13 Country, 25 Day, Round-The-World McBain Adventure 2026

Having returned a couple of weeks ago from an epic family adventure around the world, several people asked about the 13 country itinerary so I wanted to share the details.

The trip was triggered months ago with speeches I needed to deliver on July 26th and 28th in Cairns, Australia for ARN Edge 2026 on the future of channel partner ecosystems. A summary of the speech can be found here.

The idea was similar to another round-the-world adventure from before the pandemic (2019) that, with Michelle and the kids, dropped into 15 countries. Basically, to meander our way around the world with a bunch of shorter flights ending up in Australia at the end.

With now heavy use of AI tools such as Gemini and ChatGPT, alongside favorites like Kayak.com and Hotels.com, we kept the trip as flexible as possible and in many cases would only book the hotel room the day of staying. This caused a bit of anxiety at times, but also saved money without keeping to a rigid schedule. The days of having to book anything multiple weeks/months in advance is long over.

This trip also extends the original bucket list "100 Country Rollerblades and Red Bull Tour". 

While the rollerblades and Red Bull have been curtailed in recent years, the march to 100 continues was finished on our Africa trip and now has me at 112 countries!

Planning for this trip had 3 distinct parts:

1. The direct flight from Miami to Rome, with a rental car taking us 4,000 kilometers across Europe. From an overnight ferry down to Sicily (Michelle's ancestral home) up to Venice, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Munich, Prague and then over to Frankfurt.

2. The exploration of the heart of the Silk Road through Central Asia including Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakstan.

3. Exploring China, and then over to Tokyo to get down to Cairns, Australia for the speeches.

Each day of the trip brought lifelong memories, but also incredible challenges (that don't show up on glamorous Facebook posts) that I will talk about at the end.

--> Exploring Rome and the Vatican for the first time with the kids

--> The shocking history of Pompeii and the absolute beauty of Positano.

--> The incredible beauty of Michelle's ancestral home in Ragusa, Sicily and driving around the entire island after an overnight ferry from Naples.

 
--> The loooong drive from Sicily up to the stunning Venice for a day (and night) on the canals.

--> Cali really wanted to see Switzerland and I wanted to stop in Liechtenstein (a small country I missed on my 14-country tour a long time ago through Europe).

--> We continued to drive north through Austria and Germany where we saw the castle that inspired Walt Disney for his princess castles at Disneyland and Disney World!

--> Michelle had never been to Germany and I would always say that, after visiting 112 countries, that Prague was a magical place for me on a previous trip. It was on our "must see" list.

--> After 4,000 kilometers of driving through Europe, it was now time for Part 2 of the trip through Central Asia - the Stans! First stop direct from Frankfurt was Uzbekistan and a 2-hour train ride over to Samarkand.

As one of Central Asia's oldest continuously inhabited cities, Samarkand is historically significant as a pivotal crossroad of the Silk Road that connected trade and culture between East and West, and as the grand capital of the 14th-century Timurid Empire renowned for its landmark Islamic architecture.

--> The second country on the Stan tour was Kyrgyzstan - a landlocked Central Asian nation defined by the towering Tian Shan mountain range, a rich nomadic culture rooted in ancient Silk Road history, and a strong tradition of oral storytelling.

--> The final country on the Stan tour is the 9th largest country in the world by land mass, Kazakstan. It is a vast Central Asian nation characterized by its expansive steppes, rich oil and mineral wealth, and a deep nomadic heritage bridging East and West.

--> After the Stans, it was time to start moving East again. Next stop, Beijing. 

With over 3,000 years of history, Beijing has served as the imperial capital for multiple ruling dynasties, including the Yuan, Ming, and Qing, shaping it into the heart of Chinese civilization. 

Today, as the political and cultural capital of the People's Republic of China, it stands as a global superpower hub that bridges ancient heritage, like the Forbidden City and Great Wall, with modern innovation and international diplomacy.

