Donald Trump completed one term of office as U.S. President this month, and the position was transferred to Joe Biden. Again, this blog is NOT about partisan politics, and as a general rule I don’t mention it, but this is a rare instance where it’s worth listing the noteworthy failed predictions about the Trump presidency:
- “I think he will be in jail within a year.”
–Malcolm Gladwell, November 6, 2016
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malcolm-gladwell-us-election-the-national-trump-clinton-1.3838449 - “Trump’s presidency is effectively over. Would be amazed if he survives till end of the year. More likely resigns by fall, if not sooner.”
–Tony Schwartz (ghostwriter of Trump: The Art of the Deal turned enemy of Trump), August 16, 2017
https://twitter.com/tonyschwartz/status/897900928023412736 - “I don’t think he’s going to make it till the end of the year. I think he can’t take the ridicule. I think he’ll resign.”
–Alec Baldwin, August 7, 2017
http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/alec-baldwin-trump-impersonation-snl.html - “He’ll be lucky if all we do is impeach him. I predict in 6 months Trump will be holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy.”
–John Aravosis, February 14, 2017
https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/831740494610837509 - “Will Trump complete his four-year term? The odds at this point are that he won’t. What are the options for exactly how his term might end early? There are five Oval Office exit paths: impeachment, use of the 25th Amendment, death by natural causes, assassination and resignation.”
–Mike Purdy, May 19, 2017
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/334238-trump-wont-make-it-four-years-heres-how-he-might - “This tight burst of historic f**k-ups on the part of Mr. Trump in just his first 110 days in office has forced me to change my predicted date of his voluntary resignation from August 18th to July 15th.”
–Allan Ishac, May 17, 2017
https://medium.com/@allanishac/my-prediction-that-trump-will-resign-by-august-18th-has-been-revised-to-july-15th-bdcd75e2276 - “He will not finish his first term…I would be very surprised if he made it to 18 months…my best guess is within six months.”
–Cenk Uygur, August 16, 2017
https://youtu.be/ScgVbT_fry0 - “I’ve been saying this from day one of his presidency but apparently most people still don’t get it – there is no way Donald Trump finishes his first term. Mark my words: He is out of office by 2019. He is not bright enough to be able to get himself out of the trouble he is in.”
–Cenk Uygur, December 22, 2018
https://twitter.com/cenkuygur/status/1076600316286590976 - “I do not think the President will survive this term…I think the amount of heat that is going to come down on Mr. Trump in connection with his personal attorney of ten years [Michael Cohen] turning on him and rolling on him will be insurmountable, and I think his only exit, in an effort to save whatever face he may have left at that time, will be to resign the office.”
–Michael Avenatti, April 23, 2018
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/stormy-daniels-lawyer-explains-why-he-thinks-trump-will-resign-his-term - “I think it’s just going to get so tight and it’s going to close in and then everybody is going to be indicted around this president, and then he is going to realize he is probably next on the list. And I think he is going to come up with an excuse like ‘somebody is trying to kill Barron, and so I’m going to resign.”
–Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (Florida), November 3, 2017
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rep-wilson-predicts-trump-will-pretend-somebody-trying-kill-barron-resign/ - “In any case, it seems likely that Donald Trump will be leaving the Presidency at some point, likely between the 31 days of William Henry Harrison in 1841 (dying of pneumonia) and the 199 days of James A. Garfield in 1881 (dying of an assassin’s bullet after 79 days of terrible suffering and medical malpractice). At the most, it certainly seems likely, even if dragged out, that Trump will not last 16 months and 5 days, as occurred with Zachary Taylor in 1850 (dying of a digestive ailment). The Pence Presidency seems inevitable.”
–Presidential historian Ronald L. Feinman, February 18, 2017
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/presidential-historian-predicts-trumps-term-will-last-less-than-200-days-the-second-shortest-ever/ - “For a while now, I have thought the Trump presidency would end suddenly…For weeks now I have been anticipating that Trump’s last day in office will dawn like all the others, and then around dinnertime it will suddenly break that he is about to resign…I don’t know if that’s next Tuesday or next year, but I think whenever it is, that is what it will feel like.”
–Keith Olbermann, August 23, 2017
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-resign-russia-olbermann-president-654209 - “By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not even be President. In fact, he may not even be a free person.”
–Elizabeth Warren, February 11, 2019
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/10/politics/elizabeth-warren-donald-trump/index.html - “He’s gonna drop out of the race because it’s gonna become very clear. Okay, it’ll be March of 2020. He’ll likely drop out by March of 2020. It’s gonna become very clear that it’s impossible for him to win.”
–Anthony Scaramucci, August 16, 2019
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/anthony-scaramucci-interview-trump - “He can preemptively pardon individuals, and the vast majority of legal scholars have indicated that he cannot pardon himself…I suspect at some point in time he will step down and allow the vice president to pardon him.”
