Episode 305: Lessons Learned 2025 – Part two with Dominic Bowen and Melanie Meimoun
We continue learning and remembering in this second episode of Lessons Learned 2025 with our host Dominic Bowen and Melanie Meimoun, International Relations Specialist at the podcast.
Organizations leveraging risk intelligence as a strategic advantage, decentralized decision-making to better prepare for crises, understanding the special case of gold as a globalized investment, and what it means to be on the “right side of the K-shaped economy”; click the Listen button to get leadership advice and hear about the implications of politicized memory and manipulated hatred as a tool of terrorist imperialism, amongst many great topics.
Melanie Meimoun is an International Relations and Communication Specialist working for the International Risk Podcast. Recently graduated from a Master’s in International Public Policy at University College London, where she researched forced migration memory through the case of Tunisian Jews, she leverages a background in Politics and Philosophy at three different universities -Paris, London, and Madrid- to assess International Risk, and stay up to date on Global affairs.
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.
The International Risk Podcast is sponsored by Conducttr, a realistic crisis exercise platform. Visit Conducttr to learn more.
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.
Transcript
00:00: Melanie: What concerns me is hatred. Hatred and a lack of relfexion from people who probably fill a void to continue living, but who do a lot of wrong.
00:11: Elisa: Welcome back to the international risk podcast, where we discuss the latest world news, and significant events that impact businesses and organisations worldwide.
00:20: Dominic: This episode of the International Risk Podcast is brought to you by Conducttr. They’re an ISO 27001 certified Crisis simulation plateform, who lets you rehearse real crisis in a safe, virtual environment. It has realistic emails, social media, internal chats, company systems and many other features. And Conducttr really helps crises teams practice how they actually work under pressure, not how they wish they’d worked. Go to Conducttr.com to learn more about this software.
00: 51: Melanie: Hi, Dom. How are you?
00:53: Dominic: Good Mel, how are you going today?
00:55: I’m good. My neck is all better. So, you know, my week will be better.
01:00: Dominic: No more contact sports for you this week.
01:02: No!
01:04: Dominic: Fantastic. Well, look, you and I had so much fun last week recording the first episode, we thought we would come back and record a second one for our listeners this week.
01:11: Melanie: Definitely. I mean, we still have so much more to talk about. An hour doesn’t feel like it’s long enough, but we’ll try.
01:18: We’ll try it. We’ll fill it in. Well, I’m Dominic, host of the International Risk Podcast, where we unpack the topics that really matter. And today I’m joined by one of my colleagues, Melanie Meimoun.
01:27: Melanie: Hi everyone.
01:28: Dominic: Well, I’m looking forward to our conversation today.Mel?
01:30: Well, Dom, I wanted to ask you because you’ve been obviously inside a lot of boardrooms this year, taking all the information in and you know giving precious advice to leaders around. And can you maybe walk us through one situation in 2025 where a client went from, “we do have a risk register” to actually using risk and intelligence as a strategic weapon. And also tell us about what what you did to drive that shift.
01:59: Dominic: I think one of the things that I find myself doing the most, and I can think about a specific client, a large industrial client that has about 25,000 employees spread across Europe in about 16 different countries. And one of the things that I was really, you know, they’re CEO. They’ve got an excellent CEO at this company. And every time I meet her, she’s asking me, you know, who’s going to win the US elections? What’s going to happen with far-right parties in the EU? When’s the war in Ukraine going end? And then she’s asking the right questions and and they’re great. But one thing I’ve really started you know, working with her on and coaching her and supporting her is to really move from that need or that obsession to really call the next crisis or identify what the future is going to look like and really focus more on recognizing that there are many different potential futures. And the best thing that she can do for herself and her company is to position the company into the best possible spot for whatever happens. So looking at different scenarios and then going, well, if A or B happens, what’s the best place for my company? What sort of cash reserves do I want? What sort of advisors do I want? What sort of people do I want inside my company? Who should be in the executive team? What sort of crisis preparedness action should we be doing? And just recognizing that uncertainty is yet another data point that we can be using to guide our actions and really drive the decisions that we’re making. And, you know, we don’t need more reports. and And this is the other tendency. People can go, well, I need more reporting. I need more information. We do need to have better radars. We need to have better awareness. But we need to be able to make faster, cleaner decisions. We need to have good thresholds. We need to practice making decisions. And we need to practice delegating authority closer to where it can be made. And the company that I’m thinking of, you know, she’s done a really great job at really delegating decisions down and being genuinely decentralized. And that’s led to much more agility in the business areas. And you know, one of the things that that, you know, I think many of us wouldn’t predict, I mean, we had, I think we’ve had three episodes over the last 18 months where we’ve talked about gold. And I remember the first one, and you know, it was a fantastic guy I spoke to, and that episode ended with me thinking, maybe I should personally buy gold. Maybe I should be looking at my own stocks and my own portfolio. And I didn’t actually take the plunge because even though he was a great speaker, he didn’t actually leave me with that. He left me enough that I actually did some research and I actually looked. Where can I buy gold in Europe? And what’s the best way to buy gold in Europe? But I didn’t actually take the plunge because I didn’t predict it. And then, as we’ve seen, gold hit record highs on several occasions in 2025. And we’ve done a few more episodes about the risks and opportunities with gold and and and topics are around these commodities. So I’d love to hear from you, Melanie, because you actually came up with the idea and you led the most recent episodes we’ve done on gold. and including Dr. Moshe Lander’s perspective. That was episode 277. So I’d love to see, you know, how do you see the fundamental drivers behind this rise in gold prices, which has just been phenomenal, and um also that interplay with central banks. We’ve done a few episodes on central banks and the role of monetary policy there. What have you learned, and how did that impact your insight and your understanding of global markets?
