Mid-September brought the convergence of three big issues for investors: oil prices over $100/barrel (keeping headline inflation sticky), surging bond yields (with the 10-year Treasury over 5%), and sudden apocalyptic warnings that unbridled AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade.” The threat of a resulting AI slowdown sent semiconductor stocks into freefall while software stocks — the feared losers in the AI takeover — surged.

But to me, this sudden AI panic seems like just the latest in a long history of genuine risks being extrapolated into imminent existential catastrophes. Just looking back over the past century, examples are legion: