Banning Garrett, Ph.D.

Will the global future be dominated by conflict and fragmentation or by cooperation and transformation?  We are at an inflection point in history.  The global future seems more uncertain — with more uncertainties — than at any time since WWII.  The outcomes of two major wars, rising geopolitical rivalry, and domestic political dynamics could lead to a profound and long-term shift to a more fragmented and conflictual world.  Climate change is contributing to increasingly severe natural disasters and the need for greater international cooperation as well as greatly enhanced efforts to mitigate emissions while adapting to a warmer world.  But achieving the necessary level of cooperation in time is far from certain.  The accelerating pace of technological change, led by AI, holds great promise of new scientific discoveries and hastening transformation to a more sustainable and prosperous global future.  But technology also presents potentially grave dangers to society and international order through misuse or lack of control.

Banning Garrett a strategic thinker, writer, keynote speaker, and entrepreneur with more than four decades of experience in national security, US-China relations, and global trends.  He currently focuses on the impact of exponential technologies and their intersection with long-term global trends, including climate change, geopolitics, and urbanization. Garrett has consulted to the World Bank, the United Nations, and the US government as well as to private business.  He has written for nearly three dozen journals and media outlets and has been interviewed by numerous international broadcast and print media.  Garrett has made presentations to think tanks, business groups, international conferences, UN organizations, and governments in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe as well as in the United States.  He is Vice-Chair of Global Urban Development, Senior Adviser to Global Foresight Strategies, Senior Fellow at the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils, and Singularity University Expert.  Garrett was Director of the Atlantic Council’s Asia Program and founding director of the Council’s Strategic Foresight Initiative.  He created and led the Council program on the implications of emerging technologies and its Urban World 2030 program. He established and subsequently led the Council’s cooperation with the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in production of the NIC unclassified, quadrennial long-term global trends assessments, including Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (2008) and Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds (2012).  He was also a contributor to the NIC’s Global Trends: Paradox of Progress (2017).

Garrett has worked on US-China relations since the 1970s.  Besides writing and speaking about US-China relations, he consulted to the US Government and conducted an informal strategic dialogue between China and the US from 1981-2002 before joining the Atlantic Council.  Garrett created and directed the Atlantic Council US-China joint assessment of long-term global trends project and was co-author of the project’s 2013 report, China-US Cooperation: Key to Global Future. He was director of the Asia Society project that produced the 2009 report A Roadmap for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Change, of which he was co-author. He is the co-author of War and Peace: The Views from Moscow and Beijing (1984) and was the co-founder and CEO Internews international news service and the Internews International Bulletin (1971-80). Garrett has made more than sixty trips to China since 1981 for consultations with Chinese officials and analysts.  He also has made numerous similar visits to Russia, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea and he traveled with the National Intelligence Council on more than a dozen trips to most of the G-20 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe for global trends consultations. Garrett received his BA in the History of Social Thought and Institutions from Stanford University and his PhD in Politics from Brandeis University. He can be reached at: banninggarrett@gmail.com

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