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** Mansharamani Musings
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[link removed] was an action-packed month during which geopolitics and technology continued to dominate headlines. I had the opportunity to meet with business leaders from many different industries and almost every one of them was concerned about rising inflation, higher energy prices, and workforce challenges. See below for links to my April musings…

Happy May!

- Vikram

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APRIL 5, 2026

In July 1971, Henry Kissinger boarded a flight from Islamabad ([link removed]) to Beijing that supposedly didn’t exist. After feigning illness, the National Security Advisor took a covert trip to China that laid the groundwork for Nixon’s later visit. All of this was possible due to Pakistan’s president efforts to create a secret backchannel—one that ultimately reshaped the Cold War as Kissinger managed to cleave Beijing away from Moscow. It may have been the most consequential piece of shuttle diplomacy of the 20th century…and it ran through a country that didn’t exist in 1946 and that most Americans couldn’t find on a map.

And now, 55 years later, Pakistan appears poised to once again play a key role ([link removed]) in global affairs. With the U.S. on the verge of another Forever War, a politically problematic development for the Trump Administration, the US President is eager to find an off ramp. Turns out America’s “frenemy” might be the only country in the world capable of throwing Washington a lifeline…
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING ([link removed])
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APRIL 12, 2026

Like many of us, I have been thinking – and writing ([link removed]) – a lot about AI. I have been exploring its potential and the pitfalls, and have settled on an idea I call Schrödinger’s AI ([link removed]) , that AI is both revolutionary and dangerous at the same time. (It’s a tip of the hat to Schrödinger’s Cat ([link removed]) , a famous thought experiment in quantum mechanics in which a cat is both alive and dead). Like the hypothetical cat, AI is currently both promising and terrifying. Human decisions (in the form of policies, accepted norms, or other guardrails), I have argued, will push the AI development trajectory into one scenario or another.

A recent development has tipped the scales, however, and it’s something that should alarm everyone. Anthropic released a model last week called Claude Mythos Preview ([link removed]) . It is, by every measure, the most capable AI system ever built. It can find and exploit software vulnerabilities that have evaded human experts for decades—including a 27-year-old bug in OpenBSD ([link removed]) that had, until last week, gone completely undetected. It scored 93.9% on SWE-bench – an evaluation site that tests Large Language Models and their ability to solve problems - far exceeding the scores earned by every other model in existence…
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING ([link removed])
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APRIL 19, 2026

Every conversation I have with business owners, investors, and fellow executives lately seems to begin the same way: prices keep going up, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason for the trend to stop. Oil, food, housing, and labor costs all appear to be on a one way path.

At Goodwell Foods, the frozen pizza manufacturer I run in New Hampshire, I see it daily. Freight has skyrocketed on the back of higher fuel prices. Labor in rural New England remains stubbornly tight. Even whey prices, which we use in our high-protein offerings, seem to only go in one direction.

In other words, inflation is real, self-reinforcing, and disruptive. For the next one-to-three years, it deserves to be prominent on boardroom agendas. Politicians are probably on-point to worry that “affordability” is a galvanizing, anti-incumbent driver that will impact the future elections…
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING ([link removed])
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APRIL 26, 2026

I have a weakness for seemingly irrelevant indicators. Nearly fifteen years ago, I wrote in Forbes that the race to build the world’s tallest skyscraper was a more robust indicator of forthcoming chaos than most traditional measures that economists track ([link removed]) . As luck would have, the world’s tallest skyscraper neatly captures overconfidenceand hubris, loose money conditions that encourages excess liquidity to find a home, and ubiquitous speculative tendencies as “build it and they will come” logic runs roughshod over more conservative thinking.

Let’s revisit some skyscraper history. Weeks after the Burj Dubai was deemed the world’s tallest freestanding structure, the bursting of a credit bubble began which led to the Global Financial Crisis. Before the Internet bubble peaked, Taipei 101 (home of the hardware side of the tech boom) claimed the title of the world’s tallest tower, displacing the Petronas Towers, a position the Malaysian skyscrapers took in 1997, as the Asian Tigers imploded and spurred the Asian Financial Crisis. In the 1970s, the Willis Tower (aka the Sears Tower) redefined the Chicago skyline and stagflation followed. And perhaps the most iconic skyscraper to telegraph a financial crisis was the Empire State Building, which took the crown of the world’s tallest in 1931 as the Great Depression took hold.

