INKURATED

Five Trends That Shaped 2025

Governments Fell From the Street, Not the Ballot Box
One of the most striking features of 2025 was how many governments weakened or collapsed because of protests rather than elections. From South Asia to Europe, public anger built quickly and spilled into protests that weakened or toppled governments. These were rarely grand ideological movements. More often, they were sparked by corruption scandals, economic stress, price hikes, or a single triggering event.

Speed mattered more than scale. Social media, youth mobilisation and deep distrust in institutions meant governments lost legitimacy faster than they could react. Traditional warning signs such as polls, coalition math or parliamentary strength failed to capture the shift until it was already underway.

What set 2025 apart from earlier protest waves was the outcome. Unlike the uprisings of the 2010s, which were often crushed or followed by prolonged instability, many movements this time were narrower in aim. They pushed for resignations, policy reversals or resets within existing systems, and then receded rather than turning into permanent street politics.
AI Reshaped the Terms of Work
The year 2025 carries the popularity of AI, especially LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini, into the mainstream. What began as tools for experimentation now function as everyday utilities. AI is increasingly being used to perform repetitive tasks and work that requires limited strategic input, from drafting emails and summarizing documents to basic coding, data analysis and customer responses. This naturally raises concerns around entry level and some mid-management roles that traditionally perform these functions.

From helping people write emails, code, and optimizing fashion and beauty trends to improving military intelligence and operational efficiency, the near omnipresence of AI is reshaping how work is viewed, with efficiency increasingly taking centre stage.

What is far less visible is its impact on jobs. The shift is surreptitious. Roles are not disappearing overnight, but anxiety is building as workers sense AI creeping into functions once seen as safe. Employees are increasingly using AI tools to stay productive, often sharing context, judgment and domain knowledge drawn from their own roles, in effect training systems that could one day replicate parts of their work.

Governments and institutions are largely focusing on regulating future risks, while adoption inside offices and organizations moves faster than policy. AI is no longer just a technological marvel. It is becoming a story about labor, leverage and how efficiency and productivity are quietly reshaping power in the workplace.
Growth Benefited Assets, Not Incomes
In 2025, the global economy grew at a modest pace of around 3 percent. Trade fragmentation, tariffs, sanctions and tight financial conditions weighed on growth, but the system held. Inflation cooled unevenly, financial markets avoided sharp corrections, and capital continued to flow into select sectors. By conventional indicators, the global economy remained afloat.

But that stability masked a deeper divide. While parts of the economy slowed, asset values held up or rose. Equities, private markets and prime real estate continued to generate wealth, creating a growing class of everyday millionaires not through wages, but through exposure to capital. Wealth compounded quietly for those who already had access.

For many households globally, especially across the middle class, income growth lagged even as asset values surged elsewhere. Housing stayed expensive. Food and service costs remained elevated. Wages rose in some places, but rarely fast enough to restore purchasing power or a sense of security. Layoffs in technology, media and white-collar sectors reinforced the feeling that stability was uneven and increasingly fragile.

This divergence is quietly reshaping expectations. As growth has benefited a narrower segment of society, everyday effort feels less rewarding for many. Trust weakens, patience wears thin, and resentment accumulates over time, not through sudden collapse, but through the steady normalisation of inequality.
Green Transition Turned Into a Geopolitical Game
In 2025, investment in clean energy reached record levels. Global energy investment rose to about $3.3 trillion, with more than $2.2 trillion flowing into clean energy, more than double what went into fossil fuels. Solar capacity expanded rapidly, electric vehicle production scaled up, and battery manufacturing spread across regions. Governments announced ambitious industrial plans and mobilised capital toward decarbonisation. By headline indicators, the transition appeared to be advancing.

But beneath that progress, the nature of the transition shifted. Instead of fostering cooperation, clean energy became an arena for strategic competition between major global powers. Control over critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt and rare earths began to matter as much as emissions targets. China tightened restrictions on exports of key materials, while other large economies responded by reshoring supply chains, raising trade barriers and subsidising domestic production. Global supply networks increasingly fractured along geopolitical lines.

For smaller economies without mineral reserves or manufacturing scale, this shift made access to green technology more expensive and uncertain. Tariffs multiplied. Export controls spread. Technology transfer slowed. The language focused on energy security and self-reliance, but the effect was to concentrate control over essential inputs in the hands of a few powerful states.

What emerged was a quieter but important shift in climate politics. The transition moved away from being a shared global effort and toward competition shaped by power and leverage. Investment flowed not only to cut emissions, but to strengthen strategic position. Climate goals remained intact in speeches, but cooperation weakened in practice. The green transition continued, but increasingly on terms set by major powers rather than through collective coordination.
Information Warfare Became Mainstream
In 2025, information stopped being something people sought and became something deployed against them. Elections across dozens of countries unfolded amid waves of AI-generated content, coordinated disinformation campaigns, and algorithmic manipulation that moved faster than institutions could track. Deepfakes became harder to distinguish from reality. Bots amplified divisive narratives. By the time fact-checkers responded, the damage was already done.

But the scale of manipulation masked a deeper shift in how information functioned. It was no longer primarily a tool for understanding or debate. It became a weapon for destabilising opponents, delegitimising elections, and fracturing shared reality. Romania's presidential election was annulled after a candidate surged from single digits to first place through a coordinated TikTok campaign. Moldova's elections were marred by foreign interference so severe that international observers flagged serious concerns. Across multiple countries, candidates who barely registered in polls suddenly dominated online spaces through networks that appeared organic but were manufactured.

For voters trying to navigate these environments, the ground kept shifting. What looked like grassroots momentum was often fabricated. What seemed like independent voices were coordinated networks. The barrier to creating convincing fake content collapsed as tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney became accessible at minimal cost. Platforms promised accountability but enforcement lagged months behind election cycles. Institutions tasked with defending information integrity saw their funding cut. The tools to verify truth existed but operated at a fraction of the speed and scale of the disinformation itself.

This divergence is quietly reshaping democratic life. As information warfare has become cheaper, faster and more sophisticated, the ability to establish basic facts has eroded. Trust fragments when coordinated campaigns can rewrite narratives overnight. Elections become contests not of ideas or candidates, but of who can most effectively flood the information space. What emerges is not chaos but a steady recalibration: shared truth becomes optional, manipulation becomes expected, and democracy operates in an environment where information serves less to inform than to influence, destabilise and control.