--> It was now time to make our way to Cairns, Australia. A quick stop in Tokyo before heading south. We were able to rent another car and see some breathless scenery before the ARN event got into full swing.

Cairns serves as the primary gateway to Tropical North Queensland, renowned worldwide as the departure point for exploring the Great Barrier Reef. 

Beyond marine adventures, the region attracts visitors with its ancient tropical landscapes, highlighted by the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Daintree Rainforest, scenic coastal drives, and yes, lots of crocodiles!

--> After all of this adventure, it was time to put on a sport coat that I had been lugging through 13 countries, and get up on stage.

ARN (Australian Reseller News) is the premier news publication for the Australian IT channel, while EDGE is its flagship annual conference gathering ICT vendors, distributors, and managed service providers to discuss ecosystem growth and market strategies.

--> We flew from Cairns to Sydney to Dallas and then to Miami back-to-back. The only flight delay (only 2 hours) on the entire worldwide trip came on the Dallas leg and then they lost our luggage which took 5 days to resolve. 

We were home so it really didn't matter, but that brings up an important point about traveling challenges. They happen almost every day on a trip like this - some small and forgettable, some large and will be remembered forever!

So here they are...the challenges:

1. We were robbed in Switzerland!

Of all the places we have been - from Antarctica to Africa - who would of thought that Switzerland was the place that could of ended our entire trip with a robbery of our passports?!

It was surreal experience. 

Walking back to our rented SUV in Lucerne after a few hours of sightseeing and lunch, I saw a vehicle with its trunk open and a bright yellow Porsche suitcase just like mine. I thought, wow, that guy has the same suitcase as I do.

He then turned around and had a red Ducati backpack on. I thought, wow, he has the same motorcycle as I do too!

Then it clicked.

My ten year old (Cali) said she has never heard me curse before. The guy saw us and started running. It then dawned on me that our 4 passports were in that bag! The entire trip would have to be cancelled (in country 2 of 13) and we would have had to come straight back to the US.

So I defaulted into my Canadian hockey player mode and gave chase. Weighted down by the backpack and a bunch of coins he must have been stealing from every car, it didn't take long to catch up.

I tackled him in the middle of the street. Coins went everywhere. The backpack came off. A key from around his neck ripped off.

Cali jumped into action and took off with his key.

His face then turned really serious as that key would determine whether he got away or went to jail. He started to swing at Cali and lunging at her which caused her to fall down. He started to reach for his waistband too.

With our passports back, I yelled at Cali to throw the key and jump to safety. The police came, people came out of their shops, drivers stopped in the middle of the street - it was quite the scene.

The police (and locals) were horrified this happened in their town and were so apologetic. Because this involved a child, the severity of the punishment goes up by 5X in Switzerland. They promised to watch every camera on every street light and make an arrest.

We got to move on to Liechtenstein. 

2. My ATM card was sucked into an ATM machine in Uzbekistan

In the category of "all my fault", I lost focus for a moment and impacted the rest of the trip in ways I didn't imagine (or plan for).

After 112 countries, I have a rule that I go to the first ATM that I see and withdraw the equivalent of US$100 in the local currency.

I was surprised when the machine spit out $1,000,000 in Uzbekistan dollars and I turned to the kids to wave a stack of $100,000 bills!

The machine started to beep and when I turned around the card was sucked back in. Calls to the bank told us it would be 3 or 4 business days to get it back and we were leaving in 48 hours.

I had a backup card to a Canadian account but the card wasn't used in 6 months so they terminated it. Our credit cards all have PIN numbers for cash back but we didn't know any of them. My corporate card doesn't support cash back.

So, Central Asia, still half a dozen countries to go, and no access to cash in places without good credit card infrastructure.

The solution was Western Union, but explaining to Russian banks (The Stans were part of USSR until 1991) in Russian language that I am sending money to myself and "trust me" was difficult. A few banks turned me down while angry, unpaid, taxi drivers waited outside.

I finally got $500 in USD and protected that like it was gold for the remained of the trip!

