| As business titans and world leaders gathered Monday in Davos, Switzerland, for the opening of the annual World Economic Forum, all eyes were on President Donald Trump’s taking power again in Washington. Every four years, the elite winter confab falls close to Inauguration Day, but the overlap this year seems less of a coincidence than a stark collision of worldviews over global leadership. Tech leaders who have in past years favored Davos with their presence — such as Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg — sat Monday in seats of honor close to the Trump family as a man many of them long opposed but have more recently courted ascended again to the most powerful political position in the world. Kevin O’Leary, the pro-Trump investor of “Shark Tank” fame who is part of a bid for TikTok in the wake of the ban-or-sale law that has left the Chinese-owned app’s fate in limbo in the United States, laid out the reason he wasn’t going to this year’s gathering in the Swiss mountains in terms many tech leaders might tacitly endorse: “I don’t need to. Mar-a-Lago is Davos. It is Davos 2025.” To be sure, there will be plenty of tech talk in Davos, including panels on generative artificial intelligence, sustainable blockchain, and the global energy transition. Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong will host drinks with historian Niall Ferguson and former U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. Microsoft USA President Brad Smith is set to take part in a session called “AI: Lifting All Boats” with among others Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund. That is quintessential Davos: a mishmash of important people rubbing elbows in a room. The side gatherings are where the real action happens. Tech infrastructure company Cloudflare is known to host a piano bar gathering that goes late into the night, and software company Salesforce throws a coveted nightcap party. (The Washington Post is also hosting several happy hours and talks.) Unless his schedule changes, Trump is supposed to address the Davos crowd virtually from the White House on Thursday. But it is unlikely any such address could allay many of the anxieties the Davos set harbors about the new tone in American leadership. A WEF survey found climate change — a topic Trump disdains — to be the second most pressing global issue for 2025 attendees, after global wars/violence. Trump’s promised high tariffs are top of mind for many global business figures, who see them as a major potential disruption to global trade. Some of the planned sessions read as though they could come from the part of a Trump speech where he lists his foes’ wrongheaded priorities: “Industrial Decarbonization as a Growth Strategy,” “Investing in Diversity,” “Open Forum: Protecting LGBTQI+ Lives.” The biggest wild card for a crowd that largely embodies the current world order may be Trump’s commitment to “making America great again” and how that will color his administration’s approach to foreign policy, especially the conflicts in Russia-Ukraine, the Middle East, and the growing tension between the United States and China. With so much at stake and so few answers, even the notion of a global order embodied by jet set leaders seeking grand compromises in civilized debate over wine and fondue seems quaint. Amid the bonanza of networking and exclusivity, many of the elite attendees partying on the slopes will be keenly aware that more than ever, uncertainty rules the day. | 
