International Risk and Volatility Is the Cost of Doing Business: Clarity Is Your Competitive Advantage
By Dominic Bowen
Host of The International Risk Podcast | Partner at 2Secure | Strategic Advisor
In today’s fractured world, business leaders and policymakers face a daunting reality: global volatility isn’t a disruption, it’s the baseline. As Host of The International Risk Podcast, and a Partner at a leading Risk Management Consulting Firm, I speak weekly with CEOs, CSOs, and board chairs who are no longer asking if turmoil will hit; they are asking how fast and how wide it will spread once it does. With two decades of frontline leadership in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, Lebanon, and Ukraine, I have learned one thing with absolute certainty: clarity is the best competitive advantage in chaos.
The Boardroom Mirror
Last month, in a board meeting with one of Sweden’s fastest-growing companies, we didn’t just glance at a risk matrix, we interrogated it. We discussed how shifting threat velocity across sectors should drive everything from procurement policies to capital investment sequencing. The conversation moved quickly from “what’s the threat?” to “what do we do about it?”
It’s a moment I have repeated again and again: risk maps don’t impress boards, strategic clarity does. When I advise boards, I don’t present risk; I help them internalize the risk and then operationalise it. That means exploring velocity, convergence, and business-model impact in a way that drives decision-making at the highest level.
How the Best Boards Are Thinking
The board’s questions are evolving. “High” or “low” risk flags don’t cut it anymore. (And if your Chief Risk Officer is still handing you colour-coded risk matrices based on impact and likelihood alone, it’s probably time to find a new CRO.) Effective boards want clarity on:
- What’s driving this risk? (Is it geopolitical entanglement, dual-use technologies, or upstream supply chain exposure?)
- Is this a sudden pressure or a long-simmering trend reaching critical mass?
- What if the risk spikes next week? What if it spreads across adjacent markets?
Decades of experience have demonstrated to me that business leaders, politicians, and policy advisors need scenario-minded certainty in an uncertain world. Scenario-minded certainty provides the confidence to lead through volatility, not because you control the future, but because you have prepared for it well enough to move fast, stay aligned, and minimise avoidable risk. It is not about predicting the future; it’s about preparing confidently despite not knowing what the future holds. It means having a structured understanding of plausible futures, the structures established to recognise early signals of change, and the confidence to act decisively when different scenarios emerge. My clients know that certainty doesn’t come from static reports or generic headlines. It comes when we pressure-testing assumptions, when we interrogate weak signals, and when we deliberately work to understanding how risk accelerates before it materialises. The best leaders I work with don’t ask for more data (that’s a given), they ask better questions. They don’t react to volatility; we rehearse for it. In an era where instability is the norm and geopolitical, cyber, and regulatory shocks can converge overnight, the competitive advantage belongs to those business leaders who invest in clarity, move early, and lead with discipline. That’s the difference between firms that endure turbulence and those that emerge from it stronger.
From Conflict Zones to Nordic Boardrooms
I developed my skills leading crisis operations crossing mountain borders in Kashmir to advise international agencies; I improved them whilst leading operations in Iraq; and I perfected them whilst navigating airstrikes and tribal negotiations in Houthi-controlled Yemen. Today, an average weeks is advising a CEO on expansion into Ukraine, supporting a crisis team extracting staff from Lebanon, and coaching executives preparing for IPO in a fragmented geopolitical climate. This duality, knee-deep in fragility, fluent in the boardroom, is rare. It’s why some of Europe’s largest companies rely on my team and me: because we blend tactical insight with strategic foresight.
In today’s environment, yesterday’s peripheral issue is often tomorrow’s full-blown crisis. And unless you’re tracking risk velocity, you won’t know you are behind the competition until it’s too late. This isn’t theory for me, it is something I have lived for every two decades.
What’s Driving Board-Level Risk Today?
Advising boards daily provides a front-row seat to the fastest-moving, most consequential risks shaping business. Here are six that dominate my discussions with business leaders:
1. Geopolitical Tensions
There are countless examples of geopolitical tensions and international risk every day. EU leaders just passed another round of sanctions targeting Russian financial infrastructure and oil exports. Meanwhile, G20 finance ministers are reaffirming the need to shield central banks from geopolitical interference.
So what? These moves don’t just target Moscow, they shape global capital flows, supply chain reconfiguration, and risk pricing in energy markets. Every sanction creates a counter-reaction, rerouting commodities, hardening financial regulations, and accelerating economic bloc formation. Boards must ask: Are we exposed to secondary sanctions risk? Are our counterparties becoming liabilities?
