Coping with Black Swans, Grey Rhinos, or Black Jellyfish: Preparedness Prevents Peril
应付黑天鹅、灰犀牛或黑水母：有备则无患
(Translated from Chinese by Doubao AI app of China)
https://www.zaobao.com.sg/forum/views/story20250215-5879072
February 15, 2025
Lin Renjun
In the 60 years since its independence, Singapore has weathered numerous crises, continuously forged ahead with its head held high, and is still thriving today, standing proudly in the international community. Important strategic management and decision-making analysis tools such as scenario planning have surely played a certain role.
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As the new year ushers in a new beginning, everything takes on a new look. This old saying couldn't be more appropriate to describe this Lunar New Year!
After Donald Trump triumphantly ascended to the throne of the great leader of the world's most powerful country on January 20, he wasted no time in quickly implementing his ideas aimed at subverting all existing domestic and international orders. With great force, he has brought about earth-shaking changes! He has indeed brought "new atmospheres" to the world, but while some are delighted, others are worried. There is a great deal of gloom and despair. He has stolen the limelight, but who knows how many people around the world will suffer because of him?
However, it so happened that on the very same day, January 20, the world's second-largest power, with lightning speed, unveiled the powerful tool of DeepSeek, which caught the world's attention. People were amazed and flocked to it. The number of mobile application downloads reached 1.6 million within five days, breaking the record set by ChatGPT when it was launched two years ago (reaching 1 million users within five days). Moreover, on January 27, it triggered a huge tsunami in the Wall Street stock market, causing a sharp decline in technology stock prices. The sudden emergence of DeepSeek not only grabbed the world's attention but also stole much of Trump's thunder, who had just grandly announced a $500 billion "Stargate" AI plan. This forced Trump, while spouting off his words, to grudgingly admit that the rise of DeepSeek has "sounded the alarm" for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry in the United States!
DeepSeek-R1 came into the world with the features of low cost, high performance, being free and open-source. It has shaken Silicon Valley and Wall Street, which firmly believe that AI requires astronomical investments and enormous power consumption. It has also shocked Washington, which thought that building "small courtyards with high walls" or "moats" would be enough to prevent China's technological breakthroughs. It has opened up a brand-new landscape for the development of AI and has truly brought a new atmosphere to the world.
For me personally, DeepSeek made my Spring Festival busy and fulfilling. Besides participating in various group New Year greetings and gatherings, I was busy browsing the overwhelming stream of relevant information on mainstream and social media, reading analysis articles, watching discussion videos, attending lectures and symposiums, etc. Of course, I also had to learn and apply it in practice, trying out this new tool myself, grasping its performance, understanding its advantages and disadvantages, and making a comparison with ChatGPT, which was launched two years earlier.
However, I am after all a layman in technology and unable to truly "deeply explore" its technical mysteries. Besides learning to use this latest generative AI tool, I can only try to understand the significance, context, and impact of its rise from a news perspective.
Among many comments, I noticed that some Chinese and English media at home and abroad described the sudden emergence of DeepSeek as a "Black Swan" event. But based on my superficial understanding, I think it is more like a "Black Jellyfish" event.
Both the so-called "black swan" and "black jellyfish" are models in scenario planning. "Scenario planning" is a strategic management and decision-making analysis method pioneered by American futurist Herman Kahn in the 1940s and 1950s. By constructing multiple possible future scenarios, it helps organizations or enterprises formulate more flexible strategies in an uncertain environment. In the 1970s, Shell further improved the application of scenario planning in corporate strategy and predicted the 1973 oil crisis, enabling it to better adapt to market changes than its competitors. This success made Shell famous and a leader in scenario planning, and also promoted the widespread adoption of scenario planning in business strategy.
Last June, I was fortunate enough to participate in an enrichment lecture on Shell's scenario planning method. In addition to further understanding the two models of "black swan" and "grey rhino" that have been widely recognized and applied by enterprises and governments, I also learned the new term "black jellyfish".
