with a pot of gold, perhaps? l with a pot of gold, perhaps? i wish! there we had _ with a pot of gold, perhaps? i wish! there we had a _ with a pot of gold, perhaps? i wish! there we had a night _ with a pot of gold, perhaps? i wish! there we had a night to _ with a pot of gold, perhaps? i wish! there we had a night to remember i there we had a night to remember earlier today. the other feature of the weather it is very mild today. central london had temperatures of 14 celsius. the average this time of year is about seven. looking at the weather picture over the next few days, despite the fact there wasn't that much rain, we still had 2a flood warnings in force, most across southern england, a sign that the ground remains completely saturated. out west the area plan will develop into an area of low pressure bringing wet and windy weather late tomorrow and this area of cloud just off the coast of canada will bring some heavy rain for friday and we could see localised flooding friday night into the weekend staying unsettled. it is a largely dry night tonight kameni showers across northern england fading away. a touch of frost possible in northern scotland but otherwise very mild, 8-11 c. that's scotland but otherwise very mild, 8—11 c. that's how we start the day tomorrow. a decent start with sunshine across much of scotland and

england put out west the cloud will thicken quickly. a few patches of rain across england and wales but not amounting to too much, whereas for northern ireland and scotland it turns wet and windy through the afternoon. all the while the south—westerly winds bring mild air, south—westerly winds bring mild air, so temperature is about 11—14. it gets very windy tomorrow night with gales and maybe even severe gales across the far north—west of the country as a band of rain sweeps through followed by the showers. friday, blustery day in scotland with the showers rattling through on the strong winds. further southwards, a brighter, sunnier kind of day for most of you. and in the sunshine with the wind is coming up from the south—west is, mild with temperatures widely into double figures across england and wales, eight and nine in scotland and northern ireland. this band of rain from that area of low pressure that i showed you a moment ago that is currently no canada brings a band of rain through. we could see localised surface water flooding from that, and then as that moves through by the time we get to the weekend the

weather turns more showery in nature but the showers will be heavy, heavy and temperatures come down a little closer to normal for the time of year across the north, but otherwise it is staying pretty mild.— it is staying pretty mild. chris, thank you _ it is staying pretty mild. chris, thank you very _ it is staying pretty mild. chris, thank you very much. - it is staying pretty mild. chris, thank you very much. that's . thank you very much. that's tonight's bbc news at ten. there is more analysis of the day's top stories on newsnight with faisal islam getting under way on bbc two right now. the news continues on bbc one as now it is time to join right now. the news continues on bbc one as now it is time tojoin our colleagues across the nations and regions for the news where you are. from the ten o'clock team, it is good night. this is bbc news. we will have headlines and the news stories for you at the top of the hours straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk, from san francisco. i'm stephen sackur. california was the launchpad for america's tech revolution. the giants of our digital age,

the likes of gates, jobs, and musk, built their empires from right here in california. their work has transformed our lives, but it hasn't always been for the better. well, my guest today is the san francisco tech billionaire, dave friedberg. he says science and technology can and will fix humanity's problems. should we believe him? dave friedberg, in san francisco, welcome to hardtalk. yeah, thanks for... thanks for coming by. it's a real pleasure to be here. you describe yourself as an "extreme optimist" when it comes to we humans,

and our ability to overcome the most fundamental challenges we face. what do you base that optimism on? well, i think history's a good predictor. so historically, humans have... ..found themselves facing existential threat, right, it started when we were roaming the savannah looking for food, and then, we realised we could engineer the earth and make food. and that was the dawn of agriculture. and every time humans have faced some sort of existential threat, and it has been many times in our history — and we always seem to think we are facing an existential threat, perhaps we're hard—wired evolutionarily to think that — our ingenuity always seems to prevail. some new invention or engineering, or discovery has enabled some revolution in abundance for humankind. and so, there are countless examples.

