Regular readers know that I have written quite a bit about AI and the breathtaking speed at which it has grown. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, described the trajectory as heading toward “a country of geniuses in a datacenter.” It sure feels like the future will be filled with machines that can already outthink most humans in most domains. But it’s not just intellectually where the machines are surpassing us. It’s physically too.

Being outperformed by a machine is nothing new. After all, cars and tractors and factories full of equipment have been doing so for centuries. But the development of humanoid robots, machines built to resemble humans that walk on two legs with two moving arms, has been advancing at accelerating rate. Further, the humanoids are increasingly becoming autonomous.

All of this was on full display during the recent World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. Held at the National Speed Skating Oval, the very venue the PRC built for the 2022 Winter Olympics, the competition brought together over 2,000 humanoid robots from 666 teams across 16 countries. The robots competed in 51 events, from sprinting to soccer and table tennis to kickboxing. More than 40% of the events required fully autonomous operation. And by fully autonomous, I mean that there were no human operators with joysticks, remote controls, or intervention of any kind. These robots operated on their own.

Some of the achievements were staggering. China’s Tiangong Ultra clocked 9.39 seconds in the 100-meter dash; faster than Usain Bolt’s human world record of 9.58. Another robot ran 400 meters in 39.7 seconds. The pace of improvement is stunning. The fastest 100-meter time at last year’s inaugural Games was 21.5 seconds. In a mere twelve months, the robots shaved more than 12 seconds off the sprint, a 56% improvement. Human improvement in the 100-meter event has been measured in hundredths of a second per decade. Robots improved by twelve seconds in a year.

Even as robot improvements are accelerating, there are clearly still some challenges to replacing humans. They’re not perfect (yet). Just for fun, you might enjoy watching this video with some of the biggest “fails” from the Beijing event:

Of course, there’s a geopolitical angle to the humanoids as well. This event was designed to showcase China’s ambitions and capabilities, and the message was sent very loudly for the world to hear. Although teams from the United States, Germany, Japan, and Brazil participated, the overwhelming majority of competitors were Chinese.

The PRC has designated humanoid robotics as a national strategic priority, which means they have been pouring state resources into research, development, and commercialization in much the same way it did with solar panels, electric vehicles, and 5G. Beijing isn’t hosting a robot Olympics for entertainment or for social media likes. It was making a statement: Even if the United States is temporarily ahead in AI software (i.e. the brains), China holds the lead in the bodies those brains will inhabit.

And what happens when these physical machines are married to AI? You end up with a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician who is faster than Usain Bolt and stronger than Arnold Schwarzenegger. A machine that can outthink you, outrun you, and outlift you, and never needs to sleep, eat, take a vacation, or call in sick. The implications for the global economy, for labor markets, for military applications, and for daily life are staggering. The hundreds of billions that five American tech companies are spending on AI infrastructure this year isn’t just building chatbots. It’s building the brains that will eventually power the bodies that just outran the fastest human who ever lived.

So what? Why does this matter? Well, since time immemorial, there has been one truism about human societies, expressed by Auguste Comte as: “Demography is destiny.” The fates of hunter-gatherer societies and great empires alike have been determined in large part by the number of young people they have to work, fight, and reproduce. Even today, many people have suggested the future of the 21st century is being written by the baby bust in the developed world and the ramifications of the one-child policy in China.

But what if the fates of nations were untethered from how many babies were being born? Armies of robot workers and soldiers would make demographics largely irrelevant, and destinies would instead be written by whose humanoids were smartest, fastest, and strongest. And the corollary, of course, is perhaps countries with high fertility rates and young populations (i.e. those with perfect demographic pyramids!) may no longer be those with bright futures. Could it be that large populations of young workers are a liability for a country in today’s world? After all, young ambitious individuals expect jobs and not having enough jobs risks social and political unrest. And does that mean small population but wealthy countries can compete as global economic, military, or technological superpowers?

All of this is what makes the World Humanoid Robot Games more than just a curiosity. Labor is now increasingly interchangeable with technology. And if technology is increasingly accessible to anyone with capital, does this mean the age old battle between capital and labor is over? Has capital won? And if so, what are the implications for the future of wages, wealth distribution over time, and the risk of revolution?

The World Humanoid Robot Games took place in China. But unlike the saying about Las Vegas, what happens in Beijing is unlikely to stay in Beijing.

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

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According to the headlines, the American economy is doing fine. Not great, not terrible, but fine. GDP grew 2.0% in Q1 2026. Employment seems stable-ish. Inflation, while still above the Fed’s 2% target, looks like its moderating. The CBO projects continued economic expansion through the end of the year. Consumer spending is holding up, particularly at the upper end. The stock market is near all-time highs. Corporate earnings are strong, especially in tech.

Yet despite this news, most Americans are worried. Consumer confidence is far from ebullient. And the US economy is shed more jobs than it created in July. I’ve spent a career looking past headlines and connecting seemingly irrelevant and disparate dots. And the mosaic I’m putting together is forming a deeply concerning image.

The American economy is being disproportionately carried by one thing: the AI buildout. Five companies (known by those in the business as the “hyperscalers”) plan to spend a combined $700 to $725 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone. That’s more than the annual GDP of most countries, deployed in a single year, by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Nvidia. Global AI spending will likely exceed $500 billion in 2026, according to UBS.

That money is showing up directly in the GDP numbers. In Q1 2026, AI-related capital invesments contributed as much to GDP growth as all of household consumption combined. Think about that…consumption is two-thirds of GDP, and data center and AI construction matched it as a growth driver.

In 2025, Harvard economist Jason Furman analyzed how the economy might look without the AI spending. His findings are chilling. According to the analysis, AI-related investment in software and equipment accounted for 92% of GDP growth during the first half of 2025. Without it, annualized growth was 0.1%. Practically zero. But let’s remember, that was last year. Since then, AI investment has gone vertical.

Two weeks ago, Columbia Business School economist Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh said it plainly: “We’d basically be in a recession right now without data centers.” BCA Research’s Peter Berezin told the Wall Street Journal the same thing: “It’s certainly plausible that the economy would already be in a recession” without the AI boom.

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So how does the non-AI portion of the economy look? Sadly, not very healthy. The sectors that employ most Americans are slowing or shrinking. The economy that most people experience is not the economy the headline GDP numbers describe. Sure, if you’re an AI tech executive, you’re probably loving life. But if you’re like most Americans, life is a challenge. I see this every day in the demand for frozen pizza (which seems to be rising steadily), especially when compared to what’s happening at restaurants.

As regular readers know, my primary thesis in forming Goodwell Foods eighteen months ago was that economic weakness would lead people to eat at home more regularly, with frozen pizza as a big beneficiary. As such, I closely monitor developments in the restaurant industry. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I immediately read the “Consumer Outlook” report that was published by the National Restaurant Association last week. And what I read was not encouraging regarding consumer health. I’ve pasted three charts from the report that think tell the story of the non-AI economy.

First, US employment trends point to a labor market that is struggling to create meaningful job growth. Remember, this is aggregate data for “Total US Employment” and contains the job growth from the AI buildout. If we excluded construction, energy, and tech jobs related to the AI infrastructure boom, this chart would likely look worse.

The next two charts show a US consumer that’s feeling stretched. US credit card balances are skyrocketing and are currently well over $1.25 trillion, with delinquency rates also rising rapidly. These are not the signs of healthy consumer likely who is likely to keep spending. They also imply most Americans are living “hand to mouth” and don’t have ready access to funds in the cope with medical or other emergencies.

So what does this all mean? To me, it points to an economic fragility that’s downright scary. At the very highest level, I believe we have a struggling American consumer and five companies spending three-quarters of a trillion dollars a year on a technology bet that hasn’t fully proven its commercial case.

These extremes are getting buried in aggregate statistics. I often make this dynamic clear during speeches I give by suggesting audience members put their left foot in a bucket of boiling water and their right foot in a bucket of ice water. On average, I note, you’d be comfortable.

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

The most dangerous weapon in the world doesn’t exist yet, but the damage it will cause may already be done. The weapon is quantum technology, which has the potential to disrupt almost every form of communication and the protection of secrets, especially when it comes to national security. And the worst part is it’s already too late to stop the damage it will do.

But first, a quick detour into the physics of quantum computing. Every computer you’ve ever used stores information in bits, tiny switches that are either 0 or 1. Every email, every photo, every encrypted military communication, is just a very long string of 0s and 1s that are processed very fast. Quantum computing is not just an incremental improvement in speed, it’s fundamentally different. Instead of bits, it uses qubits, which can be 0, 1, or (and this is the part that makes my brain hurt) both at the same time. A qubit exists in both states simultaneously until you measure it. (This is where Schrödinger’s cat comes from—the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box.) While my PhD physicist friends may say I’m oversimplifying the difference, I’ve come to think of quantum computing as probabilistic and traditional computing as binary.

Why does this matter? Because a classical computer trying to crack an encryption key has to try every possible combination one at a time. But a quantum computer can try many combinations simultaneously. For certain types of problems—such as breaking codes, optimizing logistics, simulating molecular behavior—this approach leads to solutions that are not just determined quicker. Quantum approaches get there exponentially faster. A problem that would take a conventional computer thousands of years might take a quantum computer mere minutes.

