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As high-powered Davos meetings go, this won’t go down as the most important but it seemed to symbolise something about the world right now, the vagaries of human experience, the ivory tower remove of Davos itself.
On one side, the leader of war-torn Ukraine, battling for its very survival against a military superpower and under constant threat of assassination himself.
On the other, a billionaire banker, the head of the world’s largest financial institution JP Morgan Chase (a bank with $3.7 trillion in assets), one of the most powerful financial figures in the world and a man who almost certainly has US president Joe Biden on speed dial.
Ahead of his main address to the forum, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy met business leaders including the JP Morgan bank chief executive Jamie Dimon.
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Dimon apparently introduced himself to Zelenskiy — “I’m Jamie Dimon from JPMorgan Chase. God bless you.” Not much else is known about the meeting or what these two disparate figures discussed as it happened off-piste.
With Ukraine’s counteroffensive failing to achieve its objectives and the bandwidth of world attention sapped by Israel’s war with Hamas and fears that it might spread into a wider Middle East conflict, Zelenskiy desperately needs the backing of investors to help shore up his country’s battered economy and with more than $100 billion in vital aid for Kyiv stalled in Washington and Brussels.
“It is important for us to attract private capital to the reconstruction of Ukraine. We hope that JPMorgan will help attract a large number of global investors and corporations,” Zelenskiy later said on the Telegram messaging app.
The Ukrainian leader was top-billing on day one of this year’s World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos. His arrival at the main Davos congress hall triggered a veritable media scrum. Dressed in his customary sweatshirt with Ukraine’s national emblem embroidered on the chest, Zelenskiy described Russian leader Vladimir Putin as a “terrorist” and “predator”.
“We need to finally dispel the notion that global unity is weaker than one man’s hatred,” he said.
The first day’s proceedings were, however, overshadowed by something on the other side of the Atlantic. Donald Trump’s resounding victory in Monday’s Iowa caucuses and the prospect of him returning to the White House added to the cool Alpine breeze.
If it wasn’t on the lips of participants, it formed an uneasy backdrop to debates about global trade and security, climate change and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to spread misinformation online. Perhaps the biggest question, with Zelenskiy in attendance, was would a victorious Trump steer the US from its support of Ukraine, a scenario that has the potential to change the course of the war and plunge Europe into a deeper security crisis.
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A second Trump presidency also has the potential to aggravate trade tensions not just between China and the US but between the western allies just as the global economy tries to emerge from the energy price shock. The last time he was in office he also rowed back on the US’s climate change commitments, dropping out of the Paris climate accord.
Online-generated conspiracy theories about global elites and Davos itself also seem to have greater currency with Trump’s voter base.
A notable absence from this year’s World Economic Forum is Biden. His snub is perhaps unsurprising — he has never come while president — and US leaders like to pitch themselves as closer to working-class Americans than the global elite. Trump has attended twice before but his absence this time might have had a bigger impact.
Biden did, however, send US secretary of state Antony Blinken, presenting the possibility of a US bilateral with Chinese premier Li Qiang. Li, China’s number two, leads a large Chinese government delegation at this week’s event and is the most senior Chinese official to attend the event since President Xi Jinping in 2017.
However, Blinken said he was not planning to meet anyone from the Chinese delegation on the sidelines of Davos. “I don’t think we’re crossing over,” Blinken told CNBC in an interview when asked if he was planning to meet anyone from the Chinese delegation.
Besides war and the deteriorating global security situation, the biggest theme of this year’s Davos event is the disruptive impact of AI technologies. Accenture boss Julie Sweet said her company had 150 people signed up to do workshops on AI rather than attend discussion panels.
Ironically, as many of these AI debates were taking place across a vast warren of event rooms and meeting halls, Mr AI himself, Sam Altman, boss and founder of ChatGPT company OpenAI could be seen out stretching his legs, traversing the slippery footpaths of Switzerland’s highest town, taking in the Alpine air, blissfully at peace with his disruption of global technology.
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