well, i would counter that with the notion of the law of unintended consequences. yes, human history shows us so many different ways in which technologies have progressed human capacities. but if we think of the last great technological era of revolution, that is the, sort of, the steam engine, the combustion engine, the industrial revolution, we now realise in the 21st century that that amazing set of achievements has also a legacy of profound, even planet—threatening problems. yeah, no doubt about it. so, every technology advance that humans have manifested has come with some cost, right? so one example within the industrial revolution, chemical engineering. chemical engineering and the principles that allowed us to create new materials and create new objects, and use the factories that we had built to create many of those objects have given us really extraordinary abundance. every house has plastic chairs, has plates, has tables — all of these products are created because

of the revolution in chemical engineering. along the way, a lot of the chemicals that we synthesised, it turns out, are persistent and carcinogenic, and sit in the environment. now, what was the cost, and what was the benefit? that is a very hard thing to quantify, but the same is true in our industrialisation of food systems. we have an abundance of calories, we have, you know, enough calorie production in the next decade, theoretically, to meet the needs of nine billion humans. but a lot of those systems have their downfalls, have their costs, have their consequences. so, the arc of technology is and has never been linear. it has always had, you know, some cycle to it. i would argue that the recent cycle probably peaked in 1969. that was when man landed on the moon, and it was also the year that we had woodstock. and so, right now, i think from a societal perspective, we're generally techno—pessimists. and we were really techno—optimists leading up to the moon landing and during the industrial

revolution. and now, we're seeing the consequences in the last couple of days that are really overwhelming. yeah, you call it "techno—pessimism" — it may be techno—realism. i mean, there is no doubt that climate change and global warming are real, and they are a real threat to the way we live our lives today, and frankly, for the future of our species on the planet. now, you say this, you say that, "we do not have to make compromises as "we re—engineer life. "the ability to re—engineer our systems of production "doesn't mean that we have to make compromises." in essence, you're saying we can have our cake and eat it, too. and most human beings, in the end, conclude generally, that is not possible. yes, so i think not today, but it will be. so, there are a number of technologies — so if you look at the cost of clean energy, wind and solar has now dropped in the range of, call it $0.07 per kilowatt

hour, on an amortise basis, to produce that energy. and that's a carbon—free energy source. nuclear power is less than $0.05 a kilowatt hour, somewhere between $0.01—5 a kilowatt hour — also a carbon—free energy source. those technologies have really seen an increment of nearly, an order of magnitude, in terms of cost reduction, over the past decade, decade—and—a—half. so, we should and, we do expect to see — and there are a number of other technologies that are on the horizon, like nuclear fusion, plasma fusion — which is a new type of technology that's being proven out in a number of places right now. so, we will have an abundance of clean energy in the next couple of decades. if you assume that all the things we're seeing today, all the technologies, all the progress that we're making actually does come to fruition and scale, as we're seeing it happen right now, that a lot of the carbon production goes away and gets replaced by notjust a better, but also a cheaper alternative. all right. i mean, i understand the excitement and the importance

of r&d, and offices like this is where people are considering financing amazing future—oriented scientific ventures using bioscience, bioengineering — and it is all very fascinating and exciting — but do you not feel the urgency of now? people struggling and suffering today i'm just thinking about food — food and the agri—tech sector, which you've been big in for some time. the world food programme says, "this year, a year of unprecedented hunger, "828 million people go to bed across this planet "hungry every night". do you have technological solutions relevant to those people today? yeah, absolutely. so, most calories on earth come from rice, wheat, corn and soybeans. that's the vast majority.

about 80% of calories come from those four crops. those crops, the technology capabilities in producing those crops — digital software that helps farmers make better decisions, precision agriculture equipment that allows them to get more yield per acre by doing smarter things in the field, new genetics of the seed, new biological alternatives to traditional synthetic chemicals — these are all products that are available and are making great headway in terms of their improvements in the market today. and to give you a sense — the best corn farmer in the united states gets about 500 bushels per acre. the average corn farmer in the united states gets about 174 bushels per acre. the average corn farmer in china, 110. nigeria, 70 bushels per acre. all those regions have similar soil, similar climate — but the application of technology is different. and there are several companies that you work with that are ensuring that those yields will go higher. but i'm just wondering about your motivation here, because in the end, you're a very wealthy man, and you're

