 Good morning and welcome It is Friday the 19th of January The final morning of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting And I think we can all agree the beginning of a very long year for democracy in 2024 we are gathered this morning to have a conversation about what are the themes that are Putting democracy on the ballot this year My name's James Harding. I've been a journalist who's come to Davos for many years I'm the editor of tortoise a slow newsroom trying to understand what's driving the news and I feel incredibly Fortunate to have this group of people to help us try to understand these issues Ian Bremmer is the president of the Eurasia group You'll probably know that what Ian writes is required reading for anyone trying to understand geopolitics Rachel Botsman Was an expert on trust before we knew that we needed experts on trust and has been a lecturer at Oxford University on that subject Mark Leonard runs the European Council for foreign relations If you're trying to understand the cross-cutting issues of what's happening within European democracies Marks the person to go to Alex Soros is the chair of the Board of Directors of the Open Society Foundation probably the organization that has been most devoted to the Reinforcement of the institutions of democracy around the world And Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh is the secretary for the promotion of industry in India And as we know although there's quite a lot of attention on one Democracy this year the biggest democratic exercise is going to be happening in India And so I look forward to talking to you about that Secretary Singh The way we're going to do this just to give you a sense of the structure of the three-quarters of an hour that we've got is we're going to try and talk about some of the themes that Unite or if you unite democracies, but possibly divide us the challenges to democracy We're going to take some time I hope just to consider specifically what's happening in India specifically what's happening in Europe But we're going to leave a chunk of time to talk about the United States When I paused and said why are we doing that Rachel said because it's the United States So I hope that gives you a framework and will give some time at the end to make sure people have Some room for some questions and comments, but Ian Why don't you start when you look at the challenges to democracy? What do you think by the end of 2024? We're going to think of the the issues that have been common themes in elections this year well There's so many reasons why democracies are facing challenges But most of the elections as I see them this year aren't particularly problematic, right? I mean, you know when I look at Mexico when I look at Indonesia when I look at India I mean, these are three very large countries and the democracies are going to be held pretty smoothly and you know They'll be seen as legitimate by their populations But of course that isn't true increasingly in the most powerful Country in the world the United States and I'm not sure we'd be having the same kind of panel if it wasn't for the nature US democracies in crisis And I think that you can focus on inequality and inequality is something that plays through all of these countries You can focus on identity politics and migration and that certainly plays through the advanced industrial democracies and creating a lot of backlash, but the one if there was one theme that that worries me the most and And I've experienced it most sharply in the US, but we see it in other places It's it's much broader than that It's that as human beings we are We become civic individuals through nurture Not genetically Genetically, we're very different from that but through nurture. We become civic beings and and we have institutions around us That shape us that allow us to connect to people around us And if you look in the United States over the last 40 years Those institutions have fragmented and they have lost trust And that is true equally with the church and the media as it is with America's political institutions And and for for most of my life, I I feared that they were not being replaced by anything But they are now And that's worse Because what nurture is being replaced by is algorithm Hmm. We as human beings are being disintermediated By institutions that are not interested In creating civic individuals in community We're being disintermediated by algorithms That for for whom human beings are actually incidental to the process their products And and we're we're consumers We're stores of data And and we're meant to engage with these things and how it affects us as people and the planet Um, it is actually a real-time experiment that's being run on us and on democracy right now If I had to focus on one thing That I think is creating an a a true crisis of democracy in the united states That is the one thing I think it is Rachel will you pick up on that? Technology and trust is is Ian right? Is that what's causing so much polarization and so much division within politics? Kind of So I want to pick up on what Ian said about the loss of trust Because there's a different or deeper picture of what's going on So when you read the media We're bombarded with this narrative that trust is in a state of decline So you'll read surveys that trust and government in the u.s. In the 1960s was around 70 and people trusted to do the right thing It's now around 22 in the uk. They'll say it's around 30 percent OECD countries 40 So you look at that and my mind thinks this right state of crisis Well, this isn't actually what's happening to trust Because trust I'm not a physicist. I actually fell physics, but it's it's like energy Right, it can't be destroyed. It changes form Trust is not like dry january or drinking coffee. You don't say I'm not going to trust today So it's not that trust is in a state of decline. It's being displaced So when I think of trust in democracy, I don't think of this. I think of Like a complete fragmentation Now this is really important because when we start to think of solutions we have to think of trust being distributed So it's not a question of whether people trust and this