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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan was haunted by political uncertainty, economic instability, a deteriorating security situation and troubled relations with neighbours in 2024. But what defined the year were not just these perennial ills but the country's inability to tackle incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan. Amid political turbulence, Pakistan hosted a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) conclave, which was also attended by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar -- the first high-ranking Indian minister in nearly a decade to visit Islamabad amid frosty ties between the two neighbours. The last Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan was Sushma Swaraj. She had travelled to Islamabad to attend the 'Heart of Asia' conference on Afghanistan in December 2015. In his address at the SCO event, Jaishankar said, "If friendship has fallen short and good neighbourliness is missing somewhere, there are surely reasons to introspect and causes to address." He also said if activities across borders are "characterised" by terrorism, extremism and separatism, they are hardly likely to encourage trade, energy flows and connectivity in parallel. His remarks were seen as directed towards Pakistan, which has troubled relations with all its neighbours. If the year began with Iran conducting missile strikes within Pakistan in January, targeting Baloch militants, it ended with Pakistan carrying out airstrikes in Afghanistan, killing at least 46 people, including women and children, according to Afghanistan's Taliban government. Pakistan says the target was militants. Pakistan witnessed a series of terror attacks, particularly in troubled Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces in 2024, among the toughest years for its security forces. According to the details shared with Parliament by the interior ministry, 924 people were killed and 2,121 injured in 1,566 terrorism incidents in the first 10 months of the year. At least 573 dead and 1,353 injured belonged to law enforcement agencies, including the army. On the economic front, Pakistan was on the verge of default in 2022 and only averted it due to the timely intervention by the International Monetary Fund. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif takes credit for pulling the country back from the brink of bankruptcy and turning around the economy. In 2024 inflation came down to single digits, policy rates reduced from 22.5 to 15 percent, foreign exchange reserves improved, and the stock market made record gains. But it was jailed former prime minister Imran Khan who often hogged the headlines. In the elections in February, independent candidates backed by Khan's party surprised everyone by winning more than 100 out of the 226 seats in a hung parliament. And then the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz threw in a surprise, nominating Shehbaz Sharif as the prime ministerial candidate instead of the party supremo and three-time former premier Nawaz Sharif. As the PML-N and the Pakistan Peoples Party struck a power-sharing deal to form a coalition government led by Shehbaz, Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) decided to sit in the Opposition. Khan was arrested in August 2023 after his conviction in a case of corruption and has remained behind bars since then. Contrary to expectations, the former cricketer's popularity swelled in 2024, proving right his words—uttered before he was ousted as PM in 2022 after losing a trust vote in Parliament—that he would be "more dangerous when out of power." Recently, after his party workers staged a march to Islamabad, triggering a crackdown on them by the authorities, Khan threatened "mass civil disobedience" by his supporters if his major demands were not met. These include the "restoration" of the mandate he believes he got in the February parliamentary elections to run the country. His supporters see 2024 as a disaster for electoral politics and democracy, pointing at the "blatant disregard" of popular opinion reflected on the ballots. Some in power also concede this. In a recent interview with Dunya News, senior PML-N leader Mian Javed Latif accepted that "we had lost the elections." Talks began recently between PTI and the government, but few believe that Khan's demand to restore his "stolen mandate" will be met. Consequently, the country could continue to face strong political headwinds in 2025. With the traditional challenges still intact, the government now faces another: how to tame a 'cornered tiger'.
(Bloomberg) -- David Sacks, President-elect Donald Trump’s surprise pick to guide policy on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, doesn’t have deep ties to either industry or an extensive track record of investing in them. What he does have, though, is even more important in the eyes of technology investors — a tech-friendly worldview and a long history of skepticism about government regulation. Most Read from Bloomberg “He will ensure the United States is at the cutting edge of innovation,” said Keith Rabois, who celebrated with Sacks at a private home in Miami Thursday night. Sacks will keep the country from falling behind China, and will protect “newly emerging tech from left-wing censorship and bias,” Rabois said. The appointment of Sacks, a major Trump fundraiser, was not widely anticipated in Silicon Valley. The VC has only made a handful of crypto investments, and isn’t seen as a key player in the industry. He’s also made relatively few AI bets, though he’s a backer of xAI, the startup helmed by Elon Musk that has raised more than $10 billion this year. But Sacks has long been critical of too much government involvement in the affairs of private companies. The 52-year-old founder of VC firm Craft Ventures and member of the so-called PayPal Mafia has been one of the loudest right-leaning voices in the industry for years. The pick is seen as a boon to the startup world, where AI and crypto executives view government intervention as a potential existential threat. US action against crypto companies has driven many startups overseas. And AI leaders have worried that overly burdensome regulations could stifle the fledgling industry in the name of safety. Crypto supporters celebrated the selection, which