By the time award-winning New York University London and Oxford University academic Hagai M. Segal stepped onto the stage at YPO EDGE in Sydney, an earlier panelist had asked the question hovering over many global boardrooms: Are we already in World War III?
Segal paused.
“If you’re not in Ukraine or Gaza,” he says, “you get up every morning wondering what you’re going to have for breakfast and what you’re going to watch on Netflix — not whether a rocket is going to land on your head.”
The good news is, Segal says, this is not World War III.
The harder truth is more complex.
“We are in a polycrisis world,” he says — one “in which multiple things are bubbling all at once.”
For global chief executives, that distinction matters.
Not collapse — convergence
Geopolitical instability. Economic fragility. Artificial intelligence (AI) power shifts. Migration pressures. Cyber conflict. Climate stress.
Individually, these risks are manageable. The danger lies in convergence — when geopolitical shocks collide with economic vulnerabilities and create systemic inflection points.
— Hagai M. Segal, Award-winning Academic and Geopolitical Consultant share
History shows geopolitics alone rarely triggers prolonged downturns. It is the “double whammy” — economic weakness layered onto geopolitical stress — that destabilizes markets.
Yet amid the noise, Segal urges leaders not to mistake volatility for chaos.
“So much of what is going on in geopolitics today is actually playing out through logic and through mechanisms that we can understand,” he says.
Even U.S.–China tensions, often framed as existential, are being managed behind closed doors. “They want their conflict … to be an economic one, not a strategic one,” he says.
The challenge is not predicting catastrophe; it is recognizing patterns early enough to respond.
Geopolitics today, Segal quips, is “not like walking into your 16-year-old daughter’s bedroom and hearing heavy metal. It’s not World War III. But it is the constant drumbeat behind us.”
It’s background music. You may tune it out — but it’s always playing.
The governance gap
If the risks are mounting, the greater concern may be how little many organizations have changed.
Global surveys show most executives expect an unsettled decade ahead. Yet many admit they have not meaningfully adapted their governance models.
In Segal’s research — including interviews with dozens of CEOs — he sees a recurring pattern.
“Many boards are behaving as if basically there’s nothing they can do about this,” he says.
Part of the issue is psychological. Risk tolerance often mirrors the personality of the chief executive. Some leaders see chaos as uncontrollable and retreat into familiar metrics. Others assume geopolitics sit outside their mandate.
For decades, geopolitics could be “parachuted in once a year and then largely ignored.”
That model no longer works, according to Segal.
One company Segal advised discovered this when truck drivers began asking about cobalt sourcing in the Congo and forced labor in Xinjiang. The board was stunned. The company had strong ethical standards — but had never communicated them internally.
The solution was not reinvention. It was alignment. Geopolitical oversight moved closer to the board.
Within months, recruitment strengthened, morale improved and new clients followed.
The risk was not the supply chain itself. It was the disconnect.
“You may not be interested in geopolitics,” Segal reminds the business leaders in the EDGE audience, echoing the fifth century Greek statesman Pericles, “but geopolitics is interested in you.”
Ignoring it is no longer viable.
Cultural adaptation, not panic
If the message felt urgent, it was not alarmist.
“There’s no magic answer,” Segal tells the room. “Adapt the fundamentals. Don’t reinvent the wheel.”
Resilience does not require radical reinvention. It requires integration, starting with values.
“Values are your compass,” Segal says. “In moments of uncertainty, clarity of the mandate anchors strategy.”
Add knowledge, not as academic expertise, but as literacy — curated research, AI agents surfacing geopolitical insights and regular executive discussion. Geopolitical awareness is now “a vital skill of the C-suite.”
Then practice.
“The first time an enterprise will practice a cyberattack, they realize in five minutes why they’re doing a practice,” he says. “Simulations expose blind spots — whether forgotten legal counsel or outdated response protocols.”
And engage externally.
Governments increasingly lack the speed and technical depth to manage cyber threats or supply chain vulnerabilities alone. CEOs must step into the role of corporate diplomats — contributing insight, capability and partnership.
The shift Segal proposes is subtle but profound: CEOs should see themselves as “chief resilience officers, not because collapse is imminent — but because volatility is structural.”
From risk to advantage
The session in Sydney ended not in anxiety, but in reframing. “The uncertainty created by political and geopolitical events does not diminish the opportunity that may be found,” Segal says.
Companies that integrate geopolitical awareness early often find themselves entering markets competitors avoid. They identify mispriced assets, underserved regions and overlooked partnerships. They modernize governance before a crisis forces their hand.
In a world where multiple crises simmer simultaneously, the advantage belongs to those who are prepared — not panicked.
The drumbeat will continue.
The question for leaders is whether they will treat it as noise or as a signal.
YPO members, tune in to The Source to listen to excerpts of Segal’s EDGE session: Hagai M. Segal: The CEO’s Geopolitics Playbook Signals, Scenarios, Decisions
