Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. My name is Mina Al Arabi. I'm the editor of The National based in Abu Dhabi and I am delighted to be chairing the session today. Gulf economies all in. And we have powerhouses to discuss Gulf economies on the panel today. Our biggest challenge is going to be time with six formidable speakers and only 45 minutes. We'll try to get through as much as we can. Faster economic growth is being seen in the GCC region. Adjustments as we think about the energy transition diversification investment opportunities. But it's not all rosy like any maturing economies. There are challenges and there are needs for reforms and changes. And that's what we're going to be discussing. I once interviewed the head of the IFC Muhtar Diyab and he said to me when I come to the UAE and really he was referencing the GCC and the UAE he said it feels like Wall Street meets Silicon Valley because there's money to be made. There is opportunity and also there's innovation innovative thinking. We've just had COP 28 in the UAE. Qatar hosted the World Cup. Saudi Arabia has ambitious projects from Niyam and also hosting the World Cup soon. Bahrain leading the charge on many different opportunities and the list goes on. So the World Bank estimates 3.6% growth in 2024 and inshallah 3.7% growth in 2025. This is compared to 2.4% globally for 2024. So in some ways the region also has to think about what's happening globally and how will those dynamics affect that decision making. So I'm pleased to introduce our panel immediately to my left is Minister Khalid Al-Falih, Minister of Investment in Saudi Arabia, Minister Ali Ahmad Al-Kawari, Minister of Finance of Qatar, Hanadi Saleh, Chair of the Board of Directors in Agility. And we have of course Sheikh Salman bin Khalifa Al-Khalifa, Minister of Finance, National Economy of Bahrain and Majid Jafar, CEO of Crescent Petroleum and fellow young global leader. We're holding on to the young. Majid and I. And of course, His Excellency Ahmed Jassim is the IB Chairman of Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development. OK, so Sheikh Salman, I want to start with you, please. Get us thinking about how you see the growth outlook in Bahrain and what are the key indicators for those growth patterns but also what is your biggest challenge? Thank you very much, Mina. And I did say it in the holding area. So I will say it again. I would have to be careful saying anything before Minister Al-Falih. He's the voice of wisdom and the statesman that has been an architect of the development agenda that we see in the region today, if it's an honor to be with you, sir. And with everybody else on this esteemed panel. When we talk about growth, if you allow me, Mina, I'll just zoom out for a second and look at overall GCC regional growth and the macro trends in it today. It's a 2.3 trillion GDP per annum economic unit. It is moving towards being a $3 trillion per annum GDP economic zone by 2030 and moving towards being a $6 trillion per annum economic zone by 2050. That's the macro trend at conservative numbers. We can look at where global growth will be over the next couple of years. But let's zoom out and look at the long term and look at where that development agenda is. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is 50% of that GDP and a big driver of that growth. And that growth across the region is being driven by sound policy, by excellent execution, and by making sure that we are simplifying doing business and having a very rapid decision-making process. And we're seeing the results in that growth. And when we look at the Kingdom of Bahrain, what we have put in place coming out of COVID in October 2021, we announced the Kingdom's economic recovery plan and very clearly outlined what we are aiming to achieve. There are six sectors that we are focused on and those six sectors are banking, telecoms and digital services, manufacturing, logistics, oil and gas and tourism. And we're putting everything into those sectors. Today in Bahrain's GDP, 83% of GDP is non-oil and the largest sector in the economy is banking and finance. So we are rapidly making diversification efforts. And what we have found is that whenever you simplify procedures, whenever you go in and get government out of the way and allow the private sector to move at the pace they want to move and give them the enablers that they need, which is mainly a very good jurisdiction in terms of dealing with disputes and high quality infrastructure, things thrive. And that's what we aim to do in Bahrain to continue along this path of growth and ensure that we are a good, solid service centre for the wider economic growth in the region that we see led by the larger economies, mainly of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Can I pick up on that, Sheikh Salman, if you allow me? Often when we look at the Gulf, these priorities are similar between different countries and outsiders will often say they're competing for a very similar pot or competing for similar trends. How do you respond to that? The pie is growing so quickly that you can't be competing. What we're doing is we need... The pie currently is growing so fast that competition is not even on the table. Everybody's trying to grow their service sectors, grow their participation, grow their GDP, and there's a lot of synergistic benefits. Tourism is a great example. When we look at the targets that are being set for tourism across the region, and then we look at the efforts that are being made for joint marketing, for joint packages, for joint holidays, it is a great result not only just for the GCC, but also for economies around the GCC that participate in that growth. Because then you're talking about even tapping into larger population markets, like Southeast Asia, like North Africa, and how they can also drive and benefit from that flow of people and be positive participants in that. So bottom line is the pie is growing so fast that at this stage we need more and more partners joining on that journey. Mr. Afad, I want to turn to you, please. Minister of Investment is an incredible portfolio to have as we see the dynamics in Saudi Arabia. The ambitions are big, the projects are impressive, and have the world's attention. How do you maintain the course, the vision, when there are developments, be it regional instability, be it changes in the global outlook? What's that steadfast vision, but also importantly, are there reforms that Saudi Arabia still needs to make and what are they? Well, thank you very much, Amina, thanks to the OF and thanks to Sheikh Salman for his humility and kind compliment. And I fully agree with everything he said in terms of the macro, the sizing, the complementarity that he alluded to between the GCC countries. We are a common market that has been around for over 20 years and this common market, this road to integration between the GCC country is extremely necessary and it has served us extremely well. Our combined GDP has increased by multiple times. Trade, external trade with the outer world has increased a lot more than it would have if we had remained independent of this integration. And our inter-regional trade has also multiplied in the last 20 years and is going to take off in the non-oil sector of course as we go forward. I think as we talk about the non-oil economy consistently across the region, this is where the growth is going to be. This is where the individual country strategies are that are complementing each other and that are serving this interdependence and integration between GCC country. Saudi Arabia is very committed to working with our GCC partners represented on the panel and our private sector companies are also fully embedded in each and every nation of the GCC as we create value to each other and bring value chains across the region in a very globally robust way. I think as we look at global trends, there is of course the energy transition and the kingdom strategy and I believe the same goes for the other GCC countries. We're intent and we will succeed inshallah of remaining the region that provides energy solutions, energy reliability, energy affordability to the rest of the world but it's going to transition more to a decarbonized, environmentally sustainable mix of energy that will have oil and gas continuing for a long, long time but of course we'll bring the green, blue and other forms of energy that's emerging and that is a huge growth potential for the kingdom but I believe it's going to be done at a regional level and we've seen Saudi companies invest heavily in the Emirates, in Bahrain, in Kuwait, and in Oman as we build this sector of renewable energy and hydrogen. The other trend of course is digital transition with everything from cloud computing, AI recently and all of the capabilities that digitalization brings and I think the region is going to continue to lead in this area. I think connectivity, speed and what have you is all a big enablers for industries, for logistics, for travel and tourism to come to the kingdom and take into the region and take advantage of this digital platform that is complementing. Of course we're endowed in the region in addition to what I mentioned with a fantastic