A weekly digest - part serious, part not - in partnership with The Sofia Globe
"Mirror, mirror on the digital wall, who is the truthful opinion of all?"
Mirrors can only present the truth when you are holding them correctly and looking at the data, not other people's opinions about the data.
The year ended with a small but meaningful re-think party. The main question on the table - between beet rakia and a fusion of an old Bulgarian folk song and beatboxing - was this: in a world where everyone is trying to think outside the box, shouldn't Bulgaria focus on the box itself?
After all, it's way too crowded outside of it. And the box - the box - is ready for rethinking.
We moved to Bulgaria just a few months ago, and this was our first Christmas here, and our first New Year's celebration in the place we chose. Yes, you read this correctly: we chose Bulgaria to be our home.
So instead of the normal Monday digest - and since it's the last Monday of the year - below are 26 predictions, trends, warnings (choose the name that fits): 26 points we should pay attention to in the year 2026.
From next year, as a follow-up to the Monday digest, we will also try (try, because that depends on you, the reader) to arrange monthly lunch digest meet-ups (you have to pay for it 🙂 ) - undercover, unofficial gatherings to bring people together around the future of Bulgaria.
Happy New Year and remember, Change is not a moment. It is a legacy - something that grows step by step, carried forward by people who may never see its full shape but who know they are part of building it.
1. READING COLLAPSE
Heinrich Heine said, "Those who burn books will burn people," but what happens in a world where people stop reading? Would we eventually stop writing them?
It's scary that half of teenagers say they hardly ever read for fun.
Not "read less." Hardly ever.
The share of teens who read daily has flipped so dramatically that today's 12th graders are less likely to have had a sip of literature in the previous month than 8th graders in the 1980s were to have touched alcohol.
Elite college students arrive on campus without having read a full book. Not a full difficult book. A full book.
National reading scores: a three-decade low.
Professors report that most students are "functionally illiterate."
Meanwhile, streaming video consumption hits all-time highs. Social media becomes less about friends, more about watching strangers. Podcasts become YouTube talk shows. Everything converges toward the same flow of video.
Everything is television.
And nobody reads the manual anymore because there is no manual. There's a 47-second TikTok showing you which button to press, narrated by someone who learned it from a different TikTok.
2. TIKTOK MELTS BRAINS (PROBABLY)
So if you're wondering whether the reading collapse is just another "kids these days" panic, good news: someone checked. Talking about TikTok, a story one might call systematic, a systematic review of 71 studies and 98,000 participants (some probably Meta bots) suggests this isn't nostalgia talking - it's neurology.
Systematic review: 71 studies, 98,000 participants.
Finding: heavy short-form video users show deficits in attention, inhibitory control, and memory.
Structural differences in the prefrontal cortex. Altered dopaminergic reward responses. Cognitive flexibility reductions.
The slot machine lives in your pocket now.
And the house always wins.
Teen in-person social interaction has dropped 70% in two decades. Depression and anxiety rates: skyrocketing. But hey - at least they're connected.
One researcher put it plainly: "When connection is mediated through likes, comments, and curated posts, it leads to deep insecurities and social withdrawal."
Translation: we're more visible than ever and somehow more invisible too.
Bulgaria has the best internet in Europe. This is not a brag when all we're doing is streaming other people's content at extremely high speeds.
We built the pipes. Others fill them with dopamine.
Infrastructure without production. Connectivity without creation.
When your comparative advantage is bandwidth, you've already lost.
Which brings us to what's actually being built with all that bandwidth.
3. AI SPENDING HITS WARTIME LEVELS
While we're busy arguing about attention spans and screen time, something else quietly went full Manhattan Project. No slogans, no votes, no parades - just invoices.
$100 billion. Per quarter.
Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle - combined - spent more in the last three months than three Manhattan Projects in inflation-adjusted terms.
At this rate, AI buildout will outspend the entire Apollo program every year. Financed entirely by private companies.
