Informed i’s Weekly Business Insights

Over the weekend, several current and former advisors to President Donald Trump on AI publicly lobbed insults at the country’s leading AI companies. It began because no one can agree on what to do about Kimi, a free, open source model that Chinese AI company Moonshot launched last week. It appears to rival the intelligence of models from OpenAI and Anthropic, which are very much not free. 

Kimi and other Chinese models like it pose a real problem for Trump. And they’re dividing the top AI strategists in his orbit into factions. Every time a new smart, free model from China like Kimi gets released, US companies see less reason to fork out money to access models from Anthropic or OpenAI. Given that enthusiasm for these and other AI companies is driving an outsized share of economic growth, China’s AI models create both economic and political problems for the president.

What is Trump to do? First, consider that this is all happening just a week after New York imposed the country’s first state ban on new data centers. There is growing distrust of AI companies, and a not-insignificant share of Americans would have little sympathy for OpenAI or Anthropic as they fend off cheaper competitors, and would say it’s not the government’s job to protect their interests.

On this point, they’d see a sliver of agreement (and really just a sliver) with David Sacks, who on July 19 criticized top AI companies that “want the government to eliminate their open source competition.” He has also argued that Chinese AI models have become popular because they come with fewer restrictions on how people can use them (putting aside the built-in state censorship).

Left out of the conversation has been how a model like Kimi got so good in the first place. For much of the Biden administration and even the beginning of Trump’s second administration, keeping China from getting top chips was a priority. Those export controls have loosened—Trump made the controversial decision to allow Nvidia to sell more chips to China, in exchange for the US government taking a cut—and the government has alleged that some chip smuggling has taken place. But China nonetheless has limited computing power, and it’s not clear what chips the company behind Kimi used to train the model. 

It’s possible that the process involved some distillation, a practice in which AI models are trained on the outputs of existing AI models. OpenAI and Anthropic have long complained that Chinese AI companies do this, and they have requested government help to put a stop to it. In April, they got it, when the Trump administration announced a series of efforts to curb the practice.  

But Kimi is out there and free, and it is nearly as good as the Anthropic model the US government deemed so powerful that it was briefly shut down because it threatened national security. The weekend’s sparring suggests many in Trump’s orbit see that as a wake-up call. But nobody can agree on what for.

AI is now the top technology spending priority for many organizations, as leaders put powerful tools into employees’ hands, automate parts of existing workflows, and urge people to experiment. Yet results are still falling short of leaders’ ambitions.

The reason is becoming clearer: AI does not create enterprise value simply because more people use it. Individual productivity gains matter, but they rarely translate into lasting advantage when the organization around them stays the same.

Companies moving furthest ahead do two crucial things differently. First, they focus on areas where AI can create the most value, redesigning and rewiring workflows around what the technology makes possible, rather than spreading pilots across the organization or simply automating existing processes. Second, they treat AI transformation as an organizational change effort, not just a technology deployment, by investing in the workflows, behaviors, skills, leadership practices, and change management needed to make new ways of working stick.

To better understand employee and organizational readiness for AI-enabled transformation, the authors conducted a global survey of 750 employees and leaders across industries. The results show that most organizations are still early in their AI transformation journey—and that employees are more ready to use AI than their organizations are to change around it. Closing that gap may be the difference between AI activity and AI value.

The authors grouped organizations into three “horizons” based on how deeply AI is embedded in daily work.  In the first, enablement, organizations offer individual employees access to general-purpose AI tools that assist with parts of their existing jobs. In the second, automation, companies automate and improve existing cross-functional workflows using AI at scale. In the third, reinvention, they creatively reimagine how work gets done by redesigning roles, workflows, and operating models to leverage AI’s full potential.

Of the leaders we surveyed, only 11 percent say that their organizations are in the reinvention horizon, and the majority across all three horizons say that AI has yet to deliver meaningful enterprise value in terms of business performance, cost savings, employee experience, or customer outcomes.

A strategic dilemma for multinationals is that relying on global AI platforms maintains operational consistency but deepens exposure to geopolitical disruption and local market access risk. Localizing data, infrastructure, and models earns regulatory trust but incurs significant cost and complexity when a company operates across dozens of jurisdictions with differing requirements. The challenge is that policies vary significantly by country and are evolving rapidly, making a single global AI strategy untenable, and fully independent local systems impractical.