Simply put, a "black swan event" refers to an event that is extremely unlikely to occur but will have a huge impact once it does, and is usually difficult to predict (such as the 2008 financial crisis); a "grey rhino event" refers to a high-probability risk that will have far-reaching impacts but has been ignored for a long time and finally breaks out (such as the global large-scale outage caused by the software update of the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike in 2024); a "black jellyfish event" refers to a systemic risk that exists for a long time, has a wide range of impacts, but is difficult to detect due to its dispersiveness and slowness (such as the COVID-19 pandemic and another "pandemic" that will break out sooner or later).
ChatGPT Actually Agrees It's a Black Jellyfish Event
I think the emergence of DeepSeek is more in line with the characteristics of a "black jellyfish" because the rapid development of China's AI and the fierce AI competition between China and the United States have been "existing for a long time", and in some aspects or in a certain sense, they are "difficult to detect". But I'm not very sure either. On a whim, I thought it would be better to throw this question to its competitor, ChatGPT, for an answer.
Unexpectedly, ChatGPT actually agreed with my view and gave a very professional and detailed reply regarding the emergence of DeepSeek. It can be summarized as follows: First, it is partially predictable, but the impact is unexpected (the timing, scale, and impact of its appearance surprised many observers, especially in the current AI competition landscape dominated by OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic); Second, hidden systemic forces are at play (its development may be driven by government support, data advantages, and regulatory strategies, and these factors are not always directly visible to the outside world); Third, it is highly disruptive but will not cause a single-point destruction (DeepSeek may reshape the AI competition landscape, but it will not completely destroy existing players; instead, it will change the competitive dynamics in an unpredictable way); Fourth, it has long-term strategic impacts (the emergence of a competitive non-Western LLM (Large Language Model) challenger may mean an acceleration of the AI arms race, a further fragmentation of the global AI ecosystem, etc.).
Its conclusion is simple and to the point: "DeepSeek is not a black swan event because its rise is not completely unpredictable. But it conforms to the characteristics of a black jellyfish event - it reveals hidden systemic forces, the timing of its appearance is unexpected, and it may reshape the AI competition landscape in an unforeseeable way."
By analyzing it using the "black jellyfish" model, we have increased our understanding of this disruptive AI product, DeepSeek, and have gained a general understanding of the background, significance, and impact of its "sudden appearance". At the same time, we have also caught a glimpse of the possible future trends to some extent.
This is just an example of scenario planning, but its value is evident from this. This is also why scenario planning is highly regarded by many enterprises and governments. The "fearing to lose" Singapore government is naturally not lagging behind in this regard.
Singapore first adopted scenario planning in the 1980s and became one of the earliest governments to systematically use this method for national strategic planning. The Ministry of Defence was the first to try it out to predict security threats. In the 1990s, the Public Service Division and later the Prime Minister's Office institutionalized scenario planning and applied it to a wider range of national policies and economic strategies.
My first encounter with scenario planning was around that time. I remember that one day in the mid-to-late 1990s, a young official named Vivian Balakrishnan asked to interview me at the newspaper office, saying that he wanted to hear my opinions on the future trends and possible scenarios of Singapore. I agreed, but I had no idea where to start. Fortunately, he had excellent questioning skills and was good at asking some highly guiding questions to help me think. Then he precisely followed up in an orderly and progressive manner, understanding my views from point to surface. I learned from him that the people they interviewed included representatives from all walks of life, with a wide range. Then they would refine, summarize, and conclude the collected data. That experience left a deep impression on me. Besides allowing me to experience what scenario planning was all about, it also made me feel the government's seriousness and meticulousness in this work.
In 2009, Singapore established the Centre for Strategic Futures, a think tank affiliated with the PMO Strategy Group of the Prime Minister's Office. Its aim is to enhance the government's strategic foresight capabilities, help the government anticipate and respond to future challenges such as economic crises, geopolitical changes, and technological disruptions, and seize potential opportunities.
