- Science & Technology
- Understanding the Effects of Technology on Economics and Governance
On June 23-24, 2026, the Hoover Institution’s Tech Futures Lab hosted its inaugural retreat, which brought together thought leaders from academia, industry, nonprofits, and governments to help anticipate and mitigate the risk of strategic technological surprises. Through a series of interconnected exercises, this brain trust identified possible technological breakthroughs, debated controversial assumptions about AI and national power, traced potential unplanned and unexpected applications of technology, and considered the long-term effects of technology on multiple domains, including health, economics, geopolitics, and humanity.
The retreat was not designed to make specific forecasts but to explore a broader range of plausible–not necessarily probable–trajectories for existing and emerging technologies. The insights will help set the agenda for the Lab in the coming year, including topics for future wargames and exercises, and provocative questions to address in future analytic products.
The following summary presents the overarching themes and cross-cutting debates that surfaced organically during almost every discussion and exercise over the course of the two days.
