The uncomfortable truth is that the world is becoming more unstable, uncertain, and less predictable. Geopolitical fragmentation, fiscal and monetary distortions, energy transitions amid increasing bottlenecks, rare-earth competition, and technological disruption from artificial intelligence, robotics, and other innovations upend traditional thinking that assumes linearity, stability, and normal distributions. Ubiquitous access to information means insight is more about filtering the signal from the noise and understanding interconnections among previously unrelated factors. In other words, better thinking.
The selloff in technology stocks this week startled some investors. It shouldn’t have. The signals of an AI bubble have been flashing for some time: billion-dollar raises for companies with no product, multibillion-dollar valuations for companies with no revenue, and nine-figure offers made to individual researchers. The AI race is building products that are economic complements to one another—you need the turbines that power the grids, that power the chips, that run the models, that power the products. And you need firms to build their growth and hiring plans around the expectation that ever more of their work will be done by AI. AI is in a bubble, companies will fail, and capex is unsustainably high. The real question is whether the infrastructure being built now will unlock a technological era that outlasts the speculation that paid for it.
History suggests yes. The pattern repeats because the pattern works. The bubble is not the danger. Missing the moment is.
Artificial intelligence is no longer an engineering discipline. It is an economic one. The companies that win will be those that understand: Ambition requires capital. Capital requires compute. Compute requires global-scale infrastructure. Infrastructure requires a strategy measured in gigawatts and billions, not teams and timelines. This is not just the future of technology — it is the new architecture of global competition.
Uncertainty and decisions. This book helps readers better understand a situation (What), determine why it’s important (So What), and decide what to do next (Now What).
The world is uncertain, and all decisions are made in an uncertain environment with unpredictable outcomes. This challenge transcends disciplines, industries, and professions. An increasingly complex modern world shaped by artificial intelligence, geopolitical instability, data overload, and rapidly evolving technology can overwhelm decision-makers who rely on outdated ways of thinking.
Uncertainty is unavoidable. It is not the enemy. It can be navigated with structure and discipline. Critical thinking, multiple perspectives, and decision tools help prioritize, forecast, and adapt decisions, but cannot dictate outcomes. “Decision Intelligence” is vital because it combines data, models, and human judgment, all augmented with new technologies, especially artificial intelligence. Better decisions come from clarity, not certainty. This is the foundation of resilience, agility, and better decision-making during volatile, unpredictable, and transformative environments. It’s not simply a matter of having a formula. Uncertain circumstances are not simple mathematical problems but require systematic and structured thinking. Understanding these structures and the motivations behind the various approaches will be essential. This approach is more of a way to think about thinking.
As Einstein said, “Give me 60 minutes to solve a problem, and I will spend 55 minutes defining it. Then the solution will be obvious.”
The “Thucydides Trap” occurs when a rising nation-state—for the Greek historian Thucydides, it was Athens—must eventually have a violent confrontation with the existing dominant nation-state—Sparta in his time. It is a zero-sum game where there can be only one dominant nation-state as the eventual winner, and it is usually assumed that the rising nation-state will outdo the dominant nation-state resolved only by military conflict.The United States and China are today’s Sparta and Athens. For several decades, their geopolitical relationship has been fundamentally based on collaboration and healthy competition, raising the bar for both countries. Now, it is turning into discordant competition, trade restrictions, and embargoes. The combined benefits of global collaboration and competitiveness, not trade restraint, will only enhance the benefits for the United States and China. The government creates friction and potential conflict, which is the biggest reason we fall into the Thucydides Trap. If appropriate, oversight, sensible regulation, and enforceable trade agreements do not interfere with fair competition and collaboration. There is no “Trap” to avoid. The sooner China and the US realize this, the better off each country (and the world) will be.
Predicting what’s next has been a fool’s game, and it continues to be. The S&P 500 was up 26% in 2023 and 25% in 2024, for the best two-year stretch since 1997-98. That brings us to 2025. What lies ahead? Rationality, Optimism, exuberance, disappointment, correction, and more frequent and intense volatility—with uncertainty about the timing, extent, and outcome. Is enthusiasm for new technology creating a bubble, and will the bubble burst? Optimism has prevailed in the markets since late 2022, generating above-average valuations and astonishing returns for some (primarily AI-related) equities. Stocks in most industrial groups sell at high multiples, but enthusiasm for artificial intelligence and the persistence of the Magnificent 7 drive most market expectations. There is the implicit presumption that the top seven companies will continue to be successful and that the “new thing” (artificial intelligence) will drive valuations even higher. However, stocks may sit still for the next 10 years as earnings rise and multiples return to earth. Another possibility is that the multiple correction is compressed into a year or two, implying a significant decline in stock prices. Be aware of Mr. Market’s irrational behavior. It’s not going to be a smooth pathway forward; there will be great investment opportunities, as there are in any market, but overall, it’s a high starting point. It’s time to be neutral.
Zero-sum thinking has begun. Despite comparative advantage, mutual cooperation, and specialization proving indisputably more beneficial than any other approach to economic interaction, this ideal is under threat. Rules and norms for economic integration lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, created an order-of-magnitude increase in the average wealth of the Western population, and benefited countless hundreds of millions enabling a way of life otherwise unimaginable post-World War II. Now that system is under threat as developed countries subsidize alternative energy, attract manufacturing via expensive subsidies, and restrict the flow of goods and capital. Mutual benefit is out; national gain is now the highest priority. In other words, stupidity and zero-sum thinking have taken over. A handful of bureaucrats, regardless of how brilliant each may be, can never equal the mind of the market. Management and control usually spell disaster eventually. Managed focus on technological development for products and services the central government believes have greater substantial benefit to the overall society may not be calamitous, but the law of unintended consequences has not been repealed. It will be inefficient, substandard, and create potentially dangerous side effects. Innovation, creative freedom, and unstructured thought are essential components to the development of any technology of substance and disruptive benefit.
The collapse of FTX shows how easily crypto is manipulated and the “crypto ecosystem” is fundamentally driven by centralized players and not any true form of decentralized or digital assets. Cryptocurrency is a sideshow and benefits no one other than speculators hoping for a greater fool. However, the combination of digital asset regulation, central-bank cooperation, and distributed assets via decentralized platforms still represents one of the most intriguing opportunities, and, with the potential disruption of global finance, one of the most exciting investment areas today.
Let the data tell the story. Remove human bias. Intuitive investment ideas may seem compelling, but more often, these ideas are time-consuming, inefficient, and inferior.
Diverse thinking, innovative approaches, and a willingness to be wrong and start over typically bring superior results.
Trust the model. Data, discipline, and rigor win more often.
While most of Europe and the United States suffer sweltering heat, darkening economic skies and bitter winter of discontent are looming. Threats to the world economy are chilling. Rising interest rates are slowing activity for discretionary spending while rising prices for nondiscretionary spending are also slowing economic activity. It would be miraculous if the compounding of both effects would not lead to a recession in both Europe and the US. China’s growth has stalled. The Ukraine conflict will resolve itself to the West’s dramatic disadvantage and the West seems to be willing to let it happen – much to each economy’s long-term disadvantage. Don’t count on anything miraculous.
