YouTube Video
A well-researched documentary from SRF on Palantir’s efforts to supply the Swiss government with AI tools (I was interviewed for this documentary).
Book
The grandmother of all novellas – on the joy of living and the lack thereof on the most beautiful beach in the world.
Book
Schumacher was chief economist and advisor to the British National Coal Board, the country’s largest energy company; he travelled to Burma in 1955 as an economic advisor, and there he began to ask: Is the richest society the one that produces the most – or the one that needs the least to live well? His proposal: Buddhist economics instead of the Midas Touch. Essential reading.
Book
August Cole and P. W. Singer’s book "Burn-In" is a fast-paced thriller grounded in deeply researched fiction about security, conflict, and AI.
Book
The only play by the philosopher Simone Weil. On the saving power of beauty in dark times.
Film
Based on the novel "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The Zone that arose on Earth for unknown reasons attracts attention with inexplicable phenomena that occur there. A rumor has spread that in the center of the Zone there is something that gives a person everything he wants. But staying in the Zone is deadly, and therefore it is strictly guarded. There, each for their own reasons, the Writer and the Professor go, the Stalker leads them to the mysterious center, feeling and understanding the Zone.
Book
The Cynics were the representatives of ancient punk philosophy – they lived on the streets, owned nothing, and held up a mirror to the Midases of their time. Diogenes, who lived in a barrel and asked Alexander the Great to please step out of the sun. Here you’ll find the original quotes. Sharp, witty, highly topical.
Book
Full of interesting insights into the lagoon city as an exemplary model of ecological and economic sustainability – and, yes, also of non-sustainability.
Book
For a contemplative work about the future of AI, autonomous robotics, and human nature read Nobel Laureate, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.
Podcast
An accessible way to hear corporate governance debates through expert conversations that connect technical rules to their real-world consequences.
Series
Lena Corbyn inherits a mining empire – and decides to blow it up from the inside. What happens when someone deliberately rejects the Midas touch? The Swiss series explores such a scenario. Thrilling. Award-winning, recommended by Forbes and The Guardian, executive produced by Rhea Seehorn (Better Call Saul). A must-watch.
Book
A timely exploration of corporate responsibility. Engagingly written with many real-life examples.
Book
Huxley's dystopian classic is a nightmare vision of the fate of humanity in a post-nuclear world.
Book
There are many publications on the crisis in Venice in the 16th century. Rather than providing bibliographical recommendations, here is a travel suggestion. The city's former commercial splendour and strength are still tangible today. The same applies to its leading role in long-distance trade and the arts and crafts. You can visit the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, where goods from St Gallen were sold in those days; Murano, whose glassware was shipped as far as the New World; and the Arsenale, one of Europe’s first proto-industrial complexes. To accompany your travels, I recommend Francesco Sansovino’s city guide, first published in 1581 and now available in a new English edition by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks. Sansovino wrote this book with the intention of conjuring up an image of unity in the face of the ever-widening rifts in the Republic’s political and cultural fabric. For those wishing to trace the fault lines addressed in the book, an excursion to the mainland to visit a villa—the newly built country estates of Venetian patricians at the time—is highly recommended. A prime example is the Villa Barbaro in Maser, designed and built by the renowned architect Andrea Palladio. It epitomises the inner turmoil of the upper classes at that time. The villa's patrons, the brothers Marc’Antonio and Daniele Barbaro, spent their entire lives exploring the tension between the countryside and the lagoon, private idyll and public affairs, and detachment and engagement through letters and books.
