JAN. 30 / FEB.

6, 2023

Zip It!
THE POWER OF
SAYING LESS
by
DAN LYONS
 WHICH AGENDA
WILL THE LEADERS
TAKE ON IN THIS
FRAGMENTED WORLD?
 COOPERATION IS THE KEY.
BY WORKING WITH SCIENTISTS,
RESEARCHERS AND
TECHNOLOGY INNOVATORS
FROM NEW AND ESTABLISHED
FIRMS, SOMPO HAS BEEN ABLE
TO DELIVER BETTER ELDER CARE
WITH FEWER STAFF AND
AT SIGNIFICANT SAVINGS.

We are here to solve

global social issues
by developing
technology and data.

DISCOVER OUR INITIATIVES.

CONTENTS

2 Time January 30/February 6, 2023

 VOL. 201, NOS. 3–4 | 2023

7
The Brief
19
The View
28
India on the Pivot
The fate of the world may well be
determined by whether one country’s
markets embrace solar or coal
By Justin Worland

36
Voices of Davos
Yuval Noah Harari on the hazards of
identity; Christiana Figueres on writing
our own destiny; Sergii Marchenko on
the cost of the Ukraine war; Tristan
Harris on what social media misses;
and World Economic Forum chief Klaus
Schwab on staying optimistic

42
Move Slow and
Save Things
A pioneer in artificial intelligence
argues for proceeding with caution
By Billy Perrigo

52
Quiet Down
The case for keeping your
thoughts to yourself
By Dan Lyons

57
Time Off

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3
FROM THE EDITOR

given India’s size and virtually insa-

tiable demand for energy, “where that
balance is struck could tip the climate
scales worldwide.”
We are at a critical juncture too
for the technologies of the Fourth
Industrial Revolution, and nowhere is
that more evident than in the emer-
gence of artificial intelligence into the
mainstream. While many of us spent
our holidays generating AI poetry on
ChatGPT, TIME’s Billy Perrigo has
been exploring the deeper promise
and peril of this technology in his
reporting. Billy conducted a rare in-
terview with Demis Hassabis, CEO
△ and co-founder of Google-owned lab
Writing the future An illustration of
the World Economic
DeepMind, who is profoundly trou-
bled by some recent developments
Forum’s metaverse with the technology he helped foster.
LAST MONTH, I WAS IN BOSTON FOR THE venture, the Global “I would advocate not moving fast
presentation of the Earthshot Prize, the an- Collaboration Village and breaking things,” Hassabis tells
nual awards started by Prince William designed Billy, playing off the old Silicon Valley
to help accelerate creative solutions to the cli- motto that preaches the opposite.
mate crisis. The roughly $6 million in grants— Other warning shots in this issue
supported by donors including TIME’s owners get at the official topic of this year’s
Marc and Lynne Benioff—went to five remark- annual meeting, Cooperation in a
able projects, from a technology that turns car- Fragmented World. Tristan Harris,
bon into rock to biodegradable seaweed-based co-founder of the Center for Humane
packaging for consumer goods (called Notpla Technology, puts the problem on the
for “not plastics”). At a gathering after the cer- shoulders of social media, where, as he
emony, I was struck by the remarks of Earth- puts it, “what gets the most engage-
shot board chair Christiana Figueres, the former ment,” he writes, “are the fights, take-
U.N. climate chief, who framed this moment in downs, and proverbial car crashes we
the planet’s 4.5 billion years (no small task!) as can’t take our eyes from.”
one in which “the pen of history has been passed Amid so many global crises—public
from nature to humanity.” health, inequality, climate change, po-
I asked Figueres if she would adapt those larization, and war—it can be hard to
comments for TIME’s annual Davos partner- summon much optimism. And yet of
ship with the World Economic Forum (WEF), course we have to find a way forward.
which appears in this issue. Until fairly recently, “This situation which we are in
she notes in the resulting essay, we were pas- now is not the worst of all the times,”
sive subjects of nature’s reign. Today, it is the WEF founder Klaus Schwab told me
reverse. “More than at any other time in the late last year. “It’s a bad one. But at the
history of human presence on this planet, we end, change is what’s happening. We
are now deciding what our own future will be,” can manage change.”
Figueres writes, in a theme that echoes through- It’s our hope that the reporting and
out our coverage. perspectives in this issue, and all of
our work at TIME, contribute to that
TIME SENIOR CORRESPONDENT Justin Wor- process. We all hold the pen.
land, for his part, takes us to India—from the
coal mines of Jharkhand, one of India’s poorest
WORLD ECONOMIC F ORUM

and most polluted states, to the wind turbines

and solar fields of Rajasthan 900 miles away
and a world apart. The tension between cur- Edward Felsenthal,
rent needs for fossil fuels and renewable energy EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
is hardly unique to India. But as Justin writes, @EFELSENTHAL

4 TIME January 30/February 6, 2023

 SPONSOR’S WELCOME LETTER

ALLIES ARE
NEEDED TO
CREATE A
HAPPY SOCIETY
The Japanese concept of Seikatsusha – embracing
our multifaceted selves – allows individuals and
businesses to balance self-interest and altruism so
we can change the world for the better

Today, with society becoming more unequal and

fragmented, cooperation is becoming more difficult. How KENGO SAKURADA
can we overcome our differences in positions and interests Group CEO Sompo Holdings, Inc.
and work together more deeply? The root principle of our
behavior is the same: we want to be happy. Under this that people facing the social challenges of an aging society
idea, I believe people should pursue happiness – but for all desire. As a Seikatsusha in Japan’s aging society, SOMPO
stakeholders in society. is committed to providing elder care, which allows people
to achieve pin koro. The Nursing Care RDP* (Real Data
Many Westerners who traveled to Japan in the late Edo Platform) developed by SOMPO is the data platform that
period (1800s) wrote that Japanese society was full of enables visualization of information about and for nursing
happiness. The person who played a leading role in opening caregivers and residents (visible nursing care). It provides
Japan to the West, Commodore Matthew Perry, also optimal care tailored to individuals through predicting future
described Japan at that time: “the people seem happy and health conditions from the data collected (predictable
contented.” The concept of Seikatsusha is key to creating nursing care). A shortage of caregivers and surging social
such a happy society. Learning, working, playing, eating – security expenses, due to fact that Japan has one of the
Seikatsusha is a Japanese word that refers to people who world’s fastest declining birthrates and largest aging
live their daily lives in a multifaceted manner. For example, populations, can be deemed as a national crisis. Western
I am a CEO, a consumer, and a grandfather. As a CEO, I countries will surely face the same challenges soon. SOMPO
aim to improve corporate performance; as a consumer, I will overcome these serious social issues by offering its
choose what I love at the supermarket; as a grandfather, Nursing Care RDP as a solution for nursing care challenges
I hope for a future in which my grandchildren live happily. in Japan. Furthermore, we would like to expand this initiative
Based on their own multifaceted roles, Seikatsusha take globally and contribute to the pin koro of the elderly who are
actions considering the overall optimization of their roles. receiving nursing care at home and other places.
Seikatsusha is a unique Japanese concept that sees the
individual from multiple perspectives. It is based on the We should make companies not only valuable but
traditional Japanese code of conduct that balances self- indispensable for Seikatsusha to pursue happiness.
interest and altruism, as symbolized by Sanpo-Yoshi (three- Business leaders must show leadership and address social
way satisfaction through business transaction: good for challenges through their businesses, drive innovation and
the seller, buyer, and society) and Bushido (a traditional growth, and create value that contributes to happiness. It
Japanese code of conduct). By acting as Seikatsusha, we is also important for business leaders to be storytellers,
can achieve happiness for all stakeholders in society by keep communicating their initiatives and their value that
balancing self-interest and altruism. contributes to happiness. Eventually, this will encourage
individuals and organizations to endorse the value of
One form of happiness for human beings would be pin happiness and change their behavior, thereby changing the
koro, a Japanese concept that means a long, healthy life world. This is a new era for business leaders. We need allies
and a peaceful end. It is the ultimate form of happiness to work together. Let’s Seikatsusha!

SOCIETY CO-CREATED BY ITS SEIKATSUSHA

A quality society that pursues not only economic scale, but also the happiness
of all stakeholders of society as multifaceted value and qualitative growth
• Seikatsusha =all “individuals” playing multiple roles as consumers, workers, family
members, responsible community members
• All stakeholders in society, including all organizations (companies, schools, local
governments, national government, etc.) made up of individuals
• Creation of “value” such as prosperity and happiness through seikatsuha’s independent
choices and actions (= consumption, higher education, employment, voting)

*Real Data Platform: Platform for “real data,” data with clear origins from the real-world activities of individuals and companies
(e.g. health information) unlike virtual data generated from activities on the Internet, such as social media.
 CONVERSATION

On the covers

Illustration by
Ben Wiseman for TIME

Photograph by
Sarker Protick for TIME

Is your company
TIME at Davos shaping the
At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, future?
Switzerland—the first winter meeting since 2020—TIME and Sompo In 2023, TIME will again
Holdings hosted a dinner and conversation on how to foster greater recognize 100 businesses
cooperation to solve the world’s most pressing problems. making an extraordinary
Onstage, TIME editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal interviewed World impact around the world
Trade Organization director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (above). in the TIME100 Most
Read more about Davos at time.com/davos-2023 Influential Companies issue.
Apply now through March 1
at time100cos.com

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letters@time.com
TIME CEO Jessica Sibley; Please do not send attachments
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follow us:
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6 Time January 30/February 6, 2023

 BIDEN’S
PAPER
TRAIL
BY BRIAN BENNETT

The discovery of
classified documents at
the President’s Delaware
home and old D.C.
office throws a wrench
into his 2024 plans
S

A NEW DEBATE ON THE LISA MARIE PRESLEY, DAUGHTER THE HEIR VS. THE SPARE:
HEALTH RISKS OF GAS STOVES OF THE KING, KNEW GRIEF ROYALS FACE OFF

PHOTOGR APH BY JOSHUA ROBERTS 7

THE BRIEF OPENER

T
he discovery of classified documents at underscore the differences between his own situation
Joe Biden’s Delaware home and former D.C. office and that of Trump, who is under investigation not only
tarnishes the President politically at a moment for keeping classified documents in a storage area and
when he was hoping voters would credit him for his private office at Mar-a-Lago, but also for allegedly ob-
a resilient job market and signs that inflation is easing. structing efforts to investigate and retrieve those papers.
Parallels were immediately drawn to a separate investi- In August, FBI agents got a warrant to search Trump’s
gation into a trove of classified documents the FBI seized residence at the private club, after federal officials had
in August at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a- spent more than a year negotiating with Trump’s lawyers
Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. over the return of any government records he still pos-
While there are significant differences between the two sessed. Prosecutors said in court filings that there was
cases, the investigation into how documents with classifi- evidence that “efforts were likely taken” to obstruct the
cation markings ended up stored in Biden’s vacated Penn investigation and that government records were “likely
Biden Center office in Washington and a storage space concealed and removed” at Mar-a-Lago.
in his personal garage in Wilmington, Del., threatens to Voters aren’t the only ones who must be convinced
undercut the larger, bipartisan effort to label Trump as un- of the differences between Trump’s and Biden’s cases.
qualified for the presidency, which he’s already announced On Jan. 12, Attorney General Merrick Garland picked
he will seek again in 2024. His critics argued the hundreds Robert Hur as special counsel to oversee the investiga-
of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago provided an- tion into Biden’s handling of classified documents. Hur,
other example of Trump being a whose work Garland said will be
politician who regards himself as guided “only by the facts and the
above the law. It’s a narrative that law,” has a reputation as a hard-
Trump has promoted by base-
lessly asserting the 2020 election ‘My working career prosecutor who
has held senior positions in the
was “stolen” and by fomenting
the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capi-
tol to keep him in office.
Corvette’s in Justice Department during both
Democratic and Republican ad-
ministrations. Trump named
The investigation into Biden
makes any potential decision to a locked him U.S. Attorney in Maryland
from 2018 to 2021.
charge Trump for obstructing
the Mar-a-Lago probe more po- garage, OK? Less than two months be-
fore appointing Hur, Garland

So it’s not
litically fraught. It also opens up announced he was placing the
another avenue for Republicans Mar-a-Lago documents inves-
who now control the House to in- tigation, as well as one into
vestigate Biden, and to keep the
story of Biden’s classified docu- like they’re Trump’s alleged role in trying
to overturn the 2020 election,
ments in front of voters as Biden
mulls formally announcing a re-
election campaign.
sitting out under the supervision of special
counsel Jack Smith. Smith will
help decide whether to bring

Speaking at the White houSe on the street.’ charges against Trump.

Before Hur’s appointment,
on Jan. 12 during an event to —PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN Trump called on Garland to end
showcase his economic policy, the special-counsel investigation
Biden was asked about the revela- into “anything related to me be-
tion that his lawyers found more cause I did everything right,” and
classified documents in his Wilmington home, in addi- demanded Garland appoint someone to investigate Biden
tion to the documents found on Nov. 2 in his former D.C. “who hates Biden as much as Jack Smith hates me.”
office—a fact the White House kept quiet until CBS News Meanwhile, Representative James Comer, the Kentucky
broke the story on Jan. 9. “They discovered a small num- Republican running the House Oversight Committee, has
ber of documents with classified markings in storage areas ratcheted up his own investigation into Biden, asking the
and file cabinets in my home and my personal library,” White House for logs of visitors to Biden’s Delaware home
Biden said. Asked by a Fox News reporter what he was since he became President, dates of any searches at Biden’s
thinking, keeping classified materials in his garage next properties, and the names of aides involved.
to his Corvette, Biden said, “My Corvette’s in a locked ga- Biden is widely expected to run for re-election in
rage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street.” 2024. Months of high inflation and economic uncertainty
The Department of Justice was “immediately noti- had been a drag on Biden’s public support, but his poll
fied,” Biden said, and his lawyers arranged for the federal numbers have been ticking up in recent weeks. News of
government to take “immediate possession” of the sensi- a federal investigation is not how Biden’s political advis-
tive materials. Biden may have stressed that timeline to ers would have chosen to start the year. 
The Brief is reported by Amy Gunia, Tara Law, Sanya Mansoor, Olivia B. Waxman, and Julia Zorthian
 Nurses in the streets
Nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx join in strikes on Jan. 10 at two New York City hospitals. Some
7,000 nurses walked off the job to protest labor shortages and working conditions following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The union said it reached a deal with hospital officials after three days that would raise pay and boost staffing.

THE BULLETIN

Why Pakistan’s food crisis is getting worse

As trucks cArrying subsidized troubles are the result of unrestrained lower-middle-class and lower-class
flour arrived in Mirpur Khas in borrowing. Shortly after former Prime citizens that basically earn $2 a day.”
Pakistan’s Sindh province on Minister Imran Khan’s party came to
Jan. 6, hundreds of people mobbed power in 2018, he was forced to turn POLITICAL PARALYSIS Following
them. The flour was being sold for to the International Monetary Fund Khan’s ouster in April in a no-
O P E N I N G PA G E : R E U T E R S ; N U R S E S : J E E N A H M O O N — T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S/ R E D U X

65 rupees (28¢) per kilogram, less for a $6 billion bailout. The foreign- confidence motion, the succeeding
than half the going rate amid rampant currency crisis was made worse when government has gone from crisis to
inflation. One man, Harsingh Kolhi, the IMF first suspended its pay- crisis. Further international aid is
was killed in the crush. Pakistan is fac- ments to Pakistan in 2020 amid the predicated on making unpopular
ing a food crisis fueled by inflation COVID-19 pandemic. decisions like raising fuel prices and
and a critical shortage of foreign cur- hiking taxes. And another election
rency to pay for imports. SPIRALING INFLATION As a result, is on the horizon—making the
food got dramatically more expen- chances of the government’s taking
CASH-STRAPPED The State Bank of sive. A 10-week delay in shipments of such decisions even less likely, says
Pakistan says that reserves are barely soybeans from the U.S. and Brazil— Younus. In the meantime, daily life is
enough for three weeks of imports. purportedly because they contained becoming even more difficult. “You
In an effort to save cash, the govern- banned GMOs—drove up the price of hear stories from doctors beginning
ment is holding up everything from chicken by 45%. “Over the last four to see adult malnutrition, [people]
medicine to onions at ports, says Uzair years, blue collar workers in Pakistan who have given up two meals a day,”
Younus, director of the Atlantic Coun- have lost around 30% of their purchas- he says. “People cannot make ends
cil’s Pakistan Initiative. The current ing power,” says Younus. “These are meet.” —simmone shAh
9
THE BRIEF NEWS

GOOD QUESTION risks. A study published in the journal

Why is the U.S. considering Environmental Science and Technology
in October found gas stoves can leak
banning gas stoves? low levels of methane and benzene
BY NIK POPLI even when not in use. Some house-
holds may want to consider using air
purifiers in their kitchen to improve air
Federal regulaTors are considering a ban on quality, though filters must be replaced
gas stoves—present in roughly one-third of U.S. homes— often. Others may decide to purchase
amid rising concern about increased risk of asthma in a single-burner, plug-in induction
children and other respiratory-health risks linked to in- cooktop for as little as $60, which can
door air pollution from the appliances. The U.S. Con- be particularly cost-effective for rent-
sumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which can ers. Under the Inflation Reduction Act,
issue mandatory standards or ban products if no feasible anyone looking to swap a gas stove for
change would adequately protect the public, says it is electric can receive a tax rebate of up
still figuring out the best way to tackle this issue. Rich- to $840, as well as up to $500 to help
ard Trumka Jr., a CPSC commissioner, tweeted on Jan. 9 cover the cost of converting.
that “gas stoves can emit dangerous [levels] of toxic ▽
chemicals—even when not in use” and that his agency Gas ranges have Beyond the health reasons,
will consider “all approaches to regulation.” been found to switching to electric induction
The news has generated its own heat, but CPSC says emit methane and cooking “is an important climate
any action would involve a lengthy process, meaning benzene, even step . .. and there are potentially also
there are no imminent policy changes. Trumka clarified when turned off cooking benefits that allow you to ac-
the agency cannot physically remove gas tually cook faster,”
stoves from homes—but instead can re- says Jonathan Levy,
quire new products to comply with its chair of Boston

