Sensemaking, systemic competition, and the social compact: Neil Ashdown
Below we hear from third year student Neil Ashdown, who was awarded joint fourth place in a Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) student competition in which students were asked to write an essay about potential threats and opportunities. In July last year I submitted an essay to a competition organised by the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). The question posed by the competition organisers was: “what do you believe to be the future threats or opportunities facing UK defence and security over the next 25 years?” The results of the competition were announced in December and my essay – ‘Sensemaking, systemic competition, and the social compact’ – was among those chosen for publication by Dstl. You can read the essays here. Recurrent themes across the papers include the societal impact of disinformation (as in the essays by Edward Holland and Fearghal Hughes) and the potential for cyber-enabled disruption of critical infrastructure (as examined by Rich