Read the docsThe paperBrowse the sourceDownload .zip

When the Buildout Breaks

How likely is an AI investment bust, and how bad would it be? Models, simulations, a live-data dashboard and the working paper behind them.

Not investment advice. Everything here is model output for analysis, resting on stated judgment calls. It is not a forecast or a recommendation. The paper, the code and the documentation were written by Claude (Anthropic) at the direction of Yassin Khalil.

What it answers

Two events are tracked separately:

• Market crash: chip stocks (SOX) fall 40% or more from a peak.
• Economic bust: end-customer AI spending falls 15% or more below the path the buildout was planned for.

Four independent estimates (a revenue simulation, history, market prices, warning indicators) are pooled into one set of odds. Two damage models (a 12-sector contagion network and a weekly agent-based model of firms, lenders and policy) then show who loses what if a bust happens.

Published results (inputs as of 5 October 2026)

Weighted by those odds: expected credit losses of $23–57B depending on the model; a neocloud fails in 22–32% of futures; no bank fails in any simulated future. These come from the pooled odds (ai_bust_probability.py), the sector network (Model D) and the agent-based model (Model F). Read the limitations before quoting any number, in particular that the odds hinge on whether credit markets (which imply about 11%) are right.

Quick start

Python 3.12, about 2 CPU cores.

git clone https://github.com/YassinKkhalil4/when-the-buildout-breaks.git && cd when-the-buildout-breaks
bash setup.sh                      # venv, dependencies, the 10 unit tests, an offline end-to-end run
export AI_BUST_UA="Your Name your@email"   # SEC requires a descriptive User-Agent
python ai_bust_live.py refresh --live      # pull live data and recompute (about 90 s)
bash start.sh                      # dashboard on 127.0.0.1:8000
python build_site.py               # build the paper page, served at /paper

The dashboard has no login. It binds to 127.0.0.1 only; view it over an SSH tunnel (ssh -L 8000:127.0.0.1:8000 user@server). To publish it, put a reverse proxy in front that allows only GET and HEAD and blocks /api/refresh (see deploy/Caddyfile.example).

Reproducing the results

Seeds are fixed. Parts I and III reproduce the published odds exactly; Model F shows small run-to-run differences even with fixed seeds (about $0.2B on a $22.6B expected loss in the re-run), so treat small Model F differences as noise. Back up a result file before re-running the command that overwrites it. The 6 October 2026 reproduction is in probability_results_rerun_20261006.json and Section 18 of the paper.

What is in the repository

Documentation: overview and simulation register · Models A–E · Part I and Model G · Model F · live pipeline · data and assumptions · the paper

Known limitations

• The live fetchers have run against the real servers once. Stooq now answers with a bot-check page, so Yahoo Finance is the working price feed.
• Credit spreads, option-implied volatility, lab revenue and neocloud backlog have no free feed; they come from manual_inputs.json and are flagged as manual. Model G stays at its paper calibration.
• Model F ablations are noisy and only loosely paired across seeds, and its no-shock baseline is not quiet. Its "S&P 500" is a synthetic index, and its lender network is stylised.
• The dashboard's contagion panel averages over all shock draws; it is not conditional on a bust.
• The paper's conclusions depend on judgment calls it states and varies (when the boom began, how a shortfall maps onto Model F, how strongly the Fed, sovereign buyers and the power grid respond).

Credit and citation

If you use the code, the results or the text, please credit the work.

• Required by the license (Apache-2.0, section 4): if you redistribute this work or a derivative, keep the LICENSE and the attribution in NOTICE.
• Asked as a courtesy: say that you used it and cite the paper:

Khalil, Y. (2026). When the Buildout Breaks: How Likely Is an AI Bust, and How Bad Would It Be? Working paper, Edition 2. Written by Claude (Anthropic).

@techreport{khalil2026buildout,
  author      = {Khalil, Yassin},
  title       = {When the Buildout Breaks: How Likely Is an AI Bust, and How Bad Would It Be?},
  year        = {2026},
  type        = {Working paper, Edition 2},
  note        = {Written by Claude (Anthropic). Code and results: see repository}
}

GitHub also reads CITATION.cff ("Cite this repository").

License

• Code (*.py, *.sh, dashboard.html, deploy/, tests): Apache License 2.0. It permits use, modification and redistribution, including commercially, provided you keep the license and the NOTICE, mark changes, and accept that it comes with no warranty.
• Paper, documentation and published results (docs/, working_paper.md, *.json, fixtures/): Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. Reuse is allowed with credit, a link to the license, and an indication of changes.
• Third-party data you download with the pipeline (U.S. Treasury, SEC EDGAR, FRED, Yahoo Finance) remains under its provider's terms. The repository does not redistribute raw feeds.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Please do not commit the live_history.db database, credentials or server addresses.