Episode 256: The Top 5 International Risks to Look Out For with Dominic Bowen and Elisa Garbil

Coordinated and Produced by Elisa Garbil

A different episode today where Dominic hosts one of his colleagues Elisa Garbil  on the Podcast! They dive into Elisa’s top 5 International Risks and debate why these are so important. Listen to the episode to find out which risks she finds important, what Dominic finds of them, and what their argumentation is towards why this is an important top 5.

They discuss the episodes of: Mauro Lubrano, Rik Peels, Sander van der Linden, Dr. Allysa Czerwinsky, and Aaron Winter. 

Dominic Bowen is an experienced business leader and corporate advisor at Europe’s leading risk management consultancy. Dominic supports business leaders, boards, and executives make informed management decisions. With 20 years’ experience specialising in strategy development, organisational resilience, risk management, business continuity, and crisis response he leads and manages global risk-remediation across various industries and sectors. He has helped teams around the world plan for and respond to high-impact events, including cross-border crises, change management, natural disasters, and geopolitical turmoil. He has supported organisations design and implement operational resilience programs and enterprise risk management frameworks.

As a member of the Swedish Risk Management Association, Dominic has been establishing successful operations in some of the world’s most challenging environments. Dominic has extensive international experience having established the highest quality operational systems and structures in Ukraine, Yemen, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Timor-Leste, Thailand, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Afghanistan, Philippines, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Haiti, Liberia, and Nepal. Dominic is extremely well-versed in risk controls, resilience, governance, and compliance requirements.

Moreover, Dominic is the host and CEO of The International Risk Podcast. He has a Diploma in Public Safety, a Diploma in Security and Risk Management, a Diploma of Management, a Master’s Degree in International Relations, and currently finalising a Master of International Law.

Elisa Garbil is the Podcast Producer and Investigative Research Lead at The International Risk Podcast, where she leads on strategic editorial direction, in-depth research, and high-level stakeholder engagement. 

The International Risk Podcast is a weekly podcast for senior executives, board members, and risk advisors. In these podcasts, we speak with experts in a variety of fields to explore international relations. Our host is Dominic Bowen, Head of Strategic Advisory at one of Europe’s leading risk consulting firms. Dominic is a regular public and corporate event speaker, and visiting lecturer at several universities. Having spent the last 20 years successfully establishing large and complex operations in the world’s highest-risk areas and conflict zones, Dominic now joins you to speak with exciting guests around the world to discuss international risk.

The International Risk Podcast – Reducing risk by increasing knowledge.

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Transcript:

Elisa Garbil: [00:00:00] if I’d want anyone to take anything from this podcast is that collaboration and listening to each other is the most important part

Welcome back to the International Risk Podcast, where we discuss the latest world news and significant events that impact businesses and organizations worldwide.

Dominic Bowen: Hi, I’m Dominic Bowen and I’m the host of the International Risk Podcast. And today we have a slightly different format me and Alyssa Garel, one of the colleagues at the International Risk Podcast, are gonna discuss her top five risks. And will be a really fun conversation where we discuss some really great topics and I look forward to unpacking them.

Alyssa, welcome to the microphone at the International Risk Podcast.

Elisa Garbil: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Dominic Bowen: So Alyssa, you and I speak obviously several times a week about international risk and a range of topics. Some of them really fun, some of them quite sad, some of them offering lots of opportunity. you obviously put a lot of thought into this, every day as part of your work, what do you see as the top five international [00:01:00] risks?

Elisa Garbil: I think my top five would start with number one being neoliberalism, which is one I’ve recently found out more about. I’ve always been quite an activist and I’ve always been interested in different aspects, and I’ve recently read The Invisible Doctrine by, And I thought that really overarched everything. I thought, like I put it all together and I went, this is, this is my biggest international risk. is therefore neoliberalism because it’s where all our other issues stem from, like climate change, misinformation, the rise of fascism, hatred, xenophobia, the growing inequality gap.

So neoliberalism in essence is a policy model that encompasses both politics and economics. So it favors private enterprise and a free market many of these neoliberal policies concern the efficient functioning of free market capitalism. So they limit government spending, they limit government regulation and they limit public ownership.

You might have heard neoliberalism from the Tacher and Reagan area. So Tacher is known as [00:02:00] neoliberalism. It’s just a different name for it, but Friedrich Hayek was the first one to start neoliberalism with his book, Road to Serve Them

The current system doesn’t work for me. the idea is that there should be a trickle down economy. So the ultra rich and the rich lead to their money pouring down. So they lead to, cultural spaces, public spaces. But what we’ve noticed over the past 40 years is that that really hasn’t happened. We’ve had less third spaces.

We have an economy that’s essentially fully privatized. We have exaggerating wealth gaps between people in a country, but also between countries, which we can see in the global south, for example, or the global north. There’s huge differences in GDP. there’s social fragmentation, leads to. Blaming others. You have the rise, for example, the ultra right parties.

