As organisations operate in an increasingly complex geopolitical environment, understanding where corruption risk lies and how it is evolving – has never been more important.

Professor Robert Barrington, Professor of Anti-Corruption Practice, University of Sussex is one of the UK’s leading authorities on corruption and anti-corruption, brings these issues to life with insight drawn from decades at the forefront of policy, business and governance.

Robert has been a long-term adviser to the UK government on subjects including the Bribery Act, export credits, the post-Brexit procurement regime and Free Trade Agreements, and has served on multiple boards and advisory committees ranging from The Environment Council to the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Good Governance.

He was Deputy Chair of the Taskforce on Business Ethics and the Legal Profession convened by the Institute for Business Ethics. He writes extensively in the media and appears as an expert commentator on major news and current affairs programmes including BBC Radio 4 Today, BBC World Service, Sky News, Al-Jazeera and LBC. Publications include a ‘Dictionary of Corruption’, ‘Understanding Corruption’, ‘How to Bribe’ and ‘Adequate Procedures – Guidance to the UK Bribery Act’.

His latest book, Corrupted Kingdom, is a comprehensive overview of corruption in the UK.

An incisive study of the corruption that is rife across British society, from the UK’s foremost expert on the subject

‘Required reading for anyone who cares about how democracy works – both as a warning and a call to action’ – Bill Browder

Britain is complacent about corruption. We are used to thinking of ourselves as firm defenders of fairness and the rule of law. But our institutions have never been more corrupt, from scandals in parliament and local government to crises in housing and the NHS. The evidence is impossible to ignore. Political leaders face a clear choice: tackle corruption or continue on the road to decline.

Robert Barrington is one of the world’s leading researchers on corruption. Corrupted Kingdom is his comprehensive examination of how corruption manifests in Britain, from politicians to prisons, the Monarchy and the Met. He assesses the origins of corruption, from Londongrad to the end of Empire, and shows how we can best reverse the decline and restore trust in politics and the democratic process.

Vital and authoritative, Corrupted Kingdom provides an essential insight into why the abuse of power harms us all – and how we can banish corruption for good.

Reviews for Corrupted Kingdom

“A tour de force. With forensic skill and an eye for killer detail, Barrington dissects the rot at the heart of British public life – and what we can do to clean it up. A must-read for anyone who cares about integrity in our politics.”

– Peter Geoghegan, Author of Democracy for Sale

“Powerful and empowering. Barrington joins the dots to show that corruption in the UK is far more embedded and pernicious than we like to think, while also revealing the strengths we can draw on to fight back. A superb accomplishment.” – Liz Dávid-Barrett, Author of Power Grab

To book Robert Barrington – email connect@connectspeakersbureau.com

That was at the heart of futurist Tracey Follows’ recent keynote, Human. Machine. Meaning. Marketing in the Age of AI, for Farner Consulting’s Foresight Session 2026.

“Tracey Follows’ keynote was a standout moment at the Foresight Session 2026. She offered a thought-provoking perspective on how AI is reshaping marketing, influence and meaning—and gave our audience plenty of valuable insights to take away. Her contribution was extremely well received and added real depth to the programme.”

– The Foresight Session team, Farner Consulting

As organisations race to understand what AI means for their customers, brands and communications, Tracey brings a fascinating human perspective to the conversation exploring not just what the technology can do, but what it means for us.

A timely keynote for leadership, marketing and communications audiences navigating the next phase of AI.

Tracey Follows is a globally recognised futurist whose work has evolved from just analysing trends to building an entirely new world framework for the synthetic age.

Global Futurist | Founder of Futuremade and Me:chine Institute | Global Gurus Top 30 Futurist | Forbes Top 50 Female Futurist

Tracey’s original concepts, which include the Me:chine Self (the synthesis of the machinable and unmachinable self that inhabits a machinic world) have positioned her as one of the most distinctive futures thinkers redefining human agency, sovereignty, and personhood for the decades ahead. And her award-winning podcast is now broadcasting the Me:chine Dialogues.

She continues to advise a wide range of organisations across sectors and industries as diverse as pensions, asset management, housing, defence and security, grocery, formula one, property, finance and delivered a standout project on The Future of Health 2040 in Canada.

Tracey is the author of The Future of You and host of the award-winning podcast of the same name (winning Best Tech Show, Independent Podcast Awards 2023). Her new major work, Me:chine, extends her philosophical system into a practical and educational framework – forming the foundation of a new curriculum for identity and agency in the synthetic century.

Across her career, Tracey Follows has moved beyond trend commentary to create a generative worldview that helps leaders and institutions understand not only where the world is heading, but who we must become to inhabit it.

Tracey Follows is available for international conferences through Connect Speakers Bureau.

Mehreen Khan, Economics Editor at The Times, will be in Bangkok and available for a limited number of private client engagements.