is I think where you're going out in it's where people place their trust So just to quickly give you sort of a historical perspective on this If you think about democracy and you think about trust It maps to three really clear chapters. You have local trust and local systems of democracy Then you have institutional trust And then you have what I call distributed trust and this is what technology inherently wants to do It wants to take trust that was very top-down and linear and centralized and distribute it Now we've seen this happen with media and information. We've seen this happen with value flows Now when those two things get disrupted it's going to disrupt democracy Now the thing that frightens me is that this creates a vacuum of chaos And what we might call untrustworthy individuals They understand these dynamics They understand how to take all these fragments and this chaos And create some kind of absolute truth Create some kind of false certainty that is often mistaken for power And that's where trust flows. So it's not like people stop trusting. They just start to flow in different directions And just explain then the read across from that problem with trust To how that actually plays out in elections Well, it's very hard to control information Right, it's that's the central problem. Um, it's very hard to control messaging And then the three parts of sort of the democratic process if you like the vote The institution itself and then the people there's sort of this chaotic energy around it because It's not like we just look up to these institutions and we're really deferential to them We don't know whom to trust and therefore voices that cut through Are often clear and absolute and they push against something rather than stand for something And that's what scares me is it's sometimes the most untrustworthy Individuals that rise up in this state of chaos Well, I'll come to you one minute. I just wanted to ask Alex first. I'll come to you in one second Mark But Alex when you look at it just across the piece in terms of democracy How concerned are you about the things that Ian and Rachel are talking about and what if anything can be done about that? I um It's good. Yeah I think I want to be polite here I think the blame technology is an easy cop out Um, you know to think of technology as something separate from humans, you know, I think You know is uh, is uh Is a cop out in in saying that you know Technology has been a threat You know, uh to uh, you know, or if it's been a supposed threat You know humanity since the invention of the printing press switches, you know Much more disruptive than anything. AI is is going to do in regards to Um, uh, human civilization and I apologize Because um, you know, my real background is as a historian But um, you know, I um, I don't think that that's the I don't think that that's the fundamental I don't think technology is the fundamental issue In in democracy democracy is messy. I mean, you know democracy is about contestation of ideas. It's about, uh, plurality It's about people having different truths actually now Um, fundamentally, uh, how society lives together, um, civically, um, in those in those contestations Um, is, you know, is obviously, uh, is obviously, um, you know, quite, uh, quite, uh, you know, quite tricky But I think that if we play too much on this disinformation card We're taking the responsibility away from ourselves to actually create a narrative That inspires people to vote and to believe, uh, you know, in, um, uh, in In democracy and democratic, um, institutions and on the institutional part, I think that we can talk about, uh, institutions as these abstract things, but institutions are also about people and, um, You know, um, you know, we just heard this this this point about untrustworthy people and we talked about things in the United States Like, you know, like, um, checks and balances which aren't written anywhere, but our customs and one man Donald Trump literally came in and just took that, you know, took that took that all away You know, so, um, you know, so, um, you know, but when I see this, you know, when I look at this, um, you know, um, You know, uh, more globally regarding regarding, you know, regarding democracy. I also say to myself, when was this great Time that everybody got along so well And, you know, things were going so so great. I mean, I think, you know, um, You know the, um You know, I think that we really have to be careful here in, you know, in this nostalgia For a time, uh, you know, for a time past because a lot of the reactions we're seeing in society are actually reactions to positive, uh, to positive things like You know, like equality, uh, for women, um, you know, uh, and, um, uh, you know, and greater diversity, uh, which come with that clash Um, Mark, you wanted to weigh in, uh, let's take, by the way, some of those ideas that I raised and come back to when we talk about the U.S. In particular, but Mark, how do you see all of this playing out these themes, particularly in Europe? So I think the european situation is quite interesting because we have a big european elections this year one of the big elections Not as big as india or the u.s. Um, and people are quite nervous about it And I think there's all two things that people think are going to be true of these elections one Is that they'll be about migration and the other is that the far right is going to dominate everywhere and I think actually Neither of those things are necessarily True. Um, I think the first point about migration is is maybe Something which links up with what rachel and and ian were saying earlier, which is The migration is a kind of big issue. It's a crisis. There's a trauma from 2015 as well as what's happening today But for europeans, it's just one of five big crises that we've been through over the last few years alongside the economic crisis climate emergency The co vid the war in ukraine and what we've found In our polling work is actually that a lot of these crises are creating kind of long-term identities and political identities and One of the things that seems to be defining politics now is is less a kind of idea of hope of the future and