Strategic Alternatives · Oct 20, 2026 · 15m · 11m saved
With Dave McKay, President & CEO, Royal Bank of Canada
The most advanced AI safety tools are not available everywhere at once, and Dave McKay, president and CEO of Royal Bank of Canada, says that gap is a security problem, not just a commercial one. Most bank executives describe AI regulation in the abstract. Dave told the Milken Institute's Canada Dialogue, recorded for RBC's Strategic Alternatives, exactly where the access gap sits today.
"No, I don't think we have enough guardrails... these most advanced tools... are being selectively released outside of the United States." — Dave McKay
Dave runs a bank racing to patch its own vulnerabilities with the most capable models available, which makes the uneven rollout of those models his problem as much as a policy one.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it. 15 minutes of audio, 4 minutes of reading.
Here are the 3 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Dave says the US holds selective access to the most powerful frontier AI tools, which he calls a security gap, not just a commercial one
AI has compressed RBC's product cycles from two years to two or three months
Dave rejects the claim that half of white-collar jobs could vanish within a year or two
He expects "decomposed and recombined" value chains rather than straightforward job losses
RBC was "slow to capitalize" on AI deployment and is now trying to pivot
1. Selective Access, Real Risk
Dave extended Aidan Gomez's point about AI regulation into his own industry. RBC is racing to patch vulnerabilities using the most advanced models it can get, but those models are not released everywhere at the same time.
The most advanced AI safety tools are released outside the US unevenly, Dave says
"No, I don't think we have enough guardrails... these most advanced tools... are being selectively released outside of the United States." — Dave McKay
Asked directly whether the US holds an advantage in access to the most powerful tools, he did not hedge.
The US currently has selective access to the most powerful AI tools
"Currently, yes, absolutely. There's selective access to the most powerful tools." — Dave McKay
That unevenness, in his framing, is a sovereign security gap as much as a commercial one: a bank or a country without access to the best defensive tools carries more cyber risk than one with it.
