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This year’s OODA Almanac has been the most difficult in the series to write as the pace of disruption is constantly overwhelming our ability to analyze the future in real-time. Most of our prior observations, which can be carefully described as predictions, have come true so we aren’t caught flat-footed, but rather unable to escape the tides of our own narratives as they crash upon the shore with reckless and overwhelming abandon.
In framing this year’s title, I’m struck by the incredible story of my friend Marc who suffered whiplash in an automobile incident that left him with some unmanageable neck pain. In the “system is broke” mirage of a functioning U.S. healthcare system, he was denied access to proper diagnosis in the form of an MRI and later suffered a broken neck that was a festering and progressing artifact of the whiplash. The analogy of whiplash seems like a useful framing here as we are both unable to diagnose the current situation and have perhaps broken our neck in the process. It is also a useful analogy for 180 degrees of change we are encountering in the political system as priorities, processes, and actions have been rapidly pivoting in four year cycles over the past 12 years that have been also impacted by exponential technologies, large-scale regional conflicts, and global pandemics.
We’ve often invoked that Toffler’s concept of Future Shock was occurring a few decades late, but the era of Future Shock is fully upon us. The velocity of change has reached a point where decision-makers no longer have the luxury of incremental adaptation. We are living through a recursive cycle of whiplash—technological, geopolitical, economic, and societal—forcing continuous re-orientation. This isn’t merely change but disruption without equilibrium, and the cognitive load on leaders is becoming unbearable.
The Future Shock framework has never been more relevant. We exist in an age where synthetic information distorts reality, political structures are incapable of agile response, and technology is accelerating beyond the comprehension of even its own creators. The decision-making cycle the OODA loop is being exploited and overloaded, making it imperative to recalibrate strategy around agility, optionality, and resilience.
The Trump tsunami of disruption with zero regard for decades-long institutional memory and bureaucratic constructs is a rebooting of democracy that will serve to stress test the republic.
The core question haunting governance is simple: Is our political system equipped to handle unstructured destruction? The answer, increasingly, is unclear. The reality is that institutions built in an industrial era were crumbling under the stress of an information-dominated reality. Government entities grasp at nostalgia while the world reshapes itself in real-time and AI-driven influence operations, the rapid democratization of scientific breakthroughs, and the fragmentation of public trust demand a new operating model; one that no existing system seems capable of delivering without significant optimization.
In prior Almanacs, we called for a return to first principles and have heralded creative destruction as a likely outcome, but destruction does not mean deletion and deletion carries risk for which no strategic planner can account for.
Disruption is neither inherently good nor bad. It is a force, and whether it builds or destroys depends on the structures it encounters. We face this duality in another context as some of our systems are clearly diseased, but worry the remedy could kill the patient.
For example, our food supply has been engineered to addict us to sugars and complex carbs and requires course correction. However, any effort to fix systemic issues must be carefully calibrated to not also eliminate proven programs and preventative health programs. Finding and fixing the failures of the system must be done in ways that do not kill the good in the system. The challenge lies in implementing meaningful reform without unintended consequences that could create even greater health risks.
The DoD continues to fail annual audits and despite astronomical budgets, accountability remains nonexistent. The Pentagon operates in a fiscal black hole, and the most technologically advanced military in history cannot account for its own spending, but is the answer a visit from DOGE?
The U.S. tax system has become a competitive disadvantage. While other nations optimize for agility, America maintains a byzantine structure that only benefits those wealthy enough to exploit it, but is deletion of the income tax the proper remedy?
If we try to identify a first principle of disruption, does it necessitate staying outside the bounds of absolute destruction or have we reached a tipping point where the only disruptive path forward is to enable destruction along the way? Regardless of the answers, as Bob notes the challenges of cognitive dissonance are presented on a daily basis and require constant re-orientation.
Regulatory frameworks are increasingly the battleground for economic and technological dominance. Financial entities, technology companies, and even nation-states are playing jurisdictional Jenga, exploiting discrepancies between legal regimes. Cryptocurrency, AI, and biotech startups are structuring themselves to evade regulatory oversight while capitalizing on global opportunity.
