We’re facing a new financial fragility, and it’s nothing to do with questionable credit deals or even the so-called AI bubble. It’s something much more opaque, insidious, and systemic. It’s called the agentic cascade.

AI agents are wonderful things. They can be tasked to monitor all sorts of digital systems, from internet traffic to electrical grids to market movements, and react autonomously to signals and events. It’s what they are programmed to do. And they’re very quick and very efficient, executing their decisions long before humans have even noticed that anything’s amiss.

But that’s where the problem lies. If an automated warehouse agent detects a surge in demand – like a Black Friday promotion – and spins up additional capacity, which is interpreted by the power company agent as an anomaly, triggering demand limiting to the supercharging network, leading to robotaxi ‘outages’… Then you have a cascade of agentic actions that could have entirely unforeseen results.

And the financial system is the most vulnerable. Now that most stock markets trade 24/7 and are integrated globally, there’s no such thing as ‘after hours’ to force everyone to take a breath. Markets have their own agents to protect them, and avoid flash crashes, but they’re not in the business of protecting each other. My agent maximizes trades on my behalf, and yours does the same for you. Exclusively.

Black Swan events are random, unlikely, and totally unpredictable. AI agents can recognize patterns, analyze results and model outcomes. But they can’t predict how other private agents will react to new data.

So, don’t let AI agents control your financial future. They’re not prepared for the agentic cascade.