Before the war, Ceraweek 2026 would have been dominated by discussions about powering AI data centers, with major tech company executives presenting, but the crisis shifted focus back to oil and gas alongside electricity generation questions.

One narrative explanation for why labs are now seeing faster progress (4-month vs 7-month doubling) is that they have now narrowed their focus to software engineering and AI research tasks where they can apply intense optimization pressure, rather than working on more diverse consumer applications like image and video generation.

There is a difference between 7-month and 4-month doubling times that matters more rhetorically than practically—if AI is destroying white-collar work in 2 years vs 3 years, the distinction is somewhat academic, but the underlying exponential pace is what matters.

Treasury securities are the U.S.'s biggest export, and Trump is focused on promoting exports, creating an irony that he could theoretically benefit from exporting Treasuries while claiming to oppose the debt

The US relies substantially on China for both finished goods that US consumers enjoy and intermediate goods used in US manufacturing