Synopsis
Why are societies so often surprised by developments that, in hindsight, seem entirely predictable? This article argues that strategic surprise rarely stems from a lack of information. More often, it arises because familiar evidence continues to be interpreted through assumptions that no longer reflect an emerging reality. Rather than focusing on the events themselves, the article explores how changing interpretations reshape strategic common sense, influence institutions and redefine strategic priorities. It argues that one of the most important capabilities for leaders today is not simply anticipating future events but recognising when the assumptions through which those events are understood have begun to change.
When Familiar Facts Become Strategic
Some of the greatest strategic surprises in history were not surprises because information was missing. They were surprises because the information was not yet regarded as strategically significant. History rarely changes because societies discover entirely new facts. More often, it changes because familiar facts acquire new meaning. Every generation inherits assumptions about how the world works. They shape which risks deserve attention, which investments appear rational and which policies seem realistic. Most of the time, these assumptions are so widely shared that they cease to appear as assumptions at all. They become common sense. That is what makes common sense so powerful. It is not the absence of interpretation; it is interpretation that has become invisible. While we live within it, it simply feels like reality itself.
The interesting question is therefore not whether societies change, but how certain interpretations come to be accepted as common sense in the first place. Why do ideas once regarded as peripheral move to the centre of public debate? Why do assumptions that once appeared self-evident gradually become outdated or even naïve? And why do ideas dismissed as unrealistic sometimes return years later as the foundation of public policy? Recent developments illustrate the pattern. Twenty years ago, warnings that global supply chains could become strategic liabilities were often dismissed as economic nostalgia. Today, by contrast, concerns about dependency have become embedded in public policy. The European Union's 2026 ICT Supply Chain Security Toolbox, for example, recommends assessing critical suppliers, reducing strategic dependencies through multi-vendor approaches and strengthening resilience against foreign interference. What was once understood primarily as a question of efficiency is increasingly treated as one of economic security and geopolitical resilience.
The same evolution can be observed across multiple policy domains. Defence budgets have risen to levels that would have seemed politically implausible a decade ago. Artificial intelligence is no longer discussed primarily as an engine of innovation but increasingly as critical strategic infrastructure. Economic security has become a central organising principle of industrial policy. In each case, the underlying technologies, dependencies and vulnerabilities are not new. What has changed is the framework through which they are interpreted. Before strategies are written, budgets approved or regulations introduced, something more fundamental has already happened. A particular understanding of reality has become sufficiently persuasive that institutions begin organising themselves around it. In open societies, governments, businesses and markets rarely create strategic common sense. They inherit it from the broader assumptions that shape public debate and institutional life. That is why strategic change often appears to arrive suddenly, even when the evidence has accumulated gradually. By the time institutions begin changing strategy, legislation or investment priorities, the underlying shift in interpretation has often been unfolding for years. Decisions that later appear inevitable are usually preceded by a much quieter change in what societies consider reasonable, necessary and strategically significant. The questions societies ask determine which answers appear reasonable, which risks deserve attention and which investments appear rational. When those questions change, institutions eventually change with them.
History offers a useful perspective. Looking back, it is relatively easy to identify the assumptions that defined earlier eras: mercantilism, the gold standard, post-war Keynesianism or the widespread belief that globalisation would steadily deepen international stability. Every generation tends to regard its own strategic assumptions with the same confidence. We are generally much better at recognising the historical contingency of past worldviews than of our own. As John Maynard Keynes observed, "The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones." His observation captures something that recurs throughout history. The greatest obstacle to strategic adaptation is rarely a lack of information. More often, it is the persistence of assumptions that once explained the world remarkably well. Strategic change therefore rarely begins with new facts alone. It begins when changing events lead societies to ask different questions of familiar facts. Only then do alternative interpretations become persuasive enough to reshape common sense and eventually the institutions, policies and strategies built upon it.
Why evidence is not enough
Evidence rarely changes institutions on its own. If it did, societies would adapt as soon as new information became available. Instead, evidence often accumulates for years without altering policy, investment or public debate. What changes first is not the facts themselves, but the questions societies ask of those facts. Once those questions change, familiar evidence acquires new strategic significance. Ideas that once appeared peripheral begin to look reasonable, while assumptions that once seemed obvious gradually lose their authority. This transition rarely occurs overnight. New experiences initially appear as isolated events rather than evidence of a broader strategic shift. Over time, however, they begin reinforcing one another until an alternative interpretation of reality becomes difficult to ignore. The 1973 oil crisis illustrates this point.
Before the crisis, energy policy across much of the industrialised world was understood primarily as an economic question of price, supply and growth. The embargo imposed by the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries did not suddenly make energy important. Rather, it changed how governments understood its strategic significance. Energy security, long present but often peripheral to economic policy, rapidly became a central political concern. Policies once focused largely on efficiency and affordability expanded to include resilience, diversification and national security as equally important strategic objectives. The significance of the shift lies not simply in the measures themselves, but in what they reveal about the way governments had begun to think. Governments did not discover new facts about energy; they came to interpret familiar realities through a different strategic lens. The crisis did not create a new vulnerability. It revealed an existing one through a new strategic lens. Half a century later, many of those same questions, about dependency, resilience and strategic vulnerability, have returned. Today those same questions extend well beyond oil and gas to encompass electricity systems, critical minerals, semiconductors, artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure.
