To support U.S. competitiveness, policymakers need to make strategic decisions for defense modernization, including where to invest attention and resources. Whether identifying threats or opportunities, leaders benefit from accurate forecasts about the capabilities and limitations of emerging technologies and industries.
Crowdsourced forecasting, or CSF, has received increased attention and advocacy in recent years due to the convenience afforded by widespread internet access combined with positive experimental performance for questions regarding politics and international affairs.
Although further experimentation and evaluation are needed, such forecasting could prove to be a valuable tool for defense modernization planning, technological assessments and related activities in the Defense Department and industry.
Crowdsourced forecasting refers to a variety of systems for eliciting quantitative forecasts from groups of people about defined outcomes. There are two major types of such systems: “prediction markets,” where participants use real or fake currency to trade outcome “contracts” at prices which translate to the market’s probability estimates, and “prediction polls,” where participants state their estimates, and these forecasts are aggregated into simple or weighted averages usually based on past performance.