The United States is no longer relying on markets alone to price critical minerals. Through trade law, procurement rules, and allied coordination, Washington is bounding how prices form inside preferred supply chains.
McKinsey has acknowledged that artificial intelligence agents now operate alongside its human consultants at scale. This essay examines how that shift is dismantling the traditional consulting pyramid, creating a hidden training debt, and forcing a new settlement around liability, judgment, and institutional survival.
For two decades, companies rented business software because building it was slow, costly, and risky. That assumption has collapsed. As artificial intelligence turns software creation into an industrial process, subscription platforms begin to hollow out: the thinking moves outside the product, the platform becomes a record keeping shell, and renewals become optional. The real disruption is institutional, not technical
CES 2026 did not prove that humanoid robots are ready for the world. It revealed something more consequential: an overcrowded market rushing toward the same idea at the same time. History suggests what comes next. When innovation peaks in abundance rather than differentiation, consolidation follows. Most of today’s humanoid robotics pioneers will not survive the shakeout.
Britain does not feel like a country in crisis. That is precisely the danger. Growth limps on, spending rises, and the system appears stable. Yet beneath the calm language, the economy is losing its ability to tell success from failure. Prices no longer speak clearly, losses are concealed, and decline is administered rather than corrected.
London is about to decide whether Oxford Street exists for traffic or for people. One residents society in Marylebone has been treated as the referee, yet it speaks for one of the richest corners of the city, not for the workers and visitors who keep the street alive. This piece tests its claims against evidence on crime, access and growth