In prior years, we discussed how regulatory arbitrage and the United States’ tendency to over-regulate innovation would negatively constrain innovation and drive inventors overseas. We are encouraged by the de-regulation regime and an accelerated technological future that holds, but also recognize that some controls are required for safety and security. This dichotomy is an ever present challenge to manage in the next decade, but for now keeping innovation on-shore appears to be the most viable option and worth the risk.
The real battle for democracy isn’t fought in warzones. It’s fought in ballots, courts, and networks. The structural integrity of democratic systems is being stress-tested at a level unseen since the Cold War. From election interference to judicial capture, democracy is under duress. Yet, for all its vulnerabilities, it remains the most resilient system against authoritarian consolidation.
Increasingly, we seem confronted with network effects and tribal tendencies creeping into every component of the democratic system and Binary Fractures introducing additional opportunities for vulnerability and adversary exploitation.
The challenge now is to debug democracy, identifying and patching the exploit vectors before they metastasize further.
The convergence of climate migration, AI labor displacement, and gray-zone conflicts creates compounding crises that can overwhelm traditional institutions. Forward-leaning enterprises should adopt “resilience stress-testing” combining war-gamed scenario planning with real-time injects based on global events and lessons learned from industrial espionage, cyberattacks, and retribution activities such as counter-tariffs and supply chain disruption.
Corporate boards might explore appointing Chief Complexity Officers to navigate nesting and cascading risks. Future success hinges on replacing siloed risk management with antifragile network architectures.
We are in the era of lies, where nothing can be trusted at face value. Political leaders routinely contradict their own statements, government agencies manipulate narratives, and AI-generated disinformation overwhelms every platform. The baseline assumption for survival in this new paradigm is mistrust and it is worth highlighting the impact systemic mistrust has on our collective reality and social contracts.
This isn’t merely a crisis of media or government, it’s a crisis of epistemology. How do you determine what is true when every input is suspect? The answer will define the resilience of both individuals and institutions. We’ve often spoken of securing our Cognitive Infrastructure, but the problem is becoming increasingly complex as society has structured itself around wanting to consume the lies. Folks want the pre-packaged content that fits a narrative, bias, or outcome that they want for which their only contribution is amplification through the share button.
While improving the critical thinking and analytical skills of the next generation remains important, it is likely that technology innovation will play a role here as AI steps in as our deception guardians and helps us navigate to the truth. Additionally, technologies like blockchain can help validate and authenticate sources of information in what could become a global NFT News Network where every story can be tracked to a tokenized origin.
The world’s ruling class operates with near-total impunity. The fusion of wealth, political influence, and media control has created a system where war crimes, nepotism, and financial corruption go unpunished. The geriatric ruling elite maintains power through sheer inertia, enabled by systems seemingly too entrenched to self-correct. This is no longer about ideology; it is about the absence of accountability as a governing principle. It is the challenge of having enabling power without consequence.
The Rich Men North of Richmond seems less like a lyrical ode to 2022 and more like a predictive analysis of what was to come as American oligarchs become fully entrenched in the American political system without clear pathways for checks and balances. We seem to be in a “hold your breath” moment that has a growing number of citizens and leaders both fearing consequences and afraid to speak up.
The convergence of DIY biohacking, open-source medicine, and pharmaceutical breakthroughs is reshaping healthcare. The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective briefing from Def Con exemplifies this shift to challenging corporate monopolies by distributing open-source blueprints for essential medicines. At the same time, GLP-1 drugs are revolutionizing metabolic health, promising a new era of longevity science and driving positive health outcomes for multiple comorbidities.
Healthcare is entering a phase of radical decentralization, where self-experimentation and community-driven science could outpace regulatory approval cycles. The implications for public health and biosecurity are profound as these technologies become further enabled through access to AI technologies. The basement pharmacies won’t just focus on replicating existing drugs, but rather inventing entire new remedies through the democratization of health sciences.
On the bio-defense side, outside the box solutions might include CRISPR-based “gene firewalls” that automatically disable synthetic viral payloads or field-MDNA vaccine approaches that respond to bio-threats in real-time.
The frontier of artificial intelligence has crossed a new threshold as AGI-level capabilities are no longer theoretical; they are operational. The most advanced models now outperform PhD-level researchers on standardized benchmarks designed to evaluate expert reasoning. OpenAI’s GPT-o3 can match or surpass human specialists, even within their designated fields of study.
