The Potential Import of New, Emerging, and Over-the-Horizon Technologies

Abstract

For both practitioners and analysts, new and emerging technologies have long been a central focus of attention. National security and defense planners and analysts attempt to identify and anticipate the impact of new and emerging technologies. They are a prominent feature of intelligence assessments, department or ministry white papers, defense planning exercises, military exercises and war games, and service wish lists. In the United States, for instance, concerns about new and emerging technologies, particularly their diffusion, pervade the series of White House national security strategies, OSD defense strategies, JCS joint visions and military strategies, joint and service doctrinal and operational planning documents, intelligence community forecasts, and think tank reports. Science and technology (S&T) and research and development (R&D) programs are expected to yield exploitable, and deployable, new technologies. Not so long ago, a much-vaunted transformation enterprise was to exploit the opportunities thought to be inherent in an information-technology revolution to bring about a game-changing information-technology revolution in military affairs (IT RMA). The National Intelligence Council's recent Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, as Global Trends 2025, Global Trends 2020, and Global Trends 2015 before it, highlights technological trends, challenges, and opportunities.1