There are more jobs than ever, which would suggest that all of these new technologies that have been introduced so far have led to more work, not less work.

Yes, up to a point.

It's certainly true that work expands, and, and there were many dire predictions historically about so-called technological unemployment, that new technology would displace people so much that millions would be unemployed.

I don't really think we've seen that much, if ever.

But it's also possible, and this is unfortunately what we've seen in the past 40, 50 years in most industrial democracies, that new technology pushes people out of what were previously pretty good jobs, you know, a pretty good job for somebody who had a college education, for example, and they get reemployed.

So they've still got a job at the end of the process, but it's a less good job.

It's a lower-paying job.

As you're splitting history up in, into two sections in a way, there's technology pre-computers, where we ended up with more work and often better-paid work, but now in the computerized era, you're saying new work tends to be less good.

There are more jobs than ever, which would suggest that all of these new technologies that have been introduced so far have led to more work, not less work.

Yes, up to a point.

It's certainly true that work expands, and there were many dire predictions historically about so-called technological unemployment, that new technology would displace people so much that millions would be unemployed.

I don't really think we've seen that much, if ever.

But...

It's also possible, and this is unfortunately what we see in the past 40, 50 years in most industrial democracies, that new technology pushes people out of what were previously pretty good jobs, a pretty good job for somebody who had a college education, for example, and they get reemployed.

So they've still got a job at the end of the process, but it's a less good job.

The new jobs

How much can we read into pre-season, Simon, realistically, from an ex-player's perspective?

Yeah, it's a tricky one because sometimes it can lead you into a little bit of a false sense of security when you do really well.

And on the flip side, you can think you're really struggling if you don't get the anticipated results.

You know, but yeah, I actually didn't know too much about this signing.

I went round to me old man's and said, he said to me, have you seen our new signing? I was like, no, and then he tried to say his name, but fucking, with him being Jamaican, he just had no chance, so, he put the clips on for me, the highlights, and we watched, I watched like, two minutes of him, and I was like, Jesus Christ, like, He actually, for me, he looks a little bit special.

Now, the only thing I said to my old man was, like, we need to see him under a little bit more pressure defensively to see how he handles that.

But in possession, which is what I thought we potentially lacked a little bit last season, a centre-half, a ball-playing centre-half, a proper one...

Just answer that bit first.

How do we then capitalize on that opportunity you're talking about?

Well, that, that's a great question, and I, I don't know you necessarily have to keep it all.

I think bringing it back would also be a, a good goal.

Having, uh, you know, rotation of people around the world, uh, that's actually served a lot of countries very well, and there's many people in the US who would like to look at other places to live, and you've got some fantastic, um, combinations of circumstances in the UK.

So I think figuring out how to bring people back and also to develop your own talent and, and have ways in which your talent does get global experience and does learn how to run big global businesses and, and wants to bring more of those opportunities back to the UK.

Look, Demis Hassabis, who I know comes up a lot in these conversations, he's a terrific chap.

I mean, he told me that, um, he was o- I mean, you should ask him directly, but at least what I understand is that he was offered to move to the US with his operation.

Yeah

[laughs]

...of the research right there.

Um, yes, so a lot of people had become, um, interested in institutions, uh, in the nineteen-nineties, including because of what had happened in the former communist world, for example.

Um, issues of corruption, issues of, of governance and so on were, were, um, absolutely the forefront.

And, and, uh, we thought it'd be good to look into history and, and go back and see where did these institutions come from.

And we spotted something very interesting in colonial history.

So obviously, Europeans didn't take over all of the world, but they almost did.

Um, but, uh, there was this illusion that democracy was taking root in Russia.

What do you think underpinned that?

Well, I think he came from a libertarian philosophical tradition, which of course, has been quite strong always in the United States, and he had a business career.

I think he was a self-made man in, in many ways.

So he felt the spirit of free enterprise should permeate everything, including the financial sector.

And he thought that regulation could be and was in his day heavy-handed, so he, he backed off a lot of that.

Of course, there were other people with him in that view.

But as chairman of the Federal Reserve, he was enormously influential, and he had a pretty good run.

Has that all gone, do you think? Will Alan Greenspan or his like be seen again at the Fed?

But before we talk about some of the key comparisons in rankings between this report and the Top Risk Review, could you give us a summary about what the Top Risk Review is and what it covers?

