[smspillaz]

I'm a bit late to the thread, but I'll play the game this year (24.12.2026). I don't want any of these to happen, but unfortunately I think they might:

- US starts a digital services trade war with the EU. It starts out with tariffs on digital services provided to the USA. EU responds in kind. Google Cloud, AWS and Azure lose a lot of clients over this, but they mitigate the damage by restructuring their business to avoid the tariffs. The tariffs don't achieve any policy change in the EU and eventually settle on a tolerable level.

- Significantly more restrictions and tightening on the US Visa Waiver Programme, with a small chance that it is rescinded altogether. VWP beneficiary countries threaten to retaliate in kind, but never do, because US tourism is too valuable.

- China continues to overtake the USA in growth in tech and digital services related exports. FVEY gets very nervous about this, but in practice nothing is done because of strong consumer demand.

- Coreweave faces solvency issues and numerous AI companies fundraising are forced to do their next raise at a down round.

- AI job loss is revealed to not actually be real. The cause of unemployment really is finally realized to be economic uncertainty caused by high inflation, interest rates and international trade policy uncertainty. Potential digital services tariffs and AI boom collapse make the situation much worse.

- Significantly more momentum behind the HIRE Act, with a small chance that it passes. If it does, tech giants close their EU/UK/Canada/Australia offices and move the roles to India.

- Russia / Ukraine "peace deal" is signed, but will be broken by Russia based on some false flag. Russia's invasion and occupation of Ukraine unfortunately continues, but doesn't progress.

- MAGA aligned actors interfere in the election of another country.

- USA conducts a "special operation" in Venezuela.

- Weaponized AI generated disinformation and fake audio/video/images starts to become more common. A major news story will break based on AI generated disinformation. It will be disproven quickly, but not before it has had a chance to spread.