location. I think as trade becomes re-engineered globally from where it has been to build the resilience, the Middle East is the place where people are looking at because we're close to Europe, we're right next door to Africa and of course we're in Western Asia and we have the infrastructure, the physical infrastructure, the ports, the airports, we have great companies like Agility, we have Hanadi with us that are also allowing global value chains to be re-engineered with the Middle East right at the core. And last but not least is the global trends around demographics, aging populations and declining interest in blue collar jobs in some region. And one thing Sheikh Salman the Dimension is we have 60 million highly educated, young, driven people that love to work, love to innovate, love to invest in startups and they're working together amongst themselves but they're working with the rest of the world. Capital is a big connector to everything I said and I think that everybody knows that the region is long on capital and the capital we have linking it with global capital whether it's in public markets and private markets and different instruments allows us to bring investments at scale not seen anywhere else today. And I think the most important thing, the most important thing in a turbulent world today is political stability, long-sighted vision, consistency in those policies and also in the regulations below them and the world today is longing for a combination of that economic stability, political leadership and stability, infrastructure, physical and digital, capital and a private sector in the region that we're very proud of. Companies in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC have risen to become global leader. They're no longer national and regional leader and they're a big magnet to bring investment. Lastly, the GCC is attracting FDI into the GCC at more than twice the average rate around the world when you compare it, when you normalize it for GDP and I believe we're at an inflection point where that's going to increase and we've seen it in Saudi Arabia and I believe my colleagues will speak about it and FDI is not just about capital, I mentioned we're longing capital but it brings know-how, brings access to market and it brings global integration for us. Because that's one of the big changes just on your last point. One of the big changes we've seen is that for the countries of the GCC now it's not just about what is the transaction, what is the dollar sum that's coming out of a deal but it's really the joint investment, the expertise, the learnings. Tell me how can the investment strategy as Minister of Investment has changed and made perhaps in a decade. I think a decade ago, we wouldn't be having a conversation like this. I think what we do in Saudi Arabia is we look at every sector of the economy and we have a specific target for every sector. What is the productivity of that sector going to be in 10 years and 15 years and what do we need in terms of capability, not just assets, human talent, IP, access to markets and based on that we find the right partner, we find the right investment scheme with the right long-term line of sight and we invest for those long-term journey. If the private sector can do it on its own, our role as a government is to provide the ecosystem, to provide the regulation, to provide the financial framework so that they could access financial markets. If the private sector doesn't yet have the appetite for it then government entities like sovereign wealth funds will step in to catalyze those sectors that there is hesitancy from the Saudi private sector. They will co-invest with international partners or do it on our own and then gradually exit and turn it to the private sector fully. Mr. Ikawari, if I can pick up on that point of sovereign wealth funds and their role and how you balance trying to grow and foster a strong private sector but at the same time having the strength of the government doing its investing and its project. Thank you, Mina. First of all, thank you for hosting me in this session and I'm happy to be with my colleagues here. In this session it's a very important subject, Gulf economies, I think it's a very important subject and I will not repeat. I would like to follow in what Sheikh Salman mentioned and also his Excellency Al-Falih what they mentioned about the importance of the GCC and the role GCC is playing today in the world economies in many ways, whether in the energy supplies, whether in the growth in the economies and the opportunities, providing yet also the capital as you mentioned and this leads us to your question and about the sovereign wealth funds and the role of sovereign wealth fund is one of the example of the strength of the GCC countries which is, I mean, it's one of the champions because we have so many national champions in the GCC. I am sitting next to my friend from Agility and this is one of the champions we have in the logistics. We have many other champions in aviation but sovereign wealth funds is one of them and as you know we have powerhouses in the GCC when it comes to sovereign wealth funds and the way we understand it, sovereign wealth funds they play a very significant role for the future financial sustainability of the generations to come, for the future generations of the GCC and this is mainly the big role for all the sovereign wealth fund but yet they play a very important role in terms of national economies where they also because of the capital availability and they know how, they are able to invest and co-invest with the private sector in many important sectors and sometimes even to drive investment in sectors sometimes not attractive for many private sectors so very important and we have seen this to give an example of Saudi Bef you know they've been very active in the local investments and driving growth and driving, you know, realising realisation of the vision, you know, 2030. So it's very important I think for the sovereign wealth to drive it and the way they can do it through venture capital, supporting startups as well as going to sectors that sometimes not attractive and joining hands with the private sectors and adding capital sometimes seed funding you know these investments. So this is a very important role and I think we should not, while they play the big role in the future the what we call it the future generation fund you know I mean and to act like you know this is a source for, you know as part of the diversification for the economy yet it's very important they have to really support the local economies giving the position they are in they know how and the capital as I mentioned. So these are really very important and I must say also I mean speaking about this I think speaking about Qatar, you know last week we have launched our national development strategy the third national development strategy as you know I mean in 2008 we bought the Qatar Vision 2030 and I'm happy that to see and this is one of the I think the importance why the GCC is so successful because we have a long term view in Saudi 2030 I know in 2031 and also Bahrain you know 2035 2030 2030 also so we have this long view you know and create the same thing and on one as well you know so we have this long view and it's very important that we work toward this long term vision and to become more disciplined and executing you know the strategy so in the S3 because in the S1 our intention was to build a very strong champions local champions for the brand building and the business development which we have done you know in the aviation side in the finance in the telecom in many other sectors you know in the airlines and then we moved and to build state-of-the-art infrastructure we have spent more than 200 billion dollars infrastructure you know which is our second state which helped us to host the best World Cup ever you know in Qatar 2022 so and that now we are nearly we have an excellent you know foundation where we can build our NDS3 which is economic growth economic diversification private sector enabling and to move away from government led economy to private sector led economy we believe always you know the private sector is very important for the future so if we are talking diversification growth you know government yes you can do it you have the capital you have the guts but you know I mean the private sector is the most important and they are very important even to talk about demographics about you know creating jobs you know for the future because and to become more efficient and more effective and to run you know the business is better yet to help the government and take some of the burdens in the government from the government so this is our strategy and we as I said we have launched it and we look forward you know also we are having a session later on about Qatar strategy so but the same thing as I say as we speak about our position I see the same thing you know for all the GCC countries and this is I think the vision and the discipline have been shown you know in terms of like excluding the plans is very important and yet I should not forget you know the role of the you know Gulf Cooperation Council I'm glad that his Excellency Justin