Not Predictions for 2026

A team discussing forecasts - not predictions - for the year.

The new year always prompts people to issue predictions about what to watch and what’s to come.  In that same spirit (yet being clear that these are not predictions for what the future will look like), here in Not Predictions for 2026, we have a list of twelve important issues that every American leader today should be aware of and tracking. 

These twelve issues, ranging from the technical to the ideological, promise to reshape the mid- and long-term threats and opportunities that America – and by extension, all of us – will face in the years ahead. 

Think of these as the cross currents of change.  They are all happening simultaneously, on different levels, and at different rates of change.  And they are interacting.

As a leader trying to navigate the proliferating uncertainties we encounter today, you don’t need to be an expert in any of these, but you should be tracking them as part of a larger, ongoing strategic understanding of America’s emerging landscape of the future.

While an individual issue may not directly impact your industry or community today, all of them are causing critical shifts in American society, which over the long-term reshape the landscape on which all of our industries sit.

[Note: don’t call these “megatrends”; they’re not necessarily trends.  These are contests being waged within society, novel transformations across civilization, and transitions between old and new eras.]

1. Geopolitical Transition: the post-Cold War world is no more.  The norms and structures of the international landscape are (quite clearly) being reworked by multiple parties in a more contentious, less collaborative spirit.

2. Rise of the Machine World: to the tune of billions of dollars, we are feverishly summoning into existence a whole class of actors with powers and incentives never before seen on this planet.  The machine world joins (and overlaps with) the natural and human worlds.

3. Conflict Without Borders: because of our global connectivity, balkanizing interests, and the nature of our new tools, there is no safe zone or “rear” anymore; conflict spreads and mutates like an infection while it becomes almost trivial for anyone to reach out and create effects against others no matter where they live.

4. Reengineering Life: biology as an engineering problem.  Biotechnology broadly, and synthetic biology specifically, is and will continue to expand the design space of possibilities for altering organisms and ecosystems (and biohybrid objects).

5. Renegotiating the Social Contract: the old assumptions about employer-employee definitions and responsibilities, the nature of “organization”, and common understandings about what is “right” or “just” within work life, and how to value human (or machine) labor are decidedly in flux.

6. Offworld Bound: we are launching ourselves back into space.  While machines might play a much bigger role in “colonizing” the solar system than many expect, we are locked back into an outer space-bound trajectory, which literally alters the geometry of politics, economics, and security.

7. National Myth (Re)Making: on the eve of our 250^th birthday as a country, many of us seem deeply, existentially divided on the value, role, and prospects for us a nation, both in history and moving forward.  While we’ve never shared a single opinion on these matters, this contest is occurring amidst global realignments and existential concerns for humanity.

8. Frictionless Finance: the technologies and systems on which the mundane transactions of daily life ride are in a period of intense diversification and experimentation.  How we pay, what we pay for, and who does (or does not) get to control that are all rippling with change.

9. Twilight of Reason: America (and the West) as all of us have understood them were founded on worldviews born out of the Enlightenment.  Today, we are post-Enlightenment, struggling once again over what constitutes truth and who we look to in defining it.  The changing economic, intellectual, and information landscapes of the past three decades have led many American communities to reach for different ways of knowing and for different rules to live by.

10. Rewiring the Grid: we are in the midst of a major push to change how we generate, store, transmit, and use power.  The massive electrification of daily life, the energy transition, the surging needs from AI, and the return of nuclear energy are all elements of this sprawling, not-quite-coordinated, rewiring.

11. Contest Over Centralization-Decentralization: from the rise of the Internet to the blockchains and internet-of-things surveillance ecosystems of today, the technologies of the past 40 years have simultaneously offered both decentralizing and centralizing possibilities for society; it is an ongoing contest over which potential wins out – and who wins it.

12. Revenge of Realism: the idealism of the post-Cold War world has been supplanted by what is a return to politics without pretense.  Internationally and domestically, ambitions are shedding their principled cloaks, “might makes right” seems to be a rising sentiment, and older, more tribal and more visceral patterns to human politics are returning.

In the months ahead, VFS will be employing these twelve as lenses with which to understand some of the critical changes occurring around us, and to help forecast the possibilities to come.  We think they are a solid set of strategic issues to use as a backdrop to the foresight and strategy discussions you will have this year.

If you want to follow our evolving discussion using these twelve issues, then sign up for our monthly newsletter or email us to get alerted to upcoming publications on this strategic futures context.

As always, contact us today to arrange for a briefing or facilitated session on these for your team.