Geopolitical tensions: What risk professionals on both sides of the Atlantic need to know
In this timely webinar, Inclus brought together geopolitical risk experts from Finland and North America to explore how businesses can better understand and manage geopolitical risk. Using NVIDIA as a case example with lots of public information available, the discussion covered the fragility of the current rules-based international order, the US-China technology rivalry, the Taiwan question, and how AI-powered tools like Inclus can help enterprise teams build structured, scenario-based risk management frameworks.
The geopolitical risk gap in the enterprise
Geopolitical risk is not an information problem — the data is out there in daily headlines, think tank reports, and weekly briefings. The real challenge, as Patrick Fruchet explained, is the lack of frameworks to translate that noise into actionable insights at the enterprise level.
"What seems to me is lacking is frameworks to translate that into the 'so what' question at the enterprise level."
Unlike ESG risks, which have well-established materiality definitions, geopolitical risks are fast-moving and brittle — situations can shift from stable to critical overnight. Companies often try to manage these risks using existing tools that simply weren't built for that purpose.
A live example: AI export controls hit overnight
The webinar kicked off with a real-world example of just how fast geopolitical situations can change. Just days before the event, Mikaeli Langinvainio had been using Anthropic's Claude AI environment to prepare materials and then, suddenly, access was cut off. The US government had issued an export control directive requiring Anthropic to suspend access to its most advanced AI models for foreign nationals.
This was a perfect, live example of how geopolitical decisions can have immediate, material operational impacts on businesses, with very little warning.
The world order in transition
Patrick Fruchet offered a broad historical framing: the post-WWII rules-based international order, built on institutions like the United Nations and American global leadership, may be in its twilight years. The United States, for a range of domestic and strategic reasons, no longer feels that leading this order benefits it as much as it once did.
A key driver of this shift is the rise of China, which has been a central concern for at least the last two US administrations. The result is a world moving away from multilateralism and toward a more bipolar, transactional structure, reminiscent of Cold War-era spheres of influence.
The NVIDIA case study: Geopolitical risk in practice
NVIDIA, originally a gaming chip company turned AI infrastructure giant, sits at the very heart of US-China technological tensions. Its chips power AI data centers, autonomous vehicles, and much of the modern digital economy. Yet its supply chain runs through Taiwan, and its most advanced products are subject to US export restrictions. China, in turn, is actively working to reduce its dependency on NVIDIA chips by developing domestic alternatives.
Inclus used NVIDIA as a case study to demonstrate how AI-powered risk management can map an enterprise's geopolitical exposure using publicly available information, including SEC filings, think tank reports, and news sources.
Key geopolitical risks identified for NVIDIA included:
US-China technology decoupling and export control escalation
Grey market diversion of restricted chips
TSMC concentration risk — TSMC's own founder has stated that a military escalation involving China would make the company inoperable
Regulatory divergence across the EU, US, and China
Competitive pressure from Chinese alternatives such as Alibaba, Baidu, and DeepSeek's efficiency models
Demand-side risk as AI model efficiency reduces GPU requirements
Patrick Fruchet noted the strategic communication value of NVIDIA's public risk disclosures: by being transparent about these risks in SEC filings, NVIDIA is essentially sending a message to both Washington and Beijing that geopolitical interference makes it very difficult for them to do business.
The Inclus approach: Integrated risk intelligence
Mikaeli Langinvainio walked through Inclus' integrated risk intelligence framework, which connects business context and objectives, enterprise risk management processes, geopolitical risk monitoring, AI-assisted risk assessment with evidence-backed justification, collaborative human validation, and scenario analysis.
A distinctive feature of the approach is combining threat and opportunity analysis: by placing risks on a matrix that also captures upside potential, the tool engages C-suite leaders who are naturally more opportunity-oriented, while ensuring that directors responsible for mitigation are also well-equipped.
Patrick Fruchet praised the tool's ability to reflect the "marketplace of ideas", meaning what external stakeholders and analysts believe about a company's risk profile based on public information, which management teams can then challenge with their own proprietary knowledge.
Taiwan, strategic ambiguity, and scenario planning
The Taiwan question featured prominently as a key geopolitical scenario. Patrick & Mikaeli outlined three possible trajectories:
Bad case: Military conflict between China and Taiwan, triggering severe supply chain disruptions and export control escalation
Good case / Peaceful stalemate: Continued managed ambiguity with no major escalation
Ugly case: The US quietly concedes Taiwan to China as part of a bilateral deal, securing preferential trading access for American tech companies but effectively cutting out Europe
This last scenario, a new bipolar world order resembling the Cold War's spheres of influence, is particularly troubling from a European perspective. It would represent a fundamental breakdown of the transatlantic alliance as we know it.
The US domestic wildcard
The webinar closed with a candid exchange about the internal political situation in the United States. Mikaeli raised concerns about the pace of democratic backsliding and suggested a significant US internal crisis within the next three years is plausible.
Patrick Fruchet pushed back, arguing that the courts are holding: legal challenges to executive overreach have been consistently upheld, and no branch of government has yet openly defied a court ruling. However, he acknowledged the situation is extraordinary and that relying primarily on the judiciary as the main check on executive power is, in itself, alarming.
Both agreed that deeper forces are at work: a broad political consensus across the US political spectrum that the American worker has not benefited from decades of globalisation, making protectionism and neo-mercantilism a durable trend regardless of which party holds power.
Key takeaways
Geopolitical risk is fast, brittle, and increasingly material for businesses of all sizes
The information is available — what's missing are the frameworks to make it actionable
AI-assisted tools like Inclus can dramatically accelerate risk identification, scenario planning, and collaborative assessment, but human judgment remains essential
The rules-based international order is under serious strain, and companies must plan for a range of scenarios, including a more bipolar world
The Taiwan-NVIDIA-TSMC nexus is one of the most concentrated geopolitical risk clusters in the global economy
Being prepared for low-probability, high-severity events is no longer optional
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