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Grim view of global future offered in intelligence report

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Thursday, April 8, 2021 11:14 AM
People wait in queues outside the office of the Chemists Association to demand necessary supply of the anti-viral drug Remdesivir, in Pune, India, Thursday, April 8, 2021. India is amid its worst pandemic surge, with over 100,000 cases in the past 24 hours. And experts concur that the worst is yet to come. Hospitals across the country, particularly in western Maharashtra state, are starting to get overwhelmed with patients. (AP Photo)
People paint red hearts marking the completion of the approximately 150,000 hearts being painted onto the National Covid Memorial Wall to commemorate all those who have died of coronavirus, on the Thames Embankment opposite the Houses of Parliament in London, Thursday, April 8, 2021. Bereaved families want the wall of painted hearts to remain a site of national commemoration and are asking the Prime Minister to help make the memorial permanent. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
FILE - In this April 7, 2021, file photo, Mobile Emergency Care Service (SAMU) workers carry an elderly COVID-19 patient to an ambulance in Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil. Nations around the world set new records Thursday, April 8, for COVID-19 deaths and new coronavirus infections, and the disease surged even in some countries that have kept the virus in check. Brazil became just the third country, after the U.S. and Peru, to report a 24-hour tally of COVID-19 deaths exceeding 4,000. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana, File)

U.S. intelligence officials are painting a dark picture of the world's future, writing in a report released Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic has deepened economic inequality, strained government resources and fanned nationalist sentiments.

Those assessments are included in a Global Trends report by the government's National Intelligence Council. The reports, produced every four years, are designed to help policymakers and citizens anticipate the economic, environmental, technological and demographic forces likely to shape the world through the next 20 years.

This year's report focuses heavily on the impact of the pandemic, calling it the “most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come.”

Nations in different parts of the world set new records on Thursday for COVID-19 deaths and new infections.

“COVID-19 has shaken long-held assumptions about resilience and adaptation and created new uncertainties about the economy, governance, geopolitics, and technology,” the report says.

The document finds cause for concern in virtually all aspects of life.

It warns, for instance, that the effects of climate change are likely to worsen the problem of food and water insecurity in poor countries and hasten global migration. Though health, education and household prosperity have made historic improvements in recent decades, that progress will be hard to sustain because of “headwinds” not only from the effects of the pandemic but also aging populations and “potentially slower economic growth.”

Advances in technology have the potential to address problems including climate change and disease, but can also provoke new tensions, the report says.

“State and nonstate rivals will vie for leadership and dominance in science and technology with potentially cascading risks and implications for economic, military, and societal security,” the report says.

The report also warns of eroding trust in government and institutions and of a “trust gap” between the general public and the better informed and educated parts of the population.

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Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

 

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