Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
pandora-papers
China agitating Taiwan to demonstrate power, not start WWIII
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week with a look at Chinese warplanes, the Pandora Papers, and Facebook's major outage.
What is China signaling by sending warplanes into Taiwan's air defense identification zone?
Well, it's not their airspace. They've done this before. They do it a lot. In fact, on some days, a year ago, in the past, they've had over 20 incursions on a day. Over the last few days, it has been record levels, so clearly, they're agitated. They want to show that they're strong and assertive. Having said that, we are not on the brink of World War III. There is a greater chance of accidents happening, and that would be a really bad thing, but on balance, this doesn't cross any red lines between the two countries. I think the headlines are a little breathless on it.
What are the Pandora Papers?
It is yet one more, even larger dump of information about a whole bunch of former and standing world leaders and the wealthy people near them who are trying to obscure their wealth, frequently ill-gotten, through offshore accounts and usually buying a bunch of real estate in other countries. Some leaders that are trying to show themselves as reformers are going to get caught up and really embarrassed by that. In particular, some of the ministers around Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, President Lasso in Ecuador. There are, I would say King Abdullah in Jordan, certainly, but for people like Putin, of course, complete impunity, no shame, because they have thorough control of their system, their media. It's an authoritarian state, full on.
What's happening with Facebook?
Well, it looks like it was an own goal, of big engineering mistake. The fact that you can take half of the planet down in terms of an app that they use, so easily, it's a lot more dangerous than, say, just-in-time supply chain and what we learned about not having redundancy and resilience in our system after the pandemic. This, on the digital side, even more dangerous. Imagine if it had been something where companies use it fundamentally to work, like for example Amazon or Microsoft. I mean, this was a significant inconvenience, most importantly for small enterprises that use Facebook for their businesses. Six hours down. Big embarrassment for Facebook. Question is whether or not it makes any of us think differently about the need for redundancy and resilience on digital sites. They are so, of course, concentrated. We'll see what happens on the regulatory side. So far, there's been very little.
What are the Pandora Papers?
It is yet one more, even larger dump of information about a whole bunch of former and standing world leaders and the wealthy people near them who are trying to obscure their wealth, frequently ill-gotten, through offshore accounts and usually buying a bunch of real estate in other countries. Some leaders that are trying to show themselves as reformers are going to get caught up and really embarrassed by that. In particular, some of the ministers around Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, President Lasso in Ecuador. There are, I would say King Abdullah in Jordan, certainly, but for people like Putin, of course, complete impunity, no shame, because they have thorough control of their system, their media. It's an authoritarian state, full on.
What's happening with Facebook?
Well, it looks like it was an own goal, of big engineering mistake. The fact that you can take half of the planet down in terms of an app that they use, so easily, it's a lot more dangerous than, say, just-in-time supply chain and what we learned about not having redundancy and resilience in our system after the pandemic. This, on the digital side, even more dangerous. Imagine if it had been something where companies use it fundamentally to work, like for example Amazon or Microsoft. I mean, this was a significant inconvenience, most importantly for small enterprises that use Facebook for their businesses. Six hours down. Big embarrassment for Facebook. Question is whether or not it makes any of us think differently about the need for redundancy and resilience on digital sites. They are so, of course, concentrated. We'll see what happens on the regulatory side. So far, there's been very little.
What We're Watching: Bolsonaro on the ropes, Georgian nightmare, Pandora's box opened?
Is Bolsonaro on the ropes for good this time? Tens of thousands of Brazilians hit streets across the country in recent days calling for the impeachment of President Jair Bolsonaro. For months, pockets of anti-Bolsonaro sentiment have been bubbling nationwide, but now a record 58 percent of people polled say his performance is "bad" or "very bad." Soaring prices for electricity, food, and medicine have added to lingering discontent with right-winger Bolsonaro's disastrous handling of the pandemic. And a scandal over potential corruption in vaccine procurements hasn't helped either. Bolsonaro can still count on the unwavering support of about a quarter to a third of the population, and he has strong loyalty among cops and soldiers. But as discontent spreads, it's looking less and less likely that he'll be able to defeat his presumptive rival in next year's presidential election: the leftwing former president Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva. Current polls suggest Bolsonaro is in for a drubbing, but if so, will he accept defeat?
Panama Papers 2.0: You may recall the giant leak of financial documents in 2016 known as the Panama Papers, which exposed financial misdeeds and corruption among the global elite. The revelation prompted the resignations of several government figures and hundreds of criminal probes. Now, five years later, another trove of documents, the Pandora Papers, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and published by the Washington Post, reveals tax dodging and criminal activities linked to global heavyweights, including 14 current national leaders. Here are some of the revelations: the unassuming US state of South Dakota is now a haven for those trafficking in financial secrecy; Jordan's King Abdullah II secretly spent over $100 million on luxury homes in California; allies of Pakistan's PM Imran Khan have stashed millions of dollars offshore. All together, the Pandora Papers identify more than 29,000 illegal offshore accounts, more than double what was identified in the document dump five years ago. Given that the global economy is still in the throes of a pandemic-fueled crisis, we're watching to see what the fallout might be — if any — as angry voters demand answers.
Georgia on our mind: The flamboyantly fearless political showman Mikheil Saakashvili was arrested just hours after returning home to Georgia to support his own party in hotly contested local elections. Saakashvili — who led a pro-Western revolution in 2004 and was Georgia's president until 2013 — had been in exile for almost a decade, a period during which he lived a bachelor's life in Brooklyn and then served in the post-Maidan Ukrainian government. And yet he remains a major opposition figure in Georgia, where his political party continues to square off bitterly against the ruling, Russia-friendly Georgia Dream party. A crisis now looms because, per a compromise brokered earlier this year by the US and EU, this weekend's elections were meant as a nationwide litmus test for whether to call new snap national elections. The Georgian Dream party claims to have won by a big enough margin to avoid that, but international observers have called the result into question, fueling grievances of Saakashvili and his party. Saakashvili — who once responded to arch-enemy Vladimir Putin's threat to hang him "by the balls" by saying "he doesn't have enough rope" — is reportedly on hunger strike, and the politically volatile Caucasian country of 4 million is on edge, again.