# Daily Inspiration: “If your entire strategy is based on the assumption that global dominance is a birthright, you are already obsolete.”
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“If your entire strategy is based on the assumption that global dominance is a birthright, you are already obsolete.” - Futurist Jim Carroll Yes, a little bit of AI magic for the photo.... anyways...' Let's talk about "the elephant in the room: reality is unforgiving. It doesn't care about political slogans, patriotic optimism, or nostalgia. So let's revisit something I wrote back in back in 2017. I wrote a post how protectionist policies, isolationist shifts, and a growing anti-science mindset would slowly erode the economic and technological dominance of the United States. You can go and read it here: Trends: What Comes Next with the Decline of an Empire? It was prescient. Wildly accurate. Sadly predictively true. Today, in 2026, those early warnings are no longer just future risks: they are fully realized structural disruptions. Below is a direct look at my original ten predictions, matching what I saw back then with exactly how it has played out in our 2026 reality. 1. Relocation of Science and R&D The 2017 Prediction: I warned that an anti-science political mindset would choke off funding, causing pure scientific research to flee the U.S. for nations that actually welcome it. 2026 Reality: A total bullseye. Federal science funding has suffered its steepest decline in over a decade. By mid-fiscal year 2026, the NSF awarded just 2,179 research grants—down from a historical average of over 5,800. Foundational research has stalled in the U.S. while international competitors surge ahead. Grade: A+ (The core engine of American basic science has been systematically dismantled.) 2. Loss of Green Energy Investment The 2017 Prediction: I warned that walking away from exponential innovations in wind, solar, and electric vehicles to protect legacy, old-world fossil fuels would cost America the green transition. 2026 Reality: Verified. The Department of Energy cancelled 24 major clean energy projects worth $3.7 billion and slashed renewable budgets. While the U.S. stepped back, China executed aggressive state-led strategies, solidifying an absolute stranglehold on global battery and solar supply chains. Grade: A (A complete policy surrender. Competitors gladly took the lead the US threw away.) 3. Shift in Global Travel The 2017 Prediction: I argued that aggressive border policies, visa backlogs, and a hostile political climate would tarnish the American brand, driving high-value global travellers elsewhere. 2026 Reality: The friction is real. Extreme visa wait times and administrative hurdles have acted as a massive soft-power deterrent. Grade: B+ (The brand damage is done, and travellers have permanently adjusted their routes.) 4. Relocation of Meetings and Events The 2017 Prediction: I predicted the multi-billion-dollar global meeting industry would leave the U.S. because scientific and corporate groups would refuse to host events where their diverse, international members couldn't get visas. 2026 Reality: Since top-tier global talent now faces intense visa barriers and political vetting just to cross the U.S. border, many organizers have simply moved their flagship events to Europe and Asia. The meetings industry follows the path of least resistance. Grade: A- (If people can't get into the country, you don't get the conference. It’s that simple.) 5. Loss of International Sporting Events The 2017 Prediction: I highlighted that isolationist and volatile political climates make massive, collaborative, multi-national sporting bids an absolute logistical nightmare. 2026 Reality: While the joint North American World Cup bid survived, the actual execution phase has required massive, frantic diplomatic interventions just to handle basic border control disputes, travel bans, and trade tensions. Not to mention political interference in rules. Grade: B (The US didn't lose the events entirely, but the sheer chaos of pulling them off proved my point about the cost of isolationism.) 6. The Human Capital "Brain Drain" The 2017 Prediction: I warned of a literal "brain drain"—a scenario where top PhDs and researchers pack their bags and take their intellectual capital to countries that actually value scientific inquiry. 2026 Reality: This is now an active crisis. Slashes to NSF Graduate Fellowships and the termination of over 4,500 NIH grants have left early-career scientists stranded. Academic mentors are openly advising graduate students to look abroad, and stable European universities are aggressively recruiting American talent. Grade: A+ (The US is exporting its brightest minds to economic competitors. A devastating self-inflicted wound.) 7. Evaporation of Modern Skills Training The 2017 Prediction: I warned that while the rest of the world retrained its workforce for robotics, digitization, and 3D printing, the U.S. would lag behind by trying to save dead-end legacy industries. 2026 Reality: The gap has widened dramatically. While the U.S. focused on deregulation and preserving old-world jobs, Germany executed its High-Tech Strategy for digital manufacturing, and China subsidized technical universities to dominate industrial robotics. US automotive is pretty much done as China takes over the future of the industry. Manufacturing goes with it. Grade: A- (U.S. mid-tier manufacturing is lagging in automation because it chose nostalgia over upskilling.) 8. Loss of Technological Dominance The 2017 Prediction: I predicted that Silicon Valley would lose its uncontested monopoly on tech innovation as international talent and capital built alternative hubs worldwide. 2026 Reality: The tech landscape is officially multipolar. Silicon Valley no longer runs the world - just AI. Shenzhen is the undisputed hardware and robotics powerhouse; Silicon Wadi in Israel leads in cybersecurity; Eindhoven in the Netherlands owns the global semiconductor lithography bottleneck; and Canada's Kitchener-Waterloo dominates quantum research. Grade: B (IT innovation has completely decentralized. You don’t need to go to California to build the future anymore.) 9. A New Corporate Model for Multinationals The 2017 Prediction: I argued that the traditional U.S. Fortune 500 corporate model would lose its global dominance as innovation shifted to more forward-looking, agile nations. 2026 Reality: While massive U.S. tech stocks remain inflated by speculative stock market capital, their actual, physical footprint and systemic control over global infrastructure is shrinking. The world's top "unicorn" startups are now heavily distributed across specialized, sovereign hubs in China, the EU, India, and the UK. Grade: B- (Wall Street capital keeps U.S. giants looking dominant on paper, but the actual physical market share is eroding.) 10. Decline of Mature Political Discourse The 2017 Prediction: I warned that the degradation of political dialogue into ideological tantrums would make long-term economic planning impossible, turning basic science into a partisan battleground. 2026 Reality: We have hit rock bottom here. Scientific grants are now vetted by political appointees scrubbing keywords like "climate change," and the entire independent National Science Board has been eliminated. Peer review has been replaced with political litmus tests, completely fracturing the nation's long-term research strategy. Grade: A+ (A direct hit. When a nation starts censoring its own scientists, the slide into decline accelerates rapidly.) The hard truth? This is not a story of sudden, dramatic collapse. It is the story of a slow, steady, self-inflicted hollowing out. While private companies spend billions developing near-market products for short-term profit, the foundational basic research that builds tomorrow's breakthrough industries is being starved of cash and choked by politics. The rest of the world isn't waiting for America to sort itself out. They have built the hubs, funded the labs, and welcomed the talent. The future has moved on, and it didn't wait for permission.

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Source: https://jimcarroll.com/2026/07/daily-inspiration-if-your-entire-strategy-is-based-on-the-assumption-that-global-dominance-is-a-birthright-you-are-already-obsolete/