When I was jotting down notes for this piece I started listing out all the best observable reasons 2026 could be a bad year.

• the labor market is weakening


• AI capex can’t continue at this rate and is propping up the market


• stocks are expensive and multiples will contract


• private credit boogeyman


• inflation returns

No topic—not the genocidal war and famine in Gaza, not Trumpian authoritarianism—has magnetized bien-pensant attention this year in the way that AI has. Writing on AI thus comes in every mode: muckraking (“Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to ‘Munch’ Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health”), scholastic (“Deep Learning’s Governmentality”), polemical... See more