Dewis with us here he's the secretary general for GCC and there are so many initiatives they have been taken today by the GCC whether the Economic Union, Custom Unions you know free trade agreements and congratulation in recent agreement I mean signature of South Korea of FTA and also recently also the Pakistan you know FTAs and I know more they are coming because of the you know advance negotiations advance negotiations you know and so these things are very important this you know building this you know cohesiveness and connectivity between the GCC and sharing information and yet and I agree with the Sheikh Salman the pie is growing so it's I think and I don't think we compete we complement each other and I think this is what I see can we see that complementarity go to the next level soon do we see Economic Union currency where are we on that how do you see it absolutely I think it makes sense you know this is from my opinion it makes sense we I mean we have so many things in common you know we share the same economic structure the same you know the same you know families the same you know origins language everything you know I think there are some and you know I think we are in a position where we can really make a very strong economic power you know moving forward you know the GCC and we have all the tools of course I mean sometimes you know things takes longer than it should but you know at the end of the day the intentions are there and the willingness is there and this is the most important things and we're we're happy that Qatar will be hosting the GCC meetings you know for 2024 and I'm hoping that we'll make a break through inshallah through this year inshallah inshallah Mrs. Salah I want to bring you into the conversation because Minister Kauai was just speaking about private sector we've heard from the ministers a real sense that the private sector is imperative growing the private sector enabling it in order to see these visions come through private sector has different dynamics so I want to ask you what your greatest challenge as agility again based in Kuwait but really working throughout the region and the world not just the region how you see the private sectors challenges in the GCC what do you need I think that I think from our perspective in the private sector especially looking at agility and the investments we've done you know especially in the GCC is that the reform agenda's that they have in place is really moving us in the right direction in terms of capital flows in terms of policy reform looking at the free movement of people and goods so if I take a slice of logistics and transportation and all the investments that have taken place here at agility we launch the Merging Market Index which ranks 51 countries from the emerging markets and you have the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE rocking from the top 10 in terms of attractiveness to invest for the private sector you look at how they're earmarking investments in Saudi Arabia over 130 billion dollars you have UAE companies earmarking five billion dollars for strategic transport and logistics assets from our perspective this is all moving in the right direction and that makes us excited so from a agility's perspective what we do is we double down in the region we're earmarking 130 million dollars of investments in 2PL logistics parts in Saudi Arabia we're doing the same in Kuwait we're earmarking the development of a million square meters of land at the same time we have a partnership with GWC we're the second largest shareholder in GWC I go for a housing company and investment in logistics and the same thing with UAE it's home to our digital logistics freight platforms so from our perspective all these reform agendas with the investments and the new policy act sort of as a guiding light to make these markets more attractive and engage the private sector more actively so the assumption that some people might have that the public sector might be crowding out or the government crowds out the private sector in certain areas is the wrong assumption? I think it goes hand in hand I'd argue that it crowds in because if you look at the sort of the timing of the development when these reform agendas have come into play we've worked hand in hand with the government in the development of lands and various different areas for example, we've developed land developing craft areas in order to promote SMEs and enabling them within different countries so I think it goes hand in hand Thank you, Mr. Zabe I want to turn to you now you have an interesting portfolio with the Department of Economic Development in Abu Dhabi and all we're discussing here is kind of again, macro trends the big change is digitization energy transition attraction not only of capital but of talent so from your vantage point in Abu Dhabi how do you see the complementarity across the Gulf but also what are your priorities at the moment? Well, I think for the UAE we've been working hard to ensure that we're a hub for business a hub for entrepreneurs and a hub for new economies in the future now, having said that I think diversification kicks in very fast given the transition that is happening across the world the UAE has a transition like any other country especially predominantly you know, oil has played a big role in the UAE and we have to transition now, identifying the clusters that we're going to be working on is very important, very pivotal so identification of clusters and understanding which clusters that we're going to be in what are the right to play within those clusters and then what is the right to win within those clusters is important so we've identified different clusters and we've identified where exactly we want to win in them having said that, also we need to ensure that we have to deregulate and re-regulate further it's important that there is a clear public-private partnership that is being built especially when economies are being grown across the GCC countries now, understanding that is very important and understanding where the private sector is going to play and where the public sector is going to play we view it as the public sector is going to be an anchor when it comes to economic value add not financial value add so having the financial value add to the private sector it's very important, vis-à-vis the public sector when it comes to economic value add so understanding who's the anchor and who's going to do what in that cluster and in every single area of business is very important another thing is ensuring that the talent is attracted within the region or the UAE is very important so talent attraction is going to be there technology not only as a sector but also as a provider to increase productivity within the GCC and the UAE is very important so in the UAE we're focusing on increasing the productivity as much as we can probably we need to double the productivity if we want to be competing if we wanted to open up and have access to markets across the world then we have to increase that productivity because competition is not going to be only within a region is going to be global so hence in improving technologies within education is going to play a big role but not as in normal education that we know it but actually education in the future of education is going to be a big role another thing is life sciences is also something that we'll be focusing on and creating a haven where ensuring that people can come to the UAE or the GCC where they can work, live, have fun enjoy their life and build the family within the UAE is very important to us hence tolerance is very important within that so all in all this is where we're at currently Can I ask you about emerging industries emerging technologies Abu Dhabi is and the UAE is really standing out in terms of thinking about fintech what's the risk appetite for some of these emerging industries but also technology especially when we think about fintech and crypto well there is a misconception about the risks risks is in every single sector that you go into so from the side of the government is understanding which regulations that you're going to put there and it's important that you create a risk-based regulator hence the government takes the risk or the regulator takes the risk and the investor takes the risk putting the right regulations is going to be very important in here so we've done that and we've constantly and continuously improved the regulations to actually align with best practices and ensuring that that risk is mitigated throughout so understanding the industry and understanding where we're going fintech is going to play a big role but more than that unlocking private markets is going to be a bigger role so equities market is fine it's unlocked it's heavily regulated however private markets is where technology with blockchain and going forward is going to be the bigger play now we've got trillions and trillions of dollars sitting in private markets that are waiting to be unlocked so putting regulations to unlock those private markets is going to be the next big thing and I think that's where I think for the GCC we can tap into that and I think it's going to unlock a lot of economic value add to all these countries