A conversation with Olaf Groth

Navigating tech, geopolitics, and the big trends

Olaf Groth is Founder and CEO at Cambrian Futures.

Olaf Groth is an author, futurist, and strategist. His focus is the area where cyber, geopolitics, and geopolitics intersect and his primary interest is the AI-, data-, and compute-driven transformations of economies, industries, and organisations. Olaf is the founding CEO of advisory think tank Cambrian Futures and of concept development firm Cambrian Labs. He serves as professional faculty for strategy, policy, technology and futures at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business; Adjunct Professor of Practice at Hult Business School; and Honorary Adjunct Professor at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. He has taught at institutions across the US, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

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The big trends

What are the biggest technological shifts happening currently?

One of the most significant shifts is toward human-like intelligence, achieved through a cluster of technologies. Large language models (LLMs) are just one piece of this puzzle. Others are emerging constantly.

Another major shift is around data, not just as a commodity, but as the fuel for everything. We’re heading into an era of data wars, as actors compete for the right data for specific compute interventions. There will be a push to sign global data accords aimed at channeling this data towards societal and economic growth.

We’re also seeing a sustained trend in sovereign compute. Expect nationalised or regionalised compute centres in the EU, the Gulf States, North America, and China.  This development is foundational to how nations will control and protect their digital infrastructure and computational power.

Crypto and the technologies that underlie it – blockchain and Web3 – are often dismissed as dead, but they have laid the foundation for a more balanced Internet economy, countering the centralisation of Web2, which is dominated by a few global platforms. While Web3 may not replace Web2 entirely, it will gain traction in specific use cases that require decentralised ownership and governance. Crypto will also continue to thrive as a parallel financial system, with investors and innovators competing for power. Notably, the EU leads in regulation and adoption, while the US lags on regulation but leads in innovation.

In genomics, CRISPR is driving transformative change. The US leads here as well, propelled by both scientific innovation and pandemic-related demand. AI and data science will be indispensable in harnessing CRISPR effectively, and vice versa, pandemics provide the necessary biological data to fuel further scientific breakthroughs.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) bridge the frontier between the biological and digital. With around 500 organisations in the space – ~330 in the US and China, and ~100 in Europe – this is a rapidly growing field. Applications range from treating blindness and paraplegia to enhancing memory, education and training, and potentially even augmenting our understanding of happiness. However, these benefits come with substantial risks that must be carefully managed.

Quantum computing is another game-changer. Microsoft’s Majorana One chip may represent a breakthrough. While its broad applications are still being determined, the near-term value lies in areas including chemistry and life sciences – domains where datasets are manageable but existing compute solutions fall short. Europe could play a leadership role here, drawing on its established chemicals and biopharma sectors.

Space tech is blossoming too, led by entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson, as well as rising governmental ambition in China and India. We’re witnessing the emergence of a semi-privatised innovation ecosystem, especially in Silicon Valley. This also extends into air and ocean tech, all dealing with hostile environments and, therefore, requiring rugged technologies. Over the next 10–15 years, these may evolve into entirely new industries – an area where Europe can also assert leadership.

Lastly, defense tech is undergoing a renaissance, especially in Europe. While the US has always maintained a strong defense tech base, geopolitical tensions and real-world conflicts, such as that between Russia and Ukraine, are pushing innovation even harder. Even Silicon Valley, once resistant to this, as evidenced by the recent Google protests,[1] is now embracing this shift. Europe must commit a significant portion of defense spending to innovation, especially as defense overlaps with space and other tech domains.

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What are the most underestimated forces shaping technology, politics, and society?

The single biggest underestimated force is the deficit of trust. There’s widespread distrust of governments, media and, to a lesser extent, businesses. According to the Edelman Trust Index, governments rank lowest in public trust across many countries. To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping, governments are no longer “hunting mice” – that is, they are failing to fulfill their basic role of enabling prosperity and stability.