Thanks, Fern.

The, um, H1 2026 Top Risk Review brings together industry perspectives on the most material risks facing financial services firms today.

Based on input from risk professionals across our global membership, this study provides a clear view of current risk priorities and how they are evolving.

So just to make that more real, the most recent Top Risk Review survey was completed by over 300 respondents from 96 companies.

So it's a really good indicator of industry perception.

And when you look at the survey results, the risk rankings are largely consistent with our previous reviews, so information security, third party, and technology risk ranking highest.

What are the top three key findings?

S'agit-il du principal moteur de l'économie américaine ?

Eh bien, les investissements dans l'intelligence artificielle, dont les centres de données constituent un élément majeur, sont estimés à environ deux ou deux virgule cinq pour cent du PIB.

Certes, cela ne représente que deux pour cent de l'économie, mais à la marge, cela représente une bien plus grande partie de la croissance économique américaine.

L'intelligence artificielle va être partout et dans tout.

La question qui se pose alors est la suivante : qui contrôle l'IA ? À qui appartient cette technologie ? Et où se situent les bénéfices de cette activité mondiale ? Dans quelle mesure sont-ils partagés avec les travailleurs ou bien ces derniers sont-ils pénalisés par la manière dont la technologie est déployée ?

Mais n'est-ce pas trop tard ?

Non, il n'est jamais trop tard.

Écoutez, à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, lorsque les États-Unis se sont industrialisés, à l'époque dite de l'âge d'or, un groupe de personnes très influentes a émergé : les barons voleurs, qui jouissaient d'un pouvoir politique considérable.

S'agit-il du principal moteur de l'économie américaine ?

Eh bien, les investissements dans l'intelligence artificielle, dont les centres de données constituent un élément majeur, sont estimés à environ deux ou deux virgule cinq pour cent du PIB.

Certes, cela ne représente que deux pour cent de l'économie, mais à la marge, cela représente une bien plus grande partie de la croissance économique américaine.

L'intelligence artificielle va être partout et dans tout.

La question qui se pose alors est la suivante : qui contrôle l'IA ? À qui appartient cette technologie ? Et où se situent les bénéfices de cette activité mondiale ? Dans quelle mesure sont-ils partagés avec les travailleurs ou bien ces derniers sont-ils pénalisés par la manière dont la technologie est déployée ?

Est-ce qu'il est réaliste ou s'agit-il simplement d'une stratégie marketing fondée sur la peur ?

Eh bien, je pense que monsieur Musk mène un jeu intéressant avec ce discours.

Il dit : je crois que vous serez tellement heureux, tellement prospères et que vous aurez tellement d'argent que vous n'aurez plus besoin d'aller au bureau.

How much is that at risk right now?

Oh, I think it's very much at risk.

I think it's being called into question.

The funding is obviously down, roughly speaking, 10% in terms of its impact on the flow of graduate students.

One new graduate student who doesn't go to school now is a loss of innovation, a loss of new companies down the road.

Because once they've been in school for five, six, seven, eight years, they become extremely knowledgeable.

They're very specialized.

Do you look at the immigration realities of 2026 is reversible, Simon?

You know what you're gonna get.

Yeah, you know what you're gonna get.

Look, he, he has his moments, of course, and, and, you know, he certainly made his fair share of mistakes.

But I think, I think the, the lack of a consistent partnership is partly to blame for that.

It's like if, if...

I mean, Trev- Trevor's played more than any other center-back, which is, is also a reason why I think he gets the nod.

But if you're constantly chopping and changing a back four, then is it any wonder there's signs of little understanding? Plus you've, you've changed managers, so there's, there's been a [chuckles]...

Their ceiling might be, you know, third, fourth, fifth, but that means their floor is pretty low, far too low to be acceptable for, for BlueCo financially or, or Chelsea from a sporting perspective.

Still feel he's the key to our midfield balance." He still hasn't got 90 minutes under his belt amazingly, Simon, for Chelsea, but it does feel like he's becoming more of a consistent pick, or at least somebody that whoever the manager is for this specific game can, can lean on a bit more than has been the case in the past.

Yeah, and, and it worked, didn't it? The dynamic between him, Caicedo.

Enzo was allowed to sort of be further forward and sort of influence the top end of the pitch a lot more.

