Inside the WEF: AI, Geopolitics, and Canada's Place in the Future Economy

John Stackhouse: [00:00:00] Hi, it’s John here. Welcome back to Disruptors x CDL: The Innovation Era.

Sonia Sennik: I’m Sonia Sennik, the CEO at Creative Destruction Lab. John, I hear you’re in Davos for the World Economic Forum.

John Stackhouse: That’s right, Sonia. And it’s actually pretty late at night here, but it’s been an incredible week from Donald Trump’s diatribe, where he went against pretty much everyone in the world and laid out his plans for America first.

to some of the most fascinating discussions about artificial intelligence and where the world’s leading scientists and technologists are taking us in 2025.

Sonia Sennik: It sounds like an absolute whirlwind. Where should we start?

John Stackhouse: Well, let’s start with the mood and the mood after that Trump speech, which was heard around the world.

We keep hearing Donald Trump talk about the golden age and judging from a lot of executives, as well as investors here in Davos, there’s a lot of gold being made. The confidence in the U S economy [00:01:00] for this year is extraordinary. And the belief in Silicon Valley and especially AI is breathtaking. There is conviction right now, like I’ve rarely seen, and it’s going to drive a lot of markets and opportunities this year.

Sonia Sennik: So that’s the United States. I’m so curious, given you are in the room, 50 percent of all communication is body language. How is everybody else reacting during that virtual address from President Trump?

John Stackhouse: The room was packed. Hundreds and hundreds of people fighting over chairs. In fact, I saw Al Gore trying to find a spare chair and Christine Lagarde wrestling for one, but the mood was somewhat restrained.

Now, remember, a lot of people in the audience are European, and Trump didn’t have a lot of nice things to say about Europe. And then when he went after things like DEI, which he calls nonsense, You could hear the gas in the room. I suspect he didn’t pick it up, but tellingly there was no standing ovation.

And in fact, the applause was, I’d say polite.

Sonia Sennik: Well, politeness, this is something we’re great at here in Canada. I [00:02:00] am curious about how you feel that speech impacts our country.

John Stackhouse: Well, that was the headline, certainly for Canadians. He went after so many aspects of Canada and had nothing good to say, which is kind of remarkable because he goes after lots of countries and lots of regions.

But usually slips in a compliment, he’ll say something like, I love the Europeans after he’s trash talked Europe for five minutes. None of that for Canada. It was also interesting that his attack on Canada was unprompted. In fact, it came during an answer to a question about banking regulation. So I don’t know how Canadian lumber exports popped to the top of his mind when he was thinking about what’s next for the SEC.

But it’s a signal to Canada that we are top of mind and it’s not necessarily in a positive way. Now that said, he also spoke enthusiastically about a lot of things that Canada will be involved in. Energy, certainly, and his desire for energy dominance will include Canada, not just oil and gas, but [00:03:00] electricity and a lot of renewables directly and indirectly.

He also talked about the enormous demand for energy from data centers, from artificial intelligence, from cryptocurrency, which his administration is very enthusiastic about. All that crunching of data is going to have to take place somewhere, and as we’ve talked about on a previous podcast with Alberta’s Technology and Innovation Minister, Nate Gloobish, Alberta has a very ambitious plan that seems like it would fit in fairly well with the Trump administration’s view of where North America is going in the next half decade.

Sonia Sennik: And I’m sure you ran into the Canadian contingent from our government.

John Stackhouse: There was no one there from the Canadian government, Sonia. It was astonishing. Uh, even the investment agency that is mandated to drum up investment for Canada had no presence here and they used to be very visible. Say what you like about WEF, but every major investor in the world pretty much is here.

Sovereign wealth funds, big institutional investors, [00:04:00] pension funds from every corner of the world are here and they’re here to do business. So businesses from around the world are also here along with their governments. According that investment, and there was a real absence of Canada, and it was noted by more than the Canadians,

Sonia Sennik: there wasn’t a booth, a little flag, some decorative pens,

John Stackhouse: not even a cup of hot chocolate.

