National security risks

Risk Management And Black Swan Events

In 2007, statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined “Black Swan” as an event that “is an outlier,” as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations. Black Swans by that definition are mostly unforeseen, rare, and can be created by geo-political, economic, or from other unexpected events.

Black Swans bring challenges to risk management, especially in our rapidly transforming technological landscape. However, those transformative changes in emerging technology add to the ability to analytically forecast and try to mitigate Black Swan events.

Because of advanced computing and other emerging technologies, there are Black Swan events we can plan for, and help contain through risk management. While there are many scenarios. There are three categories that I believe we should apply risk management principles to including; 1) threats to the energy grid and critical infrastructure, 2) bio-terrorism and pandemics, and 3) the potential of malevolent artificial intelligence.