International affairs will increasingly involve the use of information networks, and information technology will not be owned by any single country. Nor can this technology and the information it conveys be easily contained. Information and communications technologies will continue to advance and diffuse rapidly, becoming so inexpensive that most countries will be able to connect to the global information infrastructure.
The United States and other developed countries will face an increasing challenge to maintain its critical infrastructure—the networks that will increasingly unite the hitherto separate sectors of banking and finance, energy, transportation, communications, and government services. Cyber threats to this infrastructure will become a major defense issue by 2015.
Rigid and authoritarian governments that resist the flow of information and attempt to restrict openness and ease of connectivity, will fall further behind economically and politically. The problem of “haves” versus “have-nots” will become increasingly related to information sharing and the diffusion of information technology.
The biological sciences will grow in importance for their applications to medicine and agriculture. Advances in basic biology will allow us to diagnose and cure diseases on a broad scale; but most biomedical advances will remain expensive, benefiting only those who are relatively well-off, most of whom will live in developed countries.
The capability to purchase, copy, or steal existing technologies rather than develop new ones offers significant catch-up opportunities for less developed countries and also for nonstate actors, including terrorists and criminal organizations. Among these technologies must be included weapons of mass destruction. Information technology will allow widely dispersed but globally connected groups such as terrorists, criminal organizations, and narcotics cartels to create far-flung networks and alliances. In some countries, these groups will be better armed than their governments and may control significant portions of territory.
It is projected that during the period 2000 – 2015, the United States will face ICBM threats from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and possibly Iraq.9 The arsenals of the new missile powers will be dramatically smaller, less reliable, and less accurate than those of Russia and China. European nuclear arsenals with a global reach will remain; the nuclear weaponry of Israel, India, and Pakistan will be regional in scope, however. Precisely because nuclear weapons delivered to missile technology is likely to remain a state-centered enterprise, and its use therefore subject to deterrence and retaliation, new weapons of mass destruction that exploit an ambiguity of origin will come into being. States that intervene abroad will find themselves the target of unnamed groups with the ability to do substantial damage through violent and nonviolent means.