Excellent perspective, but the most striking thing is not just the lack of long-term thinking, but also the mismatch between political time horizons and structural realities like demography. That gap is where strategic risk accumulates.
Reminded me in some parts of the quote: “An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today” which seems very fitting.
What you’re describing here is a systems optimization progression that most human organizations go through, when these organizations reach a certain stage of the evolution, their primary concern becomes self-preservation. Through a series of internal pressures, adaptations and systems processes that evolve over time, they perpetuate the circumstances to enhance their chances of remaining in existence and resisting change.
One of those is optimizing for people that fit within the systems without breaking them, and that help perpetuate them. So in your example, European politicians fit that paradigm to a tee: if they were to do otherwise they would face pressure that, as you said, would lose them personally their positions, force them to have skin in the game. They would also face heavy resistance if the were to attempt to introduce too much changes in the systems, which they are incentivized against.
I have had the privilege of being both inside and outside similar bureaucratic systems, and the view from the inside is tremendously tunnel vision through contextualization; things that look obvious from the outside are sometimes invisible from the inside, and at other times you can see them but you know it would incur a cost on you personally if you were to try to affect change.
This is one of the sharper diagnoses of our current strategic malaise, and it lands because it identifies something deeper than policy failure: a structural misalignment between time horizons, incentives, and reality.
The distinction between tactical, operational, and strategic thinking is not just a useful framework — it is the framework. And you are right: most of our political class is trapped at the operational level, optimising for survival within systems that no longer correspond to the world outside them. They are not stupid; they are miscalibrated. That is far more dangerous.
But I would push your argument one step further.
This is not only a generational failure. It is a systemic equilibrium that actively selects against strategic thinkers.
Modern Western systems reward:
risk minimisation over outcome maximisation
process compliance over adaptive execution
narrative control over material results
In such an environment, genuinely strategic actors — those willing to absorb short-term costs for long-term positioning — are not merely rare; they are often filtered out. Elections, party structures, procurement systems, and media cycles all converge to penalise exactly the kind of behaviour strategy requires.
So what we are observing is not just a “comfortable class” problem. It is a selection problem.
Skin in the Game — or the Absence of It
Your central point about insulation is decisive.
The Roman comparison is not about nostalgia for brutality, but about feedback loops. When consequences are delayed, diffused, or externalised, systems lose their ability to self-correct.
Today’s leaders:
do not fight the wars they authorise
do not experience the economic dislocation their policies create
do not remain in office long enough to face second-order effects
This produces what Taleb warned about: asymmetry between decision and consequence.
And that asymmetry now extends beyond politics into industry — your SatcomBw-4 example is exactly right. Europe is attempting to prepare for high-intensity conflict using procurement systems designed for peacetime rent distribution. The result is predictable: capital is allocated to incumbency, not capability.
Ukraine, by contrast, has restored the feedback loop. Failure is immediate, visible, and lethal. Innovation is not a policy preference; it is survival. That is why adaptation happens in days, not years.
The Generational Argument — Correct, but Incomplete
Where I would refine your argument is here:
It is not age per se that matters — it is proximity to consequence and exposure to change.
There are older leaders who can think strategically, just as there are younger ones who cannot. The difference is whether they:
Recognise that the paradigm has shifted, and
Are willing to incur personal or political cost to adapt to it
What Ukraine demonstrates is not simply youth, but selection under pressure. War has forced a brutal sorting mechanism. Western systems, cushioned by decades of peace and surplus, have not.
So the issue is less “old vs young” and more:
adapted vs non-adapted
exposed vs insulated
builders vs managers
Right now, the West is dominated by managers.
Europe’s Core Problem: Process Has Replaced Strategy
Your critique of Western Europe is particularly strong because it captures a cultural shift that is rarely stated plainly:
Europe has come to mistake governance for strategy.
Regulation has become a substitute for direction
Consensus has become a substitute for decision
Process has become a substitute for outcome
This worked in a low-threat, high-stability environment. It does not work under conditions of geopolitical competition.
The tragedy is not capability — Europe has immense latent power — but activation. The system is optimised to prevent mistakes, not to achieve objectives. In a competitive environment, that is itself a strategic mistake.
The United States: Tactical Mastery, Strategic Drift
Your assessment of the United States is harsh but not unfounded.
That gap is widening. And once strategic assets like alliances or credibility are degraded, they are not easily rebuilt. These are slow-forming, slow-recovering structures.
