Foresight and Early Warning

Michigan expected to deliver a Senate nominee on Tuesday night. Instead, it may have delivered the Democratic Party's most consequential ideological test since Trump returned to the White House. Abdul El-Sayed defeated Representative Haley Stevens for the party's Senate nomination against the wishes of much of the Democratic establishment, in one of the most expensive primaries in American history. His win immediately turned what had been treated as a routine state primary into a national argument over who actually speaks for the Democratic Party now. The bigger question, though, is not whether progressives can win a Democratic primary. It is whether Michigan just revealed where the party is genuinely heading, or whether it simply revealed what a narrow, highly engaged slice of primary voters wants, a distinction the party will need to answer honestly before November.   El-Sayed's win did not happen in isolation either. It followed Zohran Mamdani's insurgent rise in New York City, and it arrived on the same Michigan ballot as Rashida Tlaib's renomination and Donavan McKinney's defeat of sitting Congressman Shri Thanedar. Four results, one pattern. Together, they raise a question far bigger than any single race, whether Democratic voters are beginning to reject both the party's traditional leadership and its long-standing relationship with major donors, particularly on Israel and campaign finance.

The race to dominate AI is no longer being fought only in laboratories; It is now being fought at the ballot box. As the US struggles to establish comprehensive rules for one of the world's fastest-moving technologies, the companies developing it have begun competing over something even more valuable than market share, namely political influence. During the 2026 midterm election cycle, AI companies and their affiliated political action committees have poured tens of millions of dollars into congressional races, backed rival candidates, and expanded their lobbying operations across Washington. For the first time, elections themselves are becoming part of the battle over who will shape the future of AI governance.   This marks a significant shift in the relationship between technology and politics. Rather than waiting for governments to determine how AI should be regulated, leading firms are increasingly attempting to shape the political environment before those decisions are made. As Congress remains divided over comprehensive AI legislation, electoral politics has become another arena in the competition over AI. Consequently, the 2026 midterms may offer an early indication of whether democratic institutions can establish the rules governing AI before the industry's growing political influence begins shaping those rules instead.

