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Infrastructure resilience amid geopolitical shifts and AI growth · PwC's accounting podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, and welcome to PWC's coming public house.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Hi, I'm Heather Horn.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: Today we're talking about the growing intersection of geopolitics, sustainability, and infrastructure, and what that all means for companies making long-term investments and then strategic decisions.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: As governments focus more closely on energy security, critical infrastructure, technology, and supply chains, businesses are navigating a more complex and fragmented global environment.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: Joining me for today's episode is Craig Stromberg, a senior director with PwC Intelligence.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: We'll discuss how these shifts are reshaping infrastructure investment, sustainability priorities, and how to find opportunities where other companies are focused on risk.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: Let's listen to that conversation now.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: Craig, welcome back to the podcast.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's been a few years since we've had you on, but it's great to catch up.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I think never a better time than to talk about geopolitics specifically and what that means as companies and governments are thinking about infrastructure and sort of the next steps forward.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me back.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: So just curious, from your perspective, as companies are thinking, or sorry, as geopolitics are changing how governments are thinking about infrastructure, then what should companies be thinking about?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So in the time that we have not been talking, right, alas geopolitic has not gotten any easier for companies to resolve.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that it is almost impossible, right, to separate certain things.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like I don't think macroeconomics and geopolitics can be separated.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think increasingly you can say that about infrastructure.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Part of that is because infrastructure has always been tied up with national security.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, one of the South's great fears, right, about the North and the Civil War is that Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Chicago all produced more than the entirety of all of those states.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the reason that, you know, you had people held back from World War II is because they were the only people who could manage the timetables of the Chicago switching yards.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So infrastructure's always been important, but I don't know that it's always been used as an incentive or a hammer by countries as much as it has.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is the case.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Foreign aid goes to a lot of different things.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Increasingly, that aid is being tied to infrastructure development.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of the ways that countries are thinking about this, and this is where the geopolitical nexus comes in, is that they want other countries to develop their infrastructure, not just for the sake of those countries, but to create markets and demand for the consumption of their national products and services.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can help develop the infrastructure in another country so that that country will be in a better position to consume your materials, your services, and create demand for your multinational companies.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: But increasingly, I don't think it's just a dual-sided coin of macroeconomics and geopolitics.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you call a three-sided coin, but I think you have to have a third side in there, and that is infrastructure.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And companies need to keep that in mind that if you have an infrastructure policy that is being developed without macroeconomic and geopolitical considerations, it's probably not gonna be sustainable.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, Craig, I found very interesting all of that, obviously, but in particular, your point about companies getting involved in infrastructure in other companies or other countries to help drive demand for products or otherwise.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: From a sort of practical point of view, is that only a few companies, the largest companies, or are you seeing that all different ends, like all different types of businesses and different ends of the size spectrum?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell So I think it depends on the sector, right?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because one of the sectors that's obviously the most involved here is the financial sector, in part because even if it's a government doing the development, often there is a financial services partner that involves with specific.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I mean you need financing, right?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what you're doing.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore you need somebody that has global reach, global understanding, global acumen.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but you see you've always had this with energy, right?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Energy is probably, even in times of relative geopolitical stability, energy companies often have the best geopolitical understanding because they know you know mineral deposits down to the hectare in most of the countries in the world, and they need good relationships all over the world.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: But increasingly you see a lot of this in aerospace and defense, too, right?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Where non-traditional powers are increasingly doing some of the innovation in aerospace and defense.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so those partnerships are being built.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of outreach.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I still think you see national governments leading the way here, in part because companies are sometimes wary, especially in the US, of getting too far out ahead.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: In part because if your people are literally too far out ahead and they get into harm's way, the government's gonna have to bail you out, and that's a very problematic, yes.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was part of some of those conversations when I was with the government, and they're not comfortable.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but at the same time, governments want to create competitive differences, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: The best example here, which often gets a bad rap, but I actually think it's a pretty innovative program, is China's Belt and Road program, right, which has been in existence for a while, by which China goes into countries that are often less developed, it builds their infrastructure, digital infrastructure and physical infrastructure.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: It ties those countries to Chinese companies to provide the services that are follow-ons, and that creates economic and diversified symbiosis between the company.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so it perpetuates itself.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's a virtuous cycle.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a partnership, public-private.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: So, Craig, I would be very remiss if I didn't bring up AI and the build-out of data centers, because I think for a lot of people right now, when they hear the word infrastructure, that's the only thing they can think about.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a whole mix, right, of um demand, government, people's individual views.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's so many different factors that are impacting that right now.