By the year 2020, China and India will be vying with the United States for global economic supremacy, the nation's top intelligence analysts predict, and al-Qaeda will have withered away - only to be replaced by smaller, more splintered but equally deadly groups of terrorists.

The National Intelligence Council issued its once-every-five-year look at the future of the globe Thursday, contrasting optimism about dramatic global economic growth with concern that the same cyberpathways fueling economic development are also hastening the spread of violent, radical Islam.

"It's going to be a very bumpy ride," council Vice Chairman David Gordon said.

Headquartered at the CIA (news - web sites) in Langley, Va., but independent of the spy agency, the council coordinates the production of intelligence reports that combine the views of all 15 of the nation's intelligence agencies. In 2002, the council, then with a different membership, concluded in a National Intelligence Estimate, now largely discredited, that Iraq (news - web sites) had weapons of mass destruction.

Rather than locking itself into a single prediction of what the world will look like in 2020, the council considered four hypothetical scenarios:

• A world dominated by Asian economic expansion;

• A world in which the United States shapes and organizes global change;

• The rise of a new Islamic Caliphate - an international Islamic authority capable of challenging Western norms and values;

• A "cycle of fear" scenario in which aggressive responses to terror threats lead to increasingly intrusive security measures, "possibly introducing an Orwellian world."

Much of the council's outlook for the world in 15 years is optimistic, however.

"What we tried to avoid is what you often get from the intelligence community, which is nothing but gloom and doom," council Chairman Robert Hutchings said.

The world economy will likely be 80% larger in 2020 than it was in 2000, and average income will be 50% higher. While the United States will retain its role as the world's dominant economy and military power, China and India, the world's two most populous countries, will see their clout grow substantially, the council predicts.

"In the same way that commentators refer to the 1900s as the 'American Century,' the 21st century may be seen as a time when Asia, led by China and India, comes into its own," the council writes in its report, Mapping the Global Future. "A combination of sustained high economic growth, expanding military capabilities, and large populations will be at the root of the expected rapid rise in economic and military power for both countries."

Along with that growth will come increasing dangers as China's and India's military power expands. The report cites the India-Pakistan conflict and tension between China and Taiwan as two areas where miscalculation could lead to costly wars. In general, the council says the risk of great-power conflict is lower than at any time in the past century, but that as China, India and other growing powers improve their weaponry, the world's most powerful nations may be increasingly tempted to engage in pre-emptive war.

Rapid growth and the ease of international travel and communication will make security threats much harder for U.S. intelligence to spot, the council warns.

The council, whose members have access to the most sensitive intelligence data, predicts that by 2020, al-Qaeda will be superseded by smaller but equally violent Islamic groups. The same information-technology boom contributing to growth in China and India will help spread radical Islamic ideology, the council warns, and "enable the terrorist threat to become increasingly decentralized."

The council deliberately timed the release of its report to come after the presidential election, and the group avoided implying approval or disapproval of any current U.S. policy. The council agrees with the Bush administration that democracy will likely spread in "key Middle Eastern countries" now under repressive regimes. But the report warns that the advance of democracy in Southeast Asia and some former Soviet states could be "partially reversed."


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Hm, these are all possibilities, but I can just as well see both India and China's economies collapsing. Heh, it'll be funny to look back at this in 2020 and see how much they've got right.

Prediction: by 2020 I will be 39.

That is pretty much the current consensus, not exactly going out on a limb.

But history rarely runs according to plan so we'll see.

I'll be 35. Damn.


Assuming neither of us dies before that date.

Have you heard of these guys before? I wonder how well they're predictions went in 1985.

I bet you they never saw 9/11 coming.

Not exactly hard science to regurgitate what pretty much everyone agrees is a possibility, is it?

I"d love to see their report from 1990 predicting what life would be like in 2005.

Damn, you guys are old.

I'll be 34.

Damn...


Btw, when I first saw your avatar, I thought that it was the shadow of a huge dinosaur's footprint about to crush the little boy.

Then I saw that it was something else.

well it depends ...

I've always been told that Nostradamus predicted that at the end of the 20th century, a missile will be launched from Saudi Area and hit a city such as newyork in the west .... ofcourse, the matter is subject to interpretation but when i saw the 9/11 thing, my mind quickly turned to that ...

i heard this sometime in the 80s

the india thing does not surprise me at all ...

None of the economic predictions suprises me, how could they?


In a way, this is not telling me anything new at all!


China already is the second largest economy in the world with $6T+, and India is 4th with $3T+, and about to pass Japan.


And they still have a long way to go. 1.1 and 1.3B each, that's a lot of potential...

Damn...

D'OH!

China and India are already economic giants because of their huge size. India will never be a world power, though, unless it stomps Pakistan out of existence, starts building an empire and wins in WWIII. Sorry, but they can't even get clean drinking water right, and the caste system won't exactly help them, so how could they juggle being a world power?

China will definitely become a world power, though. We keep pumping them with cash, and with the mammoth budget surplus they have, they have a nice chest of booty they can use for empire-building wars (and also attacking us and winning, weakening our position as a hyperpower). Wait until they start attacking southeast Asia, Taiwan and Mongolia. You can say Mongolia has nothing, but it would be a stepping-stone to Siberia, which has a lot of untapped natural resources.

Prediction: by 2020 I will be 29.

You're 14?!

I feel so stupid.

i don't mean to ruin your magical prophetic story baba, but nostradamus published his 'prophecies' in 1555, 10 years before the first american city was even founded...
america was still a wilderness at that time.

This is the "prophecy" baba is referring to:

At forty-five degrees, the sky will burn,
Fire approaches the great new city,
Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up,
When they want to have verification from the Normans.

Not exactly very telling.

Nothing about oil running out, or about fresh water running out? That will throw a monkey wrench into their pretty little economic computer models.

wait krem, if u look carefully, u will see the letters that comprise 'world trade center' secretely embedded within the verse







nostradamus predicted it after all!!!!

Do youy believe in any of his prophecies Darth?

nope,

i think that any prophecies = bullshit

^^^Really? Why? Because sometimes they are alittle creeepy bc people have said some of them have come true

I don't know what to believe

well for one thing, most of them are really vague, so that u can easily associate them with a lot of things.

and 2:
when u make a hundred prophecies, a couple of them are bound to happen., just by sheer luck. people will be shocked and say "wow, he predicted this would happen".

well, what about the other 96 things that didn't happen, huh ??????????!!!!!!!!!!!

Nostadamus had significant foresight into the way society and culture would change though and his predictions accomodated for the shifts in life during peroids of time.

Anyway, Its not exaclty a groundbreaking discovery that China and India will become economic giants, but the model of growth for these countries is a bit ambitious. That said, both countries have VAST populations which are definately going to hamper their growth.

Far more intersting is the tiger economies of south east asia, and more notably as mentioned in Newsweek and other news publications - the emergence of the E.U as a superpower. They said that in a few decades the E.U would overtake America as the top superpower in the world.

That is juvenile.

If stomping out another country or people is a requirement, Hitler and Stalin's countries would be the greatest nations on earth in the history of the world since they stomped out over 10 million and 26 million people respectively.

BTW there have been massive changes in India for the best in the last 15 years and are continuing. There is a very large middle class in India and growing leaps and bounds. The TV contracts for showing India Cricket games are reaching NFL levels.

It is still imperfect, corrupt and has a lot of problems. But the change is inevitable and the pace has really picked up thankfully due to greedy stockholders and their companies.

meh .. i dont care for anything nostro boy had to say ... i was just answering box that it wasn't as surprising to me personally ... hey .. i heard the story 10 years before it happened remember!?