No human without a corporate soul has ever uttered “Build back better” in the course of speaking English. So why are you hearing it everywhere suddenly? I believe for two reasons.

In the 1st place, it comes from the theory of disaster recovery. Additionally, it’s now weaponized.

In disaster recovery it means something like “use the disaster that knocked out the infrastructure to teach you what should have been built in the first place.” That makes sense and is simply a good design practice. So why flag the phrase? That brings us to weaponized language.

I believe a second feature of the phrase has to do with the fact that institutions can do far more when folks are coping with disasters than when they can when folks can concentrate on defending their own interests. Here it means something like “The time for change is a crisis.”

The giveaway is too many different people (and usually those connected to the UN) are saying it. It’s not about the US. Or the UK.

It’s about our Global crises and using those crises & the disarray they created to try (for good/bad) to get a mandate to reengineer more things.