Friends, we hope you are well.

Today in The Geneva Observer, Stephanie Nebehay talks to Doreen Bogdan-Martin, who came to Geneva for three months, but never left. Thirty years later, the American is the first ever woman to lead the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It got her a surprise meeting the last time US President Joe Biden was in town—in what now feels like a different age. Their conversation comes a few days short of the ITU’s ‘AI for Good’ Summit. Its previous editions were often reserved for AI cognoscenti, but this year’s edition will undoubtedly be an event of larger significance, featuring participants from a much wider world, as AI takes over the global conversation.

The corridors of the UN in New York hold no secrets for Stephanie Fillon. For The G|O, she reports today on how five women ambassadors—dubbed the ‘Fab Five’ by the Swiss mission—are bringing a different perspective and approach to diplomacy and, with a welcome swagger, joyfully breaking the codes of an institution in dire need of reforms. Plural intended. All of them are seasoned diplomats who have shattered a few glass ceilings on the way to the UN Security Council, and are not afraid to challenge the dynamics of a largely paralyzed body. Friendly request to their respective government: post them to Geneva next!

Our guest essay of the week is by Dambisa Moyo, another woman widely recognized as a promoter of paradigm change. In anticipation of next week’s ITU AI summit, she argues it’s high time for government—and, as a matter of fact, for the whole of society—to start thinking boldly about what AI will do to jobs. As artificial intelligence reduces demand for labor and boosts productivity, governments and businesses are going to have to adjust. While governments might want to raise taxes and redistribute the revenues in order to mitigate the short-term disruption, in the long term, they will need to think bigger, she argues.

From ham radio to tackling AI, the new ITU chief moves with technology

By Stephanie Nebehay

• When US President Joe Biden was in Geneva two years ago for a politically-charged summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he took time during a 24-hour whirlwind visit amid the COVID pandemic to meet Doreen Bogdan-Martin.
• Their unannounced private meeting reflected the significance that the United States attached to the UN telecoms agency and the strategic interests at stake at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Six months into the top ITU job, Doreen Bogdan-Martin is preparing to host the ‘AI for Good’ World Summit next week, bringing together expert minds to tackle growing concerns about potentially dangerous misuse of generated artificial intelligence and the need for global governance.

The American’s path to the UN telecoms agency began in her youth, marked by her father, a doctor, using amateur or ‘ham’ radio to communicate from his fishing boat and at the family home in New Jersey. Bogdan-Martin, who was active in the ITU’s amateur radio ‘geeks’ club, has now earned her own amateur radio license.

“What is so cool about it is that it’s a low-tech thing, but it is an important technology. Because it’s still in many cases the only source of communications if a disaster strikes,” she tells me, during a conversation in her 14^th floor office at the ITU tower building, which has a stunning view of the lake.

After climbing the ladder for nearly 30 years at the ITU, she was well-positioned to compete in the leadership race to replace China’s Houlin Zhao, who had served two terms as Secretary-General of the agency that allocates global radio spectrum and satellite orbits and sets technical standards.

Washington realized that the geopolitical stakes were high in the contest, which the Brookings Institute called “the most important election you have never heard of,” and President Biden held private talks with Bogdan-Martin during his June 2021 visit to Geneva, before the race was officially underway. “He thanked me for my service and expressed his support,” she says.

Bogdan-Martin, then director of ITU’s telecommunication development bureau, and Russian candidate Rashid Ismailov, a former Russian deputy minister who had also been an executive at Chinese telecom giant Huawei, offered competing visions of the future of the Internet—open or state-controlled governance.

‘A free and open internet’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a public endorsement of the American’s candidacy, followed by a supporting statement from Biden. “I think my experience had a big role to play,” the new S-G tells me. “But I also think that it was a moment in time—and remains to be, I would say—where the US firmly committed to the importance of this institution.”

That means recognizing “the fact that the ITU has a critical role to play in the future in terms of shaping digital technologies and services,” she says. “I also think it was a confirmation of what I was advancing in my platform, which is a free and open internet. I firmly believe that we need to connect the whole world, and that everyone should have access to universal, meaningful connectivity, that is affordable, that is safe, that is trusted.”

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A ‘Fab Five’ Summer on the Women-Led Security Council

By Stephanie Fillion

It was another late night at the United Nations Security Council in New York City. Ambassadors were bickering in closed consultations over yet another longstanding issue on the international peacekeeping body where there are well-established resolutions that permanent members somehow keep breaching—the typical UN dynamic.

Although Malta only took up a seat on the Council in January, the meetings already feel very familiar for Vanessa Frazier, the country’s permanent representative. A lot of words are used, over and over, and little action is taken. It was around 9 p.m. when she took to the floor:

“I'm going to go home now, where my decisions have meaning, because here they don’t have meaning,” she said, “and frankly, I wasn't part of the decision taken, but the permanent members were, and they are [the] members stopping the decisions being implemented. So I'm going to go home where I actually have some power, where my decisions are being adhered to.” Frazier was referring to the simple fact that the rules she’s established at home, with her children, are respected—something she does not see often in the Security Council.

