Roughly every 250 years, human civilisation undergoes a dramatic reset. They are moments where kingdoms rise and fall, economies shift, values are rewritten, and societies reorganise themselves at every level — political, economic, cultural, even existential. These aren’t ordinary historical moments but mega epochs, when all shorter societal cycles align and force civilisation onto a new path.

Defence debates tend to focus on firepower. But the most destabilising risks may come from something far harder to quantify: the fraying of social trust, the manipulation of truth, and the erosion of the middle class.

The future is a mix of what we know is coming, what we can anticipate but not fully see, what we overlook despite being right in front of us, and what blindsides us entirely. The Johari Window maps the future across these four lenses: the known, the uncertain, the overlooked, and the unimaginable.

Militaries are adopting AI at speed; the real test will be keeping decisions accountable in an age of autonomous operations.

From biological markers to power structures, many variables shape how we understand the rhythm of societal change.

Across history, patterns of rise and fall, peace and war, innovation and decline seem to unfold in rhythms - some as short as a decade, others stretching over a century. Are there five, six, or even more distinct lengths to these societal cycles?

Complexity Theory as a Framework for Understanding Societal Transformation

What can generational theories tell us about this shift?

Every 50 years or so, according to Kondratieff wave theory, capitalist economies reorganise themselves around a new technological foundation, sparking the rise of new business ecosystems. Where are we now in that cycle—and what might the next foundation look like?

Is the current turbulence in the world only about Trump and his followers playing reckless politics out of the blue, or are we witnessing the beginning of a new era in the global world order?

Futures Platform, a leading provider of strategic foresight solutions, and Statzon, a premier aggregator of market intelligence, are merging to launch a first-of-its-kind solution that combines expert foresight, real-time market data, and Generative AI.

In 2022, we outlined four possible futures for the war in Ukraine. Now, three years later, as new geopolitical realities emerge, it’s time to reassess which scenarios still hold and what the latest developments mean for Ukraine, Russia, and the West.