Wherever I’ve gone overseas this past year, I’ve gotten mild whiplash. I think 2025 will bring a lot worse.

On the one hand, the world is full of peril. We’re heading into a year where a global conflict, already playing out in the shadows, could flare into the open.

Yet there’s something as stark that I came across everywhere: a sense of unprecedented opportunity, of forces of scientific and AI-driven technological innovation that are remaking the world for the better too. What’s also part of the whiplash? As much as Americans and others talk the place down, there is a desire, unpopular as that might be to say these days, especially in Trump world, for American leadership.