Switzerland Brings Science to the Front of Diplomacy at Davos
From AI to climate risk, Swiss-hosted sessions this year framed anticipation as a tool for governing fast-moving technologies.
DAVOS, Switzerland — As political tensions sharpen and multilateral cooperation becomes harder to sustain, Switzerland is using its role as host of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting to press a quieter argument: that science, used early enough, can still function as a stabilizing diplomatic tool.
Across Davos this year, Swiss-hosted sessions, exhibitions, and side events have emphasized not scientific breakthroughs themselves, but the use of scientific knowledge to anticipate political, economic, and security challenges before they harden into crises. The approach reflects a broader Swiss diplomatic strategy that has gained prominence in recent years, including during Switzerland’s 2023–24 term on the U.N. Security Council, where it promoted the use of science and technology assessments to inform conflict prevention and global governance.
At Davos, that logic has been framed as “anticipatory” science diplomacy: the idea that governments and institutions should engage with emerging technologies while there is still room to shape norms, standards, and cooperation, rather than reacting after interests have already polarized.
One illustration of this approach came during a workshop titled “Leading in a Science-Accelerated World,” convened by the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA). The session was framed as a working exercise in institutional preparedness.
Several dozen participants gathered in a hotel conference room, where, after introductory remarks, they broke into small discussion tables organized around themes drawn from the GESDA Science Breakthrough Radar, a catalog of potential developments in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, synthetic biology, and climate intervention. Participants were invited to contribute their own assessments of possible breakthroughs, early warning signals, opportunities, and risks.
Michael Hengartner, president of the ETH Board overseeing Switzerland’s federal institutes of technology and research and chair of GESDA’s Academic Forum, framed the exercise as a question of institutional behavior rather than scientific foresight. “Most scientific advances are not sudden surprises,” he said. “Experts usually have a good sense of what is coming — five, ten, even twenty years out. The challenge is whether institutions are willing to act on that knowledge before they are forced to.”
That distinction matters. Anticipatory science diplomacy does not promise prediction, nor does it produce binding rules. Its advocates argue instead that it can change the timing of governance, shifting debate earlier when options are still open.
Yet the limits of that approach were also evident. The emphasis, organizers said, was rehearsal rather than resolution: the workshop produced no formal conclusions, commitments, or shared positions, focusing instead on how decision-makers think through future scenarios before they become politically charged. Its value lay in exposure and exchange rather than decision-making, a feature that reflects both the strength and the constraint of neutral convening spaces like Davos.
Participants from outside Switzerland underscored those constraints. Venkatesen Mauree, head of the Strategic Tech and Academia Initiatives Division at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), pointed to the widening gap between technological deployment and global standards. “With emerging technologies like AI, governments still lack shared ways to assess safety, performance, and risk,” he said, noting that multilateral frameworks often lag innovation by design.
From a development perspective, Jennifer Baarn, head of partnerships at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), warned that anticipation alone does not ensure equitable outcomes. Technologies may arrive faster than the infrastructure and institutions needed to apply them. “Without energy access, data systems, and trusted local partners, innovation remains theoretical,” she said, adding that early dialogue can still fail if implementation capacity is uneven.
These tensions are becoming harder to ignore at Davos. The meeting’s growing ecosystem of science-focused venues, including the Swiss-run House of Switzerland and newly launched initiatives such as the Frontiers Science House, reflects an effort to anchor discussions of power, markets, and security in technical realities. Davos itself has increasingly served as a staging ground not only for economic diplomacy, but for science-driven narratives about risk, resilience, and long-term governance.
Whether those narratives translate into durable influence remains uncertain. Neutral platforms depend on trust, and trust is in short supply in an era where science and technology are tightly bound to national security and economic competition. In some domains, including artificial intelligence and biotechnology, governments are already struggling to balance openness with control.
Anticipatory science diplomacy does not resolve those conflicts. Its proponents acknowledge that it cannot compel cooperation or override geopolitical interests. What it can do, they argue, is narrow the gap between knowledge and decision-making, and make the costs of inaction more visible before they are irreversible.
The question raised in Davos this year is whether that window remains open long enough to matter.
The Science Diplomat examines how science, technology, and international affairs intersect and how scientific knowledge increasingly shapes diplomacy, security, and global governance.