To answer this question, CEOs need to make three strategic choices: where accountability for decisions should sit, how much sovereignty their operations require, and which external partners can help them execute.

1. Make sovereignty a strategic priority.  The first and most urgent CEO decision is raising AI sovereignty to the level of a strategic concern. The survey found that most organizations delegate decisions regarding AI sovereignty to chief data/AI officers (37%) or compliance/risk officers (28%), while only 15% of organizations have made it a CEO- or board-level priority. When sovereignty sits in IT or compliance, it results in fragmented decisions across business units, inconsistent approaches across markets, and missed opportunities to turn sovereignty into local advantage. Sovereign AI is not an IT architecture choice. It is a strategic bet involving geopolitics, capital allocation, supply chain resilience, and long-term competitiveness, and the decisions it requires can be made only at the top.

2. Treat sovereignty as a continuum.  As such CEO-level choices demonstrate, sovereign AI does not require full independence or the wholesale replacement of existing systems. CEOs must recognize that sovereignty is a continuum. Depending on the industry, national context, and specific use case, aspects of the company’s technology stack may need varying degrees of adjustment to meet sovereignty concerns. Only about one-third of all executives surveyed believe that their AI workloads require any such sovereign adjustment. Those actions can involve anything from implementing targeted safeguards around data residency or legal oversight to replacing entire elements of the technology stack, such as models or infrastructure, to satisfy sovereignty requirements.

3. Build hybrid sovereign ecosystems.  Few organizations can, or should, build the full AI stack independently. The survey found that 55% of organizations plan to use a mix of global and local AI providers, reflecting a shift from dependency toward flexibility.  CEOs must adopt a tailored mix of global and local AI providers, depending on use cases, the regulatory landscape, and risk tolerance.

For organizations seeking global scale, partnering with hyperscalers such as AWS, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle is an attractive option. In software and platforms, Oracle’s EU Sovereign Cloud and Microsoft’s Delos Cloud partnerships are enabling European companies to run sensitive workloads fully under EU law.

Sovereignty is better understood as a continuum of choices and that the companies best positioned to scale AI globally are those that treat those choices as a source of competitive advantage rather than a constraint to be minimized.

Leaders have always lived with stress—it comes with the territory. But today’s strain feels especially acute. Many executives describe pressure mounting on multiple fronts, from economic uncertainty to technological disruption to geopolitical volatility.  While short bursts of stress can sharpen your focus, sustained, elevated levels of it undermine decision quality and erode well-being. Over time, stress narrows your perspective, causes reactive thinking, and increases the likelihood of costly misjudgment.

Although no two leaders have the same biopsychological response to stress, consistent patterns do emerge from the authors’ work. Their framework positions stress responses along two spectrums: whether leaders react with composure or by leaping into dynamic action, and whether they approach a crisis as an opportunity or a threat. Where you fall along those spectrums determines which of the six response types is your default pattern.

