Episode 289: Trump & the World: The New Geopolitics of Trade, Technology, Energy and War with John Sitilides

Coordinated and Produced by Elisa Garbil

Dive into a high-stakes conversation with geopolitical strategist John Sitilides as he unpacks global risks! From shifting tariff strategies and corporate resilience to supply-chain de-risking, digital decoupling, sanctions, energy markets, and the future of the U.S. dollar. A must-listen for leaders navigating an increasingly divided world.

John Sitilides is a professional keynote speaker on geopolitics at corporate, investor, and industry conferences, and before government, military and intelligence community audiences, on geopolitical risk management and the business impacts of international security policies, John Sitilides is Principal at Trilogy Advisors LLC in Washington, D.C., and is Senior Fellow for National Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. 

Delivering exclusive geopolitical risk reports, webcasts, and related products and services to institutional capital market and retail clients, he explores the complex geopolitical and geo-economic decisions that impact markets in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and worldwide, helping corporate executives, investment managers and civic audiences better understand, anticipate, and mitigate risk in a disrupted international financial and security environment.  

The International Risk Podcast brings you conversations with global experts, frontline practitioners, and senior decision-makers who are shaping how we understand and respond to international risk. From geopolitical volatility and organised crime, to cybersecurity threats and hybrid warfare, each episode explores the forces transforming our world and what smart leaders must do to navigate them. Whether you’re a board member, policymaker, or risk professional, The International Risk Podcast delivers actionable insights, sharp analysis, and real-world stories that matter.

Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and Europe’s leading expert on international risk and crisis management. As Head of Strategic Advisory and Partner at one of Europe’s leading risk management consulting firms, Dominic advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives across the continent on how to prepare for uncertainty and act with intent. He has spent decades working in war zones, advising multinational companies, and supporting Europe’s business leaders. Dominic is the go-to business advisor for leaders navigating risk, crisis, and strategy; trusted for his clarity, calmness under pressure, and ability to turn volatility into competitive advantage. Dominic equips today’s business leaders with the insight and confidence to lead through disruption and deliver sustained strategic advantage.

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Transcript:

John Sitilides: we’re dealing with the reality, and the brutality of a very different global environment

Elisa Garbil: 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: Today’s episode cuts straight to one of the most consequential questions facing boardrooms facing investors and governments. Are we watching the collapse of the existing economic and geopolitical order, or simply the rebirth of something that’s much more competitive, more volatile, and much more strategic?

I’m Dominic Bowen, host of the International Risk Podcast, and we speak with the leaders who aren’t just commenting on global risk, but actually shaping how leaders respond to it. And today’s guest is exactly that. Today you’ll hear Elisa Garbil our production and investigative lead at the International Risk Podcast. In a conversation with John C, he’s a geopolitical strategist whose briefings include senior policy makers in Washington and executives from. All over the world now, John’s [00:01:00] gonna offer a rare, unfiltered assessment of the new era of tariffs of de-risking and the escalated split between the US and China.

Now, this isn’t the surface level commentary you’ll hear on many podcasts today. John and Elisa break down how tariff volatility is actually reshaping corporate strategy. What’s really happening with the bricks countries? And why the next decade will demand a different type of leadership. One that’s going to align ethics, national resilience, but also technical sovereignty. So if you advise companies, investors, if you manage supply change, or simply wanna understand what’s driving this global recalibration, then today’s conversation will give you exactly that. And this is what’s been missing from most public debates. So sit down and enjoy the next episode.

Elisa Garbil: how far do you believe the current US administration’s trade and tariff agenda represents a permanent shift away from globalization rather than a cyclical political deviation?

John Sitilides: Well, first off, there’s no such thing [00:02:00] as a permanent situation here. I mean, this may ebb and flow depending on who is president, but I would say certainly for probably the remainder of the Trump administration, so for the next three plus years. This will be the situation. I mean, president Trump has been quite open throughout his adult life as a firm believer in tariffs, not only to rebalance, structural and growing trade deficits that the US suffers with.

The People’s Republic of China with the European Union with a number of Asian countries with Mexico and the like, but also because he believes that the US government can generate significant revenues to offset a growing trade deficit now anywhere between 1.2 to $1.8 trillion a year, which is resulting in a 37 going on $38 trillion federal debt, which has resulted in federal debt service of over $1 trillion a year.