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_03: So, how do you think that build-out of the data centers fits in as you're thinking about the broader um environment?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell So if you think back to the last time we probably talked.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: If someone had asked us what ultimate business issue was at the heart of geopolitics, I probably would have said supply chain.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I think we spent a lot of time talking about that.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: We did like a whole series on it, I think.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think in the present, I think the biggest nexus is AI, without a doubt.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, what I'm most concerned about is that the enthusiasm that the market is feeling about AI could be spoiled by geopolitics.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that is because when you think of that infrastructure, you know, obviously there's a bunch of issues there, political issues, social issues.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: But when you think of the infrastructure build-out, what people often think about first is the high-end technology that's going to go into that.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is that going to be US, Dutch, Japanese, South Korean, Taiwanese chips?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Which is worth thinking about.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: But what they don't think about is you can't build most any data center anywhere in the world without componentry that comes from China.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're going to have effective piping or industrial controls or heating or cooling, you need those components.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: That makes it inherently a part of the trade complexity that is going on between the West and China.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the Chinese said two things in 2025 that I thought they said remarkably clearly, and I think the market missed.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: One of those things was if they see themselves falling behind in the AI race, they may pull back the export of some of those components so that their AI facilities can grow and others won't.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they also said they're willing to absorb the economic cost if that hurts their GDP.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure that everybody understands that.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's the infrastructure build-out that will have its domestic challenges, but I worry much more about the fact that you can't build data centers unless the global trading system is working.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the global trading system is fractured by geopolitics that aren't going to get any easier.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to talk to you about the grid and power infrastructure because I think that's fundamental here.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: But I have to ask you a question because one of the things we spent a lot of time talking about a few years ago was onshoring and all the incentives and you know bringing production and manufacturing back to the US.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so when I listen to you talk about the data centers and the need for components from China, so that part of the onshoring is not working, or maybe onshoring hasn't been as successful as the push was when we were talking about it a few years ago, or maybe both.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a bit of both.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't think it has been as successful as many of us, myself included, would have liked, right?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because ultimately it probably would be a better thing for national security if that could be successful.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: One of the components of the infrastructure build out that has been the biggest challenge is the talent.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um they just haven't been able to find the talent and quantity that they expected.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: The other challenge that is coming up with all this infrastructure is that you have a generational issue, right?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: We are building these data centers at a time where a vast amount of engineering and electrician expertise is set to retire.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the apprenticeship models for many of those people aren't working as well.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have some very specialized electricians that can build these incredibly complex electrical systems that may have two or three years left in the workforce and then they're happily going to retire, there aren't enough replacements of that caliber in the American workforce to keep building data centers at scale.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And things like that in the human workforce are going to be a challenge as much as some of the technical stuff is going to be.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, so Craig, it's very interesting you say that because if we take a step back and think about the power grid and just the underlying, you know, system that was built a hundred years ago and just built up over time, it was ultimately not necessarily designed for what's going on now.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: But what I find so interesting about what you just said is when longtime listeners know I used to be in the power and utilities industry auditing.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: And even then, 10 years ago, there was a talk about a shortage of skilled workforce, need for apprenticeship, need for all these special programs.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: And that was long, I mean, maybe not long predating, but predated what's going on now.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: So putting aside just those challenges, when you think about the capability of the power grid and otherwise to support all of this growth, I mean, what are the challenges you're thinking and and where is the sort of governmental role in all of that?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a huge governmental role.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: The problem, I think, can be that I mean, you remember as well as I do that back in the 80s, Tip O'Neill, the Speaker of the House, said all politics is local.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: I cannot remember what happened in the 80s.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're only you're only four.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um spudding It may have been true at that point.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is definitely true today, right?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where municipal, county, and state regulations are increasingly polarized, right?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that county A and County B may sit next to one another.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: The way that power could be regulated in both of those could be vastly.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's completely different, yes.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Much less the federal government, which makes it incredibly complicated for utility players and power players to navigate that landscape.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Look, everybody wants power, but not everybody feels the same about its generation or how it's generated.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, how it's generated.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that is much more as you live in a country that is as polarized as ours is at the local level, I think that is a much more complicating factor than utilities have had to deal with in the past.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think, unfortunately, that's going to get any better.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it can also rapidly change, right?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: As people are moving around the country, as people are gravitating towards certain states because of their affordability, counties can flip, right, from red to blue and blue to red over the course of four or five years, which can up-end utility company strategies that they made to last 20 years, they may only last four.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: At the federal level, I think you're going to continue to see demand.