for the right reasons.
TRC is in the intelligence business. We’re organized to be effective partners with those in the action business. We’re optimized to develop and sustain the intelligence-action model and forge it into a self-sustaining cycle that allows organizations to achieve their objectives.
In the coming weeks and months, you’ll see TRC, its people, and its partners deliver an increasing array of intelligence, more rapidly, over a wider range of terrorist and other security-related topics. Our output will be predictive. Our aim will be to know something about everything and to be positioned to surge against emerging developments. We will be adding capacity and restructuring to commit even more to a customer-centered, requirements-driven business model. Finally, we will be strengthening our partnerships to ensure we have the proper relationships and dependencies and to ensure we’re positioned to be an effective knowledge provider.
While the world today is more uncertain, unstructured, and complex than at any time in our history, the opportunities have never held more promise. Similarly, the knowledge needs of governments, multinational organizations, and other private sector activities have never been greater. I’m thrilled to be working at TRC during this moment in history, and I look forward to strengthening our partnerships with all our customers to continue to deliver unsurpassed intelligence that improves performance, achieves goals, and changes the world.