- Its 2026 survey is strong on what emerging technologies can do, but the central question now is who controls them
- McKinsey’s clients want to co-opt that control. Perhaps that’s why the report authors say so little about who holds it, or how
- The authors dismiss the architecture of governance as an abstract “open question” — but control is being hardcoded now
McKinsey’s “Technology Trends Outlook 2026” catalog of industrial evolution. It tracks 14 key vectors — from AI infrastructure and agentic software development to robotics, energy grids and advanced connectivity — backed by patent filings, capital investments and employment data. The report even grasps a reality that lesser forecasters miss: artificial intelligence is spilling into the physical world, changing the demands placed on hardware, power distribution and skilled labor.
So, that’s nice.
And yet, the single most critical trend of our era is conspicuously erased from the list.
McKinsey treats the architecture of technological control, aka operational sovereignty, as a footnote — relegating it to vague “Key Uncertainties” and framing governance as an “open question.” The rules of machine autonomy, audit capabilities and human intervention thresholds are presented as unresolved dilemmas for tomorrow.
They are anything but.
The battle for system control is here, now and concrete. Every day, corporate software architects, enterprise lawyers and network engineers are drawing the battle lines. Global telecom carriers are fighting to keep their edge networks from becoming dumb pipes, while hyperscalers push to own the underlying data center stack and custom accelerators. Industries are trying to protect their operational independence from vendor lock-in, while regulators everywhere outside the U.S. rewrite compliance, privacy and safety mandates to catch up to autonomous workflows. As I have argued before, the real prize is not infrastructure; it is the control layer above the infrastructure.
By treating “control” as a minor adoption hurdle, McKinsey dodges a more dangerous question: who owns the mechanisms that govern these systems once they are unleashed?
This is why sovereignty in an AI-driven economy is more complex than locking data inside a national border. It requires authority over the systems that interpret that data and act upon it. An enterprise or government must be able to inspect automated decisions, enforce hard limits, change infrastructure suppliers and retain a clear path to human intervention — the off switch.
A blueprint for the monopolists
McKinsey’s calculated silence is neither an accident nor a simple oversight. Its ultimate loyalty belongs to a premium client base obsessed with absolute market capture — monopolizing critical data, dominating physical infrastructure, manipulating supply chains and dictating autonomous machine actions. These empires hire McKinsey to build the explicit blueprints for their operational takeover. The last thing they want is that corporate playbook broadcast across the internet.
McKinsey’s client roster reads like a Rolodex of compromise: a definitive guide to global autocracy, systemic violence and illicit influence.
The firm has cashed checks from the CIA and ICE, ran an efficiency overhaul for Israel’s Defense Ministry/the IDF, and provided the Saudi government with information used to imprison dissidents. Its expertise has quietly supported regimes from Erdoğan’s Turkey to Yanukovych-era Ukraine, while simultaneously servicing Russian state-controlled monoliths like Gazprom and VEB. This mercenary approach reached its apex (or nadir, depending on your perspective) when U.S. lawmakers called the firm to account for a staggering corporate high-wire act: aggressively advising the Pentagon while concurrently consulting for state-linked organizations inside China.
And let us not forget the mountainous financial penalties. McKinsey agreed to pay $650 million to resolve criminal and civil investigations into its advice to Purdue Pharma on pumping OxyContin sales. Its South African subsidiary separately agreed to a $122.85 million criminal penalty over a scheme to bribe Eskom and Transnet officials for consulting contracts. And, of course, there is Enron — “the house that McKinsey built” — which the firm held up as a model before its fraudulent collapse. Enron and its initial group of bankrupt affiliates listed $63.4 billion in assets before the entire thing went poof.
What unites this catalog of unsavory clients and compromised business practices is control: over markets, public institutions, information and the millions of people affected by decisions made behind closed doors.
McKinsey & Company has earned its reputation for opacity and political entanglement. There is no question that the firm recognizes the money to be made advising clients on digital infrastructure, and it is paddling furiously to sell its expertise. But you will not find its recommended strategies for co-opting control in the pages of its “Technology Trends Outlook.” That would strip away the velvet consulting glove to expose the iron fist beneath.
This is all difficult to square with the ethical doctrine associated with its founders, James O. McKinsey and Marvin Bower. What would they make of the firm now? Garth Algar of “Wayne’s World” had a verdict for this level of absurdity: “What a shitty circus.”
No one likes to get half the story. My advice to anyone reading tech analysis today is to consider the agenda behind the authors' narrative. Enron, much?
Learn more about operational sovereignty
Introducing: The Unified Infrastructure Stack
Can you turn it off? The new test of tech sovereignty
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Security vies to become the new control plane of the enterprise
Stephen M. Saunders MBE is a communications analyst and USPTO-registered inventor examining how digital infrastructure — 5G, cloud and AI — is reshaping industry, power and society, as well as underpinning the emerging, ubiquitous global digital economy. As anchor of FNTV and a longtime industry insider, he focuses less on growth narratives and more on execution, risk and how hyperscale technology is distorting markets, governance and society at scale.
Opinion pieces from industry experts, analysts or our editorial staff do not represent the opinions of Fierce Network.