INDIANAPOLIS — Think about the epic years of your life.
If you’re part of the Greatest Generation, you remember 1941 and ’45, the beginning and end of World War II. For Boomers, it was President John F. Kennedy’s murder in 1963, more assassinations and civil strife in 1968 and the moon landing a year later. For millennials, it was the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. For Gen Z, it was the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection.
My job is to peer around corners, and 2027 is poised to be one of those blockbuster years that changes everything.
As we head to the polls between now and Tuesday, our choices for Congress, the Statehouse, and the General Assembly could have far-reaching, life-changing ramifications. Unsatisfied with the status quo? Perhaps a change is in order.
In 2027, the promise and peril of artificial intelligence — what The New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman calls the “second big bang” — will unfold in ways that could be life-altering.
In 2027, we will have the oldest president of our republic ever, with Donald J. Trump’s erratic war of choice, tariff regime that has alienated longtime allies like Canada and NATO partners, and apparent mental decline unfolding before our eyes. The result is an absolute wild card. We have a president fixated on men’s buttocks and renaming an ocean after himself. This behavior is not normal. And this man has access to the nuclear codes, with no James Schlesinger (the defense secretary under President Richard Nixon) poised to counter dark and drastic impulses.
In 2027, the Iran war, along with oil shocks and a reshuffling of the global order, will play out in ways unfathomable just months ago. Will Trump expand his war of choice against Iran after the midterm elections? Or will he, as neoconservative commentator Robert Kagan wrote in The Atlantic, “surrender,” with Iran using the midterm election pause to create a “new Iranian strait regime” that “may already be firmly in place.”
If Democrats take control of Congress, will Trump reject his lame-duck status and attempt the kind of high jinks that occurred Jan. 6, 2021? The red-letter date to watch is Jan. 3, 2027, when the 120th Congress is set to convene.
In 2027, will a Congress that has willingly ceded its power of the purse and oversight of the executive branch reassert itself? Will it deal with affordability or fall into an impeachment and investigation rut?
This year is already the hottest on record, and climate change will further stress the political order in 2027 — as the riots across France after wave after wave of unrelenting heat so vividly demonstrate.
On the Indiana front, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has altered healthcare access, removing tens of thousands from Obamacare and Medicaid rolls. Gov. Mike Braun’s 2025 tax reforms dramatically changed the state’s tax structure, with changes set to take effect over the next five years and more cuts to local governments and school districts.
General Assembly Republicans have signaled they want to end property taxes in 2027. The central question for voters between now and Nov. 3 is this: Will Republicans maintain their dominance, or can Hoosier Democrats break the GOP supermajorities to gain a seat at the table?
Axios co-founder and CEO Jim VandeHei described what could be “chain-reaction chaos” if several of those factors collide.
“We’ve navigated single-shot crises like the financial meltdown of 2008 and the pandemic of 2020,” VandeHei observed. “This next year will be different. The real risk is a chain reaction: One shock sets off others — faster than we can process, and caused by AI dynamics we don’t fully understand.”
Or as The Times’ Friedman put it: “We’ve created an artificial brain greater than the creator endowed us with. We have disconnected intelligence from human biology — that is a godlike act. We’re about to experience the greatest phase change in human history, and we are not ready.”
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang explained, “This is the part that people don’t see: AI is literally everywhere.”
This week, Anthropic released its 400-page prospectus for its $2 trillion initial public offering (that’s $2,000,000,000,000), which The Wall Street Journal described as a “mix of promise and peril.”
AI, the Anthropic prospectus explained, could usher in a new era of progress, transforming how people code, conduct research, build financial models, automate routine tasks and even help cure deadly maladies like cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease.
Anthropic added that “Sufficiently advanced AI systems could, if not developed, deployed, and operated with appropriate safeguards, oversight and security measures, pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.”
Friedman wrote this on Oct. 7, “I’m here to tell you: On Oct. 7, 2027, it’s going to be different. And on Oct. 7, 2028 — oh my God, I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like.”
Five megabillionaires (and trillionaire Elon Musk) are presiding over the “second big bang” technology with virtually no federal guardrails. Musk has contributed an astounding $455 million to Republicans this campaign cycle. Meanwhile, tech companies are building hundreds of mega data centers, sparking a populist and Hollywood backlash likely to intensify in 2027.
We have spent this year wrapping our brains around war, inflation, AI agents and plutocrats seizing various systems that stand to affect our daily lives.
The coming year is poised to be a hinge point in history — for our state, our nation, our planet and, perhaps, for humanity.
Brian A. Howey is an opinion columnist for State Affairs Indiana and the founder of Howey Politics Indiana. His writing offers analysis and opinion shaped by decades of experience covering Indiana politics. Email him at howey@stateaffairs.com.
