John Edward (Jack) Smith is an Adjunct Professor of Technology and Strategy at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa where along with Professor Jonathan Calof, he is Co-Director of the Telfer Foresight Leaders Forum. Mr. Smith brings over 20 years of federal government policy, technology and innovation program development experience to his futures and foresight work. Since founding the Office of Technology Foresight at the NRC in 2002, he has led or been an advisor to collaborative foresight projects in several emerging S&T domains such as: bio-systemics; nano-bio-info convergence; bio-products; future fuels for APEC economies; animal health; bio-health innovation and stewardship, and future professional readiness for physicians and veterinarians. Mr. Smith is Chair of the Foresight Synergy Network (FSN) of Canada, a member of the International Advisory Board for the APEC Centre for Technology Foresight in Bangkok and a member of the Technical Committee for the European Commission’s Future Technology Assessment Conference. He has a BA Hon. from Queen’s University and a Masters Sc. from Cornell University.

What wild cards do you think may happen in the next 20 to 25 years which might affect Europe?
 
If you can link to these grand challenges that would be great. A nuclear incident, such as a dirty bomb, would be a big challenge and be both a wild card and a major reorder of the equilibrium. It is such an undesirable thing, no one wants to face the prospect. Europe has never had an active bomb or dirty bomb to my knowledge. That would be a very strong wild card and a grand challenge at the same time. The second one I call the population bomb. This is a massive shift in the profile of the population – both age and origin – away from traditional patterns. It could be in any number of directions, but render traditional European populations minorities. That would cause some anxiety perhaps in the population and might be a bit of wild card in terms of culture and values. Right now it represents a considerable challenge in how to anticipate the development of the multicultural realities of modern Europe. In Canada, we have been actively thinking about this and accommodating our minorities better. But from the example of France and Paris in the past five years, with the riots and so on, if that happened more prevalently through Europe it would be a major dislocation. Another potential wild card would be a schism of Europe between one part and another. In the past we have had North/South East/ West, an iron curtain. Another schism of a different type may be a digital have/have not, an environmental have/have not, maybe some portable cleavage causing a schism. So you may not have a united Europe, which is what the European Union is premised upon. If this were severely weakened, it would cause major dislocation in economic, cultural, social and maybe military affairs. Another potential wild card is a digital blow-up, a major cyber meltdown, massive identify theft or cyber warfare event which made people less willing to trust in cyber communications and commerce and weakened the Union in that critical economic dimension.
 
Which one did you think is more likely to happen?
 
I think the population bomb or the cyber one. We don’t like to admit any probabilities for nuclear incidents, but if it did happen it would be a major one.
 
 What makes these wild cards really wild?
 
The unpredictable implications, multi-level reach in terms of populations, countries, the economic and social implications, the whole feeling of distrust and future activities related to cyber or population. The potential for alignment with other schisms; for example, a religious minority is part of a schism and it suffers and goes on the offensive and tries to become aggressive and is united in that it may trample the rights of other minorities. This is what Nazism effectively was in the 1920s. In the 1930s it was a minority on a kind of religious mission to stamp out other ethnic groups, and triumph the German master race. It started out as a minority in Germany and took over in a devious way and made its own majority temporarily through aggressive means. Ideologically.
 
 Can you share some very weak signals that a re happening?
 
You look for gains in electoral or population share by extreme groups or breakouts of violent incidents, higher frequency of cyber attacks or attacks along one weak point. Cyber attack could take on an economy by hitting a weak point over and over again. The US economy was almost taken down by the banking situation two years ago and there is evidence there was some malevolent cyber hacking and bank draining at the time. In September 2007 or 2008 there were some events the US does not like to talk about, in terms of trillions of dollars disappearing quickly from bank accounts. There are reports of mysterious origins, difficult to trace, and they shut down the banking systems. It was only through vigilant behaviour that even worse meltdown was averted. Cyber has the possibility to happen very quickly and has very high mounting implications. Population is much more predictable as a wild card. For generations to grow up, most generations get assimilated but not all. The question of assimilation remains as an interesting one. I think you get some climate change wild cards as we do in Canada, such as the impact of melting glaciers and arctic meltdown and the release of CO2 from the peat bogs and the tundra. There are some equivalents across Northern Europe which could accelerate climate change and that would be an environmental wild card.
 