And by the way, it seemed everyone and their dog was offering hot chocolate on the main street. The Qataris, the Indians, even Meta had a fancy hot chocolate booth that had a lineup down the street, but no Canadians.

Sonia Sennik: No one does hot chocolate better than us, John.

John Stackhouse: Well, we got to prove it.

Sonia Sennik: One of the things that President Trump pushed for was NATO countries to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP.

Now just a couple months ago, Canada committed to meet NATO’s military spending target of 2 percent of GDP by 2032. And last year in 2024, for reference, Canada’s defense spending was about 1.3 percent of GDP. How do you [00:05:00] think leaders reacted to this push?

John Stackhouse: Well, I think a lot of countries are thinking very hard about how to increase defense spending, which is usually harder than it sounds.

Procurement number one is incredibly difficult. And then there’s the politics of it. Governments in Europe as well as North America are running deficits, in some places very big deficits. And they have demands for health care and education and other claims on the public purse. So doubling, in some cases, defense spending is going to be a tough sell.

Now, there’s also an opportunity to broaden what we mean by defense spending. And since this podcast is about technology and disruption, that’s where the conversation’s going. Cyber defenses, something Canada is actually very good at, is becoming a meaningful part of military strategies and artificial intelligence, which we’re going to talk about a lot more through the episode, is becoming more and more central to defense strategies everywhere.

It was interesting to hear the Ukrainians, including President Zelensky, talk about how advanced their technology is, [00:06:00] especially drones, which we’ve all read about and probably seen videos of. A lot of those drones are driven by artificial intelligence. And I was shocked to listen to a discussion between a couple of military experts about how the Russians and Ukrainians are learning from each other day by day, week by week during this war.

By capturing drones and other devices, tearing them apart and copying them, and then advancing their own technologies. This may sound inhuman when we’re talking about tens of thousands of people whose lives have been lost during this conflict. and all the suffering that is going on and unfortunately will go on.

But it’s important to note about our own defenses and it’s getting to be a more challenging world. So we will need more defenses to think that technology and innovation are going to be an important part of that. And those can lead to important civilian benefits as well.

Sonia Sennik: Well, John, there’s been this evolving conversation around the concept of dual use technology.

There’s so many different applications for emerging tech, software, hardware. [00:07:00] We’re living in a world where that term is becoming a little bit meaningless because almost everything could be considered dual use technology. For many of our listeners, their only interaction with a drone may be for photography, taking pictures of leaves changing color in the fall.

John Stackhouse: Yeah, this was a hot debate and whether these technologies and particularly AI are going to benefit democracies more or autocracies more. And it could go either way. We’ve never seen autocracies and I’d include China, Iran and Russia in that category with more technological might. And the ability to scale that technology.

And as we know, technology is all about scale. A wise person at Davos made, I thought, a profound comment reflecting on the history of autocracies and dictatorships, having always to rely on the will of the people. Throughout history, even in some of the greatest dictators. Have fallen to the uprising of people when their basic needs were not being met.

That’s starting to change with [00:08:00] technology. And you think of what AI can do when it can persuade at scale an entire population, when it can bring surveillance technology at scale 24 seven in everyone’s lives. That could make autocracies more powerful than we’ve ever known. On the flip side, democracies can also get better and better with these technologies.

Think of what AI can do to our public service. All the frustration that all of us have with the delivery of public services, private services too, but the frustration with government can be reduced, perhaps profoundly, with AI. When we talk about those budget challenges of healthcare. Well, AI is there ready to be deployed at scale to help us not only deliver better service and improve all of our health outcomes, but save money as well.

So it’s an incredible race that unfortunately is about more than technology. It may well determine the direction of where society goes. In the rest of the century,

Sonia Sennik: John, for sure. This world where lightweight technologies have the potential to make [00:09:00] massive changes totally transforms the calculus. And I like what you said about AI adoption and public service would love to see more and more productivity through some of those tools

with interest rates still being a major concern around the world. How did you find global leaders were framing the relationship between economic stability and the ability to drive forward with innovation? Debt financing is critical in the early stages of developing any new research and technology to be able to go to market.

