Monitor 001 / Check-in 01 of 8 / FEBRUARY 2026
Two analysts wrote a memo from June 2028 about an AI-driven crash. Every month we check which parts of it are coming true. This is the February 2026 reading, kept exactly as it was written. Source memo: THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS, “What follows is a scenario, not a prediction.”.
So far · Machines: Happening. People: Too early. Money: Repriced.
The memo is published on 22 February into a market that has just spent two weeks pricing something very like its first chapter. That is an awkward place to start a monitor from: the technological premise arrives loudly and everything downstream of it is still theory. Our opening position is that we can already see the machine working, and we cannot yet see anyone losing a job because of it.
Positioned as Claude Code for everything that is not code, on the desktop app for all paid plans.
Touches 01 (supports) · Anthropic — Claude Cowork
Described by CNBC as moving toward a vibe working era. Tops the Finance Agent benchmark.
Touches 01 (supports) · CNBC — Anthropic launches Claude Opus 4.6 as AI moves toward a 'vibe working' era
Information services and per-seat software names take the worst of it. Thomson Reuters falls 15.8% in a single session, its largest on record. By late March the software complex has shed more than $1tn.
This is the market's opinion about the future, not a change in what software companies earned.
Touches 09 (supports), 01 (supports) · Fortune — Anthropic's Claude triggered a trillion-dollar selloff
A memo written as though from June 2028. Opens by saying it is a scenario, not a prediction.
Touches no link · Citrini Research — THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS
Frank Flight argues demand for software engineers is rising about 11% year on year, that diffusion follows an S-curve rather than an exponential, and that productivity shocks are positive supply shocks which raise real income.
Touches 03 (contradicts), 05 (contradicts) · Fortune — Citadel Securities demolishes viral AI doomsday essay
Starting position deliberately conservative. The memo's chain has thirteen links and only the first has real evidence behind it. Resisting the pull to score the whole thing off one dramatic fortnight.
A predicted symptom appearing does not mean the predicted mechanism caused it.