The military implications are profound. The Defense Science Board has identified three areas where quantum technology could reshape warfare. The first is quantum sensing. Quantum sensors can navigate using the properties of atoms instead of relying on satellites. You can’t jam the atoms and their properties. You can’t shoot them down. DARPA just awarded IonQ a $28 million contract for optical atomic clocks that provide precision timing in GPS-denied environments. The implications for submarines, hypersonic missiles, and special operations in contested airspace are profound.

The second area is quantum computing, which the Pentagon estimates is at least a decade away from battlefield impact but could eventually enable breakthroughs in pattern recognition, target identification, and artificial intelligence. The Department of Defense named “Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance” as one of its six critical technology areas and allocated $781 million for quantum technologies in FY2025.

The third is quantum communications. In theory, this approach could enable the creation of unhackable channels that use quantum mechanics to detect attempts at interception. China is working on this intensely and has already launched a quantum communications satellite and built a 2,000km quantum network between Beijing and Shanghai.

But here’s what keeps me up at night. The most dangerous quantum threat isn’t in the future. It’s in the past. The threat emerges from a strategy called “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” and the logic is as simple as it is terrifying. Adversaries, namely China and Russia, are vacuuming up encrypted data right now. Military communications, diplomatic cables, weapons designs, intelligence reports…all of which is encrypted (and therefore unreadable) today. They’re not even trying to crack it. They’re just storing it…and waiting, patiently. Waiting for something known as Q-Day, the day a quantum computer powerful enough to break modern encryption becomes operational. Leading analysts estimate that day is less than a decade away. On Q-Day, everything that was harvested and encrypted becomes readable. Retroactive intelligence of an enormous pile of a country’s most sensitive information. Every secret transmitted over decades, unlocked in one stroke. (If you have 20 minutes, the above video will prove worth your time.)

And, perhaps most disturbingly, you can’t patch breaches that have already happened. The Cyber Threat Alliance puts it bluntly: the damage is done the moment the data is intercepted, not when it’s decrypted. The harvest is the breach. The decryption is just the reveal.

And while you and I may not care about emails sent 10 years ago about dinner reservations or a child’s soccer game, the most sensitive encrypted information (even if dated) in the national security domain is probably still very valuable. Consider these examples:

Nuclear submarine patrol routes. America’s submarines carry nuclear missiles, and their locations are among the most closely guarded secrets in the military. The entire deterrent rests on the assumption that nobody knows where they are. If China decrypts a decade of encrypted Navy communications that include patrol orders, position reports, and maintenance schedules, the CCP will be able to map patterns. Barring a wholesale change in our approach, the subs wouldn’t be as invisible, our second-strike deterrent is compromised. Not because someone hacked a submarine, but because someone read an email from 2018.

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Weapons system specifications. Encrypted communications between Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon, and subcontractors might contain the exact radar cross-section of the F-35, the vulnerabilities in its electronic warfare suite, the specific frequencies it uses, the countermeasures it’s designed to defeat. Decrypt those and you can engineer a defense against every American weapons system currently deployed. China is already suspected of having stolen F-35 designs through conventional hacking; its J-31 fighter looks suspiciously familiar. Quantum decryption might enable them to rapidly complete what they already have underway.

War plans for Taiwan. The Pentagon has detailed operational plans for defending Taiwan. Even if those plans get updated, previous versions reveal doctrinal thinking, strategic assumptions, logistics constraints, and institutional habits that don’t change quickly. Knowing the American war-fighting approach for a 2018 conflict tells you a great deal about how America might fight in 2028.

Intelligence sources. Between 2010 and 2012, China identified and killed or imprisoned at least 30 CIA sources inside the Chinese government, one of the worst intelligence disasters in American history. Nobody knows exactly how they were identified. If a harvested encrypted communication from that era names sources who survived the purge and are still active today, those people are going to be killed and American insight into the CCP will deteriorate.

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Diplomatic negotiations. Every negotiating the US has had with China over the past decade (on trade, on Taiwan, on North Korea, on Iran, on rare earths, on climate, etc) probably included encrypted cables between the State Department and embassies. Cracking the encryption and reading those cables will reveal America’s red lines, its bluffs, its internal disagreements, and its fallback positions. China would get a glimpse into American thinking, posturing, and the gaps between statements and beliefs.

The Pentagon knows all of this. In June, it published a Post-Quantum Cryptography Strategy calling the quantum future an “existential threat” to military missions and mandating that every DOD system must support quantum-resistant encryption by the end of 2030. President Trump signed two executive orders in June to accelerate the transition and the United States is planning to invest in America’s leading quantum technology companies. But here’s the problem: the strategy is forward-looking. It protects tomorrow’s secrets. It does nothing for the one’s that were captured yesterday.

We tend to think of wars as events that happen in the future…something we prepare for, something we see coming. But the information war may have already been fought, silently, over fiber-optic cables and satellite links, by adversaries who recorded everything and are simply waiting for the key.

The weapon doesn’t exist yet. But the damage may already be done. The question isn’t whether Q-Day is coming. It is. The question is how much of America’s most sensitive information is already sitting in a vault in Beijing, waiting to be read.

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

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Let me tell you about the luckiest country on Earth, one most people have never even heard of. Guyana is a former British colony on the northern coast of South America with a population of 800,000 people, fewer than Austin, Texas. In 2015, ExxonMobil was drilling in the waters off Georgetown, Guyana and struck oil. What they found was staggering: over 11 billion barrels of recoverable resources in the Stabroek Block, one of the largest discoveries of the 21st century. In just 11 years, Guyana went from zero to 903,000 barrels per day, one of the fastest production ramp-ups in the history of global oil.

The numbers are staggering. Guyana has been and continues to be the fastest-growing economy on Earth, with GDP growth of 43.6% in 2024, 19.3% in 2025, and a projected 16.2% in 2026. It is now the 11th richest country in the world by GDP per capita. The government has taken in $6.2 billion in oil revenues as of late 2024, and this year’s annual revenue is projected to exceed $3 billion. A fifth offshore project, the $12.7 billion Uaru development, comes online this year, which will drive production past one million barrels per day. By 2030, Guyana could be pumping 1.9 million barrels per day, becoming South America’s second-largest producer behind Brazil (and ahead of Venezuela).

And the timing couldn’t be better. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed by the Iran war, the world is desperate for oil that doesn’t pass through a chokepoint. Guyana’s crude ships straight across the Atlantic to the US Gulf Coast…no Suez, no Hormuz, no Malacca. US imports from Guyana hit 261,000 barrels per day in April; that’s up 51% in just two years.

Think about it. Guyana is a country of 800,000 people, sitting on 11 billion barrels, growing at 20% a year, with no chokepoint risk, at a moment when the world’s most important shipping lane is closed. What would you call that? The luckiest country on Earth. But like all coins, however, there are two sides. Lucky, yes. But also cursed.

To begin, there’s the neighborhood. Venezuela claims sovereignty over two-thirds of Guyana’s territory, specifically the Essequibo region, a chunk of land roughly the size of Georgia. In 2023, Caracas held a referendum on annexing it. In 2024, Maduro signed the annexation into law. The disputed territory, surprise surprise, happens to contain the waters where all of Guyana’s oil is being extracted.

The case is now before the International Court of Justice, but here’s the uncomfortable reality. The claim isn’t a remnant of Maduro’s idiosyncratic rule. It commands rare consensus across Venezuela’s political spectrum, including the opposition. Regime change won’t extinguish the territorial dispute, which goes back decades. A post-Maduro government seeking legitimacy could even find nationalist utility in pressing the claim harder.

But there’s also the traditional resource curse known as Dutch Disease. The condition, repeated across decades and continents, is one in which oil wealth destroys the very economies it enriches. For Dutch Disease to take root, a country must be early in its development of institutions, lack checks and balances, and exhibit high inequality, among other conditions.

Last week, Bloomberg Opinion published an analysis titled “Oil’s Curse Is Hanging Over the World’s Fastest-Growing Economy,” and its conclusions were damning. Guyana, Bloomberg found, is fertile ground for Dutch Disease. The country, Bloomberg noted, exhibits weak institutions, inadequate transparency, widening inequality, and political power concentrated around the state. The production-sharing agreement with ExxonMobil has been criticized as lopsided. $214 million in disputed audit costs remain unresolved five years after being flagged. Procurement is opaque. Decision-making is concentrated in a handful of officials.

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And then there’s the income inequality, which creates a risk of instability. Despite being the 11th richest country in the world by GDP per capita, 58% of Guyana’s population still lives in poverty. GDP is breaking records, the sovereign wealth fund is swelling, and yet most Guyanese endure unreliable electricity, inadequate healthcare, poor drainage, rising food prices, and housing shortages. The oil boom is real and there’s no question wealth is being generated. Whether it trickles down to the ordinary citizens is an entirely different question. The risk of unrest is rising.

