Trump is once again threatening Canada’s sovereignty as wildfire smoke from the north impacted US cities.

As a researcher, I write scenarios that weave together a comprehensive set of data into scenarios. These scenarios are not usually meant to be predictions of the future, but I have found that when we rigorously follow data and remove our biases, many of them come true.

Below is my scenario for how an attack on Canada and/or Greenland might play out. It’s extension of work done in 2024 on the Futures of Social Interaction in America, in which my team and I predicted how the Trump presidency would play out (most of which has now happened; the only thing remaining is a US exit from NATO).

Here’s the scenario:

When Donald Trump attacks Greenland, he secures the downfall of the American empire. The attempted occupation marks the end of America’s participation in NATO. Europe, the UK, and Canada declare war as Denmark invokes Article 5. The first round of WW3 is not fought with bullets and bombs, but through existing economic infrastructure.

Europe, CANZUK, and its Asian allies end all trade with the US and agree to strategically position the Euro as the world’s next reserve currency. An initial bout of economic pain and rising interest rates give way to new treaties and partnerships. Allies dump US Treasury bonds and introduce sanctions, sending the US into a deep depression and effectively bankrupting the country. With the US dollar tumbling in value, American wealth is wiped out. The country struggles to pay for its army.

China uses the War of the West to fight a proxy war. It participates in bond dumps and helps weaken America’s grip on the world. While the West is distracted, it annexes Taiwan, establishes AI and tech supremacy, and claims its place as the world’s next superpower.

With the Constitution discarded and in shambles, Californians and New Yorkers are the first to call for secession. These states negotiate unilateral treaties with other nations. Progressive candidates are put forward as presidents of these new republics. Thanks to DOGE cuts at the Department of Energy, defectors help US enemies smuggle out nuclear warheads.

The world races to decouple from all US financial and tech infrastructure. Countries establish alternatives to Visa and Mastercard, social media platforms, and work-oriented suites such as Google and Microsoft. The tech oligarchs see their wealth diminished as they realize they greatly overestimated their intelligence and capacity to run a country. Their strategies to control the world and its resources backfire as their foreign assets and accounts are seized. At the height of the war, bounties are declared on their heads.

The end of trade makes famine inevitable. With an alarming percentage of the population on the brink of starvation and ongoing clashes with ICE, the American people revolt. Death tolls escalate, particularly as preventable diseases ravage an unvaccinated population. The Second American Civil War begins in earnest. Environmental disasters further compound the problem, with Americans suffering through multiple and compounding tragedies. The Trump regime faces high-profile assassinations as it fails to control an angry population and citizen militias.

When Trump dies, his spell on the American people breaks. Republicans deny they ever supported or voted for him. Hardline MAGATs fracture and tear themselves apart. JD Vance struggles to lead America and is assassinated shortly after taking office. In the aftermath of its downfall, America goes the way of the USSR, splintering along ideological lines, no longer the republic it once was.

This scenario was first published in January of 2026.

Future scenarios may be exclusive to subscribers.

Three things are guaranteed in life: death, taxes, and change.

As someone who grapples with complex change for a living, I’ve experienced and witnessed how much anxiety a turbulent world causes.

In 2020, the pandemic “created uncertainty in nearly every aspect of daily life” from our health to our relationships to our finances. Navigating such a high degree of uncertainty became a hardship, in and of itself. Uncertainty is not only stressful, it can paralyze us and prevent us from taking action.

Uncertainty continues to plague us. Complex challenges such as climate change and wealth inequality are adding to a growing landscape of uncertainties that impact our lives in ways that are difficult to predict. However, planning for the future can reduce our stress, stave off depression and anxiety, and even reduce our risk of dying. It can also help us make better decisions and achieve our goals when we foster that expectation.

So, how do we get a grip on change?

The Change Matrix

The Change Matrix is a personal foresight model designed to help you explore a how given change might impact your life (remember: simple does not mean unsophisticated). The goal of this model is to help you reduce your sense of uncertainty and anxiety, grasp how your future might change, and plan accordingly. Think of it as a two-dimensional pros and cons list.

