Never in the three decades I’ve been a practicing futurist have I been so uncertain about what lies ahead. Think of the many issues that confront humanity right now: a nagging war in Ukraine, job loss due to automation and AI, the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. and other countries, and potential bubbles setting off the next global financial crisis.
The future arriving at our doorstep will be unlike anything we’ve seen before. As I illustrate in Build a Better Future, a book that probes where we’re headed in the next 10 years, colliding issues such as these are likely to ignite the next “polycrisis,” a disruption where multiple crises occur simultaneously, interacting in ways that amplify their overall impact.
Unlike isolated crises, a polycrisis involves interconnected challenges that feed into one another, making them harder to resolve.
The COVID-19 pandemic gave us a stark illustration of how a polycrisis ignites. What started as a flu virus in Wuhan, China, quickly morphed into a public health crisis, economic meltdown, supply chain disruption, and a social upheaval, all at once.
More recently, the CrowdStrike crisis on July 19, 2024, was a stark reminder of just how deeply interconnected our systems have become and how fragile our systems are.
On July 19, 2024, thousands of travelers found themselves stranded in airports worldwide as flights were canceled en masse, their carefully laid plans thrown into disarray. In hospitals, the consequences were even more dire. Emergency rooms struggled to access patient records, delaying critical treatments and surgeries, while doctors and nurses were left scrambling to work around the digital blackout.
Meanwhile, as ATM’s stopped working, banking customers faced their own disruptions, transactions froze, and businesses and consumers were unable to process payments. While Microsoft was able to restore systems in a matter of days, it was a polycrisis wake-up call—a seemingly isolated tech failure that cascaded into worldwide economic turmoil, public frustration, and operational paralysis, exposing just how vulnerable we are to the unintended consequences of our digital era dependencies.
The war in Ukraine is an example of a poly-crisis multiplier. What started as a regional conflict quickly became a geopolitical crisis unseen since WWII. As Europe scrambled for alternatives to Russian gas, a food crisis ensued as wheat exports from the region ground to a halt, and an inflationary shock rippled through global markets. Layer in climate-driven disasters—wildfires in Canada blanketing the U.S. East Coast in smoke, record-setting heat waves in the Middle East, and extreme flooding in Asia—and you begin to see how today’s crises can combine and multiply.
The rapid advance of technology is bringing both promise and peril. AI and automation upend industries, displacing millions, while social media platforms—once heralded as tools for global connectivity—become breeding grounds for misinformation and disinformation that further erode trust in institutions.
Add to this a world where biodiversity loss threatens food security, and geopolitical conflicts spark energy crises that send shockwaves through global markets. Those who can anticipate these polycrises and navigate their complexities will not just survive, they will prevail in the future.
Looking ahead at the rapid proliferation of AI and the trend of nationalism and isolation, the world is facing not just individual problems, but deeply intertwined issues that exacerbate one another and require holistic, systemic approaches. The question is: are we prepared?