There was some beautiful classic Romeo Lavia sort of passing through the lines and turning away from pressure.

The big sort of key question mark is when can he put in not just one 90-minute game, but which would be a start, but several in a row, because Chelsea, I do feel, have been sort of waiting for, for him to come good, because when he's on the pitch you, you do feel like...

You, you do see a window into what Chelsea could be, and it's kind of agonizing.

Sort of within reach, only for him to suffer another setback and, and hopefully...

How did he look? I mean, obviously I would imagine there was a bit of ring rust there, but I'm sure he was as delighted to be out there as Chelsea were to get him.

I'm not sure there'd be a huge market for him, but, but it's one of those signings that hasn't worked out and to all intents and purposes doesn't look like it's going to work out.

No, I mean, I, I sort of almost deferred to the answer I gave you about Delap that, that 40 millionUm, it does-- it's not like, you know, they're trying to offload Romelu Lukaku.

But I hate to think that this comes across as hindsight.

I, I can't, I can't remember if I was asked about Garnacho from the start.

Probably I, I wouldn't have given my opinion just in case he, he, he lit it up.

I can't remember.

But I never understood it.

That's like the most Cole Palmer answer ever.

I, I go back to

toPeople I was talking to back in two thousand and twenty-four, they, the, the club always felt that a financial penalty would be fair in the sense that, and we're not talking about how other people see this, by the way, we're talking purely about the club, that they themselves are sort of, it, it wasn't us, it wasn't under our watch, gov.

And secondly, the fact that as, as Matt said, the, the fact that I can't remember a club sort of telling on themselves to, to this degree.

It's not as if the Premier League, of course, UEFA have already punished them a, a few years ago with a financial punishment.

I can't remember a club basically saying, "We found this.

Here it all is, and we're gonna give you all the evidence you want." Extraordinary cooperation and collaboration, which is in contrast to perhaps some other clubs which I won't go into because that's not my patch.

So the clubs sort of think, well, if you wanna do a harsh punishment when we've been this kind of helpful and actually told on ourselves, then what kind of message does that send to everyone else in the game that actually it's better, better to lawyer up, deny everything, oh, we haven't seen anything, and drag it out as long as possible? So, so Chelsea will sort of think, well, by doing the right thing, this is our reward as such.

Can you see what it looks like here in terms of it feels like a bit of a slap on the wrist considering all the other financial stuff we're talking about Chelsea and then also the amount of times that Chelsea have also shown financial losses as well?

So if they go up, everything goes up, so all economies will be affected by this.

Yes, absolutely to, to, to some extent, the price of, of fuel goes up, the transportation becomes more expensive.

The price of, well, price of oil is about, up about twenty, twenty-five percent from, compared to before this, uh, this phase of the conflict, uh, started.

And the price for jet fuel is up a lot more than that in some places.

The price for, uh, liquefied natural gas is up a lot more than that in some places.

So it's a definite impact on people who travel, on, on the movement of goods, and that will be felt everywhere.

And of course, uh, shocks like this are felt a lot more at the lower end of the income distribution, uh, just because, um, what people consume, a lot of basic food and the basics like, um, energy prices feed very directly into their standard of living.

It seems like a good idea in practice, but how easy is it to implement, to move away from oil because of the shocks we're seeing in the system?

Wow.

And essentially the very, very vast majority said they'd got very little, sort of faith, or that they're not happy with what's going on, uh, with the ownership and, and how they're running the club.

Secondly to that, there, there is a fan protest being arranged for the home game against Brentford on January the 17th.

Um, let's see how that protest goes.

There was a protest earlier in the year before the nice run that Maresca had at the end.

I, I think it was a- around the Southampton game at home.

That attracted quite a lot of noise, although it wasn't massively attended.

Didn't really work out for them either.

So why did it break down so rapidly? And if it was the club's decision, why did they decide that now, with a massively busy January, was the time to do it?

Well, I, I...

In fairness to the club, I think going all the way up to the, the Bournemouth game and, and, and even after the, sort of like the, the result itself wasn't the, the trigger, that they had planned to do, um...

The, the, the plan A was still the same, to, to review everything, not, not just Maresca, but obviously Maresca's progress as well, at the end of his second season.

But, but things were so clearly beyond repair after the game, where, where Maresca refused to do his media duties.

