Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

Panthera uncia—the snow leopard that inhabits high mountain ranges in Central and South Asia—is one of nature’s best-camouflaged animals. The majestic cat’s beautiful white coat, with gray and black spots, blends seamlessly into the rocky and snowy landscape in which it lives. Known as “the ghost of the mountains,” it seems to appear out of thin air. The reality, of course, is the snow leopard has been there all along, an unseen sight. 

In world affairs, there are numerous under-the-radar phenomena that are difficult to spot but crucial to understand given their capacity for disruption and transformation. Like the Himalayan cat, these metaphorical “snow leopards” may appear invisible but in fact are all around us: early-stage technologies that, if developed and scaled, might yield revolutionary results; social movements that, while just beginning to gather strength, could have enormous political consequences in the years to come; demographic trends that only a few experts study but that could overhaul societies in the long run; ecological changes that are not yet fully understood by scientists but could portend disaster ahead should they worsen. These phenomena present underrated risks or opportunities. Each of them could reshape the future. Some already are. We just need to know where to look.

Each year, our Global Foresight series identifies a new set of snow leopards. In this year’s edition, as in previous editions, this challenging task fell to the ’s younger staff, who are well-positioned to identify trends, events, technologies, and forces that their older colleagues might overlook. They scrutinized the world around them and came up with a list of underappreciated but potentially world-changing phenomena. 

In the years to come, keep an eye on these six snow leopards. 

When businesses are first movers on the battlefield

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, among the first responders were a conglomeration of cyber and tech companies of all sizes. These companies did critical work to ensure that Ukraine’s cyber defenses held up against an unprecedented onslaught of Russian cyberattacks. Combined with assistance from allied governments, such efforts helped keep the lights on in Ukraine. But the companies’ interventions amounted to entering a conflict of their own volition, without a state’s authorization or direction—which triggered profound geopolitical risks.

The private sector participating in conflict is nothing new; governments have contracted with private companies in war and peacetime for centuries. But three elements are new: First, cybersecurity companies have begun entering interstate conflicts without the authorization of or at least direction from states. Second, these companies effectively possess state-grade capabilities—and, with that, the ability to make world-changing decisions—but without the policy, legal, or risk frameworks states erect around such capabilities to constrain their use. Third, states, citizens, and businesses are increasingly dependent on these companies’ infrastructure and services in peacetime and for cyber defense in conflict. Microsoft recognized this in a June 2022 reflection on the company’s assistance to Ukraine, declaring that the technology sector has an “inevitable” role to play in the “cyber defense of nations.”

The risks of this kind of private-sector involvement in conflict are already emerging. Civil society has raised questions about whether cyber and tech companies constitute combatants under international humanitarian law, particularly where their capabilities intersect with state capabilities—as when, for example, private firms identify exploitable vulnerabilities (or “zero days”) in other companies’ software code. As states and others increasingly contest privately owned digital infrastructure, ideologically motivated cyberattacks (“hacktivism”) have also risen—creating heightened risks of retaliation. The whims of tech executives also have geopolitical consequence. In September 2022, for example, Elon Musk reportedly cut internet access in Ukraine provided via his Starlink satellite technology, disrupting a key Ukrainian counteroffensive. In response, a British member of parliament decried the “dangers of concentrated power in unregulated domains.”

Where these risks could amount to world-changing impact is during a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and both Taipei and Beijing are clearly paying attention. Musk’s reported decision to cut Ukraine’s internet access was one reason Taiwan set up its own satellite internet infrastructure. There is some evidence that the Chinese state also is learning lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine about the role of US cyber and tech companies as a source of advantage in conflict. This development might not be so concerning were it not for the significant business dependencies that Apple and other US tech giants have in China, which could muddy decision-making during any period of conflict. The clarity and unity of purpose seen in cyber companies’ efforts to help Ukraine cannot be guaranteed in the future.

This is an issue that the international security community must address through dialogue and policy development with the private sector. Goals should include firmer guardrails and improved accountability mechanisms—or outright deference to states as primary decision-makers. Such dialogue will prepare states and industry to jointly navigate future conflicts and collective preparedness without generating unintended consequences when the private sector jumps ahead of states. 

Leave, learn, return—and start a business?

