Foresight

What the US Strategy Shift Means for Business Leaders

From Strategy to Reality: Understanding the Changes That Affect Us All

Anna Loverus

07 Dec 2025 — 4 min read

This week, the United States launched a new National Security Strategy. It is more than a policy update — it's a fundamental shift in how the US approaches Europe, and Russia, and how the US believe it can come out on top.

This might feel far from your everyday life, but:

If you have a mortgage, it will affect your interest rate.
If you have a job, it will affect your employer's performance and the overall job market.
If you are a business leader, the consequences will be real, immediate, and strategic across almost any industry.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this. When geopolitical turmoil heightened a few years back, I was a strategy consultant at H&M. As a global retailer, every global disruption, from war to disinformation campaigns, had consequences for the business.

And while my formal responsibility was to head Social Media, the work I enjoyed most was with the H&M Group's Crisis Management team – bridging online and offline signals.

If someone offered me a role like that today, working on challenges unfolding in real time, I would take it in a heartbeat. I learned so much about the world, about business operations, and about leadership in uncertain times.

This week, we’ve had two significant events showing why leaders need the insight to connect global change to the decisions they make every day.

Here’s what is happening now:

1 — The US is reshaping its role in Europe

The US have published their new National Security Strategy. I won’t be able to cover it all, but you can read it in full here. If you read Swedish, I’d recommend Carl Heath's analysis.

However, there are a few key points from the strategy:

Europe's responsibility: In 2027, Europe must assume primary responsibility for NATO and its own defence. (This is a very short timeline in a defence context.)
Strategic pivot to Russia: The US intends to stabilise relations with Russia and halt NATO expansion. It wants to mediate between Europe and Russia.
Political influence: The US will incentivise governments and movements aligned with its principles. This is interpreted as explicitly supporting nationalist/populist parties and opposing collaboration within the EU and efforts to strengthen democracy.
Disinformation and tech: Efforts to counter disinformation are framed as threats to US interests, such as content moderation and fact-checking.

The takeaway: Europe cannot assume US support. Geopolitical pressures will increase further, regulatory friction will intensify, and incentives in the transatlantic relationship will change drastically and quickly.

2 — The EU vs. Elon Musk

Just before the new strategy was published, we saw it in action when Elon Musk responded to the EU’s regulatory fines.

X was fined €120 million under the EU Digital Services Act for several transparency violations.
Political framing: Musk tweeted that the EU should be abolished, and the Trump administration quickly framed this as an attack on American free speech, echoing the US strategy’s broader critique of Europe.
Practical impact: European regulatory enforcement is no longer just legal — it is political, with potential trade and diplomatic consequences.

The takeaway: We will see an increasing number of power battles. Tech platforms wield significant power and are increasingly using it to their own benefit. They influence markets, regulation, and even political outcomes. For example, most US tech platforms have been actively funding the Trump administration in various ways.

We, as users and leaders, must understand these dynamics, not just the products.

Why should you care, and what you should do

The US shift and tech regulation might feel like abstract events; they are not. They will impact you and your daily life faster than you know it. They affect supply chains, market access, regulatory compliance, and the balance of political influence in your direct environment.

However, we need to realise that our actions have consequences. To spell it out in an uncomfortably clear way: When you watch or run an ad on Instagram, you support efforts to dismantle European democracies.

The good news is that we also have power. Not necessarily when we think of our actions one by one, but if we work together. The challenge is that we need to prioritise actions that make the short-term less fun, because they will make us better off in the long term.

For example:

Don't support companies participating in the political agenda (X, Meta, Substack) and move to open and democratic alternatives (Ghost, Signal, Mastodon)
Support and engage in your local community and buy from local independent actors that do the same
Educate yourself and others, and question the narratives that algorithms are feeding you

And if you need some supporting arguments, for why you should do these things even if they feel boring or inconvenient, we find them in psychology.

Because, while one argument could be that democracy is better than the alternatives, another one is that it will make you personally better off.

And if you read The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner, you will learn that the best way to increase your individual influence is to act in ways that improve things for the masses. So even if your personal goal is to come out on top. Acting in ways that make all of us better off is the best way to win.

(Unfortunately, the best way to lose power is to prioritise your own needs ahead of everyone else, so you will be caught in a spiral of doing good. But that's a topic for another issue.)

All jokes aside, I realise that connecting your Instagram scrolling to democratic failure can feel very unfair. And I understand that these topics might feel distant and complex. But, I’m also a firm believer that knowledge is power. And that taking action is always better than passively waiting for someone else to save you.

We’re in this together. My inbox is always open if you have thoughts or questions.

Anna