And then, like most things in the world these days, there’s China. The ExxonMobil consortium that controls the Stabroek Block includes China’s National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) as a 25% economic partner. A quarter of the biggest oil play in the Western Hemisphere is owned by Beijing. With Washington, DC pushing a 21^st century version of the Monroe-Doctrine and intent on getting everyone out of its neighborhood, China is already inside the deal.

So, Guyana is both lucky and cursed…but how might this contradiction resolve itself? Readers will know that I deal in probabilistic scenarios rather than predictions, and I see two paths. Guyana’s president says he wants to follow the “Norway model”, that is to say, using oil wealth to build lasting prosperity through a well-managed sovereign fund, infrastructure, and economic diversification. But Norway had 150 years of democratic institutions before it struck oil; Guyana has had seven. Venezuela said the same thing once, and Nigeria, and Angola…and that’s the second possible outcome. The same path as these failed states.

The luckiest country on Earth has 11 billion barrels of oil, the fastest-growing economy in the world, and a neighbor that claims two-thirds of its land. It has $3 billion a year in revenue flowing in and 58% of its people living in poverty. It has the Norway model as its aspiration and the Venezuela model next door as its warning.

Luck is not a strategy. And oil, as every petrostate eventually learns, is not a blessing until you prove it isn’t a curse.

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

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A wave of youth-led protests has been sweeping the globe, and it is unlike anything we’ve seen since the Arab Spring. Over the past three years, Gen Z protesters have toppled governments, stormed parliaments, and forced presidents to flee their own palaces. Bloomberg suggests the unrest is being driven by a generation “crushed by soaring rents and living costs and staring down a future where robots and AI threaten their jobs.” The protests are leaderless, organized on TikTok and Discord, and spreading across three continents with a speed that has caught governments completely off guard.

Here’s the scorecard (so far):

• Sri Lanka (2022): Protesters stormed the presidential palace over economic collapse and President Rajapaksa fled the country.

• Bangladesh (2024): Students ousted PM Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule over a corrupt government jobs quota system; over 1,400 were killed. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus was installed as interim leader and Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia.

• Kenya (2024, 2026): Gen Z stormed parliament and burned part of it, forcing President Ruto to withdraw a $2.7 billion tax bill. Dozens were killed, and the protests restarted this year.

• Serbia (2024): A train station collapse in Novi Sad triggered massive anti-corruption protests led by students demanding accountability for systemic negligence.

• Nepal (2025): PM KP Sharma Oli was toppled by youth-led protests over corruption and economic mismanagement.

• Indonesia (2025): Youth protested parliamentary salary hikes and corruption in school meals. The government rescinded the salary increase.

• Morocco (2025): The “Gen-Z 212” movement was a mass protest over economic conditions. Thousands were arrested and handed harsh prison sentences.

• Philippines (2025): Corruption in flood-control projects led to protests that forced the House speaker to resign.

• Madagascar (2025): The government fell to youth protests over economic mismanagement and corruption.

• Tanzania (2025): Post-election youth protests were met with a brutal crackdown; more than 1,000 were killed.

And don’t forget about the United States. That same generational frustration and economic anger are fueling the rise of democratic socialism and leading to the elections of far-left candidates across the country, most notably in New York City.

So, what do protesters in Dhaka, Nairobi, and New York City have in common? To start, they are all young. These movements are all about promises that today’s young feel are not being honored. And these young people are for the most part over-educated and under-employed. They did what they were told—studied hard, got degrees, played by the rules. But then they discovered the economy had no place for them. Throw in the power of social media and these disruptive youth movements have viral potential; they are leaderless, decentralized…and spread quickly.

Not surprisingly, the risk of unrest is especially pronounced in countries with a youth bulge, often thought to populations where more than 20% are between 15 and 29 years of age. In Africa, for example, 60% of the population is under 25. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has found that large cohorts of young adults with limited opportunities “exacerbate unemployment, prolong dependency on parents, diminish self-esteem and fuel frustrations.”

And then there’s what political scientists call the surplus male theory: the argument, laid out in Valerie Hudson’s Bare Branches, suggests societies with large numbers of young men with limited marital and economic prospects tend to either go to war or take to the streets. The logic is straightforward: young men with nothing to lose and no stake in the system are a dry tinderbox; inequality and joblessness are matches that transform their despair into protest.

It now appears it’s India’s turn. India’s Chief Justice recently called unemployed youth and social media activists “cockroaches” and “parasites.” The insult inspired a digital strategist named Abhijeet Dipke to turn the slur into a brand. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) went from satirical meme into one of the fastest growing political movements in Indian history.

Recent revelations of corruption have thrown fuel onto a simmering fire leading to significant youth unrest. Massive paper leaks in India’s 2026 national examinations, including the NEET medical entrance exam, led many to believe the supposed meritocracy of exams was a smokescreen hiding corruption. In a country where exam scores determine your career, your income, and your marriage prospects, a rigged exam is more than a scandal, it’s an existential crisis. Students who studied for years learned the test had been sold before it was presented. Some committed suicide.

Thousands of young people camped on the streets of New Delhi. On July 20, over 10,000 tried to march to Parliament, but were turned away as police fired tear gas and beat activists with batons. 150 protesters were wounded. Multiple videos showed the police attacking marchers; no footage has emerged of any violence by the protesters. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was detained.

And then, unexpectedly, the government blinked. On July 25, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned. Given the Modi government rarely concedes anything, I found it significant that it agreed to all three of the CJP demands: (a) Pradhan’s resignation; (b) no prosecution of protesters; and (c) compensation for families of students who died. CNBC called it the moment India’s Gen Z “forced Modi to listen, respond and act…exposing chinks in the ruling party’s armor.”

It seems the cockroaches won. And the playbook was identical to every other Gen Z revolt on the list. Begin with social media organizing. Have a leaderless movement structure. Exhibit moral clarity and clear objectives. And have a willingness to endure resistance (including beatings in the street) until the government either cracks down harder or gives in. India’s Chief Justice called them parasites. Around two months later, the education minister was forced to resign.

The Journal of Democracy warns that toppling a leader is the easy part. The harder question is whether any of this translates into lasting change. Will the movements create jobs, affordable housing, or exams that aren’t rigged? History suggests they probably won’t, but this generation doesn’t seem interested in waiting to find out. These battles will be long and drawn out but today’s youth are resilient and determined. I wouldn’t bet against them. After all, cockroaches are among nature’s most accomplished survivors.

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

As many of you are aware, I run a frozen pizza factory. Pepperoni pizza is one of our best sellers, so it should not be surprising that I spend a lot of time thinking about pork prices. And while the price of your pizza is obviously impacted by the price of pepperoni on top of it, you may find it interesting that the price is increasingly being set in Beijing, not in Iowa or North Carolina.

How’s that? Well, it turns out that the Middle Kingdom is the world’s largest consumer of pork. China consumes 57 million metric tons of pork per year—roughly half of all the pork eaten on Earth. And pork in China isn’t like chicken in America. The Chinese character for “home” (家) is literally a pig under a roof and pork is deeply intertwined with Chinese culture. So when anything disrupts China’s pork supply (such as a disease, tariff, or trade war), shockwaves flow through global markets. Including, eventually, to the pepperoni we put on pizzas in America.

But there’s an interesting twist to the story that very few people talk about. China doesn’t just buy American pork chops and tenderloins. It buys the parts of the pig that Americans won’t touch: the feet, the heads, the stomachs, the ears, the hearts. China takes 59% of all US pork “variety meat” exports. The National Pork Producers Council puts it bluntly: “There is no alternative market” that can absorb this volume.

Why does this matter for pepperoni? Because the revenue from selling those pig feet to China subsidizes the cost of the rest of the pig. Every part of the animal that gets sold offshore reduces the effective cost of the trim that stays here—the trim that gets cured, fermented, and turned into pepperoni. When China stops buying feet, that revenue vanishes, and the cost of producing the cuts Americans do eat goes up. Pig feet you’ve never thought of and will probably never eat quietly keep your favorite pizza affordable.

And of course the buying slows to a trickle whenever the trade war heats up. Over the past several years, US pork tariffs in China have swung from 12% to 81%. At 81%, trade effectively stops. The November 2025 deal brought tariffs down and granted waivers on the worst duties, but those waivers expire at the end of 2026. The pork industry received a reprieve, not a resolution.

But these dynamics, we must remember, work in two directions. When China needs pork, it doesn’t just buy, it hoovers up whatever it can find. In 2018, African Swine Fever killed roughly half of China’s pig herd, hundreds of millions of animals. Chinese pork prices spiked 46.7% in a single year. China bought everything it could find on the global market, pulling supply away from processors everywhere, including the ones making pepperoni for American pizza companies. They also made massive investments into their domestic pork industry, including the now infamous “pig skyscrapers.”

Separately, there’s also a twist steeped in international intrigue. Smithfield Foods (America’s largest pork producer, responsible for 23% of the entire US pork market) is owned by China’s WH Group. The Chinese company bought it for $4.7 billion in 2013.

