National Security Trends & Risks in 2014

The threat spectrum has broadened to new players, technologies, and regions. More information must be collected and analyzed to combat it.

To what extent will resources drive international tensions?

We're really tracking five big dynamics and trends that we think will unfold or intensify in 2014.

The first is around borders and boundaries. Our current maps don't really reflect where control of territorial resources, populations, and institutions really lie. For national security communities, borders, and boundaries, and uncertainly of where control lies will be a huge driver of competition, of unrest, and potentially conflict. While at the same time, not being a particularly relevant force in terms of containing these conflicts and crises once they unfold.

The second big trend is really around the broadening of the threat spectrum with which the national security community communities have to deal. More actors in our mind have the capacity to affect strategic and operational landscapes in environments. We're really focused at the bottom and end of this spectrum around galvanizing personalities and technologically savvy and ideologically imbued individuals who now have access to very powerful information technologies which will enhance their impact on the international security environment.

The third force is proliferation. I think in the first six months of 2014 you'll see a lot of discussion around nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea. Certainly, these situations have the opportunity to stabilize but also to deteriorate fairly rapidly in the first six month of the year. But we're also focused on the very illicit proliferation of advanced military technologies and deal with these items.

When you take all these proliferation dynamics together, I think 2014 will be a year in which we will see enhanced and increased uncertainty about the military capabilities that potential adversaries, potential competitors, and even partners possess, and how they use these capabilities. Our team is very much focused on trying to anticipate big, disruptive technologies, technological innovation in 2014, a lot like the IED.

The fourth force is really the continuing erosion of the uniform or model in global geopolitics. I think we'll see intensified competition in strategically important regions like the Middle East and East Asia. We'll also see new theaters and domains of competition.

A lot of attention's been paid to the Arctic which will continue to be a theater in which geo-strategic competitions play out, but also the information domain. Cyber warfare is a domain that has an awful lot of activity. We're seeing more attention from national security communities and, indeed, corporate risk officers as well.

It's a great transition to our fifth driver which is really the importance of this domain and not just the importance of offensive and defensive cyber activities, but also the importance of the ability to navigate an increasingly complex and rapidly expanding information environment. There's a lot of good information out there.

I adjust information. There's a lot of bad information and there's a lot of intentionally misleading information. I think national security and intelligence communities in particular have a huge challenge in vetting and validating information and aggregating all of this information available to them to one assessment of threats and challenges and opportunities.

How much attention should national security organizations place on cyber risk and security?

Cyber security is a pressing and increasing priority for national security and defense communities as well, and for the industries that support the critical national infrastructure that national security communities are designed to protect. Defense industry, energy, telecommunications, transport, media, finance, they're all increasingly at risk.

The truth is the incredible technologies that we use to perform business with a click of a button or to connect with our friends and family and colleagues throughout the world and then have been able to step-change in military capability, actually also creating enormous vulnerabilities that are increasingly being exploited by a wide range of actors, from nation- states down to loosely linked and ideologically linked networks, to individual actors who now are in command of better and more types of capabilities.

I think this is an area that is growing in interest and in relevance for our national security community, customers, and clients. I think it's an area that we've already seen a lot of focus in terms of the establishment of cyber commands and offensive and defensive cyber activities just in the last three to five years.

How will the evolving threat landscape affect defense equipment, technology, and capability developments?

The general idea that the threat spectrum has broadened while the number and amount of resources to meet the threats has not, indeed in some cases has diminished, has put a premium on four types of characteristics and capabilities for military platforms and systems and initiatives.

The first is flexibility and commonality -- the idea that individual platforms and systems are able to meet multiple threats and be operated by multiple types of communities.

The second is durability and endurance. This is both the idea that platforms and systems are able to operate for longer periods of time in harsher environments and also the idea that these systems are required to stay in service longer. We've actually seen the development and maturation of a maintenance repair and operations and support services market. They've popped up in the last half decade or so because military simply cannot afford some of the big programs they had planned to bring into service and now having to rely on systems that have been in service for a long time.

Third is really focused on the information domain. Here there are four big areas. One is protection of critical national infrastructure systems and network. The second is holding at risk the critical national infrastructure systems and networks of your adversaries and competitors. Third is being able to operate at an increasingly complex information environment and be able to exploit that environment for situational awareness.

Last, but certainly not least, is the idea that strategic communications should be a priority of national security communities, and these communities should be able to develop and sustain compelling narratives of why they're doing what they're doing. I think in this new information environment, the idea of ground truth is probably a little naive. Perceptions frequently matter a lot more than what is actually true, so the national security communities need to be able to influence these narratives and create justifications that will find resonance with why they're doing what they're doing.

The last characteristic is really a focus on protecting and retaining human capital. We often forget about the importance of human beings when it comes to military and national security communities. I think the proliferation of unmanned systems and their increasing integration in the military is reflecting the concern of keeping human beings out of harm's way as much as possible.

But an environment in which resources are constrained and which many military and security communities are at war and therefore at risk, the ability to recruit and maintain talent will be a primary focus area for militaries and national security communities going forward.

Tate Nurkin Managing Director, Aerospace, Defense and Security Research