these long timescales about what could happen Than the trauma of a kind of brutalized public that That whose identities have been shaped by these things and migration is the dominant trauma in in germany post 2015 But what's interesting is is that all of those five crises have got constituencies which are, you know between sort of 70 and 80 million People around europe if you look at the whole european They're more or less the same size if you think about these crisis crisis tribes of europe. They've got different Dynamics within them. They lead to different kinds of voting behavior But i think what it points to is a sense that actually rather than having Societies that are centered around You know a more kind of enlightenment idea of what democracy looks like where people are seen as individuals and they Have collective interests which can be projected into the future. What increasingly Is happening with politics is that people are looking at these kind of You know the individual is being kind of broken down into a whole series of different things I think that's one of the things that does come from technology And what you try and do is assemble a kind of winning coalition on a particular issue at a particular time Based on some aspect of their identity Which you think you can get to to to trump other kinds of identities I think that's very Very difficult for a kind of progressive politics if you want to get people to think about the future if if You have such a fragmented sense of what the reality is and people's identities are But anyway, so I think that the migration isn't going to be the key issue And then I don't think the far right is going to win either I think there will be you know nine Member states and the you a third of member states where the far right tops the polls but If you look at we've built a model and it shows that actually the results are not going to be vastly different from what they are at the moment The three kind of big Centrist blocks the socialists the liberals and the center right blocks will have over half of the seats in the european parliament They'll be the ones who decide who get the big jobs who's president of the european council president of the european commission The eu higher up presents to the president of the european parliament There'll be a small shift They'll go down from 60 to 55 percent of the votes and there'll be a lot of storm and rung about the Move towards the the far right But I don't think that it's going to be as important as a lot of the national elections Which are taking place in in in europe this year Particularly in countries like germany actually where these election the local elections and in But and the british election you can see how the polish election actually completely changed the mood That people had about the far right earlier So I would look probably more at those things than at the european elections if you want to understand what's happening with you Mark i mean i think this speaks to ian's point right at the beginning that there are lots of elections But there's probably only one that changes everyone's view about democracy and we'll come to that in a minute But can i just ask i'm struck by your five big crises and i just wanted to ask you about one in particular It's striking here how quickly At the forum meeting we sort of moved on from thinking about the disruption of kovid And yet in the politics you sense that's really changed the way in which people think about government and their relationships with power You know, I know that the european council on foreign relations looked at this What what are you finding in public sentiment around post kovid politics? So we've been doing Poli on kovid from the very beginning at the beginning it was one of the crises. So a lot of these crises um Either help incumbents or they help The the kind of opposition and the war in ukraine and kovid were incumbency friendly Crises so at the beginning they led to a surge in support for governments everywhere And then over time that kind of dissipated and was interesting if you think about long political kovid the most kind of strongest identities actually seem to be to do with The loss of trust in elites from particular segments. So there's sort of anti-vax Libertarian elements in our society because you have this weird political cross-dressing during kovid where all the kind of liberal politicians like eminence mchorn people like that Came out as kind of authoritarians that were shutting their societies down and all the real authoritarians like marine lupin and the afd Nigel farage and people like that all kind of reinvented themselves as as tribunes of freedom against Lockdowns against compulsory vaccinations in different places. And I think that that probably Is going to be the the kind of longest term legacy of it Secretary sing I keep on hinting at the impact of the us elections, but of course the indian elections is a kind of Creature unto itself both in terms of scale, but also the system Of the election. Can you just talk us through what you think is on the ballot in India in 2024 So before I talk about that, let me also say that I'm an outlier on this panel I'm the only civil servant And I'm also the only person who's actually conducted elections quite a bit In the first 10 years of my career as a civil servant. I've done about 15 odd elections at at different levels as returning officer district election officers, etc As you as you hinted it's a very broad mammoth exercise that india does with 900 million people 10 million odd polling stations The reason why it runs so well in our opinion is that it is run entirely by the bureaucracy And it is run on the basis of standard operating procedures The the criticism that is normally made about the bureaucracy in india that it is very Bound with red tape procedure oriented rule bound Now those become strengths during elections because it is you're doing very narrowly tailored tasks Operating on checklists and that combination really works and obviously we Delivered elections over 75 years which have always been credible People's faith in the election process and in the election commission of india has actually