A Warning Bell. In an Age of Insularity, Who Will Repair Broken Trust?

Over the past few days, Davos has once again become the focal point of global attention. Leaders, policymakers, investors, and institutions have gathered to debate the state of the world. The conversations are familiar. Geopolitics, AI, inequality, fragmentation. Almost everyone agrees that something is deeply wrong.

Yet amid the noise, I chose to place my full attention elsewhere. On data. On structure. On underlying signals.

I spent these days immersed in The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer.

Not because it offers easy answers. It does not. But while many acknowledge the symptoms of a fractured world, far fewer are willing or equipped to dive deeply into the mechanics of the problem itself.

EVERYONE can feel the tension. But solving systemic breakdown requires something rarer. The willingness to look closely, without comfort, at how trust is actually breaking. And where it might still be repaired.

What the report reveals is not simply declining confidence. It is a profound shift in how people relate to one another, to institutions, and to the future itself.

We are entering an era of insular trust.

This is no longer just disagreement across values or politics. It is something deeper and more corrosive.

People are not only refusing to trust those who think differently. They are increasingly willing to undermine each other’s success.

When this mindset becomes dominant, society does not simply fragment. It stalls.

The Real Crisis. Institutional Grievance in the Shadow of AI

Trust erosion is often blamed on misinformation, algorithms, or political rhetoric. The data points elsewhere.

The report reveals a fundamental structural divide. High-income and low-income groups now live in opposing institutional realities.

• Since 2012, the income-based trust gap has more than doubled
• Lower-income groups are far more likely to believe that systems are rigged against them
• AI, rather than representing opportunity, is widely perceived as an accelerant of exclusion

 

One statistic stands out:

54% of low-income respondents believe they will be left behind by generative AI, receiving none of its benefits

This matters.

AI did not create the trust crisis. But it is amplifying pre-existing grievance, fear, and loss of agency.

When people feel unseen by institutions and excluded from the future, they retreat into smaller circles of perceived safety. Trust becomes local, conditional, and defensive.

This is the psychological foundation of insularity.

The Cost of Insularity. Productivity, Leadership, and Innovation at Risk

Insular trust is not an abstract social concern. It is already producing tangible economic and organizational damage.

According to the report:

• 34% of employees say they would reduce effort if led by a manager with different values
• 42% admit they would be less motivated to help leaders they disagree with politically
• A growing share would rather change roles than work across value differences

 

The implication is severe.

In an era defined by complexity, systems thinking, and cross-disciplinary collaboration, trust conditioned on ideological alignment makes innovation structurally impossible.

When perfect agreement becomes the price of cooperation, organizations descend into friction, homogeneity, and stagnation.

Who Can Still Build Bridges? The Answer Is Clear

In a world where trust in institutions is broadly under strain, one actor stands out.

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer delivers a clear conclusion:

Employers and businesses are currently the most trusted institutions, and those with the smallest gap between expectations and performance

Across markets, trust in “my employer” significantly exceeds trust in governments, media, and many public institutions.

This is not because businesses are morally superior. It is because they retain something critical.

Ongoing, lived, and verifiable relationships.

People may distrust distant systems, but they still observe how organizations treat them day-to-day. Fairness, listening, and follow-through still matter.

Trust Brokering. Not Persuasion, but Translation

The report introduces a pivotal concept: Trust Brokering.

This is not about taking sides. Nor is it about convincing people to change their beliefs.

At its core, trust brokering is about translation without judgment.

• Translating different realities, constraints, and incentives
• Surfacing shared interests without erasing differences
• Creating conditions for cooperation without demanding consensus

 

The data is striking:

When institutions perform trust brokering effectively, trust among low-income groups increases by 18 percentage points

Few social interventions show this level of measurable impact.

Trust brokering restores something essential. Confidence in the future.

How Organizations Can Act as Trust Brokers

The report outlines practical, non-symbolic actions:

1. Redesign collaboration: Create teams that require people with different values to work together to succeed. Pair this with mandatory training in constructive dialogue.

2. Build shared identity: Reinforce what unites employees in purpose and mission, rather than allowing identity to be defined by external political or cultural labels.

3. Commit to real localization: For multinational companies in particular, long-term community investment and local hiring outperform short-term engagement or performative CSR.

We Need More Bridge-Builders

Insularity cannot be addressed by any single institution.

We need more platforms and organizations with bridge-building DNA, such as TPC (Tsao Pao Chee), that are structurally designed to:

• Move between capital, culture, and institutions
• Hold tension without inflaming it
• Translate fear into shared, forward-looking interests

 

Without such actors, the risk is not temporary division. It is long-term social paralysis.

Trust as Critical Infrastructure

In an AI-accelerated world, trust is becoming the scarcest form of infrastructure.

Businesses are no longer just economic actors. They are being called into a broader role:

Stewards of civil dialogue and repairers of broken trust

This is not a moral aspiration.

It is a strategic necessity.

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Source: 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report. “Trust Amid Insularity”