Countries are scrambling for critical minerals with an intensity that feels like a more sophisticated, and potentially more volatile, industrial revolution. In 2024-25, competition among great powers for these resources has reached its most active period in decades. Greenland and the recent U.S.–NATO tension symbolise this well. Countries are ready to stray from history to claim enough of what they need—minerals.

What made Carney's speech less frightening was the fact that we know the new 'multiplex' world order—one defined by complex multipolar systems of cooperation—has been developing with prosperity in the backdrop of this rupture.

Many niches are disappearing, forcing graduates to set aside their specialist industries and integrate with those that remain.

Next month will mark the fourth year of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In recent months, much discussion has focused on the current world order.

One could define each period in history by its geopolitical conditions. By what makes each act by a state or empire possible, what conditions of the period allow monumental acts of foreign policy to be executed.