Which now exceeds the annual American military budget. So I think he’s looking [00:03:00] for a number of ways to use tariffs to recalibrate and rebalance our trade relations with countries around the world to improve America’s fiscal balance and order here in Washington. And frankly, right now, we also have a very.

Pronounced belief by President Trump that countries that export fentanyl into the United States indirectly to the Mexican drug cartels and Mexico, which President Trump believes has not done enough to prevent. The direct smuggling of fentanyl into US markets that have killed maybe a half a million, mostly young American men. So I think this is going to be the case. And then we’ll see to what extent a Republican who might succeed him would continue with these tariff policies, whether a Democrat might or whether there’ll be a reversal.

And then of course we’ll have to see how the Supreme Court rules. They may decide that much of the tariff agenda under President Trump is unconstitutional, but both [00:04:00] President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bess have made very clear there are other tariff instruments that they will make available to the administration even if they don’t have the kind of scope and breadth and scale of the current tariff policies.

Elisa Garbil: would you say that given the transactional and rapidly shifting nature of US trade policy, how would multinational firms effectively price and hedge against tariff and predictability in their long-term contracts? You said that hopefully the Republicans or whoever follows up would follow on the current route.

But that might change. Would it? what would be the best way for companies to deal with it?

John Sitilides: I think President Trump has been very direct and very transparent on this, was he’s also looking to accomplish, is to persuade as many companies as possible that want to access the vast and affluent American consumer market.

The richest market in the world by building factories and facilities here in the United States. He’s very direct about this. [00:05:00] If you build in the us, you don’t have any terrorists to deal with If you build outside the US and seek to export into the vast affluent us. Consumer market, you will be dealing with some type of baseline tariff.

Right now it looks like it’ll be about 10% for the foreseeable future. And then ideally, if you, are existing or operating out of a country that has higher than baseline tariffs, you might want to seek to build facilities in a neighboring country, a nearby country, or an allied partner country that is enjoying these baseline tariffs, but that’s really for corporate executives to decide. President Trump, very bluntly, very starkly, is not seeking to do any favors. For any corporate executives in countries outside the United States, if they want the best partnership, the best access into the US market.

The best way to do so according to President Trump is to operate from within the United States. So that’s really a corporate [00:06:00] decision and long-term investment decision by a corporate executives. It may not make sense for those companies, and then they’ll simply have to bake in the tariffs into their pricing policies and other expenses.

It’s pretty straightforward by the president and I believe he means it when he says America first. If these are activities and operations that will benefit the American consumer and the American citizenry, then that’s what he hopes to encourage corporate executives to undertake going forward.

Elisa Garbil: There’s been quite a bit of backlash from other countries and other companies, obviously because of the tariffs. Do you think that trade could reinforce between other countries, and therefore they might not be interested in trading with the US because of tariffs.

John Sitilides: Of course, that could very well be an offshoot of this policy, an unintended consequence, and we see this in many ways already taking place with the informal network of countries that are members of bricks, right.

So Brazil, Russia, India, [00:07:00] China, and South Africa launched the Brix network back in 2008 or so. About two years ago, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates formally joined Brix, and I believe it was in January of 2025 that Indonesia. Formally joined as a member and now there are probably at least a half a dozen, maybe as many as a dozen countries that are waiting in the wings hoping to become formal members.

And what I think you have here is not so much any direct competition against the G seven or the G 20. Many of these countries are enemies, are rivals, in their own right. So it’s not as if they’re going to be as cohesive as I say the G seven members. But what they are looking to do is to inoculate their own economies.

From the kind of weaponization of dollar dominance or the American dominance of the international financial systems, as in the SWIFT system for financial payments, communications, and look to see to what extent they might be able to trade bilaterally or in mini [00:08:00] laterals, three-way, four-way trade using local currencies and not having to purchase dollars in order to engage in trade.

So you may have something along those lines taking place, but. I think President Trump feels ultimately that it would be self punishing for any company, and for that matter, any country to set up a regulatory regime that denies those countries, companies, or any particular company access into the US market. By size, right, where there were several hundred so-called middle income Chinese in the People’s Republic of China. The per capita GDP in China is far lower than that of the United States. So if you take just the sheer size of America’s three hundred and thirty five, three hundred 40 million population and the per capita GDP, there simply is no comparison.