1. The Lighthouse.  Lighthouse leaders project calm when others are rattled. In a crisis they maintain a measured pace, regulating their breathing, lowering their voices, and staying focused on the horizon—not just on the crisis immediately in front of them.  Adaptive strategies for lighthouses: During a crisis the first step these leaders should take is to explain their intentions.  Next they should invite their teams to share their emotions and should reciprocate in kind. Finally, they must signal momentum.
2. The Alchemist.  Alchemists see pressure not as a threat but as a catalyst for growth. In a world defined by overlapping disruptions, they treat turbulence as the raw material for reinvention—a signal that the old logic no longer fits.  Adaptive strategies for alchemists: Under pressure alchemist leaders should fix on a North Star.  And instead of running back-to-back transformations that leave teams perpetually in motion, they should establish a regular cadence for change: cycles of push and pause, invention and consolidation. Finally, they must moderate their tendency toward reinvention and creativity by collaborating with pragmatic teams that can organize and execute transformations skillfully.
3. The Firefighter.  Firefighters thrive on pressure and momentum. They favor decisiveness over prolonged analysis. When a crisis erupts, they move fast, radiate urgency, and mobilize others. Adaptive strategies for firefighters: In a crisis the first step firefighter leaders should take is to pause before acting—to get set, then go. Next they should involve others in decisions early on. Finally, they should hold quick after-action reviews on a situation once the immediate urgency has passed.
4. The Stoic.  Stoics lead through discipline and self-control. When the pressure spikes, they get analytical—anchoring themselves in principles and reason and striving to create stability. They have a composed response to stress, sharing the lighthouse’s external calm but for different reasons.  Adaptive strategies for stoics: In a crisis, stoic leaders must first regulate themselves—steadying their own emotional responses without suppressing them. Then they can make the emotional climate open to discussion, articulating what the tension in the room may be signaling.  Next they should visibly practice empathy.  Finally, they should acknowledge their own emotions.
5. The Diplomat.  Diplomats lead with tact. They ease tension through dialogue and keep teams connected when stress threatens to divide them. For these leaders, a crisis is as much a social test as a strategic one. Under pressure they foster social connection—defusing conflict, sustaining trust, and reading interpersonal signals as carefully as others read financial data.  Adaptive strategies for diplomats: At their best, diplomats aren’t conflict-avoidant but understand that rupture and repair are healthy for relationships. Their first step in a crisis is to surface the tensions.  And they need to be clear about where they stand.
6. The Container.  Containers lead with control. They respond to stress by imposing structure and holding the system together when others are overwhelmed. They excel at managing multiple demands coherently.  Adaptive strategies for containers:   Their first step in a crisis should be to deliberately blow off pressure—to use reflection, feedback, and recovery to allow themselves to reset. They should also routinely zoom out, engineering systematic, regular shifts in perspective on their teams so that their organizations aren’t operating with tunnel vision. Finally, they need to model resilience.

There are no intrinsic rights and wrongs here. Response requires a few clear steps:  Expand your range of responses; Test and adjust in real time; Develop flexibility; and Share the cognitive load.

According to the author he has spent much of his working life among entrepreneurs and business leaders wrestling with a deceptively simple question: when is it time to let go?  Few decisions reveal more about a leader’s judgement than knowing when their continued presence strengthens an institution, and when it begins to weaken it. That same pattern appears far beyond business. 

There is a particular kind of failure that history reserves for some of its most admired figures: the failure of people devoted to a cause who, by refusing to step away at the right moment, hand that cause to its enemies. The reasons vary—ego, misjudgment, or the counsel of those invested in proximity to power—but the outcome is consistent: supporters are left with a sense of betrayal when the failure to step aside enables the very outcome they sought to prevent.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent her life building a jurisprudence of equality. By 2013–2014, after surviving serious illness, she had a clear opportunity to secure a successor aligned with her values. She declined, confident her health would hold and that the presidency would remain in sympathetic hands.   Ginsburg’s decision was a wager under uncertainty. She bet that she would live for years, remain productive, and that the political environment would cooperate. She was right about the first two and wrong about the third. Such miscalculation is human. She made a political judgment, whether or not she described it that way. She chose to stay, and the bet failed.

Having defeated Donald Trump once, Joe Biden spent four years insisting he was uniquely positioned to do so again. Having described himself as a bridge to the next generation, he might have committed early to a single term and allowed time for a genuine process to produce a successor. He did the opposite. By the time his candidacy collapsed, the time required to mount an effective alternative had largely disappeared. In withdrawing late, he effectively narrowed his party’s options at the moment they mattered most.

Ginsburg misjudged an unknowable future; Biden failed to respond to a visible present. One error was a forecast that proved wrong; the other was a refusal to act on evidence already in view. The latter is harder to defend. Nor was Biden’s failure his alone. Those closest to him had the clearest view of his condition and the greatest influence over what was shown to the country. In protecting the individual, they compromised the cause they believed he alone could serve.

What unites these cases is the indispensability delusion: the belief that the cause requires the individual, and that departure would amount to abandonment. The leader does not say, “I want to stay,” but rather “the institution cannot do without me.” This is the most dangerous form of the error, because it does not announce itself as ambition. Naked hunger for power is visible, and we know to distrust it; the indispensability delusion wears the costume of duty, telling the leader that the discipline of leaving is actually a dereliction, and that one more term, or one more year on the bench, is a sacrifice made for others rather than a comfort taken for oneself.

History is dense with this pattern, and the better cases show the same supporting cast. 

