Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came to San Francisco on Monday night to promote Greece, but he also did something that heads of state on trade missions don’t typically do. In front of roughly 250 founders, investors and operators, he said openly that he doesn’t have answers to many of the AI questions leaders around the world are more privately debating.

The prime minister, speaking with this editor at an event hosted by Endeavor Greece, the local arm of a global nonprofit that supports entrepreneurs in emerging and growth markets, described his Bay Area trip as partly a fact-finding mission. He’d spent the morning touring Tesla and Sequoia Capital, among other stops, with plans to head this week to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. But the trip was also meant to build bridges; indeed, he was pitching anyone in tech who might consider setting up shop in Greece, which is set to regain developed market status next year from MSCI, the influential index provider.

“I think it’s another indication that the economy is doing well and that Greece is no longer treated as a special case,” Mitsotakis said.

Mitsotakis, who earned a master’s degree at Stanford and called the visit “a homecoming,” made the economic case first and foremost during our sit-down. Greece is paying down its debt at a record pace, and, he added, borrows more cheaply than the United States. “I don’t know if I should say this,” he told the crowd, smiling.

It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. Interest rates are lower across the eurozone, which accounts for part of the difference. But it makes for a strong talking point. As of this writing, Greece’s 10-year bond yield sits around 4.3%, versus roughly 5% for U.S. Treasuries. That would have been completely unimaginable during the debt crisis, when Greek yields topped 40% in 2012.

Mitsotakis was just as eager to talk about how Greece has spent its money. For example, he said that much of the roughly €36 billion Greece received from the EU’s post-COVID recovery fund went into digital infrastructure, including an online portal that lets Greeks handle government paperwork without waiting in line, and a new supercomputer assembled with the help of Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the port town of Lavrio that he said will come online within months to power AI and scientific research in Greece.

Unsurprisingly, he also listed policy changes that can matter even more to tech companies. Greece has changed how stock options are taxed, he said, loosened labor laws, and offers returning Greeks far lower taxes for up to seven years.

We also talked about the country’s growing array of visa programs, though when asked how he measures the success of these, Mitsotakis said the government “still [has] work to do” on processing speed.

He separately volunteered that there has been a stark turnaround at Greece’s public universities, which he said long embraced a “radical leftist approach,” looking down on corporations, and now spin out startups.

Mitsotakis’s larger goal is to win back the talent Greece lost during its debt crisis, when many of the country’s younger citizens left because they had no other options. He also sees an opening: with American work visas getting harder to obtain, he suggested, more founders should consider hiring in Greece.

It did strike me that the conversation took on a different tone when it turned to AI’s effects on society. Mitsotakis was refreshingly candid about not having a finished plan.

Greece, for example, is instituting a ban on social media for children under 15 as of this coming January, a step many countries are similarly weighing or adopting. He suggested the ban may already be behind the times, however, considering the seemingly addictive nature of AI chatbots.

“Sometimes I feel that we’re already fighting yesterday’s battle,” he said. “What does it mean for our kids to grow up with digital companions or boyfriends or girlfriends?”

He was similarly cautious about AI in classrooms. Greece has run an education pilot with OpenAI aimed at reducing teachers’ administrative work, and he sees promise in personalized AI tutors. But he said the benefits depend on AI not replacing “the hard work of learning the basic skills.” He warned that students are already using chatbots to do their homework, adding: “complacency is a human trait.”

When I asked him about AI infrastructure — Greece has been courting data center investment — he described the country as an outlier. Despite growing opposition to data centers across the globe because of the amounts of electricity and water required to power them, Mitsotakis said that “we have not had any significant reaction” in Greece. He pointed to the fact that Microsoft is building a cluster of data centers near Athens and that AWS recently announced a deal with Greece’s largest utility to build the country’s biggest data center in a former coal region. There, he said, the projects are welcomed.

Unlike many politicians, he didn’t pretend to have answers about what comes next, either. Job displacement “is something which is going to happen,” he said, “and no government and no society is prepared for the speed with which it will happen.”

As for the debate over whether AI development should slow down, he sided with the leaders of the frontier labs who’ve been calling for one. “If the people who are building the models are telling us, ‘We’re not really sure exactly what’s happening with these models,’” especially in how they improve themselves, he said, “we need to listen to them.”

Some form of “smart regulation” is inevitable, he observed, and the U.S. will largely decide what it looks like. Still, he added, Greece would happily host the conversation.

Humanity has created “a form of intelligence that is very quickly exceeding the capacity of the most advanced organ that evolution has ever created,” said Mitsotakis, raising the question of what it means to be human. Bringing together technologists with “the social scientists, the philosophers, the historians,” he said, “I cannot think of a better place to really have these discussions.”

He has a point. Athens is where Socrates badgered his fellow citizens in the agora, the city’s ancient public square, about what makes a good life and a just society. Maybe the questions Silicon Valley is still debating will end up being settled there, too?

On Tuesday, Rabiu Kwankwaso, the vice-presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, said that a Peter Obi-led administration would bring back fuel subsidies in a modified form.

