Baroness Dambisa Moyo on board governance, AI's productivity supercycle, and why you can't bet against America

Speaker 2: How are you doing?

Speaker 4: I'm so great to it's very glad to be here. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you. I would love to go back in time first and start with a little bit about your journey to where you are now. How how do you introduce yourself? You have you're multi hyphenate. An author, an economist, an investor. What else am I missing? Take me through it.

Speaker 4: Well, first of all, everybody calls me Dambisa, so that's the easiest thing to do. I'm a member of the House of Lords in The United Kingdom, so that's my sort of day job. Also Yeah. It's not bad, actually. And then, I I serve on a number of boards.

Speaker 2: On the

Speaker 4: board of Chevron, on the board of Starbucks and Conde Nast. I know you had Roger Lynch

Speaker 2: here Oh, love Roger.

Speaker 4: Ago. As well as on the Oxford University Endowment. Sure. But my also my other day job, multiple hats here, is I am co principal of a family office Yeah. Which is tech based actually, proceeds from a sale of a SaaS company in 2018. Qualtrics. Yeah. Qualtrics.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Fantastic.

Speaker 4: That's So my

Speaker 2: Let's stick with the board dynamics first because we've been having a whole bunch of conversations about corporate governance in the modern era. It's at the top of everyone's mind because of governance of AI companies. And I'm interested in your lessons from working with these these very important boards, very established companies you mentioned. Yeah. They've certainly had decades if not centuries to work out any of the kinks. Yes. And I'm wondering about your thesis on on high performing board management generally because we've had Eric Reese from Long Term Stock Exchange talking about different structures that have been the triple bottom line. There's so many different options and I feel like a lot of founders and their companies explode in value. They say, oh, maybe I'm different. Maybe I should do things differently. I wanna know how you weigh in on

Speaker 4: all this. Yeah. So the longest sort of company board that I've been on was a company that was over 360 years old. That was Barclays Bank. Yeah. And I think great Success. Yeah. You think about, you know, multiple centuries, most of these companies have already experienced a pandemic, probably in the nineteen eighteen to nineteen twenty pandemic. They've gone through economic recessions. Obviously, 1929. You have a crash for twenty years. The Dow Jones Industrial doesn't clear.

Speaker 2: Not many people are going through COVID being like, here we go again. Exactly. Twice before. Exactly. So I

Speaker 4: think history is a great lesson. I think the other thing is advice that I received when I joined my first board about fifteen years ago, which is anything can happen. And I think that's it sounds very flippant and sort of obvious, but in a way, it's it has a lot of kernels of important truths for how we manage organizations, not just thinking about risk mitigation, but where the opportunities are and how to invest. Because ultimately, we're taking punts, we're taking bets, but we wanna make sure these companies last for another three hundred plus years. So I think that's the really most important thing. I've had the privilege of being on boards that have been bookended by the financial crisis, the pandemic, but also companies which were trading close to $60 a share and they collapsed down to 7. You know, all of a sudden, you know, it's the Mike Tyson quote, all of a sudden your plan and your strategy gets punched in the face. Yep. But also, you know, we've had a CEO die in office, which is very traumatic in terms of resetting. But company one of them are my favorites is a company that we were absolutely certain would not get purchased. We were told that we were number two in the sector. This was S. B. Miller.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Anheuser Busch was number one and people said there's no way they'll buy you. Mhmm. And they ended up buying us by issuing the the biggest bond that year in 2016, and and they bought the company outright. So love it. Anything can happen. And I think, you know, when you think about where we are today with the market valuations and you think about where rates are and even just this year, coming into 2026 thinking that oil would be around $50 a barrel. Yeah. Well, it's not. You know, how does your balance sheet play out in that environment?

Speaker 2: So help me help me square that idea of of anything can happen. The job of the board, if I'm telling it back to you, this is obviously a con condensation of what you said, but the job of the board is to sort of set the level of risk taking in the organization. And I can imagine that instantiated in two ways. One is we are going to the management team and saying that AI is real. We need to be taking more risk to put ourselves in a strong position or the risk of oil going up this year is high so we need to offset and hedge that. And you're issuing sort of a prescriptive strategy notes versus we need to our job is only to hire the management team. And if we have a CEO who's not taking the right level of risk, too much risk or not enough risk, we need a new management team. How do you square those two?

