Historians have called this a “period of instability,” but what has caused this era to be such? Listing the many risky situations does not explain them; instead, we need to step back from the battlefronts and look at several forces that are converging on the world’s societies. First, what we call the Big Shift, the multi-decade-long transfer of great amounts of wealth from net consuming countries to net producing countries. Second, what made the Big Shift possible. We see as the enablers of the Big Shift three big forces that are changing economies worldwide: globalization, digitization and permeable borders. As societies worldwide make adjustments to expectations in order to bring them into alignment with the new realities that the Big Shift and the three big forces have created, we expected to see Tensions in the Transition. But the transition has become a dynamic of its own, with its own drivers that have nurtured an Us-versus-Them perspective. As the conflicts that mark this period of instability become intermixed with the anger and scapegoating that the We/They perspective encourages, the Tensions in the Transition could become increasingly risky.