THE END OF PREDICTION

The End of Prediction

13 August 2026

I haven't written about geopolitics in months. Not because I've stopped watching – I track global dynamics as closely as ever – but because most of what I had to say fell into one of two camps: either it was already obvious to anyone reading the papers, or it was a prediction that I no longer trusted enough to make.

That's not absence of thinking; it's a diagnosis.

Prediction, as a service, has stopped working.

What has changed?

I argued in January that Trump's second term hastened a structural shift in geopolitics - not simply a change in personnel, but a change in the operating system. Eight months on, the case for this has only strengthened.

• The range of plausible outcomes has widened, not narrowed. Weaker institutions and eroding norms mean more of the outcome distribution now sits in the tails – both the risks and the opportunities.

• What counts as signal versus noise has become intensely situational, dependent on your industry, your footprint, and where you sit in your own decision cycle. Generic commentary loses value by the month.

• Volatility has increased in both directions. Swings are sharper and faster, which shortens the shelf life of any single read.

The evidence

Two examples from the past six months make the point clearly.

In February, the US and Israel struck Iran; by April, a ceasefire was in place. By late July, Washington said it had paused further strikes at Tehran's request; within days, Iran was publicly denying any talks were underway while the US insisted they were under way. By early August, both sides were back at the table on the Strait of Hormuz. An analyst extrapolating from the best available information at any point in that sequence would have been wrong within days - repeatedly.

In February, the Supreme Court ruled that the President could not use emergency economic powers to impose tariffs - a decision that looked, on its face, like it would end the administration's signature trade policy. Within three weeks, the White House had opened a replacement built on entirely different legal authority - a short-term bridge under one statute, a longer-term framework under another - aimed at preserving the same tariffs the Court had just struck down. The policy held. The legal route to it changed twice inside a month.

Leaders know this. In McKinsey's November 2025 survey of business conditions, geopolitical instability outranked macroeconomic volatility, cybersecurity and technological disruption as the chief risk to growth. 45% of respondents in McKinsey's 2026 geopolitical risk survey identified geopolitical intelligence providing early warning of material developments as the biggest capability gap in organisations today. Integration of geopolitics into core business decisions came second at 36%.  The risk is correctly identified. The tool for managing it isn't.

What some leaders are doing in response

Risk appetite has fallen in response, further narrowing the room to manoeuvre. 

I'm watching this shift happen in real time in my own work. Pre-Covid, most boards wanted a geopolitical briefing once a year, ahead of a strategy day. That changed after 2020: geopolitics moved to the top of the CEO's inbox, something to be watched constantly. In the past year, it has changed again. The leaders I talk to have largely stopped asking for the view from the top. What they're asking for instead is building the capability, further down the organisation, to read a situation and know when to escalate it.

My own client work has moved with them. Fewer single briefings to the C-suite, more sustained work with the leaders one or two levels below, building capacity and judgement rather than delivering conclusions.

What works now

• Resilience is the objective, not the forecast.

• Preparation means identifying the no-regret moves, the decisions that hold up whichever way events break.

• Communication earns trust. State certainty where you have it and say plainly where you don't.

• Decisions get made on incomplete information. Waiting for clarity is a decision too, and usually the wrong one.

• The scouring still has to be done, by you or someone you trust. And it has to be specific to your business, your country exposure, your moment.

I still watch the world as closely as I ever did. I've just stopped pretending I can tell you what happens next. What I can tell you however is how to operate well regardless of what happens. And that's a different, harder, and more useful outcome.

Ask your team how much of your geopolitical process still depends on someone getting the forecast right. The answer tells you where you stand.

Best regards,

Xenia

Wickett Advisory 

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