21st Century Wire says…
Back in 2000, in the first days of the Bush Jr presidency, the brain trust at the Central Intelligence Agency got together to work out what would likely be ‘going on’ in 2015.
Mostly, CIA analysts were only predicting the likely time frames for the inevitable fruition of trends which were already in motion - and telling relatively clueless politicians in Washington DC what they wanted to hear. Regarding the Bush administration, it was a case of what NeoConservative politicians wanted to hear at that time.
One interesting item which was included was regarding terrorism, where CIA star-gazers foretold the event only months away, “Between now and 2015 terrorist tactics will become increasingly sophisticated and designed to achieve mass casualties”, essentially predicting the attacks of Sept 11, 2001. Anyone who knows their inside baseball would know that of course, the CIA would know what was coming on 9/11, not least of all by looking at ranking CIA agents who were involved in the insider trading of American Airlines stocks before 9/11.
Here is a summary of the Telegraph’s report on the CIA predictions…
Back In 2000, The CIA Made These Predictions For 2015
Business Insider
Back in 2000, the CIA published a 70-page report on what the world would be like in 2015.
Here were some of those predictions, according to a December 2000 story from the Telegraph.
“International affairs are increasingly determined by large and powerful organisations rather than governments.” Verdict: Probably true. Though it is sometimes hard to distinguish between non-state actors and state actors. Just look at the Islamic State or the possibly-not-North Korean hackers who took down Sony.
“Between now and 2015 terrorist tactics will become increasingly sophisticated and designed to achieve mass casualties.” Verdict: Definitely true. Sadly, this prediction became true within months.
CLUELESS: The CIA’s 2000 report guided George W. Bush.
(…) “Iraq and Iran [will] develop long range missiles in the near future. Iran … could be testing such weapons by as early as the coming year, and cruise missiles by 2004.” Verdict: Both true and false. Iran is definitely working on an ICBM, but it won’t test it till next year.
“The world population will grow by more than one billion, to 7.2 billion.” Verdict: True.
“Energy resources will be sufficient to meet demand.” Verdict: Nailed it. Companies are actually canceling plans to dig up more natural gas because oil is abundant right now.
“China’s economy will grow to overtake Europe as the world’s second largest but still behind the United States.” Verdict: True-ish. By some measurements, China’s economy is now larger than the US economy.
“Europe will not achieve fully the dreams of parity with the US as a shaper of the global economic system.” Verdict: Correct. The report was way too bullish on the European economy, which is “going nowhere” these days.
“Aids, famine, and continuing economic and political turmoil means that populations in many [African] countries will actually fall.” Verdict: False. Africa’s population rose from 800 million in 2000 to 1.1 billion in 2014.
