The Pentagon is drafting a new strategic construct that strives to better prepare for "shocks" to national security and international order that are caused by non-military factors, scrutinizing global "trends" across a wide range of disciplines from demographics to economics to developments in science and technology. If adopted, this new "trends and shocks" construct -- which aims to widen the aperture of threats considered in long-term military planning -- could lay the foundation for the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review and...