Semafor World Economy Summit: Views from policymakers and CEOs on digital infrastructure

On unplugging: Sampath said that in his home, cell phones aren’t allowed at the dinner table. He advocated for others to set boundaries, too. “I tell people: Put your phone down. You have to put your phone down,” Sampath said. “I think having a balanced and a healthy relationship with your phone and the digital internet is super important. You have to make space for other things in life.”

On the future: Sampath has a positive outlook, despite challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and, more recently, tariffs. “I think the next 20 years in America is really the greatest 20 years ever in the world, in any country,” he said. “We’re going to have, of course, great internet. We’re going to have some of the greatest advancements in health care. We’re going to have the greatest advancements in AI, in robotics, in computational biology, in computational geology.”

On tariffs’ effects on US automakers: Barra said General Motors is “very much aligned” with US President Donald Trump’s goals of establishing “a strong manufacturing base in this country and a strong auto industry.” Barra pointed to the work that GM did following the COVID-19 pandemic to bolster its supply chain resilience to have less “global complexity.” GM wants the Trump administration to understand the auto industry and how it operates, she said, so that US carmakers will “not be put at a disadvantage to our foreign competitors.”

On the US electric vehicle market: Barra noted that barriers to EV ownership remain, with price and charging capacity chief among them. Most EV owners also own traditional combustion engine cars for longer journeys. While US charging networks are improving, and “we’re making good progress,” Barra added, “it’s going to take some time, and it’s going to take investment.”

On artificial intelligence: Schroeter said that while many people are scared of AI, the majority of Kyndryl’s customers are already deploying it in some way. “I don’t think we’re in a hype cycle,” he said. “Our customers tell us, roughly three-quarters of them say, we’re experimenting with AI, some form or fashion,” Schroeter said, adding that of those, almost half are already at the point of seeing a “great” return on their investment.

On consumer spending: Miebach said that Mastercard’s internal data do not yet show significant changes in consumer activity resulting from economic worries and market turmoil. “The consumer today is an empowered consumer that will stick to what they want to do: They still want to make that trip,” he said. “We don’t see any change at this point.”

On artificial intelligence: Artificial intelligence is going to revolutionize the way consumers shop for things like travel, Miebach said, by automatically processing data like rewards and loyalty program balances. “In a world of agentic commerce, you have a smart agent that knows all your preferences and all of your balances and all of that, and will book this thing in two minutes,” he said. “The world isn’t designed around this today, but you can see a world where you have five, six agents… that do this for you.”

On Donald Trump’s economic policies and cuts to government programs: Tariffs and spending cuts are causing pain and upheaval, Beshear said. “I’ve never seen anything in politics more attributable to one person and one person alone,” the Democratic governor of Kentucky said. “His tariff decisions are devastating the economy,” Beshear added, while “rural health care will cease to exist if they do major cuts” to Medicaid. The administration’s hardline approach will also come with political costs, the governor suggested: “This will cause the American people to nearly revolt if they make these cuts.”

On the impact in Kentucky: The tariffs, along with the politicization of initiatives such as green energy manufacturing, are harming the people of his state, Beshear said, noting the significant investments in electric vehicle battery plants in Kentucky. “We really need him to rethink this tariff policy.” While 95% of all US bourbon is made in Kentucky, the state’s biggest industry is aerospace, followed by automotive, he added.

On his bid for TikTok: McCourt, who is leading a bid to purchase TikTok from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, said that he did not establish Project Liberty specifically to buy the China-owned app. “The TikTok bid was serendipitous,” he said. “The fundamental point of Project Liberty is not that the tech is bad. … The point is that we should each own and control our data because our data is our personhood, it is us, in the digital age. We should own ourselves.”

On how USAID cuts will affect Africa: “We’re talking of replacing an economic order that has been there for 100 years,” Mwangi said, referring to the billions of dollars in development aid slashed by the Trump administration. “The question is: Will the markets, the capital markets, replace those structures?” he added. Private investment can close some of the gap, Mwangi said, while a supply of minerals critical to the energy transition and a youthful labor force point to optimism for the continent. “Africa is in a very good position to reorganize the global market,” he said.

On how artificial intelligence and social media are different: Midha said the regulatory challenges facing AI are different from those faced by social media platforms. “AI models aren’t like social media. Social media gives individual users the ability to amplify their intentions, whereas [AI] models don’t have agency or intentions. They’re just math. It’s literally matrix math that you’re running on large pieces of data.”

On the US tech race with China: Midha called AI “as transformative as electricity,” and said it is a critical piece of national infrastructure. That’s why when it comes to competing with China, he said, “We must win. We don’t have a choice.”

On the allure of digital collectibles: People are spending more time in the digital world, and some of the activities they enjoyed in the physical world, like trading collectibles with friends, have shifted online, according to Gharegozlou. “They just want to do it in a place where they’re spending most of their time,” he said. “Sports fans in particular just want to connect with their sport through ownership.”

On connections with his company’s virtual character: The digital persona has drawn millions of young female followers, he said. “You’d be surprised that a digital character in a digital world can make people open up a lot more” than in the physical world. Shared experiences and the “connection she creates with people helps them open up, helps them discover themselves, express themselves in a new way,” he added.

On investing in Africa: Maasdorp said it’s time to rethink the global development financing system, and he agreed that private capital can replace some of the funding that used to come from governments. He wants to partner with major investment firms to help mitigate risk. “We need to mobilize third-party money from pensions funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, from the institutional investor community,” he said.

On tech regulation: Spiegel said there’s a feeling in his industry that US President Donald Trump is more receptive to technology overall, and especially artificial intelligence, than the Biden administration. “A lot of what we’ve seen from the [Trump] administration is encouraging investment in AI, trying to take a lighter-touch regulatory approach until we have more clarity on the areas where there are real risks that do need to be regulated,” Spiegel said.

On how artificial intelligence could impact the workforce: Spiegel said businesses need to think now about what AI could mean, particularly for the white-collar workforce. “If you look at America today it’s very clear that blue-collar workers have been impacted by globalization, by moving manufacturing overseas, by automation,” he said. “I think we could see a similar phenomenon with white collar workers… I think it could be highly disruptive.” But, Spiegel cautioned, “over the long term, I think it’s mission critical that we adopt AI, that we benefit from those productivity gains. But the transition… I think could be quite challenging.”