Scenario Planning Helps Weather Crises
Our little red dot, which is "as small as a piece of nasal mucus" and has limited natural endowments, has an innate sense of忧患. It is absolutely necessary to constantly scan the horizon through analysis tools such as scenario planning to look for possible risks and potential opportunities, especially in the current situation where the global political and natural ecological environments are deteriorating rapidly, the law of the jungle is rearing its head, and trade bifurcation is increasing day by day.
Over the years, we have safely weathered many crises, both big and small, and have also made use of numerous development opportunities. How much contribution have the scenario planning efforts of the government, government-linked companies, and private companies made? Most of these are confidential and unknown.
However, from some bits and pieces of publicly available information, we can also get a rough idea of the scenario planning of some important institutions. For example, Tan Chong Meng, the 14th speaker of the "Singapore Institute of Policy Studies - S.R. Nathan Lecture Series", talked in detail about various aspects of how Singapore can maintain its position as the world's leading international maritime center in a series of lectures last March and April.
Tan Chong Meng, who had just stepped down from the position of CEO of PSA International at that time, had led global businesses in the Shell Group, which attaches great importance to scenario planning. In his speech, he elaborated on how PSA International looks to the future, improves the overall ecosystem of port operations, and makes forward-looking investments in technology and automation to maintain its leading position and remain invincible, which broadened my horizons. During the Q&A session, he did not shy away from the actual and potential crises faced by PSA International, including competition from regional ports, such as the threat to Singapore's ports posed by Thailand's possible construction of the Kra canal and the Kra land bridge, as well as the impact of the trade bifurcation between China and the United States on our country as an international transportation and supply chain hub and how to deal with it.
From his speech and answers, it can be seen that PSA International has already envisioned various possible future scenarios and should also have corresponding countermeasures. I believe that some other government-linked companies in our country that face fierce international competition, such as Changi Airport Group and Singapore Airlines, also have similar plans and preparations.
In fact, some of the problems they face are also national problems. For example, the issue of the trade bifurcation between China and the United States does not only involve PSA International but is likely to impact Singapore's status as an international trade hub. The emergence of DeepSeek has caused a strong reaction from the United States, and our country was almost hit by the crossfire: The US government is investigating whether DeepSeek used regulated NVIDIA chips and suspects that these chips may have been transshipped to China through Singapore. Although NVIDIA has said that there is no reason to believe that DeepSeek obtained any export-controlled products from Singapore, and our Ministry of Trade and Industry has responded accordingly, I believe that such issues will continue to ferment because this does not only involve the issue of trade bifurcation but also includes broader issues such as technical controls, supply chain security, and geopolitical competition, involving multiple government departments. We should be fully prepared.
The emergence of DeepSeek may be a crisis for the United States, but for our small country, which is also actively developing AI and LLM but lacks the astronomical funds of hundreds of billions or trillions and inexhaustible energy sources, it is undoubtedly great news. Perhaps it should be more appropriately called a "white jellyfish". While avoiding the crossfire, we should make the most of the development opportunities it brings us.
Whether it is the "second entry into power" of Trump, this grey rhino, or the birth of DeepSeek, this black/white jellyfish, the impacts of these two major events at the beginning of the Year of the Snake on Singapore seem to be controllable so far and are not entirely negative. There are even many hidden opportunities.
However, we must not be complacent. We must continuously improve this proven effective tool of scenario planning and always be vigilant against all kinds of black swans, grey rhinos, and black jellyfish that may suddenly emerge ahead.
In the 60 years since its independence, Singapore has weathered numerous crises, continuously forged ahead with its head held high, and is still thriving today, standing proudly in the international community. Of course, this is mainly due to fundamental factors such as our unique good governance, the resilience of our institutions, and the people's trust in the government. But important strategic management and decision-making analysis tools such as scenario planning have surely played a certain role.
With the powerful intelligence of AI, our scenario planning can surely be done even better. Whether it is a black swan, a grey rhino, or a black jellyfish, whether they come one by one or all at once, as long as we are fully prepared, preparedness prevents peril.
The author is a former editor-in-chief of Lianhe Zaobao.
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