The international system is undergoing one of its most significant periods of transformation since the end of the Cold War. Intensifying geopolitical competition, prolonged armed conflicts, growing tensions between major powers, and mounting criticism of international institutions have all raised fundamental questions about the future of global governance. 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} 50%{ opacity:.22; } } @keyframes bg-flow{ to{ stroke-dashoffset:-320; } } main, footer, .hero, .intro{ position:relative; z-index:1; } @media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce){ .scroll-cue .line{ animation:none !important; } .bg-anim .ring-group, .bg-anim .ring-group.reverse, .bg-anim .node, .bg-anim .link{ animation:none !important; } } Pulse Survey Series The New World Order The old system is fracturing — and no clear successor is in sight. Findings from Al Habtoor Research Centre. Read the findings The international system is undergoing one of its most significant periods of transformation since the end of the Cold War. Intensifying geopolitical competition, prolonged armed conflicts, growing tension between major powers, and mounting criticism of international institutions have all raised fundamental questions about the future of global governance. As confidence in the post-1945 order declines, debates over multipolarity, the effectiveness of multilateral cooperation, and the legitimacy of international organizations have moved to the center of global political discourse. This Pulse survey examines how the public reads that shift — their trust in institutions, their view of recent great-power behaviour, and their expectations for who, if anyone, leads next. 87%say Trump's positions have hurt international bodies 75%see multilateral cooperation as weaker than a decade ago 43%expect a multipolar world of major powers Confidence in institutions has collapsed 56.5%say bodies like the UN, WHO and World Bank are no longer as reliable as they once were Only 4.3% of respondents still describe these institutions as trustworthy and dependable. A further 39.1% express just moderate confidence — a qualified trust that, combined with outright distrust, means 96% of respondents now hold some degree of reservation about the institutions built to anchor the post-war order. International institutions derive their effectiveness from broad public confidence in their impartiality. When that confidence is this thin, it points to a legitimacy challenge rather than a passing mood — and it sets the baseline against which future Pulse surveys will track whether the erosion is cyclical or structural. How much confidence do you currently have in international institutions? The "Trump effect" reads as corrosive, not neutral 87%view Donald Trump's recent positions as a negative influence on international institutions Positive, neutral, and unsure responses are essentially tied at 4.3% each — a rare degree of consensus in an otherwise divided survey. Respondents appear to read the "Trump effect" as more than disagreement with one leader: when the world's most influential power openly questions or selectively engages with international institutions, it creates permission for other states to do the same. Over time, that dynamic risks weakening respect for international law, reducing compliance with multilateral rules, and accelerating the fragmentation of the global governance system this survey documents throughout. How do you view recent Trump positions on international institutions? No successor to the current order is in sight 43.5%believe no clear leader will shape global governance in the years ahead Emerging powers are the next most likely candidate at 29%, while the United States (13%) and regional coalitions (14.5%) trail closely behind — essentially split. Rather than a single successor to the current order, respondents anticipate a diffusion of influence. The absence of a dominant choice suggests people don't expect a straightforward handover from one hegemon to the next, but a more fluid, contested environment where power is dispersed among multiple actors without a universally accepted leader. Who is most likely to shape global governance in the future? A decade-long slide in multilateral cooperation 75.4%say multilateral cooperation is weaker today than a decade ago Only 8.7% believe it has strengthened; 15.9% see it as roughly unchanged. This perception reinforces the broader narrative running through the survey: a system seen as increasingly fragmented and less able to coordinate collective action — on security, public health, climate, or economic governance. If this view persists, it may further erode public expectations that international institutions can manage the next global crisis. Cooperation vs. a decade ago Multipolarity is the expected — not the feared — outcome 43.5%expect power distributed among several major states; another 36.2% expect regional coalitions to lead instead Together, multipolar and coalition-led futures account for close to four-fifths of all responses. Just 17.4% remain unsure, while a return to unipolarity (2.9%) draws only marginal support. The post–Cold War unipolar moment, in the public's view, is ending — not in favour of a new single power, but of a system with multiple centres of influence and greater reliance on flexible coalitions. Which future model of global order is most realistic? "Respondents don't simply believe the existing order is weakening — they expect the emerging one to be more fragmented, more competitive, and less predictable." Managing diffusion, not replacing a hegemon Taken together, the five findings point to one conclusion: the challenge for global governance in the coming years is less about which power replaces the last one, and more about managing a world where power is increasingly diffused across multiple, uncoordinated actors — with public trust in the referee institutions already running low. 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What if the sea lanes were no longer free? For seventy years, the assumption that ships pass through the world's strategic straits without permission, payment, or political approval has underpinned global trade so completely that it was rarely stated, let alone defended. In 2026, that assumption stopped being safe. In one of the world's most critical waterways, passage is now vetted, priced, and rationed by political alignment. At another, a price for safe transit has been openly announced. Along the polar routes, permits and fees are already the law, and older managed regimes are quietly expanding. These are not isolated crises. Taken together, they form the early signal of something larger: the transformation of maritime chokepoints from global commons into sovereign assets, and with it, the quiet repricing of the geography on which world trade depends.

Global food security has rarely faced two simultaneous structural shocks of this magnitude. The February 2026 closure of the Strait of Hormuz, triggered by the escalating US-Israel-Iran conflict, severed the world's most critical maritime corridor for energy, fertilizer, and food trade in a single blow. Thousands of miles away, El Niño, a periodic warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that triggers droughts, weakens monsoons, and disrupts growing conditions across the globe, is intensifying at a pace forecasters warn could make it one of the most severe events since records began.   Each shock alone would constitute a serious test for global food systems. Together, they converge on a region structurally designed to withstand neither. In 2026, both shocks are unfolding simultaneously, stacked on top of fertilizer markets already in crisis — a compounding that no previous El Niño episode has faced. The question is no longer whether they will converge, but how severe the consequences will be for a region structurally unprepared for either.

