Burning Questions for 2026: Industry, AI, Geopolitics and the Future of Manufacturing

As we enter 2026, manufacturing leaders face a landscape shaped by converging disruptions: AI acceleration, geopolitical fragmentation, sustainability pressures and industrial policy.

Below are eight “burning questions” that I see defining what happens in 2026 and beyond—and why the answers matter.

1. Is the AI bubble going to burst?

Concerns around an “AI bubble” are intensifying. Analysts from Forbes and Euronews warn that valuations and expectations around generative AI (genAI) increasingly outpace real-world return on investment. Venture investors report fatigue as many genAI startups still lack clear paths to profitability. Physical constraints—energy shortages for data centers, data-processing bottlenecks and rising compute costs—add friction.

And yet, industrial and enterprise AI should remain resilient even if the speculative layer contracts. Many industrial AI solutions are model-agnostic, built on classical machine learning and domain-specific data. Enterprises have already invested billions into AI-ready infrastructure, and these sunk costs won’t evaporate because consumer GenAI hype slows.

Bottom line: A correction is likely. A collapse is not. Industrial AI is too embedded to vanish—it will mature while the hype deflates.

2. Will the tariff whirlwind continue—and which industries get hit next?

Tariffs have been keeping executives  up at night, with virtually no manufacturing or supply-chain organization left untouched. In a 2025 Fictiv survey of 254 manufacturing leaders, 96% expected President Donald Trump’s policies to impact their supply chains, with 57% citing costs and profitability as the primary concern.

At the same time, World Trade Organization data indicate that roughly one-fifth of global imports are now affected by tariffs or other trade-restrictive measures, a sharp increase since 2019.

Expect:

Automotive and EV supply chains: a primary U.S. pressure point, shaped by ongoing Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum and auto parts, offset by credits favoring U.S.-assembled vehicles.

Semiconductors: continued strategic caution rather than rapid escalation. While chip protectionism remains a policy objective, the U.S. is likely to delay new semiconductor tariffs to avoid downstream disruption in automotive and industrial supply chains.

Critical raw materials and components: selective de-escalation paired with long-term risk management. The U.S. moves to suspend expanded entity-list restrictions and renewed commitments to ease Chinese export controls on rare earths offer short-term relief for EV manufacturing, even as dependency reduction remains a strategic goal.

Outlook:
The “Game of Tariffs” continues, but in 2026 it is increasingly defined by U.S.-led calibration rather than outright confrontation.

3. Will humanoid robots take over industrial operations at scale?

Despite stunning demos and pilots—from BMW’s Figure 02 deployment in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to XPENG’s IRON humanoid and Tesla’s Optimus—the answer is: not anytime soon.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently warned that a “humanoid robot bubble” may be forming, with over 150 startups but very few industrial proofs. The challenge is not vision—it’s physics:

• Safety certifications remain slow and complex.
• Humanoids are fragile compared to fixed or wheeled robots.
• Costs and maintenance requirements are still prohibitive.
• Most industrial tasks do not require legs. Wheeled robots and robotic arms outperform humanoids in approximately 95% of real factory scenarios.

Conclusion: Humanoids will emerge in logistics, labs and special-use tasks, but wheeled automation and robotic arms will remain the industrial workhorses for the coming decade.

4. Does quantum computing bring real value to the industrial sector?

Despite optimistic projections—and Jensen Huang’s public walk-back on short-term quantum expectations—industrial-scale quantum advantage is still distant.

Key issues:

• Computing stability and error correction remain severe obstacles.
• Real industrial use cases (optimization, material science, energy systems) require fault-tolerant systems still several years away.
• Classical AI and high-performance computing continue to outperform quantum prototypes in nearly all practical domains.

Conclusion: Quantum computing holds massive long-term potential, but 2026 is unlikely to be the breakthrough year for mainstream industrial adoption.

5. Can we remove humans from AI- and agent-managed processes?

An emerging consensus: Humans remain in the loop, but their roles will shift.

A 2025 global survey (arXiv preprint) shows rising public demand for human oversight over AI systems, even as enterprises automate more processes. TechTarget and others report that hallucinations, model drift and edge-case failures keep organizations cautious. Dynatrace’s State of Observability 2025 notes that:

• 69% of AI-driven decisions are still manually verified by humans.
• 99% of AI governance leaders monitor AI decisions manually.

As AI agents cover more tasks and transactions, human verification slows systems down. This creates pressure for:

• Autonomous workflows
• Self-correcting models
• Machine-governed guardrails
• “Verified autonomy” frameworks

Trajectory:
In 2026, human-in-the-loop shifts from constant manual verification to strategic oversight. Humans increasingly focus on setting thresholds, validating edge cases and managing escalation paths — not approving every decision. AI systems handle routine decisions autonomously, while humans supervise at the boundary conditions.

Full autonomy will emerge only in specific, well-bounded domains where risk, regulation and data maturity allow it. Rather than disappearing, humans move “up the stack,” providing governance and judgment while machines take over execution.

6. Cybersecurity: Who’s the next victim?

2025 demonstrated that even well-funded enterprises remain vulnerable. Jaguar Land Rover reported severe production disruptions after a major cyberattack:

• A £485 million loss (vs. £398 million profit the previous year).
• Manufacturing lines offline for weeks due to IT system shutdowns.
• Full recovery taking well into early October.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report places AI-driven cyber threats, identity attacks and misinformation among the most severe near-term risks.

Key dynamics:

• Companies still overspend on traditional IT defenses relative to OT risks.
• AI-integrated industrial environments create new attack surfaces.
• AI-powered attacks (deepfakes, synthetic IDs, automated social engineering) scale faster than defenses.

Takeaway:
Cybersecurity in 2026 is a precarious environment. Every enterprise needs a “code-red plan,” including offline recovery capabilities, network segmentation, AI-enabled anomaly detection and rapid isolation.

7. Does the U.S. keep its technology dominance?

The U.S. maintains major leads in:

• Semiconductors
• Advanced AI chips
• Hyperscale cloud infrastructure
• Leading AI research institutions

But the landscape is shifting.

Open-source AI, including powerful 2025 models from outside the U.S., has lowered global entry barriers. Business Insider reports that CEOs expect “headline blowups” and market shakeouts across both U.S. and international players. Meanwhile, China accelerates in applied AI and robotics, and Middle Eastern economies expand “AI diplomacy,” investing heavily in compute infrastructure.

Yet semiconductors—the “picks and shovels of the AI gold rush”—remain controlled largely by the U.S. and its allies (Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Netherlands).

Conclusion:
The U.S. maintains its lead into 2026, but the gap narrows. Dominance becomes contested rather than absolute.

8. Is sustainability still a priority, or has industry moved on?

2025 is a year of contradictions:

• The U.S. political shift toward “drill baby drill” reflects renewed emphasis on domestic fossil energy.
• The European Union continues pushing for reduced dependence on critical materials and stronger recycling ecosystems.
• Corporations keep sustainability in their strategies—but execution lags as cost pressures, energy prices and geopolitical risks rise.
• The global boom in AI and semiconductor manufacturing increases demand for electricity, rare materials and water—putting climate targets under strain.

Verdict:
Sustainability is “still a thing”—but increasingly in tension with industrial policy, economic competition and resource scarcity. The next two years will determine whether ESG commitments survive the changing geopolitical and economic winds.

The pace of technological, geopolitical and industrial change makes precise forecasting nearly impossible. Organizations that anticipate corrections and embrace flexibility will navigate 2026 more successfully than those chasing certainty.