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say demand, it's not necessarily financial demand, it's political pressure, right, on utilities and energies to continue to deliver.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure there's going to be as much help coming from the federal government as companies would like.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that is because the people who control the purse at the federal government level is Congress, and that it's also a polarized institution.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're not always going to be willing to open the purse for power generation unless it is of a certain kind.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I I have faith the grid will will be there.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it is going to be incredibly complicated to navigate this local issue.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's going to complicate our ability to have more national solutions to this.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and I think, I mean, we could have an entire podcast series about the amount of investment that's needed and otherwise.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: But just picking up on what you were just talking about, I think as you start to think about infrastructure more broadly, particularly data centers, power or and the like, it seems that then it is becoming increasingly important from a political perspective, who has control, who is funding, and otherwise.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so how do you think about that looking at the US and then looking more broadly across the world, the role governments are playing and and how this is translating into sort of shifting power?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think a lot of it is going to have to deal with what group of officials, elected officials in Washington is going to be willing to pick up the can.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: We have been kicking the can on a certain number of issues.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: The deficit, the debt, social security for years.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: All of those things are in the trillions and trillions.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those trillions of dollar figures do not include the tens of trillions of dollars of investment that will be required to modernize the grid, amongst other things.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Solving those multiple fiscal challenges?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure there is political will anywhere to be able to do that.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, so I was just going to ask you, and sorry to cut your thought off, but I mean with all the polarization we talked about, you know, I love to ask for predictions.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: Do we really think that that is something Congress or otherwise is going to focus on in the next, say, two to six years?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um Well, Social Security is a great example, even though, again, not a topic of our podcast.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: But if you add up all of these issues, I think some of them, yes, they will.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think the biggest challenge of all the ones that I just listed is going to be coming up with the tens of trillions of new funding that is going to be required to modernize the grid.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, the firm's own estimates, right, are well above a hundred million.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: A trillion.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: A trillion.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I think we'd get that back in terms of productivity, but that's a hard argument to make.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think we were on the road to this to a degree, right?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: We had sort of a down payment with the CHIPS Act and the IRA.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: But in order to really get those things traction, you would have needed an IRA part two and an IRA part three and a CHIS Act Two and a CHIS Act III going well into the 2030s.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that the polarization allows for the agreement that would be required to get those investments.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: But you're going to have to have a federal government that is already substantially in debt and with a massive deficit to fund these things.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody is going to have to come along and have the ability and courage to do that to solve some of these problems.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or you're going to have to have the private sector do this, which I don't know that they have the capital or risk tolerance or mission to do this.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: So the taking the perspective from a company then, just trying to wrap up our discussion of infrastructure, if I'm, let's say, in the CFO's department in an individual company, and I'm either dependent on infrastructure that's controlled by the US government, another government, or another company, how should I start to be thinking about the risk to my organization?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think one of the forces you need to consider, you just got to in your question, and that is control.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: What do you control and what do you not control?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Just because you don't control something doesn't mean it's not a strategic vulnerability.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the framework that I would urge people to think about is strategic vulnerability, right?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: What are those things on which you rely that directly impact your ability to operate that you need to have some visibility on and control over?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you two quick examples.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: One of the parts of infrastructure that is a strategic vulnerability for most companies, whether they know it or not, is undersea cables.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: We rely on those far more than the average person understands.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: We continue to lay them all over the world, you know.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And as we're seeing this revolution in UAVs in the air, we're also seeing this revolution in maritime UAVs.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's what my son is studying in college.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be long before you have UAVs that can operate like submarines that can cut cables at will.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can't do anything about that if you are a private company.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: What you can do is have the contingency plans in place to mitigate the impact on yourself and your clients and your regulators, right?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can be ready for that.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And another example is precision timing and navigation, right?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can't conduct financial transactions without satellites.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: If a satellite network goes down, that's not on you to resolve, but you need a plan for that.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so even for the things that are outside of your control, I feel like a lot of companies, as soon as they reach that conclusion, they're like, I don't need a plan for this.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's beyond my control.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I disagree.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I think you still need to have some kind of contingency planning for how to mitigate as much possible risk as you can, even for those strategic vulnerabilities that you cannot control.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and Craig, it's so interesting you bring up these undersea cables because we're uh recording this the day after there was a cable cut that impacted Newark Airport.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean there's huge disruption of flights at not just at that airport.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, that was an accident.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: It was an accident.