As global power dynamics shift, the intersection of technology and national strategy is defining a new Cold War race. In this season opener of Disruptors, host John Stackhouse sits down with economist and Noahpinion author Noah Smith to map out the new geopolitics of tech.

Together, they unpack China’s dominance over the critical "electric tech stack" (batteries, magnets, and power electronics), why traditional military platforms are being upended by cheap drone warfare, and how middle powers like Canada, Japan, and Korea can build "Allied Scale" to compete. They also explore the true goal of modern industrial policy, the reality of AI labor disruption, and what a disabled rabbit named Giggles can teach us about resilience in a noisy world.

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 - Introduction: The Shift to Geo-Technology
01:58 - Lessons in Resilience from a Disabled Rabbit
03:07 - Great Power Competition & the New Global Tech Map
07:15 - The "Electric Tech Stack": Batteries, Magnets, and Electronics
10:03 - Rebuilding "Allied Scale" Without the U.S.
13:32 - Modern Industrial Policy: Wealth vs. Strategic Preservation
17:10 - AI, Labor Disruption, and Jevons Paradox
21:30 - Canada’s Next Move in the Geo-Tech Race

RESOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED:

Substack Newsletter: Noahpinion by Noah Smith
Commentary & Analysis: Bloomberg Opinion archives by Noah Smith
Concepts Referenced: Rush Doshi’s "Allied Scale," Mark Carney’s commentary on global hegemons, and Jevons Paradox in economic theory.

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The world is investing billions in data centres and compute. Canada’s edge isn’t bigger boxes—it’s Trust: rules enforced at home, private information secured under Canadian jurisdiction, and a clear path for enterprise data handling in the age of AI.

That’s how “Canadian trust” becomes a competitive advantage.

This week on Disruptors: The Canada Project, John Stackhouse takes us to Waterloo to map how policy as code, Canadian residency, and lineage + audit turn trust into a speed advantage. Guests: Tom Jenkins & Shannon Bell (OpenText), with Janice Stein (Munk School).

Build it here—export it with confidence.

Takeaways:
OpenText new book
Enterprise Artificial Intelligence: Building Trusted AI with Secure Data

RBC Thought Leadership’s Bridging the Imagination Gap: How Canadian companies can become global leaders in AI adoption

RBC Thought Leadership

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As the world electrifies—from cars and buses to datacentres and defence—demand for battery materials is exploding. Today, China refines more than 90% of the world’s graphite into the material used in virtually all EV battery anodes—that level of concentration is a strategic vulnerability Canada, and its allies, can’t ignore.

But Canada is starting to respond. The federal Major Projects Office has just referred Nouveau Monde Graphite’s Phase-2 Matawinie Mine as a “Major Project of National Interest”—a move aimed at helping Quebec and Canada shift from exporting ore to building a full mine-to-refine graphite value chain at home, and with it, an entirely new strand of economic and industrial capacity.

In this episode of Disruptors: The Canada Project, host John Stackhouse takes listeners into that story. With former Quebec premier Jean Charest and Eric Desaulniers, founder & CEO of NMG, he lifts the hood on what it means for a critical-minerals project to be treated as a “major project” in Canada—and what this could mean for Canada’s role as a trusted critical-minerals supplier to its G7 allies.

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Canada’s prosperity depends on how efficiently it can move goods to market — yet its largest ports have fallen behind the world’s best. With global trade accelerating and supply chains under pressure, Roberts Bank Terminal 2 represents a generational investment in Canada’s competitiveness.

In this episode, Peter Xotta, CEO of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, Devan Fitch, the project’s Program Director, and Tamara Vrooman, CEO of Vancouver International Airport, join John Stackhouse to discuss how this long-planned expansion will bring new automation, capacity, and environmental innovation to Canada’s Pacific Gateway. Together, they explore how smart infrastructure and strong partnerships can secure Canada’s trade future — sustainably and sovereignty.

RBC Thought Leadership

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Season 10 of Disruptors asked one question, in a lot of different ways: does Canada have what it takes—the tools, the ambition and the will—to compete in the economy being built right now?

For the season finale, John Stackhouse took that question to the RBC and Eurasia Group US-Canada Summit, where 500 leaders spent a day debating the most important economic relationship in the world.

He came back with two conversations that, together, amount to an answer.