04:51; Well, listening to Dr. Lander, I learned that the gold rise truly reflects a kind of deeper anxiety that people and investors have about financial instability and even fragmentation at a global level. So we have central banks in emerging economies buying gold at really high levels because they want to be shielded from or at least have a backup plan from U.S. sanctions, from obviously we’ve seen the dollar volatility and what characterizes emerging economies, which is the asymmetry that really characterizes power in general also in geopolitics. And the episode taught us that gold is no longer just something that you might have on your portfolio or a little hedge, but it’s kind of becoming and again, sort of being reborn again as a real geopolitical reserve asset. So it kind of goes in never-ending circles of lows and highs over time, as Dr. Lander explained, and now the record high price for shares of gold, you know, compared to inflation, what we’ve seen in the past is that gold will always be kind of trending more or less. And the drive behind central banks suddenly purchasing large amounts of gold, large amounts of gold, um ah we’ve, it’s kind of, as Dr. Lender explained it a strategic, there’s a strategic logic behind it. So countries like China, Turkey, and even India are, they’re all trying to diversify and reduce their exposure to an unstable financial system that’s very dollar centric. So the gold boom is about ah two things to sum up. It’s sovereignty – global governance, rivalry, and also risk prevention, that’s really pushed by a decline in trust, both from individuals mistrusting their government and markets, but also governments not trusting global institutions and other governments. So that’s the third first thing. And the second is that markets are naturally regulating. And when we have these uncertain times where when inflation or even deflation is really high, if gold keeps rising, it really shows that investors and states expect a bad period to be longer than predictable. So the market behavior and the global financial trend are very much tied. And linked to that, Dominic, you’ve talked about the K-shaped economy and also being on “the right side of the K”. Personally, what decisions did you take in 2025, I mean, whether in your career, your your business or your investments, to really kind of keep yourself on that upward line.
07:22: Dominic: It’s really interesting. I think that that K-shaped economy you know really reverts to, as my mum used to say when I was younger, you know the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And I used to laugh at her and just think, you know, what do you know, mum, when I was a kid? And sadly, my mom was right. And we’ve seen this, you know, we know that it’s 0.1% of the, population that has about 25% of the global capital, it’s just huge amounts. And if we increase it to the top 1% of the population, they own about 40% of the market. I mean, it’s just phenomenal. The, wealth that’s owned by a small group of the population., I really believe in egalitarianism and I’m certainly would never describe myself as a socialist or or a communist. um I think capitalism works. And I think what we need to do is to to work out how we can position ourself personally for success. I spend a lot of time advising companies and advising executive teams and and board members. And just occasionally I do try to look back at myself and my family and go, what do I need to do for my own success? And I think one of the things I’ve done in my career is really double down on being the person and having the skills that executives really need before a crisis occurs. Now, of course, that also means I’m available when the crisis occurs as well. That went really narrowing my focus down in 2025 to focus on where I really think it matters for business. Talking about enterprise risk, supporting with crisis leadership, and insider threats is an extremely large and growing issue across Europe. Organized crime exposure is just, you know, the penetration of organized crime across UMP and businesses is just mind-blowing. And then, of course, just looking at how we build resilience, both personally as business leaders, but also as companies. I think this year, i actually said no a lot more to generic advisory work, and invested a lot more of my time into making sure that we’ve got really strong methods and processes and the systems that I have and that my team has around giving clients advice and supporting clients is much sharper and much stronger. Certainly work on the podcast and the work that we’re doing, i think has been really valuable. This is ah a really big credibility engine. We get to speak to some of the most amazing experts on a huge range of topics. from around the world, from government, from academia, from people that are working on the front lines. And so I think this is really, really valuable so that we can build clarity in the middle of what is you know really, really a chaotic world. And I think for for me you know, volatility was expected. um It wasn’t this surprise in 2025. So making sure that that I was positioned and my teams were positioned was really going to be important. I mean, you know one thing that we did see, and I certainly found you know quite shocking, whether it was the Liberation Day in April where the stock market dropped 20% to 30%, then, of course, in October, and November, with the very significant worries that a lot of people have had about