There's also the ramification of losing control of Taiwan's semiconductor industry and handing it to China, which is an economically important asset.

Hellscape relies on the availability of many thousands of drones which right now probably exist in a procurement spreadsheet rather than in actual US naval material stores, so that remote control defense by robot of Taiwan remains fictional and will remain so for a few years.

The degree to which the PLA and Air Force have been misbehaving around Taiwan has increased dramatically, and the odds in prediction markets on Chinese attack on Taiwan haven't increased over the last few weeks, suggesting either a market blind spot or that the threat is already priced in.

Always bet against the Davos consensus because it is always wrong—the Davos consensus in January was pessimistic on Europe, so shorting US equities and going long European stocks in January would have been the correct bet.

Europe has ignored every warning from successive American administrations over 30 years about looking after its own security, and this represents a fundamental failure to rise to the challenge.

The mood at Davos in January was absolutely funeral, with European business leaders saying Europe is terrible and wishing for Trump or Musk, but six weeks later European leaders are stepping up with support and proactive steps to rearm and re-energize the continent, courtesy of the shock doctrine from Washington DC.

Scott Bessent and others in the administration have said there's going to be pain from tariffs, and even a 10% stock market draw down sends Bessent and Kevin Hasset into TV studios to reassure markets that tariffs are transactional and temporary, suggesting the administration will soften implementation if markets react severely.

The world is in a very different place now than it was 50 years ago when Kissinger went to China—the US was 45-50% of global GDP then while China was a couple of percentage points; now the US is about 25% and China is approaching 19-20%.

Export controls and diffusion controls on chips and advanced technology that were supposed to constrain China didn't work and instead probably triggered innovation and invention in China, which has now started to happen.

The old story about American tech dominance (NASDAQ winning, Nvidia and TSMC holding the line with ASML's EUV machines being the insurmountable barrier) is being replaced by a new story where Deep Seek has shown inference (where economic benefits come from) doesn't require cutting-edge chips, and Huahei may have an EUV machine and ASML is setting up repair in China.

We have lived for the last 30 years since the Cold War collapse with a particular security architecture and economic rules of freedom of navigation, reduced tariffs, trade everywhere, lowest-cost production, and this order is now clearly over.

Azim sees certain things about the new economic and security order: more regionalized trading blocks, resurgence of Belt and Road with software exports (Deep Seek), cheap BYD cars, pressure for dual or even three-track technology ecosystems (core technology, maybe financial rails), and reshuffling of the global south's alignment.

One key thing that needs to happen and people are waking up to it: dusting off history books because if you've been in diplomatic service or trade negotiations in the last 40 years, you've played with a completely different playbook than the one you currently have.