And so a low interest rate environment is very friendly to those brave entrepreneurs that are going to take a risk on something that’s never been built before. In an environment where those interest rates don’t exist, you may find creative, ambitious people a little less incentivized to take that leap.

Was there a conversation about that with the global leaders that you were with in Davos?

John Stackhouse: Yes, and add to that A lot [00:10:00] of concern about regulation, like that was one of the topics of the week is regulation. And certainly Donald Trump has declared war on regulation in the U. S. We’ll see how far he gets in trying to reduce it.

Every new leader seems to want to cut red tape and then discovers that there’s more red tape than they ever imagined and there’s always some vested interest in preserving it. That said, I think government leaders everywhere are looking at the United States and then looking in the mirror. And saying, Hmm, maybe we got to do a lot more than we said we would do.

And we got to be faster at it. The Europeans, I think, are still in a bit of shock from the Trump election. And we’re really humbled by that finger wagging that he gave them. But they also said, you know what? We need this wake up call. We’ve got everything here in Europe. We’ve got skills. We’ve got talent.

We’ve got savings. Apparently they’ve got hot chocolate and they’ve got hot chocolate, but they don’t have technology to the level that they should have. And they know that, and they know that young technologists are leaving [00:11:00] Europe in droves are coming to the United States or coming to Canada. To start their businesses and they also know that their regulatory environment can be hostile to tech companies.

Trump made that very clear. He said, you pick on our tech companies, Apple and Google, you take them to court and you find them billions of dollars. Well, I consider that a tax and you know what he means when he says that he’s going to tax back. But it’s a signal to governments to maybe step back and let business be business and, uh, invent, create, fight each other and, uh, see where that, uh, leads, maybe have a bit of creative destruction as creative destruction lab inspires, but let those spirits thrive, not just in financial markets, but in technology and in science and in inventing.

All the great things that we’ve talked about on previous podcasts

Sonia Sennik: And really for an innovation ecosystem to thrive. You really need a mosaic of all different types of stakeholders pulling together. We see that through our partnership with our European CDL sites, [00:12:00] CDL Paris at SSA Paris, CDL Berlin at ESMT Berlin and CDL Estonia at the University of Tartu.

It’s incredible to see the community’s commitment to building their ecosystem and building connections all around the world. You’ve pointed to global shifts in trade policy as one of the top risks that you see. What changes do you think will shape the trade order over the next decade, and are we here in Canada doing enough to stay competitive?

John Stackhouse: No to the last question, and we have to treat this moment as a reckoning as well, not just in our relations with the United States, but in how we manage our own economy, in how we create those ecosystems, but let them thrive and in how we look to compete with every part of the world. The United States, in some ways, is a category of one.

It has size and scale and diversity across its economy that allows it to do things its own way, whether the world wants to play ball with it and trade with it or not. The U. S. can afford [00:13:00] to build walls, but it’s not going to build impermeable walls. It’s going to trade with all parts of the world, but it’s doing so from a position of strength and therefore will probably get stronger as a result.

Smaller countries like Canada have got to be nimbler, more creative, more dynamic. Think a bit more like Israel or Singapore in seeking opportunities. I was interested to hear the president of Singapore speak to these themes and he said, you know what, as a small country, you figure out pretty early how to make yourself useful to all sorts of other countries.

And I think Canada needs to wake up every morning and see how can we be useful, not just to the United States, but to all sorts of countries. We’ve got the resources, we’ve got the people, we’ve got our own dynamism. We just need to be more ambitious and more aware of the risks that are coming at us. And also celebrate our own successes.

It’s really interesting to hear Americans at this time celebrate themselves, leads to a lot of eye rolling. It was funny to hear Kristalina Georgieva, who runs the International Monetary [00:14:00] Fund this week, say that as a European, she grew up listening to her parents applaud something by saying. Well, that was pretty good.

So they never said it was great. It was a, that was pretty good. Then I watched an American walk down a few steps and they get a standing ovation. That got a good laugh from the crowd and recognition that, yeah, Americans sometimes overdo it, but they celebrate success. And that tends to lead to more success.

