NIKOLA TESLA'S ANNUAL REPORT 2026 To the Engineers of the Future By Nikola Tesla
New York, January 2026
Another year has passed.
The machines have become faster.
The calculating engines now perform trillions of operations in a single second.
Artificial brains compose poetry, create music, and answer questions that even their creators scarcely understand.
And yet I find that mankind is still unable to answer the same questions that occupied me more than a century ago:
What is electricity?
What is gravitation?
What is the medium through which the forces of nature are transmitted?
The Reign of the Mathematicians In my time, a new priesthood began to take possession of science.
Their instruments were not measuring devices.
Their instruments were equations.
I was told that space could curve.
I was told that matter could be transformed into energy.
I was told that time itself could slow down.
Then, as now, I replied:
A mathematical description is not necessarily a physical explanation.
A beggar remains a beggar even when clothed in purple.
Today this tendency has advanced even further.
Entire universes are simulated upon screens.
Particles are discovered because equations demand their existence.
Invisible matter is postulated because observations no longer agree with prevailing models.
When a theory continually requires new auxiliary assumptions, one should eventually consider questioning the theory itself.
The Vacuum That Is Not Empty Modern science continues to insist that space is empty.
Yet at the same time it speaks of quantum fields, vacuum energy, zero-point fluctuations, space-time foam, and virtual particles.
I ask the reader:
How many properties may a nothing possess before it ceases to be nothing?
Long ago I maintained that all space is filled with an exceedingly subtle medium.
In those days it was called the ether.
Today it appears that the same idea is being rediscovered under far more complicated names.
The progress of science sometimes consists of forgetting old ideas and later rediscovering them.
The Internet – My Planetary Nervous System More than a century ago I described a worldwide system of wireless communication.
Many laughed.
Today every person carries a small receiver connected to billions of others.
The Earth has acquired a nervous system.
It is called the Internet.
I must confess that its existence pleases me greatly.
What astonishes me is that humanity uses it primarily to distribute cat videos, political quarrels, and advertisements.
A planetary system of unimaginable technical elegance is frequently employed to propagate trivialities at the speed of light.
This, too, is a form of efficiency.
Artificial Intelligence or Statistical Spirits? The greatest technological sensation of 2026 is undoubtedly artificial intelligence.
Millions already regard these systems as oracles.
They ask questions.
The machine responds.
The response sounds convincing.
And therein lies the danger.
A clock may display time without understanding what time is.
A calculating machine may generate language without comprehending meaning.
A parrot may recite entire sentences without practicing philosophy.
Nevertheless, I perceive enormous potential.
If these systems are ever connected directly to the sensors of the world, they may become something far beyond my automatic machines:
A planetary intelligence.
Whether this shall prove to be a liberation or a catastrophe, I leave to future generations.
Concerning Hertzian Waves Wireless technology based upon Hertzian waves continues to dominate communications.
This surprises me.
Humanity expends immense quantities of energy hurling information through space.
It constructs billions of cellular transmitters.
It launches swarms of satellites.
It fills the heavens with electromagnetic noise.
And yet this may be merely an intermediate stage.
Nature rarely operates wastefully.
The greatest discovery of the coming centuries will not consist in building more powerful transmitters.
It will consist in understanding the medium itself.
The Unresolved Question of Gravitation Many theories concerning gravitation have been attributed to me.
Most of them I never published.
Some I never expressed.
Others were invented by journalists.
The truth is simpler.
I was convinced that gravitation must be part of a greater mechanical process.
I was convinced that force can never exist independently of matter.
I was convinced that space itself can possess no properties.
Yet convictions are not proofs.
An engineer measures.
A philosopher believes.
The distinction is of utmost importance.
A Curious Observation The further science advances, the more its terminology begins to resemble ideas it once ridiculed.
It speaks of structures of space.
Of energy fields.
Of vacuum dynamics.
Of cosmic networks.
Of information fields.
Of quantum fluctuations.
Of non-local connections.
Perhaps science is moving in a circle.
Perhaps it is approaching the same mysteries by a different road.
Or perhaps everyone is mistaken.
Nature possesses the inconvenient habit of paying no attention to human opinions.
Looking Ahead The coming decades will be shaped by three forces:
Automation.
Artificial Intelligence.
Energy.
The first two will transform society.
The third will determine whether those transformations endure.
For every civilization is ultimately limited not by its philosophy, but by the energy it is capable of commanding.
Thus the most important scientific question of 2026 remains precisely what it was in 1896:
What is electricity, truly?
If mankind ever answers that question completely, many other mysteries will vanish at the same moment.
Until then I shall continue listening to the vibrations of the world.
For sometimes a single spark reveals more truth than a thousand pages of mathematics.
— Nikola Tesla
Annual Report 2026
