Impending technological advances will widen an adversary’s attack plane over the next decade. Visualizing what the future will hold, and what new threat vectors could emerge, is a task that traditional planning mechanisms struggle to accomplish given the wide range of potential issues. Understanding and preparing for the future operating environment is the basis of an analytical method known as Threatcasting. It is a method that gives researchers a structured way to envision and plan for risks ten years in the future. Threatcasting uses input from social science, technical research, cultural history, economics, trends, expert interviews, and even a little science fiction to recognize future threats and design potential futures. During this human-centric process, participants brainstorm what actions can be taken to identify, track, disrupt, mitigate, and recover from the possible threats. Specifically, groups explore how to transform the future they desire into reality while avoiding anundesired future. The Threatcasting method also exposes what events could happen that indicate the progression toward an increasingly possible threat landscape. This book begins with an overview of the Threatcasting method with examples and case studies to enhance the academic foundation. Along with end-of-chapter exercises to enhance the reader’s understanding of the concepts, there is also a full project where the reader can conduct a mock Threatcasting on the topic of “the next biological public health crisis.” The second half of the book is designed as a practitioner’s handbook. It has three separate chapters (based on the general size of the Threatcasting group) that walk the reader through how to apply the knowledge from Part I to conduct an actual Threatcasting activity. This book will be useful for a wide audience (from student to practitioner) and will hopefully promote new dialogues across communities and novel developments in the area.
Brian David Johnson is a Futurist, Author, and Professor of Practice at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society. In his private practice he works with governments, militaries, trade organizations, and startups to help them envision their future. He has over 40 patents and is the author of a number of books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Future You, War: Wizards and Robots, Science Fiction Prototyping, Humanity and the Machine: What Comes After Greed?, and Vintage Tomorrows. His writing has appeared in publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal and Slate to IEEE Computer and Successful Farming, and he appears regularly on The BBC, Bloomberg TV, PBS, Fox News, and the Discovery Channel. He has directed two feature films, and is an illustrator and commissioned painter.
Natalie Vanatta is a U.S. Army cyber officer and currently serves as the Emerging Technologies Research Team Lead at the Army Cyber Institute (the Army’s think tank oncyber). Here she focuses on bringing private industry, academia, and government agencies together to explore and solve cyber challenges facing the U.S. Army in the next 3–10 years in order to prevent strategic surprise. She holds a Ph.D. in applied mathematics as well as degrees in computer engineering and systems engineering. She is an adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University as well as an Academy professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Spanning a military career of over 20 years, Natalie has served and operated around the globe (on three continents) in order to defend the nation. She was a platoon leader in Germany, a company commander in Kuwait, and a Battalion S3 (operations officer) in Italy. LTC Vanatta has also served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the National Security Agency (in both 2017 and 2021), the technical director of Joint Task Force Ares, and a Team Leader within the Cyber National Mission Force focused on defending criticalinfrastructure for the nation.
Cyndi Coon is the CEO, and Founder of Laboratory5 Inc., where she builds frameworks and human ecosystems to provide decision-makers in government agencies, military, higher education, NGOs, and nonprofits with scenarios they need to take action. Cyndi is the Chief of Staff at the Threatcasting Lab, Producer at Applied Futures Lab, Producing Director at the Weaponized Narrative Initiative, and a producer for the president’s office at Arizona State University. Through these roles, she engages with multiple audiences across numerous mediums to create narratives for tools, training, and applied outcomes and she is a trained facilitator. Topics she has created include: Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Coolabilities, Dual-Use Technologies, Ecosystems, Education, Experiential Events, Future of Sports, Gender, Information Shaping, Information Disorder, Justice, Moral Injury, STEM, Space, Threatcasting, Weaponized Narratives, and Covid-19. Cyndi is a subject matter expert in Information Shaping, Creativity, and Threatcasting. Trained as an artist, Cyndi received a Masters Degree of Fine Art from Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona and a Bachelors of Fine Art Degree from Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Cyndi taught at Arizona State University and in the Maricopa Community College system.
