For internationally engaged companies, the rules of the game have been ripped up, and no one knows how they will be rewritten. International commerce hasn’t seen this level of uncertainty since the Second World War. With the US retreating from trade leadership, the challenge for the rest of the world is clear: protect the operating system of globalization before it forks into a fractured, less productive future.
It may help to think of globalization and the rules-based world trade and financial systems that support it as the world economy’s operating system: the invisible infrastructure that keeps goods, services, capital, and know-how flowing across borders.
Like any operating system, this one has an architecture. For the last few decades, it’s looked a lot like open-source software: decentralized, collaborative, and built on shared standards. But now? We’re watching it drift toward a closed-source model. And that shift is reshaping the logic of how the global economy works.
In software, open-source systems are built by communities. They’re open, flexible, and constantly improved by a broad base of contributors. They are fantastic at leveraging diverse skills and perspectives but require trust and a baseline set of rules. Think Wikipedia.
Closed-source systems, by contrast, are proprietary. They move fast, centralize control, and often deliver sleek performance, but at the cost of openness and interoperability. Think Encyclopaedia Britannica. In thinking about the contrast, an old saying comes to mind: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
That same tension is now playing out in globalization. The open trading system based on reciprocity, trust, and diffuse benefits is under pressure from protectionist policies, tech decoupling, and a return to national interest economics. Just as some firms prefer the control of closed-source code, some governments are embracing economic closure to insulate themselves from global risk.
The point isn’t that one model is always better than the other, but the trade-offs are real and becoming more visible by the day. Thinking about globalization through the lens of open versus closed systems can help us understand what’s changing and why it matters.
Two lessons emerge when we put open-source software and open trade systems side by side: one about trust and the other about the distribution of expertise and resources. They help explain how openness succeeds and why sometimes it fails.
Open systems, whether codebases or trade networks, run on trust, not goodwill alone. Software developers share code freely because they trust the system to protect their contributions. They don’t expect their work to be misused and believe that improvements will be shared and that the rules of the community won’t change suddenly. The collaborative engine stalls if contributors fear their code will be hijacked or locked behind paywalls.
The global trade system is the same. Firms invest abroad, share technology, and build global value chains because they believe the system is stable and rules-based. They count on low tariffs, predictable regulation, and respect for property rights. Firms pull back when that trust falters – when tariffs spike overnight, or supply chains are weaponized. They hedge, relocate, or reshore, and openness gives way to defensiveness.
The breakdown of trust between the US and China, the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the strategic shock of the Ukraine war have exposed the fragility of this operating system. Openness collapses when countries no longer trust each other to play fair. A once collaborative platform is becoming a contested space.
Open systems thrive when no single actor holds all the cards. In software, no one developer or company has the full range of skills to build, maintain, and scale today’s most complex systems. That’s why open-source communities, from Linux to Python to Hugging Face, are so powerful. They mobilize talent globally, allowing innovation to emerge from the edges, not just the center.
The global economy works in the same way. No country has everything it needs. Even the most advanced economies depend on others for raw materials, intermediate goods, talent, and capital. The rise of global supply chains wasn’t just about cutting costs; it was about tapping into a distributed network of expertise and resources that no single nation could replicate alone.
When capabilities are spread out and no one can go it alone, openness isn’t a luxury but a necessity. It’s the reason why globalization and open-source software scaled so quickly in the 1990s and 2000s: the world was full of underused capabilities and complementary assets. Openness unlocked them.
On the flip side, closure begins to look viable or even attractive when expertise or resources become concentrated (when, for instance, one country dominates the supply of critical minerals or semiconductors). If you control the chokepoint, closing the gate is a form of power.
In short, the more distributed the system, the greater the gains from openness. But the more asymmetric the system, the stronger the temptations to close parts (or all) of it.
Closed-source systems are proprietary. They move fast, centralize control, and often deliver sleek performance, but at the cost of openness and interoperability. Think Encyclopaedia Britannica.
In the post-Cold War era, the US sat at the center of a largely unipolar world. It led in military power, economic scale, technological innovation, and global rule-setting. The global operating system – globalization – reflected a kind of de facto “made in America” architecture. Others plugged in because the center was strong, stable, and hard to replace.
Today’s world is far more multipolar: China is a manufacturing powerhouse and, increasingly, a technological rival to the US, India is rising, Southeast Asia is dynamic, and Africa and Latin America are asserting more economic and political agency. Talent, capital, innovation, and ambition are more dispersed than ever. That should point us toward openness, not away from it.
And that should point us toward openness, not away from it.
An open-source architecture makes more sense when capabilities are distributed as it allows countries, firms, and individuals to contribute what they do best and benefit from the strengths of others. Closing the system through protectionism, export controls, or techno-nationalism means cutting yourself off from valuable inputs, ideas, and partnerships.
If no one nation can build the whole system on its own, then we all have a stake in keeping the system open. Strategic openness is pragmatic as well as moral and ideological. It’s how we best harness a more diverse and distributed world.
