It’s Sting: A (non-Steve Clemons, who knows but won’t tell us!) source gave away to us the name of the act at Salesforce’s impossible-to-get-into party tonight, which is somehow always Davos’s best kept secret. Grounded: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was stuck here briefly when his Boeing 737 plane was deemed unsafe to fly due to an oxygen leak. Rather than traipsing up and down the Promenade with us, a smaller jet was flown over from Brussels to take him back to DC — but not the accompanying press corps and many of his aides, who had to find their own way home. Cue: Grouchy reporters, grouchy stories. Speaking of media management: Axios’s Ryan Heath, whose story last year on succession at Davos infuriated WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab, was not issued a press credential this year. The snub may have been intended as a warning to others, but has predictably backfired and prompted new interest in the subject.  Unawkward: The Economist hosted Sam Altman and Satya Nadella for a discussion Wednesday afternoon and it was a hot ticket, with invitees being turned away after the room reached capacity. Some people (this reporter!) would have appreciated some awkward moments when the inevitable questions about the Altman firing came up. But, alas, those juicy questions never came up and Altman oddly played down his own tech, calling GPT-4’s capabilities “bad.” Some comfort to a Davos crowd that seems petrified of large language models. Schwarzman on fire: Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman to a closed-door meeting of big investors and sovereign funds, where complaints about government policies — or lack thereof — ran thick: “Stop being professional victims. You can change things.” In defense of concerts: DevEx’s Vince Chadwick pushed Bill Gates on whether corporations and governments really ought to count support for the aid-promoting Global Citizen extravaganzas. “I don’t mind applauding people for things they would have done anyway,” Gates replied. “The .001% we spend on Global Citizen you could say, ‘Go ahead and do the math.’ The key question is what ideas do you have about maintaining this aid.” Reasons for being here: A prominent Silicon Valley VC, asked at the JPM party why he’s at Davos, replied that it’s the only place to build relationships with trad industry folks, which can come in handy when portfolio companies get to a certain size. Translation: when your investment is going south, find some big Davos-going company to acquire it. Didn’t age well: The dumbest thing an ostensibly smart person told Vista founder Robert Smith about AI: “It’s nothing new.” Bearish: We aren’t entirely sure why J.P. Morgan chose this particular beast to illustrate a set of thinkpieces distributed yesterday evening.  Welcome wagon: “We’ve missed Nigeria for many years. Welcome back, Nigeria!” said the WEF’s Klaus Schwab at the Nigeria party. Spotted: Former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan and JPMorgan’s Mary Erdoes at Teneo’s & Manchester United’s party at the Morosani. Always innovating: The sitting prime minister of Belgium, Alexander de Croo, served as the judge at an Oxford-Union style debate hosted by The New York Times. Russian retaliation: A cyberattack claimed by a pro-Russian hacker group disrupted a number of government websites in Switzerland on Wednesday, the Swiss government said. The Russian-linked group claimed the attacks were in retaliation for hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the WEF. Still time: It’s not too late to convert to Raelism, according to a flyer being distributed on Scalettastrasse.  Overheard outside the Ameron: “You’re going to jail, not to prison. There’s a difference.” Paltintir’s hostage event: Palantir Founder Alex Karp couldn’t believe that WEF hasn’t offered the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel the sort of solidarity it showed to Ukraine. “In the world I live in — as important as climate is right now, this is the most important issue and everyone has to discuss it,” he said of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. “We must talk about this in every public forum.” But since this wasn’t the view of WEF, which has provided a stage to varying views on the crisis from Israel’s President, as well as the Prime Minister of Qatar, Karp created his own space, hosting a packed house at Palantir’s Promenade pavilion for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. The audience included the exiled Belarusian leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Putin foe Bill Browder, and Anti-Defamation League chief Jonathan Greenblatt. Relatives of the hostages sat at the front of the stage holding hands, and while there was talk of peace and of geopolitics, the message of the event was, the entrepreneur Yossi Vardi said in closing, “It’s the hostages or nothing.” | 
