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Rapid technological change and the reemergence of great power competition are affecting geopolitics and creating novel risks. These developments increase the speed, complexity, and number of actors in 21st century conflicts—undermining stability and increasing the dangers of conflict escalation. Consequently, long-term national security is becoming increasingly international in scope and concerned with governing powerful emerging technologies.

As Richard Danzig puts it, “[AI and synthetic biology] are developing faster than our mechanisms of control, and they have the potential for producing especially traumatic, one could say catastrophic, consequences.”

Experience with previous technological revolutions—like the development of aviation and nuclear weapons—should inform discussions about current efforts to control artificial intelligence (AI), synthetic biology, and other emerging technologies.

However, these challenges are larger and more complicated than those we have faced before.

Some of today’s choices will have enormous, enduring impacts, while others may do significant harm—even inadvertently. Today, for example, we are witnessing the costs of a century burning fossil fuels on the health of our climate. Going forward, we need to mitigate the harm current strategies impose on our long-term wellbeing.

“Today’s choices will significantly influence the course of the twenty-first century.”

— RAND Corporation

Our national security institutions are not prepared to navigate the far-reaching consequences of today’s decisions about emerging threats. As The Kill Chain puts it, “the defense establishment overwhelmingly favors the present over the needs of the future.”

So often, federal funding–and, therefore, priorities–are better suited to fighting the last war than the next. National security leaders are starting to recognize the need for change, but our institutions are slow to catch up.

Many factors contribute to this institutional lag: psychological biases favoring the near-term, misaligned incentives within national security organizations, and the insufficient practices for predicting and planning for the next crisis. As a House Armed Service Committee member put it, “the past is over-represented in Washington” because “the future has no lobbyists.”

We are no longer in a world in which we can reliably prevail with overwhelming force or resources. In the words of Richard Danzig, “Technological superiority is not synonymous with security.”

These new, powerful forces will disrupt global stability. Advanced AI and biotechnology will radically alter today’s security environment. So, too, will developments like great power conflict, pandemics, nuclear proliferation, and climate change.

“The premises that have guided us from World War II to the present must be modified for the future.”

– Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

In its “Global Trends: 2040 report, the U.S. National Intelligence Council recognized that “low-probability, high-impact events are difficult to forecast and expensive to prepare for but [our efforts] can provide some resilience to exogenous shocks”–shocks with potentially existential consequences.

Despite the lack of current investment, one historic lesson is clear:

“The prevention of the supreme catastrophe ought to be the paramount object of all endeavor.”

— Winston Churchill