In August 2025, Dr Oliver Hartwich delivered the inaugural Da Vinci Lecture at the Portfolio Construction Forum Strategies Summit, an essay called Leonardo’s Legacy. That lecture attempted something ambitious – to trace the civilisational architecture that connected the Renaissance humanists to our present moment, and to explain how that structure was failing us.

The diagnosis in Leonardo’s Legacy identified five interconnected crises: eroding trust in institutions; decay at the institutional core; a civilisation so materially comfortable it had become complacent about the conditions sustaining it; a retreat from reason masquerading as wisdom; and, a hollowing of Western self-confidence.

Leonardo’s Legacy ended with a warning. The rules that had governed the international order for four centuries were being quietly emptied of content. The architecture was still standing but the foundations were shifting.
Six months later, that warning looks timid.

In the first three weeks of January 2026, the President of the United States demanded territorial control of Greenland, ordered the military capture of a sitting head of state, received a Nobel Peace Prize medal as thanks for the operation, and imposed tariffs on eight allied nations to compel the sale of sovereign territory. All these events happened in three weeks. They were not aberrations. They were the new pattern.

This essay picks up where Leonardo’s Legacy left off. The diagnosis remains the same. But this time, we attempt an answer to the practical question – what should investors do now? The thesis is stated without qualification. Investors must adapt to a more tribal, less rational world. Unfortunately, this is not a forecast of what might happen. It describes the world we already inhabit.