You’ve heard of black swans and the elephant in the room. Now add to that menagerie gray rhinos.
The term was coined by Michele Wucker in her book The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore. Here is how the book description at Amazon.com explains it:
A “gray rhino” is a highly probable, high impact yet neglected threat: kin to both the elephant in the room and the improbable and unforeseeable black swan. Gray rhinos are not random surprises, but occur after a series of warnings and visible evidence. The bursting of the housing bubble in 2008, the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters, the new digital technologies that upended the media world, the fall of the Soviet Union…all were evident well in advance.
Andrew Stuttaford uses the term to describe our
rare earth problem: Nearly all of today’s electronic wonders rely on “rare earth” materials, nearly all of which come from China. We can find the raw materials elsewhere, including here in the U.S., but processing them is very difficult and China is pretty much the only place that has the technology to do so. We could develop our own sources, but this will take lots of time. As of now, we are utterly dependent on China for these indispensable imports. And now we have a trade war with China.
This, says Stuttaford, is a “gray rhino.” We have known about the problem for a long time, but we haven’t done anything about it. And soon the rhino may charge, overturning the technology upon which we and our economy have become dependent.
This weekend’s question: What are some other “gray rhinos” that we have been ignoring?
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