Through a Glass Darkly: Predictions for 2025

Polish the crystal ball, plug in the AI and voila!

As we turn the page on 2024, the overriding theme for the year was surprise, sometimes bordering on shock. To wit, Joe Biden’s cognitive collapse and forced retirement, the utter dominance of Israel in the Mideast (including the use of pagers as IEDs), an illegal immigrant burning a woman on a New York subway, the Kamala Harris campaign burning through $1 billion and still losing, Michigan beating Ohio State, Bill Belichick going back to school as coach of the Tarheels, and a coke-sniffing statutory rapist briefly nominated as U.S. Attorney General. As they say in Ohio, you can’t make this stuff up.

JEP fearlessly waded into this volatility last year to make our annual predictions, and we came out, well, not too bad. Out of a total of 31 predictions, we were correct on 17 and wrong on 14, for a total batting average of .548, a number that would easily command a $500 million contract in the MLB today.

Our biggest whiff was the presidential election, which we said would be won by Biden, who would then have a heart attack, turning the reins over to Kamala; we were wrong on all three counts. On the other hand, we successfully predicted the surge in power demand from Big Data and the continuing rise of women in arts and politics (here’s looking at you and your $2 billion tour, Taylor).

This year, as Yogi Berra said, it’s even harder to make predictions, especially about the future. But we are unbowed. Our prognostications for 2025 were sourced from our own predilections, our omnivorous consumption of media, input from family and friends, and those occasional insights that pop up after a second martini.

So, let’s polish the crystal ball, plug in the AI and get going.

Betting Markets Topple the Pundits: Change will continue to sweep through the media industry, good and bad. Small and medium-sized newspapers will keep struggling, with many finally shuttering their doors. Jeff Bezos, growing weary of losing money and newsroom politics, will sell the Washington Post. All forms of alternatives to legacy media will continue to grow, especially X and podcasts. Influencers will eclipse legacy media in market share. There will, however, be a downside to the rising sea of digital media. There will be much more of what Sara Morrison at the Nieman Lab calls “AI slop,” anonymously created content that is either wrong, just plain noxious, or worst of all — boring.

Finally, the hegemony of the pundits — those nattering nabobs of cable TV, to adopt William Safire’s famous phrase — will be supplanted by the wisdom of crowds known as betting markets. Polymarkets, for instance, beat all the pollsters in 2024 by predicting Trump’s victory, drawing more people into its betting network and thus becoming even more accurate. Betting markets crunch the data without all the bloviating. Sneak preview: Polymarkets pegs the chances of Trump declaring a national emergency in his first 100 days at 75 percent. It predicts a 65 percent chance of Trudeau leaving office before April, and a 1 percent chance that Taylor Swift will get engaged (sorry, Travis).

DOGE: Order Out of Chaos: The Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of government efficiency will officially storm the windmills of the empire sometime next month and immediately create chaos and confusion. At first, they will rely on crowd-sourcing solutions to trim the reach and cost of government, which will turn into a mosh pit of cheer-leading and resistance. There will be mistakes. By year-end, Elon and Vivek will trim their wicks a little and get serious, nominally achieving some $1 trillion in cuts and a 20 percent reduction in regulatory overhang. Alert: Elon runs the risk of taking too much oxygen away from Trump and being banished from the Oval; this will test his self-restraint.

It’s America’s World, Everyone Else Just Lives in It. The American economy will remain in high gear. Productivity will continue its rise in 2025, leading to GDP growth of 3 percent. The DJIA will break 45,000. The U.S. will remain the center of global innovation, with advances in AI, quantum computing, nuclear technology and pharmaceuticals. IPOs and M&A will surge in 2025 and eclipse the 2021 peak. While China and the EU continue their economic purgatory, America’s 25 percent share of the global economy ratchets up a few points.

Big Energy. Demand for energy will keep growing. Fossil fuels will remain the indispensable source even as alternative sources continue to expand; market demand will support both, but with challenges. Oil markets, for instance, will be fully supplied in 2025, bringing the WTI price of oil down to $50 or less, and alternatives are likely to have some price supports taken away by the Trump administration. Data will be the big energy hog of the late 2020s. We’ll see more investment in “behind the meter” power solutions for Big Data centers — freestanding natural gas plants, small modular nuclear reactors, wood pellets, perhaps even the first steps toward data centers in orbit running on solar power, beaming their bits back to Earth.

