FSG Signals: What are we missing?

So, what are we missing? As scenario planners it’s our job to rigorously imagine unexpected trends and events, wild cards, and black swans – especially at a time overburdened with turbulence and uncertainty. In this latest “Signals” blog we’ve chosen a limited and eclectic selection of topics that present risks or challenges to the US (and the world). We’re interested, in particular, in issues not widely considered or discussed. See what you think. As always, we welcome readers’ comments. 

Looser Nukes

The term “loose nukes” was coined in 1991 by Ash Carter, a future US Secretary of Defense.  Carter was a member of a research team raising the alarm about the casual security around the nuclear arsenal of the former Soviet Union. At the time there was active worry that those weapons would fall into the hands of rogue states. Or the hands of individuals unaffiliated with any state at all.

Carter became an essential member of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. The CTRP was an outgrowth of the Nunn-Lugar Act of 1992, a bi-partisan effort to secure and in some cases dismantle nukes—and bioweapons—formerly the property of the Soviet Union.

Now, a generation later UK Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakinv argues that we have entered “a third nuclear age.” Radakinv describes it as “multiple and concurrent dilemmas, proliferating nuclear and disruptive technologies, and the almost total absence of the security architectures that went before.”

For decades the prospect of using nuclear weapons was so horrific that no one dared. Perhaps now the world has grown so accustomed to them, and so far removed from Hiroshima, that the threat is felt less acutely.

The US Department of Defense recently asked for ideas for chopping up to 75 percent of the budget for programs that police nukes and bioweapons. Britain intends to invest £15 billion in “renewing” its nuclear arsenal. China is racing to catch up to the United States and Russia. The latter mutters aloud about using tactical nuclear weapons to end the stalemate in Ukraine.

Mark Lynas, an expert on climate change, observed recently that nuclear weapons are the greater threat to life on earth. Unlike climate change, says Lynas, “there’s no adaptation options for nuclear war.”

One use would change everything. Permanently.

China Is Island-Hopping

As the fate of Taiwan hangs in the balance, China is pushing further into the Pacific – into an American vacuum.

In May of 2023, the Solomon Islands, liberated by US Marines at great cost in 1943, signed “a deal on police cooperation as part of an upgrade of their relations to a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’” with Beijing. 

The US response? Biden canceled a trip to the region (over a debt ceiling fight at home) weeks later.

In February of 2025, China signed a set of deals with the Cook Islands, which use the New Zealand dollar and carry New Zealand passports, “covering infrastructure, tourism, technology and … deep-sea mineral exploration.” A shocked New Zealand suspended its own longstanding financial support for the Islands. 

Late in the same month, “a task group [of three Chinese warships] sailed deep into the Tasman Sea… [between] Australia and New Zealand. As the warships fired live rounds and caused commercial jetliners to divert, alarm rippled through the corridors of power in Australia and New Zealand.”

According to CSIS, “These actions [give the] unmistakable message to Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands: The United States is far away and uninterested; China is a neighbor who offers great benefits to its friends, so long as you don’t cross it.” 

In May 2025, China hosted a meeting with 11 Pacific island nations “to extend its influence and expand economic ties at a time when the United States is showing very little interest in this region… increasingly…many of those countries are more aligned on China on things like investment, infrastructure, trade and even security assistance.”

Until late May, the U.S. had no permanent ambassadors in place in any of these countries – not even in Beijing. Australia-US talks on a nuclear submarine deal were canceled when Trump left the Canada G7 early. 

Goodbye Pacific?

The Next Financial Crisis?

“The conclusion of one [financial] crisis begins the countdown to the next,” notes The Economist magazine in its recent survey of innovations shaping Wall Street. Which raises the questions:  How close are we to the next crisis? And what could be the trigger? It’s time to think beyond a recession, a crypto crash or a bond market freak-out. 

Technology, new non-bank players, restless asset pools, changing rules, and rising risk appetites are converging in both innovative and potentially destabilizing ways. A lot could go wrong, as new financial instruments and interdependencies appear that regulators don’t quite know what to do with, and at a time when financial regulation itself is in flux, perhaps dangerously so.  

Case in point: the rise in private-credit lending. Private credit provides loans and other credit instruments to corporate clients. It’s now a huge market outside of the traditional banking system, with up to $1.5 trillion in assets. The big names in private credit are Blackstone and Apollo. 

