The Geopolitics Shift Boards Cannot Ignore
The publication of the 2025 United States National Security Strategy (NSS) last week was not a routine policy refresh. It was a strategic rupture that signals the end of an era in which companies, investors and governments could rely on the United States to underwrite the security of international markets, uphold global norms, and intervene to stabilise supply chains wherever needed.
The new doctrine presents a clear conclusion. The United States will prioritise domestic economic strength, industrial capacity, and resource security over maintaining a predictable global order. This shift affects every organisation operating internationally and presents to the world how the U.S. wants to see an ‘America First’ global ecosystem.
The document outlines a worldview in which economic vitality, access to critical minerals, supply chain sovereignty, and technological leadership are treated as national security priorities, directly challenging the assumptions that underpinned thirty years of globalisation.
For senior executives, boards and investors, the implications are profound. The world has entered a new era in which geopolitical competence is no longer optional. It is a fiduciary responsibility.
The End of the Global Security Subsidy
For decades, global businesses benefited from a geopolitical subsidy rooted in the assumption that the United States would secure key trade routes, intervene in regional crises, and protect the integrity of global markets. The 2025 NSS explicitly rejects this historic role, noting that prior commitments to liberal globalism and open markets were costly and strategically self-defeating. This ignores how the United States has benefited from globalisation.
The language, though, is unambiguous.
The United States has stated that it will not carry global burdens alone. Instead, it expects allies and partners to take primary responsibility for their regions. It also signals a readiness to leverage tariffs, sanctions and trade restrictions to ensure reciprocal economic treatment. To a certain extent, the current document outlines a brutal commercial mindset - if you want security in these turbulent times, then prove the benefit to the US and then pay for it.
Economically, Europe is still central to US growth, even if the new National Security Strategy talks about it as a burden that must carry more of its own weight rather than as a partner to be protected. The data are pretty clear on that.
Europe is one of the largest end markets for US exports. At the same time EU and US firms together have about €4.7 trillion of investment in each other’s markets. From profits to dividend flows, Europe is one of the main external engines of US earnings, investment returns and technological diffusion.
The shift in the document represents more than a policy change. Yes, it’s the withdrawal of the regulatory and military scaffolding that held the global economy together, which is why businesses and investors in 2026 and beyond must prepare for a world in which a single superpower no longer stabilises global markets. And if they are to be, then the price for security will be costly.
Geoeconomic Realism: A Redefinition of Risk
Economic security is national security
What is clear from the new National Security Strategy is that economic security, industrial capacity and technological leadership are core components of national power, with the United States intending to secure critical supply chains and eliminate dependencies on adversarial states. All while it works to rebuild domestic industrial capability.
This recalibration is rooted in three structural trends:
Great power competition and strategic rivalry
Fragmentation of global supply chains
Weaponisation of trade, minerals and technology
For boards and investors, the key message is that economic policy is now foreign policy. This means decisions once made under market-led or operational assumptions must now incorporate geopolitical strategic thinking.
What This Means for Global Trade and Supply Chains
Fragile supply chains face structural stress
The NSS reinforces a shift away from the post-Cold War paradigm of hyper efficiency and global interdependence. It emphasises the need for secure, diversified and politically aligned supply chains. Firms that rely on extended, single-region or politically exposed suppliers will face heightened risk.
This creates upward pressure on operating costs, but also creates a new competitive advantage for companies that can demonstrate resilience, redundancy and political alignment. Perception will matter.
The rise of friend-shoring and near-shoring
Businesses and investors should expect governments to encourage, subsidise, or pressure sectors to relocate supply chains to aligned jurisdictions. This applies especially to critical minerals, semiconductors, dual-use technologies, pharmaceuticals and advanced manufacturing.
Near-shoring to trusted regions, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, is now considered strategically desirable and may attract preferential state support.
Intelligence-led supply chain scrutiny
The NSS also authorises the US intelligence community to monitor the integrity, origin and vulnerabilities of strategic supply chains worldwide.
This has two consequences:
Corporate supply chain exposure will increasingly become a national security question.
Firms with opaque or politically sensitive supply networks may face regulatory or market penalties.
