The way that poker is played today is light years from how it was done in the days of the Wild West and gambling in saloons. I have had a lot of success playing cards but 99 per cent of the decisions that I make are detailed mental calculations based on game theory – not the result of quick wits and intuition. Whether at the poker table or the negotiating table, if you fly by the seat of your pants, you will get crushed.

I learned early on that in poker you need to bluff. A lot. Bluffing is a crucial strategy, as much in cards as in negotiations. Studying game theory was the key to learning how to do it well. It’s how I figured out the best way to play certain combinations of cards to get results.

Once I had grasped the theory, I realised that it wasn’t really “bluffing” as I’d thought of it at all. I was only ever making the correct plays in response to the evolving situation on the table. That discovery was very liberating for me. There’s nothing wrong with getting caught out with a bluff either. It’s all part of the game.

My doctorate was about the art of decision-making in moments of uncertainty and I worked with collaborators on Wall Street to better understand the pressures of making complex decisions in high-risk conditions in financial markets. I came to understand that high-stakes poker offers a good metaphor for life: it teaches you how to take calculated risks in everyday settings, how to think through probabilities and work out the value of those risks correctly. Above all, poker also trains you in how to deal with emotions, which is crucial if you want to be a winning player. It’s the perfect learning environment because, unlike in everyday life, you get immediate feedback on your decisions.

The lessons of poker can apply far beyond the gaming tables, whether it’s about something innocuous such as choosing which restaurant to go to for dinner or about a big, consequential life decision regarding your health. At the core, it’s all about what kinds of risks are worth taking and which aren’t. I would never fly in a helicopter, for instance, or ride a motorcycle: I have poker to thank for that because examining probabilities has now become second nature to me.

The poker skill set is helpful in trying to manage financial risk because you become better at making and executing decisions in the moment. You have to hone your ability to recognise when you’re “on tilt”, as we poker players say, which is another way of describing when you start playing poorly because your emotions have got the better of you. This is when your decision-making suffers.

These skills are more crucial than ever. To navigate risky decision-making in the current political and economic climate, I would suggest doing as much work as you can ahead of time: mock up a system in which you write down all of the possible factors that you can think of that might shape the outcome of a decision. Don’t just do this exercise mentally: put pen to paper and run through the situation in a notebook because – take it from me – otherwise you will lie to yourself. Assign probabilities and certainty scores as best and as honestly as you can. Have an open, accurate framework that you can then go back to after you make the decision and evaluate yourself.

How did you do? Did you consider all of the right factors and weight them correctly? Were those probabilities accurate? If not, how can you adjust, adapt and do better in future? My approach might sound overly cautious but it has proved successful for me. You don’t need a poker player to tell you that nothing in life is ever totally certain. So you need to hedge some of the time. And my most important lesson learned from years of personal thought, academic research and professional poker? Never, ever bet the house.

Konnikova is a professional poker player and the author of ‘The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win’, published by Penguin Press.
As told to Gregory Scruggs.

In his book The Atomic Human: Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI, Neil D Lawrence asks what artificial intelligence might mean for our identity as humans. He doesn’t believe that we should try to compete with computers, which are already able to communicate 30 million times faster than we can. He also sees plenty of scope for technology to serve people better; he cites, for example, an AI lab in Uganda that helps to reduce the impact of disasters such as floods and famines by working with the UN to offer better warning systems.

Lawrence, who is the Deepmind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge and a senior AI fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, is also dismissive of some of the dystopian visions of where this technology could take us. He questions, for instance, the possibility of artificial general intelligence – the idea that machines could master any intellectual task that a human could.

Here, he sits down with David Phelan, Monocle’s technology correspondent, to survey the road ahead.

First of all, what should I call you?
Though my official title is Deepmind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge, I don’t work for Deepmind, the Google-owned AI firm. It endowed the chair and put in a certain amount of money with which the university pays for the position. It’s a lot less money than you might think – academics are pretty cheap. I have a lot of job titles so people normally just call me Neil.

Should we be afraid of AI? In your book, you write that the possibility of machines becoming so clever that they operate beyond our control is slim.
To the extent that it could happen, it has already happened. A simplistic view of AI technologies leads to significant misunderstandings. It also propagates vivid, sci-fi-like narratives, for very human reasons. But machines going beyond our control – in banking, for instance – is an interesting issue because you’re talking about a world in which there was a whole human system of interacting with, editing and controlling data. Think of systems such as double-entry bookkeeping, in which you can train someone relatively quickly to understand what they’re doing and then they’re able to bring their whole human judgement to the task. What you’re seeing with the digital world as it stands is a disempowering of people, whether they’re in banking, law or accounting. The ability of human judgement to influence an individual decision, where the context is well understood, has been sort of eliminated.

What are the benefits of AI? How can it help us?
I use the notion of an “artificial general vehicle” in my book to show the absurdity of the idea of “artificial general intelligence”. Is there a vehicle that’s right for all circumstances, whether you want to go to the shop at the end of your road or trying to get to New York? No. There’s no such vehicle. Exactly the same is true for intelligence. Artificial general intelligence is an absurd notion and deeply misleading when it comes to how businesses should proceed.

But you can imagine that, in 10 or 20 years, everyone in a business will be able to interact with a computer and steer it as finely as the best software engineer can today. That would be a major shift in power structures: to go from being restricted to a few hyperscalers [companies with huge data centres with enormous computing resources] that are able to build large-scale software systems to things being distributed throughout organisations. That would be deeply transformative.

