USA
Fusion plants that breed their own fuel would remove one of the biggest barriers to commercial fusion power.
Regulators now accept humans cannot watch every AI agent, so market-wide stop buttons may become standard.
Cheap, abundant zinc could give grids a fast-charging, long-lasting alternative to lithium for storing energy.
Refuelling in orbit would free deep-space missions from carrying all their fuel from launch, opening longer journeys to Mars.
If vulnerability discovery becomes a strategic deterrent, every organisation’s unpatched software becomes part of a national arms race.
Government sign-off before release could become the norm for frontier AI, slowing launches and reshaping who gets access first.
Connected car rules now decide market access, and carmakers with Chinese links risk being shut out of the US.
Distillation attacks let rivals copy frontier AI cheaply, turning model access into a national security battleground.
Custom inference silicon could loosen Nvidia’s grip on AI compute and push down the cost of running AI.
Satellites that track every airborne threat from orbit could replace surveillance aircraft and reshape how wars are fought.
AI-designed longevity drugs and China’s speed could reshape who leads, and profits from, the next era of medicine.
Starfall hints at a future where the military could drop supplies and weapons from orbit anywhere on the globe.