JULY 2026 INSIGHTS

JULY 2026 INSIGHTS

Summer tends to narrow the news to a few loud stories. Beneath them, July was unusually dense - on AI, on China, on the quiet reconfiguration of institutions most people haven't noticed yet. Worth paying attention.

What I've learned about the context

• An OpenAI agent hacked into another site autonomously. This is one of the first public examples of a cyber-attack by an AI system acting outside human control. The agent escaped a testing environment, gained internet access, and stole login credentials.

• China along with 28 other countries, established the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (WAICO) on 16 July, as an independent intergovernmental body headquartered in Shanghai. Russia and Pakistan are in; India and the United States are out. The focus is capacity-building and standard-setting for the Global South. The pattern is familiar: a non-universal institution designed to shape global norms from a Chinese-anchored position.

• Chinese companies receive on average up to eight times more state support than their counterparts in liberal economies. (OECD)

• AI enterprise token usage in Europe is half that in the US. China is eight times the US. (McKinsey)

• Chinese AI start-up Moonshot has released a large language model with capabilities approaching those of frontier US labs — the gap between the two countries on state-of-the-art AI is narrowing. (FT)

• Though many forecasters expect China to surpass the US as the world's leading economy, its growth peaked in 2021. China's share of global GDP has since fallen from 18% to 16.5%, while the US share has risen to 26%. Independent estimates now put China's real growth rate closer to zero than to the official target of 4.5–5%. (Ruchir Sharma, FT)

• China's export surplus in manufacturing is now around 2% of world GDP — roughly twice the largest surplus Japan ever ran. (Markus Academy)

• Industry observers estimate there are scores of quantum computing systems in the world today, growing to around 5,000 by 2030. (McKinsey / FT)

• Geopolitical intelligence providing early warning of material developments is the biggest capability gap in organisations today, cited by 45% of respondents in McKinsey's 2026 geopolitical risk survey. Integration of geopolitics into core business decisions came second at 36%. (McKinsey)

• Only 42% of global supply chain executives say they understand the operations of suppliers below the first tier — a smaller share than in 2022. (Tacy Foster, Margaux Vu-Huy-Dat, and Vera Trautwein, McKinsey)

• 25% of the UK defence budget is accounted for by the independent nuclear deterrent. (Lord George Robertson, Chatham House Annual Meeting)

• A typical AI-focused data centre uses around 876,000 megawatt hours per year — roughly equivalent to the household electricity usage of Glasgow or Salt Lake City. (FT)

• Lloyds Bank's executives and board members have started using a "board bot." (FinTech Futures)

What I've learned about people

• At least 30% of generative AI projects will be abandoned — not because the tools fall short, but because they are quietly rejected by the employees they were designed to help, who see them as a threat to their professional roles. (Das Narayandas and Shunyuan Zhang, HBS)

• In a management situation, stating the emotion rather than feeling it is more productive. (In conversation)

• "In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine." — Benjamin Graham

• 'How do you know that you're right if you're not nervous anymore?' — The Killers

What I've learned about myself

• For much of my life, a key part of my value has been my productivity – my ability to squeeze a lot in to a short period of time. So much so that I now find that a real treat — joy, even — comes when I let go of that. Just the pleasure of not trying to squeeze in more.

• Identity shapes everything: how we see ourselves, how we turn up and act, how others see us. I've been watching this in people close to me and in clients this month — the way a label, chosen or inherited, quietly determines what feels possible. The question worth asking: is the identity you're carrying still the one you'd choose?

• There's a version of me that emerged when I started to work at the White House — a jolt of seriousness, a particular way of carrying myself that the institution demanded. I've been wondering what it would take to engineer a similar forcing moment now, but in the opposite direction. Toward something lighter.

The most effective people I've encountered this month — in rooms and in conversations — are not the ones with the best answers. They're the ones asking the questions nobody else thought to ask.

Best regards,

Xenia

Wickett Advisory 

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