The latest policy, research and news on global catastrophic risk (GCR).

When it comes to national resilience and preparedness, there’s a term that gets easily thrown around but is wildly complex: ‘whole-of-society’. The reality of 21st-century risk, and modern civilization, is that responding to a national crisis is not contained to the cabinet room and to emergency responders. Whether it be hospitals, manufacturers, retailers, banks, farms or local communities, all will have a role to play. And it requires policymakers to reimagine how to mobilize the country for a catastrophe – how to engage and direct the private sector, how to communicate with the public, how to adapt infrastructure, how to produce critical supplies, how to train workforces, how to commit scarce budgets. A whole-of-society approach does more than widen the circle of responsibility; it rewires the crisis playbook.

Enabling the private sector during catastrophe

On 22 May, Global Shield Executive Director, Jared Brown, testified at a hearing on the Defense Production Act (DPA) in the US Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Originally enacted in 1950, the DPA grants the US government a range of authorities to shape how the private sector provides materials, services, and expertise to the government for national security purposes. The DPA is most known for its Title I authorities, which require companies to accept contracts for goods and services necessary for the national defense, and its Title III authorities, which create financial incentives and subsidies for critical domestic industries to produce more goods and materials than would otherwise be provided. Under Title VII, several authorities exist that enable the government to plan alongside the private sector to address anticipated or existing problems for national security, and to employ private sector experts in the government during a crisis. Jared urged Congress to reauthorize and modernize the DPA, particularly Title VII authorities, for 21st-century, global catastrophic threats.

Policy comment: If a global catastrophe occurs, all governments, including the US, would need support from their domestic private industries to respond effectively. So the DPA is a core instrument for the US’s preparedness for and response to global catastrophic risk. Medical supplies, energy systems, transportation, communications, food production, and logistics, among other critical infrastructure and goods, are mostly owned or operated by private firms. Domestic manufacturing might need to be retooled or expanded quickly to meet demand in a crisis. And technical and operational expertise needed for innovation, production and distribution – which heavily reside in the private sector – would need repurposing for government response. For example, Title I Authorities could be used to issue prioritized orders from the private sector for critical emergency goods, such as food and energy inputs. Under Title III authorities, funds could be allocated or loaned to companies or communities to produce infrastructure or equipment that has been damaged or destroyed. Other countries should consider adopting similar authorities to enable their private sectors to prepare for and respond to catastrophe, or reimagine the use of other existing authorities for similar policy objectives.

Building public consciousness for national crises

A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) notes that “The Australian Government isn’t doing enough to prepare Australian citizens for the more volatile and uncertain strategic environment that we face. There’s no regular public discourse about the national risks to Australia, there’s no planning or capability development for mitigating such risks, and there’s no regular program for educating, training or exercising Australia’s communities to deal with them.”

The report also notes that “The Republic of Finland is an excellent exemplar of what a nation can do to build and maintain national resilience and national preparedness against all hazards, including the risk of conflict and war”, including its Comprehensive National Security model. Independent journalist, Johnny Harris, demonstrated this concept recently when he embedded with Finland’s defense forces as it performed a large-scale military exercise on the border with Russia.

Australia’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) held a multi-day crisis scenario with 350 participants that explored the impact of complex crises, including fuel supply shortages, the transmission of bird flu to animals and humans, natural hazards, power outages, supply chain disruptions, and social unrest.

Policy comment: Finland and Australia provide useful counterpoints on effective national resilience. Finland’s century-long fight for national sovereignty, especially given its shared border with the former USSR and now Russia, has helped entrench a public consciousness on preparedness. This includes government-led initiatives, like a national risk assessment, public education, crisis communications, sheltering infrastructure, strategic reserves, and compulsory military service. Meanwhile, Australia’s geographical distance and historical comfort have bred institutional and public complacency. The changing geopolitical landscape and recent shocks, like the 2019-20 Bushfire season, COVID-19 and large-scale flooding, have provided a warning. And NEMA’s exercise, as well as its intended development of an Australian Government Catastrophic Crisis Plan (AUSCATPLAN), are important steps in the right direction. But they are unlikely to be effective when they do not sit within a larger whole-of-society approach to resilience. Countries like Australia, which do not necessarily have the traumatic historical context in which to build a preparedness mindset, must rely on other forms of public engagement, like direct communications, education, arts and culture, and media, to build those national-scale ‘neural pathways’.

Global Shield’s new Australian office intends to engage with the Australian Government on building catastrophic risk into policymaking processes, including the development of the AUSCATPLAN. If you are interested in our activities, be sure to reach out to our Director of Global Shield Australia, Devon Whittle.