2. Trade Volatility & Tariff Threats
A new tariff escalation between the US and EU is looming. President Trump’s team has floated a near-universal 15 to 20 percent tariff on EU exports. The EU’s countermeasure, the Anti-Coercion Instrument could slam US tech and investment access into Europe.
Why this matters: According to Barclays and Bloomberg analysts, this standoff could knock 0.7 percent off EU GDP if tariffs stick. That’s not theory, it is margin pressure, FX volatility, and market access risk baked into your Q3 projections.
Boards must act now: Where are we vulnerable to retaliatory trade policy? Are we embedded in value chains that might fracture? Is your plan really to “just wait and see?”
3. Energy Shock Risk
Oil supply disruptions in Kurdistan have pulled 150,000 barrels/day offline. Meanwhile, Europe’s energy strategy is entering a dangerous paradox: wind output is plunging just as energy demand peaks.
Coal and gas plants across Germany, France, and Spain are scaling up to fill the gap, with July coal output projected to surge 50 percent month-on-month. Energy price spikes are colliding with ESG mandates, causing tension between boardroom commitments and operational necessity.
The deeper insight: renewable-energy fragility isn’t just a climate risk, it’s an operational resilience risk . Boards must ask: Are we prepared to pivot energy sources in real-time? Have we stress-tested peak-load dependencies against geopolitical shocks?
4. Financial Fragility & Market Complacency
Markets are rallying, the FTSE is nearing record territory, and the S&P 500 has surged over 15 percent year-to-date. On the surface, optimism is justified: US inflation has cooled to three percent, rate-cut expectations are rising for Q3, and corporate earnings remain resilient. However, beneath the bullish narrative lies a critical blind spot, one that I have been discussing for months, and more recently flagged by analysts at Morgan Stanley, Jefferies, and the IMF alike: geopolitical risk is being chronically underpriced.
The BlackRock Geopolitical Risk Indicator, which tracks the frequency and sentiment of geopolitical news, remains elevated, yet equity volatility is near historic lows. War in Ukraine continues with intensifying drone strikes by Russia against civilian buildings; Israel’s operations in Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, and Syria all risk regional escalation; and tensions in the Taiwan Strait have prompted the largest live-fire exercises in over a decade. Despite this, investor positioning reflects near-total complacency: as of July 2025, allocations to defense equities are down eight percent from Q1, and insurance-linked securities are trading at pre-2022 valuations.
Compounding this is a lack of pricing around systemic AI threats. In the past three months alone, the US Treasury, a top-tier European bank, and multiple energy utilities have disclosed AI-linked vulnerabilities, yet credit default swap spreads in these sectors remain largely unchanged. There is a growing disconnect between real-world exposure and market reaction.
This isn’t a question of intelligence, it’s a matter of incentive alignment. Financial portfolio managers are rewarded for quarterly alpha, not geopolitical foresight. But for boards and CROs, that short-termism is a luxury they cannot afford. Risk isn’t vanishing, in fact, I suggest it is compounding. And when it materialises, capital will exit faster than compliance teams can react.
Boards must beware: Are our investors too optimistic? Is our risk posture reflective of current fragility or lulled by market euphoria?
5. Emerging Geopolitical Flashpoints
Last week, Taiwan conducted its largest-ever joint military exercises, simulating a repulsion of Chinese amphibious assaults. China responded with a naval blockade simulation near the Taiwan Strait.
Simultaneously, Iran shifted its strategic messaging after the NATO summit in The Hague, floating Gulf shipping disruptions in response to perceived Western provocations.
These aren’t hypotheticals. They are live military rehearsals with market implications. Boards must think three moves ahead: How would a limited conflict over Taiwan reshape our regional exposure? Are we treating Gulf shipping as secure when it isn’t?
6. Talent Shortages and Retention Challenges
While risk teams obsess over cyber and geopolitics, many boards are missing a more insidious threat: leadership fatigue and ongoing quite quiting. C-suite turnover is at record highs. Insider threat cases, particularly from disaffected staff, are rising. And in a world of converging pressures, burnout isn’t an HR issue, it’s an operational risk. I deal with at least one major and materialised insider-risk every month from well-established companies with supposedly strong recruitment and HR systems in place. The biggest risk to your company could be sitting beside you. Whilst it is an uncomfortable conversation, insider risks are real and happening every day.
Smart firms are integrating mental health metrics, ensuring there are realistic leadership redundancy plans, and implementing proactive retention models into their enterprise risk frameworks. The question isn’t “can we fill the vacancy?” but “can we withstand a sudden leadership vacuum?”