So if companies decide to punish their shareholders and their executives and their own stakeholders by denying themselves access into the [00:09:00] US market, my sense is that President Trump will say, go have it. Go have at it.

Elisa Garbil: Interesting. To what extent do you think that businesses can generally de-risk for their supply chains without suffering, prohibitive cost increases or efficiency losses? ’cause that’s essentially what you’ve been saying so far.

John Sitilides: They may not be able to as successfully as they had during the so-called era of globalization. Right. When we had from the early 1990s. Until maybe about 10, 15 years ago, the era of seamless, just in time inventory, globalization, where there was this, in retrospect, naive sense that all countries were operating by the same. Free and open trading rules. And I think what we’ve had, especially with the rise to General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping, is a very belligerent foreign policy and trading policy where prior to Xi [00:10:00] Jinping, Chinese general secretaries would abide by a policy of abide your time.

Hide your strength and not unnecessarily alarm your neighbors, your trading partners, and keep growing the Chinese economy. And under Xi Jinping, we’ve seen a far more aggressive trading policy. We’ve seen the weaponization of China’s dominance, especially say for instance, in the rare earth elements that was just unveiled several weeks ago, which in the short term will likely be of great benefit to China because the US and so many advanced industrial economies.

Are dependent on those rare earth elements for their own economies and their own technological development. But you see already that President Trump is traveling around the world entering into agreements with countries to be able to secure access to very valuable rare earth element critical metals and critical minerals mining access.

Of course, China will continue to dominate the refinement and processing. Rare earth elements for at least the next half [00:11:00] decade to decade. But the beginning of that de-risking has already begun. And when we had the COVID pandemic lockdowns, we recognized to what extent, I’ll just speak from an American perspective here.

The US economy was utterly dependent on China for essential pharmaceuticals and for personal protective medical and equipment and the like. And we also have come to realize that this kind of dependency is not in the interest of the United States. From a national defense perspective, much of our American defense industrial base is dependent on sub-suppliers inside of China for the ball bearings and magnets and semiconductors and components and materials for partial assembly before you get to the full assembly inside the United States of, for instance, the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile.

The F 35 fighter, jet Tomahawk Cruise Missiles, Ohio class nuclear submarines, , the Patriot Anti-Missile system. These are America’s most [00:12:00] important and Mighty weapon systems, and they’re dependent on the Chinese Communist Party. To build in the years ahead. And I think also the extent to which we’ll be looking to protect not only our semiconductor lead and to date, at least the lead in artificial intelligence training, especially with the most advanced chips.

I allow those that are designed by Nvidia, but also to protect our own telecommunications infrastructure and energy systems from cyber attacks from China. So these are all the ways in which we are already beginning to de-risk the American economy and American society from China. But keep in mind, China has begun this process already.

While we are debating whether or not this is the way to proceed, I believe it was in 2023, the Wall Street Journal had a very important expose on a program called Document 79. This is where Xi Jinping has ordered all Chinese state owned enterprises to [00:13:00] begin to become independent of American hardware and software systems by 2027.

And the, colloquial name for this is delete . So China has already begun for three years now to de-risk. Its at least state owned systems from dependence on American technology. And because of China’s very aggressive policies of the last 10, 12 years, and especially everything that was revealed with the COVID pandemic and now this latest attack, through the rare earth elements, restrictions, we need to de-risk not only the American economy, but those of the advanced industrial economies in Europe and in East Asia as well.

Elisa Garbil: So do you think that full digital and technological purification between the US and China is inevitable? Or are we seeing a full of hybrid standards emerging?

John Sitilides: That had firewalled its own country against American and Western technology and social media companies, so google is banned in China. Facebook is banned, [00:14:00] X is banned. YouTube is banned. So many of our media are banned in China. They’ve already banned so much of American and Western technology companies and social media companies from operating in China, whereas they very fully, and I don’t blame them one bit, very readily exploit the openness of American, European, and Democratic East Asian societies.

In the US we’re having an argument as to whether or not TikTok, whose data is ultimately controlled by the Chinese company by dance, which is accountable to the Chinese Communist Party. Should operate freely in the United States. And we have Temu and Shine and WeChat and all of these companies and, deep sync and all of these are able to operate in the United States and in, again, the global West, so to speak, Europe and East Asia, while they have completely walled off their society from Western technology.