3. Michelle got her iPhone stolen in a train station, also in Uzbekistan

Also in the category of "our fault", Michelle left her iPhone in a bathroom stall at a train station.  Her pictures, navigation, communication and payments, gone.

It was only about 30 seconds later when she realized it was missing and rushed back into the bathroom. No one claimed they saw it and the cleaning lady said she was out of luck.

I hit the Apple Find My iPhone feature and the phone started ringing - right in the middle of the cleaning lady's stuff. She had hidden it.

Crisis averted but it made us question humanity for a moment.

Other challenges were not as serious but still added unnecessary drama:

--> I booked the car from the wrong Rome airport. D'oh. While they are only 19 miles apart, the travel time was close to an hour. The first airport had a lucky cancelation and a nice MG SUV to rent but it could have started the trip with a thud.

--> Our first night away from Rome in Positano was a Airbnb type hotel up on a high cliff with a promise of a lock box number that never came. We were sitting at a restaurant at 11pm trying to get the number still and contemplating if we were sleeping in the car.

--> I lost my Meta Oakley glasses on the Great Wall of China. With memories of Michelle's iPhone, I was questioning if I would ever see them again. Interestingly enough, our tour guide said that very little theft happens in China because of the overly severe consequences. We walked back and the first tower guard had the glasses from someone who turned them in. Faith in humanity restored!

--> We had couple of challenges in China that we should have planned better for. First, our phones (Verizon) didn't connect to their network. No cell phone access meant no two-factor authentication on our credit cards. AliPay, their version of an "everything app" worked great till we hit $1000 and then the fraud checks started to come. We could verify any of the cards and were stuck with our tour guide paying for everything. Luckily he had an old PayPal account (through a VPN because it isn't allowed in China) and we were able to get money (and a big tip) over to him.

--> Flight delays to Dallas and they lost our luggage for 5 days. The trip around the world through 13 countries was flawless. Every flight was on time and our luggage was sitting at customs waiting for us. That was until our trip home and we faced a 2-hour delay. That then meant that only 1 out of our 6 bags showed up in Miami. Five days later it was resolved. It didn't really matter because we were home, but still another small stressor.

All in all, the trip was fantastic. The memories will be there for a lifetime.

It also reminded ourselves that we have become a bit too lax on our planning. Not carrying enough cash. Not testing cards before we go. Not researching enough of the gotchas in far away lands. We will remedy this for next time.

Onward and upward!

While we celebrate the 250th in the United States 🇺🇸 today, it is interesting to see how the first 100 years played out.

When I see a visual like this, it reinforces my own belief that I am a visual learner.

While you frequently see statistics online claiming that roughly 65% of people are visual learners, 30% are auditory, and 5% are reading/text-based, there is a major catch: these numbers are not backed by educational science.

Only 2% of people are visual-only learners.

The concept of fixed, distinct learning styles, known as the VARK model (Visual, Auditory, Reading/Writing, Kinesthetic) is actually how 65% of people learn.

Having finished visiting all 50 states last year (kinesthetic) and being able to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste the U.S. as a whole gave the total experience.

Final thoughts on learning…

I have become obsessed with Audible since we adopted our Golden Retriever, Malibu. I have averaged 10,845 steps a day in 2026 with 26 books flowing through my Meta Oakley sunglasses 😎 

The map below gives me 10 more books to go and listen to!

Tomorrow the McBain’s head out on another epic global adventure. 12 countries and a full circumnavigation 🌎✈️ 

Details:

—> Flight to Rome 🇮🇹 , check out the sights plus the Vatican 🇻🇦 

—> Drive down to Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast. Ferry ⛴️ over to Sicily and Michelle’s ancestral home in Ragusa.

—> Up to Venice 🛶, Switzerland 🇨🇭, Liechtenstein 🇱🇮, Munich 🇩🇪, and into one of my favorite places, Prague 🇨🇿.

