There is something fundamentally breaking right now in how the world organises itself. The overarching narrative is one of dramatic collapse, but these collapses are the result of abandonment of global rules-based order by actors who are powerful enough to walk away and remake the world to their advantages. Frameworks we have used in the past are being broken faster than we can make new ones. For every organisation operating in this rapidly shifting context, there is a need for lenses and language to process the paradigm shifts we are currently undergoing. The 10F Consortium maps the shifts emerging from this transformation and the capabilities needed to navigate it.

For organisations navigating systemic change—whether NGOs, corporations, government agencies, multilaterals or philanthropies— being able to see broader patterns above the noise of constant norm breaking and spectacle matters in immediate ways. Funding mechanisms fragment as geopolitical competition drives financial systems toward incompatibility. Partnerships span regulatory regimes that shift unpredictably. Sources of critical information have become unreliable narrators at best. Locally-focused organisations find themselves affected as global fragmentation rapidly cascades into their communities.

These immediate pressures reflect something deeper than headline narratives suggest. It's not simply multipolarity replacing unipolarity, or a clash between competing models of capitalism and governance, or even a struggle between competing theories of international relations. What distinguishes the current moment is that powerful actors are intentionally and strategically dissolving the shared frameworks they once upheld and this dissolution is spreading like contagion.

When nations abandon norms around transparency, alliance commitments or institutional cooperation, it doesn’t just create bilateral rifts. There are now new rules and permission structures that cascade through imitation. When powerful actors break norms without consequence, others face pressure to follow. Those who don't must find alternative positions or fall behind. The concept of universal rules embodied in an agreed multilateral structure— acknowledged but certainly not universally adhered to in the post- War era—becomes untenable, not because alternatives prove superior, but because maintaining the pretence while others drop it imposes asymmetric costs. Few are pretending to follow the old rules anymore, but new rules and norms are not yet established or understood. 

This transformation is an active deconstruction of shared assumptions about international order, with viral properties. It is not a passive drift toward new arrangements due to weakening of key powers or a few key agreements. What's different now is the simultaneous cascade of norm violations across multiple interconnected systems, creating a compounding effect where disorder in one domain enables and accelerates disorder in others. 

The Shared Fiction and Its Collapse

For decades, global leaders operated under the shared fiction that everyone was playing the same game with clear rules that wouldn't change. The narrative wasn't entirely false—just incomplete. For many countries, the "one game" of a multilateral system was never their game, but maintaining the illusion often offered more benefits than openly challenging it. The asymmetries were acknowledged privately while publicly upholding the fiction of a rules-based order. The post Cold War order did create unprecedented integration across trade, technology, security and governance, but it also required wilful self-delusion about whose rules were being followed and who benefited most.

We are shifting from one game to many games. Where previously leaders, companies and organisations navigated a single global system with recognised rules and institutions, they now simultaneously operate across multiple incompatible arrangements with varying degrees of interoperability. The rules are not only unclear, but change unpredictably, strategically and situationally. To play at all means playing several games at once. Those who can only play one game find themselves trapped in someone else's. These “many games” increasingly require on-the-fly translation between incompatible systems, while shapeshifting around rapidly changing needs and constant cognitive arbitrage. In this new order, strategic advantage accrues to those who can process complexity where others cannot—that is, those with the resources, networks and positional power to shape which games matter, who can rewrite the rules midplay and then determine who gets a seat at the table. 

The Mechanism: Accelerating Norm Cascades

What we're witnessing isn't random chaos, but systematic reorganisation driven by the strategic choices of actors powerful enough to redefine acceptable behaviour. These cascades are uneven across systems and time; some corridors remain open and reliable even as others gate or fail. China restricts economic data that was previously public. Russia exits post-Cold War coexistence with Western-led institutions. The United States withdraws from climate agreements and drastically reduces global aid programmes. Major digital platforms engineer opacity into their systems. The AI industry devalues human labour and deteriorates information quality while exponentially increasing quantity. Dark markets underpin huge financial flows while avoiding regulatory scrutiny. Countries turn deportation and detention into a revenue source. Voters swing wildly among newly emerging political movements. Each action signals that old constraints no longer bind.

The cascade accelerates through three dynamics. First, early defection reveals information asymmetries—knowing the rules no longer hold is itself a strategic advantage. Second, maintaining old norms while competitors abandon them imposes costs without reciprocal benefit. Third, the current façade of universal rules becomes obvious, which further weakens the institutions that continue to enforce them.

This isn't simply moral collapse—it's strategic adaptation to changed circumstances. The actors changing norms aren't necessarily wrong that transparency, multilateralism and integration carried hidden costs and unequal burdens. But now, their strategic choices fragment systems that many others still depend on, defend, or must recreate, causing cascading disruptions across multiple systems and sectors.