Speaker 4: Yeah. So I would say, you know, fundamentally, there are three roles of the of the board. Yeah. One is strategic oversight.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 4: And so, you know, we meet obviously on a quarterly basis. We have strategic meetings. I think our job is to be additive to management in thinking about these longer term risks. And we can talk about how those horizons have collapsed just because of the the spate and information, more technology, more information. So there is definitely a shrinking in in that delta. But the second thing is hiring and in some instances firing the CEO. Mhmm. And that's a very important piece as you've you've because the CEO's job is to bring in the team, make sure the team actually can execute on not just, again, risk mitigation, but, you know, leading into investments, thinking about longer term opportunities for the business. And then the third thing, which I think tends to be discounted, but sort of ebbs and flows over time, is how do great businesses partner with communities, with society, with government Yep. Especially something like AI. I'm just going to so transformative beyond just what's the SpaceX IPO going to generate for my portfolio. I think we need to think about what does this mean strategically. Yes. And so that's where I think those three things are very important.

Speaker 2: I I love that third point and it ties to my next question. People say data is the new oil. What can AI companies learn from oil companies?

Speaker 4: Well, I think there tends to be, in general, and I've been on boards of tech companies, I think we just have to make sure that people don't poo poo a lot of the governance and the structural sort of muscle that we now know exists from 300 of companies existing. So there's a lot of good governance, having an audit committee Okay. Thinking about strategy, having regular meetings, that balance between what management does in terms of tactics on a day to day basis versus strategic thinking and overlay from the board. I think those are things that people can very easily dismiss when, you know, your returns are so high or your, you know, with 30% of the of the stock exchanges, stock market. But I think really understanding what the purpose of the board is

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Especially for publicly traded companies where the board is really there on behalf of shareholders. And again, even that has changed. It's more stakeholders, including what the regulators care about and what does society care about more generally.

Speaker 2: So with the regulators, I have this I have this interesting it feels like we're in an entirely new era with the AI companies where if you go back to the previous big big organizations, like before we had big tech, had big pharma and big oil and big tobacco. Right? And each one of those companies went through a process of figuring out how they interface with regulators. And in the case of environmentalism and emissions and also in the big tobacco era, there was a there was a a feeling that those organizations were brought to knee by the regulators and that the executives at those firms sort of denied, denied, denied until it was staring them at the face in a congressional hearing and then they had to admit that there was a negative externality and they figured out how to internalize that. And I still think that, especially when it comes to oil, a lot of great things have come from that technology. It needs to be balanced, of course. But we're in a new era in that it feels like the AI lab CEOs, the big tech leaders are doing the opposite. They're they're going on podcasts saying AI is going to kill everyone, going to destroy all the jobs. They're saying all the bad stuff before and the regulators are like, what? I'm learning this from you. It would be like if in 1910, you know, an oil executive came out and said, we really got to worry about carbon emissions. Like, that just didn't And so what is going on and and how should things change? Is this a positive development?

Speaker 4: Well, I think, most companies that have existed over a hundred years or plus, three hundred years, have figured out that, they have to be more a partner, a partner not just to government in thinking about what dislocations might happen to jobs or to productivity gains? What does it mean Yeah. For more concentration in one sector versus another? And it's not just a capital markets question. It's also about what does this actually mean for our pensions? What does it mean for taxes? What does it mean? And I I know you can tell that I I sit at the intersection of not just corporations and investment, but also public policy. This is absolutely a debate in the House of Lords trying to think what should we be doing? Should we be aggressively, you know, sort of imposing risks? I personally, that's not my view and I argue very compellingly. Hope that we need to be leaning into what AI can do. It can improve productivity, but that would be naive to just say it's all upside and having government as partners. It doesn't matter if you're an energy company, a tech company, or a bank, or even pharma. You you wanna bring them on side so that they can understand what the second order implications of a technology might be and how we can get ahead of some of the downside risk.

Speaker 1: What is cultural or consumer sentiment around AI like right now in The United Kingdom?

Speaker 4: Very similar to what you have in The United States. I worry a lot that it it sort of seeped into the narrative in policy making, so I do hear a lot of my colleagues in the House of Lords who are sort of, you know, reciting, you know, sort of tropes about AI, which, you know, can be very compelling. You know, obviously in The United States, people are very attuned with the difference between how the Chinese population views AI versus The United States population. And I think that just means there's a lot more work to be done, not just by the AI companies, but by regulators also, and say this is the first super cycle, you know, real positive sort of push for economic growth for and, you know, you know, that we've had since globalization, since women came into the workplace. Sure. And this is enormous, and we need it. Growth has been flat

Speaker 1: Yeah. Is it showing up in in in GDP in The UK?

Speaker 4: I think it's early early indications of it. I think the, you know, the the sort of sky is falling down scenario is always, oh, what's gonna happen to jobs? Mhmm. But, you know, I personally think from my experience in

Speaker 1: the the job market in The UK

Speaker 2: Is pretty poor.

Speaker 1: From what I've heard for just going back to my college years is, you know, you're lucky if you graduate from a great university and get a job for like 50, you know, 50,000 Yeah. USD

Speaker 4: I mean, look, the unemployment numbers for not just the average in the population, but for the youth is particularly problematic. There's no doubt about it. Even the current government, tends which to lean left, has just put out a report talking about youth unemployment. It's very similar to sort of double unemployment rates that you see for entrance levels in The United States, but in some places it's even worse because it's permanent structural unemployment where people literally are not coming back into the workplace. And so there's absolutely a real issue that needs to be thought through, and I have my views on what needs to be done, but ultimately I'm just one voice and public policy needs to really change the narrative about what AI can do. It will have dislocations as all technologies do, but

Speaker 1: Is there any type of a re industrialization movement or or energy happening in The UK?

Speaker 4: Do you mean energy as a pun or you mean energy literally?

Speaker 1: Like as yeah. As a as a pun. Yeah. Okay. Well Or or A lot of reindustrialization projects are linked to power generation. I guess both. Both.

Speaker 4: Don't don't get me started on the power situation. I mean, again, I've I've I've spoken about this in the in the lords. The The UK as an example, since we're talking about that, is, on average about 40¢ a kilowatt hour. Mhmm. The US is somewhere between 12 and 16¢ a kilowatt hour depending on which state you're in. And then China, some of the estimates around 8 to 9¢ a kilowatt hour. There's no country that has achieved levels of per capita income without cheap energy. Yeah. And so, of course, there's not a single person I know, you know, whether it's in my boardrooms or my colleagues in investing, who doesn't appreciate the the sort of second order concerns around carbon emissions, etcetera. But I think you can strangle economic growth by doing some of the things that I'm afraid of are happening around the world, banning, you know, energy sources. I think that kind of approach is is probably too aggressive and and doesn't really work for the long term. We need the energy. So Have you

Speaker 2: Have you wrestled with this question of the source of China's optimism about new technologies? I I I sort of think about two possible, and they might both be contributing. But one is that it's easier to grow from a lower baseline, 6,000 GDP per capita. There's a lot of room to go up. Yes. And so, like, the the tide is so low that if it goes up, will raise a lot of boats. But then there's the other side, which is the actual not just the economic standing of the country, but the actual political structure and the jobs guarantees, the works projects, the trains to nowhere and the empty buildings. Like, those are rough, but they can create a lot of jobs. And so I think that there's maybe less fear mongering about job loss because at the very least, the CCP will put you to say, hey, go build a building over there and maybe it's empty, but you don't really care because at least you had a paycheck and you showed up and you had a sense of purpose. Have you wrestled with either of

Speaker 4: I have, and I think maybe I'd add a third aspect, which is probably related to the role of the state. Yeah. Which is to say that a lot of the public goods issues, healthcare, education are areas even in The United States that have not benefited from technological advances. Sure. Partly because of regulation, but there are a whole host of vested interests, etcetera. And so, if you take that hat and you think about how sort of AI is permeating through the Chinese population, a lot of it is through those same public goods, through healthcare and the sesame sort of calculations, thinking about education, etcetera. And so, yes, it can be viewed as somewhat heavy handed, but at the same time, I think people can more easily see a direct impact of benefit. Whereas, you know, in The United States, when you think of AI, think a lot of it is still disconnected from the average day user. People may maybe will see it more in show up in terms of their social media Yeah. Exactly. Or And so, I think that's an area of opportunity, if you think about it, in the West where a lot of the public goods costs, social costs that are we know are coming Yeah. Could actually be, I think, a net positive, not just for the GDP numbers, but also for just for people thinking about more positively about what AI can do.

Speaker 2: Yeah. How are how are conversations going on the boards that you sit on around AI adoption? And particularly, we've been we've been grappling with a lot of, you know, CEOs need to experiment. They need to move quickly. At the same time, costs can get out of control, the risks, the benefits, not getting left behind. And then also just like does your biz is your business even technology? Like Chevron, Starbucks. I'm thinking like AI could be a useful tool for some back office stuff, but, you know, the robots aren't going to drill oil or make for coffee yet. Maybe that's coming, but certainly that's not what's being sold right now by the AI lab. So what are those conversations like? How what is the mature way to think about testing and evaluating and rolling out AI at a large company?

Speaker 4: Yeah. So it's all of the above, everything that you've listed out there. And I think any company worth its salt will be looking at these issues in a very broad way. It's a learning curve, obviously, to state the obvious, and I think that what the best companies are doing is trying to figure out not only what does this mean for our bottom line, is this going to increase revenue and cut costs, you know, think about new metrics of how we compare ourselves, what are our new KPIs and the financial metrics comparing ourselves to other competitors, other, you know, peers, but also other sectors. But I think they're also thinking about what does this mean for society? Is this a complete re shaping of how governments tax? If it's just going to be a handful of companies that are thinking about, you know, generating revenue and concentrated success, constant returns, you know, how do we then think about where our role is in that? Of course, also thinking about the job market. I mean, I think it's Henry Ford's quip about, you know, you can't you know, you have to pay people a reasonable wage for the work because ultimately, in a very cynical way, but I think it's something that I think about a lot is you need you still need to think about consumers

Speaker 2: and who's gonna be He said that he needed to pay his workers enough that they could buy a car.

Speaker 4: Correct.

Speaker 2: The ultimate circular deal.

Speaker 4: Yeah. No. Right. Exactly.

Speaker 2: But but but in doing so, it wasn't that every Model T was sold to a Ford employee. It was that he set the market wages at a certain level Exactly. And that created a sustainable ecosystem.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I think I think corporations get short shrift because people just think that there are these sort of 12 people on a board Sure. And a corporation that's sort of greedy shareholders that are just simply going and trying to gouge, you know, consumers. I think what I would say about AI is that the breadth of its potential impact is now bringing about a a level of sophistication and discussions that goes beyond just narrow metrics. What's the shareholder return going to be? I mean, of course, if you want to compete in a capitalist society, those things are important. But I think the most sophisticated companies are understanding that their role and the role of the state, but also the role of the consumer is going to change, the demands of the consumer are going to change. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Please. Can we talk about the family office?

Speaker 2: I was I was gonna ask Good the same

Speaker 1: time. Yeah. I I wanna your your overall market outlook, how you think about, you know, what an insane year it's been. I think everyone, you know, was watching a set of geopolitical events play out and assume now would be a good time to bet against the the global economy. Least that hasn't been reflected in in the markets just yet. But I'm curious your overall view and then I wanna get into more specifics around kind of managing the family office itself.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Look, I think I would say that the global economy, we need to be growing at 3% per year in order to double per capita incomes in a generation. So a generation's about twenty four, twenty five years. In order to double per capita incomes, you've to be growing at 3% per year. The reality is most countries are not growing at that rate. Both developed countries across Europe, you know, you know, Japan until recently, which has started to see interesting story coming from there. But but also large emerging market economies, we have that have at least 50,000,000 people. They're stalling. I was just in Peru ten days ago, and there everybody's concerned about growth. And you can add to that other structural issues, the debt story, the fiscus being challenged here in The United States, etcetera, etcetera. We know about these issues. But, you know, as I pointed out earlier, we're also at the early innings of a super cycle, which could really power the productivity contribution to growth, could really change the narrative about growth. I mean, PWC thinks growth it could add about $16,000,000,000,000 worth of of GDP by 2030. That's four years away. So that's Yeah. Really constructive story. I mean, my concern would be that it's quite skewed. I think this is very much a US story. You can't bet against The United States.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: I think the changes and and rollout of this new era are quite choppy in places like China. I mean, there's some elements of it that are quite interesting, but China does have a lot of, you know, debt drag. It has, you know, demographic drag. I mean, they're thinking now by some forecasts that it'll be at 800,000,000 population by the close of this century. So structural challenges remain there. Europe has been quite a disappointment in many respects. A lot of the larger economies growing somewhere between 0.5 to 11.2%. A lot of the structural things we've touched on already, debt, but also now in the near term, risk of inflation. So I think the picture is very much don't bet against The United States, but understanding that it's quite concentrated, it's quite skewed, And thinking about how to play that is is obviously top of mind.

Speaker 2: How do you how do you wrestle with international efforts in AI? So when when the whole sovereign AI theme started maybe last year really getting talked about, I was deeply skeptical. Because I said, well, you know, England doesn't need their own Google. They can just use Google and it can and it can be localized into Spanish and French and it's pretty Yeah. Easy for the core technology to live in one country and it's hard to compete with something that's compounded like a Facebook or an Instagram or Mhmm. Consumer app or even in the enterprise. You know, Salesforce like, I don't know that Salesforce has a has a native French competitor eating their lunch But as I've gone deeper into the supply chain, I'm starting to see a lot of opportunity for like France generates a ton of nuclear power. That's clean energy. They if they have the right permitting and the right place for it and the right community, they could potentially build something that they sell to American AI companies that winds up generating a ton of return and you sort of have a new a new energy story about let's go around and find all the cheap wind energy, cheap solar energy, where can nuclear be built. Because the nature of AI is that it doesn't need to be on premise because you're waiting twenty minutes for something to come back. Right. It doesn't need to be down the street. It can be halfway across the world.

Speaker 1: Yeah. The story doesn't need to be my conflict with Macron.

Speaker 2: Yes. Yes.

Speaker 1: Yes. And we we went we went back and forth.

Speaker 2: Potentially under investing. We want them to to go full forward.

Speaker 4: SoftBank. I was just with Alex last week, and he was talking about the new data center that they're thinking about building there precisely because of some of these costs of advantages on the energy side. Look. I would say as a as a sort of sort of shorthand Mhmm. Europe generally thinks about things as glass half empty.

Speaker 6: Sure.

Speaker 4: The United States tends to think about things as glass half full. Glass so flowing sometimes. Yeah. Exactly. And you can think you can think about whole

Speaker 2: on this.

Speaker 7: Yeah. Touche.

Speaker 4: But you can think about whether it's energy or AI Yeah. Climate transition. Like, there's many different themes that have occurred where Europe's, you know, again, shorthanding it. The response has always been, oh my gosh. You know, we need to regulate Yep. This thing. We need to put you know, curb emissions. And I'm not saying it's all bad. I'm just saying that that they tend to air on the side of risk mitigation as opposed to investing through to figure out, well, we don't like x, so why don't we try and think about how to do that better? And I think that's part of the culture. I will say, you know, since 2008, The United States and Europe were about the same GDP, as you know, and now, you know, The United States has just run with it. And so I I would hope that a lot of the I wouldn't count Europe out. I mean, The United Kingdom is the home of the industrial revolution. There's some kernels of of goodness that remain in terms of rule of law, the stuff that everybody talks about. But if you do look at the the top sort of top FTSE companies, the stock market. They they they tend to be pretty old and stodgy. Yeah. It may not be a

Speaker 2: Europe story. May maybe more of a global story. I'm just thinking about, you know, a certain region in in India or Japan or Greece or Egypt might have some piece of the puzzle that they can now bring to bear because there is more demand for that. Like, you could imagine a French company that's an expert in nuclear. Maybe they don't build another data center nuclear power plant there, but they expand. They build the nuclear power plant somewhere else. There's another place that has a lot of land, lot of solar. Yeah.

Speaker 4: I think it's comparative advantage, what you're alluding to. Yeah. And so, yeah, in principle, yes. But, you know, we're in a world of deglobalization, broadly speaking, so we can't, you know, we can't dismiss the fact that the policy world has

Speaker 1: there are there is there is there a bullish narrative outside of AI and robotics? I've been trying to I've been

Speaker 2: trying Defense to and delobalization.

Speaker 4: Are you talking about in Europe or

Speaker 1: in world? Just just just generally in the world because you see like, you know, lots of debt, inflation, low growth, population

Speaker 4: side. Yeah.

Speaker 1: You know, employment. There's so many, you know, ongoing conflicts. There's so many Stories. And negative stories. And it feels like AI is is, you know, the only the only thing really happening and basically almost every country in the world saying like like we got dollar

Speaker 2: GLP one market would like a word for you. Okay?

Speaker 1: Biotech Biotech is doing very is another one. Much so that so much so that that people on X I think last week were saying we're gonna see the first $100,000,000,000,000 biotech company. It's possible. Possible. Very American to see to see something working and assume.

Speaker 2: And if the replacement rate, fertility rate declines, you've got to live longer, that's where biotech comes in and solves that problem.

Speaker 4: The other thing I would say is that what does history tell us about this is that kind of things just repeat themselves. So, you know, if you think about us being in a period post World War one, post the pandemic nineteen eighteen to 1920, and post 1929 crash, you could argue we're kind of in this period of of, you know, Smoot Hawley, a larger government, more tariffs, you know, protectionism. And so, question is, will there be this new era that came, you know, post World War II, which is where you get more globalization, you know, governments start to work more more cooperation. And I think we have to be optimistic. I mean, you know, there are a lot of good things that are happening. I was just in India. I had been in India fifteen years prior to that. Mean, it's a it's a changed society, and people yeah. Are It's not is it is it rich? No. But is it on a path of of growth that's quite diversified and it's got an intriguing story of being part of the service sector but also technology? Yes. Absolutely. As I said, I was just in Peru. There are plenty of places, and I was just in Silicon Valley. Hard to sort of be negative about the world and I think it is I I

Speaker 1: We have the the blessing of having a job where we talk to people all day long about what they're building for the future. And so it's it's hard to ever get I never get completely black pilled even though there's so many different sort of negative negative stories.

Speaker 4: So negative

Speaker 1: Because I do believe that a small, you know, small relatively small number of people can can can have, you know, massive outside impact on on the fate of, you know, humanity and Yeah. Economies and all these things.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that's a great place to leave it.

Speaker 4: Thank you.

Speaker 2: A message of optimism. Completely agree.

Speaker 4: Thank you. And go Knicks. Oh, yes. Go Knicks. Thank you Thanks, so

Speaker 1: Dave. Was I was just I was in New York I was in New York over the weekend and there were some enterprising young kids that were doing a lemonade stand. Really? But and they were giving discounts to Knicks fans.

Speaker 4: How do you prove that? Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I was like, it'd be kind of crazy to be Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 4: Well, thank you

Speaker 2: for having

Speaker 4: me. A pleasure being here.

Speaker 1: Thank you so

Speaker 2: much. This is him.

Speaker 1: Cheers.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Our next guest is Samuel Hoom who's going to completely debunk Jordy's black pilling about biotech because we got him on to talk about all the advanced

Speaker 1: black I'm pilling on biotech.

Speaker 2: Oh, oh, oh, there's nothing else going on outside of AI. This is what you said. Don't deny it. We can roll the tape.

Speaker 1: Well, he not applying AI?

Speaker 2: Sure there's I'm sure a little bit of technology. No. No. He actually uses just pencil and paper. Wow. Pencil and paper. No computers at all. Anyway, first I'm going to tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces and now with AI agents. And now we have Samuel from Stimatic Labs.