National Intelligence Council Releases Global Trends Report on the "More Contested World" of 2040

The National Intelligence Council has released the seventh edition of its quadrennial Global Trends report. Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World is an unclassified assessment of the forces and dynamics that the NIC anticipates are likely to shape the national security environment over the next 20 years.

Global Trends 2040 identifies four structural forces that will shape the future – demographics, the environment, economics, and technology – and assesses how they affect decisions and outcomes. It further describes five potential scenarios for the world in 2040, based on different combinations of the structural forces, emerging dynamics, and key uncertainties. It ends with a series of graphics displaying key demographic trends in nine geographic regions.

The NIC has delivered Global Trends to each incoming or returning U.S. presidential administration since 1997 as an unclassified assessment of the strategic environment, reflecting a broad range of expert opinion in the United States and abroad. The report is intended to help policymakers and citizens anticipate and prepare for a range of possible futures.

The NIC supports the Director of National Intelligence in her role as head of the Intelligence Community and is the IC’s center for long-term strategic analysis. Since its establishment in 1979, the NIC has served as a bridge between the intelligence and policy communities, a source of deep substantive expertise on intelligence issues, and a facilitator of IC collaboration and outreach


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Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World