This lack of trust is also why crypto is blossoming. At its core, crypto represents a trust revolution, not just a financial one. It’s built on blockchain, which diffuses power by replacing centralised platforms with decentralised protocols. How can we create new mechanisms for trust within and across communities? In countries such as the US, where tribalisation is especially pronounced, rebuilding trust is more urgent than ever.

Meanwhile, geopolitics will continue to define the next two decades. It’s not a new force, but it’s acquired a new target: technology. Innovation is increasingly being shaped by geopolitics, whether it’s AI sovereignty, data sovereignty, or compute sovereignty. In the past, geopolitical concerns were limited to narrow tech such as nuclear arms. Today, military-civilian fusion means technologies like social media can be weaponised.

Finally, the fusion of technology and energy is a critical, often overlooked force. Cognitive technologies such as AI require vast computational resources, which, in turn, demand more energy. We may move from dedicating 1–2% of our energy budget to tech, to 20% or more. This will likely trigger a nuclear renaissance, possibly involving small modular reactors (SMRs) or even breakthroughs in fission energy, if we can commercialise them safely.

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Understanding the “six Cs” and techno-Confucianism

You’ve written about the tectonic shifts in our world and defined what you call the “six Cs.” Could you expand on these?

Absolutely. The six Cs frame the major global shifts we’re experiencing. First is climate change – ­­­­­an existential but also an economic threat. We’re looking at infrastructure impacts of over $7 trillion, with another trillion or two in lost economic activity. While some of that might transform into innovation and new industries, the negatives will outpace the positives over the next decade.

Climate change will also drive migration. Potentially 500 million to 1.2 billion people moving, mainly from the Global South to the North. That will bring significant political disruption as countries struggle to manage livelihoods, healthcare, and social systems under strain.

Second, there’s the China-US reset. Both countries are socially and politically volatile, but for different reasons. China’s dealing with what I call the “great wobble.” Xi Jinping is restructuring the national economy, shifting from digital services for consumers to enterprise services and more automated manufacturing. But this happens amid a looming demographic crisis. China’s population is projected to shrink from 1.4 billion to 800 million by the end of the century. That’s fewer mouths to feed, but also fewer workers to support an aging population.

China is also addressing fallout from the pandemic: economic hardship; limited digital infrastructure; a lower birth rate due to lack of privacy in multi-generational homes; and a burst real-estate bubble. Add to that energy security concerns and deeper ties with Saudi Arabia, plus geopolitical issues such as Taiwan, plus backlash to the Belt and Road Initiative, and you have a complex and delicate situation.

Meanwhile, the US is facing what I call the “Trump tornado.” It includes draining government agencies, limiting immigration, and increasing tariffs, while trying to reduce taxes. Immigration is especially tricky. One-quarter of US entrepreneurs are foreign-born, and much of the service industry relies on immigrant labor. There’s also a push toward advanced manufacturing and AI integration, but we lack the educational infrastructure to retrain tens of millions of workers. Both China and the US are in industrial transition while being locked in a competitive rivalry.

The third C is cognitive technologies: compute power, data, and AI. We’re seeing a push for compute sovereignty. President Biden issued an AI executive order [Executive Order 14110 of October 30, 2023], and President Trump will likely follow with his own version. Major players like NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and AMD are already investing heavily in new alliances, with Saudi Arabia for example, to strengthen their positions. AI is infiltrating everything – industry, medicine, safety systems, even brain-computer interfaces. It’s both a geopolitical tool and a source of geopolitical tension.

Next comes cybersecurity, the fourth C. Two revolutions are happening. One, hackers are moving upstream, attacking the software providers and manufacturing equipment that form the backbone of our infrastructure. Two, they’re moving away from attacking company firewalls and are targeting individuals. By tracking 20–30 executives from an organisation, you can uncover patterns in behaviour, travel, product development, and client strategies, all without hacking into a corporate network.