wealthy because you spot a profit and you know how to make one. you want intellectual property rights over the brilliant ideas that you and your teams are developing. you want to say to the world, "i have a means of," for example, "fixing the world food crisis, "but you're going to have to pay me to share my ideas." i think the only form of sustainability is a sustainable business model where the market incentives are aligned, meaning the customer wants something and it benefits them, and they're willing to pay for it. but with the greatest respect, many of the customers we're talking about are the most deprived and desperate people on earth. oh, no, completely, completely agree with you. the purpose is to bring the cost of food down. and if you can bring the cost of food down by increasing the abundance of food, the farmer will pay a price for a service or technology that allows them to do that. and ultimately, the consumer that is in need of calories will thus be able to afford it. and the cycle of abundance will continue. the actual inflation—adjusted cost of food has declined by nearly 50% in the last 30—a0

years. so, we are seeing those technologies already play out. the number you quoted from the un world food programme, on over 800 million people facing less than 1,200 calories a day on average of access to food, was over 1.1 billion, 30 years ago. that number actually dropped below 600 million pre—covid. and the dysfunction associated with covid in supply chains has caused a dramatic rise in that number since then. i...everything you're saying, i understand, but i come back to motivation. you launched a very successful company some years back, the climate corporation, which used digital technologies to help farmers understand weather patterns, and how they could respond to weather patterns to improve their crop yields and avoid crop damage when the weather was going to be extreme and negative. it was hugely successful. you sold it out for over $1 billion to one of the biggest agri—tech corporates in the entire world, monsanto. and i think it's right to say even your own father

accused you of selling out to an evil corporate. so, what really is your motivation? so, the benefit of that product has been that farmers get more with less. so, they put seed in the ground, they make the right decisions about what applications to apply to their field, and they get more yield per acre out of the field. that product is still largely free. when we sold that product to monsanto, we sold it for when we had about ten million acres of usage. within a year, that product was installed on over 100 million acres, and today, it's used on over 180 million acres globally. so, each one of those farmers is getting more yield per acre — which means less carbon, less water, less cost, and more yield per acre, which means the price of food comes down. and that's the benefit of technology in agriculture. it ends up, if you can actually get technology — and the general definition of technology since the dawn

of humanity is to improve the productivity of the human species, where humans can have more leverage, they can get more for less. and so, we could say, "let's give all the money we have to all the ngos". and what they'll be doing is using yesteryear�*s technology and last year's cost to buy food and feed the world's people — and by the way, that is a very noble goal. we're spending about $20 billion this year through the un world food programme to feed undernourished people around the world. that's a great bridge, but it doesn't solve the problem. in order to solve the problem, we need to make more food, and we need to make the price of food go down. and technology is the way we do that. and technology will only find its way into the market if someone's willing to pay for it because it has a benefit to them. and that means that ultimately, the cost for them to return to them is good, the company that provides the technology is good, and for the consumer, it is good because the price comes down. so, when it comes to technological innovation, particularly these sorts of innovations which can offer so much public good, you don't believe in the, sort of, fundamental principle of open sourcing. so, let's use a general technology example, because one could say the same about pharmaceuticals

and therapeutics, and so on, and assume that the typical cycle, the investment cycle for a therapeutic orfor an agricultural programme, ora piece of software is $1 billion. it cost $1 billion to invent a technology, to bring it to market that's going to have some benefit. who funds the billion dollars? and is the billion dollars ultimately going to yield the best benefit for the market, for the customer, and ultimately for the end user, for the consumer, for the people in need, for the 95% of the world that are desperate to move themselves up the ladder in the world? or will the motivation of the market, the market that says, "if this works, i will get paid for it" — will that source the billion? and by the way, it's not... if i may interrupt, i mean, that sounds like, frankly, a billionaire mounting an extremely, er, persuasive defence of capitalism. but we live on a planet which is dominated by capitalism. and what we see is inequity of every different sort, across this planet, we see billions of people living

with virtually nothing. we see a tiny, tiny few in the elite — like you, dave friedberg — living with unimaginable wealth. capitalism doesn't work. capitalism has its downside. have you read any of steven pinker�*s books? yeah, in fact, we've had him on the show. so, i think he does a greatjob of framing the arc of progress. and the arc of progress, i think, is one where if you look at the relative condition of people as a whole, of the bottom 20%, of the bottom 50%, of the bottom 90%, everyone continues to make progress. the rate of progress, however, is not symmetric across all people — and that is the downside of capitalism, and we're certainly going through a cycle now where that downside is getting the focus of the democracies of the west. but i would argue that without the market, without the market—based system, there wouldn't be as

