Listen to Steve read this post below (15m audio)
Fortunes are made because they usually require big investment, the building out of infrastructure, and shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Fortunes are lost because of incumbents ignore these shifts because they take so long. During the build-out, bubbles often burst, allowing yesterday’s heroes to say, “I told you so…” before they eventually get usurped. Big Media missing the internet is still the best example.
The second most common question I get asked after a keynote is about big trends. And with that in mind, here are my top 7 big shifts—the shifts we’ve all got time to navigate around to adapt or start something new and big.
1. Deglobalisation
In the 1990s and early 2000s, global trade typically grew twice as fast as global GDP. In 2026, the WTO projects trade will grow by only 1.9%, while GDP is expected to grow by 2.8%. Global merchandise trade (the sum of world exports and imports) is now 44.8% of global GDP, down from its all-time high of 53.3% just over a decade ago. Remember, these shifts take decades. The good news is that this gives us time to recalibrate around them.
2. Re-shoring
We are moving from a “just in time” to “just in case” Economy. Manufacturing will return to high-cost labour markets. While Covid showed us the risks of international reliance, AI and robotics are about to remove the advantage developing markets currently have in manufacturing goods.
In the 1990s, the West literally taught China how to manufacture quality at scale. It was done via joint ventures from the promise of lower-cost goods to sell in home markets. Fast forward 25 years, and China has now surpassed the West in all forms of manufacturing. But the most important of these is humanoid robots. I’ve written about them before here, and I believe this shift is bigger than informational AI. I call it Physical AI—where we put brains into machines, especially human-shaped ones.
We quite literally need humanoid robots for two reasons. One, we don’t have enough humans; our global population has now turned the corner into decline based on global birth rates per female. Two, we have a human-shaped world. Houses, hospitals, and retail environments need flexible, dextrous robots who can do a task the first time they’ve seen it or literally had it explained to them. That’s coming quicker than we think. Expect to have humanoid robots which follow verbal and visual instructions with a PhD in every subject for around $30,000 by 2030. Yes, you’ll own one. And when this happens, we’ll get China’s robots to help make our robots and reverse what China did to the West, using their technology and processes to reinvent ours.
3. AI as Infrastructure
AI is no longer a feature, but a foundational utility of the 21st century. There are a lot of clues around this idea because at the same time we hear about huge amounts of investment (up to $7 trillion globally by 2030), we are also hearing rumblings about whether this will ever get a return on investment and people not wanting it built near where they live (all the while using Generative AI a zillion times a day). This is what has happened every time we’ve had large infrastructure shifts since industrialisation.
As of today, the investment in AI now rivals investment in roads and power grids. The US Interstate Highway System took 35 years to complete at an average annual cost of $18.8 billion; the AI data center build-out is currently spending that same annual sum every 5 weeks. It raises important questions about corporate power and ownership of the major factors of production. AI falls into that category and shouldn’t be in private hands. Smart countries will remove it from private operators, just like we did with the electricity grid in the Gilded Age.
4. Data is Energy
Big Tech is pivoting to becoming global energy titans; they have to in order to sustain the massive power requirements of AI. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are securing their “compute” future by investing heavily in nuclear power, ranging from small modular reactors to reviving dormant plants like Three Mile Island. This shift blurs the line between information and physical energy, as AI data centers—already consuming 5% of the U.S. power supply—are projected to triple their demand by 2030.
This “Big Energy” move serves as a strategic “Monopoly 2.0” that allows tech giants to expand while avoiding antitrust scrutiny. By applying the Amazon Web Services (AWS) model to the power grid, these firms will generate excess carbon-free energy and sell it back to consumers, potentially displacing traditional utility and oil firms. This consolidation of AI, information, and infrastructure grants Big Tech a level of influence that rivals nation-states, positioning them as the new global colonizers of the 21st century.
5. The Conglomerate Comeback
There’s a reason Big Tech is doing so well in the share market. They remembered it is better to own than rent. And so, whenever they can, they use their excess funds to build or acquire the resources they need to expand. Outsourcing creates global shock risk. Building a giant supply chain in-house now fits with the emergent market dynamics listed above.
Take Amazon, for example: it didn’t outsource its supply chain—it bought every layer of it, then opened each layer up as a paid service to competitors. AWS was the template. Amazon owns 110+ cargo jets, 175,000 delivery vehicles, 1 million+ warehouse robots (via the Kiva acquisition), 185+ fulfilment centers, its own nuclear power plant, 450 satellites in orbit, and 500+ Whole Foods stores. This pattern is also evident in most of what Musk is doing, as well as Google. The most powerful companies of yesteryear did this too: in the 1920s, Henry Ford built a massive, pre-fabricated industrial town in the Amazon rainforest to secure a direct source of rubber for car tires. During the peak of globalisation, companies moved to focus on singular core businesses. That’s now in reverse.
6. Inequality as Policy
I’ll start with this: the world’s 12 richest billionaires now own more wealth than the bottom half of humanity (more than 4 billion people). It’s worse in the USA. Elon Musk has more wealth than the bottom 51% of the entire nation. The Gini coefficient is how economists measure inequality: zero indicates everyone has exactly the same wealth; a score of 1.0 means one person owns everything. The US is above 0.8 and in Australia, it is 0.61. It’s not your imagination—wealth is accumulating at the top. It’s why our economy lives in the extremes: people with 10 houses and people who can’t afford a house—or as I like to call it, the Tiffany’s and Costco Economy.
We can expect the government to start responding heavily with wealth taxes in addition to income taxes. They have to—otherwise, it will end in war, famine, or revolution; it always has. In Australia tomorrow, the new budget will be released with policies that hit inequality around investment properties and capital accumulation. But what we really need is a courageous government to go hard on corporate tax avoidance (easy to fix actually, just tax them on 5% of revenue), billionaires, and resources taxes. Even the CEO’s I work with of large public corporations agree who they work for should pay more tax – we all do.
I think and hope they are starting to get the message that they should chase the top end of town, not everyone somewhere in the middle trying to get ahead and secure a dignified retirement. The middle class was a great post-WWII invention and one that is worth maintaining. Globally, 74% of millionaires actually agree with increasing wealth taxes, as do I. Billionaires would do well to think the same way (be less greedy) if they want to remain at the top of the tree.
7. Re-nationalisation of Infrastructure
Smart governments are taking back the keys to essential services in the name of national security and resilience. The UK launched Great British Energy in 2025 with £8.3 billion in public capital to drive the clean-power transition. In France, the full nationalisation of EDF has allowed the government to cap energy prices and commit €72.8 billion to new nuclear reactors—the kind of long-term, nation-scale investment private markets were unwilling to make.
In Australia, it is mostly just rumblings—but a huge majority of voters want higher taxes on our fossil fuels, and public infrastructure back in the hands of “the public.” Simply because the jury is in: our services are now often worse and somehow cost more. Australia’s privatized services have evolved into a mandatory cost-of-living tax, with utility price increases consistently outstripping inflation. Electricity leads the surge with a 20% price hike following the “rebate cliff,” with electricity bills nearly five times the rate of inflation. The Transurban Tax evolves from a terrible deal where the government allows a fixed 4.25% escalation in prices per year. Meanwhile, corporatized water utilities have resulted in water prices doubling the inflation rate over the past decade. People are sick of it.
Now that people are aware of the heist, smart governments (let’s hope we get one) will claw back essential services, probably in a 51/49 private deal, so they can manage the cost of living and infrastructure investment, and provide employment and training enclaves.
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Keep Thinking,
Steve.
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