Surveillance technology plays a huge role in this, and it’s not limited to autocracies. Over half of the countries using surveillance tools are liberal democracies. We’ve been too lax, and that’s the third aspect of the cybersecurity revolution.

The fifth C is COVID-like pandemics and CRISPR. The pandemic exposed and intensified a broader unraveling of globalisation already under way. Governments diverged in transparency and response, both locally and globally. Power shifted from national to local levels, such as in the US, where counties set their own laws as the federal government stepped back.

While macro-level governance faltered, science and local efforts largely succeeded. The development of a vaccine in just six months was a remarkable scientific achievement. This contrast between failing leadership and thriving innovation recalls Deng Xiaoping’s assertion of practicality over ideology.

During COVID, many Western democracies struggled to meet basic needs, while some Asian countries prioritised results over political form. At micro-level, science and innovation thrived. Two Turkish immigrants in Germany, using CRISPR and AI, developed mRNA technology, succeeding where big pharma and government had not. It was a bottom-up triumph.

The sixth C is crypto, which represents a governance revolution and a counterweight to traditional systems. I won’t dive into that now, since we’ve discussed it earlier.

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The generative AI impact

How will Gen AI shape executive decision-making?

Many older executives nearing retirement will say, “I can’t manage this complexity.” Last year, the US had the highest number of CEO firings in history. This isn’t just due to AI but because of the growing complexity of the economy. It’s becoming too much for one person to handle.

Executives who educate themselves on AI will make better decisions. To illustrate, a friend of mine, chess Grandmaster Patrick Wolff, once said that, when a Grandmaster plays with a chess AI against another human-AI duo, the AI vastly expands the range of possible strategies. The humans bring long-term vision and insight, while the AI opens the field of opportunity. It’s the same in business: AI supports creative strategising.

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What role does AI play in combating climate change?

We cannot solve climate change without AI. Governments have not succeeded in driving climate mitigation, not necessarily because of incompetence, but because it’s too complex and too slow.

For the first time, governments are calling on innovators to help. Traditionally, regulators set pricing signals, and companies responded. Now, it’s flipped: governments need private-sector innovation, including AI, data science, and compute power. AI can help optimise complex supply chains, production processes, and transportation systems, factoring in travel times and carbon footprints. Individuals can’t manage this complexity, but AI can.

Simulation and digital twins will be crucial. I serve on the board of EchoTwin, an organisation that creates digital twins of cities. This allows us to identify poor urban design or deterioration with predictive insight. We’ll need to invest billions – maybe hundreds of billions – into carbon capture, sequestration, and circular carbon use. Carbon isn’t toxic until it’s airborne. Let’s keep it out of the air and turn it into a productive asset.

We’ll also need to strengthen carbon markets and embrace new data-driven solutions. If we do this, we may stay under 2°C. But the damage is already immense. If we want to contain further loss, AI and compute power are essential.

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What are your thoughts on Gen AI regulation globally?

In the US, we’ve shifted focus from safety to economic and geopolitical competitiveness, especially with China. The accelerationists, like Musk and Altman [Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI] have largely won. But even they acknowledge safety concerns. We just aren’t calling it “safety” anymore; it’s “security.” Economic, national, public, and functional security.

The US will likely introduce new regulations under this broader umbrella. Meanwhile, Europe has overregulated. While I respect GDPR and the EU AI Act, Brussels isn’t entrepreneur-friendly. The cost of compliance is too high, and venture capital isn’t funding these startups. Europe needs to find a better balance between regulation and encouraging innovation.

It’s promising to see China participate in AI summits such as the one in Paris. For global regulation to happen, collaboration with China is crucial, but it may take five years or more to materialise.

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The impact of deep tech:

Which deep tech areas have potential to trigger significant shifts in the next 5–10 years?

