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Welcome to Hard Talk. I'm Steven Sokka. The coronavirus pandemic has given humanity an almighty shock. Here we are, in our technologically advanced, interconnected societies, now living in lockdown, fearful for our health and the future of our economies. So what better time than now to talk to my guest today, the best-selling Israeli author and historian, Yuval Noah Harari? What are the lessons we can learn from the impact of Covid-19?
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Yuval Noah Harari, welcome to Hard Talk.
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
You are known around the world for taking the grand historical perspective of us, Homo sapiens, and you have described with wonderful detail how our extraordinary cognitive abilities have led to a mastery of our environment. But this seems to be a moment when we're learning that our mastery of the environment is extremely fragile. Do you see it that way?
Yeah, it is very fragile. Though, we—I have to say that we are still in a much better position with regard to infectious diseases than perhaps in any previous time in history since the Agricultural Revolution. You know, this isn't the Middle Ages, and we are not facing the Black Death. When the Black Death spread, nobody understood what was happening, what was killing people. Today, it took us just two weeks to identify the coronavirus behind the present epidemic and to sequence its entire genome. Of course, we still don't have the power to stop evolution, to stop nature. Pathogens continue to jump from animals to humans and continue to mutate, so they will continue to be epidemics. But our ability to understand what's happening and to some extent control it is much bigger than ever before.
I understand that point, but maybe there's something else—maybe our expectations of how science can protect us are very different now. Perhaps in the Middle Ages, when faced with plague, human beings accepted the inevitability that many would die, and now we find that extremely difficult to accept completely. I—one of the main laws of history, if you can call it a law, is that as conditions improve, expectations increase. So people can be as satisfied or as vulnerable as before. So you're perfectly correct that as our civilization becomes more efficient and powerful, our expectations also increase. So, in a way, the sense of fragility also increases.
And I'm mindful that just one month ago—it seems a long time ago now—but just a month ago you wrote this: "Humankind is now facing a global crisis, perhaps the greatest of our generation. The decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks could shape the world for years to come. We must act quickly and decisively." Okay, one month on, how are we doing?
Not so good. I mean, you know, in some countries, in some cases, the responses have been quite effective. But maybe at the most important level, which is the global level, we are not seeing any kind of real global leadership, any kind of real global plan; not on the healthcare front and even less on the economic front. And the big worry is what will happen as the crisis intensifies, not only in the developed world but also in developing countries—in South America and Africa, in South Asia. And if we don't get a kind of global safety net or a global plan, the economic and political consequences could be catastrophic and could poison international relations for years to come.
So, as an—as an historian, as a guy who's looked at the nature of leadership over many centuries, why, right now, at this moment of great need for global leadership, is it so very lacking? Why?
Because we are paying the price for recent developments in the international system. Over the last few years, before the epidemic, we saw the rise of extreme nationalism and isolationism, and most notably, maybe, in the previous leaders of the international community, like the United States. In previous crises, like the Ebola epidemic of 2014 and the global economic crisis of 2008, the United States played the role of global leader, when it was quite effective. Now, the current US administration has basically abdicated the job of global leader, saying—telling the world that it no longer cares about the world, about humanity; it cares only about America—America First.
So you've alighted upon Donald Trump as a key factor, but surely this goes much deeper than any individual, including Mr. Trump. Because what we're dealing with here surely is human nature. We face a pandemic which, to most of us—unless we live in Wuhan, for example—has come in from outside. The inclination is to shut borders, to look for self-protection, to blame others for what is happening to us. All of those are instincts which do lead quite naturally and instinctively to isolation, to a focus on self-interest rather than cooperation and collaboration and trust.
I think we should—we should separate quarantine and blocking borders and stopping flights from actually blaming and hating foreigners. It doesn't have to go together. The simple fact that I'm not meeting somebody or am cutting physical relations with somebody doesn't mean I stopped cooperating or start blaming that person. I am now self-isolating in my house. I haven't met my sisters and my mother for more than a month. It doesn't mean that I blame them or that I stopped cooperating with them. Even—in order—if you look at the international system—even in order to isolate effectively, you actually need to cooperate first and foremost in sharing information. Information is the vital fuel for everything we do—on the national level, on the local level—and information in this pandemic demands international cooperation, not a blame game of who is responsible and who is to blame for this epidemic. Within information about the virus, about the disease, even about the lockdown measures—now governments all across the world are experimenting with somewhat different policies.
Just one more thought about leadership: This, in a way, is an authoritarian moment, is it not? Because, again, around the world, populations, publics are looking for massive reassurance from their leaders. They want strong leaders whom they believe will protect them, and is that not why authoritarian strains of governance appear to be pretty effective right now?
