20% of all ops in UK are robot-assisted already, which will rise to 95% by 2035. This is just a small part of the AI revolution taking place across health care, which will save 10 million lives a year by 2035. - 25% reduction in operative time - 30% decrease in intraoperative complications - 40% increase in surgical precision - 15% shorter recovery time - 20% higher surgeon workflow - 10% cut in healthcare costs.

30th April 2026 comment on posts below:  Europe continues to be at major risk of a further Russian miscalculation, but at same time, President Putin now faces multiple additional challenges, which are growing rapidly, are interconnected, and will be increasingly hard to deal with:

These include 

- Static front lines - despite media reporting in Russia, changes very minor - a snail would reach Kiev faster than speed of advances over the last year

- Poor access to accurate information about what actually happening - typical in dictatorships where bad news is often hidden

- Unsustainable losses of troops and equipment - huge numbers of deaths

- Rapidly growing techno-power of Ukraine long range and short range drones, astonishing speed of innovation

- Growing resentment in cities like Moscow from web disruption and censorship etc - a threat to economic growth

- Very high inflation and interest rates - unsustainable without eventual economic collapse

- Disruption of oil and gas exports - attacks, seizure of tankers, sanctions

- Sanctions resulting in higher import prices of huge range of vital materials / / components / products 

- Poorly developed manufacturing base - plus corruption at many levels

- Multiple loan defaults by companies starting to hit large banks

- Shortage of skilled workers - due to huge military deployment

- Even greater shortage of talented executives - 1m migrated shortly after conflict began

- Returning soldiers from battle to towns and villages with severe injuries and resentment about treatment of troops on front lines

- Growing numbers of bereaved parents, many with very disturbing stories

- Gossip about front-line abuse / atrocities / corruption undermining troop morale

- Collapse in fertility rates

- Rising alcoholism to record levels

- Impact of huge numbers of criminals released from prison causing challenges on front line and local communities

- Psychological trauma in large numbers of Russian troops as a result of combat exposure in terrible conditions, overseen by uncaring or corrupt superior officers

The greatest challenge of all

We can debate which of the above are most significant, but the greatest issue for President Putin and his leadership is something else entirely....

What’s next in the battles driven by exploding drones? As I predicted in 2 books, drones have given vast destructive powers to small groups with low budgets. Expect massive investment in anti-drone tech, particularly lasers like UK's DragonFire and the U.S. Helios. Until widely available, every "normal military campaign" will face huge added risks.

Swarms of small, AI-driven drones will always strike targets more easily than missiles can destroy them. Lasers can neutralize thousands of drones with a limited number of systems, costing only a few dollars per hit. However, such weapons will be expensive, require very high power, yet must be highly mobile to avoid being destroyed themselves.

To grasp the immense scale of the challenge, consider aerial displays in China, where 5,000 to 10,000 synchronized drones replace fireworks. Imagine 20,000 attack drones over a single area, each with an explosive charge, each independently controlled by AI-linked cameras, making their own targeting decisions - even when GPS and online contact is jammed.

Such AI will be trained using 1 million hours of drone operator videos from Ukraine. That's a huge amount of learning for AI defence systems.

THIS IS YOUR FUTURE: beyond chaos, media headlines and market frenzy.

The biggest of all MEGATRENDS is this: 1 billion children alive today. 85% in emerging markets. Where they live, what they do, will dominate our future world AND 1 billion people will migrate to cities in the next 30 years, many across borders - driving retail, housing, infrastructure, transport, health, education and global economic growth. Demographics will have an even greater impact on our future world than innovation, AI, trade barriers or anything else. But changes relatively slowly. Part of Futurist Keynote in Mexico City for Logistics World.