–New York Attorney General Letitia James, December 8, 2020
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/529339-new-york-attorney-general-predicts-trump-will-step-down-allow-pence
There’s no justification for U.S. troops to be in Syria anymore.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/turkey/2021-01-25/us-strategy-syria-has-failed
China’s stealth fighter is ten years old.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/38655/ten-years-ago-today-chinas-j-20-stealth-fighter-first-flew-a-two-seater-could-be-next
China didn’t invade Taiwan in 2020, as Deng Yuwen predicted.
https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2126541/china-planning-take-taiwan-force-2020
U.S. power didn’t collapse in 2020, as Johan Galtung predicted.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7ykxx/us-power-will-decline-under-trump-says-futurist-who-predicted-soviet-collapse
Bonus: The U.S. did not have a Soviet-style collapse in 2010 as Igor Panarin predicted.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/map-of-the-day-ex-kgb-analyst-predicts-balkanization-of-us/58945/
Ballistic computers have shrunk to the sizes of rifle scopes.
‘The [L3Harris NGSW-FC scope] features a magnified direct-view optic with a digital reticle, a laser rangefinder, a ballistic computer, and environmental sensors capable of measuring air pressure and temperature.’
https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/l3harris-unveils-next-generation-squad-weapon-fire-control-system
The bricks of explosive-reactive armor typically seen attached to the hulls of Soviet/Russian tanks have powerful “back-blasts” that can dent the thinner metal armor of vehicles like the BMP-series inward.
https://thedeaddistrict.blogspot.com/2021/01/bmp-2-with-k-1-era.html
Here’s an interesting tour of an old Soviet T-54 tank. Driving that thing looks like a rough job.
https://youtu.be/SCaBLjg6No0
Azerbaijan has towed several destroyed Armenian tanks to Baku to be used as exhibits in a soon-to-be-built war museum.
https://thedeaddistrict.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-baku-preparations-begin-for.html
Here are the fascinating recollections of a career U.S. Navy sailor about life at sea, improvements in naval technology, and how the organization has changed (for better and worse).
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/13038/making-steam-high-seas-tales-and-commentary-on-todays-navy-from-a-chief-engineer
China has repurposed old artillery pieces to be forest fire extinguishers.
http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201904/04/WS5ca554fca3104842260b456c.html
LED walls are made up of many smaller LED panels arranged in a grid to form one, giant display of arbitrary size. I just saw one of them in an airport and was impressed. This might become common in homes starting in 10 years as prices drop and people demand TVs that would be too big to fit through the front doors of their houses if made of one, rigid screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQxa8VruNJg&feature=emb_title
Here’s an interesting desalination plant. It uses solar power, pumps, a 90-meter tall hill, and reverse osmosis to make drinking water from seawater.
https://youtu.be/B4irlTMk_Os
An “acoustic resonator” is a piezoelectric device that converts noise into electricity. It can also do the reverse. The resonators could be placed underwater, where they would use the ocean’s ambient noises to recharge their batteries, and use that power to send their own sound-based data signals to other nearby devices.
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/10/17/how-to-send-underwater-messages-without-batteries
“Fulgurites” are remarkable-looking minerals formed when lightning strikes and melts wet sand.
http://www.geologyin.com/2014/06/amazing-fulgurites.html
Here’s a big roundup of predictions for the 2020s by a bright guy I’ve never heard of. I respect his thoroughness, though I need to more time to decide if I agree with him.
https://elidourado.com/blog/notes-on-technology-2020s/
Were the earliest plants purple instead of green? Are there alien planets covered in purple plants?
‘Because retinal is a simpler molecule than chlorophyll, then it could be more commonly found in life in the Universe…’
https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/was-life-on-the-early-earth-purple
Nobel Prizewinner Paul Cruzen died. He was a pioneer in global warming research, and later advocated geoengineering as a way to keep the phenomenon from getting out of control.
https://www.mpic.de/4677594/trauer-um-paul-crutzen
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis might be wrong.
‘On the other side of the debate are those who say that although language is indeed linked with cognition, it derives from thought, rather than preceding it. You can certainly think about things that you have no labels for, they point out, or you would be unable to learn new words. Supposedly “untranslatable” words from other tongues—which seem to suggest that without the right language, comprehension is impossible—are not really inscrutable; they can usually be explained in longer expressions. One-word labels are not the sole way to grasp things.’
https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2020/10/15/does-naming-a-thing-help-you-understand-it
Autonomous vehicles only designed to transport cargo could look very different from normal cars, as they wouldn’t need seats or safety features to protect humans during crashes. For those same reasons, they could be lighter and cheaper than regular cars.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-autonomous-safety-idUSKBN29J29Z
“AI video compression” sharply reduces the amount of data needed for video calls. The means by which this is accomplished is very interesting, and has other uses.