Kwankwaso, a former Kano State governor, stated this in an interview with Arise TV on Tuesday.

DAILY POST reports that the NDC running mate was discussing the fuel subsidy policy of the President Bola Tinubu-led administration and the positions of presidential candidates ahead of the 2027 election.

Both Obi and Kwankwaso have criticised the current administration’s handling of fuel pricing and agreed that Nigerians need relief from high pump prices.

However, they appear to differ on a key question: whether the subsidy should return.

Recall that Obi, the NDC presidential candidate and former Anambra State governor, has consistently defended the removal of fuel subsidy.

DAILY POST reports that his position, as reflected in his 2023 manifesto and subsequent interviews, is that the subsidy should have been removed in a structured and phased manner.

According to Obi, the government should have first tackled corruption and established a transparent pricing framework with operators in the downstream petroleum sector.

Also speaking recently at the Nigerian Bar Association conference in Port Harcourt in August 2026, Obi rejected calls for a return to the old subsidy regime.

“I subscribe and maintain that you need to remove subsidy. Mismanagement of the proceeds shouldn’t be the reason for not removing it,” he said.

The NDC presidential candidate also argued that the savings should have been invested in critical sectors such as healthcare, education and agriculture, while also strengthening the country’s sovereign wealth fund.

Obi further claimed that the government recovered trillions of naira from subsidy removal but failed to transparently channel the funds into productive investments that would cushion the impact on Nigerians.

On the contrary, DAILY POST reports that Kwankwaso is approaching the issue from a different direction.

In an exclusive interview with Arise News on Tuesday, the NDC vice-presidential candidate said an Obi-led government would bring back subsidy, although not in the form previously operated.

“We are bringing subsidy in our own way,” Kwankwaso said.

The former Kano governor also faulted President Bola Tinubu’s decision to remove the subsidy on May 29, 2023, arguing that the policy was implemented without adequate preparations.

According to him, the decision contributed to what he described as a “total mess economically.”

Kwankwaso acknowledged that the major contenders in the 2023 presidential election had campaigned on eventually removing the subsidy.

Kwankwaso said the government should encourage and support the expansion of both private and public refineries to ensure that petroleum products are produced locally and supplied at lower prices.

“If individuals in this country can build refineries, I see no reason why government under certain circumstances will not build refineries,” he said.

He added that the objective would be to do “whatever it takes to put the price of oil down.”

The comments have raised questions about how the NDC would reconcile the positions of its presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

While Obi has maintained that Nigeria should not return to the old subsidy regime, Kwankwaso has openly spoken about bringing subsidy back “in our own way.”

Although both men have criticised the manner in which the subsidy was removed and have argued that Nigerians should not continue to bear the full burden of high fuel prices, their approaches differ mainly on the mechanism.

For Obi, the emphasis is on maintaining subsidy removal, preventing waste and corruption, and using the savings to improve public services and the economy.

For Kwankwaso, government intervention should include supporting domestic refining and introducing measures that would bring fuel prices down, including subsidy in a new form.

Obi, Kwankwaso may clash over leadership if elected – economist

Speaking to DAILY POST about the development, Chief Economist of ARKK Economics & Data Limited, Dr Samson Simon, expressed concern that a potential Peter Obi-Rabiu Kwankwaso administration could face personality and leadership clashes if elected in 2027.

Simon said Kwankwaso’s age and longer experience in politics could create tension with Obi, whom he described as not being primarily a politician but a former bank chairman.

He said the two opposition leaders needed to resolve their differences and agree on common policies before the election.

“For Peter Obi and his running mate, I am beginning to be concerned. Kwankwaso is older and he has been in politics longer than Peter Obi. And Peter Obi is not primarily a politician; he was a bank chairman,” he said.

“I’m afraid that if they get to power, they may have a clash of personality and Kwankwaso might feel too big to take instructions from Peter Obi.

“They need to sit down together. They can’t be singing discordant tunes. They have to sit down and agree on a policy.

“I think Kwankwaso should defer to Obi as the head of the ticket, even if he doesn’t agree. That’s one thing about leadership. The thing about power is not about age,” he added.

Obi, Kwankwaso must harmonise positions on fuel subsidy – Analyst

For his part, a political analyst and communication expert at Peaceland University, Enugu, Nduka Odo, said the disagreement between Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso over fuel subsidy shows the need for the opposition ticket to harmonise its economic policies ahead of the 2027 election.

Odo told DAILY POST in a chat that although both politicians could have different views on economic management, they must present Nigerians with a clear and coherent position on fuel subsidy.

“You cannot be running on the same ticket and be sending different signals on an issue as sensitive as fuel subsidy,” he said.

According to him, the issue should not be reduced to political rhetoric, as the policy has direct implications for the cost of living and the broader economy.

“They need to sit down, look at the figures and agree on a position that is economically sustainable and politically clear to Nigerians,” Odo said.

He added that Obi and Kwankwaso should explain what they intend to do differently and how their proposed approach to fuel subsidy would affect ordinary Nigerians.