G A S : G E T T Y I M A G E S ; P R E S L E Y: D AV E A L L O C C A — S TA R P I X /S H U T T E R S T O C K ; M C C A R T H Y: F R A N C I S C H U N G — P O L I T I C O/A P ; B E C K : R O N P O W N A L L— G E T T Y I M A G E S
regulations. This could include requir- University’s De-
ing new homes be built with electric partment of Envi-
stoves or high-efficiency exhaust vents. ronmental Health.
The debate over gas cooking’s health Gas-stove regu-
hazards began nearly 50 years ago when lation is a hot topic
researchers in England and Scotland in the restaurant
surveyed the parents of more than 5,000 world. An out-
children and found a positive correla- right ban on gas
tion between gas cooking and asthma stoves could have
symptoms. But a slew of new studies a particularly sig-
have spurred fresh concerns. Research- nificant impact on
ers have found that gas stoves release East Asian restau-
nitrogen dioxide and other tiny airborne rants, which often
particles known as PM2.5, both of which require very hot
are lung irritants and have been linked with childhood flash frying. But some chefs are wel-
asthma. In December, a study published in the Inter- coming the adjustment to electrifica-
national Journal of Environmental Research and Public tion. Chris Galarza, a Pittsburgh-area
Health found more than 12% of current childhood asthma chef and founder of the commercial-
cases in the U.S. can be linked to gas-stove use. Certain kitchen consulting company For-
populations, such as children or people who already have ward Dining Solutions, says making
asthma, are more susceptible, says Brady Seals, a manager the switch to induction has helped
in the carbon-free-buildings program at the nonprofit his team increase production and im-
clean-energy group RMI and a co-author of the study. ‘We only proved employee mental health be-
“This gets into the health-equity issues, since we know started cause the kitchen isn’t as hot. “A lot
asthma is a profoundly unequal disease as Black children of chefs will say gas is king because
are almost three times more likely to have asthma.” cooking that’s how we’ve always done it,”
A simple safety measure people can take is to use a with gas the Galarza says. “But we only started
high-efficiency range hood that carries air contaminants
outside rather than recirculating them indoors. Those
last 100 or cooking with gas the last 100 or so
years, so if you’re really concerned with
without an exhaust hood should open their windows dur- so years.’ tradition, you’d be cooking on coal or
ing and after cooking, recommends the National Asthma —CHRIS GALARZA, wood—not gas. When it comes down to
Council. But even that may not fully resolve the health CHEF it, chefs are afraid of change.” 
10 Time January 30/February 6, 2023
MILESTONES

ELECTED

DIED

DIED DECLINED ARRESTED CHARGED

11
THE BRIEF NEWS

WORLD a member of China’s State Council’s

China’s Lunar New Year pandemic-prevention team, urged peo-
ple “don’t go home to visit” elderly rel-
threatens a grim COVID-19 toll atives if they had not yet been infected.
BY CHARLIE CAMPBELL “You have all kinds of ways to show
you care; you don’t necessarily have
to bring the virus to their home.”
Harry Li wanTs To spend THe Lunar new year
holiday in his home village in northern China’s Hebei It’s another example of China’s
province, but he is afraid of spending more than 12 hours chaotic reopening since a spate of anti-
on crowded trains and buses lest he bring COVID-19 lockdown protests erupted in early
to his elderly parents, who have not been vaccinated. November. Maintaining zero COVID
“It’s been three years since I’ve been home [for Lunar required diverting legions of doctors
New Year],” says Li, a 20-year-old law student in Shang- and nurses to conduct billions of PCR
hai. “I was vaccinated nine months ago, but everyone tests, while vaccinations were an after-
around me is still getting sick.” thought. Meanwhile, jingoistic state
Many Chinese face a similar conundrum. For decades, ▽ propaganda lorded the nation’s suc-
the Lunar New Year holiday was renowned as human- Passengers wait cess in banishing the virus.
ity’s largest annual migration, when hundreds of millions for trains in As of Dec. 14, only 42% of those
travel from China’s freewheeling coast back to ancestral the tech-hub over 80 had received three doses of a
villages to feast and toast with elderly kin. During the city of Shenzhen vaccine, according to government fig-
pandemic, strict controls and state-led incentive schemes on Jan. 15 ures. Worryingly, those figures are also
put the brakes on holiday travel. But heavily skewed toward
on Dec. 9, China began completely elderly living in cities,
dismantling its testing and quarantine meaning those await-
apparatus, allowing the virus to spread ing the Lunar New
like wildfire across the world’s largest Year arrival of sons and
population of 1.4 billion. daughters, nephews
Officials, who have stopped count- and nieces, are dispro-
ing infections, said on Jan. 14 that portionately vulner-
nearly 60,000 people with COVID-19 able. China’s health
died from Dec. 8 to Jan. 12. Still, that system has improved
figure includes only victims who died in recent years, but vil-
in the hospital following a pneumonia lagers still seek medi-
diagnosis and excludes all those with cal care in the nearest
underlying health conditions. Mean- big city rather than at
while, social media images of crowded neighborhood clinics.
hospital wards, overfowing morgues, Despite President
and long queues outside cremato- Xi Jinping’s insistence
riums and funeral parlors point to a burgeoning health in his New Year’s address that he has
crisis. Around 900 million people in China had been in- “put life first all along,” China is re-
fected as of Jan. 11, according to a study by Peking Uni- fusing to pay even the reduced price
versity, or 64% of the population. Independent death-toll that biotech firm Pfizer charges lower-
projections range from 1 million to 2 million. middle-income nations for its antiviral
On Jan. 14, Jiao Yahui, a prominent health official, said medication Paxlovid. “They are the
the “national emergency peak has passed.” But Yanzhong second highest economy in the world,
Huang, a public-health expert at the New York City– and I don’t think that they should pay
based Council on Foreign Relations, says estimates less than El Salvador,” Pfizer CEO
should be taken “with a grain of salt.” “With the disman- Albert Bourla said.
tling of the testing regime, they cannot be expected to Instead, Lunar New Year migrants
V E R N O N Y U E N — N U R P H O T O/G E T T Y I M A G E S

provide accurate information.” have to care for themselves. Xi Chen,

Much hinges on what unfolds during the weeklong hol- a professor of public health and eco-
iday. Lunar New Year officially starts Jan. 22, but for many, ‘This year’s nomics at Yale, advises travelers to
the grand peregrination begins days earlier. The combina- get a booster and bring fever and
tion of millions of people crammed onto public transport
migration is cough medication to their villages.
traveling to a predominantly elderly, undervaccinated unstoppable.’ “This year’s migration is unstoppable,”
population in villages with rudimentary health care —XI CHEN, says Chen. “But it’s never too late to
threatens to be a perfect storm. Professor Guo Jianwen, YALE UNIVERSITY fatten the curve.” 
12 Time January 30/February 6, 2023
 CONTENT FROM THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR

AL YAMAMAH STEEL – Building with purpose

Saudi Arabia’s construction sector recorded an 8.8% growth rate in 2022, its greatest expansion in eight
years. The sector’s buildup is in keeping with Vision 2030, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious
trillion-dollar initiative to overhaul just about every element of the nation’s economy and society.

ost of this huge investment is

M destined for key developments like

the Red Sea Project at Neom, and
for the King Abdullah Financial District and
other city infrastructure projects, such as the
$22.5 billion Riyadh Metro and the Riyadh
Rapid Bus Transit system. It promises to be a
very busy and prosperous few years for Saudi
Arabia’s contractors and their suppliers.
“The construction sector is very important
to the Saudi Arabian economy,” says Engineer
Saad Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al-Mojel, chairman of
the Almojel Company. “It gives an additional
impetus to the country’s traditional reputation Eng. Saad Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al-Mojel Yousef Saeed Ba-Zaid
for its reliance on oil and gas.” The Almojel Chairman of Al Mojel Company CEO of Al Yamamah Steel Industries Co.
Company has been playing a critical role in companies we have always made it a priority steel mills.” The company is also on a continual
the economic development of Saudi Arabia to hire the right people and to do our best to mission to reduce the costs it passes on to clients.
and the neighboring Gulf States for the past hold on to them for as long as possible.” Al Yamamah Steel has also earned a
50 years. Headquartered in Riyadh, Almojel One of the group’s flagship companies reputation for innovation. In addition
has a controlling interest in a network of -- and undoubtedly among those most to working with renewable solar energy
companies stretching across the Middle East crucially positioned to contribute to the technology providers, it has diversified into
that operate in a wide range of industries, Kingdom’s development -- is Al Yamamah the supply of fabricated steel for different
including manufacturing, building materials, Steel Industries Co. Publicly listed on the tracking systems used in both concentrated
finance and investments, retail, education, Saudi Stock Exchange, it is one of the leading and photovoltaic solar power parks. Its steel
real estate, energy services and technology. manufacturers of metal products for the towers are scheduled to be commissioned
As the former chairman of the Riyadh construction, telecom, and electrical and in 2023 to carry wind turbines for OEMs
Economic Forum, a former board member renewable energy sectors. Its manufacturing (original equipment manufacturers) in their
of the Council of Saudi Chambers, former plants produce high-quality value-added offshore wind tower projects.
vice chairman of the Riyadh Chamber of products like steel reinforcing bars, steel hollow And to meet an anticipated exponential
Commerce and much more besides, Al-Mojel sections, lighting and electrical distribution increase in demand from the Saudi electrical
has a farsighted interest in the success of poles, high masts, overhead transmission line sector in the years ahead, Al Yamamah has
Vision 2030. “One of my goals is to make our OHTL and telecom towers, all of which can be tripled its capacity to manufacture steel
population understand what it is we are trying seen throughout the country and, increasingly, lattice towers. However, with 90% of annual
to achieve by 2030,” he says. “We want to off its coast. Its steel tracking systems are now revenues currently generated within the KSA,
create a legacy not just for our children but for being strategically used in both concentrated the prospect of increasing its footprint across
the betterment of our entire society.” and photovoltaic solar power parks as per the MENA region must be tempting. “We are
In order to develop a highly skilled the international solar technology providers’ planning to carry our business not just in line
population able to meet the demands of the requirements. with the requirements of Vision 2030, but
21st century’s knowledge-based labor market, Since establishment in 1988, Al Yamamah with those of the global construction, electrical
HRH Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Steel has become widely acclaimed for the and renewable sectors,” says Al-Mojel.
has put education at the center of the Vision quality of its products. But there is more to its “We are building for the country’s success.”
2030 initiative. Al-Mojel meanwhile has long success, as the chairman explains: “We have
made a concerted effort to attract, develop years of experience in managing the steel raw-
and retain talented employees. “Saudi Arabia material supply chain and obtaining competitive
is blessed with huge reserves of energy and prices,” says Al-Mojel. “We have nurtured strong
plenty of land,” he says, “but as a group of and lasting relationships with both traders and

www.yamamahsteel.com www.almojelco.com
THE BRIEF NEWS

◁
Harry, right, with
William at the funeral
of Queen Elizabeth II
on Sept. 19, 2022

against me and my wife,” Harry told

Anderson Cooper.
Harry reveals he and his brother
William have been living separate lives
since their mother Princess Diana died
in a 1997 car crash. In high school,
William told his younger brother to
stay away from him. But Harry sug-
gests that dating Meghan, an Ameri-
can actor, starting in 2016 strained
his relationship with his brother even
more. In early 2019, on the grounds
of Harry’s cottage at Kensington Pal-
ace, the brothers got into a shouting
ROYALS match over what he says were inaccu-
Prince Harry’s memoir rate stories in the tabloid press about
Meghan. Harry says William shoved
deepens an age-old rift him so he fell down, landing on a
dog bowl. In September 2022, when
BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN
Queen Elizabeth II’s health deterio-
rated at Balmoral Castle in Scotland,
The media bliTz following The Jan. 10 publicaTion Harry says he wasn’t invited on the
of Prince Harry’s memoir Spare has one major theme: he family plane to rush to her side, and
has grown apart from his father King Charles III and his by the time he arrived, she had died.
brother William, the Prince of Wales.
Family tensions boiled over in public when, in January The broThers’ feud is also about
2020, Harry announced that he was taking a step back from more than just their relationship with
his royal duties because of what he saw as a lack of support each other. “The traditional ascrip-
from the palace staff over negative tabloid coverage of his tion to the ill will between William
wife Meghan Markle. But passages from Spare suggest ten- and Harry is that neither of their wives
sions go back to birth—an underlying resentment of being like one another and that has driven
“the spare,” while his older brother is “the heir” to the throne. Royal a wedge between them, coupled with
(The book is jam-packed with revelations, such as Harry’s brothers a sense on William’s part that his

H A N N A H M C K AY— P O O L /A F P/G E T T Y I M A G E S ; I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y B R O W N B I R D D E S I G N F O R T I M E
claim that he killed 25 Taliban fighters from a helicopter in younger brother has behaved irre-
Afghanistan—which experts say is dangerous to publicize.) meet on sponsibly and selfishly in abandoning
There’s a long history of royal sibling feuds, accord- a modern any sense of duty by staging his quasi
ing to Alexander Larman, author of The Windsors at War: abdication,” says Larman.
The King, His Brother, and a Family Divided. As he puts it, field of It remains to be seen whether the
“Think of James II, who began as Duke of York and then battle, family will come together in a public
made a spectacular mess of being King [in the 1680s] after
[his brother] Charles II died. Or Richard III, who, if Shake-
the media show of unity before King Charles III’s
coronation ceremony on May 6. Lar-
speare is to be believed, brought about the deaths of both man notes that Harry’s attacks on his
his brothers Edward IV and the Duke of Clarence to as- brother can, in some ways, be seen
cend the throne [in the 1480s], only to be forced off it by through an age-old lens: “Today, we
Henry VII. Nobody’s thinking that Harry has had anything might not see royal brothers meeting
quite so dramatic in mind .. . yet, anyway.” on the field of battle, winner taking
In a Jan. 8 60 Minutes interview, Harry said he was all, but instead we find them conduct-
going public about the drama because the royal family’s ing their warfare via that rather more
relationship to the British press has made it impossible for insidious weapon—the media—and
him to mend his relationship with his father and brother. hoping that the court of public opin-
“Every single time I’ve tried to do it privately, there ion will favor one side over the other
have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories in a hopefully definitive way.” □
14 Time January 30/February 6, 2023
 H E A LT H

BY ANGELA HAUPT

1. Stop texting people 5. Design an

who are nearby indoor circuit

2. Get (or borrow) a dog 4. Have mobile meetings

3. Create some
competition

S O U R C E S : S C I E N T I F I C R E P O R T S , 2 0 1 9 ; B M C P U B L I C H E A LT H , 2 0 17 15
Condemning coal
A pair of muddied protesters huddle in the rain on Jan. 14
near Luetzerath in western Germany, where they joined
thousands demonstrating against the demolition of the
village as part of utility company RWE’s expansion of
a coal mine. Climate activist Greta Thunberg was among
those detained on Jan. 17, when protesters broke
through a barrier around the site. Activists and police
both said scores on their side sustained injuries.

Photograph by Thilo Schmuelgen—Reuters

▶ For more of our best photography, visit time.com/lightbox
 A ROOM
WITH
A VIEW
Over the last 50 years, The Ocean Race has become The sailors have adapted to racing at high speed from inside
recognised as the toughest challenge in professional team an enclosed cockpit that protects them from the breaking
sport and a global platform for inspiring people everywhere waves and stinging ocean spray on deck.
to take action to protect the ocean.
However, the relentless pounding and slamming motion
The legendary round-the-world race takes its competitors below can be extremely disorientating and makes even the
to remote parts of the planet nobody else visits and simplest task highly complex.
constantly pushes the limits of mental and physical resilience
– especially during the current edition which features the The Ocean Race stands as the proving ground for the best
longest individual leg in the race’s history. sailors in the world.

