Can Democracy Survive the Polycrisis?

George Soros argues that there are three main sources of the polycrisis (in order of importance): artificial intelligence, climate change, and Russia’s war on Ukraine. AI poses a “mortal threat” to open societies via disinformation, and it provides closed societies new instruments of surveillance and control; climate change threatens to make large areas uninhabitable; but Russia’s failure in Ukraine has become a positive shock by undermining Putin’s imperialist ambitions and opening room for American-Chinese cooperation. “So, it is appropriate to use a question mark in asking whether democracy can survive the polycrisis.”