“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

―Antonio Gramsci

WHAT DRIVES DAVOS

“Dialogue is the drug of Davos…and that makes people come back.” – Matthias Lüfkens ????♂️

It was wild to be in Davos the year news actually emanated from the town. I’m used to it being a great place to take the pulse is, but not witness geopolitics in action. Even Trump succumbed to the power of dialogue in Davos.

In a world fracturing along geopolitical, technological, and economic lines, conversation remains a powerful currency.

This week proved it. Donald Trump gave a speech threatening tariffs, or worse, then walked into a room with NATO leadership. Moments later, the Greenland crisis transformed.

THE GREAT FRAGMENTATION: WHEN THE RULES BASED ORDER BREAKS

“We’re in a transition phase. Everyone knows the pre-existing post-war architecture – whether the aspects of the UN, WTO, or these multilateral institutions – are effectively not working, or don’t have the political bite they once had.” – James Kanagasooriam, Focal Data

What’s coming depends entirely on the groupings of countries that see themselves as allies in values and trade. Canada’s net approval of America as an ally has swung to minus 50. Europe is quietly rethinking alliances. Eastern European nations have always had different interests from Berlin and Paris. China and the US remain locked in economic and geopolitical competition.

And beyond trade, we heard a

“very harsh reminder for every other member of NATO that Trump is going to be transactional about the US membership of the Alliance. And that means…if Russia invades Poland, does NATO, does the US come to the rescue? Now, I think people are no longer going to assume anything from the US on that.” – Peter Thal Larsen, Reuters Breakingviews

The gap between what used to be guaranteed and what must now be negotiated is where geopolitical risk lives.

AI: FROM SCIENCE FICTION TO SUPPLY CHAIN OPTIMIZATION IN THREE YEARS

The conversation has shifted. Two years ago, executives told me about the probability of doom. Today,

“CEOs and chief technology officers are asking: how do we really get this to work across our companies? They’ve been experimenting for a couple of years, and I think they’re a little bit impatient that they need to give the technology just a bit longer. It’s only been three years since ChatGPT.” – Azeem Azhar Exponential View.

The companies seeing outsized returns aren’t using AI for customer service or data processing. They’re deploying it in the core of their business.

Investment committees at major firms now have AI as a member, tuned to fill cognitive gaps. If your analytical voice is missing, the AI steps in analytical. If your strategic thinker is absent, the AI pivots strategic. Better collective decisions emerge when you can control for cognitive bias.

Dow Chemical uses AI across facilities the size of Manhattan to predict maintenance needs ahead of time. $5 million saved. One example. Many more exist, mostly unreported.

But here’s what surprised me: the highest penetration and most agentic users of Chat GPT aren’t in Silicon Valley or New York.

“There are countries where the average user of our products is using three times more of the thinking capabilities. There are countries like Vietnam, Pakistan, Morocco. And that’s very exciting, because it’s also a way for them to turbocharge their development.” – George Osborne, Head of AI for Countries at OpenAI.

THE UNUSUAL: HOW AI IS PROTECTING WHALES

One of the most compelling uses of AI emerging from Davos had nothing to do with productivity or profit. It had to do with survival.

Ships kill more whales today than commercial whaling ever did. It’s called “road kill at sea.” But we didn’t know where the collisions were happening because we couldn’t see where they are.

UC Santa Barbara’s Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory created one. The team combined whale sighting data from decades of research, mapped shipping lanes, and found the hot spots: Chile, Santa Barbara, South Africa, the Mediterranean.

Now comes the interesting part: AI-powered hydrophones listen to the ocean automatically, detect whales by species, and send alerts to shipping companies telling them when to slow down in high-risk zones. Thermal sensors spot whale spouts. Predictive models forecast where whales will be.

And back to dialogue, Davos is where those who need to adopt it congregate.

“Here in freezing cold Davos, we have all of the players we need in the same space at the same time to figure out this solution. I need to talk to major shipping companies who are here. I need to talk to their customers – the Amazons, the Walmarts moving goods back and forth. I need to tell them: there are whales being harpooned in your supply chain by your ships. They don’t want that. And there are global leaders here who can create policy to enable this at scale.” – Douglas McCauley, UC Santa Barbara Benioff Ocean Science Lab

THE MEDICAL AI THAT REASONS LIKE A DOCTOR, NOT A CHATBOT

“ChatGPT is a bit like a literature student who knows how to read, has read loads of text and then reads a medical textbook and can answer your questions about medicine based on the textbook it read. That’s not what a medical doctor is. They’ve practiced medicine. They’ve seen the blood pressure, the X-rays, all this data, and they can reason about medicine, not as a linguist, but as a physiologist.” – Prof. A. Aldo Faisal, Nightingale AI & Imperial College

The medical AI I’ve been looking for! Nightingale learns from actual medical data, not text. It reasons about disease interactions, co-morbidities, and treatment options the way a clinician does: by integrating patterns across thousands of cases simultaneously.

