In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about a breakthrough promising “a new and important source of energy.” The scientist that it could “conceivably” be weaponized into an extremely powerful bomb, a conclusion Nazi Germany might have also reached. More than eight decades later, technological breakthroughs and geopolitical shifts are still disrupting the world—for better or worse. Today, four emerging disruptions will demand the attention of whomever the American people choose as their president:
1. An authoritarian axis is rapidly coalescing around China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, disrupting the belief that an international community has taken shape in the aftermath of the Cold War.
2. Climate alarmism and the prohibitively expensive green transition will give way to energy sobriety, which recognizes the need for abundant, reliable, and cheap power.
3. A new realism about trade will see beliefs about free trade cast aside in favor of addressing imbalanced trade and the mercantilist practices of countries like China.
4. The transformational potential of artificial intelligence will affect individuals, societies, economies, and political systems in ways no one can foresee. It could be the most disruptive development of all.
All four of these disruptions represent fault lines that have emerged from a shifting post–Cold War architecture. They are not only drivers of the breakdown of this architecture but also symptoms of its failures. Further, they are taking place against the backdrop of America’s relative decline as a world power. The way policymakers shape and respond to these disruptions will impact US power as well as the relative power of other states.
The Authoritarian Axis
The first disruption is the growing collusion among revisionist powers.
For the first time since World War II, the United States is facing an axis of four revisionist powers working together across the critical regions of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East; within international institutions; and within specific countries to weaken American power. Whether one prefers to call it an , , or , this development will be the principal geopolitical challenge facing the White House for years to come.
Since the end of the Cold War, presidents of both parties have worked to integrate China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea into the international community. By engaging with China, the US foreign policy establishment sought to convert Beijing into a responsible stakeholder in the liberal international order. Similarly, until the all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, every president sought to reset diplomatic relations with Russia. The Obama and Biden administrations repeatedly sought to pacify Iran’s regional and nuclear ambitions, and every administration sought to induce North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program.
In 2017, the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy recognized the return of great power competition. The America to awaken to the political, military, and economic competitions underway, warned against allowing American power to erode further, and emphasized the need to mobilize to meet the long-term challenges of revisionist powers in East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
While these powers are diverse culturally, politically, and economically, they share the goal of upending the US-led world order and displacing the United States regionally, around the world, and in key strategic sectors.
At their May summit, Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin a “new era” of strategic cooperation and said that they intended to, , “defend the principles of justice and a democratic world order that reflects multipolar realities.” This built on last year that Russia and China were driving global changes “the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years.”
Cooperation among the axis of authoritarians is evident in the war in Ukraine. China’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which came days after a summit declaring a partnership with “no limits,” presaged the birth of the axis.
In the military arena, China has supported Russia’s war effort. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after the Group of Seven meetings last April that China is the “primary contributor” to Russia’s defense industrial base. “We see China sharing machine tools, semiconductors, other dual use items that have helped Russia rebuild the defense industrial base,” he said.
North Korea has provided over a million rounds of artillery ammunition to Russia. Russo-North Korean cooperation has only deepened since the war began—a trend the Vladimir Putin–Kim Jong Un summit in June exemplified. During the summit, the two leaders signed a bilateral treaty that—among other things—established a mutual defense agreement. The formalized the exchange of Russian military technology, space-related expertise, and economic investment for North Korean weapons and munitions.
Meanwhile, Tehran supplies Moscow with hundreds of drones, possibly even surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, and is building a drone factory in Russia. In exchange, Russia has provided Iran with military aid and technical support, from multi-role fighter jets to cyber capabilities, which significantly improve Iranian forces.
Axis members cooperate beyond supporting Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Three years ago, China and Iran signed a to advance joint training and exercises, research, and weapons development. North Korea and Iran have also long cooperated to exchange missile technologies.
Meanwhile, China is now the in the world. It positions itself by offering more affordable advanced weapons without attaching political conditions. At the Dubai Airshow this year, several countries expressed interest in Chinese systems and jets, and Pakistan has already purchased dozens. And it’s probably safe to assume that when China agrees to sell equipment to a country, it will not take years to deliver. In contrast, Taiwan is still waiting for the F-16s that the US promised to provide in 2019.
