Last week, as Europeans debated the prospect of fuel rationing, I found myself at an elegant dining table in San Francisco, chatting with local luminaries. There was lively gossip about artificial general intelligence, Anthropic’s tussle with the Pentagon and the putative public listings of SpaceX and OpenAI, which could shower even more wealth on the Bay Area.
“Aren’t you worried that events in Iran could derail this?” I asked. They shrugged. “Look at the markets,” one financier retorted. “They are doing great!”
Welcome to the paradox of 2026. War in the Gulf has created “the biggest energy crisis in history”, according to the International Energy Agency. Violence has consumed other parts of the Middle East, as well as Sudan and Ukraine; populism, nationalism and angry polarisation are rising in the west; debt burdens are sky-high; climate change is accelerating; and the AI revolution that so thrills Silicon Valley titans is also threatening to destroy jobs. Meanwhile, American consumer confidence has slumped to its lowest level on record.