Fourth Industrial Revolution also known as the digital revolution.
—Glenn S. Gerstell, general counsel of the National Security Agency, “I Work for N.S.A. We Cannot Afford to Lose the Digital Revolution.”
The Fourth Industrial Revolution, 4IR, or Industry 4.0, conceptualizes rapid change to technology, industries, and societal patterns and processes in the 21st century due to increasing interconnectivity and smart automation. Coined popularly by the World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman, Klaus Schwab, it asserts that the changes seen are more than just improvements to efficiency, but express a significant shift in industrial capitalism.
A part of this phase of industrial change is the joining of technologies like artificial intelligence, gene editing, to advanced robotics that blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds.
Throughout this, fundamental shifts are taking place in how the global production and supply network operates through ongoing automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices, using modern smart technology, large-scale machine-to-machine communication (M2M), and the internet of things (IoT). This integration results in increasing automation, improving communication and self-monitoring, and the use of smart machines that can analyze and diagnose issues without the need for human intervention.
It also represents a social, political, and economic shift from the digital age of the late 1990s and early 2000s to an era of embedded connectivity distinguished by the omni-use and commonness of technological use throughout society (e.g. a metaverse) that changes the ways we experience and know the world around us. It posits that we have created and are entering an augmented social reality compared to just the natural senses and industrial ability of humans alone.
—Wikipedia, “Fourth Industrial Revolution”
The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work and relate to one another. It is a new chapter in human development, enabled by extraordinary technology advances commensurate with those of the first, second and third industrial revolutions. These advances are merging the physical, digital and biological worlds in ways that create both huge promise and potential peril.
—World Economic Forum, “Fourth Industrial Revolution“
The digital revolution has urgent and profound implications for our federal national security agencies. It is almost impossible to overstate the challenges. If anything, we run the risk of thinking too conventionally about the future.
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