Consider the snow leopard. Panthera uncia sports some of the most effective camouflage in the animal kingdom, its white coat with gray and black spots blending in perfectly with the rocky, snowy Himalayan landscape it inhabits. It’s known as “the ghost of the mountains,” seeming to appear out of thin air on the rare occasions it is seen in the wild.
There’s an equivalent phenomenon in global affairs: under-the-radar trends and events that elude even the most seasoned observer. When their effect on world affairs eventually becomes apparent, they may seem to have come out of nowhere. But these “snow leopards” were there all along. Trends slowly gathering momentum while the crisis du jour dominates headlines, technological developments whose real-world application is still theoretical, known but underrated risks—all of these phenomena have the power to reshape the future. Some already are.
Any forecast of the future needs to account for these snow leopards. As we brought together experts across the Atlantic Council for our annual look into the future, our next-generation staff took on the challenge of spotting the hard to spot. They surveyed the world around them for overlooked risks, trawled scientific journals and the websites of obscure government departments, and came up with a list of potentially world-changing trends and developments.
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