A Year-End Reflection
What 2025 Taught Me
About North America's Future—and What 2026 Will Test
This year, I've been teaching courses on Digital Transformation, Cybersecurity, and Systems Design while simultaneously working on policy frameworks for the 2026 USMCA review.
The parallel tracks showed me something I might have missed otherwise. Somewhere between grading assignments on AI integration and drafting recommendations for trilateral digital infrastructure, a convergence hit me:
"The questions my students grapple with are the same questions facing the continent."
They became one conversation with different entry points.
The Convergence
Five threads became one conversation
Trade Policy
Policy roundtables in Washington
Cross-border frameworks and tariff regimes that shape $1.6 trillion in annual trade.
"Rules changed quarterly. Exemptions appeared and disappeared. Industries whipsawed between relief and panic."
AI Governance
Classroom discussions at the university
Decisions about autonomy, human judgment, and machine speed.
"The automation question is becoming the augmentation question—how do we amplify human capability?"
Workforce Transformation
Keynotes in San Antonio
How work changes when AI augments human capability.
"Companies cannot train workforces when they don't know what skills tomorrow will demand."
Energy Infrastructure
Panel discussions in Mexico City
The power systems that enable digital and industrial transformation.
"Data centers need power. Manufacturing needs power. AI needs power. Who builds it?"
Continental Security
Trilateral consultations
Shared security frameworks that underpin prosperity.
"Security and prosperity aren't separate policy tracks. They're inseparable."
The Strategic Questions
What will determine North American competitiveness
How does AI change work?
The automation question is becoming the augmentation question. For a decade, the fear was replacement—machines doing what humans do, only faster and cheaper. But 2025 showed us something more nuanced: the real transformation isn't about replacement, it's about amplification.
The question isn't whether AI will take jobs. It's whether workers will have access to AI that makes their work more valuable—and whether our institutions can adapt fast enough to make that transition possible.
What decisions require human judgment?
As systems grow more autonomous, identifying the irreducible human element becomes critical. Not everything can be automated, and not everything should be. The decisions that shape communities, that require contextual wisdom, that demand accountability—these remain human.
The framework I've developed with my students: speed to machines, judgment to humans, and clear lines between them. The hard part is drawing those lines in real time, as the technology evolves faster than our institutions.
What processes benefit from machine speed?
Speed without wisdom is dangerous. But wisdom without speed is increasingly uncompetitive. The answer lies in the nature of the decision: reversible decisions can be fast; irreversible decisions must be slow.
Trade compliance checking? Speed it up. Supply chain rerouting? Let algorithms optimize. But workforce restructuring? Community investment? Strategic partnerships? These need human time, human relationships, human judgment.
When does autonomy create value, and when does it create vulnerability?
The same autonomy that drives efficiency can become a vector for systemic risk. This is the paradox of 2025: we need autonomous systems to compete, but autonomous systems create dependencies we don't fully understand.
The answer isn't less autonomy—it's better understood autonomy. Transparency about what systems decide and why. Redundancy for critical functions. And always, always, human override capability for decisions that matter.
The Year Uncertainty Became the Product
The Precarity Premium
The hidden tax businesses pay when they cannot forecast what regulatory environment they'll face six months from now.
Policy Volatility Index
out of 100
The old question
"How do we grow?"
The new question
"How do we survive the unpredictability?"
Investment decisions delayed
Capital waits for clarity that never comes
Expansion plans shelved
Growth opportunities lost to uncertainty
Capital flight to stable regions
Money flows where rules are predictable
Supply chains frozen
Companies cannot build what they cannot plan
The economic damage isn't just from tariffs themselves. It's from the inability to plan. Companies cannot build supply chains, train workforces, or commit capital when the ground keeps shifting beneath them.
The Deadline
July 2026
2026 will force a resolution—whether through the USMCA review, market pressure, or competitive losses to regions that offer stability.
The clock is ticking on North America's ability to restore predictable, rules-based certainty.
2026 Will Demand Answers
As 2025 draws to a close, I want to share what this convergence has taught me—and what I believe it will demand of us in 2026.
Trade policy. AI governance. Workforce transformation. Energy infrastructure. Continental security. These stopped being separate conversations this year.
The questions my students grapple with are the same questions facing the continent. The answers we develop in classrooms, boardrooms, and policy forums will shape North America's trajectory for the next decade.
Daniel Covarrubias, Ph.D.
December 2025