I remember speaking with Congressional leaders then and many were concerned about the impact the acquisition might have on food safety. Many were concerned that Chinese food safety standards would transform the US food company and put our hot dogs or bacon at risk. I remember discussing it with Smithfield executives at the time who were confused by this suggestion, and correctly (it turns out) noted that the Chinese were seeking to learn US food safety procedures so they could take them to China.

Nevertheless, the concern about Chinese ownership of US agriculture and food assets has not dissipated. In 2023, for instance, Virginia passed a law banning “foreign adversaries” from owning farmland in the state. Well, it turns out that Smithfield has farms in Virginia. One national security critic put the concern simply: “If we get into some sort of world disaster, where do you think China’s going to send their pork? They’re going to send it back to China.” Who would have thought that pepperoni could be a national security issue?

These dynamics are a useful reminder that something as simple as pizza is an amalgamation of countless supply chains, geopolitical dynamics, disease, weather, and politics. Even small events happening on the other side of the globe can ripple through the economy and impact the price of frozen pizza. Connecting these seemingly unrelated dots can help us understand the levers that impact prices and drive supply. The geoeconomics of the pork industry may seem large and lofty and irrelevant to most, but can, via the price of pepperoni, impact the price of your pizza.

The price of pepperoni was shaped by a tariff negotiated in Geneva, a pig disease that started in a province most Americans can’t pronounce, an acquisition that handed a quarter of America’s pork supply to a Chinese conglomerate, and 59% of the pig (parts no one here will eat) being shipped across the Pacific. Think about that next time you take a bite of a slice!

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

The World Cup final is later today (Argentina and the legendary Messi versus Spain and Lamine Yamal) at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey—and I’ll be watching. My son is an avid soccer fan and watching the games together has been one of those family moments you don’t plan but never forget. Sitting on the couch, cheering for the home team (or the favorite…or the underdog…), groaning at bad calls, high-fiving after goals, with the most important people in my world. And of course, how could we not fall in love with the Norwegian viking row?

As I watched the games this year, I was reminded of Franklin Foer’s book How Soccer Explains the World, which came out in 2004 and used soccer as a lens to explain tribalism, nationalism, corruption, and the enduring power of identity. It was a contrarian book during an era when Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat (2005) was on everyone’s mind, when globalization was supposed to sand down every rough edge and turn the world into one big market. Who could forget his famous thesis that no two countries that had a McDonald’s had ever gone to war with each other?

Foer pushed back. His argument was that the Beautiful Game revealed something uglier underneath. Foer suggested that tribalism doesn’t dissolve with free trade but rather deepens. Familiarity breeds contempt, as the old saying goes.

It was easy to see Foer’s thesis play out over the past few weeks. Before the tournament even started, there were boycott calls from European politicians furious over Trump’s immigration crackdowns, his threats against Greenland, and the invasion of Venezuela. Fans from 39 countries faced travel bans. A Somali referee who had been selected by FIFA to officiate was refused entry to the United States entirely. Then came the matches themselves: England versus Argentina in the semifinals—replaying the Falklands War on a pitch in Atlanta, 44 years later, with Argentine fans carrying Malvinas flags into the stadium. And now the final: Spain versus Argentina, which the internet has already dubbed “colonizer versus colonized.” Tribalism sure seems alive and well.

And then there’s the fact that America doesn’t care about soccer nearly as much as other countries. The United States is devoted to football—uniquely American, not really played anywhere else—which is itself an extension of an innate and enduring isolationism, born out of being surrounded by two oceans and friendly countries. We play our own game, on our own terms, declare ourselves the world champion, and the rest of the world can watch or not. Pundits warned of empty stadiums, dampened turnout, an American public too indifferent and too polarized to care.

And then the games started. And none of that happened.

Attendance shattered the all-time record by June 25…with 48 matches still to play. Fifty million Americans watched the US lose to Belgium 4-1, and then kept watching anyway, with viewership up 92% over 2022. The boycotts fizzled. And the internet flooded with videos of foreign tourists marveling over our country over Buc-ee’s (“A gas station mixed with Disney World wrapped in a gift shop”), over free refills, and bottomless appetizers (“The supply chains of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined”) over Texas steaks. The world marveled at the sheer size of everything. And ranch dressing. Europeans became so enamored with the dressing that the TSA had to issue a warning to stop European tourists from packing bottles of ranch dressing in their carry-ons. Kraft launched a TSA-compliant ranch travel kit. I am not making this up.

As an American posted on X: “If you want to hate America, watch the news. If you want to love America, drive across it.”

And then there were the moments that made you forget about jerseys and borders entirely. Entire stadiums singing John Denver’s “Country Roads” after every US match…players and fans together, 70,000 voices, arms around strangers. Japanese fans staying behind to clean the stadiums after every game, win or lose. A Spain fan and a Cabo Verde fan swapping jerseys in the stands with the Cabo Verdean so moved that someone wanted to wear his tiny country’s shirt that both men were in tears. Japanese tourists in cowboy hats in Houston. A Mexican fan handing a young English boy his Merlin the Duck plush after their teams had just played each other.

Sure, Argentina and England still hold their grudge and Argentina and Spain will relitigate 300 years of colonial history on Sunday. Fans still sing songs about old wars and the tribalism that Foer wrote about hasn’t really disappeared. But it’s settled in shootouts, not shooting. The grudges are real, the passions are fierce, and at the final whistle, they swap jerseys, embrace the thrill of victory and agony of defeat as competitors who love the sport, and go home.

So maybe soccer really does explain the world. America is easy to hate from afar but harder to hate up close. Soccer is capable of making boycotts fizzle and getting people to overlook policy disagreements long enough to share a stadium. And all of this happened here. America hosting, bringing people together, welcoming the world with open hearts, inspiring them with the country we’ve built. Still the shining city on a hill and a force for good in the world.

It may not be our national sport, but we still cheer for the home team regardless of political persuasion. Despite divisions and polarization, in the end, we are still a patriotic people. Fifty million people (Yes, 50,000,000) watched a 4-1 loss, after all. Sure, we’re all tribal. But today’s tribes are capable of playing a sport fiercely and with passion, but also with joy and hugs, and singing songs after, regardless of jersey color.

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

The conversation is centered around Meb’s new book, Investing in America: The Rise of a 250-Year Bull Market, inspired by COVID-era meme-stock speculation and written to teach young investors an optimistic, long-term “ownership mentality” and the power of compounding through U.S. market history. Men addresses short-term risks, arguing the key is survival through drawdowns, and highlights common investor mistakes such as home-country bias, lack of global diversification, and under-allocation to real assets; he also gives a moderate view on Bitcoin and stresses learning from financial history to navigate uncertainty.

CLICK HERE TO BUY MEB'S BOOK

00:00 Welcome and Introductions

00:16 Meb’s Origin Story

02:38 Building Cambria and ETFs

03:30 Books and Early Research

05:10 Why Write Investing in America

06:23 Ownership Mindset and Compounding

10:08 Book Reception and Purpose

13:02 Short-Term Needs vs Long-Term Investing

14:03 Three Investor Mistakes

17:48 Bitcoin in a Portfolio

19:18 AI, Bubbles, and Market History

23:19 China, Demographics, and Going Global

27:50 Why Bet on America

29:03 Navigating Uncertainty Advice

31:10 Closing and Farewell

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

I have spent a career arguing that the most important signals rarely announce themselves. The skyscraper that tops out at the market peak. The pizza order that spikes in the Pentagon parking lot the night before a military operation. The private-label, single-serve trade-down in the frozen aisle that telegraphs a stressed consumer months before the macro data confirm it. Connecting seemingly irrelevant dots is not a parlor trick. It is, I’d argue, the only reliable way to see around corners and navigate uncertainty.

And the latest dot that has caught my eye is the size of a poppy seed that no one on Wall Street is watching: a tick that is quietly building a short position in animal protein. At the root of the development is a disease the tick spreads. It’s a condition called alpha-gal syndrome, or AGS, for short. It is an allergy (often severe, sometimes fatal) — to a sugar present in almost every non-primate mammal. AGS essentially makes you allergic to meat.

You can catch AGS by being bitten. A tick injects alpha-gal into your bloodstream, your immune system learns to attack the molecule, and from that day forward a hamburger, a pork chop, a glass of whole milk, a gelatin capsule — even certain medications — can trigger hives, violent gastrointestinal distress, and, in the worst cases, anaphylaxis. A particularly cruel feature is the delayed onset of symptoms. Reactions usually arrive two to ten hours after the meal, long after the victim would ever think to blame dinner. A man eats a steak, wakes in the middle of the night throwing up and assumes it’s food poisoning. In reality, however, his blood chemistry was quietly re-engineered.

This is not a fringe diagnosis, and recent data should catch everyone’s attention. On July 2, the CDC published a seroprevalence study that should alarm any consumer-staples analyst: In the five states with the highest burden, an estimated 24 percent of adults carry alpha-gal antibodies, led by Arkansas at 31.2 percent and Missouri at 26 percent. Now, it is important to note that a positive antibody test is not a confirmation of AGS. Only a minority of sensitized people go on to develop the full syndrome, and the CDC’s own authors warn against overdiagnosis. But for anyone on the lookout for potential economic fires, the magnitude of the kindling is stupefying. The CDC estimates as many as 450,000 Americans have confirmed AGS, roughly 0.14 percent of the population. The sensitized pool sitting one bad tick season away is vastly larger.