and Mr. Jaffer I want to turn to you we've spoken about diversification energy transition hugely important you know Crescent is hugely important for energy but also when you're thinking about from the private sector what those opportunities are but what are also your challenges? Thank you so first of all stepping back I think we're all hearing that the region is masha'Allah going through a golden age of growth and progress but I think it's important to recognize that's not something that's happened suddenly yes we've had higher energy prices recently but we're really now enjoying the fruits of visionary leadership and decades of stability and those are the two key elements that the private sector needs that the economy needs anywhere I think we step back and out hearing things like the government should be enabling the private sector hearing things like government trying to attract talent from around the world we're not hearing those things from many other parts of the world today including Europe, developed countries the narrative has often gone against those so I think we need to recognize how special that is obviously there are some good macro factors at play we've got inflation coming down interest rates coming down a young and more educated population the talent attraction of expats and the energy prices that have been stable I mean relatively high but also stable but just to touch on three things which I think have been fundamental one is the investment flows and yes they're in the tens of billions of dollars annually but I think importantly and for the first time we're seeing in and out flows in and out so sovereign wealth funds now in the region have grown 70% in the last five years and are now four trillion dollars which is a third of the world's sovereign wealth funds and they're making strategic investments around the world which is not only part of economic diversification income diversification but is adding to the political clout of the region but then similar amounts of tens of billions of dollars of FDI coming in so it's reached 5% of GDP now which is the highest of any region secondly on energy and again in the presence of our teacher Minister Al-Falih in that sector I think the GCC has half the world's oil reserves roughly speaking a very large percentage of the world's gas reserves and thanks to Qatar and other reserves and those are still actually largely undeveloped at a time when demand is going up and we're seeing Europe wanting more LNG prices in Asia and so on and then what was touched upon with the energy transition the energy sources of the future whether it's new forms, green hydrogen solar, the lower cost solar power in the world these are being proven up in our region because of the ability to invest and because of the availability of those energy sources and finally on the infrastructure and we could have a whole session just on that but there have been major investments in both the digital and the physical infrastructure across the region including connecting the region together so I think it's positive what our challenges obviously there are risks could there be an energy shock worldwide that's the risk for the whole global economy that's being discussed here in Davos we saw it last year it seems less likely this year could there be God forbid escalation conflict-wise in the Middle East there are of course risks but at the moment the stars are aligned and even in the case of tourism where some other parts of the region have been affected we haven't seen that in the GCC and tourism has been sustained Part of the challenge of having little time of course we're speaking about the Gulf region it sits in a volatile environment at the moment devastating war of course in Gaza but also the concerns about the Red Sea and beyond there are too many protracted conflicts to talk about we haven't spent time on this panel speaking about because we wanted to actually take the time to talk about what is happening in the Gulf and also opportunities there we have time for questions please indicate to me if you'd like to ask a question and if you can stand as you ask your questions so that you can be seen so gentlemen here and if you could kindly identify yourself Hello, good afternoon my name is Michael Süß from Early Count Switzerland one question to the whole group here is how you maintain your workforce or how we create your workforce but we see actually in US we are short on workforce in US we are short on workforce in Britain we are short on workforce in Germany despite the migration because that's the wrong migration so will you generate in the GCC countries the capable workforce you need for the growth out of your population or will that be a war for talent of migration in Switzerland here we have almost 30% non-Swiss people working here Switzerland has never given up its identity I'm a Swiss migrant I'm from Bavaria it's a southern part of Germany so how you will handle that because this will be decisive besides the capital and all the other stuff if you don't have a capable workforce you will not make it OK, Chef Selman, do you want to say it? If I may Thank you for that question and that's a challenge globally and we are very lucky to be in a region where we have a growing population and we have a young population and have been able to provide them in the GCC with a high level of education and more recently a high level of digitization and therefore the first problem that you have in any country is if the population is declining then you have nothing to work with then the next issue you have is you have areas of the world where you have rising populations and young populations but there's not enough education infrastructure to bring them in to be economically additive and so they end up being a burden on the state the sweet spot that we're seeing in the GCC is that we have young populations we have a high growth rate and there is a very high quality education system that's able to transform them to be economically additive and today I'll give the example of the Kingdom of Bahrain one of the main attractions when companies are coming and looking at FDI is they say oh, we have the ability to hire Bahrainis and we have the ability to also have an open market where we're able to bring in labor so that combination of the fact that one of the attractions is the labor force the challenge is to ensure that you have skill sustainability and today for example with AI coming in that you embrace the technology and make it a center where people work with it and become experts in it or you very quickly get left behind and that's one of the challenges that we need to ensure skill sustainability is there across the board just to add to that I think the GCC has hidden, untapped or in the process of being tapped potential and that's a female workforce so if you look over the years you have countries like Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain where women's participation is growing to over 50% in the workforce you have KSA which has grown over the past few years to 47% of the workforce but the specifically interesting part about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia it's largely taking place in the private sector so there is definitely a hidden untapped potential which I think is yet to flourish Minister Al-Fadir Yeah, I would add to the excellent comments that have been made is that the region has also evolved a little bit from where the government had the primary responsibility of training and the private sector complained that there is a mismatch between skills, attitudes and the jobs they require and this has been a problem we have to acknowledge to a public private partnership where the government participates and providing some of the vocational training some of the education infrastructure the private sector provides the skills, competencies, productivity that they demand from the incoming workforce and the two work together and the government provides a lot of funding to reduce the cost of training but I think something that has been said repeatedly is that the Gulf has the perfect model in my opinion and I have worked around the world where you're blending to the maximum the capabilities of your population and they are not insignificant and topping it off with the best that you can get globally and providing the living standards, the quality of life, the attractiveness where you see it from around the world people want to move to the Gulf they want to raise families they want to scale up and the indices of the future that are growing at scale in the region and we're seeing it certainly in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Mr. Qawadi wanted to come in Thank you I think it just, I mean actually to some I would like to add to what he said Sheikh Salman and Excellency Al Fala you know I mean the answer is very simple I mean we're investing in education we're investing in the development of the human capital in the countries and it's a huge it's one of the pillars of our visions and strategies and it's coming up very strongly now we see the results yet also what Excellency Al Fala mentioned about that we are open to talents and the GCC has been a home for many international