Abishur Prakash
Boards now make commercial decisions inside a state-shaped landscape. Sanctions, export controls, AI rivalry and severed supply corridors are no longer background context, they are the terms on which growth, capital allocation and market access are negotiated. Most leadership teams have no internal capability to read these moves before they become balance-sheet events.
Abishur Prakash helps boards and executives read geopolitics as a commercial variable, translating state-level technology rivalry, sanctions and bloc formation into decisions about capital, supply and market access.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Abishur Prakash
- He defined the geopolitics-of-technology field early. His 2016 book Next Geopolitics set out a scenario framework for state competition over AI, robotics and emerging tech that boards are now living through.
- He gives executives a working vocabulary for the new operating environment. Concepts he coined, including Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI and Business Iron Curtain, name dynamics that buyers can otherwise only describe in fragments.
- His work at the Center for Innovating the Future has been cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, signalling that policymakers and corporates draw on the same analysis.
- He briefs in two registers. He has testified to the Senate of Canada and writes regularly in CNBC, Nikkei Asia, BBC, Politico, Fortune and the WSJ, so he is fluent with both heads of state and operating executives.
- He runs an advisory firm, The Geopolitical Business, that is built specifically for corporate decision-makers, not academic audiences. The reading frame is always: what does this mean for your next investment, supplier, market or product launch.
Biography highlights
- Founder and CEO of The Geopolitical Business, a Toronto-based advisory firm.
- Author of five books on the geopolitics of technology, including The World Is Vertical and Next Geopolitics Volumes One and Two.
- Former geopolitical futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future; represented CIF in testimony to the Senate of Canada in 2017.
- Work cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings Institution, Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
- Bylines and commentary in CNN, BBC, CNBC, WSJ, Nikkei Asia, Reuters, Politico, Fortune, The Telegraph, Scientific American and SCMP.
- Coined frameworks now used in corporate strategy discussions: Next Geopolitics, Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI, Business Iron Curtain.
Biography
The intersection of state power and corporate strategy is where most boardroom assumptions are now breaking. Export controls on chips, sanctions regimes that shift quarterly, severed supply corridors and AI rivalry between Washington and Beijing are no longer macro context. They sit on the operating P&L. Abishur Prakash has been mapping this terrain since 2013, when he first set out the case that geopolitics and technology had become a single field.
His five books built that argument in stages. Next Geopolitics Volumes One and Two used scenario-based chapters to show how AI, robotics and biotech would force governments and companies into new postures. Go.AI examined the state-level race for artificial intelligence advantage. The Age of Killer Robots looked at autonomy in defence. The World Is Vertical: How Technology Is Remaking Globalization argued that the flat, integrated world of the 1990s and 2000s is being replaced by a layered, segmented one in which corporates choose blocs rather than markets.
His vantage point is built on both policy and corporate exposure. As a futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future, his work was cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings and the UAE foreign ministry, and he testified to the Senate of Canada in 2017. He now runs The Geopolitical Business, a firm built to convert that analysis into decisions for executives, central banks and investors. His commentary appears regularly in CNBC, BBC, Nikkei Asia, the WSJ, Politico and Fortune.
What boards take from him is not a worldview, but a working method. Concepts he coined, Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI, Business Iron Curtain, give leadership teams a vocabulary for things they were already feeling on supply, capital and market access. The output is concrete: which corridors are closing, which blocs are forming, where the next sanction or subsidy is likely to land, and what that means for the next investment cycle.
Key speaking topics
- Geopolitics of technology and AI
- US-China strategic and technology competition
- Vertical Globalization and the end of flat-world supply chains
- Sanctions, export controls and the Business Iron Curtain
- Scenario planning for boards and investors
- Long-range geopolitical foresight
- Bloc formation and the future of trade corridors
Ideal for
- Boards, CEOs and CSOs setting strategy across multiple geopolitical blocs
- CFOs and treasury leaders running capital allocation under sanctions and currency volatility
- Heads of supply chain, procurement and manufacturing footprint
- Investors, central banks and policy leaders responsible for long-horizon risk
Audience outcomes
- A clearer reading of how state-level technology rivalry is reshaping their specific industry
- Named frameworks for describing geopolitical change inside their own strategy process
- Sharper questions for the next board, investment committee or supply review
- A view of which corridors, blocs and choke points to watch over the coming cycle
- Confidence to act on geopolitical risk before it becomes a balance-sheet event
Talks
A working session on how state-level rivalry over technology is now landing on corporate strategy.
Key takeaways:
- How export controls, subsidies and sanctions reshape the playing field
- Where boards typically misread geopolitical risk as macro noise
- A framework for surfacing geopolitics inside existing strategy reviews
A reading of the structural shifts in the US-China relationship and what they mean for non-aligned corporates.
Key takeaways:
- Where the showdown is hardening and where it is being managed
- Sectors most exposed to forced bloc choices
- Practical decisions companies face on supply, talent and capital
How decisions made between capitals translate into operating realities for companies and consumers.
Key takeaways:
- The pathway from sanction or policy to product, price and supplier
- Why mid-market and B2B firms are increasingly exposed
- How to build internal early-warning capability