Interestingly, there’s also surging diagnoses in areas that have the ability to move markets. On Martha’s Vineyard, the hospital went from nine alpha-gal tests and two positives in 2020 to nearly 1,700 tests and 742 positives in 2025; that’s a positivity rate north of 40 percent. Nantucket sits on the same curve. On Long Island, a single Southampton allergist now manages more than 1,100 cases. These are not Appalachian hollows. They are the summer addresses of hedge fund managers, private-equity chairmen, and the people who set the clearing price of beachfront everything.

When a disease colonizes the Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Hamptons simultaneously, it has entered the bloodstream of American capital itself. And in November, the story crossed a threshold: a 47-year-old New Jersey pilot became the first documented U.S. death from food-induced alpha-gal, collapsing four hours after a barbecue hamburger. One fatality is not a trend. But it is a headline, and headlines change behavior.

So why now? Follow the deer. The lone star tick’s range is marching northward on milder winters and an exploding deer herd, and this spring the CDC reported emergency-room visits for tick bites at their highest level since 2017. But the lone star tick is no longer the only suspect. The CDC now acknowledges the blacklegged (deer) tick can also transmit alpha-gal. This means the very species that blankets the Lyme-ridden Northeast and bites straight through winter may also be a problem. That quietly widens the high-risk area from the South to most of the eastern United States.

Regular readers know that I have a deep belief that every lens is biased, incomplete, and limited…and therefore insist on analyzing uncertain developments through multiple lenses. So what does a multi-lens analysis of AGS suggest?

The market lens. I run a frozen-pizza company, so let me confess my self-interest: pepperoni, sausage, and beef crumbles are mammalian. Every diagnosed case is a household quietly and (potentially permanently) exiting the red-meat market (and often the dairy market). This is not a fad diet subject to rapid changes in consumer sentiment. It is involuntary demand destruction, one bite at a time. The cattle, pork, and dairy complexes have spent years fretting over plant-based imitators and GLP-1 appetite suppression. They should add an arachnid to the watch list.

The biotech lens. Pfizer and Valneva just posted 73 percent efficacy in their Phase 3 Lyme vaccine trial; Moderna is advancing mRNA candidates to treat Lyme; and Tonix is testing a Lyme prophylactic. Notice the gap: every single one targets Lyme, not alpha-gal.There is still no vaccine and no cure for AGS, only avoidance. But that white space is unlikely to remain vacant. As part of a new federal plan, the NIH is now courting companies with products that could protect against AGS. Layer in emerging research tying alpha-gal sensitization to coronary-artery plaque, and the addressable population may dwarf the people currently breaking out in hives. And because the biotech and pharmaceutical industries tend to focus on large potential markets, we should all take notice.

The social contagion lens. As I mentioned above, this is generating headlines, and headlines change behavior. You don’t go from nine tests to 1,700 in five years (as happened on Martha’s Vineyard) unless people are starting to panic. Remember, a large portion of these are people proactively seeking an alpha-gal test because they heard about the problem. Regardless of the true positivity rate, concern about AGS is now a social contagion in the elite parts of the country with potentially large ramifications.

The policy lens. Increasing policymaker attention over the last month suggests greater visibility of AGS as a risk. Massachusetts made AGS a reportable condition and Congress is weighing legislation to classify alpha-gal as a major food allergen. Such a designation would increase labeling and foodservice training requirements. And in late June, HHS unveiled a national plan to combat tick-borne disease. It funds a pilot program to eradicate ticks on animals before they bite, backs reauthorization of the Kay Hagan Tick Act, and sets a 2035 target to cut Lyme diagnoses by a quarter. Regulators and legislators are notoriously overburdened with requests for their time; the fact that ticks are getting attention should concern all of us.

So what should an individual do? Treat clothing with permethrin; use DEET on skin; tuck pants into socks in brushy terrain; run a full-body tick check within hours of being outside; cut back the lawn edges and leaf litter where ticks lie in wait. If you’ve been bitten and later feel ill after meat, get the blood test — and if you’re positive and symptomatic, read every label, because alpha-gal hides in gelatin, broths, dairy, and even some drugs. Carry epinephrine if your physician advises it. Prevention costs a few dollars; the alternative can cost you, as one New Jersey family learned, far more than a hamburger.

AGS is an under the surface dynamic that justifies more attention as it may intensify into a more dramatic and disruptive phenomenon. While some might dismiss these developments as insignificant, my quick analysis suggests otherwise. After all, we can now link a tick on a Vineyard deer, by an unbroken chain of cause and effect, to demand for animal protein, the biotech pipeline, and even an act of federal policy. The dots are on the page. We need to connect them.

And perhaps most importantly, keep an eye out for little black dots on your legs.

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

Inspired by my attendance at a naturalization ceremony in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, two years ago, I have been writing about America each year around Independence Day. Spending the day of America’s birth with her newest citizens, it was impossible for me not to think about my own family’s immigrant journey, and each year I pause and reflect with gratitude about our great nation.

Last year, in “Still a Shining City on a Hill,” I wrote about my family’s journey, in particular that of my father, who traveled from India to Africa to a little apartment in Queens to the life he built in New Jersey. This year, as America turns 250, I suspect it will not surprise readers to learn that I am as convinced as ever that the United States is still the greatest nation on Earth. Despite political headlines and polarized dogma, America is still shining. More so than ever, actually.

The concept of the shining city on a hill was popularized by Ronald Reagan, who used it throughout his political career. But it was in his farewell address to the nation on January 11, 1989 that he gave it its fullest expression:

“The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the ‘shining city upon a hill.’ The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.”

Over the years, I’ve written about my immigrant roots, and the doors that were open to my family because my parents had “the will and the heart to get here.” Other times I’ve written about “people of all kinds living in harmony and peace”, and the freedoms and rights that make this the greatest country in the world. I’ve dwelt on the “tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans”, and how American military might protects us all. But today, as America celebrates its 250th birthday, it’s a different part of Reagan’s words that resonates with me. The part about “free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.”

As regular readers will know, I started a private-label frozen pizza manufacturer in 2024 and currently serve as the owner and CEO of Goodwell Foods. Running a company has given me a deep and visceral appreciation for the opportunities America provides to entrepreneurs. It’s only from my global experiences and perspective that I know that the ability to start and grow a business, creating jobs and building prosperity along the way, is not a given. In many countries, such opportunities are only given to those who descend from the powerful. America is indeed unusual.

America is also unique in its approach to immigration. As Reagan noted, “you can go live in another land — you can go to France, but you can’t become a Frenchman. You can go live in Germany, but can’t become a German. You can go live in Japan or Turkey, but you cannot become Japanese or Turkish. But anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American.” This sense of belonging is an inherent part of the American entrepreneurial spirit. Reagan’s words eloquently describe America’s love of creative destruction, appreciation for innovation, and deep belief that incumbency and status are not hereditary.

It’s not just the rights and freedoms that make America a land of opportunity. It’s also the American military that safeguards and protects our liberties and freedoms. But while freedom and liberty are necessary, they are not sufficient. The secret American sauce, I’ve come to believe, is our entrepreneurial spirit. Freedoms and liberties provide the conditions under which entrepreneurship can thrive, innovations can be nurtured, and American ingenuity unleashed. It’s this combination of rights, liberties, freedoms, and entrepreneurial spirit that has made us the greatest country in the history of the world.

My father, born in what was then British India, fled to India when during the 1947 Partition when he, a Hindu, found himself on the wrong side of a line drawn on a map. As a British subject, he might have been able to opt to go to Britain; it probably would have been easier. I could have been born in the UK instead of the US, and now writing this from Hampshire in England, instead of New Hampshire in New England.

Without a doubt, my life would have been different. My father wouldn’t have had the chance to educate himself, become a mechanic, or own his own gas station. I likely wouldn’t have had the chance to attend Yale and MIT, teach at Harvard, and run for higher office.

Today, I am reflecting on the opportunity America gave me to start a business. To dare and dream, to take risks, and to build something that makes something. Things like that do not happen every day in Britain…or France…or many Asian or African countries. Stifling rules and regulation, a risk-averse culture in which banks generally only lend to those who don’t need to borrow, and calcified institutions strangle entrepreneurship and smother creativity.

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So on America’s 250th birthday, I feel compelled to acknowledge the importance of our rights and freedoms, the resilient institutions of representative democracy, and the awesome American military that has repeatedly saved the world from darkness. But I am also thankful for a free economy and the opportunity to be an entrepreneur…to do good and do well. Because today, I am running a factory that literally sits on a hill, humming with commerce and teeming with people…driving forklifts, working machinery, and loading trucks.

American workers, making food with American ingredients, for American families, in a factory in America.

Happy birthday, America. And thank you.

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

4,316,233 babies were born in the United States during 2007, the most in American history. The fertility rate, a measure of how many children are born per woman, stood at 2.12, almost exactly at the level needed to keep the population stable.