The danger is not a single decision, but path dependency — each move constrains the next, often invisibly at first.
The Real Risk: Strategic Atrophy
If I had to compress your argument into one line, it would be this:
The West is not losing because it lacks resources. It is losing because it has lost the ability to think and act strategically under conditions of pressure.
And that is not a cyclical problem. It is a capability erosion problem.
On Renewal — and Its Limits
You are right to call for generational renewal. But renewal alone is insufficient if the selection mechanisms remain unchanged.
If younger leaders enter:
the same bureaucratic systems
the same procurement structures
the same electoral incentives
they will behave in much the same way.
So the real requirement is twofold:
Personnel change (new actors)
Structural change (new incentives and faster feedback loops)
Without the second, the first will be absorbed and neutralised.
Final Thought
The most uncomfortable implication of your argument is this:
We may not be facing a failure of leadership alone, but a failure of the systems that produce leadership.
And systems, unlike individuals, do not change easily — especially when those benefiting from them are the ones in control.
Which brings us back to your closing line, and it is the right one:
If those making decisions do not bear the consequences,
they will eventually make decisions whose costs are borne by others.
I am not sure I completely agree with this analysis. The younger generation that is poised to take over is nihilistic, entitled, untested, and self important. They lean towards Communist China and call it freedom. They support the Ayatollahs and say it is resistance to the west, because apparently democratic freedoms are awful and Islamist tyrannies are cool. They do not embrace democratic or capitalist values, unless they can find a way to use these concepts to make themselves millionaires while telling everyone else to "eat cake."
Granted there are issues in every sphere because the world is moving at an incredible rate and no the older generation cannot keep up. But the issue is power not dotage. Once you have it you do not relinquish it happily. While some of the young in the west are ready to lead (as mentioned in the article), most of those who are in ascendence most definitely are not.
The issue is what the author said in the very beginning of the essay- Roman emperors did not die of old age because they suffered the consequences of their decisions and we need to find a way back to the place where our leaders feel their mismanagement. But that is what elections are all about. The entire concept of democracy is if you do not like those in power you remove them at the ballot box. We are no longer supposed to assassinate our leaders, but replace them through elections. But what do you do if the best and brightest no longer want to go into politics? What do you do if because of what the world has become (whether because of social media or lack of morality and ethics), it means that those who are best able to lead refuse?
The issue in truth is not who is at present running the world, it is who is slated to take over.
My point is more about what that generation represents in terms of internalised ideas. As someone who mingles and has contacts in a range of serious industries - be it defence, tech, energy, satellites - you won’t find many young people there waving commie flags or praising the Ayatollahs. You’ll find tons that are working hard on innovative ways to solve our most serious problems, and their innovations are often being sidelined by legacy incumbents that neither want to adapt, not let anyone adaptable through the door. The recent Rheinmetall scandal being a perfect illustration of that point.
I agree with you. There are alot of serious young people in this world trying to make it a better place. But my point is that those who are in politics are not these young people, but the ones waiving commie flags and praising the Ayatollahs. Look at who is considered the front runners for the democrat nomination for president in the US. Who is being catered to in Europe? And it is the politicians who rule the roost, create the laws and the environment in which we live.
IMO, America would be losing its greatest curse if it lost those things. (theres real chance, believe it or not, that a very different path might have been taken by America and by extension the world, in the latter 1940s/1950s, at least if the USA hadnt entered WW2, but instead we took an old path that America had been largely institutionally set up to avoid, and then we got the Old Europe style planetary imperial structures of capital "G" Globalization)
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system that had legal and regulatory variability, policy variability, an intentionally diffused and pluralized private sector, local fiscal dominance. With a very heterogenous academe and most all scientific, economic, commercial, fiscal, and cultural decision making occurring diffusely and outside of the places you would think to look should you only know the America of today. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters with real participation, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they don't offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
You are too kind to Trump if you think his actions are due to his age and inability to adapt.
Trump is a malignant narcissist - not only does he think everything revolves around him, but he needs to hurt people in order to feed his narcisism. His first term he was somewhat held in check on the international level (though not at home) by more responsible advisers. This time he made sure to surround himself only with enablers and similarly damaged people. It never ceases to amaze me that Europeans think there must be (or must have been) some rational, well-meaning core that is now gone. He was always like this. The difference is that now you see it too.
Eastern Europe has seen a societal reset in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This has indeed given room to a new generation who does things differently. As you state.