I love unconventional indicators because they capture something official data often miss…they capture real time human behavior while traditional information is usually backward-looking. Today I’d argue that pizza — specifically, frozen pizza — is telling us something equally important about the American consumer. And very few people seem to be listening…
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING ([link removed])


** EXCLUSIVE SUBSCRIBER CONTENT: INTERVIEW WITH JAMES LITINSKY OF MP MATERIALS
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APRIL 9, 2026

On March 9th, 2026, Dr. Vikram Mansharamani spoke with Jim Litinsky, Chairman and CEO of MP Materials, America’s leading rare earth and magnet company. Recorded at MP’s magnet plant in Fort Worth, Texas, topics covered in the conversation include:
* Jim’s background as an investor and his path to running a vertically integrated rare earth magnetics company.
* The critical role of human capital and the importance of identifying talent in times of uncertainty.
* How MP has competed against a geopolitical competitor (China) and secured funding to create an American champion.
* How MP, despite being a de facto startup, secured GM and Apple, as well as the Pentagon, as customers.
* Why developing resilience and staying power when dynamics are unfavorable is key to navigating uncertainty…

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE CONVERSATION ([link removed])
SUBSCRIBE NOW! ([link removed])


** EXCLUSIVE SUBSCRIBER CONTENT: INTERVIEW WITH OIL INDUSTRY EXPERT TOM PETRIE
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APRIL 14, 2026

On April 12th at 11am, Dr. Vikram Mansharamani spoke with oil industry veteran Tom Petrie about current Iran-driven geopolitics and oil markets. Tom has been an active student of commodity cycles and the energy industry for more than 50 years and is among the world’s most informed experts on oil dynamics. Tom is Chairman of Petrie Partners, former Vice Chairman of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and a cofounder of Petrie Parkman & Co, an energy-focused investment bank that was sold to Merrill Lynch in 2006. Tom is a graduate of West Point, has a graduate degree from Boston University, and was awarded an honorary doctorate of engineering from The Colorado School of Mines. Topics covered in the conversation include:

* The similarities between today’s oil dynamics and the 1973 Yom Kippur War era when OPEC initially gained power.
* Tom’s advisory work for the Saudi government and how he thinks other Gulf states are thinking about today’s regional conflict.
* Trump’s recently announced intention to blockade the Strait of Hormuz and whether it’s a negotiating tactic
* The outlook for the price of oil, informed by past cycles and how $200 oil is possible but will almost certainly be self-defeating to those who drive it there.
* How domestic political pressures will constrain the Trump Administration’s ability to finance another “forever war” and tolerate higher energy prices.
* How US-China negotiations may be a contributing factor to America’s actions in both Iran and Venezuela.
* What Tom’s watching going forward

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE INTERVIEW ([link removed])
SUBSCRIBE NOW! ([link removed])


** 2026-2031 Predictions
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** Read Vikram’s Prior Predictions!
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Since 2015, Dr. Mansharamani has publicly posted a set of global developments to watch over the following five years. Corporate executives, government leaders (including several heads of state!), journalists, academics, and others eagerly read, reread, and look forward to his annual piece. If you reread his prior pieces, you’ll find some developments he noted come to fruition, and others simply did not happen. But as Dr. Mansharamani repeatedly notes, the goal of the predictions is not accuracy, but instead usefulness in provoking thoughts about possible futures. Click on the link below to review his posts from 2015 through 2025.
Mansharamani Predictions: 2015-2030 ([link removed])

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** NAVIGATING UNCERTAINTY
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As many of you are aware, I’ve returned to writing my weekly newsletter and have been pleased by the rapidly growing interest in my thoughts. As I have in the past, I’m addressing a wide range of topics, ranging from geopolitics and economics to social trends to technology. The overall theme of my work is focused on “navigating uncertainty” and how a generalist approach can help us all make sense of what seems like chaos.

If you have not already done so, please consider subscribing!
Subscribe to “Navigating Uncertainty” by Vikram Mansharamani ([link removed])


** Want Vikram to speak at your event?
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** About Vikram
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VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worth profiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World ([link removed]) , Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence ([link removed]) and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before
They Burst ([link removed]) . Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.
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mailto:[email protected]
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