If some women diplomats tend to shy away from talking about their families, and the way their gender affects work at the world’s highest security body, Frazier embraces it, even using it to her advantage at times. A mother of two, she has had a successful career representing the archipelago in countries like Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), all of it while raising a family. She has won several awards for her work, especially for her contribution to women in diplomacy.

Whether it is by openly talking at the Security Council about her role as a mother, or simply by using the element of surprise—as in Italy, for example, when old-fashioned diplomats expected an older white man and not a fashionable young woman to show up—Frazier has learned a lot from the misplaced comments or unexpected situations that have come from her participation in a traditionally male-dominated world.

She is one of five women currently sitting on the Security Council, and between May and August, for the first time in history, four of them in succession will occupy the role of Security Council president: first Pascale Baeryswil of Switzerland in May, followed by Lana Nusseibeh of the United Arab Emirates, then Barbara Woodward of the United Kingdom, with Linda Thomas-Greenfield of the United States ending the run in August. Malta presided over the Council last February, as per the alphabetical order.

The five women come from radically different backgrounds and bring completely different perspectives to the Council. From an Olympic judoka to an avid swimmer, and a proud African-American woman known for making a delicious gumbo that she uses as a diplomatic soft power, not all women on the Security Council are the same, but they do share one crucial trait in common: they have broken glass ceilings time and time again in making it to one of global diplomacy’s most prestigious posts.

In the 78-year history of the 15-member Council, in which five new ambassadors come in every year as rotating members, the Council has only had 28 female ambassadors in its membership. The United States, a permanent member, accounts for at least seven of them. When she joined the Council, Frazier was told she was number 27. While an exact total of all the ambassadors to sit on the Council throughout the years is not available, Security Council Procedure—a think tank analyzing the Security Council—estimates the number to be between 400-500.

Women in diplomacy try to join forces and support each other as much as they can, and this dynamic also translates to the Security Council. During Switzerland's presidency in May, Baeriswyl celebrated the historical first by publishing a video of the five women on a stroll on Roosevelt Island in New York City. In the video, she claims enthusiastically, “I’m here with my four Council colleagues, and together we represent a third of the representatives in the Council.”

From a powerful Gulf state to a small Mediterranean archipelago, the women represent countries with different priorities and foreign policies. As such, they all understand the limits of what their shared gender can in itself achieve. What Frazier believes they do have going for them is a genuine belief in each other’s success, and a greater desire to find common ground.

“I think there's more of a willingness amongst the women to try to understand each other, and we go completely against the stereotype that you hear about women in the workplace,” she says. “We really do not bicker or bitch about each other, but actually we really try, when maybe we're not on the same side, to go have a coffee or go for a walk and talk about it, and you always find a way.”

Another way of standing out is to make sure women are represented in other ways on the Council, for example as briefers, and as subject matters of discussion. “Together, we want to amplify women’s voices. We want to hear women from all backgrounds, on all aspects of the Council’s agenda, and listen to their expertise and recommendations. Their contribution is vital to building sustainable and inclusive peace,” Baeriswyl told The G|O in an email.

The Swiss team created the hashtag #FabFive for the exclusive group—a quirky moniker that some other upcoming presidencies may or may not want to use—but being part of the ‘Fab Five’, and being a minority in a Council used to masculinity (three of the five permanent members, Russia, China, and France, have never had a woman as their representative) isn’t always a walk in the park—or a walk on Roosevelt Island, perhaps.

For instance, ambassadors often stumble when addressing Madam President instead of the usual (though less and less unusual), Mister President—an honest mistake, but a telling one. More seriously, Frazier remembers being told by a Council member that women briefers were “okay,” provided they were qualified. “What makes a woman unqualified and a man qualified?” she asked in response. “You should always assume that a woman is qualified. I find that most offensive, because you have fully qualified women, overqualified women, you’re often spoilt for choice.”

Frazier doesn’t deny there is often a double burden for professional women, at any level, when it comes to family responsibilities. As such, while her role as an ambassador gives access to a lot of support, from drivers to home aides, she tries to share it with fellow colleagues whenever she can, as lower-level diplomats or experts don’t have the same help. Together with colleagues, she’s currently working to open an emergency childcare facility. The United Nations headquarters in New York City also recently inaugurated a lactation room.

Even if they only represent a third of the membership, the five women are trying to push for gender-equality across the organization—including co-chair and penholder positions, for example.