Housing? In a rut. Farmers? Hurting. Manufacturing? Shrinking.
But the US economy keeps growing, powered entirely by an AI infrastructure project unlike anything in modern history.
Electricity costs near data hubs: up 267%. In Virginia and Oregon, data centers consume one-third of state power.
Data center construction now surpasses all national retail construction. By 2026, it could outstrip offices and warehouses combined.
China responds by building 3.75 terawatts of power generation - nearly three times the US - and has 34 nuclear reactors under construction. More than the next nine countries combined.
Europe debates the Digital Euro.
The final text will go to Parliament.
How long does it take China to install another hundred solar panels?
About a second.
4. ANTI-AI POPULISM IS COMING
Whenever infrastructure gets built faster than consent, politics eventually shows up with a brick.
When electricity bills spike 267% and data centers drink a third of your state's power, someone will run for office promising to shut them down.
And they'll win.
The AI buildout creates a new class of near-trillionaires while Main Street watches energy costs soar. Affordability politics - the watchword of the 2020s - now has a target with a server-farm address.
Europe already treats Big Tech like a piñata. Tax it, fine it, regulate it.
America is next.
Populism doesn't care if AI "works." It cares that someone is getting rich while everyone else pays more to keep the lights on.
The future of politics isn't left versus right.
It's everyone versus the algorithm landlords.
5. AI ACTUALLY WORKS (WHICH MAKES IT WORSE)
The comforting theory was that AI would always be obviously bad. Wooden. Soulless. Easy to spot.
Reality didn't respect the theory.
ChatGPT fine-tuned on an author's complete works fooled expert readers. They preferred the AI's writing. Couldn't tell which was human.
This isn't slop. This is indelibly human output created by something that lives in a Virginia data center.
Creative industries console themselves with fairy tales about AI being "permanently sub-human."
The data says otherwise.
Writers mock AI's wooden, em-dash-heavy style. Fair. But with gentle coaxing - fine-tuning on specific voices - AI becomes indistinguishable.
The future will be filled with slop, yes.
But it will also be filled with stories, images, videos, and writing that seem human because they've learned to pass every test we've designed.
And when the test can be passed, the test becomes meaningless.
Now zoom in on the people who were supposed to inherit all of this.
6. GEN Z CHECKS OUT
The share of people aged 20–24 who are not in a job, not seeking work, not in school, and not raising a child has nearly doubled in the last quarter-century.
In both the UK and the US.
They're not lazy. They're locked out.
Blocked from homeownership, they gamble with housing money. Crypto, meme stocks, sports betting - all attempts to hit a jackpot big enough to afford a down payment.
Northwestern and University of Chicago researchers call it "gambling for redemption."
Middle- and lower-middle-class renters taking bigger risks on speculative bets to get the windfall that makes a house possible.
The economy isn't a ladder anymore.
It's a slot machine.
And Gen Z knows the odds.
7. MEANINGLESSNESS EPIDEMIC
When freedom stops coming with instructions, anxiety fills the gap.
The share of (US only) liberal, non-religious high-school seniors who say life "often feels meaningless" has doubled since the early 2000s.
Conservatives and religious teens suffered smaller increases in depression and anxiety.
Jon Haidt suggests conservatism and religion offer a "binding moral matrix" that protects against rapid change. Progressive moralities grant freedom to "create your own identities."
Kierkegaard called it: "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."
Pre-modern people were lost in finitude - constrained by tradition, religion, economy.
Modern anxiety comes from infinitude. Boundless choices. No map.
Perhaps despair is the price of liberation.
8. MONEY IS THE ONLY VIRTUE LEFT
Nature abhors a vacuum. The market filled it.
Americans don't care about patriotism, marriage, or family the way they once did.
Wall Street Journal poll showed that shrinking share of Americans say these values are "very important."
One exception: money.
Young people care less about getting married or having children. What they do care about: finding a job and getting rich.
