In this episode, Ross and Treston unpack the rising concern over bias in large language models and its implications for business, politics, and information ecosystems. As AI systems become embedded in corporate workflows and decision-making, the hosts explore how cultural, political, and commercial bias seeps into data and rules, shaping what people see, believe, and decide.
They discuss AI as a new arena of soft power competition between China and the West, how LLMs can reflect partisan or ideological leanings, and the emerging phenomenon of “LLM SEO” — manipulating models to amplify certain narratives.

In this episode, we examine Debt Overhang & Crowding Out — the fourth of the Top 10 Geopolitical Risks for Business in 2026.

We explore how decades of ultra-low interest rates created a global dependence on cheap credit. As rates normalise, the political and corporate debt burdens accumulated during that era are constraining growth, investment, and strategic freedom.

Key Themes

• From cheap credit to structural pressure: The long shadow of post-COVID inflation and sustained high interest rates is reshaping both fiscal and corporate balance sheets.
• Sovereign debt and political risk: Rising debt-to-GDP ratios in the US, Europe, and Japan highlight the limits of fiscal space and the potential for governance paralysis.
• Corporate debt and stagnation: Over-leveraged firms face limited room to manoeuvre, leading to downsizing, delayed innovation, and suppressed hiring.
• AI, technology, and long-term profitability: We assess how debt levels could determine which tech firms survive the current wave of AI-driven investment.
• Global South vulnerability: Fragile tax bases and reliance on external creditors expose emerging economies to IMF conditionality, unrest, and political instability.
• Interconnected risk: High debt levels signal not just financial weakness but systemic governance strain — linking fiscal policy, national security, and business continuity.

Signals to Monitor

• Sharp tax increases or emergency budgets
• Rising bond yields and refinancing challenges
• Large-scale layoffs, asset sales, or corporate restructurings
• IMF programmes tied to subsidy cuts in developing economies

In this episode, we continue our series on the Top 10 Geopolitical Risks for Businesses in 2026, turning to Risk #3 — Industrial Policy and Geoeconomics. We examine how governments are abandoning decades of free-market orthodoxy in favour of state-led industrial strategies designed to protect national interests, secure supply chains, and reassert economic sovereignty.

The discussion explores:

• How industrial policy has re-emerged as the economic extension of great-power competition and techno-nationalism.
• The evolution from neoliberalism to interventionism, tracing roots from Alexander Hamilton to the CHIPS Act and beyond.
• How national security framing justifies tariffs, subsidies, and state involvement across sectors once considered purely commercial.
• The semiconductor industry as a case study—why it set the template for deeper state-corporate integration.
• The tension between what is good for a corporation and what is good for a country, illustrated through U.S.–China technology policy.
• Winners and losers: how energy, hydrocarbons, and certain emerging markets like Vietnam and Mexico could benefit, while agriculture and innovation face headwinds.
• Why protectionism may be more destabilising than industrial policy itself.
• The rise of a “Hamiltonian capitalism”—a new model where prosperity and security are increasingly fused.

Key Takeaway

The liberal economic order is giving way to a Hamiltonian era of strategic capitalism. For corporations, success will depend not just on market performance but on political alignment, negotiation, and an ability to operate within government-defined priorities.

In this week's episode, we discuss how techno-nationalism is reshaping the global economy. Governments are moving to control data, AI, chips, and the critical minerals behind them. The result is tighter rules, fragmented supply chains, and companies needing a clearer foreign-policy lens.

This is part of our series covering our Top 10 Risks for Businesses in 2026: download the full report here Top 10 geopolitical risks for business 2026Music for this episode is by @barleysentient on Sora.

In this week's episode we discuss why great-power politics remains the defining backdrop for 2026, how a shift toward hard-edged transactionalism is reshaping alliances and regions, and what this means for corporate strategy, supply chains, and market access. We use history as a guide (the “long nineteenth century,” the Concert of Europe, Bismarck’s balance-of-power craft) to frame today’s risks and opportunities, and we explain why leader personalities and national political cultures now matter more for forecasting than abstract institutional models.

