Picture the world as a giant prison. Built in 1945. The prison’s governor is the United States. The prison’s guards are the rest of the West, rewarded for loyalty with higher living standards and the comfort of “special relationships.” The prisoners are everyone else. The Global South. The prison’s officers do well. Average incomes sit around US$58,000 per annum. It pays to be part of the system. Or at least, it did. But things are changing.

The governor, Donald Trump these days, in case it passed your notice, has decided to run the prison himself. No need for officers. No need to share the spoils. The prison officers are understandably shocked. They have lost their role. Not quite understanding the change, they keep going back to the governor’s door, Oliver Twist–like, asking for more. He can’t mean this. But he does.

Trump’s actions since his re-election and recently over Venezuela and Greenland, have lifted the veil that had long obscured the view from the guardroom. We are not living in a rules-based order. We are living under empire. And empires demand homage.

In the days of the last empire, the British Empire, the riches of the colonised were channelled through companies such as the British East India Company. By the late eighteenth century it owned land, raised armies, and collected taxes. It ruled vast parts of India, then the richest region on earth, siphoning wealth back to the motherland. Local industry collapsed, and a commercial enterprise became the engine of empire.

Today, land is replaced by data. Taxes by subscription fees. Private armies by platform dependency. The British East India Company by Google, Amazon and the rest.

And the prison officers have been happy to acquiesce. They do so because their own living standards depend on it. Capital flows to this empire, not only from the prisoners but from the prison officers as well. Willingly, quietly, and dressed up as prudent investment. The UK MPs’ pension scheme disclosures in December underline this reality. With only around 4% of its assets invested in UK companies, it will hold more of its money in Microsoft and Nvidia alone. This is not diligent diversification. It is allegiance, expressed through capital allocation.

Empires are sustained by these inward flows of wealth. Britain did not abandon its empire when resistance began, but when the cost of control exceeded the return. The same logic applies today. Inward flows to the United States mean its so-called ‘Magnificent Seven’ companies now account for around 30% of the global equity market. That dominance is not sustained by domestic savings alone, but by continuous inward investment from the prison officers.

But as the veil lifts and a tipping point approaches – tariffs, Greenland –the guards may see that what looks like choice is starting to feel like compulsion. For now, they remain at the door, bowls in hand. The formation of the US/Greenland/Denmark Arctic working group is telling. The guards turn up politely, still assuming the old rules apply, asking for reassurance and inclusion. They behave not as equals, but as officers hoping to remain on the rota. And so, the capital still flows toward the imperial core, though more nervously. Pension funds and institutions continue to pay for the upkeep of the prison in the hope their keys still fit. Most of your employee pension will be there, helping.

But when investment becomes obligation rather than choice, the logic breaks, and the US market will break with it.