In this episode of The Friday Reporter, I sit down with Bruce Mehlman — partner at Mehlman Consulting and the mind behind The Age of Disruption. Bruce has spent decades operating at the crossroads of technology, politics, public policy and business, and he brings a rare, genuinely bipartisan lens to how power and change actually work in Washington and beyond.

We talk about why this moment feels so chaotic — and why it isn’t as unprecedented as it seems. Bruce makes the case that much of today’s tension comes from a simple problem: 20th-century institutions trying (and failing) to govern 21st-century realities. From AI and automation to geopolitical risk, culture wars and supply-chain vulnerability, he explains how history offers a surprisingly useful guide for navigating what comes next.

In this conversation, we dig into:

Why today’s disruption echoes moments like the Gilded Age, the New Deal and the Reagan era
How AI, automation and social media are reshaping work, governance and risk
The difference between performative corporate politics and leadership that actually matters
How companies can think about political risk without turning themselves into partisan actors
What young professionals really need to understand about AI and the future of work

Bruce also shares how his once-quarterly strategy decks evolved into a must-read weekly Substack ()— now shaping how policymakers, executives and journalists think about disruption in Washington and Silicon Valley.

We’ve Been Here Before | Bruce Mehlman