Disruptive Innovation and Social Impact CXOTalk

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We're discussing the impact of  disruptive innovation on society,   politics, social responsibility, and globalization  with three prominent leaders. The honorable   Malcolm Turnbull was the 29th Prime Minister  of Australia. Malcolm, welcome to CXOTalk.  Thank you very much, Michael. Glad to be with you. Tell us about the areas in which   you're focused right now. Out of politics, Lucy and I are both   keeping ourselves very busy. We're spending more  time with our grandchildren. That's important. 

We're also, from a business point of view and  apart from speaking and doing events like this,   we're back in the venture capital business. In  years past, we've been involved in starting and   supporting and investing in early-stage  companies, almost all in the technology area,   so supporting some great Australian  companies and a few American ones too.   That's what we love doing. We like technology that  is disruptive and working with creative people.  Lucy Turnbull, AO, was the first female Lord Mayor  for the City of Sydney. Lucy, welcome to CXOTalk.  Thank you so much, Michael. It's great to be here. Tell us about your areas of focus   and interest right at the moment. Well, Malcolm spoke about our common interest  

in innovation and technology and investing in  investing and technology. I'm also interested,   as Malcolm, I know, is technology as it affects  social innovation, social and societal impacts,   and also how it can have good and bad effects. I've also, over many years, had a very high level   of interest in urbanism and urban planning.  That's what took me into the town hall,  

not the other way around. I've been fascinated  in the history of my city, the history of other   cities, and how they work and come together. That fusion of geography, demography, culture,   and location, that sense of place, and the  layering of place, society, and the economy   is something that's always fascinated me. I've  been particularly interested, coming off the   back of that, in how to improve and increase the  participation of women in the economy, in society,   and in the conversation about how to participate  and become involved in the life of the city.  My friend Dr. David Bray is an old hand here  at CXOTalk. David, how are you? Welcome back.  I'm doing great, Michael. Great  to be back and really excited to  

hear from Malcolm and Lucy both about  how technology is changing the world.   As they were remarking, there  were two thoughts that I had.  One of the things we're looking at with  the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center   is, how do we make sure things are as inclusive  as possible? Usually, technology disruptions,   when they happen, they initially have an outsized  inequity to the disruption. If we're seeing   several happen in parallel, the question is,  how can we make sure that this actually uplifts   societies as opposed to pulls them apart? Then the other question is, we're seeing   data technology change the public's  expectations for the speed of governance   to unprecedented levels. But obviously, you  don't want to rush the decisions, and so   how can we make effective governance decisions  more participatory, at the speed that people   are expecting and, at the same time, more  inclusive in their decision-making process?  I think this theme of disruption and displacement  is perfectly timed. We just finished the U.S.  

elections, which was split so dramatically.  What does that tell us about disruption   and the feeling of displacement in society  today? Malcolm, why don't we start with you?  Look. The thing that troubles me most about  the United States at the moment is the level of   division. People are not talking with each other.  They're basically in silos. The hyper-partisanship   of the media, particularly that part owned by  Rupert Murdoch, is encouraging a fracturing.   Divisions and differences, which obviously  exist, are being exacerbated rather than healed.  Of course, Donald Trump is unusual, I think,  as an American President — that's probably the   understatement of the day – in the sense that  he doesn't even try to unite the country. As a  

national leader of a multicultural society, as  I was for three years, you know that one of your   primary roles is to bring people together and  encourage mutual respect, which is the glue that   binds a multicultural society together. When you get leaders and media   that is actively aimed at driving bigger and  bigger wedges into fissures that already exist,   that's extremely dangerous. That troubles  me. I hope that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris   can really provide that healing that Joe  Biden has talked about because it is vital.  A lot of people say, "Oh, that's just warm words  and eyewash." It's not. Believe me, I know,  

having done the job of leading a multicultural  society. Obviously, much smaller than the United   States. You have to be very conscious that  there are always people trying to divide   and the leader and responsible players,  including the media (in my view),   have got an obligation to  bring the country together. 