A lot could go wrong. Private credit’s biggest customer base is the middle market, the sector most vulnerable to an economic downturn and thus at risk of not being able to repay loans. But there’s significant systemic risk, too. While separate from commercial banks, private credit often share clients with banks and actually borrow funds from banks to lend to customers. Banks could get dragged into a private lending crisis as well. 

In a report last year, the International Monetary Fund argued strongly for “a more proactive supervisory and regulatory approach” to private credit. Worrisomely, there’s no evidence of that happening in the US. 

Could the Gulf Stream Shut Down?

Like as early as 2025 or 2030?  Few scientists find that plausible, but the latest research suggests that a collapse in ocean circulation is happening even faster than previously feared. 

First the science: The Gulf Stream keeps Europe’s climate milder than Canada’s by bringing warm tropical water to Europe’s North Atlantic coast. When it reaches far northern latitudes, the Gulf Stream’s warm saltwater cools, sinks, and flows back south as part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). If the AMOC’s warm saltwater were diluted by enough fresh water – or if the cold winters in the North Atlantic became too mild – the water would no longer sink, and the AMOC would stop bringing warm water to Europe’s shores. 

Winters could turn Arctic, with temperatures in Great Britain dropping to -20°F and -60°F in Scandinavia. Summers would remain governed by continental heating, leading to record-hot, dry summers and Arctic-deep freezes in winter. Rainfall extremes would worsen, stressing both natural ecosystems and human systems. The Eastern US and Canada would experience similar climatic shifts and rising sea levels due to the stalled Gulf Stream. We’re talking about impacts far worse than seasonal flooding in Miami.

The AMOC is already slowing. Greenland is shedding 30 million tons of fresh water per hour into the North Atlantic, roughly six times the rate of loss in the 1980s and increasing every year. The early-2000s temperature “hiatus” in the Northern Hemisphere ended around 2015, and winter weather in the North Atlantic is becoming milder. 

The Beaufort Gyre, a vast circulating mass of fresh water in the Arctic Ocean, which historically flushed into the North Atlantic every 5-10 years, has not flushed in over 20 years and has significantly increased in volume. An overdue flushing of this fresh water could happen at any time and lead to a complete shutdown of the AMOC. Researchers are also tracking accelerated melting in Antarctica, the world’s largest repository of ice. 

Over the last 30 years, global-mean temperature projections by climate models have tracked the actual warming trend surprisingly well. However, these models have underestimated how fast and hard the Earth’s feedback systems and extremes have responded. Heatwaves, heavy downpours, and coastal flooding are superlinear phenomena, meaning a small increase in temperature can lead to much bigger spikes in intensity or frequency. The collapse of the AMOC is a tipping point event that can occur due to just such a spike arriving ahead of schedule.

Loving the National Parks to Death

The beauty of US national parks may be their doom.  US national parks hosted 331 million visitors in 2024, the most ever.  Despite their wide-open spaces, the nation’s natural treasures are faced with overcrowding.

Outdoor recreation quickly rebounded from the pandemic as a popular alternative to the health risks of other tourist destinations.  Social media opened the floodgates on the natural beauty of U.S. national parks and provided an irresistible opportunity not just to experience that beauty but to be seen experiencing it.  For those seeking adventure, improved backcountry gear, concierge guides, satellite technology, and endless online planning resources bring within reach remote locations that were once only accessible to the most experienced explorers.

Although national parks can resemble theme parks, safety is a constant concern where unprepared or careless visitors are prone to animal encounters, dehydration, getting lost, exposure, or serious injury.  Satellite technology, while saving lives, is stressing search-and-rescue organizations (often volunteers) as distress calls increase.

Casual visitors to the outdoors also often do not understand or practice Leave No Trace principles designed to allow enjoying natural places while minimizing impact to them. Trash, human waste, vegetation destruction, and wildlife disruption are becoming acute in national parks.  

Conditions to counteract these trends and impacts are not likely to be found soon.  The National Park Service, the stewards intermediating the tension between park accessibility and protection, stands to be slashed by almost 40% in budget proposals. Although residents of communities near national parks are beginning to speak out against overtourism, the economic benefits from outdoor recreation are positioned to fuel, not cool continued growth. In 2023 the outdoor recreation economy contributed more to the U.S. economy than farming, mining, or utilities.  

Without significant intervention, our national parks are poised to suffer the tragedy of the commons and be loved to death.

FSG’s contributors  to this piece are Kevin McDermott (loose nukes), Patrick Marren (China island hopping), Peter Kennedy (financial crisis), Robert Avila (Gulf Stream threats) and Joe DuFresne (national parks risks).