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Global Trends-2040: The US and China will influence global dynamics, forcing other states to accept âstarker choicesâ. Reuters
Vappala Balachandran
Former Special Secy, Cabinet Secretariat
Global Trends-2040, released by the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on April 8, is the seventh in the series starting with the first report in 1997 which was a 15-year global strategic security projection till 2010.
In 1996, the US government asked its civilian intelligence and analysis body, the National Intelligence Council (NIC), to conduct periodical studies on the emerging global trends that might affect its strategic security. This was in the background of a smug feeling that had emerged even within its intelligence community that the role of the US as the supreme global leader was unchallenged after the end of the Cold War with the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.