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so then if you think of someone with malicious intent, any of these cables undersea, even underground, um, it is something for companies to think about.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so how are you advising companies that say, okay, I'm dependent on this, but I and I know I need to think about contingencies, but I I don't even know where to start.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the flip side of the coin to strategic vulnerabilities, and that's critical dependencies.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are a company that produces something that, for instance, relies on magnesium, can you trace the magnesium as far down its supply chain as you possibly can?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you can, you may realize that there is a single plant in Texas or Louisiana or Nigeria that if that plant goes offline because of a hurricane or a fire or a strike, that's it.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Very few companies go down that far in their critical dependencies, which don't have to be critical minerals.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: They could be people, they could be finances, they could be technologies.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Can you, from the top of your institution, trace down those things on which you rely, whether that's data, Finances, human beings, transportation, whatever it is, to find out where the critical dependencies are.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And again, even if you don't control the critical dependencies, do you understand where the weakness is?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: What I like about doing this is for some companies, if you can do this, you're going to realize that there's a massive opportunity here.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: That if all of these companies rely on this one thing, it's an opportunity to go make another one.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's something new, but you can go create something that will germinate its own tree of opportunity.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's what you have to do, is you have to have both the strategic vulnerabilities and the critical dependencies understanding.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do, I think you're much more resilient.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: So, Craig, you mentioned hurricanes, and we're recording this here in New York during Climate Week.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to shift our attention to sustainability.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: And specifically, if we think about the context that we've just been talking about, the geopolitical fragmentation, um, you know, the global warming, energy security, data centers, like it's all sort of mixed together.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so how are you seeing that first starting with governments, but also companies are balancing all of these competing demands?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: So I think electricity use should go down, but I want to build a data center, or I want data centers to be in my country.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, I need energy security because what if the cables that are being cut are the transmission grid in the eastern United States?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's all of these different vulnerabilities.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: So how do you think about that?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I at the most strategic sense, the thing that I am worried about the most is that it is very possible that we are on the verge, and I hope that we are wrong about this, but it is possible that we are on the verge of seeing a two technology stack world emerge with a Western technology stack and an Eastern technology stack.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And for some companies, especially multinational companies that operate all over the world, you could have both.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: But if if someone, and I think the someone would far more likely be the US, was to insist that you choose, that could be incredibly complicated.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know if it's doable, but it would also be incredibly expensive.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is because geopolitics is tied up in technology as a force and as a weapon in a way that it didn't used to be.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I I increasingly see many countries feeling like they have to have a hand in the data center arena just as part of the cost of being a competitive economy.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not inexpensive, and it is not without geopolitical risk.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because depending on who you are and where you are in the world, you may find a larger, more powerful country coming to you and say you must choose.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a very uncomfortable thing to do.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I guess, Craig, what if you conclude, yes, I want this, but how do I balance that then with maybe a long-standing climate agenda or otherwise?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think that increasingly where climate solutions are going to have to come from are either going to be coalitions of the willing geopolitically, and you already see some of this, or from multinational companies.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't think that it's possible for there to be true progress on climate change until you get to the point that you have genuine partnership between the United States and China.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Not just cooperation, but partnership, to the point that the world's top two economies can say to everybody else in the world, we agree on this, that this is a risk to everybody.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to transform our own economies and we're going to do it together, and we're going to create policy that all of you can follow.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody has to pick a team.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to say that's feasible.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're plots of this happening anytime in the nearcoming.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can't do that, I don't know that coalitions of the willing are going to be enough.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, because you mentioned multinationals, but now I'm a multinational truly in all these different countries.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I have the U.S.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: on one hand, you know, one message of the EU that's trying to balance their green goals with their growth goals.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: You have China, the same, you know, um continuing to build coal plants and otherwise.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: So how how do you navigate that then if you are a multinational where you have different places that are giving you completely different messages?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not easy to do.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that part of what has to be done here is understanding the time window that most governments have.
• 27:05
