The COVID-19 Pandemic: Gray Rhinos, Complexity, Prediction, and National Security

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has seriously challenged the security of a number of countries world-wide. It has also challenged efforts to conceptualize and therefore analyze its occurrence, course, and effects. I argue that the concept of the Gray Rhino, a rare, impactful event that has detectable signals, is the best framework for anticipating, understanding, and mitigating the pandemic and similar Gray Rhino threats. Because Gray Rhinos are rare, they challenge traditional concepts of prediction and this paper will also explore what prediction can usefully mean in the context of Gray Rhino events. Properly conceptualizing pandemics as Gray Rhinos is important because COVID-19 will undoubtedly not be the last pandemic the world, and the U.S., will face. It is even more important to have a conceptual and analytical framework for Gray Rhino events in general because there are other systemic shocks (natural disasters, political upheavals, economic crises, major terrorist attacks) that are equally rare, impactful, and detectable, and that have similar social, economic, and political effects. Modeling the complexity of the systems that produce and are impacted by Gray Rhinos is also essential;the immediate effects of a Gray Rhino can often be mitigated (e.g. increased production of equipment and vaccines, economic aid) but the more pernicious effects ripple throughout the system, sometimes for years. An analytical framework for detecting Gray Rhinos needs to be developed and sustained so that the nation can plan against, anticipate, and mitigate in order to enhance the nation's durability. This paper outlines an analytical framework necessary to accomplish this and provides recommendations for how such a system could be sustained as a government/academic/private sector consortium. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.