Lucy, could we not say that the  issues Malcolm just raised, really,   is a symptom of divisions that existed before?  Yes, the media exacerbated it, but that division,   there are reasons that those divisions exist. I think there are reasons that they exist and they   have existed for a very long time. We are seeing,  actually, through technological transformation and   disruption, and also through the politicization  of the media, the intensification of that   trend that has been there since the mid to  late '60s during the protest movements and   the reaction from those protest movements. It's  impossible to understand the significance of the   intensification of that fragmentation,  of that fraying of the American idea. 

I think the task of bringing Americans back  together is not a trivial one. it's not a minor   one. But as Malcolm said, it's a fundamentally  important one that has to be addressed. The only   way that it can be addressed is by developing  trust: trust in each other, trust in facts,   trust in what societies are able to do, and  trust and belief in the idea that people do have   a common identity, a common sense of purpose,  and a common set of values around what it is   to be American or [insert name of country]. Yeah. Michael, I agree with everything Lucy  

said there, but let me just add a  footnote as it relates to the media.   If you go back 20 years, which is not  very long, the media, by and large,   was what we would call mainstream media.  Their business model relied on them reaching   a broad audience in order to maximize their  eyeballs, listeners, viewers, or whatever.  Or advertising. Well, hence adverting. That's   exactly right. Okay, so you fast-forward  to modern times, contemporary times,  

and what have we got? We've got the Internet.  We have social media. We have much reduced   costs of making and disseminating news, and so  narrowcasting becomes a viable economic option.  People no longer have to go through  curated media to get their views across.  

You can just put it out on Twitter or Facebook.  All of that has regrettably enabled people to,   in effect, choose their own facts. We should all be able to choose our own opinions,   but when people are starting to literally  choose their own facts, you get into   a situation which is what I think is happening  in America at the moment where people aren't   talking together. Now then, you get the additional  problem of issues that should be questions of fact   becoming issues of identity. The classic case of that and the most   dangerous case is climate change. Now, global  warming is a question of physics. It's a function   outcome of physics but it has been turned by the  populous right and it's amplified in the media   into an issue of value, identity, or belief. Now, saying you believe in global warming is  

like saying you believe in gravity, right?  Yet, it's been turned into a values issue,   and so that has held up action on addressing  global warming, both in your country and ours.  David, Lucy and Malcolm just  spoke about issues such as trust.   Where is the issue here? Then there's technology.  Then there's this confusing of fact with identity,   as Malcolm just said. It's kind of a mess. Well, it is kind of a mess. But the good news is,  

in some respects, there's always been  messes. It's just this is a new mess   that we are trying to make sense of. We had a model in the 1960s, 1970s,   that was subscription-based, and so it was  incentivized to play more to the mainstream   and the moderates. What happened now with the  Internet, the great news is it democratized,   yet again, information distribution. The  challenge is, with that, it turns out that   the number one way to make something go  viral on the Internet is to make angry. 

Yeah. The number two way is to make   it fearful. It's not about making everyone angry  or fearful. That quickly dies out if it's trying   to be spread on the Internet. What you want to do  is make one group angry and the other group angry  

in response. It bounces back and forth. The good news is, technology is getting   democratized. The challenging news is technology  is being democratized and people now can do things   that were only possible by large nation-states 30  years ago. That includes being able to do things  

that only the national security functions of  large nation-states were able to do 30 years ago.  Right. Which includes misinformation and disinformation,   which includes knowing your location.  We've super-empowered individuals but,   going back to how we opened, it's not good  that we've super-empowered everyone equally.   Let alone, it's not clear that we thought about  how open societies where we do have pluralistic   narratives versus more autocratic societies. Autocratic societies can solve this easily.  