the AI bubble, sentiment just snaps in both directions so, so fast. And I think the the market has punished and rewarded people in ways that we haven’t necessarily predicted. So really trying to sit back and analyze that in a calm, measured way, I think has been really important for me personally, but also for the clients that I’m working with. So I think to summarize it, I’m not trying to predict volatility. I’m expecting that volatility is here. I’m trying to work out what’s the best place for me to be. And so building ah a career, building a business, um building ah a personal investment posture that benefits from that. I think that’s how you can get yourself on the right side of that K-shape, not on the wrong side of it. And I think, Melanie, you know one thing that’s really impressed me consistently when working with you is the topics and the ideas that you come up with. And, you every Monday we we talk about themes that that that we’re feeling and we’re seeing and that we want to research and we want to bring to our audience. And you you brought us a topic that a lot of listeners wouldn’t have heard for for a long time, and that was around Srebrenica, international law, and it was around political memory. And I thought that was really interesting. And i remember when you raised that topic, and it was an instant, oh, yes, yeah, yeah tell tell me more, Melanie, what are you what are your thoughts around that? Even just the terminology that you presented around why Srebrenica remains you know such a ah critical turning point for international law, as well as the the word case study doesn’t feel right because there were so many people that were just impacted in in in in just such somewhat much so much of the most profound manners. But you know it really did manipulate our politics. It manipulated our memories. So you know what lessons do you think we we should draw from the episodes that we did on this topic and, what can we do to prevent atrocities happening today?
11:34: Mélanie: That’s a lot of questions! I’ll try to answer first by saying before I started preparing the interview sheet, I kind of had an idea of really the legal significance of Stravarnitia was, and it made a lot of noise in the 90s. And we still hear about it today because first, because the not all the bodies were found, and the population still holds, I guess, if we do a generality, a lot of grudge against the Serbs and the Serbian government. But i guess what I learned um coming from Aidan Hehir during the interview when I when was was listening to your conversation with him is that really he points out the fact that there’s a gap between the promise of international protection, so by the UN mostly, and the reality, which was inaction really. So the genocide and the conflicts around the world in the 90s, I guess, forced the UN and European countries, but the UN mostly, to realize and recognize that there was a failure um committed by a peacekeeping mandates. So I guess what Aiden explained is that, the modern frameworks like R2P, which is Responsibility to Protect, they were reinforced today, although he doubts that they’re working. But they were reinforced because there was a precedent, which was for Srebrenica, unfortunately, more than boys and men died. And they did qualify that as a genocide, not by the number of people who died, but by the intention of erasing a population from Earth. So the key lesson, I guess, is that the ways in which the international community was dealing and still deals with conflicts around the world is inefficient. um And I guess about, you asked about memory politics, um or in the Balkans, there’s a mix of identities. Aidan talked about like a massive denial and minimization of facts ah from the Serbian government. And that also is reflected on the people. So the people themselves still today in parts of Serbia and Republika Srpska are denying what happened. And that is the result of a kind of manipulation of the people who perpetrated real, you know, Ethnic cleansing but also ethnic divisions, I mean that completely prevents reconciliation today and the biggest I think for me, the biggest insight from the conversation you had with him is that memory is you know, not just about the past, but it kind of shapes the political order that we have today. So Srebrenica is a symbol of the recognition of a genocide, both in legal facts, but also as as a kind of political battleground between a memory of denial and a memory of what actually happened. um But the key, I guess, is that the, yeah, I’ll say it again because you can’t say it too much, but the international norms are a bit powerless against a political will to destroy memory. And Aidan make clear that really mandates thrown out by the international community, by the UN must be realistic. So they must take into account the fact that they have to work with states who are in power for prevention to work. Otherwise, the Srebrenica pattern will repeat, unfortunately. And that’s an uncomfortable truth, but it’s necessary to say out there. And also i was I was curious, Dominic, across your work in 2025, obviously advising CEOs, being a partner in a management consulting firm, and of course talking with over, I think it’s 100, over 100 global experts on the International Risk Podcast. um Can you tell us, maybe three leadership behaviors that clearly separated the people who used them this year to build an advantage from those who just kind of survived in the field.
