Something has shifted in boardrooms over the past year, and it's not just the geopolitics. It's a subtler discomfort. Growth plans are on hold. Capital is being preserved. Risk appetites have contracted. And beneath the careful language of quarterly reviews, there is a question that's harder to ask out loud: are we actually ready for what's coming?

Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, delivered a speech at Davos recently that included a line worth examining: "The rules-based international order is being replaced by a deals-based one." For those working in digital infrastructure and data governance, this wasn't political commentary—it was a description of a planning environment that has fundamentally changed.