That has happened because people feel that their safety net have been taken away. You don’t really have what we previously had. Well, in the UK you have DNHS and everyone [00:03:00] complains here that you can’t get a doctor’s appointment, which is rather true. ’cause if you end up needing the doctor, usually it’s like, oh, you can come in a month.

And it’s like, yeah, but my issue is now. Not in a month. Like I hope that in a month I don’t have it anymore. and a lot of people will need to find scapegoats and scapegoats are often the marginalized groups, or the immigrants, illegal immigrants. And there is this idea being pushed forward that long as you work your way out of being poor, you’ll get out of it.

But what we’ve noticed is that if you start. A step backwards in society is actually quite hard to get further up the ladder. It’s not impossible. It has happened before, but it is increasingly getting difficult and for example, getting on the housing market. Do tell me what you think Dominic.

Dominic Bowen: I think everything you said is, really interesting and I, I think trickle down economics has largely been disputed, and we’ve seen plenty of case studies more recently in Latin America where countries that have moved away from the traditional neoliberal policies have seen a decline Wealth and income inequality and we know [00:04:00] that the traditional form of the early realism that was really pushed in the eighties and nineties, saw cuts to social welfare, cuts to public services, labor market, deregulation, privatization.

we know that, as you said, people like Margaret Thatcher were, were proponents of that. We see today people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump are big proponents of it. I think one of the reasons that it has lasted as a theory and a very successful theory is that it’s been incredibly effective at, at masking the ideology as just common sense.

this is common sense. How can you argue with common sense? And as I said, since about the 1980s, it’s, it’s really reshaped the global economic order and has embedded this market first thinking into every corner of public life. All, and I say all of us really, I think have internalized the idea that the private sector is more efficient.

And I think today it is. But should it be? And why is it? I think we have just naturally all assume and believe that the government is always bloated. The government is always oversized [00:05:00] and. I think thirdly, this idea that individual success is a matter of just personal grit and hard work, and you don’t have to have just recently done your MBA from the London School of Economics or Stockholm School of Economics to believe that.

You just need to switch onto social media and you’ll be told by a hundred cool people driving fast cars with nice watches. That success is just a matter of hard work and, and grit. And I think it’s this ideology and it’s not just the tax codes and the trade agreements that support it. actually rewired our values and our how we see success and how we pursue success.

I know my work on a daily basis. I work with European multinational firms. I work with senior leadership teams. I, I work with some of Europe’s wealthiest families and, and most successful companies. And I, I see the results and there’s no criticism here, but you see that that risk is often externalized onto the public or onto the government.

see, very successful business leaders, but often just rely on their. Gut ’cause it’s their grit that has made them successful. But then they wonder why they’re [00:06:00] vulnerable to, to new types of crisis. And we know, and we see, we see this from the data. And I, I see this, I see this every day, that the biggest beneficiaries, they’re not small business owners, they’re not medium-sized enterprises, they’re multinationals.

They’re the companies that have the ability to optimize their tax schemes, that employ lobbyists, have the ability to take advantage of regulatory arbitrage strategies. So it’s not really a free market. Again, that’s another great term. Free market. It’s a free market. It’s open to anyone, but it’s not, it’s a very curated And again, I don’t say this with any criticism. I say this as as observations as as what I see in my, my daily business, and I also want to emphasize it. And we can’t ignore this, that it’s the same neoliberal frameworks that have enabled unprecedented global growth. We saw 23% and 24% growth of the stock market, despite a huge drop in April after Trump’s trade announcements we’ve seen, generally speaking, a very positive.

in both Europe and, and North America and in many emerging countries as well. And, and this has lifted hundreds of millions of people out [00:07:00] of poverty. And it’s driven extraordinary innovation, which is great, and it’s to be welcomed. So capitalism’s dynamism is real. The entrepreneurial spirit is, real.

I think the framework that we’re operating in, it’s not free. It’s not a free market. And there are very significant design flaws in the system that we are operating in.

Elisa Garbil: I probably slightly disagree with that, if you look at people in the UK and the Netherlands, a lot of people vote for a right. Feel that they’ve getting worse off. what we can see in, in British politics especially is that the rich bi. Policy. So they buy politicians and it might not be directly buying ’cause that is obviously illegal, but it might be in donations.

And as you’ve seen with Donald Trump, for example, the biggest donators get the biggest power, which means that a lot of policies are catered towards who buy them, who can buy them. It’s the rich so that a lot of policies will be catered towards these people, which then makes it harder if you’re not. Your vote is still important and I do think everyone should go out and vote. ‘Cause only by voting will you be able to make a difference. But it does [00:08:00] feel a bit sometimes that your vote isn’t being listened to, especially if you don’t have direct influence over someone. I think that sometimes leads to, more poverty in areas as well, especially amongst farmers, for example. Or, people being in social welfare. That might be a group that’s definitively feeling it more others.

Dominic Bowen: I think it is, is really important. And of course this is the International Risk Podcast, and so when we consider neoliberalism and its, impact during crisis, I, I think there’s some important considerations too. We, we saw during COVID-19 and, and I worked with a lot of Nordic and Baltic firms, were really stunned by just this lack of coordination, both at the state level but also at the interstate level.