Mehreen is widely recognized for her sharp analysis of:

Global Economic Trends

Geopolitical Risk & Trade Dynamics

Policy Shifts Shaping Markets and Business

She is particularly effective at:

Moderating Senior-Level Discussions

Hosting Leadership Roundtables & Private Dinners

Delivering Concise, Insight-Led Keynotes for Executive Audiences

Against a backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty, shifting trade relationships and changing economic policy, Mehreen offers financial leaders a clear and highly relevant perspective on how these forces are reshaping investment, strategy and decision-making.

A Timely Opportunity in Bangkok

With Mehreen already in Bangkok for IMF Week, clients have a unique opportunity to engage her without the usual international travel costs.

Whether for an executive roundtable, private dinner, client briefing or keynote, Mehreen will bring fresh intelligence, incisive analysis and tangible takeaways to the conversation.

Book Mehreen Khan during IMF Week Bangkok connect@connectspeakersbureau.com

Make Your Next Event Memorable Book Your Speakers with Connect Speakers Bureau

“AI is not replacing human insight, it’s helping us frame it in a different way.” – Dr Lollie Mancey, Anthropologist and AI Ethicist

Dr Lollie Mancey is a specialist in anthropology and innovation education. A futurist by nature, her work focuses on the changing cultural landscape in Ireland, including how this is shaped by technology. Dr Mancey believes AI is driving the next phase of the cognitive revolution.

Dr Mancey says that in order to thrive in this changing landscape, individuals need a critical thinking mindset, something she encourages her students, the next generation of innovators, to cultivate.

“Adopt a playful, critical, curious mindset,” Dr Mancey advises. “It’s not replacing human insight, it’s helping us frame it in a different way.”

The key is to explore the ways in which AI can enhance human potential rather than replace it.

“What’s going to excite and delight your customers?” she asks. “Is it a chatbot? Probably not. Putting an AI solution in where a human could be isn’t always advantageous,” she concludes.

Business leaders need to be strategic as to how AI can support their goals. “The answer is not just to sprinkle some AI on it and make it happen,” she says. “It’s got to work in designated areas… It’s got to benefit you, but also keep you productive and keep you working and at the top of your game.”

Transparency and ethical use of AI is also important to maintain trust with customers and ensure that businesses are putting systems in place that will work in the long term. “I think it’s really important to differentiate between the fact that ethical AI isn’t just a nice thing to have. It’s a business imperative.”

A big fan of using AI in her own work, Dr Mancey outlines its benefits and encourages other business leaders to start small, looking at how they can adopt the growing range of available technologies.

“In my writing, it helps me refine ideas, structure arguments, pushes my creativity, sometimes gets me off a blank page. It frees up my cognitive space for deeper, more strategic thinking.”

As a third-level educator who specialises in future studies, Dr Mancey highlights that the education system is struggling to keep pace with the progress of new technologies and their ethical implementation. This has a knock-on effect in the workplace, where skills gaps and a reluctance to evolve could mean Irish companies fall behind.

“Future proofing, ethical decision-making, and responsible AI integration are all the relevant skills coming from education into business,” Dr. Mancey says.

Now is a critical moment, and we have the power to harness this change. Upskilling the next generation could be the solution to bridging this knowledge gap so that Irish companies can lead and innovate in the space. Dr Mancey says there are opportunities to expand AI learning in the workplace as well as in higher education.

“It’s not about working faster, it’s about working smarter,” Dr Mancey says, echoing the phrase that has become the mantra of the digital revolution. This is just the next phase.

Dr Mancey’s advice to business leaders can be summed up in five simple points:

Don’t chase AI, chase value

Invest in AI literacy

Build diverse AI teams

Think long-term, position for the future

Put ethics at the heart of your strategy

      Themes & Topics:

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work
Human-Centred AI and Responsible Innovation
Leadership in the Age of AI
Trust, Culture and Organisational Transformation
The Future of Expertise and Decision Making
Innovation, Creativity and Building Adaptive Organisations
The Anthropology of Technology: How AI is Changing Human Behaviour
AI, Ethics and Society
The Future of Insurance and Financial Services
Future Skills and Workforce Transformation
Women’s Leadership in Technology and AI
Navigating Uncertainty: Leading Through Disruption
The Human Future – what remains uniquely human in an AI world

Norman Ohler decided to have a closer look and went to the Federal Archives of Germany in Koblenz, where the notes of his personal physician were stored a guy called Theodor Morell, who had been a kind of VIP doctor in Berlin in the 30s and had met Hitler in 1936 during a spaghetti dinner in Munich. He became Hitler’s personal physician almost immediately because he had probiotics and cured Hitler’s chronic stomach problems and bloating. So Hitler had great confidence in this man, and actually spent every day from 1936 to 1945 with Morell. Morell was closer to Hitler than anybody else.