There's one narrative. If you don't like  it, you're fired, imprisoned, and/or killed.   It's not clear how open societies can allow  different narratives to exist in the current model   unless we do find media, as well as politicians,  recognizing their responsibility, as Malcolm said,   to be more of a unifier as opposed to a divider. David, can I just add something to that? I think   the problem we've got at the moment is we  get this surreal sort of Orwellian situation   where people talk about alternative  facts and people can live in their own   echo chamber. That is what is really dangerous. I don't have an immediate answer for that because   I think it's inherent in the nature of the media.  But we've got to make sure that we understand it   and that people recognize it  because, otherwise, you just get   people at risk of being in a propaganda silo. There is some interesting research that shows  

there does seem to be, in humans, two different  ways of thinking. Those people that tend to be   more progressive tend to be more exploratory in  seeking out new information and facts. They feel a   greater joy when they find those new insights and  those connections and less pain if they somehow   cross something that's a hurtful experience.  Those that tend to be more conservative,  

interesting enough – it's been shown in science  – they feel greater highs and greater lows, both   in their experience for searching for information  and actually things that challenge their identity.  What we may actually be discovering  is, at some point in human history,   there were pros of having people that did both:  those that were willing to try and go over the   next hill to see if there was better food or  better resources over there, but also those   that were a little bit more conservative  because, if they went over the next hill,   there might be someone out to kill you or worse.  This may be fundamental to being human is that we   have these tensions and these pulls at play. The other thing that I would say is  

some of it is, yes, you've got to have a  basis for facts. I recognize, as a scientist,   science is always updating what it knows. You were talking about climate change a little   bit earlier. This is one of the things that I  think is really challenging in the political space   when science is constantly updating what it  believes to be true, when sometimes it may think   something is not the case and then, after three or  four years of research, finally says, "Yes, this   is actually the case," or even, in some cases in  physics, decades before it turns something over.  It's hard to explain to people, "you've  got to think like a scientist," which is,   always be testing your assumptions and  recognizing new knowledge will be coming forward.   I think, in an era in which people  are feeling information overload,   they're exhausted by that, and so it's easier when  a politician comes in and just says, "The world   is black and white." Never mind that the black  and white might be artificial or incorrect. It's  

that most people can't handle the fact that we're  constantly updating our knowledge as a species.  That's a really interesting point,  David. My follow-on question to you is,   how therefore are those personality types or  predispositions so clearly geolocated whereby the   more conservative people in society – and it's not  just in the United States. It's also in Australia   and other countries – tend to be located in  regional and rural areas, in provincial areas   on the one hand and progressive people,  which are who are insultingly defined by   a lot of people as elites, tend to cluster  in urban areas? Why does that happen? Is   that personality-driven or does it become  cultural over time of people attracted to   lives and cities because of their personality,  disposition, and they send kids to school in   a progressive environment? That's actually a  fascinating question for me because I've always   been intrigued by, if you like, the belief system  differences between urban and nonurban places. 

I think you hit the nail on the head, Lucy.  It's probably a mixture of both. It's probably,   in some respects, natural selection. You  tend to pick rural areas and urban areas,   depending on your beliefs. There are clearly  people that are born into this as well.  I would say, if we look at the map of the  election, for the most part – there are some   exceptions – it really was a referendum  of what states, by and large, feel like   the last decades – the impacts of technology and  data – improved their lives and actually give them   hope for the future versus those that say, "By  and large, we feel like it hasn't helped us."  Quite frankly, the previous President or the  current President that's going to be exiting   in a few months, was an anti-establishment  candidate. Again, he may have done objectional   behavior and everything like that  but, in their minds, they felt like   this person is at least changing the train because  we don't feel like globalization has helped us. 

