Michael Ward and Nils Metternich imagine a future in which we can predict major world events based on models like Nate Silver's:
Today, there are several dozen ongoing, public projects that aim to in one way or another forecast the kinds of things foreign policymakers desperately want to be able to predict: various forms of state failure, famines, mass atrocities, coups d'état, interstate and civil war, and ethnic and religious conflict. So while U.S. elections might occupy the front page of the New York Times, the ability to predict instances of extreme violence and upheaval represent the holy grail of statistical forecasting — and researchers are now getting close to doing just that. In 2010 scholars from the Political Instability Task Force published a report that demonstrated the ability to correctly predict onsets of instability two years in advance in 18 of 21 instances (about 85%), including the prediction of instability in Iran in 2004 and Côte d'Ivoire in 2002, for example.
The Dish 