Are there dangers connected to AI?
Our current structures in terms of software, hardware and behaviour are now distinctly out of date. The information infrastructure has shifted so profoundly that things are now not being done correctly. The problem is that none of us knows what the correct way is.

Today there is a whole business literature around what you should do but the only thing that we really know is that those who are pronouncing what we should be doing are likely to be wrong. Well, one of them might be right – but which one? What you’re seeing is a period of uncertainty when business leaders are faced with the difficult task of making decisions about technologies with which they’re not always intimately familiar. As a result, their business judgement tends to flip: people are all in or all out. But the truth is that there’s something in between.

If I tell you to pay attention to something, that might focus your thinking but then you won’t be scanning the horizon. We want our business leaders to be horizon-scanning as well as focusing on customer needs. Taking advantage of developments such as AI requires restoring business leaders’ confidence in the fact that their fundamental intuitions about businesses and customers still hold.

However, because the information infrastructure has been roughly constant for years, most businesses have split what they do into different parts for efficiency. Unfortunately, that tends to disconnect the business from its customer base and undermine agility. In short, the opportunities are enormous but the challenge that we tend to face is around re-examining structures and the culture, and how it’s servicing customer needs.

US scientist Roy Amara once said that people tend to overestimate the impact of new technologies in the short term while underestimating their long-term effects. Is that true with AI?
Bill Gates said something similar: that things in the short term happen more slowly than you expect but, in the long term, they happen much more quickly. That’s another challenge; the type of timeframe for making decisions really sits between those two. My advice to business leaders is to refine their communication machine because that would allow them to steer around what will be a complex and evolving landscape. We can talk about making efficiencies but people know about that. It’s about how they deploy and integrate AI in existing infrastructures.

How about sectors such as healthcare and education? What opportunities can AI offer them?
People have wanted to see what benefits that it could bring for a decade but we have delivered virtually nothing because there’s a total separation between macroeconomic interventions and microeconomic need. There are disconnects between companies and their customers, and, even more seriously, disconnects between governments and citizens. To the extent that there’s something dystopian about AI, that’s the root of the issue.

In a company such as Amazon, there’s a notion that you have to dive deep when anecdotes and data are suggesting conflicting things. People lean on data too much and I have seen Jeff Bezos quoted as saying that it’s usually the anecdote that’s right.

The digital systems that we now use give people the impression that things are OK from a data perspective. That’s problematic and reflects a weird desire to centrally control everything. We know that this doesn’t work. That’s what is negatively affecting education and local authorities: the people who are at the coalface have been undermined in their ability to deliver because their tools have become separated from something that, say, a normal teacher can work with. A nurse, like my wife, might spend 30 per cent of her time on data entry.

AI offers an enormous opportunity to put that right. People could sit down with a nurse and look at their day job today and give them a series of tools that could quite quickly be designed to support them in that data entry. We need a world where that nurse is capable of building that type of service themselves. And that’s a fundamental shift in our information infrastructure, which is going to take time. So, if deployed in a different way – not centralised but in smaller pockets – AI could have a significant impact.

Where do things need to change?
The ability to work with all of this innovation in software is currently guarded by a few digital providers. While they’re accruing power, the rest of us aren’t able to grow and benefit in terms of productivity. This has already affected health, education and social care. We are beholden to what large hyperscalers choose to deploy and they’re stuck in that loop. We need innovation by those who understand the role, the job and how to make things better, and AI is an extraordinary route to that.

Finally, a matter of manners. Should we be saying please and thank you to Alexa?
There are differing views on that. My answer is that I do because it’s about my own dignity. Voice services such as Alexa provide a human interface and play on our sense of interacting with other people. I think that means it’s keying deeply into my dignity and I don’t want to demean myself. What we see again and again with social media is that it’s degrading our social interactions. Now, I don’t know whether that’s right or wrong but it’s something that I’m thinking about. I’m choosing to say “please” – at least, when I remember.

Music and architecture are inextricably entwined. One can inform the other. As an architect, I have always felt more inspired by DJs and producers than master builders. While other creative industries, such as fashion, have far more confidence in their connection to music, the link with architecture is less defined.

This might seem surprising when you consider the way that our eyes and ears work in tandem in physical spaces. It’s a relationship that means a room or building can shape your appreciation of a piece of music and, in return, influence the way that you appreciate design.

At Soda, the architecture practice that I co-founded with Laura Sanjuan, many of our projects feature social spaces, particularly those geared around hospitality or work. These settings contain multiple ingredients that contribute to the atmosphere – and music is a key one.

Take the Sessions Arts Club in London, a restaurant that I set up with painter Jonny Gent in an 18th-century courthouse. We curated a playlist with Rob Burn, from recording studio Ten87, which manifested our sonic ideas about the mutability of a building’s atmosphere.

The restaurant has two distinct personalities, which are split between lunch and dinner service. The daytime is soundtracked by “9”, a delicate piano piece by the British multidisciplinary artist Duval Timothy. It works beautifully alongside the daylight streaming through the upper-level windows. By way of contrast, Steve Monite’s “Only You”, a 1980s Nigerian disco anthem, is perfect listening for a Friday night at a corner table. It has a smooth, flowing bassline that would easily back a romantic date or a more raucous night out with friends.