Malcolm, we need to overlay technology here,  it seems to me, in two ways. Number one is   technology, to a certain extent at least, has  been the driver of this economic polarization   that Lucy was referring to earlier between  the rural areas and the cities. Number two is,   you spoke about Facebook and the creation of  the Internet bubble in which many of us live   where we don't have outside and differing,  diverse perspectives. What about technology   and the role that it's playing in all of this? The first thing is that the march of technology   can't be resisted. The tenor of our times is  a change at a pace and scale that's utterly   unprecedented. That's not going to change. You may  not be interested in the volatility of our times,  

but it's interested in you.  It's going to impact on you.  We've got to basically learn to live with it.  We've got to make it work for us. We've got to   be very alert. Leaders, in particular, have to be  very alert to the fact that it impacts different  

parts of the community differentially and ensure  that parts of the country are not left behind.  One of the important things has got to be, in  terms of planning, dealing with an area like that,   is to make sure that it goes from being  a coal-fired energy hub, if you like,   to being a green renewable energy hub. That's very  feasible. This is something that planners should   be doing in the United States as well because,  wherever you've got a big center of coal-fired   generation, you've got a lot of transmission  infrastructure that's very expensive. Transmission   lines will carry electrons regardless of whether  they're generated by hydro, solar, wind, gas,   whatever. You've got to really focus on making  sure that there are no areas that are left behind. 

I think that the term that sums up the problem  is the term "The Rust Belt." There should never   be a rust belt. When a factory, when a plant  is obsolete because of technology and whatever   technological developments, it  should be replaced by something else.  There should never be a rust belt. It's  a term we've got to try to eliminate   because really what rust is, is a synonym for  forgotten. That has been the great failure. 

When you've got a big city and a business or  an enterprise closes down for whatever reason,   the people who work there have got a reasonable  prospect of finding jobs somewhere else.   Where you've got a more spread out economy and  you've got smaller towns and cities that are   dependent on one company or one industry,  when that closes down you've got a major   problem because there aren't alternatives. People often decry big cities but big cities   have a very big advantage that there are always  multiple opportunities for employment. That's   not always the case in smaller communities. Now, that doesn't mean everyone should move to the  

city. What it means is – and we can do it today  because we've got all the great communications   technology of broadband, et cetera – what we must  do is make sure that the smaller communities,   regional communities are not left behind. I'm really enjoying what Malcolm and Lucy   are sharing because it gives me hope that  we can turn the corner on where we're at. 

I'll give three E's for your listeners,  recognizing that they may be in the private   sector or they may be in the public sector  trying to figure out how to make things work,   three E's that unite and build on  what Lucy and Malcolm just shared.  • The first one is, it's about employment. • The second is, it's about education.  • The third is, it's about engagement. On the employment side, Lucy and Malcolm   were both asking the question, what drives people  to pick one possibly more conservative versus less   progressive stance? I would say, if you feel  like your employment prospects are threatened,   you may be more likely to look for  more of an authoritarian individual.  I think this is fascinating because, while  we're in a world in which government can do some   stimulus spending, obviously we spend a lot of  stimulus already on getting out of the pandemic,   I think a lot of it is going to have to  be the private sector also recognizing   what can they do to create more of a startup  ecosystem mindset in areas that are not the West   Coast or are not Austin or Seattle. As Malcolm  was saying, through communications technology,   we can actually now make it so that you have  mobility when it comes to finding employment,   that you're not tied to your geography. The second is education. Lucy was actually  

asking the question about what makes people  go one way or the other. I think, in the past,   and in fact, it's not unique to the United States,   rural areas have always had the myth that  people that go to urban areas come back   changed. They're the changelings or they're not  the same when they come back. That's probably   partly through the college experience  or the university experiences they have. 