Four Meta-Patterns of Transformation

Beneath the noise, we see four fundamental shifts configuring this transformation:

‣ Integration gives way to fragmentation of interfaces in trade, payments, data/identity, mobility and energy as unified systems splinter into incompatible arrangements.

‣ Trust-based relationships become transactional exchanges, with every interaction negotiated afresh.

‣ Efficiency optimisation yields to resilience building, accepting higher costs for reduced dependency. Who absorbs losses—public backstops vs households/firms—becomes decisive.

‣ Transparency norms collapse into strategic opacity, with information itself being weaponised.

Fragmentation, transaction, opacity and resilience aren't separate trends—they form a reinforcing loop. Navigating multiple systems requires deal-by-deal flexibility. Flexibility requires discretion about who you're dealing with and on what terms. Discretion breeds distrust, which demands resilience because you can't rely on what you can't verify. Together they describe a world reorganising from interoperable to incompatible, from open to concealed, from cooperative to competitive. 

Three Essential Capabilities for Navigation

These meta-patterns demand new organisational capabilities. Traditional strategic planning assumed stable systems with predictable rules. Now, organisations must develop three interconnected capabilities to navigate permanent multiplicity:

Connected Sovereignty means achieving strategic autonomy through selective interdependence—being self-sufficient enough to survive disruption while remaining attractive enough to secure essential partnerships. Corridor states (geographic intermediaries, trading hubs, and neutral clearing houses) like Singapore, the UAE, and Switzerland increasingly rely on this model by collaborating with everyone, but maintaining the ability to operate without outside support. Qatar's navigation between regional rivals, India's protocolbased alternative to platform dependence, and Vietnam's balance between manufacturing blocs all demonstrate variations of the same principle. This isn't isolation but calibrated engagement, knowing when to connect and when to detach. It gives rise to fewer long-term “special relationships” and more of what we call “Strategic Situationships,” deliberately undefined partnerships that maintain strategic ambiguity about depth, duration and exclusivity.

Businesses mirror this logic: fragmenting supply chains, duplicating infrastructure and maintaining parallel compliance systems—not for efficiency but for optionality. What was once optimised for a single global system is being expensively reengineered for strategic flexibility, trading deep integration for calibrated, reversible connections across incompatible arrangements.

Cognitive Arbitrage emerges when complexity overwhelms most actors but becomes an advantage for those who can process it. As governments cultivate multiple incompatible realities for disparate populations and corporations maintain parallel narratives for individual stakeholders, those who can navigate these contradictions without requiring resolution gain decisive advantage. It's not about understanding everything, but about functioning effectively while others are paralysed by paradox. This requires investment in an ability to track and remain fluent in multiple system cultures at the same time, even when resources are already stretched thin.

Corridor Capabilities reflect the reality that official channels increasingly serve as theatre while actual operations flow through ad hoc parallel systems—some grey, some underground, some simply alternative. Organisations develop presence in both visible formal structures and invisible informal networks, maintaining access to multiple pathways simultaneously. When front doors close, side hatches and back channels determine who continues operating.

These capabilities reinforce each other: sovereignty enables a choice of corridors, cognitive arbitrage reveals which corridors matter and corridor access provides the operational flexibility sovereignty requires. Organisations with all three capabilities can navigate transformation; those lacking any of the three find themselves increasingly constrained. 

Ten Forecasts Mapping the Transformation

These ten Forecasts represent the domains where norm cascades are most visible, system-level changes are most consequential and where the transition from "one game to many games" is most clearly manifesting.

Information & Governance:

‣ F01: From Agreed Transparency to Engineered Opacity examines how governments and sophisticated actors deliberately engineer information asymmetries for competitive advantage

‣ F02: From Political Spectrum to Ideological Fog shows traditional categories dissolving into algorithmically-driven contradictions

‣ F03: From Digital Empathy to Localised Solidarity tracks the erosion of universal cooperation toward localised, identity-based priorities

Relationships & Systems:

‣ F04: From Special Relationships to Strategic Situationships documents stable alliances fracturing into fluid, transactional partnerships

‣ F05: From Collective Climate Ambition to Fragmented Adaptation maps the shift from unified climate mitigation toward isolated resilience strategies

‣ F06: From Open Society to Tactical Shape-shifting traces formal civic participation declining as informal arrangements become primary

‣ F07: From Selective Migration to People as Asset Class reveals mobility transforming from humanitarian concern into strategic resource competition

Strategic Assets & Resources:

‣ F08: From Energy Hegemony to Power Plurality captures the fragmentation of energy dominance without clear winners emerging

‣ F09: From Dollar Dominance to Money Unbundled anticipates monetary systems proliferating across incompatible digital and state architectures

‣ F10: From Technology Convergence to Sovereign Systems documents tech ecosystems diverging into mutually unintelligible parallel systems 

The AREAS Framework: Strategic Positions in Transformation

Understanding these shifts requires abandoning fixed categories of ally/adversary, developed/developing, East/West. The old frameworks —Global North/Global South, G-somethings, OECD, BRICs—impose developmental or moral hierarchies that obscure how power actually operates in fragmented systems. The AREAS framework developed by the 10F team maps five strategic positions actors take toward each transformation, recognising that positioning varies by domain rather than following from identity. Identity tells you who actors are. AREAS tells you what they're doing about it.