Western Europe, similarly, has seen a societal reset in 1945 after the collapse of the Nazi regime. With actually a fairly similar consequence: a new generation that did things differently. And indeed, success breeds comfort…
Interestingly we now see a phase difference of 46 years between both halves of the European continent… 🤔
Well, LOTS of Roman emperors did die peacefully in bed! It’s just incorrect to say otherwise, and to go on to draw political conclusions from this. Partial list: Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Vespasian, Titus, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius…
"Also, has any - ANY - leader in the past several decades been held accountable for his bad leadership? Apart from the Romanians that (rightfully) executed Ceaușescu?"
Moammar Gaddafi also met a sticky end at the hands of a dissatisfied section of his own country's citizens.
My point doesn't relate to age as a number, but to age as a representative of certain internalised ideas - and I think the examples you've listed actually reinforce rather than challenge that distinction.
Take Trump: yes, he is disruptive. But disruptive in what direction? Disruption for its own sake, or disruption toward greater agility and adaptability? There is a meaningful difference between an incumbent using disruption as a political tool and genuinely new thinking breaking through entrenched systems. Macron at 48 ran as an outsider and built a movement from scratch - that is qualitatively different from a 79-year-old billionaire leveraging decades of capital and connections to upend norms. The mechanism matters.
More importantly, the list of EU Prime Ministers proves my point rather than refuting it. These are people who reached the top of systems that were built by and for the post-war, Cold War generation. The pipeline itself filters for a certain kind of thinking. A 48-year-old who spent 20 years climbing the ladder of legacy institutions often carries the same mental model as a 65-year-old - because that is what the system selected for.
Give you a recent example. Armin Papperger, 63, CEO of Rheinmetall - one of the continent's largest and most politically connected defence contractors - recently dismissed Ukraine's drone programme by calling them "Lego drones made by Ukrainian housewives." This is a man whose entire career was built on legacy platforms: heavy armour, long procurement cycles, and peacetime government contracts worth billions.
Rheinmetall's business model depends on relationships with politicians and ministries, not on battlefield experience and feedback loops. It is a model that worked beautifully in 1990. It is a model that reality is now actively retiring.
Now look at Oleksandr Yakovenko, 36, CEO of TAF Industries - one of Ukraine's largest drone manufacturers. His company runs its own R&D centre, iterates its designs weekly based on live battlefield data, and operates a distributed production network specifically engineered to survive missile strikes. That is not a defence company in the traditional sense, but an adaptive system built for a war that is happening right now. This is 2026, not 1979.
The Iran conflict actually made the economics impossible to ignore: $20–50k Shahed drones forcing billion-dollar air defence systems to burn through multimillion-dollar interceptors per engagement. The math isn’t mathing anymore. Papperger's contempt for Ukrainian drones is just the revealed preference of an entire class of incumbents whose capital, legal resources, lobbyists, and political access allow them to keep the gates closed against exactly the kind of thinking Yakovenko represents.
And that is the pattern I hear consistently from contacts across defence, satellite, and comms: the problem is not that older leaders exist. It is that they neither adapt nor make room for those who can. Entrenchment plus gatekeeping - that is what I am writing about.
My opinion on Trump is a pragmatic one. The current version is not the same as the one from his first term. Back then, he enacted certain policies that made sense, kept hostile actors at bay because of his unpredictability, and demonstrated the weaknesses of the Democratic Party (it’s not like they chose to do anyting with that feedback).
His second term is a whole different ball game. I don’t know about the crypto side, because I don’t follow it, nor do I have or plan to have investments in crypto. But the tariffs aren’t protecting working class Americans, especially in the ways that they are implemented. Business operates on stability and predictability, the Trump administration offers neither.
His second term is a copy-paste version of Balkan politics, which is why the jokes around by people from that region have evolved over the past year. It’s absolutely the same, including the decor. Our elders are suffering PTSD as we speak.
"systems do not learn because individuals inside them learn... Systems learn by removing those who are not fit for purpose."
Relatedly: as Max Planck supposedly said: "science advances one funeral at a time."
You could probably replace "science" with terms from other fields
I was going to mention that exact line about science advancing one funeral at a time. But you beat me to the punch by three weeks…
Excellent perspective, but the most striking thing is not just the lack of long-term thinking, but also the mismatch between political time horizons and structural realities like demography. That gap is where strategic risk accumulates.
Excellent article:
Reminded me in some parts of the quote: “An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today” which seems very fitting.
