The open secret of geopolitical forecasting is that almost none of it can be wrong — not because the analysts are dishonest, but because the format is engineered to be unfalsifiable. And a prediction that cannot fail is not a forecast. It's commentary with a future tense.
The open secret of geopolitical forecasting is that almost none of it can ever be wrong. Not because the analysts are dishonest — most are careful, serious people — but because the format itself is engineered to be unfalsifiable. And a prediction that cannot fail is not a forecast. It is commentary with a future tense, and it should be priced accordingly.
Dissect a typical 'forecast' and you can see the engineering. 'Tensions between the two powers will likely escalate in the coming months amid continued uncertainty.' No date that bites — 'coming months' never expires. No threshold — 'escalate' covers everything from a statement to a war. Hedged — 'likely.' And reversible — if nothing happens, the tension was simmering; if something does, it was predicted. Whatever the world does, the sentence was right. That is the genre, and it is a very comfortable place to live.
It persists because the incentives build it. The career-safe forecast is precisely the one nobody can check. Specificity is occupational risk; vagueness is tenure. The analyst who says 'we're monitoring the situation' is never wrong; the one who names a date, a place, and a probability can be humiliated. The market for commentary rewards exactly the behavior that makes commentary useless — and then everyone wonders why no expert can be held to anything.