Sonia Sennik: John, you mentioned that this could be a bit of a moment of reckoning for Canada. What do you think is the most important thing for our country right now?

John Stackhouse: I think we need to come to grips with what we are excellent at. And what we can continue to be excellent at in a very competitive and increasingly competitive world.

And then secondly, map that against what our allies and partners need and are going to need in the years ahead. I was reflecting at Davos this week on Justin Trudeau’s First trip [00:15:00] to the World Economic Forum, where he made that infamous comment about Canada being a resourceful nation rather than being a resource nation.

And that was unfortunate because we’re both. And now the conversation sparked by Trump’s desire for energy dominance is very focused on resources and how can we supply energy, oil and gas, for instance, to the United States. Let’s think about the resourcefulness. That allows us to do that. The remarkable engineering talent in the oil and gas sector and in the electricity sector and in the fusion sector that can work with equally great talent in the United States and elsewhere.

To Canada’s advantage, how do we think about a remarkable talent in space? There was extraordinary conversation that I hope we can get into about the space economy and the new space race that is underway. We had a great episode with Chris Hadfield a few months ago on that, Sonia, and. There’s an opportunity there for Canada to differentiate [00:16:00] ourselves.

We’re the brain economy, which is thriving. We have many of the world’s great neuroscientists in Canada, as well as brain entrepreneurs. And there’s billions of dollars at play there. We can take advantage of that, and also take advantage of our abundance of natural resources. That’s always been the Canadian way, that balance.

But we need to have an honest look in the mirror. And assess what we’re good at, what we’re great at, and what we can lead with in this new age of competition.

Sonia Sennik: So what needs to change is how we approach the world with what we have to offer and identify with that ourselves. A friend of the podcast and colleague of ours, Professor Janice Stein.

Made the suggestion that we need to establish a quiet confidence in our strategic assets. Would you agree, John?

John Stackhouse: Yeah, I mean, you can be loudly confident or quietly confident. I think at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter as long as you perform and deliver. And that’s been one of Canada’s challenges in recent years.

We have been talking more than doing. And the world has noticed that say [00:17:00] do gap. We have not been executing to the degree that we said we would. And we’re now into a new show me period where we’re going to have to show the United States, but others, including ourselves, that we can deliver on time, on budget, and at a quality that we know we can, but we just got to do it.

Sonia Sennik: Listening to you, John, I’m thinking about the Olympics. It’s one thing to say, I want to go to the Olympics. It’s quite another to get there and then win a gold medal. Right now, Canada can adapt that own the podium mindset, which works so well for our athletes and maybe apply it to our business and industries.

John Stackhouse: Well, the Olympics is a good reference because we all celebrate the individual successes at the Olympics. But if you’ve ever been to or studied the Olympics, you know, the great athletes, even the individual performers show up with a team. And we have to do more of that as Canadians. And I don’t mean in the traditional flag waving big mission team Canada efforts, but just in strategically bringing together the right people [00:18:00] at the right time to connect with the right audiences.

That’s kind of like game day performance thinking. That’s the sort of attitude we need to have in Canada. And it was interesting at Davos to see countries. Be surprised, Mongolia, which has a really interesting economic ambition underway, showing up with the right collection of technologists, entrepreneurs, governments to say, Hey, we’ve got some game here as Mongolians, do you want to come check it out?

India was the same. I had a great conversation with our friend Raquel Urtizan from Wabi, the autonomous vehicle company. They will have autonomous driving trucks on highways in Texas this year and will be expanding beyond that. And that’s just the start of what Raquel and the hundreds of people on our team in Toronto are building towards.

And that’s the Canadian advantage. Canadian entrepreneurs with Canadian resources. Taking advantage of the U. S. market, doing that with a team behind them, that ecosystem, [00:19:00] including the great communities at the University of Toronto and Creative Destruction Lab that have allowed Raquel to do what she’s doing with Wabi.

Other great Canadian companies like Cohere, also here telling and selling their story. How, as Canadians, do we get behind that a bit more strategically? They don’t need big parades down the main street of Davos, but they need that combination of right people, right time, right audience to seal the deal.