expertise as well from all the continents so we have the access we are very open in terms of attracting capital so even human capital even if we don't have enough in terms of population although we're growing at a good rate but still we are open and we have certain regulations and policies our migration policies have been very much open in terms of welcoming talent with their families and also to build generations in the region so we are open both ways developing our own nationals in the same time open to you know talents everywhere in the world Mr. Jeffrey wanted to No just to quickly add to that and totally endorse all that was said about the on the talent but also in terms of the capital investment so the region last year in 2023 awarded contracts of 205 billion dollars but more than ever before we're seeing that those contracts are tied with local content and talent development which was different from decades ago it's really not just about building something but actually about empowering, enabling, enhancing the local private sector and developing the talent at the same time so that blending of the capital investment with the talent development is I think what's so special Okay so we're nearly out of time but I'm going to ask each of you please in one word or one sentence tell me from your vantage point as we're beginning 22 and 24 in a global setting where we're expecting elections we still have high inflation rates and they're not coming down as quick as people want interest rates at an all-time high globally What one thing are you watching are you looking out for that can impact your work? Minister Afaila, I start with you Well the truth is we've got a wide aperture we're watching everything and opportunistically jumping on those emerging opportunity but also in a very agile way reacting to any threats or challenges I think the talk of everywhere not just where F is AI and we're going to invest and double down on our digitalization strategy I think interest rates will be a challenge and I think we have to make sure investors have means to offset those through access to innovative financing tools to make sure that we don't slow down as interest rates persist at these levels Minister, at what? I mean, I think the economic parameters will be good will look good in 2024 in terms of inflation coming to normal ranges in terms of interest rates start we should start the Fed reducing based on their inflation targets we should see a very stable oil prices I think the supply demand is very sufficient so everything should look in a good shape of course, I think the biggest challenge for the area is the geopolitics we have to be careful about that point I mean, we have the war on Gaza this is one thing and this is something as it's completely inhuman and what's happening in Gaza and this is going to affect, of course, also the regional stability is very important so I think that's the biggest challenge but from economical, from business parameters I think things look good perspectives So from our perspective, I mean, we see this region as growing, growing quite healthily and we are airmarked hundreds of million dollars of investment over the next few years so we're keeping our eye on the execution and also opportunistically we think this region is set we're doubling down on it so that's one thing we think is very important and obviously the geopolitics of the region gets us a little nervous Geopolitics aside, I'm not going to make any geopolitical comments, I'll keep that aside AI and the adoption of AI and how it will, it's transformative and the way it manifests itself in different industries will be the biggest transformation since the Industrial Revolution so that's what we're watching So I would endorse the points made by my esteemed colleagues and on AI also the rate of its adoption in different sectors in our region and then to add one new point, I think what happens with the Chinese economy Chinese is an important trading partner of our region across many areas including with energy and really what is happening with that economy I think has global ramifications and for our region as well Minister, this is the admin, this is the admin Technology, I think that's it So whether it's AI or quantum computing or any other kinds of technology probably those trends are going to play a big role and there are additions of that and who are we going to get there So I think technology is going to be the biggest trend going forward So with that, our eyes on technology adoption of AI watching of course the macro trends regionally, globally demographics, the opportunity of young people and the people of our region investment opportunities but of course keeping our eye on the geopolitics these are difficult times in our region inshallah we are able to have a more optimistic outlook politically but at least on the economy and at least in the GCC as we say in Arabic al-adima nama it is looking promising and it's exciting but also not to be blind to the challenges that exist there is complementarity in the GCC and the strength and the unity we see here between the private sector, the public sector and the different countries gives us hope which is always important vision, long-term vision stability but always hope Thank you so much for joining us please come back


CTSA hubs partnered with local and regional partners to collect data on the pandemic, provide access to relevant patient data, and produce data dashboards to support decision-making. Continued investments in informatics resources will aid in ensuring tools, resources, practices, and policies are aligned to meet local and national public health needs. This article was authored by Bart Ragon, Boris B. Volkov, Chris Pulley, and others.


Yeah, so Thanks everyone for coming especially since this is the last slot and there's a closing game after this one I don't think you need to run out after my talk. There's 15 minutes or so to get over there and Yeah, so Yeah, let's get started. I'm young liberal. I'm from pangatronics. I Started there doing kind of development work and now do talking with customers finding finding out what they want to do and Looking at other technologies that are coming up and yeah deciding how they fit into the embedded context So you probably all Basically now that does the Linux storage stack in a very simplified way. So, you know on one hand we have Block devices that is the normal Hard disk drives SSDs SD cards and so on where you have normal fire systems on top and In some cases you can have the device map a layer in between which can Yeah, do interesting things with the data in between the fire system and the book device and on the other hand you have the MTD layer which is used mostly on embedded devices to store data on Yeah storage devices that are not as simple as Here you get the right this block to this address. So where you need to do most of some for example like a net flashes and To make that usable for fire systems for data storage there's the UBI on sort of block images layer in the Linux kernel Which is then used by fire systems like UBI FS So and on top of this stack we can introduce encryption authentication and come both in the at the same time at various levels and We could also do that in our own applications, but for this talk. I'm only looking at Layers or infrastructure which is already in the Linux kernel so that the Authentication and encryption is transparent to the application so that's what I think is most useful for our general embedded devices and interestingly in Any given project only usually one or two of those is actually a good choice and if you choose the other one Yeah, you're choosing a lot of pain Probably not initially, but maybe later When you do things that don't really fit to what that layer is providing you So there was the word crypto three times on the last slide So we need a bit of cryptography knowledge not much. So I'm going to give a quick refresher Most of you probably know at least some of those So we're going to talk about hash functions But this is a method medical algorithm, which takes a chunk of data and produces deterministic fixed-size result independent of how large the input data is and the interesting thing at that level is That you can't go back from the output to the input and That you cannot generate another block easily It is it is not feasible to generate a different block of input which produces the same output But it's what we usually use in the form of the SHA algorithms one or 256 and so on so Building on top of a hash function. You can have the hash-based message authentication codes Which is basically a method of using a hash Together with the secret to authenticate data the way that this works is that you take the hash put the key in first then your data and hash the result so that you Can see if the person that generated this HMAC is also in possession of this secret which is usually yourself at an earlier point in time So the next step relates to public key cryptography There is the concept of a signature which is used for data authentication So you have a private key on one hand, which you use to produce a signature for some data and Someone else can use the corresponding public key to make sure that