Davos in the Swiss Alps is renowned as Europe’s highest city (1,560 m) and is well known as the city that hosts the World Economic Forum (WEF) annually, founded and created by Professor Klaus Schwab.
In the summer, Davos is popular for hiking, mountain biking, and sailing on Lake Davos. In winter, it is a major ski resort, plus every January hosting WEF.
I started attending the WEF in the early 1990s. Attendees were restricted to 700-750 participants, and leaders such as Presidents, Prime Ministers, heads of global institutions were welcomed with one accompanying advisor, unlike today when a CEO or President arrives with two dozen accompanied staff plus security.
In the old days, you could find Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Shimon Peres of Israel, sitting in the Congress Hall welcoming participants to talk to them between sessions, as Amr Moussa, General Secretary of the Arab States, and Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, allowed with no security or entourage blocking them.
Those were the days that the WEF religiously followed its declared mission of “Improving the State of the World”
Now the WEF has gone through a major shift. It started with Klaus Schwab opening the door for exclusive selection of participants that can have serious input and discussions to a global open forum to serve anyone who had the money or those whose voices can resonate across the world – even at the expense of leaders who had the tools to work on improving the state of the world.
When COVID swept the Earth and world leaders failed to work together, causing chaos and unnecessary deaths, I stopped attending the WEF and focused on my Foundation.
As the world shifted by the advent of super intelligent cell phones, high speed internet, a plethora of unregulated social media, an abundance of fake material, and emerging AI whose wide and deep impact has not been recognized, I decided a new event was needed.
The new event had to bring experts from around the world together – no fees – across different specializations and under Chatham House rules, to discuss the immediate future and what they see as coming to us human beings in the short-term.
The new event was “Expecting The Unexpected”, a long working dinner.
I remember my Master’s degree thesis focused on long-term economic planning and the benefit of five-year plans. Today, all that is irrelevant and given the quality of our leadership, the iceberg of AGI, the decline of humanism over the rise of sheer power, it is imperative for success to have a close reading of the world’s pulse on a daily basis.
On January 21 this year, an opinion piece in the New York Times discussed the WEF, denying its death as premature but admitting its transition and questioning its relevance.
The first US President to attend WEF was Bill Clinton in the year 2000, who walked the streets of Davos with minimal security and greeted the crowds. It was the peak of enthusiasm for globalization. This year, unlike 2000, when Trump addressed the WEF, he used mockery as a weapon of diplomacy.
In his January speech, President Trump oozed power and deployed ridicule as a message for submission.
Trump’s visit to Davos reinforced the belief that Washington was no longer predictable nor bound by any fundamental principles.
It was surreal watching Trump rip open the international order in front of global leaders in the audience and not a squeak in response. No one dared stand up and leave the speech.
The only such act was by Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, who walked out of a dinner at the WEF during US Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick’s pouring heavy criticism of Europe.
The Lutnick dinner was hosted by Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock (with $13 trillion under management), who was also appointed – not known how – as the Co-Chair of WEF after the shameful way of treating Klaus Schwab, who created the WEF, on the basis of anonymous, unproven allegations by the WEF board that Schwab appointed.
It was definitely a coup.
Fink ended the dinner before the dessert and Lutnick was heckled. Opinion leaders wrote after the event that Fink is expected to shift the WEF’s mission from improving the state of the world to how the business and political global elite marry their interests.
It is surprising that whilst Trump, as President of the most powerful nation on Earth, is tolerated and yet to be challenged, his crew from Lutnick to his Secretary of War, plus his Secretary of State to his Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, are very aggressive in their language without reason or any incoming challenge.
Interestingly, Lutnick wrote an opinion piece published in the Financial Times on 21 January during the WEF, declaring “We are here to make one thing crystal clear: with President Trump, capitalism has a new Sherrif in town.”
Lutnick added, “We are not attending Davos to blend in.” Whilst WEF did not ask Lutnick to blend in, I assume working face to face, discussing, negotiating, and talking to each other rather than at each other would produce better results than autocratic declarations.
The US is a great country with so much to offer to its people and to the world as a whole. The world also needs to offer America its best. It is a two-way relationship and there is no need to destroy such a mutual beneficial futuristic vision, not only for today’s generation but also for the future.
I had the privilege of meeting President Trump briefly and in the few minutes of one-to-one discussion, before being joined by Robert O’Brien, who was President Trump’s NSA at the time and Steven Mnuchin, who was at the time President Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury, Trump made a lot of sense with a clear memory.
In our meeting, President Trump was focused, knowledgeable, detail-oriented, and humane in his responses. Traits he does not display publicly. The brief meeting spoke of an intelligent, transactional, focused human being with deep ideological beliefs towards his country and the world.
Trump survived vicious and unconventional attacks to become President, so far as to be shot as I predicted in an earlier opinion piece. Trump defied all that was thrown at him and was elected. He needs space and a special approach. No doubt about that.
Former US Presidents are not without fault. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Gaza, Iran-Contra, and more are US policy failures. It is not Trump alone, but there is great hope that Trump can surprise us in his remaining years with a shift where his leadership brings positivity, even as negativity reigns today.
As I sat penciling this opinion piece, I remembered clearly what my late parents hammered in my grey cells. “With power comes great responsibility. The more power you have, the greater empathy and humble manner you should display.”
May all those with power remember that they can shift the world – hopefully for the better.
About the author
M. Shafik Gabr is a renowned leader in international business, innovation, investment and one of the world’s premier collectors of Orientalist art, and an accomplished philanthropist.
During his career, Gabr established over 25 companies plus three investment holding companies including ARTOC Group for Investment and Development which, established in 1971, is a multi-disciplined investment holding company with businesses in infrastructure, automotive, engineering, construction and real estate, over the past three years focusing on investment in technology and artificial intelligence.
Gabr is the Chairman and a founding member of Egypt’s International Economic Forum, a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum, a Board Member of Stanhope Capital, an International Chairman of the Sadat Congressional Gold Medal Committee, and a Member of the Parliamentary Intelligence Security Forum.
Gabr is a Member of the Metropolitan Museum’s International Council and serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for Financial Stability, the Advisory Board of The Middle East Institute, and the Global Advisory Council of the Mayo Clinic.
Through the Shafik Gabr Social Development Foundation, Gabr is helping to improve elementary-school education in Egypt, introducing students to arts and culture and promoting sports and physical fitness for youth. The Foundation has its first Medical and Social Development Center in Mokattam, Cairo, offering free medical and health services.
In 2012 Gabr established in the US the Shafik Gabr Foundation which supports educational and medical initiatives plus launched in November 2012 the ‘East-West: The Art of Dialogue initiative promoting exchanges between the US and Egypt with the purpose of cultural dialogue and bridge-building.
Gabr holds a BA in Economics and Management from the American University in Cairo and an MA in Economics from the University of London.