—> Fly from Frankfurt to Uzbekistan 🇺🇿. Spend a few days touring and then down to Kyrgyzstan 🇰🇬. A few more days and finish off in Kazakhstan 🇰🇿.

—> Fly to Beijing 🇨🇳 and check out all the sites including the Great Wall. 

—> Fly to Tokyo 🇯🇵 en route to Cairns, Australia 🇦🇺 for a speech on the 26th and 28th.

—> Fly down to Sydney and then to Dallas 🇺🇸 and back to Miami!

Last time we did this (2019) it was 15 countries and some lifelong memories.

This will make 112 countries visited (out of 193) for me.

Bon Voyage!

Weaving Together My Life Story In A Series Of Blogs

The blog has always been a great platform for storytelling. Over time, I have shared many things about my history, my present, and goals for the future - they are:

My Life Story - Have you ever thought about the impact of big decisions that you made in your life? How about the small ones or the ones made for you? How would have your life turned out if things went the other way?

My Love Story - Michelle and met on October 15, 2010 in a serendipitous way. We were both part of a charity in Raleigh, NC and one night at a dinner struck up a conversation about many things - including our love of travel.

My Housing Story - After 13 moves and stops in three Canadian Provinces and three U.S. States, here is my journey in pictures from the Northwest to the Southeast of North America.

My Car Story - I have the dubious honor of getting speeding tickets on all 6 driveable continents - lucky that there are no cars in Antarctica! Did I ever tell you the time I passed the Polizia in Italy with my mom?

My Travel Story - The story started with a "Rollerblades and Red Bull" journey to 100 countries. It is now expanding in every direction after hitting 7 continents and the 7 wonders of the world (most with kids in tow).

My Nautical Story - I am pretty sure the love of water started in 1972 when I was six weeks old and my grandparents Bob and Dona McBain retired to Shuswap, British Columbia, Canada, and built a log cabin.

My Crazy MBA Story - In the summer of 2017, while climbing Machu Picchu, Peru as part of my wife Michelle’s International MBA from Manhattan College, I thought – why not me?

My Hockey Story - As long as I can remember, I have been playing hockey. Over four and a half decades and thousands of games later, I still lace them up a couple times a week, year-round.

My Cycling Story - When the Covid-19 pandemic first took hold in March 2020 we responded quickly as a family - including strict stay at home orders and no outside contact until we could get a handle on the risks. My attention now turned to exercise - and biking across North America (virtually).

My Retirement Story - I have no interest in disconnecting fully from the work that makes me so fulfilled. I could never see myself  in bingo-playing retired life. I want to stay curious, engaged, and adding value past the (very specific) date in 2034 that I am aiming for.

My Christmas Story - Whether traveling to see family, or going to Disney or Hawaii, or simply staying home - the season is packed with memories of family and friends.

My Music Story - My favorite music can be best defined as sad / emotional / multi-level slow music. Oddly, it is opposite of my worldview - which is normally overly-positive and optimistic.

My Movie Story - Oddly enough, I think Pretty Woman made me very interested in business. I named my cat Austin Powers - oh, and yes, "Danger" is his middle name. Our current dog is named August Rush (Auggie Doggy). Movies such as Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Forrest Gump, & National Lampoon's Vacation have become soundtracks to my life.

These are all my personal stories. My business stories wrap around channels, partnerships, alliances, and ecosystems and can be found here. 

Also business related, on this platform I named the top 100 most visible channel influencers and top 100 global women in technology groups that continue to get thousands of visitors per month.

Thanks for taking a walk with me through memory lane!

As predicted, the world's largest IPO successfully landed today with SpaceX (SPCX) finishing at $2.105 trillion in value with Elon Musk's share at $884 billion.

Combined with Tesla, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and other investments and assets, he is officially the world's first trillionaire at $1.2 trillion (that the we know about - likely larger).

Founded by Musk in 2002 to revolutionize space transportation, SpaceX initially struggled, narrowly avoiding bankruptcy after three failed launches of its Falcon 1 rocket.