I don't think—I mean, there are some governments more effective than others, but I don't think the dividing line passes between authoritarian regimes and democracies. You do see—you see some democratic regimes, some chronic governments which are dealing with this quite effectively, whether it's in East Asia, like South Korea, in Taiwan, whether it's New Zealand or Germany or Greece. So I don't think it's a question of—of only the authoritarian systems. You are right, of course, that in a time of emergency, when people are afraid for their jobs, for the future, for their very lives, there is a built-in tendency in humans to wish for some savior, for some strongman—it's almost always a man—that will save us, knows everything, will protect us. But this is very dangerous. I don't think that the historical record indicates that dictatorships are always better than democracies in dealing with these kind of situations. Yes, dictatorships have one big advantage, which is they can act faster because the dictator doesn't need to consult with anybody; it just makes up its mind and says, "Okay, do that," and that's an advantage, certainly. But it's also a huge disadvantage because if the dictator makes the wrong decision, for whatever reason, it's usually much harder to admit a mistake and to try some other course of action.
The dictator—if I may interrupt for just a second—you're sitting and talking to me from Israel. We—there—we have a democracy led by a veteran Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, which, in the course of a response to this emergency, has basically curbed parliamentary sittings, has passed legislation which increases the powers of the executive, where we now know that surveillance powers are being employed by the Internal Security Agency without any parliamentary approval. What we have is a democracy, and it's not just in Israel, but we see others too, where the executive power, without actual accountability, is being vastly expanded.
Yeah, and I think this is very dangerous. With what happened in Israel, at the moment when it seemed that this Prime Minister—which, at the time, was just a stand-in Prime Minister—it did not win the election. There was an election; he didn't win it; he had a minority in the parliament, and he tried to use this emergency to basically shut down Parliament and rule by emergency decrees, not as an elected government. This is something very different from, say, the German government issuing emergency decrees. The German government has been elected by the people. In Israel, at the time—about a couple of weeks ago—you had a parliament elected by the people and a Prime Minister not elected by the people, and the Prime Minister tried to shut down the Parliament. And I, personally—at the moment—made an announcement—at least, in my view—this is an attempted coup, an attempt to overturn the democratic system. Fortunately, this was averted. Parliament was reopened, and some measure of democratic balance was restored. So yes, there is this danger. And what I try to say earlier is that the people who think that we should actually do these things because dictatorships work better in emergencies, this is wrong. Because if a dictator makes the wrong decision—and they often make wrong decisions—I mean, no system is perfect. If you build a government system based on the assumption that it will never make a mistake, this is a recipe for disaster. The big advantage of democracies is that you have different voices and different centers of power. So if one voice, if one center of power makes the wrong decision, it's easier to notice it and to rectify it. And this—this is why, in the long run, even in such emergencies, I think that democracies perform better than dictatorships.
But let us go deeper into that question of surveillance, because it has been raised again by Covid-19. There are governments, both authoritarian and genuinely democratic, who are now united in a conviction that they need a much greater level of surveillance of their populations. Now, at the moment it's about public health, but it could be about other things in the future. But what they want, in your phrase, is to get under the skin of their population, so that they're surveilling them in the most profound ways—from body temperature to all sorts of other physical data which automatically is going to be recorded—everything from their movements to their—to their breath is going to be recorded. Is that, in your view, taking the historical perspective, a power that we should right now be happy to invest in our government?
Well, I'm not against surveillance per se. I think it's a very important technological tool that can help humanity fight against this epidemic and against future epidemics, and we need to use it. But we need to use it responsibly and carefully, so we don't end up losing our freedoms in order to get protection from epidemics. There is a huge danger of the rise of totalitarian regimes, worse than anything we've seen before. In the 20th century, you had totalitarian regimes that monitored what people were doing, but they couldn't go under the skin and monitor what people were actually feeling and thinking. This was absolutely impossible; they didn't have the technology or the computing power to analyze all the data. Now, for the first time in history, it is becoming feasible to monitor everybody all the time, and not just what we do but even what we feel. You know, we have been hearing for many years about the rise of this surveillance, but most people still focus on what you can call "over the skin" surveillance—what you do, not what happens inside your body. Like, we already know that corporations and governments can know that you are now watching this show, and they can—even if you watch BBC Hard Talk—they can deduce from that all kinds of things about your political views, about your artistic tastes, even about your personality. But this is still limited; they don't know yet what you're actually feeling as you're watching us. Do you—do you think that I'm talking nonsense? Do you—
I think you're correct. And you're becoming very afraid, are you bored, and you're looking for the remote control to switch to another channel? They don't know that. But once you have "under the skin" surveillance, you can know that, because emotions and feelings are biological phenomena, just like fever. The same technology—if you were a badminton bracelet that constantly monitors your body temperature, your heart rate, your blood pressure and other biometric data—it can know if you have a fever, but it can also know if you're angry or you feel joyful or if you're bored. It's all because—because yes—and because this technology makes no real differentiation between the different aspects of what it can read about you. Surely, if we give up our right to privacy when it comes to our health, we are going to, in the end, give up our privacy when it comes to our thoughts and feelings as well, because they're on the same sort of physiological spectrum to a certain extent.