The latest generation of super-fast foiling IMOCA yachts Join us on this journey www.theoceanrace.com
can rack up more than 550 miles in 24 hours as they
skim above the ocean surface at average speeds near
25 miles/hour (40 kilometers/hour).
ETHICS

WHAT HUMANS
OWE ANIMALS
BY MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM

INSIDE

THE ATTACK ON BRAZIL’S QUESTIONING COVID-19 HOW SECRETS

DEMOCRACY IS NOT OVER BOOSTER RECOMMENDATIONS KEEP US SICK

19
THE VIEW OPENER

In a way, this problem is age-old. Both

Western and non-Western philosophi-
cal traditions have deplored human
cruelty to animals for around two mil-
lennia. The Hindu emperor Ashoka,
a convert to Buddhism, wrote about
his efforts to give up meat and to forgo
all practices that harmed animals. In
ancient Greece, the Platonist philoso-
phers Plutarch and Porphyry wrote
detailed treatises deploring human
cruelty to animals, describing other
creatures’ keen intelligence and their
capacity for social life, and urging hu-
mans to change their diet and their
way of life. But by and large, these
voices have fallen on deaf ears, even
in the supposedly moral realm of the
philosophers, and most humans
have continued to treat most ani-
mals like objects, whose suffering
does not matter.
Today, we have, then, a long- Feeding oranges to a group of Japanese macaques, a monkey species that—
overdue ethical debt: to listen to argu- despite its protected status—is often trained to entertain tourists
ments we have refused to hear, to care
for what we have obtusely ignored,
and to act on the knowledge of our bad lights entice them. Today, new forms Approach urges that our goal should
practices that we can so easily attain. of animal cruelty turn up all the time— be, for each type of animal, a set of
In Porphyry’s world, animals suffered without even being recognized as opportunities—capabilities—to lead
when they were killed for meat, but cruelty, since the impact on the lives of lives characteristic of their kind. With
up to that point, they lived pretty de- intelligent beings is barely considered. the CA framework in mind, even a
cent lives. There was no factory meat very humane zoo will be problematic
industry that today breeds these ani- What do We do noW? First, we need because animals there typically do not
mals as if they were just meat already, a good theory to map out the goals live with a large enough group of other
confining them in horrible conditions, to which we are heading. My theory, animals and have few choices about
cramped and isolated, until they die the Capabilities Approach (CA), how to live.
before ever having decently lived. rejects the idea that we ought to rank There is so much to be done
Animals were long hunted in animals by their likeness to us, and that there is more than enough for
the wild, but for the most part their also that we should focus only on the everyone, and we all need to work
habitats were not taken over for minimization of pain. The theory says from our own starting points and with
human dwellings or invaded by that justice entitles all animals to a our own skills. My law students will go
M A C A Q U E S : J A S P E R D O E S T; B R A Z I L : V I C T O R M O R I YA M A — T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S/ R E D U X
poachers seeking to make money set of “capabilities,” or opportunities out and try to grapple with the myriad
from the murder of intelligent beings to choose, corresponding to their of legal issues about animal treatment
like elephants or rhinoceroses. In species’ form of life. For example, that are now before us. Others will
the seas, humans have always fished each elephant would be entitled to focus on efforts to protest the factory
for food, and whales have long been the opportunity to socialize with a farming industry, or raise awareness
hunted for their commercial value. matriarchal herd of other elephants, about plastic waste and its disastrous
But the sea was not always full of to bring up young communally in that effects on marine creatures. Many will
plastic trash that can choke them to setting, to walk long distances over adopt and love a shelter animal.
death. Nor did companies drilling for the grass searching for—and finding— Justice is for all of us—and it’s
undersea oil create noise pollution food, and to be free from murderous a choice. It’s a choice to become
everywhere, making life increasingly poachers eager to kill for ivory. friends of animal lives: with wonder,
difficult for social creatures whose Animals do need relief from pain, compassion, outrage, and hope.
sense of hearing is their primary mode but they also need the society of We need to make it now.
of communication. Birds were shot other creatures, lots of room to move
for food, but those who escaped did around in, opportunities for play, and Nussbaum is the author of Justice
not choke on air pollution or crash in general the chance to be the makers for Animals, from which this essay
fatally into urban skyscrapers, whose of their own lives. The Capabilities is adapted
The View is reported by Julia Zorthian
THE RISK REPORT BY IAN BREMMER

21
Applications are now open. In 2023, TIME will once again recognize
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incredible work and impact that you and your team are creating.
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A P P LY N O W : T I M E 1 0 0 COS .CO M
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THE VIEW ESSAY

SOCIETY

How secrets
keep us sick
BY SARAH LEVY

i have always had The urge To lie. as a child, i Told

classmates that I had a new puppy at home. I was afraid of
dogs and had never even asked my parents for one, but I
understood that pets were attractive to other 6-year-olds.
When Julie, a French girl with a blunt haircut, came over
for a playdate, she looked skeptical when I told her my dog
was in the other room. “He’s sleeping,” I explained. When
she accused me of lying, I finally introduced her to Lucky,
my plush stuffed dalmatian, holding him the way I had
seen my mom cradle my baby brother. “Shh,” I whispered
to Julie. She never came over again.
I told white lies, mostly. “I’m majoring in biology,” I
once rattled off to a stranger at a nail salon despite having
zero interest in science. Other lies were random, like when
I told a crush that I had spent the previous Saturday night
at a party with Adrian Grenier (nope), and that I had been
in seven serious relationships before (I was 26 and had two
ex-boyfriends).
Some lies were bigger and more serious, like the Sunday
evening I woke up in the emergency room after blacking
out at brunch and falling down a flight of stairs. I had been I was fine. I would try to shake the
taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and because I was pain off, but once I became aware of
only 24 and still on my parents’ health-insurance plan, I it, it was harder to ignore. Uncovering
panicked at the thought of them receiving a bill in the mail. the truth about my blackouts was
The truth about my blackout seemed too horrible to tell a similar shock to my system. After
them; I didn’t want them to worry. So I told them I had years underwater, I was finally
been hit by a cab instead. coming up for air and examining
Of all the people I lied to, I was the best at lying to what was left of my life. I realized I
myself. Researchers have dubbed this act “self-deception,” hadn’t just been lying to myself about
explaining that it involves a degree of mental dissociation. how alcohol affected me; I had been
I knew my blackouts were dangerous, problematic, and lying to myself about why I drank
unmanageable, but I was entirely unwilling to give up in the first place. I never let myself
drinking. So I developed mental processes that allowed me admit how hurt and scared I felt at
to ignore selective memories and told myself what I wanted 16, or 24, or 26. I was ashamed of
to hear: When I woke up with vomit in my hair after heavily having feelings, so I buried them.
drinking the night before, I decided I had just gotten carsick
on the cab ride home. If I blacked out and cried, it was When I got sober at 28, I started
because I was stressed about work. When I went home with to parse through my lies. There were
a guy I couldn’t remember meeting, I pretended it was a so many: the excuses I invented for
funny story. I switched from vodka to tequila to white wine missing plans when I was painfully
to beer to vodka again, telling myself this time would be hungover, the exaggerated details
different. I wanted to believe I had control over the way my about my love life, the reality of
brain and body processed alcohol, but the truth was I never I was how unmanageable my drinking
had any idea what would happen once I started to drink. ashamed had really gotten. I couldn’t bear the
There were nights I tripped on sidewalks and curbs, the idea of my friends and family seeing
ground rushing up underneath me until I smacked down of having me at my lowest, so I constructed a
face forward. The initial contact occasionally jolted me feelings, house—brick by brick, lie by lie—to
out of a blackout, the impact searing into my palms and protect myself.
knees and sending a message to my brain to get up. I always so I buried Strangely enough, if you had asked
bounded up quickly, reassuring everyone around me that them me when I was still drinking, I would
24 Time January 30/February 6, 2023
 disruption of decisionmaking, and lying over time.
But I had been lying long before I took my first drink.
Maybe some children simply make up stories, their wild
imaginations running rampant. I had been coached to lie
by the person who sexually assaulted me when I was a
child. I was taught to withhold the truth from my parents
and other adults in my life, and the trauma stopped me in
my tracks, rewiring my brain to invent lies whenever the
truth was too ugly. When I discovered alcohol years later,
my lying habit simply escalated.

SecretS keep uS Sick. For years I had been in denial

about my struggles with alcohol, as well as the truth about
my abuse. Until I got honest with myself, I could not begin
to heal. Now, if I wanted to truly recover, I needed to begin
practicing rigorous honesty in all areas of my life.
This did not come easily to me in early sobriety. I
Until I got was experiencing my emotions for the first time in over
honest a decade, and disclosing giant truths to my family and
with therapist. Still, I was disappointed to discover how much of
a knee-jerk reaction lying had become. When a co-worker
myself, asked me about my weekend on a Monday morning, I felt
I could the urge to fib and invent stories about fun parties even
though I had spent the past 48 hours in recovery meetings
not begin or horizontal on my couch. Truthfully, sometimes I missed
to heal it: the way I could escape into the distraction of managing
chaos. In the quiet, I had to face the parts of myself I
wanted to avoid.
have told you I was an honest person. I had too much to lose to pick up lying again. In
Lying and keeping secrets from people recovery groups, they say that there is a strong link
wasn’t something I did to be cruel; between addiction and loneliness, both in the physical
it was a survival mechanism. There’s and emotional sense. My secrets kept me isolated from
research that shows that primates myself; I told lies so I could become someone else, and in
evolved the tendency to tell lies to the aftermath of lying I often withdrew from those closest
maximize survival, and a 2018 study to me. It was a vicious cycle that kept me trapped in shame,
in Memory and Cognition explains that and I was ready to break free from it.
false denial can serve as a coping tool A therapist once told me that trauma causes separation,
for managing shame and guilt. I was while healing means integration. When I was drinking, it
dreadfully uncomfortable in my own was painful to admit how many mornings I woke up feeling
skin and desperate to be someone, absolute terror and demoralizing shame over the night
anyone, else. It seemed natural to before. I separated from my drunk self, disturbed by how
alter the truth when my own reality little I cared about what happened to me when I blacked
was painful. out. I also separated from my inner child, the little girl who
In recovery, I started to understand had been taught to lie as a form of protection. In recovery,
that lying was a tool many picked I learned to make space for all the younger versions of
up early in life to cope with feelings myself. I paid attention to the feelings and fears over which
of discomfort and inadequacy. we lied and drank, and I began to learn to comfort us all.
Alcoholism, I learned, involves an Honestly, there are still moments I want to lie: when I
inability to be honest with ourselves forget to send an email, or haven’t seen the movie everyone
and other people, not only about is talking about, or want to avoid conflict. I’m not perfect.
our drinking but also about the But I continue to work to promptly admit when I’ve
inner workings of our minds. I was been dishonest with myself or someone else. The self-
surprised to discover that alcohol use esteem and inner peace I have gained since I kicked
SHANNON WEST— E YEEM

disorder can actually cause damage lying in sobriety is what I searched for in every drink and
to parts of the brain like the frontal dishonest breath.
lobe. Such damage, it turns out, has
been shown to increase the potential Levy is the author of Drinking Games, from which this essay
for behaviors like risk-taking, the is adapted
25
THE VIEW INBOX

By Philip Elliott

The role of COVID-19 boosters may change as immunity from other sources increases

Health Matters
By Alice Park
SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

IN THE THIRD YEAR OF THE COVID- with weakened immune systems.

19 pandemic, it may be time to re- Bur for otherwise healthy people, the
think booster recommendations, bivalent shot is protecting against
says one vaccine expert who serves mild illness from Omicron strains
on the U.S. Food and Drug Admin- that already cause only mild disease
istration’s vaccine advisory commit- to begin with. “The experience of the
tee. In a Perspective published in the past year has taught us that chasing
New England Journal of Medicine, these Omicron variants with a bi-
Dr. Paul Offit makes a case for why valent vaccine is a losing game,” says
it may be time to reconsider blan- Offit, who also developed the rota-
ket booster recommendations that virus vaccine and is director of the
apply to everyone equally. vaccine-education center at the Chil-
For one, the latest Omicron booster, dren’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
a bivalent dose that targets both the When the pandemic began, and
original and Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 people had no immunity to the virus,
variants, is no longer up to date. When building that immunity with vaccines
it was authorized in August 2022, the and booster shots was critical. Now,
BA.4 and BA.5 variants were expected with most people vaccinated or recov-
to cause most of the new infections in ered from bouts of natural infection,
the U.S. Now, different Omicron vari- that immunity has increased, so most
ants like XBB have taken over. people who get infected with Omi-
In addition, studies show that cron strains aren’t getting severely ill.
people who received the bivalent Better data from the Centers for Dis-
Omicron booster don’t make appre- ease Control and Prevention about
ciably higher levels of virus-fighting who is getting hospitalized because of
antibodies against the BA.4 and BA.5 COVID-19 could help narrow down
strains than people who received the which people benefit most from a
original booster. That means, as most booster, says Offit. “Initially, every-
people already know, that getting the body benefited from getting vacci-
MICHAEL CIAGLO — GE T T Y IMAGES

booster doesn’t mean you won’t get nated and boosted,” he says. “But we
infected with the virus. The booster need to learn who benefits now.”
does, however, keep people from de-
veloping severe COVID-19 illness, For more health news,
so Offit says it still provides critical sign up for Health Matters at
time.com/health-matters
protection for the elderly and people
26 TIME January 30/February 6, 2023
 D A V O S

COMING
TOGETHER
In partnership with the World
Economic Forum, TIME takes
a closer look at the people,
technologies, and ideas that
might bridge our divides

ILLUSTR ATION BY MARYSIA MACHULSK A FOR TIME

 D A V O S • C L I M A T E

INDIA’S PATH

Jharia coalfield in Dhanbad, in the state of Jharkhand, is home to India’s largest coal reserves.
In Mumbai, right, many residential buildings run green thanks to rooftop solar panels
PH O T O G R APH S B Y S AR KE R P RO T IC K F O R TI M E
 HE DRIVE FROM RANCHI TO providing electricity for the growing
Hazaribagh in the eastern population of the state of Maharashtra,
Indian state of Jharkhand is home to Mumbai. Even as the region
only 65 miles, but it takes nearly expands its renewable-energy indus-
three hours. We swerve to avoid try, the atmosphere remains clean and
schoolchildren chatting with pleasant enough to support a thriving
friends and meandering down tourist trade.
the highway, honk at cows to get out of the way, Jharkhand and Rajasthan, so differ-
and accelerate past pickups reconfigured as make- ent in appearance, are being shaped by
shift transport vehicles overflowing with workers. the same fundamental force: India is

7%
Men in sandals push bicycles overloaded with bags growing so rapidly that its energy de-
of coal down the highway, while on the back roads mand is effectively insatiable. But the
close to Hazaribagh, women carry buckets of the two states present starkly different
stuff on their heads. INDIA’S CURRENT
answers to that demand. Historically,
Coal is what brought me to Jharkhand, one of SHARE OF ANNUAL fossil fuels from places like Jharkhand
India’s poorest and most polluted states. The pe- GREENHOUSE-GAS powered industrialization. But today,
destrian colliers, illegal miners trying to make ends EMISSIONS with climate concerns rising, many ex-

17.7%
meet, are just the start. All along the route to our perts are calling for India to ditch coal as
destination, the Topa Open Coal Mine, a caravan soon as possible and embrace the green-
of large, colorful trucks filled to the brim with coal energy model so prevalent in Rajasthan.
barrel toward us in the opposite lane. When we Much rides on which approach dom-
finally reach the mine, I see the source of it all: THE SHARE OF THE inates India’s energy future. In the three
an explosion has blasted through a wall of rock, GLOBAL POPULATION decades since reducing emissions be-
opening access to new tranches of coal to feed the LIVING IN THE came a discussion point on the global
COUNTRY
country’s fast-growing power and industrial needs. stage, analysts have portrayed the U.S.,
says JK John, the senior mining supervisor on site China, and Europe as the most critical
employed by a subsidiary of the state-owned Coal targets for cutting pollution. But as the
India Ltd.: “Here, coal is in demand.” curve finally begins to bend in those
Two flights and more than 900 miles away, places, it’s become clear that India will
the northwestern state of Rajasthan is a world soon be the most important country in
apart. Along a smoothly paved highway from the the climate change effort.
Jaisalmer airport, wind turbines dot the land- In December, I spent 10 days in
scape as far as the eye can see. Farther from the India, visiting coal communities, tour-
town’s center, we approach a field of solar pan- ing renewable-energy sites, and talk-
els, comprising a 300-MW power plant opened ing with leaders in the country’s polit-
in 2021 by the Indian company ReNew Power, ical and financial hubs to understand

30 TIME January 30/February 6, 2023

 △
India’s approach to the energy transi- From left: a lift operator What the Global North does matters too. The
tion. The picture that emerged is of a in the control room at one International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates
government following an approach un- of India’s last underground India needs $1.4 trillion in additional investment
charted for a country of its scale: pursue mines; surface mining in coming decades to align its energy system with
green technologies in the midst of in- leaves a scene of global climate targets; that will very likely require
dustrialization while leaving the fate of dynamited mountaintops; reforms at international lenders like the Interna-
in Jharia, 37 million tons
coal to the market. “India, as a responsi- tional Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank
of coal is estimated to
ble global citizen, is willing to make the have been consumed by to facilitate the flow of money. The best outcome,
bet that it can satisfy the aspiration for a coal-bed fire that has observers say, is one where India gets the help it
higher living standards, while pursuing been burning for longer needs to make the best choice for everyone. “India
a quite different energy strategy from than a century has to do it for itself,” says Rachel Kyte, the dean of
any large country before,” says Suman the Fletcher School of international affairs at Tufts
Bery, who leads NITI Aayog, the Indian University. “And India needs to do it for the world.”
government’s economic policymaking
agency. India, Bery says, will pursue In a bItter Irony, coal-rich Jharkhand can-
clean energy while seeking a “balance not provide reliable electricity even to hospitals,
between energy access and affordabil- schools, and other essential-service providers. In-
ity, energy security, and environmental dia’s second poorest state may be an extreme ex-
considerations.” ample, but such problems pervade every corner
Where that balance is struck could of the country and are the crux of its energy and
tip the climate scales worldwide. India climate challenge. It is, fundamentally, a develop-
contributes 7% of the emissions that ing nation, and its leaders do not want to write off
cause global warming today, a percent- any fuel source while energy demand continues its
age that will expand alongside its econ- meteoric rise. As the country’s population swells
omy. This growth will help determine to as high as a projected 1.8 billion over the next
whether—and by how far—the world 40 years, and its economy grows at an even faster
blows past the goal of keeping global rate, the country will need to add a power system
temperatures from rising more than equivalent in size to that of the entire European
the Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C. Union, according to the IEA.
Equally important, India’s approach is Historically, development at that scale hap-
being watched elsewhere. If it can use pened one way: fossil fuels built a country’s in-
low-carbon development to bring pros- dustrial base, and then leaders pivoted to a lower-
perity to its 1.4 billion people, others carbon, service-oriented model. China, one of
will follow. Failure could lead to a re- history’s most successful examples of rapid mod-
trenchment into fossil fuels across the ernization, built its industrial capacity by relent-
Global South. lessly adding coal-fired power plants and now

