A Future Forged: Transcending History's Grip to Secure Tomorrow

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Humanity exists in the shadow of its past. History, with its triumphs and tragedies, serves as both a guide and a warning. We study the rise and fall of civilizations, the consequences of unchecked ambition, and the devastating impact of ideologies fuelled by hate, not to relive these events, but to inoculate ourselves against their repetition.

This is especially true as we confront the modern threats to national security. The battlefields of the 21st century are no longer confined to physical borders; they encompass the digital networks that power our lives, the electrical networks that power our infrastructure, the economic systems that sustain us, and the very cultural fabric that binds us together.

The echoes of history resonate in these new arenas, demanding a profound shift in how we perceive and prepare for conflict:

Cyber Invasions and EMP Attacks (often together in first strike Asian war thinking, likely): Imagine a nation plunged into darkness, its power grid crippled by a coordinated cyberattack or EMP explosion. Financial institutions grind to a halt, communication networks fall silent, supply chain deliveries of food stops arriving to all the cities, and essential services collapse, leaving citizens vulnerable and afraid. This isn’t science fiction; it’s a stark reality in a world where critical infrastructure is increasingly reliant on vulnerable digital systems or completely vulnerable electrical systems. The perpetrators of these attacks could be rogue states, terrorist organizations, proxy war adversaries secretly given an EMP by a larger power, engineers who construct an EMP using Artificial Intelligence, or even individual hackers — all wielding the power to disrupt entire nations without firing a single shot.
Economic Subjugation: Conquest in the 21st century may not involve armies crossing borders, but rather insidious economic warfare. Imagine a nation burdened by crippling debt, its economic policies dictated by foreign creditors, as happened in Eastern Europe during the hyperinflation of the early 1990s. Critical industries are bought up by hostile entities, natural resources are plundered, the public Crown Land of nations like Canada and public land of United States is sold off as tokens to the world’s wealthy (foreigners with many passports), and the levers of financial power are used to manipulate and control. This is the reality of economic subjugation, where nations are enslaved not by force but by dependence, their sovereignty eroded by the invisible hand of predatory economic practices, practices set to become immortalized on the block-chain so that if subjugation occurs, it occurs for millennia (or forever).
Cultural Invasions: Culture is a powerful force, shaping our values, beliefs, and perceptions of the world. But what happens when this force is weaponized? Imagine a society bombarded with carefully curated narratives designed to sow discord, undermine trust, and erode national unity. Disinformation campaigns spread like wildfire through social media, manipulating public opinion and eroding faith in democratic institutions. This is the insidious nature of cultural invasion, where the very soul of a nation is under attack, not by bombs and bullets, but by carefully crafted narratives designed to weaken and divide or immigration rates beyond the natural sustaining and assimilation rate of a country.
Biological and Environmental Warfare: The natural world, once a source of sustenance and wonder, is increasingly vulnerable to manipulation for nefarious purposes. Imagine a deadly pathogen, engineered in a lab, released to spread panic and death across the globe. Or picture a world where weather patterns are weaponized, causing droughts, floods, and other environmental disasters to destabilize nations and trigger mass migrations. These scenarios may seem like the stuff of dystopian fiction, but the tools and knowledge needed to manipulate nature are increasingly within reach, making biological and environmental warfare a chilling possibility that demands our attention.
Technological and Space Dominance: The pursuit of technological superiority has always been a driving force in international relations. But in the 21st century, this competition has taken on a new urgency as advancements in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and space-based technologies promise to reshape the global balance of power. Imagine a world where a single nation or entity controls the algorithms that govern our lives, dictates access to space, or possesses the ability to wage war with autonomous weapons systems. This is the high-stakes reality of technological dominance, where the victors will not be determined by the size of their armies but by their mastery of the technologies that will shape the future and the monopolies of the internet systems. These victors may even be able to subjugate the nation-states where human rights legislation, frameworks, and bills to defend life itself reside (bio-security, physical security, intellectual security, safety, rights, and freedoms). Is it OK to safeguard those not living, but to let the living lose their rights, freedoms and protections and that of their children and children’s children for all time?

These few examples of many threats which have now emerged, and which are forecasted to emerge from 2020 to 2050 (as part of the Great Filter problem), just a few from a very long list, highlight a crucial lesson from history: those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. But more than that, they underscore the urgent need to shift our focus from merely studying history to actively shaping the future.

This is where vision-driven national security becomes paramount. We must move beyond reactive measures and embrace a proactive approach that anticipates, adapts, and innovates.