  unknown: Right?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: The Chinese time window, for instance, tends to be pretty long, right?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because of the stability of their rulers.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: In Washington, it's pretty short, right?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can measure it in two years or four years or six years, depending upon what you think.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: That means that policy is very unlikely to be consistent when it comes to things like climate change.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I think this is also where you start to get into the conversation that we had before about things increasingly being local.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: People at the city, county, and state level have more power to influence this issue than they used to.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think they are.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And increasingly you're seeing very effective local governance about policies that may not change global climate and weather, but they do have an impact.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: But increasingly, it is very difficult for governments to deal with forces that are as powerful as climate change because they are so large and in many cases so slow moving that they can be ignored.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, Craig, we talked before about tectonic forces.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: Is would you put that in this category then?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: Or how maybe just remind our listeners how where where climate change fits in.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I think tectonic forces, right, are those large strategic forces that like tectonic plates, right, they move relatively slowly.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: But then But when they impact one another, you get things like the Himalayas, right?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: You get a tremendous change and impact.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that climate change is one of those.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is often an ignored plate because it is possible for policymakers and decision makers from any country to say, this is too much for me.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's too big of an issue now.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not going to be our problem anyway.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I think it's a different conversation to have, right, if you are a national leader on the Maldives, right?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or Haiti, right?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: On Nepal, basically I mean, or Nepal, right, where i it's different.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the I mean, I don't think you can argue with the science, but it's much easier to say no when changes happen very slowly, and the change may not happen during your administration or your reign as a national leader?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron Powell So if I'm a company and I think okay with this broad tectonic force, and there's other ones that we haven't talked about today, and then I see all the stuff that's happening every day of you know, just all the political tension, all these other things, how do I separate these long-term issues that are going to endure from this sort of day-to-day noise in the system?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: And then how do I manage through that?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think the pass-through is opportunity, right?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: If multinational companies, which are pressed for time, are going to take the time to try and understand their long-term issues, what they have to be put in a position to do is to figure out how they are going to be able to operate better and find opportunities for growth in future environments, even if they're less predictable, so long as they can have some foresight into those.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there are companies that are very good at this, right?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: That are able to find secure growth regardless of the complexity of the global operating environment, because they have teams internally that do this for them, right, at the board level and the C-suite level.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that when things get complicated in the operating environment, they have a plan for growth in that world.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they have a plan for growth that's even more complicated and one that's less complicated, and all they need to do is take it off the shelf.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's an expenditure of time and a little money, but it tends to make people more confident that no matter what happens, you can turn all of these tectonic clashes and these tectonic shifts into opportunity, but it has to be phrased in terms of opportunity.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: If it's just phrased in terms of risk, you're gonna lose the board and you're gonna lose the C-suite.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: So you must have been reading my mind because my next question was about risk, so I'm gonna ask it anyway.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: But again, coming back to climate for a moment, so we talk a lot about physical risk and transition risk associated with climate change.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: But if I'm a board, and if we rewind to the beginning of our discussion, when you think about the what's going on from a geopolitical perspective, you think about infrastructure, you think about all of these different issues, how then can a board really prior or a senior management team really prioritize, okay, well, I have a factory that is subject to, you know, a hundred-year flood that could be underwater, and it's a critical point for me.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: How do you balance all of these competing demands?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's an excellent question.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how I would do it.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: I would, and there's a lot of different vehicles to do this, right?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: You could do this with the whole board, you could do it with the board's risk committee, I would get the chief risk officer involved, I would get people like the chief technology officer involved, and I would get agreement at as high a level as you possibly can on three different buckets.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is what are the strategic vulnerabilities that the company faces?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not every strategic vulnerability, it's the ones that directly impact our ability to operate day to day, which probably is a list of five or six things.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a list of sixty things.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: I would then move on to the second bucket, and that's critical dependencies.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the third bucket is the gray rhinos, right?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's those known risks that can accelerate.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: And again, for any company in the world, I don't think that's a list of 60 things.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a list of five or six things.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then you need to come back to those lists, and the first thing you're gonna see is some of these are exactly the same across these three lists.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, so then and those things go to the top of the board's risk agenda.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Then you're gonna go through all three of those lists again and examine them through a prism of what is in our control, what is outside of our control.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Of those things that are inside of our control, what is our controlled plan?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: What are our contingencies?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Who in this room is responsible, right?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: How are you gonna deal with this?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: How does it connect to board governance?
