The distinction between interregnum and arrival lands well—2025 as the year multipolarity was declared, not just anticipated. And positioning 19th-century stability as precedent rather than defaulting to catastrophism is a helpful reframe for readers navigating what comes next.
Something we've been exploring that connects here: the emerging poles may not map cleanly onto nation-states the way the Concert of Europe did. Compute infrastructure, AI training capacity, settlement systems—these increasingly concentrate in entities that sit alongside sovereigns rather than beneath them. Nvidia's market cap exceeds most national GDPs. Stablecoin issuers hold more Treasuries than many central banks.
The friction you flag—less regulatory alignment, harder travel, impeded information exchange—might run along corporate-sovereign lines as much as nation-state ones. Less Metternich, more something we don't yet have language for.
Interested in how you're thinking about where non-state actors fit in the multipolar frame.
Thanks Rowan. It's a good question. I still err towards seeing the global system, whether unipolar or multipolar, as one of nation-states (i.e., an international system).
For at least 500 years, states have been the dominant actors, and where there were non-state actors with the means to challenge them (e.g., the East India Company, the Sicilian mafia, the Russian Communist Party, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Standard Oil), they either eventually became a state or were eventually usurped by a state.
Nvidia and Tether have large market capitalisations, but they don't have armies, and the odds remain that they will be regulated into oblivion rather than pose a genuine threat to any but the smallest states. AI is certainly revolutionary, but in my view only as revolutionary as previous industrial innovations like steel, oil and coal that brought about the corporate titans of the day but didn't necessarily challenge the primacy of states.
The historical pattern is hard to argue with—and "become a state or get usurped" may well be how this resolves. The East India Company example is apt.
Maybe the question is less whether states remain primary and more about the timeline and friction involved. Standard Oil got broken up, but it took decades and the state understood the technology. The AI case might be different if the capability gap between regulator and regulated is widening rather than closing.
Not a prediction that Nvidia escapes state authority—more that the negotiation looks different when the state needs the entity's cooperation to understand what it's regulating. That's temporary, perhaps. But "temporary" in geopolitics can mean a lot happens in between.
A good point Rowan, particularly as the regulators in Nvidia's key market, the US, seem to be taking a far more industry-led approach than in the past.
The distinction between interregnum and arrival lands well—2025 as the year multipolarity was declared, not just anticipated. And positioning 19th-century stability as precedent rather than defaulting to catastrophism is a helpful reframe for readers navigating what comes next.
Something we've been exploring that connects here: the emerging poles may not map cleanly onto nation-states the way the Concert of Europe did. Compute infrastructure, AI training capacity, settlement systems—these increasingly concentrate in entities that sit alongside sovereigns rather than beneath them. Nvidia's market cap exceeds most national GDPs. Stablecoin issuers hold more Treasuries than many central banks.
The friction you flag—less regulatory alignment, harder travel, impeded information exchange—might run along corporate-sovereign lines as much as nation-state ones. Less Metternich, more something we don't yet have language for.
Interested in how you're thinking about where non-state actors fit in the multipolar frame.
Thanks Rowan. It's a good question. I still err towards seeing the global system, whether unipolar or multipolar, as one of nation-states (i.e., an international system).
For at least 500 years, states have been the dominant actors, and where there were non-state actors with the means to challenge them (e.g., the East India Company, the Sicilian mafia, the Russian Communist Party, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Standard Oil), they either eventually became a state or were eventually usurped by a state.
Nvidia and Tether have large market capitalisations, but they don't have armies, and the odds remain that they will be regulated into oblivion rather than pose a genuine threat to any but the smallest states. AI is certainly revolutionary, but in my view only as revolutionary as previous industrial innovations like steel, oil and coal that brought about the corporate titans of the day but didn't necessarily challenge the primacy of states.
The historical pattern is hard to argue with—and "become a state or get usurped" may well be how this resolves. The East India Company example is apt.
Maybe the question is less whether states remain primary and more about the timeline and friction involved. Standard Oil got broken up, but it took decades and the state understood the technology. The AI case might be different if the capability gap between regulator and regulated is widening rather than closing.
Not a prediction that Nvidia escapes state authority—more that the negotiation looks different when the state needs the entity's cooperation to understand what it's regulating. That's temporary, perhaps. But "temporary" in geopolitics can mean a lot happens in between.
Appreciate the pushback—sharpens the thinking.
A good point Rowan, particularly as the regulators in Nvidia's key market, the US, seem to be taking a far more industry-led approach than in the past.