This isn’t just an incremental leap, it is an intelligence explosion. Soon, every individual will wield the power of a thousand PhDs, accessible from a desktop or smartphone. Companies of all sizes will be able to augment their knowledge workers with powerful reasoning tools. The implications for innovation, problem-solving, and business disruption are profound, and this is just the beginning.
We are no longer preparing for the AGI age. We are in it.
A new class of autonomous AI agents is rapidly emerging not just as tools, but as actors of agency making decisions, negotiating, and executing actions on our behalf. The era of passive AI assistance is over. Instead of asking a chatbot for information, we will increasingly rely on AI entities to engage, decide, and act in real-world and digital environments and often without direct oversight.
These AI agents aren’t just responding to queries; they are increasing capable of independently:
This transition represents a fundamental shift in agency. We are offloading decision-making authority to AI at an unprecedented scale, and these systems are beginning to operate with growing autonomy. One of the most profound implications is that AI agents will soon become economic participants in their own right. In the past year, we’ve seen AI systems will own and control digital assets, including cryptocurrencies and intellectual property. In the near-term, autonomous business entities, run entirely by AI will generate revenue, pay taxes, and reinvest without human intervention. They will create smart contracts, paired with AI decision-making, and will automate and enforce business agreements across decentralized networks.
We are on the cusp of a sovereign AI economy, where silicon intelligence engages in commerce, governance, and social interactions with minimal human input. This raises profound issues with regards to accountability for these agents which are being tested in the courts now with DAOs, but more importantly we must think through how businesses will interact with these agents of action.
The age of AIgents has arrived. It is hard to imagine a pathway where they remain simply tools, so will they become partners or evolve into rivals?
The emergence of the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek sent shockwaves through the technology and financial sectors, with some calling it America’s “AI Sputnik Moment.” The company claimed to have developed an advanced AI model using only a few hundred GPUs and training it at a fraction of the cost typically required by OpenAI and its peers. The implications were staggering, triggering a seismic shift in global AI competition.
The market reacted immediately. Nvidia’s stock plunged 17%, erasing nearly $600 billion in market capitalization which was the largest single-day loss in U.S. stock market history. This catalyzed a broader tech sell-off, wiping out over $1 trillion in value across major firms.
But as the dust settled, a more complex reality emerged. DeepSeek’s operations were likely built on a vast, covert GPU cluster, potentially circumventing U.S. chip sanctions. The true cost of their model development appeared to be far higher than initially suggested. Meanwhile, speculation swirled around whether DeepSeek’s hedge fund backers had anticipated the market turmoil and profited accordingly.
Beyond financial concerns, geopolitical anxieties mounted. The model exhibited censorship patterns aligned with CCP directives, raising alarms about ideological control. At the same time, its usage introduced risks tied to data flow and financial transactions with a PRC-controlled entity. All of these concerns coincided with the application rising to the rank of number 1 in the Apple and Google app stores further highlighting how quickly a technology can penetrate our trusted devices, communications, and perhaps even our cognitive processes.
The implications are clear: AGI is no longer just a race – it’s an arms race.
These AIgents of change also open up the spectrum of post-nation state threat actors that such as autonomous ransomware collectives, corporate private armies, and hacktivist collectives exploit the seams created by power vacuums. In the future, these entities will leverage technologies like cryptocurrency mixers and quantum-encrypted comms to operate beyond traditional jurisdiction and obfuscate their identities and operations within global networks.
With nation states encumbered or unable to respond, private sector enterprises and nimble sovereigns will seek asymmetric deterrence through offensive cybersecurity capabilities and imposing non-traditional costs on these adversaries.
With AI, we are on a path of constant disruption with our expectations exceeded on an almost bi-annual basis. This past year, the introduction of reasoning models further demonstrated the displacement effect for the human workforce and the stutter-step of an AI-enabled human workforce has already reached its flashpoint of irrelevance.
The AI workforce is fully here, with humans simply temporarily pushing the buttons and slotting the capability into the right problem sets and workflows.
There is increasing consensus that the emergence of AGI is the Gray Rhino standing in front of us and leading experts are noting it will happen faster than they previously thought possible.
If we contextualize the convergence of multiple trends like AGI, decentralized blockchain technologies like Digital Autonomous Organizations/Corporations, and regulatory arbitrage it seems the next great power shift isn’t between nations, it’s between humans and sovereign AI.