The fourth launch in 2008 succeeded, securing a vital $1.6 billion NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration cargo contract that stabilized the company.

SpaceX went on to disrupt the aerospace industry by developing the Falcon 9 and achieving the world's first orbital-class rocket booster landing in 2015. Reusability slashed launch costs, fueling the rapid deployment of its Starlink satellite constellation.

--> SpaceX acquired xAI (which previously merged with X), consolidating SpaceX's aerospace, AI, and social media empires into a single entity.

Now trading publicly as SPCX, the trillion-dollar company leverages Starlink's massive revenues to fund heavy AI compute costs, including a major data center partnership with Anthropic.

Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month. Running through May 2029, the total potential value of the contract sits at a massive $40+ billion.

--> Anthropic is going to IPO itself into a potential multi-trillion dollar value in the upcoming days.

This operational dominance and the massive scaling of its Starship program combined with AI leadership ultimately propelled SpaceX to its historic public IPO.

Both Anthropic and OpenAI have hired notable channel chiefs (and teams) to go after the enterprise tech opportunity. Waiting for SpaceX to do the same before year end.

 

The "Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY) backlash against data centers has turned the physical infrastructure of artificial intelligence into a fierce national land-use battle.

For years, the tech industry marketed the cloud as an invisible metaphor, but AI’s massive appetite for resources has broken that illusion, forcing industrial-scale installations into local communities.

Currently, the United States houses over 4,500 active data centers. To fuel the AI boom, an additional 700 to 1,500 facilities are actively under construction or in development nationwide.

Check if one is in your backyard here: https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-data-center-near-me-location-tracker-2026-6

This unprecedented footprint has triggered a severe public backlash; a recent Gallup poll revealed that 71% of U.S. adults now oppose data center construction in their local areas.

Opponents cite strained local power grids, skyrocketing utility bills, immense water consumption for cooling, and disruptive noise pollution. Local rejections and high-profile lawsuits, such as the citizen-led suit against the 9-gigawatt Stratos project in Utah, are stalling major rollouts.

Moving forward, the trend will shift from urban mega-hubs like Northern Virginia to rural regions, with 67% of planned facilities targeting rural areas to avoid localized resistance.

To survive, developers must pivot to energy-aware hybrid infrastructure, secure independent power via natural gas or small nuclear reactors, and engage transparently with communities to balance national compute demands with local quality of life.

We are entering an unprecedented cycle of IPOs where we will have three companies all join the trillion (or likely multi-trillion) dollar club on day one.

SpaceX (which has xAI, X, and Grok inside), Anthropic, and OpenAI have taken the "unicorn" story to the next level.

(A unicorn is startup company valued at $1 billion or more by private investors before going public.)

The story doesn't track for all unicorns though. As of March of 2026, there are 1,356 total unicorns across all industries with 485 of them being in enterprise technology.

Fun facts:

1. The San Francisco "Bay Area" alone has 171 enterprise tech unicorns — more than 1 in 3 globally.

2. The US 🇺🇸 isn't just winning — it's lapping everyone 341 of 485 (70%) are American. The next four — China 🇨🇳 (26), UK 🇬🇧 (17), Israel 🇮🇱 (16), France 🇫🇷 (13) — combined still don't match New York City alone (42).

3. $4 trillion+ in combined value, but wildly top-heavy. The median valuation is just $1.7B — barely over the threshold. The three companies above represent 2/3 of value.

4. 2021 was a unicorn factory 148 of 485 companies — 30.5% — earned unicorn status in 2021 alone. That's more than the entire decade of 2013–2020 combined.

5. 99 companies are worth exactly $1 billion. One in five enterprise tech unicorns is sitting right at the minimum threshold, suggesting many are valued at the round number they were last marked at, not true market price discovery.

6. Sequoia Capital's portfolio is worth more than most countries' GDPs. Sequoia appears in 52 companies with a combined valuation of $2 trillion+ — mostly because of OpenAI and Anthropic.