The lack of surge capacity, even things like basic preparedness from public institutions. I certainly also saw this during the, expected invasion from Russia into Ukraine. and I was speaking to many government actors, across Northern Europe. And the level of preparedness was, was shockingly slow.

And I remember speaking to some government actors back in [00:09:00] 2015 Europe about concerns about, Russian escalation. And, and Russia’s grabbing additional territories back then in Ukraine, but certainly expanding its, uh, information operations and its hybrids attack across Europe. then seven years later, there was still no further preparedness actions taken.

And I think. Neoliberalism really trains governments for stability and for cost savings and not for volatility. And it, it sometimes treats resilience as a waste, as public infrastructure, as a cost center, not something that adds society. And I think that’s a concern because pandemics, cyber attacks, climate shocks, simply don’t care about balance sheets and, and they do require redundancy.

We know this in the business sector, that you need redundancy, you need stock polls, you need coordination, you need trust. These sometimes things that I think some advocates of neoliberalism see as inefficiencies. And we’ve seen that recently with Elon Musk and Doge and their cuts for many government agencies the USA.

You’re hearing organizations like the FBI, organizations like fema, the Federal Emergency Management Agency being [00:10:00] gutted and cut down the complete dismantling of usaid, the largest foreign donor of, of any government around the world. This really removes, not just redundancy, but an essential emergency service that that is provided to, to millions of people every year.

So I, I, I think there are some significant concerns there that we need to be aware of. And the risks, certainly neoliberalism, I think has brought some benefits. Um, if you take it, it’s purist. There’s certainly are, some risks that we need to be careful of. So if you’d like to tell us about your second risk, what’s the, second risk that, that keeps you awake at night, Alyssa?

Elisa Garbil: my second risk is climate change. It’s the biggest risk we face as humanity, as humans, and I strongly believe that if we do not change anything, the earth will do it for us. So of this will lead to mass migration, mass deaths, famine, food insecurity, mass displacement, infertile, land, hoarding of resources like freshwater, and there’s so many more.

Issues surrounding it. I do sometimes feel a bit weird to have to say that climate change is a big risk find [00:11:00] it quite hard to graph that people don’t believe climate change is a risk. And for me it’s such an obvious one. especially because a drought in one part of the world can destabilize the whole global food systems.

So sparks not only mass displacement, but it also triggers geopolitical tensions thousands of miles away. Small example, but last year in Spain there was an issue with tomatoes. They didn’t grow properly and the UK had a tomato shortage we’re out of Europe right now, so we’re not part of the priority list.

it was quite interesting, see, everyone panicking because there were no tomatoes and how can you not have tomatoes? And is just. One short example that is in the West, basically, but it, it does show that it will touch everyone everywhere. So rising sea levels, extreme weather events, all of them can be witnessed today all of them will lead to more climate refugees.

And this also leads to more cross border tensions. like I said, often in the west, we don’t think we get touched. That we’re safe. most of the droughts happen in Africa. Most of the extreme weather [00:12:00] is in South Asia, but we’re both witnessing them here as well. Especially if you look now, there’s huge fires in Cyprus, in Italy, France, Spain, there’s probably more countries as well, Norway has Arctic cities heating up like it’s the Mediterranean that’s not known either.

In the south of France, a lot of rain hasn’t fallen. So I, some of my family members are farmers. The only thing I hear right now if we called each other is there’s been no rain. Did you have rain?

We still don’t have rain. Our crops are failing. Our animals are, struggling to get enough food. And these are in Europe right now. It’s not just something that will happen to other people. So not only is that a problem now, all these droughts are a problem now, but this will lead to floods as well.

’cause what we saw a few years ago in limber, for example, in the Netherlands, is that there was a huge period of dry weather, then the rain did finally come, but the earth wasn’t able to sustain it. So everything flooded. built [00:13:00] next to our rivers in a lot of countries because that’s what a fertile ground is.

That’s where the nice views are. That’s where the scenery is. But forgetting that if the river. Rises, we’re gonna have our feet in the water, basically in our houses. And that’s also what happened in Belgium. There’s huge floods. There’s still areas like people can’t live there because of the amount of flooding that happened.

So change will also lead to resource conflicts, like the scarcity of fresh water and food, which then not only do we struggle with. Not having enough food like in the south of Europe, but we also struggle with having fresh water, which is how we sustain the food, how we sustain ourselves. And this scarcity will lead to economic shocks. So global supply change and the financial systems are threatened by these climate induced disruptions. This leads to destabilizing, emerging and developing countries, which we can see as well. it leads to the rise of fascism ’cause somebody needs to be blamed.

For everything we’re witnessing for the lack of food there, scarcity. Somebody [00:14:00] needs to get the blame for that. And rather than looking at what is causing this, we need an immediate scapegoat, which often leads to xenophobia. And I think this is my last point, there’s still health crisis. COVID-19 wouldn’t have been able to exist without us living so close to each other Mass migration, we are closer to spreading vector borne diseases, small nutrition and heat related illnesses. And also this also leads to political instability then, which I said previously, which leads to a rise of fascism and right wing, et cetera. What do you think about climate change as a second big risk.