What you’re describing here is a systems optimization progression that most human organizations go through, when these organizations reach a certain stage of the evolution, their primary concern becomes self-preservation. Through a series of internal pressures, adaptations and systems processes that evolve over time, they perpetuate the circumstances to enhance their chances of remaining in existence and resisting change.
One of those is optimizing for people that fit within the systems without breaking them, and that help perpetuate them. So in your example, European politicians fit that paradigm to a tee: if they were to do otherwise they would face pressure that, as you said, would lose them personally their positions, force them to have skin in the game. They would also face heavy resistance if the were to attempt to introduce too much changes in the systems, which they are incentivized against.
I have had the privilege of being both inside and outside similar bureaucratic systems, and the view from the inside is tremendously tunnel vision through contextualization; things that look obvious from the outside are sometimes invisible from the inside, and at other times you can see them but you know it would incur a cost on you personally if you were to try to affect change.
A very interesting read.
Bianka
This is one of the sharper diagnoses of our current strategic malaise, and it lands because it identifies something deeper than policy failure: a structural misalignment between time horizons, incentives, and reality.
The distinction between tactical, operational, and strategic thinking is not just a useful framework — it is the framework. And you are right: most of our political class is trapped at the operational level, optimising for survival within systems that no longer correspond to the world outside them. They are not stupid; they are miscalibrated. That is far more dangerous.
But I would push your argument one step further.
This is not only a generational failure. It is a systemic equilibrium that actively selects against strategic thinkers.
Modern Western systems reward:
risk minimisation over outcome maximisation
process compliance over adaptive execution
narrative control over material results
In such an environment, genuinely strategic actors — those willing to absorb short-term costs for long-term positioning — are not merely rare; they are often filtered out. Elections, party structures, procurement systems, and media cycles all converge to penalise exactly the kind of behaviour strategy requires.
So what we are observing is not just a “comfortable class” problem. It is a selection problem.
Skin in the Game — or the Absence of It
Your central point about insulation is decisive.
The Roman comparison is not about nostalgia for brutality, but about feedback loops. When consequences are delayed, diffused, or externalised, systems lose their ability to self-correct.
Today’s leaders:
do not fight the wars they authorise
do not experience the economic dislocation their policies create
do not remain in office long enough to face second-order effects
This produces what Taleb warned about: asymmetry between decision and consequence.
And that asymmetry now extends beyond politics into industry — your SatcomBw-4 example is exactly right. Europe is attempting to prepare for high-intensity conflict using procurement systems designed for peacetime rent distribution. The result is predictable: capital is allocated to incumbency, not capability.
Ukraine, by contrast, has restored the feedback loop. Failure is immediate, visible, and lethal. Innovation is not a policy preference; it is survival. That is why adaptation happens in days, not years.
The Generational Argument — Correct, but Incomplete
Where I would refine your argument is here:
It is not age per se that matters — it is proximity to consequence and exposure to change.
There are older leaders who can think strategically, just as there are younger ones who cannot. The difference is whether they:
Recognise that the paradigm has shifted, and
Are willing to incur personal or political cost to adapt to it
What Ukraine demonstrates is not simply youth, but selection under pressure. War has forced a brutal sorting mechanism. Western systems, cushioned by decades of peace and surplus, have not.
So the issue is less “old vs young” and more:
adapted vs non-adapted
exposed vs insulated
builders vs managers
Right now, the West is dominated by managers.
Europe’s Core Problem: Process Has Replaced Strategy
Your critique of Western Europe is particularly strong because it captures a cultural shift that is rarely stated plainly:
Europe has come to mistake governance for strategy.
Regulation has become a substitute for direction
Consensus has become a substitute for decision
Process has become a substitute for outcome
This worked in a low-threat, high-stability environment. It does not work under conditions of geopolitical competition.
The tragedy is not capability — Europe has immense latent power — but activation. The system is optimised to prevent mistakes, not to achieve objectives. In a competitive environment, that is itself a strategic mistake.
The United States: Tactical Mastery, Strategic Drift
Your assessment of the United States is harsh but not unfounded.
What we are seeing is the separation of:
tactical brilliance (media, politics, disruption)
from
strategic coherence (alliances, long-term positioning, institutional strength)
That gap is widening. And once strategic assets like alliances or credibility are degraded, they are not easily rebuilt. These are slow-forming, slow-recovering structures.