Norman looked at Morell’s papers in the archives, interestingly no one had ever looked at these papers. But in the Federal Archives, these weird medications actually became quite an interesting reality, because Morell meticulously noted what he gave Hitler every day. And it was quite obvious that Hitler became addicted very quickly not to a specific medicine, but to injections in general. Every day he received an injection that would optimize his performance.

In the beginning those were mostly vitamins, supplements we would say today. But in 1941, and especially in 1943 and 1944, when the war became quite difficult for Germany, he used more and more opioids. His favorite drug was Eukodal — the very opioid that is related to what later became oxycodone. It was a German patent. It was called Eukodal in Germany. The patent was lost when Germany lost the war.

Hitler was not at all a teetotaler, but actually became a junkie in 1943, and especially in 1944. He was using 20 milligrams of Eukodal intravenously every second day, which is a very high dosage.

From a childhood conversation that exposed the moral blind spots of a generation, to groundbreaking research that challenged established historical narratives, this speaker delivers a powerful exploration of how individuals and systems behave under pressure.

Blending storytelling, history, and sharp analysis, his talks leave audiences questioning assumptions and seeing both the past and present in a new light.Watch Norman Ohler’s fascinating talk delivered to the Oxford Union recently which outlines how Hilter became dependent on drugs and methamphetamine changed the trajectory of World War II.

Message from Tom…..

Thank you to everyone who helped make this possible. To those who bought the book, shared it with a friend or colleague, or sent a message about how the story resonated with you, I can’t thank you enough.

What means the most to me is knowing the book is already reaching thousands of readers and starting conversations about ethics, decision making, and accountability.

If you’ve read 𝘞𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘞𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘵, I have one small favor to ask. Even a short one or two sentence Amazon review can help the book reach others who might benefit from the message.

Thank you for helping this story reach far more people than I ever expected. Tom Hardin

If there is one consistent feature of the US-China relationship since normalization in 1979, it is the frequency of volatility and change. One of the most recent and consequential inflection points occurred in 2018 with the initiation of the era of strategic competition during the first Trump administration. That policy shift, more than most, heralded a comprehensive change in both US and Chinese strategies—domestic and international—toward the other, and came at a time of emerging centrality of US-China ties to global politics. The transition to strategic competition was arguably overdue, but it did provide a degree of clarity to Washington, Beijing, and the rest of the international community about the trajectory of relations moving forward.

With the advent of the second Trump administration, most expected continuity in China policy. It has been anything but that. US President Donald Trump started off in spring 2025 with a trade war and imposition of over 150 percent tariffs on China, signaling the Trump team had found a new gear in their approach to strategic competition. This was familiar, if a bit extreme, but then the situation rapidly escalated. Washington and Beijing both brandished new threats—including cutting off access to critical minerals and technologies—as punishment and leverage.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping stared into the abyss of economic conflagration, and neither presumably liked what they saw. Ultimately both sides backed off and negotiated an agreement to reduce tariffs and resume trade in critical minerals, with bigger deals over the horizon. Trade talks became the arms control of the 21st century: the central venue for negotiating the terms—explicit and implicit—of long-term competition.

In the aftermath, something else began happening in China policy, a shift that will now define US-China relations in 2026.

Trump’s Quiet Rejection of Strategic Competition

In fall 2025, Trump’s determination to pursue long-term and intensive competition was replaced with a personal affinity for Xi and an ambivalence toward, if not a quiet rejection of, a comprehensive approach to strategic competition. Following the two leaders’ first meeting in South Korea in November 2025, Trump initiated a new and more expansive phase of diplomatic, economic, and technological engagement with China. In order to keep these economic relations stable and diplomatic ties on track, he started backing off some of the key pillars of strategic competition. It was as if the president decided that the United States was now content to run aside China rather than slow it down or run faster.

The administration’s China policy appeared to be going back to the engagement playbook, when relations were driven by leader-level summits and economic dealmaking. Trump and Xi agreed to exchange state visits in 2026, beginning with Trump going to Beijing in April and Xi reciprocating later in the year. Senior US officials talk about convening possibly four meetings between the leaders in 2026 alone—a new benchmark in the history of bilateral relations.

Other signs of a changing strategy emerged: The Trump administration agreed to sell Nvidia’s advanced H200 chip to Beijing and, alongside private sector partners, also finalized a deal to purchase TikTok that reportedly leaves control of key parts of the business in the hands of its Chinese parent company; Trump removed several National Security Council staffers and Commerce Department officials who advocated for greater tech controls toward China; and discussion of Beijing as a strategic rival was left out of both the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy. Most recently, the president said he wants to negotiate US arms sales to Taiwan with Beijing.

Policymaking is trending more in the direction of accommodating Beijing than US President Richard Nixon’s détente of the 1970s.