China’s role as the source of economic, military, and political support for the other axis states highlights its centrality within the coalition. It buys Russian and Iranian oil, going around Western sanctions, and supplies lifeline support to North Korea. And the longer the axis serves as the fulcrum for regional conflicts in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, the more axis members will become reliant upon and interconnected with China.
Policy Responses
This axis is not invulnerable. Authoritarians are distrustful, even of each other. Their priorities and ideological motivations differ, leading to internal contradictions. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran all suffer from serious internal weaknesses. However, whoever the US president is next year will need a deliberate strategy to check the ambitions of the axis.
Militarily, the United States and its allies and partners in East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East need to up their game. From 2023 to 2024, every North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally—save Iceland, which does not have a military—. Yet nine of the 32 member states still of their gross domestic product on defense. The that the United States passed in April 2024 included $95 billion in aid, more than the total defense budgets of France and Canada combined.
But spending is not the only issue. Allies need to develop integrated capabilities if they plan to fight together. Currently, significant communication challenges exist at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. In addition, allies should use technology to share a common operating picture (COP) and because allied militaries currently use diverse devices and operating systems.
Advances like AI will also require allies to integrate their digital fires—that is, their ability to target and kill using software and data sharing. As the US comes to depend on what Alex Karp has called interoperability could become more difficult.
Beyond the military realm, axis cooperation challenges the efficacy of punitive tools that the United States has traditionally used, such as sanctions. Even now, Western sanctions designed to punish Moscow for invading Ukraine have not had the desired effect due to the axis states’ sharp increase in trade with Russia.
The White House will also need to shift its mindset away from multilateralism with axis members. International organizations, particularly the United Nations, will struggle to meaningfully deter or punish the axis states due to their collective willingness to shield each other from the consequences of their aggressive actions. This means thinking in regional terms and acting with coalitions of the willing.
Energy Sobriety
The disruption driven by energy sobriety rests on two facts. First, intermittent renewable energy sources—solar and wind power—cannot supply modern economies and drive economic growth. Second, the capacity to produce or access abundant energy is a form of geopolitical power that US adversaries will use even if the US chooses not to.
After three decades of attention to climate change, carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise worldwide. While US emissions and the energy intensity of its economy have declined, the world’s emissions reached historic levels in 2023. Other countries, particularly those that are vulnerable economically, are struggling to meet their energy needs. Energy sobriety means accepting that until game-changing technologies such as fusion are , fossil fuels will be a mainstay.
Despite the prevalent thinking about climate policies in “global” terms, there is no fixed path toward decarbonization. Vaclav Smil, one of the world’s premier energy experts, observed that “complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat.”1 Poorer countries are pushing back on externally imposed green mandates, and farmers and working-class voters are turning to populist parties in Europe and elsewhere in response to economically ruinous green policies.
For example, following the European Parliament’s condemnation of a proposed oil pipeline connecting Uganda to the Indian Ocean via Tanzania, Ugandans took to the streets. One top official “the highest level of neocolonialism and imperialism against the sovereignty of Uganda and Tanzania.” The energy minister “Africa has been green, but people are cutting down trees because they are poor.” Even the United Nations has the need for “nationally determined” pathways and the role of natural gas as a key fuel in energy transitions.
While US agencies call for “100% carbon-free electricity by 2035,” that “significant future research” is necessary to determine how this will affect power system operations, grid stability, and infrastructure investment costs. Even 15 years ago, “whether an energy transition away from oil and gas . . . [could be] completed during the 2025 time frame” was a “key uncertainty.”