Technology, Innovation and the New Investment Reality
The future belongs to secure and sovereign technologies
The NSS is unambiguous about the strategic importance of advanced technologies. Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, undersea systems, defence technologies, energy innovation and critical infrastructure are all viewed as decisive factors in future economic and military competition.
For VC, CVC and PE investors, this is both an opportunity and a compliance obligation.
The United States will actively guide capital toward strategically aligned sectors and away from adversarial ecosystems. Outbound investment restrictions will likely expand, placing new responsibilities on GPs and LPs to demonstrate alignment with national security considerations.
Inbound capital will be filtered through a geopolitical lens
Investors from allied nations may benefit from expedited regulatory treatment, including through bodies such as CFIUS. Conversely, adversarial capital will face presumptive prohibition in strategic sectors.
Investors must now map not only the financial characteristics of deals, but the political identity of shareholders, limited partners and supply chain partners.
Why Companies and Non-US Governments Must Rethink How They Present Themselves
This is where your strategic viewpoint becomes essential. A world that prioritises economic security and sovereign resilience requires companies and foreign governments to articulate their position clearly and persuasively to reduce political risk and secure growth.
This idea is absolutely valid and increasingly essential. In fact, the organisations and governments that present themselves effectively will gain access, trust and policy support. Those who do not will face barriers.
The new imperative: position yourself as strategically valuable
Companies must demonstrate not only commercial merit but also geopolitical value.
This means:
Showing how your operations support national economic resilience
Demonstrating alignment with industrial strategy and technological priorities
Proving that supply chains are transparent, ethical and politically secure
Positioning your organisation as a reliable partner in a fractured global system
Non-US governments must take the same approach. They need to craft compelling, credible narratives about their reliability as investment destinations, their alignment with US and allied values, and their contribution to regional stability.
This is the difference between being viewed as a strategic partner or a strategic risk.
The power of government-backed positioning
U.S. technology companies have long leveraged the American state's weight as a competitive advantage when entering new markets. Non-US firms should do the same by aligning themselves with their own governments and presenting a unified narrative to international partners.
This reduces risk, supports regulation, and provides legitimacy.
What Senior Executives, Investors and Boards Must Do Now
Below are some strategic recommendations.
1. Embed geopolitical risk into enterprise risk management
Geopolitical risk must be integrated into all strategic decision-making. Conduct regular geostrategy audits to evaluate supply chain vulnerabilities, technology exposure, resource dependencies and political relationships.
Boards should mandate geopolitical risk reporting as standard practice.
2. Build or acquire geopolitical and strategic advisory capability
The pace and complexity of change require specialist capability. Companies should hire internal geopolitical teams or retain external advisory services to support horizon scanning, risk analysis, scenario planning and government engagement.
3. Realign investment criteria and due diligence
Investors must evaluate sovereign alignment, supply chain origins, technology classifications and regulatory exposure as core components of deal evaluation. GPs and LPs must prepare to demonstrate alignment with national security principles.
4. Rethink supply chain models
Friend shoring, near shoring, dual sourcing and vertical integration should be considered where strategic. Firms should quantify the cost of geopolitical instability and incorporate it into production decisions.
5. Engage governments with tailored positioning
Develop clear, evidence-based narratives for relevant governments that show how your company or investment activity supports national strategic outcomes. This may include job creation, industrial innovation, critical mineral security, or technological leadership.
6. Build robust scenario planning and stress testing
Test organisational resilience against geopolitical shocks such as export controls, energy disruptions, sanctions, regional conflict or technology bifurcation. Integrate scenario planning into capital allocation, M&A strategy and operational design.
A New Era of Strategic Responsibility
The 2025 NSS is the most consequential strategic document for business in a generation. It formalises the end of an era in which global markets operated within a predictable security architecture enforced by a single power.
Companies, investors and governments must now adapt to a world defined by selective engagement, fragmented supply chains, sovereign industrial priorities and political risk tied directly to economic activity.
Those who adjust early will be able to secure trust, shape regulation, build strategic advantage and capture growth. Those who fail to recognise the shift risk being left exposed in a rapidly reorganising world.
Geostrategy is no longer an add-on. It is the new operating system for every global business and investor.
