Before the First World War, Europe existed under what appeared to be a stable, even prosperous imperial order. Leaders across the continent believed that even if conflict broke out, it would be localized, brief, and easily manageable.
They were catastrophically wrong, and the most dangerous moment was precisely when everyone still believed the situation could be controlled. Today, as global capital begins to retreat, it is not merely a market signal but a profound signal of civilizational turning.
In traditional financial markets, holding cash is typically read as conservatism, signaling hesitation or even a missed opportunity. However, at genuine historical inflection points, cash becomes a judgment about the uncertainty of the coming order and a fundamental reassessment of risk.
An Unusual Investor Consensus
Recently, an unusual consensus has been forming among the world's most prominent investors. Warren Buffett, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Peter Thiel—investors of vastly different styles and generations—have all made remarkably similar moves at the same moment.
These financial titans are dramatically increasing their cash positions and actively withdrawing from public markets. This is highly unlikely to be a mere coincidence; rather, it is a stark signal of our changing times.
At Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett raised his cash and short-term Treasury holdings to approximately $380 billion ahead of his retirement. This represents nearly 30% of his total assets, sitting far above his historical average.
The implicit message from Omaha is clear: it has become incredibly difficult to find long-term opportunities worth committing to at scale. Druckenmiller similarly reduced his exposure to technology stocks sharply, quietly liquidating what had been core artificial intelligence positions.
Thiel went even further, using his massive fund to clear out virtually all publicly disclosed equity holdings. Interpreting these aggressive moves simply as a reaction to market overvaluation severely underestimates their broader geopolitical significance.
The End Of A Cycle Looks Like Prosperity
Ray Dalio has long argued that reserve-currency empires tend to display three consistent features during their late stages. These include unsustainable debt levels, extreme wealth concentration that raises internal social tension, and polarized political systems that lose decision-making effectiveness.
Crucially, these symptoms do not suddenly appear when the crisis erupts; they appear while the surface still looks remarkably strong. That is what makes the end of an economic cycle so deceptive: the underlying structure begins to loosen precisely when everything still appears powerful.
Dalio identifies five primary forces that drive the rise and fall of nations: economic cycles, internal wealth distribution, external geopolitical competition, technological change, and environmental factors. Examined against the present moment, all five forces are shifting simultaneously.
Global debt remains fundamentally unresolved while internal political divisions deepen across Western democracies. China's rapid rise presents a sustained structural challenge to the existing international order, while the AI revolution actively reshapes global power distribution.
Meanwhile, climate change introduces unpredictable external shocks into a system already under immense strain. When multiple massive cycles overlap like this, the result tends to be a violent structural break rather than a linear adjustment.
Exiting An Outdated Assumption
Among these financial moves, Thiel's SEC-disclosed liquidation of public equity positions is the most symbolically significant. Reducing a portfolio to near-zero in public markets is not a comment on price, but a direct question about the stability of the system itself.
For decades, global capital markets rested on the implicit premise that capital could operate smoothly beyond geopolitics. Investors assumed markets could function independently of states and that technology companies could grow across borders without constraint.
That foundational premise is now rapidly eroding. Supply chain fragmentation, technology decoupling and the militarization of AI mean that technology companies are no longer purely commercial entities.
These firms have become active participants in complex contests between sovereign states. Thiel's deep involvement with Palantir Technologies—a firm whose business is tightly bound to U.S. defense—reflects his consistent worldview that the most strategically valuable technology strengthens state capacity.
The more accurate reading of Thiel's market exit is that he is abandoning an outdated assumption about global stability. When the premises of globalization begin to fail, the most sensitive capital always moves first.
From Efficiency To Security
The past three decades of globalization were organized almost entirely around efficiency, prioritizing lowest cost, greatest scale, and maximum speed. However, the era we are now entering is organized strictly around national security and geopolitical competition.
Capital is no longer simply repricing expected returns; it is actively repricing policy risk, great-power rivalry, and institutional stability. In this new security era, critical infrastructure, defense, energy, and local industrial capability will be aggressively repriced upward.
This massive shift raises a pointed question for Taiwan's economic future. Does the competitive advantage Taiwan built in contract manufacturing and semiconductor supply chains still hold in a world being reorganized around strict sovereignty?
When Buffett, Druckenmiller, and Thiel raise their cash positions simultaneously, they are preserving crucial optionality. This cash gives them the capacity to choose again when the shape of the new global order finally becomes clearer.
Capital markets still speak the optimistic language of valuation and growth, but the real world has reverted to the older language of power and security. When war and power competition return to center stage, global capital does not remain indifferent.
*The author is the founder and CEO of Kneron and holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA. Republished with permission. （Related： Internal Friction Mutes KMT Lawmakers In Crucial Defense Budget Debate ｜ Latest ）