In any case, the Maltese diplomat agrees with Eleanor Roosevelt’s assessment that women’s DNA has evolved in a way that makes them better humanitarians: “We are in tune with our common humanitarian principles, but I think it makes us more principled in general.”

Elsewhere in the Ecosystem

The Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) has lost its diplomatic mastermind.

A few months before its planned annual October summit, Swiss diplomat Alexandre Fasel is leaving GESDA. Over the last three years, Fasel had embodied the concept of science diplomacy in Geneva, giving it a much needed conceptual framework at a time when science and technology are at the center of great powers’ rivalry. Positioning GESDA, a Swiss-led initiative that aims to promote advances in science and technology as common goods, has always been a challenge. Fasel seems to be up for another, possibly bigger one by becoming the head Swiss negotiator with the EU: “Ignazio Cassis, the Swiss Foreign Minister, has found a new martyr to the cause,” is how the Tribune de Genève announced Fasel’s nomination.

An Economic Model for the AI Age

By Dambisa Moyo*

In April, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai predicted that artificial intelligence would have an impact “more profound” than any other human innovation, from fire to electricity. While it is impossible to know precisely what that impact will be, two changes appear particularly likely: demand for labor will fall, and productivity will rise. In other words, we appear to be moving toward a labor-less economic model, in which fewer human workers are needed to sustain growth.

Jobs in back-office support, legal services, and accountancy seem to face the most immediate risk from new generative AI technologies, including large language models like ChatGPT-4. But every sector of the economy is likely to be affected. Because language tasks account for 62% of employees’ time, a recent report by Accenture notes, large language models could affect 40% of all working hours.

Accenture estimates that 65% of the time spent on these language tasks can be “transformed into more productive activity through augmentation and automation.” And a new McKinsey report predicts that the AI-driven productivity boost could add the equivalent of $2.6-4.4 trillion in value to the global economy annually.

But, even as higher productivity boosts economic growth, the diminution of labor would undermine it, meaning that, ultimately, growth could well stagnate. Reduced demand for human workers implies a steep rise in unemployment, especially since the world population is set to continue growing.

Unemployment is already a persistent problem. According to the International Labor Organization, the total number of unemployed young people (15-24 years old) has remained around 70 million for more than two decades. And the global youth unemployment rate has been trending up, from 12.2% in 1995 to just under 13% percent after the 2008 global financial crisis to 15.6% percent in 2021.

AI will exacerbate these trends. And because AI’s impact on labor markets is likely to be structural, the rise in unemployment would amount to a permanent dislocation. Structural unemployment could return to levels last seen in the deindustrialization of the 1980s, when joblessness in the United Kingdom, for example, remained above 10% for the better part of the 1980s.

How can governments support GDP growth in a new era of persistent structural unemployment? The most obvious likely response is a shift to greater redistribution, with governments raising taxes on the proceeds from AI-driven productivity gains and using those revenues to support the wider population, including by implementing some version of a universal basic income.

To ensure adequate revenue to support expanded social safety nets, governments might move beyond taxing excess profits generated by AI-driven productivity gains to taxing the revenues of the firms reaping the biggest rewards. That way, the state – and, in turn, the general population – would claim a greater share of the AI windfall.

Of course, the AI revolution also has profound implications for businesses. For starters, companies will have to adjust their strategies and operations to account for the combination of higher productivity and a smaller labor force, which will enable them to generate more output with less capital. Companies that adjust as needed, and deliver low cost-to-income ratios, will attract investors; those that are slow to change their operating models will lose competitiveness and could fail.

The effects of such corporate adjustments will reverberate throughout the economy. Reduced demand for capital by firms will put downward pressure on the cost of capital, and companies will have less need to borrow from banks, causing overall activity in capital markets also to decline.

Higher taxes on corporate profits (or revenues) would create additional challenges. While the state will need to increase revenues to support the growing number of unemployed, this could leave corporations with lower retained earnings to reinvest, despite the additional profits generated by AI-driven productivity gains.

This is bad not only for the companies themselves. Lower investment in the economy would undermine growth, shrink the economic pie, and lower living standards. It would also narrow the tax base, erode the middle class, and widen inequality between the owners of capital and the traditional labor force.

So, while governments might want to raise taxes and redistribute the revenues in order to alleviate the short-term disruption caused by AI, in the long term, they will need to think bigger. In fact, policymakers are going to have to rethink prevailing economic models and principles – beginning with the assumption that labor is a key engine of growth. In the age of AI, workers may do little to drive growth, but they must benefit from it.

*Dambisa Moyo, an international economist, is the author of four New York Times bestselling books, including Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth – and How to Fix It (Basic Books, 2018).

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2023.

Today's Briefing: Stephanie Fillion - Stephanie Nebehay - Philippe Mottaz -

Guest Essay: Dambisa Moyo

Editorial intern: David Jenny

Edited by: Dan Wheeler