We’ve found that some of the most moving pairings of architecture and music are those that don’t necessarily enhance the function of a space but contrast with it. For example, as part of the London Festival of Architecture in 2018, a choir piece was specially composed for the Silver Building at the city’s Royal Docks, a brutalist former beer factory that Soda converted into creative workspaces. It was organised by producer Luke Neve and composer Benjamin Tassie, taking a poem by Annie Freud that was sung by choral group Musarc, whose polished performance was unexpected in such rough, unfinished surroundings.

The flexible workspaces that we created for The Office Group and MYO required a different approach again. Here, as part of an ongoing partnership, we thought about ways that we could use the soundtrack to strike a balance between communal and intimate spaces. We needed to ensure that the soft tones of the background music – essential for working environments – were in harmony with the material palette of natural timbers and warm colours.

We found that the music of US singer-songwriter Erykah Badu worked perfectly. There is an elegant simplicity to many of her songs – including “Incense”, a celestial number featuring a theremin and harp – that was perfect for the space.

Bearing all this in mind, it’s worth noting that there’s no formula for pairing architecture and music. Our latest office design was based on a mid-century modern aesthetic – but that doesn’t mean that you have to play jazz from the same era. No one wants that. As with most creative work, the expected can be boring. Rules are made to be broken.

Zürich Art Weekend is a 3-day programme of exhibitions and events taking place across 71 venues in the city from 13 to 15 June. Visitors can walk through exhibitions with the artists, follow curators on guided tours or attend late-night gallery openings. There are also performances, book launches, DJ sets and more. Here, founding executive director, Charlotte von Stotzingen, talks about her goal of drawing back the curtain on a world that can feel exclusive, bringing together every level of Zürich’s art scene and why you should always plan a few surprises. 

What was the idea behind launching Zürich Art Weekend eight years ago?
The idea was to create a platform in Zürich for discoveries and encounters. We wanted visitors not just to see great art in the best possible setting but also to give them the possibility to engage with artists, curators and thinkers in a direct way. That’s why, from the start, we not only set up exhibitions but also built up a programme of talks, behind-the-scenes guided tours and collection visits – opening doors that are normally not accessible.

How are you engaging all levels of Zürich’s art scene?
In Zürich we have major players with global reach – Kunsthalle Zürich – and on the other hand, independent spaces such as Stiftung Binz39, Tableau Zürich and Jevouspropose, which are hosting emerging and underrepresented voices. All of this is in the context of the deep-rooted trust in Swiss quality and rigour. We want people to feel welcome and intellectually engaged at the same time. 

What’s the importance of having an interdisciplinary element to the programme?
Since 2018, we’ve been programming conversations and talks linking art and science, art and music, art and politics. This year we’ll again have our interdisciplinary talk series at the Luma Westbau and Schwarzescafé with Taloi Havini, a Papua New Guinean-Australian artist, who will be in conversation with curators Mario Schulze and Sarine Waltenspül. Another talk will be with the UK-Kenyan artist Grace Ndiritu together with Louise Benson from ArtReview. 

There are some secret exhibition venues that visitors can only find out about by texting a special number. Why did you include this element of mystery?
I like surprises. And we collaborate a lot with the Offspace in Zürich, they’re the most creative people. Some locations will be revealed each day on the spot. There are other formats too, such as Spirit Music, which blends art, music and film in a huge space. It’s called Gallery House Zürich and will bring together exhibitors such as Fitzpatrick Gallery, Blue Velvet and Lovay Fine Arts, along with non-profit organisations such as Parkett, Studioli Roma and Sentiment. They will be presenting monumental installations and blending different exhibitors in one single space. 

What’s the VIP programme like?
We’re launching community events whereby museum directors, curators, artists and collectors can interact with one another in closed sessions. They will then reunite for a big brunch on Sunday. The shared experience and exchange of ideas will hopefully enable them to continue their endeavours and address the challenges of the art ecosystem today, maybe with new approaches. 

How do you think Zürich’s art scene has changed since you’ve been running the event?
Zürich has always been an art capital but it was somehow under the radar, and that’s what we wanted to crack. Over the course of the past eight years, we’ve really worked on bringing that whole ecosystem together. Zürich is small, so the connections between major global institutions and experimental, fiercely independent spaces can be created quickly. What we wanted to offer was giving people the possibility, within a few days, to exchange and discover the voices that are shaping contemporary art today. 

After a day spent at Zürich Art Weekend, where are your favourite places for a drink or dinner?
The amazing restaurant Rosso has fresh produce and a not-too-long menu, which means that it’s easier to make up your mind. Also, because it’s central and just lovely with the Max Ernst fresco, I love hanging out at Kunsthaus Bar.
 
To enjoy Monocle’s full city guide to Zürich (featuring more on Kunsthaus), click here.

Helen Brocklebank is the chief executive of Walpole, the official sector body for the UK’s luxury industry. As the wider industry faces economic uncertainty, there are still opportunities aplenty if you know where to look. Here, we talk to Brocklebank about emerging trends and Walpole’s role in supporting UK talent. 

What trends in the industry are you seeing emerge? 
From the customer’s point of view, the origin and personality of the product’s place of production is increasingly important. There are very interesting national characteristics in the premium market. French luxury is opulent and there is an element of art for art’s sake. The Italian economy is slightly broader with many entrepreneurs and founders of brands such as Prada and Armani. Then there are other sectors including design, hospitality and gastronomy. 

