The Economist Who Predicted Two Major Crashes Is Raising Questions About AI That Nobody Wants to Answer
In a New Video Presentation, the Economist and Former CIA Advisor Draws a Detailed and Uncomfortable Parallel Between Today's AI Frenzy and the Technology Bubble That Devastated Investors in the Late 1990s
Baltimore, MD, March 30, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Every generation of investors believes its moment is different. That the technology is too transformative, the opportunity too large, the stakes too high for the usual rules to apply. Jim Rickards has watched that conviction form — and unravel — more than once. And in a newly released video presentation, he argues it may be forming again.
Drawing on nearly five decades of experience at the intersection of financial markets, government policy, and economic strategy, Rickards presents what he describes as a methodical comparison between the dynamics driving today's artificial intelligence boom and those that defined the internet bubble of the late 1990s — a period that ended with one of the most devastating market corrections in modern history.
His argument is not that AI is without merit. It is that merit and market rationality are two very different things — and that confusing them has proven costly before.
A Pattern Rickards Says He Recognizes
The foundation of Rickards' presentation is pattern recognition — the discipline of looking past the surface excitement of a market moment and examining the underlying dynamics that have historically preceded serious dislocations.
In his analysis, the AI boom shares several defining characteristics with the internet era. A breakthrough technology capturing the imagination of investors. Heavy and accelerating infrastructure spending. Valuations increasingly disconnected from near-term return potential. And a widespread conviction that this time, the old rules simply don't apply.
That last element, Rickards suggests, is perhaps the most telling parallel of all. In the presentation he examines how "breakthrough technologies often attract big promises, heavy spending, and rising expectations that can eventually move too far ahead of reality" — a dynamic he observed firsthand during the internet boom and believes is clearly visible in AI today.
The Infrastructure Trap
One of the most specific parallels Rickards draws in the presentation concerns infrastructure investment — the massive buildout of physical and technical capacity that tends to accompany major technology booms.
In the late 1990s, the conviction that the internet would transform everything led companies to pour billions into fiber optic cable, server capacity, and networking infrastructure — spending that ultimately far outpaced what the market could absorb. The technology was sound. The investment calculus was not.
Rickards sees echoes of that dynamic in the current race to build AI data centers, acquire advanced chips, and expand cloud capacity. The scale of capital being committed, he argues, reflects the same winner-take-all logic that drove overbuilding in the dotcom era — and carries the same potential to leave investors exposed when the pace of spending proves unsustainable.
When Innovation Outpaces Economics
A thread running throughout the presentation is Rickards' distinction between the value of a technology and the value of the companies built around it at any given moment in time.
He is careful to acknowledge that artificial intelligence represents a genuine and significant technological development. His concern is not with the technology itself but with what he describes as the tendency of investors, in moments of genuine innovation, to conclude that valuation no longer matters — that the transformative nature of what they are witnessing exempts the market from the discipline of economics.
That conclusion, he observes, was reached during the internet boom. It proved to be wrong in ways that took years to fully reckon with. In the presentation, Rickards notes that "fast innovation can also lead to sharp market resets" — a lesson he believes the current moment calls for investors to revisit seriously.
The Breadth of the Risk
Rickards also addresses in the presentation what he views as the wider economic implications of an AI correction — drawing again on the dotcom experience as a reference point.
The internet bust did not simply damage technology investors. It reverberated across the broader economy, affecting industries and individuals with no direct exposure to the stocks that collapsed. Rickards argues that the AI boom, having become similarly embedded in broader economic activity, carries comparable potential for wide-reaching disruption if the cycle turns.
It is a sobering historical observation — and one he believes is being largely overlooked in the current environment.
About Jim Rickards and Paradigm Press
Jim Rickards has spent decades across Wall Street and international finance. Throughout his career, he has advised U.S. government agencies, including the Pentagon and CIA, on financial markets and economic strategy. He has been a direct participant in some of the most significant market events of the modern era.
Rickards' research and market commentary are published through Paradigm Press, a financial publishing firm that has earned a 4.8-star rating across nearly 2,000 reader reviews. Paradigm Press produces independent market analysis and financial education focused on giving everyday investors the tools and perspective to understand what is actually happening in the markets — and why it matters to them.
Derek Warren Public Relations Manager Paradigm Press Group Email: dwarren@paradigmpressgroup.com
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