Nervous rex: the Davos elite brace for Trump and his dinosaur diplomacy
“There’s no diplomacy with Donald Trump: he’s a T rex,You mate with him or he devours you,” Debate at the World Economic Forum annual meetings high in the Swiss Alps is usually scrupulously polite, but as this year’s gathering got under way in Davos on Tuesday, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, had this blunt advice for handling the week’s star speaker,The US president was yet to arrive but throughout the blond wood congress centre the hottest topic among the global elite of business and politics – on and off conference stages – was Trump’s intemperate attack on European allies, threatening punitive tariffs if they fail to let him annex Greenland,Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, kicked off the day by urging US allies to calm down, accusing them of “hysteria” in their reaction to the president’s comments.
“What I am urging everyone here to do is sit back, take a deep breath and let things play out,” he said,However, a string of European leaders who addressed delegates on Tuesday seemed very reluctant to wait and see what the T rex is minded to do to them when he arrives to give his Wednesday afternoon speech,The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said recent chaotic events underlined the need for what she called “a new form of European independence” – and she warned that it would be a mistake to expect a return to normal,“Nostalgia will not bring back the old order,” she said,The French president, Emmanuel Macron, also attempted to galvanise the European response to Trump with a warning about the risks of “new imperialism or new colonialism”.
Wearing mirrored aviation sunglasses throughout because of an eye condition, Macron delivered a speech oozing criticism – and a smattering of sarcasm.“It’s great to be here and it’s a time of peace, stability and predictability,” he said to peals of laughter.He went on to warn of what he called “a shift toward autocracy against democracy … a shift towards a world without rules where international law is trampled underfoot, where the only law seems to be the strongest and imperial ambitions are resurfacing”.Unless the US president retreated on his Greenland threat, Macron suggested Europe may have to use its anti-coercion instrument, known as the “trade bazooka”, potentially imposing sweeping sanctions and tariffs.“Can you imagine? This is crazy,” he said.
Before addressing the packed congress hall, Macron made a show of shaking hands with European leaders, including von der Leyen, lined up in the front row.“Let’s not accept the global order which will be decided by those who claim to have the bigger voice or the biggest teeth,” he said.Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, who turned his party’s electoral fortunes around partly by taking an “elbows up” stance against the US president, also used a keynote speech to sound the death knell for the rules-based global order.Peppering his address with references from sources as varied as Thucydides and the former Czech leader Václav Havel, Carney warned: “There is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along.To accommodate.
To avoid trouble.To hope that compliance will buy safety – it won’t.” Echoing Newsom’s warning, he added: “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”Just as Carney was speaking, another member of the large US delegation, Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, was giving a combative account of the US position at a panel discussion in another Davos conference room.“We are here to make a very clear point: globalisation has failed the west and the United States of America.
It’s a failed policy,It is what the WEF has stood for, which is export, offshore, find the cheapest labour in the world, and the world is a better place for it,” he said,“The fact is, it has left America behind,It has left American workers behind,”Instead, Lutnick suggested, the US would look out for its own interests – and he urged other nations to do the same.
Predicting that the Greenland “kerfuffle,” as he called it, would eventually be resolved through dialogue rather than trade war, he insisted: “When America shines, the world shines.”Some analysts suggested that Trump would seek to woo his audience when he addresses Davos on Wednesday, rather than create fresh drama.But with both sides of an increasingly raw global divide on clear display, the stage is set for the T rex to make quite an entrance.
Deactivate your X account – you won’t miss it when it’s gone | Letter
As a past follower of Marie Le Conte (AKA the Young Vulgarian) on X, I read her column on leaving the platform with interest, complete empathy and self-reflection (To anybody still using X: sexual abuse content is the final straw, it’s time to leave, 12 January).I joined X – or rather, Twitter – in 2007 after reading a Guardian article on the five next hit websites. Needless to say, most of the others have been forgotten. I was bored in my uni halls and it sounded the most interesting.In those days one could sit and watch the global feed – every tweet being posted in the world – with notable seconds between posts
‘Still here!’: X’s Grok AI tool accessible in Malaysia and Indonesia despite ban
Days after Malaysia made global headlines by announcing it would temporarily ban Grok over its ability to generate “grossly offensive and nonconsensual manipulated images”, the generative AI tool was conversing breezily with accounts registered in the country.“Still here! That DNS block in Malaysia is pretty lightweight – easy to bypass with a VPN or DNS tweak,” Grok’s account on X said in response to a question from a user.Grok’s ability to allow users to create sexually explicit images, including images of children, has created a global outcry over recent weeks, with regulators and politicians around the world launching investigations. Indonesia and Malaysia became the first two countries to announce blocks on the technology, with Malaysia’s regulatory body saying last Sunday it had “directed a temporary restriction” on access to Grok, effective as of 11 January 2026. Officials in the Philippines have said they too plan to ban the technology
‘We could hit a wall’: why trillions of dollars of risk is no guarantee of AI reward
Will the race to artificial general intelligence (AGI) lead us to a land of financial plenty – or will it end in a 2008-style bust? Trillions of dollars rest on the answer.The figures are staggering: an estimated $2.9tn (£2.2tn) being spent on datacentres, the central nervous systems of AI tools; the more than $4tn stock market capitalisation of Nvidia, the company that makes the chips powering cutting-edge AI systems; and the $100m signing-on bonuses offered by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to top engineers at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.These sky-high numbers are all propped up by investors who expect a return on their trillions
He called himself an ‘untouchable hacker god’. But who was behind the biggest crime Finland has ever known?
Tiina Parikka was half-naked when she read the email. It was a Saturday in late October 2020, and Parikka had spent the morning sorting out plans for distance learning after a Covid outbreak at the school where she was headteacher. She had taken a sauna at her flat in Vantaa, just outside Finland’s capital, Helsinki, and when she came into her bedroom to get dressed, she idly checked her phone. There was a message that began with Parikka’s name and her social security number – the unique code used to identify Finnish people when they access healthcare, education and banking. “I knew then that this is not a game,” she says
China blocks Nvidia H200 AI chips that US government cleared for export – report
Suppliers of parts for Nvidia’s H200 have paused production after Chinese customs officials blocked shipments of the newly approved artificial intelligence processors from entering China, according to a report.Reuters could not immediately verify the report, which appeared in the Financial Times citing two people with knowledge of the matter. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment made outside regular business hours.Nvidia had expected more than one million orders from Chinese clients, the report said, adding that its suppliers had been operating around the clock to prepare for shipping as early as March.Chinese customs authorities this week told customs agents that Nvidia’s H200 chips were not permitted to enter the country, Reuters reported
ChatGPT to start showing ads in the US
ChatGPT will start including advertisements beside answers for US users as OpenAI seeks a new revenue stream.The ads will be tested first in ChatGPT for US users only, the company announced on Friday, after increasing speculation that the San Francisco firm would turn to a potential cashflow model on top of its current subscriptions.The ads will start in the coming weeks and will be included above or below, rather than within, answers. Mock-ups circulated by the company show the ads in a tinted box. They will be served to adult users “when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation”, according to OpenAI’s announcement
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Badenoch warns Tory MPs about people trying to ‘undermine party from within’