Jobs are important. Money is nice to have.
But when every non-market value plummets and only wealth remains, we've replaced ethics with economics.
The modern world hasn't lost shared moral language.
It's just that the only language left is price.
9. FERTILITY COLLAPSE ACCELERATES
And when the only value left is money, family planning becomes a cost-benefit analysis nobody can afford to pass.
Rich countries are dying faster than policy can acknowledge.
Birth rates below replacement level across dozens of nations. China, Japan, Europe - shrinking or stagnant populations paired with rapidly aging societies.
In some countries, a quarter of people are over 65.
By 2060, Asia will have 60% of the world's population aged 65 and older.
Pensions collapse. Healthcare systems buckle. Labor markets shrink.
And nobody has an answer that doesn't involve either immigration (politically toxic) or forcing people to have children (dystopian).
The future is old, expensive, and empty.
10. GLP-1 DRUGS ARE ACTUAL MAGIC
After all the bad news, it's worth noting that not everything in modern science is broken. Occasionally, something actually works - almost suspiciously well.
Weight loss is the headline. The real story is everything else.
GLP-1 drugs protect against heart disease even in patients who don't lose weight. Mice on GLP-1s experienced body-wide anti-aging effects - gene expression, proteins, metabolites, inflammation markers all shifted toward youth.
And it wasn't about calorie restriction. The effect happened with minimal dosage that didn't change weight.
Daniel Drucker's theory: GLP-1s broadcast a message throughout the body - STOP THE ATTACK. LESS INFLAMMATION.
Chronic inflammation causes organ damage, stroke, neurological problems. GLP-1s bind to receptors in the gut, immune cells, central nervous system.
Panaceas don't exist.
But we're getting close.
11. GLP-1 RESHAPES THE FOOD INDUSTRY
When drugs change bodies at scale, they don't stop at medicine - they spill straight into markets.
Households with at least one GLP-1 user reduced grocery spending by 5% within six months.
Chips and salty snacks: 10% decline.
Sweet desserts: walloped.
Fresh fruit and yogurt: rising.
The alcohol industry is terrified. Bloomberg Intelligence projects total spending on beer, wine, and spirits in the US and Europe will decline by $30 billion over the next decade.
Sweet and salty foods: another $25 billion drop.
Humanity will be extremely attractive - better weight-loss drugs, better facelifts, better plastic surgery.
And fewer friends. Fewer parties.
The future is hot, high, and lonely.
While bodies are being chemically unlocked, housing is doing the opposite.
12. HOUSING MARKET LOCKED
New home prices are now lower than resale prices.
This hasn't happened in 50 years.
Existing owners really, really don't want to leave. They have 3% mortgages. The 30-year fixed rate is over 6%.
Half of homeowners pay under 4%. Roughly as many pay over 6% as pay under 3%.
So in many markets, you can't find a home to buy because owners aren't selling.
They're locked in by the math.
13. BLOCKED RENTERS GAMBLE FOR HOUSES
And when people can't buy homes the normal way, they don't stop wanting them - they just change tactics.
Northwestern and University of Chicago research: crypto investing is most common among middle and lower-middle-class renters.
This is bizarre. For most asset classes, investments rise with income.
But these renters - on the verge of homeownership - are "gambling for redemption."
Taking bigger risks on speculative bets to get the windfall that makes a house possible.
They're treating the economy like a slot machine that might finally pay out a down payment.
Calls to the National Problem Gambling Helpline have nearly tripled since 2017 in states that legalized sports gambling.
Half of men aged 18–49 have a sports betting account.
In New Jersey, nearly 1 in 5 men aged 18–24 is on the spectrum of having a gambling problem.
The monks have entered the casino.
And they're losing.
14. PROGRESS REQUIRES ORGANIZATION
At this point, it's tempting to blame individuals - attention spans, bad choices, weak morals. But history suggests that's the wrong level of analysis.