So this really is a very one-sided campaign [00:15:00] and the idea that somehow we need to go through some hand wringing in the west. And absolve China of any responsibility to participate as a quote unquote responsible stakeholder in the international trading system, I think really exposes how weak the west has been in dealing with the Chinese threat for the last quarter century.

Elisa Garbil: Yeah, very interesting. I haven’t thought about it that way, really. So what secondary consequences should markets prepare for if San sanctions continue to target Russian energy and possibly extend to other major suppliers to such Iran or Venezuela as we’ve seen?

John Sitilides: Oh, very interesting question. Let me sort of break this down by the countries in the question.

Keep in mind, first of all, that President Trump is a very strong believer in low energy prices. For him. If you don’t have a functional energy market in your country, everything else will suffer as a result. It’s also one of the reasons why he’s been so critical, for instance, of the policies of certain European Union [00:16:00] countries to allow themselves to become dependent on Russia.

Never fearing that Russia would eventually weaponize. Its energy dominance over, say, countries like Germany and other countries in Europe that are now suffering. And the United Kingdom with extraordinarily expensive energy prices effectively impoverishing the middle class in so many European countries because of these reckless energy policy.

So here at home, president Trump, I think is doing. His very best to ensure that the price of oil and energy over writ large remains as low as possible. Not so low that it, it bankrupts oil and gas companies and coal companies and the like, but to strike the lowest balance possible between. Earning a healthy profit for the companies and ensuring that Americans enjoy the least expensive energy possible and that American companies also enjoy the least expensive energy prices possible, especially in the context now of the insatiable demand for electricity to build [00:17:00] out AI training and data centers and the overall electri electrification of the American economy and those, frankly of our allies in Europe and in East Asia.

So I think as it pertains to Russia, I think there’s a sense that. Even with the new sanctions that have been imposed on Rosneft and on Luke Oil, that overall there won’t be any significant rise in the price of oil. Anything that would endanger again, the president’s policies domestically here in the United States, and very importantly to ensure that the president’s Republican party allies in the Senate and the House of Representatives don’t lose control of those bodies in the off year elections that we have in November of 2026.

Because if the Democratic Party wins the Senate or the House, it’s the end of any legislative achievements for President Trump in the remaining two years of his presidency. And also if, especially in the House of Representatives that goes into democratic control. Probably the first bill that will be introduced in January of [00:18:00] 2027 will be the impeachment again of Donald Trump for the third time.

So I think that’s really what’s the domestic focus of many of the policies that are inherent in the question that you ask. So I think the sense is that there’s not gonna be any significant impact on oil prices domestically or globally. And oil prices are set on global markets, unlike natural gas, which is really set on spot markets, and as it pertains to Iran and to Venezuela.

I think the president intend to be very careful mind that when President Trump ordered the destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities in June of this year, the strikes were limited to just those facilities. We don’t want to see the kind of chaotic flow of millions of refugees from Iran into Saudi Arabia, into Iraq, into Kuwait, or into Europe, for that matter, as happened with Syria and Afghanistan during previous wars.

So I think the idea is to encourage a change in behavior by the regime in [00:19:00] Iran. So that it becomes a normal country, a normal neighbor that isn’t financing terrorism and destabilization against Saudi Arabia, against Israel, and for that matter is no longer sponsoring terrorism in European and American cities as it has for the last 35 years.

And similarly, I think there’s not really an intention to depose. The regime of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela because if you have a sort of regime change there, you probably would have chaos throughout South and central America. Millions of Venezuelan refugees far more than has already been the case over the last 10, 15 years.

Spilling over into Columbia, into Peru, into Chile, into Brazil, and up into the Panama, and central American countries towards the United States in numbers that we’ve been so far under the Trump presidency, been able to control with the nearly completely shut down border between Texas and Mexico. So I don’t know to what extent the secondary and tertiary [00:20:00] order.

Consequences would go beyond anything along those lines. I think President Trump’s aim is to achieve diplomatic goals while causing as little regional chaos, disruption, or disruption and upending of global energy markets, given the importance of all three of those countries, right? Venezuela is the country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world.

Iran may have the largest natural gas or is among the top natural gas. Exporters in the world and Russia, both oil and gas and coal, but also natural resources like timber and diamonds and critical metals and minerals and rare earth elements and fertilizers to help feed billions of people around the world all coming from the Russian economy.