All of that seemed to change in 2008. When Lehman Brothers collapsed on September 15, 2008, the birth rate collapsed along with it. The number of births in America had already started slipping earlier in 2008 (~68,000 fewer babies than the year before) but by 2009, births had dropped to 4,131,000 (~185,000 below the 2007 peak.) And it just kept falling. Through the recovery, through the bull market, through the lowest unemployment in half a century. Year after year after year.

Last year, 3.6 million babies were born; that’s 700,000 fewer than the 2007 peak. The fertility rate hit another record low: 1.6 children per woman, well below the replacement rate, and government demographers believe it will stay near 1.6 through 2055.

But let’s consider the demographic ripple this change in birth rate is causing. What about all those babies that weren’t born in 2009? All those missing babies translates into missing adults now. They would have been turning 18 next year. They’re the first cohort of the “missing generation” and they’re absent from college enrollment lists, military recruiting pools, and entry-level job applicants.

Between 2008 and 2025, roughly 7.4 million fewer Americans were born than would have been at the 2007 rate. That’s 7.4 million fewer workers, taxpayers, consumers, soldiers, and Social Security contributors. They don’t exist and no policy can create them retroactively.

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The demographics were screaming. The elementary school classrooms got emptier every year. The middle schools followed. Then the high schools. And now the empty chairs have finally reached the college lecture halls as enrollment is falling off a cliff.

Syracuse University’s chancellor just told faculty the school will run its first budget deficit in years because it can’t fill its freshman class. The school cut 93 academic programs; 55 of those had zero enrolled students. To attract the ones who do exist, Syracuse offered tuition discounts of up to $200,000 to students who’d already turned them down. Syracuse isn’t alone. Ohio State cut eight majors and merged 20 others. The University of North Texas slashed 70 programs amid a $45 million deficit. The University of Chicago paused doctoral admissions in over a dozen humanities departments. Demographers call it the “enrollment cliff,” a projected 5 to 10 percent decline in freshman class sizes beginning now.

Just as colleges are missing students, the Pentagon is missing soldiers. The U.S. Army missed its FY22 goal by 25% and its FY23 goal by 10%. This rebounded a bit after the services raised the enlistment age to 42, loosened drug and tattoo restrictions, and created a pre-boot-camp prep course to get unqualified applicants up to standard. But the math is about to get worse. The Hoover Institution projects a 10% reduction in eligible 18-year-olds starting in 2026, directly caused by the post-recession birth decline. And of that shrinking pool, only 23% are eligible to serve without a waiver; the rest are disqualified by obesity, mental health issues, drug use, or criminal records. Center for a New American Security projects a 13% decline in 18-year-olds between 2025 and 2041. You can’t recruit soldiers who don’t exist.

In addition to working its way through colleges and the military, the demographic ripple is about to hit the workforce. Fewer 18-year-olds means fewer entry-level workers in a labor market that’s already tight. And fewer consumers. It means fewer first-time renters, fewer people buying their first car, fewer consumers forming households and spending money in the ways that drive economic growth. It’s also important to note that these dynamics mean fewer workers will be paying into Social Security, the retirement system supporting 70 million retirees who seem to be living longer and longer. Might the baby bust lead to Social Security’s collapse?

The 2008 financial crisis broke something that 18 years of recovery couldn’t fix. The economy came back. The stock market hit all-time highs. Unemployment fell to historic lows. None of it mattered. The birth rate just kept falling, through boom years, low-unemployment years, stimulus years, wage-growth years. Once a generation loses confidence that the future will be better than the present, the babies don’t come. And once they don’t come, you can’t get them back. The last full-sized cohort of 18-year-olds is walking across graduation stages right now. Next year, the missing generation arrives. Or rather, doesn’t.

The baby bust is going to reorder our society in ways that we are only beginning to understand. And as the BBC video below describes, this is not just a US story.

The implications of fewer humans on the planet are likely to be disruptive and lead to many changes, but it’s important to be balanced in our thinking. Yes, fewer workers may lead to higher wages and a wage-price spiral, but might the dynamic also allow for the rapid introduction of artificial intelligence without social disruption or unrest? Yes, fewer humans may result in an “enrollment bust” with our inflated education industry, but perhaps an aging population might find fancy campuses more suited to retirement communities?

My main point here is not that the baby bust is good or bad, but rather that it’s an under-the-surface demographic trend that will have major implications for various industries and the economy as a whole. And in times like these, it’s critical we spend time connecting dots across seemingly irrelevant domains (aging populations and college campuses, for instance) to unveil lurking risks and spot hidden opportunities.

Please share your thoughts about the baby bust by voting in the poll below.

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

I hope you’ll indulge me on this Father’s Day and take 6 minutes to watch (or at least listen to) his speech. Yes, I’m a proud father who wants to brag about his son. But I’m also a concerned citizen and want his powerful message of hope and optimism to be shared and spread as widely as possible. He offers a path towards a more compassionate and peaceful politics.

And if you like his speech, please consider subscribing to his podcast, The Kai Guy Show, on Apple Podcasts where he regularly shares his thoughts. Please also consider sharing his speech via the share button below with family, friends, and colleagues. The audio only version can be accessed by following Kai.

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One of the most touching moments of Kai’s speech is when he calls out his sister Tori for her recent success at the Special Olympics of New Hampshire Summer Games. I couldn’t be prouder of Tori for all her hard work, nor of Kai for recognizing her efforts!

Thank you for allowing me the joy of sharing some of my recent experiences as a father. But it wouldn’t be fair today if I didn’t at least re-share thoughts about my own father, with whom I was able to spend some quality time today.

See below for a post that I’ve shared before.

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

Here’s his summary of our conversation:

1. Strate…

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History may not repeat itself, but it often does rhyme. As resources become valuable, major powers scramble to secure access to them. But it’s not just the resources that matter, it’s the ability to get (to) them; inevitably, chokepoints emerge, and great powers start jockeying for position. In many cases, success in securing materials or trade routes is enough to reorient global power dynamics.

Rome conquered the Mediterranean in the 2nd century BC because it meant control of trade. For a thousand years (or so), the Silk Road drove empires from the Han Dynasty to the Mongols to battle for control of Central Asian corridors. The spice trade led the Portuguese and the Dutch into conflict over nutmeg in the 1500s and 1600s. The 1908 discovery of oil in Persia redrew the map of the Middle East, and we’re still fighting over those lines today. And Britain and Russia spent the entire 19th century playing what Kipling called the “Great Game” across Central Asia, with India as the grand prize. Battles over resources and trading routes is nothing new.

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Today, another Great Game is underway in the north. As I have written before, I believe the next couple of decades will see a Great Power contest for the Arctic, and it is already heating up.

Why the Arctic? Well, for starters, it’s teeming with valuable resources. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic holds 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil (around 13% of the world’s reserves) and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, roughly 30% of the planet’s supply. The Wall Street Journal has estimated another $1 trillion in rare earth minerals, at today’s prices. The Russian Arctic alone holds $1.5 to $2 trillion in mineral wealth. And let’s not forget the Arctic already produces 40% of the world’s palladium, 20% of its diamonds, and 15% of its platinum.

But it’s not just about resources; it’s also about transit routes. Readers will know that I’ve been arguing for months that Trump’s seemingly incoherent geopolitical grandstanding about Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada aren’t random. I’ve suggested they represent a coherent strategy, albeit incoherently described. But they’re also about chokepoints.

The global economy runs through a handful of narrow passages: the Strait of Hormuz (oil), the Bab el-Mandeb and Suez Canal (Europe-Asia trade), the Strait of Malacca (China’s lifeline), the Panama Canal (Atlantic-Pacific), and the Turkish Straits (Black Sea access). Every major trade route on the planet runs through a bottleneck that a country or alliance can effectively shut.

The Arctic bypasses all of them. The Northern Sea Route, running along Russia’s northern coast, shortens the transit time between Asia and Europe by 40% and saves 4,500 nautical miles—all while avoiding the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Strait of Malacca. Further, the Northwest Passage through Canadian waters is increasingly safe for transit for more of the year. And Greenland? As you’ll see below, It sits at the mouth of both routes. Now ask yourself why Trump wants it.

South Korea is so convinced of this future that it relocated its entire Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries to Busan from Seoul, a symbolic but important gesture. The first Korean container ships on the Arctic route are planned for this year. These aren’t hypothetical sea lanes that might one day carry goods. They’re under construction and the voyages are underway.

As they say, the game is afoot and the main players are ready to go.

Russia is already in the Arctic and very active. It has been reopening Soviet-era military bases, building new airfields and ports, and today operates the world’s largest icebreaker fleet, including dozens of nuclear-powered icebreakers that no other country can match. Russia today controls the Northern Sea Route and charges transit fees via mandatory icebreaker escorts, permits, and pilotage. The Arctic isn’t a sideshow for Moscow. It’s a part of its strategy.