15:06: Dominic: Yeah, thanks for that question. And yeah I am really blessed. You know You asked me earlier about the K-shaped and how I put myself on the right side. and And probably the biggest thing I do is I watch and I learn. I look at people that I admire, people that have been successful, people that would look at me in the same way I look at these people and I work out what what skills and qualities they demonstrate. And I think one of them is they practice. They practice offering leadership. Leadership isn’t a title. There’s a difference between a leader and a manager. A manager is a job title. You can be the manager. You can be the team leader. But leadership is something that you you offer. And I think the the best leaders that that I get to work with are ones who are continually offering it. Now, some of them are CEOs. Some of them are the chairpersons of of boards, and they have very clear titles as well. But often they’re not. Often they might be just someone who’s in the room, but they can still be someone who’s offering leadership. And it could be that junior executive or someone who’s on the board, but not a chairperson who’s suggesting that we run more simulations, we run more tests, we have more robust key risk indicators. So I think that’s a really important element skill or something that I think is really, and it might seem obvious, but just recognizing that leadership is something that we offer and practicing offering it, whether you are the leader or the manager or just someone who’s in the room, but practicing offering leadership. I think that’s a ah really critical thing and something I think is very generous and brave when people do it. And the second one is being really explicit, explicit about expectations, explicit about what they expect from their teams, but also explicit about things like risk appetite, about being very clear. So many companies talk about, well, we’ve got really clear goals and objectives. We have really strong risk management, but they don’t have risk appetite statements. They haven’t actually articulated what their risk appetite is in key areas of their business and then attached risk tolerances, key risk indicators, so that their teams can actually measure that. So it’s not just this feeling, oh, I feel like we’ve probably got a low risk appetite. Because if you speak to someone in sales, they’re probably going to have a much higher risk appetite than someone who works in compliance or legal, for example. So having these key risk indicators, risk tolerance, and risk appetite clearly defined helps everyone throughout the organization. And that’s a really important leadership um quality that I see with some of the best organizations. And I think the other one is is really forward-looking. It’s very easy to track what we’ve done. What were our sales targets? Have we reached them? What were our goals on certain activities? Did we reach them? But actually pairing lagging indicators like profit and loss like incidents with actually leading ones like time to decide, near-miss reporting, early warning signals. And I think that requires a lot more creativity It requires trying, failing, learning, improving, but actually looking forward and having KPIs that help you look forward because that’s ultimately where we’re going. We can learn from the past, but we want to be looking forward. So actually developing and practicing that I think is another really creative leadership skill that I think some of the best leaders I’m seeing are working on. And I wonder, Mel, it’s certainly been a busy, a hectic and a lot going on for 2025 and it’s been really exciting in many regards, and it’s been really challenging and in others. I wonder when when you look back on 2025, you look back on on the year that’s been, what are the the international events that that stood out to you most and I guess also what what did you learn from them?
18:14: Melanie: It’s a complicated answer I’m going to give because there are so many bad things happening around the world. But as we speak, we’re the 16th of December. And unfortunately, during the first day of what was supposed to be a very joyous celebration of Hanukkah, the two terrorists attacked hundreds of people on a beach in Australia. And the Bondi beach attack, you know, when I first heard about it in the news, i didn’t believe it because, you know, I thought the worst, you always think, I think our our brains kind of trick us into thinking the worst is always behind us. And it’s like what you talk when you look at risks and risk prevention, you can never fully 100% prevent stuff like that from happening. And the attack on the international level I know there was a French boy who died on this beach. His name was Dan Elkayam. And hearing the prime minister talk, the French prime minister talk about his death made it all the more real. And it made me think, obviously this is the first event that comes to mind because it’s the most recent I’ve heard of, but something that will always concern me is hatred, because it’s at the root of so much of the atrocities that we’ve experienced or not. I mean, when you take the Second World War, for example, there’s this book by Ionesco, a French author who wrote Rhinoceros, it’s a play, and he wrote it in the 40s, so he was a Frenchman, of course, going through Nazi occupation under Petain. And the book is about, normal people slowly transforming into Rhinos. And it’s a bit weird when you’re 15 reading it, you’re like, what is going on? What is this book about? So I searched. He’s done many interviews, but there’s one that pops out the most. And I’m like, okay, I’ll just check it out. And when the interviewer says, why did you write about the society just turning into Rhinos and wanting to kill each other? And he says, I was a French boy in 1933 Germany in Berlin, precisely. And of course, today we all know that Hitler rose to power in 1933, but he had no idea at the time. He didn’t really care about German politics. And he says, I was in the street just walking around doing my thing. And he suddenly hears this kind of, in old French, we call it a rumor, noise coming from far away so he’s drawn to it he doesn’t know why but he suddenly finds himself in a row of people waiting for something. And that something comes closer and closer and closer and he himself feels chills all over his body, he feels the need to really come together with the people and celebrate but he doesn’t know what’s coming. At that time, he saw a carriage, like a sort of a big car and Hitler on the top, just salutating everyone and every everyone screaming and chanting. And then when he learned that it was Hitler of bringing Nazi ideology and so on, and he reflected on it it. And he’s like, I have a disdain for everything this man stands for. And yet not knowing what was happening, I felt like I was taken, and he calls it collective hysteria. And so that’s always a very long introduction just to say i that really resonated with me because I think there are two things driving, you know, people attacking other people for seemingly no reason. It’s that, sense of belonging. When in 2015 during the Bataclan attacks when we were hearing about you know the the young people who were taken away from not taken away, because they weren’t physically forced out of their home to join you know terrorist groups in Afghanistan or even Pakistan. The leaders of terrorist groups who don’t actually perpetrate the attacks, but were looking on the internet for young people, 13, 14 year olds, who felt really lonely at home and whom they could play on their psyche. I think it’s really interesting because we haven’t, I guess, unfortunately evolved as a society enough to pay attention to where it most matters. I know it’s complicated. I mean, I wouldn’t pretend to be a good president. I think it’s probably one the most complicated jobs in the world. But I think, you know, what concerns me to answer your question is hatred. It’s the hatred and the lack of reflect reflection from people um who, you know, probably feel a void to to continue living but who do a lot of wrong.
