Dispatch from Davos: hot air, big egos and cold flexes

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It’s supposed to be frigid in Davos this time of year. Part of the charm is seeing the world’s elite tromp through the streets in respectable suits and snow boots. But this year it’s positively balmy, with highs in the mid 30s, or a little over 1°C. The current conditions when I flew out of New York were colder, and definitely snowier. I’m told this is due to something called a föhn, a dry warm wind that’s been blowing across the Alps. 

I’m no meteorologist, but it’s true that there is a lot of hot air here. 

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump arrived in Davos to address the assembly, and held forth for more than 90 minutes, weaving his way through remarks about the economy, Greenland, windmills, Switzerland, Rolexes, Venezuela, and drug prices. It was a talk lousy with gripes, grievances and outright falsehoods. 

One small example: Trump made a big deal of claiming that China, despite being the world leader in manufacturing windmill componentry, doesn’t actually use them for energy generation itself. In fact, it is the world leader in generation, as well. 

I did not get to watch this spectacle from the room itself. Sad! 

By the time I got to the Congress Hall where the address was taking place, there was already a massive scrum of people jostling to get in. 

I had just wrapped up moderating a panel on “the intelligent co-worker,” ie: AI agents in the workplace. I was really excited for this one as the speakers represented a diverse cross-section of the AI ecosystem. Christoph Schweizer, CEO of BCG had the macro strategic view; Enrique Lores, HP CEO, could speak to both hardware and large enterprises, Workera CEO Kian Katanforoosh has the inside view on workforce training and transformation, Manjul Shah CEO of Hippocratic AI addressed working in the high stakes field of healthcare, and Kate Kallot CEO of Amini AI gave perspective on the global south and Africa in particular. 

Interestingly, most of the panel shied away from using the term co-worker, and some even rejected the term agent. But the view they painted was definitely one of humans working alongside AI and augmenting what’s possible. Shah, for example, talked about having agents call 16,000 people in Texas during a heat wave to perform a health and safety check. It was a great discussion. You can watch the whole thing here. 

But by the time it let out, the push of people outside the Congress Hall was already too thick for me to get in. In fact I couldn’t even get into a nearby overflow room. I did make it into a third overflow room, but getting in meant navigating my way through a mass of people, so jammed in tight together that it reminded me of being at a Turnstile concert. 

The speech blew way past its allotted time, and I had to step out early to get to yet another discussion. Walking through the halls while Trump spoke was a truly surreal experience. He had truly captured the attention of the gathered global elite. I don’t think I saw a single person not starting at a laptop, or phone or iPad, all watching the same video. 

Trump is speaking again on Thursday in a previously unscheduled address to announce his Board of Peace. As is (I heard) Elon Musk. So it’s shaping up to be another big day for elite attention capture. 

I should say, though, there are elites, and then there are elites. And there are all sorts of ways of sorting out who is who. Your badge color is one of them. I have a white participant badge, because I was moderating panels. This gets you in pretty much anywhere and therefore is its own sort of status symbol. Where you are staying is another. I’m in Klosters, a neighboring town that’s a 40 minute train ride away from the Congress Centre. Not so elite. 

There are more subtle ways of status sorting, too. Yesterday I learned that when people ask if this is your first time at Davos, it’s sometimes meant as a way of trying to figure out how important you are. If you’re any kind of big deal, you’ve probably been coming for years. 

But the best one I’ve yet encountered happened when I made small talk with the woman sitting next to me as I changed back into my snow boots. It turned out that, like me, she lived in California–at least part time. “But I don’t think I’ll stay there much longer,” she said, “due to the new tax law.” This was just an ice cold flex. 

Because California’s newly proposed tax legislation? It only targets billionaires. 

Welcome to Davos.