EISPS Associate Professor Brian Klaas named on Prospect Magazine's list of global Top Thinkers

The human instinct to look for clear narratives and explanations is a fool’s errand, writes Brian Klaas, a political scientist, in his 2024 book Fluke. Sometimes, there isn’t a clear story about X causing Y. The tiniest twist of fate can change everything. Think of the bullet nicking Donald Trump’s ear and how, if he had turned his head or if the assassin had been allowed into his school’s shooting club, the outcome might have been very different. In a sense, everything is chaos.

This is an important reminder for policymakers and researchers who make decisions based on causal links. Forgetting that randomness—from the cellular level to the geopolitical one—is an ever-present driver of change, leads to wrong and sometimes dangerous conclusions. But perhaps more consequential is Klaas’s point about the risks of interconnection. Our political and financial systems are now so enmeshed and without slack that every action and event has wide, rippling ramifications. We are more vulnerable than ever before. In July 2024, for instance, one faulty Crowdstrike software update crashed 8.5m Windows devices, impacting airlines, hospitals and financial systems around the world.

In the face of fast, sometimes frightening change, we long for a narrative that explains what’s happening. Realising that we can never predict exactly what’s coming could feel disempowering but, when we’re faced with challenges from climate change to conflict to AI, it should instead spur leaders to construct more resilient systems. It also reminds us that each of our acts does make a difference in this world—we just don’t know what that impact will be.