22:23: Why do you think that? I mean, because the events in Bondi are just shocking. As you know, i’ve been really excited about my, I’m from Australia and I’m i’m heading back to Australia and, you know, I’m just beyond excited just to spend every day at the beach over Christmas. It’s, ah you know, what I’ve been hanging out for several months. But, you know, this this event has just, you know, just really brought to, you know, for me, the beach is my happy place. Being in the surf, being either on a surfboard or just in the water, that’s my happy place. Doesn’t matter what country I’m in. um You know, if I’m in the water, or i’m I’m in a happy place. And, you know, this is just such a juxtaposition. But it wasn’t just in Bondi. I mean, to wake up and to see that on the news on the weekend was just… Honestly, it was really hard to believe. And you know Bondi? I plan on going to Bondi beach. It can’t be right. This can’t be happening in Australia. And I know you know we’ve all said that about different atrocities over the years. But at the same time, there was a shooting in America at a Brown University on Rhode Island. Two people dead, nine injured. um At the same time, I think it was two American service servicemen were but were killed in Syria. You know the attacks, that the hatred are occurring all around the world, and these aren’t just um just random events. And you know In October, the head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, he he spoke to the British Parliament, and he said, you know ISIS, along with Al-Qaeda, groups that we thought were long destroyed, are becoming even more ambitious and they’re encouraging more attacks, these lone wolf attacks or small group attacks. Why do you think these are still happening? You know, I understand the hurt. I understand that so many people are angry and scared today because of many of these events. But what’s causing such levels of extremism? And we’ve spoken to quite a few guests on the podcast about this, but where do you sit? What do you think, what’s driving this?
23:56: Melanie: I think there’s always going to be leaders -they’re very good leaders. i I mean, the people at the head of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, I do believe they’re very intelligent people, having tactics to really gather, lonely or hateful, I don’t know, people to do their their work. But you know, I do see, imperialists, i don’t know if it’s the right word, but for me, it’s all about control. If they want a global… to have a truly global governance, and if they can’t you know impose their ideology, because it’s an ideology, what’s happening in Iran, in Afghanistan, governments using religion at their own advantage to submit women and men for them to be more obedient. If they want to create that atmosphere of terror, because that’s what a terrorist attack is about. I’ll always remember after the 2015 Paris attacks, the next day at school, there were a couple of kids who had lost loved ones in the attacks. And, you know, I’ll be grateful to the French government because when they sent out really quickly, they were really reactive in schools, someone to… not a psychologist, but a kind of therapist to talk to young ah to to kids that we were about the attacks. He never said one hateful word and he could have because the attacks were awful. But he wanted to make a clear distinction to young French kids between what the attacks were perpetrated for. So to instill terror in minds and hearts. And what he was saying, which was, don’t be afraid to go outside. The world is still beautiful. Don’t, you know, dive into the terror they want to instill in you. But also just be careful who you talk to on the internet. You know, there was all these new soft restrictions… we were really free before we were just going all around Paris. We knew, know Paris by heart. And so you would see kids from six year olds, six year in most, parts of Paris, like going to school by themselves with their backpack and, and no one would say a thing, but then as insecurity becomes, higher. Parents are, of course, scared for their kids. And, you know, even if you’re after the Bataclan attack, a lot of Parisians said, we want to go back ASAP, because if we don’t go back now, they win, because we will be scared forever to enter a place, because that’s why they targeted the Bataclan in 2015, because it was you know, people, humorists, laughing at everything. They were laughing at religion. They were laughing at, you know, politicians. They were laughing at everything. And that’s really, and Charlie Hebdo, of course, was caricaturing everything. And that’s the essence, I guess, of the French. And if, so, I think the attacks happening today in 2025, especially this winter it’s about the same thing it’s always been. It’s instilling terror. And, you know, people going back to the beach, if you go back to the beach, that will be your way to say f terror. You know what I mean?