‣ ARCHITECTING actors shaping transformation itself Examples: China building data sovereignty frameworks, Russia establishing alternative payment systems, India deploying digital public infrastructure, major platforms companies engineering opacity as product features.

‣ RESISTING actors fighting to maintain existing arrangements Examples: EU pushing disclosure requirements, Japan defending quality certification standards, small island nations resisting breakdowns in climate cooperation, transparency coalitions defending open data

‣ EXPLOITING actors profiting from gaps between systems Examples: Singapore and UAE leveraging regulatory arbitrage, data brokers capitalising on information asymmetries, Turkey positioning between incompatible alliances, Kenya's M-Pesa bridging formal and informal financial systems

‣ AVOIDING actors building parallel systems to escape both old and new constraints Examples: Mutual aid networks bypassing formal institutions, decentralised protocols circumventing state control, Indigenous communities maintaining parallel governance structures, diaspora networks creating cross-border support systems

‣ SHAPED actors who have lost the ability to choose and are swept along by forces beyond their control Examples: Landlocked nations dependent on neighbours' infrastructure choices, small NGOs losing funding as philanthropic priorities shift, fragile states unable to resist external pressures, refugees navigating incompatible asylum regimes

Positions aren’t fixed for a given entity—at state, subnational, or sector levels. The same entity might architect one transformation while resisting another. This dynamic positioning, rather than static identity, determines how actors navigate fragmentation and what advantages and challenges they may be facing.  Read more about AREAS.

Why This Work Matters Now

10F is a network of foresight practitioners and strategic analysts who gathered to map this transformation as a public service effort— providing strategic intelligence for organisations navigating systemic change they didn't choose and can't prevent. Funded by the Tingari- Silverton Foundation to ensure independence, this work, including the Forecasts and underlying horizon scanning, is released under open licence as a public resource—free to use, adapt and build upon with attribution.

10F emerged from a specific concern: the existential risks this transformation poses to organisations doing essential work globally, regionally and locally. Civil society organisations, NGOs, multilateral institutions, philanthropies and purpose-driven enterprises face threats not just to their way of operating but to their continued existence. The systems they depend on—predictable funding mechanisms, shared normative frameworks, available and reliable data, functional coordination and governance structures and stable operating environments— are fragmenting in real time.

We came together to align disciplinary and culturally disparate personal perspectives gained through decades of experience, to paint a picture of this turbulent landscape as we see it. Without understanding the challenges and opportunities this transformation presents, many organisations will face threats they cannot anticipate or navigate. What fills the vacuum when essential institutions fail is unlikely to be constructive.

These Forecasts serve decision-makers by providing three critical examinations:

‣ Establishing grounded baselines about what's changing and why

‣ Revealing how shifts in one domain cascade through others in non-obvious ways

‣ Enabling organisations to develop "code-switching capability," or the capacity to operate across incompatible systems while maintaining core mission and values.

The transformations described here document unprecedented challenges, such as cognitive overload, institutional breakdown, permanent uncertainty, as well as unexpected possibilities. Old constraints are failing, which creates space for innovation. Hegemonic capture is weakening, enabling alternative approaches. Fragmentation opens doors previously foreclosed. Organisations need to be building new navigational capabilities, that is, the ability to play multiple games while maintaining purpose and finding opportunities others miss. Those assuming a return to normal, will discover the ground has shifted beneath them. The question isn't whether this transformation continues, but how the players position themselves within it. 

These Forecasts are designed as starting points for organisational sense-making, not endpoints. Different organisations facing different constraints in different contexts will, and should, develop different responses to the same transformation. This initial set of Forecasts represents 10F's first collective output. The Consortium intends to continue developing foresight on emerging transformations, responding to both the evolving landscape and the needs of organisations navigating it.

Note: These Forecasts were developed through the 10F Project, an independent foresight initiative. They represent analytical assessment of systemic transformation, not prediction or prescription. We've cited sources and verified claims where possible, but perfect information doesn't exist when describing systems in transformation. Organisations should evaluate these insights against their own strategic context. 

Browse the 10 Forecasts

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