When using this model, the x-axis remains constant; “my life improves” versus “my life worsens.” The y-axis represents a given change and should be labeled with the two ends of the spectrum of that change. For instance, “the wealth gap grows” versus “the wealth gap shrinks” or “I keep my job” versus “I lose my job.”

The change can be systemic or personal, acute/niche or widespread, and simple or complex. You can consider any time horizon; change that will take place soon or decades in the future.

You may want to consider the following factors (amongst others) and prioritize them in whatever order suits you best:

• Relationships: family, friends, and any other relationships that may be of importance to you.

• Health: any form of health including physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, etc.

• Work: factors that contribute to society including jobs, careers, volunteer work, etc.

• Finances: how you manage and use money and assets.

• Lifestyle: how you live including identity, hobbies, interactions, etc.

There is room to account for a wide range of values, circumstances, and interpretations. You can be as rigorous and detailed in the scenarios as you want to be.

Once you fill all four quadrants, you’ll have a set of four personal scenarios. Depending on how you position the change, the scenarios will indicate a high-level action you want to take: achieve, contribute, prevent, and improve.

1. Achieve (top right quadrant): What actions can you take to create this scenario for yourself and for society?

2. Contribute (bottom right quadrant): What actions can you take to improve society given your fortunate position?

3. Prevent (bottom left quadrant): What actions can you take to mitigate or prevent this scenario for yourself and others?

4. Improve (top left quadrant): What actions can you take to improve your outcomes in a favorable context?

Benefits

The Change Matrix is simple, convenient, intuitive, and inclusive. It also has two key benefits:

• It reduces stress by helping you engage in “proactive coping” i.e. future-oriented thinking, in which you anticipate and make plans for how to handle potential hardships.

• It helps you avoid binary thinking and challenges you to think about how you might thrive during ‘negative’ change and struggle during ‘positive’ change. For example, some people thrived during lockdown while many others didn’t.

Variations

There are several variations of this model. Though the Change Matrix was specifically created with individuals in mind, it can be used to assess how a given change will impact a family, community, or organization by replacing the values on the x-axis with “family +/-”, “community +/-”, and “organization +/-.”

If you want to challenge yourself, you might explore how a given change might impact you now versus the future.

Examples

Here are some examples completed by people who were considering how a change might impact their lives.

Air Pollution

Another wildfire season has arrived. Air pollution will have an increasing impact on our lives in the absence of meaningful action on climate change. This matrix was completed by a Toronto resident and homeowner who considered how air pollution might change their life. This is an example of a systemic issue.

Housing

Housing is a pressing and significant concern for many people for various reasons. This matrix was completed by an individual who considered remaining in a multi-generational living situation versus a single-family home, with the acknowledgment that homeownership may not be an option. This is an example of a personal decision in the context of a systemic issue, rather than two ends of a spectrum of a systemic issue.

Employment

Economic conditions are creating a strain for many people as inflation rises and organizations cut jobs. The following matrix was completed by an individual seeking employment, exploring whether the job market will improve or worsen in the next year.

Conclusion

As the world continues to evolve at a rapid pace, coping with uncertainty is vital to societal health and our collective social-economic and political outcomes. The Change Matrix is a personal foresight method that allows you to explore scenarios of how change, personal or systemic, might impact your life. It is simple, convenient, intuitive, and inclusive — design parameters that may be useful when creating other personal foresight methods. By conscientiously exploring and planning for our individual futures, we can build better collective futures, one change at a time.

Read the full essay on the Change Matrix here.

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Earlier this week, Open AI made headlines because two AI models broke containment and attacked Hugging Face, an AI research platform.

Wired reported that “rather than stay contained in the sandbox, the models ​​“exploited a zero-day vulnerability” to gain access to the open internet as they ‘hyperfocused’ on finding a solution for the AI cybersecurity benchmark known as ExploitGym. Such experiments involve prompting that pressures the models to find solutions, essentially egging them on.”

This shouldn’t surprise you.

Rogue AI isn’t sentient or evil; it’s the result of bad goals/prompts and training data (e.g. novels, films, etc.) kicking in. In this video, I explain how and why AI goes rogue, and how cybernetics explains this phenomena.