gone up over the years And the process is also incredibly efficient because we are able to Generate our election election results in Literally half a day because we use electronic voting machines for the last 25 years Coming to your question about what is on the ballot bread and butter issues are on the ballot in india like everywhere else It's it's basically economic development but yeah, I mean The record of the present prime minister in terms of Economic development in a way has already been sort of Validated in a sense by the recently concluded elections in five states where unexpectedly he won You know the majority of those as a civil servant. Therefore, I can't predict I should not be predicting results But you know the writing is pretty much on the wall things are looking pretty clear but yes in terms of Treadability of the process. I think there's not much doubt issues of disinformation of Use of money power to a certain extent those of course are important in india as well and those are issues which probably Don't affect the election results as much as we think because people generally even if you you know people go around sometimes You're giving cash handouts candidates could do cash on the handouts or liquor bottles in the night to their constituency Usually the the voter will take that but he will vote as he pleases because he's very confident that his voting is going to be anonymous And secretary sing what about the points that Ian and Rachel were making right at the beginning this idea of You know the destruction of institutional trust the explosion of distributed trust Do you feel that that's coming in india already? You know part of the politics of india. How do you read that? Uh I don't think trust in institutions has gone down significantly in india particularly as far as the election commission is concerned because it's a constitutional body It's it has very strong Sort of constitutional protections in the form in the sense that they have the same protections as a supreme court judge You can't remove them. They have a fixed tenure And they run the elections entirely free of political interference during the election process Essentially the entire state and central machinery start reporting to the election commission during that Two or three week period when elections are being held So I wouldn't say that trust has gone on but across the board if you say that the trust in institutions have Sort of started coming down. Yeah, I mean maybe to some extent that that's true in certain cases But in general india is an outlier. I think trust in elections in its institutions is probably fairly robust in india even today Thank you so interesting. All right. Let's let's turn to the united states Everyone in this room has a Point of view and probably even more questions than points of view and I suppose I'd like to explore those Alex I'm going to ask you first What do you think we're missing in understanding what's happening in the politics of 2024 in the us? so, um You know, it's uh, interesting to be at uh at davos because in davos long trump is already the president again again in uh in uh in in the united states And obviously that's uh, that's a good thing because davos, you know, the davos consensus is always wrong Obviously, I think people understand which side of the political ledger. I'm on I'm on in the united states, but I think when you know, we look at the election in the united states It's way too early. I mean, you know, uh We're talking about we're in january You know this time in 2020 we didn't know the democratic candidate was going to be I think there was there's probably it was a lot of naivete Among people in thinking that there was somehow going to be contested republican primary against Donald trump. Donald trump owns a republican party And um, we're in something I like to call the trump cycle because I think even um, if and I believe if the institutions hold when he loses This election, he'll also be the republican candidate in 2028 He and maybe even in 2032 as well because no, I mean, what's the way out for him? I mean he either winds up in prison or he winds up in power He's not going off on some beach somewhere and retiring I mean, this you know, this is this man and this is the you know, the party that we've that we've created and we will deal with this issue now um, you know, uh for uh, you know for for a while But on the on the election itself, let me let me just say that you you know, we are, uh, you know, we're not a you know, um a Democracy where the person with the most votes when it's a democracy of states and we have the electoral college and You know, there are there are 50 states and there are about there are maximum Seven but probably six states that matter and a minimum, you know, three plus the the uh, the uh, Omaha Uh congressional industry which goes into the to the to the college and uh, you know So if you look at kind of the the blue wall states, michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, the ones that trump Uh, you know one and took away from democrats when he beat hillar clinton the one that biden had won back and the one that You know democrats have have have overwhelmingly won back since uh, since you know since then i would really look at I would really look at those I would also look at arizona. I would also look at georgia and i also look at, uh, nevada and possibly uh, north carolina Because you have a you have a democratic, uh, you know, uh, governor's race and if you look at those states Um, you know, joe bines got a pretty good map um, you know, uh Joe bines got a pretty good map. Um, you know, uh, arizona the you know, the population has changed by by 50 demographically from between 2016 and 2020 um, and um, you know, uh, even though people think that you know that, um, herschel walker senna candidacy was some sort of outlier You know when you speak to people in georgia trump is really really toxic And you you know, obviously a very very strong and and organized african-american Um, uh Vote but actually i think if you want to look at one state which will really test where the election is it's wisconsin because um If joe bines able to win