...Looking Forward 2026

The Oxford University Press word of the year for 2025 was "rage bait," explained as "online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content.”To get in on this action, we will make our bold predictions for 2026 - with our own more measured take.

AI and the Infrastructure Boom

While the benefits and downsides of AI are a subject of intense debate, one of the positive side effects of the data center boom is the increased investment in high-performance computing, fusion power generators, and other critical infrastructure. However, these discussions frequently overlook timing - an invisible but vital pillar of data center operations. Now there is a movement towards data centers in space to access the direct energy from the sun - and they will need timing synchronization as well.

GPS: Old Habits Die Hard

GPS has been an economic engine for the world, spawning over $2 trillion dollars of economic benefit. But in the process, we have become too reliant on this vulnerable signal - holding back the improvements needed for future networks, autonomous vehicles, and other applications.This weaning process, which started in February 2022, will continue into 2026. Last summer, as part of Operation Spiderweb, Ukrainian drones initially used GPS signals to help destroy Russian bombers deep inside Russian territory. Prior to this operation, Russia had been jamming GPS only in conflict zones and around critical infrastructure. Now, they are extending this jamming inside Russia - and other governments are taking note.Some experts believe that soon GPS will be purposefully denied around military and critical infrastructure, and, in time, all major urban areas will be GPS dead zones. Another forcing function is concern about using a US military asset that has a local off-switch that is being used more frequently. Sovereign and commercial alternatives are coming - including from Xairos.

The Blurred Line Between Space and Ground

For nearly seventy years, we have dreamed of space as another territory to explore and conquer. Thanks to the rapid commercialization of space over the last two decades, that future may have finally arrived.There will be a lot of opportunities to change your internet service thanks to the commercial mega-constellations coming online, as well as plans for space tourism, lunar travel, navigation, imagery, and even data centers and power generation.But not everybody is happy with this global access to communications- increasingly, commercial and military space assets are in the crosshairs for a future conflict (see below in "The More You Know...").

Quantum Comes Out of the Lab

Quantum development will continue to advance rapidly in 2026, spurred along by unprecedented private and government investment. With that, however, comes a growing push to show a commercial return on this investment. This challenge is especially true for quantum computers. Some estimates suggest that the "earliest commercial quantum applications will need several million qubits" and "could be within reach around 2035–2040," and the so-called Q-Day - the point where quantum computers can crack most public key infrastructure - is at least five years away. But quantum sensing and communications (such as those Xairos is developing) are more advanced and already have shown the ability the solve real-world problems, especially for position, navigation, and timing (PNT). The value of a quantum-enabled PNT infrastructure lies not only in the security and resiliency inherent in quantum mechanics, but also in its promise of improved accuracy. The benefits of more accurate positioning knowledge are obvious: in a world of flying taxis and self-driving cars, much better accuracy is needed than five meters. But with more accurate timing, new applications could be unlocked that don't exist today, including quantum networks, 6G networks, more efficient data centers, low latency financial networks, distributed sensors and radars, and data fusion for industrial automation.

Last Week's Theme: 2025 Looking Back...