Now, not everyone has to go to university anymore.  But now that we can provide education online,   how can we make it so that this is a  transformative experience for everybody,   again not tied to your geography but,  instead, it's available to everybody?  Then lastly, I'll end with engagement. We were  talking a little bit about the responsibility of   particularly some of the large social  media companies and media companies.   I actually created my first social media  account in 2013, but I would say I could   see a shift even just from 2013 to 2015. 2015, the tenor started changing. I started  

seeing more bots than humans. You might  think that these companies have an incentive   to get rid of the bots. I would say it's only  recently that they started cracking down on it.  2015 was the time when some social media  companies all of a sudden started showing profits   and that's when they allowed ads to auto-play  without a human clicking on them. I'm pretty   sure it wasn't more humans viewing ads. While they  can say, "We're not writing algorithms that try to  

amplify extreme content," if what they're trying  to do is write algorithms that amplify engagement,   don't be surprised if that sometimes does  the narrow-casting that Malcolm mentioned.  The question is, how can we make being a  moderate, being a collaborative individual   exciting again? How can we make that go viral  versus more of the extreme things on the fringes?  Malcolm, many of the listeners to this show  are technologists, work in technology. Do   technology companies have a special or unique  kind of responsibility given that they're   drivers of wealth as well as drivers of division  through social media, Facebook, and so forth?  I don't think every technology company is a driver  of division. The aim is for them to be disruptive,  

obviously, and rattle the cage  of the established order and   succeed, right? That's what makes it exciting. But do things that make people's lives better.  Correct. That's right. You should be trying to  design into your product. You should be maybe   making them, for example, safe by design. If you're consumer-facing, particularly if   you're social media, you've got to really, really  think about the impact of what you're doing.  Our eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant  is actually an American, originally.  Seattle. Formerly from Seattle. 

Yeah. Formerly Microsoft and Twitter, who I appointed   to be our eSafety Commissioner, Julie has got this  very good point she's pushing, which is safety by   design. I think that's critically important  because you've got to basically say, "Okay,   what are we making here? Let's just pause for a  second and just imagine; think about how it could   be misused. What could be the adverse consequences  of it? What can we do to mitigate that?"  You can't mitigate everything. If you build a  road, a road will be used by people going to work,  

people taking their kids to school. It'll be  used by bank robbers on their way to rob a bank.  You can't mitigate everything but you've  got to at least think ahead. It's always   better to get things done at the outset  rather than trying to retrofit them later. 

One of the most insightful things I was ever  told when we work on government projects,   capital projects like building things or major  investments in social or gray infrastructure   or grown infrastructure, is that there is a  triangle of time, cost, and quality. The same   applies to product development for technology. If you're going for speed, you can't get quality   and cost at the same time. You're going to have  to go for quality or go for cost. That will   have a big impact on the product you develop. It's getting those three legs of the   triangle right when you're developing  anything. The race for speed can have  

qualitative and societal negative consequences.  We saw in 2016, finally, after about three  years, that both the Senate came back and,   I think, the House did as well that they found the  ratio of real information to false narratives was   about 1:1. That took about 3.5 years for  people to finally get to that conclusion.   That was 2016. One can assume things  have only gotten more challenging since.  Is it a case that both politicians, but also any  leader in the public sector, should be ready for   misinformation attacks? If so, do you have any  recommendations on how to be ready for that?  Yeah. What's the solution when false news can travel  

much faster than truth? Malcolm and then Lucy. Okay. I'll give you a really good,   practical lesson of that. Now,  if you go back a decade or so,   the conventional political advice would be  that if you are faced with an outrageous lie,   you should not respond to it. Just ignore it  because the advice was that you would give it   additional sailings. You would help it along. Just  let it go through to the keeper and ignore it.  Now, we faced this challenge in the 2016  election here, which my government narrowly won,   where our opponents were peddling an outrageous  lie that we were planning to sell Medicare,   which is our national health service.  Which, obviously, you couldn't sell anyway.  They pushed this. They were mocked and ridiculed  in the mainstream media. I mean humiliatingly.  