For the complete analysis and practical implications by sector, see the Top 10 Geopolitical Risks for 2026 report: https://www.insightforward.co.uk/top-10-geopolitical-risks-for-business-2026/

Why do so many modern leaders look skilled at the sound bite but weak at getting things done? In this episode, we discuss the decline in political effectiveness and how it fuels today’s populism. We trace how the attention economy reshaped the skill set for office, why vision and institutional mastery have thinned out, and what that means for policy volatility and corporate risk. From C-SPAN sound bites to primary-system incentives, LBJ’s dealmaking, Nixon–Kissinger centralisation, and the Thatcher/Blair era, we contrast past statecraft with today’s programme-management politics. We close with Plato’s Republic, the philosopher-king ideal, and practical implications for executives.

This week we carry on the conversation about the online aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killing and what it signals for corporate risk. We explore “mimetic nihilism” and ****posting as threat vectors, the rise of crowd-sourced doxxing lists, the new wave of firings over celebratory posts, and how companies are being squeezed from both ends—consumer expectations below and state power above. In the second half they examine shifting political norms in the US, where legal boundaries sit, and what real indicators of democratic backsliding would look like.

In this episode of Boardroom Statecraft, we examine the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in the United States and its wider implications.

We discuss Kirk’s role in shaping the conservative youth movement, the suspect’s uncertain motives, and why the killing fits into a troubling pattern of targeted violence against political figures and business leaders worldwide. The conversation connects today’s climate of polarization to historic periods of political violence in the U.S., Europe, and beyond, drawing parallels to the late 1960s and 1970s.

Key themes include:

• The blurred line between political polarization and violent extremism.
• How recent assassinations and attempts — from U.S. politicians to corporate CEOs — highlight growing risks to high-profile figures.
• The shifting tactics of left- and right-wing extremist groups, and what that means for future incidents.
• Why corporations and their executives are increasingly perceived as geopolitical actors and potential targets.
• The international dimension: rising populism in Europe, large-scale protests, and parallels across Latin America and Asia.

The episode concludes with a forward-looking assessment of how businesses and governments should prepare for escalating political violence and the spread of targeted attacks.

What would Machiavelli do? This week we use the realist tradition—Machiavelli, Thucydides, Bismarck, Metternich, Kissinger—to frame how boards should operate in a multipolar world. We are back to an anarchic system where states (and companies) pursue self-interest. For corporates, that means recognising you are a geopolitical actor, building a grand strategy with market-specific variants, and being willing to make hard choices—negotiate, comply, contest, or exit—depending on the jurisdiction. The episode unpacks security dilemmas, the costs of one-size-fits-all policies, and examples such as adapting to export controls and divergent tech regulations. It closes with three takeaways for leaders: accept anarchy and human fallibility; map power as it is, not as you wish it to be; and run the company as a political actor with a full toolkit, not a single playbook.

Music is by @BarelySentinet on Sora.

In this episode, we unpack the Trump administration’s confrontation with the US Federal Reserve—what politicising an independent central bank means for inflation control, debt servicing, market stability and global spillovers. We connect the dots to the dollar’s reserve-currency role and BRICS “multipolar” rhetoric, then pivot to the widening transatlantic rift on technology governance, as Washington pushes back on EU/UK content regimes. We close with practical guardrails for corporate AI use amid model bias and rising “automation bias.”

This week we make the case for strategic intelligence as a core business function, not a “nice to have”. explaining why much vendor “geopolitics” is operational rather than truly strategic, and how to shift from incident tracking to impact analysis with second- and third-order effects.

The conversation covers communicating for decision-makers (clear executive summaries, tailored outputs), and why good intelligence reduces uncertainty rather than declaring “permacrisis”. Methods include scenario development, indicators, and Bayesian updating, framed by Sherman Kent’s definition of strategic intelligence.

We close with three actions for leaders: put geopolitics in the boardroom, build cross-functional risk forums, and develop or partner for deep analytic capability.

