As Joe Biden takes office, Justin Crump – CEO of the global risk and intelligence consultancy Sibylline, takes stock of the challenges the new administration will face
Looking back at this moment four years ago, what I most remember is the difficulty of discussing analytical predictions for the incoming Trump presidency. A presentation that suggested his office would be ending amidst a global pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and a violent mob of supporters forcing lawmakers to shelter in the Capitol would not have been believed, to put it politely.
There is a lesson here about black swans, which is pertinent to consider on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. It is of course the job of analysts to consider the unthinkable, and we have had no better lesson in that than the last 12 months. After all, it was exactly a year ago that a few hundred of the world’s leading CSOs sat down at the ISMA meeting in San Diego with the “Chinese Coronavirus outbreak” (as it then was) placed as an emergency session on the agenda. At that time, many could not believe or accept the impacts that were coming, although at least that session helped to change minds – setting the scene for successful US corporate security action and advice to leadership in the early stages of the pandemic, once it reached our shores.