31
 D A V O S • C L I M A T E

boasts the second largest economy in the world, India, for example, all but eliminated
run primarily on coal. With that base established, the risk that states would renege
the country has recently begun its full-fledged ex- on their agreements—a significant
pansion of renewable energy. worry for the banks that finance such
India, with its abundant coal resources, could projects—by serving as an intermedi-
simply do the same. While research shows that a ary between private-sector developers
rapid expansion of renewable energy could pro- and states. If states don’t pay, the agency
vide the country with reliable electricity given ad- can essentially force them to do so—an
equate investment, no other country has tried it innovation that has played a “funda-
at India’s scale. Attempting a renewable revolu- mental” role in allowing the industry
tion comes with some inevitable risks, like tech- to grow, says Sumant Sinha, who has
nical challenges and vulnerability to foreign supply led ReNew Power since 2011.
chains. Meanwhile, coal is tried and tested. Using policy to drive private-sector
Above all, leaders in India insist that they have
the right to power up using coal. In the lingo of
the climate world, every country has its own
2003
ENACTS A NEW
investment is the norm in places like
the U.S., but it’s new for India. For de-
cades, electricity production and distri-
population-based “fair share” of emissions it can LAW ALLOWING bution in India was controlled by state-
produce before the world hits unsafe levels of FOR INCREASED owned enterprises, from state-owned
COMPETITION IN
global warming. In this formulation, the U.S. and THE POWER SECTOR, coal mines to state-owned power plants
European countries have already far exceeded PAVING THE WAY FOR to the state-owned grid. With the new
their limits; India, on the other hand, has contrib- RENEWABLES approach, the private sector deploys
uted only 4% of global emissions since 1850, de- clean-energy technologies, and the gov-
spite being home to 18% of the world’s population,
according to a 2019 U.N. report.
Whatever the reasoning, no one I spoke with
2008
LAUNCHES FIRST
ernment facilitates.
This is a fundamental, ideologi-
cal change in Indian governance. The
in India, from academics to renewable-energy ex- NATIONAL CLIMATE preamble to India’s constitution de-
ecutives, would endorse a swift transition away ACTION PLAN, clares it a “socialist” state. But the in-
WITH A FOCUS
from coal. “India’s not married to coal,” says Rahul ON SOLAR POWER
vestment in renewable energy that has
Tongia, a senior fellow at the Centre for Social and led capacity to double since Modi took

2014
Economic Progress in New Delhi. “It’s just that’s office has come almost entirely from
what India’s got.” Instead, government officials are private companies—and it isn’t slow-
working to promote renewable energy without ac- ing down. “The most natural thing for
NEWLY BUILT COAL
tively working to shut down coal. POWER CAPACITY India to meet this burgeoning electric-
PEAKS—THOUGH ity requirement is to meet it through
AT THE CENTER of this approach sits Prime Min- OVERALL COAL renewable energy, because it’s the
ister Narendra Modi. Modi, whose support for ENERGY KEEPS cheapest, most commercially sound
solar power extends back to his time as the top GROWING thing to do,” says Sinha. The IEA proj-

2021
official in the state of Gujarat in the 2010s, has set ects that solar power will make up
bold renewable-energy targets, saying at COP26 around 30% of India’s electricity gen-
in 2021 that the country would install 500 giga- eration by 2040, matching coal’s share.
watts of renewable-energy capacity by 2030. HOLDS UP COP26 This private-sector vitality was on full
AGREEMENT OVER A
That’s equivalent to 15 times California’s current CLAUSE ENDORSING
display in Rajasthan, where I saw mas-
renewable capability. PHASING OUT COAL sive wind and solar farms that belong
To get there, the Modi government has merged to the country’s biggest private play-
its renewable-energy and clean-technology ob-
jectives with its policy of liberalizing the econ-
omy and boosting the private sector. Bery, of
2030
TARGET TO SOURCE
ers, including the megacorporations
Tata and Adani.
But the focus on markets also re-
NITI Aayog, describes the government’s approach HALF OF ELECTRICITY flects hard politics. Driving around
as market-based: creating a context for clean tech- FROM RENEWABLES Jharkhand, a state of 33 million people,
nologies to “edge out coal in the market” rather it’s impossible to miss how entrenched
than relying on government mandates. India, he
tells me in his New Delhi office, should be “back-
ing all these other technologies, so that it’s a pure
2070
TARGET TO REACH
the coal industry has become. Liveli-
hoods depend on it, from educated su-
pervisors running the show to indigent
commercial choice, rather than a regulatory choice NET-ZERO EMISSIONS locals scrounging for scraps of coal. On
to phase out coal.” the outskirts of the Topa mine, I saw an
Industry insiders say this approach is working. entire village abandoned to make way
The government-backed Solar Energy Corp. of for miners to open a new coal seam.

32 TIME January 30/February 6, 2023

 countries while supporting their economic growth.
India’s leaders are keenly aware of the global
stakes. Wherever I traveled there, I saw signs cel-
ebrating India hosting this year’s G-20, the annual
forum for the world’s largest economies, at which
the host is keen to make climate a central topic.
India will tout its efforts to spur behavioral change
among consumers, and its nascent use of hydrogen
as an energy-storage medium. The meetings, Kant
says, could lead countries to come to agreement on
how to reform institutions like the IMF and World
Bank so they can help developing countries de-
carbonize. The energy transition globally will cost
untold trillions of dollars, and most countries now
agree that these international financial institutions
need to create instruments to make investing in
places like India less risky for private financiers.
To actually deliver on such an agenda, though,
India must first convince the rest of the world that
its model for low-carbon development can work.
Modi and others have already begun a campaign
to show the rest of the world how serious it is—
and to point out Western hypocrisy. At COP27, the
annual U.N. climate conference held in November
in Egypt, India lobbied for countries to agree to
phase out “all fossil fuels” rather than just coal, an
implicit challenge to the U.S. and other Western
countries that are rich in oil. “Why should only coal
be phased out?” Kant asks me rhetorically. And
Modi’s LiFE campaign, which focuses on the role
behavioral change can play in cutting emissions,
stems from a recognition that India’s per capita
emissions are just 40% of the global average.
India’s energy future remains India’s “choice.”
△ But for all of the country’s insistence on sover-
Displacing such a colossus, policy- Birds swoop through eignty, by marrying its energy policy to its economic
makers say, cannot be done with a reg- smog in Delhi on a liberalization it has chosen a path of interdepen-
ulation here and there. “The minute December morning dence. In leaving the speed of its green transition
you say ‘no coal’ there will be political with air quality in the to the whims of the market, India has accepted a
implications. There will be riots,” says “very unhealthy” category dependence on price signals, investment choices,
Amitabh Kant, who is leading India’s and economic trends far beyond the control of
G-20 conference this year. “But if coal New Delhi or Mumbai. “The political signals, the
becomes commercially nonviable, policy evolution, or even the international commit-
that will be acceptable because the ments are also contingent on how quickly the mar-
market will do it.” ket participants are able to respond,” says Arunabha
It’s a bold bet. Even with a true tran- Ghosh, CEO of the Council on Energy, Environ-
sition from coal likely decades away, ment and Water, an Indian environmental NGO.
many local officials and activists across Which means our future on the planet, once
India have begun to call for dedicated again, depends on a collective choice. Political
programs to ensure a “just transition” leaders across the Global North and South can re-
that protects those affected by a move form the institutions that govern the global econ-
away from coal. omy, ensuring that the market decisively favors
clean energy over fossil fuels. Or, we can all bid
a smooth transition matters not farewell to global climate targets and gird our-
only for India but also for the rest of the selves for the far more costly dangers that come
world—it is a test case for how to im- next. —With reporting by Solcyre Burga and
plement an energy shift in developing leSlie DickStein/new york 

33
From pandemics to climate change to poverty and injustice,
seismic issues are threatening our future. People around the
world are struggling with economic stagnation and inflation,
diseases and discrimination, a lack of food and clean water,
and access to sustainable energy.

When we are faced with so many unsolved problems in

our physical world, we should look to the digital world for
answers. This is where the metaverse comes into the picture.
Connecting our physical and virtual worlds offers endless
possibilities to innovate and solve our greatest challenges.

“As with so many innovations in our history, it’s what we make

of the metaverse that matters,” said Annika Hauptvogel,
Head of Technology & Innovation Management at Siemens.
When she thinks about the metaverse, she
has something different in mind than simply
a virtual realm for fun, games and shopping.
“The biggest potential of the metaverse lies
with the industries that help run our world,”
Hauptvogel said. It can change the way we
work, live, manufacture and travel, which can
ultimately help maintain and sustain the well-
being of our planet.

In this “industrial metaverse,” real-world

machines and factories, as well as buildings problems before they occur in an actual They are used in almost all industries and
and even entire cities, will be mirrored down hospital, airport or water treatment facility. will be the building blocks for the industrial
to the tiniest chip. Advanced digital twin And most importantly, we could launch new metaverse to take shape.
technology will enable these systems to innovations at an incredible pace to address
function exactly as they would in the real the planet’s most pressing issues. “We have already adopted much of the
world, empowering engineers, scientists and technology that has powered our digital
everyone else to find solutions and make A look at Denmark helps to understand the twins over the past decade, and that will
improvements faster, easier and cheaper. potential. There, a team from the Technical continue to expand the future industrial
University of Denmark (DTU) is working metaverse,” Hauptvogel said. “Artificial
In the industrial metaverse, we could run with Siemens to make wind turbines intelligence, machine learning, edge
unlimited simulated tests using real-world more efficient. Researchers developed an technologies, 5G, and now digital twins
assets that would be too costly or scarce executable digital twin of the turbine’s rotor have enhanced how we make decisions to
to do in real life. We would gain more blades to test, monitor and optimize the impact the world for good, and we’re just
opportunities to optimize and discover new blades’ performance. getting started.”

The results were impressive: hardware costs By combining the real and virtual worlds,
have been reduced by 30 percent while humanity can unlock a more sustainable
making it up to five times faster to set up tests. future. “As the physical and digital worlds
melt together in a digital twin, I am sure this
“One of the exciting things with connecting will impact us in almost everything we do,”
the real and virtual world into a digital twin is Branner is convinced. “It will give new life
to use this technology to simulate different to physical labs at our university and foster
future scenarios before a decision is taken new development in sensor, measurement
in the real world,” said Kim Branner, Head and IT technology that is bound to transform
of Structural Design & Testing at DTU Wind our whole world.”
Artificial Intelligence. This proactive approach
“provides a wealth of data and understanding Along with its partners, Siemens is
that feeds back to the designers and developing the next generation of digital
manufacturers, providing the basis for better twins that will enable immersive, physics-
design and production of the next generation based, photo-realistic interaction in real-
of wind turbines,” said Branner. time. This promising technology will usher
in an industrial metaverse, serving as a
Although it sounds like the stuff of science powerful tool for people to solve today’s
fiction, digital twins are —in fact— very real. greatest challenges.

FIND MORE INSIGHTS AND STORIES AT - SIEMENS.COM/INSIGHTS

 D A V O S • E S S A Y

be imagined without Aramaean con-

tributions. Orthodox Jews leave the

The Dangerous
world to the Aramaic sound of the kad-
dish prayer. At some point about 2,500
years ago, Jews even abandoned their

Quest for Identity

own Hebrew script, and to this day
write the Torah, the Talmud, and their
daily newspapers in Aramaic script.
As for the very idea of writing, it is a
BY YUVAL NOAH HARARI
contribution not of Aramaeans, but of
the ancient Sumerians. Thousands of
All humAns Ask Themselves who They Are, years before the first Jew lived, some Su-
where they came from, and what is their identity. merian geeks had a startup: use a stick
This quest for identity is important and fascinat- to imprint marks on a piece of mud.
ing, but it can also be dangerous. In attempting They invented a code for these marks
to define a clear identity for myself, I might close and created the technology of writing,
myself off to the world. I might conclude that my which eventually gave us books, news-
identity is defined by belonging to a single group papers, and websites.
of people, emphasizing those parts in me that Not just its language and writing
connect me to the chosen group, and ignoring all system, but even core religious beliefs
my other parts. came to Judaism from outside. For in-
But people are incredibly complex beings. If we stance, the belief that humans have
focus on just one part of our identity and imag- an eternal soul that is punished or re-
ine that it alone matters, we cannot understand warded in the afterlife isn’t mentioned
who we really are. For example, for me as a Jew, anywhere in the Torah, and apparently
it is obvious that Jewish history and Jewish cul- was not a key part of biblical Judaism.
ture are important to my identity. But to under- The Old Testament God never promises
stand who I am, the Jewish story is far from suf- people that if they follow his command-
ficient. I am made of many pieces that came from ments, they’ll enjoy everlasting bliss in
all over the world. heaven, and nowhere does he threaten
I like football, which I got from the British. They that if they sin, they’ll be burned for
invented this game. So when I kick a ball into the all eternity in hell. Belief in a personal
goal, I am being a little British. I like to drink coffee afterlife seeped into Judaism from other
in the morning, for which I must thank the Ethiopi- faiths, most notably from the Greek phi-
ans who discovered coffee and the Arabs and Turks losophy of Plato and from the Persian
who spread the drink far and wide. I like sweet- religion of Zoroastrianism. The Persians
ening my coffee with a spoonful of sugar, so I am also gave the Jews the idea of the devil—
grateful to the Papuans who domesticated sugar- and of the messiah.
cane in New Guinea at least 8,000 years ago. Some-
times I upgrade my coffee with a piece of choco- From Food to philosophy, from
late, which came to me all the way from the tropical medicine to art, most of what keeps
forests of Central America and Amazonia, where us alive, and most of what makes life
Native Americans began making cocoa treats per- worthwhile, are things that were in-
haps as early as 5,000 years ago. vented not by members of my specific
Some Jews don’t like football, don’t drink cof- nation but by people from across the
fee, and avoid sugar and chocolate. But they still whole world. That’s true not just of
owe much to foreigners. Hebrew, the sacred lan- Jews, but of everyone. Once, someone
guage of Judaism, got many of its words, idioms, who wanted to belittle African cultures
and basic structures from other languages such as asked derisively, “Who is the Tolstoy
Phoenician, Akkadian, Greek, Arabic, and most ERY of the Zulus?” That person seemed to
importantly Aramaic. Entire chunks of the Old HUMAN believe that the culture of no African
Testament are written in Aramaic rather than He- people—either the Zulus or anyone
brew, as are large parts of the Mishnah, Talmud,
BEING IS else—produced literary works com-
and other key Jewish texts. The ancient Aramae- HEIR TO THE parable to Tolstoy’s War and Peace or
ans worshipped the god Haddad rather than Je- WHOLE OF Anna Karenina. Ralph Wiley, an Afri-
hovah, and killed several Jewish kings, but the HUMAN can American journalist, answered this
Hebrew language and Jewish culture can hardly CREATION challenge with breathtaking simplicity.

36 Time January 30/February 6, 2023

 insights that are relevant to the inhabitants of
Durban and Johannesburg no less than those of
Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Two thousand years ago the African-Roman
playwright Terence, a freed slave, expressed the
same key idea when he said, “I am human, and
nothing human is foreign to me.” Every human
being is heir to the whole of human creation. People
who in search of their identity narrow their world
to the story of a single nation are turning their back
on their humanity. They devalue what they share
with all other humans. And they devalue far deeper
things. All the inventions and ideas of humans over
the past few thousand years are just the upper crust
of who we are. Under this crust, at the depths of our
bodies and minds, we contain things that evolved
over millions of years, long before there were any
humans. This deep mystery manifests itself in ev-
erything I feel and think. To understand who I am,
it is necessary to open up to this mystery and ex-
plore it, instead of settling for a story about how I
belong to one tribe of people who lived for a few
thousand years on some hills near some river.
Consider, for example, our courtship rituals.
What do we feel when we see someone we find
attractive, when we hold hands for the first time,
when we exchange a first kiss? Think of the emo-
tional storm, the hopes and fears, the butterflies in
the stomach, the rising body heat, the quickening
breath. What are all these things that authors are
endlessly fascinated with, and that singers never
tire of singing about?
These aren’t things that were invented by Jews,
Wiley didn’t list Zulu authors like Bene- Aramaeans, Russians, or Zulus. These things
dict Wallet Vilakazi, Mazisi Kunene, or weren’t invented by any humans. Evolution shaped
John Langalibalele Dube. Nor did he them over millions of years, and we share them not
insist more generally that African au- only with all other humans, but also with chim-
thors like Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda panzees, dolphins, bears, and numerous other ani-
Ngozi Adichie, or Ngugi wa Thiong’o are mals. Religious rituals like the Jewish bar mitzvah
as good as Western authors. Wiley com- or the Christian Eucharist are at most 2,000 years
pletely bypassed this sectarian trap. In- old, and they connect the present generation to
stead, he wrote in his book Dark Wit- about 100 previous generations. In contrast, the
ness that “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the rituals of mammalian romance are tens of mil-
Zulus—unless you find a profit in fenc- lions of years old, and they connect us to millions
ing off universal properties of mankind of previous mammalian generations and even to
into exclusive tribal ownership.” premammalian ancestors.
In contrast to the views held by fanat- If I insist on narrowing my identity to the fact
I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y M A R Y S I A M A C H U L S K A F O R T I M E

ical racists, as well as by people taking that I belong to one specific human group, then I
the condemnation of “cultural appro- ignore all that. I leave little room in my identity to
priation” to extremes, Tolstoy isn’t the football and chocolate, to Aramaic and Tolstoy, and
exclusive property of Russians. Tolstoy even to romance. What remains is a narrow tribal
belongs to all humans. Tolstoy himself story, which may serve as a sharp weapon in the
was deeply influenced by the ideas of battles of identity politics, but which comes with a
foreigners like the French Victor Hugo high price. As long as I adhere to that narrow story,
and the German Arthur Schopenhauer, I’ll never know the truth about myself.
not to mention Jesus and Buddha. Tol-
stoy speaks of feelings, questions, and Harari is the author of Sapiens and Unstoppable Us

