They issued a long statement announcing that the cooperation between them has “no limits”. Let me now turn to recent developments, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping met on February 4 th at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. But, as I shall explain later tonight, that is not the case. Xi Jinping’s China, which collects personal data for the surveillance and control of its citizens more aggressively than any other country in history, ought to benefit from these developments. These different attitudes shed new light on the conflict between the two different systems of governance that the US and China represent. The United States has been more hesitant because it has worried about their effect on the freedom of the individual. China has turned its tech platforms into national champions. They have sharpened the conflict between China and the United States. These developments have had far-reaching consequences. They are multinational and their reach extends around the world. These conglomerates have come to dominate the global economy. The rapid development of AI has gone hand in hand with the rise of social media and tech platforms. AI is particularly good at producing instruments of control that help repressive regimes and endanger open societies. Covid-19 also helped legitimize instruments of control because they are really useful in dealing with the virus. But in practice the effect is asymmetric. In theory, AI ought to be politically neutral: it can be used for good or bad. I found part of the answer in the rapid development of digital technology, especially artificial intelligence. I have pondered long and hard why that should have happened. Today China and Russia present the greatest threat to open society. Repressive regimes are now in the ascendant and open societies are under siege. They also coincided with a period of personal financial success that allowed me to increase my annual giving from $3 million in 1984 to more than $300 million three years later.Īfter the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the tide began to turn against open societies. The effort turned out to be more successful than I expected. That was a time when a large part of the world was under Communist rule, and I wanted to help people who were outraged and fought against oppression.Īs the Soviet Union disintegrated, I established one foundation after another in rapid succession in what was then the Soviet empire. I became engaged in what I call political philanthropy in the 1980s. That’s why I say our civilization may not survive. Other issues that concern all of humanity – fighting pandemics and climate change, avoiding nuclear war, maintaining global institutions – have had to take a back seat to that struggle. In an open society, the role of the state is to protect the freedom of the individual in a closed society the role of the individual is to serve the rulers of the state. Let me define the difference as simply as I can. The world has been increasingly engaged in a struggle between two systems of governance that are diametrically opposed to each other: open society and closed society. The invasion of Ukraine didn’t come out of the blue. That is the subject I will address this evening. The invasion may have been the beginning of the Third World War and our civilization may not survive it. Even when the fighting stops as it eventually must, the situation will never revert to what it was before. The European Union was established to prevent such a thing from happening. Since the last Davos meeting the course of history has changed dramatically.
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