As we close the autumn academic quarter at the University of Washington, I am grading final papers for the enterprise risk management course I have just taught, and at the same time preparing my winter quarter cybersecurity course materials, to begin again on January 3. The winter solstice occurs the day after we turn in grades, and signals both the beginning of winter and the earth’s turn back toward the light.

What a week it has been! At the top of the charts would be Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, and his subsequent dismantling of special teams that oversaw content management, ethics, privacy, as well as employment law protections. Though Musk is considered brilliant at developing startup companies like Space X and Tesla, this time he had purchased and made private a publicly traded company with 7,500 employees.

This week, we’re looking at pandemic risk in my Enterprise Risk Management course. Students worked in their small groups on Monday to describe two or three impacts that COVID has had on their health, their studies, their outlook, and their finances. I’ve excerpted some of the responses below.

It’s hard to look away from natural disasters – we wonder why, after so many years of studying them, their impact has not lessened, and their restoration time has not shortened.

We are enjoying the last weeks of summer, interspersed with climate change indicators that bring fires, floods, excessive heat, and even an earthquake or two. As I write this on September 11, I am mindful that there are thousands more victims than the 2,996 who died that morning in 2001 who have died unexpectedly while simply going about their business.

Here are some of the issues I’m thinking about that I did not cover in my column yesterday on geopolitical uncertainty and operational resilience.

Reproductive Privacy

Choice

Russia’s Quest

China’s Ambitions

Iran’s Tensions

Africa’s Famines

There is no lack of headlines to draw our attention to a range of risks that are present in our world. In a recent risk steering committee meeting, we discussed a range of issues, including economic and pandemic wildcards, the evolution of cyber risks, the war in Ukraine and escalation risks, geopolitical blocs, and the November U.S. election outcomes. (Credit here to Gary Roboff, senior adviser at Shared Assessments, for presenting the challenges.) This list was presented to identify topics to be covered in our October meeting but was not meant to be a comprehensive list of operational risks.

On July 19, 2009, ASA presented itself to the world. The country was just pulling out of the 2007—2008 financial crisis, and the need for companies and agencies to re-examine assumptions around critical infrastructure was high.

We launched the website and distributed a news release to announce our company and its services to a network that included executives, heads of agencies, risk managers, cyber specialists, entrepreneurs, media, and technologists. From its inception, we imagined the company to have two parts.

The number of mass shootings in this country appear to have increased dramatically. It is hard to predict where one might next take place. Against an international backdrop that includes Russia’s war on Ukraine, new variants of the Omicron virus, gas prices, and continuing supply chain problems, the rise in violence and the unpredictability of location might encourage us to stay home and hunker down.

Nearly every month, my column generates substantive comments. Here is my colleague Howard Stein, former head of operational risk, The Corporate & Investment Bank, Citibank and Citigroup International, reminding me that there is another way to look at the issues I am describing in my column on gun controls.