An All-of-Society Approach to Existential Threats We Face Today
We face unprecedented threats to our survival – including increasingly sophisticated adversaries with deadly chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive weapons, cyberattacks, global warming, artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, deforestation, the decimation of animal species, and the list goes on. If we are to survive, an “all-of-society” response to these existential threats is urgently needed. These are the conclusions my colleagues Katharine Jennings, Susan Ehrlich, Caroline N. Broun, Kathryn H. Floyd, and Michael L. Buenger reach in an article to be published next month in The Court Manager (“Courts Have a Significant Role to Play in the Whole-of-Government Approach (WGA) to Our Safety and Security,” Winter 2019 - Vol. 34/4). The Problems of Complexity and Hyper-Specialization In his posthumously published 2018 book, Brief Answers to Big Questions , Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned physicist and cosmologist, who we quote in our article, wrote that