BNS0023 Written evidence submitted by Nik Gowing and Chris Langdon, Thinking the Unthinkable (TTU) project1 CONFRONTING GLOBAL THREATS AND DISRUPTION: HOW TO CHALLENGE OURSELVES TO THINK UNTHINKABLES Summary There is a natural institutional and personal resistance to Think the Unthinkable for major risks that are wrongly considered to be unlikely. The devastating nature of the subsequent shocks to our society from COVID-19 has obviously reinforced what our TTU work had already identified and warned about. It is the imperative to work and think more radically, whatever the professional and career risk in doing so. That does not come easy in government. Indeed, there are formidable in-built, institutional drag chains and resistances. Our focus is not just on the effectiveness of the bodies and institutions named and set out in the formal ambitions for this enquiry.2 It must also be about the human inefficiencies and vulnerabilities of those who work in them, and ultimately their relationships to those who make the final political decisions. However new realities within public service mean there is the likelihood of even greater risk aversion and professional fear among even the most talented, just when the opposite is needed. Our TTU work highlights how conformity and conformist attitudes are core limiters to the breadth or perceptions now needed to embrace unthinkables. That conformity carries a high cost. Our published work3 has already concluded that the conformity which qualifies many leaders for the top now disqualifies most of them from accepting, embracing then dealing with the new scale of risk and disruption. We are not optimistic that current cultures, mindsets and behaviours are anywhere close to being primed and prepared for innovating or transforming at the speed and scale that are necessary. We urge that the JCNSS’s findings highlight that as a priority. Reason for the submission We were asked directly by the committee advisers to submit it. Argued Evidence “In the new era of disruption, leaders must challenge longstanding assumptions and zombie orthodoxies in order to lead with authority”. 1 For fuller details and background of our work see www.thinkunthink.org. 2 As detailed in https://committees.parliament.uk/call-for-evidence/150/biosecurity-and-national-security/ 3 Thinking the Unthinkable by Nik Gowing and Chris Langdon. John Catt Educational Ltd. (2018) This was the headline summary in a Thinking the Unthinkable (TTU) paper we prepared for a staff workshop organised by a forward leaning department within one Whitehall ministry in 2019. The gathering was designed to calibrate how public servants could prepare themselves, their departments and ultimately their ministers, for the kind of unthinkables that increasingly we would all have to confront. We warned that the need for this transformation and shedding of orthodoxy was urgent. The core reality is that there is a natural institutional and personal resistance to Think the Unthinkable for major risks that are wrongly considered to be unlikely. Yet unthinkable is how many will rate the extreme scenarios having to be considered by the JCNSS. The devastating nature of the subsequent shocks to our society from COVID-19 has obviously reinforced what we had already identified and warned about. It is the imperative to work and think more radically, whatever the professional and career risk in doing so. That does not come easy in government. Indeed, there are formidable in-built, institutional drag chains and resistances. As we report later, the Whitehall session surfaced significant frustrations among civil servant attendees. Many voiced how their ability to think differently, bravely and in unthinkable ways was routinely discouraged and stifled by those zombie orthodoxies. Too many institutional and personal frictions are built into the current decision-making system. Visionary perspectives are often discouraged or suppressed. This is exacerbated by the attitude of ministers who believe they are right, know everything and therefore should not be challenged by radical perspectives that orthodoxy considers as too marginal. This is further compounded by a reputational fear of over committing both politically and financially to a threat or risk whose inevitability might appear far from certain despite warnings posted in risk registers. The same frustrations were voiced loudly but confidentially behind closed doors when TTU led two sessions for top civil servants at the first conference of the new National Leadership Centre on 29 January 2019. The frank contributions we heard there just before COVID-19 struck mirrored this angst and these anxieties. These have also been revealed to us candidly in the corporate sector – both in the UK and internationally. We recommend that defining the limiting reality of these institutional constraints should be at the heart of the JCNSS’s considerations in this enquiry. There is no point identifying a risk if the system is not liberated and welcoming enough for it to be