When strategic priorities change
For much of the post-Cold War period, European strategy was shaped by a broad confidence in globalisation, economic integration and market efficiency. The dominant strategic questions concerned competitiveness, growth and the expansion of international trade. Those questions naturally influenced which risks received attention and which appeared secondary. That framework did not disappear overnight, nor was it overturned by a single crisis. Rather, a succession of events gradually changed the questions policymakers, businesses and investors began asking. Each revealed a different strategic vulnerability that had previously received limited attention.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed how Europe thought about dependence. Extended global supply chains had existed for decades, but the pandemic revealed how disruptions to medicines, medical equipment, semiconductors and other strategically important goods could rapidly become questions of national resilience. During the pandemic, ISM surveys found that the share of supply-management organisations reporting supply chain disruptions rose from 81% in February 2020 to 97% by May 2020. Vulnerabilities that had long been understood by specialists suddenly became matters of broad political concern.
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed how Europe thought about security. Energy dependence, defence industrial capacity and critical infrastructure were not new realities, but they acquired a different strategic meaning. Questions that had previously belonged largely within specialist defence and energy communities moved to the centre of political and economic decision-making. Perhaps the clearest illustration is NATO itself. For years, political debate focused on whether member states would meet the Alliance's 2% spending guideline. Following the Hague Summit, attention shifted towards implementing a new commitment equivalent to 5% of GDP by 2035. The most significant change was not simply that governments committed to higher defence spending, but that the boundaries of politically acceptable debate shifted. Proposals that would previously have been regarded as unrealistic or excessive became widely accepted as necessary responses to a changed strategic environment.
At the same time, accelerating competition over artificial intelligence and advanced technologies changed how Europe thought about competitiveness. Innovation was no longer understood simply as a driver of productivity and economic growth. It became inseparable from sovereignty, industrial capability and long-term economic security. The European Union's Scaleup Europe Fund reflects this shift. The question is no longer only how Europe develops breakthrough technologies, but how it retains the capabilities, investment and ownership needed to sustain them.
Taken together, these developments did more than alter policy priorities. They changed the questions through which governments, businesses and institutions interpreted the world. Cost and efficiency remain important, but they are no longer sufficient. Strategic decisions are evaluated through questions of resilience, dependency, sovereignty and long-term security. This is also why strategic priorities rarely change in isolation. As the questions societies ask evolve, seemingly unrelated policy areas begin moving in the same direction. Energy, defence, technology, industrial policy and investment increasingly become interconnected because they are interpreted through a shared strategic framework rather than as separate policy domains. None of these developments became strategically significant because governments suddenly discovered new facts. Supply chains were already global. Energy dependencies already existed. Artificial intelligence was already advancing rapidly. What changed was not the evidence, but its meaning. Familiar facts acquired new strategic significance because societies began asking different questions of them. The most revealing indicator of strategic change is often not what governments decide, but what they no longer feel the need to justify.
Conclusion
Societies are rarely surprised because evidence was unavailable. They are surprised because familiar evidence continues to be interpreted through assumptions that belonged to an earlier world. Those assumptions shape which risks deserve attention, which investments appear rational and which policies seem realistic. Because they feel like reality itself, they often remain invisible until changing circumstances expose their limitations. Most organisations devote significant resources to monitoring geopolitical developments, technological change and market trends. Far fewer devote the same attention to recognising when the assumptions used to interpret those developments have begun to shift. Yet it is often that shift in interpretation, rather than the events themselves, that ultimately reshapes strategy. Recognising that shift requires leaders to pay attention not only to events themselves, but also to the language, priorities and assumptions increasingly shaping public debate. These often provide earlier indications of strategic change than legislation, markets or institutional reforms, which typically follow once a new interpretation has become widely accepted.
In an age defined by accelerating technological, geopolitical and economic change, the ability to recognise when familiar realities have acquired new strategic significance may become as important as the ability to discover new ones. That requires a degree of intellectual humility. Every strategic framework reflects the circumstances that made it persuasive. Today's emphasis on resilience may itself become the next strategic orthodoxy. Future leaders may eventually ask whether resilience, like efficiency before it, became so dominant that other trade-offs disappeared from view. The challenge is therefore not to replace one orthodoxy with another, but to remain alert to the assumptions that every orthodoxy inevitably creates. The greatest strategic advantage may therefore lie not in predicting the future better than others, but in recognising sooner when yesterday's common sense no longer explains the world that is taking shape. The next time a development appears to have taken everyone by surprise, the first question should not be whether the evidence was new, but whether familiar evidence had simply begun to mean something different.
References
- European Commission. ICT Supply Chain Security Toolbox (2026) Digital-strategy
- European Commission. European Economic Security Strategy (2026) EU Internal Security Strategy
- European Commission. Scaleup Europe Fund (2026) EU Scale Up Fund
- NATO. The Hague Summit Declaration (2025) NATO Hague Summit 2025
- Institute for Supply Management. COVID-19’s Global Impact on Supply Chains (2021) Supply Chain Impact
- International Energy Agency. World Energy Outlook (2025) World Energy Outlook 2025
- Keynes, John Manyard. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) Prometheus Books
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