China declared itself a “near-Arctic state” in 2018 (last I checked it’s not near the Arctic, but what do I know?) and outlined a “Polar Silk Road” for Arctic shipping. It has invested heavily in Russia’s Northern Sea Route and started working with Russia to patrol the Bering Strain in 2024. It’s even building its own icebreaker fleet. Beijing sees the Arctic the way it sees the South China Sea: contested space where early positioning creates future leverage.

Canada has been increasingly focusing on the north and Prime Minister Mark Carney recently announced the government would be investing more than $40 billion in forward operating locations, infrastructure to connect the North, and the development of critical materials. All part of Canada’s plan to shift from reliance to resilience, Carney’s administration hopes to develop the full economic potential of the region while improving its security footprint. For Canada, the Arctic isn’t some faraway and distant worry. It’s literally their doorstep.

The United States is playing catch-up, but Trump’s Greenland gambit jumpstarted the conversation about Arctic strategy, and the Pentagon recently deployed F-22s to Alaska. But the clearest measure of the gap: the U.S. has two operational icebreakers. Russia has over 40. Even Canada, our partner to the north, only has two large icebreakers and six medium sized ones. If freedom of movement through the Arctic is to be maintained, an icebreaker fleet is required.

NATO launched Arctic Sentry in 2026 and gained two Arctic members when Sweden and Finland joined. But Europe’s response remains symbolic. As I wrote earlier this year: The real threat to the Arctic isn’t America, it’s China and Russia. Europe seems to be posturing against the wrong adversary.

So, why now? The Arctic and it resources have been there all along, after all. True, but most of it has been inaccessible. Until now.

The Arctic is opening in part because the ice is melting. A warmer climate has exposed the oil, the minerals, and the shipping lanes. But it’s also a frontier that hasn’t been fully exploited, and as the world bifurcates into two global economic and geopolitical blocks, a mad scramble is underway to secure much-needed resources.

The spice trade lasted centuries. The oil game has been running for 118 years. The Arctic game is just starting—and it already has more players than any Great Game before it. Russia has nuclear icebreakers. China is building the Polar Silk Road. South Korea is redesigning its port system. The U.S. has a president who wants to buy Greenland.

Kipling would have recognized this. And written plenty about it. Who knows what great works it might one day inspire…

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

The protein boom is alive and well. Unless you live under a rock, you’ve likely seen protein being marketed on almost every food item you buy. Doritos, your coffee, and even your ice cream now trumpet their protein content. And it’s not just a marketing story; consumers are demanding more protein. A majority of Americans say they’re actively trying to eat more of it. Meat snacks alone have become a $5.5 billion juggernaut, and #protein has millions of posts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. These days, the word “protein” on a package is almost as important as the price.

Food fads are not new, and while I believe the protein story isn’t a fleeting phenomenon, it’s not unreasonable to question the sustainability of the boom. After all, before protein, American consumers were infatuated with hydration. Remember when Liquid I.V. suddenly appeared everywhere? When everyone started carrying water bottles and Stanley cups became a status symbol?

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It seems to me there’s a pattern here. First, a real health concept goes mainstream, social media amplifies interest in the topic, the food industry builds an empire with brands and products to help consumers achieve their goals, our culture changes to incorporate the new desires, and suddenly it’s in every aisle of your grocery store.

For the past eighteen months, I’ve had a front row seat as food trends play out in real time. Regular readers will know that I currently run a private-label frozen pizza company that produces single-serve offerings for some of the largest grocers in America.

As the protein wave rapidly accelerated and gained momentum (even before Starbucks and Dunkin’ had amplified the interest) in early 2025, I directed my product development team to focus their efforts on a high-protein pizza. Early last fall, our taste tests indicated we had a winner, and the market agreed. One of America’s largest grocery retailers agreed to put it on its shelves in 2026.

I say this not to sell you pizza but to explain why I spend an unusual amount of time studying food trends, how consumer focus interfaces with market opportunities, and, perhaps most importantly, what might be coming next. And in that regard, I’ve been directing our innovation efforts at Goodwell Foods towards what I believe may be an even bigger trend than protein.

And those running the biggest food companies in the world seem to agree with me as they too are saying the F-word.

Fiber.

Bigger than protein? Yes. How’s that? Turns out that most Americans already get enough protein. Johns Hopkins puts it simply: “Americans get plenty of protein, but not enough fiber.” The numbers aren’t even close. According to the American Society of Nutrition, around 7% of American adults consume the recommended daily fiber. Over 90% of women and 97% of men fall short of the recommended 25 to 35 grams per day.

The opportunity is enormous. The average American gets about 15 grams of fiber a day, about half of what they need. That’s like eating a single apple and not consuming any additional fiber all day. Most foods (pasta, a sandwich, a bag of chips, a protein bar) don’t even move the needle. Those foods that do (beans, lentils, vegetables, whole grains) have been scraped off American plates by low-carb dieting efforts and our (relatively) newfound protein obsession. We spent years telling people to avoid carbs. Fiber was the baby thrown out with the bathwater.

Nearly everyone in America is skipping the indigestible carbohydrate that fights heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, while also providing necessary fuel for our gut microbiome, which is connected to everything from our immune system to our moods. Fiber, it turns out, may be the biggest nutritional deficiency we’ve discovered yet and has the potential to mitigate numerous chronic diseases.

But could this be a fleeting trend that never makes it into the mainstream? To validate my thinking, I often turn to the people whose bonuses depend on figuring out these trends. On a recent earnings call, for instance, PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta boldly noted that “fiber will be the next protein.” And McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski publicly predicted that fiber “is going to be big.” When the leaders ofPepsiCo and McDonald’s both say the same thing, I pay attention.

And the signals are now rapidly emerging. PepsiCo is launching Smartfood Fiber Pop and SunChips Fiber. Whole Foods put fiber-forward products in its 2026 trend forecast. Thrive Market reported a 30% surge in fiber-related search terms. And Datassential, the food research firm that tracks what’s actually moving in the industry, called fiber “the next big health trend following on the heels of protein.”

The validation from food industry titans tells me that fiber isn’t just a fun speculation. The breadth of interest suggests there’s an entire supply chain gearing up to feed a forthcoming surge in American appetites for fiber.

GLP-1 drugs are further accelerating this trend. About one in five American adults have used (or are using) Ozempic, Wegovy, or a similar medication. GLP-1 users experience a 25 to 40 percent decrease in caloric intake, which means every bite has to count. Nutrient density per calorie increasingly matters. Given its ability to deliver satiety, blood sugar stability, and gut health, fiber demand is likely to rise rapidly alongside GLP usage. When the drugs that are reshaping how America eats also happen to increase the need for fiber, you have a trend with structural tailwinds, not just a viral TikTok moment.

Speaking of TikTok, social media has jumped aboard with “Fibermaxxing,” the act of maximizing daily fiber intake through every meal and snack. Fibermaxxing started online, moved into mainstream food culture, and is now in the boardrooms of America’s largest food companies. A majority of consumers said they’d try “fibermaxxing” after learning about it.

Every few years, the food industry finds a health trend to rally around. Hydration had its moment. Protein is today’s focus. And, I really believe that fiber is next. When 93% of the country isn’t getting enough of something that prevents heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, that’s not a trend. That’s an opportunity. And a big market.

The CEOs of the largest companies in the world are placing their bets. Product launches are already in motion. Social media is abuzz with discussion. And back in our test kitchen at Goodwell Foods, our product development team is working on developing a high-fiber pizza that will be ready to go later this year.

Soon, everyone will be saying the F word.

VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

It’s graduation season, and like Spring itself, it’s a time of renewal, hope, and new beginnings. It always brings back the excitement I felt decades ago, in the audience in cap and gown, my whole life ahead of me.

It’s also the season of older people standing at podiums telling younger people what lies ahead and the secret sauce to living their lives. And it’s no easy task for the speaker: 15 minutes to make an impact on a crowd that’s hungover, sunburned, and already thinking about the after-party. They also already feel like they have all the answers – who doesn’t at that age? Stated or not, there seems to be a simple rule for commencement speech success: energize the graduates and make them feel like they can take on the world.

But as I listened to a bunch of this year’s speeches, I was struck by a recurring theme: students pushed back. It started in Orlando. On May 8, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield stood before the graduating class of UCF’s College of Arts and Humanities and called artificial intelligence “the next industrial revolution.” The students booed. Not a polite murmur. A sustained roar that continued to get louder until Caulfield stopped, turned to the administrators, and asked, “What happened?”

She tried to recover: “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives” and the crowd cheered… but as she continued, “and now, AI capabilities are in the palm of our hands…” the boos resumed. One graduate, Ethan Lubin, told the New York Times: “Talking about artificial intelligence at a college for arts and humanities can be, you know, a bit rough, because it kind of goes against the humanities part.”

The next day, it happened again. At Middle Tennessee State University, Scott Borchetta, the Big Machine Records CEO best known as Taylor Swift’s adversary, told graduates that “AI is rewriting production as we sit here.” More boos.

His response: “Deal with it,” followed by: “Then do something about it. It’s a tool. Make it work for you.” Then he told them what they’d learned in college was “already obsolete.” A man worth $450 million telling students with six-figure debt that their education is worthless. Gizmodo’s verdict: “Perhaps not well-suited to the job of inspiring young people.”

