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Younghusband
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Younghusband

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July 28th, 2007

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George Friedman on the Future

George Friedman, CEO of Stratfor, recently spoke at the JHU-sponsored series Rethinking the Relation Between Economics, Resources, Technology and National and International Security. The audio and video are both available on the JHU site.

Friedman talks about the challenges of forecasting throughout history and lays out some interesting scenarious for the next one hundred years. The speech is based on his upcoming book which sounds pretty interesting. I have previously reviewed one of his books on CA before. (Stratfor itself appears on CA often).

Here are some interesting tidbits/highlights from the talk:

  • His daughter is in the 1Cav currently deployed in Iraq
  • “The single most important fact is demographic…” [Curzon!]
  • The future threats of Mexico and Turkey
  • Advances in robotics, biotech and space technologies
  • Space-based energy alternatives

Have a listen and feel free to discuss any of his points in the comments.

Comments to this entry

CTDeLude
July 28, 2007
10:27 pm
Very good stuff.

Thanks for posting this.
CTDeLude
July 29, 2007
12:17 am
Okay, so he ends with the situation of 2020's mimicking the Great Depression and the 70's. So the questions is, for relatively young people (I myself am 25) what do we do to insure our stability with such a forecast ahead? Now there's no guarantee what he says will come to pass but he certainly paints and strong argument that it can. So is this a matter of wait and see while performing the proper fiscal responsibility of personal economics or do we keep our eye on such times and invest accordingly (technologies and resources)? Listening to this I am immediately of the mind that for my children's sake they should know as much as they can about basic do-it-yourself applications because the need for such things might be great and it's also fiscally responsible to do as much by yourself rather then pay someone else. Granted all of this all hinges on the basis that the world today still looks somewhat the same today. All bets are off if suddenly the world is turned on its head.

Otherwise quite interesting through and through especially in his breakdown of Mexico and Turkey as well as our relationship with Japan. I actually find it satisfying to hear someone else state that our future relationships involve Japan more then they do China while all the media today wants to go on and on about is China being the next world power.
Mark
July 29, 2007
4:17 am
CT, you should get rich, get well armed and get rid of any attachment to the nation-state and embrace the coming anarchy. But it takes a long time to ruin a country as rich as the US. Friedman is a neocon with an agenda that may have more to do with Israel than you may have.
IJ
July 29, 2007
10:23 am
Russia's demographic situation is so bad that it could almost be said: “Last one out, turn off the lights”?, is a comment George Friedman makes in the notes accompanying the presentation.

Russiablog also worries about the decline in Russia's population. Its sparsely populated, but resource rich, areas like Siberia and the Arctic will become vulnerable to annexation by other countries. There seem to be few international procedures to prevent such takeovers.
ElamBend
July 29, 2007
5:52 pm
The economic data he quotes about Mexico is undeniable. The scary part is that while Mexico is rising, it is, in many ways spinning apart at the edges.