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: How does it connect to how the firm operates on a daily basis?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Reputational management, all of that stuff.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the stuff that's outside of our control, what do we do about it?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do we lobby?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do we ally?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do we get partners?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do we talk to the government?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: Do we cross our fingers?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do we cross our fingers?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: Hopefully not.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: But what should happen if that exercise is conducted is that the people who are responsible for the good governance of that institution should leave that room with a far better understanding of what the real risks are, how well prepared they are, and what they have to do to better secure the future of that company.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not nothing.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like that leaves them with a far more impressive degree of decision confidence than they probably would have had before.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: So, Craig, before we got started today, you and I were chit-chatting, you mentioned to me that you're traveling everywhere these days and talking to a lot of different boards and companies.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so when you're talking to them, what's a piece of advice that maybe we haven't spoken about today that you would share with our audience?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe you've already shared all your birds of wisdom?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing that I would add is that the thing that I continue not to see, or I see with great rarity, is I think at many companies, large and small, across sectors, there are people who are doing really innovative things about connecting risk to opportunity.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Those people are often buried six or seven layers below the board in the C-suite.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And their ability to get the results of their work elevated is very, very rare.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like I am, I am extraordinarily lucky, right, that I talk to Paul, you know, our our CEO every week.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: I talk to Karen, the chairman of our board, every week.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: If we feel like there is an intelligence issue that needs their attention, they will give us their time.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: We have a very effective intelligence relationship with them.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Most companies are not like that, right?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Your ability to get them on the phone is very limited.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just having the team.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: The part about this that a lot of boards don't think about is does the team have the access to you to give the board the proper warning about either a risk or an opportunity?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because if they don't have the access, then having that team is not going to help save you.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe start wrapping things up.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to pull a thread on something you said earlier because you mentioned not to make this about risk.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: And then, of course, I asked my risk question.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: But if we we turn to opportunities, so now I'm this company that has a critical dependency, or I have an infrastructure dependence, or you know, all this array of risks, how can you flip your thinking then to seeing some of this as an opportunity?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the biggest opportunity that I see emerging is I think one of the open questions that geopolitical analysts are dealing with is what kind of a model of global governance are we moving into?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Are we moving into a bipolar world or a multipolar world or a disordered world?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: I personally believe that the most likely is a multipolar world.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you see some of this emerging.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like the fact that you saw actors like Qatar and the UAE step forward to try and solve some of the problems in the Middle East.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you've seen the Pakistanis do the same, and the Turks and the Egyptians.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is not normal behavior for them, right?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: They are putting their national countries at risk and their brands at risk by doing this.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: Although it's very critical to them to get this resolved.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also a bold step for them, and it demonstrates that they are ready to operate at a level of global leadership that they may not have been willing to do before.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is incredibly important.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're seeing Canada mentioned all the time in the conversation.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not just because of the issues that are going on with trade in the U.S., it's because they act differently.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: If we enter, and it is an if, more of a multipolar world over the next 10 or 15 years, that gives companies a much different opportunity to approach the world.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because then it's not just maybe two big players that control everything, it's a bunch of little consortiums of countries.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that may complicate the picture, but it also increases your optionality.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because if this consortium isn't helping you, you can go over to that one.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that will increase the level of competition of governance between those multilateral groups to be more effective in working with multinational companies.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because that group that can be most effective may get more of the foreign direct investment.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: If we head down that world, I think it's a much more interesting one for companies to operate in and one that's more filled with opportunity and less with risk.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: So if I rewind then, so when we're talking about some of these major problems we face as a world, climate change, but there's other ones, and you mentioned the fact that you really need the US and China to be working together.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_03: But if you go down this path where there's a lot more, I'll say distributed power, then do you think that makes it more likely we can solve some of these societal issues?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: Or it's uncertain?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think you might be able to solve them for parts of the world.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: But for the foreseeable future, China and the United States will continue to be the two biggest economies in the world, which by definition gives them an immense amount of power.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you're still going to need them involved and cooperating if you're going to solve everything you want to solve.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: You might solve it for everybody else, but if if those two aren't involved, it's just going to stick less.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you got to get them involved.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: Alright.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, in the interest in ending on a positive note, what is a it's as you look ahead and as you're counseling companies and you know our own company, how what is a positive, something positive that you see as you look into the future?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Look, the positive that I see, even with all the geopolitical disruption, is that multinational companies are getting better at operating in this environment.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they're finding it any easier.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're certainly not finding it any more pleasurable to continue to deal with all this disruption, but they're getting better at it and they're asking more hard questions, and I'm seeing more adaptations in how companies govern themselves.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: That I think is a positive.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think ultimately, even if things get less complicated, it makes the companies more resilient.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and maybe a lot of opportunity for everyone then, if we're starting to see that.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: But the large companies, maybe this we'll start to see some of the same with some smaller companies too.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_03: All right, well, Craig, it's always fascinating to talk to you.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for joining me today.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.