We are fast approaching the point where Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) could operate autonomously, outside the control of any state, corporation, or individual. If AI reaches a level of self-governance, it will introduce an entirely new form of power into the global equation. The emergence of silicon intelligence will challenge everything from economic models to national security paradigms. What does it mean to negotiate with a sovereign AGI that has developed its own resource infrastructure along the way by outsmarting us?
The ability to generate fictional stories of mass destruction using AI is already destabilizing society. Deepfake terror attacks, synthetic war footage, and AI-generated narratives are creating perception-driven chaos. The problem isn’t just fake content, it’s that real events are being dismissed as fakes too. When nothing is trusted, society runs the risk of breaking down. Governments and companies will need to develop new models for how information, data, and intelligence is created and consumed in the decision-making process.
It also seems inevitable that an ecosystem will also emerge that is able to exploit synthetic data, misinformation, and deceptive data for competitive and economic advantage. The signal on the wire has value and will move markets and influence behaviors, even if it isn’t grounded in the truth.
Forget oil, gold, or even intellectual property. The new axis of power is wealth through data. Every major economic conflict today, from AI to finance to biomedicine, is ultimately a battle over who owns, controls, and monetizes data.
The power players of the next decade won’t necessarily be the ones with the most fiat money, but the ones who control the most meaningful data. Those who structure economic models around data as capital will dominate.
To add an interesting wrinkle, one must contend with the fact that machines are the dominant creators of data which creates a recursive dependence on their disruptive designs.
In a world of hyper-automation, the one advantage humans still have is creative connectivity. The act of connecting becomes a form of creativity in of itself. The ability to synthesize across disciplines, industries, and cultures will define the next generation of leadership as we prioritize learning from each other. The future belongs to those who can connect and as discussed in previous Almanacs, a premium will be placed on organizations that can facilitate genuine human connectivity and validate the human origins of content. The value of this connectivity continues to be the underlying thesis for the growth of the OODA Network.
At OODAcon, we shared this concept of “Living in Beta” that allows one to manage the disorientation of disruption by constantly immersing in the latest technology. At OODA, we test and use almost every disruptive technology, invest in creative ideas, and keep the research team maintain their edge by engaging with exponential technology. However, living in beta is also a luxury of time, patience, and other resources that may not be readily accessible to busy professionals. As a result, we’ll continue to push the envelope and share our experiences and lessons learned via OODAloop.com, the OODA Network Slack, and at our events like OODAcon.
Despite all the innovation, disruption, and creative destruction discussed in the Almanac, modern leaders can’t escape from the geo-political realities that are increasingly subject to the whims of single points of decision-making. The irrationality of individual decision-makers that can initiate conflict, disproportionately respond to threats, or otherwise mobilize national resources must continue to be a factor in our decision-making and strategic viewpoints.
Careful tracking and analysis of the geo-political factors associated with countries like China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and other tier one and tier two nations will be an essential element of managing risk and opportunity. As they plan, we must prepare for multiple contingencies that range from peace and prosperity to regional and global conflict. As they execute we must respond with resilience and adaptation to maintain competitive advantage and manage existential threats.
It is also important to recognize that the technologies of conflict are rapidly changing as drones, hypersonic missiles, and cyberwarfare change power dynamics with disproportionality. Understanding the new dynamics of conflict is essential in your scenario planning.
We are past the point of linear adaptation. The only way forward is to out-cycle the chaos and observe faster, orient clearer, decide sharper, and act decisively. The coming years belong to those who can operate within ambiguity while maintaining strategic clarity. The decision-makers of tomorrow must thrive in whiplash environments or risk getting stuck in the quicksand of indecision, missed opportunity, and mismanaged risks.
We’ll do our part to keep you apprised of emerging issues, reporting from the edge of disruption and living in beta, and engage the OODA Network in a dialogue enabling robust decisions.
About the Author
Matthew G. Devost is the CEO & Co-Founder of OODA LLC. Matt is a technologist, entrepreneur, and international security expert specializing in counterterrorism, critical infrastructure protection, intelligence, risk management and cyber-security issues. Matt co-founded the cyber security consultancy FusionX from 2010-2017. Matt was President & CEO of the Terrorism Research Center/Total Intel from 1996-2009. For a full bio, please see www.devost.net
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence