Geopolitical Mining · Article

Davos 2026: Coordinates of the New Geopolitical Era

Authors: Marta Rivera | Eduardo Zamanillo

From the Financial Age to the Industrial Age

Davos 2026 shows that geopolitics is shifting from an era dominated by finance to a far more industrial and material stage. Leaders, using very different languages, are speaking about growth, reindustrialization, the middle class, energy, security and state speed as new variables of power. Legitimacy no longer rests only on narratives, but on the real ability to execute projects that improve the well being of their populations. In this context, mining and mineral supply chains stop being a sectoral topic and become part of the design of the new order.

The analysis behind this text is based on the main speeches and conversations at Davos 2026, particularly the Special Address formats and one on one dialogues with key leaders: Donald Trump (United States), He Lifeng (China), Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz (European Union / Europe), Prabowo Subianto (Indonesia), Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (Egypt), Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Ukraine), Javier Milei (Argentina) and Mark Carney (Canada), as well as the conversation between Larry Fink and Elon Musk.

From that close reading, six axes of analysis emerged Davos 2026, which we develop in depth in separate pieces and only list here:

On that basis, this article brings together three core conclusions, or three insights, that synthesize the shift in era that Davos 2026 reveals:

1. One Underlying Shift: From the Financial Age to the Industrial Age

If we line up the six pairs of speeches, a common thread appears that no longer depends on each leader’s ideology:

The United States and China organize their strategies around their own populations: reindustrialization, productive employment, abundant energy and higher purchasing power for their middle classes.
Indonesia and Egypt describe stability, social programmes and economic reform as the basis of a social contract that can hold under stress.
Germany and Ukraine force Europe to think about security, competitiveness and unity as a single issue, where institutional speed is no longer a technical matter but a strategic one.
Europe (through von der Leyen, Macron and Merz) in dialogue with China, debates how to reorganize the international order between independence, de risking, industrial policy, defence of multilateralism and institutional reform.
Milei and Carney show that the West is revisiting its own story: what it understands by freedom, what an order based on rules actually means, and what role middle powers should play.
Fink and Musk put the next wave on the table: AI, robotics, energy and the question of who benefits and who is left out.

Seen this way, Davos 2026 is not just a collection of speeches. It is the signal of a change of era.

From the Financial Cycle to a More Industrial and Material Stage

For decades, much of growth was interpreted through financial flows, asset price inflation and ever deeper capital markets. Today, major decisions are once again revolving around production, infrastructure, energy and physical chains:

where goods are produced,
who controls intermediate processing,
what kinds of jobs are created,
which territories sustain which capabilities.

The United States talks about factories, steel, gas, nuclear and tax cuts for physical capital. China talks about dual circulation and increasing domestic consumption on top of an already consolidated industrial base. Indonesia and Egypt put in place social programmes, sovereign funds, economic zones and logistics corridors. In Europe, the Commission and leaders such as Macron discuss gigafactories, power grids, an energy union and a dedicated strategy for AI and clean technologies that allows European industry to compete. Musk insists that the real limit to AI will be available electricity and the infrastructure to move it.

The centre of gravity is shifting: financial balances still matter, but they are no longer enough. Legitimacy and influence once again rest on the ability to materialize projects in the physical world.

From the Age of Form to the Age of Substance

In the previous phase, the emphasis often fell on form: declarations, targets, frameworks and labels. At Davos 2026 another word keeps reappearing, even if not always named explicitly: execution.

Merz and von der Leyen talk about cutting red tape, simplifying regulations, building something like an EU Inc. and registering companies in 48 hours. Macron insists that without industries and concrete projects there will be neither competitiveness nor autonomy.
Prabowo and El-Sisi describe social programmes, sovereign funds, privatizations and defined sectors as instruments to break the chain of poverty and attract real investment.
Zelensky suggests measuring support for Ukraine by offices, projects and jobs on the ground, not only by resolutions.
Fink warns that the legitimacy of AI and the next wave of investment will depend on whether they translate into tangible improvements for those who have not benefited so far.
Musk reduces the discussion to one very precise point: without more power generation, new grids and faster permitting, the narrative of technological abundance will not hold.

The international system is entering a phase where it matters less what actors say they will do and more what they are capable of building, connecting and sustaining within specific timeframes.

Time and Speed as Strategic Variables

Time ceases to be just a coordinate and becomes a field of contestation:

who approves a critical project more quickly,
who deploys key energy and digital infrastructure first,
who can respond to an attack or a market disruption without being paralysed by internal processes,
who can adapt institutions to the pace of technology and climate change.

In this context, the question is no longer just what do we want to do?, but in how much time? and with what institutional capacity? That tension (not only what decisions are taken, but at what speed and with what institutional depth) is at the core of Mining Is Dead. Long Live Geopolitical Mining.

A Deep Consensus Beneath the Differences

Beyond the tensions (West and China, North and South, market and State, different versions of values) there is one point on which almost everyone converges. From the United States and China to the Europe of von der Leyen, Macron and Merz, passing through Indonesia and Egypt, and the voices of Milei, Carney, Fink and Musk, the intuition is the same:

the world has become tougher, more uncertain and more fragmented;
maintaining legitimacy requires delivering visible, material results;
those results depend on concrete chains of energy, industry, data and resources.

One may agree or disagree with many of the proposals, but the structural direction of movement seems clear. This shift will not be reversed by a single change of government or a short economic cycle.

2. Social Contract, Middle Class and Social Legitimacy

Behind this industrial and material shift there is a subject that almost every speech tries to recover, even if it is not always named explicitly: the concrete person, the middle class, and the social contract that sustains them.

In the United States, the reindustrialization described by Trump is not presented only as an abstract economic strategy. In his speech he insists on factories coming back, industrial jobs, abundant energy and tax cuts for physical capital, and offers all this as a way to restore incomes, stable jobs and a sense of security to millions of people who felt pushed aside by decades of offshoring, stagnant wages and financial promises that never turned into real improvements in everyday life. The implicit message is simple: if the new industrial abundance does not improve the lives of that social base, the project loses legitimacy.

In China, He Lifeng’s emphasis on domestic demand and the expansion of the middle class points in the same direction from a different model: the next stage of development depends on raising the spending power of urban and rural households, improving services and allowing more people to access goods and opportunities that until now were reserved for a minority. It is not only about exporting more, but about people feeling that they participate in growth.

Indonesia and Egypt, with different histories and income levels, use similar language when they talk about breaking the chain of poverty, expanding social programmes, clarifying the role of the State and opening space for the private sector: the political stability of the coming decades depends on development being perceived as something concrete and shared, not as a distant promise. In Europe, when competitiveness, energy, AI and industrial policy are discussed, the same dilemma sits in the background: without growth and quality jobs, internal fractures and dissatisfaction with the system deepen.

In all these cases, geopolitics stops being just a game between states and blocs and returns to a very direct question: Who can guarantee their population a material life that feels sufficient, stable and reasonably equitable?

This is where social legitimacy enters as the third axis of this framework:

It is legitimacy that allows governments to sustain the difficult decisions that a new industrialization requires (infrastructure, energy projects, reforms).
It is the perception of direct benefits (jobs, incomes, services, opportunities) that increases societies’ willingness to accept rapid changes in their environment.
It is that same legitimacy that will determine whether political time is sufficient to implement projects at the speed the new context demands.

State speed, which Merz, Zelensky, von der Leyen or Musk all refer to, is not only about internal procedures. It is also about trust: governments will be able to move faster insofar as people see that this speed translates into real improvements in their lives, and not into unilateral sacrifices or empty promises.

For that reason, the social contract and the middle class are not a footnote in this change of era. They are the third pillar that completes the picture:

a structural turn (from finance to matter),
a central subject (the person, the middle class, social legitimacy),
and a set of physical chains (energy, industry, data, resources) on which this new contract will be tested.

There remains, however, an open question that Davos 2026 only hints at and that will be decided off stage:

How will the actors who operate this social contract react?

Politicians, who define laws, permits and regulatory frameworks.
Companies, which decide where, how and with what time horizons they invest.
NGOs and civil society organizations, which can be both effective protection of rights and additional layers of friction when they become institutional actors without revisiting their own practices.
States, with their real bureaucracies, their agencies and their internal incentives.

