THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS

In this essay, Citrini and Alap Shah construct a fictional macro memo written from the perspective of June 2028, using the format of financial retrospective analysis to explore a single underexamined scenario: what happens when AI adoption succeeds beyond all expectations, and that success becomes the source of catastrophic economic disruption. The piece traces how accelerating AI capability interacts with the structures of the white-collar labour market, corporate spending, consumer demand, credit markets, and government fiscal policy — identifying the feedback loops that connect each layer into a single, self-reinforcing system. The authors are explicit that this is a thought exercise rather than a forecast, and the essay closes by returning the reader to February 2026, framing the scenario as a risk to model and prepare for rather than a fate already in motion.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 00:56 - Macro Memo

* 00:57 - The Consequences of Abundant Intelligence

* 05:33 - How It Started

* 10:18 - When Friction Went to Zero

* 19:17 - From Sector Risk to Systemic Risk

* 27:47 - The Intelligence Displacement Spiral

* 32:45 - The Daisy Chain of Correlated Bets

* 47:34 - The Battle Against Time

* 54:12 - The Intelligence Premium Unwind

* 56:43 - Acknowledgements

https://open.substack.com/pub/citrini/p/2028gic?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe