It’s been six years since we first wrote about the coming G-Zero world—a world with no global leader. The underlying shifts in the geopolitical environment have been clear: a US with less interest in assuming leadership responsibilities; US allies, particularly in Europe, that are weaker and looking to hedge bets on US intentions; and two frenemies, Russia and China, seeking to assert themselves as (limited) alternatives to the US—Russia primarily on the security front in its extended backyard, and China primarily on the economic front regionally, and, increasingly, globally. ... These trends have accelerated with the populist revolt against “globalism”—first in the Middle East, then in Europe, and now in the US. Through 2016, you could see the G-Zero picking up speed ... with the shock election of Donald Trump as president of the US, the G-Zero world is now fully upon us.
1.   Independent America: Trump rejects the comparative weakness of the presidency, and he wants to more directly project American power in service of US national interests
2.   China overreacts: Xi will be extremely sensitive to external challenges to his country’s interests at a time when all eyes are on his leadership
3.   A weaker Merkel: Could the Europeans have resolved their financial crises without the Germans forcing a solution?
4.   No reform: The reform needle won’t move in 2017. Save for a few bright spots, money won’t know where to flow
5.   Technology and the Middle East: Technology, a force for economic growth and efficiency, also exacerbates political instability
6.   Central banks get political: In the US, there’s risk of an open conflict between the Federal Reserve and the White House
7.   The White House versus Silicon Valley: Technology leaders from California, the major state that voted in largest numbers against Trump in the election, have a bone to pick with the new president
8.   Turkey: Ever-fewer checks on executive power will leave the private sector vulnerable to political whims
9.   North Korea: It’s making consistent progress on an intercontinental ballistic missile capability that would allow it to hit the West Coast of the US with a nuclear weapon
10.   South Africa: South Africa’s political infighting will undermine the country’s traditional role as a force for regional security
Red Herrings: US domestic policy, India versus Pakistan, Brazil

1.   Still brooding about his loss of the popular vote, Donald Trump vows to win over those who oppose him by 2020.  ...
2.   The combination of tax cuts on corporations and individuals, more constructive trade agreements, dismantling regulation of financial and energy companies, and infrastructure tax incentives pushes the 2017 real growth rate above 3% for the U.S. economy.  Productivity improves for the first time since 2014.
3.   The Standard & Poor’s 500 operating earnings are $130 in 2017 and the index rises to 2500 as investors become convinced the U.S. economy is back on a long-term growth path.  ...
4.   Macro investors make a killing on currency fluctuations.  ...
5.   Increased economic growth, inflation moving toward 3%, and renewed demand for capital push interest rates higher across the board.  The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield approaches 4%.
6.   Populism spreads over Europe affecting the elections in France and Germany.  ...
7.   Reducing regulations in the energy industry leads to a surge in production in the United States. Iran and Iraq also step up their output.  ...
8.   Donald Trump realizes he has been all wrong about China.  Its currency is overvalued, not undervalued, and depreciates to eight to the dollar.  Its economy flourishes on consumer spending on goods produced at home and greater exports.  Trump avoids punitive tariffs to prevent a trade war and develops a more cooperative relationship with the world’s second largest economy.
9.   Benefiting from stronger growth in China and the United States, real growth in Japan exceeds 2% for the first time in decades and its stock market leads other developed countries in appreciation for the year.
10. The Middle East cools down.  ...

For every flight departing Dubai, as cabin crew head to their airplanes, the last room they traverse is a hall with mirrors on one side and windows to the tarmac on the other. The space allows workers to inspect themselves for perfection against a backdrop of government-owned taxiways thick with Emirates jets. That’s the airline, in one image: glamour and ambition in a framework of absolute control. ... Out in the desert, a half-hour drive from the coast’s skyscrapers and malls, the government is building a $32 billion, five-runway megahub precisely to Emirates’ specifications. Its ambitions are consonant with its name: Dubai World Central. The project will have a capacity of 220 million passengers per year, four times the number that New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport serves today. ... the airline is at risk if those emerging markets don’t, in fact, emerge. Emirates in May reported its first-ever annual revenue decline and is cutting some of its plans for growth amid slackening demand from sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey, and Brazil. The slump has industry analysts wondering how Emirates will fill the staggering number of planes it has on order. ... From a fuel and flight-time perspective, the Persian Gulf is the most efficient place on the planet to connect Europe with Southeast Asia and Australia, and the U.S. with India. Strikes and protests aren't an issue—unions are banned, and rights to free speech and assembly are severely limited.

On average, an American office worker sends and receives roughly 120 emails per day, a number that grows with each passing year. The ubiquity and utility of email has turned it into a fine-grained record of our day-to-day lives, rich with mundane and potentially embarrassing details, stored in a perpetual archive, accessible from anywhere on earth and protected, in some cases, by nothing more than a single password. In the case of Violeta Lagunes, her email login represented a point of vulnerability, a seam where the digital walls protecting her campaign were at the mercy of her human judgment — specifically, whether she could determine if a message from an apparently reputable source was real or fake. ... Not only will a working email password yield years of intraoffice chatter, invoices, credit-card bills and confidential memos; it can often be leveraged into control of other personal accounts — Twitter, Facebook, Amazon — and even access to company servers and internet domains.

But after stopping on a desolate gravel road next to a sign for a gas station, Santillan got the feeling that the voice might be steering him wrong. He’d already been driving for nearly an hour, yet the ETA on the GPS put his arrival time at around 5:20 P.M., eight hours later. He reentered his destination and got the same result. Though he sensed that something was off, he made a conscious choice to trust the machine. He had come here for an adventure, after all, and maybe it knew where he was really supposed to go. ... It’s comforting to know where you are, to see yourself distilled into a steady blue icon gliding smoothly along a screen. With a finger tap or a short request to Siri or Google Now—which, like other smartphone tools, rely heavily on data from cell towers and Wi-Fi hot spots as well as satellites—a wonderful little trail appears on your device, beckoning you to follow. ... The convenience comes at a price, however. There’s the creepy Orwellian fact of Them always knowing where We are (or We always knowing where They are). More concerning are the navigation-fail horror stories that have become legend. ... Enough people have been led astray by their GPS in Death Valley that the area’s former wilderness coordinator called the phenomenon “death by GPS.” ... By turning on a GPS every time we head somewhere new, we’re also cutting something fundamental out of the experience of traveling: the adventures and surprises that come with finding—and losing—our way. ... Individuals who frequently navigate complex environments the old-fashioned way, by identifying landmarks, literally grow their brains.