The 2023 World Government Summit (WGS), which was held on 13-15 February in Dubai under the theme ‘Shaping Future Governments,’ included a speech from Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk, who warned in contrast to the name of the event itself that “I think we should maybe be concerned about becoming too much of a single government,” because “we want to avoid “creating a civilizational risk,” which could result from “too much cooperation between governments.”

Musk noted that “all throughout history, civilizations have risen and fallen, but it hasn’t meant the doom of humanity as a whole, because there were separate civilizations that were rising and falling at different times.” Musk noted that while Rome was falling, Islamic civilization was rising, and that “ended up being the source of preservation of knowledge and future scientific advancement.” He noted further that if “we are too much of a single civilization, then the whole thing may collapse … We want to have some amount of civilizational diversity such that if something does go wrong with some part of civilization that the whole thing doesn’t collapse and humanity keeps moving forward.”

Musk has also previously warned that civilization may collapse due to falling global birthrates. At the Wall Street Journal‘s annual CEO Council in 2021, Musk stated, “Look at the numbers — if people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble,” and that, “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”

Musk’s comments at the WGS contrasted with those made by other prominent speakers, including those who have called for greater cooperation among governments to make revolutionary changes to the world as a whole, in what has been dubbed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as the “Great Reset.”

Professor Arturo Bris from the IMD World Competitiveness Center argued that a “shock” is needed to shift global society away from the current “world order” in a “transformation” that “cannot be gradual. It has to be driven by a certain shock.”

Referring to artificial intelligence, WEF leader Klaus Schwab argued that “my deep concern is that those technologies, if we do not work together on a global scale, if we do not formulate, shape together on a global scale the necessary policies, they will escape our power to master those technologies.” Schwab also argued that “Our life in ten years from now will be completely different … and who masters those technologies will be the master of the world.”