Now on bbc news, hardtalk with stephen sackur. Welcome to hardtalk. Im stephen sackur. 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 bestselling israeli author and historian Yuval Noah Harari . What are the lessons we can learn from the impacts of coronavirus . Yuval noah harari, welcome to hardtalk. 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 on our environment. But this seems to be a moment when we are learning that our mastery of the environment is extremely fragile. Do you see it that way . Yeah, it is very fragile, though i have to say that we are still in a much better position with regards to Infectious Diseases then perhaps in any previous time in history since the agricultural revolution. You know, this isnt 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 do not have the power to stop evolution, to stop nature. Pathogens continue to jump from animals to humans and continue to mutate. So there will continue to be epidemics. But our ability to understand whats happening, and to some extent control it, is much bigger than ever before. I understand that point, but maybe there is something else, too. 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. Yeah. And now we find that extremely difficult to accept. Completely. One of the main laws of history, if you can call it a law, is that as conditions improve, expectations increase. So people can remain as dissatisfied or as vulnerable as before. So you are perfectly correct that as our civilisation becomes more sophisticated and powerful, our expectations also increase. So, in a way, the sense of fragility also increases. And i am mindful that just one month ago it seems a long time ago now butjust 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. 0k, one month on, how are we doing . Uh, not so good. You know, in some countries, in some cases, the response has been quite effective. But maybe 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, in africa, in south asia, and if we dont get a kind of Global Safety net, or a global plan, the economic and political consequences could be really catastrophic and could poison International Relations for years to come. So as an historian, as a guy who has 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 . Partly its because we are paying the price for recent developments in the International System. Over the past 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 and 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. You have alighted upon donald trump as a deep factor, but surely this goes much deeper than any individual, including mr trump . Yeah. Because what were 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 separate quarantine and blocking borders and stopping flights, from actually blaming and hating foreigners. It doesnt have to go together. The simple fact that i am not meeting somebody or cutting physical relations with somebody does not mean i stop cooperating or i start blaming that person. I am now self isolating in my house. I havent met my sisters and my mother for more than a month. It doesnt mean that i blame them or that i stop cooperating with them. Even in order if you look at the International System even in order to isolate effectively, you actually need to co operate, first and foremost and 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. We need 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 dont think i mean, there are some governments more effective than others, but i dont think the dividing line passes between authoritarian regimes and democracies. You do see some democratic regimes, some democratic governments, which are dealing with this quite effectively, whether it is in east asia, like south korea and taiwan, whether it is new zealand or germany or greece. So i dont think it is a question of only the authoritarian systems. You are right, of course, that in a time of emergency when people are afraid for theirjobs, for the future, for their very lives, there is a built in tendency in humans to wish for some saviour, for some strong man, and its almost always a man, that will save us and knows everything and will protect us. But this is very dangerous. I dont think the historical indicates dictatorships are always better than democracies in dealing with these kinds of situations. Yes, dictatorships have one big advantage, which is that they can act faster, because the dictator doesnt need to consult anybody. Hejust makes up his mind and says, 0k, do that. And thats an advantage, certainly, but its also a huge disadvantage. Because if the dictator makes the wrong decision, for whatever reason, its usually much harder to admit a mistake and to try some other course of action. The dictator has a tendency. If i may interrupt forjust a second, you are sitting talking to me from israel. 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 its notjust 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, he did not win the election, there was an election and he didnt 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 tried to say earlier is that people who think that we should actually do these things, because dictatorships work better in emergencies, this is wrong. Because if a dictator makes a 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 centres of power, so if one voice, if one centre of power makes the wrong decision, its easier to notice it and to rectify it. And 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 i9. 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 its about public health, but it could be about other things in the future. What they want, in your phrase, is to get under the skin of their population so that theyre 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 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 governments . Im not against surveillance per se. I think its an 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 that we dont end up losing ourfreedoms in order to get protection from epidemics. There is a huge danger of the rise of totalitarian regimes worse than anything weve seen before. In the 20th century you had totalitarian regimes that monitored what people were doing, but they couldnt go under the skin and monitor what people were actually feeling and thinking. This was absolutely impossible. They didnt have the technology or the Computing Power to analyse all the data. Now, for the first time in history, it is becoming feasible to monitor everybody all the time and notjust 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 if you watch bbc hardtalk 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 dont know, yet, what youre actually feeling as youre watching us. Do you think that im talking nonsense . Do you think that im correct, and youre becoming very afraid . Are you bored, and youre looking for the Remote Control to switch to another channel . They dont 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 wear a biometric bracelet that constantly monitors your body temperature, your heart rate, your Blood Pressure and other biometric data, it can know if you have fever, but it can also know if youre angry, or if you are joyful or if you are bored. It is all biological phenomena. 