Dominic Bowen: You know, I think climate change risk is really important. And I think, an important reframing that’s needed is that this isn’t a future risk. This is a force multiplier that’s happening today. I work on supply chain vulnerabilities, for quite a few Scandinavian companies, they’re already seeing raw material disruptions due to droughts in southern Europe.

And you alluded some of those in, in, in Spain, but they’re occurring in in several southern European countries. And we know [00:15:00] that these environmental shocks can trigger price volatility. It also encourages labor migration. And in many cases it actually includes, local conflict. we see that just in Europe now, multiply that across every industry and across every geography.

And we see that climate change isn’t just something that melts, glaciers, it’s also melting the business environment. and ultimately social cohesion. We know that it stresses weak governments. it ignites resource conflicts. It accelerates border tensions. So it’s not just making the planet hotter, it’s, it’s also making governance harder.

And know, we’ve got the Nile, we have conflicts between Sudan, Ethiopia, and Egypt, over the Grand Renaissance dam that impacts about We’ve got tensions along, the Brara River, separating China and India. We know between Turkey and Iraq, along the Tigris and Euphrates, there’s tension. obviously there’s, tensions between water scarcity and water access in in Palestine from Israel. And then along the indus between Pakistan and India, two countries that are regularly [00:16:00] at loggerheads fighting active conflicts and a risk of, of nuclear tension.

I mean, this is, this is very, very significant and the impacts for Europeans and for Northern American business leaders. You know, we see supply chain disruptions. We see increasing operational costs. We know that it makes the markets more sable. We know that the geopolitical risks, as I just mentioned, are, are, are very, very significant and depending on how your, your company, your university, your government policies are, are placed.

There’s also very significant reputational risks. But on the other side, you know, we’ve, we’ve talked a lot about the risks. I, I think the opportunities, the markets have proven surprisingly capable of generating clean technology and, and coming up with new levels of innovation from, electric vehicles to, to battery storage.

I think if we can harness this innovation, well, if we can encourage the markets and the private sector to move forward positively, capital can be a powerful ally in mitigating climate risk, but it just has to be done a framework that supports, you know, ethical, moral decisions that benefits everyone, just [00:17:00] a few.

And I think that might sort of touch on a, a point that you mentioned. I heard you used the word fascism a a few times. So I, I, I wonder if one of your risks is related to that.

Elisa Garbil: I think the rise of fascism is a huge issue. Often we have called it the rise of the old right or the right wing, but I think we need to start just calling it what it is, I wonder sometimes where our tolerance lies towards hatred towards what we call or what is claimed to be free speech.

Because we are witnessing a direct erosion of human rights in Gaza, for example, and that’s just one of them. You just mentioned South Sudan. there’s Eritrea also happening. Congo has huge problems as well with human rights issues. all of that starts in the West, for example, where the question is.

How do we treat refugees in Europe? Because we demonize them here. They’re targeted regarding our hatred and our insecurity. They become the scapegoats for everything that’s going wrong. if you have to step on a boat out of all the options you have in the world and that seems the [00:18:00] best option to go on a boat, risk your life, bring your family and children, then that for me, you have a right.

everyone has a right to go somewhere else to. Find their luck. I mean, either of us don’t live in the countries. Well, So technically we would be seen as people who traveled for their luck and for their wealth as well. Right? We moved countries because of opportunities and of, we had the opportunities to do so, and the privilege to be able to do so. I don’t think refugees are a reason. You can’t get an appointment at your doctors. You can’t get a paid job. You can’t get, the government to do what you want them to do, refugees, also not the reason inflation has risen and the salaries haven’t followed up.

I think that has to do more with. The company’s decisions and the government’s decisions, rather than somebody trying to get a better life and allowing the far right and fascism to gain ground, we are allowing directly for the undermining of civil liberties in the UK recently, there’s been a law in instated, which makes protesting harder.

I do think everyone should have a right to protest. I might not agree with all [00:19:00] protests, that doesn’t mean. They’re not allowed to by making it harder to protest. we’re slowly seeping into the promotion of authoritarianism and I find it quite hard that we haven’t learned from the past. It seems. My I do have some more points, but I’m quite interested in what you think.

Dominic Bowen: I think this is a really important one, and I think it’s gonna be really easy for some business leaders to dismiss this as, as something that that’s not occurring in their workplaces. And I, and I think there’s a growing number of people. No, I think, I know the data is, is really clear and the social contracts has frayed I meet with executive teams and, and business leaders right across Europe.

They often assume that workers are motivated by career growth. but at the end of the day when you are earning less in real terms than your parents did, or for some of us that are a little bit older, you’re earning less in real terms today than what you were earning 15 years ago. I think it’s not surprising that people are looking for alternative narratives.

