In Trump’s America, smart robots and AI mask an uncomfortable future |
Las Vegas, Nevada – The first thing you notice at CES, the world’s largest tech show, is how seamlessly everything is supposed to work. The televisions anticipate what you want to watch. The robot vacuums know where you left the breakfast cereal. The Lego bricks now talk to each other.
The second thing you notice, checking your phone between press conferences, is that a 37-year-old woman was shot dead by an immigration agent in Minneapolis, bushfires are raging across Victoria and US federal troops have captured the president of Venezuela.
Inside the CES bubble.Credit: AP
This year’s CES in Las Vegas was defined as much by what was outside the conference halls – the tariffs, the violence, the overwhelming volatility – as what was on show inside.
CES 2026 was a consumer technology trade show dressed in artificial intelligence clothing – every company is now spruiking AI, even companies that have no real right to be.
The dazzling gadgets were overshadowed by the economic realities of Trump 2.0, however. The Consumer Technology Association – the organisation that runs the show – released reports during the show indicating tariffs could increase smartphone prices by 31 per cent, laptops by 34 per cent, and video game consoles by as much as 69 per cent.
Every product announcement carried an unspoken asterisk about what it might actually cost.
The Korean giants went head to head regardless: Samsung unveiled its mammoth 130-inch Micro RGB display. LG countered with its OLED evo W6 “Wallpaper” TV – about the width of a ballpoint pen. Both are betting on Micro RGB technology – a shift from blue-and-white backlights to red, green and blue micro-LEDs producing dramatically richer colour. If you’ve wondered why your television doesn’t capture what your eyes see in real life, this is the answer the industry is proposing.
“Big screens are no longer the exception; they’re the expectation,” Samsung Australia’s Simon Howe said. Australia remains a top-10 market globally for premium televisions per capita – we love our screens even when budgets are tight.
Hisense expanded its RGB MiniLED range........