Axios C-Suite: A real-time risk map for CEOs

• Think: Staff in revolt over robots. A cyberattack launched by AI. Their supply chains choked by an obscure mineral dispute.

Here's a stab at ranking our in-this-moment risks. I asked C-Suite reader and Eurasia Group founder and president Ian Bremmer to help stress-test it and share some insights.

• Some risks in the second part of this list, like China or debt, might feel manageable now, but could spike to the top with a single bad decision or day of news.
• As Jamie Dimon told me last month: We face the most geopolitical risk since WWII.

1. AI. It represents both wild opportunity and wild risk, but the risk part feels particularly acute in the short term.

• On one hand, we could be too slow to adapt, allowing competitors to eat our lunch. On the other, there's the fear of moving too fast, spooking and confusing staff while fomenting internal backlash.
• And this is just the part that we control. Externally, there's the possibility of AI causing a devastating cyberattack or wiping out jobs and stirring consumer panic.
• Bremmer convinced me this is bigger than anything. "AI is #1 in my view ... because it affects literally everyone, and it's happened faster than almost everyone thought," he says.

2. Middle East and its aftershocks. Even in a best-case de-escalation scenario with Iran, we're left with oil prices structurally above prewar levels, rising Saudi-UAE competition and a persistent Israel-Hamas conflict.

• Don't think of this as purely an energy cost story. Consider its impact on everything from shipping to logistics to insurance.
• "The markets don't tell the story the CEOs are focused on, which is massive supply chain disruption that is coming soon ... oil shortages, plastics shortages and longer-term food inflation," Bremmer says.

3. Rare earth reliance. Every emerging technology — AI chips, electric vehicles, defense systems, clean energy, medical imaging devices — runs on rare earth minerals.

• China controls roughly 70% of mining and 90% of processing of these materials.
• There's currently no heavy rare-earth separation capacity in the U.S. at meaningful scale. That means countless critical U.S. products are at risk to any rare earth supply chain disruptions.

4. China. It's simultaneously our largest geopolitical rival, our most dangerous AI competitor and our biggest supply chain vulnerability.

• It's also the most likely trigger for a global conflict we can't easily win. But right now, China relations are much calmer than most expected.
• Bremmer says Beijing's threats against Taiwan are overblown. He believes China can patiently pursue a lower-risk strategy both economically and militarily, which it's doing.
• 5. Debt, both public and private. Nearly $39 trillion and counting in national debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that interest payments will eat nearly 15% of all federal outlays by 2028. You can't even call it a crisis. It's an obvious slow bleed with no attempt to stop it.
• Forget default. Fiscal constraint should be what really scares you. When the next recession hits, Washington's toolkit is already depleted. There's no room for stimulus and no room for tax relief. Every policy response will have to get slower and smaller.

• And this is all separate from the sharp rise in defaults in the $3 trillion private credit market.

6. Political volatility. Tax policy, regulatory posture, antitrust enforcement — none of it is predictable on a 12-month horizon. And it's all happening as the federal government becomes more content to govern by executive action that can be overturned with the stroke of a pen.

• With both parties capable of lurching toward their respective extremes, the risk isn't just the next election. It's the absence of a stable policy floor that unpredictably swings on two-year or four-year cycles.
• CEOs can plan around bad policy. We can't plan around random policy.

7. Anti-wealth backlash. AI is making the wealth gap visibly wider — in real time — and accelerating a trend that was already bad. That's a genuine talent, retention and consumer risk constantly bubbling under the surface.

• Edelman's 2025 Trust Barometer shows business trust at its lowest since 2012 among workers under 35.
• Gallup finds 60% of Americans now view large corporations negatively — up 11 points in four years.

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