The latest CIR Magazine article, Black swan risks rise amid geopolitical strain, highlights a growing concern across the risk and resilience profession: the term “black swan” is being used so loosely that it is losing all meaning. According to the Allianz Risk Barometer, 69% of UK respondents identified a global internet outage as the country’s most feared “black swan event”. Supply chain paralysis and the collapse of a major financial institution followed closely behind.
There is only one problem.
None of these are black swan events.
And the fact that thousands of risk professionals are confidently predicting them proves the point.
What a Black Swan Actually Is
The term “black swan” was popularised by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and has a very specific meaning. A true black swan event has three defining characteristics:
- It is completely unpredictable — no meaningful precedent, no credible forecasting, no widely recognised warning signs.
- It has extreme impact — economically, socially, politically or structurally.
- It is rationalised in hindsight — after the event, people claim it “should have been obvious”.
If an event is:
- on the National Risk Register;
- widely discussed by risk professionals;
- modelled in exercises;
- included in corporate risk assessments; and
- the subject of webinars, conferences and industry reports.
…it is not a black swan.
It may be a high‑impact risk, a systemic risk, a cascading risk, or a plausible extreme scenario — but it is not a black swan.
Why the CIR Article Gets It Wrong
The CIR article reports that:
“69% of respondents cited a global internet outage triggered by a major cyber attack or technology failure as the country’s most feared black swan event”
If 69% of respondents can imagine it, describe it, and rank it, then by definition it is not unpredictable.
Similarly, the article lists Covid‑19 as a black swan event, despite the fact that:
- Pandemics have been at the top of the UK National Risk Register since its creation;
- The World Health Organization had repeatedly warned of pandemic risk;
- The UK ran Exercise Cygnus in 2016 specifically to test pandemic preparedness; and
- Numerous scientific papers had modelled global pandemic scenarios for decades.
Covid‑19 was devastating, but it was not a black swan. It was a known, high‑likelihood, high‑impact risk that was insufficiently prepared for.
Calling it a black swan is not only inaccurate — it obscures the real lessons.
Why This Misunderstanding Matters
Misusing the term “black swan” creates three major problems for organisations:
1. It encourages fatalism
If everything is a black swan, then nothing is foreseeable — and therefore nothing is preventable.
This is dangerous.
Most crises are predictable, modelled and manageable with the right preparation.
2. It distracts from genuine blind spots
True black swans are rare, but they do exist. They tend to emerge from:
- unexpected interactions between systems;
- overlooked dependencies;
- novel technologies;
- behavioural tipping points; and/or
- geopolitical shocks that fall outside traditional models.
If we label every major risk a black swan, we lose the ability to identify the real blind spots.
3. It undermines strategic resilience
Resilience is built on:
- understanding known risks;
- preparing for plausible extreme scenarios;
- identifying emerging threats; and
- building adaptive capacity.
None of this requires predicting the unpredictable. It requires clarity — and misusing terminology clouds that clarity.
So What Should We Call These Risks Instead?
The scenarios listed in the Allianz report — global internet outage, supply chain paralysis, financial system shock — are serious, high‑impact risks. But they are not black swans.
They are better described as:
- Systemic risks
- Cascading failures
- Plausible extreme scenarios
- High‑impact, low‑likelihood events
- Strategic shock scenarios
These terms are more accurate and more useful for planning.
What True Black Swans Look Like
A genuine black swan might include:
- A technological breakthrough that instantly renders an entire industry obsolete
- A geopolitical realignment that no analyst had considered plausible
- A sudden, unprecedented behavioural shift in society
- A novel biological threat with no prior analogue
- A financial collapse triggered by a mechanism no regulator had modelled
These are events that sit outside existing frameworks, not at the top of them.
What Organisations Should Do Instead of Chasing Black Swans
Michael Bruch of Allianz is quoted as saying “businesses can never fully prepare for rare high impact events”
This is true — but only if we are talking about true black swans. For everything else, organisations can and should:
- Build organisational agility
- Strengthen decision‑making capability
- Develop scalable response plans
- Understand their critical dependencies
- Invest in horizon scanning
- Build a risk‑aware culture
- Prepare for plausible extreme scenarios
This is the heart of modern resilience.
A Call for Precision in the Resilience Profession
Words matter.
Terminology shapes thinking.
Thinking shapes planning.
Planning shapes outcomes.
If we label foreseeable risks as black swans, we risk:
- under‑preparing for the predictable;
- over‑focusing on the dramatic;
- misunderstanding the nature of uncertainty; and
- ultimately weakening resilience.
The resilience profession needs clarity, not sensationalism.
Black swans are real — but they are rare. Most crises are not black swans. They are foreseeable, modelled, and manageable with the right preparation. And that is exactly where organisations should focus their efforts.