We’re living in strange, high-stakes times, and sometimes, it feels like the long-term risks we face don’t always make headlines. So, when someone recently asked Reddit: “What is, in your opinion, the biggest silent threat the world is facing right now?” I was curious to see what people had to say.
The responses were unsettling, surprisingly aligned, and deeply relevant. Here’s what everyone shared:
1.“The erosion of trust in information.”
2.“I don’t know if it’s technically the same thing or slightly different, but in a similar vein, the rejection of science and trained professionals.”
3.“Probably misinformation. Not just the fake news, but how easy it is to manipulate what people believe.”
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4.“Anti-intellectualism. By far one of the greatest threats to humanity and the world as we know it.”
5.“We’re losing the lessons we learned after the world wars, and are slowly making the same mistakes again.”
6.“The disappearance of many pollinator species. We hear a lot about global warming, but the extinction of species is also super dangerous for life on earth.”
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Without pollinators, we risk losing more than 80% of flowering plants that rely on them to reproduce, a loss that could trigger ripple effects up the food chain. Today, research suggests that more than 22% of native pollinators in North America are at risk of extinction due to habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change. Planting native flowering plants can help support their survival.
7.“Multiresistant bacteria.”
The overuse of antibiotics in both healthcare and agriculture is accelerating the evolution of drug-resistant bacteria. Experts warn that if antimicrobial resistance goes unchecked, it could have devastating consequences, with estimates suggesting death rates could double by 2050, with nearly 40 million deaths over the next 25 years.
8.“Social media and its influence on the younger generations, especially.”
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9.“AI. I’m not kidding either.”
Some leading AI scientists warn that AI “agents” or “agentic AI,” aka AI systems that operate autonomously without constant human supervision, could prove dangerous if they do not behave in line with human goals. AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, notably called one of the “godfathers of AI,” has warned that some agentic AI models are already edging towards “dangerous behaviors” traits such as “deception, cheating, lying, hacking, self-preservation, and more generally, goal misalignment.”
10.“Lack of empathy in favor of power and money.”
11.“Private equity buying housing. In 20 years, you’ll either have to get land/property passed down to you through inheritance or rent property for the rest of your life.”
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12.“Propaganda. Information is becoming more and more centralized every day. The same megacorps own all the news networks, the same oligarchs own all of the social media platforms, and the same holding companies own all of traditional media. This makes it ludicrously easy to brainwash the masses, to mislead them, to ‘steer’ them.”
“Let me give a few examples. How many of you can name five brands of headphones? How many of you get your news from a non-centralized website? … We live in a much, MUCH darker timeline than anyone realizes. We’ve eradicated critical thinking, cynicism, and skepticism and replaced it with force-fed slop, served hot and ready to quite literally everyone. The consequences of this will be magnified exponentially as AI slop continues to saturate the internet.”
13.“Wealth inequality. It is the cause of many things mentioned here. After WW2, wealth inequality was at a low because most people in the west had lost a lot, if not everything, which created the role of the state as a provider for those in need. This was supported by a broad sense of community and camaraderie. Now, we’re slowly moving toward the system (as was the case in most of our history) where the 1% owns everything.”
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“Since the ’80s, we’ve started moving to a system where individualism and personal accumulation of status and wealth are more important than societal and community support. As a result, it’s become an everyone-for-themselves-and-fuck-the-rest system. As a result, wealth has started accumulating slowly at a select group of people who were able to make it (entrepreneurs, politicians) or had a head start (born into wealth). This has resulted in the top 1% class of people owning more wealth than the nation’s entire middle class.”
14.“The wealth gap. The richest are on pace to become trillionaires within a decade, while the average American cannot afford to buy a home. A plan that’s been in motion by the elites for some time.”
“And poor people defending the wealth gap. It’s pretty crazy.”
15.“Fascist/autocratic ideas fomenting among their supporters in online circles. Yes, the loudest of them are feeling emboldened to be more public with their views because they feel safe in their online spaces, but the algorithms are definitely providing fertile grounds for hateful tribalism.”
Beth Kuchera / Getty Images/iStockphoto
16.And lastly, “The perfect storm of climate change, infectious diseases, economic disparity, and the prosperity doctrine.”
What are your thoughts? Have any others to add? Let us know in the comments.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length, clarity, and accuracy.