The Lobito Corridor shows how digitization is shaping critical minerals competition Expert comment thilton.drupal 17 July 2026 The railway from Angola to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia is a global focal point of the race for critical minerals. But the digitization of mineral supply chains will be crucial to achieving genuine economic transformation in the region. Two recent major investment announcements have refocused attention on the Lobito Corridor, a Western-backed infrastructure initiative centred on a railway linking Lobito on Angola’s Atlantic coast to the inland resource-rich areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia.On 3 July, the US International Development Finance Corporation and the Development Bank of Southern Africa secured a $753-million package to rehabilitate and upgrade the 1,300-km single-track railway from Lobito to the DRC border, known as the Lobito Atlantic Railway. On 10 July, the DRC government approved a partnership with Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil for a complete rehabilitation of the railway line from Angola’s border to the copper and cobalt producing regions in the DRC. These moves are part of wider geopolitical competition between the US (and its European partners) and China – the dominant international presence in the region – over infrastructure, mineral production and development opportunities. In this context, the railway has become the centrepiece of a potential regional mining ecosystem that could economically transform Africa’s strategic Copperbelt. — Railway lines are approximate and based on a combination of maps from the Lobito Corridor Investment Promotion Authority and the European Commission, accessed online. Base map made with Natural Earth and World Bank data. But for this regional mining ecosystem to become integrated across borders and achieve genuine economic transformation, it will need to be digitized. Digitization has increasingly become a vital and under-appreciated feature of the mining sector. Data systems – such as online geological databases, traceability tools and transparency portals – and mining cadastre systems (online land records of mining rights) are fundamental to achieving regional mining ambitions. However, they present a new and distinct set of governance challenges that span the life of a mine: in particular, what data is needed and how is it collected? Who owns it, where is it stored, and who has access to it? Digitized records and their challengesThe digitized geological records of the DRC are a source of value, causing competition over owning and accessing them. This can be seen in the recent disagreement between the Belgian government and KoBold, a US company backed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, over who should digitize the colonial-era geological records on the DRC that are being kept in a Belgian museum. Belgium has refused KoBold access to the museum’s archives. The case demonstrates how geo-economic competition and ensuing public-private tensions are catalysing ongoing debates on data ownership and management. Angola, the DRC and Zambia are implementing online cadastre systems that list land records of mining rights. In principle, these systems should reduce overlaps and simplify the allocation of rights, while being more transparent to help prevent corruption and give investors confidence. However, several challenges have emerged. Bad inputs result in misleading information flows. Firstly, digitized systems are still corruptible. Whether containing geological data or information on licenses and rights, digital systems can be corrupted. In some instances, digitization makes this easier than when information is stored in hard copy. This has led some mining companies to lose confidence in digitized systems in the region, due to changes allegedly being made overnight to concession ownership, opaque back end controls and limited audit trails. Secondly, these systems often depend on human capacity that does not yet fully exist. At the DRC Mining Week at Lubumbashi in June, Chatham House heard how digital cadastres had often been operated by staff with limited experience working with computers. The effectiveness of a data system relies on a simple principle – what comes out is only as good as what goes in. Bad inputs result in misleading information flows. Digitization without capacity and safeguards therefore risks simply re encoding existing power imbalances into a new format.Tracing requires trust and interoperabilityThe DRC and its neighbours have been the focus of several international legal and regulatory requirements to report on minerals provenance, or tracing minerals back to their origin. This is due to the link between conflict and minerals, especially in the east of the country. The DRC’s state-owned certification agency (CEEC) has launched an E-trace digital platform to track and certify minerals across the value chain, ostensibly to ensure responsible sourcing.However, there are notable differences between what international markets are asking for, what is actually feasible, and what is in the best interests of mining-dependent communities and producing states. The World Today Related work Angola’s critical mineral express Consumers and regulators increasingly want mechanisms that can trace a material all the way back to where it came out of the ground to provide assurance on provenance and responsible production. For the DRC, traceability is often understood primarily as verification of mineral deposits and exports: ensuring that reported volumes and qualities match what is actually being taken out of the country and transported along the Corridor. The DRC’s emphasis reflects genuine concerns about misreporting, leakage and illicit flows. However, it stops short of a fuller, mine to manufacturer conception of traceability that would follow material all the way through the supply chain. Similarly, transparency systems are often limited by what companies can easily measure and are willing to disclose. Reporting formats also differ across firms and jurisdictions, making it difficult to assemble a coherent picture of corridor wide performance. Trustworthy, interoperable data systems are essential. How these systems talk to each other, what they measure, and who controls them will heavily influence whether the Lobito Corridor becomes a coherent, credible space for investment and accountable development.More unified data management requires interoperable systems and standards, agreed protocols for data ownership and access, and shared understandings of what traceability and transparency should encompass. Trustworthy, interoperable data systems are essential. Entry points for development partnersDigital infrastructure should in theory constitute the backbone of effective data governance along the Lobito Corridor, turning physical infrastructure into an integrated ecosystem. Given Africa’s over-reliance on undersea cables, reinforcing inland connectivity should be a priority. However, the Corridor’s digital component has so far lagged behind. While it does feature in the long-term strategic vision for the Corridor, it has not been the focus of the recent wave of investment announcements or ongoing development partnerships. Meanwhile, the DRC recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Beijing for the construction of a 2100km fibre optic network along the Congo River.
Chatham House
Globalisation has changed economic research profoundly, making it more comparable, more competitive, and thoroughly quantitative. This column argues that AI may unsettle this new order as thoroughly as globalisation unsettled the old one and discusses the technical and geopolitical mechanisms at work. One prediction can be made with high confidence: someone who wakes up thirty years from now is likely to recognise economics as little as someone who fell asleep thirty years ago and just woke up today.
Center for Economic Policy Research
Through research and entrepreneurship, Professor Devavrat Shah is helping to design methods that can handle constant decision-making using limited computational resources.
MIT
Computational Linguistics, International Security, and The Review of Economics and Statistics lead their disciplines with 2026 Clarivate impact factors.
MIT
Die KI-Euphorie treibt die Börsen auf neue Höhen. Anleger wetten auf die grosse Zukunft der künstlichen Intelligenz.
SRF Wirtschaft