There is a simple test. A leader truly serving a cause larger than themselves should be able to name the conditions under which they would leave, and, crucially, should arrange their departure early enough that the cause has time to produce a worthy successor. In many positions of leadership, leaving is not a single act at the end. It is a process that must be started while there is still runway, because a successor does not appear on demand; an institution sometimes needs years to surface and test one. The leader who waits until the last moment, then announces that no acceptable replacement exists, has usually engineered that very outcome by waiting. The figure who experiences every prompt to begin the process as a threat rather than a relief has confused the cause with the self.

The lesson is not that leaders should distrust their own importance. Some genuinely are, for a time, the right person for the moment; Washington was, as were Lincoln in 1864, Roosevelt in 1932, and Churchill in 1940. Indispensability is sometimes real, which is exactly what makes the test so hard: the sense of being uniquely needed is itself the distortion, weighting the case for staying when the facts do not warrant it, so that self-interest arrives disguised as the cause’s own demand. The more indispensable you actually are, the more carefully you must plan your departure, and the more suspicious you should be of any voice—your own, or those of the circle around you—assuring you that the institution cannot survive your leaving. Washington heard that voice and overruled it. That, more than any battle, is why the office outlasted him.

There is a reason this discipline is so rare, and it is not only ego. Our culture has built a shrine to perseverance. We teach grit as an unmixed virtue and treat walking away as quitting. Annie Duke, in her book Quit, argues that this is a costly confusion: knowing when to fold is not the opposite of grit but its necessary partner, a decision skill most of us exercise too late rather than too early, because identity and the fear of looking inconsistent make leaving harder than the arithmetic warrants.

Entrepreneurs feel this acutely, because the thing they are asked to relinquish is something they often built from almost nothing. To hand it on while you can still picture running it better feels like a small death, and the culture offers a vocabulary for holding on but none for leaving well. Yet the founder who steps aside at the right moment, before decline forces the question, is not quitting. The test does not care about scale. It asks only whether you can tell the difference between what the cause needs and what you need, and whether you can act on the answer while the choice is still yours to make rather than mortality’s, or the electorate’s. To leave at the right moment is not weakness. It is the rarest form of strength, and the one we have been least willing to honor.

While many professionals are spending their time learning to build AI agents and master new AI tools, those aren’t the only skills worth investing in. AI can help write your presentation, create your slides, and even coach your delivery. But when you step onto a stage, into a boardroom, or onto a Zoom call, people aren’t evaluating your technology. They’re evaluating your ideas, your presence, and your confidence. Public speaking give you to opportunity to connect with stakeholders.

Many Jobs Require Public Speaking.  Many professionals spend a significant portion of their careers presenting in meetings, project updates, client pitches, and virtual calls. Public speaking gives you an opportunity to demonstrate expertise, influence decisions, and strengthen relationships. These everyday speaking opportunities are among the most powerful ways to build your personal brand and demonstrate leadership, whether or not leadership appears in your title. Every time you give a project update, pitch a client, lead a meeting, facilitate a workshop, or present over Zoom, you’re practicing public speaking.

AI Can’t Replace Public Speaking.  AI is changing the economics of career success. As knowledge becomes abundant, the ability to communicate that knowledge becomes more valuable. Public speaking may be one of the smartest ways to future-proof your career. Knowledge worker roles that require public speaking and presenting have only a 22% chance of being automated, according to a study by Click Finder. As the list of jobs that can be disrupted or completely eliminated by AI grows, roles that require communicating ideas, inspiring others, and building trust become more important.

Public Speaking Creates Trust And Leads Change.  Organizations today are changing faster than ever. The average employee now experiences ten planned organizational change initiatives every year, a fivefold increase from a decade ago, according to McKinsey. At the same time, 73% of organizations report they’re at or beyond change saturation, and only 38% of employees say they’re willing to support organizational change. During periods of constant disruption, leadership is less about having the right strategy than helping people understand it, believe in it, and act on it. That requires communication, and few tools are more powerful than public speaking. During periods of change, people need more communication, not less. Trust is built through conversations, authenticity, presence, vulnerability, emotion, and storytelling, all of which public speaking delivers exceptionally well.