much technological innovation. and you can look at all the socialist and communist histories around the world, and technology has not been born from those markets. technology has been born from the free markets. and the free markets have allowed the industrial revolution, the internet, and the current age of bioengineering to really transform the human species, to transform medicine, to transform food, to transform industry, because the free markets operate. what you frame this as, dave, is constantly, you frame it as a set of technological challenges which you believe we humans, backed by your money and people like you's money, we can overcome. but maybe, actually, what we need to be addressing isn't constant advance in science and technology. we need to be thinking about human prioritisation, about politics, because there are many people who say, "frankly, we could feed the people of the world

"perfectly well today. "the problem isn't a lack of technology. "the problem is the way we run the planet." it's a political, not a technological problem. both are true. both are true, and they don't need to be dependent. it's not that you have to choose. we can continue to have really important social gain through political action, and we can also continue to move all of society forward and humanity forward by investing in and building new technologies that are only going to be enabled by market—based systems. here we sit in san francisco, one of the hubs of america's big tech economy. i mean, this city has received so much money, has become so prosperous — and, of course, still has massive economic problems to go alongside that — but it has come to symbolise, and particularly california as a whole, has come to symbolise the success of american big tech. but do you appreciate that right now, there is a growing public scepticism about big tech, and about

the impacts it is having on society here in america, but around the world? yeah, and i will tell you, for the first time in my career, i am seeing the scepticism and the concern about the aggregation and the monopoly effects that are being realised in the technology markets being heralded notjust by the majority, but also by the minority in the tech world. and we're seeing it from everywhere. you're saying — because you're very wired into the tech sector, you have a big network here — you're saying that even within the network, there is a concern about, for example, elon musk, who's bought san francisco's very own twitter. he has gone in there, he has slashed jobs. he said that he wants to completely change the way that the site is moderated, the way verification works. i mean, this in a way, has become a symbol of the way power vested in one extraordinarily wealthy individual can have impacts around the world.

does it worry you? elon doesn't worry me. i think the... why not? well, i think elon�*s going to get himself in more problems than he is going to benefit. no, but twitter is actually, isn't it, a very important social media platform for millions and millions of people around the world. and what we've seen is that one man with an extraordinary amount of money and power can go in, and, in many people's view, undermine the values of that company. or he's recasting the values. and i think that's his prerogative. and if the customer, the user of that platform doesn't like his new values, what i'm seeing happen, and what i expect will continue to happen, is people will leave that platform, and they will go elsewhere. and we have seen this happen. there is no social network that has continued

to dominate on this... we all thought social networks were going to become monopolies. turns out, maybe they weren't. friendster, myspace, facebook, instagram, and now, the current one is tiktok. and twitter�*s, kind of, a question mark on what's going to happen, where each one of these, the quality of the content, the quality of the audience, the quality over time reaches some peak, and then, declines. and then, that network, kind of, degrades or erodes, and the next network takes its place. so, what will happen with twitter? i don't know. isn't this...? maybe this is much bigger thanjust twitter, or the fate of meta/facebook. maybe this is a moment when we realise that the hopes and dreams we had for the internet 25 years ago, when we thought it was going to be this extraordinary positive force which would empower the individual, give us all, with our smartphones, access to all of the world's information and break down hierarchies, give us more individual power — maybe we've come to realise, maybe even you realise that it could be, rather than benign, it could be malign.

again, i'll zoom out. the bigger perspective is that there are incredible benefits. people that have no access to education can go on youtube and watch educational videos. that is affecting hundreds of millions of people around the world in an extraordinarily positive way. there are social networks that kids are on where they're being influenced with negative content that's causing adverse behaviour in the real world. both are true. i will say... ..in the last couple of years since covid, shopify saw the number of stores increase by something like from a million to three—and—a—half million stores. these are small businesses that otherwise didn't have the ability to earn a living. individuals operating primarily in the united states, but really, now around the world that can now create a commerce, that can create a business that they couldn't otherwise have afforded to do. we're seeing people find new—found careers by being content creators on the internet.