Um, this, this is connected to the- him going away to, to weigh up his options.

Um, I'm told he didn't even say goodbye to his players.

Your reading of the dressing ro- do you think there's likely to be relief that Maresca's gone? Might there be a no Maresca bounce, or do you think that there's gonna be kind of confusion, disor- disarray, splits even among the team?

I think the fact that that happened tells its own story, really, that the writing was perhaps on the wall, and Arsenal were just putting off the inevitable.

And the inevitable did happen.

Chelsea got the guy for £5 million, with William Gallas also part of that deal, Simon.

I mean, Arsenal fans have a very mixed bag view about how William Gallas's tenure was at Arsenal, but actually an important player for Chelsea to some regard.

He was very good for Chelsea.

He actually had a great partnership, central defense partnership with John Terry.

Then Ricardo Carvalho came along, of course Mourinho signing, and so Gallas sort of kinda got moved to the left-back position, and there was a lot of chat that Gallas wasn't too happy about that, that he wasn't playing in his best position, and he ended up sort of leaving under a bit of a cloud.

And whatever Arsenal's grievances with Ashley Cole over the transfer, there are still a lot of fond memories of what he accomplished as a player.

So are countries with, shall we say, more equitable power dynamics, democracies, are they necessarily richer countries?

Personally, I think democracy is absolutely essential for shared prosperity, Robert, because y- you, if power isn't widely shared across society, in any kind of authoritarian system, you're gonna have a, a situation where, you know, you might have a, a good ruler or, or a pro-growth ruler for a while, but then they're gonna get cranky.

They're going to die and pass it on to somebody else who's reallyNot good for growth.

So authoritarian rulers are highly unreliable in terms of sustained prosperity.

What you need is a democracy, and the democracy shares prosperity, and that shared prosperity with what we call in the United States hardworking American families.

I think that's the current term of art.

Those people want their rights to be protected, and they get really angry if they feel that there's an encroachment on their economic and political rights.

The playing field in America is not as level as perhaps we'd like to think."

(laughs)

They're, they're doing their best to rule themselves out of that equation.

But they're, they're very similar in terms of...

Like Manchester United are doing it now, they're, they're trying to rejuvenate, address and go a bit younger.

Chel- Chelsea are a year or two ahead of them i- in, in their project but they're, they're, they're showing that it's very difficult.

It's easier said than done to, to bring a whole bunch of young players together.

But particularly in front of a fan base, an expectant fan base.

Well, you know that Sir Jim Ratcliffe will get some ideas about the whole dugout ticket prices, right?

Why is that sell-off significant, and could that have impacted the president's decision?

Well, a key piece of American strength is the idea that we're a safe haven for the world.

And a safe haven means when something goes wrong, either out in the world or in the United States, people come into American government debt, into Treasuries, which should mean that the interest rate will fall.

But instead, the interest rate was rising, so there was a pressure and at le- at least a signal that we're not as safe as we thought we were, and- and perhaps there's a crisis of confidence in the United States.

All these, uh, thoughts were going around.

So, I- I think, um, the White House got the message that the- the bond market was signaling a lack of confidence in- in the strategy and it was time to back off.

Simon, holistically when you look at this, the fact that these are now unilateral deals being negotiated, the ramping up of a trade war between the two largest economies on the planet, does this suggest the end of the globalization era to you?

Uh, it's not the end of anything.

Is that just because there's a effectively, I mean, and this is weird in the crypto era, but there's effectively a finite amount of money in the world, and when you concentrate it, that means less for everybody? Or is it, uh, d- is it a different idea? Is it that when the government and the economy is structured to channel all the gains to the very top, you end up with a system where people can't move within the system, where nobody is able to move into the upper ranks? It reduces mobility, opportunity, and ultimately innovation, the kind of thing that drives growth for the economy overall.

Yeah, I would say it's the second one, which is think of it as monopolies, but really, really big monopolies, pervasive monopolies.

And monopolies are not only about economics and prices but also about politics and social mobility.

So a small group of people holds all the opportunities for themselves.

They do well, by the way.

Some of them do incredibly well, and, and then they have [laughs] vast wealth overseas a- and so on subsequently.

We've all heard those stories.

It's about a s- creating a sort of permanent stultifying effect that means that our economy is going to suck for a really long time.