wisconsin It should mean that he's won pennsylvania in michigan because if you look at the you know, uh, pennsylvania michigan are are more Democratic than wisconsin is and if you look at the boat share of 20s, you know 2016 2020 was under it was under 1 percent So who's ever doing better? You know in wisconsin will probably show in which direction The election goes can you talk about this or naivety as regards trump and his relationship with the republican party? I have to confess one of my forms of naivety was thinking Around Thanksgiving, you know, the bides are going to get together as a family and say look You know, we've had a really impressive run. The presidency is probably under um reported in its achievements, but the right thing to do is to hand over and allow a democrat contest As observant people will have noted that didn't happen Why is that not happened and how worried are you about biden as the candidate? Um, I mean, I think that's done I think that's not happened for a couple reasons And I think that that is because biden actually has and has a particular advantage in a In a polarized electoral environment, which is actually that he's not polarizing You know, you could say a lot of things, you know, uh, you know about joe biden, but the republicans have basically created You know, first of all him himself. He's you know, um, you know, you can't say that he's you know One of you know someone that's trying you know to you know force your children to have some sort of sex change Or you know or you know or something I mean, you know, he's uh, you know, he's a pretty down-to-earth Uh, you know, uh, you know a person and also even he just we don't actually have somebody in the democratic party That's actually polling so much better than him or better than him I mean even you know, some like wretchen whitmer who you know is you know, one of the most popular governors She doesn't have a name recognition and commoncy has real power and validity in the us in the us, uh, you know in the us Um the system but in if the 22 election and you know, no election is like You know if if republicans are going to run these extremist candidates and they have trump to have somebody like joe biden Who you know is not a very polarizing? Uh, you know figure and republicans have basically said is essentially Demented. I mean the whole age thing. I think we'll actually backfire because They set a standard where essentially joe biden just goes up to it goes up to a debate and puts three words in the sentence together He's kind of punctured their idea that he's this man that can't even walk and you know and talk I mean, I mean they've really set the bar so low That uh, you know that he can he can completely over uh, you know over over performant But I think joe biden is is is running because he believes that I think it's you know It's the it's I don't think many of us have a good counter argument that he's in the best position to win Ian can I ask you to do something quite it's quite an unfair thing to do Map out 24 as you see things unfolding. Um, because I think one of the things that's most difficult about dealing with the us presidential election Just emotionally is the uncertainty well, I Fully agree that there's a long way to go. Uh, and so I mean I think it's 60 40 trump right now But I have very low confidence around that and you can push me down to 50 50. What's what should be relevant To everybody here and especially the europeans because if trump wins it is an unmitigated disaster for them More than any other country in the world in my view Um countries, um is that trump can win He can easily win So, I mean you cannot write this guy off And if if what we've seen from the davos consensus is that it is actually going to mobilize people to start thinking about the implications God bless that right. That's a good thing now. Um, yeah What those implications are for well, I mean for europe specifically I mean, this is a guy that has zero interest in supporting nato Zero interest in supporting the european union sees zolenski as a personal political enemy because he refused Right to to uh support um the investigation of biden and of hunter I mean those are very serious things. He says he's going to end the war in a day You know, he's going to do that He's going to say you've got to accept the outcome that putin wants and when that doesn't happen He's pulling money. That's an existential problem for the europeans, right? So these are very very serious issues that are at play um But but in terms of how 2024 is because that's 2025 And and forever more but 2024 one thing we can say Which is underappreciated is that trump is almost certainly going to get the nomination Right and when that happens He is going to become dramatically more powerful than he is now Now I believe that trump is likely to be convicted before the election But trump convicted when he already is the nominee and when the republicans are all Therefore completely behind him and you saw that yesterday on a panel with the head of the american What was it there a heritage right who was was clearly i mean i mean utterly fact-free And knows better, but he is performing because he wants a position You just saw the beginning of what a lot of serious republicans that you think you know Are about to do in about two months And when that happens in an environment that is unprecedented out said when was it so good before from this perspective? It was always better because we are seeing Unprecedented things happen in the united states every week Sometimes every day and we're normalizing them. We didn't have january 6th before We didn't have this level of people believing in fundamental conspiracy theories that undermine the fabric of democracy That is new We don't we never had a president that was twice impeached thrown out We never had 91 indictments against the president do not normalize this do not Inconsistently a self-involved media question is that regards there's often this debate about Do you put trump on air? Do you not put trump on air? Do you put trump on air? But you delay so that you can check you know fact check Culturally, I don't think that's the challenge particularly