Technology, particularly the shift to digital labor and AI, operates as a continuum that cuts through and influences all world order transitions and can provide productivity gains across geopolitical and economic turmoil.

The robotic age will transform the workforce such that future COOs will not manage only humans but will manage humans, agents, and robots in integrated teams.

Microsoft and other major tech companies have initially disappointed with their AI implementations, with co-pilot being a limited initial offering, but now the agentic vision of AI is showing real value in terms of employee augmentation and customer intimacy.

The how of policy implementation—the specific methods, speed, and narrative framing—can be surprising and even entertaining but is ultimately distinct from the what (policy goal), and execution varies across administrations.

Salesforce's model is to move from the hype cycle to the value cycle by delivering concrete productivity gains and demonstrating clear ROI; this approach of showing actual results differentiates them from companies still in the hype phase.

Super-scaler companies (large data center operators like AWS, Google Cloud, Alibaba) competing for dominance are investing hundreds of billions in data centers, driving down commodity prices for compute, which benefits software companies like Salesforce that can run applications across multiple providers at very low cost.

Reciprocity in trade policy (treating countries the same way they treat you) can be beneficial, but the critical factor is how the policy is implemented—if the what and how are not put together in a clear, consistent, and meaningful way, the result will be high volatility and conflict.

Both the US and China have different approaches to AI; the US does not have a significant leading edge, as demonstrated by the emergence of DeepSeek and Alibaba models from China, and neither country has a monopoly on training or inference chips.

Robot workers deploying in restaurants represent a concrete example of digital labor taking hold in real-world commercial applications.

Neither the US nor China has a significant unilateral leading edge in AI; both have different approaches, different chip strategies, and no monopoly on training or inference chips.

Salesforce positions itself at the intersection of digital labor innovation and AI, building software over 26 years to run on commodity data center infrastructure, avoiding capital-intensive data center competition.

Salesforce believes the next generation of work will involve employees working hand-in-hand with AI agents and robots, and Mark Benioff will be the last CEO/COO of Salesforce who only managed humans.

Uncertainty about tariff implementation and the 'how' of trade policy can lead to enterprise customer hesitation and lower IT spending as companies delay decisions pending clarity.

The digital labor revolution represents a 3 to 12 trillion dollar global opportunity involving AI agents and robotic agents operating in an agentic and robotic age.

Technology is a continuum that constantly gets lower cost and easier to use, and this technological continuum 'slices through' all the changing world orders and forces that Ray Dalio describes.

Data center prices have never been lower due to huge multi-hundred billion dollar weekly data center investments by hyperscalers competing with each other, creating a commodity market where software companies like Salesforce can deploy at very low cost regardless of provider (Alibaba, Amazon, Google, or others).

Microsoft disappointed many companies because while it started with co-pilot, it did not deliver the value it promised initially, but now real value is emerging in agentic applications.

The reciprocal tariff approach is conceptually good in principle because it creates clarity (if one country treats you one way, you treat them the same way), but the implementation ('how') matters enormously and can result in high volatility and conflict if unclear or inconsistent.

Salesforce's large customers are actively deploying agentic AI applications, demonstrating that value is moving beyond hype into implementation phase.

The first Trump administration's policies were unpredictable in their specific implementation ('the how'), making it impossible to forecast exact outcomes while the general direction was predictable.