What does this unlock? A 65-year-old diabetic with a rare genetic heart disorder can upload their medical history to an app on their phone. Nightingale reasons over it privately, surfaces interactions no human could track, explains the logic, and offers options their doctor can act on. For rare diseases, it’s the difference between diagnosis and guesswork. For patients with multiple conditions, it’s the difference between standard care and personalized medicine.

The platform is being built at universities, in partnership with hospitals, governed by nonprofits. The intent is clear: keep it neutral ground, not a corporate black box.

MOVING THE CLIMATE BURDEN TO ORBIT

A provocative idea: data centers generate massive heat. What if we move that infrastructure to space?

“Data centers throw off massive heat when installed on Earth…the opportunity is to take that physical infrastructure burden and put that work into space, get it above the atmosphere.” – Ariel Ekblaw, Aurelia Institute & Foundry Fund

It sounds like science fiction. It might not be. The logistics are complex. The regulatory pathway is unclear. But the problem it solves is real: the more compute power we need, the more heat we generate, the more water we need to cool it, the more strain we put on terrestrial infrastructure.

Elon Musk has been talking about this for years. It’s gaining conversation velocity now.

THE OCEAN IS THE EARTH’S OPERATING SYSTEM. HERE’S WHERE THE MONEY IS GOING.

The high seas treaty passed in London just before Davos. Over a decade to negotiate. 65 countries signed on. Beyond the 200-mile territorial limit, it was open season. Fish don’t respect borders. Climate systems don’t either. It’s opened up a wealth of possibility for climate-positive investment.

“The blue economy is the most important investment thesis of our time, because if we don’t have a healthy, regenerative and sustainable blue economy, then the ocean will not be able to thrive and survive, and if the ocean doesn’t work, then all of the planetary systems will collapse. The ocean is, if you like, the Earth’s operating system.” – Chris Gorell Barnes , Blue Marine Foundation & Ocean 14 Capital

The blue economy is worth 3 trillion annually. Fishing, aquaculture, shipping, tourism, mining. It’s been massively underinvested. That’s changing fast.

Standard Chartered just brokered a 5 million carbon credit deal with the Brazilian state of Acre. All proceeds flow back to indigenous communities protecting the Amazon. A separate green bond financed by the World Bank is replacing cook stoves in 400,000 Ghanaian households, generating carbon credits that count toward Switzerland and Ghana’s climate commitments. Venture-backed ocean companies are generating 20-25% returns. The myth that ocean tech can’t generate money is demolished.

“Whether you believe in climate change or not, follow the money, because whoever turns out to be right, there’s money to be made.” – Jean-Pierre Douglas-Henry, DLA Piper

The capital shift is toward adaptation. More than 90% of climate finance was mitigation. Now the question is: how do we build for what’s already happening?

A Chinese solar manufacturer realized hurricanes blow panels off roofs. They engineered hurricane-resistant solar. That product line now deploys globally. Middle Eastern companies are building sand-resistant panels. Bangladesh is redesigning agricultural systems for salinity. Southeast Asia is retrofitting ports for higher seas.

This isn’t altruism. It’s supply chain. And it’s where capital sees the infinite addressable market.

“More than 90% of climate finance was trying to protect against global warming. But now we need adaptation finance…the opportunities to invest and for commercial return are everywhere. I call it the infinite addressable market.” – Marisa Drew , Standard Chartered Chief Sustainability Officer

The friction: geopolitics. The US withdrew from Paris. Europe has different standards than Singapore. Companies caught between contradictory obligations pay twice. But the money flows anyway. Because adaptation is not optional. It’s survival economics pretending to be environmental policy.

SCIENCE IS BACK IN BUSINESS

The World Economic Forum inaugurated its first Science House on the Promenade. Scientists from around the world had the chance not just to talk about science, but to interact with the people who fund it, influence policy with it, and deploy it.

“We have witnessed, unfortunately, over the past years, a tendency for people’s uninformed opinions to have more weight than scientific or medical facts, and because of what happened within the Congress Center, but also thanks to Frontiers, who’s one of the biggest science publishers in the world, who inaugurated the very first science house on the Promenade, a lot of scientists from all over the world were able not only to talk about science, but also to interact with people who can fund their research.” – Olivier Oullier, Neuroscientist, Entrepreneur & Brain Computer Interface Expert

Elon Musk showing up and talking about Neuralink did more for brain-computer interface research visibility than a decade of peer-reviewed papers.

It was heartening to see!

HUMOR AS SURVIVAL

In the midst of geopolitical fragmentation, economic uncertainty, and technological disruption, Rory Bremner’s impression of Donald Trump served as collective therapy.

“The world has changed. We’ve got the rules-based international order has now gone. And we got six men in their 70s, you know, if you think about it, Trump and Modi and Putin and Xi and Netanyahu and Erdogan and, I mean, six extraordinary men in their 70s. They shouldn’t be in the White House and the Kremlin. They should be in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. We’re coming to terms with it, and it’s happening so fast.”

Laughter remains a way of coping with acceleration we cannot control.

#Davos2026 #HubCulture #Geopolitics #AI #BlueEconomy #ClimateAdaptation #FutureOfWork #Leadership