Conor Seyle, the vice president of operations at PAX sapiens and one of the analysis organizers, told Business Insider that the experts met in Bangkok in July 2023 for four days to workshop the scenarios.
“The focus of this discussion was on what might happen in the future rather than specific mechanisms for how to mitigate risks,” Seyle said.
“It is not a case of a single escalatory event, or a single crisis that spins out of control,” Seyle said at a briefing on Friday about the analysis.
Seyle emphasized that the analysis isn’t presenting forecasts, but theoretical scenarios that hit areas of concern in broad strokes.
“The reason why it’s narrative is because we are story-telling creatures,” Seyle said at the Friday briefing.
“We organized this project at a time of general pessimism about the prospect of the current US-China relationship,” wrote Seyle, Ren Libo of the Chinese think tank Grandview Institute, and Adam Kahane of Massachusetts-based consultancy Reos Partners.