WireAugust 11, 2026 at 12:31 PM
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Former MI6 chief Sir Richard Moore issued a sharp warning for American corporate leadership this week, stating the gravest threat to business is not a surprise 'black swan' event, but the systemic risk accumulating from well-known geopolitical friction points, including Chinese economic aggression and the collapse of traditional trade alliances.
Speaking in a newly published interview, Moore dismantled the notion that the U.S. can easily disentangle itself from the Chinese economy, a reality that has direct consequences for American workers. He argues that "decoupling" is a fantasy, preferring the term "derisking" to describe the fraught relationship. However, he noted that blocs like the European Union no longer act in unison, with member states taking "very different views on China." This fragmentation forces American firms to navigate a minefield of competing national interests, often at odds with U.S. economic nationalism.
Are you now devoting the resources you need to understand where individual countries are? Without that effort, you won't achieve the empathy you need to make decent investments.
For American industries, this means the cost of operating globally now requires a local-intelligence focus that prioritizes national sovereignty over the failed models of globalist integration. Moore pointed to the Philippines' direct confrontation with China in the South China Sea as a clear example of the volatility that can upend supply chains critical to U.S. economic security.
Moore’s central thesis—that "resilience eats efficiency for breakfast"—is a direct challenge to the corporate dogma that prioritizes cost-cutting through offshoring. The compounding crises of COVID-era supply failures, the Ukraine war, and tariff regimes require a new boardroom calculus. The priority must shift to the ability to "pick yourself up off the floor," a discipline that should redirect investment toward domestic industrial capacity and energy independence.
Moore, now a political risk advisor to global firms, emphasized that internal corporate culture must be overhauled to allow employees to "speak truth to power" without fear. This is the same clarity needed when weighing the dangers of deep economic ties to China against the hollow promise of unverified compliance in opaque markets. The real risk for the American worker remains the known and deliberate erosion of domestic manufacturing by corporations who failed to build resilience at home, long before the crisis hit.