Since the beginning of December, we have been scanning the reports of the world's leading think tanks, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) conducting international research and international organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on their 2023 projections. In almost all of these reports, five main risks stand out for 2023.
The first is the diversification of geopolitical risks and threats of global extremism. The second risk is the risk of deepening political polarization and social unrest. The third is the increased cyber risks and the risk of global cyber-network crashing. The fourth risk is operational risks and the risk of a deepening energy crisis. The fifth and final risk is climate issues.
Regarding the first risk, Europe and Asia-Pacific will remain on the radar in 2023. The subsequent phases of the Russia-Ukraine war, an escalation that will prolong the war for at least a few years or steps toward peace, will profoundly affect the balance in the global system. Because the prolongation of the war will continue to inflame debates on global energy, food and supply chains.
In connection with this issue, it is understood that the Atlantic-based think tanks will make great efforts to keep the China-Taiwan tensions on the agenda. Accordingly, it is also said that China will keep the supply of raw materials, intermediate products and final products to the international supply system under a certain level by using the coronavirus measures as an excuse, and therefore, the global inflation pressure will continue.
However, there are certain question marks about China's risk of the slow growth of its economy under this assumption. Therefore, if China returns firmly to the global supply system in 2023 and accelerates its production and development, then the second wave of global inflation may occur in global commodity prices, especially in energy derivatives (oil, natural gas and coal).
If this situation forces the leading central banks to raise interest rates even more, the risk of stagflation will be on the table.
The second risk is the problem of the whole world. In particular, the hate speech escalating through global social media platforms deepens political and social polarization worldwide. Unfortunately, this situation also increases the risk of social unrest. It will be necessary to be vigilant against any deep efforts to agitate different segments of the same society or different societies with discrimination of religion, language, race, culture and gender, which is unfortunately systematically deepened by the deep structures in the global system and that seems to protect a certain group.
In fact, Atlantic-based think tanks have been raising their concerns about extremist tendencies, particularly in the West, motivated by the escalating far-right and broader terrorist ideologies, particularly in Europe and the U.S., throughout 2022.
Last week the third risk was also brought up at the OECD Digital Economy Ministerial Summit hosted by Spain in the Canary Islands, namely the danger of collapsing global cyber-network cooperation in 2023 due to mutual trust in the cross-border sharing of data and due to big differences between continents, the commercialization of personal data, and global political tensions between the Atlantic and Asia-Pacific.
In addition, the opportunities offered by hypersonic digitization to hackers, which are gaining more and more dangerous dimensions with each passing day, caused 15 million data breaches worldwide in the third quarter of 2022.
The fourth risk is operational risks related to the global energy, food and supply chain crisis. The new dimensions that the Russia-Ukraine war may reach in 2023 and the severe operational risk caused by the tensions between the Atlantic and Asia-Pacific will pose on energy, food, and all modes of transport (road, air, sea, rail and pipeline) and logistics centers-systems will also need to be managed.
The fifth risk, the global climate change risk, is on our agenda every day. However, companies and institutions are still not vigilant enough about the seriousness of the risk. We hope that 2023 will not be a global year of natural disasters.