The promise of generative AI has made this rebalancing more urgent. that there is not enough electrical power to run new AI services. predicts that by 2030 data centers’ power demand globally will increase 160 percent. In the United States, energy providers risk due to demand from data centers. In Arizona, utility companies worry they will be out of transmission capacity by the end of the decade unless they undertake major upgrades. Northern Virginia will need the equivalent of several large nuclear reactors to power new planned data centers—many of which are already under construction. And despite its pledge to be carbon neutral by 2050, Dominion Energy—a Virginia-based utility company—already plans to construct a new gas-fired power plant to meet this
Moreover, diplomatic efforts to work with China on climate issues are bumping up against reality. China remains the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases—representing 30 percent of the globe’s total emissions, more than American, European, and Japanese emissions combined. China’s control over the production of wind and solar systems and Western political decisions to adopt electric vehicles and renewable energy quickly mean that the US and Europe will increasingly depend on China.
Meanwhile, both China and Russia clearly view energy as a strategic asset: a geopolitical strength that they intend to exploit.
Policy Responses
In the years to come, the White House will need to accept energy sobriety and adopt an energy architecture that balances growth with climate considerations. It will also need to view energy as a domain of strategic competition.
First, more sober energy policies would place energy security—abundant and reasonably priced supplies—front and center. This would drive better relationships with countries around the world, which in turn could drive positive economic, political, and military alignments for the United States as well as better climate outcomes.
Second, policymakers need to accept that there is no fixed path toward decarbonizing power systems and that the increasing array of clean power solutions needs to be taken seriously. The exact technology mix and tools that the United States could and should deploy remain unknown, and countries with different geographies and legacy energy systems will face other difficult challenges.
Also, energy sobriety will require assessing broad statements about climate goals in light of the actual infrastructure and regulatory frameworks that are necessary to advance new approaches to generating, storing, and moving energy. Realism needs to replace wishful thinking. note that it can take 12 to 16 years for a mine extracting critical minerals needed for an energy transition to come online.
The infrastructure and regulatory frameworks should facilitate and not block such shifts toward new energy sources, particularly next-generation energy technologies such as fusion. The deployment of fusion generators at scale will require a complete rethinking of current regulatory frameworks.
Third, until game-changing technologies like are deployed at scale, natural gas will remain the “glue that binds.” Energy mixes including hydrocarbons, renewables, fission and fusion, geothermal, hydroelectric, and biofuels will need to provide a realistic pathway to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, the International Energy Agency expects global demand for liquified natural gas to increase by one-fifth between now and 2040. It recently criticized Europe for falling behind China after making “two historic monumental mistakes” in energy policy: depending on Russian gas and shunning nuclear power. The agency’s that the bloc would need “a new industrial master plan” to recover.
Trade Realism
Trade realism—the third disruption—entails a recognition that the current system of globalization and free trade does not fully serve US interests. This new approach requires a greater consideration of reciprocity between trading partners, balancing national security and economic efficiency, and calls for trade policy to serve geopolitical objectives and American social goals. In this context reciprocity means that, at the very least, the levels of market access and tariffs between countries are equal. In cases like China, where the trade imbalance is so immense, reciprocity will require addressing this imbalance with additional tools. Such trade realism will lead to a restructuring of the global economy.
This contradicts the traditional view, which says free trade—the movement of goods and services freely across borders—benefits all. This posits that “undeniable economic benefits for the vast majority of American families, businesses, and workers.”
Many current discussions about trade wars or deglobalization view them as near-term breakdowns and imply or directly foresee a reversion to the pre-2016 status quo. This worldview focuses on getting through a particular tension, such as calls for tariffs or export controls, while avoiding the tougher problems that drive demands for a new trading architecture.
In 2022, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund described shifts in trade as an earthquake. “geopolitical tectonic plates” would drift further apart and fragment “the global economy into distinct economic blocs with different ideologies, political systems, technology standards, cross-border payment and trade systems, and reserve currencies.” This that a reversion to the pre-2016 system is necessary and tends to consider the current dislocations as part of a “deglobalization movement,” as opposed to a reordering to a new trade system.