37
 D A V O S • V I E W P O I N T

We Hold the Facing this stark reality with

our eyes wide open, we must make an
Pen of History immediate choice. Most of us can feel
deep in our bones that transformational
BY CHRISTIANA FIGUERES change is needed, and science has made
abundantly clear what it must entail. To
more Than aT any oTher Time in The hisTory protect ourselves, we have to protect
of human presence on this planet, we are now de- 1.5°C as our maximum global average
ciding what our own future will be. temperature increase.
Since the last ice age, some 12,000 years ago, That means we have to make two
humans have been able to develop civilization as things happen this decade: First, we
we know it thanks to the stability of the earth’s have to cut our global greenhouse-gas
interconnected ecosystems, which cradled life emissions in half by 2030. And sec-
and supported our expansion. During this era, the ond, we have to safeguard all remain-
Holocene, humans flourished but nature reigned. ing healthy ecosystems, regenerating
We were the thriving recipients of a favorable en- those we have depleted.
vironment unique in the history of the planet. If we don’t meet this dual challenge,
But around 1950, the situation changed. We we basically condemn ourselves and our
moved from being the passive recipients to being descendants to a world of ever increas-
the direct driving force ing climate chaos, spiraling destruction,
behind transformation and deepening human misery.
in our natural environ- However, if we do choose to cut our
ment, and not for the bet- emissions by 50% by 2030—which is
ter. We now exercise such technically entirely feasible—and act
control over the planet decisively to protect nature, we open the
that we have catapulted it portal to a world that not only averts the
and ourselves into a new worst of climate change, but is actually
geological era, known as a much better one than we have right
the Anthropocene: the now, with better public health, more-
human-shaped epoch, in livable cities, more-efficient transport,
which the pen of history and more-productive land.
has been passed from na- Without a doubt, we are in the deci-
ture to humanity, and we sive decade. We must be guided by the
are the ones determining firm conviction that humans can meet
what will be written. this challenge. We must change the un-
In just 70 short years, folding story of the Anthropocene from
we collectively ignored △ one of overconsumption, inequality,
all the scientific warnings about the dangers that A walkway crosses ponds and destruction to one of repair, re-
would ensue. Decades of extraction and over- in a “sponge park” built on generation, and reconnection—against
consumption, the accumulation of great wealth in a former coal-ash dump all apparent odds.
small pockets of society, and general disregard for site in Nanchang, China We must constantly remind our-
N G H A N G U A N — A P ; O P P O S I T E PA G E : C E L E S T I N O A R C E — N U R P H O T O/G E T T Y I M A G E S
our role as guardians of the global commons have selves that we are holding the pen. We
altered the earth’s atmosphere, land, and oceans so must stand tall in our unwavering faith
substantially that we are literally living ourselves in human ingenuity and compassion,
out of our life-providing environment. This is the reminding ourselves of our individual
most perilous moment in human history. and collective agency. Carving a better
That is the clear message from the latest scien- future does not happen on its own. We
tific reports, which are categorical in warning us have to be intentional, purpose driven—
of looming, radical changes in the earth systems frankly, downright stubborn—about our
that have so far been keeping us safe. Our planet objective. Only that determination will
will of course continue on her evolutionary path, give us a fighting chance.
started 4.5 billion years ago, but the human effects
of those tipping points would render many parts of
HOUT Figueres is co-host of the climate
our globe uninhabitable to the human race, with A DOUBT, podcast Outrage + Optimism
all the attending economic, social, health, political, WE ARE IN and former executive secretary
and security consequences. The resulting turbu- THE DECISIVE of the U.N. Framework Convention
lence would be unprecedented—and irreversible. DECADE on Climate Change

40 Time January 30/February 6, 2023

Russia’s War Costs Commission’s proposal to launch a new
full-scale macrofinancial assistance pro-
The Whole World gram for Ukraine in 2023. But as the war
drags on, this is not enough.
BY SERGII MARCHENKO Large economies and international
financial institutions need to find new
A yeAr Ago, UkrAine’s economy wAs on A tools and solutions—and not just for
strong footing, with a debt-to-GDP of less than Ukraine. When a country finds itself
50% and a budget deficit of 3.5%. Then came under attack, it needs fully engaged and
Feb. 24, and with it a full-scale war. We were in constant cooperation. Learning from the
a new reality, with very diferent financial needs. experience of military aid coordination
Funds that should have been directed toward at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and to
environmental, social, and corporate-governance coordinate financial support to Ukraine
goals, sustainable development, and strengthen- and address immediate financial needs,
ing the country’s competitiveness were redirected Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky
to defense, humanitarian purposes, and support and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal have
for people afected by the war. And in 2023, about proposed a new financial-coordination
50% of the state budget is allocated to national se- platform. The idea of developing this
curity and defense. platform is to bring G-7 member coun-
Months of war have transformed Ukraine from tries and international financial institu-
a country with stable and promising financial in- tions to the table on a regular basis—to
dicators to one that is directing all resources to the facilitate information sharing on key de-
struggle while battling severe economic conse- velopments and projections, as well as
quences: 30% economic decline, inflation around ensure timely and efficient channeling of
28%, up to 8 million refugees, unemployment of the financial assistance from various do-
about 30%, and hundreds of destroyed or damaged nors. This kind of cooperation will help
businesses and industries. to make disbursement more efficient.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion of With Ukraine as a co-chair, the plat-
Ukraine by the Russian Federation, we have been form could de-
implementing measures for macroeconomic stabi- velop efective
lization and accumulation of financial resources to and sustainable
defend our state. While business in Ukraine was mechanisms to
practically paralyzed in the first month of the war, coordinate fi-
we’ve ensured that today just 10% of enterprises nancial support
are nonfunctioning. And our economic and finan- for Ukraine, as
cial systems are fully operational. well as a valu-
The financial system has performed at full ca- able model for
pacity since the invasion. Budget revenues have in- other nations
creased by 20% since April. We began issuing war to use in the
bonds. All social expenditures, pensions, wages of future.
teachers and health care workers, as well as the Russia’s war
security and defense sector, have been financed. doesn’t just af-
At the beginning of the Russian invasion, in- fect Ukraine’s
ternational partners verified our budget deficit at economy. The
$5 billion per month for the rest of 2022. As of early economic con-
December we had received just over $28 billion out sequences have
of that required $50 billion, and the National Bank △ been global.
of Ukraine had to print $12 billion more. A worker cleans debris Many countries are facing the highest
In 2023 the state budget deficit of Ukraine will in the streets of Dnipro inflation in decades, huge energy costs,
reach $38 billion. The constant massive missile at- after a Russian missile and threats of recession.
tacks across Ukraine mean the reconstruction bill landed in the city Food security and an energy crisis will
and economic losses will keep growing in 2023. bring many more deaths and more suf-
fering around the world. We must work
The supporT of international partners will play a more closely toward a solution for us all.
crucial role in how we get through the 2023 budget
year. We welcome the U.S. intention to continue Marchenko is Ukraine’s Finance
providing grants to Ukraine, as well as the European Minister

41
 D A V O S • T E C H N O L O G Y

EMIS HASSABIS STANDS HALF- DEEPMIND’S CEO in the human body. AlphaFold has al-
way up a spiral staircase, sur- HELPED TAKE AI ready been a force multiplier for hun-
veying the cathedral he built. MAINSTREAM. dreds of thousands of scientists work-
Behind him, light glints off the NOW HE’S ing on efforts such as developing malaria
rungs of a golden helix rising URGING CAUTION vaccines, fighting antibiotic resistance,
up through the staircase’s airy and tackling plastic pollution, the com-
well. The DNA sculpture, span- BY BILLY PERRIGO/ pany says. Now DeepMind is applying
ning three floors, is the centerpiece of DeepMind’s LONDON similar machine-learning techniques to
recently opened London headquarters. It’s an ar- the puzzle of nuclear fusion, hoping it
tistic representation of the code embedded in the helps yield an abundant source of cheap,
nucleus of nearly every cell in the human body. zero-carbon energy that could wean the
“Although we work on making machines smart, global economy off fossil fuels at a criti-
we wanted to keep humanity at the center of what cal juncture in the climate crisis.
we’re doing here,” Hassabis, DeepMind’s CEO and Hassabis says these efforts are just
co-founder, tells TIME. This building, he says, is the beginning. He and his colleagues
a “cathedral to knowledge.” Each meeting room have been working toward a much
is named after a famous scientist or philosopher. grander ambition: creating artificial
“I’ve always thought of DeepMind as an ode to in- general intelligence, or AGI, by building
telligence,” he says. machines that can think, learn, and be
Hassabis, 46, has always been obsessed with in- set to solve humanity’s toughest prob-
telligence: what it is, the possibilities it unlocks, lems. Today’s AI is narrow, brittle, and
and how to acquire more of it. He was the second- often not very intelligent at all. But AGI,
best chess player in the world for his age when he Hassabis believes, will be an “epoch-
was 12, and he graduated from high school a year defining” technology—like the harness-
early. As an adult he strikes a somewhat diminutive ing of electricity—that will change the
figure, but his intellectual presence fills the room. very fabric of human life. If he’s right, it
“I want to understand the big questions, the really could earn him a place in history.
big ones that you normally go into philosophy or But with AI’s promise also comes peril.
physics if you’re interested in,” he says. “I thought In recent months, researchers building
building AI would be the fastest route to answer an AI system to design new drugs re-
some of those questions.” vealed that their tool could be easily re-
DeepMind—a subsidiary of Google’s parent com- purposed to make deadly new chemicals.
pany, Alphabet—is one of the world’s leading arti- A separate AI model trained to spew out
ficial intelligence labs. Last summer it announced toxic hate speech went viral, exemplify-
that one of its algorithms, AlphaFold, had predicted ▷ ing the risk to vulnerable communities
Demis Hassabis by the
the 3D structures of nearly all the proteins known Helicase—a sculpture
online. And inside AI labs around the
to humanity, and that the company was making that uses DNA’s helix world, policy experts have grappled with
the technology behind it freely available. Scientists shape as a symbol of near-term questions like what to do when
had long been familiar with the sequences of amino human endeavor and the an AI has the potential to be comman-
acids that make up proteins, the building blocks of pursuit of knowledge—at deered by rogue states to mount wide-
life, but had never cracked how they fold up into DeepMind’s headquarters spread hacking campaigns or infer state-
the complex 3D shapes so crucial to their behavior in London on Nov. 3, 2022 level nuclear secrets. In December 2022,

PHOTOGR APH BY JAMES DAY FOR TIME

43
 D A V O S • T E C H N O L O G Y

ChatGPT, a chatbot designed by OpenAI, went viral

for its ability to write almost like a human—but
faced criticism for its susceptibility to racism and
misinformation. And the tiny company Prisma Labs
went viral for its Lensa app’s AI-enhanced selfies.
Many users complained Lensa sexualized their im-
ages, revealing biases in its training data. What was
once a field of a few deep-pocketed tech compa-
nies is becoming increasingly accessible; as com-
puting power becomes cheaper and AI techniques
become better known, you no longer need a high-
walled cathedral to perform cutting-edge research.
It is in this uncertain climate that Hassabis agrees
to a rare interview, to issue a stark warning about his
growing concerns. “I would advocate not moving
fast and breaking things,” he says, referring to an
old Facebook motto that encouraged engineers to
release their technologies first and fix problems that
arose later. The phrase has since become synony-
mous with disruption. That culture, subsequently
emulated by a generation of startups, helped Face-
book rocket to 3 billion users. But it also left the
company entirely unprepared when disinformation,
hate speech, and even incitement to genocide began △
appearing on its platform. Hassabis sees a similarly Hassabis, left, captaining psyche that makes winning so appeal-
worrying trend developing with AI. He says AI is the England under-11s ing, and whether you could imbue those
now “on the cusp” of being able to make tools that chess team at the age of 9 same traits in a machine. “All the time
could be deeply damaging to human civilization, I’m thinking, This is just a kid!” He
and urges his competitors to proceed with more cau- knew then this young man was destined
tion than before. “When it comes to very powerful for great things.
technologies—and obviously AI is going to be one of After graduating from Cambridge
the most powerful ever—we need to be careful,” he University, Hassabis returned to Bullfrog
says. “Not everybody is thinking about those things. to help Molyneux build his most popu-
It’s like experimentalists, many of whom don’t re- lar game to date: Theme Park, a simula-
alize they’re holding dangerous material.” Worse tion game giving the player a God’s-eye
still, Hassabis points out, we are the guinea pigs. view of an expanding fairground busi-
ness. Hassabis went on to establish his
HASSABIS WAS JUST 15 when he walked into the
Bullfrog video-game studios in Guildford, just
southwest of London. A gaming obsessive, he had
entered a competition in a video-game magazine
$500 own game company before later decid-
ing to study for a Ph.D. in neuroscience.
He wanted to understand the algorithmic
level of the brain: not the interactions be-
to win an internship at the prestigious studio. His MILLION tween microscopic neurons but the larger
program—a Space Invaders–style game where THE AMOUNT THAT architectures that seemed to give rise to
players shot at chess pieces descending from the GOOGLE REPORTEDLY humanity’s powerful intelligence. “The
top of the screen—came in second place. He had PAID FOR DEEPMIND mind is the most intriguing object in the
L E F T: C O U R T E S Y D E M I S H A S S A B I S ; R I G H T: L E E J I N - M A N — A P

to settle for a week’s work experience. IN 2014 universe,” Hassabis says. He was trying
Peter Molyneux, Bullfrog’s co-founder, still re- to understand how it worked in prepara-
members first seeing Hassabis. “This little slender tion for his life’s quest. “Without under-
kid came in, who you would probably just walk past standing that I had in mind AI the whole
in the street and not even notice. But there was a time, it looks like a random path,” Hass-
sparkle in his eyes: the sparkle of intelligence.” In a abis says of his career trajectory: chess,
chance conversation on the bus to Bullfrog’s Christ- video games, neuroscience. “But I used
mas party, the teenager captivated Molyneux. “The every single scrap of that experience.”
whole of the journey there, and the whole of the By 2013, when DeepMind was three
journey back, was the most intellectually stimulat- years old, Google came knocking. A team
ing conversation,” he recalls. They talked about the of Google executives flew to London in
philosophy of games, what it is about the human a private jet, and Hassabis wowed them

44 TIME January 30/February 6, 2023

 DeepMind’s interests were aligned with its own.
Google’s mission, Eustace said, was to index all of
humanity’s knowledge, make it accessible, and ulti-
mately raise the IQ of the world. “I think that reso-
nated,” he says. The following year, Google acquired
DeepMind for some $500 million. Hassabis turned
down a bigger offer from Facebook. One reason, he
says, was that unlike Facebook, Google was “very
happy to accept” DeepMind’s ethical red lines “as
part of the acquisition.” (There were reports at the
time that Google agreed to set up an independent
ethics board to ensure these lines were not crossed.)
In 2016, DeepMind won its first major coup.
One of its algorithms beat one of the world’s best
players of Go, an ancient Chinese board game far
more complex than chess. Forecasters had not ex-
pected the milestone to be passed for a decade. It
was a vindication of Hassabis’ pitch to Google: that
the best way to push the frontier of AI was to focus
on reinforcement learning in game environments.
But just as DeepMind was scaling new heights,
things were beginning to get complicated. In 2015,
two of its earliest investors, billionaires Peter Thiel
△ and Elon Musk, symbolically turned their backs on
by showing them a prototype AI his team Hassabis celebrates DeepMind by funding rival startup OpenAI. That
had taught to play the computer game DeepMind’s victory over lab, subsequently bankrolled by $1 billion from
Breakout. DeepMind’s signature tech- Go player Lee Sedol, right, Microsoft, also believed in the possibility of AGI,
nique behind the algorithm, reinforce- in South Korea in 2016 but it had a very different philosophy for how to
ment learning, was something Google get there. It wasn’t as interested in games. Much
wasn’t doing at the time. It was inspired of its research focused not on reinforcement learn-
by how the human brain learns, an un- ing but on unsupervised learning, which involves
derstanding Hassabis had developed scraping vast quantities of data from the inter-
during his time as a neuroscientist. net and pumping it through neural networks. As
The AI would play the game millions of computers became more powerful and data more
times, and was rewarded every time it abundant, those techniques appeared to be mak-
scored some points. Through a process ing huge strides in capability.
of points-based reinforcement, it would While DeepMind, Google, and other AI labs had
learn the optimum strategy. Hassabis been working on similar research behind closed
and his colleagues fervently believed doors, OpenAI was more willing to let the public use
in training AI in game environments, its tools. In late 2022 it launched DALL·E2, which
and the dividends of the approach im- can generate an image of almost any search term
pressed the Google executives. “I loved imaginable, and the chatbot ChatGPT. Because both
them immediately,” says Alan Eustace, a of these tools were trained on data scraped from
former senior vice president at Google. the internet, they were plagued by structural bi-
Hassabis’ focus on the dangers was ases and inaccuracies. DALL·E2 is likely to illus-
evident from his first conversation with trate “lawyers” as old white men and “flight atten-
Eustace. “He was thoughtful enough dants” as young beautiful women, while ChatGPT is
to understand that the technology had prone to confident assertions of false information.
long-term societal implications, and he In the wrong hands, a 2021 DeepMind research
wanted to understand those before the paper says, language-generation tools like Chat-
technology was invented, not after the GPT could turbocharge the spread of disinforma-
technology was deployed,” Eustace says. tion, facilitate government censorship or surveil-
“It’s like chess. What’s the endgame? lance, and perpetuate harmful stereotypes under
How is it going to develop, not just two the guise of objectivity. (OpenAI acknowledges its
steps ahead, but 20 steps ahead?” apps have limitations, including biases, but says
Eustace assured Hassabis that that it’s working to minimize them and that its
Google shared those concerns, and that mission is to build safe AGI to benefit humanity.)