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 theyre on the same sort of physiological spectrum to a certain extent. Not necessarily. I think i dont believe in technological determinism. I think its very dangerous to believe that technology is deterministic, once you can do something, it will be done. It doesnt 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, medical conditions, it should be an independent agency. Dont give it to the secret police, like they did in israel and like they did in several other places. This is not the business of the police. Yuval, i think for people around the world, theyd be fascinated if we make this quite personal, because in the past, youve written and reflected on the degree to which, in your own life, when you were young, a teenager, you didnt, for a long time, acknowledge that you were gay. I think you said as a teenager 01 14, there were signals that you are perhaps sending to the world that you were gay, but you didnt even acknowledge it to yourself till you were, i think, about 21. That is, you know, you were basically more interested in pictures of men than women, but you didnt really want to know and so you didnt discuss it with yourself. And in a sense, these days, had you been looking at a computer and had your feelings and your. Literally your key taps been recorded, in a sense, social media platforms, the Data Collection services would have known you better than you knew yourself. And ijust wonder, philosophically, whether thats a good place that we are taking our species or a very bad place . Its a new place. I mean, again, it can do good things and it can do bad things. Its like a knife. A knife, you can use it to kill somebody, you can use it to save somebodys life if youre a surgeon in hospital, and you can use it to cut salad. The knife doesnt 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 now that 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 on your smart phone, which is monitoring the signals coming from within your body, from your brain, and recognising that you are now in panic mode. And this is, you know, a biological phenomena, very easy to spot that, and the smart phone tells you, wait a minute, we know from so Much Research this is not the time to make big Financial Decisions when youre in panic mode. Now, this is a kind of system that serves your interests. It collects data about whats happening in your body, not for the benefit of some corporation or government, but to serve you. And if 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, its a fascinating glimpse into a positive view of a brave, new world. But im also very aware that right now, thanks to the covid i9 pandemic, we also see so many people, including leaders of the world, from trump to bolsonaro to salvini in italy, many others too, who are peddling false information, fake news about different elements of this pandemic. Science, which youve 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 . Its extremely dangerous because, especially in this disaster, in this crisis, science is our bedrock. If we cant trust the basics scientific facts, for instance, about what this disease is, then we have no idea what to do or we do counter productive 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, as 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 to 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, we are paying the price for developments in the last two years when irresponsible politicians have undermined the public trust in science and in reliable media. But i think its not too late. Just a final quick one, yuval. Were almost out of time. You have given us this sort of trajectory, this arc for the development of homo sapiens, and youve looked far into the future. Does this covid i9 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, its 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 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 dont think it will be one of the big events of history. It is it could be a watershed event in several ways, like we discussed earlier, with surveillance. People could look back in 100 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, is this ability to hack human beings, to go under the skin, collect biometric data, analyse it and understand People Better than they understand themselves. This, i believe, is maybe the most important event of the 21st century. The moment when a system out there knows me better than i know myself, it has never been like this before. Yuval, with that fascinating thought looking into the future, i really do appreciate you being on hardtalk and i thank you very much forjoining me. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. It has been a pleasure. Hello there. Over the next few days, it looks like the temperatures are going to creep upwards. We could be looking at the mid 20s celsius across some southern parts of the uk, but well also have building humidity as well, and that could increase the chance of some showers, some of which will be heavy and thundery. Now, the pressure chart for thursday shows High Pressure largely dominating the scene, particularly towards the eastern half of the uk. Further west, well have these weather fronts, but it will introduce more cloud and outbreaks of rain. So it could be fairly wet in one or two places during thursday morning, the patchy rain spreading northwards into scotland. And then further south, we should see some sunshine developing but a few heavy showers on into the afternoon. Central eastern parts of the country seeing the best of the drier and the sunnier weather. We could see highs reaching 23 degrees in the south, but up to 19 or 20 in the north too. Now, there could be some evening showers or thunderstorms across england and wales into the midlands, certainly. These will tend to die off through the night. Most places will be dry, but it will stay rather cloudy and damp across the north and the west of scotland. And a milder night to come as well, temperatures in double figures across central and southern areas. So, for friday, it starts off milder. So its going to be a warmer day. Bit more cloud around generally. Certainly across the north and the west, well have further outbreaks of rain. Certainly for northern scotland. Elsewhere, some thundershowers will develop into the afternoon once again, particularly northern ireland, england and wales. Look at those temperatures up to 25 degrees across the south. Now into the weekend, as we start to see some changes. For saturday, a cold front begins to push southwards across scotland. Much colder air behind it, as the name suggests. Some rain on it too. Further south, itll be another warm day with sunny spells but increasing chance of showers and thunderstorms. Those temperatures, again, reaching the low to mid 20s in the south. Much colder in the north, as that cold front begins to slip southwards. And then during saturday night, itll advance its way southwards, right across the country, so by sunday, its going to feel very different. Unusually cold air for the time of year will make it feel very chilly indeed and well see some wintry showers across northern and eastern parts of the country, maybe even some settling snow across the north in scotland, even down to lower levels. That said, apart from a few showers, there will be some sunshine around. But look at these temperatures compared to what they expect for the next few days ranging from 6 to 12 degrees. This is bbc news and a very warm welcome to all of you joining us across the uk and around the world. Im david eades. As the United Kingdom records more than 30,000 deaths linked to covid i9, the Prime Minister prepares to outline plans for easing the lockdown. 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