Commentators supporting the prevailing view of free trade. First, comparative advantage allows countries to specialize in different products and services; sometimes these advantages are due to different resource endowments, geographies, or other natural advantages. that those cost advantages appear as unfair competition—yet the “whole point of free trade is that it is not fair,” since countries bring different advantages to the table. Second, since businesses can sell to countries around the world, free trade makes markets bigger. Third, it forces less productive firms to exit the market. And finally, it smooths out political differences, : it is “a critical card to play in the complex game of global influence.” The global trading system has helped prevent “the slightest danger that economic competition would spill over into geopolitical competition,” “one of the great historical anomalies” of our time.
There are four problems with this view. First, it creates supply-chain vulnerabilities that America’s adversaries can exploit. This has been well-documented for years, particularly during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, for a range of critical pharmaceutical ingredients. Nearly all —which are among the strongest magnets and are used in virtually all critical weapon systems as well as in clean energy technologies—. In the energetics domain, China controls many of the chemicals needed to make explosives. Overall, , China controls “70, 80, and even 90 percent of global production for the critical inputs necessary for our technologies, infrastructure, energy, and health care—creating unacceptable risks to America’s supply chains and economic security.”
Second, the ideology of free trade occludes the fact that mercantilist states exploit countries like the United States. For well over a decade, China has followed , which has involved maintaining a deliberately cheap exchange rate to boost exports and giving enterprises large subsidies. Many have pointed out that because of these policies, Chinese-owned companies across a range of advanced industries gained significant global market share at the expense of . And even the World Bank the “international trading system is ill-equipped to discipline the use of subsidies.”
Third, the social impacts of unfair or open trade have been devastating. Reports vary, but some count lost since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001. In addition, while traditional measures of trade tend to focus on direct linkages between trading partners, that across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, employment declined in those sectors most exposed to Chinese imports and that the impacts were even worse for low-skilled workers.
Fourth, globalization has enabled adversaries to grow rich and use that wealth to challenge the US-led international order. As China joined the WTO, the forthcoming period as one of “strategic opportunity” that would allow the expansion of China’s “comprehensive national power.” China modernized its military in all domains of warfare, and that modernization was directly linked to the civil-military fusion that drove its technological advancements in areas such as hypersonics, AI, and quantum.
The system of globalization and free trade is failing because it disassociated trade from politics and ideology. Competition between the United States and its allies on one side and the authoritarian axis on the other further restrictions on trade and investment in pursuit of greater security and productivity. During the Cold War, trade policy was aligned with geopolitical strategy, creating an open system for the free world and limiting the Soviet bloc’s access.
Today, China has deliberately used the interdependencies of globalization to advance its interests. Therefore, the free world has to work its way out of the traps of globalization.
Policy Responses
The next administration will need to focus on restructuring supply chains in critical sectors, whether through reshoring, nearshoring, or friendshoring. It does not need more studies of the problem. It needs to identify and remove key obstacles to building new facilities (e.g., permitting regulatory reform), move faster by attaching specific timelines to efforts, and increase transparency of where allocated monies have been spent—or not.
Underpinning these shifts should be the idea that sovereignty can extend to key industries. The late Angelo Codevilla put it well: we need to think of “sovereignty over essential materials, products, processes and skills as an issue.”2
Second, the next administration should insist on reciprocity in trade regimes to eliminate chronic trade imbalances. As part of this effort, it needs to document and publicize which countries or domains are most affected by a lack of reciprocity.
Third, it has to incorporate the costs of imbalanced trade’s social impacts into decision-making. , it should consider what “a trade policy is for.”
Fourth, the next president needs to adopt policies that limit the enrichment of our adversaries at our expense. This will mean paying continued attention to restrictions on outward capital flows to ensure that, at the very least, funds do not strengthen the People’s Liberation Army.
AI Reverberations
Artificial intelligence presents the fourth disruption. A former engineer at OpenAI that the tech industry is “building machines that can think and reason,” and that by the end of the decade the world will have “super superintelligence” along with “national security forces not seen in half a century.” Another early developer of AI, a founder of DeepMind, observed that sooner or later this powerful generation of technology could lead humanity toward a catastrophic or dystopian outcome.3 Both engineers argued that policy choices could shape some of these outcomes.
