Europe Inc. waking up from Davos

Why I'm doing the "Augmented Ideas" project

It was three years ago that I published my first post for Augmented Ideas on Substack. I thought I would be publishing once per week, but that did not happen.

It’s been a tumultuous crisis week for Europe, where the Greenland question could have led to a wide range of outcomes at Davos 2026. Anything could have transpired if you cast a wide net and took in a range of opinions and predictions from analysts, business leaders, and politicians. And yet, we go into the weekend with a Greenland framework agreement in the works after Trump met Mark Rutte, ‘Europe's whisperer-in-chief’. Mark Rutte works on the submarine principle, according to a European diplomat who knows him well. “You stay below the surface, don’t make waves, and surface only when you absolutely need to, to get something done.”