Trend Extreme uncertainty becomes the everyday condition for national strategy

Summary

The author argues that extreme uncertainty has become a routine feature of the strategic environment since the second Trump administration took office in 2025. Trade policy shocks, US export controls on advanced chips and restrictions on AI model use have disrupted the global innovation ecosystem. Tariff conflicts among major economies and overlapping wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are pushing the world economy toward a defensive and fragmented order. Generative AI, released in November 2022, has added a new layer of technological uncertainty by raising productivity while also amplifying job displacement, algorithmic bias, privacy intrusion and disinformation. In this setting the future can no longer be forecast as a single path but must be treated as a space of competing possibilities. Strategy-making therefore has to shift from prediction-based planning to an exploratory process that prepares for several outcomes.