The character of The conflict between nations has fundamentally changed. Governments and militaries now fight on our behalf in the “gray zone” where the lines between peace and war are blurred. They must navigate a complex web of ambiguous and deeply interconnected challenges ranging from political instability and disinformation campaign arrive Cyber attackassassinations, proxy operations, election interference, or maybe even man-made epidemic. Add to this list the existential threat of climate change (and its geopolitical ramifications) and apparently the description of what now constitutes an expanded national security problem, each crisis straining or undermining the structural national resilience.
Traditional analytics tools are poorly equipped to predict and respond to these fuzzy and intertwined threats. Instead, by 2022, governments and militaries will use sophisticated and reliable real-life simulations that put software at the heart of their decision-making and operations. For example, the British Ministry of Defense is developing what they call an army Digital Backbone. This will combine cloud computing, modern networking, and a new transformative capability known as Single Aggregate Environment or SSE.
This SSE will incorporate artificial intelligence, machine learning, computational modeling, and modern distributed systems with trusted data sets from multiple sources to support detailed, reliable simulations of the real world. This data will be owned by key institutions, but will also be sourced through an ecosystem of trusted partners, such as the Alan Turing Institute.
SSE provides a multi-layered simulation of a city, region, or country, including high-quality maps and information about the country’s critical infrastructure, such as electricity, water, transport networks, and telecommunication. This information can then be overlaid with other information, such as smart city data, military deployment information, or data gathered from social listening. From there, models can be built to provide a rich, detailed picture of how an area or city might respond to a given event: disaster, epidemic, cyber attack. or a combination of such events organized by enemies of the state.
Defensive synthetics are not a new concept. However, previous solutions have been built in a standalone manner that limits reuse, longevity, choice and – importantly, the speed of insight needed to combat regional threats. effectively gray.
National security officials will be able to use SSEs to identify threats early, better understand them, explore their response options, and analyze the possible consequences of actions different movements. They will even be able to use them to train, rehearse and execute their plans. By running thousands of simulated futures, senior leaders will be able to confront complex questions, refine complex policies and plans in the virtual world before implementing them in the real world. real.
A key question that will become even more important in 2022 is how countries can best secure their populations and supply chains against extreme weather events caused by climate change. SSEs will be able to help answer this by bringing together the area’s infrastructure, networks, roads and population data with meteorological models to see how events might unfold. and when.
