Davos 2026 didn’t feel like reassurance.

It felt like honesty.

In this special Davos edition of Decoded, I step back from headlines and speeches to decode what was really said — and what it means — when the world’s political leaders, CEOs, central bankers, and institutions finally stopped pretending the system is elastic.

This episode is not about what happened at Davos.

It’s about why it felt different.

We unpack:

- Why economics can no longer absorb politics — and why power is back as a binding constraint

- What Emmanuel Macron’s speech reveals about Europe’s identity crisis and the return of capacity

- How Donald Trump’s worldview has reshaped global behaviour — even in his absence

- Why Greenland suddenly matters, and why geography is back

- Mark Carney’s warning: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu” — and what trust really means now

- China’s calm confidence, and why execution matters more than consensus

- Why AI, energy, and productivity are no longer innovation stories, but survival arithmetic

- How corporations are pricing permanent instability

- Why peace is no longer guaranteed by institutions, but assembled through capacity and partnerships

- Yuval Noah Harari’s quiet warning about intelligence, delusion, and what it means to stay human

This is a conversation about limits — economic, institutional, technological, and human.

And about what kind of world is being built when guarantees disappear.

Stay curious.

And peace be with you.

The world entering 2026 is shaped by forces that don’t always appear in the headlines. The economy feels steady but cautious. Technology moves faster than we notice. Energy systems are transforming unevenly. Climate pressure is now part of everyday planning. And people themselves are changing what they expect from work, life, and leadership.

In this second episode of the 2026 Global Outlook trilogy, I explore these engines and how they influence one another. My aim is to make the world feel clearer and more understandable, even when everything seems in motion.

In this first episode of the 2026 Global Outlook trilogy, I trace the world’s journey into 2026 — a decade shaped by shocks, wars, inflation, political fragmentation, and the fastest technological acceleration in modern history.

From the pandemic and its economic aftershocks to the return of hard geopolitics in Ukraine, the Sahel, the Red Sea and the Indo-Pacific, we explore how the foundations of global stability shifted. We also examine the humanitarian devastation in Gaza, where the UN’s International Court of Justice ruled there is a “plausible risk of genocide,” and how this moment reshaped public opinion, alliances, and moral confidence across continents.

This episode connects the major forecasts from the World Bank, IMF, OECD, Morgan Stanley and The Economist with the deeper forces driving the decade: AI, energy transitions, climate volatility, inequality, demographics, and the widening generational divide.

The goal is simple: to understand the full picture — the economic, political, emotional, and structural realities that shape the world we are entering. Before we can navigate 2026, we must understand the ground beneath our feet.