This week we discuss - the decision to deploy federal forces in Washington, DC, the Home Rule context, and the wider trend toward militarised policing. They separate perception from crime data, explain why visible presence can calm fear without fixing root causes, and note that sustained police capacity is what reduces crime over time.

The conversation then turns to corporate risk: arbitrary policy swings, politicised data, and a transactional model of government and business deals in semiconductors and critical minerals.

The takeaway for leaders is clear: firms are political actors, sector context matters, and you need strategic intelligence to judge exposure and act early.

In this episode of Boardroom Statecraft, Ross Hill and Dr. Wheat examine how European politics—particularly in the UK and EU—has shifted over recent decades, drawing parallels and contrasts with developments in the US. They explore the economic stagnation, demographic decline, and migration pressures driving political change, alongside the rise of nationalist-populist movements from the UK’s Reform Party to France’s National Rally and Italy’s Brothers of Italy. The discussion covers how stronger European party systems shape leadership, the EU’s future under growing sovereignty debates, regional economic divides, and the increasing ability of nationalist parties to govern effectively. They close by looking at the implications for regulation, technology policy, and business strategy in an increasingly fragmented geo-legal environment.

In this episode of Boardroom Statecraft, Ross Hill and Dr. Treston Wheat explore the deep structural forces reshaping American politics. They unpack Donald Trump’s return to power, the failures of post-WWII liberalism, and the rise of nationalist populism within the Republican Party. The discussion dives into shifting demographics and how social media and podcasts are influencing political engagement. With Trumpism now outgrowing Trump himself, this episode provides a sharp lens for understanding the political realignment underway and its implications for global business, geopolitics, and corporate strategy.

Five Key Takeaways

• Trump’s reelection reflects disillusionment with post-war liberalism’s uneven benefits
• Cultural alienation is as powerful as economic grievance in driving voter behaviour
• Voter trust increases when leaders “do something,” regardless of policy detail
• Podcasts and short-form social media reshape how political ideas spread
• Nationalist populism has overtaken traditional conservatism in the Republican Party

In this episode we ask a direct question: if multinational corporations operate like geopolitical actors, should they also think like them?

We unpack what a corporate foreign policy could look like, including some real‑world cases from semiconductors, energy, and consumer tech.

In this episode, we unpack the latest economic signals from the United States and China to assess how tariffs are reshaping trade, investment, and supply chains. We explore the securitisation of commerce, rising protectionism, and their wider macro‑economic ripple effects, with a spotlight on rare‑earths.

The discussion then shifts to recent UK foreign‑policy moves, including new accords with France and Germany, to understand how regional blocs are repositioning in today’s geopolitical landscape.

Read our latest blog post - The Geopolitics of Critical Minerals https://www.insightforward.co.uk/blog/the-geopolitics-of/#GeopolofCriticalMin

In the second episode of Boardroom Statecraft, we examine why corporations have become prime targets in today’s era of ideological conflict and radicalization.

Building on our exploration of the new Gilded Age, this episode unpacks how reputational, ideological, and physical threats are converging to create an unprecedented risk environment for businesses and their leaders.

We discuss the collapse of corporate neutrality, the rise of online ecosystems that enable doxxing, swatting, and lone-wolf violence, and the assassination of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO as a case study of how symbolic acts can inspire further attacks.

Finally, we outline what companies must do to adapt—from rethinking executive security and crisis management to developing intelligence capabilities that track emerging narratives before they become threats.

Read the report here Revolutionary Violence New Gild Age

In this opening episode of Boardroom Statecraft, we explore the parallels between America’s first Gilded Age and the turbulent environment facing companies today.

From the rise of robber barons and labor uprisings in the late 1800s to the concentration of economic power in today’s technology giants, the episode traces how inequality, technological disruption, and collapsing public trust have repeatedly sparked social and political backlash.

We examine why CEOs have become symbolic targets, how anti-elitist conspiracy culture is fueling new threats, and why the lines between protest and violence are blurring in the 21st century.