This is a good point. All this froth about Bitcoins being a scam or worthless or illegal or blah blah is a very useful smokescreen for people with a business model that's falling apart at the seams. If a U.S. citizen wants to gamble online despite the legal restrictions they can. That market is already filled. What's this guy got that the other's don't? Bitcoins? Is that it? Wow. I wanna invest.

The report from 15 years ago is here:
http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Global%20Trends_2015%20Report.pdf

I found that link to download VERY slowly, and the PDF appears to be rasterised pages? Ick ick ick ick.
Anyway, suffice it to say that they missed a fair few very important trends. Like the social network platforms and social media that would emerge. The upheavals in the petroleum market, the shift towards gas, etc.

Indeed. It seems much of the economic analysis in the report (and in the comments here, for that matter) is labouring under the misconception that the exchange of money is the cause of human interaction, rather than a symptom of it.

This NIC mob have been releasing their "Global Trends 20XX" for some time now. In fact, if you head over here: http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Global%20Trends_2015%20Report.pdf you can see what they were saying about 2015. I'll be wanting to read that report, and see how right they were, before paying any attention to the latest one. Unfortunately they seem to have been /.-ed and that link is downloading VERY slowly.

Random magazine reports on talk at random conference by random pen tester dude who sez "Wow the world's telco networks are so insecure like I've hacked them heaps of times I'm pretty 1337" (I'm paraphrasing a bit but that's basically it). Well ... meh. Although, point that world's telco networks are pretty insecure, and the main limiting factor on the amount of hacking going on is just the amount of people who bother trying, is valid. Cheers.