Annex A – Project methodology
Scenario – Competitive arms race
After a long period of nationalism, isolationism and proliferation states eventually agreed
to cooperate and end isolation for reasons of (economic) growth and scientific and
intellectual development.In 2050, human augmentation is mature; the technologies are perfected and highly
accessible at low cost. Human augmentation is effective, safe and totally accepted.
Some types of interventions are state sponsored, through ‘life care accessible for
all’ programmes, while others are kept secret and are limited to military use only.
‘Democratic states’ perceive human augmentation as critical to economic development.
There is a free, deregulated and competitive market. Human augmentation health care
is available for all, and the crossover from civilian into military applications has resulted in
lower costs for the military since the basic technology is proven.A class of warrior, remnants of nationalist times, remains and so does the antagonism that
has built up between military and civilian society. The risk of new conflicts is omnipresent,
and the power of states has been eroded due to their inability to work in large coalitions.Implications
Identifying implications is one of the most important, but also most difficult, steps in
strategic foresight. Each future scenario is linked to the present via its own development
path, but what lessons, what deductions can be made from the future scenarios for
decision-makers?SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis^52 as decision support
was the method of choice in this project. The strengths and weaknesses relate to
the organisation itself, whereas the opportunities and threats relate to the external
environment and in this case to the future developments regarding human augmentation.SWOT analysis is simple, easy and are widely used today. But like any other method,
it has its limitations. It is focused on only one goal, without considering the costs and
benefits of alternative means of achieving the same goal. This is not a problem so long
as the analyst is aware that the results are only a part of the options for the decision in
question. In this project, SWOT analyses were carried out several times with the same or
slightly modified questions, and with different participants, so that different approaches to
achieving the same goal were considered. Once the SWOT analysis was completed the
results were consolidated.The SWOT analysis always followed the same pattern. The first and most important
step for the participants was to immerse themselves in the corresponding scenario and
to imagine that this scenario had occurred. To support the process, participants had to
decide which aspects of this scenario were desirable and which were alarming. Based
on the key question ‘What opportunities and threats for Finland, Germany, Sweden and
UK security policies arise from the scenarios?’ The opportunities and threats for the
security policy of the respective country were worked out for each scenario and recorded
in tabular form. These findings were then translated back into findings relevant to the
present, by asking the question ‘What would be the strengths and weaknesses of Finland,52 SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis was developed in the 1960s for
position determination and strategy development in companies.