this data was actually signed by the holder of the private key So that's where we can separate authentication from the Between multiple people or systems coming to encryption there for this talk basically to Relevant differences. There's unauthenticated encryption and authenticated encryption So for the unauthenticated encryption that is what we usually use on on this encryption and so on I Take a block of data. I have a key encrypt this block of data stored on a device but any attacker cannot decrypt this but he can modify it and I can still take this modified Encrypted block decrypted and I will get something out and that May look like random noise. It may look like somewhat like my initial data but there's nothing telling me that this was modified and This is exactly what I get with authenticated encryption. So at the decryption step The algorithm tells me if this was the original data or if it has been modified So I'm not going through the different Implementations I had on the storage stack For authentication encryption and the few cases where we can do both at the same time and I will go through them Beginning from the block device going up through the layers ending on top of the fire systems and afterwards I'm going to Talk a bit about some general considerations which come up when implementing such mechanisms so and if at any point I'm Not explaining something in enough detail. Please wave at me or shout and I try to Explain it in more detail. So beginning We start with the emberity that is Element in the device map a layer which can be used to authenticate data. So I take my file system put it into the emberity container basically and store that on my block device and in addition to the original file system data, I have a tree of Hashes So basically I have my data pages from file system. I take a few of those hash each block individually put all those hazards in a new block Do that for some other nodes and now I have a new layer Which are blocks full of hashes and hash those again? Up the tree until I end up with only one hash so this allows me to Make sure that each individual block that I read from the file system. I can look at the in the hash tree go up the layers and find out if that is actually Intended to be at that location in this file system that works only if I know the original Root hash so this has to be provided out of band In the originally that was spun by the bootloader in the kernel command line Or it was compiled into the corner so the kernel basically knows which root file system it expects and No single block in this image can be changed But I'm sure that the original data is there when I read it and I don't need to go through all the blocks Initially to check them. I can just do that incrementally when I read each block and very recently The mainline kernel has gained support to have a signature in this root block So I can do signature checking of the root file system By just having a public key in my kernel image And I can then easily update the root file system and just check the new signature input that So that's very new The tools to create that and configure it is in verity setup That comes from the Luxe 2 package. So it's probably installed on most of your laptops Together with crypt setup and some other tools So usually you combine it with something like x4 Squash FS or the ERO FS It's in your read-only file system and in that way it has been used in the past and Currently as well for Chrome OS and Android. So they have fixed root partitions that they check at each access so at the same layer in the Device mapper layer. There is the dm integrity dm integrity module so The dm verity only supports read-only file systems. So if I want to have a file system Which authenticates my data, but is also writable. I need to do something more complex. So I have For each block of data, I have some additional smaller space where I can store authentication data and this was not invented by the Linux device mapper people but by the storage industry. They have something called t10 or device integrity format, which is initially was done for SCSI devices and Sus disks where they have for each data sector some additional space to store integrity data and Basically, this API is emulated by the dm integrity module But to do that it needs additional space so after Several blocks we get one block of integrity data because the integrity data is smaller and this single block combines integrity data for the preceding data blocks that Leads to a problem when writing to this What happens if I write data and that one then my system crashes and I haven't updated integrity data So on the next boot It there's a mismatch and I can't read my data. I at least get an authentication error So what the integrity does is it has journaling for the data and for the integrity meta data So each right is all first written into journal and after it's committed into the journal It's written in the normal data area. So that costs some performance because basically every Data element is written twice so, yeah, we lose some performance for that and on its own it can use Simple checksums to detect data corruption, but not intentional attacks And that's configured by a via integrity setup So then there's the encrypt that is probably the best known of the methods. I'm going to talk about it's an Made module to do sector-based encryption So I take a sector of data encrypted and write it into my block device. That's pretty simple at that level It supports many different algorithms can get its encryption keys in several different ways And it's usually configured at least on desktop systems using crypto setup The crypto setup tool has gained recently a new feature for re-encryption So you can change the underlying encryption key on the fly For example, if you remove someone from the access list of your server You can re-encrypt all data. So that person does not have access to any further data that you write and again, it does not authenticate and That is because to authenticate we would need some additional space to store this authentication data. It is an underlying Constant of encryption and authentication The normal length through preserving encryption can only be unauthenticated so Irrelevant which algorithm I use As long as I don't have additional space I can't authenticate. So that's what the encrypt does is a good choice for Laptops if I don't have additional space or if I need the performance at least I have encryption and it's hard for an attacker to Modify something specific, but I'm not really protecting it against that. So and that's something gained in the recent years that I can Combine the integrity and layer the encrypt on top and at that point The encrypt has some space to store this authentication data So when I encrypt in sector, I get additional authentication data and that is stored in this metadata area provided by the integrity so at that point I can If I read back a sector from the storage device run the authenticated encryption and can detect intentional modifications There's one downside to this or limitation is that because it's sector-based. I cannot Detect if this is the correct version of the sector that I'm reading So an attacker could take an old sector from an old copy Put that onto my device and I would not notice that this has been modified But depending on which attackers you are you're expecting that might be accept It's definitely more secure than just using the encrypt without authentication. And so There are again several algorithms supported by The encrypt with authentication called a ad algorithms So it's authenticated encryption with associated data, but we don't have any associated data. It's just authenticated encryption our case so the recommended algorithm is ages 128 random, so it uses a random miscellaneous vector for each sector and that's also Security improvement about what the encrypt can do without authentication. So moving up a layer In file systems We now have since the very last main icon is Something called FS Verity, which is basically the same idea we had with DM Verity, but applied to files So the main use case for that is Authenticating large files on a writeable file system So the main use case where this was invented for is Android packages on mobile phones, so that you download the large APG to your X4 file system or some other writeable file system and The Android runtime wants to make sure that every time it accesses this APK That is still unmodified compared to what it downloaded from the store So You basically have File system call Which you can run on a single file and the file system will generate this hash hash tree for you report the root hash back and then you can check that this root hash is The one you expected and after this point the file system is completely immutable so after the next reboot or Any time you want to Verify this file can ask a file system for the root hash and Compare it to your own database, which is stored somewhere else and Then on each access to this fire the Hash tree is used to authenticate the data that this has been read So you get authenticated read-only files on a writeable file system So yeah, Android is basically the main user for this And there are