45
 D A V O S • T E C H N O L O G Y

Despite Hassabis’ calls for the AI race to slow Hassabis believes the wealth from AGI,
down, it appears he may have other blind spots that if it arrives, should be redistributed. “I
could lead to unsafe applications of the technology. think we need to make sure that the bene-
He wants the world to see DeepMind as a stan- fits accrue to as many people as possible—
dard bearer of safe and ethical AI research, lead- to all of humanity, ideally.” He likes the
ing by example in a field full of others focused on ideas of universal basic income, under
speed. DeepMind has published “red lines” against which every citizen is given a monthly
unethical uses of its technology, including surveil- stipend from the government, and uni-
lance and weaponry. But neither company has versal basic services, where the state pays
publicly shared what legal power DeepMind has for basic living standards like transporta-
to prevent Alphabet—a surveillance empire that tion or housing. He says an AGI-driven
has dabbled in Pentagon contracts—from pursuing future should be more economically equal
those goals with the AI DeepMind builds. In 2021, than today’s world, without explaining
Alphabet ended yearslong talks with DeepMind how that system would work. “If you’re
about the subsidiary’s setting up an independent in a [world of] radical abundance, there
legal structure that would prevent its AI being con- should be less room for that inequality
trolled by a single corporate entity, the Wall Street and less ways that could come about. So
Journal reported. Hassabis doesn’t deny DeepMind that’s one of the positive consequences of
made these attempts, but downplays any sugges- the AGI vision, if it gets realized.”
tion that he is concerned about the current struc- Others are less optimistic that this uto-
ture being unsafe. When asked to confirm or deny pian future will come to pass—given that
whether the independent ethics board rumored to the past several decades of growth in the
have been set up as part of the Google acquisition tech industry have coincided with huge
actually exists, he says he can’t, because it’s “all increases in wealth inequality. “Major
confidential.” But he adds that DeepMind’s ethics corporations, including the major cor-
structure has “evolved” since the acquisition “into poration that owns DeepMind, have to
the structures that we have now.” ensure they maximize value to share-
Hassabis says both DeepMind and Alphabet holders; are not focused really on ad-
have committed to public ethical frameworks and dressing the climate crisis unless there
build safety into their tools from the very begin- is a profit in it; and are certainly not in-
ning. DeepMind has its own internal ethics board, terested in redistributing wealth when
the Institutional Review Committee (IRC), with the whole goal of the company is to ac-
representatives from all areas of the company, cumulate further wealth and distribute
chaired by its chief operating officer, Lila Ibra- it to shareholders,” says Paris Marx, host
him. The IRC meets regularly, Ibrahim says, and of the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us. “Not
any disagreements are escalated to DeepMind’s recognizing those things is really failing
executive leaders for a final decision. “We oper- to fully consider the potential impacts of
ate with a lot of freedom,” she says. “We have a the technology.” Alphabet, Amazon, and
separate review process: we have our own internal Meta were among the 20 corporations
ethics review committee; we collaborate on best that spent the most money lobbying U.S.
practices and learnings.” When asked what hap- lawmakers in 2022, according to transpar-
pens if DeepMind’s leadership team disagrees with ency watchdog Open Secrets. “What we
Alphabet’s, or if its “red lines” are crossed, Ibrahim lack is not the technology to address the
only says, “We haven’t had that issue yet.” climate crisis, or to redistribute wealth,”
Marx says. “[It] is the political will.”
ONE OF HASSABIS’ favorite games right now is a Back at DeepMind’s spiral stair-
strategy game called Polytopia. The aim is to grow case, an employee explains that the
a small village into a world-dominating empire NEED TO DNA sculpture is designed to rotate,
through gradual technological advances. While MAKE SURE but today the motor is broken. Closer
Hassabis’ worldview is much more nuanced— THAT THE inspection shows some of the rungs of
and cautious—it’s easy to see why the game’s BENEFITS the helix are askew. At the bottom of the
ethos resonates with him. He still appears to be- ACCRUE TO staircase there’s a notice on a wooden
lieve that technological advancement is inher- stool in front of this giant metaphor for
ently good for humanity, and that under capital-
AS MANY humanity. “Please don’t touch,” it reads.
ism it’s possible to predict and mitigate AI’s risks. PEOPLE AS “It’s very fragile and could easily be
“Advances in science and technology: that’s what POSSIBLE.’ damaged.” —With reporting by MARIAH
drives civilization,” he says. —D EM I S H ASSAB IS ESPADA and SOLCYRE BURGA □

46 TIME January 30/February 6, 2023

Benjamin Meet Circle—the place where money

meet meets the internet, crypto meets

Blockchain
compliance, and local businesses
meet global customers.

circle.com

© 2023 Circle Internet Financial Limited

 D A V O S • V I E W P O I N T

Social Media’s squares don’t actually resolve our 3D

problems. Take the issue of climate
Perspective Pitfall change: 2D squares/circles ask, “Is cli-
mate change really an existential risk
BY TRISTAN HARRIS or overblown media hype?” While the
3D-cylinder perspective question re-
cooperaTion, The Thing we need mosT To mains: “What trade-offs do we collec-
solve big problems in the world, is being collapsed tively want between economic growth,
by the thing that promised to connect us and bring energy needs, global security, and emis-
us closer together: social media. The problem is sions required for that growth?”
that social connection isn’t actually the business Additionally, the classic social media
model—“engagement” is. debate between free speech and censor-
Social media platforms (TikTok, Instagram, ship is a circle/square debate. Should
Snapchat, Twitter, and more) make choices to platforms allow free speech? Or should
show us—the users—content that is most “en- platforms moderate content to keep
gaging.” Unfortunately, what is most engaging users safe? Which is right: the circle or
isn’t always aligned with the square? Or can we ask a 3D-cylinder
what we value. What gets question: What kind of information eco-
the most engagement— system design and incentives will re-
follows, shares, and ward the most good-faith marketplace
comments—are the fights, of ideas? For example, for all the talk of
takedowns, and prover- Twitter as a “public square,” there is a
bial car crashes we can’t big difference between the speech re-
take our eyes from. warded if that public square is designed
Seeing more divisive like a Roman Colosseum that incentiv-
content pushes us further izes violence and chaos, compared with
into polarized ways of the speech rewarded by a Quaker meet-
thinking on every topic— ing that incentivizes reflection.
which spills over into our Cylindrical perspectives allow for nu-
offline lives and makes ance and promote a synthesis of ideas—
cooperation a taller and not merely consensus or tyranny of the
taller task. masses, but a merging of ideas into a
Yet today’s world re- Venn diagram of agreement.
quires unprecedented By taking a cylinder view, we learn
levels of coordination and △ that we actually can discuss complex
cooperation to meet unprecedented challenges. A simple visual experiment topics and reach cooperative solutions
Whether it is climate change, reducing crime, or demonstrates the power of required in democratic societies.
how to harness and keep humanity safe in increas- one’s point of view Technology is made up of design
ingly AI-driven realities, our most pressing prob- choices. Engagement as a business
lems depend upon a shared reality. model produced choices that have got-
ten us into the 2D situation we’re in. But
The image on This page shows how a 3D cylin- we can make new design choices. Soft-
der can cast a 2D shadow that can look like either ware is malleable. We can rebuild ex-
a square or a circle depending on the light’s angle. isting technology and design new ones
If we focus from one angle, the 3D cylinder’s with a more humane philosophy that
shadow looks like a 2D square—but if you look from strengthens our capacities for synthesis
the other angle, the cylinder’s shadow looks like a and cooperation. Rather than fall into
2D circle. People standing on either side might fight the trap of 2D debates on this issue of
back and forth, yelling more and more loudly at each free speech vs. content moderation, we
other over which 2D shape is “true,” increasingly con- can take a collaborative 3D perspective.
vinced that the other side is wrong. Meanwhile, they Change won’t be easy, but the coopera-
would be missing the higher-dimensional cylinder, tion we need to tackle all of our other
which requires synthesizing multiple perspectives. ARE existential challenges is at stake.
Today’s social media is designed in a way that REWARDED
rewards us for arguing in 2D about 3D issues— FOR ARGUING Harris is co-founder of the Center for
seeing the world in squares and circles. IN 2D ABOUT Humane Technology and co-host of the
Narrowly framed debates about circles and 3D ISSUES podcast Your Undivided Attention

48 Time January 30/February 6, 2023

13 - 15 FEBRUARY 2023
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
 D A V O S • M E T A V E R S E

INTERVIEW

WEF’s Klaus
Schwab on
What’s Ahead
The World Economic Forum may be returning
to its long-standing ritual of meeting in Davos,
Switzerland, in January, but—even as the
pandemic ebbs—this is still a time of remarkable
upheaval. WEF founder Klaus Schwab sat down
in New York City with TIME’s editor-in-chief
Edward Felsenthal to discuss what’s ahead for
Davos and the global economy.

A couple of times when we’ve had these con-

versations, I’ve asked you about what the im-
pact of a real economic downturn might be on
the tension between stakeholders and share-
holders. And here we are, with the economy
facing some real headwinds. Do you see any
retreat from the movement toward stake-
holder capitalism? I think it’s the wrong ap- △
proach, from the beginning on, to create a choice Schwab, front, with Swiss with a crisis mindset and a short-term
between shareholder capitalism vs. stakeholder President Ignazio Cassis, approach. We have to manage in a stra-
capitalism. The company is not just an economic arrives at the Davos opening tegic way this transformation period,
unit: it’s a social organism, which has to play its ceremony in May 2022 which may last three, four, five years
role inside society. This generation expects from and will be socially very painful.
a company not just to serve shareholders, but to
take care of people and the planet. The company You made the unprecedented de-
who keeps this in mind will have much better cision last year to ban Russia from
talent in the future and will have much higher Davos. We immediately followed the
attractivity with its customers. global sanction policies, so we froze all
our relationships with Russia.
But there is some tension. You can’t fully take
care of your people if you’re laying off 13,000 And that continues? That continues.
workers. No, in your practical decisions as a
CEO, you have to make compromises. At a cer- The first time I came into contact
tain moment, the balance may shift more to the with the crypto world at all was at
short term—which is to emphasize, let’s say, the Davos. After the collapse of FTX and
profitability of the company. And other times it the broader challenges over the past
may shift more to the long term. four or five months, what do you
make of that market? I’m a big fan of
There aren’t many people in the world who new technologies, so we [at the World
talk regularly to as many CEOs and world Economic Forum] were always very
leaders as you do. What are you hearing and engaged in the development of crypto.
feeling about the economic outlook for ’23? E But it’s a fact that technological devel-
I wouldn’t relate it only to ’23. We are in a restruc- COMPANY IS opment is so complex and so fast, that
turing of the global economy. When you have NOT JUST AN sometimes it’s very difficult for politi-
a restructuring in a company, you write off the ECONOMIC cal [institutions] to comprehend the
ARND WIEG M A NN — REUTERS

costs on your balance sheet, and shareholders are significance of a certain new develop-
suffering and sometimes employees have to go.
UNIT: IT’S ment, and even more difficult to create
But when you have a restructuring of an econ- A SOCIAL the necessary boundaries around it.
omy, it bites into the purchasing power of the ORGANISM.’ So I’m not surprised about what hap-
people. We should not look at the global economy —K LAUS SCH WAB pened. Crypto will remain. But now we

50 Time January 30/February 6, 2023

have to make sure crypto is integrated
into, or at least made congruent with,
TECHNOLOGY
our traditional systems.

Now you’re working on bringing

the World Economic Forum into the
metaverse. A year ago, when Meta had
changed its name, I became curious
what [the metaverse] is and could it
have an impact, as you did with crypto.
So I asked many people, What does it
really mean? Everybody gave to me
a different answer. And for me, it be-
came very clear: it’s the capability to
meet in a virtual three-dimensional
room. I mean, you have two levels.
First is just to meet around a table with
your avatars. And second, is to com-
bine it with an immersive experience—
and that’s what we will do in Davos.
We will showcase in Davos what we
call the Global Collaboration Village
and inaugurate it in the summer next
year. This has such an importance be-
cause it can make global collabora-
tion more open; you always can con-
vene the most relevant and the most
knowledgeable people. And second,
it makes it more sustained, because
you can work together on a continued
basis, and not just come together for
a physical meeting and then nothing
happens for quite some time again.
We created a community, which has
at the moment 70 members, whom
we call Village Partners, who support
us. [Salesforce, whose chair and CEO
is TIME’s co-owner Marc Benioff, is a
Village Partner.] I feel this could be a
game changer in global collaboration.

What brings you optimism in this

challenging time? I’m always an
optimist—and if I tend to become a
pessimist, I just think of my mentor
Shimon Peres, who explained in Davos
once the difference between optimists
and pessimists: both, in principle,
have the same lives, but optimists
have a much happier life. This situ-
ation which we are in now is not the
worst of all the times. It’s a bad one.
But at the end, change is what’s hap-
pening. We can manage change.

This interview has been edited

for length and clarity

51
SOCIETY

ILLUSTR ATIONS BY BEN WISEMAN FOR TIME

Overtalkers are everywhere—
but saying less will get you more
BY DAN LYONS

53
SOCIETY

THE WORLD IS
FILLED WITH OVERTALKERS.
YOU RUN INTO
THEM ALL THE TIME.
They’re that pest at the office who destroys every Bader Ginsburg chose her words so carefully and
Monday by recounting each unremarkable thing took such painfully long pauses that her clerks de-
they did over the weekend. They’re that jerk who veloped a habit they called “the Two-Mississippi
talks over everyone else at a dinner party while the Rule”: finish what you’re saying and then count
rest of you fantasize about slipping hemlock into “one Mississippi . . . two Mississippi” before you
their pinot noir. They’re the neighbor who drops speak again. The Justice was not ignoring you;
in uninvited and spends an hour telling you sto- she was thinking . .. very . . . deeply . .. about how
ries you’ve already heard, the arrogant know-it-all to respond.
who interrupts colleagues in meetings, the CEO Most of us will not get appointed to the Su-
whose reckless tweet gets him charged with secu- preme Court or become tech billionaires, but we
rities fraud. And don’t get me started on the Brit- can prevail in our own day-to-day battles. Buying
ish prince who incessantly uses the press to spread a new car or house? Hoping to move up the lad-
his message criticizing the press. der at work? Trying to win friends and influence
To be honest, they’re most of us, too. people? Learn how to shut the F up.
It’s not entirely our fault. We live in a world
that doesn’t just encourage overtalking but prac- Men, in particular, are the champions of over-
tically demands it, where success is measured by talking—and talking over. We bulldoze. We hog
how much attention we can attract: get a mil- the floor. We mansplain, manterrupt, and deliver
lion Twitter followers, become an Instagram in- manalogues. To me, this is a personal problem.
fluencer, make a viral video, give a TED talk. We I’m an inveterate overtalker, and it has cost me
are inundated with YouTube, social media, chat dearly. The issue is not only that I talk too much;
apps, streaming services. Did you know there are it’s that I have never been able to resist blurting
more than 2 million podcasts, which have pro- out inappropriate things, and I can’t keep my
duced 48 million episodes? Or that more than opinions to myself.
3,000 TEDx events take place every year, with up Once, when I put my foot in my mouth at work,
to 20 wannabe Malcolm Gladwells participating I lost my job and the promise of millions of dol-
in each one? Or that Americans sit through more lars. Worse, my lack of conversational impulse con-
than a billion meetings a year, but think that half trol led to a separation from my wife, and nearly
are a complete waste of time? We’re tweeting for cost me my marriage. It was then, living alone in
the sake of tweeting, talking for the sake of talking. a rented house, away from my wife and kids, that
Yet many of the most powerful and successful I conducted what members of Alcoholics Anony-
people do the exact opposite. Instead of seeking mous call a “searching and fearless moral inven-
attention, they hold back. When they do speak, tory” of myself, and acknowledged that in ways
they’re careful about what they say. Apple CEO Tim big and small, overtalking was interfering with my
Cook lets awkward pauses hang during conversa- life. This sent me on a search to find the answers to
tions. For four decades, Joe Biden was the King of two questions: Why are some people compulsive
Gaffes, but in 2020 he found the campaign-trail talkers? And how can we fix it?
discipline to keep his voice low and his answers Early on in my process, I discovered there’s a
short, to pause before speaking and give boring word for my problem: talkaholism, a term coined
answers; now he’s President. Albert Einstein was by a pair of communication-studies scholars to de-
an introvert who cherished solitude. The late Ruth scribe a form of extreme overtalking. They created
54 Time January 30/February 6, 2023
a self-scored questionnaire to identify people was the best person to talk to about the research
who suffer from the condition (find the quiz at that had been done since the Talkaholic Scale was
time.com/talk). introduced.
I got 50 points on the Talkaholic Scale, the “It’s biology,” Beatty told me when we got on
highest possible score. My wife Sasha gave me the phone. “It’s all nature, not nurture. It starts
the same 50 points and probably wished she could to develop prenatally.” Twenty years ago, he pio-
give me more. This was not unexpected, but ac- neered a field called communibiology, which stud-
cording to Virginia P. Richmond and James C. ies communication as a biological phenomenon.
McCroskey, the West Virginia University research- Instead of teaching courses in journalism and pub-
ers who developed the test in 1993, this might be lic speaking, the traditional business of a univer-
cause for concern. They described talkaholism sity communication department, he collaborated
as an addiction, and said that while a talkaholic’s with neuroscientists, giving study participants
gift with words can help them advance in their ca- EEGs to measure their brain waves and sticking
reers, their inability to rein in their overtalking can them into fMRI machines to watch their brains
lead to personal and profes- light up when they looked at
sional difficulties. Check, pictures or listened to audio
check, and check. recordings.
Talkaholics cannot just A lot of communication
wake up one day and choose researchers thought he was
to talk less. Their talking is going down a blind alley,
compulsive. They don’t talk but Beatty was sure he was
just a little bit more than ev- right. “To me, it would be
eryone else, but a lot more, weird if the way we com-
and they do this all the time, municate was not related
in every context or setting, to the brain,” he said. “We
even when they know that just didn’t know how.”
other people think they In 2010, Beatty and his
talk too much. And here is colleagues discovered that
the gut punch: talkaholics talkativeness is linked to
continue to talk even when brain-wave imbalances.
they know that what they Specifically, it’s about the
are about to say is going to balance between neuron
hurt them. They simply can- activity in the left and right
not stop. lobes in the anterior region
“That’s me,” I said to of the prefrontal cortex.
Sasha. “Right? That’s to- Ideally, the left and right
tally me.” lobe should have about
“I’ve been telling you the same amount of neu-
this for years,” she said. ronal activity when a per-
We were sitting in the son is at rest. If there’s an
kitchen. Our kids—15-year- asymmetry—if your left
old twins—weren’t home. side is more active than the
Memories flew around in right—you’re likely to be
my brain, times when I blurted out something shy. If the right side is more active, you’re likely
off-color at a party, or embarrassed the kids by to be talkative. The greater the imbalance, the fur-
talking someone’s ear off, or regaled them with ther out on the talkativeness spectrum you will
unsolicited advice instead of asking them how tend to be. A talkaholic’s right lobe will fire a ton
they were or what they needed. “Danalogues,” we while the left side barely flickers.
called them, and we would all laugh and pretend “It’s all about impulse control,” Beatty told me.
it was funny—“You know how Dad loves to talk!” The brain imbalances he studies have also been
But now, looking at these test results in black- shown to correspond to aggression and “your abil-
and-white, I didn’t feel like laughing. I felt embar- ity to assess how a plan might unfold and what the
rassed. And worried. consequences will be.”
The right-dominant lack of impulse control, the
MY SEARCH FOR ANSWERS brought me to Michael same factor that might make it so hard to zip your
Beatty, a professor who once worked with Rich- lips, often plays out in the workplace. “If I’m right-
mond and McCroskey and now teaches at the side dominant and I’m a CEO, and I’m in a meeting
University of Miami. Richmond told me Beatty where some employee starts saying dumb things,
55
SOCIETY