You can’t win an argument. There’s no such thing.  Think about the last argument you “won.” Did the other person walk away persuaded? Or did they walk away quiet, resentful, and busy building a mental case file against you? Dale Carnegie made this point nearly a century ago, and nothing about human nature has changed since: the moment you make someone feel wrong, you lose them — even if you’re right. Especially if you’re right.  The alternative isn’t caving. It’s validation. And validation is wildly misunderstood.

Validation is not agreement. It’s not surrender. It’s the simple act of demonstrating that you understand why the other person sees it the way they do, before you say anything about how you see it. Phrases like: “That makes sense.” “I can see why you’d feel that way.” “You may be right.” That last one is the most powerful four-syllable sentence in business, because it costs you nothing — you may be right is not you are right — and it instantly transforms an adversary into a collaborator.

Here’s where you can use it:

With employees. When someone on your team pushes back on a decision, your instinct is to re-explain the decision, louder. Resist it. Validate first: “You’re closer to this than I am, and I get why this feels wrong to you.” Half the time, once people feel heard, they’ll talk themselves toward your position. The other half, they’ll surface something you genuinely missed — which is the whole point of hiring them.

With customers. The companies that fought complainers with facts created enemies for life. The companies that opened with “you’re right to be frustrated” created fans. Validation was the entire playbook, and it never failed.

With investors, partners, and spouses. Same principle, higher stakes. The fastest way to end a fight is to stop trying to win it. The person who validates first isn’t the weaker negotiator. They’re the one controlling the temperature of the room.

Three ways to practice this week:  A)  Ban “but” for seven days. “You’re right, but…” erases the validation that came before it. Swap in “and”: “You may be right, and here’s another angle.”  B)  Validate before you correct — every time. Even when someone is 90 percent wrong, find the 10 percent. Lead with it. Then the correction lands on open ears instead of crossed arms. And C) Ask yourself the outcome question. Before wading into any disagreement: do I want to be right, or do I want to get what I want? You’d be amazed how rarely they’re the same thing.

The people who get everything they want in business are almost never the best debaters. They’re the ones who make everyone else feel understood. Winning the argument is losing. Stop keeping score, and watch what happens.

Every leader will eventually have to deliver disappointing news — a missed target, a restructuring, a canceled initiative, a budget reduction, a layoff. These conversations are hard for everyone involved. Behind every business decision are people whose work, plans and expectations may be affected.

Over the course of her career, the author has learned that trust isn’t damaged by the news itself. Trust is damaged when people feel surprised, confused or excluded from understanding why decisions were made. Trust gets built one transparent conversation at a time.

When leaders communicate difficult news with clarity and honesty, people are far more likely to stay engaged — even when they disagree with the outcome. The author relies on a simple four-part framework whenever I have to deliver a hard message. It helps people understand what is happening, why it is happening and how we move forward together.

1. Start with the facts.  When people sense bad news is coming, they want clarity. Leaders often spend too much time building up to the message. They provide excessive background, soften the language or avoid the core issue altogether. As a result, people become distracted trying to figure out what is actually being said.  State the decision clearly and early.  Direct communication is a form of respect. It gives people a clear understanding of the situation and lets them focus on the information that follows.
2. Explain the business context.  Once people understand the decision, they need to understand the reasoning behind it. Context matters because it connects the decision to the broader realities the organization is facing. Without it, assumptions and skepticism fill the gaps.  The goal isn’t to justify the decision or win consensus. It’s to help people understand it. When people understand the circumstances leaders are navigating, they are better able to accept difficult outcomes and maintain confidence in the team steering the ship.
3. Acknowledge the impact.  Business decisions affect people differently.   Leaders should acknowledge that reality directly.  If you hire well, these are sharp, capable people — they need information, and they need to know you’re mindful of them. Leaders who cling to platitudes miss the chance to create alignment and squander the trust of their team in the process.  People want to know that leadership understands the consequences of the decision. They want to know that leaders have considered the human side of the equation. Acknowledging impact doesn’t require lengthy emotional discussions. It requires awareness, sincerity and respect.
4. Provide a path forward.  After difficult news is delivered, attention quickly shifts to the future. People want to understand what comes next, what priorities remain unchanged and where to focus their efforts.  This is where leaders need to create direction. Be forthcoming about next steps. Clarify expectations. Explain where the organization is headed and how the team will move forward. Even when circumstances are challenging, clarity creates stability. People can navigate uncertainty when they understand the mission and their role within it.