Today, Washington talks mainly about summits, a new “G2,” big economic deals, and, in a word, détente—even if the US administration does not use that specific term. The Trump team is focused on securing a long list of billion-dollar commercial deals with Beijing, from agriculture to planes, for his upcoming visit. Trump himself flirts with the idea of welcoming major Chinese investment back into the United States, even as resistance from Congress and state governors grows. Washington is also flush with rumors about changes in US declaratory policy toward Taiwan that would chastise Taipei and, thus, mollify Beijing.

Conservative optimists argue that Trump is wisely pursuing a “tactical détente” to buy time in order to enhance military deterrence and remove US vulnerabilities to Chinese supply chains. But at what cost to US technological advantages, US allies, the US strategic position in Asia, and, most specifically, Taiwan’s security? Such policymaking is trending more in the direction of accommodating Beijing than US President Richard Nixon’s détente of the 1970s.

The Central Challenge for US-China Relations

Thus, in 2026 Washington may break new ground in the history of US-China relations. This will be driven by policy moves away from an intensive and exclusive focus on competition and more toward diplomacy and economic deliverables. It is not that Washington will completely give up on competition (watch US policy on rare earths), but the more intensive dimensions will not be pursued (i.e., technology denial).

The central risk for US-China relations in 2026 and beyond is that Trump’s détente is unlikely to be sustainable and may sow the seeds of future instability. In fact, the relationship may be at the dawn of one of its most precarious moments: when China uses America’s time-out from strategic competition to undermine the US position in Asia and, ultimately, to surpass it economically, technologically, and geopolitically.

The divide between the structural and the cyclical forces in the relationship is too great to be stable and thus sustained. The structural forces of competition in US-China ties are deep and wide. US and Chinese interests diverge more than they converge across a wide set of issues including security, economy, technology, and views about global governance. A core tenant of China’s geopolitical strategy is to diminish US power. These assumptions are well accepted across the US political spectrum, and Trump’s engagement with China this year—his cyclical détente—will only intensify anxieties among US political, military, and business leaders about falling behind.

The administration’s moves thus increase the risk of a “snapback” to a much tougher form of strategic competition. For example, if the Republicans lose badly in the November midterm elections, Trump may pivot to a hardline position on China, as he did in 2020, to shore up his political base in advance of the presidential election. Alternatively, Democrats may embrace competition with China as a way to criticize Trump, advance their domestic agenda, and create a political vulnerability for the Republicans going into 2028. Or, simply if the president concludes that the Chinese are playing him. Whatever the pathway, the United States is going back to strategic competition in some way, shape, or form.

Whatever the pathway, the United States is going back to strategic competition in some way, shape, or form.

There is perhaps an even deeper and more profound risk. The events of the last year, especially the trade war, brought to the fore bigger questions about relative advantage between two major powers in a highly competitive global system: Who has the upper hand, and how will they use it? Xi and Trump each believe they have relative leverage and the tools of escalation dominance. Both sides also believe they can impose unacceptable economic costs on the other and, in China’s case, Beijing believes it can suffer more pain—“eat more bitterness”—than US leaders. This is a precarious place for Washington and Beijing to be. Eventually one side will be tempted to test the proposition, possibly triggering a broader crisis.

To be sure, China’s cutoff of US access to critical minerals, especially rare earth elements and heavy magnets, created great anxiety among US political and business leaders and alerted Washington to a major vulnerability. Trump himself was probably surprised that China has such leverage, defying his initial expectations. When the administration tried to impose additional technology controls in October 2025, Beijing broadened its critical minerals cutoff, revealing the depth of US vulnerabilities.

Washington now clearly understands its exposure, and the Trump team has rightly initiated several efforts to reduce US vulnerabilities. While the administration believes they can close the gap in one to two years, most experts—Western and Chinese alike—think it will take at least five. Those differing assessments add to the risk of instability if Washington underestimates its exposure to Chinese supply chains, which remains substantial. For its part, China is trying to master advanced chip production equipment and other technologies where the United States possesses advantages and can control China’s access.

The mutual effort to reduce vulnerabilities, to generate leverage, and the probing of relative advantage has created a dangerous period in US-China ties, arguably opening a new stage in the evolving strategic competition. Both feel vulnerable, both have some advantages, both are willing to weaponize their interdependence, and both are unsure of the costs associated with the former. Washington and Beijing also have their own domestic politics that complicate these calculations.

In short, the United States and China are now effectively in a race to reduce vulnerabilities and master certain technologies before the other—while also trying to accumulate new sources of pressure. It is that race that will define the already-fraught and complex US-China relationship in 2026 and beyond. None of the summits nor economic deals of 2026 will change any of these harsh strategic realities. It is incumbent on Washington to remain focused on the real challenges it faces as China sprints to maximize its power and influence in a global system in flux.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is an independent, nonpartisan organization and does not take institutional positions. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

About the Author – Evan Medeiros
Distinguished Nonresident Fellow, China

Evan S. Medeiros is Distinguished Nonresident Fellow on China at the Council and also a professor and director of Asian Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He served for six years on the staff of the National Security Council from 2009-2015, working on Asian affairs.

