Investing, Trading, and Doing Business in an Anxious World 2025: Extension and Enforcement

Global trends continue to drive extension and increasingly aggressive enforcement of national security-based regulation impacting global investment, technology, data flows, and supply chains. Acceleration and convergence of AI-assisted technologies, the appetite for expanded energy and information infrastructure, and the key role of sovereign wealth in international investment are interacting with policy makers’ increasingly anxious reframing of the global risk environment. The relatively benign assumptions of the post-Cold War era—that increased economic, technological, and digital interdependence would result in societal convergence and the end of geopolitical conflict—have given way to worry that adversaries are exploiting global markets in order to achieve unacceptable strategic advantage. This skepticism is coupled with a populist-fueled sense that decades of laissez faire globalism have hollowed out nations’ core industrial, economic, and social interests. Policy makers’ past attitude of benign neglect toward global markets has been replaced by worry that markets do not appropriately price national security risk nor incentivize investment in security, resilience, integrity, and the public good.  

The upshot is a more anxious, dynamic, and assertive security state, with increased authority and capability to intervene to correct perceived market failures, secure industrial policy objectives, and address acute policy worries. The past year has witnessed extension of national security authorities into new issue areas, application of these authorities to impose significant enforcement actions, and dramatic instances of intervention in investment and business on national security grounds. Recent developments include, among others:

• Extension of U.S. regulatory authority to new issue areas, including outbound investment screening, Infrastructure as a Service (“IaaS”), Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) frontier capabilities, U.S. sensitive data, and non-U.S. software applications (among others)
• Initiative by the U.S. Government to use a combination of the Foreign Direct Product Rule (“FDPR”), export licenses, sanctions, and enforcement authorities to deny adversaries’ access to advanced computing and semiconductor technology and capabilities, wherever they are manufactured or operated
• Use of statutory and regulatory authorities to require TikTok either to be divested from its Chinese owner or banned in the U.S., and to halt Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel
• Two major defense trade compliance enforcement consent agreements issued by the U.S. Department of State, against Boeing and Raytheon
• Unprecedented Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (“CFIUS”) enforcement actions, including a $60 million fine against T-Mobile for National Security Agreement compliance violations
• Imposition of “CFIUS-style” mitigation requirements as conditions for deal approval by Canadian and European investment screening authorities  

While this dynamic environment presents challenges for business and investment, it also presents opportunities for companies, organizations, investors, and counsel who engage and adapt.

What You Will Learn

This one-day conference will bring together industry, financial, regulatory, and policy experts; attorneys and professional service providers; U.S. and foreign Government officials; and corporate and organization executives who operate at the intersection of policy, technology, trade, and finance to provide interdisciplinary insight into the risks and opportunities of a dynamic world. The conference will be comprised of seven interactive panel discussions by industry-leading experts: including panels focused on policy and regulatory developments, practical application and strategies, and a look at what’s next in the dynamic policy risk environment.