One Guy's Fake AI Doomsday Essay Crashed the Stock Market and Then Citadel Had to Step In

This might be the wildest AI story of the year so far. A researcher named James van Geelen published an essay on Substack called "The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis" that basically predicted the end of the economy as we know it. It went mega-viral. And it actually started moving markets.

The essay paints a terrifying picture: AI replaces all the white-collar workers, the S&P 500 crashes 38%, unemployment hits 10.2%, and the entire economy spirals into chaos. It describes a nightmare scenario where laid-off workers default on mortgages, private credit markets collapse, and entire software companies go bankrupt because AI can just build their products for free.

Here's where it gets crazy. The essay got so much attention that Ken Griffin's Citadel Securities, one of the biggest market makers in the world, actually published a full rebuttal. Their macro strategist Frank Flight wrote a detailed report using real economic data to prove the doomsday scenario is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how economies actually work.

Citadel pointed to job posting data showing software engineer demand is actually UP 11% year over year in early 2026. Not exactly the collapse the essay predicted.

But here's the thing: even if the essay was wrong on the specifics, the fact that a single Substack post could rattle Wall Street enough to trigger a response from Citadel Securities tells you something about how nervous people are about AI right now.

As reported by Fortune.

Source: Fortune