Steffen Hessel

For roughly three decades, the global economy operated within a relatively stable framework. Energy was abundant and inexpensive. Global supply chains expanded continuously. Geopolitical competition receded in importance. Monetary stability appeared broadly secure. Those conditions shaped the investment environment of the globalization era. Capital flowed primarily toward financial assets, technology platforms, and efficiency-driven production networks. Today, however, the structural...

2026 increasingly looks like the year the world stops pretending. We are entering what I call the Era of Realism —a period in which governments, companies, and investors are moving away from ideology and abstraction and back toward pragmatism. In simple terms: a return to what works for security, reliability, and long-term survival. The past few years have delivered a series of hard lessons. AI is consuming power at an unprecedented scale. Geopolitics is becoming more transactional and...