there's a whole long list of benefits that are accruing to the individual that are enabling both new content and access to information, but also enabling them to earn a livelihood that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to earn... well, we... yeah, at the same time, the aggregation of content, by the way, just to say something about this point, has always been a problem in media, and there have always been significant holders, whether it's news corp or — i know bbc is a public service, which is tremendous, the quality of that — but many of the public services have not reached the same quality of the bbc, and the winners in the market have always aggregated into monopoly powers. before we end, i want to get a little bit personal, because again, we're sitting down in this place where there are a very few unimaginably wealthy people, and you're one of them. do you think with that tech wealth comes a clear responsibility to do things for the public good? there are two personalities within that cohort. and i know the personalities,

and i know the cohort. the first personality is, "i am going to be the best "at reinvesting these dollars in building the next enabling "technology set that is going to benefit the world. "and that is more important than donating money "to non—profits." the second cohort is, "after a certain amount of money, "i don't need any more, let me give it all to non—profits, "and let's benefit the world today". and there are very smart and rational people in both camps. which one are you in? i'm not in either camp, because i'm not in that stratosphere. yeah, you are. it's a serious question, because you have an influence and the power that comes with money, and i wonder whether you think carries with it a responsibility. so, my area of focus on a nonprofit basis is animal rights. so, i donate a lot of money to animal rights causes. that's my — i don't donate any money to political campaigns or political causes, or anything like that. so, i'm much more of a "who can't be helped by technology "and how can we help them"? and then, the other aspect for me is, where can i invest my capital in building

technology that can benefit people and make costs go down, and improve access to things in the world? and so, i guess one could argue maybe i straddle both camps, but i'm certainly not as influential as those who are very die—hard and much bigger in one or the other. what do you think of those individuals? and i guess i'm talking about musk and bezos, who are spending tens of billions of dollars, if not more, on space, on their preoccupation with expanding mankind's horizons to mars, and maybe even beyond — when even in this city, san francisco, which has benefited so much from the tech boom, there are thousands of homeless people, when, as we've established, across the world, there are hundreds of millions going short of food. what do you think of that? the same comments you were making were being made in the 14th and 15th century in spain, and there was a more dramatic disparity of wealth, disparity of income,

and disparity—of—life condition than there is even today, believe it or not. and during that time, the attempts to cross the atlantic and discover the new world ultimately yielded benefits that were unimaginable at the time. and one could argue, yes, there was travesty and loss of life, and all these terrible things that happened because of it — but ultimately, it did enable a lot of progress for all of people that i think arose from discovering and realising the opportunities in the new world. so, i'm not going to rush to judgment to say that someone choosing to invest their wealth in discovering new frontiers — whether that's microscopic biological frontiers, or whether that's space frontiers — is doing right or wrong. i think time will tell what the benefits will be that will accrue ultimately to all people, if those discoveries do pan out, and they do yield benefit for us. dave friedberg, we have to end

there, but thanks very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thanks for having me. hello there. looking at the weather picture at the moment, it is a largely quiet picture out there with some clear spells. the winds turning a bit lighter, just a few isolated showers in the west, but otherwise, it's a mostly dry picture. now, despite the clear skies, it is actually quite mild at the moment. temperatures as we head into the first part of thursday morning, 10—11 celsius across england and wales. further north, a few patches of frost into northern areas of scotland. now, starting the day on thursday, the best of the sunshine will be with us in the morning across northern and eastern areas, but then it turns generally a bit cloudier. the thickest cloud in the west with an area of low pressure ultimately pushing a band of rain across northern ireland and well into scotland as we go

through the afternoon but the winds strengthening all the while. stays mild, though, temperatures for the vast majority into double figures and could peak at around 13—14 celsius. well, that is around six or seven degrees above the seasonal average. as we go though thursday night, it gets very windy, particularly to the northwest of the country where we will have gales or perhaps even severe gales for a time.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm karishma vaswani. the headlines. we have a special report from bakhmut in eastern ukraine — the site of fierce fighting from which almost all the city's occu pa nts have fled like you can tell every minute that this is an area that is being intensely fought over. chaos and confusion again in congress, there's still no speaker in the house of representatives — kevin mccarthy loses a sixth vote as the republican rebellion continues. the european union now recommends pre—departure covid testing for chinese travelers entering the bloc more than 160 thousand people have

paid their last respects to the former pope — benedict 16th — before his funeral