President Trump returned to office with a clear promise to the technology industry, namely that the federal government would get out of the way. He had campaigned on dismantling what he called the Biden administration's overreach on AI safety, installed venture capitalist David Sacks as White House AI and crypto czar, and welcomed Big Tech CEOs to his inauguration as a signal of the partnership he intended.   For Silicon Valley, the message was unambiguous. The deregulatory era had arrived, and American AI companies would be free to race ahead of China without bureaucratic friction slowing them down. Almost 18 months later, those same companies cannot release their most advanced models without first receiving a phone call from the Commerce Secretary. The story of how that reversal happened, and what it means for US national security, allied trust, and the global AI race, is one the administration has never fully explained.

In February 2025 the AI researcher Andrej Karpathy named something programmers had already started doing: describing what they wanted in plain English and letting an AI model write the code, rather than reading and understanding it themselves. He called it "vibe coding." A year later, a version of the same habit turned up somewhere far less forgiving of error. A recent Economist report on "vibe lawyering" describes how ordinary people, guided by AI chatbots rather than legal training, are drafting complaints, contesting disputes, and pursuing litigation they would once have needed a lawyer for. Research cited in that report, by Anand Shah at MIT and Joshua Levy at USC, examined 4.5 million federal civil cases and found that the share of self-represented litigants, flat at around 11% for two decades, climbed to 16.8% by fiscal year 2025, while the number of self-filed suits roughly doubled. The chatbots involved don’t just help people write; they tend to invent case law outright, encourage litigation, discourage settlement, and inflate people’s sense of how likely they are to win. Courts have started responding in kind: nearly a thousand reprimands have gone out over improper AI use in filings, and a federal appeals court recently suspended two lawyers over fabricated citations.   Law makes an unusually good case study, because courts keep a public, searchable record of what happens when confidence outpaces competence. But it is a case study, not the whole story. The same dynamic, a fluent AI answer standing in for judgment someone doesn’t actually have, is turning up wherever people now use AI to make decisions they used to need real expertise for. That is what this piece is actually about: not litigation specifically, but what AI does to a person’s sense of their own competence once it is quietly doing part of the thinking for them, and what that could mean as the pattern spreads well past the courtroom.

On July 3, reports emerged that the United States has warned Warsaw of a possible Russian armed "provocation" against Poland, designed to test NATO's resolve. According to sources close to Polish President Karol Nawrocki, cited by the Polish outlet Onet, Washington has repeatedly signaled that such an operation could be launched within a matter of months. The scenarios under discussion range from missile or drone strikes on Poland's critical infrastructure to a limited crossing of Russian soldiers into NATO territory. This raises a critical question: is Moscow preparing to directly test Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty?   A provocation of this kind would differ fundamentally from a conventional invasion. It would be deliberately calibrated to remain below the threshold of open war — ambiguous enough to sow hesitation among allies, yet aggressive enough to force a response. Though limited in scale, its consequences for European security and the global order could be profound.

Germany "needs new partnerships more than ever," declared Chancellor Friedrich Merz as he opened a tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, announcing along the way that Berlin would loosen its long-standing restrictions on arms exports to the Gulf. Such words from a German chancellor would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Yet the scene fits a wider pattern now visible across the continent: Korean tanks arriving at Polish ports, Turkish drones ordered for Baltic skies, Brazilian transport aircraft entering European fleets, and Gulf sovereign wealth courted from London to Berlin. Europe, long accustomed to a single security patron, is visibly assembling a new roster of defence partners, and officials on all sides describe it as a strategy of diversification. The pattern reaches its most symbolic setting this week, as NATO leaders convene in Ankara, the capital of the very partner Europe has never quite decided how to treat. But strategies imply choice, and choice implies a chooser. The pressing question is: is Europe actually selecting its new partners, or is something else doing the choosing?

At a Beijing military parade in September 2025, a hot microphone captured Russian President Vladimir Putin telling Chinese President Xi Jinping that advances in biotechnology could allow humans to continuously replace their organs, grow younger, and perhaps even achieve immortality. Xi responded that people may live to 150 years by the end of this century. The exchange was widely dismissed as eccentric small talk between aging heads of state. It was neither eccentric nor small.   Behind Putin's remarks sat a $26 billion Russian state initiative, a team of scientists working toward bioprinted human organs by 2030, and a broader pattern of powerful states and private actors treating human longevity as a strategic priority. As gene therapies, regenerative medicine, and organ replacement technologies move from laboratories toward clinical settings, a question that has received little attention begins to demand serious consideration: what happens to state power when the biological clock that has always constrained political leaders and their institutions starts to slow down?

