Crisis Fears, While They Drive Change, Have Unintended Consequences
9/21/26 – – Former White House Chief of Staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is credited with saying, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” This opportunistic sentiment has driven politicians and business leaders to do some very good and very bad things. We’re seeing this play out as fear builds over predictions of an imminent AI apocalypse.
The prospect of human annihilation by 2030, expressed by CEOs of some of the largest AI companies, has probably gotten your attention. Even if you question the legitimacy of their warnings or motives, it’s hard not to be afraid. And that’s what makes moments like this so useful to good and bad actors wishing to cash in on what I call “crisis fears.”
We’ve been here before.
Y2K
You may remember the angst as clocks approached the first second of January 1, 2000. The problem, labeled the “Y2K bug,” was with the two-digit date field in most operating computers. Without four digits, after the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, the field would read 00, not 2000. All would come to an end. Systems would crash, sensitive medical equipment would stop working, financial networks would go crazy.
The response to this perceived crisis (I say “perceived” because the potential meltdown turned out to be way overblown) accelerated upgrading of computer hardware and software by a full generation, at least five years by most estimates.
Consequently, the last year of the 20th century was wildly profitable for computer manufactures and consultants. In the United States alone, companies, organizations and municipalities spent a fortune — more than $100 billion according to the U.S. Department of Commerce — bringing computer systems into Y2K compliance.
An Inconvenient Truth
You may also recall watching Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” released in 2006. The hyperbolic climate documentary gave the inhabitants of Earth 10 years to “avert a major catastrophe.” We were warned unless major changes were adopted to reverse the damage we had done to our planet, extreme weather, melting ice caps, tides rising 20 feet and global famine would wipe out the human race by 2016.
To be fair, even though doomsday has not come to pass, the heightened attention to cleaning up the air and advancing the development of renewable energy has been helpful.
But what’s also true is the fear exacerbated by the film disrupted market-driven responses and accelerated the accumulation of wealth by those who “didn’t let a serious crisis go to waste,” including subsidized manufacturers of solar panels and batteries, clean energy/sustainability consultants, facilitators of sketchy carbon credit swaps, and investor Al Gore.
COVID-19
We’re still learning about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. History (and perhaps Congressional investigations) will determine the appropriateness of our government’s actions and private industry’s response. But one thing is certain: Fear created unprecedented opportunity for profit and economic ruin.
In addition to pharmaceutical companies blowing through normal channels of oversight (vaccines were rushed into mandatory use), companies well positioned to benefit from prolonged lockdowns and contamination fears cashed in on the societal disruption.
Peloton, Zoom, Amazon, Netflix and DoorDash were some of the big winners. For restaurants, airlines, cruise ships, commercial real estate companies and live theaters, their survival was threatened. Thousands of small businesses closed their doors and school children lost academic and social ground because of heartless, unnecessary government overreach.
The AI Apocalypse
So, it’s right to ask ourselves who stands to gain from the “crisis fears” created by the predicted AI apocalypse. Is it laudable that the CEOs of Anthropic, Open AI and SpaceX are sounding the alarm and asking for government regulation on the products and services they provide?
Or do they believe they are the ones who will benefit most from the environment of fear they’re creating?
Critics have suggested the desire for a “slow down” and heightened government oversight is less a show of caution and more an effort to lock in big company dominance and create roadblocks for smaller, creative frontier AI start-ups.
As Rahm Emanuel would acknowledge, crises invite political participation, which can have unintended consequences. Did the CEOs promoting “the sky is falling” narrative anticipate the escalating bipartisan opposition to data centers? SpaceX wants to build data centers in space, but that solution is years off at best.
Here’s what’s truly ironic: The fearmongering may have made it impossible to develop the infrastructure necessary to support competitive U.S. AI development.
As was the case with Y2K, climate alarmism and COVID, crisis fear has good and bad consequences. Our computer systems leapt forward at the turn of the century, sustainability has quickened the development of clean energy alternatives, and vaccine science has accelerated at a pace thought impossible. But there have been winners and losers along the way.
Hopefully in the long run the threat of an AI apocalypse, real or not, will encourage smart oversight and be a good thing for humanity. Making that happen will be the best way to assure we don’t let this crisis go to waste.
Crisis Quotient Blog 