some ideas to integrate this with IMA, which I am going to talk about later so and basically the same idea with the embarity and FS variety is with the encrypt and FS script. So we have block based on block based Encryption of fires at the file system ever that allows you to have different keys in a single file system Which is again interesting for Android or any other multi-user system So each user can have its own keys on The shared file system. So you can you reuse this free space? random, yeah dynamically between the different users and One additional benefit is that you can mount the file systems without having the key and you can also Remove complete directory trees without having this key. So for example, if you have an Android phone and Added an additional user and Later want to delete this user. You don't need to have the corresponding encryption key yet You can just delete that sub directory completely and the file system doesn't care. So For the security side, it's basically the same SD encrypt But has more complex key management because you need to manage keys for each user So it's only really useful if you have a system where you want to have Uses with their own passwords or their own encryption keys and need to share space between them and Since last year, there's Basically the single case where file system Does authentication of the complete data in the Linux kernel with UBI FS That this works with UBI FS is yeah lucky coincidence maybe because UBI FS is a file system special specifically designed for flash use cases and With this constraint the file system is built in a way that it never overrides data Which is a problem. We've seen with the integrity You cannot simply update things in place and keep the hash trees in sync so by just never overriding data and storing all the File system data and metadata in a tree, which is basically written linearly over the flash and then regularly Goblet-collected you can just add hashes to each of these tree nodes Which then authenticates the parts that are below those tree nodes so With one single Key you can have authentication of the whole file system and make a file system metadata but only for UBI FS so in one case the root hash is authenticated we are H max so it's a Fixed secret or you can have a signature in the root hash in the root node similar to what it has been done for Deamverity for initial flashing in the factory So every system gets its gets the same image signed with a public key and on the first boot the system uses its own key To update that to a HMAC and then the system file system is writable So it's the best choice for NAND and other raw MTD devices Probably because it's the only choice But then at least you get authentication and you can use FS script again to Encrypt specific parts of that file system So or not net flash you can't use device mapper so there's no deam script and so on so There's also eCrypt FS probably longtime Ubuntu users know about that It's a stacked file system So you mount it on top of a different file system and it encrypts all files in this upper file system That has been used for home directory encryption per user by Ubuntu since Over ten years ago But it's now deprecated and they use deam script as well as most other distributions And the Ubuntu employees that have previously maintained that Now do other things So the maintenance is a bit unclear the current part is still maintained, but the user space tools didn't get releases for For some time now and yeah, so it's probably not a good idea to use that for new systems So and it has no authentication There were some patches for authenticated encryption posted Several years ago, but they were never merged and So yeah, it's I considered superseded by FS script then There's IMA EVM Which yeah, it's a bit On on a tangent It's it's layout on top of the file system, but it's not a file system by itself it stores its own metadata in Extended attributes in the file system and it's mainly initially developed for use with TPMs and trusted boot or a verified boot and remote attestation so that a Role mode system can prove that your computer or your laptop or desktop in the company is running the approved software image and It does that by having hashes of each file in extended attributes Sending those to the TPM to So the TPM can basically log which files have been accessed and if only authentic Whitelisted files have been accessed and the system is trusted and secure So that alone cannot be used by the system itself to protect it against any attackers That wants to modify files because only the mode system can then detect that it's not in a secure state anymore so The idea was to introduce this EVM extended validation module on top of that Which basically uses HMAX again to authenticate each individual file, but then you have At least currently because some parts of the initial design have not been implemented There are texts possible like Copying the shell over the init Binary near reboot rebooted the system In my EVM detects, that's an authentic file, but it cannot know that it's in the wrong location So we get a root shell so it's interesting for remote authentication, but more or less useless currently for Protecting the system itself against modification. So there's a talk On Monday by Luke Hins About the key lime project. That's Yeah infrastructure for doing this remote authentication. So if you're interested in that Go to his talk and Watch the recording So we've now gone through several implementations, but there are some things that apply basically to all of them Initially Where do we store the key to? Authenticate or decrypt our file system So we now have a mechanism to encrypt data, but we still need to have some key that is not readable by the attacker so on a desktop or laptop system the way this is usually done is the user has to enter a password the key is derived from that and So an attacker that simply steals the laptop does not have the password. So it does not have the key For embedded systems that is not really useful Because there's usually no user who wants to enter the password to Yeah, talk to his fridge or whatever So many of those embedded socks have some mechanism To store a secret key inside the SOC itself That can be used to encrypt such secrets it's usually called wrapping keys and That can be used together with a Verified boot or secure boot to make sure that only the authentic boot loader or kernel can access this key and decrypt the rest of the data But there are other talks at this conference and previous iterations to Look at how this works and also by You like been yourself here to talk earlier today how that can be done with the mainland kind of today and Other options to source this data are T's or opti which is an open source trusted execution environment on our platforms Which is basically the way that Android does this so they have a tea Running in a separate processor mode to store such secrets or you can use a TPM to store that secrets so When we think about These mechanisms there are some which apply to read-only file systems, which are very low overhead like DM verity But they have the downside of being read-only so I can't just edit my configuration files and root file system But I still have usually some configuration data or application data that needs to be stored somewhere else so I need to decide what how to partition my system in Usually with only root file systems and maybe application file system and writeable data partitions So I can use the high performance and most simple DM verity for the root file system and Do some things like DM integrity with the encrypt for authenticated encryption on the data side so I only have the the overhead of the Combination and the additional logging for the errors where I actually need it So in the case where we have authenticated starch We cannot actually protect against an attacker which gets into our system via some network exploit and then Just uses the system as it is to write to that authenticated partition because he has access to all the keys so if we only had authenticated writeable storage After such an event I would need to destroy my device and get a new one So usually it's useful to have some sort of read-only authenticated recovery partition that can be used to erase all the writeable parts restore the factory state and get back to a working state after after an exploit and for the developers among us it's Also use case that needs to be thought about in advance but only hurts later because We will get devices back from the field which have failed in some way that we don't understand and We have when we have systems which are locked down with verified boot and have only authenticated starch We usually can't do the normal debugging approach we are used to so and Possible way to do that is to have a way in the boot loader or a kernel startup That can erase these encryption keys which are used for our customers data so Which I intended to protect those data partitions Just erase them and disable verified boot and then you can just use your normal Mechanisms to start another kernel and look at how is how does the file system layout look how Does the NAND flash work and so on to at least get some data