Forget the viral clips of President Trump. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know the difference between Iceland and Greenland. The real signal at Davos this week came from the leader of a “middle power” who just rewrote the rules of the game.
Mark Carney’s address was the most consequential speech of the summit. He didn’t offer the usual Davos platitudes about “cooperation.” He offered a eulogy for the old world. Watch here if you haven’t seen it yet:
Carney declared that we are facing a rupture, not a transition. He urged leaders to “stop living within a lie” by referencing Václav Havel’s famous essay The Power of the Powerless. The “lie” is the belief that the old rules-based order is coming back. It won’t.
We now face a brutal reality where “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
His message to middle powers like Canada, the UK, New Zealand and Australia was blunt. “If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
This rupture reinforces the shift we explored earlier this month in Request for Startups 2026: The Rise of the Sovereign Stack.
Here is why Carney’s speech signals a massive opening for the global (not just US) venture ecosystem:
1. Technology is the Only Substitute for Globalisation
For 30 years, the world created wealth by arbitraging global efficiency. We shipped manufacturing to the cheapest geography and data to the cheapest cloud.
That era is dead. Friction is back. Tariffs, sanctions, trust, and “friend-shoring” are the new taxes on trade.
When you lose the efficiency of open global markets, technology is the only way to get it back.
Nations can no longer rely on integrated global supply chains to solve their problems. They have to code, build, and engineer their way out of dependency. This is the “Sovereign Stack” we wrote about:
Sovereign Compute: Local data centers and training infrastructure so nations don’t have to ship their citizens’ private data abroad to be processed.
Energy Resilience: Distributed grid management and battery tech that protects a nation from global energy shocks.
Dual-Use Defense: Drones, sensors, and cybersecurity tools that allow smaller nations to defend their borders without relying entirely on a superpower’s umbrella.
Startups building these tools will capture the value that used to go to global shipping lines.
2. The “Trust Tax” on Concentration
Carney touched on a sensitive nerve regarding the risks of economic integration.
For decades, the default move for any government procuring software was to buy the American standard. It was the safe bet. But in a fractured world, concentration risk is the new enemy.
This isn’t about the US being a bad actor; it’s about basic risk management. Governments in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East are realising that they cannot have 100% of their critical infrastructure (their power grids, financial rails, and defense systems) dependent on a single jurisdiction.
Just as a CIO wouldn’t rely on a single vendor for every mission-critical system, sovereign nations are looking to diversify their exposure. They need optionality.
3. The Middle Power Advantage
This is where the narrative shifts for founders in ecosystems like Australia and New Zealand.
ANZ startups will and must always expand to the US. It remains the deepest capital market and the most important customer base in the world. But for the rest of the global market, neutrality is becoming a feature.
When a foreign government looks to procure critical infrastructure, they are increasingly balancing capability with sovereignty. They want the best technology, but they also want to ensure their supply chain is resilient to geopolitical shocks.
This creates a massive opening for “Middle Power” technology. Ecosystems like ANZ offer a unique value proposition: we build Western-standard, high-trust technology, but we come without the geopolitical weight of a superpower.
We are seeing this shift in real-time procurement conversations:
In Digital Infrastructure: Nations are looking for cloud and data sovereignty solutions that allow them to retain full jurisdictional control, making neutral vendors highly attractive for government contracts.
In AgTech and Energy: Countries prioritising food and energy security are looking for partners who can share IP and capability, rather than just selling a black-box service.
In Cybersecurity: As cyber becomes a domain of warfare, neutral vendors are being sought out to secure critical assets where perceived independence is paramount.
The Seat at the Table
Carney was right. The old order is gone.
While superpowers focus on great power competition, the rest of the world is looking for partners to help them build resilience. They are looking for builders who offer capability and diversification.
The era of default dominance is closing. The era of Strategic Choice is opening. It is time to stop apologising for not being in Silicon Valley and start selling the one feature that matters most in a rupture: Resilience.
The table is being reset. Let’s take our seat.