The confluence of multiplying political, economic, and social crises has made the military acronym VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) feel like a perfect description of the third decade of the third millennium. The acronym was used at the Army War College in the late 1980s to describe a world that was more unpredictable than the bipolar one of the Cold War-era, but it has come to feel increasingly resonant today, as one emergency cascades into another, amplifying the perils of an ever more interconnected globe.
On top of the looming disaster of climate change, there are escalating threats to democracy at home and abroad, high-stakes wars in Ukraine and Gaza, surging populist anger at governments and institutions, and a tidal wave of fake news and disinformation that will rise to tsunami levels with the expanding use of AI. Many of these threats, as we’ll see, are connected with one another in a kind of doom loop: chaos and discontent also enable authoritarian-minded leaders who foment further havoc in cementing and justifying their hold on power.
According to a 2024 Pew survey, such power grabs are endorsed by a growing sector of the population. The study found that “a median of 31% across 24 nations are supportive of authoritarian systems,” including an astonishing 38% of Americans under the age of 30.
Rapid technological developments and globalization have accelerated many of the discontinuities we are experiencing today, but hinge moments throughout history have been marked by instability and tumult, as old frameworks for explaining or managing the world begin to break down in the face of snowballing change, and give way to what the historian Thomas S. Kuhn referred to as “paradigm shifts.”
In 1930, while imprisoned by Mussolini’s fascist regime, the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci…
