The Arlington Institute was founded in 1989 by John L. Petersen, who has had multiple careers in the military, nonprofit sector, residential real estate development, advertising and marketing, presidential politics, national security policy, and the music industry.

Midway through the 90s, Petersen became convinced that humanity was living in an extraordinary time of change that would necessarily result in a major global shift within the following two decades. TAI committed itself to playing a significant role in facilitating a global transition to a new world that operates in a fundamentally different way from the past. The question begged by this perspective was: What kinds of events could be the catalyst for a big, historical shift? That query led to an exploration of “wild cards,” rapidly moving, surprise events that had the potential of quickly and fundamentally reshaping the global landscape. In an attempt to understand the breadth of the possibilities, he wrote his second book, Out of the Blue: Wild Cards and Other Big Future Surprises, in 1997, which became a World Future Society bestseller and was the first and only book on the subject written in English.