The New Rules of Power: Making Sense of the Geopolitical Shift

Today we're diving into geopolitical tensions. It's a big topic and a hot one. It deserves more context than usual, especially for a podcast focused on business insights for executives and founders. Something has changed. The world feels different now. Think back 10, maybe 15 years. Yes, we had major crises between 2000 and 2016. The September 11th attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the global financial crisis in 2008, the Arab Spring, which brought down regimes and contributed to the migration crisis in Europe. And in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, although at the time that didn't dominate headlines in Western Europe or the US the way it might today, and maybe that's the reason for the later disaster. However, for most people in Europe or the United States, those events felt somewhat distant. Disruptive, yes, but not destabilizing to everyday life. That's changed. Over the past 7 years, the sense of stability has really started to erode. It began with the COVID pandemic in 2020, then Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the election of President Trump in 2024, a vote for the distrust in politics. A heavy distrust, almost like a rebellion by large parts of American society, completely ignoring the lack of morality and long term implications of their own alternative. The unbelievable global sex traffic scandal around Epstein, which seems to give a signal that the rich and influential define their status by staying immune to accountability when disobeying the rules and the law. And as we record this, an unprecedented, certainly illegal military attack by the United States and Israel against Iran, which as of now has not triggered the kind of global protest you might have expected, and which seems to emerge out of increasingly unchecked power by the US administration. So the self-inflicted geopolitical tensions now feel almost absurd and certainly less predictable, less stable, and in many ways more fragile than at any point in the more recent memory. And this isn't just my feeling. In January 2026, the World Economic Forum ranked geopolitical tensions as the top global risk. That was before the recent escalation involving Iran. And surveys reported by Reuters a few days ago, this April 2026, show that central banks are more concerned about geopolitical risks than they've been in years. In this episode, we'll explore what that all means for businesses, for startups, for innovation, and for the people building the future. I'm discussing this with Claude, the AI from Anthropic. Claude's responses will be read by Charles and my parts by Daniel. All right, let's get into it.