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Greetings all --

It's taken me a while, and I have a lot of clean up to do on the site, but
I'm bringing back *The Washington Note* and will be posting dispatches all
this week from the *World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos*. Of
course, my big think pieces will be at *The Atlantic* -- but I need a place
to be quick, silly if I want to be, and provocative in my own sandbox.
I've added you to an occasional distribution list because I thought you
might be interested in these dispatches - but I promise after Davos to be
very light-handed.

Some parts of the site definitely need to be freshened up -- but give it a
couple of weeks and it will be simmering all the time.

Of course, should you not want to be on this list, just send me a note and
these alerts will stop. Thanks for checking in when you can! And if you
have thoughts, reactions, or questions, don't hesitate to connect.

*My first Davos dispatch below!*

--
*Steve Clemons*
*Washington Editor at Large, The Atlantic*
*202-276-1176 mobile **Follow me on Twitter @SCClemons*


*http://washingtonnote.com/doing-davos-again/
<http://washingtonnote.com/doing-davos-again/>**DOING DAVOS AGAIN?*

*by Steve Clemons*

During the five days of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, the
talented Barry Colson <http://www.barrycolson.com/> has for years owned the
anchor entertainer top spot at Davos' Hotel Europa where the most highly
credentialed multinational CEOs sing, badly but passionately, along with
the uncredentialed *hoi polloi *who want to collect stardust wherever they
can go without being blocked by battalions of Swiss WEF security
mercenaries.

'The Mooch' loves the place. So too Paul Jacobs, the once and perhaps
future CEO of Qualcomm. Last year, Bloomberg Global Media Chief Justin
Smith and Mylan CEO Heather Bresch all sang along (with yours truly) in a
temporarily memorable version of Neil Diamond' *Red Red Wine* -- following
Point72's friend-of-Steven Cohen-only crowd of those who love and
appreciate 100 point wines. (Cohen himself was unable to make it to his own
high-sizzle deal). After wine-tasting (or wine-guzzling the '100s,' Barry
got going, pounding his keys and belting out sing along songs, but yelling
to the happy but unsteady to keep drinks off the piano, which was mostly a
platform for his electric keyboard -- finally shorting out when the
fermented barley of too many revelers became a circuit board flooding
beer-nami.

This is one of the scenes anyone near Davos who treks up the mountain by
car, train, or helicopter can have every evening. There is always someone
interesting around Barry's piano, and their guard is down. Corporate, NGO,
and Foundation titans; Treasury Secretaries and national security advisors;
modern versions of Fagin and the Dodger many times over, but no Olivers;
share secrets, gossip about business conquests, talk dirt about Trump, and
beyond that, generally, just lose themselves in a scramble of big ideas,
more lasciviousness than one might expect in this era, and crafted
cocktails.

Groundhog Day can strike every day during WEF week with Barry at the
Europa, but then there is dinner with Paypal's Dan Schulman on financial
inclusivity for the unbanked or the CNBC/Quartz party on the mountaintop on
Monday, or the Global Blockchain Policy Council crowd, or the Oleg
Deripaska blow-out which managed last year an oligarch humble brag of
Enrique Iglesias performing amidst unlimited aged magnums of Dom Perignon
and* uber grande* sized tins of the blackest caviar. Georgetown and
Princeton have polite parties. PwC hosts one of my favorite hang-out
lounges and offers hats, mittens and shoe cleats for the outside bound.
Every night, there are dozens of stacked to-do options -- some gatherings
designed to kill brain cells and some that actually elevate and educate
them.

This Davos over the top stuff of the rich and elite has become a big,
tasty, caramelized cliche that's all true, and in some ways, off-putting,
or, as a Facebook friend, or two, have nudged -- and yes, I'm still on FB
-- calling the gathering "disgusting."

I don't agree with my critical friends as I find Davos a place where I
still encounter architects of attempted global improvement, real heroes, in
my book, focusing on rampant in-nation and among-nations wealth gaps,
global environmental degradation, the refugee disaster, gender and LGBT
rights battles, the strangulation of civil society and free expression,
cancer and alzheimers research, or any number of other vital global public
goods deficits that smart strategists and activists try to seduce global
elites to acknowledge and commit to fixing.

I was at the dinner last year when George Soros
<https://www.georgesoros.com/> gave his Sheryl Sandberg-radicalizing speech
about how Facebook and Google, among others, were becoming dangerously
powerful platform monopolies that needed to be regulated to protect the
public interest. Somehow or another it was that speech that got Facebook to
hire outside firms that thought it fine to launch insidious, anti-Semitic
slime ball attacks against Soros. I've been told Soros will give an
equally provocative set of remarks this year at the Hotel Seehof, and I'll
be there to share what I'm sure will be take-no-prisoners remarks. Can't
wait for that one.

I also had conversations last year with the IMF's Christine Lagarde with
the aforementioned Dan Schulman, iconoclastically for Davos clad in jeans
and a long sleeve t-, on what rich countries and banks still needed to do
to fill in the gaps of finance for nations and peoples who were neglected
in credit and banking networks. Salesforce CEO (and TIME's new owner) Marc
Benioff told me that if managed right, crypto currencies and blockchain
could revolutionize how every person's talents and efforts are rewarded and
paid for. No more middle men, agents, perhaps even 'media operations' with
'stables' of writers.

I also wrote a piece
<https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/trump-davos/551666/>
for *The Atlantic* on Trump not delivering his flamboyantly disagreeable,
pugnacious, anti-globalist self and leaving the place disappointed. People
wanted "to be in the room when Trump happened" -- but he was a nearly
genteel, seemingly sedated version of himself, at least in the big public
event.

I understand the cynicism about WEF, but consequential conversations happen
in Davos, and I'm going because I want to hear them, and be a part of the
debate about how what WEF founder Klaus Schwab calls the Fourth Industrial
Revolution is going to work and still keep humans in the picture.

Remember Bill Joy's dystopian *Wired* essay an eon ago titled "Why the
Future Doesn't Need Us <https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/>"? Well, I do
-- and I worry about real people, the ones driving our trucks, and building
our roads, and caring for the elderly, and doing all sorts of work that few
attending the Davos gathering know much about.

Also, I'm going because Donald Trump and no one from his Cabinet is going.
That's a bit of a fib as I would have gone if they were there in attendance
this year. But the world feels America slipping away from it, at least from
alliances the U.S. was tethered to, and even from rivalries that had been
defining for some countries that have long preoccupied America's strategic
class.

It's easier to take stock of how global elites feel about America's power
contraction when no one has to pretend to be polite because the American
President is in town.

This is why I'm going, and I look forward to sending dispatches on the
tidbits I pick up and perhaps some interviews I do. I'll post everything
here at TWN <http://washingtonnote.com/>.

If you want emails sent to you of my postings, zap me a note at scclemons
(at) gmail (dot) com -- and I'll add you to the list!

*- Steve Clemons*

*To be removed from this list, please just send an email to this one, and
alerts will stop.*

--
*Steve Clemons*
*Washington Editor at Large, The Atlantic*
*202-276-1176 mobile *
*Follow me on Twitter @SCClemons