Many countries have experienced migration as a driver of “brain drain”—a one-way outflow of human capital. But a more dynamic pattern is reshaping global talent flows in some parts of the world. A growing number of migrants who work or study overseas are returning to their home countries with new skills—a pattern known as “brain circulation”—or staying closely connected to their home countries and turning their global experiences into new opportunities there.

Brain drain refers to the loss that occurs when a country’s citizens, especially highly skilled and educated workers, pursue opportunities abroad. Host countries often gain productivity, tax revenue, and innovation—except when migrants are pushed into low-skilled work (such as when immigrants holding master’s degrees work at jobs requiring a high-school diploma), a phenomenon known as “brain waste.”

Another concept, “brain gain,” captures the positive effects of emigration for sending countries: The prospect of opportunities abroad motivates more people to pursue higher education, most of whom remain at home. Those who do leave often continue to contribute through remittances and stronger trade ties.

But these concepts overlook the circulation of talent that is quietly changing the geography of opportunity worldwide. “Brain circulation” first became visible in countries such as India and China, where engineers and entrepreneurs who had lived and worked in the United States returned and used their US career experience to start businesses at home.

What began as a modest trend in the early 2000s is accelerating as travel and digital connectivity become more accessible. The circulation of skilled, educated workers is now remaking national and regional economies. Studies show that returning immigrants tend to be more entrepreneurial and resilient than their peers and are significantly more likely to start businesses. Migrants return with expertise and global exposure they could not have acquired domestically.

Central and Eastern Europe illustrate how transformative this loop can be. After experiencing decades of outward migration, Central and Eastern European countries are now registering rising return flows. Romania, for example, has had three consecutive years of positive net migration driven by returning citizens. They launch startups, invest in local ecosystems, and open doors to new practices and global markets, sometimes with the support of government financing programs. Such ventures are helping power a regional boom. In 2024, startups in the region raised nearly €3.7 billion, a 56 percent increase from the previous year. Nearly half of that total—more than a billion euros—came from companies whose founders studied or worked abroad, or worked at big multinational companies.

At a time when many countries are grappling with aging populations, talent shortages, and relentless competition, this loop of leaving, learning, and returning is becoming a critical source of national advantage. Brain circulation offers a replicable model for countries that need to catalyze growth and sustain innovation. Countries that recognize this opportunity build policies and institutions that drive people, skills, and capital to move in loops, not lines, so that yesterday’s emigrants become tomorrow’s nation-builders. The future belongs to dynamic societies that treat mobility as a renewable resource, turning migration into a story of shared prosperity and, ultimately, into the backbone of a global innovation system that can respond to challenges and opportunities no country can tackle alone.

Uliana Certan is an assistant director for European engagement at the ’s Global Energy Center and Romania.

Big seaweed could be big business

In the waters off one-third of the world’s coastlines grows a powerhouse plant: kelp. Towering kelp forests capture twenty times more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than do land forests of equivalent size. They promise lower-cost and lower-carbon ways to feed the world’s population, and they protect coastlines from the effects of more powerful storms. As scientists and policymakers increasingly turn to nature-based solutions to take on climate change, these colorful stalks of algae may be the next big thing.

Kelp forests can remove one ton of carbon emissions from the atmosphere for somewhere between $20 and $85. To do the same with direct-air-capture machines costs $1,000 per ton. Not only is kelp an incredible carbon sink, it drives other forms of environmental conservation and protection. The stalks reduce the size of tidal waves by up to 60 percent, prevent soil erosion, and absorb agricultural runoff. Studies show that kelp supports the development of the biogenic aerosols that help clouds form, reducing the temperature of water, soil, and air. Kelp also is an ingredient in biodegradable biopolymers, which can replace petroleum-based plastics.

In the food and agriculture sectors, kelp is both a nutritional food source and a protective habitat for hundreds of plant and animal species, including commercial fish such as cod, crab, octopus, and lobster.

And it doesn’t stop at seafood: Sprinkling seaweed on cattle feed can reduce cows’ methane emissions by between 40 and 80 percent. Kelp can be processed into natural, liquid biostimulants for agriculture, which can reduce the need for artificial fertilizers that release greenhouse gases. These kelp-based treatments also could reduce the large amounts of water required by many high-value cash crops such as almonds, avocados, strawberries, and grapes.