Sonia Sennik: It’s all about the team behind the team. And I’m thinking of those pictures we’ve all seen of our incredible Hockey Canada teams winning the gold medal, whether it’s the men’s or the women’s team. As soon as they’re on the ice getting their medals, you see a flood of more people than the number of players and athletes on the team join them in that photo from physios to managers to logistics to truck drivers to the equipment team.

And when you think of that in terms of what it takes to create a thriving global business. You know, your country coming together behind you is an essential part of that. And I think there’s a [00:20:00] real theme of collaboration and celebration that I’m hearing, John, that folks were reacting to at Davos.

John Stackhouse: Yeah.

I’m glad you mentioned those words because I had written three words down and that was celebrate, cooperate, and compete. Those were consistent themes through the week at Davos. How do we celebrate whether it’s scientists or businesses or public servants? How do we collaborate, bringing people together to do more than they do on their own?

And then how do you create the right environment to have that competition, which we need to create hockey teams, to create companies, to create great technologies.

Sonia Sennik: I’m sure some of the folks listening who may spend time reading the latest headlines or scrolling through their app of choice have picked up on some signals of geopolitical fragmentation. And one of the many benefits of an interconnected world is the open sharing of ideas and talent across borders.

As you said. you know, celebrate, collaborate and compete. [00:21:00] John, after spending five days in Davos, what is your sense of the risks related to geopolitical pressures?

John Stackhouse: Well, they’re significant. I think everyone is realizing we are moving into a new era of history and what we have all perhaps taken for granted over the last 50 years is not going to be there over the next decade and probably decades beyond that.

We don’t know where the world is going, but it won’t be as global as it was. Most of us I’ve traveled the world for decades without having to think too much about it. But I’m old enough to have gone to a country called East Germany. And I still vividly remember going through the wall from West Germany to East Germany and feeling like I was on another planet.

It was a different system altogether. And we’re now moving into this era where we may have multiple systems in the world, like we’ve had in ages past. But that leads to inefficiencies, it leads to frictions in the world, leads to greater tensions, [00:22:00] and it leads to uncertainty. Which becomes iced into risk models.

So all the entrepreneurs listening will have to pay a bit more because of that uncertainty. We all pay for that uncertainty, whether we know it or not.

Sonia Sennik: We may be seeing more fragmentation and fracturing here on planet Earth while simultaneously heading to outer space more than ever. So orbiting back to one of our previous episodes, the dramatic drop in cost of accessing lower Earth orbit has unlocked new opportunities for space technologies to benefit humanity.

How was that economic transformation discussed? And where do you see the greatest near term opportunities with the space economy?

John Stackhouse: Two words. Launch pads. Maybe that’s one word hyphenated. Not sure. But whether it’s one word or two words, launch pads are hot. I didn’t realize that there is a scarcity and could be a significant scarcity of launch pads.

One of the best parts of Davos is there are dinners [00:23:00] that bring together the most interesting people you could ever imagine. And one night I got to go have dinner with the heads of space agencies from around the world, the India Space Agency, European Space Agency, Americans, Chinese, It was fascinating, as we discussed on that podcast, Sonia, to hear about the billions of dollars of venture capital money that is going into the space economy and all the private sector firms.

Of course, we know about Blue Origin and SpaceX, but around the world, there are more and more private sector entrepreneurs developing very ambitious space enterprises, both in low orbit and going to the moon, probably in big numbers before too long. And then we can all remember that comment by Donald Trump during his inauguration speech about planting the American flag on Mars.

That just highlights the ambition that I got to see from around the world, but there’s limited capacity, so there could be a supply demand imbalance. There was something like 140 orbital [00:24:00] space launches last year, and the people I had dinner with said, we’re going to be pretty soon seeing 100 orbital launches a week, and we have to start preparing for that.

And there are not enough launch pads on the planet for that. So interesting signal of both the demand to come and the opportunity.

Sonia Sennik: And we can’t leave this episode without me asking you about artificial intelligence and how it was discussed. You witnessed some really creative applications of AI at Davos.

