🌐Strategy note #2: Using Claude 3 Opus to accelerate foresight / geopolitical scenario development

AI, imagine the future(s)🔮

A post which is hopefully of interest, particularly for all of you strategic foresight practitioners among the Memia audience!

Here’s a quick writeup of a technique I’ve been trying out which has significantly accelerated my ability to generate future scenarios and then explore their hypothetical implications.

This doesn’t entirely automate the strategic planning process but speeds it up considerably - by at least one order of magnitude I’d estimate. (This whole post took only 2 hours to generate and write!)

Here’s how Midjourney imagines one of the scenarios generated:

/imagine “The world fragments as network states and nation-states compete, some wielding powerful autonomous weapons. Geopolitical volatility is high as is the risk of devastating conflicts between states and network states.”

Background

Just over 2 years ago, I wrote a post Geopolitical Scenario Development: 100 Axes Of Uncertainty in April 2022, listing out the key geopolitical uncertainties of the time under the following headings:

• Ukraine war: (17 questions)

• Russian domestic politics: (5 questions)

• Ukraine war geopolitics: (10 questions)

• US domestic politics (15 questions)

• China domestic politics (2 questions)

• China and Taiwan (24 questions)

• China and the Pacific (3 questions)

• US and the Indo-Pacific (3 questions)

• Australia domestic politics (3 questions)

• Global supply chains (4 questions)

• Covid-19 (8 questions)

• Climate change and ecological collapse (8 questions)

• Technology (8 questions)

• …Not forgetting the usual existential risks! (10 questions)

(Actually 120 questions all in all).

(Some of these questions have since been answered: Xi Xinping got a 3rd term as Chinese President, Labor won the 2022 Australian general election outright and the 2022 US midterm elections saw the Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives while the Democrats managed to retain control of the Senate. However, most of the questions still remain unresolved two years on…).

Strategic prompting

Claude 3 Opus from Anthropic is my go-to model these days for complex text analysis and reasoning tasks. In particular, it has a *huge* context buffer (eg the length of the prompt and other generated context) which so far I haven’t managed to exceed. You can also tune your prompts with XML syntax which I’m still learning how to do. (Check out Anthropic’s Claude 3 Prompt Library for an accelerator on ways to use the tool).

So here’s a prompt I’ve been iterating which turns out to be exceptionally powerful:

System Prompt:

“You are a strategic foresight analyst. Your role is to generate future scenarios to help with strategic planning. You use the "Axes of Uncertainty" methodology, creating a quadrant between two axes and generating a scenario in each.“

And then:

User Prompt:

“In the following article, over 100 geopolitical "Axes Of Uncertainty" are listed. Pick one of the most novel axis combinations and juxtapose these, generating a short 2-sentence scenario description for each square in the quadrant.

For each scenario, list 3 opportunities and 3 threats for <entity>{paste entity name / description}</entity>.

<article>

{paste in article}

</article>”

(You can substitute <entity> with “<country>”, “<industry>”, “<politicalParty>”, “<manufacturer>” … anything really).

Here are just four sample responses looking at techno-geopolitics for my own <country>Aotearoa New Zealand</country>. Some of them are incredibly spot on!

(Emphasis mine to improve readability.)

Response 1

“For this exercise, I'll juxtapose the following two axes of uncertainty:

Axis 1: Will China establish a military base in another Pacific country? (No…Yes/when?)

Axis 2: Will Aotearoa be invited / choose to officially join the AUKUS defence pact? (No…Yes)

Scenario 1 (No Chinese base, No AUKUS): Peaceful Pacific Aotearoa maintains an independent foreign policy while deepening economic ties with both China and the US/West. The Pacific remains a relatively stable and peaceful region.

Opportunities:

1. Aotearoa can be a neutral broker and peacemaker in the region

2. Increased trade and investment with both China and US/West

3. Stability enables focus on domestic issues and regional cooperation

Threats:

1. Balancing act between China and US becomes increasingly difficult

2. Pressure to "pick a side" grows over time

3. Complacency about defence leaves Aotearoa vulnerable if situation changes

Scenario 2

(No Chinese base, Yes AUKUS): NZ Aligns West Aotearoa joins AUKUS, firmly aligning itself with the US and its allies to counter China's influence. This strains NZ-China relations but shores up Western support.

Opportunities: