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Techlash takes over Davos

Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP / Getty Images

"Davos 2018 has emerged as a bastion for anti-Silicon Valley sentiment," writes Vanity Fair's Maya Kosoff:

Key figures: George Soros compared Google and Facebook to mining and oil companies, saying that both “earn their profits by exploiting their environment... Salesforce C.E.O. Marc Benioff said on Tuesday that Facebook should be regulated like a cigarette company. ... Theresa May ... urged them to take responsibility for 'harmful and illegal' activity online."

Zeitgeist ... "Warnings of complacency made by some as crisis memory endures," per Bloomberg:

  • "[T]he giddiness ... gave some investors pause as they warned against turning too exuberant."
  • David Rubenstein, who co-founded the Carlyle Group: “The biggest concern I have is that most people think there’s no problem of a likely recession this year or early next year ... Generally, when people are happy and confident, something wrong happens.’’
World Economic Forum (WEF)