AI advances will shape the disruptions outlined above and create others. The authoritarian axis will seek competitive advantages by using AI for military and political purposes. And while powerful states with large amounts of data and computing power could dominate this realm, may also leverage the new technology and disrupt global affairs, particularly as AI pioneers smaller and that require less data. In the trade realm, states will seek to manage AI and the technologies that undergird it, given its dual commercial and national security uses. AI will both drive energy requirements and shape how quickly companies can develop new energy solutions. The onset of generative AI is intensifying these disruptions and will continue to place this technology at the center of geopolitical competition.
Predicting the effects of AI is impossible. Nonetheless, whoever is president will need to consider its impact on at least three domains: national security, domestic industries, and human biology and behaviors.
In the national security realm, AI will change the way wars are fought. Tactically, it will increase lethality and precision in weapons systems and drive increases in autonomy. Military services are experimenting with autonomy on everything from jet fighters to drones. Around 70 percent of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) programs some type of AI, machine learning, or autonomy. Autonomy and speed will make it harder, if not impossible, to keep “humans in the loop.” AI will enhance operational planning, allowing for faster and more accurate wargaming and analysis. It will continue to drive decision superiority (the ability to distill massive amounts of information into something that commanders can use). This can help the United States adapt faster, but it will also help US adversaries do the same. At the strategic level, it will accelerate the pace of events and will likely impact strategic stability.
AI will drive changes across virtually all the sciences—moving science forward faster—and many of these domains have national security implications, too. In the biotechnology sphere, DeepMind’s Alpha Fold accurately , a problem considered a “grand challenge” in biology. The company is now limiting downloads of the model due to potential biosecurity risks.
AI will shape domestic economies. Some industries will benefit, and others will not. suggest that, in a few years, 30 percent of the hours that Americans work could be automated. Others argue that AI will impact highly skilled jobs and thus drive greater dislocations in advanced economies—affecting as much as 60 percent of jobs. AI adoption and integration may provide benefits, such as enhanced productivity, but could also lead companies to Unlike mechanized automation, which has an outsized impact on blue-collar workers, generative AI’s enhanced calculation capacity will likely affect the availability and nature of white-collar work.
AI may also transform human beings. Henry Kissinger, who became fascinated with the potential ramifications of AI before his death, worried that it could give people answers without deeper insights or explanatory reasoning. “human knowledge but not human understanding” could lead to a “new form of human consciousness”—one characterized more by ignorance than reason.
Policy Responses
The White House will need to have frameworks in mind to shape the impact of AI across key challenges. The challenges are many; below are a few examples.
First, the next president should consider the ongoing problem of speed—or lack thereof. There will be a constant lag between the speed at which AI drives change and the government’s ability to adapt.
Hundreds of that no one, “not even their creators—can understand, predict, or reliably control” what will unfold. Over the past few years, models have demonstrated “emergent behaviors” that scientists have been unable to predict. This is not necessarily new: creators have rarely foreseen the consequences of their inventions. But the speed of change will create dislocations of a different magnitude than in the past. and operating architectures will be needed.4 And in a sense, it will require further decentralization of decision-making: policymakers cannot wait weeks to make decisions as information trickles in; this will only give adversaries temporal advantages.
Second, decision-makers should rethink the current tendency to apply “Band-Aid solutions.” This is a propensity to upgrade old systems and tinker at the margins rather than enabling wholesale change. For a variety of reasons, including sunk costs and entrenched bureaucracies, this perpetuates a clash between old and new while preventing the full realization of positive innovations (not to mention perpetuating serious security risks). Several years ago, the Government Accounting Office identified ten critical federal information technology systems, from eight to 51 years old, that were using outdated languages, were operating with unsupported hardware or software, and had known security vulnerabilities. Each year the federal government spends more than $100 billion on IT and cyber-related investments. Of this amount, it spends to operate and maintain legacy systems. Even if it were desirable (and that is highly questionable), America is a long way off from having the government play the central role in managing the “severe safety challenges of superintelligence.”5 At the very least, policymakers should create incentives to overcome stultified bureaucracies and create favorable conditions for the adoption of AI.