To book Evan to share his brilliant insights at your next conference – email connect@connectspeakersbureau.com

Before his historical research, Ohler was established as a novelist and screenwriter in Germany. His writing often blends meticulous archival work with narrative storytelling, making complex historical material accessible to a broad readership. Ohler’s work has been translated into numerous languages and he is a frequent speaker on modern European history, propaganda, and the cultural legacy of the Second World War.

Ohler’s work challenges traditional narratives of World War II and the years leading up to it, showing how meticulous research can reshape how we understand power, ideology, and the hidden forces driving political decisions.In an age where students and thinkers alike are questioning state coercion, information control, and the politicisation of science, his perspective offers a vital lens for re-examining both history and our present realities.Norman will be speaking about Blitzed, Tripped, and the upcoming book Stoned sapiens; and how these works continue to redefine the boundaries of historical inquiry.

To book Norman Ohler for your next event, email connect@connectspeakersbureau.com

“Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich” is an explosive true story which uncovers an untold aspect of what fuelled the Nazi war machine during World War II. Revealing the close relationship and hidden connections between the Nazis, and the early days of drug prohibition in America, the author shares how this secret history held back therapeutic research for decades and became the foundation of America’s unsuccessful War on Drugs.

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

A fast-paced narrative that discovers a surprising perspective on World War II: Nazi Germany’s all-consuming reliance on drugs

The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. But as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping new history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs. On the eve of World War II, Germany was a pharmaceutical powerhouse, and companies such as Merck and Bayer cooked up cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, to be consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to millions of German soldiers. In fact, troops regularly took rations of a form of crystal meth—the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to explain certain German military victories.

Drugs seeped all the way up to the Nazi high command and, especially, to Hitler himself. Over the course of the war, Hitler became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs including a form of heroin—administered by his personal doctor. While drugs alone cannot explain the Nazis’ toxic racial theories or the events of World War II, Ohler’s investigation makes an overwhelming case that, if drugs are not taken into account, our understanding of the Third Reich is fundamentally incomplete.

“An astonishing account that changes what we know about the Second World War.” – The Guardian

“A fascinating, most extraordinary revelation.“ – BBC World News

‘It is not speed that kills, it is the sudden stop’ This quote from a paper on currency crises by economist Rudiger Dornbusch came to mind last week as the price of silver having climbed over 100% in a month, collapsed by 30% in an afternoon. The sudden stop in silver is emblematic of many of the problems with financial markets, but also strikes a chord with some of the deeper changes materialising within the world economy, such as the rising quantum of debt, and recent attacks on Jerome Powell.

As we noted in ‘Grasshopper’, silver used to be a money, though the propensity of some users to mix it with inferior metal lead Sir Thomas Gresham to coin Gresham’s law that ‘bad money drives out the good’. In bulk form, silver and more so gold, was good enough to be a money, and to back up the paper money system until 1971 when the gold standard came to an end (one could present dollars to a bank and demand gold in return).

Without the backing of gold, the reasons people held and used paper (fiat money) were determined largely by important intangible factors – such as the rule of law, policy credibility, quality of institutions, as well as the economic usage of that paper – did central banks hold it as a reserve currency, is it widely traded and are financial institutions happy to use it? On most of these criteria, investors, businesses and central banks avoid China’s renminbi, but for the same reasons have been very happy to use the dollar, and to a lesser extent the euro. But, that might be changing.

First of all, as globalization crumbles, there is a rise in distrust, notably in the dollar. There are two facets to this.

In my notes, I have mentioned the work of Barry Eichengreen a number of times. He is the academic authority on currencies and in a paper entitled “Mars or Mercury? The Geopolitics of International Currency Choice” written with two economists at the ECB, he finds that military and geopolitical alliances are a significant factor in explaining currency strength. The rationale is that a country that is geopolitically well placed is engaged with and trusted by its allies through trade and finance.

Unsurprisingly one of the main implications of the “Mars or Mercury?” paper is that in a scenario where the United States withdraws from the world and becomes more isolationist, its strategic allies no longer become enthusiastic buyers of US financial assets and long-term interest rates in the United States could rise by up to 1 percent (there would be fewer buyers of American government debt), according to the paper. As such the many geopolitical events at the start of the year may now have triggered a move away from US assets.

A related move is that the institutions behind the dollar are also under attack, and from outside at least, look less sure. The mid-term elections and the way in which they are held, will be instructive.

The nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next head of the Federal Reserve is another important development. My instinct, unlike other economists is to put less store on his family background, and suspicions that he might not be independent, simply because any political bias or even more general lack of judgement, will be quickly punished by markets. I agree with stances he has taken in recent years, notably against the ongoing deployment of quantitative easing. The really interesting element of the Warsh Fed will be the partnership he forms with Scott Bessent, and I suspect that this ‘accord’ will focus on creating the means by which the financial sector (notably banks) becomes the driving engine of the economy.