So I think there’s a, balance in terms of how effectively and how rapidly we can achieve our diplomatic objectives without destabilizing those capitals and the countries around them.

Elisa Garbil: said, I like the phrase of the aim is to achieve the most diplomatic goals with the [00:21:00] least amount of disruption. That’s a very nice way of putting it. Do you think that prolongs sanctions and the use of financial exclusion would accelerate parallel settlement systems, which could reduce the dominance of the US dollar and what would that mean for global liquidity risk?

John Sitilides: Well, as I mentioned earlier, you already have the formation of this informal network of countries within Brix, and you may have other mini laterals formed again to protect these countries and provide them a measure of strategic depth and protection against US dollar dominance as the global reserve currency and its dominance over the international financial system, but there’s really no viable alternative.

At least for the foreseeable future to the dollar. So, however much angst you see in many capitals, financial capitals around the country over this American dollar dominance, the Euro is really a no place to replace the dollar. The REM nibi certainly is not, the yen is not, the pound is not. And [00:22:00] if there were to be a quote unquote BrickX currency.

President Trump, I think, declared several months ago that any attempt to form a bricks currency would immediately bring, I believe it’s a 100% tariff on every country that participates in this bricks currency. So, there might be a very long-term slow, gradual chipping away. Right now, I think the dollar is used for about 70% of global, commercial transactions.

Maybe it goes down to the mid sixties in a decade or two decades, but very slow, very gradual, and again, with no viable alternate in insight. However, I think there already has been a significant move to potentially replace the US dollar as the global reserve asset. And you see this because of inflation in the United States.

A debt, a federal debt that seems to be growing without any limits, without any controls, without any serious effort by Republicans and Democrats together to get our [00:23:00] annual deficits and our overall federal debt under control. And so you see that recently, gold and silver as commodities. Hit their highest prices, record prices that may be cyclical, but right now you see that gold and silver are being utilized as reserve assets, also commodities such as oil, which is highly cyclical.

But in the long run, the International Energy Agency of the United Nations , just I think reported several weeks ago that there won’t be peak oil in terms of global demand. For at least 25 years until beyond 2050. So oil in the long term is a superb reserve asset. And then you also have other options such as the IMF, special drawing rights, and even Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

So I think you’re already starting to see a much more substantive chipping away of the US dollar as the global reserve asset.

Elisa Garbil: Very interesting. How should multinational boards decide which geopolitical [00:24:00] blocks to prioritize? So I’m thinking about the us eu, China. You already said that the Euro isn’t strong enough, the pound isn’t strong enough, but each of them have now different regulations and different laws. EU is strongly regulated. For example, they tend to be very big on laws. How should a company decide where to stay at and how to make sure which side to prioritize?

John Sitilides: Well, that will certainly depend, first of all, on each individual company’s objectives, operations, corporate culture. Sectors. I mean, there’s really no blanket approach, I think, to something along these lines.

But I would put a blanket approach to the other side, not so much the corporate decision making, but the markets in which they would choose to operate, and in many ways. The system that we enjoy today of relative unprecedented prosperity and relative peace, at least within the global West, is [00:25:00] predicated on a free market system that is open and dynamic and innovative, and based on the free choices and the free movement of individuals, of entrepreneurs, of capital, of goods and services.

And that is probably the ideal environment for most companies in which to operate. Also, they abide by the rule of law. You know that you’re able to enter into an agreement and have the courts protect your rights in the Global West. You also have labor standards and environmental standards and human rights standards that bring a very important ethical perspective into how a corporation operates.

Then you have the alternative. If we have a parallel system that Beijing is looking to create within China, of course, but then to export it to other countries, either through the Belt Road Initiative, through the Asia infrastructure [00:26:00] investment bank, and other state enterprises that are lending or are making credit available to countries and to companies in other parts of the world.

And then you also have the Notorious China Standards 2035 initiative that was unveiled by Xi Jinping in 2019, I believe it was, where China would look to establish the norms and values and standards and platforms for the global interoperability of the technologies in which it dominates right now.

That’s solar panels and wind turbines, right? Weather dependent, intermittent energy , generation electric vehicles, lithium ion storage batteries, even beyond those new technologies, steel, for instance. Which the production of which China absolutely dominates on a global scale ship building where it’s competing with Japan and South Korea.

