Want Perfect Abs? There’s a Pill for that, says Neuroscience. The World’s Securest Smartphone comes with a catch, and much, much more...

Gru?zi! I’m Adrian Monck – welcome to this World Economic Forum newsletter!

Also this week – global warming is making elephants’ ears bigger, and other strange stuff, sucking CO2 from the atmosphere, commuting in Waterworld and submarine diplomacy.

Need an excuse to reach out? – Share this newsletter!

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1???Leaner, Meaner, Faster, Thinner #future

Neuroscience has its eyes on a new type of diet pill.

We know the brain regulates weight. People who try to lose pounds are waging war not on waistlines but neurons. The body attempts to hang on to the precious adiposity that protected humanity’s hunter-gatherer forebears in times of scarcity.

In the twentieth century medicine came up with ways to help. Sadly most ways were really bad for you, like this diet pill from the 1930s which had the unfortunate side effect of cooking you from the inside.

Now drugs like semaglutide target not bellies but brains.

And more sophisticated drugs may be on the way, according to Stephan Guyenet, as he explains in a fascinating look at obesity treatments:

“The drugs of the future may make us leaner, healthier, and more muscular.”

• “The next generation of weight loss drugs may also cause effects on body composition that are more sophisticated than a simple loss of weight.
• “Another drug-in-testing with a strange name and interesting mechanism is bimagrumab, developed by Novartis, which inhibits a pathway that naturally constrains muscle growth.
• “The result in a recent clinical trial in people with type 2 diabetes was a loss of one-fifth of their fat mass and a 4% gain in lean mass, which is the opposite of what usually happens to lean mass in weight loss trials. This was coupled with a significant improvement in blood sugar control.”

Would you take a drug like this? Drop me a comment below.

??Other drugs: would you get a COVID-19 booster shot if offered?

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2?? The World’s Securest Phone! #technology

Who would possibly want an ultra-secure, ultra-private cellphone?

And who would possibly sell one? Meet An0m, the world’s most secure mobile phone.

• “An0m could not be bought in a shop or on a website. You had to first know a guy. Then you had to be prepared to pay the astronomical cost: $1,700 for the handset, with a $1,250 annual subscription, an astonishing price for a phone that was unable to make phone calls or browse the internet.
• Almost 10,000 users around the world had agreed to pay, not for the phone so much as for a specific application installed on it. Opening the phone’s calculator allowed users to enter a sum that functioned as a kind of numeric open sesame to launch a secret messaging application.
• The people selling the phone claimed that An0m was the most secure messaging service in the world. Not only was every message encrypted so that it could not be read by a digital eavesdropper, it could be received only by another An0m phone user, forming a closed loop system... Moreover, An0m could not be downloaded from any of the usual app stores. The only way to access it was to buy a phone with the software preinstalled.”

There was only one problem for users. The entrepreneurs behind the world’s dumbest smartphone were ... cops.

??Crime is high on the list: what’s worrying the world right now.

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3?? CO2 Sucks #futurism

But unless we start pulling it out of the atmosphere...

The good news: if we take a billion tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere by 2025 we can stop global warming in its tracks.

And there’s a plant just opened in Iceland that is doing just that.

The bad news: it can only pull 4,000 tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere each year.

Could we get to billion tonnes? The cost of pulling a tonne of CO2 out of the air is around $650 to $800, so multiply that by a billion (forget that the price may go down as capacity goes up) and it’s the equivalent of a small pandemic stimulus package in the EU or US.

Meanwhile if global warming doesn’t get us first, the FT warns that pressure release from melting ice sheets will rumple the planet’s tectonic plates sending earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes apopping.

??Our Sustainable Development Impact Summit #SDIS21 starts 20 September.

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4???Global Warming is Driving Animals to Evolve Faster #futurism

But not human beings so much...

??The species and crops most threatened by climate change.

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5?? Is it a Boat? Is it a Plane? #innovation

No, it’s an electric sea glider, which could come in VERY handy as sea levels rise.

??Big data can help the shipping industry get to net zero.

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6?? Medicine’s Nostril-damus #health

Your new knee cartilage could be living...right up your nose!

??These #innovations are just as exciting — for your mental health.

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7?? Submarine Diplomacy and Power Politics and WW1

A reminder from the great J.M. Keynes, as we roll back to pre-WW1 diplomacy.

This is from Zach Carter’s glittering Keynes bio, Price of Peace.

In case you haven’t been following the news, Australia dumped a submarine deal with France to get the upgraded nuclear version from the US. It’s part of a new US, Aussie, Brit compact called – awkwardly – AUKUS. The pre-WW1, naval arms race parallels are not lost on former Australian prime ministers. Here’s Paul Keating:

Not the kind of thing that makes anyone sleep better at night, but if that leaves you in need of a wry smile, I give you this:

??Need cheering up after that – try our podcast – Radio Davos.

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If you enjoy this newsletter – please recommend it!

Best,

Adrian

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Thanks to everyone for the help and encouragement.