Einstein, 1929: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Beautiful. A million hallway posters.
But here's what he said next: "The only progress I can see is progress in organization."
He continued: "The ordinary human being does not live long enough to draw any substantial benefit from his own experience."
Each generation must learn anew.
But institutions - organizations - allow knowledge to survive us.
The internet is full of idealists fighting for a better world.
How many are building institutions to amplify their idealism?
All human progress requires progress in organization.
Our institutions lock us into the past instead of enabling the future.
Which brings us to the continent where institutional failure isn't theoretical - it's fiscal, political, and strategic all at once.
15. EU ECONOMIC STAGNATION
Growth in the EU: below 1% in 2024.
Germany and France - Europe's two largest economies - have no budgets for 2025.
Not delayed budgets. No budgets.
Political infighting brought down both governments. New elections in Germany in February. France rolling over 2024 provisions into 2025 while deputies fight.
France: 6.1% deficit, 112% debt pile.
Germany: politically paralyzed, €30 billion funding gap projected after 2026.
Goldman Sachs forecasts 0.8% growth for the euro zone in 2025.
The US: 2.5%.
Europe faces ongoing decline without fundamental reform.
Reform requires political will.
Political will requires functioning governments.
Functioning governments require budgets.
16. EU DEFENSE CRISIS
Economic stagnation would be bad enough on its own. Unfortunately, geopolitics didn't wait.
€800 billion needed by 2030 under the ReArm Europe plan.
€150 billion SAFE loan instrument proposed to help countries invest in missile defense, drones, cyber security.
Critical capability gaps: air and missile defense, ammunition, counter-drone systems, electronic warfare, strategic airlift.
Europe operates one major TNT factory. In Poland. Another under construction in Finland.
Explosives production is now a bottleneck.
Most troops under NATO plans would come from the US. But the US is pivoting away faster than expected.
Europe must prepare to replace at least 20,000 US troops.
It doesn't have the readiness, stockpiles, or equipment.
The backstop is leaving.
17. EU–CHINA ECONOMIC TRAP
Just when Europe realizes it can't rely on the US the way it used to, it remembers there's another dependency it never really dealt with.
Europe can't reduce its economic reliance on China.
Even as Trump ramps up pressure to do exactly that.
Germany's automotive industry? Now driven by Chinese companies. Especially in innovation.
Europe will struggle to decouple while China shores up its ailing domestic economy and eagerly mitigates external pressures.
EU–China trade tensions escalate - tit-for-tat measures - but Europe's industrial ambitions still depend on Chinese supply chains.
The only saving grace: Beijing's focus on domestic problems gives Europe some breathing room.
But not much.
Europe is caught in the middle of a deteriorating US–China relationship with no good options.
Siding with the US risks economic suicide.
Siding with China risks strategic irrelevance.
Europe debates and… debates and five founding NGOs and…. debates
18. DRAGHI REPORT SOUNDS THE ALARM
If all of this is starting to feel unsustainable, that's because it is - and someone finally put a number on it.
€800 billion.
That's the annual investment gap Mario Draghi calculated Europe needs just to stay competitive.
This excludes new defense spending demands - 2% of GDP already out of reach for several economies, now facing calls for 5%.
Productivity collapse versus the US. Innovation deficit. Fragmented markets.
The Letta Report points to a still-fragmented single market and suggests a "fifth freedom" for research, innovation, and education.
Draghi highlights the urgent need for substantial private and public investment to drive innovation-led growth.
The problem isn't diagnosis.
It's time.
Europe's policymakers operate in two-year election cycles.
China measures time in centuries.
Building resilient supply chains requires patience and capital that extend beyond news cycles, congresses, and presidencies.
Europe's technocratic elite aren't cooking up a crisis.
The crisis is real.
Whether Europe can muster the political will to address it is another question entirely.
