Carmen Hett

Technological breakthroughs are advancing at an unprecedented pace, driven by the rapid maturation of university-led research and industry partnerships. As fintech innovation accelerates in the areas of AI, digital assets, and digital transformation, collaborations between universities and industry players—combined with the development of real-world use cases—have become essential in empowering next-generation talent, creating new commercial solutions, and enhancing innovation capabilities within financial services. These efforts not only enhance the efficiency of humanitarian aid but also have the potential to address the sector’s most pressing and underfunded challenges.

This panel brings together leaders from academia, banking, and corporate treasury in the humanitarian sector to explore how industry-research collaboration can drive technological transformation, accelerate fintech innovation, and provide real-world experiences to the innovators of tomorrow.

In moments where diplomacy fails and economic instruments lose traction, the unthinkable—the outbreak of global conflict—must be considered as strategic foresight in a public multi-stakeholder debate. The possibility of systemic financial collapse triggered by a combination of escalating trade wars, sovereign debt spirals, currency devaluation, and geopolitical proxy war hotspots spiralling into a global military conflict is no longer remote. The question is no longer if but when we must confront cascading failure scenarios—and how well our financial systems are prepared to endure and rebuild.

In March 2025, the European Union issued formal guidance for its 450 million citizens to prepare for wartime conditions, following earlier warnings from NATO leadership. These developments are not isolated; they reflect a deeper pattern: deteriorating global governance and security, disrupted trade and supply chains, politicised capital flows, technological disruption, and military escalation across multiple regions.

Should a full-spectrum crisis occur—reaching as far as market seizures, infrastructure compromise, or even nuclear deployment—what financial infrastructure, if any, remains viable? And more critically: what systems can support _recovery_?

This roundtable addresses the serious, strategic challenge of financial survivability. We ask:

• Is our global financial infrastructure resilient enough to withstand systemic rupture?
• What are the weak spots and central points of failure in the current financial systems?
• Can decentralised protocols—once theorised by Paul Baran to survive Cold War devastation—serve as functional fallback systems today?
• If decentralised systems—public, permissionless, and antifragile by design—are viable tools for a post-collapse economic recovery capable of preserving financial continuity, how can we strategically integrate them with the current financial infrastructure today?

This discussion brings together economists, technologists, policymakers, and financial strategists across public and private sectors to interrogate the real-world feasibility of decentralised financial lifeboats—not as ideological and academic alternatives to the system, but as critical infrastructure in scenarios where the system itself ceases to function.