At it's core, UTC is about reconciling 2 different clocks; the Earth (basically represented by UT1) and the Cesium atom (represented by TAI). It's a useful basi

At it's core, UTC is about reconciling 2 different clocks; the Earth (basically represented by UT1) and the Cesium atom (represented by TAI). It's a useful basis for Civil time -- which is naturally political -- because everybody seems to intuitively agree that seconds should be defined by the Cesium standard but days should be aligned with the Earth's rotation. It's not guaranteed that all governments would pick the same if forced to pick only one of the two. That would make time zones even harder. Sure, people in Western China may regularly see the sun at midnight, but that's not without controversy. People generally like the sun to be out when they're up. So I think it makes sense to have both UTC and TAI. If the BIPM just turns UTC into TAI plus a constant offset, then I'd wager they would eventually introduce another system to take the place of the former UTC, with leap seconds, so some people can have that system that reconciles the two clocks if they want it. It's hard to predict the future. But the reasoning in the GCPM resolution [1] seems inherently flawed to me. "recalling that the CGPM at its 26th meeting (2018) ... stated that UTC is the only recommended time scale for international reference" is the core of the problem. TAI should be the ultimate basis. UTC is based on TAI (with leap seconds), and civil time based on UTC. [1]: https://www.bipm.org/en/cgpm-2022/resolution-4 https://www.bipm.org/en/cgpm-2022/resolution-4