Now I’m not encouraging people to look for alternative narratives and I’m not encouraging people to buy into the alt rights or neoreactionary [00:20:00] movements or, or, or fascism. I think we need to accept that fascism. Is on the rise. The data is clear. In 2025, fascism is on the rise and there has been very, very significant developments in Europe and the United States.

Now, there’s only a few political parties that openly describe themselves as fascists or, or neofascist or proto fascist movements. at the end of the day, these parties exist. We see them in Hungary, we see them in Italy. We see them in Poland. We see them in Sweden, in in the USA, ands. When there’s narratives and when there’s just memes on social media and populous language about taking back control, that sounds great.

Taking back control. Who doesn’t want to take back control? Who doesn’t want to see their real wage? Increase, to be able to pay for their rent, to be able to buy a home, to be able to, with a relative degree of confidence, know that they can retire at a reasonable age. And when there is this gap, when there’s a gap left behind, when there’s an absence of belonging, when there’s an absence of predictability, there’s no visible fairness.

Well, I don’t think we should be surprised [00:21:00] that these things are are on the rise. I’ve sat in a room, and I’m embarrassed to say this. I’ve sat in a room and watched managers tell employees won’t be getting pay rises because salary is already above market average. And then when employees ask, well, hold on, the shareholders are getting an increase.

The company’s demonstrating 10 to 15% profitability. How come we can’t get a, a salary rise? And then management response with, well, it’s complicated. wouldn’t understand. Those responses. You cannot be surprised when employees start getting pushed to the extremes. And so I think when austerity is gutting local services, when different companies are amplifying grievances and, and companies are demonstrating great levels of profitability at the same time as salaries and not keeping pace.

I think we really need to accept that this is a very significant risk. but like always, you know, we, have to balance this narrative that, so far, free markets, free markets. I acknowledge the term I just used, these markets that we’re operating in, this capitalist society that we largely operate in has been successful for lifting societies [00:22:00] at large out of poverty and has offered a lot of people more choice.

But not everyone and definitely not equal. I remember when I was a little kid, my mom used to say, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. I used to just sort of roll my eyes and go, sure, whatever mom, you know, 35 years later. She’s still right. She’s still right. It’s in the data.

It’s so clear. It’s the reason why, albeit, perhaps potentially misguided, it’s why politicians like, in Italy, like in Hungary, like in America, getting voted in because they’re offering a narrative to back control.

Elisa Garbil: Yeah. Whether they actually managed to take back control is the will question.

‘ cause I do think a lot of fascist regimes lead to more aggression and violence. not only they undermining international norms, for example, the best example I have is last week. I don’t know if you follow this, but the Heritage Foundation, which is, neoliberal but also rather. Right wing foundation that is very close to the White House.

[00:23:00] They’ve come up with Project 25, for example. They stated that the European Union needs to get rid or dismantle the European Commission, they need to give countries more power, which not only is another country meddling with another country’s own politics. And this is the youth politics, but it’s also an interesting one because the European Commission is actually where the research is being done, not where the policies are made. They research the policies and they research, money and they are in charge of where the money goes, but they’re not in charge of how much money they get. Which then questions why countries need to have more power, which is a whole different debate on whether you agree with the European Union Union or not. But you cannot have another country going around saying checks and balances are incorrect in another country. has happened a lot in the past, I think, when you look at colonial histories, but I don’t think that’s the way we should go forwards and.

This radicalization, this slow radicalization, what we’re seeing in people around us or in [00:24:00] the people we vote for as well, and the parties we vote for we’ve discussed this extensively on the podcast is one of the topics I push forwards the most. had a lot of great episodes on the podcast, which we’ll link down below.

But I do think that this surge of fascist movements leads to political extremism. All of our political parties have shifted to the right, so what even I who’ve. Haven’t been voting for that long. The first party I voted for when I just turned 18, we had elections in the Netherlands with they says ancestor, which was mostly center right.

Nowadays you probably could call them. Right? Which would be what the FE day would be nowadays. ‘ The whole political spectrum has moved towards the right to accommodate these xenophobic ideas and accommodate. The fear of the other. And radicalization also means that we see more terrorism.

like white supremacism, we see more violent hate crimes, which happened in the UK with the far right riots. some people call them Farage riots. Stick to far right [00:25:00] riots where misinformation and disinformation leads to loads of men mostly coming out to these places and setting fire through houses and trying to trash the place.

And I don’t think, not only are they unfounded because it turns out that some of these immigrants were purely immigrants, but it leads to so much more pain and it leads to so much more panic around everyone. People don’t feel safe anymore, and that’s not something we would want around us, especially because having one party or one group feeling empowered to do something that will lead to other groups feeling empowered to do something because they feel that their voices are being listened to, is where the question of free speech comes into account.

Are we allowing hatred and misinformation to be called free speech, or should we understand that maybe you shouldn’t say everything that comes up in your mind.