Trump said would give startups regulatory clarity. “Crypto and AI are two of the United States’ most pressing strategic priorities right now, and David Sacks is one of the only people in the world that is uniquely qualified to lead in this pivotal role,” said Kyle Samani, a managing partner at Multicoin Capital, where Sacks is an investor. Sacks will be an “invaluable asset in shaping the nation’s future,” Samani said. Startup competition Trump has signaled that he’ll take a friendly approach to both crypto and AI. Bitcoin has hit all-time highs since his election, and he has vowed to repeal President Biden’s 2023 AI executive order that requires developers to safety-test new models. AI is also a focus for Musk, a key Trump ally and a longtime friend of Sacks. Investor Marc Andreessen, whose firm invests heavily in both industries, was ebullient at Sacks’ pick. “From the Wright Brothers to Starship With Chopsticks, in just a single election,” Andreessen wrote on X on Thursday night, referencing SpaceX’s latest achievement of landing re-usable starships. OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman also struck a celebratory note, writing on X, “congrats to czar @DavidSacks!” But there’s been some trepidation over Sacks’ allegiances in the AI world. Sacks’ Craft Ventures is an investor in Musk’s xAI, and Sacks’ ties to Musk have raised questions about how he would treat rival companies in the fiercely competitive industry. Sacks has previously spoken critically of OpenAI, a key xAI competitor. In a now-deleted post on X, Sacks said, “I’m all in favor of accelerating technological progress, but there is something unsettling about the way OpenAI explicitly declares its mission to be the creation of AGI.” AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to AI technology that can perform most tasks better than humans. Sacks did not respond to a request for comment on the post. Sacks and Trump allies say that involvement in the industry is a prerequisite for understanding it, and that some perceptions of conflict of interest will be inevitable. “I think we should take people at their word,” said Shaun Maguire, an investor at the prestigious Sequoia Capital, which has backed both xAI and OpenAI. Sacks “won’t harm any competitors,” he said. Sacks’ other bets include BitGo and Bitwise in the crypto world. In AI, Sacks co-founded a startup called Glue that makes chat software for companies, and he’s invested in developer startup Replit Inc. and AI writing tool CopyAI Inc. Sacks will not leave Craft, a spokeswoman said, and the new czar position will function as an advisory role, rather than a full-time government job. The appointment won’t require Sacks to divest or publicly disclose his assets. Like Musk, Sacks will be a special government employee. He can serve a maximum of 130 days per year, with or without compensation. However, conflict of interest rules apply to special government employees, and Sacks would be required to recuse himself from matters that could impact his holdings. Tech-Friendly There’s a long history of technology officials taking advisory roles to the government, said Silicon Valley historian Margaret O’Mara. But the roles don’t always have a clear mandate. “You can have a title, but if you don’t actually have a budget or people reporting to you, it’s something more ambiguous,” O’Mara said, pointing out that Sacks would not be a White House staff member. “Sometimes it does morph into something that has some power to it.” Some industry observers would have preferred the crypto and AI czar positions to be separate — a move that might have telegraphed the importance of each, and reflected the different risks and rewards of both technologies. “While I am very encouraged by the new administration’s crypto-friendly focus, I would have preferred separate crypto and AI czars,” said Campbell Harvey, finance professor at Duke University. “Both need urgent, dedicated attention,” he said. Sacks has forged a more wide-ranging career, rather than focusing on just AI or crypto. He first made a name for himself at PayPal, the payments company whose founders in the late 1990s included Musk and billionaire investor Peter Thiel. During a stint in Hollywood, he produced the 2005 satire Thank You for Smoking. At Craft, his venture firm with stakes in Musk-owned businesses including SpaceX, he has invested widely as well as serving as a host of the All-In podcast. His comments about crypto on the podcast have not been universally positive, but he has discouraged attempts to penalize or control industry players. “The fact of the matter is you’ve got a lot of brilliant young entrepreneurs, computer scientists building this financial infrastructure of the future with crypto,” he said in a podcast episode in 2021. “We don’t necessarily want to interfere with that to the point where we break it.” He’s also made significant money on crypto. Craft Ventures invested in Samani’s Multicoin Capital in 2018, which in turn was an early investor in the Solana cryptocurrency. The token was worth less than a dollar when it launched in 2020, but notched a peak price of around $250 in late 2021. “It will end up being about $1 billion of Solana for us in terms of returns,” Sacks said at the time. More recently, in a November episode of the podcast after Trump’s election, Sacks took aim at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s aggressive positions on crypto under its chair, Gary Gensler. “The days of Gensler terrifying crypto companies — those days are about to be over.” --With assistance from Shirin Ghaffary, Olga Kharif, Katie Roof and Jackie Davalos. (Updates with historian's comment in 15th paragraph.) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek ©2024 Bloomberg L.P.Dibba added three steals for the Salukis (4-6, 0-1 Missouri Valley Conference). Jarrett Hensley added 16 points while shooting 4 for 10 (1 for 4 from 3-point range) and 7 of 10 from the free-throw line while he also had 11 rebounds. Kennard Davis finished 5 of 10 from the field to finish with 11 points. Stephen Olowoniyi finished with 24 points for the Screaming Eagles (4-5). Jayland Randall added 22 points and two steals for Southern Indiana. Jack Mielke finished with six points and six rebounds. The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .
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