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The global economy<\/span>\u00a0has become dependent on the AI industry. Trillions of dollars are being invested into the technology and the infrastructure it relies on; in the final months of 2025,\u00a0functionally all<\/a>\u00a0economic growth in the United States came from AI investments. This would be risky even in ideal conditions. And we are very far from ideal conditions.<\/p>\n Much of the AI supply chain\u2014chips, data centers, combustion turbines, and so on\u2014relies on key materials that are produced in or transported through just a few places on Earth, with little overlap. In particular, the industry is highly dependent on the Middle East, which has been destabilized by the war in Iran. A global\u00a0energy shock<\/a>\u00a0seems all but certain to come soon\u2014the kind where even the\u00a0best-case scenario<\/a>\u00a0is a disaster. The war could grind the AI build-out to a halt. This would be devastating for the tech firms that have issued historic amounts of debt to race against their highly leveraged competitors, and it would be devastating for the private lenders and banks that have been buying up that debt in the hope of ever bigger returns.<\/p>\n For the better part of the past year, Wall Street analysts and tech-industry observers have fretted publicly\u00a0about an AI bubble<\/a>. The fear is that too much money is coming in too fast and that generative-AI companies still have not offered anything close to a viable business model. If growth were to stall or the technology were to be seen as failing to deliver on its promises, the bubble might burst, triggering a chain reaction across the financial system. Everyone\u2014big banks, private-equity firms, people who have no idea what\u2019s mixed into their 401(k)\u2014would be hit by the AI crash.<\/p>\n