A week later, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt got the same treatment at the University of Arizona. As soon as he mentioned AI, the crowd reacted. Schmidt, to his credit, stopped and said: “I can hear you. There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.” It might have been the most honest thing said by anyone this commencement season. It was also an admission, from a man worth $30 billion, that those who built these technologies understand the fear they’ve created among the next generation.

TechCrunch’s headline summarized the lesson to be drawn from these speeches: “If you’re giving a commencement speech in 2026, maybe don’t mention AI.”

The reaction of graduates shouldn’t be surprising. The pushback against artificial intelligence is a reflection of society’s worries. A Pew Research survey found half of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI. And a Gallup report says the mood is getting worse, not better. Hope is giving way to anxiety and, in some extreme cases, anger.

Think about this from the graduates’ perspective. They were told to go to college. They did. They were told to learn skills the economy values. They did. Many of them took on mountains of debt to do so. And now they’re listening to people who are making gazillions from this revolution tell them the very skills they just spent four years acquiring are being automated…and it’ll make the future better. The boos are not just anti-technology. They’re also anti-hypocrisy.

I’ve written a lot about AI over the past year, focusing on both risks and opportunities emerging from the technology. But watching students boo speakers created a new perspective on the topic for me. I realized today’s youth aren’t Luddites smashing looms. They are kids who grew up with technology, whose entire lives have been videoed and shared with the world; they use ChatGPT to write papers and Claude to debug code. They’re not afraid of AI because they don’t understand it. They’re afraid because they do.

The people making money from these technological advances tell them that the future is bright and are confused by people who think otherwise. Somebody is wrong, and I’m not sure it’s the kids in the audience.

Not every commencement speaker this season got booed. Country singer Eric Church gave what’s being called “one of the best commencement speeches ever” at the University of North Carolina. He didn’t mention AI once. Instead, he strummed his guitar and used its six strings as metaphors for faith, family, partnership, ambition, community, and individuality. He closed by telling graduates: “The world does not need another cover song. It needs an original.” Then he played “Carolina” and rows of students in blue caps swayed arm in arm. Millions viewed online.

His speech worked because he talked to the graduates, not at them. In this swirling world of change and chaos he told them to ground themselves in old-fashioned values that are just as relevant now as they were for our grandparents.

In a time when students are wondering if being human is enough, Church offered them something deeply human. And at least for now, it sure seems like humans value humans.

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

The South Korean stock market is booming. The KOSPI index is up about 150% from its April 2025 low and gained ~75% percent in 2025. This is Korea’s best performance in over 25 years. But it hasn’t stopped this year. It’s already up more than 75% and recently touched the 8,000 level for the first time in history. For comparison, it was hovering around 2,500 two years ago.

Regular readers know I’ve had a lifelong interest in bubbles. Unsurprisingly, performance like this catches my attention. Six days after hitting 8,000, the KOSPI plunged around 12%, triggering downside circuit breakers. The very next day it bounced 8% or so, triggering an upside circuit breaker. It was starting to look less like a rally and more like a seizure. My bubble spotting seismograph was indicating tremors afoot.

The dynamics get more concerning when you acknowledge that the meteoric rally has been largely fueled by the performance of two stocks: Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. Both make the high-bandwidth memory chips that power Nvidia’s AI accelerators, and as the media put it bluntly: “Without Samsung and Hynix, there would be no KOSPI at 6,000” (not to mention 8,000).

So, the question I ask myself is simple: Is this a bubble?

My 2011 book on bubbles provided a framework for thinking about how to answer this question. The book was based upon a class I taught at Yale, and offered a multi-lens approach to spotting bubbles before they burst. I suggested the use of five lenses (microeconomics, macroeconomics, psychology, politics, and biology) to explore and evaluate sustainability of a boom. At root, it was based on my belief that every perspective is limited, biased, and incomplete…so why not use more than one?

So, let’s run the KOSPI through my framework.

Microeconomics Lens = Bubbly

Traditional economics suggests that when prices rise, demand is depressed and supply is motivated. But what if the opposite happens? What if higher prices lead to more demand? Might a self-fulfilling dynamic of higher prices leading to higher demand lead to even higher prices (and even higher demand)?

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The KOSPI is a capitalization weighted index, meaning that the large companies exert more influence on the index. It also means that as heavyweights like Samsung rise in value faster than other components, their weight in the index rises. Continued positive performance compounds this dynamic, leading to a narrowing of breadth and a limited set of companies that drive the index performance. Today, Hynix and Samsung are about 50% of the index…and their earnings depend on a bet that AI infrastructure keeps booming. KB Securities calls this “a textbook feature of a late-stage bubble”: narrowing leadership, concentration in a few names, retail money piling in behind them. It’s what happened with the Nifty Fifty in 1971 and the dotcom stocks in 1999.

Macroeconomics Lens = Bubbly

When investors can easily borrow money to invest, my alarm bells go off because this too can create a bubbly dynamic. And through this lens, Korea looks vulnerable. Margin loan balances hit a record $27 billion on May 15, the very same day the KOSPI touched 8,000. And because the margin interest rates are hovering in the 7%-9% range, this implies retail investors are convinced the index will do better.

Credit magnifies both the upside and the downside. Think of it as a two-edged sword, and slight changes in credit can turn a virtuous upside cycle into a vicious downside one. Consider the story of a Korean civil servant who put 2.3 billion won ($1.7 million) into Hynix, most of it borrowed. Might that end badly? When the KOSPI dropped 12 percent, forced liquidations surged to 6.5 percent of unsettled trades and $625 billion in market value vanished in a single session.

Psychology Lens = Bubbly

Anyone who studies financial bubbles understands that investors swing between greed and fear. Times with widespread and extreme investor fear are usually good times to buy. The flip side is that widespread and extreme investor greed is a good time to sell. And while data such as foreign investor selling may dampen bubble concerns, Korean retail investors are suffering from stratospheric levels of FOMO (fear of missing out). They’ve absorbed more than $13.2 billion of foreign investor selling last week alone and are doing so with margin debt.

Investor overconfidence is a tell-tale sign of bubbly conditions and record Korean margin debt and buying in the face of intense selling from foreigners seems to be pointing to a bubbly KOSPI. ZeroHedge recently called Korean retail investors “levered to the gills and out of funds, buying with the bank’s money.” South Koreans are even cashing out insurance policies to play the market, eerily reminiscent of the ordinary people flooding the market for tulip bulbs in 1637, with some even mortgaging their homes. When the smart money exits and the crowd doubles down on borrowed cash, it’s starting to look as bubbly as a glass of champagne.

Political Lens = Sort of Bubbly.

Government actions often also play role in fueling bubbles. This was true in the great financial crisis as government policies created moral hazard in the mortgage market, allowing a social objective of greater homeownership to create and reinforce risky lending. Political leaders thinking about market performance as a report card for their political acumen is also a concerning dynamic.

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South Korean President Lee Jae Myung vowed to hit KOSPI 5,000 and his “Corporate Value-up Program 2.0” mandated governance reforms, strengthened shareholder protections, and slashed dividend income tax in half to 25%. These are real, structural improvements. But when a government explicitly targets a stock index number, it creates a political incentive to keep the party going—and a political cost to letting it correct.

Biology Lens = Bubbly.

In the past, I’ve often described a bubble as an infection that spreads rapidly across a society, eventually reaching epidemic breadth before “herd immunity” leads to a correction. The AI narrative is a great case in point, and it’s jumped from Silicon Valley to Seoul in less than two years. Samsung’s HBM4 chips, SK Hynix’s Nvidia contracts, and the “semiconductor supercycle” are all mechanisms to spread the AI virus to more and more people. The Korea Times identified it as a “gray rhino”: plainly visible, widely recognized, and frequently underestimated. The number of people without any exposure to the artificial intelligence story is dwindling rapidly.

Epidemics don’t end because the virus weakens. They end when everyone susceptible has already been infected. And with the case of Artificial Intelligence, herd immunity is nigh. In markets, that means the rally ends when everyone who’s going to buy has already bought—on margin, at the top. There are no more greater fools left to join the party. When taxicab drivers and bellman start talking about the market, the bubble is close to bursting.

So where does this leave us?

My assessment is that the Korean markets are very bubbly and unsustainable. Record margin debt, forced liquidations, and professional investors selling while retail investors sell life insurance to buy the market are big bright flashing warning signs. And the fact that everyone, and I mean everyone everywhere, is talking about AI adds a level of caution to anything dependent upon that story continuing.

I’ve often said that investors are destined to make mistakes. None of us is perfect. But we do have a choice in the type of mistake to make. There are errors of commission in which investors own a bubble that eventually leads to losses. And there are errors of omission in which investors miss the final stages of a bubble and miss gains.

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Korea is not a market I’d chase. Yes the AI semiconductor story is real and Samsung and Hynix are world-class companies that will benefit from the global transformation underway. But a good story and a good investment are not the same thing, especially when leverage is maxed out, the institutions are heading for the exits, and the government is promising the party won’t end. Now’s the time to make errors of omission…

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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.