Jake Sullivan on power, industrial strategy, and the new global order

What does it mean to lead in a world where the United States — the anchor of the post-war order — has become "the biggest disruptor in the world"? In this episode of Leaders Unplugged, IMD's David Bach sits down with Jake Sullivan, former National Security Advisor to President Biden, for a frank, wide-ranging conversation on the forces reshaping global business, geopolitics, and the social compact. From the collapse of allied trust to Iran's newly proven ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, this is the geopolitical briefing every senior executive needs.Sullivan argues that Trump "does not believe that allies are assets — he thinks they are liabilities," that the Iran war was "entirely a war of choice, an elective war," and that the era of assuming innovation dominance without industrial strength is over: "The United States has to concern itself with being able to build." On AI and the future of work, he warns that we need "fundamentally new answers" to the question of "where does the human fit in, in an age of exploding technology?" — and that no political leader has yet emerged to deliver them. Our guest:Jake Sullivan served as National Security Advisor to President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2025, helping shape U.S. responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, strategic competition with China, the wars in the Middle East, and the growing intersection of technology and geopolitics. A longtime adviser to both Biden and Hillary Clinton, Sullivan was also one of the architects of the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama administration and a leading voice behind the idea of a “foreign policy for the middle class.”Today, he is the inaugural Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at Harvard Kennedy School, a faculty affiliate at Harvard’s Belfer Center, a Senior Fellow at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy, and co-host of the foreign policy podcast “The Long Game” alongside his former deputy Jon Finer. Harvard Kennedy School faculty profile: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/jake-sullivan X: @jakejsullivan ResourcesJake Sullivan, “The Tech High Ground,” *Foreign Affairs:    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/tech-high-ground-jake-sullivanKurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi, “Underestimating China”:    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/underestimating-china The Long Game with Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer:https://podcasts.voxmedia.com/show/the-long-gameDan Wang, “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future”:https://danwang.co/breakneck/