November 1st 2026

Crystal Ball

Since everyone else does it, I wrote down some thoughts on what’s ahead - if nothing else, for your amusement:

Domestically - the latest polls show that the earlier polls were skewed (no surprise there, polls have been gun-decked I suspect since Noah started asking whether building a boat was a good idea…) But, that suggests that perhaps it won’t be as dire as some have predicted, with the loss of the House by a narrow margin and the Senate either at a 50-50 split or 51-49 one way or the other. This will mean an ugly fight if one of the Supreme Court judges retires in the next 2 years, as has been postulated, but that is what it is…

Will there be impeachments of some cabinet officers? Probably. None appear to me to be deserved, but that doesn’t mean much. Somehow this really does need to be corralled. I may have gotten a little cheap thrill out of President Clinton’s impeachment, but it accomplished nothing positive. For that matter, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson may have been legally accurate - he did break the law, but the law was foolish and was stricken by Congress a short while later. 

The question, as one smart friend pointed out, is whether this sort of thing so wraps up the President’s attention and efforts that he is weakened on the international stage? That is, of course, a distinct possibility. On the other hand, president’s in the past have flexed to the international stage where they did have a more free hand and we might well find Trump more engaged abroad. We shall see, but my guess is that Trump will stay involved internationally and will still find ways to get what he wants, for the most part.

Other than that, the US is actually doing well. I spent a few hours going over crimes stats this past week and the US really does have the lowest violent crime rates since 1900 - yes 125+ years, and well below nearly all of our allies in Europe and Asia. Economically, we are not only independent in energy, we have tremendous reserves and our position relative to the rest of the world is improving a bit. Overall, very positive. We also have some 600 million acres of woodlands, 500 million acres of grasslands and more than 400 million acres of commercial farmland - we can feed ourselves and much of the world. Prices may be unpleasant from time to time (too high for consumers, too low for farmers), but the fundamentals remain solid.

Further there are sectors of our economy that are moving in the right direction, and at the head of it is Space, courtesy of Musk. And his efforts in AI may also soon take center stage. So, economically, very good. And, from a combat capability perspective, our weapon systems remain the finest in the world, though expensive and difficult to produce in mass - though perhaps we will turn the corner on that in the next two years - I am guardedly hopeful.

Socially, we have a great deal of strain. But I think it’s worth noting that in 1968 we had anti-war riots picking up momentum (remember the pictures of burned out blocks in Washington DC on the cover of Time?), a Presidential candidate assassinated, Rev. King was assassinated, and there was a general fear of a race war. We are not that bad today, not even close - and the crime figures that lean in that direction are all concentrated in perhaps 20 cities governed by the far left. The one issue that I have worries about are the cell phones and the disturbing fact that some 2/3rds of folks get their news of their cell phones and the cell phones overwhelmingly use 4 news aggregators (Apple, Google, MSN and Yahoo). It’s not simply that these 4 sites are left of center in what they report; it is also how they report it. Listening to some recent reports you could easily come away with the sense that the US has dissolved in into the Wild Wild West, that there are shoot-outs on every street corner, store shelves are empty and we will all be scrapping for food before Thanksgiving. In short, they love to promote doom, and AI will only make this problem more severe. And there is no easy fix for that.

I’ve been trying to get my hands around AI and the two issues that worry me concern the markets, and personal information and manipulation. The markets - the banks and big trading houses all around the world - have automated systems for stopping and starting trades in the event of certain movements in the market already defined as too high risk. I have read a number of major traders express real concern that AI systems will be no different EXCEPT that they will be more predictive and at the same time faster. But the predictive software isn’t perfect (it can never be, thank you quantum mechanics), it’s just faster and uses more variables, but can be just as wrong. But the auto-trading stops and starts will be faster. The risk here, again, as per a few traders, is that a system makes prediction of some trend and gets it dramatically wrong. And then acts on it with blistering speed… we could have market mayhem quickly - perhaps too quickly to prevent a major disaster. There is a very low probability that it will happen, but very high cost if it does.

The other issue with AI is what this software is doing: 

First, it is accumulating every stitch of information on everybody. I talked to a guy from one of the major tech firms a number of years ago and they were already working on what we would call a pattern of life (POL) file on everyone - everyone. 8 Billion POL files. Everyone will be analyzed and profiled and they will try to understand you - all of you, all of us.