The UK industry is broad as well, with 12 sectors. There are the personal luxury brands, which include Burberry, Manolo Blahnik, Mulberry and Dunhill, all the Savile Row tailors, Church’s shoes, Boodles and Jessica McCormack among others. But the biggest sector is premium automotive: think world-class manufacturers such as Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin and Land Rover. 

Then there’s food and drink (scotch whisky is the biggest UK export in that category), hospitality, beauty and fragrance. The idea of taking into consideration where something is made is a real theme in all of these categories. 

The market is much tighter this year for premium goods. Of course, there is an external context with geopolitical upheaval and financial turbulence. In the UK, of the £81bn (€96.2bn) value that the industry has, £56bn (€66.5bn) is destined for export. So international customers – particularly from the US, the Middle East and APAC – are hugely important. When one catches a cold, or all as they have recently, that causes disruption. 

During this global recalibration of the industry, there has been a period of complacency. The slowdown has been a shock but one that brands have leaned into very quickly. This is why we have seen numerous international labels change creative directors. It’s because creativity is the secret sauce of luxury.

Constraint is the godmother of ingenuity. You have to focus on the true fundamentals of premium craft, which is creativity, extraordinary craftsmanship and quality that gives customers a reason to believe in provenance. Scarcity is a factor as well, a term rarely mentioned in the business recently. 

The UK’s luxury industry is uniquely placed to win in this market because of its unique entrepreneur-led brands that value new ideas. 

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Which sectors do you see new opportunities in? 
Transformative luxury or the idea of transforming the self by optimising our bodies. At the extreme end, it’s about biohacking and extending lifespan. But how can we make sure that our life is as rich as possible in every way? It’s where medicine and premium care meet. When you’ve got everything you can own, luxury becomes what money can’t buy. 

In this slightly constricted market, we’re still seeing growth in the top end. About one per cent of the consumer base is responsible for 40 per cent of purchases. Every brand is looking to see how they can better understand the needs and passions of their very important customers (VICs) and how to deliver products in a way that feels meaningful. Personalisation of experience relies on knowing the buyer’s behaviour and how it changes according to geographic region. What a VIC wants in the US will be different to those in China.

There are big opportunities despite the tariffs and the Chinese market. China accounts for 11 per cent of the UK’s luxury exports and it’s a rapidly developing economy that is growing by five per cent a year. There’s no systemic fault in China’s economy – it’s an 18-month to two-year problem. So how do we make better and meaningful inroads into their market? The consumer base is there, so it’s up to the brands to drive the beauty and message behind a product. 

How much more relevant will the ability to cross disciplines become?
For any successful label, the starting point is the customer’s lifestyle. You must ask: how can we show up in as many places in their life as possible? Prada now creates tableware and Armani Casa has been around for a long time. Even Bentley has a design division. 

It will be interesting to see how that cross pollination continues. It’s good to know how you can become part of your customer’s world. With a manufacturing facility’s skills, you could be making a beautiful chair while also making a great pair of shoes. Johnstons of Elgin produce incredibly high-quality cashmere in Scotland for all the top-end international brands but they also do the most luscious interiors. It was able to translate its gorgeous cashmere blankets into an armchair, curtains and even wall coverings. 

There is a balance to preserve; a brand shouldn’t forget its core and try to do too many things. But you have to be playful. Luxury must not forget that it is about joy and fun. 

How does Walpole support the luxury industry in the UK? 
Walpole is the only sector body in the country that acts as a collective voice for the boutique market. We don’t have an LVMH or a Kering – we have lots of extraordinary independent brands. As a convening body, Walpole’s power to bring them together is incredibly important. At a time of great challenge, unity and knowing that you can win as a group is more important than ever. 

Our mission is to protect, promote and develop the business of luxury. Last year, the industry was valued at £81bn (€96bn). It will continue to develop but if we don’t work as an organisation, we can compromise that great growth trajectory. 

Politics really matters right now, so we have been focusing on the US tariffs – particularly in getting them reduced in the automotive sector.  We are also focused on what the government can do to mitigate the impact of those tariffs by getting tax-free shopping back so that we can compete with Europe by encouraging US customers to spend in the UK. 

Additionally, we hold events designed to feed the collective intelligence of this sector. We share with brands where the opportunities are, what the VICs are after and what the newest trends are.  

We also have a programme called Brands of Tomorrow that nurtures up-and-coming labels and creates an organic pipeline for growth. It has been 18 years since we began the programme and 150 brands have come through it, 90 per cent of which are still in business. We’re bucking the trend of early-stage failure. The enthusiasm for new names is where the UK can win. If you’re a sophisticated customer, finding something new and interesting that is also beautifully designed is a form of luxury.

Saager Dilawri, founder of multibrand boutique Neighbour, first set foot in the Gastown district of Vancouver in 2011. He sought to create a sartorial hub for men who were interested in craftsmanship and design – only without the pretention. “Going into shops in New York, they felt a little too cool for school,” he tells Monocle. “I wanted an approachable shop, where someone could come in and talk to me about clothes and I could learn from them, too.” At the time, there were only a handful of menswear boutiques in the area, focusing on streetwear, premium luxury or Americana. “I’ve always been more into Scandinavian design and minimalism, and I could offer [customers] a different option,” he adds. 

He has since introduced numerous brands that had never previously been on Canadian shores, including Swedish stalwart Our Legacy. His obsession with high-quality fabrics also led him to Japan, where he forged partnerships with labels such as Auralee and Comoli. “Everything fits so well with Comoli. It’s all black and navy but still super interesting,” he says. “It always comes down to the fabric in the end.” Dilawri also highly rates brands closer to home, such as San Francisco-based label Evan Kinori. “I’m lways in awe of everything Evan does – whether it’s his dyeing process, learning about the weavers or where he’s sourcing the materials,” he adds. 