Colonel Jeremy Hansen, the first Canadian to travel into deep space, talks about what you see from the Moon, what it taught him about collaboration and self-reliance, and why the Canada-U.S. relationship is worth fighting for.

Michael Sabia, Clerk of the Privy Council, discusses the hand Canada holds right now and why this is a moment for ambition, not anxiety.

Recorded live. A fitting close to a season built around urgency.

For more RBC Thought Leadership on Canada's economy and competitiveness, visit rbc.com/thoughtleadership

KEYWORDS

Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II, Canadian astronaut, Moon mission, deep space, Michael Sabia, Clerk of the Privy Council, Canada-US relationship, US-Canada Summit, Eurasia Group, RBC, John Stackhouse, Disruptors podcast, Season 10, Canadian economy, bilateral trade, Canada competitiveness, critical minerals, Canadian energy, AI sovereignty, Canada confidence, collaboration, ambition

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There are roughly 11,000 data centres in the world. Canada has about 300. The United States has 5,000 and that number is growing fast.

Canada is putting real money behind sovereign AI compute. But what does data sovereignty look like on the ground

In this episode of Disruptors, John Stackhouse visits Global Relay’s data centre in North Vancouver to see the physical side of the cloud: cooling systems, backup power, biometric access, data halls, and AI racks.

Global Relay Chief Product Officer Sahar Kayhani explains how the company manages communications data for highly regulated industries and why the infrastructure behind that data is becoming as important as the data itself.

Warren Roy, Global Relay’s founder and CEO, joins the conversation to discuss why the company chose to build its own cloud, and share his thoughts on what Canada needs to do to develop more technology companies rooted here.

For more RBC Thought Leadership on AI, healthcare, productivity and Canada’s innovation economy, visit rbc.com/thoughtleadership.

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Canada’s national AI strategy puts healthcare on centre stage – and for good reason. If you ask Canadians about the healthcare system, many will say they value it deeply, but that they are frustrated by wait times. In this episode of Disruptors, John Stackhouse looks at what we need to do to make artificial intelligence move the needle for wait times and quality of care.

Mara Lederman, co-founder and COO of Signal 1, explains the pressure inside hospitals: rising demand, constrained supply, long waits, and digital systems that often record care without helping the system move faster. She points to practical AI uses already emerging, including AI agents that call patients before procedures, reduce cancelled appointments and protect scarce clinical capacity.

Dr. Amol Verma and Dr. Fahad Razak of Unity Health Toronto take the conversation to the national level. Their work on VITAL – a health data platform – is aimed at connecting more than 160 hospitals across Canada. The promise is larger than one AI tool: better clinical trials, safer AI validation, more Canadian data, stronger governance and a healthcare system that can learn in near-real time.

Canada’s healthcare system generates enormous amounts of data every day. Every hospital admission can produce hundreds of thousands – even millions – of data points, from lab tests and imaging to digital vital signs and outcomes. But too much of that data remains trapped inside hospitals, provinces and systems that were not built to learn from one another.

The episode asks: if Canada has a public healthcare system, world-class research talent and hospitals generating hundreds of thousands of data points for every admitted patient, can AI finally help make the system work better for patients?

For more RBC Thought Leadership on AI, healthcare, productivity and Canada’s innovation economy, visit RBC Thought Leadership

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Canada has helped shape major technology waves, from AI to quantum. But when companies move from promising startup to global contender, the harder questions begin: where does the growth capital come from, who becomes the customer, and how can long-term value stay connected to Canada?

In this episode of Disruptors, John Stackhouse is joined by Boris Wertz, founder and general partner of Version One Ventures, and Sid Paquette, head of RBCx, for a conversation about Canada's growth capital gap and what it takes to build globally competitive technology companies in Canada.

They discuss why Canadian companies need global investors and global markets, why domestic capital still matters, how procurement and corporate customers can help companies scale, and why AI is creating faster cycles and more concentrated outcomes. The conversation also looks ahead to physical AI, biotechnology, quantum and the steps necessary for Canada to be a world leader in the tech space for the next 30 years.

Links:
RBC The Growth Project

Keywords: Canadian tech, growth capital, venture capital, domestic capital, RBCx, Version One Ventures, Boris Wertz, Sid Paquette, John Stackhouse, Disruptors podcast, AI, quantum, physical AI, biotechnology, procurement.

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