This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batchford, and I welcome Daniel Franklin of the Economist

magazine, the executive and diplomatic editor correspondent to speak of Zoom meetings or

Microsoft meetings in the virus for diplomacy. Daniel, a very good evening to your presentation

about Zoom took me immediately to a memory of the Versailles Treaty and diplomacy. Versailles

Treaty, when Wilson arrived back after his, John, his brief John in February back home

and then he came back to France, he was offended right away when there weren't large crowds

to greet him. And then more offended when he realized that the French had given him

a much smaller residence in Paris to conduct the rest of the treaty. If I read your presentation

correctly about diplomats, all of that would have been avoided and the world would be changed

today, Daniel, if we'd had Versailles under Zoom meetings. Is this a revelation or were

diplomats always aware that getting together introduced risks into conversations that could

be avoided in some fashion? Good evening to you. Good evening and thank you very much for

having me, John. I don't know whether we can completely rewrite history and say that

Versailles might have been a better treaty, had it been, how it had it happened virtually,

that might be going too far. Although one thing I think it might have, might have been a slightly

more inclusive treaty because it just is easier to bring more people in remotely and you're

able to do a number of things that you can't do physically, but at the same time you do

lose something as well. You lose that personal chemistry and the kind of rapport you can

build up in person. I want to tell another anecdote I remember from the late Cold War.

George Schultz was Secretary of State and there was much ado in the press about how

when he went to Moscow, he had to have his meetings inside a special trailer that was

sealed from outside snooping inside the embassy, inside the embassy grounds. All of those snooping

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