Chile still has time, but time is running out. Irrelevance isn’t decreed: it’s built through omission. The only remaining decision is whether we’ll have the courage to break free from this path before the world moves on without us.
Chile is being left out of the networks that currently define power, innovation, and growth. Irrelevance isn’t a future risk: it’s an ongoing process. Reversing it requires transforming education, talent, metropolitan governance, and women’s labor force participation.
There’s a blind spot in the public debate: Chile has already begun to become irrelevant in the new global order. This isn’t an ideological judgment or an exaggeration; it’s the direct consequence of how the world has reorganized itself while we continue to operate with frameworks from the last century.
The world is entering a simultaneous phase of hyperinformation, geopolitical anxiety, institutional fatigue, and democratic backsliding, where citizens have more data than ever before, but less capacity to interpret it. International political cooperation is receding, while technical cooperation based on science, data, climate innovation, cities, and technology companies is advancing. That is the new playing field, and Chile is looking the other way.
Domestically, a form of feel-goodism persists: a complacent narrative that interprets stability as success and the absence of crises as progress. But the data shows otherwise. Chile is falling behind in investment, innovation, productivity, education, and international presence. We confuse calm with competitiveness and political tranquility with strategic vision.
Meanwhile, the international landscape is becoming increasingly tense. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the technological dispute between the United States and China, and the militarization of the South China Sea are redefining logistics routes, energy, critical minerals, and supply chains. The world is reorganizing itself around blocs that compete for data, talent, and technological control. On this chessboard, Chile has no position, no voice, and no strategy.
The first sign of irrelevance is absence. Chile does not participate in the networks where the urban, technological, and climate future is being defined today: C40, U20, City Science Labs, AI Urban Consortium. In an interconnected international system, not being on the network is tantamount to not existing.
The second sign is geoeconomic. While Mexico attracted US$40 billion in nearshoring, Uruguay and Colombia doubled their digital services exports, and Brazil strengthened its technology hubs, Chile was left behind. Moreover, in the last eight years, 60% of Chinese investment in South America went to Peru, not Chile.
The third sign is educational. Without advanced mathematics, functional English, digital skills, and computational thinking, talking about AI or innovation is an empty promise. The fourth sign is cultural: overexposure to information with a lack of critical thinking, emotional polarization, and institutional distrust.
In this context, Chile needs modern metropolitan governance. In dynamic economies, it is cities—not states—that connect talent, innovation, and global logistics. Barcelona, Toronto, and Singapore operate with mixed institutions that project their metropolitan areas to the world. Chile has nothing equivalent, and the responsibility for integrating Santiago into the networks that matter lies with the state, not the municipality.
Artificial intelligence reflects the same pattern. Chile graduates only 1,300 computer engineers per year, compared to 35,000 in Korea or 8,500 in Canada. A third of the digital talent works for foreign companies. With AI, we could add between 1.5% and 2.5% to the annual GDP and export billions, but we continue to regulate before producing and train less talent than needed.
Education is at the heart of the problem. Chile lost two years of learning during the pandemic; 56% of young people do not understand complex texts; less than 30% of teachers are proficient in digital tools. Without a profound transformation, we will remain outside the value chains of the future.
Female labor force participation is another missed opportunity. The OECD estimates that Chile could increase its potential GDP by up to 9%. Simply adding 100,000 women to the labor market—less than 15% of those currently excluded due to caregiving barriers—would contribute between US$720 million and US$1.23 billion annually. Universal Childcare is not social policy: it is an economic investment with one of the highest returns available.
Chile could capture US$10 billion in value-added lithium, US$12 billion in nearshoring, US$5 billion in agritech, and US$4 billion in digital services. It’s not a lack of potential; it’s a lack of vision.
Chile still has time, but time is running out. Irrelevance isn’t decreed: it’s built through omission. The only remaining decision is whether we will have the courage to get off this path before the world moves on without us.
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