Global Trends

Article published on the Office of the Director of National Intelligenc on 01/09/2017

For nearly two decades, National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends Report has been shaping strategic conversations within and beyond the US Government. Since the first Global Trends was released in 1997, the audience for each report has expanded, generating more interest and reaching a broader audience that the one that preceded it.

A new Global Trends report is published every four years following the U.S. presidential election.

Global Trends: Paradox of Progress

We are living in paradox – industrial and information age achievements are shaping a world both more dangerous and richer with opportunity. Human choices will determine whether promise or peril prevails.

Global Trends is the Intelligence Community’s major assessment of the forces – and choices – shaping the world over the next two decades.

National Intelligence Council’s latest edition of the report, Global Trends “Paradox of Progress” was released Jan 9, 2017, exploring trends and scenarios over the next 20 years.

Not an End, An Invitation

The release of each Global Trends report is not an end, but an invitation, to discuss, debate and inquire further about how the future could unfold. The Global Trends series pushes us to reexamine key assumptions, expectations, and uncertainties about the future.

Unique amongst intelligence products of this depth and stature, the NIC quadrennial Global Trends report is completely unclassified.

Creating Global Trends

Every four years the NIC produces a new assessment of the economic, political, social, technological, and cultural forces collide. In creating the report, the NIC engages expertise from outside government on factors of such as globalization, demography and the environment, producing a forward-looking document to aid policymakers in their long term planning on key issues of worldwide importance.

Critical to its insight and policy-relevance have been meetings worldwide with a wide range of interlocutors—including government officials, scholars, business people, civil society representatives, and others—in workshops, exchanges, and other events designed to stimulate thinking about possible global trajectories and discontinuities over the next two decades.

Individuals from scores of countries and walks of life have helped the NIC examine trends—including economics, demography, ecology, energy, health, governance, security, identity, and geopolitics—and understand their implications for peace, security, and prosperity worldwide.

The NIC crystallizes ideas gleaned from these meetings as well as extensive research in a Global Trends report published every four years, between the US Presidential Election Day and Inauguration Day.

Read the full issue