19. EU POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION
By the time economics stalls, defense weakens, and dependencies pile up, politics doesn't stabilize - it fractures.
Nationalist and anti-establishment movements are rising across the continent.
France consumed by domestic unrest. Germany approaching elections with a weakened government. The UK facing a tired society and tight budgets.
States divided over security, energy policy, migration.
Unity: elusive.
Elections in over 60 countries in 2024 led to power shifts, protests, and the escalation of right-wing and populist movements.
Nearly 700 million people globally live in extreme poverty. Progress to reduce poverty has stalled.
And European voters are angry.
Four in ten people see hostile activism as justified.
People's perception that leaders lie to them: all-time high.
69% worry government leaders purposely mislead people.
68% think the same of business leaders.
70% don't trust journalists.
Societal polarization ranks fifth-highest short-term risk and fourth-highest medium-term.
GenAI accelerates polarization by creating and distributing false or misleading content at scale.
Europe isn't just fragmenting politically.
It's fragmenting at the level of shared reality.
20. ENERGY COST CRISIS
All of this would be survivable if Europe had cheap, reliable energy.
It doesn't.
European industry pays nearly double what the US and China pay for energy.
Even after prices fell from the 2022 peaks.
The International Energy Agency calls this a structural disadvantage.
Without low-cost, reliable clean energy infrastructure, European industry cannot compete.
Europe has a single market for goods.
Energy market? Still trapped in national priorities and legislation.
Completing this unfinished pillar could close the cost gap.
But tackling regulatory fragmentation - including taxation - requires political courage Europe doesn't currently possess.
Every country fears the benefits of integration won't be equally distributed.
Or that a European-level supervisor won't be as nimble as a national one.
Meanwhile, energy-intensive industries bleed.
And politicians debate.
21. MIGRATION WEAPONIZATION
When systems fail to manage pressure, they outsource it.
The EU finalized a bilateral deal with Egypt in 2024: over €1 billion in macro-financial assistance.
Human-rights organizations call it "another EU cash-for-migrant-control deal."
Europe is outsourcing border control to the Middle East and North Africa.
Egypt. Turkey. Libya.
Pay them billions. Let them handle the "migrant problem."
Development assistance is increasingly tied to cooperation on repatriation and returns.
President von der Leyen promised to "get tough on migration."
The EU appointed its first-ever Commissioner for the Mediterranean.
The message is clear.
Migration is no longer a humanitarian issue.
It's a transaction.
Pay enough, and other countries will do your dirty work.
22. EU DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY FAILURE
At this point, Europe reaches for its favorite tool: regulation.
Europe has no productivity technology of its own.
Strategies orbit American platforms. No real answer to Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft.
Yes, there are attempts.
Work with Nextcloud for a week and tell me how fast you run to the nearest bar.
Europe must regain digital sovereignty - this is true.
But it won't happen through regulation-as-punishment and rhetoric-as-substitute-for-vision.
It must be driven by innovation-first frameworks. Policies designed as catalysts, not constant deterrents.
Brussels acts as if fining Google will somehow produce a European competitor.
It won't.
Regulation can punish.
It cannot create.
And Europe desperately needs creation.
23. AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY COLLAPSE
Nowhere is this failure more visible than in cars.
Northvolt—the Swedish battery manufacturer that was supposed to be Europe’s shield against China—crumbled. After laying off 25% of its workforce, it spiraled into bankruptcy by late 2024, leaving European automakers exposed and empty-handed.
VW, the crown jewel of German industry, did the unthinkable: it moved to close at least three German plants and cut tens of thousands of jobs. The "Transparent Factory" in Dresden wasn't just a building; it was a symbol. Now, it’s a tombstone for a transition that was handled with pure arrogance.
The green transition and intense competition from China pushed the European automotive industry into a terminal crisis. The EU market saw an 18.3% decline in new car registrations across the board.
The math is embarrassing. BYD’s R&D department alone employs 120,000 engineers. Tesla employs 100,000 people total.
