Kamath drew a parallel between the functioning of financial markets and geopolitical systems, emphasising that both ultimately rely on confidence.As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes information flows and political systems face rising strain, historian and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari has warned that the real risk to global stability may lie in the gradual erosion of institutional trust.
Speaking with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Harari said that large scale human cooperation has historically depended less on force and more on shared belief in institutional frameworks. Financial systems, nation states and legal structures function because people collectively trust narratives that extend beyond individual leaders, he said.
“Humans control the world not because we are stronger than other animals, but because we cooperate better. And cooperation depends on storytelling,” Harari said.
The conversation comes at a time when geopolitical tensions, political polarisation and declining public confidence in institutions are becoming more visible across major economies.
Kamath drew a parallel between the functioning of financial markets and geopolitical systems, emphasising that both ultimately rely on confidence.
“If trust is the foundation of finance, it is also the foundation of geopolitics,” Kamath said, underscoring how sentiment and belief systems influence market behaviour as much as macroeconomic fundamentals.
The discussion also turned to the role of emerging AI systems in shaping information ecosystems and authority structures. Beyond automation and productivity gains, Harari suggested that the deeper question is how societies preserve human agency and shared truth in an environment where machines increasingly generate content, narratives and decision inputs.
For founders and technology builders, the conversation highlights a growing structural risk: as AI tools scale the production of information, the reliability of digital narratives and the institutions built on them could come under greater pressure. That, in turn, may have downstream implications for markets, governance models and platform trust.
The episode forms part of the People by WTF podcast hosted by Kamath.
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