Turning Threat into Strategic Opportunity: Three Important Considerations
Quarterly risk updates are obsolete. The pace of threat escalation, whether geopolitical, technological, or reputational, now requires live, layered, and integrated insight. A static report prepared in April is irrelevant by July. Risks don’t respect reporting cycles, and neither should you. What managers and boards need isn’t just visibility; they need a dynamic capability to detect, interpret, and act on weak signals before they snowball into crises. The organisations that thrive in this environment are those that treat foresight as a daily discipline, not a quarterly obligation. Organisations can only integrate risk-based decision making into daily practices if the risk landscape is clearlu defined and visible to managers at all levels every day.
External advisors are increasingly critical to companies who dont have an internal risk team of 100 poeople, but companies need to understand that advisors bring risk too. Incidents like SolarWinds and PwC’s regulatory entanglements in China prove the point: law firms, accountants, consultants, cyber vendors, and even ESG auditors are prime infiltration vectors. Every external party with system access or insider knowledge extends your threat surface. Yet too many companies still treat third-party risk as a checkbox, not a strategic exposure. If you are not interrogating the security posture of your partners, you are not managing risk, you are outsourcing it blindly. In today’s threat environment, trust must be verified, tested, and monitored continuously.
The best boards I work with begin every session with an “emerging threats” slide. It sets the tone. It forces alignment across the C-suite. And it signals to investors and staff that this company doesn’t just acknowledge volatility, it is structurally prepared for it. That slide isn’t symbolic either; it’s operational and strategic. Starting the meeting by considering emerging risks anchors conversations about strategy, capital allocation, talent risk, and resilience planning. Most importantly, it ensures that decisions are made with the future in mind, not just the present in view.
Real-World Projects & Strategic Impact
Later this month, I begin a full Enterprise Security Risk Management engagement for a highly regulated Nordic firm operating across China, the US, UK, Germany, and Japan. It’s a company experiencing rapid commercial growth, but without a risk architecture that’s kept pace. The leadership team has identified exposure to geopolitical interference, third-party data leakage, and insider employee risk, but what they lack is a coherent model to translate those risks into operational actions. We are building a live, scenario-integrated risk system that links board decisions to real-time threat indicators. That means automated signal tracking across five regulatory zones, developing risk scorecards for executive dashboards, and producing pre-approved response playbooks for sanctions, cyber, and reputational escalations. This wont be a risk awareness exercise, it will be risk capability that is embedded, repeatable, and owned internally.
Simultaneously, I am leading a strategic review for one of Europe’s most critical energy infrastructure assets. This isn’t a paper exercise. We are confronting the reality that a single coordinated cyberattack or geopolitical act of coercion could simultaneously disrupt physical infrastructure, freeze energy flows across borders, and trigger regulatory investigations in multiple jurisdictions.
We are simulating cascading failure scenarios, mapping threat actor tactics against actual system vulnerabilities, and red-teaming executive response timelines. The goal is not just to build resilience, but to build competitive advantage through anticipation. Resilience is the baseline, and advantage comes when the company can absorb a hybrid attack on Tuesday, and business can continue as usual by Wednesday. If this company can recover faster, respond clearer, and communicate better under duress than their competitors, they win more than safety, they win and retain market trust.
No board should be asking “what do we do now?” in the middle of a crisis. That question should have been answered six months earlier. My job is to ensure that it is.
Closing the Strategy Loop
Once you have a clear, living risk map, it’s time to build it into a strategic foresight engine. One that helps leaders answer:
- Where are we under-prepared for high-velocity disruption?
- Which top three threats are trending upward and why?
- What “no-regret” moves must we make before the next board meeting?
The more interesting conversation isn’t where is risk today? It’s where is risk accelerating, and why haven’t we moved yet?
We are in an age of strategic turbulence. Boards need clarity, not compliance theatre. They need capability, not colour-coded dashboards. It is clear to me that the winners will be those who operationalise foresight, act decisively, and never assume stability. What is your risk team providing you?
If you’re still not sure where your organisation stands, ask yourself:
- When was the last time your board simulated a cascading risk scenario involving geopolitical, cyber, and insider threats?
- Do our decision-making structures move at the speed of risk, or at the speed of internal politics?
- In six months, which threat will we wish we had moved on sooner?
If you don’t like your answers, it’s time to change them. After all, while volatility is the cost of doing business in 2025, clarity remains the only sustainable advantage in a business environment full of international risk. The companies that are still throving in 2030 will be the companies that invested in clarity when everyone else was clinging to hope.
