Trump at 100: Global Security Minds Weigh the Climate, Tech & Power Fallout

The recent conference held at the RAC Club aimed at assessing the impact Trump was having on the crucial global challenges discussed at our first conference 18 months ago: climate, demographics, technology and geopolitics.

Climate change is an inherited challenge that trump will make worse, not just by his own ‘drill baby drill’ policies but by his soft power example; he has legitimised doing nothing about the growing challenge, with climate change indicators at record levels in 2023 and a perceived shift from predictable linear to uncontrollable feedback loop growth in threats (e.g. 28% drop in ocean CO2 absorption rates in 2024).

Quadrupling of global population over the last 100 years set to top out at 10bn, with Africa having still rising populations and 30 of 31 top birth rates – in countries increasingly uninhabitable. Our obsession with small boats is a distraction from the real scale of the migration Europe is going to see as climate change hits. Trump will thus be an accelerant on an existing trend, and his cuts to USAID will open the door to Chinese soft power.

US global dominance has been in decline from the unsustainable 1945 peak; Trump fighting against this by shifting from supporting values to pursuing value – a realtorpolitik attitude. This threatens to abandon Ukraine and also potentially Europe where the end of the ‘peace dividend’ poses a huge challenge to western governments if NATO with an unreliable US is to have any credibility.

Technology has already encouraged populism amongst those disadvantaged by changes in manufacturing, but AI threatens to affect 85% of current employment with unforeseen political consequence. Trump’s alliance with the techbros means AI will be developed primarily for profit/value, not for the benefit of mankind. Indeed, techbros’ ideology sees technology being the replacement for a failed and outmoded democracy, with their near monopoly on sources of information making this threat all the more potent and harder to counter.

Trump’s influence here is huge, albeit that he is being used as a means to the techbros’ ends. Indeed, Trump is less a cause, more a symptom of change driven by techbros, religious evangelicals and the Christian nationalists of the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. These drivers will persist well after Trump has left the stage but are enforcing their will via executive orders (online for a record breaking 400 in the first year of his presidency?) in order to enshrine change before the status quo can mount resistance.

Speakers list

• Major General Jonathan Shaw CB CBE (Former Assistant Chief of Defence Staff and Director Special Forces)
• Dr Keith Dear (Former (Advisor to UK Government)
• Michael Shipster CMG OBE (Former British Diplomat)
• Nick Hopton (Former British Ambassador to Yemen, Libya, Iran and Qatar)
• Robert Fox MBE OSI (Italia) MA (Journalist. Security Editor and Foreign Commentator and reviewer and reviewer at The Evening Standard.