Third, the White House can prepare for some AI impacts by assessing which industries are likely to be most affected by generative AI—and how quickly. Leaders can proactively assess the infrastructure and enabling inputs that these advancements will require by looking at inputs such as energy supplies, data quality, people, and a conducive regulatory climate.
Fourth, the United States will also need to shape the geopolitical impacts of generative AI. One aspect of this will be the degree to which countries should regulate AI. Can governments regulate AI, particularly given the advancements in generative AI? Should they? Will regulation hamper innovation and reduce US—and other democracies’—geopolitical advantages? Current efforts to regulate AI seem almost as complex as the technology itself: there are myriad efforts in the US, UN, EU, OECD, China, and elsewhere. California alone has Yet many AI experts do not believe regulations can keep pace with the speed of the technology and its capabilities. Others argue that the focus should be on “containing” key AI technologies.6
Fifth, the United States should prepare for the geopolitical impacts that will occur when AI enables “decision advantages.” This will be particularly important in the defense and national security realms, where the impact of AI on intelligence and warfighting will be operationally and strategically consequential, since the technology compresses timelines so dramatically.
Conclusion
These four disruptions present risks and opportunities. The future will depend on whether America blunts the first and seizes the latter three.
The United States can capitalize on the four disruptions. It can work with allies to maintain regional balances of power so that they can check the authoritarian axis. The more power these adversaries gain in each region, the more power they assume globally, eventually constraining the United States and harming US interests. With regional balances of power that favor the United States and its allies, economic opportunities are more likely to flourish, threats to the US homeland are less likely to emanate, and US national security interests will be better protected.
By adopting a more realistic approach toward energy, which recognizes the inability of renewable forms of energy to power the growth necessary for economic progress that poorer countries seek, the United States can lead the way in cultivating a diversified energy system that can ensure sustained economic and national security—and is more likely to achieve desired climate goals. America can also realize the longer-term opportunities afforded by new technologies such as hydrogen capture and fusion energy.
The US can lead in developing a trading system in which reciprocity is a central feature and in which there is value in producing goods in the United States. Requiring reciprocity will mean that America drives toward a fairer trading system, one in which US businesses are not taken advantage of and, relatedly, one in which American workers have a real chance to compete in the global economic marketplace.
Artificial intelligence will present the US with opportunities. It will drive American innovation, propel advances in medicines and other industries, and help to ensure that America’s military remains the best in the world, capable of maintaining deterrence as well as winning in conflict if necessary. But at the same time, as one AI expert has observed, the coming wave of artificial intelligence will bring uncertainties.7 The United States should be wary of conventions that seek to limit the development of AI if its adversaries remain unchecked. If America does not remain in the lead, developments in this domain could benefit authoritarians, to the detriment of democracies.
Speed and time will matter in making the changes necessary to respond to these shifts. Yet bureaucracies continue to plod. Thus, across these domains, actions and progress will require the removal of regulatory and other hurdles. The architectures, both domestic and international, that governments constructed to maintain an analog-based peace need to adapt to a technology-driven competition.
In shaping these disruptions, the United States cannot default to large, multilateral processes. This means abandoning the mindset that multilateralism is an end in itself rather than a tool of statecraft. To make decisions with agility and speed, the United States should be willing to take immediate actions on the basis of its own interests. It cannot continue to suborn its security needs in pursuit of global comity—for if it does, it will get neither.
It’s useful to remember what decisive American leadership looked like when confronted with new and disruptive technology in the hands of a hostile fascist regime. Within two months of receiving Einstein’s warning, Roosevelt had to study uranium, the first step in what would soon become the Manhattan Project, one of the most expansive and consequential government programs in history. While the outcome of such an effort was uncertain, the disruptive potential of atomic power was clear, and the US did not hesitate to act.
America needs that courage again if it is to meet the challenge of this generation’s disruptions.