26:44: Dominic: definitely. Mm-hmm.
26:46: Melanie: It will be your singular way to say, I’m not going to be scared my whole life because there was an attack. Of course, and people might be scared for their kids, but, you know, it’s a kind of revolution to go there. I guess the final word I’ll say is what they want is for you to be scared. And the only thing we can do as people who aren’t in the government is to just enjoy life.
27:03: Dominic: I think that’s so true. and And it’s critical.And I think the Australian authorities have done a really great job in trying to get people back to a level of normality, making sure people feel safe and secure around Bondi and across the country, but really trying to get people back and showing defiance. And I think Australian culture is really good at that that, sticking their middle finger up at authority and definitely sticking their middle finger up at terrorists. And I think it’s important to, you know, what you said is totally right. You know, the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incidents across Europe reached 9,000 incidents in 2024, which is, you know, record levels over the last 40 or 50 years that they’ve been recording this data. But it’s important to note, I mean, yes, some of this might be fueled by the war in in Gaza no doubt. But it’s important to remember things like, you know, France has been a country that’s suffered from a lot of anti-Semitic attacks over the last couple of years. And a lot of this is on the back. French police actually identified that Russian intelligence services were stenciling hundreds of Stars of David across Paris in 2023 as a way to sow divisions. And so it’s important to note that, there can be tensions between communities, Islamic communities and Jewish communities. But a lot of this is being actually fermented by foreign states that are trying to sow this division. They want to see this hatred. And in the same case, it was just in a few months ago that the Australian government actually expelled the Iranian ambassador. What did the Australian government expel the Iranian ambassador for? For spying that was linked to arson attack on synagogues. There was a deliberate attempt by the Iranian authorities in Australia to sow division, to cause attacks on synagogues, and then to create that hatred and that tension between communities, in australia. So, yes, there’s definite issues that have to be addressed um across Australia and across many, many countries. But a lot of this division is being sponsored and driven by foreign state actors that want to see that division. And it’s really important, it’s really, really important that we don’t show hatred, that we can be fine, we can feel anger, we can feel sadness, we can be scared. But we have to remember that getting angry at each other and sowing even more division in our communities is not the way that we’ll solve this. We won’t solve this by following Trumpian politics and removing all Muslims from Australia or becoming more racist or becoming more segregated. That’s not the way we defeat this terror. The way we defeat this terror is the way that Australia has always been great because of multiculturalism, and because of our compassion, because of our love, because of our forgiveness, and because, you know we give each other a fair go and try and find the best way forward. And I really hope we can we can find that as we move into 2026.
29:30: Melanie: I really hope so. And I’ll follow up by on what you said about, anti-Semitic attacks. There was for me a before and after October 7th. Because feel like the Jewish community was always targeted throughout the years. That’s true. We’ve seen World War II and pogroms in the early 20th century in Russia and other ah Eastern countries. And also in North Africa, which I’ve learned recently. But, you know, I feel like now that more people, have access to information, which is great, but in a way, there’s also the wrong side of it, that people have access to malinformation or disinformation. And when, some random person who just listens to the news or more importantly, goes through social media and sees Jews are responsible for the death of Palestinians. What does that mean? Jews are responsible for the death of Palestinians. The person will go, huh, let me go target Jews now because they’re killing Palestinians. But that’s not what’s happening. A government, the government of Israel has taken action against Hamas and has caused casualties. That’s what happens in wars. I’m not going to be, I’m not, you know, a referee of international law. I don’t have to speak on that. There are casualties, yes. But why would you, you know, equalize the government of Israel with all the Jews in the world, in the diaspora, as they call it? That’s hatred. And also, you know, I’ve seen Russians be targeted, in the street of Paris, you know, because of what Putin is doing. I mean, we can, I think both you and I can agree that what Putin’s doing is wrong. But are we going to attack a random Russian person in the street who left it’s his his or her country because he didn’t agree with the war going on and he wanted to protect his his or her family? I mean, and that’s also coming from a place of, I don’t like that word but I guess it’s coming from stupid, like human stupidity. And so, I really hope we get less of that in 2026 as well. Yeah.