https://youtu.be/NqmMnjJ6GEg
Microsoft has patented a chatbot that would be able to mimic dead people after analyzing their “images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages” and other data. I’ve predicted that this kind of technology will get advanced enough to let people achieve “digital immortality” during the 2030s.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/microsoft-chatbot-patent-dead-b1789979.html
OpenAI’s latest boundary-pushing computer program is “Dall-E,” which can generate clear drawings based on user-submitted written descriptions of what they should look like.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55559463
Algorithms that can edit video footage are getting frighteningly advanced. Objects, including moving objects like humans and cars, can be easily deleted from video footage without anything looking amiss. Whatever was behind them is filled in.
https://youtu.be/86QU7_SF16Q
Most of the world’s top AI researchers go to universities in the U.S. and then get jobs there. China produces the most top AI researchers of any country (unsurprising given its large population), but few of them stay there.
https://macropolo.org/digital-projects/the-global-ai-talent-tracker/
This blog discusses how overregulation and risk-aversion have stifled innovation and cost-saving measures in the aviation industry.
https://elidourado.com/blog/why-aviation-innovation-matters/
Richard Branson’s Virgin company launched small satellites into space. A Boeing 747 flew to high altitude, and then dropped a space rocket from its belly, which ignited and flew into orbit.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/richard-bransons-virgin-orbit-launches-rocket-from-under-boeing-747s-wing/
Space-X launched 143 satellites using just one space rocket–a new record.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55775977
‘Star lifting is any of several hypothetical processes by which a sufficiently advanced civilization…could remove a substantial portion of a star’s matter which can then be re-purposed, while possibly optimizing the star’s energy output and lifespan at the same time.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Star_lifting
“Diamond plants” exist.
https://newatlas.com/science/carbon-diamond-stable-highest-pressure/
Tech tycoon Elon Musk briefly became the world’s richest person.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55578403
Scientists have identified the types of cells that let some animals sense magnetic fields, and have observed them doing that for the first time. I think posthumans will have this extra sense.
“[We’ve] observed a purely quantum mechanical process affecting chemical activity at the cellular level.”
https://newatlas.com/biology/live-cells-respond-magnetic-fields/
There’s no scientific evidence that the food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG) hurts human health. The public health panic over MSG was spawned by a flawed study. In spite of this, Americans still believe it is dangerous.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/msg-isnt-bad-for-you-according-to-science
The FDA just approved the first long-term HIV drug. It manages the virus’ effects and only needs to be injected once a month into patients. It could replace daily doses of antiretroviral pills. Early HIV drugs had to be taken multiple times per day.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-extended-release-injectable-drug-regimen-adults-living-hiv
Machine learning can optimize factories by studying ultra hi-res photos of their products at various stages in the manufacturing process. Something like a screw missing from a circuit board would be seen by the computer before the board left the building.
https://youtu.be/MOh55-TF6LQ
Are Silicon Valley’s days as the world’s tech hub over? Mandatory teleworking imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic has worked out better than many tech workers and founders expected, and they will push to make the arrangements permanent, leading many to leave the Bay Area for cheaper locales.
https://blog.initialized.com/2021/01/data-post-pandemic-silicon-valley-isnt-a-place/
We have no idea how many people COVID-19 has killed in sub-Saharan Africa.
‘In 2017, only 10 percent of deaths were registered in Nigeria, by far Africa’s biggest country by population — down from 13.5 percent a decade before. In other African countries, like Niger, the percentage is even lower.’
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/02/world/africa/africa-coronavirus-deaths-underreporting.html
In September, the University of Washington COVID-19 model (IHME) predicted 410,000 Americans would be dead by January 1:
‘Jha says his disagreement with IHME’s methodology amounts to much more than a technical debate. “The problem here is if we come in at 250,000 or 300,000 dead [by year’s end in the United States] — which is still just enormously awful — political leaders are going to be able to do a victory dance and say, ‘Look, we were supposed to have 400,000 deaths. And because of all the great stuff we did, only 300,000 Americans died.'” says Jha.’
The actual outcome didn’t satisfy anyone. The U.S. death toll hit 354,000 by the January 1 deadline, which made both the IHME and the skeptics like Jha all look dumb. At the same time, no politicians did a victory dance.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/09/04/909783162/new-global-coronavirus-death-forecast-is-chilling-and-controversial
Mutant versions of COVID-19 have emerged in Britain and South Africa. They spread faster among people, and as such will kill higher numbers of people overall, even if they are not more lethal to any individual than the older strains of the virus.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/04/variants-and-vaccines
The COVID-19 vaccines are probably also less effective against the South African strain.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/29/jj-and-novavax-data
There remains a small, but real chance that COVID-19 is a Chinese-made biological weapon that leaked from one of their labs.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/a-real-investigation-into-the-origins-of-covid/