The US National Security Strategy, released last week, is an exceptional document. It lays bare many of the radical shifts in US policy that we have already witnessed by 2025. It has profound implications for European society and its economy.

We don't yet know exactly what artificial intelligence (AI) will bring us in the future. But the technology is improving rapidly and is already causing two phenomena that we couldn't have anticipated three years ago. The first is the surprising prolongation of the economic expansion in the US despite the sharp rise in interest rates between 2022 and 2023. Investment in data centers, power plants, chips, and other AI-related goods accounts for a very significant portion of US GDP growth. Jason Furman, former director of the Council of Economic Advisers, states that it constitutes 92% of the growth in his country's aggregate demand in the first half of 2025. The second phenomenon is the stock market bubble associated with AI. The surge in the valuations of the five major tech companies—Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon—has propelled the US stock market to new highs this year, even though the international geopolitical environment has been extremely uncertain since the start of Trump's second term. As is always the case with bubbles, it's impossible to know when they will burst and what portion of the stock price increase is based on solid foundations. Do the current valuations reflect realistic expectations of the profits these tech giants will generate? Will they all achieve high returns, or only those that win the race?

What is happening in the United States is impacting many areas, but also those affecting the business world.

After US Vice President JD Vance's speech at the Munich security conference and Zelensky's meeting with Trump at the White House, it's difficult to write about anything other than Europe and its future. The victory of the far right in the US and the new international order it is trying to impose should spur European leaders and provoke an accelerated political reorganization of the continent. It's time for Europeans to abandon illusions about how we would like the world to be and to make the difficult decisions that must be made to face the world as it is. It's time for realism.

Donald Trump's hyperactivity since returning to power prevents us from assessing the scope of some of the initiatives he is taking. His decisions and his attitude towards financial markets are a clear example.