31:15: Dominic: And I think as I look back on what’s happening in 2025, you know, right now I think it’s ah such ah a volatile place. I mean, just this week, America seized a tanker carrying Venezuelan oil. America continues to build up military hardware in the country to huge levels. It’s got this armada of warships off the coast. It’s got electronic warfare aircraft. It’s got six tankers. It’s got drones, military radars based next door in Trinidad and Tobago. You know, I really think that the current force posture of American assets around Venezuela seems to be more about attacking Venezuela’s air defense network, which is usually what’s done just before an attack. And you know that that worries me a lot. There are obviously enough wars. There’s too many wars already occurring around the world. And I think the risk of new wars breaking out concerns me a lot. And we’ve seen recent peace efforts by the Trump administration led by Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, which really seems to be more about making business deals that favor wealthy americans and wealthy russians than actually achieving peace. And of course attacking Venezuela would also look like a war on oil. So those things really do worry me a lot. The decline of democracy. So many guests on the podcast have talked about their concern about the decline of democracy. And that’s something that’s continued in 2025 to continue the pattern that we’ve seen for the previous 19 years. So that’s something that really worries me a lot. Of course, there’s the the risk we’ve had this bull market for the last three years, I think 23% and 24% growth of the S&P. This year looks like about 17% growth on the S&P. It’s just been a fantastic bull run. Will it continue in 2026 or are we going to see a market correction or some sort of an AI bubble crash? Yeah, that’s something that myself and, of course, a lot of clients are watching very, very closely. But there’s also some some things that that concern me that I’ve seen this year that, as you know, Mel, I’m always trying to see, you know, risk is one side of the coin, but the other side of that same coin is is is opportunity. You know, if we look at a potential market adjustment or a crash or a popping of the AI bubble, I mean, this could be brutal and could cause a lot of people a lot of pain. But I think it also creates a few opportunities. One is about talent and and assets being repriced. It means companies can rehire, they can acquire smaller businesses, they can consolidate them at more reasonable valuations. And secondly, it forces discipline. And, you know, companies that can prove their unit economics, that have the right cash conversion, that have good pricing power, will be able to pull ahead um if there is a market correction. And whilst they’re painful, these things are sometimes necessary in the long term in order to make more of an even field. and to give new players, smaller companies, more junior professionals the opportunity to get into the market. So I think this could also present opportunities. You know we’ve seen measles deaths. Measles deaths in the US, a country that’s been free of measles for over two decades. That growing amount of vaccine scepticism, which I think can be linked to that truth crisis, which again we’ve talked about on the International Risk Podcast, is very negative. It’s a risk that I worry about. But I think this also could potentially bring opportunities. um This could bring us back to looking at verification, listening more to trusted channels. And so I hope that that this will lead to um you know ah a recalibration of of us considering what is what is true and what’s not.
And then, of course, you know one thing that really excites me heading back to Australia is the recently came into effect that the ban on social media for people under the age of 16, which I think is such ah such a great move. I know you’ve you’ve got some family members that are in that age group. I’m not sure how they’d go without their social media advice, but I think this is a great opportunity.
34:47: Melanie: I mean, I have a brother, still a minor. I mean, I’ve been taking care of him since he was two. So, the social media ban, I think it’s a great idea. i mean, you know, I do firmly believe that the higher rates of attacks against Israelis who are abroad, against Russians, I’ve seen attacks against Ukrainians. You know, not even coming from Russian people, not at all, from people outside of the conflict, who are bored. And, you know, I think it comes from social media. And what you said about, you know, us in 2026 and forward, you know, turning to more trusted channels. I think it’s, a great idea and I wish more people would do that. But what are trusted channels? I mean, we are.
35:25: Dominic: The International risk podcast is one!
35:26: Melanie: Turn to us! Hahah. But I think, you know, it’s becoming more and more difficult to, separate what’s true from what’s wrong or from what’s malinformation, disinformation, because these are real and they’re everywhere. you know, you could say, a Russian attacked, a French person, or you could say, well, you know, how people perceive the information is sometimes more important than the actual facts. And that’s, you know, if you take, for example, i don’t know, Le Monde, a newspaper, or the New York Times, and they’ll talk about the same thing. It’s like you’re reading about two different things, and you’re reading about the same event. So I think that will be the biggest challenge to really spot the channels, the media you can trust based on your opinions, but also but also based on facts. And the other thing…
36:10: Dominic: What about peak booze? I understand that in 2025, we might have reached the the peak consumption of alcohol, and it’s only going to go down from here, which as someone that, you know, I really value health and wellness, and I’m not drinking myself. I’m quite interested to see how that’s going to impact social settings if the consumption of alcohol declines in 2026.