There are other factors at work. China has been aggressively courting its emerging market trading partners to use the renminbi, and this is beginning to show up in currency flows (the renminbi has jumped from 2% to 4% of international trade driven transactions in the last two years, according to a research paper from the Fed). The big shift however is central banks, who for a variety of reasons, mostly geopolitical, have a newfound penchant to hold gold as a reserve, rather than Treasuries.

In this regard, buying by central banks has been the new development in the gold market in recent years, this has been surpassed by the side-effects of the financialisaton of gold and silver. To state it simply, the existence of exchange traded funds (with liquid options markets on these ETFs) has allowed retail investors, and institutions, to speculate on the price of gold. In the old days one had to buy it in barloads, and in Zurich at least, take the No. 13 tram to visit the gold, as we described in a note, Marmite.

The lashings of financial products that have been built around gold and silver have to a large extent transformed them from stores of value, into Frankenstein like speculative assets. The 30% collapse in the price of silver last week had many causes, but most of them can be traced to financial engineering. As such, this is a warning that, in a world with more US PE funds than McDonalds in the US and with more ETF’s than stocks, financialization can ultimately be highly damaging.

Another angle on this is bitcoin, a techno-financial response to the growing lack of trust in economies. Some commentators have described it as digital gold, but it looks to have failed the test of being a money and is most certainty not a safe asset. I regard it as a risk asset, in a small, narrow pantheon with art, penny stocks and racehorses. Indeed, its utility as an instrument to transfer money is also diminishing, in a world where stablecoins are more prevalent, and where fintech is getting better (and cheaper) at facilitating transactions. It might be next for a stress test.

Have a great week ahead, Mike

To book Michael O’Sullivan for your next conference email connect@connectspeakersbureau.com

As of last week, the price of gold had more than doubled since the start of 2025 and had risen by more than a quarter in January alone. Gold has always been attractive, but it has never been this valuable.

Is the recent price drop proof that this is just a speculative mania, or are there sound reasons why gold is now so expensive?

Safe Haven

Gold has been the ultimate safe haven since ancient times. It is portable and convertible, a store of value and a universally accepted means of payment.

When the Russians invaded Estonia in 1944 and my grandparents fled, they took their only child, a single suitcase and their gold jewellery. As refugees, that gold later bought my family food to survive.

When the financial crisis struck in 2008, my partner stocked up on gold coins in case the banking system collapsed. The price of gold in euros peaked in 2012, at the height of the eurozone crisis.

When Donald Trump became US president again a year ago, I invested in gold indirectly by buying shares in gold mining companies and an exchange-traded fund that owns physical gold.

War, geopolitical upheaval and a loss of trust in the financial system are powerful reasons to turn to gold. If a global war were to break out, many would prefer to own gold rather than shares in technology companies or government bonds.

Many economists and sophisticated investors remain sceptical about gold. A century ago, John Maynard Keynes dismissed it as a “barbarous relic”, even while investing in gold mining shares himself.

Critics argue that gold has limited uses beyond jewellery and some industrial applications. Unlike shares or bonds, it does not generate income and cannot easily be valued using standard financial models. In a world of digital trading, derivatives and cryptocurrencies, gold can seem crude and outdated.

Yet in a world of paper promises and digital accounts, gold remains simple, solid and reliable. It cannot be hacked, frozen, defaulted on, bankrupted or vanish in a bank collapse. Its value comes from its scarcity and enduring demand. Gold was valued long before modern states existed and can outlast them all.

At the very least, gold is a form of insurance in troubled times. It can also deliver solid long-term returns. Between January 2000 and January 2025, it rose by an average of 9% a year.

From Ukraine to China

The recent rally began with Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Western governments froze Russia’s foreign reserves, including those held in Brussels. This prompted other central banks, led by China’s, to shift into gold, which is beyond the reach of US and EU sanctions.

Central banks continue to buy gold, though less aggressively last year, with Poland leading purchases. China’s buying is less transparent.

What started with central banks has spread to broader investors, particularly since President Trump’s re-election.

Over the past year, Trump has undermined trust in US institutions, expanded government borrowing, pressured the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, launched trade wars, questioned NATO, threatened to abandon Ukraine, and intensified global instability.

US Treasury bonds are traditionally a safe haven, but after Trump’s tariffs last April, US shares, bonds and the dollar all sold off together. For a brief period, US markets behaved more like those of a poorly managed emerging economy.

A complete collapse in trust in the dollar would be monumental, but even a small erosion has consequences. Since neither the euro nor China’s currency can fully replace the dollar, gold has benefited. The gold market is small compared to the vast US Treasury market, so even modest diversification can push prices sharply higher.

Another wave of buying has come from Chinese investors. After the country’s property crash, central bank liquidity and mistrust of other assets made gold especially attractive.

