As the majority of Wall Street got ready for a calm start to the week on Sunday night, a 7,000-word memo started making the rounds in trading group chats. Manhattan’s displays were blazing red by Monday morning.
Citrini Research’s paper, “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis,” which was posted on Substack, wasn’t presented as a prediction. Written as a June 2028 hypothetical reflection, it envisioned a future in which artificial intelligence had destroyed white-collar jobs and plunged the international economy into a deflationary cycle. The text resembled speculative fiction. It was regarded by markets as a warning siren.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Memo Title | “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” |
| Publisher | Citrini Research (Substack) |
| Lead Author | James van Geelen (with Alap Shah) |
| Length | ~7,000 words |
| Core Theme | AI-driven white-collar unemployment & deflationary spiral |
| Immediate Market Impact | Sharp sell-off in tech, payments, and software stocks |
| Companies Affected | Mastercard, American Express, Visa, DoorDash, ServiceNow, Blackstone |
| Reference |
Shares of American Express and Mastercard had plummeted by Monday noon. The downdraft also affected Blackstone, DoorDash, ServiceNow, and Visa. Traders characterized the atmosphere as tense, not frantic, but unsettled—the tension that remains when a legitimate anxiety is expressed too explicitly.
The memo’s thesis was clear: white-collar unemployment would rise above 10% if AI agents were able to automate coding, compliance, customer support, and financial analysis. Spending by consumers would decline. The cost of services would plummet. Defaults on loans would increase. Banks would sway.
Investors may have been more alarmed by the narrative’s coherence than by the prognosis itself. James van Geelen of Citrini is known for making connections between big ideas before others do. He has amassed a cult following since 2023 for his early thematic calls on AI and weight-loss medications. The memo was quiet. It thought.
Imagine a Monday at 10:17 a.m. on a trading floor close to the New York Stock Exchange. The phones are ringing. The headlines regarding “AI-driven disruption” are repeated on CNBC. Charts are being refreshed by junior analysts. Between desks, the phrase “deflationary death spiral” keeps coming up.
AI appears to be revolutionary in the eyes of investors. They just hadn’t factored in the potential impact of transformation on revenue models that rely on human labor.
According to the memo, AI will write almost all software code in the near future. In the past, products that needed months of research and thousands of engineers could be spun up in a matter of hours. With the use of generative tools, clients would threaten to develop their own solutions rather than extending contracts at greater prices.
Software companies would have to contend with price wars after years of seamless subscription renewals. It would be difficult to distinguish. The margins would compress. The belief that artificial intelligence (AI) would increase productivity without causing demand instability was the core of Wall Street’s most crowded trade.
Investors seem at ease with AI taking the place of manufacturing jobs. Displacement in white-collar jobs feels different. It has to do with consuming. Credit cards and mortgages.
The memo’s suggestion that widespread white-collar unemployment would reduce transaction volumes notably hurt payments companies. Spending declines when high-earning professionals lose their jobs. Payment networks are affected when expenditure declines. However, a lot of analysts brushed the response aside as being too soon.
Some tech companies had started to recover their losses by late Monday afternoon. Portfolio managers noted that such terrible possibilities are not yet supported by unemployment data. Adoption of AI is still unequal. Despite cooling, corporate recruiting has not stopped. One strategist informed clients, “It’s an uncertain existential risk,” claiming that markets were reacting to stories rather than statistics.
As this is happening, it’s difficult to ignore how swiftly a blog post may cause a stir in the financial markets. A speculative research note could have been surreptitiously circulating around hedge firms ten years ago. Substack now shares social media trends prior to Asia opening.
The topic of whether AI could lead to deflation in services, similar to how globalization caused deflation in goods, is a valid one, notwithstanding the instability. Prices may decrease if AI agents significantly lower the cost of financial research, legal assessment, and software development. Customers might gain from that. However, it can also reduce salaries and corporate profits.
The fictitious 2028 situation presented in the document is not unavoidable. It might even turn out to be incorrect. However, it draws attention to a risk that investors are just now starting to consider: that the benefits of AI might not be shared equally.
In the days that followed, markets made a partial recovery. Models were recalibrated by analysts. Analysts argued about whether Citrini’s scenario was a macro prophecy or a cautionary tale.
The enduring realization that AI is more than just a growth narrative is what’s left. It is a structural force that has the power to challenge presumptions regarding demand and employment.
This seems to have been more about time than it was about a single memo. Maybe investors were ready for skepticism after years of unrelenting tech advances.
Wall Street’s AI panic might no longer make headlines. However, the issues it brought up around expenditure, employment, and the vulnerability of white-collar security will probably come up again. The memo might not feel at all imaginary the next time.