But they just pushed it and pushed  it to the vulnerable demographics,   people who are older, more likely to be sick,  less well-educated, and it really worked. It   really worked. It cost us quite a few seats. The lesson we learned from that was that when   a lie is being spread in the social media age, you  have to knock it on the head instantly. You cannot   let it run. You've got to  basically have a whack-a-mole  

approach. That is absolutely critical. That's one very, very clear lesson.  You did right, David. What do they say? "A lie is  halfway around the world before the truth has got   its boots on." I think a lie is five times around  the world nowadays with the speed of social media.  Now, you may remember that, earlier  this year, there were a bunch of people,   as is often the case in America, brandishing  guns. They turned up at state capitols protesting   against lockdowns to combat the COVID virus. That  appeared to have enormous support on social media. 

Now, a company that we're invested in, I'm a  director of, called Kasada, an Australian company,   is essentially a bot elimination company that  can basically ensure that your website or   your service is only being accessed by humans as  opposed to bots. They established that about 60%   of the tweets that were supporting this action  were from automated bots. They weren't even   from humans. It wasn't even a Ukrainian or  Macedonian troll farm that was doing it.  Right. This was just   a program. These are just programs, you know,  computers programmed by maybe just one person.  Yep. That's something we've got to be really alert to  

because people, your adversaries, whether they're  domestic or international, have the ability   to create the impression of a surge of public  opinion on an issue when it is completely bogus.  If you could actually, with social media strings,  identify where they say likes or thumbs up,   thumbs down, or whatever it is, if they  could actually characterize or identify   that the likely ratio of bots to normal humans  is X to Y, that would be enormously helpful   in the community calibrating what the strength  of the underlying support is for a particular   piece of information or disinformation. It's fascinating because what we're seeing,   particularly as you talked about using bots to  manufacture the appearance of social mobilization,   and it's getting even more interesting where  a human will initially create the account,   so they get past the captchas and everything like  that, and then they'll shift to letting the bot   do it. In the moment either Twitter or Facebook  has tried to crack down on them, they'll get the   human back on the scene and say, "No, no, no, I'm  a real person." Then they turn away the attention.  That leads to now the optimistic question or the  question I'd like to ask both of you because,   one, I know you're doing a lot on the world stage  and I really am impressed with what you're doing   basically to translate to positive  action and investing in companies.   Is it the case now that maybe the best way to  predict the future is to invest and build it?   Is this a world where maybe venture  capitalists and funds that actually   invest in building the kind of world we  want to see can have an outside influence,   especially in tech, to building a better world?  I'd be interested in your thoughts on that. 

I think that's right. I think technology  has enormous power to do harm and good,   but let's concentrate on its power to do good.  I think that that is something that is vitally   important that we do, that we don't just  always denigrate technology and say that   it's universally a bad thing. It isn't. We've got to support good things and  

work with it because, especially with a  recessionary, low-interest-rate environment,   the circumstances or the economic environment  to invest in early-stage venture technology   opportunities is actually very big because  people will not particularly be terribly   attracted to get super-low interest rates if they  hold cash. They will be prepared to put more money   into more risky and speculative things. Now, I'm not suggesting that people with   small amounts of money should risk their  capital, but there is an opportunity for,   I guess, the investment community to seize that  opportunity. I think that's really happening.  The great thing would be to do that in the  space of improving the community conversation,   the national conversation, and have it more  informed and fact-based in developed nations and   undeveloped nations. There's a huge opportunity  to do that. There's also a huge opportunity to   do that in the environmental space and to get  investments in what will be transformational and   critical to the survival of our planet. Yeah, I agree. I agree with all of that.  Looks. Let's face it. Technology is going to  save the planet, if you believe that global  

warming is the biggest global challenge  we face, and I think it clearly is.  People need to have energy. They've got  to have energy from zero-emission sources.   That is, essentially, a consequence of tech. It's going to be a combination of solar.  

Probably, principally, overwhelmingly  photovoltaics. Much of the technology of that   was designed here in Sydney. Then wind  and then storage of one kind or another.  You've got the prospect of green hydrogen  will enable us to make green steel,   green cement. Ultimately, technology will  save us. We've got to keep investing in it. 