Europe has spent the last few years watching its tech anxiety go from background hum to full orchestra. It's not hard to see why. In June 2026, France's intelligence services announced they were dropping Palantir, the American data analytics firm long embedded in European defence and policing work, in favour of a domestic provider, explicitly citing the need for "strategic autonomy." Germany's military reportedly will not touch Palantir at all, and the UK is now fielding parliamentary debates over a quarter-billion-pound contract with the company, partly because, as one legal analysis bluntly put it, even European data sitting in European data centres can still be pulled by U.S. authorities under American law, contracts or no contracts. It's the kind of detail that makes "data sovereignty" sound less like a policy buzzword and more like a genuine catch.   Then, just days before this was written, the U.S. government ordered Anthropic to cut off access to its most advanced AI model, Mythos, for anyone who wasn't a U.S. citizen, citing national security concerns. Anthropic's response was to switch the model off for everyone, Americans included, rather than build a citizenship checkpoint overnight. The episode lasted only days, but it landed exactly where Europe's anxieties already live: the frontier of AI doesn't just sit outside Europe's control, it sits inside one government's control, and that government can flip a switch.   None of this means Europe should panic, or try to build its own version of everything from scratch by Thursday. As the cost estimates make clear, chasing full autonomy across the entire AI stack would run into the trillions of euros, well past the point of being realistic. The more sensible response, is for Europe to get serious about which parts of the stack actually need to be sovereign, where partnership is a perfectly good substitute for ownership, and where its real strength, regulatory leadership, can be used deliberately rather than as a consolation prize. Sovereignty, in other words, isn't about owning everything. It's about knowing exactly what you can't afford to depend on.

By 2101, the concept of democracy and the architecture of governance will undergo a profound transformation that moves far beyond traditional mechanisms such as ballot boxes and political rhetoric. In their place will emerge a system built around transparent digital interfaces that display the outputs of exceptionally powerful algorithms entrusted with making consequential decisions on behalf of societies. The central dilemma in political philosophy will no longer concern who holds the right to vote. Instead, the debate will shift toward a far deeper and more consequential question: who will possess the authority to design the code that governs human destinies and shapes control over the world’s resources?   Meanwhile, Nada sat in a soaring glass chamber overlooking the heart of the city, where vast digital walls shimmered with data visualisations and undulating lines. The space was known as the Pulse of the People Hall, the neural hub through which algorithms monitored public sentiment in real time. The main display contained no reference to parties or candidates; instead, it presented dense layers of complex code and finely calibrated colour indicators that measured levels of fear, anger, satisfaction, and trust, using the same precision as that used to measure temperature and humidity.   Nada released a heated exhale and murmured to herself, “All of this happened because democracy eroded from within.” She had studied at university what historians came to describe as the Age of Political Chaos in the late twenty-first century, a period in which elections degenerated into open arenas of cyber warfare, driven by legions of automated bots and engulfed by unending torrents of fabricated news. During that era, borderless capital asserted dominance over every dimension of political life, purchasing electoral campaigns, opinion polls, and platforms for public debate. Confronted with successive climate, pandemic, and financial crises, elected governments stood paralysed, absorbed by internal rivalries far more than by the act of governing.   At that pivotal moment, fatigued governments and weary societies alike came to regard a single path as the only rational recourse: “Let the machine decide.” What first emerged was the Comprehensive Algorithmic Governance System, an advanced suite of frameworks designed to support decision-makers in interpreting data and reaching swifter, more objective judgements. These systems were introduced to the public as neutral entities: unconcerned with transient popularity, untroubled by ballot boxes, and untouched by private interests. Yet what began as an auxiliary tool soon transformed into the primary centre of authority and, ultimately, the sole arbiter of decision-making.