Dominic Bowen: I, agree with you and I, I think there is, enough evidence that I think everyone can acknowledge that the far right and, and fascist [00:26:00] discourse really is undergoing this process of, normalization and mainstreaming in various contexts, in various geographies, especially in Europe.

don’t mean that the far right and the fascist ideologies are becoming softened. I mean that the mainstream is shifting. To the right, that extremist views and the ideas and the symbols and the memes are increasingly being incorporated into normal dialogue, normal dialogue between politicians, in the media and even business leaders.

And I, I can tell you a story, Lisa, I was listening to, A Nordic company’s, quarterly earnings call, and the CEO was talking, about labor policies and, and salaries and, and talent shortages and retentions. And on more than one occasion, he casually repeated far right talking points about immigration.

this wasn’t company policy, it was his personal commentary, but this was just normalized and. My expectation was that this would become a huge crisis for the company, but it wasn’t even picked up. The media didn’t even comment on it. It wasn’t talk about it, it wasn’t, discussed. It, it just, it just fell, under the, under the [00:27:00] radar.

Now, this company was lucky the media didn’t pick it up. Not lucky that that has been mainstreamed within their organization or that it’s coming from the top, but I think. If we look the Overton window, that’s the, the theory about the, what is the range of socially accepted discourse. These are the things that courts use to decide is language offensive?

Is it a criminal offense? it’s also the sort of window that media companies, news outlets, TV programming channels, what can be aired before eight 30 at night, and what has to be aired after eight 30 at night. And it shifts. But it’s important to note, and I think this is what everyone needs to remember, that it, it shifts gradually.

A Hitler didn’t just come into power in 1939. He came into Power years before that, and social structure and systems that enabled the Nazi party to gain power occurred a decade earlier. These things shift over time. Before we realize it, what was unacceptable yesterday becomes tolerated, and then eventually it even becomes institutionalized.

And I think just to, to wrap up that thought, I think your point about free speech and being able to have an open discourse is, is really important. [00:28:00] And liberal democracies allow for this contest of ideas. And that’s partly what we do on the podcast. We allow that contest of ideas and trying to censor ideas often push ideas underground.

It will often give narratives justification, I think, know, this is the difficulty, this is the difficulty of risk management and identifying where is the line of, where do we and need. To allow pressure valves to prevent, you know, socially explosive breakdowns. at the same time, freedom doesn’t mean immunity from consequence, the consequence parroting and, and, and promoting narratives that are exclusionary, that are racist, that are misogynistic, that are promoting fascist ideologies.

So it’s, difficult, but why we have the podcast. That’s why we have professionals that, are advising companies to work on these topics. So we’ve talked about neoliberalism, we’ve talked about climate change. We’ve navigated through fascism. What’s number four on your list?

Elisa Garbil: Number four is societal polarization.

And I think that for me means. We’re losing the capacity to listen to each other. So [00:29:00] what I’ve noticed, and all, all my points tie in together. but I’ve noticed at that there’s a lot of, it has to be either, oh, what they’re saying is left wing, or what they’re saying is right wing.

I feel that countries and people especially are forgetting that compromise and cooperation is the only way forward. You can’t just. Accept one person or one person’s view. ’cause you might have a fully different view and that’s okay. Like all different viewpoints are okay, but you need to be able to sit down and listening to each other.

So what we’re witnessing with societal Polarization the weakening of democratic cohesion. With the rise of fascism and the rise of the old, right. We’re witnessing deep social divisions within countries and between countries as well. We are directly seeing that with our intolerance of the other politically. We make it harder to govern, get policies passed, get ideas flowing, to ensure that we do not fall into authoritarianism.

We are increasing the risk of institutional paralyzes and breakdown. And I think this polarization also leads to more civil unrest and violence we are unable to see [00:30:00] different viewpoints we are unable to understand different viewpoints. If we’re not able to sit down and listen, people tend to just listen to argument or listen to respond rather than listen to understand.

And this then leads to manipulation. Because societies that are deeply polarized, are more susceptible to foreign interference propaganda than hybrid war tactics. I think especially now with the rise of AI and we’re seeing algorithms taking over more and more. 10 years ago, of us were as glued to our phones we are now.

It’s incredibly annoying. I found you’re trying to just search something up and suddenly you’ve lost an hour scrolling it wasn’t even the rabbit hole you wanted to be in. but our best example is the 2024 US elections Russian interference, not new Russian interference in political elections.

Happens a lot in Europe. You can see it as well in Serbia, Moldova, and a lot of the Eastern Bloc countries. But Trump and Musk. Slightly openly admitted that they have manipulated algorithms to ensure that they [00:31:00] would receive the win. This would not have been okay a few years ago. And I think that’s, that ties into your point.

What do we agree? Like we’re slowly moving towards acceptance. ‘ a few years ago that wouldn’t have been accepted at all. And this polarization in countries. Also leads to polarizations in other countries in domestic instability. Trump is the best, argument ’cause he just changes the mind so quickly.

He just sees something new and then pops on to do something else, which is quite. Interesting to have that as a political leader. ’cause we tend to know political leaders are very stable and calm and Trump is the full opposite of that. for good economic corporation, you need to be able to work together to rely upon each other to trust somebody’s word.

that is not really what we’re seeing nowadays. I don’t know what your opinion is on polarization.