Beyond the environment and agri-food industries, kelp generates health and cosmetic products, attractive tourist destinations for snorkeling, and critical supplies for indigenous communities.

Kelp, however, faces an uncertain future due to predators, pollution, and marine heatwaves induced by climate change. Efforts to regrow damaged kelp forests off the coast of California offer a prime example for other coastal governments. Scientists and conservationists are planting specific kelp varieties that grow three times faster and absorb double the amount of CO₂ compared with other kelp. When this kelp matures, by some calculations it could absorb as much CO₂ as the global aviation sector emits. Kelp could help the state meet its target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2045—five years sooner than the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

To help kelp survive in warmer oceans, scientists use remotely operated vehicles and motorized growing lattices, raising the kelp toward the water’s surface during the day to absorb sunlight and lowering it into deeper, more nutrient-rich water at night.

The effects of climate change on the world’s coral reefs have grabbed headlines. The United Nations Decade on Environmental Restoration has increased attention on coral-reef, mangrove, and seagrass restoration efforts. But so far, there has been limited funding focused specifically on kelp growth and management.

Global cooperation on kelp will be crucial for future climate efforts, as new research proves that oceanic carbon sinks are 15 percent larger than land sinks. But even in the absence of such coordination, expect continued momentum for work on kelp. Kelp and seaweed farming is the fastest-growing global aquaculture industry, increasing 6.2 percent per year over the last twenty years. Countries in Asia, particularly China and Indonesia, produce 98 percent of farmed seaweed by volume globally, but there is enormous potential for growth and applications in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. And with a $500 billion market, kelp has plenty of potential to combat climate change, mitigate the biodiversity crisis around the world, and develop a more profitable and sustainable “blue economy.”

Ginger Matchett is an assistant director for the GeoStrategy Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Are we going back to the bad old days?

In recent years, an alarming number of countries have withdrawn from or defied human rights treaties and humanitarian conventions. Global norms about how human beings should be treated were a key part of the international system that arose after World War II, including the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Specialists have said for years that this postwar system is under stress. But the consequences for individuals are underappreciated. If the postwar order was a bulwark against the horrors of the twentieth century, the idea that ordinary citizens should be protected from unrestrained state power was a load-bearing pillar. The weakening of that pillar is ominous and risks a future with fewer human rights than exist today. 

The retreat from human rights is happening at two levels: through actors exiting treaties, and through changes in the societal expectations that those treaties both reflect and reinforce.

Consider the developments of just this past year. In 2025, the United States, Israel, and Nicaragua withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council, reducing the reach and legitimacy of one of the few multilateral bodies tasked with universal monitoring of rights.

That same year, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Poland withdrew from the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, while Lithuania separately pulled out of the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. Proposals for other NATO members to take similar steps further highlight the erosion of norms against weapons that can indiscriminately harm civilians long after conflicts end. These shifts are coming as countries facing new security pressures increasingly prioritize military flexibility over humanitarian restrictions. The withdrawing states—all of which border Russia or Belarus—have cited the dangers they are confronting in the wake of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has been rife with human rights abuses. In light of the withdrawing countries’ statements, it seems unlikely that any would have withdrawn had Russia not invaded Ukraine—which underscores the snowball effect of diminishing postwar humanitarian norms, and why each violation matters.

Norms may be intangible, but after 1945 countries codified many of them into binding commitments in an effort to build a better world with such norms at its core. Once these norms are weakened, as appears to be occurring now, they may never recover. This diminishes international law, emboldens perpetrators of human rights violations and war crimes, fuels cycles of impunity, and leaves civilians increasingly vulnerable. The cumulative effect is a weakened global system of accountability at precisely the moment when conflicts and authoritarian forces are on the rise.

Sarah Wallace is a former program assistant for the GeoStrategy Initiative and Adrienne Arsht National Security Resilience Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Out of the dataset, out of mind

We know who we are because of our memories, our history, and our stories. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an important part of how people store information, as generative AI tools are woven into search engines, social media platforms, and everyday interfaces like virtual assistants. The data these generative AI tools draw on to answer our questions or summarize our emails shapes how people understand the world.

