Rockefeller Foundation report foresaw a pandemic 10 years ago

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Pandemic, coronavirus, global self-isolation of countries, economic crisis, everything that is happening now is described with amazing accuracy in the report of the Rockefeller Foundation published in May 2010. The title of this report was "Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development."

It is interesting, first of all, as a predicted version of the further development of events. In the report, 2012 was taken as the starting point for the epidemic, but it began in 2020, therefore, all predicted events must also be shifted by a difference of 8 years.

The document was prepared by the experts of the fund together with one of the leading consulting companies in the world Global Business Network. The report describes 4 scenarios for the development of world events in the near future. Of these 4 scenarios for the near future, one is incredibly accurate describing what is happening in the world now. This scenario described the hypothetical likelihood of a global pandemic.

Scenarios for the future of technology and international development

In 2012, a pandemic broke out that the world had been expecting for years. Unlike the 2009 H1N1 virus, this new flu strain has become extremely contagious and deadly. Even in the most prepared countries for a pandemic, the virus spread rapidly, affecting almost 20 percent of the world's population and killing 8 million people in just seven months …

The pandemic has also had a fatal impact on the economy, with international mobility of people and goods reduced to near zero, weakening industries such as tourism and disrupting global supply chains. Even within countries, normally noisy shops and office buildings were deserted and remained so for months - without employees and customers.

The pandemic has swept the planet, although a disproportionate number of people have died primarily in Africa, Southeast Asia and Central America, where the virus has spread like wildfire due to a lack of official containment protocols.

But even in developed countries, stopping the spread of the virus has become a challenge. The original policy of the United States of initially simply advising citizens not to fly proved deadly as they did not follow the advice and accelerated the spread of the virus not only in the United States but also beyond.

Nevertheless, there were countries where things were much better. This is primarily about China. The Chinese government's swift and tough imposition of strict quarantines for all citizens, as well as the almost instantaneous and hermetic closure of borders, saved millions of lives, stopping the spread of the virus much faster and earlier than in other countries, and then contributed to the country's faster recovery from the pandemic.

The Chinese government has not been the only one to go to extreme measures to protect its citizens from the risk of infection. During the pandemic, national leaders around the world have strengthened their powers of power by imposing a host of restrictions and new rules - from the mandatory wearing of face masks to checking body temperature at the entrances to public places such as train stations and supermarkets.

Even after the pandemic subsided, such authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities did not soften and even intensified. The reason for the widespread strengthening of control by the authorities was protection from future troubles and global problems - from viral pandemics and transnational terrorism to environmental crises and growing poverty and inequality.

Initially, this model of a more controlled world received widespread acceptance and even approval. Citizens willingly gave away some of their sovereignty and privacy to increasingly paternalistic states in exchange for greater security and stability for themselves.

Moreover, citizens turned out to be more tolerant and even impatient in terms of strengthening control and supervision, and national leaders had more opportunities to restore order by the methods and in the way they saw fit.

In developed countries, heightened surveillance took many forms: for example, biometric identifiers for all citizens and tighter regulation of key industries, the stability of which was considered vital to national interests.

In many developed countries, compulsory agreement and approval of a set of new rules and agreements has slowly but steadily restored both order and, more importantly, economic growth.

However, in developing countries, the story turned out to be much more variable. Strengthening the authority of the authorities here took different forms in different countries and depended on the capabilities and charisma of their leaders.

In countries with strong and thoughtful leaders, the economic status of citizens and the quality of life have improved. But in countries where the leadership sought exclusively to increase their own power, and the elites turned out to be irresponsible and used the available opportunities and increased power to realize their own interests at the expense of the rest of the citizens, the situation worsened, or even ended in tragedy.

In addition to the above, other problems have arisen, including a sharp increase in nationalism. A strict technology regulation system, in fact, hindered innovation, on the one hand, keeping the already high costs at the proper level, and on the other hand, holding back the introduction of new inventions. As a result, a situation arose in which developing countries began to receive from developed countries only those technologies that were considered "best" for them. In the meantime, countries with more resources and better capabilities have begun to innovate within their own countries to fill gaps on their own.

Meanwhile, in developed countries, the strengthening of control and supervision by the authorities led to a slowdown in the field of entrepreneurial activity. This is partly because governments have begun to intervene in development and advise academics and businesses on the lines of research they need to pursue. In this case, the main selection criteria were either profitable (for example, the development of a product needed by the market) or the so-called right rates (for example, fundamental research). Riskier or more innovative research has found itself in an unenviable position and has been largely halted. At the same time, the research itself was carried out either at the expense of states, where budgets allowed it, or at the expense of global corporations, which made it possible to achieve significant success, but all the fruits of labor - intellectual property obtained as a result - were under strict national or corporate protection. …

Russia and India have introduced extremely stringent internal standards for the control and certification of encryption-related products and their suppliers - a category that really meant all IT innovation. The US and the EU, in turn, have fought back by introducing their own national standards, disrupting the development and diffusion of technology around the world.

In developing countries, acting in the name of their own national interests has often come to mean finding practical alliances that align with those interests, be it gaining access to the right resources or uniting to achieve economic growth. In South America and Africa, regional and sub-regional alliances have become more structured. Kenya has doubled its trade with South and East Africa as partnership agreements were concluded with the states there. China's investment in Africa has grown even more, with agreements reached with local authorities who find it profitable to gain new jobs and infrastructure in exchange for access to basic mineral resources or food exports. Interstate relations have been reduced mainly to cooperation in the field of security.

By 2025, people seem to have grown tired of such powerful control from above and of allowing leaders and authorities to make choices for them. Wherever national interests clashed with the interests of individual citizens, conflicts began to arise. At first, a single rebuff to pressure from above became more organized and coordinated, as disgruntled youth and people who saw how their social status and opportunities eluded them (this was more true of developing countries) provoked civil unrest themselves.

In 2026, protesters in Nigeria toppled the government after fed up with entrenched nepotism and corruption. Even those who liked the greater stability and predictability of this world began to feel embarrassed and embarrassed by the many restrictions, rigid rules and the strictness of national norms. It was felt that sooner or later something would inevitably disrupt the order that the governments of most countries of the world had so zealously established …

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