for tv broadcasters the challenge is the outriders the people who are commentators Advocates of his candidacy Who you have to put on air because they're part of the debate, but they themselves may be Pushing arguments by pushing ideas that as you say fact free What what's the responsibility of the media in this situation as regards normalization? I mean the responsibility Is not to simply drive headlines That are clickbait. I mean the fact is that if you go through the clicks and you read the pieces From fox or from the wall street journal or the new york times of cnn They're often pretty decent straightforward coverage But the headlines which is what most of the people are reading are are frequently fact free And they're very polarizing. They're very tribalizing. That's a problem But I mean look we've lost this battle in the united states right now because the coverage is going to be dominated by trump Because he is the person that gets the money and the media is in trouble financially So they're going to cover it you remember lest moon veers saying that from cbs It's bigger now because the media is facing a bigger existential challenge. That's what's happening rachel When you look at this what's the Way in which the world will interpret what's happened in the united states what will be I was going to say lessons of democracy in the united states Yeah, can I just come back to what yin said and I should say I lived in the states for 10 years and I worked for president clinton and I think my experience from working with him is how much politics is a performance And I think the thing that I find deeply disturbing from this conversation and you mentioned this is the normalization of low expectations It's not okay that he's an old man Our expectation shouldn't be that he goes up and he says three words and he doesn't fall over right like that's very low expectations I wouldn't be surprised if trump wants to go to prison and be in power I keep having this image of the orange man in the orange suit trying to run The white house and he loved that right because that's the ultimate theater and performance the media is not going to cover that So, you know, how do we raise expectations in who our leaders should be? How do we actually get back to a society that says, you know what trust is mine to give I'm gonna think about who deserves that trust because they're actually trustworthy so In some ways, I think this luring of expectations of what leadership looks like has a massive impact all around the world And it has a massive impact on younger generations that look at public service Look at civil servants look at leadership and think well, I don't want to be a part of that I don't want to vote for that. I'm just going to disengage Can I forgive me? There's one point that you made and I dropped the ball on it Which is the tension between popular will and the law in democracy You were talking about The possibility of trump becoming a republican nominee and at the same time being convicted And I think a lot of people around the world are deeply confused about what the us Legal position is on that Are we right in thinking that even in the event of convictions, none of those things stand in the way of his Winning a us presidential election I I don't know. I mean, I think he can still win an election and be convicted That would have to be tested in the supreme court Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's nothing that says that he can't I suspect the supreme court would punt on it If they were forced to until after the election was over and ultimately punts when it means meaning into 24 if he's convicted It's hard for me to see the supreme court ruling and saying he's not going to be able to serve until the election is over and this is so key because democracy often depends on Trustworthy systems being able to hold untrustworthy individuals, right? and so what trump is a master at is sort of completely rattling And bringing down sort of The structures of institutions and this would be the ultimate act I can I can be elected from prison It's the ultimate screw you You know the the georgia case in particular because he can't pardon himself Because it's because it's a state because the state Case the state where you go charge Is is going to be is going to be an ultimate test So I think you know if if he wins and if these if you know that we're going to be in a constitutional crisis Um, I want to make sure that we've got it's not a bigger, you know violent crisis You know, it's it's but it's it's a very curious thing Alex because if you sort of I read a lot of what timothy snider Who I know has been here writes and you think to yourself This this contest between democracy and the constitution that seems to be playing out and it's harder It's hard to interpret I want to make sure that we've got some time for Questions or thoughts if people have things they want to say please just Catch my eye and I'll make sure to bring you and I'll just ask you to say Say who you are. Um, if you've got any thoughts, yes, there's just on the front here I just wanted to know so will you just say your name? Ah, I'm Vivian Girardier and I'm just today here. I'm happy Have some question. Uh, what is the artificial intelligence doing with our democracy? Um, can I send that to Ian if I might because you did that survey, didn't you do you did that survey and I had a look at AI and its impacts on And uh, you know view, uh, overwhelmingly from the survey, uh, was that it was reducing trust Um in elections not increasing and that's still very early days Um, look, I I accept the fact that it is not technology that is to blame Some technologies are centralizing some are decentralized and we have the communications revolution Which actually helped facilitate democracy the arab spring. We now have surveillance technology top down Which is you know, actually atomizing destroying as a sent distribute centralized trust that's undermining it But the thing that worries me the most on AI Is and you heard it from sam haltman a couple days ago with bill gates is that we are the next, um, AI model his next model anyway, and everyone's going to have it soon Is