Speculative fever

There are solid reasons for gold’s rise, but speculative behaviour has also played a role. Fear of missing out has amplified anxiety about financial and geopolitical risks.

The world remains deeply uncertain, so the underlying drivers of gold’s surge remain. However, if gold becomes a mainstream financial asset, it may provide less protection in a crisis. If investors are forced to sell gold to meet margin calls when markets fall, gold prices could drop too.

Book Philipe Legrain to share his brilliant insights with your next audience: connect@connectspeakersbureau.com

On January 15, the State Department released its “Agency Strategy Plan,” much of which mirrors the November National Security Strategy, but more deeply reveals the Donald Trump administration’s intentions for re-ordering US foreign policy. The new State Department plan bluntly elaborates the primacy of “vital chokepoints like the Panama Canal,” warning that the US “will no longer permit foreign adversaries to use commerce and investment as a stalking horse for control of the region’s critical infrastructure and strategic territory.”

A Hong Kong-based company, CK Hutchison Holding, has been operating two Panama Canal ports since 1997. After Beijing enacted a national security law in 2020 that criminalized any Hong Kong actions deemed as collusion with foreign forces, Washington has been concerned about free passage, as 40 percent of all annual US trade with Asia sails through the vital chokepoint. In the event of a crisis, the Chinese Communist Party could order the Hong Kong company to deny US naval passage of destroyers, combat ships, and amphibious transport dock ships to support and reinforce Pacific Command fleet operations.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first overseas trip was to Panama City, where he met with President José Raúl Mulino to express the United States’ insistence that the Chinese Communist Party’s control over the ports must end.

Panama later announced it would end its participation in China’s predatory Belt and Road Initiative, embedded in twenty countries throughout South America.

Hutchison then announced it would sell its stake in the two canal ports, along with dozens of other ports, for $23 billion to a BlackRock-led investment group. Hutchison neglected to first inform Xi Jinping, and Beijing immediately condemned the deal, viewing it as a strategic setback to its South America operations. Beijing launched a regulatory review of the deal, and later demanded that China’s state-owned shipping giant COSCO become an equal partner and shareholder with BlackRock and other investors.

Panama’s government has since charged Hutchison with violating national interests, after an audit revealed $1.3 billion in lost government revenues and back taxes since the 1997 license. Panama’s Supreme Court may rule to revoke Hutchison’s concession, after which the ports would revert to Panamanian control for re-tendering, possibly to new owners favored by Washington.

If not, the White House could decide to directly challenge China’s presence at the strategic chokepoint as a critical threat to US plans to dominate the Western Hemisphere, ensure permanent maritime and naval access through the canal, and expel Chinese and other adversarial assets from Greenland to Cape Horn.

Beyond the Panama Canal await other issues of malign Chinese operations in Latin America. COSCO controls and operates a massive $3.5 billion deep-water megaport on Peru’s Pacific coast, offering the continent an alternative to the canal and potentially re-orienting Brazil’s $2 trillion economy toward greater dependence on China.

Another Chinese company controls a major port in Kingston, Jamaica, near vital Caribbean shipping routes and 170 miles from the US naval station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In December, a Chinese naval hospital ship docked there to provide medical services after Hurricane Melissa struck the Caribbean. China’s “civil-military fusion” strategy means the hospital ship could also have collected military intelligence from a nearby US rapid response facility.

China’s colossal illegal fishing operations in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans give it significant control over US seafood, 80 percent of which is imported through Chinese-controlled supply chains.

These activities have devastated valuable and essential fisheries for Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, and generated serious economic and environmental challenges for many South American nations.

The White House is concentrated on Venezuela and Greenland, and monitoring Chinese regime influence operations in Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, and potentially Mexico, where cartels ply Chinese precursor chemicals into fentanyl to kill tens of thousands of Americans annually.

The State Department’s Agency Strategic Plan states that the Trump administration reserves the right to “prevent [Chinese] control and roll it back where it has already occurred, and we will do so regardless of whether that control is exercised directly by competing powers or instead through purportedly private entities that operate under those states’ thumbs.”

It adds that “we will not allow any foreign adversary to use force or establish a military base anywhere in the region, and will seek to reverse the expansion of all other forms of foreign military influence, including the spread of foreign security assistance, intelligence facilities, and facilities with dual-use possibilities.”

Looking deeper into 2026 and beyond, the question remains: where will the Trump administration turn next in the Western Hemisphere?

Europe ended a gut-wrenching year on a mixed note.

At their summit in Brussels on 18–19 December, EU leaders failed to agree to use €210 billion in frozen Russian assets to provide Ukraine with the sustained military and financial support that it needs.

But crucially, they decided to collectively borrow €90 billion to fund Kyiv over the next two years, ensuring it can fight on for now. Hungary’s pro-Russian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who had promised to veto an EU loan, backed down after securing an opt-out, as did Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Can Europe sustain that positive momentum in 2026, or are further setbacks in store?