Dominic Bowen: I always lean on the, facts and, and what is the data. And, again, we’ve seen decades of hollowing out of the middle, not just economically. And we spoke about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

So we’re certainly seeing it economically, we’re also seeing it socially, institutionally, politically. [00:32:00] And, you know, to be honest, emotionally now when I, my. Day-to-day job advice, CEOs on crisis management and stakeholder engagement. I often say things similar to, you know, you’re not just managing perception here.

You’re not just managing the narrative, you’re also managing trust and, honestly, equity as well in many cases. know that trust, and this is the issue that really needs to be underlined, that trust is dangerously low across most democracies, both. With our politicians, with our bureaucrats, but also our business leaders.

it’s not just the economy, it’s identity, it’s status, it’s voice. And when people feel unheard too long, stop listening too. And that’s where polarization begins. you know, to your first fear around neoliberalism, you know, it, it really told people that they were customers, they were consumers.

Not citizens and that they should choose the best schools. They should choose the right hospitals to have their babies. They should choose the pensions, in the same way that we choose toothpaste or, or bananas at the supermarket. But market logic doesn’t always build social cohesion. In fact, many times it, it fragments it based [00:33:00] on you are sending your kids to school, where you can afford to go on your holiday, the sort of car you drive.

So people aren’t just divided. By politics anymore, but also by the platforms they use and, and the, the status symbols they have, but also now, which is quite strange by the facts that they believe and the facts they choose not to believe. And, you know, sadly, I, I’ve seen this and I think the risk is, is, is really very significant.

And I, I think you’re right to have this in the, in the top five a shared reality really. Is the foundation of everything, of good governance, of commerce and, daily life. I was recently running a simulation for a large European logistics firm, we were looking at reputation risks and specifically reputation risk tied to, to climate policy.

was quite interesting that half the people in the room assume that. The public would support their net zero transition, which stands to reason, the other half believe that climate change was still a politically divisive topic and not one that the company should be engaging in. the honest answer is yes.

They were both right, depending on which reality you were subscribing to. And, and that’s the [00:34:00] problem a world where truth and factors sometimes personalize, as you talked about, our social media feeds are algorithmically siloed. Consensus becomes really difficult to achieve, and I find this is where I really earn my money.

This is where I earn my value as a, as a management consultant. Being able to achieve that shared consensus. And, and I think, know, when I talk to leadership teams about this is the process and these are the sprints we’re gonna run and these are the phases of the program that, that we’re gonna implement.

The last one is always around achieving consensus. And I honestly, I think that’s one of the most important phases and the important things I do. But don’t think that’s realized until you’ve really got everyone sitting around the boardroom and realizing how divided everyone is and the realities that different people are subscribing to.

And I think. If we can’t achieve, a series of shared facts in a boardroom, then you know, not gonna be able to achieve the same shared facts in, in our political dialogues, in our parliaments and right across society. So I think this is something that, that is really important and we do business leaders, as academics, as politicians and bureaucrats.

We do need to be [00:35:00] thinking, ’cause this isn’t the fault of capitalism. really is a fault of leadership at all levels across our society.

Elisa Garbil: Yeah, I think I agree with that, that A lot can be learned from cooperation.

Dominic Bowen: Now we’re getting close to the end of our discussion, but we’ve got one more.

What is it? What is your fifth top risk?

Elisa Garbil: My fifth top risk is misinformation and disformation. I think the best person to explain this is Sanda Linda. We had him on the podcast last year in November, I think. Misinformation and disinformation leads to the eroding trust in institutions. Like we said, the polarization leads to a lot of people standing in different viewpoints and spreading false narratives.

Weakens not only trust in science, but also in government media. undermines the effectiveness of crisis response. COVID-19 is a great example ’cause anti-vax, became huge. A lot of people trusted misinformations around the vaccines, around the pandemic. It led to lot of people suddenly becoming doctors and telling people what to do and who to believe, even though are [00:36:00] trusted like doctors who’ve studied years upon years to get.

Their qualifications weren’t believed, and this leads to threats directly to public health, right? If we wouldn’t have gone into lockdown, how many millions would’ve died? You can see it in Italy. Thousands of people lost their family members. And it is true that there are a lot of conspiracies that we all believe in.

As Rick Pill said, Watergate is one that leads, like you said, the lack of good leadership is why there is a rise of mistrust and disinformation. then this leads to conflict. These campaigns of disinformation from state actors. I mean, we know Russia has been involved in a lot of disinformation campaigns all over Europe, a lot of cyber attacks as well.

inciting violence meddling in elections and ensuring that countries don’t work together anymore, ensuring that there’s different political views. The invasion of Russia into Ukraine is still being labeled as saving the Ukrainian people from fascism. That is well believed by a lot of Russians.