China didn’t just catch up in electric vehicles. They lapped Europe.
And Europe responded the only way it knows how: by debating.
As trust erodes politically and economically, technology finishes the job.
24. DEEPFAKE FRAUD EXPLOSION
Deepfake attacks increased by 3,000%.
$200 million in losses in Q1 2025 alone. North America.
Voice cloning requires 20–30 seconds of audio. Convincing video deepfakes: 45 minutes using free software.
A British engineering firm lost $25 million after attackers deepfaked their CFO on a video call.
Ferrari's CEO was nearly impersonated via an AI-cloned voice replicating his southern Italian accent. The executive terminated the call only after asking a question only the real CEO would know.
The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center calls this "a fundamental shift from disrupting democratic processes to direct financial theft."
Deloitte projects $40 billion in AI-enabled fraud by 2027.
The core problem is asymmetry.
Generation accelerates. Detection lags.
Traditional authentication - face, voice, recognition - no longer works.
When you can't trust what you see or hear, the infrastructure of business trust collapses.
25. LONELINESS EPIDEMIC
Strip away trust, institutions, and shared reality, and what's left is isolation.
One in six people worldwide is affected by loneliness.
Teens: 21%. Highest of any age group.
The WHO Commission on Social Connection equates loneliness to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Higher risk of stroke, heart disease, diabetes, cognitive decline, premature death.
Lonely people are twice as likely to be depressed.
Teenagers who feel lonely are 22% more likely to get lower grades.
Teen in-person interaction dropped 70% in two decades.
Americans under 30: 25% report feeling lonely most of the time.
Just under half of Americans belonged to a religious congregation in 2023 - a historic low.
Union membership: ~10%, down from 20% four decades ago.
Public-space participation collapsed post-pandemic.
The body treats loneliness as danger.
Cortisol rises. Sleep worsens. Blood pressure increases.
We're living through a loneliness epidemic.
And nobody is building the infrastructure to fix it.
All roads lead here.
26. CHINA'S CRITICAL MINERALS CHOKEHOLD
China processes 90% of the world's rare earth elements.
Controls 80% of lithium processing. Same for lithium batteries.
Graphite: 72% of mining, nearly 100% of battery-grade processing.
Every EV battery anode passes through China.
Rare-earth permanent magnets - used in cars, wind turbines, data centers, defense systems - China's market share: 94%.
Twenty years ago: 50%.
The US is 100% import-reliant for 12 critical minerals and over 50% reliant for 28 more.
In April 2025, China introduced export controls on seven heavy rare earth elements and related compounds.
October 2025: controls expanded.
December 2025: controls applied even to foreign-made products containing Chinese materials.
This isn't dominance.
It's leverage.
Rebuilding alternatives takes a decade.
Until then, China tightens the chokehold.
And the West pays the price.
The end and a begining
There are no collision zones at the end of the year, we do however have a bottom line - rather simple one.
Bulgaria must wake up in January 2026 and realize that it's actually the oldest human settlement in Europe, it's ground zero for everything that is Europe today.
We must look beyond the inherent inferiority complexes and get our breath back!
May 2026 be the year where:
Education & Growth equips people to adapt and create. A society grows only as far as its schools can imagine.
Innovation opens the state to experimentation. Government becomes a system that tests, learns, and improves - not a machine that defends its own precedents.
Economy & Entrepreneurship spreads prosperity beyond the few. An economy captured by insiders is fragile. An economy powered by many - family firms, farmers, artisans, startups - cannot be captured easily and does not break under stress.
Wellcare gives dignity and prevents decline before it begins. Welfare keeps people in place. Wellcare moves them forward.
Anti-Fragility ensures the system grows stronger through challenge. Bulgaria cannot afford institutions that crack under pressure. We build systems that bend, learn, and return stronger after every shock.
Happy new year.
Aric D. Jankov. Aka ADJ