I’m not going to be polite. I’m going to get angry them speak. Officially speaking, we were “hav-
and tell him to shut up,” Beatty said. ing a talk,” but in truth, I was having a listen.
Unfortunately, Beatty, Richmond, and Mc-
Croskey all came to the same conclusion in their re- for mosT of us, talking is like breathing. You
search: a talkaholic can’t just quit. After all, Beatty don’t think about it; you just do it. But when
argues, you can’t simply zap your neurons you start paying attention to how you
back into balance. “It’s not completely speak, this leads you to think about why
deterministic, but there’s very little room you speak the way you do. You’re forc-
to change who you are,” he told me. ing yourself to become conscious of
something that usually happens uncon-
This, of course, was not the answer HOW TO STOP sciously. Now you’re doing the kind of
I wanted to hear. I wanted to be a bet- OVERTALKING work you might do with meditation or
ter spouse, parent, and friend. I wanted psychotherapy. You’re turning your at-
to stop dreading social events and miti-
1 tention inward. You’re engaging in self-
gate my risk of blowing up my job. There WHEN POSSIBLE, reflection and self-examination. You’re
might not be a cure for talkaholism, but SAY NOTHING figuring out who you are.
there’s also no cure for alcoholism—and Pretend words are money, Gradually, I began to develop more
yet some alcoholics develop the disci- and spend them wisely. discipline, and as I did, something ex-
Be Dirty Harry, not
pline to stop drinking. Prince Harry.
traordinary happened: I started to feel
I couldn’t afford a speech coach. I better, both emotionally and physically.
couldn’t find any online courses that I’m not perfect, and I can’t always ad-
teach you how to stop overtalking. So, 2 here to my own rules—but when I do,
after connecting with Beatty, I struck out MASTER THE the results are magical. I feel calmer,
on my own, interviewing dozens of peo- POWER OF THE PAUSE less anxious, and more in control, which
ple who, in one way or another, are ex- Take a breath. Wait. Let makes me less likely to overtalk. It’s a
perts on speech: historians, social scien- the other person process positive feedback loop: the less I talk,
tists, political scientists, communication what you’ve said. the less I talk.
professors, executive coaches, psychol- Better yet, I see the effect on the peo-
ogists. Some research suggests that si- 3 ple around me. My marriage is stronger
lence might help us grow new brain cells, QUIT SOCIAL MEDIA than ever. My daughter and I sit on the
so I went “forest bathing” in the Berk- The first cousin
porch in the evening and have long con-
shires. I took an online listening course. of overtalking is versations filled with laughter. If you are
A psychologist in California shared with overtweeting. If you can’t the parent of a high-school-age kid, you
me the techniques she teaches to pris- quit completely, at least know how miraculous this feels. She tells
oners to help them keep their mouths dial it way back. me her dreams and what she thinks she
shut during parole hearings and nontalk might want to do with her life. She tells
their way out of prison—methods that I 4 me about her fears and doubts. Instead
hoped would help me break free from my SEEK OUT SILENCE of trying to solve her problems, I listen.
compulsion. Detach. Unplug. Giving Inevitably, she works her way around to
Armed with theory, advice, and ex- your brain a rest can kick- solving them herself and concludes that
ercises, I developed guidelines for my- start your creativity. she is going to be all right and that she
self and started practicing them. I bailed knows what she needs to do. I discover
out of social media almost entirely. 5 that she has never felt confident play-
I trained myself to become comfort- ing Mozart and Haydn on the piano, and
able with uncomfortable silences. Be- LEARN HOW TO LISTEN that now that she is going to a summer
fore picking up the phone or getting on Instead of just camp where she will have to play Haydn
hearing someone, practice
a Zoom call, I took deep breaths to slow active listening. Pay in a trio, she’s freaking out. She fears she
myself down, using the heart-rate moni- fierce attention to the might not be able to do it, but at the same
tor on my Apple Watch to see whether other person. time, she would rather try and fail than
this was working, and jotting down chicken out. I discover that I don’t just
notes on the purpose of the conversa- admire her, but that I’m inspired by her.
tion so I could stick to the agenda. Dur- I hear her—I hear all the people in my
ing the call, I would lower my voice and life who matter deeply to me, and now,
slow my cadence. I attached a piece of paper to when I do speak, they’re ready to listen.
the wall above my computer screen with admon-
ishments in 60-point type: “QUIET! LISTEN! Lyons is the author of STFU: The Power of
SHORT ANSWERS! WRAP IT UP!” I asked my Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy
kids open-ended questions, then sat back and let World, from which this essay is adapted
56 Time January 30/February 6, 2023
 S

JESSE EISENBERG MAKES SALMAN RUSHDIE THE 1619 PROJECT

HIS FEATURE DIRECTING DEBUT SPINS A SPRAWLING FANTASY COMES TO STREAMING

ILLUSTR ATION BY PETER STR AIN FOR TIME 57

TIME OFF OPENER

A
DAPTATIONS OF BOOKS SERVE AN OBVIOUS with a particularly difficult decision,
purpose: They make substantial something you might run around the world of
you’d previously only imagined. The joy of the game trying to find another way
watching Game of Thrones as a reader was see- to surpass a barrier rather than com-
ing the dragons rendered, or hearing the “The Rains of mitting some truly awful act. But
Castamere” for the first time—even if you knew the song there’s only one, terrible path forward.
was heralding the atrocities of the Red Wedding. The Last of Us Part II doubled down,
A video-game adaptation doesn’t have the same raison programming NPCs to beg for mercy
d’être. Arguably very few have improved upon their source as you kill them. (Mazin says the even
material. Visuals from the medium’s leading studios, like darker sequel will serve as the source
Naughty Dog, rival the best visual effects in television and material for a second season, if HBO
film. Many critics would argue not only that Naughty Dog’s gives it the green light.)
Indiana Jones–esque Uncharted adventure games looked Mazin knew that maintaining this
far better than last year’s film adaptation starring Tom tension was critical to the TV series’
Holland, but also that the emotional resonance of the story success. “When you’re watching tele-
was lost in translation. Bella Ramsey vision, which is passive as opposed to
as ELLIE
Neil Druckmann, the co-president of Naughty Dog, of- She may hold the the interactive aspect of playing video
fered faint praise for that particular movie, over which antidote to the games, your moral complications
he had little creative control. He has been much more in- zombie apocalypse come from your emotional attach-
vested in the new HBO series based on the game closest ment to the characters you love,” he
to his heart, The Last of Us, which debuted Jan. 15. The says. “You begin to root for them, even
premise may sound familiar: A fungal infection trans- as they do bad things.” He cites audi-
forms most of earth’s population into zombies. Twenty ences clinging to Walter White as he
years later, a smuggler named Joel, who lost his daughter devolved from antihero to villain.
early in the pandemic, begrudgingly agrees to play body- The showrunners zeroed in on one
guard to 14-year-old Ellie, who may hold the key to a cure. of the game’s major themes: protect-
He ushers her across a postapocalyptic landscape inhab- ing your loved ones at the expense
ited by tribes of hungry humans and the eerily gorgeous, of the greater good. As Joel and Ellie
mushroom-headed undead. make their way west, they encounter
Yet critics agree that The Last of Us is high art, perhaps individuals ready to kill for a sibling,
the greatest video game ever created, in large part because a lover, or a child, even if it imperils
of the moral conundrums into which it regularly thrusts the survival of humanity at large. Of
players. The 2013 game sold more than 1 million copies in course, if everyone in the apocalyptic
Pedro Pascal
its first week and went on to win bundles of accolades. Its as JOEL hellscape prioritizes protecting their
high standing and complex moral universe loomed large Ellie’s reluctant own, good guys and bad guys cease
over an adaptation, a process set in motion nearly a decade guide across to exist. There’s no social contract, no
ago that ultimately found Druckmann teaming up with the hellscape righteous moral code. Only survival
Chernobyl showrunner Craig Mazin. Mazin, whose Emmy- and vengeance. That may sound like a
winning HBO series shares considerable DNA with the rather negative assessment of human-
story, says the game “was literature to me.” The duo, aided ity. But, Mazin argues, the game—and
by a $100 million budget courtesy of HBO, enhance the the show—is a love story.
visuals of city ruins devoured by nature and coax wrench- “The Last of Us is about the best
ing performances from their leads, Pedro Pascal as the and worst of love. Love is the strongest
gruff yet tender Joel and his Game of Thrones co-star Bella and most beautiful human emotion.
Ramsey as the foulmouthed but vulnerable Ellie. It leads us to create life and nurture
But justifying its existence, and that hefty price tag, will and spread joy and light and peace,”
come down to more than offering up a love letter that faith- he says. “But if you scratch the surface
fully reproduces a story that revolutionized the medium. of xenophobia, racism, tribalism, you
The power of the video game is that it implicates the player also find love. It’s a darker love, pro-
in the morally compromising decisions Joel and Ellie must tective to the point of violence. It’s the
make to survive. Can that power be replicated when a con- Nico Parker
kind of love that says, ‘My kid’s life is
troller is replaced by a remote? as SARAH worth more than your kid’s life.’ Well,
The daughter is that true?”
IN MOST GAMES, players fire off bullets to kill faceless Joel lost before This murky moral philosophy ap-
goons, known as nonplayable characters or NPCs, with- he met Ellie plies to just about everyone Joel and
out a second thought. In The Last of Us, every enemy has Ellie encounter, from an informer
a traumatic past or a sympathetic backstory. Every bullet who will snitch on heroes to save his
carries a moral weight the player must bear. Confronted sick brother to the leader of a tribe
58 TIME January 30/February 6, 2023
 Ramsey and
Pascal face the
darkness together

who will risk the lives of her entire The Last of Us every Sunday night and more like him. And that’s a problem.”
militia to avenge her brother’s death. discuss it the next morning, “they are Mazin hopes the audience will feel
Mazin and Druckmann find the most sharing a communal experience.” protective of the duo, but also ques-
room to expand on the game’s story- What they will watch together is tion that devotion. “This isn’t meant
telling in these diversions from Joel Joel’s heart slowly cracking open. The to be perfectly beautiful,” he says.
and Ellie’s journey. A gorgeous “bottle reluctant guardian turned father fig- “This is a study of potentially extra-
episode” about a survivalist and his ure is a familiar trope; in fact, Pascal ordinarily dangerous co-dependency.”
partner, played respectively by Parks plays one opposite an adorable baby In a midseason episode, Joel and
and Recreation’s Nick Offerman and Yoda in another series, the Star Wars Ellie accidentally drive into a trap set
The White Lotus’ Murray Bartlett in spin-off The Mandalorian. But the by a rebel group that’s recently over-
a perfect bit of casting, is the show’s emotional arc of such stories tends to thrown the fascistic military regime in
Emmy-worthy moment. The sur- consist of a child helping an adopted their city. The old government turned
vivalist is willing to damn the rest parent grow into a better person. That neighbors against one another and
of the world to protect the man who isn’t necessarily the case here. While conscripted children into battle. In
stumbled into his hideout. “We keep Ellie might look like the perfect fit for any other story, these revolutionaries
circling around the same story,” says Joel’s emotional wound—a surrogate would be heroes. But they’ve pinned
Mazin. “What do we do when we’re daughter for a lost one—his fear of los- our protagonists down. Joel begins to
missing the love we need, and what ing another child could overwhelm shoot their way out, but he’s middle-
do we do when we have too much love his capacity for reason. And a par- aged with achy knees. He’s lost a
and that love can cause danger?” ent figure brings out something feral step. A man barges into the room be-
in the orphaned Ellie. “They don’t hind Joel, and Ellie reaches for a gun
T H E L A S T O F U S : H B O (4); T H E L A S T O F U S G A M E S E R I E S : S O N Y (3)

In a game, you’re compelled to stick make each other better per se,” says and must decide what to do. She’s
with even the most harrowing sto- Mazin. “Joel had such an enormous never shot an uninfected human be-
ries. There’s a next goal to meet or a love for his daughter, and this other fore. If Mazin and Druckmann have
checkpoint to reach. That ask may be kid comes along that’s so different in done what they set out to do, a shot
more challenging for a television au- almost every way. And he ends up lov- of Ramsey’s finger on the trigger will
dience. The 81-minute premiere sets ing her a little bit more because she’s feel as visceral as having your own fin-
the tone with a series of rather grue- ger on the button of your controller. It
some deaths. Mazin hopes that with may be an impossible feeling to rep-
the move to television, audiences ‘If you scratch the licate exactly, but we wouldn’t have
can at least process this darkness surface of tribalism, more than a century of rich cinematic
collectively. “We play video games history if there weren’t power to be
on our own,” he says. But if most you also find love.’ found in watching angst cast a shadow
viewers tune in to new episodes of CRAIG MAZIN, CO-SHOWRUNNER across an actor’s face. 
59
TIME OFF MOVIES

REVIEW

A mother and son, out

of tune with one another
Nobody uses The Term generation his mother that he doesn’t even real-
gap anymore, but the problems it ize he’s been shunted aside; he’s also
refers to are eternal—and they’re distracted by his crush on a school-
the core of When You Finish Saving mate, Alicia Boe’s Lila, a budding
REVIEW the World, Jesse Eisenberg’s debut political activist—she’s a passion-
as a writer-director. Finn Wolf- ate yet plodding spinner of rhetoric,
hard is Ziggy Katz, a teenage singer- no match for the awkward romantic
songwriter who’s a minisensation in poet in him.
his corner of the internet, cultivating These are the gentle, interwoven
an audience of loyal followers with his tensions that hold When You Finish
folky songs about youthful love and Saving the World together, albeit just
angst. But his mother Evelyn (Julianne barely. There are times when the
Moore), the harried founder and man- movie leans a little too hard on Moore
ager of a women’s shelter, downgrades as the chilly, clueless mom, a woman
both his enterprise and his talents, who still sees herself as an idealistic
and his father Roger (Jay O. Sanders) hippie though she’s the exact oppo-
is a checked-out academic type whose site of laid-back: even the way she
nose is always buried in a book or a swirls her malbec in the goblet, un-
magazine. The clash between mother winding after a stressful day at the
and son is particularly acute: Evelyn shelter, is uptight. Yet Eisenberg
just wishes her son were somehow dif- is a thoughtful filmmaker, devoted
ferent, in ways she can’t even define. to showing his characters as multi-
When a particularly smart and dimensional, fawed human beings.
sensitive teenager, Billy Bryk’s Kyle, This is a modest film, but not a super-
moves into the shelter with his ficial one. The point, maybe, is that
mother, Evelyn takes him on as a per- parents and children sometimes have
sonal project, encouraging him to to lose each other for a while before
apply for college scholarships even finding accord. The space between
though he has his sights on being a them isn’t so much a gap but a cycle of
mechanic, a job he’s exceptionally reconnection, played out one genera-
good at. Ziggy is so frustrated with tion after another. —s.Z.

Wolfhard and Moore play strangers under the same roof

60 Time January 30/February 6, 2023
 ◁
Seydoux, right, plays
a caregiver finding
space for her own needs

lost opportunity. Before long, the two

of them have tumbled into an illicit ro-
mance, and something inside Sandra
kicks back to life.