Big Internet. Remember the Internet of Everything? It will metastasize in 2025 as AI is integrated into, well, everything. Be prepared to have your own AI “agent,” which will do anything from ordering groceries and plane tickets to wading through the detritus of Netflix for something decent to watch. Also: by next year, the IoE will have more than 100 billion connected devices, each with more than a dozen sensors collecting data. Cisco says the “Trillion Sensor Economy” will create the potential for $19 trillion in new value. And to tie this back to the preceding prediction, the IoE will take a lot of energy. For instance, the energy required to show a new Instagram post from Cristiano Ronaldo to each of his followers could power a house for several years, according to a London professor.

League of Doping. Someone somewhere will create a sports league where competitors are encouraged to dope. “How Good Can You Get?” will be the official tagline. In addition to how far you can throw a hammer or how fast you can run 100 yards, part of the discipline of the new dopers will be how effectively you curate your pharmaceutical regimen.

Big Sports. Netflix’s 2025 NFL Christmas broadcast will draw more than 70 million viewers. An NFL quarterback will sign a contract in excess of $700 million. Shohei Ohtani will notch more than 55 home runs for the Dodgers.

Bonus Predictions!

Ukraine War Ends: Putin packs it in after nominal concessions from Ukraine.

Restless Russia: An assassination attempt will be made on Putin by a Russian citizen upset about the direction of the country.

Rock Bottom: China will suffer a major financial collapse that rivals 2008 in America.

Homelessness Continues to Grow: The rate of homelessness will grow by about 15 percent in 2025, compared to the record increase of 18 percent in 2024. The growth rate will be softened by a decrease in cross-border migrant flow, but the main drivers — a national housing shortage and stagnant wages — remain.

Sugar Free: RFK Jr. will enact a tax on high fructose corn syrup.

Bad AI, Good AI: A major AI-generated cyberattack will prompt immediate AI regulation. But AI will also generate a major breakthrough in cancer treatment in 2025.

AI’s Close-Up Moment: The first major movie made by AI will air on a streaming service.

Bitcoin Uber Alles: Bitcoin will hit $200,000 in 2025 and we’ll see the return of Initial Coin Offerings.

White Gloves: In the age of AI and automation, high-touch service in the retail and hospitality industries becomes even more valued.

Drones Go Mainstream: Where’s my pizza drone? I’ve been waiting for more than five minutes!

Animal Pandemic: A virulent strain of bird flu rips through cattle and chicken stocks in the U.S., wiping out 20 percent of supply.

Whoops: Jeffrey Epstein’s black book is released, elites freak out.

San Francisco 49ers Tune Up: After two heartbreaking seasons, QB Brock Purdy is out. As likable as Brock is, he doesn’t have the arm strength or the accuracy today’s NFL demands.

No Threepeat: Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs finally run out of gas as Buffalo clinches the Super Bowl.

Nothing Lasts Forever: Steph Curry will retire and the GOAT argument will get even more inconclusive (MJ still has my vote).

Tennis Twofer: An American man and an American woman will win a tennis grand slam in 2025.

Not Yet, Folks: Inflation creeps back up to 3 percent, spurred in part by the Trump tariffs, prompting the Fed to delay further rate cuts.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? President Biden, in his remaining days in office, issues a wide-ranging prospective pardon for his brother, James.

Green for Greenland: To maximize the sales price, Denmark will list Greenland with Sotheby’s auction house.

God Willing: Joe McLaughlin, the great raconteur and self-anointed expert on everything, will celebrate his 90th birthday.

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(Sources: The Nieman Lab, Peter Diamandis, Goldman Sachs, Forbes, Mary Yarrow, David Cook, Greg Berardi, Joe McLaughlin, Richard Rubin, Jessie & Breton Birkhofer, Nostradamus, Yogi Berra, Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Mel Robbins, and the aforementioned second martini.)