But the second piece is that the AI linguistics models will take those individual files and will, based on models of each of us individually, attempt to modify any response  - any and every response - to you based on those files. This is already being done to some extent. If you use any of the AI systems, they are already cued to note your likes and dislikes, the types of language you use and don’t use, and they adjust their answers accordingly. The long-term goal here is to shape everything that hits your cell-phone, laptop, etc., so that it is tailored specifically for you so that you respond in the desired manner, from simply accepting their answer to buying their product. Of course, buying or selling sits soap its one thing. But the same process can, and presumably will eventually, be used to influence how you vote.

And it all rests on the ever growing mountain of data abut you that is held by all these various firms.

I would add my own personal soap box issue here: we need to strengthen the 4th amendment - a great deal. People should own their own data - just as we have done with college athletes; this would change the dynamic of what can be collected and held and used - used against you. And no organization should be allowed to hold more than a certain amount of data on you. If you have paid your taxes for the last 40 years, why is the IRS holding your data? Limit it to 5 years. Limit a bank to 5 years. Google or Amazon can only hold 3 years of data. It’s like a tennis ball in a pipe, push a new ball in, and an old ball falls out. And violation of the rule would have criminal penalties.

I would also add that any long-term fix to the issues in our country will, in the end require fixing education in this country, that children and young adults go to school to learn, not be indoctrinated. But that is an issue for another day.

As for the rest of the world: some other issues:

1) The various warnings about having 72 hours of food and water, etc., as has suddenly become of note in Europe and elsewhere, besides being a generally good idea, my sense is that several things have happened at once: 

a) The lack of any sense by much of the European leadership as to how to respond to the riots in Europe, beyond some meaningless words and minor tactical responses. They can restore order in limited cases and small areas, but they don't want to answer the real problem, the combined far left and Muslim immigrant alliance that is using their own words against them. Any real response must begin by undermining their own political positions for the last 25 years, and in a certain sense, undermines the EU itself. Political, social and economic problems have spread across Europe: Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the UK, now even Poland are all facing troubles that their leadership ill equipped to address. The answers seem straightforward, but politically nearly impossible. 

b) The EU has advertised Russia’s “hyper war” or "5th Gen War” for political purposes, but I think there is enough that they have found (and really, there is nothing new here, the Russians have been doing this since 1918) that they - the EU nations - need to act but doing so will require realigning real money and again, walking back policies they have championed for at least 35 years. That Trump has poked them all in the eye and insisted that they fix it themselves has them finally worried that he meant it. That an alliance with 3 times as many people and 8 times the GDP of Russia is struggling to fix readiness while also keeping the fight going in Ukraine is a real problem. That Ukraine has already come forward and said “We need another 70 billion Euros for next year” has served to demonstrate how weak they - collectively - really are.

So, "not knowing" what is going to happen next, but fairly certain they will have no coherent and effective response, the leaders of Europe are acting like they are waiting for the Fates to descend from Olympus and mess up the world, and they will simply need to respond when it happens - but they continue to act as if it certainly isn't their fault. 

It also helps that they seem to have come out of their delusional state and recognized that the US is not a parliamentary system; Trump will still be president for 26 months after the November elections no matter how the elections go. Intellectually, they know this; viscerally, they seem to regularly forget it. Yes, Trump may be weakened by all the intramural cat-fighting after the next Congress sits, but my suspicion is that he won’t be as weak as they hope on one hand, nor as weak as they fear on the other, when they try to figure out how to deal with Russia.

2) The Russia - Ukraine war is now a real problem. Someplace in the recent past the EU was still living in fantasy land and “knew” that Ukraine was going to win (not than anyone had a strategy that explained “how”) and all they needed to do was to fund it at 50 - 60 billion Euros per year. Ukrainians would continue to die but they - the EU leadership - didn't look too hard at the casualty counts, and there seemed to be enough Ukrainians and besides, they believed the reports on Russian deaths and 8 to 1 kill ratios. But, now we have clearly settled into a “post Somme” reality with folks arguing about taking back from the Russians 105.83 sq kilometers of land in the "just 9 months" of fighting, as if this were some amazing, D-Day level of tactical and operational success. 

