Jordan’s hard-won lessons for an age of existential risk
“Believe it or not, we are very optimistic about the future,” said Muhannad Shehadeh, Jordan’s deputy prime minister and minister of state for economic affairs.
These may seem blithe words coming from a country bordered by Israel, Syria and Iraq, with Iran a missile launch away. In fact, Jordan is a model of resilience. As the UK and other developed countries face threats from hybrid wars – unconventional attacks, such as disinformation and cyberattacks – and frontier technology, there are lessons to be learned.
“Believe it or not, we are very optimistic about the future,” said Muhannad Shehadeh, Jordan’s deputy prime minister and minister of state for economic affairs.
These may seem blithe words coming from a country bordered by Israel, Syria and Iraq, with Iran a missile launch away. In fact, Jordan is a model of resilience. As the UK and other developed countries face threats from hybrid wars – unconventional attacks, such as disinformation and cyberattacks – and frontier technology, there are lessons to be learned.
Speaking at a September roundtable convened by the CISI, Mr Shehadeh wryly joked that the country was subjected to a new crisis every two years, from the financial crisis in 2008 to the Gulf Wars, and all the way to the general regional wars of today.
“We have intercepted 450 flying [hostile] objects, and our population has grown by 20% in two years,” he noted. Despite the threats the country faces, the International Monetary Fund’s June 2026 report for Jordan forecasts GDP growth of up to 2.7% in 2026, rising to 3.1% in 2027, with inflation at 2.3%.
The report praises the swift response by the authorities to the latest crisis, as well as continued progress on reforms to support resilience, economic growth, and fiscal sustainability. Additionally, the country’s stock market is on a record run, driven by foreign investor interest.
Expertise, agility and resilience
What are the lessons from Jordan relevant for the resilience of the UK and other developed economies?
Two come to mind:
Expertise of the officials. Technocratic officials with international education and experience run the economic and financial institutions.
An ability to adjust to changing circumstances. “The game is dynamic,” said Mr Shehadeh. The Jordanian government, for example, has approved capital market reforms to attract foreign funds, and Jordanian banks have expanded in Iraq and Syria, taking advantage of changing circumstances in both countries.
Jordan’s experience highlights the potential value of continuity, agility and specialist expertise within economic and financial institutions, particularly when responding to repeated crises.
In contrast, the UK has experienced frequent changes in political leadership since Brexit. The average tenure of a British prime minister over this period is two years, according to the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, while that of ministers is much shorter.
An era of existential risks
Public awareness of potential threats has also been raised as an issue. “Government must be more explicit about the threat,” said General Sir Richard Barrons, KCB, CBE, speaking at an event hosted by The Resilience Imperative, an organisation focused on building UK resilience and raising awareness of hybrid war.
Sir Richard, who co-authored Britain’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review, noted that we are now living in an era of “existential risks”, including the manipulation of populations via disinformation, which he called “a much more powerful weapon than missiles”.
The theme was taken up by Prime Minister Andy Burnham in his recent United Nations speech. He told the General Assembly that the Kremlin spends around £1.3bn each year on manipulating information, using bots and falsified newspaper articles, and forging the branding of institutions like the BBC.
“We're talking about an insidious campaign that reaches into people's homes and twists what they feel about their own country and community – creating a narrative of decline, stoking division and sowing despair,” he said.
To that risk must be added the risk of AI going rogue on its own, let alone in the hands of enemies. AI behemoth OpenAI admitted on 25 September that its tools may have breached the systems of “dozens” of governments, universities and public agencies.
What makes this all the more frightening is that the possible security violations were only discovered months later, when OpenAI was forced to review its agents’ behaviour on the back of a well-publicised hack of Hugging Face, a machine learning hub.
Jean Charles Ellermann-Kingombe, Assistant Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), in charge of cyber and digital transformation, will discuss ‘Quantum and AI in the age of technological Darwinism’ at The City Quantum & AI Summit on 7 October, for which CISI has endorsed CPD. NATO and the EU are currently grappling with how to respond to Russia’s hybrid war at an appropriate level to deter threats such as arson and drone incursions without provoking a major attack.
Message from the markets
The definitions of risk and resilience are changing in a multipolar world facing a tsunami of dangers. Markets tell that tale clearly. The Kingdom of Jordan’s US$700m seven-year Eurobond, issued at the end of 2025, is yielding around 7%. The US ten-year Treasury bond is currently yielding just above 5.2%.
Less than a 200-basis point difference between a superpower and a small country situated in a conflict zone evidences a world where safety and security are in short supply and adaptability is all.