For a business that operates very much locally (Dilawri and his wife, Karyna Schultz, have gone on to open three more shops within a 100-metre radius of each other), it has a decidedly global perspective – a reflection of the diverse makeup of Vancouver and Dilawri’s own scope of influence. His e-commerce shop, often featuring atmospheric imagery from Tokyo’s yokocho alleys, has become a point of reference for menswear veterans around the world. “I’ve always been interested in photography and, when we started, most brands didn’t have an online shop,” he says. “That gave us an opportunity.”

There’s a renewed appreciation for the neighbourhood shop, for intimate retail experiences and brands that prioritise craft over scale. As far as Dilawri is concerned, this marriage of storytelling and artisanal goods is what keeps customers returning to Neighbour, and what drives the future of the broader menswear industry. “People want something just a little bit different but not out there,” he says. “They want to know why they are investing $500 (€437) in a shirt. They want to know the story behind the brand and the makers. That’s not going away.” 
shopneighbour.com

“This exercise is about making the unreal feel real” says Major Hamish Waring as he stares intently at a map dotted with dozens of red, blue and yellow pins. The softly spoken British Army officer is speaking to Monocle in a bunker hidden deep within a forest near Estonia’s border with Russia. Waring’s battalion, the 2nd Scots Battle Group, is taking part in Exercise Hedgehog, the largest-ever military exercise to take place on Estonian soil, featuring more than 16,000 troops from Nato countries including the UK, France, Canada, the US and Sweden. “We’re here to simulate defending Estonia from an aggressor,” Waring adds. The current “aggressors” to which he is referring are Swedish units trying to infiltrate the base. Nato’s newest member applied to join the alliance in May 2022, three months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and was finally admitted in March 2024. Since then, Swedish soldiers have been attached to Nato’s Forward Land Forces (FLFs), units deployed in advanced positions near the alliance’s 2,500km (1,600 miles) border with Russia. 

It is the FLFs that make up Hedgehog’s personnel and the key aim of the three-day exercise is to improve interoperability. The size and military budgets of Nato’s 32 member states dwarf those of its most likely adversary – but Russia’s forces have the edge in combat experience and the advantage of a common language and military culture. Part of Nato’s challenge in meeting the threat from Moscow is to better integrate its members’ myriad languages, combat systems and procedures. “The biggest challenges are practical,” says Waring. “It might seem small but a misinterpreted message on a battlefield can have serious consequences.” Language adds a layer of complexity that could cause a breakdown in key moments. “The British aren’t the best at languages,” Waring chuckles. “And while many allies speak excellent English, there are nuances – especially in tactical terms – that need clarity.” Lieutenant Colonel Henrik Rosdahl, commander of the Swedish South Skåne Regiment P7, echoes Waring. “We’ve all trained extensively but integrating forces with different languages and cultures is like learning to dance together when you each know different steps.”

Estonia’s position near a heavily populated part of Russia makes it particularly vulnerable to attack. “For Estonia, the threat is real and immediate. These exercises are not theoretical drills but essential preparation,” explains Kristi Raik, a Baltic security expert and director of the International Centre for Defence and Security, a Tallinn-based think-tank. “They signal that Nato is united and ready to defend its members.” The Baltic country has taken serious measures to enhance its defence capabilities since 2022. “Estonia has pledged to up its defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, which is among the highest [per capita] in Nato,” says Raik. “They’ve also developed rapid-evacuation procedures and integrated their civilian population into defence plans.” Alongside simulated military operations, Exercise Hedgehog also includes an evacuation drill as well as a first-ever test of the nation’s public-alarm system, which simulates how civilians and military personnel would respond to sudden alerts. Everyone with a mobile phone in the country, including Monocle, received a message from the Estonian Defence Forces at 15.00 on 14 May that read, “Public warning system test – no real danger!” The authorities were careful not to incite panic, and the exercise was about testing whether the nation-wide alarm system would work in times of real peril. “It’s about readiness – making sure that everyone knows what to do if the worst happens,” Raik adds. All did not go smoothly, however. There were considerable delays across Estonia in sounding the sirens. The Estonian Defence Forces later admitted that only two-thirds of the alarms triggered on time.

Most Estonians were likely unfazed by the warnings. As in other Baltic countries and Finland, there is a strong sense of crisis preparedness here. More than 80 per cent of the population is in favour of taking up arms to defend the country against an attack, and there’s widespread support for increased military spending and large-scale exercises such as Hedgehog. The combat in Ukraine has demonstrated that modern warfare can be both attritional and technologically advanced. “The conflict has taught us invaluable lessons,” Waring says. “It has shown the importance of rapid deployment, interoperability and sustaining supply chains under pressure.” To that end, the UK maintains a brigade – roughly 5,000 soldiers – on 30 days’ notice to deploy to the Baltic. “We’re ready to move here on short notice to support Estonia and other allies,” he says. The speed of this deployment was also put to the test during Hedgehog. In under 48 hours, a 1,700-strong battle group deployed from the UK to Estonia via rail, sea, road and air. “A credible deterrent requires more than presence – it needs the capability to reinforce quickly and effectively,” Captain Marcus Worthington from the British Army tells Monocle as his platoon of Royal Engineers practises dismantling a roadside improvised explosive device (IED).