7. The big three investors are everywhere Andreessen Horowitz (41 companies), Sequoia Capital (39), and Accel (38) appear in roughly 1 of every 12 companies on the list each.

8. The average time since joining the list is 4.1 years. The oldest — Mu Sigma Inc. (data analytics, India) — has been a unicorn for over 13 years with no exit. Lookout and Magic Leap have been waiting 12+ years.

9. Israel punches well above its weight with 16 companies, $29.4B in combined value, from a country of 10 million people. That's more unicorns per capita than any nation except the US, and ahead of Germany and Australia despite being a fraction of their size.

10. The AI wave is just getting started 88 companies joined in 2025 to March 2026 alone. Nearly 1 in 5 of the entire list in just 18 months. The newest entrants (WorkOS, AMI Labs, Nexthop AI, Axiom Math) all hit unicorn status in March 2026, and 4 of the top 8 by valuation are pure-play AI companies.

Outside of the consumer interest in big IPOs (and soon to be richest people in the world), the business interest for channel partnerships is seeing which categories of enterprise tech are getting the attention of serious money.

Early market success regularly results in huge channel plays downstream - just look at Anthropic's $100 million investment in partners a few weeks ago!

Today marks a historical moment in the rapid growth of AI.

AI agents crawling the web have, for the first time, surpassed humans in internet activity, according to Cloudflare.

The split is currently 57% machine to 43% human, at least as measured by HTTP requests. The gulf is certain to widen.

What are the bots doing, you ask?

Checking prices, comparing flights, ordering products, facilitating payments, reading pages, and, not unlike their web crawling forebears, scraping and indexing content. (But this time, for AI models not search engines)

Generative AI has spent years learning from the web, now agents are spending their time "doing" on the web. That translates to lots of page load requests, even if it’s not much time spent compared to humans.

Coming up on June 12th, we are going to have the world's first trillionaire (Elon Musk) after the SpaceX IPO

Coming up on June 12th, we are going to have the world's first trillionaire (Elon Musk) after the SpaceX IPO.

Looking at previous milestones, Bill Gates was the first to $100 billion ($185 billion in today's dollars) in April of 1999. Jeff Bezos was the first to $200 billion in August 2020.

Obviously, the first argument is how much money should sit with individuals as Elon would effectively join the G20 - the richest 20 countries of the world (in GDP) as an individual.

More interesting for me is the story (or system) behind this and what it means for the rest of the partner ecosystem.

How do more billionaires get formed in orbiting this opportunity? (excuse the space pun). How do more multi-millionaires form by rotating around each of these billionaires? And so on...

It is easy to dismiss Elon as a jerk - both in the Steve Jobs sense of management as well as many people's opinions on his foray into politics (DOGE) and acquiring Twitter.

As an analyst, in contrast, we think about algorithms, systems, methods, processes, workflows, and repeatable logic.

The Algorithm was the first book written by someone in Elon's close circle - the ex-President of Tesla about the "system" behind the story. What do we learn from this system? (both the good and the bad). How do we explain it to others?

Author Jon McNeill had already founded and sold six startups when Sheryl Sandberg introduced him to Elon Musk, who was looking for help at Tesla. McNeill was steeped in the lean principles that had made Toyota Motor Corporation a global powerhouse—principles focused on achieving efficiency and optimization by incrementally improving existing systems and processes.

What he learned from Elon at Tesla was its antithesis, an approach that required radical rethinking to explode the status quo, attack complexity, and set seemingly unrealistic goals.

--> Elon called this five-step framework “The Algorithm.”

Fun fact for our channel: - McNeil is also one of early funders/advisors of Cork alongside Datto legend Austin McChord and CEO Dan Candee. Cork is redefining how MSPs approach cybersecurity and financial promises to clients. I am also proud to be a company/board advisor.

