This is my final newsletter of 2025.
As the year closes, I find it useful to step back—not to forecast the future with precision, but to widen the aperture on what may lie ahead. Predictions are often misunderstood as attempts to be exactly right. That is not the point. No company, executive, or policymaker can control the forces described below. But leaders can become more sensitive to the environmental signals that shape opportunity, risk, and strategic timing.
This annual exercise forces me to stretch my own thinking beyond near-term plans and the next budget cycle. It is an invitation to readers to question assumptions, notice patterns early, and avoid anchoring strategy to a world that may no longer exist.
1. Severe Economic Downturn Between 2030
In 2024–2025 the Federal Reserve relied on revised or delayed economic indicators while simultaneously managing tariffs, industrial subsidies, emergency lending facilities, and interest-rate shifts. With incomplete data and reactive tools, policy increasingly resembles dial-turning rather than strategy—an environment historically associated with volatility.
2. President Trump Will Not Complete His Term
At age 79, President Trump is the oldest sitting president in U.S. history. Limited transparency around health introduces governance uncertainty. The evidence and pace of physical decline is becoming more noticeable by the month. Historical precedents show that health-driven leadership constraints can rapidly reshape agency and congressional behavior.
3. Congress Reasserts Itself in 2027
Congress controls roughly $1.7 trillion annually through appropriations. When executive authority weakens, this power naturally reasserts itself regardless of partisan alignment. The mid-term elections will provide unmistakable evidence of a citizenry not aligned with its government and serve as the catalyst.
4. China Will Sell Electric Cars in the U.S. by 2029
China produces over half of the world’s EVs and dominates battery manufacturing and critical mineral processing. BYD now outsells Tesla globally by volume, while Chinese EVs continue rapid expansion across Europe and emerging markets.
5. The U.S. Will Not Build Another Aircraft Carrier
Aircraft carriers operate on roughly 50‑year lifecycles. The issue is not elimination, but whether to procure new $13B platforms in an era defined by hypersonic threats and distributed maritime operations.
6. University Systems Will Contract and Consolidate
U.S. undergraduate enrollment has declined by more than one million students since 2019, forcing financial strain and consolidation across public and private institutions. AI is fundamentally challenging the delivery mechanism of a college education.
7. A Military Readiness Hole Becomes Unavoidable by 2028
Following two decades of sustained optempo, depot backlogs and aging platforms persist. The U.S. has never fully balanced operational demand with maintenance capacity.
8. The Defense Industrial Base Contracts Another 15% by 2028
Private equity ownership continues to expand across the defense sector while inconsistent acquisition signals and disrupted R&D funding narrow entry points for small business.
9. NATO Rebrands Out of Necessity
The Western European Union preceded today’s EU, while SEATO dissolved after losing relevance. NATO faces similar pressures as member threat perceptions diverge.
10. The Supreme Court Expands
and Moves to 25-Year Terms
Public confidence in the Court has declined sharply, making structural reforms—once implausible—part of the mainstream policy debate.
11. Electoral Reform Expands: Ranked-Choice Voting and Open Primaries
Ranked-choice voting operates statewide in Maine and Alaska, while open primaries are expanding elsewhere—altering incentives that currently reward ideological extremes. Watch for this to expand as a means of reducing polarization.
12. A Decoupled Corporate Healthcare
Financing System Emerges
Employer-sponsored healthcare remains the largest non-wage labor cost in the U.S. A contribution-based system would reduce job lock while preserving private care delivery. Medicare and Tri-Care for Life are models that will expand shifting this burden from corporations to government.
13. SBIR Reauthorization Arrives Inside
the FY26 Defense Appropriations Bill
When authorizing committees stall, Congress historically embeds fixes in appropriations. SBIR reauthorization is likely to follow this pattern.
What Am I Reading?
Olivia Nuzzi’s latest book, American Canto, is a difficult read—both stylistically and emotionally. Once a prominent political reporter for The Daily Beast, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times, Nuzzi chronicles a deeply personal unraveling that played out in public view. The narrative includes an unusually intimate relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one he denies despite substantial evidence.
The book’s structure is halting—so much so that it likely would not pass Amazon’s basic publishing requirements—making Simon & Schuster’s decision to publish it surprising. I pushed through out of respect for her earlier reporting, but it is a painful story: a thirty-something professional drawn to proximity to power and ultimately crushed by the machinery she believed she understood. It is not a new story, but it remains a cautionary one.
