https://psyops.tech/Two analysts wrote a memo from June 2028 about an AI-driven crash. Every month we check which parts of it are coming true.enhttps://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-09https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-09Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTAn unusually useful month: one important part of the thesis got substantially stronger while another was directly contradicted by the data. Private-credit stress worsened to a new record, and Wipro gave the cleanest real-world example yet of AI producing enormous labour-productivity gains. But software, the sector the memo's credit mechanism depends on, has the lowest default rate of any major sector, and Wipro redeployed its freed capacity rather than firing it. The evidence now supports a coherent alternative version of the story rather than the memo's own.https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-08https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-08Sun, 16 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMTThis month moves the needle slightly toward the memo, mainly because the employment picture weakened materially after revisions and private-credit defaults set another record. The crucial second half, collapsing consumption, prime mortgage stress and contagion, is still missing. And a different credit risk is appearing: not AI destroying software, but the financing of the AI boom itself.https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-07https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-07Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMTThe thesis is becoming more credible at the micro level but remains unconfirmed at the macro level. The strongest live confirmations are rising private-credit defaults, slower hiring with unusually persistent white-collar unemployment, and large companies explicitly shifting spend from payroll to AI. The central crisis sequence is still absent: consumer spending is growing, aggregate layoffs are low, prime mortgages are healthy, equities are near records. The thesis may be arriving first as a no-hire economy for exposed workers rather than a wave of claims.https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-06https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-06Tue, 30 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMTThree months after publication, the thesis has gone from a niche thought experiment to a widely debated macro scenario. Markets, economists and policymakers now argue about the mechanisms it named: AI-driven labour displacement, Ghost GDP, SaaS margin compression, private-credit exposure. The strongest evidence supports the microeconomic parts. The weakest evidence is the macroeconomic catastrophe. As of June, the live data are consistent with structural disruption and repricing, not with an unfolding crisis.https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-05https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-05Sun, 31 May 2026 12:00:00 GMTThe first household-level data worth attaching to the thesis, and the first careful look at graduates. Both show stress. Neither shows the white-collar signature the memo requires. Prime borrowers are slipping, which is what the memo said would happen, but they are slipping everywhere rather than in tech metros, and the timing is well ahead of the job losses that are supposed to cause it.https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-04https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-04Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMTA quiet month that moved one thing decisively. Aggregate private-credit defaults set another record, so the financial stress the memo describes is now unambiguously present. The attribution still is not. We are also noting that the most careful independent forecaster in the adjacent field has revised his own timeline, which is a useful reminder about what we are doing here.https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-03https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-03Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMTThe first month with hard numbers on both halves of the thesis, and they point in opposite directions. Real companies cut real staff and named AI as the reason. At the same time the first sector-level credit data arrives and software is the safest thing in the book, not the most dangerous. We are recording that contradiction rather than resolving it.https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-02https://psyops.tech/checkins/2026-02Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMTThe 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.