If we want to avoid stumbling over an obstacle, it’s best to walk with our eyes open. Yet when we suggest adopting the same attitude toward the future, we’re labeled pessimists or Cassandras—and all too often discredited. Today more than ever, we must walk with our eyes open along the path of time. There are at least seven gaping chasms along the way. All are now well-documented, quantified, and, for the most part, already at work. To fail to see them—or to ignore them in debates about the challenges ahead—would be irresponsible.
First threat: In France, the budget debate set to begin for 2027 should serve as a reminder of a reality that electoral posturing seeks to obscure: in August 2026, public debt crossed the threshold of 118.3% of gross domestic product, up from 115.6% at the end of 2025, and is heading toward 130%. In its June 2025 report, the Pension Policy Council forecasts a financing gap that will not be closed until 2070. To date, no declared presidential candidate has proposed the massive structural adjustments to public spending—and in particular to pensions (a significant increase in the retirement age, partial deindexation of pensions, increased taxation, and a shift to a funded system)—that alone would make it possible to reverse this trajectory in a sustainable manner.
Second danger: the runaway growth of the global financial system. Global debt—public and private combined—will exceed three times the world’s gross domestic product by 2026. This massive amount, inflated by a decade of low interest rates followed by an erratic rise in long-term rates, circulates largely within a parallel banking system (private equity funds, hedge funds, private credit platforms) that is exempt from the oversight imposed after the 2008 crisis. Neither the Federal Reserve, nor the European Central Bank, nor the Basel Committee currently has a grasp of the scale of the systemic risks that this largely opaque and interconnected shadow banking system poses to the real economy; the day is approaching when long-term interest rates—or a geopolitical shock—will expose its fragility and the whole system will collapse.
Third trend: economic concentration. Global mergers and acquisitions are projected to exceed $5.3 trillion in 2026: in the first five months of the year, the value of transactions surged by 41 percent, while their number increased by only 2 percent. Mega-deals worth more than $10 billion have increased by 52% in number and 53% in value over the past year. All of this proves, if proof were needed, that wealth is becoming concentrated among an ever-smaller number of players. From artificial intelligence to pharmaceuticals, a few dozen corporations are acquiring market power—and thus political power—that neither U.S. antitrust authorities nor the European Commission, despite their ongoing proceedings against tech giants, will soon be able to contain.
The fourth catastrophe, and the most well-documented: climate change. This year, the world is experiencing the most intense wildfires ever recorded; polar sea ice has reached its lowest observed level; and the global average temperature is now 1.52 °C higher than its pre-industrial level, exceeding for the first time the threshold that the Paris Agreement aimed to ensure would never be crossed. If we continue on this path, we are heading toward a 4-degree rise before 2040.
Fifth upheaval: automation driven by artificial intelligence and robotics. The OECD estimates that in France, four million jobs—a quarter of the workforce—are at high risk of disappearing. The International Monetary Fund estimates that 40% of jobs worldwide will be affected or even eliminated; This is a much more rapid upheaval than that of previous industrial revolutions, which gave societies time to adapt. And no training or retraining program is, at this stage, adequately prepared for what lies ahead.
Sixth threat: U.S. military activity in the Gulf has not gone unnoticed by either Moscow or Beijing. This summer, China stepped up its military maneuvers around Taiwan, while Russia has continued its provocations throughout Europe; all of this increases the risk of Sino-Russian coordination aimed at taking advantage of the U.S. absence—with one seeking to attack Europe and the other to invade Taiwan.
The seventh, more insidious poison: xenophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism. In France, the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights observes that these forms of hatred are taking root rather than representing a temporary spike. And there are other poisons as well, just as insidious, such as various forms of drug abuse and demographic decline.
In the face of these seven perils (and others, more subtle, such as drugs, demographics, or the deterioration of the school system), solutions exist. Provided they are implemented without delay: bring France’s public debt under control through a committed structural adjustment; regulate the shadow banking system before it triggers its own crisis; implement a global competition policy commensurate with the scale of mega-mergers; phase out fossil fuels and protect the biosphere; organize massive training for those in professions that artificial intelligence will not eliminate; sufficiently rearm Europe, autonomously, to deter aggressive powers; uncompromisingly combat racial and anti-Semitic hatred; and all other forms of poison that creep into societies.
All of this requires courage, constant mobilization, a clear vision, and men and women of character capable of accepting temporary unpopularity. We urgently need grit—and new Churchills.