The danger is not a single decision, but path dependency — each move constrains the next, often invisibly at first.
The Real Risk: Strategic Atrophy
If I had to compress your argument into one line, it would be this:
The West is not losing because it lacks resources. It is losing because it has lost the ability to think and act strategically under conditions of pressure.
And that is not a cyclical problem. It is a capability erosion problem.
On Renewal — and Its Limits
You are right to call for generational renewal. But renewal alone is insufficient if the selection mechanisms remain unchanged.
If younger leaders enter:
the same bureaucratic systems
the same procurement structures
the same electoral incentives
they will behave in much the same way.
So the real requirement is twofold:
Personnel change (new actors)
Structural change (new incentives and faster feedback loops)
Without the second, the first will be absorbed and neutralised.
Final Thought
The most uncomfortable implication of your argument is this:
We may not be facing a failure of leadership alone, but a failure of the systems that produce leadership.
And systems, unlike individuals, do not change easily — especially when those benefiting from them are the ones in control.
Which brings us back to your closing line, and it is the right one:
If those making decisions do not bear the consequences,
they will eventually make decisions whose costs are borne by others.
We are already there.
This should be required reading for anyone, any age that is eligible to cast a ballot.
I am not sure I completely agree with this analysis. The younger generation that is poised to take over is nihilistic, entitled, untested, and self important. They lean towards Communist China and call it freedom. They support the Ayatollahs and say it is resistance to the west, because apparently democratic freedoms are awful and Islamist tyrannies are cool. They do not embrace democratic or capitalist values, unless they can find a way to use these concepts to make themselves millionaires while telling everyone else to "eat cake."
Granted there are issues in every sphere because the world is moving at an incredible rate and no the older generation cannot keep up. But the issue is power not dotage. Once you have it you do not relinquish it happily. While some of the young in the west are ready to lead (as mentioned in the article), most of those who are in ascendence most definitely are not.
The issue is what the author said in the very beginning of the essay- Roman emperors did not die of old age because they suffered the consequences of their decisions and we need to find a way back to the place where our leaders feel their mismanagement. But that is what elections are all about. The entire concept of democracy is if you do not like those in power you remove them at the ballot box. We are no longer supposed to assassinate our leaders, but replace them through elections. But what do you do if the best and brightest no longer want to go into politics? What do you do if because of what the world has become (whether because of social media or lack of morality and ethics), it means that those who are best able to lead refuse?
The issue in truth is not who is at present running the world, it is who is slated to take over.
https://substack.com/@waronomics/note/c-238118609?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=6izrcd
My point is more about what that generation represents in terms of internalised ideas. As someone who mingles and has contacts in a range of serious industries - be it defence, tech, energy, satellites - you won’t find many young people there waving commie flags or praising the Ayatollahs. You’ll find tons that are working hard on innovative ways to solve our most serious problems, and their innovations are often being sidelined by legacy incumbents that neither want to adapt, not let anyone adaptable through the door. The recent Rheinmetall scandal being a perfect illustration of that point.
I agree with you. There are alot of serious young people in this world trying to make it a better place. But my point is that those who are in politics are not these young people, but the ones waiving commie flags and praising the Ayatollahs. Look at who is considered the front runners for the democrat nomination for president in the US. Who is being catered to in Europe? And it is the politicians who rule the roost, create the laws and the environment in which we live.
IMO, America would be losing its greatest curse if it lost those things. (theres real chance, believe it or not, that a very different path might have been taken by America and by extension the world, in the latter 1940s/1950s, at least if the USA hadnt entered WW2, but instead we took an old path that America had been largely institutionally set up to avoid, and then we got the Old Europe style planetary imperial structures of capital "G" Globalization)
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system that had legal and regulatory variability, policy variability, an intentionally diffused and pluralized private sector, local fiscal dominance. With a very heterogenous academe and most all scientific, economic, commercial, fiscal, and cultural decision making occurring diffusely and outside of the places you would think to look should you only know the America of today. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters with real participation, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they don't offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
You are too kind to Trump if you think his actions are due to his age and inability to adapt.
Trump is a malignant narcissist - not only does he think everything revolves around him, but he needs to hurt people in order to feed his narcisism. His first term he was somewhat held in check on the international level (though not at home) by more responsible advisers. This time he made sure to surround himself only with enablers and similarly damaged people. It never ceases to amaze me that Europeans think there must be (or must have been) some rational, well-meaning core that is now gone. He was always like this. The difference is that now you see it too.