considered. We write this because we describe our experience in the TTU project as follows: ‘We work with you to turn radical disruption and uncertainty to your advantage. We do original research interviewing leaders. We share this in speaking events, publications and with our clients. We help build a new leadership that thrives on change’ Our focus is not just on the effectiveness of the bodies and institutions named and set out in the formal ambitions for this enquiry.4 The focus must also be about the human inefficiencies and vulnerabilities of those who work in them, and ultimately their relationships to those who make the final political decisions. Based on hundreds of interviews and conversations, our TTU work highlights how conformity and conformist attitudes are core limiters to the breadth or perceptions now 4 As detailed in https://committees.parliament.uk/call-for-evidence/150/biosecurity-and-national-security/ needed to embrace unthinkables. That conformity carries a high cost. Our published work5 concluded some time ago that the conformity which qualifies many leaders for the top now disqualifies most of them from accepting, embracing then dealing with the new scale of risk and disruption. What has been remarkable is the number of leaders and those working for them who have quietly nodded agreement. We need to underline that this reality was clear for many years before the global societal earthquake of COVID-19. It then became starkly clear after unthinkables like the shock of the Novichok poisoning by Russian agents of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018 on UK soil. The similar poisoning of Alexei Navalny and sudden public pressure in Germany to cancel the Nordsteam 2 gas pipeline from Russia illustrate vividly how the unthinkable has to be thinkable. But were they unthinkables? As we have argued time and again since we started our TTU project work in 2014, developments like these should not be regarded as just unthinkables on the outer fringes of probability. They were possible. Yet how far did the possibility of them happening make progress through the hierarchy of institutional analysis and decision making? Most important for the highly imperfect process of policy making and risk assessment in this new radically uncertain environment is that they were not unthinkable but unapalatable. This is the term that a wise former top ambassador told us best encapsulated the tensions faced by those at all levels, especially close to the toP. Not correctly reading the unpalatable is the reason why ministers and senior civil servants appear blind-sided by events that were foreseeable. This is even if they are identified by more junior level officials, UK Embassies, or the intelligence agencies, plus external experts who are consulted. The evidence and analysis was usually there to be ingested and analysed. But for a host of reasons few – if any – of those involved in reviewing evidence and probabilities wanted - or had the bandwidth and official support - to consider the possible dire implications in ways that should have been encouraged and sanctioned. They were unpalatable because senior leaders either failed to listen, failed to take note or failed to take appropriate action. That is why in our work, thinking the unpalatable is a more accurate overarching title. But to ensure that our message had greatest impact we adopted Herman Kahn’s “unthinkable” phrase from his thought experiment during the 1962 Cuba missile crisis on the possibilities for nuclear war. Some JNCSS committee members who have held ministerial office will have their own experiences of this. Some will recognise what we write. Others may be resistant and sceptical. So for the latter, we need to reassure them about the nature of unthinkables. On 1 June 2016 we highlighted in a front cover analysis for The World Today published by Chatham House6 the advance signals that pointed to the shocks of both a vote for Brexit 23 days later, then the nomination and election of Donald Trump as US President. As we detailed, the evidence was there. We wrote: “until a few weeks ago, what many viewed as 5 Thinking the Unthinkable by Nik Gowing and Chris Langdon. John Catt Educational Ltd. (2018) 6 https://www.thinkunthink.org/perch/resources/documents/twt-2016-03-how-groupthink-depriving-west- vision-gowing-landon.pdf outlandish ‘unthinkables’ were not even being considered or investigated as corporate or political risk assessments. Now they have to be”. But few in government and the commentariat were prepared to believe it. Indeed, many scorned our analysis. But in the UK that narrow human vision and institutional blindness on public emotions about Brexit carried a huge political cost. As Prime Minister David Cameron wrote three years later about his Brexit judgements: “I am sorry, I failed”. The JNCSS must therefore ask how the UK public service can put in place radical and confidence building processes which in future will prevent similar mis-readings of unpalatable evidence and trends.