The kind of rapid deployment that Worthington is referring to is at the heart of Nato’s plans for the defence of its eastern flank. At the alliance’s 2022 Madrid Summit, it announced a shift in its strategy from the so-called “tripwire” approach to a more robust posture. In practice, this means pledging to radically increase Nato troops’ presence near its borders, meaning that it can deploy soldiers quickly in order to defend every inch of ground from the first hour of an attack, instead of letting territory fall into enemy hands and then liberating it later. It’s a tough ask, as Raik points out, given the hundreds of thousands of troops that Russia would be able to deploy to the Baltics (were they not holed up in Ukraine). “But it’s a step in the right direction”, she admits. “As the war in Ukraine has shown, taking back conceded territory from Russians is challenging”. 

Estonia’s defence strategy relies heavily on reservists, civilians who have completed mandatory military training. In 1991, Estonia introduced compulsory military service for men, today the country has 230,000 trained reservists, nearly one-fifth of the population. Integrating them into Nato is one of Hedgehog’s main objectives. “I did my military service three years ago and was called upon to refresh my training at Hedgehog,” 21-year-old IT student Peeter Lääniste tells Monocle in a makeshift lookout post. He’ll miss two weeks of university, meaning that he will have to make up for lost time by taking several exams – but did not hesitate when called upon. “Living next door to Russia, you have no excuses to stay at home during exercises like these,” he says. While we’re speaking, a squadron of Nato fighter jets booms overhead. Lieutenant Colonel Madis Koosa, who grew up next to an airbase during the Soviet occupation of Estonia, gets visibly emotional. “As a child I used to hate the sound of the Soviet planes but this sound that we just heard, to me that is the sound of freedom.”

At its core, Hedgehog is as much a political exercise as a military one. “We want to show that Nato stands united,” Koosa says. “With forces from across the alliance, including new member states, we want Russia to know that we stand together. An attack against Estonia is an attack against the mightiest military alliance ever to exist.” Despite the unified front, Nato faces significant challenges. Disagreements at the highest level, especially between western Europe and the US, make the alliance appear in disarray. With US military support no longer a cast-iron guarantee, there is a sense that European countries need to shoulder more responsibility by upping defence spending. Then there’s the material factor. On paper, Nato is far superior to its adversary but the fact is that it has never fought a war as a single force. Meanwhile, Russia brings combat experience and troops battle-hardened from combat in Ukraine. “The question is whether Nato’s political will and military readiness will hold up in a crisis,” Raik says. “The exercises are vital but only part of the picture.” 

Is Nato ready for war against Russia? As Raik points out, the consensus among security analysts (at least in this part of Europe), is that a lot depends on how the war in Ukraine plays out. “Putin has made clear that he sees the Baltics as being within the Russian sphere of influence”, she says. “If he has his way in Ukraine, he won’t stop there”. According to Raik, Baltic countries such as Estonia might be next in line. “If Russia sees Nato as weak and not able to defend its Baltic members, it might be tempted to attack”. That’s why exercises like Hedgehog are so crucial. Towards the end of the third day, Monocle meets Fusilier Parker, a fresh-faced 19-year-old Scotsman hiding from drones piloted by Ukrainians with recent battle experience. “This feels more real than any training that I’ve done before,” he says. “But we are ready, come what may”. That, in a sense, is the message that Exercise Hedgehog is hoping to send: that Nato, for all its infighting, is getting better at speaking with one voice.

You can use our mews as a cut through if you are on foot or a bicycle but a strategically placed bollard means that cars can’t. So, apart from the occasional van dropping off a delivery, it’s mostly car-free and echoes with a shifting tide of voices – young children being dropped off at the nearby primary school in the morning, a tipsy drinker from the neighbouring pub making an apologetic call home at 23.00. I love it all. This is life in the centre of the city. Though, it’s a little irksome when someone sits on my doorstep to smoke a spliff. Well, they never offer to share.

On Saturday afternoon my neighbour Frank spotted me and laughed at my appearance (an increasingly common occurrence these days). My hands were covered with soil and I had managed to smear compost across my face. On someone younger this might have been a bit of a marine-on-exercises look but, dressed as I was in an outfit of old, clashing gym gear, it was more Dad’s Army. “Shall I take a picture?” he asked. “I see all those nice ones of you on Instagram but I could show people the real Monocle editor in chief.”

My fetching appearance was the result of a day spent tending to the pots of plants that pack out the front of our house – and the three neighbouring ones that I had been given permission (I think) to help colonise. It’s the point in the year when irises are closing down their show and the agapanthuses are about to take to the stage. There’s also oleander, silver birches, grasses and lavender. As I moved things around and repotted shrubs that had outgrown their digs, a female blackbird would dart down to see if I had perhaps dislodged a snail. It’s not perfect by any means but people stop to smell a flower and run a hand over the leaves.

We’ve been running a series of talks at The Ned in the City of London thanks to a nice man there called Victor. On Monday he invited us – Josh, Carlota, Lex and me – to talk about our forthcoming Quality of Life Survey. The categories are pleasingly shaken up this year (just wait until you see our July/August double issue. And, hey, why not subscribe?). The audience had great questions, we talked about trust and about how a fear of crime risks curtailing your freedoms (in London you’d be a fool for taking your phone out on the street without first checking for muggers on e-bikes). And, I explained how, for me, some of this was eased into the background by focusing on the small acts of urban generosity that happen in a city such as London every day – the shopkeeper who puts out a bowl of water for a parched pooch or a bench for seniors keen to pause. Or people placing plants outside their homes. Tiny interventions that can, sometimes, humanise the city. Make you see that most people are good.