Tell us more.

John Stackhouse: Yeah, I mean, what’s going on in robotics is incredible. I mean, we all have interacted with robots, but robot technology and especially the AI component is starting to really accelerate. So in just a few years, we’re going to see and touch and work with robots in all sorts of interesting ways.

But one of the most remarkable. Applications of AI And robotics was being carried out by a Canadian artist, Suquin Chung, who was born in Toronto, now lives in the U. [00:25:00] K. And she has trained a robot using sensory devices that read her brainwaves and train the robot to paint like her and develop creative patterns like her.

So I watched her. paint on a large canvas with a robot beside her. It was like watching two artists interact, except the robot was developing its own creative style and instinct based on the brain waves literally that were coming from her. Amazing to see the art, but what she is working towards is training the robot to be a creator when she’s gone.

It boggles the mind.

Sonia Sennik: The saying, art is timeless, hers may be truly infinite.

John Stackhouse: Think of what that can do for all sorts of other things in the world. I met a neuroscientist who’s developing ways of doing brain surgery without having to do the surgery, just like we do now with hearts. You don’t need to cut someone open to treat the heart.

He’s now doing this with the brain and [00:26:00] using AI to make it safer and also more sophisticated and more affordable because these procedures can be very, very costly.

Sonia Sennik: You know, John, in 2021, we started our CDL Neurostream, uh, this program supports founders pursuing commercializable opportunities in neuroscience.

And we’ve really learned from our neuro room that there’s a huge shift towards developing non invasive brain technologies. As you mentioned, an example is Augmental. One of our alumni developed smart mouthwear that allows you to control your phone, computer or tablet hands free. So this is especially useful for people living with paralysis.

It’s really exciting to think about how these technologies can be enabling to so many people around the world.

John Stackhouse: I think we’ve got a future episode there, Sonia, so let’s, follow up on that idea. I mean, this is all remarkable stuff and it sounds like sci fi, but it’s not sci fi. This stuff is happening in our world today and it’s going to scale.

very quickly through the rest of the decade, and could lead to very positive outcomes for society if we manage it [00:27:00] well. And that was one of the most important points at Davos this week, is how are we going to manage technology to ensure that it’s safe, to ensure that we are working towards the objectives that it was created for.

But also, How are we all going to work with and coexist with technology, be it software or those robots, because that is the future that’s coming at us very fast. This idea of cohabitation, it was Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, who said to a room full of business leaders, we will be the last generation of CEOs to manage a human only workforce.

He said, my successor is going to have to manage a human workforce and a digital workforce. And we’re only starting to figure out how to do that. Not just from a technology point of view, but from an organizational behavior point of view. How do you build teams of agents to work with teams of humans and teams of agents [00:28:00] to work with other teams of agents and collaborate with the humans?

Sonia Sennik: We’ve been cooperating with machines for centuries. What’s novel about this moment in time is our conversation about agency between humans and machines. I think more to come in future episodes on that one.

John Stackhouse: Someone should be concerned about, but I hope Sonia, people can reflect also on how much there is to be hopeful about.

If we do things right, there are incredible opportunities in the world right now. Amazing innovations in science and technology here on earth, under the oceans. and out there in space. So it actually is a great time to be alive despite all the risks that we see around us and the fears that we rightly talk about.

Let’s not forget about the opportunities as well that can overcome those fears.

Sonia Sennik: This has been an amazing discussion John, thank you so much for reflecting on your time at Davos and get home safe.

John Stackhouse: Sonia, thank you. Looking forward to being with you in the studio for our next episode. For now, this is Disruptors, an RBC [00:29:00] podcast.

I’m John Stackhouse.

Sonia Sennik: And I’m Sonia Sennik. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and join us next time as we continue exploring the groundbreaking ideas shaping Canada’s economy and beyond.

John Stackhouse: Talk to you soon. If you want to read more about this year’s World Economic Forum, check out our new report, Davos 2025, at thoughtleadership.rbc.com. Or follow me on LinkedIn.

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