Three big challenges

For sure, Europe will continue to face huge economic, political and geopolitical challenges.

Economically, it is lumbered with slow growth, high debts, huge new defence needs and massive welfare commitments. Its ageing societies resist later retirement while also rejecting youthful immigrants. And its open economies remain reliant on trade in an era of rising protectionism and cut-throat Chinese competition.

Politically, Europe is often polarised and paralysed, with weak coalition governments that feel threatened by far-right populists, who are newly encouraged by Donald Trump’s America.

Geopolitically, it is vulnerable to Russian aggression, American bullying and Chinese chokeholds, while its efforts to build new alliances are often hamstrung by domestic politics: witness the repeated failure to agree a trade deal with the Latin American countries of Mercosur.

But in the holiday spirit of good cheer, here are three reasons for hope.

Economic upside?

For a start, Europe’s economy is stronger than it seems. Despite massive economic and geopolitical uncertainty, a stronger euro, Trump’s tariffs denting exports to the US and soaring imports from China eroding its manufacturing base, the eurozone is set to grow faster this year (around 1.4%) than it did in 2024, with inflation broadly on target. Indeed, despite all the hype about artificial intelligence in the US, European stockmarkets have outpaced America’s in euro terms in 2025.

That economic momentum may be sustained next year. Even without further interest-rate cuts, the boost to investment and spending from looser monetary policy – the European Central Bank has halved its key deposit rate, to 2%, since June 2024 – will continue to be felt. Lower energy prices, notably of oil, will also help.

Meanwhile, Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, is going on a borrowing spree to boost investment in defence and infrastructure. The EU’s Covid funds will continue to lift Italy, while immigration juices Spanish growth and Poland’s boom powers on. And in France, the ongoing parliamentary stalemate entails little in the way of fiscal tightening, supporting spending next year. More broadly, the EU has greenlit increased borrowing for defence, which will also act as a fiscal stimulus.

In short, the EU economy may surprise on the upside in 2026.

Ousting Orbán?
Politics may provide the biggest positive next year. 2025 saw the election of a new German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, a Christian Democrat who has described his grand coalition with the Social Democrats as centrism’s last chance of holding off far-right populism.

The implicit assumption is that if nationalists ever win power, countries are condemned to an erosion of democratic institutions and entrenched illiberal rule, as Orbán has engineered in Hungary since 2010.

That danger is real. But it is not the only possibility. Some far-right politicians have moderated their positions in order to win power and mostly remained responsible once in office: witness how Giorgia Meloni governs Italy largely as a traditional conservative.

In the many European countries that have parliamentary systems in which many political parties win seats on the basis of proportional representation, far-right parties can typically gain power only as part of a coalition, limiting their sway. And when they disappoint voters, they can be ditched.

Note how Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party, which had triumphed in the 2023 Dutch elections, flopped in this year’s vote. The big winner was its antithesis: the socially liberal, pro-EU D66 party led by a 38-year-old gay man who campaigned on a platform of youthful can-do optimism.

And even in countries where nationalists seemingly gain a lock on power, as in Poland between 2015 and 2023, a united opposition can eventually eject them.

2026 looks set to be a quiet year electorally. Barring the remote possibility that France’s President Emmanuel Macron calls early legislative elections (or resigns), only three EU countries will have parliamentary elections: Denmark, Sweden and Hungary.

Orbán’s grip over the media, legal system and other civic institutions is such that elections in Hungary are usually a forgone conclusion. But this time he is facing his most formidable foe yet: Péter Magyar, a charismatic politician who knows Orbán’s weaknesses because he was previously a senior member of the ruling Fidesz party. With the economy ailing and voters sick of high-level corruption, Orbán looks vulnerable, and Magyar’s new Tisza party consistently leads in independent polls.

No doubt Orbán will fight dirty, with the help of his foreign allies, Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But next April’s election offers a good chance of finally ousting him.

That would be great for Hungarians, who have seen their democracy and freedoms eroded. And it would also be a big victory for the EU, since it would strengthen the rule of law, remove a frequent veto-wielder and weaken the EU’s external enemies.

Geopolitical steel?

Geopolitics is a wild card. 2025 highlighted the EU’s weaknesses, as my recent column explained. Its dependence on Trump’s America for its defence against Russian aggression saw it accept an unfair US trade deal and abase itself to try to prevent Trump abandoning Ukraine altogether. China’s rare-earths stranglehold, which were weaponised in its standoff with the US, also threatened to stall European industry.

But this newfound vulnerability has also focused minds. It is now crystal clear that unless the EU steels itself for a new world order where hard power rules, it will be torn apart by hostile foreign powers.

As the latest summit in Brussels showed, EU leaders are still wary of flexing their geopolitical muscles. But eventually they still found a way to support Ukraine. Might they again surprise us with their fortitude in 2026?

After all, Europe tends to advance in a crisis – and crises don’t come much bigger than this.