Also see:

• An op-ed in the Washington Post by Global Shield board member, Christian Ruhl, and his colleague, Hannah Yang, on civil defense that better considers biological risk

Managing single threats with multi-pronged approaches

On 11 May, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) suspended the import of live cattle, horses and bison through ports of entry along the border with Mexico in order to curb the spread of New World screwworm. Screwworm is a flesh-burrowing larva that can be fatal to livestock and wildlife, such as cattle and deer. While no screwworm cases have been detected within the US to date, the movement of the infestation up through Mexico, as close as 700 miles from the border, has raised alarms for US policymakers and cattle-ranchers.

On 27 May, the USDA announced an additional $21m to renovate a facility in Mexico that produces and releases sterile male flies – a technique used to halt infestation because the female screwworm only mate once. US senators have introduced the “STOP Screwworms Act” to require USDA to begin construction on a similar facility on US soil.

No cases closer to the border have been reported since the suspension, and the USDA chief veterinarian has said that imports are likely to resume by the end of the year. However, concerns remain that the US is unprepared for its first widespread infestation since successfully eradicating the screwworm in 1966 due to the inability to produce enough sterile flies, lack of licensing for certain drugs that treat screwworm, and reduced cowboy workforce.

Policy comment: This resurgence of screwworm, which started in Panama in 2022, is the perfect case study of complex and cascading global risk. Until 2022, a collaborative effort between the US and Panama using the sterile insect technique had effectively created a barrier at the Darién Gap, a dense rainforest and jungle along the border with Colombia. However, numerous factors led to this barrier being breached: the COVID-19 pandemic causing supply-chain issues at the sterile fly factory and disrupting regular cattle inspections; more people crossing the difficult Darién Gap; illegal cattle trade; and changes in climate making screwworm survival and reproduction more favorable. As with any complex problem, a single solution is unlikely to be effective. Multi-pronged approaches, especially dealing with the root causes and risk drivers, are needed. Managing the risk from any global catastrophic threat requires breaking the problem down into its components – whether geopolitical, environmental, technological, economic or otherwise. For each component, a range of policy approaches might be needed, often those outside the domain of the original problem.

Anticipating and governing uncertainty

A number of unrelated publications look at a variety of new, emerging or unexpected threats.

A new preprint study looks at the movement of the Aspergillus species of fungus due to climate change. The fungal species causes severe infections in humans, livestock and plants. While parts of the US, Canada, Europe and northern Asia would become more suitable habitats for the fungi, parts of South America, Africa and Australia would become too hot. Another researcher in the field told CNN that “fungal pathogens are becoming increasingly common and resistant to treatment, and we are only beginning to understand how climate change is contributing.” Fungal infections kill about 2.5 million people a year, but the relative lack of research and data means the trajectory is highly unclear.

An article in Wired looks at the potential chaos caused by “Q-day”, what cybersecurity analysts call the moment when a quantum computer could crack most worldwide encryption. With every individual’s, company’s and government’s data vulnerable, Q-day could upend personal privacy, market dynamics and national security. In the Quantum Threat Timeline Report 2024, based on a survey of 32 experts, such a quantum computer was plausible in the next 10 years, and more likely than not in 15 years. According to the Wired article, “Long before quantum technology is good enough to break encryption, it will be commercially and scientifically useful enough to tilt the global balance.” The timing and impact of quantum technology remains highly uncertain.

Existential risk researcher, Thomas Moynihan, has written about the unintentional building of a “world brain”. He told RNZ that, given “we are creating a far more complex planetary system and are far more coordinated globally…something like a loss of autonomy will necessarily have to happen on the human individual.” It remains unclear what a world connected by AI means for how humans engage with each other and the world around them.

Policy comment: The defining feature of 21st-century risk is not just scale, but uncertainty. Rapidly changing technological, environmental and biological drivers – as well as increasing global interconnectedness – will make national and global crises more unexpected, and potentially more frequent. Previously inconceivable threats, like Q-day, might emerge without warning. And familiar threats of the past, like fungal infections, might take dangerous turns. Traditional risk models – anchored on probabilities and historical patterns – are no longer enough. Policymakers must navigate, and ideally embrace, uncertainty. The implication: governments must invest in system-wide resilience, flexible response capabilities, social cohesion, and individual and community-level preparedness. It also calls for a fundamental rethink of long-term projects, such as conventional defense capabilities and infrastructure. Large-scale projects that take decades to deliver could be rendered moot by climate change and artificial intelligence. Worse, they divert budgets and attention from being prepared. Investments in an era of uncertainty must be designed for adaptability, modularity and scalability – ensuring they can be repurposed or expanded in response to creeping risk and sudden crises.