The interest rates the United States has to pay for the bonds it sells to fund the government have been surging. This was once a niche obsession of financial markets, but it is swiftly evolving into a much broader issue, with implications that extend far beyond the immediate pain of steeper borrowing costs for households. Already, it has prompted the Treasury Department to intervene more forcefully in this key global market.

This is no ordinary bond-market sell-off. It’s being driven by forces unlike those of the recent past. And if it persists, it could mark the beginning of a structural economic shift more enduring and more globally consequential than most previous episodes of market volatility.

The leap in the cost of borrowing has been breathtaking. Rates on newly issued 30-year U.S. bonds, considered one of the world’s safest bets, recently hit 5.3 percent, up from 1.7 percent in 2021. The American government hasn’t had to pay such high rates since 2007, on the eve of the global financial crisis. That means more federal revenue goes to service the debt — nearly 20 percent — leaving less available for, say, defense or health care.

The pain is spreading, especially as corporate borrowers also face a widening credit spread — that is, the extra risk premium they must pay relative to comparatively risk-free government debt. On Main Street, people are struggling to buy homes or refinance because mortgage rates are so high. It’s the same story for auto loans and credit-card balances.

Ask 100 market players why rates are rising, and they would undoubtedly point to the usual suspects: stubborn inflation, ballooning government debt and fiscal deficits and the sting of higher gas and diesel prices tied to the war with Iran.

While these explanations make historical sense, they risk misleading policymakers and investors alike on both the “why” and the “so what” of the current situation.

There are four new and significant issues at play.

The most dramatic is a staggering surge in actual and prospective borrowing by technology companies pursuing the transformative promise of artificial intelligence. Simply put, a rising number of tech companies want to borrow huge amounts of money to deliver breathtaking innovations that can benefit billions. They’ve already sold almost $500 billion in bonds this year and will likely borrow a minimum of another $300 billion by year’s end.

We should certainly welcome the unique capacity of American capital markets to fund productivity-enhancing investments, from mainframe computers to dot-coms to data centers, that promise higher future growth and prosperity. Yet any profound transition needs to be managed carefully, especially this one, as the colossal corporate demand for capital competes directly with even larger government debt issuance.

While this corporate appetite is growing, traditional foreign buyers of American Treasuries have retreated. This is not merely a consequence of China’s geopolitical hesitancy or the need for Persian Gulf states to redirect some of their wealth toward domestic economic diversification and repair damage from the Iran conflict. It also involves steadfast buyers who could become sellers because of their own domestic exigencies. Japan, for one, faces mounting pressure to liquidate foreign assets, including U.S. government and corporate bonds, to defend its battered yen — something that the U.S. has already supported in a rare joint intervention.

The diminished appetite of these traditional buyers directs more of the outstanding bonds into flightier private hands, fueling volatility around a rising path of yields.

In the past, higher bond yields were typically a product of runaway inflation, but a range of market indicators suggests that’s not the issue at the moment. Neither is concern with the Fed’s credibility. (Despite the many past policy missteps of the Federal Reserve, markets still broadly trust the central bank’s commitment to returning inflation to its 2 percent target in the future.) What has surged is the real yield, or the extra, inflation-adjusted compensation that investors demand to bear the risk of buying debt in a more volatile world. It’s unsettling out there right now.

The U.S. is exporting these problems to some of our closest allies. Higher American yields have undeniably driven up borrowing costs worldwide, pushing yields on even the ultrasafe German government bonds to levels unseen since at least 2011. At least three other countries in the powerful Group of 7 are even more worried because of their own financial frailties: Japan, France and Britain. Pressures in these sovereign debt markets risk blowback for U.S. markets.

Take all this into account and we get a yield surge like no other. It’s a new order, driven by the combination of enormous tech and government borrowing needs opposed by a decline in willing bond buyers. Then throw in the energy shock and, finally, widespread inflation and Fed-related issues.

This reordering is especially consequential as it suggests that elevated borrowing costs will be far less responsive to the traditional macroeconomic dynamics that have stabilized markets in the past in a timely fashion. Historically, two distinct forces have been able to break the fever of soaring borrowing costs: the Fed taking away the proverbial liquidity punch bowl by hiking interest rates, and the punishing cost of funding that organically convinced borrowers to step back.

Neither will function efficiently today. Fed rate increases will do nothing to discipline bloated government deficit spending. Indeed, they would merely increase the government’s debt-servicing burden. Nor will higher rates deter technology firms that possess an unshakable faith in the exponential future returns on their investments in artificial intelligence — and whose FOMO is palpable. Consequently, other, more vulnerable segments of the economy will have to adjust.

Sectors that are traditionally sensitive to interest rates, notably housing and autos, are in the cross hairs, as is the high leverage in some parts of the financial markets and in revolving credit-card balances. The resulting squeeze will fall hardest on low-income households. It will sideline even more prospective first-time home buyers and inflate the everyday cost of transportation. Both dynamics feed directly into an affordability crisis that already sits atop voter anxieties ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.

The economic and political risks could tempt the Trump administration into a new phase of market interventions to tame the so-called bond vigilantes. The government has announced it will increase the buying back of longer-term bonds as a way of lowering those yields. While this buys time for that segment of the market, it requires the government to issue more shorter-term bonds, risking unintended consequences for the functioning of liquidity markets. Ironically, Fed watchers might wryly note that this could take place just as a chastened central bank attempts to unwind the collateral damage and unintended consequences of its own protracted market overreach initiated during the global financial crisis.

Hopefully, the investment in artificial intelligence will deliver higher productivity that generates significant income growth; and at some point, the administration and Congress may agree to reform a budgetary process that results in too high a deficit and too much debt, which on Wednesday crossed the $40 trillion milestone. Until then, the bond markets will offer both enormous upside and considerable risks to our well-being.

Mohamed A. El-Erian is the former chief executive and a former chief information officer of PIMCO, and served as the chair of President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council from 2012 to 2017.

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