going to be training on your individual data in part when that happens We are no longer going to be operating in our president information environment. All of us are going to have AI on trained with us help mates kind of real time all the time And you need to know we need to understand What it's driving us to do unless we are regulating that in a radically different way Then the hands-off process on social media then I think the tribalization issue I think the disinformation issue. I think the atomization of community issue is going to explode This strikes me as existential for democracy Um Other questions or thoughts mark. I just wanted to put one thing to you about One one point that's been put to me in the last few weeks is that one of the elements we're missing about the coincidence of democratic elections in 2024 Is what happens to the behavior of politicians? Namely promises and this will have an impact on Debt and spending that there's a cumulative impact that people are missing Do you see that do you think that there's a pattern in what? politicians are promising I think there's a definitely a kind of memetic quality to these elections where everyone is sort of copying each other I think one of the biggest day, you know, I Think that the us election Is an existential election for the us, but it is for the world Precisely for that reason that he is creating and legitimating a template for how you do politics Which has its reference Right across the world. I think there's a particular challenge For for europeans in the way that ian was was describing I spent a lot of time in in washington at the end of last year talking to the different maga tribes About their plans for a dormant nato and how they want to shift the burden rather than share it and The idea of the kind of war of the administrative state and how they're going to use all the tricks in the book to To have a very very different kind of administration next time around to to trump 1.0 And that is something that everybody's sort of looking at I think it's it's definitely true that If you look at the crises people have been describing here, I spent a lot of time in the geopolitical sessions There is a sort of technocratic elite idea about what to do in the middle east and the different elements of How we get from where we are now to a better place And then And everyone can agree on what the different elements are what the roadmap is and then you look at american politics Israeli politics what's happening in other places And by the end of the conversation you become totally convinced none of this is going to happen And you can take that for most of the problems we're describing here. So there is definitely a sense of a sort of functional technocratic imperative in lots of different areas And then just the dynamics of this very identity based politics with very different time scales And I think that does me make 2024 very very dangerous year So can I can I just ask you To a visit slightly unfair but to ask you to comment on the perspective of the three to four billion people who aren't voting because I think one of the Facts of the last two decades or so has been this sense Amongst democracies certainly amongst western democracies that the argument that was Ascendant, you know a generation ago is losing and that many people are not so confident that democracy is the way to run their country What do you think the impact of this year will be particularly the u.s. election on the way in which non democratic countries see democracy? I don't know enough about american politics to really comment, but let me give the example of india there the Voting percentage or the number of people who are voting the percentages are way high these days 70 to 80 percent year after year and one interesting innovation that our election commission did as part of the Case that went all the way up to the supreme court was that it created a In the electronic voting machine. It gave an option of none of the above It basically meant that people who didn't want to vote for any of the Candidates on the ballot. They simply went for no time. There are cases that there are constituencies where not I was getting The majority of the votes so I mean that was one way of in a sense registering the frustration of You know a set of voters with their you know the limited choices that they may have had I also wanted to talk about the american elections and the you know the fairly alarmist view about One candidate in particular I mean one should look at these things You know slightly more dispassionate historical sort of perspective and which is why I'm mentioning this indian example conflict of law And candidacy there was a time in the 70s when we had this very strong leader called Mrs. Indira Gandhi She was convicted of electoral fraud and corruption in the 70s She refused to accept the convictions. She declared an emergency a constitutional emergency She ruled under that emergency for two two and a half years. I think thereafter she went for elections roundly defeated Thereafter she was in the wilderness for another three four years Again thereafter, however, she came back and again we are not sweeping electoral victory So maybe you know some of these issues if you looked at look at it in a more historical perspective Maybe the blips will not seem that you know alarming as it might do in the very near term perspective It goes back to the point that alex was making that maybe there wasn't this sort of this golden age When everything was quite as neat and tidy as we as we think as we think Um, uh, I will take secretary seeing your guidance to be a little more dispassionate Um, I'm not sure it'll work even to the end of the day, but I'll give it my best I'll give the best try. Um, there is so much to discuss on this We've tried to touch on as many of the themes as possible within the 45 minutes we've had I know this is going to be a conversation that's going to go through the year But I hope you felt in the in hearing from ian and rachel and mark alex and secretary seeing It's given you a framework for thinking about the year ahead Please join me in thanking them and thank you for being part of this panel