We've got to have an attitude. You see it's  not just the dollars. It's the attitude.  Startups are a massive boon to the economy.  Honestly, nobody loses from startups   except, to some extent, investors.  The investors, generally, learn a lot.  If you think about it, in a startup economy,   the founders, even if they don't  make a million or a billion,   will learn a lot. The employees learn a lot.  They all pay tax. They all get paid and pay tax.   They learn skills. They might then go and start  another company or go and work for a big company. 

From a government's point of view, and  this is why I supported them so strongly,   it is an absolute no-brainer. The startup  culture and economy is critically important.  You've got to basically encourage an innovative  mindset. If people are prepared to be open-minded,   reject "not invented here" or "we've always  done it this way," then we'll find the answers.  Malcolm, as we finish up,  I have a question that gets   to the heart of the premise of this discussion  of disruption and displacement. You just were  

talking about the mindset of accepting  innovation and accepting change. However,   the negative implications of change are not evenly  distributed through society. What should we do   to foster that kind of acceptance of change yet,  at the same time, help those people that are   receiving a disproportionate share of  the pain associated with the change?  Michael, you've got to basically map that.  You've got to work out who is going to be  

adversely affected by the changes of globalization  and make sure that there are other opportunities,   better opportunities. You've just got to be  very, very aware and alert to that and you   can't just assume that a rising tide of economic  growth will lift all boats because it doesn't.  Look. I've got to say, having run a government,  strong GDP growth means higher revenues. It does   solve a lot of problems. I'm not discounting  it. Nonetheless, it's still uneven. The key to   a successful society is one where we give people  every encouragement to streak ahead, but also we   make sure that if people are falling behind, they  are supported and brought up back into the pack.  Lucy, your thoughts and then  we'll finish up with David. 

Well, I completely agree with Malcolm. I think,  in the U.S., you've had an administration which   has been very pro-coal, notwithstanding that  the industry is still contracting. There are   structural and unalterable forces in the economy  which will transition. Truthfully, it doesn't   matter who is in power, but it will be accelerated  and, I think, better managed if you acknowledge   the problem. Yeah.  Step one is acknowledging the problem,  acknowledging the challenge and, as Malcolm said,   work with it and make sure that those left behind  are actually supported. Not subsidized forever,  

but they are supported into a new  technology and energy system, a new economy.   I think that is vitally important. David, you're going to get the last word here.  All right. Again, I think Malcolm and Lucy said it  all. If I could add some additional contributions,   I think we're really talking about  having empathy for those disrupted,   particularly those that are in places that,  again, may not have seen the beneficial   effects of globalization and technology. I think, again, maybe ten years from now,   historians will look back and say, at least for  the United States, 2016 to 2020 was a period in   which some part of the United States called  out and said, "Time out. We're not sure if   this path of globalization, this path of digital  advancement, is helping us as much as it's helping   others, and so we wanted a time out.'" Two, though, I think we've got to say,  

part of this responsibility, we can't  just say that's government's role to fix.   It's going to require – whether you're in the  private sector as a CEO, private sector as an   investor, private sector as just a positive change  agent that wants to make things happen – instead   of doing learned helplessness and saying, "Oh,  that's not in my scope. I can't do anything,"   I think what we really need to do is figure  out how CXOs around the world can say,   "We want to uplift everybody because that  creates a better framework and a better   overall commonwealth and market  for all if we can uplift everyone."  I'm excited to see what maybe some  private sector activities can do,   joined with public sector efforts, to  try and improve the future for everybody.  Well, certainly, we're ending on a very positive  note. I'd like to thank Malcolm Turnbull,   Lucy Turnbull, and Dr. David Bray. Thank you all  so much for taking time. This has been a very,  

very interesting discussion. Thank you, Michael.  Thank you. Thank you both. Thanks, Michael.  Everybody, thank you so much for watching.  Before you go, subscribe to our newsletter   and check out CXOTalk.com. We'll see  you soon. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

2020-12-20

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