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For some time, the prevailing description of the modern operating environment has been captured in the acronym VUCA: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. It remains a useful shorthand, particularly in defence and strategic contexts, but it is increasingly insufficient. VUCA describes the conditions we face. It does not adequately describe how those conditions are now interacting, nor how our behaviour within them has evolved.

I would suggest that we are now operating in what can more accurately be described as a SWIPED world.

This framework captures six interconnected domains: Society, War, Intelligence, Planet, Energy, and Direction. These are not discrete challenges to be considered independently; they form a tightly knit system, where pressure in one domain accelerates stress in the others. The other behavioural aspect of a SWIPED world is that we are now increasingly tempted to think fast and flick past that which is not simple, attractive or entertaining - further undermining the complex interdependencies of the real world.

At the heart of SWIPED, and that which should be the centre of our thinking, sits the Planet. Climate and environmental systems are no longer background variables; they are increasingly shaping the conditions within which economic, social, and political systems must operate. On our tiny blue dot, changes in temperature, atmospheric humidity, sea temperatures, weather patterns, and resource availability influence the delicate harmony and balance necessary for life. These shifts will affect migration, infrastructure resilience, food and freshwater systems, and, ultimately, our role as caretakers.  On Alderney, we are seeing the effects of climate change play out as they are across northern Europe with an increase in the frequency and severity of bad weather events (e.g. wetter and windier in the Winter; drier and hotter in the Summer) and this will affect travel to and from the island if we do not also consider this within the designs for the airport and harbour accordingly.

Overlaying this is Energy which remains the binding constraint of modern civilisation. Current geopolitical tensions, particularly in the Middle East and Ukraine, are not isolated conflicts. They are deeply interconnected through fossil fuel energy systems, supply chains, and strategic dependencies. The resulting volatility is not cyclical but increasingly structural, and will be amplified on Alderney.

The domain of War has therefore expanded beyond traditional military boundaries. With over 100 global conflicts and now the Pandora's box of US/Israel/Iran adding to the significance of Russia/Ukraine, War is becoming a dominating factor in thinking and will affect resource configuration across all other domains. The redistribution of international aid funds towards defence is easily explained but undermines both Social and Planetary investment. The conduct of war encompasses economic pressure, information ownership, technological competition, and strategic positioning across multiple regions. These dynamics are not contained; their effects propagate globally.

At the same time, we are witnessing the rapid acceleration of Intelligence, both artificial and human. Advances in Artificial Intelligence, combined with the control and distribution of information - and trust - are transforming decision-making environments. The distinctions between fact, opinion, truth, misinformation, and disinformation are becoming harder to discern in real time, introducing uncertainty not only in outcomes but in perception itself. Additionally, our mushy brains are being tempted to think less deeply and faster, for instant gratification, which affects the quality of discussion, decision making, diplomacy and our direction.

These all interact directly with Society, where demographic pressures, the erosion of trust in government and their agencies, growing inequality in and between societies, and rapidly changing degrees of social cohesion, education, and expectation are reducing the capacity of communities to grow healthily and absorb shocks. The resilience of our social systems is being tested at precisely the moment when external pressures are intensifying.

Finally, there is Direction - the ability of governance systems to respond with clarity, rapidity, efficiency and dignity, and do so effectively. This includes not only political leadership and institutional capacity, but also the underlying economic and financial structures that support them (whatever we believe in their validity). Global debt levels, particularly in major economies such as the United States and Japan, will inevitably shape future fiscal and monetary decisions, with implications that extend far beyond national borders. At the same time, the deliberate weakening of international organisations such as the cooperative frameworks of the UN and NATO, and the undermining of international treaties, accords and norms is reducing the ability to anticipate, debate and coordinate responses to shared challenges.

The defining characteristic of a SWIPED world is not, therefore, any one of these factors in isolation, but in their interaction. For example, the climate crisis influences migration and economic pressures. Society disfunction is accelerated through inequitable wealth transfer, individualism, and corporate greed that takes no account of planetary boundaries and regards war not for its horrors, but for its financial opportunities. The maintenance of historic fossil fuel agreements beneficial to the few, and the newer democratisation of energy enabled by local power generation through renewable technologies, amplifies geopolitical tension. Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence are reshaping our neural networks, the information domain, beliefs and conflict itself. Governance systems (of all types, in all locations and at all levels) struggle to respond to the pace and complexity of this change. The conduct, morality and ethics of debate, decision-making and strategic direction are increasingly opaque and vulnerable to abuse. In the West, we might argue that the limitations we see in Direction and in fact democracy dying.

There is a second dimension to this SWIPED concept that is equally important. We are not only living in a SWIPED world, but we are also increasingly behaving as though we will navigate through it with short-term, transactional thinking in the same way we are being groomed to doom-scroll through the feeds on our phones.

Digital technologies have fundamentally altered how we process information and make decisions. Attention has become fragmented. Depth is often replaced by immediacy. The habits formed through constant interaction with digital platforms - scrolling, filtering, reacting - are subtly shaping how we engage with others and with complex, long-term challenges. Even the systems we are building are beginning to recognise the risk: Anthropic’s Claude has reflected that by removing friction through cognitive offloading, it may also be removing the productive struggle through which judgement and understanding are formed. A profound mismatch now exists between how we must think and act, and how we are doing so.

Some of the most powerful politicians are making rapid, often reactive decisions in systems that operate on long time horizons and exhibit delayed, sometimes irreversible consequences. Whether in energy policy, climate response, or geopolitical strategy, the effects of decisions made today may not fully materialise for years, yet they are increasingly taken within compressed decision cycles. While excellent thinking and decision-making can be rapid, there is benefit in comprehensive thinking that demands slower, more objective, honest and deliberate debate and diplomacy.

My perspective has been shaped by three decades of military service across multiple regions, working with both allies and adversaries, followed by roles in start-ups, government departments, and now as Managing Director of Alderney Electricity. The lesson, across all contexts, is consistent: tactics are not strategy, and stability is never accidental. It must be built, through deliberate, coordinated effort across all domains, aligning strategy, diplomacy, economics, education, health, and social cohesion around a clear and shared purpose. But enduring stability demands more than coordination alone; it requires an underlying morality and ethics: an empathy with the planet and compassion for all living things.

The SWIPED framework represents a shift in how we understand both risk and behaviour in the modern world. While traditional models such as VUCA and PESTLE describe external conditions, they largely treat them as discrete factors. SWIPED recognises that the domains of Society, War, Intelligence, Planet, Energy and Direction are now deeply interconnected and mutually reinforcing, forming a tightly coupled system in which change in one domain inevitably and rapidly propagates across the others.

Crucially, it also reflects how we engage with that system. In an increasingly digital and transactional environment, we are conditioned to process information at speed, scrolling, filtering, and reacting, often at the expense of depth and deliberation. The risk is that we apply this “swipe-speed” thinking to challenges that are systemic, long-term, and frequently irreversible. SWIPED therefore captures not only the structure of the world we inhabit, but the cognitive conditions under which we are attempting to navigate it.

The implication is not that the situation is beyond control, but that it requires a different quality of thinking. The challenge is not simply to respond to events as they arise, in their individual circumstances, but to understand the system in which those events occur, and to act with foresight, coherence, and purpose across all of them. We must be capable of operating at pace, while retaining the discipline to think systemically and act deliberately. We must recognise that interconnected risks cannot be managed in isolation, and that short-term optimisation carries long-term cost. Unlike the digital environments that increasingly shape our behaviour, these are not challenges we can simply flick past.

C S MacGregor
Managing Director,
Alderney Electricity