Anyway, I don't normally recommend books - but grab this one and read it before June 12th to give you more context behind the scenes:

https://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Hypergrowth-Formula-Transformed-Lululemon/dp/B0FFG5KFSK

AI won't replace you (in the short term). It will, however, be responsible for getting you fired

Calls being recorded for “quality purposes”, key loggers, mouse tracking, email metrics, badge monitoring, login attempts.

All surreptitious tactics to correlate and report on the productivity of employees.

What is missing? Context.

Every job is different. Top performers may execute their jobs differently when full context is understood.

—> So, what systems have almost perfected context in the past 12 months? LLMs.

That AI agent that sits on your shoulder, reads every email, watches every keystroke, listens to every conversation, analyzes every spreadsheet, records everyone else’s opinion of you.

That “copilot” that has been promised to make you superhuman is also reporting back (to who paid for that agent) the exact contribution you are making to the business.

How many hours are you actually working?

What measurable output comes from those hours?

How many meetings are you attending and not leading, taking away actions, and/or actually completing them?

How many jobs are not directly impacting revenue growth, cost control, client satisfaction, partner enablement, or product innovation?

Layoffs are hitting by the tens of thousands per company almost daily. These aren’t people who managers deem “low performers” (which was always subjective and unfair) but who AI reports aren’t providing an acceptable ROI (with surprising accuracy and getting better each day).

Case in point (in past 48 hours):

The situation at Meta has escalated rapidly as the company prepares for a massive workforce reduction (10% or 8,000 people) while simultaneously rolling out new, highly invasive tracking software.

The convergence of surveillance, imminent job cuts, and labor organizing marks a significant turning point in the technology industry internal culture (and soon to be all industries).

—> This isn’t AI replacing your job. It is AI causing your job loss.

One of the interesting (and unpredictable) side effects of AI may be the resurgence of unionized workforces.

Recruitment flyers are already in bathrooms in the U.S. 🇺🇸 and UK 🇬🇧 at Meta.

Unions first exploded on an international scale between 1877 and 1886 during the Great Upheaval. 

A second, even larger explosion occurred in the Great Depression (and the New Deal in the U.S.) during the 1930s.

Will AI trigger a massive third wave?

Demographics are a fascinating way of predicting future trends, opportunities, and threats.For example, we knew for the last 8 years that millennials would become the #1 buyer in the $6.07 trillion tech industry last year.

--> We also know that China will drop their population in half (1.41 billion to 633 million) by 2100 due to the disastrous One-Child Policy.

The average age is already 40.6 years old and they will be facing a similar economic fate as Japan because of demographics.

We are not only in the AI-race for the next 20 years, we are also in an immigration race as most of the world (minus Africa and some of the Middle East) are not at a 2.1 child replacement rate.

Far from it.

It would also behoove us (as global citizens) to encourage the economic and geopolitical development of Africa to handle the coming population boom.

--> Africa will double in population size by 2050 and the situation is a study in extreme contrast.

The continent is home to the world's most significant demographic "boom" while simultaneously navigating localized crises of violence, disease, and structural instability.

Africa’s population is "chronically young". Half of the citizens in sub-Saharan Africa are under 21 years old. About 12 million enter the labor market every year and only 3 million formal wage jobs are created annually.

This youth bulge can be a demographic dividend if educated and employed, but without opportunities, it becomes a primary driver of social instability and recruitment for extremist groups.

More challenges:

1. Over half of the low-income countries in the region are at high risk of debt distress, leaving little money for "human capital" (schools and hospitals).

2. Traditional foreign aid from the West (ie. USAID has cut upwards of 60% in past year) and China has been falling since the pandemic, forcing African nations to look toward "self-reliance" and diaspora philanthropy.

3. Severe droughts in East Africa have worsened food security, making children even more vulnerable to diseases they might otherwise survive.

--> Analysts tend to call demographics "destiny in slow motion."

Unlike economic forecasts or polling (which can shift with every tweet) demographic data is remarkably "sticky" because the people who will make up the workforce, the taxpayer base, and the buyer markets twenty years from now have, for the most part, already been born.