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Cabs drive along Westminster Bridge in front of the British Parliament with the Elizabeth Tower and the famous Big Ben bell.
Britain unveils new child deepfake law
The United Kingdom is set to unveil the world’s first national law criminalizing the use of artificial intelligence tools for generating child sex abuse material, or CSAM.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said in a Sunday BBC interview that AI is leading to “online child abuse on steroids.” A series of four laws will, among other things, make it illegal to possess, create, or distribute AI tools designed to make CSAM, which would carry a maximum five-year prison sentence. The government will also criminalize running websites where abusers can share this material or advice about cultivating it.
The Internet Watch Foundation, which focuses on eliminating CSAM on the internet, issued a new report on Sunday showing that AI-generated CSAM found online has quadrupled over the past year.
The United States criminalizes CSAM, but there’s some gray area about whether AI-generated content is treated the same under federal law. In 2024, 18 states passed laws specifically outlawing AI-generated CSAM, but so far there’s no federal law on the books.Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a speech during a visit to the Manufacturing Futures Lab at UCL in London, on Jan. 13, 2025, as he prepares to launch a plan to harness AI to spur growth and efficiency in the country.
British PM wants sovereign AI
On Monday, the British government announced the AI Opportunities Action Plan, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s economic and technological development plan for artificial intelligence. Starmer’s goals include building a homegrown challenger to OpenAI, building data centers nationwide, and exploring renewable energy sources — including nuclear energy — to power the data centers.
Last year, Starmer canceled $1.7 billion of spending commitments meant for computing infrastructure as part of a broader set of budget cuts — nixing the promises made under the prior administration of Rishi Sunak. Starmer is now trying to leave his own mark with a play for “sovereign AI” in the country. “Today’s plan mainlines AI into the veins of this enterprising nation – revolutionizing our public services and putting more money in people’s back pockets,” the government wrote in a press release.
As part of the initiative, three companies — Vantage Data Centres, Nscale, and Kyndryl — committed $17 billion to build data centers, a plan the government says will create 13,250 jobs across the UK and increase compute capacity twentyfold by 2030. The ultimate goal: Starmer’s government wants to make the UK “irresistible” to AI firms.
People attend an anti-immigration protest, in London, Britain, October 26, 2024.
UK prime minister promises border crackdown
The UK Labour Party, as the expression goes, hits different now. At least when it comes to immigration.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the party’s leader, lambasted what he called the UK’s post-Brexit “open borders” policies and promised a comprehensive crackdown on immigration.
This capped a sea change in the party’s views under Starmer, who took over from his (much) further left and more pro-immigration predecessor Jeremy Corbyn in 2020, and led the party back to power for the first time in 14 years in July.
The context: Since the UK “Brexited” from the EU, immigration numbers have soared under successive Conservative governments. Last year, net migration hit a record high of 906,000 people. Immigration debates have roiled the country with particular fury in recent months. August saw violent clashes between xenophobic mobs and immigrant gangs, stoked in part by online misinformation. The government's response, which included the arrests of several people for stoking anti-immigrant violence online, drew harsh criticism from anti-immigration groups and free speech activists.
The bigger story: Across the continent, just as across the pond, backlashes against mass immigration are a defining feature of politics. No longer solely a right-wing issue, parties from all points on the political spectrum must find a politically tenable position on the issue.Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump reacts at a Faith Leaders Roundtable at Zebulon, Georgia, U.S., October 23, 2024.
Labo(u)r of love or “election interference” from the UK?
Donald Trump’s campaign has accused Britain’s Labour Party of “blatant” interference in the US election after volunteers from the party traveled to the US to campaign for his opponent, Kamala Harris.
Campaigning while foreign isn’t necessarily illegal, but the Trump campaign’s complaint with US election authorities suggests the Labour Party funded the travel, which would be unlawful. A LinkedIn post by a Labour Party organizer had promised to “sort” (read: pay) for the volunteers’ “housing.”
This isn’t new. British volunteers have often campaigned in the US, with Labour supporting Democratic candidates, and Tories traveling for Republicans. Former UK PM Liz Truss has stumped for Trump in the US, as has far-right Reform Party leader Nigel Farage.
The incident raises two issues. First, if Trump wins, it could irritate relations between his White House and the UK’s current Labour government. Prime Minister Keir Starmer doesn’t think so, but Trump could well remember it.
But second, what’s “election interference” anyway? Beyond directly altering vote tallies or hacking the campaigns, are there gray areas between free speech and malicious meddling? Does posting polarizing lies about the candidates constitute “interference”? Is it only a problem if it comes from abroad? And how about the outsized impact of billionaires on our politics or the perception that media bias – on airwaves or algorithms – is its own form of tipping the scales?
This is something we’ll look at closely in the final days of the race – but first we want to hear from you: How would you define “election interference” and what would you do to stop it? Let us know here.
A 'coal is dead' placard is seen during the demonstration. Activists from Friends Of The Earth and other environmental groups gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice as the legal challenge to the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria begins.
Hard Numbers: UK buries coal, Austria’s far right surges, Le Pen faces trial, UN extends but doesn’t expand Haiti mission, Russia spends more on guns (less on butter)
142: After 142 years, the UK government closed the country’s last coal-fired power plant on Monday night. Coal power was a critical factor in the British-born Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, but it wasn’t until 1882 that the British opened the first public coal power plant. The closure is part of the government’s plan to generate 100% of Great Britain’s energy from renewable sources by 2030. Our favorite British coal story? How coal pollution changed the color of the Peppered Moths of Manchester.