But this sudden happiness is

just a sidenote. Sandra’s father Georg
(Pascal Greggory) suffers from a
neurodegenerative disease that has
already robbed him of his sight and is
now, increasingly, blurring his mind.
A former philosophy professor whose
life has always revolved around read-
ing, he now spends his days alone in
his book-lined apartment, a thirsty
man surrounded by water he can’t
drink. You also get the sense that he
has always been a little remote as a
father to begin with, but that doesn’t
lessen the severity of the crisis when
REVIEW it’s determined that he can no longer
The best of times and the worst live on his own. Sandra finds herself
in the position of struggling to do the
T U R N E V E R Y PA G E : S O N Y P I C T U R E S C L A S S I C S ; W H E N YO U F I N I S H S AV I N G T H E W O R L D : A 24 F I L M S ; O N E F I N E M O R N I N G : S O N Y P I C T U R E S C L A S S I C S

of times, all at the same time right thing by a father who, almost lit-
erally, now looks right through her.
BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK
Sandra herself seems to be in a bit
of a nowhere zone, a place of transi-
Soon enough, moSt adultS muSt reckon with their
parents’ physical and mental vulnerabilities, and it’s al-
Hansen- tion she can’t seem to fight her way
out of. Hansen-Løve’s best movies—
ways a blow. Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve’s delicately Løve’s best Father of My Children, Eden—are quiet
shaded One Fine Morning deals with the wrenchingly mun- movies but sturdy reflections on people stuck
dane nature of caring for those who used to take care of in between, people who don’t seem to
us. But it’s also about the difficulty—and the necessity—of
are quiet realize, or have forgotten, that the in-
tending to our own emotional lives even as we’re looking reflections between is really all there is. One Fine
after others. That sounds so simple, you might not think it’s on people Morning is in a league with these pic-
enough to fill a whole movie. Yet the end of One Fine Morn- tures, and Seydoux, with her watchful
ing imparts a sense of life spilling over, the way its strange, stuck in eyes and cautious smile, is perfect as
radiant richness is often too much to analyze in the mo- between a woman who once knew her way but
ment. This is a big movie served up in a surprisingly small, has somehow lost it.
intimate package. Late in the film, as Sandra goes
Léa Seydoux is Sandra, a translator living in Paris with about divesting Georg’s beloved li-
her 8-year-old daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins). brary, giving much of it away to an
Her husband has been dead for several years; she’s so de- adoring former student, she remarks
voted to her daughter and her work that she hasn’t given that she feels closer to her father with
any thought to finding someone new. She runs into an old his books than she does when she’s
friend, Clément (Melvil Poupaud), a scientist, and after a physically with him: “There, is his
pleasant, platonic dinner, he quizzes her about the state of bodily envelope. Here, his soul.” In
things. “I just feel my love life is behind me,” she answers. this movie about how the best times
Clément is married, with a child of his own, and he’s not in our lives are sometimes entwined
trying to put the moves on Sandra, at least not yet. But he with the worst, that state of uneasy
gives her a look that can barely be summed up in words— grace is as close as you can get to a
not pity, but a sad acknowledgment of another human’s happy ending. 
61
TIME OFF REVIEWS

BOOKS of her life “would carry the scent of her moth-

A fictional history of er’s burning flesh in her nostrils.”
Into the void of Pampa’s grief steps the god-
an imaginary empire dess Parvati, who, speaking through Pampa’s
BY NICK MANCUSI own mouth, tells her that “in this exact place a
great city will rise, the wonder of the world, and
its empire will last for more than two centuries.
Salman RuShdie’S laST novel, 2019’S BookeR And you . . . will see it all and tell its story.” The
Prize–short-listed Quichotte, blended elements goddess adds that in this new empire, women
of Don Quixote with a contemporary narrative to are no longer to be treated like chattel. As a
tell a modern parable about “junk culture” and the king will tell her later, Pampa’s ideas are “a little
opioid crisis in America. His new, much different ahead of your time.”
novel, Victory City, released as he recovers from an After nine years spent in a cave with a lecher-
attack before a lecture last August, abandons the ous monk, Pampa instructs two passing shep-
modern age and idiom entirely, starting the clock in herds to scatter some seeds at the site of her
14th century India, where a young girl, possessed mother’s pyre. These seeds sprout into the pal-
and empowered by a god, will found a city and shep- aces, temples, and hovels of a sprawling city that
herd it into an empire. will be named Bisnaga; people emerge, “born
After a minor conflict between two kingdoms full-grown from the brown earth, shaking the
in Hindustan (“nothing particularly special about dirt off their garments, and thronging the streets
the battle without a name”), the women of the ▽ in the evening breeze.” The shepherds, Hukka
vanquished kingdom follow their husbands into The author, and Bukka, correctly reckon they will become
death by marching into a bonfire. A 9-year-old girl photographed the first kings of this new empire, and Hukka
named Pampa Kampana watches, and for the rest in May 2021 has the idea to tell the freshly sprouted citizens
that he and his brother are gods, descended
from their father, the moon. “No,” replies Bukka,
“we’ll never get away with that.”

What happens from here is less of a plot

and more a progression of history, all witnessed
and influenced by Pampa, who carries the curse
of long life (about 250 years). She is Bisnaga’s
first and second queen, then twice exiled and re-
turned. Palace intrigues roil as the borders of the
empire expand and contract under subsequent
monarchs: some conquerors, others managers,
and some religious zealots. Royal succession is
complicated by Pampa’s children. An under-
ground resistance movement called the Remon-
strance sows dissension. Through it all, Pampa,
like Athena to Athens, makes her best attempts
at divine intercession.
Rushdie’s relentless creative energy pairs well
with his understanding of how history “works,”
and (excepting the occasional magic spell or gift
of flight) this book can read almost more like a
work of history than a fairy tale. So call it a feat
of fidelity that later sections grow confusingly
byzantine and the history lesson drags at points.
What Rushdie re-creates convincingly is the
way that the divine is a necessary component in
the creation myths of great cities and societies.
The urge to understand ourselves in sacred terms
developed not from the invention of history, but
alongside it. It’s as if Rushdie has dropped a mol-
ecule of divinity into a petri dish containing the
other basic stuff of life, and watched a civiliza-
tion cultivate. 
62 Time January 30/February 6, 2023
 TELEVISION

The 1619 Project architect Nikole Hannah-Jones doubles as the series’ host

TELEVISION

An embattled Project makes

its case in a new medium
BY JUDY BERMAN

The aim of The 1619 ProjecT is To from voting rights to music. Equally at
re-center American historical dis- home interviewing academics, playing
course around “the consequences of Marvin Gaye records with critic Wes-
slavery and the contributions of Black ley Morris, and reminiscing with her
Americans.” In some senses, it’s been family, whose history is a through line,
a victim of its success. Hannah-Jones (an execu-
Launched in a 2019 issue of tive producer, with Oprah)
the New York Times Maga- Stories makes an ideal host.
transcend
-
zine that coincided with Anyone who follows
R U S H D I E : B E N E D I C T E VA N S — A U G U S T; T H AT ’ 9 0 S S H O W : N E T F L I X ; T H E 161 9 P R O J E C T: C O U R T E S Y L E V I W A LT O N / H U L U

the 400th anniversary of

slavery in the colonies, the polemic the news will be familiar
with many issues the se-
acclaimed initiative stoked when ries addresses. But at its
right-wing outrage. A cur-
riculum released with it be-
viewers best, it makes astute—and
personal—connections be-
- came a target of reactionary see faces tween the antebellum and
red-state legislation. pre-civil-rights past, and
The project’s leader, Nikole a present in which Black people still
Hannah-Jones, has defended it, in disproportionately face violence, ex-
part, by keeping it in the public eye, ploitation, and other forms of oppres-
with the publication of a book and now sion. A long history of white control
in a Hulu docuseries of the same name. over Black women’s fertility is filtered
Given that the six episodes draw heav- through a contemporary mom’s har-
ily on essays that have fueled a book, a rowing encounter with the medical
curriculum, and a podcast, it’s fair to establishment. A provocative episode
ask whether the TV series is overkill. on capitalism juxtaposes the eco-
But stories transcend polemic when nomics of slavery with the fight to
viewers see the faces behind them. unionize Amazon. That the series is
Neither an art-house doc like Exter- poised to spark fresh controversy only
minate All the Brutes nor slick edutain- reinforces how much more the 1619
ment like Amend, The 1619 Project bal- Project has left to say.
ances rigor with approachability. Each
episode takes on a facet of Black life, THE 1619 PROJECT arrives on Hulu Jan. 26

63
OMAN AIRPORTS – Ready for Take Off
lessed with an abundance of flora and fauna, glorious firmly on the future. “We had to decide whether to maintain the

B sand dunes, a rugged mountain range and by far the

most verdant coastline on the Arabian Peninsula,
Oman is one of the world’s great undiscovered tourism gems.
status quo or be more bullish and carry on with RayourC.plans
Espinosa,
for
President and CEO of Meralco
restructure that would lay the foundations for future growth,”
says Al Saadi. “After a great deal of debate and soul searching,
One of Sultan Haitham bin Tariq’s first actions was to secure we decided to go ahead with the restructure.”
the legacy of his predecessor by ratifying the Oman Vision Two years later that decision has been more than vindicated,
2040 initiative, which means that the country’s various with the total number of passengers travelling through Oman’s
tourism offerings are about to become significantly more airports up 187% in the first seven months of 2022, compared
accessible. with the corresponding period a year earlier.
Designed as a roadmap for the development of a diversified By improving productivity through the introduction of multi-
economy underpinned by innovation and equal opportunities, tasking for many of its personnel and successfully renegotiating
the initiative identified logistics and tourism as sectors key to several large contracts with major vendors and suppliers,
Khamis Mohammed Al Saadi
the Sultanate’s growth and prosperity. The result is the aviation Chairman of Oman Airports costs have been slashed by an impressive 29%. “Today, we
industry, and the government-owned enterprise Oman Airports are a much more efficient and agile organization,” says Al
are set to play key roles in modernizing this ancient and Saadi. “We are very pro technology and are firmly convinced
venerable country. that automation is the way forward and will help make us
Oman Airports oversees all the Sultanate’s civil airports, a leaner operation. We are about to begin a post-restructure
which includes providing integrated airport operations and implementation review to see if we can develop an even more
infrastructure management such as on-ground services, effective structure.”
terminal buildings, cargo buildings, runways, aprons, This will be music to the ears of government officials in
car parking and other facilities. Its flagship is the Muscat Muscat who, in accordance with Vision 2040, are relying on
International Airport (MIA), which will celebrate its 50th Oman Airlines to boost the country’s tourist and logistic sectors.
anniversary this year. The company also manages the airports The growth of Oman’s tourist industry has largely been held
at Salalah, Suhar and Duqm, as well as three others built over back by a lack of transport infrastructure and accommodation.
the last decade to serve Oman’s oilfields. Additionally, Oman But now, with plans to expand the country’s passenger capacity
Airports has a land bank of 3.5 square kilometers, which it to 80 million from 20 million, Al Saadi is determined that
intends to use to transform the Sultanate into a key regional Oman Airlines will help rectify that.
logistics hub in line with the objectives of Oman Vision 2040. Historically, lack of demand rather than lack of supply has
Oman Airports has been a big and growing business, and in constrained the growth of Oman’s logistics sector, but that too
2020 the government decided to look outside the aviation and is changing thanks in large part to a significant relaxation of
airline industries for someone with the skills and experience foreign investment regulations. These are expected to trigger a
to oversee its development. Oil industry veteran Khamis wave of foreign direct investment heading into Oman, much of
Mohammed Al Saadi was appointed chairman and charged it destined for the Oman Airlines’ real estate portfolio. “The land
with ensuring that Oman’s network of airports realized their around our airports is ideally suited for the logistics, aviation
maximum potential and contributed fully to the Sultanate’s and hotel sectors,” says Al Saadi.
overall growth. For the time being, however, Al Saadi’s focus is on
Al Saadi assumed his new role during the first months of encouraging other airlines to take advantage of Oman’s airport
the COVID-19 pandemic and had to hit the ground running. infrastructure. “We have a team dedicated to promoting other
Thanks in part to the able response of Omani authorities in airlines to come here,” he says. “For the foreseeable future, our
mitigating the pandemic’s economic impact, Oman Airports goal is to have our airports working at as close to full capacity
managed to retain most of its employees and kept its eyes fixed as possible.

time.com/specialsections
 CONTENT FROM THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR

B
As the founder and CEO of Al Sharqiya Aviation (ASA), Oman’s first and forget. You may only do it once or twice in your life, but the memory will
to date only commercial helicopter operator, Tariq Al Barwani finds himself stay with you forever.”
in an ideal position to ride this wave. ASA started life as the aviation Al Barwani recognized that passenger safety was always going to crucial
subsidiary of MB Holding -- a global conglomerate with interests in to the success of his new venture, and he was immediately encouraged
many industries -- and by 2020 had decided to focus on the commercial by the pool of local talent he had at his disposal. “Flying a helicopter is
helicopter segment. more complicated than flying an airplane, especially in a country like
As with many successful businesses, chance played a large part in this Oman,” he says. “Pilots need to be able to fly in high winds and extreme
change of direction. The son of MB Holding’s hugely successful chairman, temperatures. They also need to be able to fly over our mountains.”
Al Barwani started his business life in its mining division, and it was in this Many of ASA’s pilots are veterans of the Royal Air Force of Oman, with
capacity that the idea of setting up a commercial helicopter operation first many years of local experience, and it is a particular source of pride for
began to take root. “We were looking to undertake a major geophysical the company that the overwhelming majority of its workforce are Omani
survey, so we approached the head of the Civil Aviation Authority about nationals.
renting some helicopters,” he recalls. “To my surprise, he suggested that Al Barwani has also ensured that ASA’s helicopter fleet is the best
we set up our own helicopter company and offered to give us his support.” that money can buy. After extensive research, the five-seater Airbus
Al Barwani is realistic enough to recognize that being part of the Al H125 with its track record of working in hot environments and high
Barwani family has opened doors for him. He had the opportunity to study altitudes won his vote. “It is just so versatile,” he says. “One day it
geology at Imperial College London, a subject, he says, that “really teaches can be carrying tourists or transferring VIPs, the next it could be crop
you how to make decisions with very limited information.” He then went dusting or participating in mining surveys.” Always looking for ways
on to take an MBA at McGill University in Canada, at which point he to expand the company’s versatility, ASA recently took delivery of a
began to realize his interest and strength lay in strategy. new five-bladed Airbus H145 for use in HEMS (Helicopter Emergency
Two years after being repurposed as a commercial helicopter specialist Medical Service) missions across Oman.
operation, ASA has carved out a niche as the domestic go-to provider So what does the future hold for ASA? The H145 purchase points
of onshore and offshore inspection and survey to further diversification into the HEMS sector, while
operations for the oil and gas industries. This work Al Barwani has also set his sights on the air cargo
includes the speedy transfer of tools, an external transportation sector.
load-lifting operation, both passenger and medevac ASA is demonstrating that it is a company with broad
transport, plus aerial filming and photographic commercial horizons.

time.com/specialsections
Last year, Ben was too sick to dream.
He has Primary Immunodeficiency or PI.
Thanks to the Jeffrey Modell Foundation,
he has been properly diagnosed and treated.
Now he can search for the cure.

helping children reach for their dreams

info4pi.org
 6 QUESTIONS

Natasha Lyonne on her new series Poker Face,

escaping the confines of traditional female
characters, and why she’s happier than ever in her 40s

Poker Face, premiering on Peacock Sheen in Apocalypse Now looking up

on Jan. 26, is a collaboration with at the ceiling fan while the Doors’
Glass Onion filmmaker Rian John- 2022 was a “The End” was playing. It’s so fas-
son that casts you as a scruffy de- cinating to watch a human being in
tective in the mold of Peter Falk’s rough year for process, ruminating, that we trust
Columbo. What appealed to the
two of you about that kind of pro-
streaming. As a that to hold an audience’s attention.
So whenever I have a measure of
tagonist? We have a shared love for creator of smart, say-so in a character’s creation, I try
[Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled
detective] Philip Marlowe. It’s such
offbeat TV, does to see to it that they’re able to have
their inner beat be the thing leading
an iconic character type that we’ve that worry you? them, rather than society’s expecta-
seen permutations of it for, prob- tion of what a life should look like.
ably, seven decades now, whether it’s
Humphrey Bogart or Elliott Gould or Animal, the production com-
Jack Nicholson. pany you co-founded with Maya
Rudolph, works with a lot of
The women you play in the Netflix emerging artists, like Sammi
hit you co-created, Russian Doll, as Cohen, who directed Hulu’s queer
well as in Poker Face, have a rug- teen rom-com Crush. As some-
ged, idiosyncratic independence one who’s had a lifelong career in
that’s still largely reserved for Hollywood, is it rewarding to shep-
male leads. Have you always been herd newer creators through the in-
drawn to more traditionally mas- dustry? I love that I get to help raise
culine archetypes? I’m very self- up so many brilliant young women. I
taught. I dropped out of the film- love young people, just in general. But
making program at NYU when I was I also love growing up—I wouldn’t go
16 and decided to just watch a bunch back in time for anything. I can’t tell
of movies at Film Forum and read you that I’m a 100% happy person,
every book on filmmaking I could get but I’ve never been happier in my
my hands on. And as much as I love whole life. And it’s been hard-won.
Bette Davis and Mae West and Gena
Rowlands, I often found myself iden- Are you surprised that you feel as
tifying with the Peter Falks and the fulfilled as you do, at age 43?
Joe Pescis and the Jimmy Cagneys— The only surprise is how false the bill
all the boys. Certainly, by the time of goods is that we’re sold as young
I was writing Russian Doll, I saw a women. We’re supposed to be ter-
character who was the perfect mix of rified of anything after 17 or 21. So
feminine and masculine. it’s a revelation to discover what a
lie that was. The truth of the matter
Do you think that androgynous is, it’s way better over here. I’m sure
quality liberates your characters any woman in her 40s is gonna tell
from the typical story lines we you, that’s when it all starts clicking,
see female protagonists saddled because you get to let go of so much
with, like the romance plot? For concern about what other people
sure. You get to circumnavigate all think, and you get to focus on what
J A S O N M E N D E Z— G E T T Y I M A G E S

the traditional, overused tropes sur- you care about. And, of course, life
rounding how we think of female being that funny karmic beast that
characters. Especially when they’re it is, as soon as you let go of cer-
the central character, it seems that tain things, those are the very same
they’re defined by an outer life. I re- things that come to you.
member, as a teenager, seeing Martin —JUDY BERMAN
68 TIME January 30/February 6, 2023