Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio has a new warning for the U.S.: We’re on a collision course toward repeating history.
The billionaire investor said that current national crises—from federal agents killing people in Minneapolis to the skyrocketing national debt—signal a transition to a more violent phase of the American “Big Cycle.”
“The United States is now a tinderbox,” he warned in a lengthy essay on X on Monday, titled “Money, Civil & International War, Minneapolis, and Beyond—in Perspective.”
The post draws heavily on his 2021 book Principles for Dealing With the Changing World Order, in which he analyzes 500 years of history to explain why some countries succeed and others fail, describing a six-stage, 80-year cycle that tracks the evolution of a society’s monetary, domestic, and international order.
In his X post, Dalio said it is in the hands of President Donald Trump to pull away from, or step closer to, civil conflict.
“Many people are waiting to see whether President Trump will continue to fight, which I believe would risk pushing us over the brink into a more clear civil war, or if he will make an attempt to pull us back from the brink by appealing for peace, promising and showing that the justice system will handle the shootings appropriately, and curtail ICE activities,” he wrote.
Dalio has for years used his Big Cycle framework to caution that the U.S. is deep into what he calls Stage 5—the “pre-breakdown phase” characterized by bad financial conditions and internal conflict—and risks teetering into Stage 6, what he calls the “final and most painful stage,” marked by the breakdown of the existing order via civil war or revolution.
In the past, he has sounded the alarm about widening economic inequality and political polarization. And last week, he said in a conversation with Fortune at Davos that we are now dealing with the “breakdown of the monetary order” as the national debt now stands at $38 trillion, which he has called a common symptom of failing empires.
On the brink in Minneapolis
In his latest post, Dalio argued that the killings in Minneapolis and the surging national debt together suggest the U.S. may be moving from Stage 5 into Stage 6. He cited excerpts from his 2021 book, in which he stated that “people dying in the fighting” is a sign that “almost certainly signifies the progression to the next and more violent civil war stage,” and that intensifying disputes between the federal government and the states is a classic historical marker for civil conflict. He also included an excerpt, stating the “single most reliable leading indicator of civil war or revolution is bankrupt government finances combined with big wealth gaps.”
Dalio has been edging toward this conclusion for several years. In 2024, he warned that the U.S. risked large-scale civil conflict if one side didn’t accept the results of the presidential election. And in an essay that same year in Time, he said the “risk of some form of civil war is uncomfortably more than 50%.”
Whatever direction Trump takes in the wake of the killings in Minneapolis, Dalio said that the U.S. is already in a heightened state of tension.
“While his choice will have huge implications for what comes next, including possibly lighting the tinderbox, in any case, it is important to see everything that is happening in the context of all the forces and events that are driving the Big Cycle,” he added.
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