And suddenly, the cash strapped EU, which still doesn’t have enough stored energy for this winter if it’s too cold (I get the feeling some of the EU leadership is praying for global warming), realizes that all the money they loaned to Ukraine was provided with the understanding that the EU nations are paying the interest on the loans, and Ukraine is only repaying the principle, but only IF Russia starts paying remunerations in the wake of a peace treaty. Which is looking pretty sketchy… I get the sense that for much of the EU, ending the war sooner rather than later is suddenly a priority before the EU sinks deeper into debt.

Whether they can is another issue. Zelenskyy I think understands that he has painted himself into a corner, that he needs to end the war, he is running out of men and the country is being destroyed. But, I think psychologically he doesn’t know how to let go. He is going to need to be helped off the stage… Trump’s unorthodox approach, as grating as it can appear sometimes, in fact, may be the only thing that works. And yes, Putin is an evil SOB. But he has killed far fewer people than any one of China’s leaders in the last 80 years and everyone talks to Beijing. EU leadership needs to accept the fact that they need to deal with unsavory people, like the Hamas figures they deal with all the time.

3) The Mid East is a mess BUT, my guess is that some important steps have taken place here in the last year and they are going to start to bear fruit. At the top, Sheikh Mohammed of the UAE (the Prime Minister) realizes that a great deal of what everyone has been fighting for - for decades and decades - is insane. I think he is going to keep pushing for the UAE to be increasingly independent of any sort of Pan-Arab thinking and focus on UAE political and economic security. The pipeline across Fujairah and doing something about the Houthis are both part of this - as is emasculating Iran. I think Mohammed bin Salman (Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince), who is, perhaps not quite a smooth as Sheikh Mohammed, also gets this. Trump will take care of Iran, and Iran, which has the same problem with US presidents as does Europe (the “not a parliamentary system” issue), is waking up to the fact that Trump will still be here next year. I think it will be interesting to see how many of the IRGC relish martyrdom, and I think, IF we keep the squeeze on, many will have that opportunity next year. Whether there can be a successful revolution is another story. I think they - the people - need a real leader to mobilize them. IF one merges, the revolution will be VERY bloody. But how it turns out remains a mystery at this point.

Meanwhile, oil flow out of the Gulf states now exceeds what it was before the war started. Iran has forced the Arab world to make the Strait of Hormuz of little importance. Thanks.

4) China… China remains a country struggling with basic issues: they import 12+ million barrels of oil per day, they produce about 4.4 million per day, their consumption  reached 17 million barrels per day almost a year ago and their consumption numbers continue to rise. They are also net importers of food. And they have an economy that has been structured around manufacturing and cheap access to foreign markets as a “developing economy,” all of which has been weakened by Trump’s foreign policies. Add to that what they have observed of the wars both in Ukraine and Iran (wars never go according to plan), and a clear “signal” that directly confronting Trump will at least lead to unexpected results, add the renewed prickliness in South and South East Asia, and it is difficult to imagine that Xi will try anything while Trump is in office - which may give the US and its allies a tiny window to prepare.

But, there is the fear that is may soon be “too late,” which could push him to try something, if not a direct move on Taiwan, some sort of "5th gen war with Chinese characteristics.” 

And then there is the issue of China’s population: Yi Fuxian, a professor of demographics and obstetrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has spent years studying Chinese birth-rates. Last year he reported that China had the same number of births in 2025 as China had in the 1738 when the population was 150 million. He has pulled the numbers apart reaching back decades and his answer is that the Chinese population is currently 130 million less than the official 1.41 billion. Other estimates, based on salt consumption - a staple and stable number apparently - puts the delta between 200 and 400 million. Perhaps more importantly, the demographic trends suggest China’s population is contracting rapidly, and will fall below 400 million by 2100.

This too might prompt Xi to act now rather than later as the numbers continue to work against China

5) As noted above, there is the issue of AI. My own sense is that AI will be a great worry but less impactful than expected. Certainly, in medicine it offers great potential. In finance it could be a disaster simply because it will project trends faster and act faster, but not necessarily be any more accurate. In weaponry, we already have systems that function of full auto - I’m not that worried. Can AI be used by evil people to do horrible things? Yes. I think the way to address that is not with AI, it is with protecting personal data - everyone’s personal data. That we let college athletes do so is a start. Let’s go from there.

6) Finally, there is the Black Swan, the completely unexpected event. Coronal Mass Ejection, perhaps. Or some world-wide flu… Or… But those aren’t unexpected - folks have been along about them for decades. The answer here is to actually prepare, calmly, ahead of time. We need to begin with hardening infrastructures, and go from there..

v/r pete