But the US now, it has a ship building capacity that is one 230th that. [00:27:00] The global shipping sector. So we look to see to what extent China is able to take this global interoperability and apply Leninist one party absolute rule standards to possibly create a techno authoritarian state command surveillance system that largely strips its citizens, whether in China today or in countries that would import that model that strips its citizens of data privacy, of human rights, of individual liberties and of political freedom. Which is a system that China would love to see in as many countries around the world. And I think corporate executives need to think hard about what kind of a system they would like to pass on to their fellow countrymen, to their children and grandchildren to the generations to follow, and whether it’s one that should adopt and adhere to Western standards.

Elisa Garbil: Yeah. When you say it like that, it doesn’t seem like there’s much of an option, I think, but what [00:28:00] skills or governance changes are most urgent for boards? And executives to ensure agility and ethical coherence.

John Sitilides: Yeah, I think that’s an issue that many corporate executives and investment portfolio managers are still grappling with because the, I think the stark contrast that I just laid out is a difficult one for many corporate executives who tend to take a bottom line approach.

What is most profitable for the company, and I understand that to a large degree, but if it’s only profits that a corporation is pursuing, then I think we’re going to have a very bleak future in many parts of the world. The extent to which we’re able to align corporate objectives and business policy aims with an A system of ethics.

Of principles based on trust, based on reliability, based on openness, based on clean systems. Right? There’s a great fear right now, especially in Europe and increasingly here in the United States, that many of the Chinese [00:29:00] systems that are being exported around the world a not only produce a very dangerous dependency on a country that is looking to upend the global order by 2049.

That would be the centennial of the Communist Party’s takeover of Beijing, and they’ve been very open about this. This is open source intelligence. It’s nothing that’s hidden. We just need to take seriously the pronouncements in Mandarin of Chinese communist leaders. But I think also the fact that they have deliberately contaminated, there’s really no other verb for it.

The technology systems that they sell. To Western companies, whether it’s cranes at ports, whether it’s telecommunication systems, whether it’s electric buses and other vehicles, these are all have bugs that can be controlled by companies that are accountable to the Chinese Communist Party. So in the event of a crisis between say, Beijing and Taipei over the ability of Taiwan to remain a free market democratic entity, or China’s increasing belligerence against the Philippines.

[00:30:00] Or China’s dispute over the sovereignty by Tokyo over a number of Japanese islands in the East China Sea. And if you have European companies, for that matter, pardon me, European governments that take a diplomatic stance that Beijing finds distasteful, do you start to see more cyber attacks? Against Europe’s infrastructure, against European ports, against European, water grids and utilities and transportation grids and telecommunications networks.

And we’ll look to see, hopefully this never quite materializes, but this is the danger that we’re dealing with right now. So if the primary goal of a corporate executive is to, again, revert to a seamless just-in-time inventory trade relationship. With a China or a similar country, it could bring about great harm to those corporate executives, fellow countrymen.

And I think that’s where you’re starting to see also a reversion to not necessarily nationalism with a sort of negative or derogatory, [00:31:00] definition to it, but a sense that there is an obligation to one’s country that provides you the corporate environment, the regulatory environment, the legal framework, the financial and economic freedom, the labor force.

To be able to generate significant profits. And companies really are not global entities. They’re national entities with a global presence. So I think this is gonna be an important place for corporate executives to consider approaching in their planning. And I would also add that there really needs to be far deeper consideration of not forecasting, but very agile scenario planning, incorporating geopolitical geo-economic, and for that matter, geo technological risk.

In assessments for corporate planning purposes, for investment planning purposes, considering as we talked about before, during the course of this interview, secondary and tertiary consequences, right? Second and third order ramifications of various decisions, and to go beyond linear thinking and to engage in [00:32:00] lateral thinking and create new mental models for how to grapple with a very, very difficult global economic environment, the relatively peaceful interregnum.

Of 25 years between the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early nineties, and again the end of globalization of peak globalization between 2010 and 2015. But the rise of Xi Jinping and Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, which went largely unchallenged by the West, by the US and by Europe, means that we’re dealing with the reality, and the brutality of a very different global environment that corporate executives will have no choice.