Not necessarily. I think—I don't believe in technological determinism. I think it's very dangerous to believe that technology is deterministic. Once you can do something, it will be done. It doesn't work like this. In the 20th century, people used the same technology to build communist dictatorships and fascist regimes and liberal democracies. They all used trains and electricity and radio, but in different ways. So this new surveillance technology that can go under the skin, it can do good things, like improve our healthcare, and we can keep it focused on that and prevent its abuse. It can be prevented. First of all, if you establish a new surveillance system that monitors people's medical conditions, it should be an independent agency. Don't give it to the secret police, like they did in Israel and like they did in several other—other places. This is not the business of the police.
I think for people around the world that would be fascinated if we make this quite personal. Because in the past you've written and reflected on the degree to which, in your own life, when you were young, a teenager, you didn't, for a long time, acknowledge that you were gay. I think you said as a teenager of 14, there were signals that you were perhaps sending to the world that you were gay, but you didn't even acknowledge it to yourself till you were, I think, about 21. That is, you know, you're basically more interested in pictures of men than women, but you didn't really want to know, and so you didn't discuss it with yourself. And, in a sense, these days, had you been looking at a computer and had your feelings and your—you're literally—or your key taps been recorded, in a sense, social media platforms, the data collection services would have known—knew better than you knew yourself. And I just wondered philosophically whether that's a good place that we are taking our species or a very bad place.
It's a new place. I mean, again, it can do good things and it can do bad things. It's like, you know, it's like a knife. A knife can—you can use it to kill somebody; you can use it to save somebody's life if you're a surgeon in hospital, and you can use it to cut salad. The knife doesn't care. Now we have this unprecedented technology to get to know people better than they know themselves. This can be very helpful to them, not only in healthcare but in many other cases. Just think about, you know, now there is all this panic in the stock market, and you see the news—the stock market is down 8% this morning—and you panic and you immediately pick up the phone to sell your entire portfolio. Just imagine that you have an AI sidekick, maybe in your smartphone, which is monitoring the signals coming from within your body, from your brain, and recognizing that you are now in panic mode, and this is—you know, a biological phenomena—they're very easy to spot that—and the smartphone tells you, "Wait a minute, we know from so much research this is not the time to make big financial decisions when you're in panic mode." All right, well, no, this is a kind of system that serves your interests. It collects data about what's happening in your body, not for the benefit of some corporation or government, but to serve you, and it really works well. It can help you make much better decisions in life—about your financial situation, about what to study, about whom to date.
No, it's a fascinating glimpse into—into a positive view of a brave new world. But I'm also very aware that right now, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, we also see so many people, including leaders of the world—from Trump to Bolsonaro to Salvini in Italy, many others—who are peddling false information, fake news, yes, about different elements of this pandemic. Science, which you've just described offering us the most amazing potentialities for the future, right now is being traduced; it is misinforming. I mean, we are being misinformed about the facts. How dangerous is that?
It's extremely dangerous, because, especially in this disaster, in this crisis, science is our bedrock. If we can't trust the basic scientific facts, for instance, about what this disease is, then we have no idea what to do, or we do counterproductive things. I think the good signals that we do see around us is that, in this crisis, even many people and politicians which previously disregarded science are turning to it as the ultimate authority—is the most trustworthy authority. In Israel, for example, they closed down all the synagogues; in Iran, they shut down the mosques; churches all over the world are telling people, "Stay away from church," because even the religious authorities are trusting what the scientists are saying when the scientists tell them that, "Look, these places of worship should be closed down because they could spread infection." Of course, there is still a lot of fake news out there, a lot of conspiracy theories out there. And, again, is—we are paying the price for developments in the last few years when it is—politicians have undermined the public trust in science and in reliable media. But I think it's not too late.
Just a final quick one, Yuval, we're almost out of time. You—you—you have given us this sort of trajectory, this arc for the development of Homo sapiens, and you've looked far into the future. Does this Covid-19 crisis, which you call the biggest crisis of our lifetimes, does it, to you, represent, in the end, little more than a bump in the road, or is it something more profound than that?
For me, as a historian, it's really very interesting, this moment right now. I think that in our lifetime—if you think in terms of a couple of decades—it will be big, not just—not because of the epidemic itself, but even more so because of the economic and political consequences. But in the long sweep of history, you know, thousands of years, no, I don't think it will be one of the big events of history. It is—it could be—what—a watershed event in several ways, like we discussed earlier with surveillance. People could look back in a hundred years and identify the coronavirus epidemic as the moment when a new regime of surveillance took over, especially surveillance "under the skin," which I think is maybe the most important development of the 21st century—this ability to hack human beings, to go under the skin, collect biometric data, analyze it and understand people better than they understand themselves. This, I believe, is maybe the most important event of the 21st century. At the moment when a system out there knows me better than I know myself—it has never been like this.
You are with that fascinating thought, looking into the future. I really do appreciate you being on Hard Talk, and I thank you very much for joining me.
Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Been a pleasure.
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