Impending technological advances will widen an adversary's attack plane over the next decade.
Visualizing what the future will hold and what new threat vectors could emerge is a task that
traditional planning mechanisms struggle to accomplish given the wide range of potential
issues. Understanding and preparing for the future operating environment is the basis of an
analytical method known as Threatcasting. It is a method that gives researchers a structured
way to envision and plan for risks ten years in the future. Threatcasting uses input from
social science technical research cultural history economics trends expert interviews and
even a little science fiction to recognize future threats and design potential futures. During
this human-centric process participants brainstorm what actions can be taken to identify
track disrupt mitigate and recover from the possible threats. Specifically groups explore
how to transform the future they desire into reality while avoiding an undesired future. The
Threatcasting method also exposes what events could happen that indicate the progression toward
an increasingly possible threat landscape. This book begins with an overview of the
Threatcasting method with examples and case studies to enhance the academic foundation. Along
with end-of-chapter exercises to enhance the reader's understanding of the concepts there is
also a full project where the reader can conduct a mock Threatcasting on the topic of the next
biological public health crisis. The second half of the book is designed as a practitioner's
handbook. It has three separate chapters (based on the general size of the Threatcasting group)
that walk the reader through how to apply the knowledge from Part I to conduct an actual
Threatcasting activity. This book will be useful for a wide audience (from student to
practitioner) and will hopefully promote new dialogues across communities and novel
developments in the area.