29.2: Austria’s Freedom Party became the first far-right party to win an election in the country since World War II, after taking 29.2% of the vote in Sunday’s election by appealing to Austrians worried about immigration, inflation, and the Ukraine war. But it’s a familiar story in Europe these days: A far-right party takes a plurality of the vote, only to find that it lacks an obvious coalition partner to form a government. The incumbent Austrian People’s Party has said it will only work with the Freedom Party if party boss Herbert Kickl renounces any cabinet position. That’s a tough sell – Kickl says he wants to be chancellor.
9: Meanwhile, elsewhere in European right-wing news, Marine Le Pen, the former leader and top candidate of France’s National Rally party, began a nine-week trial in which she and two dozen other party officials are accused of misusing EU funds by using them to pay party staff for political work. Le Pen says the payments were legitimate. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison, fines of several million euros, and possibly being deemed ineligible to run for office. She is considered a top contender in the 2027 presidential election.
1: The UN Security council agreed unanimously on Monday to authorize the UN-backed security force in Haiti for one more year. But a US proposal to make the mission – currently a Kenya-led volunteer force – into a formal UN peacekeeping operation was blocked by Russia and China, which said the current force needs more time to find its footing. Haiti, for its part, has called for a peacekeeping operation as the Kenyan-led force struggles to subdue the powerful gangs that have taken control over vast swathes of the capital.
25: Russia will boost defense spending by 25% next year, as Vladimir Putin doubles down both on his invasion of Ukraine and on the deeper militarization of the economy at home. Social spending, meanwhile, is set to fall by nearly 20%. Heavy spending on defense has helped to insulate Russia’s economy from the effects of Western sanctions, with GDP growing 3.6% last year and forecasters predicting a similar outcome this year. How secure is Putin? Read our recent piece on the endless ends of the Russian president.Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer walk outside a polling station during the general election in London, Britain, on July 4, 2024.
Brits say bye-bye to Tory rule
British voters put a new spin on the Fourth of July today, freeing themselves from 14 years of Conservative rule. Labour won in a historic landslide, making party chief Keir Starmer the United Kingdom’s new prime minister.
In May, following news that inflation had slowed to 2.3%, then-PM Rishi Sunak called for a July election even though he could have waited until the end of the year. He tried to capitalize on the good inflation news and has spent the last six weeks campaigning up and down the country in a bid to win support.
But polls have consistently favored Labour by a wide margin. In the end, Labour secured 412 seats to the Conservatives’ 120. On Friday, King Charles invited Starmer to form a new UK government.
What will change? Domestically, Starmer has pledged to lead a “pro-business and pro-worker” government while facing “hard choices” for public spending. The party plans to work on “wealth creation” and, among other goals, aims to create a new publicly owned clean power company. In terms of foreign policy, Starmer is pro-NATO and pro-Ukraine, like Sunak, but he will take a different approach to the European Union to rebuild trust in the post-Brexit era.
Will the UK rejoin the EU? Not so fast. Starmer says he has no plans for a “Breturn” and does not believe the country will rejoin in his lifetime. That said he’s still looking to reset ties with the EU. According to Ian Bremmer, Starmer has developed a strong rapport with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and intends to expand Britain’s foreign policy cooperation. “He plans to propose a wide-ranging UK-EU security pact as well as bilateral defense agreements with Germany and France,” Bremmer wrote for GZERO.
“Longer term, he wants to return to something akin to a customs union in all but name.”
British opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer attends a Labour general election campaign event, in Norton Canes, Britain July 2, 2024.
The UK is on the cusp of a big change
The United Kingdom is holding its first general election in roughly half a decade on Thursday, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak – who’s made a series of blunders while campaigning – and his Conservative Party are bracing for a major defeat.
Change is in the air. After 14 years in power and overseeing everything from Brexit to the UK’s pandemic response, the Conservatives are seemingly on the verge of being knocked off their perch. Polling has consistently shown Keir Starmer’s Labour Party with a sizable lead.
What happens after? Starmer, likely the next British prime minister, is a centrist and former human rights lawyer. Though he’s widely characterized as dull, he has been credited with reshaping Labour and making it more palatable to UK voters by shifting the party away from the far-left politics of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
Starmer has pledged to lead a government that’s “pro-business and pro-worker” but also says Labour will face “hard choices” for public spending. The party’s manifesto says it will focus on “wealth creation” and, among other goals, Labour aims to create a new publicly owned clean power company.
Ian Explains: How political chaos in the UK, France, & Canada impacts the US
Big political changes are coming in Western democracies, is the US ready to deal with the fallout? Voters in the United Kingdom and France will head to the polls in the coming weeks after UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron called snap national elections. Both political gambles could have a huge impact on everything from the West’s collective ability to deal with climate change to the AI revolution and countering China’s growing influence.
On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down the tumultuous landscapes of French and British politics right now, with an eye on upcoming elections in Canada and the United States.
In Britain, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is almost guaranteed to lose control of the government. In France, the far-right National Rally Party is highly favored to win the most seats in the National Assembly. A similar story is playing out in Canada, setting the stage for a potentially brutal electoral defeat next year.
So why should Americans care about all this political chaos so far from home? Watch Ian Explains for more on what’s at stake with so many big elections on the horizon.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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