This involves a multi-faceted strategy:

Embrace Backcasting: To stop events like genocides, we must imagine the ideal state of national security — a future where threats are neutralized before they materialize, and societal resilience is paramount. Then, working backward from the model of the future as we want it to be and think it best to be, to the present, using “reverse engineering,” we can identify the technological advancements that are still required, the social advancements that are still required, the industrial requirements that are still required, the economic requirements that are still required, policy changes, labour market shifts and re-balancing, educational system re-balancing (probably to STEM), and cultural shifts needed to make the future vision — a safe vision — a reality.
Invest in STEM: The solutions to tomorrow’s challenges lie in the hands of scientists, engineers, and innovators (not so much historians). Fostering a culture that prioritizes forward-looking, positive-tech-vision STEM education and research is not optional; it is essential to our survival.
Strengthen Global Partnerships: The threats we face are global in scale and demand collective action. By strengthening alliances with nations that share our values and commitment to peace, we multiply our capacity to address these challenges.

The future is not preordained; it is a canvas upon which we, as a nation and as a global community, have the power to paint. By harnessing the lessons of history that we learn as children and teenagers, embracing the power of visionary thinking that we do as adults, and fostering a culture of proactive STEM innovation, we can use the imagination of the best academics, the visions of the best STEM professionals, the dreams of the best artists, to break free from the cycles of conflict and create a future worthy of our highest aspirations.

The time for passive re-litigation of the past is over. The future demands our active engagement, our active analysis, our active engineering mindset. And when we don’t know how to code the future, we must conceptualize it through art. We must find out what the best imaginations envision, and work backward to figure out all of the steps that must be taken along the journey to get there. That is how we can come to a good conclusion of what needs to be changed about this world as it is in the present so that we can plan how to walk the path to the future. Let us rise to the challenge and craft a world where the horrors of the past are never repeated, and the promise of a secure and prosperous tomorrow is realized for all.

However, though we acknowledge the weight of the past, particularly for nations like the United States, whose history is marked by both progress and problematic foreign actions as part of its guardianship and enforcement of the global commerce system, it is crucial to know that any other country in this role will do the same. Yes, Russia and China, in charge of BRICS with their nuclear arsenals, will do the same in the future, and likely worse (China’s case, because of CCP structure). It’s crucial to acknowledge they have made a potentially false promise to the world through BRICS, and warm romance language countries, countries like Brazil, will not be an equal partner at the table either in the near term and especially not in the long term.

It’s crucial to acknowledge the past in education and upbringing, but as adults, continuous debate may not be necessary to re-litigate historical grievances if it comes at the expense of the work effort and time needed to build the safety, survival, innovation, security, and future systems and mega-projects that will safeguard humanity.

Instead, understanding who might repeat past mistakes requires a deep knowledge of today’s world. By constructing an accurate model of the present, we can foresee potential future repetitions and identify those at risk first. This insight helps us grasp which historical patterns are likely to recur and where they are likely to occur first so we can be ready, and who might be the first victims of such cycles.

There’s a global perception — whispered in hushed tones — that the world seeks to teach America, Canada and Western Europe a lesson for their historical actions. This collective global unconscious may shape a future where America and Canada experiences invasion on its soil, and at the very least semi-invasion from domestic civil war conflict scenarios (which is a different way to slice the same apple as a traditional military invasion), or any of the troubles mentioned earlier in this article, similar to the historical attacks it made on others to win wars. Such a scenario posits a more dangerous setting for potential conflict and upheaval, possibly orchestrated by large armies or even through sophisticated control, like AI from supranational bodies. Americans, as citizens, are the ones with enemies now, just as others had enemies in the past. The roles have flipped.

The world’s elites are once again creating the situation for global conflict, and they might get away with it, we will see (because with AI we can reverse engineer who causes the next global conflict and find them).

Understanding these dynamics doesn’t require dwelling on conspiracy theories; it requires vigilance, preparedness, and a commitment to forging a future where the mistakes of the past are not repeated — by any nation, on any soil. We must learn from history, not to become prisoners of it, sure, but to become architects of a brighter tomorrow, we must change where our time zone mental existence resides, and only then will the problems of today start to be solved by all of us. We must live with dreams and aspirations for the future while living in the present. We must always see the future world and be connected to it. Then, we will always take the right actions that solve the problems in the way that bridges us to a safe and bright path forward to arrive at our dreams.

A Future Forged: Transcending History’s Grip to Secure Tomorrow

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