But Russia has also very much one [00:37:00] state propaganda, one state actor. There’s not a lot of different information that comes through, it shows you how important misinformation is Israel and the current war in Gaza. I dunno if you noticed, a lot of states currently have done 180. Suddenly the Dutch states.

Has come out and said, look, this is enough. We don’t agree with this. Last week people were being picked up and arrested for protest. They were doing for the exact same reason. There’s a lot of change happening because of this information and misinformation, also leads to cybersecurity risks.

Critical infrastructure and national infrastructure. For example, being targeted from anti-technology extremists, which Maru Luno talked about on the podcast a few weeks ago. It undermines global consensus. Basically, we refuse to listen to each other because we have those different viewpoints, these different narratives. Like you said, we don’t have shared realities anymore. We have fragmented realities.

We don’t live in what we consider or reality, and that means that it weakens international collaboration, [00:38:00] but also our own collaboration between the neighbors. We live with family members. got quite a few people in my family our anti-vaxxers, and that sometimes makes conversation quite hard, I’m not gonna lie.

And if I’d want anyone to take anything from this podcast is that collaboration and listening to each other is the most important part you don’t have to agree with me. I don’t think my viewpoints are the ultimate, I’m not all all knowing I can be wrong as well, right? There’s nothing wrong with that, I think admitting that you are wrong, it’s bad either, you need to be able to listen to someone and understand where they’re coming from. ‘Cause I might disagree with you politically. I might disagree with you. On a lot of different topics, but I can still understand where you’re coming from and why you’re making these choices. And I think this information and the all five risks basically leads to us not being willing to sit down and listen for the sake of listening than listen for the sake of argumenting.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, very much. And I think this is a. You know, you talked a lot about [00:39:00] families and, and discussion on a, a one-to-one level, and I think that’s very valid and I, I, I certainly miss that discourse. I know when I’m traveling in Turkey and, and Lebanon and, and Jordan, I can certainly have these really robust dialogues and, and communities and people I’m working with and meeting, there are certainly much more amicable to that sort of dialogue, but.

It’s not the case in Europe. It’s, it’s definitely not the case in Europe where people are willing to, to have that, that, that free and, and feel safe and to feel brave when having those conversations. But I think at a, at a more strategic level, I think. This is a real threat and a, and a significant risk to democracy and, and global cooperation as well, because democracy really is a trust game and, and misinformation is something that just really poisons that, that whole idea.

And I think as you mentioned before, during the pandemic, I know I was advising several, uh, Scandinavian and Northern European, both public agencies, but also corporate actors The biggest challenge I was facing wasn’t logistics. It, it wasn’t vaccine distribution, it was belief. There were still massive segments of the population were more [00:40:00] likely to trust a, a WhatsApp group or a telegram thread or something they saw on Facebook instead of the information provided by trained epidemiologists and public health.

So this wasn’t a failure of science. I think this was a real failure of narrative, of, communication. And I know WHO, the World Health Organization talked about it. it was a pandemic, but they also called it an info demic, there was so much competing information that that made it really complicated for them.

and we know that misinformation thrived when there’s just so much white noise. And when everyone’s a broadcaster, when institutions are seen as political actors, even when they’re meant to be bipartisan and independent, The information narrative is really tilted towards those who can move faster, who can be louder, not necessarily those who are more accurate, or those who are fact-based.

And misinformation is fast. It’s scary how fast misinformation travels. And it doesn’t have to be true. needs to feel true or needs to feel fun or exciting or humorous. And I think that’s strategically dangerous when it’s scale. and I think [00:41:00] this is, what concerns. Me the most, and I think this is something that we really need.

To be aware of. Companies need to be aware of their reputation. Governments need to be aware of their ability to actually govern. When that’s said, and, and I think this does matter enormously and there’s so much going on internationally and. Locally when it comes to misinformation and disinformation, I think this is something that really, as individuals, we need to be educating ourself and as, as leaders, need to be considering what we can do to maintain and build back trust in order to counter mis and

But thanks very much for your, your questions today, Alyssa.

Elisa Garbil: Well, I’m, I’m glad you had me on.

Dominic Bowen: Well, that was a, a really fun conversation. I really appreciated discussing those top five risks. I, I think the conversation around neoliberalism is, very, very relevant. I think, was a really thoughtful, risks that, that Alyssa raised today.

and, and I think, you know, you brought quite clarity and, and conviction to the topic, and, [00:42:00] and hopefully as we demonstrated, you don’t have to be perfectly aligned when discussing topics with someone. And that’s, that’s part of the fun, that’s part of the, the interest. But, you know, with this rising tide of disinformation, social polarization, you know, what even authoritarian resurgence, across much of the world, I think we need to be having these discussions about our, our vulnerabilities and, and about the risks.

we’re facing. But certainly one thing that’s clear to me is that today’s operating environment is not isolated. Everything is interconnected, it’s accelerating, and it’s shaped by the systems and the, the narratives that we’re working within. So Alyssa, thanks very much for coming on the podcast thanks very much for our listeners for listening to the conversation today.

Elisa Garbil: Yeah, I hope everyone had a good time.