back out of those return devices so coming to the end some recommendations so for read by block devices Use dm-crypt as you're used to with laptops possibly with a dm-integrity If you can take the performance hits and need the additional authentication Use dm-verity for read or if I systems because it's simple and well tested on NAND flashes you can use uBFS and enable encryption authentication if you need it and Do something like verify boot keep wrapping to store the actual master key Which is yeah the root of the security of the rest of the system and then use yeah, hard acceleration for Doing hashes and encryption on those socks. It's it's usually well supported So in summary avoid the complexity and only select the necessary components depending on what you're actually defending against Yeah, so that concludes the talk Happy to take questions Thank you. Yeah, so I have a microphone here which I'll pass around the room Maybe just come forward Yes, thank you You said something about replay attacks because even though the sector is authenticated when it's encrypted You could take a previous sector and replace it. Is there any way to work around that? Yeah, that's correct so currently What is implemented in the links are there and there's no way around that at least for Dm-verity and dm-crypt so uBFS authentication would detect that because that's a Continuous tree up to the root hash. So we only have the most recent consistent version But as it's sector-based if an attacker has access to the device at two points in time Can make a copy and then return sometime later to restore Maybe an old vulnerable kernel then you can do that if he figures out where your partitions are So you still can't read the data So he needs to have some other way to find out which parts he needs to replace That is definitely hard, but it's it's not prevented by the mechanism itself. So this limitation is known to the people implementing this and they're definitely thinking about ways how to solve that on the sector level, but it's Yeah, you can search for the the authenticate full description problem That's it's it's cryptography research and it's it's not Solved in a general high performance way Yeah, someone else if no other questions come up then thanks a lot


In a recent episode of Louder with Crowder, Stephen Crowder decided to dedicate a couple of minutes to a segment on black farmers. And rather than actually trying to grapple with the substance of a subsidy that farmers will be receiving, farmers of color in particular, he decided to just like make fun of black people. And this segment basically devolved into a competition between him and his co-hosts and they all tried to compete to say the most racist thing. Now this isn't the first time that Stephen Crowder has said something explicitly racist or homophobic or transphobic, but in this clip, like this is next level, like even for Stephen Crowder, this is, this is yikes. This is bad. Here's the clip. I don't know where you find this many farmers of color, but they did. And 5.2 billion are being allocated exclusively for colored farmers, farmers of color, farmers of color. Roll the date. We begin today's show looking at a major provision in President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that aims to address decades of discrimination against black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian American farmers who've historically been excluded from government agricultural programs. The American Rescue Plan sets aside $10.4 billion for agriculture support and allocates about half the funds to farmers of color who are, quote, subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group, unquote. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights confirmed as long ago as 1965, the U.S. Department of Agriculture discriminated against black farmers, but little was done to address the problem. Yeah. Most happy about the new policy. These people. So, yeah. I'm a black, a black plow man. I'm going to plant that corn. I'm going to get a John Deere Barack Obama mother. I'm the president. Applying that ad. I thought the lesson they would want to do is be farmers. Wasn't that a big problem for hundreds of years? Yeah. Isn't that why Arsenio Hall called himself the urban man's Johnny Carson? I think so. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Are people lining up out in the middle of Cornfield, Iowa for new dunks? How would you prove this, by the way? Like, how would you prove that you've been discriminated against? You don't have to. You just say so. Well, I didn't get that loan. Sir, you had no credit. Well, that should not have stopped me from getting the loan. I planted a Hennessy tree, but it's not growing.  I put it in the ground. I planted a VSOP XO tree. I'm getting in some niche esoteric cognac humor with a book. Don't white people just go to their neighborhoods and build urban farms and ruin their communities? Oh, it turns out the the the the soil content is a high level of meth crazy. Well, I don't know that and teeth. There's teeth and by the way, in my arugula, yikes.  Get it right. Second of all, I don't get the joke like this is supposed to be comedy. He's a comedian, a conservative comedian, but nonetheless, he identifies as a comedian. What's the joke?  Or is the joke that black farmers don't exist?  Like, I don't understand. Like, I'm struggling to wrap my mind around what the punchline is here.  Had you decided to do a quick like five minute Google search, you would have learned this. And as Summer Sewell of The Guardian explains, the number of black farmers in America peaked in 1920 when there were 949,889 farmers. Today, of the country's 3.4 million total farmers, only 1.3 percent or 45,508 are black, according to new figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture released this month. They own a mere 0.52 percent of America's farmland. By comparison, 95 percent of U.S. farmers are white. The black farmers who have managed to hold on to their farms eke out a living today, they make less than $40,000 annually compared with over 190,000 by white farmers, which is probably because their average acreage is about one quarter that of white farmers. So that last paragraph there gives you some insight as to why black farmers are disappearing and why this subsidy is necessary because less property leads to less profits.  So the farmers of color that exist need the additional assistance that they otherwise wouldn't necessarily need if they were already advantaged in society. But it's not just historical racism. That's the issue here. It's also modern day racism and the article that we just read cites the story of a farmer named John Boyd, who explains specifically how he makes less money as a black farmer because he's black in Baskerville, Virginia. Huge sunrises turn ponds into fiery wolves, strangers in cars wave as they pass. Food is fried and smothered. Things move slowly. This is also Trump country with support displayed on bumper stickers and hand-painted roadside signs. Dixieland, as Boyd calls it, has palpable racial tension. He is a big man with deep set eyes, usually in the shadow of a cowboy hat brim. His voice could rumble floorboards. Boyd 53 seems most content bouncing in the seat of his tractor. Smoke tufts marking his trail. He'll harvest the soybeans he's busy planting today in the fall once they're about knee high. He needs 45 bushels from each acre to make a profit. To avoid being docked, getting priced down for moisture or debris in the bushels, he will ask his wife, Kara Brewer, Boyd, to enlist her white stepfather to sell the beans for him when the other man takes Boyd's beans. He's not docked, but complimented. I lose money if I sell them myself, he says. In 2019, that shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't be losing money because I'm black. So do you understand what's happening?  Because when he sells the beans, they'll say, oh, well, look at that. There's moisture in it. But conspicuously enough, when he has his white stepfather sell the beans, no complaints, I wonder why that is. And to Steven Crowder, black farmers, I mean, that's that's preposterous. That's not a thing, except it is a thing. And they're disadvantaged in comparison with white farmers. And that's just like one example of the way that black farmers are disadvantaged. Another issue is that Boyd and 400 other farmers literally had to come together to sue the USDA because they were denied loans and other services provided by the government that farmers are supposed to get. But because they're black, they were not getting said loans given to farmers. But Steven Crowder thinks that this is a joke.   When in actuality, we see right through you.  So, I mean, this is bad even for Steven Crowder, but he just continues to do it because his audience of rubes is going to continue to reward him on Patreon and by buying his merchandise when he says more outrageous and explicitly racist things, because that's what they like.  So, I mean, there's not much left to say that segment speaks for itself.  Racism right there from Steven Crowder. He's like almost saying what he thinks out loud. He's like really close, not quite there yet, but really getting there.