Episode #562: When the Rule-Based Order Wobbles: Investing in Resilience Over Size

Stewart Alsop sits down with investor and entrepreneur Adnan Hassan on the Crazy Wisdom Podcast to explore his thesis on creating a small state asset class, using evolutionary insights from asteroids, dinosaurs, and mycelium as a framework for understanding resilient systems. Hassan brings his background in Silicon Valley technology, New York and Washington finance, and sovereign funds—including senior leadership roles at the World Bank—to explain why 162 of the world's 200 states are actually small states with populations under 12 million, and why these distributed, autonomous entities might be best positioned to survive the coming global shocks from AI, currency disruption, and the wobbling international order. For more information about Hassan's work, visit www.sac-holding.com (SAC stands for Small State Asset Class), where you can find two-minute videos explaining his approach to building this new financial architecture.Timestamps00:00 Introduction and the asteroid, dinosaur, mycelium thesis as a framework for understanding evolutionary survival patterns across billions of years05:00 Global order institutions are wobbling while currency systems evolve and AI emerges, creating simultaneous shocks that favor adaptable networked systems over large centralized structures10:00 Small states defined as populations under 12 million represent 162 of 200 global economies, contradicting assumptions that most nations are large centralized powers15:00 States behave as selfish entities seeking regulatory control while individuals seek autonomy, creating tension as the Westphalian system undergoes fundamental transformation20:00 Cooperation versus competition in human systems, examining how KYC requirements and state surveillance are expanding globally including in America and Argentina25:00 Small states are most interested in rule-based global order because they need protection from larger powers, unlike powerful nations that prefer unconstrained action30:00 Of the twenty richest countries by per capita GDP, seventeen are small states, yet no small state asset class exists in financial markets35:00 Uncorrelated assets provide diversification protection for investors, while small states offer geographic distribution across Caribbean, Africa, Europe, Gulf, and Pacific regions40:00 Cross-border family business collaboration between small states will increase, leading to knowledge sharing and a proposed Davos for small states event45:00 The individual sits at the core of this framework, with AI enabling creative minds in small places to access world-class resources previously impossible50:00 Demonstration of accessible technology costing only ten dollars shows how AI removes barriers, allowing creativity to become the distinguishing factor for entrepreneurs globallyKey Insights1. Adnan Hassan presents a thesis grounded in billions of years of evolutionary data, arguing that systems which survive major shocks share common characteristics: they are autonomous, networked, cooperative, resilient, and lack single points of failure. He uses the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs as his central metaphor, noting that while massive dinosaurs went extinct, smaller organisms like mycelium, ants, bees, and marsupials survived because of their distributed and adaptable nature. Hassan believes we are currently experiencing a similar asteroid-level shock to our global systems through the simultaneous disruption of the rule-based global order, currency systems, and artificial intelligence, all happening at once over the next three to five years.2. Hassan identifies 162 out of 200 global states and economies as small states, defined as having populations under 12 million people. This number surprises most people, including sophisticated observers who typically guess around 60 or 70. Even more striking, 17 of the 20 richest countries by per capita GDP are small states, representing 85 percent of the wealthiest nations. These small states have disproportionate resources to deploy internationally and the greatest interest in maintaining a rule-based global order since they have the most to lose from chaos and cannot rely on size or military power for protection.3. The current global institutional framework established after World War Two, including the UN, IMF, World Bank, and WTO, is fundamentally wobbling and reaching the end of an era. Hassan argues that states are inherently selfish creatures addicted to regulatory sovereignty and control, but the systems designed to give these states structure and credibility are now failing. This represents the first major restructuring of the global order since the post-World War Two period, which itself followed 400 years of colonial systems. The transition period will be characterized by significant chaos and convulsions throughout the