But to grapple with and to prioritize technological resilience, to build, a strong protective shield around data, around the privacy of their personnel to deal with cyber attacks and now even AI attacks. And anthropic announced just several days ago that there were actors inside of China [00:33:00] that were manipulating ai.

To be able to engage in attacks against philanthropic, one of the leading new AI companies. And then ultimately, I would say it’s important on our, for our business schools. To emphasize, values integration and to build a foundation for ethical principles so that we take, considerations beyond pure profit, bottom lines into consideration when we’re making decisions.

To uphold what is finest and most bountiful from a Western perspective, and to be honest about again, the kind of future that we may bequeath to our children and grandchildren if we simply cave in to achieve profitable bottom lines. By engaging in the kind of business that has been very, very dangerous to date with the people’s Republic of China and will become increasingly so as China becomes even more advanced and more effective in weaponizing its leading technologies against adversaries and against, uh, the global [00:34:00] West.

Elisa Garbil: In that vein, when you look around the world, what are the risks that concern you the most?

John Sitilides: From a purely geopolitical perspective, I think the potential for a major crisis between China and the United States, over Taiwan, over the Philippines, Japan, or the South China Sea, which is the world’s maybe most important waterway, one third of all commerce annually traverses the South China Sea. This is at the usurpation of the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam and Malaysia and Bruna and Indonesia. A number of countries, the Southeast Asian tiger countries and ASAM and the US has a legal obligation to come to the defense of Taiwan.

Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, South Korea. So any type of a conflict between China and its East Asian neighbors major in the United States. [00:35:00] So I think every day American policy planners in this administration and in succeeding administrations, their number one foreign policy, national defense objective will be to persuade Xi Jinping now and whoever his successor might be, that every day is the worst day to even think about green lighting, an amphibious invasion, or even a blockade or quarantine of Taiwan that could lead to catastrophic global economic consequences that would exceed the magnitude of what the COVID Pandemic Lockdowns did three and four and five years ago. So that’s my number one concern there in terms of what hopefully we can avoid, and I would say for, especially a global audience, watch for the, imminent release of the US New National Defense Strategy under the, recently renamed Department of War, no longer the Department of Defense under President Trump, where we have not only the prioritization of the Indo-Pacific region and the hopeful, [00:36:00] successful deterrence of China from, again, any invasion or any reckless hostile act against Taiwan, but also to prioritize the American defense of the Western Hemisphere, and ultimately with the goal of expelling China, Russia, and Iran from Venezuela and from the presence they have in many Latin American and South American countries, and in the Caribbean.

All of this means there likely will be a diminution of the American military presence in Europe. Which is why President Trump has successfully persuaded NATO countries to build up their defenses to up to 5% of their annual GDP to better be able to protect themselves against a revist imperial Russian design in Ukraine and other potential threats against European security. And so I think all of these together give us a sense of a very sort of target rich geopolitical landscape.

That we have to grapple with from a governmental level, a political and [00:37:00] diplomatic level, and I presume for the purposes of this interview from a corporate planning and investment portfolio management perspective as well.

Elisa Garbil: Okay. Thank you so much for coming on today, and thank you for this interview

John Sitilides: and thank you very much for having me.

Dominic Bowen: Well, that was a really interesting conversation with John and Elisa and exactly the kind of in-depth conversations. We aim to bring you on the Internationalist podcast every single week, so if you like today’s episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. Now, John’s analysis today really reinforce something that.

I’m seeing every week when I advise senior business leaders, and that’s that geopolitical risk is no longer just a backdrop. It’s something that directly impacts our balance sheets, creates supply chain issues, and it’s something that boardrooms and executive teams need to be considering every single day.

And the companies that thrive and that will thrive over the next decade are the ones that are building clarity Now. They’ve got this ethical coherence, they’ve got this strategic adaptability. And it’s builds into their operating [00:38:00] environment. So if today’s conversation challenged some of your assumptions or perhaps sharpened your view of, of US China relations, well please remember to subscribe to our content on YouTube and wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts.

I’m Dominic Bowen, host. Thanks very much for listening. We’ll speak again next week.

Elisa Garbil: Thank you for listening to this episode of the International Risk Podcast. For more episodes and articles, visit the international risk podcast.com. Follow us on LinkedIn, blue Sky, and Instagram for the latest updates, and to ask your questions to our host, Dominic Bowen. See you next time.