Leaders broadly agreed that the shale revolution has buffered American consumers from the worst of the current energy shock in ways Europe, Asia, and Africa cannot match. Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel, said the US economy is “much more sheltered from the consequences of this energy shock” than peer economies, and Kevin Hassett, director of the US National Economic Council, pointed to the current scale of US oil production as the key differentiator from the 1970s.

There was striking consensus among financial and geopolitical leaders that investors are making a dangerous bet — that the conflict ends quickly and cleanly. “The market is discounting where we really are at its own peril,” said Amos Hochstein, former top energy and national security adviser to former President Joe Biden. Harvey Schwartz, CEO of the Carlyle Group, said geopolitical risk was “mispriced,” warning that complacency has set in because “we haven’t had a geopolitical event of severity in a long time.” Sadek Wahba, managing partner of I Squared Capital, added that the damage to Middle East energy infrastructure is extensive, and “will take years to rebuild” — triggering a fundamental reassessment of global supply and demand chains that markets have not yet absorbed.

It’s not just about markets, however. As many speakers at Semafor World Economy noted, the real bottleneck for the AI economy comes down to one thing: electrons. Unlike oil, electrons can’t be shipped in barrels across oceans. The US has to navigate regulatory hurdles, political opposition, and supply chain disruptions to increase its energy capacity, or the token economy will run into a brick wall.

Without energy capacity, the promise of AI will be realized more slowly. And while the US leads in many areas of AI — China is playing a different and potentially more dangerous game.

American frontier labs hold the lead on models, chips, and lithography — but the report finds near-unanimous conviction among leaders that this advantage is fragile. Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, was unequivocal: “Anyone that tells you that you can sell compute to China and it somehow doesn’t disadvantage you in the race is horribly wrong in a way that will damage this country.” Horacio Rozanski, CEO of Booz Allen Hamilton, identified the divergence in strategy as the real risk: While US labs race toward superintelligence, China is deploying AI to upgrade its vast manufacturing base — a path that may prove more durable. Phillip Buckendorf, CEO of Air Space Intelligence, warned that the US’ software advantage is real but not self-sustaining: “Just resting on our laurels is not going to be enough.”

Read the full Semafor Intelligence findings on prevailing views from Semafor World Economy 2026 here and the full methodology here.