36:26: Melanie: I mean, absolutely! I think more and more people, if the world continues on that path, will drown in alcohol as a way to, you know, obliviate everything. But you talked about… I mean, our democracies are sick. It sounds better in French, but they’re sick. There’s a lack of trust in our governments, and… something that really hit me, I think it was two days ago, I was scrolling just like the majority of us, unfortunately, and it was this French, you know, humorist, he does funny videos about, you know, corporate world and stuff like that. And he said something that really shocked me. I know it was a joke, but I was like, that’s the beginning of the end. He said, we should probably take the voting rights away from dumb people, and I was like Gosh. I know that it’s supposed to be a joke, but if we do that and we have like a technocracy, or that just is an open road to dictatorship. What are we going to do next, make everyone pass IQ tests and put them in boxes, and you can vote you can’t and then oh I guess women can’t vote anymore well let’s just test men it will be more efficient. you know it’s a all downhill from there, so I wish to eat less of that in 2026.
37:34: Dominic: It’s very interesting, and I know this will come across, or some some listeners will hear this in the worst possible sense, but I often have wondered from a social science and experiment point of view, what would happen, you know, in Australia, there’s mandatory voting, you have to vote if there’s an election. But before you went to vote, if you had to just answer one or two questions like, oh, you want to vote for the Labor Party? No problem. Can you tell me two of their policies? What’s their stance on immigration or education? And if you can’t answer a couple of basic questions, then yeah, I’m sorry, you obviously are just guessing. Come back later. And, you know, I definitely understand your point about excluding dumb voters from voting. But I do wonder on the other side, if you could only vote if you had some level of information behind it, as opposed to just, my dad’s always voted Labor, so I’m going to vote Labor, or…
38:14: Melanie: Dumb people can read, you know? Most people just don’t… I always receive in my mailbox those prospectus. It’s on the paper. You know, most people just throw them in the trash, and they’re like, I’m just going to vote like far right or labor or whatever, like I’ve always done. But on the other hand, I’ve seen maybe it’s only the people I talk to. But more people are questioning what the new leaders of the parties they’ve been voting for forever are doing, or, you know, I remember I talked to people who voted Macron, when he first got elected. When you talk to them today, wow. The reactions that you have years later after, you know, they’ve been deceived because not fulfilling promises and switching your whole like political identity and your whole, you know, I’ve heard people in the street calling him two-faced… Even Melanchon I mean people who voted on the left or even far left forever like like some of them are still voting for him, like they’re voting for him and they’re like I don’t agree with everything but you know it’s my only option. I’ve heard this sentence so many times and they’re not really wrong, I mea, If you’re not a part of a party, if you don’t present yourself, then your only option is to choose from what’s being presented to you. Also, there are a lot of people who are voting in spite of, instead of for. I talk to my grandma because you know she loves politics she’s still all her mind and you know we talk a lot and she’s like you know in my time I feel like people had like Convictions and they voted for and you know, I could have friends who voted ah on the left and or on far right and we would talk and the things we would disagree with if I heard talks of you know, illegal things or killing or racism. Today people really vote in spite of. So, yes, our democracies are sick and it’s both coming from the media. And, I will say something maybe not everyone will agree with, but it might be coming from how the way our our leaders are trained. Because, for example, L’ENA in France, who was an institution, I mean It changed and you said something, really interesting about change, and the you know the other side of the coin, which of the risk, which is opportunity. But the thing with change is that it’s amazing. It’s what humanity is there for. That’s what I believe at least. um But just like Earth has been struggling to adapt to the ever more increasing rate of our evolution and, you know, humanity’s imprints on the soil. The same thing happens for humans. When AI overtakes a part of the job markets or even everything how will companies adapt to this change and how will people adapt? Because you know people who are in their 50s for example, and who are looking for a new job and have to readapt to everything some people will do the work who will look for “oh how to do my cv right” and stuff like that and there are people who you know might not also have access to how to adapt to the change.
41:03: Dominic: It’s a very interesting discussion. And thanks very much for joining me on the podcast today, Mel.
41:07: Melanie: And thank you for inviting me.
41:09: Dominic: No, I think it’s been a lot of fun, Mel. Well, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. And thank you to you for all your your production work throughout 2025. And a big thanks to Stephen Penny also, who produces all our video and multimedia content. I’m Dominic Bowen, host of the International Risk Podcast. It’s been great speaking with you all this year and no doubt we’ll speak again in the next couple of days. Thanks, Mel.
Thanks for joigning us on the International Risk Podcast. This episode was sponsored by Conducttr, the crises exercise platform that turns crisis plans into lived experiences. With tailored scenarios, decision logs, and realistic social media and news feeds. Conducttr helps organisations learn from their mistakes in a simulation, not during the real crisis. Have a look at the Conducttr website to learn more about their services and products.
41:53: Elisa Garbil: Thank you for listening to this episode of the International Risk Podcast. For more episodes and articles, visit theinternationalriskpodcast.com, follow us on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Instagram for the latest updates, and to ask your questions to our host, Dominic Bowen. See you next time!