The tension in the coming years will lie in whether these actors are able to shorten timelines without hollowing out safeguards, using their power to make processes more efficient and more equitable, or whether they choose to protect their own inertia, widening the gap between what citizens hear in speeches and what they experience in day to day life.

Ultimately, the question is not only whether Trump, He Lifeng, von der Leyen or any other leader manages to design a good strategy. The question is whether politics, business, NGOs and States will live up to this new demand for speed with legitimacy, or whether they will continue to operate with logics from another era, feeding the frustration of the everyday middle class who, once again, will decide to support or withdraw their support according to what they see in their own lives.

With that framework in mind, the next step is to look at a terrain where all these tensions will become visible very quickly: mining, sustainability, and the organization of the material system that underpins this new geopolitical era.

3. Mining, Sustainability and the Era of Substance

In this landscape, mining is no longer an “upstream” sector that merely supplies others. It becomes one of the spaces where it will be most evident whether this new phase succeeds in moving:

from climate announcements to the infrastructure that actually makes the transition possible;
from social justice rhetoric to contracts, jobs and local capabilities;
from security and resilience narratives to supply chains that actually work under stress.

Three ideas connect Davos 2026 directly to mining and sustainability:

The Energy and Technological Transition Is, Above All, a Material Transition

The AI, robotics and digitalization agenda Musk speaks about demands huge amounts of energy, data centres and hardware.
The reindustrialization proposed by the United States and Europe (including the industrial strategy defended by Macron) needs steel, copper, aluminium, rare earths, batteries and intermediate processing.
The expansion of consumption in China, Indonesia, Egypt and other economies implies more housing, transport, urban infrastructure and durable goods.

None of this happens without extracting, processing and transporting large volumes of minerals and metals. Sustainability can no longer be thought of apart from the geography of extraction and processing.

Sustainability Moves from the Declarative Plane to the Operational Plane

In the age of form, sustainability was expressed through commitments, taxonomies, labels and reports. In the age of substance, the questions are different:

How long does it take for a project to obtain approval under demanding environmental and social standards?
How are risks and benefits distributed between companies, States and communities?
What technologies are adopted to reduce footprint, water use, waste and risk?
How are just-transition criteria and local employment integrated into business models?

Mining becomes an early test: it shows whether we are capable of combining speed with environmental protection and social legitimacy. If we fail here, it is hard to imagine success in the rest of the material agenda. And in the European case, what von der Leyen and Macron propose implies that this combination will not be optional: the reindustrialization they promote is meant to go hand in hand with high standards of sustainability and traceability, standards that will inevitably be projected back into how the minerals Europe wants to buy are extracted and processed.

Narrative Still Matters, But Substance Matters More

Milei and Carney discuss values. Von der Leyen, Macron and He Lifeng discuss rules and institutions. Fink discusses trust. All these levels remain essential. But in this new stage, narrative only holds if it is anchored in matter:

in communities that can see and feel the benefits of well designed projects,
in infrastructures that are actually built,
in value chains that pay wages, taxes and reasonable returns,
in institutions and processes that are efficient enough to deliver change within the political time available,
in ecosystems that remain livable after the machinery leaves.

The conversation about mining and sustainability stops being about mining and becomes a conversation about how we organize the material system we depend on.

Davos 2026 can thus be read as an early warning for geopolitical mining: the game is no longer defined only by commodity prices or investment cycles. It is defined by who can align reindustrialization, energy transition, legitimacy and institutional speed without breaking the social contract or planetary limits. From here on, the task will be to observe, country by country and chain by chain, which models of mining are able to operate in this new era of substance and which remain trapped in an old logic of forms without content.

Geopolitical Mining: Where It Will All Be Seen

That, in essence, is what we mean by geopolitical mining: looking at mining not only as an industry, but as a system where social contract, reindustrialization, energy transition, security and narrative all intersect. Davos 2026 confirms that this intersection is no longer theoretical. From now on, every decision about where, how and with whom minerals are extracted and processed will also be a decision about a model of development, a geopolitical position and the type of society we want to sustain.

Cover of the book Mining Is Dead. Long Live Geopolitical Mining

For the full Geopolitical Mining framework behind this article, see our book Mining Is Dead. Long Live Geopolitical Mining .