No analogy is perfect, and closed systems can outperform, at least in the short run. In software, proprietary models often win on speed and integration. Apple’s iOS is a tightly controlled ecosystem, but its coherence makes it attractive. OpenAI’s GPT models owe much of their success to the fact that they’re not open. The organization moved fast, monetized early, and avoided the messy governance that often slows down open-source projects.
Trade is no different. Sometimes, closure makes strategic sense, especially when national security is at stake. China’s “dual circulation” strategy and its push for tech self-reliance are textbook cases. So, too, is the US CHIPS Act, which aims to re-shore semiconductor production and reduce vulnerability to geopolitical shocks.
Closure can work when three conditions are met: interdependence feels too risky, control is more valuable than scale, and the closed player has enough internal capacity to go it alone.
But here’s the catch: closed systems often win the sprint, not the marathon. They deliver early returns but usually come at the expense of long-run adaptability and resilience. By walling themselves off, they risk falling behind the broader ecosystem, where innovation builds cumulatively and progress accelerates through collaboration.
In today’s interdependent world, going it alone is rarely sustainable. It may buy time, but it rarely builds the future. If full openness is vulnerable and full closure is short-sighted, what is the way forward?
The status quo is no longer viable. Guided by the principle of “enlightened self-interest”, pre-Trump America provided a “trust substrate” on which the open trade system worked. So, which architecture should we use to write the new rules? Open-source (Wikipedia) or closed-source (Britannica)? We don’t need to choose between the two extremes.
Just as the software world has evolved hybrid models that balance openness with control, the global economy can and should embrace strategic openness.
In open-source software, hybrid models are everywhere. Dual licensing allows companies to offer free access to most users while reserving commercial rights for paying clients. Communities like the Linux Foundation or Apache Software Foundation create governance structures that manage contributions, enforce standards, and deter bad actors. These arrangements don’t abandon openness, but they manage it.
In trade and investment, something similar may be taking shape. Policymakers are experimenting with “friend-shoring”, “trusted trade”, and industrial strategies that aim to retain the benefits and mitigate the risks of international integration. The idea is to stay open, but only with partners who share values or strategic interests. Trade agreements increasingly include digital and security clauses, and investment screening has become the norm. Globalization hasn’t stopped, it’s just becoming more conditional.
This strategic openness is messier than the old model. It’s not the clean multilateralism of the 1990s, but it reflects today’s realities: trust is fractured, power is more dispersed, and security matters more. The goal is to upgrade the old global operating system to serve a more complex world.
Strategic openness still requires governance, transparency, and reciprocity. Without rules of the road and institutions to mediate trust and manage conflict, it risks collapsing into ad hoc nationalism. However, with the right architecture, this middle path can preserve what matters most: access to ideas, markets, and talent beyond our borders.
Openness is a spectrum, not a binary. In a world that is neither fully cooperative nor fully fragmented, the challenge is to find and defend the sweet spot on that spectrum.
The US is careening toward a closed-source system, at least for the next four years. But it is no longer as dominant as it once was, accounting for less than 15% of world trade. What should the nations that account for the other 85% do now?
First, don’t panic, at least not yet. Trump’s April 2025 tariffs may look like the start of a seismic shift, but we’ve seen this movie before. Season 1 of the Trump Tariff Show ended in a whimper. Symbolic deals, tactical ceasefires, and a resilient trading system muddled through. This time might be no different. So, the first thing to do is be patient and avoid overreacting.
However, the stakes are higher in the medium term, and the job is clearer. Friends of the multilateral trading system must act now to protect the open-source architecture of globalization, even as the US increasingly opts for proprietary code.
If the world economy is an operating system, then the WTO is its kernel. It may be clunky, and its rulebook may need updating, but throwing it out would be catastrophic. Nations should continue to retaliate within WTO rules, make clear that their actions are compliant, and file legal complaints to maintain institutional clarity. Above all, they should support the rule-keeper, the WTO secretariat, and invest in its relevance.
What happens when the traditional maintainer of the codebase stops updating the software? Others step in. That’s what happened with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). When the US walked away, Japan picked up the leadership baton, stripped out the Washington-specific features, and recompiled the deal as the CPTPP. Trump didn’t object; he just ignored it. The CPTPP didn’t kill US trade, but it proved something crucial: leadership gaps can be filled, and openness can be preserved and even enhanced without US initiative.
That’s the real takeaway: in a world where capability and influence are increasingly distributed, we need a distributed model of leadership. The international community, especially middle-sized powers, should stop waiting for Washington to reboot the system and start patching it themselves.
Open systems depend on trust, predictability, shared governance, and, crucially, stewardship. We are at a moment when the global operating system risks being splintered into incompatible, siloed versions. That path leads to inefficiency, fragility, and long-run stagnation. However, it is not inevitable.
The better path is strategic openness: updating the rulebook, building coalitions of the willing, and recommitting to the core logic of the system. Like open code, trade works best when many contribute, many benefit, and no one actor tries to control it all.
The multilateral system is under strain, but it is still running. If those who believe in open trade continue to maintain, protect, and modernize it, it will keep running, even if the US temporarily logs off.
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