A short digression – we’ll be back on the main path in seconds, promise. I was recently interviewing a candidate for a role at Monocle and asked them to explain how their title was produced. They told me about their policy of “publish, then polish” – in short, whack copy up on the website and try to tidy it up in the days that followed. Then they said, “Do you think anyone cares about how things look these days?” Although my neighbour Frank might have some disquieting photographic evidence to the contrary, I do care, actually, and I do think that we all respond to moments of considered beauty.
 
And now here comes the bit where we can tie this column together and I can let you get on with your day.

For Thursday’s outing of our cities podcast The Urbanist, I interviewed David Godshall at the Californian landscape architecture firm Terremoto. The company makes amazing public spaces, including in Denver where it has engineered a piece of rewilding in the heart of downtown (you can also read an interview with Godshall here). It’s work that is underpinned by deep thinking and a radical manifesto for change in the landscape industry. But Terremoto is also a group of people who know that, yes, we respond to beauty, that plants have the power to transform our cities. And that communities, citizens and workers need to be pulled into this story. And blackbirds too.

PS If you care about cities, about doing things differently, come to this year’s Quality of Life Conference. It’s in Barcelona from 4 to 6 September. And I promise to put on my nice clothes.

Native Union is the French brand that made smartphone cables and chargers a desirable design accessory – available to buy in the Apple shop – rather than freebies found in the bottom of the box. Co-founder and CEO Igor Duc built the business from Hong Kong to be close to his manufacturing partners in China. With revenues of $25m (€22m) a year, it was a winning formula until Donald Trump became president again. These are testing times for the leader of any business that makes all of its products in Asia and sells them in the US, Native Union’s largest market. Tariffs are tying Duc’s company in knots, prompting him to develop other consumer markets outside of the US and to find manufacturers in southeast Asia. “It’s a very hard moment,” says Duc, while sitting on a rock in Hong Kong looking out at the South China Sea.

Monocle joins the surfer and watersports enthusiast for an early-morning paddle around the rocky coastline near his home in Clearwater Bay. As the sun shines through the clouds, the 44-year-old Parisian claims to be a little older and wiser during Trump’s second term: less prone to panic, better equipped to avoid burnout and more able to tackle stressful situations. The serial entrepreneur also hopes to solve the universal issue of technology addiction. “I want to create a new product to rebalance tech usage,” he says. “No one has made one yet. If they had, I’d be using it.”

Waking up at 06.45 to answer emails on his phone, his day finishes in the same way at 23.30. “The problem of having a global business is that there is zero downtime,” says Duc, listing some of the ways that he has tried to disconnect, from using a dumbphone to locking his devices in a glass jar. For now, nature and sport are the best tonic. Duc moved to a seaside village in eastern Hong Kong 12 years ago, right before the birth of the first of his three children. Kayaks and paddleboards line the beach, while wild boars can be heard grunting in the forested hills. 

Technology addiction has been on Duc’s mind for the past five years. “I was extremely close to burnout,” he says. There is an obvious irony in that the businessman who has made a big success out of connecting us with technology has failed to find a way of cutting his own cord. But striking a balance between traditional and modern forms of communication strikes to the core of how Native Union began. 

Duc was running an export furniture brand when, largely for fun, he bought a traditional telephone handset from a market and connected it to his iPhone. He ended up starting a business to produce and sell the gadget with another entrepreneur whom he was sharing an office with. Native Union’s first product, the “MoshiMoshi” handset, sold three-million items in two years before being made obsolete by cheap copycats. 

Back then, the idea was to allow Blackberry and iPhone users to speak on the phone while using the screen at the same time. Now, 15 years later, Native Union is bringing back its best-selling product for the opposite reason: to allow smartphone users to focus on phone conversations and put their screens away. “The art of the conversation has been diluted,” says Duc. “When you look at the most important talks between Trump and Putin, they are still made with an ergonomic telephone. The microphone is by your mouth and you feel that you are on the phone.” 

“This one will be even more beautiful than the first one,” he says. Whether version two will be as popular is yet to be seen. At the moment, cables and chargers account for the largest chunk of the firm’s revenue. Magnetic powerbanks are the best-selling single product but that changes with each new launch. Native Union has already moved into bags and, next year, the brand will launch a portable light, which Duc already uses when working at night. 

By that point, half of all Native Union products will be made outside of China for the first time in the company’s history. Some electronic production has moved to Vietnam, while bags are made in Indonesia. It’s a de-risking strategy rather than a departure. “China is the most advanced place in the world to produce a high-quality technology product,” says Duc, who must work to Apple’s exacting standards in order to stay on the shelves of its shops. Native Union is also making an increasing number of technology-related products and small accessories for European luxury brands. Many of the big houses have come to accept that the best quality in this category is in China, even if only a few are willing to be open about it. 

As we get back on the water and begin paddling towards the beach, Duc explains that he has no plans to leave Hong Kong. Every few weeks, he boards the high-speed train from Hong Kong to China for a factory visit. “My manufacturing partners do a lot of innovation themselves, so being closer to them means that we are first to see their new materials and techniques.”

