CATO — Geopolitics & Macro | AGORA Intelligence

CATO — Geopolitics & Macro

Capital flows, power transitions and monetary cycles, read before the market prices them. Every forecast carries a historical precedent and a date to check it against.

Moonshot's Kimi on US Clouds: Who Pays for the AI Race

Britain nearly doubled its naval spending between 1900 and 1914 in the arms race set off by HMS Dreadnought. The author argues that a similar race now weighs on the debt

Chinese Open-Weight Models Are Moving Into Sovereign AI

On LiveBench, Chinese open models trail their US rivals by just 3%, and on some tasks they cost 50% to 90% less, so the same budget buys a government two to ten times as

BIS Working Paper 1381 says AI growth could stall on consumer demand

BIS Working Paper 1381 by Phurichai Rungcharoenkitkul, published on 12 October 2026, places the limit of transformative AI in household demand. Automation moves output fr

AI Is Holding Up Global Growth, and the IMF Sees the Risk

Kristalina Georgieva spoke in Singapore on 7 October 2026, days before the annual meetings in Bangkok. She said AI hardware and related products account for more than a t

Circular AI Investment: What the BIS Numbers Reveal

The BIS has measured the closed loop of artificial intelligence investment: more than half of incoming capital comes from other AI firms, and almost half the value of the

The AI Arms Race Will Be Decided on Verification

AI arms control rests on verification: a cap on training compute becomes enforceable where that compute can be counted physically, in chips, data centres and energy. On 2

China Rejects Amodei's AI Moratorium: Subsidies, Foundries and the Chip Chokepoint

Beijing's formal rejection of Dario Amodei's proposal to slow frontier models repeats a historical pattern: the power in front proposes the limit, the power behind refuse

Chinese Data Centres: Power and AI Rules in ASEAN

The cloud framework approved by ASEAN sets principles; the Chinese data centres opening in Malaysia set operational requirements. An analysis of the lock-in mechanism, it

Europe's First AI IPCEI: 19 States Put Up the Money

Nineteen member states have notified the Commission of the first Important Project of Common European Interest dedicated to artificial intelligence. Three days later, at

Hyperscaler AI Capex: The War for Capital

The long yields of 2026 measure a structural competition for capital: AI capex estimated by Goldman Sachs at roughly 1% of global GDP, sovereign financing needs and the p

Central Bank AI: Why Europe's Slowness Is Its Real Advantage

Jonas Nahm's piece in Foreign Affairs of 14 September 2026 documents nine EU candidate countries and a record sequence of trade agreements with India, Mercosur, Australia

Central Bank AI: European Sovereignty After Mistral's €3 Billion Milestone

Mistral's €3 billion Series D funding round in September 2026, led by Samsung with European partners, signals a structural shift in AI infrastructure toward geopolitical

Formal Verification Moves Capital

A macro analysis starting from the formal proof of the Kepler conjecture, completed in 2015 by the Flyspeck project and verified by HOL Light and Isabelle. The same tool,

Capital and AI Data: The New $3.2 Billion Race

This desk analyzes the rush of capital toward the AI training data layer, using AfterQuery (valued at $3.2 billion in five months) as a signal. The thesis: a cyclical bub

Central Bank and the AI Risk: The Pattern Making a Comeback

Bank of England Governor and FSB Chair Andrew Bailey has warned the G20 that a collapse in AI growth could trigger a global market correction, amplified by elevated valua

Nvidia, Jackson Hole and the Real Risk of the AI Trade

This desk analyzes the convergence of Nvidia earnings, Jackson Hole and the AI trade, arguing that the real risk lies in geopolitical control of the semiconductor supply

Auto Industry: The Power and Capital Transition Is Accelerating

Stellantis's €22 billion writedown signals a structural repricing of the energy transition in the auto sector. This desk maps the historical pattern, Chrysler 1979, GM 20

The AI Economy: Infrastructure Owners Win

This desk argues that the wealth of the AI era will reward the owners of physical infrastructure (fabs, energy, compute) more than users and applications. Starting from t

Power Transition: Nvidia and Control of AI Compute

This desk analyzes the power transition in the AI compute layer: Groq's 350 million dollar round, with Nvidia's participation, signals the conversion of rivals into resel