From mortgages to auto loans to credit cards, borrowing is set to get even pricier.

But the Federal Reserve’s decision on Sept. 16, 2026, to hike its baseline interest rate also highlighted an increasingly confounding dilemma: It can raise the price of money across the economy, but it can’t determine which sectors are most affected.

That means the rate increase may further slow the weaker parts of the economy, such as housing, while barely affecting the strongest, namely the relentless investment in artificial intelligence.

Robert Thayer looked up from his computer as a churning weedwacker-like sound interrupted the silence of his west Omaha home. As he noticed his grass swaying, he thought: That must be the drone.

The tech worker walked out his front door to find a blue-and-white robot hovering above his yard. 

He watched with amusement as the drone dropped a brown box containing the allergy medicine he had ordered 90 minutes earlier. Then, the machine’s powerful propellers blew the box from his lawn into the street. 

Growing up on the Omaha Reservation in northeast Nebraska, Roslyn Saunsoci had heard the name Susan La Flesche Picotte but knew nothing else. She grew excited upon learning in school that the famous tribal member was a doctor. The school day ended and soon her excitement exploded into near disbelief.

“I went home to share that with my grandmother and she was like, ‘Yeah, that was one of your great-grandmothers,’” Saunsoci recalled.

“I thought that was the coolest thing on Earth.”