Instinctively, I would say quantum computing. Paradoxically, it’s both over- and underhyped. If we reach commercially scalable quantum computing, it could transform everything, from cryptography and payment systems to travel and education. I’ll put that alongside fission energy, which has similar visibility.

One area that’s truly underestimated is synthetic materials. Finding substitutes for lithium, for instance, would be a game-changer in energy management. We’re talking about new chemistries, possibly even new branches of physics, enabling significantly longer battery life and greater storage. The next breakthrough in energy security is undoubtedly storage.

What excites me is when trends collide. Imagine combining AI with quantum computing and applying that to material science problems. That collision could unlock cascades of technology capabilities, from advanced battery storage to entirely new energy solutions.

Another underappreciated frontier is carbon. We’ve conducted trials, and there are startups exploring carbon packaging and productising, but it’s not yet commercially scalable. If we manage to flip carbon to being a positively priced production asset, we create incentive structures for its use. That transition from sequestration to carbon circulation within a circular economy would have profound implications.

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Getting and staying ahead:

What are the new skills that leaders should focus on?

There are five essential skills leaders must focus on, which are outlined in the design activist leader (DAL) framework from our book.

The first is futures and foresight thinking, or executive foresight. Executives today are overwhelmed by countless challenges, many of them difficult to quantify, making prioritisation nearly impossible. That’s why the ability to think ahead – one, two, even three years – is a vital decision-making skill.

Second is systems thinking. This is thinking in ecosystems of both traditional and untraditional actors. For example, decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), blockchain entities, or virtual actors influencing policy. Leaders must understand the broader stakeholder landscape: who’s influencing whom, who’s financing whom, and whether their missions align with ours. That’s the essence of true systems thinking.

The third skill is geotech thinking. This involves understanding how technology sits at the centre of geopolitics. For any executive using or deploying tech, a geotech mindset is essential. For instance, if you can’t source chipsets for your product – be it a wearable device or a smart fridge – you are stuck. Everything is getting smarter, but this means every product contains geopolitical risk. That’s why we advocate for geotech SWAT teams embedded in organisations, capable of assessing local political segments and sociological trends. Leaders need this situational sensitivity in the C-suite.

Closely related is the fourth skill: simulation capability. Organisations must use digital twins, not just for operations, but also to understand market shifts and how their archetypal customer is evolving. This forward simulation allows leaders to stay ahead of change, rather than being reactive.

The fifth, and perhaps most human, is empathy among stakeholders. In a tribalised society, it’s become harder to practice empathy. People on opposing ideological poles barely understand each other anymore. But empathy is essential for dealmaking and collaboration. Leaders must ask: where’s the common pain point? What are they experiencing in their lives that I can connect with?

And beyond these, there’s a growing need for leaders to create hybrid ventures, blending the virtual and the physical in innovative ways. We are no longer in a binary world. Hybrid is the new norm.

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Given all this complexity, are there grounds for optimism?

We’re living through a liminal moment, when structures are being undone, and everything feels up in the air. That can feel chaotic and anxiety-inducing, but it’s also immensely formative. It’s a moment to rebuild, to reassemble our systems, differently and better.

We often talk only about what we’re losing. But what if we focused on what we could gain? Can we build a better international order, a more resilient economy, or a fairer version of globalisation?

This is where zeroth principle thinking (ZPT) comes in. It’s not a new idea, but it’s a crucial one. It challenges leaders to imagine what seems impossible: to see new building blocks, new logics, and not just fix systems but reinvent them altogether. We’re too often in reform mode, but rarely in reinvention mode.

That’s why I’m optimistic. I believe we can build Globalisation 2.0 – more equitable, still profitable, but less fragile. Yes, I was once a believer in unfettered global integration. But we’ve seen how many areas that has left behind – the heartland of the US, much of the UK outside of London – culturally alienated and economically stagnant.

Now, I talk to bright minds across the world who want to reinvent, not just repair. We need to bring those people together. That’s how we create a future worth believing in.