When JPMorgan Chase launched its Center for Geopolitics in May 2025, naming Derek Chollet, a counselor to former Secretary of State Antony Blinken and chief of staff to former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, to lead it, CEO Jamie Dimon was blunt: "Our greatest risk is geopolitical risk." The unit's advisory board reads like a national security all-star roster: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley.
This move wasn't corporate theater. It was recognition of a fundamental shift in global business.
Citigroup followed suit, bringing on Robert Lighthizer, Trump's former trade representative. McKinsey and Russell Reynolds report surging demand among Fortune 500 companies for executives with geopolitical expertise, often recruited from military, intelligence, and government backgrounds. These moves signal that the assumptions underpinning global commerce for three decades have shattered.
The data confirms what boardrooms increasingly understand. The Geopolitical Risk with Trade Index has surged approximately 30% since 2020, compared to the previous two decades. The Global Supply Chain Pressure Index has nearly tripled. The use of sanctions has more than tripled since 2019. Restrictions on exports of industrial raw materials increased fivefold between 2009 and 2023, now targeting not just military items but also cutting-edge technologies such as semiconductors, AI, and quantum computing.
Companies that once worried primarily about exchange rates and regulatory compliance now navigate trade wars, sanctions, export controls, nationalist boycotts, and populist leaders who prize political theater over economic rationality. In this environment, ignorance of geopolitics isn't just risky, it's reckless.
We have entered an era defined by geoeconomic fragmentation and exponential innovation. Established cooperative frameworks are under pressure, requiring more dialogue, imagination, and entrepreneurship to maintain momentum. Technology deploys at unprecedented speed, with companies playing ever-greater roles in shaping outcomes.
As Edward Fishman, author of Chokepoints: How the Global Economy Became a Weapon, observes, companies are increasingly "instruments of geoeconomic policy." Yet they retain agency through advocacy and compliance efforts, thereby shaping how policy is developed and implemented.
The challenge extends beyond managing discrete crises. Rupert Younger, who founded Oxford University's Centre for Corporate Reputation, notes: "Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have lived in a world characterized by remarkably stable geopolitics. Now geopolitical complexity and unpredictability are back, but today's boards, executives, and corporate-affairs teams have little muscle memory for navigating these volatile conditions."
Karthik Ramanna, professor of business and public policy at Oxford, captures the strategic dilemma: "If you don't play the short game, you're not around to play the long game, but if you only play the short game, you'll find yourself outcompeted by your peers in the long term."
Consider Apple. The company built an empire on "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China," A subtle geopolitical message suggesting the real innovation remained American while mass assembly leveraged Chinese efficiency. That model is breaking down. The company is expanding into India and Vietnam, enhancing supply chain resilience while courting U.S. allies.
Even pedestrian regulations carry geopolitical weight. When Brussels mandated USB-C ports across consumer electronics, Apple lobbied hard, arguing that "strict regulation mandating just one type of connector stifles innovation." Brussels was unmoved. Apple SVP Greg Joswiak acknowledged reality at a WSJ Tech Live conference: "Governments get to do what they're gonna do. Obviously, we'll have to comply. We have no choice."
He's right. Governments have changed the rules, and companies have no choice but to comply.
Despite mounting evidence, most corporations remain woefully unprepared. Geopolitical advisory units and risk analysts too often occupy ancillary roles peripheral to core decision-making—consultants writing reports that gather dust, government affairs departments focused on tactical lobbying rather than strategic anticipation.
What's needed is fundamental restructuring: a Chief Geopolitics Officer (CGO) at the C-suite level with a seat at the table where decisions get made daily. This isn't about adding another layer of compliance. It's about integrating political intelligence into every major business decision, be it capital allocation, supply chain design, or market entry strategy.
The CGO role addresses systemic risks that traditional risk management cannot handle. This executive must understand how governments think, how regulators operate, how political crises unfold, how voters respond, and how to navigate all four simultaneously. They require sophisticated intelligence capabilities, scenario-planning expertise, and the authority to shape corporate strategy in real time as geopolitical conditions evolve.
Rising expectations of corporate patriotism add another dimension. Business leaders who spent careers in hyperglobalization must now balance global operations with alignment with home-country geoeconomic agendas. In Europe, "lobbying" carries negative connotations and is replaced by "advocacy" or "active engagement." You're packaging the same activities differently to be culturally effective.
US businesses must prepare for an era of endless tit-for-tat tariffs, restructured supply chains, and elevated interest rates driven by geopolitical instability. This requires four strategic imperatives:
First, integrate geopolitical intelligence into core strategy. This means elevating political risk analysis from a compliance function to a strategic driver. Every significant investment, partnership, and market decision must account for regulatory shifts, sanctions risk, and diplomatic tensions.
Second, build supply chain resilience through geographic diversification. The era of optimizing purely for efficiency is over. Companies must balance cost considerations with geopolitical stability, cultivating supplier relationships across multiple jurisdictions and political alignments.
Third, engage governments and stakeholders proactively. Reactive crisis management no longer suffices. Companies need sustained dialogue with policymakers in Washington, Brussels, Beijing, and other power centers, shaping policy before it shapes them.
Fourth, develop internal capabilities for scenario planning and rapid response. The CGO must lead war-gaming exercises that stress-test business models against various geopolitical shocks, including sanctions escalation, intensification of trade wars, and regional conflicts that disrupt critical supply routes.
This interconnected geopolitical business environment demands specialized expertise.
Caracal Global is a geopolitical business communications firm that lives at the intersection of globalization, disruption, and politics—home of the world's most savvy participants. The firm specializes in Globalization + American Politics, providing Intelligence + Strategy + Communications services for senior executives, board members, and CEOs responsible for geopolitics, corporate affairs, public affairs, stakeholder engagement, and communications. Led by a Michigan-born, DC-based global business advocate with experience in US and UK national political campaigns, US-China commercial relations, NATO, and media engagement, Caracal Global helps Fortune 1,000 companies navigate today's interconnected business environment where commerce and statecraft have become inseparable.
Geopolitical risk has crossed the threshold from manageable concern to core strategic challenge. The most forward-thinking companies already recognize this reality and are acting accordingly. The question for every other CEO is simple: Will you establish the capabilities to navigate this new landscape before your competitors do, or will you learn these lessons the expensive way?
Alan Turing wrote in 1950: "We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done." In today's geopolitical environment, that short distance requires constant vigilance, sophisticated analysis, and strategic agility. The companies that build these capabilities now will define the winners in tomorrow's geoeconomic competition.
-Marc
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Marc A. Ross is a geopolitical strategist and communications advisor. He is the founder of Caracal Global and is writing a book entitled Globalization and American Politics: How International Economics Redefined American Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics.