The current generation of AI, however, is built on Western-centric datasets that are disproportionately produced, curated, and governed in North America and Western Europe, largely in English. Knowledge that is oral, community-held, locally archived, or produced outside these systems is far less likely to be captured. Optimized for volume rather than nuance, these systems put cultures that fall outside dominant data flows at risk.

The phenomenon of cultural erasure can take two forms: omission, where cultures fail to appear entirely, and simplification, where complex traditions are reduced to stereotypes. The cases of small and developing states illustrate these risks most vividly. Much of the intangible heritage of the world’s island states, for instance, remains under-digitized, preserved instead through oral storytelling, music, ritual, and collective memory. When generative AI encounters such cultures, it often only reflects what can be easily retrieved from training data. For example, AI-generated media depicting “Caribbean culture” tends to reproduce a narrow canon of beaches, rum, and steelpan. Missing are the complexities: linguistic diversity and multi-ethnic histories that define the region’s melting-pot identity. Pre-AI search engines didn’t return a complete, nuanced picture of these small cultures either. But generative AI can process so much data so quickly that the speed and scale of the threat have changed. The kind of responses AI tools offer can also create the impression of a more definitive answer. Where search engines returned a page of links or a variety of pictures for the user to browse and evaluate, generative AI products offer a more finished-looking result: complete sentences and paragraphs, or a single composite image. For the people living in these smaller states, AI-driven “data colonialism” shapes how the world sees them and, potentially, how they see themselves.

If AI advances to a point where it becomes the default lens through which people encounter culture, then nations and groups underrepresented in AI training data risk losing authorship of their own stories. The version that survives may be the one defined by external markets. Indigenous groups, minority-language speakers, and marginalized communities around the world all face this threat.

But small island states can use their position at the United Nations and elsewhere to elevate concerns around cultural data representation and press for international standards, compelling actors who can shape the global AI ecosystem to take action. These nations can play a catalytic role in making cultural representation a priority for technology governance, even if the power to execute change lies elsewhere.

Preventing cultural erasure means embedding diverse heritage into datasets, creating frameworks and metrics that assess cultural harm through an interdisciplinary lens, and ensuring AI governance treats cultural erasure as seriously as information manipulation or digital privacy. The question is not just whether AI models are accurate, but also whether they reinforce or erode the cultural foundations communities rely on. As AI increasingly shapes what the world finds, learns, and imagines, we must confront a pressing question: If a culture isn’t in the dataset, can it survive the AI era?

Dominique Ramsawak is the associate director of communications at the ’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

Whether you want it to or not

The next tech disruption could be the human mind paired with cutting-edge neurotechnology. New kinds of neurotech create pathways for communications between the human brain and external devices, some implanted in the brain. Recent developments in neurotech that don’t require an implant—and could eventually even be portable—signal a future in which there could be ways to read someone’s thoughts, with or without their permission.

One such development is a semantic decoder that translates the brain’s electromagnetic waves into a continuous stream of text capturing what someone is thinking about, with varying degrees of precision. Currently, the decoder works with a trained model—a version of the large language models powering chatbots—using brain activity measured on a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. Earlier versions required a user to lie down in an MRI machine for the better part of a day to train the system. In 2025, researchers tested a version of the decoder that only requires an hour of training. Developments like these, coupled with investments expected to surpass four billion dollars in 2025, indicate the potential for additional advances in the field. And if neurotech follows the trajectory that computers did—the first computers took up an entire room; now billions of people carry one in their pocket—it’s possible there will be portable systems in the future.

While the idea of something invading your thoughts might be alarming, there are both positive and negative potential applications of this technology. Any patient with a medical condition that makes it difficult or impossible for them to speak—Parkinson’s disease, aphasia, the aftereffects of a stroke—could benefit. So could patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who find it difficult to speak about their trauma.

Ethical considerations must also be taken into account. While it’s hard to predict exactly how this technology will evolve, laws protecting neural data privacy will be needed. In November 2025, UNESCO adopted the first global ethical framework for neurotechnology, seeking to ensure that “neurotechnological innovation benefits those in need without compromising mental privacy.”

In 1992, the physicist and theologian Ian Barbour observed that all technological advances are multifaceted in nature, acting as a liberator, a threat, and an instrument of power. That framework will hold true for the neurotech transformations we’ll experience in the years ahead.