Neoliberalism, with its ideology of market dominance over state political influence, is the political dogma of our time.
In this system, the state has shrunk to a mere service provider for the economy, and strategic planning is no longer necessary.
A prime example is Germany's dependence on Russian gas.
The desire of German industry, particularly the chemical sector, for cheap raw materials was translated into political action by German governments.
The premise that "economics defines politics" led German politicians to believe that Russia could not possibly have an interest in war.
Eastern Europe has seen a societal reset in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This has indeed given room to a new generation who does things differently. As you state.
Western Europe, similarly, has seen a societal reset in 1945 after the collapse of the Nazi regime. With actually a fairly similar consequence: a new generation that did things differently. And indeed, success breeds comfort…
Interestingly we now see a phase difference of 46 years between both halves of the European continent… 🤔
Well, LOTS of Roman emperors did die peacefully in bed! It’s just incorrect to say otherwise, and to go on to draw political conclusions from this. Partial list: Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Vespasian, Titus, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius…
"Also, has any - ANY - leader in the past several decades been held accountable for his bad leadership? Apart from the Romanians that (rightfully) executed Ceaușescu?"
Moammar Gaddafi also met a sticky end at the hands of a dissatisfied section of his own country's citizens.
My point doesn't relate to age as a number, but to age as a representative of certain internalised ideas - and I think the examples you've listed actually reinforce rather than challenge that distinction.
Take Trump: yes, he is disruptive. But disruptive in what direction? Disruption for its own sake, or disruption toward greater agility and adaptability? There is a meaningful difference between an incumbent using disruption as a political tool and genuinely new thinking breaking through entrenched systems. Macron at 48 ran as an outsider and built a movement from scratch - that is qualitatively different from a 79-year-old billionaire leveraging decades of capital and connections to upend norms. The mechanism matters.
More importantly, the list of EU Prime Ministers proves my point rather than refuting it. These are people who reached the top of systems that were built by and for the post-war, Cold War generation. The pipeline itself filters for a certain kind of thinking. A 48-year-old who spent 20 years climbing the ladder of legacy institutions often carries the same mental model as a 65-year-old - because that is what the system selected for.
Give you a recent example. Armin Papperger, 63, CEO of Rheinmetall - one of the continent's largest and most politically connected defence contractors - recently dismissed Ukraine's drone programme by calling them "Lego drones made by Ukrainian housewives." This is a man whose entire career was built on legacy platforms: heavy armour, long procurement cycles, and peacetime government contracts worth billions.
Rheinmetall's business model depends on relationships with politicians and ministries, not on battlefield experience and feedback loops. It is a model that worked beautifully in 1990. It is a model that reality is now actively retiring.
Now look at Oleksandr Yakovenko, 36, CEO of TAF Industries - one of Ukraine's largest drone manufacturers. His company runs its own R&D centre, iterates its designs weekly based on live battlefield data, and operates a distributed production network specifically engineered to survive missile strikes. That is not a defence company in the traditional sense, but an adaptive system built for a war that is happening right now. This is 2026, not 1979.
The Iran conflict actually made the economics impossible to ignore: $20–50k Shahed drones forcing billion-dollar air defence systems to burn through multimillion-dollar interceptors per engagement. The math isn’t mathing anymore. Papperger's contempt for Ukrainian drones is just the revealed preference of an entire class of incumbents whose capital, legal resources, lobbyists, and political access allow them to keep the gates closed against exactly the kind of thinking Yakovenko represents.
And that is the pattern I hear consistently from contacts across defence, satellite, and comms: the problem is not that older leaders exist. It is that they neither adapt nor make room for those who can. Entrenchment plus gatekeeping - that is what I am writing about.
My opinion on Trump is a pragmatic one. The current version is not the same as the one from his first term. Back then, he enacted certain policies that made sense, kept hostile actors at bay because of his unpredictability, and demonstrated the weaknesses of the Democratic Party (it’s not like they chose to do anyting with that feedback).
His second term is a whole different ball game. I don’t know about the crypto side, because I don’t follow it, nor do I have or plan to have investments in crypto. But the tariffs aren’t protecting working class Americans, especially in the ways that they are implemented. Business operates on stability and predictability, the Trump administration offers neither.
His second term is a copy-paste version of Balkan politics, which is why the jokes around by people from that region have evolved over the past year. It’s absolutely the same, including the decor. Our elders are suffering PTSD as we speak.