 How do you think it will impact the EU as a political and economic entity and as a research area?
 
The research area is probably pretty much on top of most of these issues, in that they anticipate them. The European research area is quite extensive. It has good research, has more foresight,and therefore even the fact that they have the iKNOW project shows they are ahead of the curve in preparatory thinking. I was surprised in the grand challenges that there was not something more overtly about security. I saw this even when I attended the future of Europe meetings in 2009. I tried to get them to recognise that security was its own independent issue on top of all this, but they tend to see it as subsidiary. For example, climate change leads to security issues, rather than security being an issue on its own. In North America because of 9/11 we still feel somewhat vulnerable. North America is a bit of a fortress, but a fortress is still penetrable. Even though there is a high level of awareness and paranoia, there are still many areas that could be exploited by smart terrorists. We have studied this in research terms and foresight terms, and we see how very vulnerable everyone is. We have our own item about security but we link it with energy. In North America those are subsidiary. Military defence and social security come first, energy and social environmental security is something that comes later. The reverse is true in Europe and with respect to the European value set we call it a bit of ‘head in the sand’, ostrich behaviour on behalf of the European leaders.
 
 If we take these two wild cards, population bomb and digital blow-up, what can you suggest in terms of business pre wild cards and after wild cards?
 
Europe needs to be aware of what their contingency plans might be for these. They are not all negative. Population bomb is just a market, like in North America, and it is really predictable in terms of demographic. What is not predictable is what the social preferences, mores and degrees of buy-in and expectations are of the groups in European society. That is where it gets interesting. I think this can be modelled.
 
 And in terms of policy before and after?
 
Only for Europe to consider whether its policies are too rigid or too tolerant or flexible or non-existent to respond to this.
 
 What about post wild card?
 
Post wild card it is all about recovery and renewal, but my experience has been that nobody knows if you have a wild card that comes true. People predicted 9/11 but nobody listened, and the same with Katrina they even had contingency plans. Policy preparations are useful, because if policy makers do not listen or discount the impacts or probabilities, then low probability does not mean no probability so they often react that way. Even if they have a policy contingency situation, it is usually not adequate to cope – as with Katrina, as with 9/11. When 9/11 hit, I knew this would mean massive change in the US immigration and border and talented services. I think I underestimated how massive that change would be.
 
 What about research pre and post wild cards? 
 
It is important that there is research in a foresight sense to have a project like iKNOW to do this, so one can model and simulate it. I would suggest that major use of the Proteus tool, a CTGT asymmetric gaming tool, would be a very useful tool for the European Commission to sponsor. They can do it through Sandera1 or something like that.
 
 Can you tell me more about this tool?
 
It was developed by the US and Canada, mostly the US, by the Meyer Institute by the Naval Postgraduate School in Monteray California. It is premised upon a game, an algorithmic learning game, a no winner strategic interactive game that one learns through the evaluation of actions. It is currently modelled on Iraq. It was developed when it was clear to some of the US and Canada that Iraq was a very complex, poorly understood environment. Just about every aspect of the reason for starting this game has proven valid. It is fairly resource-intensive. It has the potential to be a commercial intelligence game. It needs about $50,000 investment to make it have something other than Iraq as the subject, such as the future of the European Commission, the future of the British hospital system.
 
 So the purpose is before wild cards and the purpose after wild cards could be coping with the impact?
 
This game if codified. If you threw some wild cards in, it will show you some dislocations that will happen as the European system tries to restore equilibrium. I have the software – not the game but some of the background.
 
 Do you think we need to raise this kind of awareness?
 
You have to be careful about it, but I think among leading strategic people it is clear that Europe, faster than North America, is becoming a more multicultural society. This is not a problem in itself, but if it is dominated by certain directions, inclinations or radicalizations, or strong groups who affiliate and look to other places for their co-ordination and direction, it could be a problem. I noticed it was not in the grand challenges.
 
 Not specifically. We have security, but as you said, it is in addition to other things, we have ageing society.
 
 Environmental security is not the same as human security and state security, or security of institutions and way of life. Human security is personal safety from attack and safety from ideology and safety from torture and safety from accidents. Then your environmental ecosecurity, which is the security of the eco-system and the economic system and I think human security is the one that will happen. People feel fear, and when they feel fear they act irrationally.