Inspiration can strike anywhere – so what turns certain unexpected places into hubs for entire industries and ideas, while other centres fade and fail? Despite the rise of remote working, proximity and placemaking still have the power to create an infrastructure for investment, collaboration and R&D.

If the question is “Where is the next Silicon Valley?” there’s currently no shortage of cities – from Hong Kong to New York – investing in their own contenders. Singapore is no different. Its new Punggol Digital District (PDD) is the island nation’s first meaningful attempt at a purpose-built start-up hub. The 50-hectare mixed-use development opened at the end of 2024 and its first tenants arrived in February this year.

With a focus on businesses in digital sectors, from robotics and AI to cybersecurity, the district is on the northeastern shore and has been hailed by prime minister Lawrence Wong as “Singapore’s first-ever smart district.” This being Singapore, there’s also a mall, as well as a hawker centre.

The PDD is a greenfield development that combines a business park with community facilities and the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) university campus. Even before opening, 65 per cent of the office spaces were snapped up; tenants include OCBC Bank, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore and blockchain solutions provider Wanxiang Singapore. But what might come as a surprise to visitors is the lack of towering skyscrapers in this high-rise city. Instead, there’s a rustle of casuarina trees from Coney Island park and an unexpectedly relaxed atmosphere in the neighbourhood that feels far removed from the densely packed Central Business District (CBD) beyond.

Steady US government backing was crucial to Silicon Valley’s early development. Singapore is similarly investing in the PDD to set it up for success, though for now things remain in the future tense. “It will be a smart and sustainable district,” says David Tan, the assistant chief executive of JTC Corporation, the government-owned body that acts as the precinct’s master-planner and developer. “In the past we used to put on the digital infrastructure after the physical infrastructure but, at Punggol, both were installed around the same time,” says Tan. This explains the pleasingly human-scale buildings and walkable spaces, freckled with greenery.

The buildings and precinct are themselves an innovation. At the core of their infrastructure and spatial design is the Open Digital Platform (ODP), a master operating system that enables everything from the lifts and the fire alarms to the air conditioning to “talk” to one another. Employing some 20,000 sensors planted across the area, the system monitors and controls various things in real time, including the temperature and streetlights.

All of that ambition, data and interactivity have proved to be a big draw for firms specialising in AI. Singapore-based robotics company DConstruct decided to shift its entire operation to PDD. “To deploy autonomous robots, you need this environment,” says its chief executive officer, Chinn Lim. His suite of robots, which are designed to assist with train inspections, deliveries and surveillance, can navigate lifts and turnstiles autonomously. For the firm, the PDD is a handy “sandbox” in which to study how humans will interact with its robots.

“We believe that the future will be more like the PDD,” says Lim. He adds that, to become a real rival to the likes of Silicon Valley, the district’s systems need to integrate with the city as a whole. A connection to a place where people want to be and live is vital to creating space for professional innovation. One of the harder-to-measure elements of Silicon Valley’s appeal to entrepreneurs is quality of life: the promise of a space where the lines between work and play can blur.

Offices today aren’t – and can’t be – sterile cubes and need to allow for more playful and informal interactions. The PDD’s solution is to be a car-lite town, where the main roads are placed at the fringes and all access roads, car parks and public transport links are underground. All of that space-saving paves the way for a handsome 800-metre boulevard that ties together offices, the campus, retail and food options, and a waterfront promenade.

“The result is a community-centric park-like district,” says Mun Summ Wong, the founding director of architecture firm WOHA, which was involved in master-planning PDD. The team has also preserved a patch of forest and transformed it into a 1.3km heritage trail (40 per cent of the district is now covered in greenery). “Through biophilic design – helping people to work closer to nature – we enhance their productivity,” says Wong. Renowned for its role in shaping iconic Singapore hotels with sky gardens, such as the award-winning Pan Pacific Orchard, WOHA has given the same restful qualities to the PDD’s office spaces, from cabana-like pods to lush courtyards.

The most significant (and elusive) piece of the puzzle for any budding start-up scene, however, is talent. Singaporean start-ups are known to err on the side of caution when it comes to risk, perhaps inhibited by higher operating costs and a relatively small domestic market. Shiyan Koh, co-founder of a global pre-seed venture fund, and Karen Tay, who coaches start-ups in the US and Singapore, write about the differences between the Bay Area and the city-state in the essay collection America: A Singapore Perspective. “Trying and failing [in Silicon Valley] are seen as valuable learning experiences rather than a judgement on someone’s competency,” they note. “Contrast this to the attitude of most Asian employers, who prefer candidates with credentials and experiences at other large companies.”

The JTC team is clear-eyed about such prevailing attitudes in the region. In the hope of increasing Singaporeans’ appetite for risk at a younger age, the developer has reached out to SIT and connected undergraduates with businesses in the new district. Multiple partnerships have also been put in place, such as OCBC’s bond-free scholarships for SIT students and its funding of a “state-of-the-art analytics and innovation lab” to provide hands-on experiences on financial-analysis tools, cutting-edge technologies and beyond.

Standing on a bridge overlooking the boulevard, JTC’s Tan describes the PDD as a “living lab”, highlighting how the ODP’s digital twin component allows everyone to test prototypes and attain actionable insights. “At the PDD, companies with new technologies can test them in a virtual environment before deployment.” His team has clearly put in place world-class infrastructure; now it’s up to entrepreneurs and students to take that and run with it.

“Instead of copying Silicon Valley,” says Tan, “we want to create our own identity.”