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.
US & Canada
In this episode of GZERO AI, Taylor Owen, host of the Machines Like Us podcast, reflects on the five broad worries of the implication of the US election on artificial intelligence.
I spent the past week in the UK and Europe talking to a ton of people in the tech and democracy community. And of course, everybody just wanted to talk about the implications of the US election. It's safe to say that there's some pretty grave concerns, so I thought I could spend a few minutes, a few more than I usually do in these videos outlining the nature and type of these concerns, particularly amongst those who are concerned about the conflation of power between national governments and tech companies. In short, I heard five broad worries.
First, that we're going to see an unprecedented confluence of tech power and political power. In short, the influence of US tech money is going to be turbocharged. This, of course, always existed, but the two are now far more fully joined. This means that the interests of a small number of companies will be one in the same as the interests of the US government. Musk's interests, Tesla, Starlink, Neuralink are sure to be front and center. But also companies like Peter Thiel's Palantir and Palmer Luckey's Anduril are likely to get massive new defense contracts. And the crypto investments of some of Silicon Valley's biggest VCs are sure to be boosted and supported.
The flip side of this concentrated power to some of Silicon Valley's more libertarian conservatives is that tech companies on the wrong side of this realignment might find trouble. Musk adding Microsoft to his OpenAI lawsuit is an early tell of this. It'll be interesting to see where Zuckerberg and Bezos land given Trump's animosity to both.
Second, for democratic countries outside of the US, we're going to see a severe erosion of digital governance sovereignty. Simply put, it's going to become tremendously hard for countries to govern digital technologies including online platforms, AI, biotech, and crypto in ways that aren't aligned with US interests. The main lever that the Trump administration has to pull in this regard are bilateral trade agreements. These are going to be the big international sticks that are likely to overwhelm tech policy enforcement and new tech policy itself.
In Canada, for example, our News Media Bargaining Code, our Online Streaming Act and our Digital Services Tax are all already under fire by US trade disputes. When the USMCA is likely reopened, expect for these all to be on the table, and for the Canadian government, whoever is in power to fold, putting our reliance on US trade policy over our digital policy agenda. The broader spillover effect of this trade pressure is that countries are unlikely to develop new digital policies over the time of the Trump term. And for those policies that aren't repealed, enforcement of existing laws are likely to be slowed down or halted entirely. Europe, for example, is very unlikely to enforce Digital Services Act provisions against X.
Third, we're likely to see the silencing of US researchers and civil society groups working in the tech and democracy space. This will be done ironically in the name of free speech. Early attacks from Jim Jordan against disinformation researchers at US universities are only going to be ramped up. Marc Andreessen and Musk have both called for researchers working on election interference and misinformation to be prosecuted. And Trump has called for the suspension of nonprofit status to universities that have housed this work.
Faced with this kind of existential threat, universities are very likely to abandon these scholars and their labs entirely. Civil society groups working on these same issues are going to be targeted and many are sure to close under this pressure. It's simply tragic that efforts to better understand how information flows through our digital media ecosystem will be rendered impossible right at the time when they're needed the most. At a time when the health and the integrity of our ecosystem is under attack. All in the name of protecting free speech. this is Kafka-esque to say the least.
Fourth, and in part as a result of all of the above, internationally, we may see new political space opened up for conversations about national communications infrastructure. For decades, the driving force in the media policy debate has been one of globalization and the adoption of largely US-based platforms. This argument has provided real headwind to those who, like in previous generations, urged for the development of national capacities and have protectionist media policy. But I wonder how long the status quo is tenable in a world where the richest person in the world owns a major social media platform and dominates global low-orbit broadband.
Does a country like Canada, for example, want to hand our media infrastructure over to a single individual? One who has shown careless disregard for the one media platform he already controls and shapes? Will other countries follow America's lead if Trump sells US broadcast licenses and targets American journalism? Will killing Section 230 as Trump has said to want to do, and the limits that that will place on platforms moderating even the worst online abuse, further hasten the enforcement of national digital borders?
Fifth and finally, how things play out for AI is actually a bit of a mystery, but I'm sure will likely err on the side of unregulated markets. While Musk may have at once been a champion of AI regulation and had legitimate concerns about unchecked AGI, he now seems more concerned about the political bias of AI than about any sort of existential risk. As the head of a new government agency mandated to cut a third of the federal government budget, Musk is more likely to see AI as a cheap replacement for human labor than as a threat that needs a new agency to regulate.
In all of this, one thing is for certain, we really are in for a bumpy ride. For those that have been concerned about the relationship between political and tech power for well over a decade, our work has only just begun. I'm Taylor Owen and thanks for watching.
FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Special Counsel Jack Smith are seen in a combination of file photos in Washington, U.S., in 2023.
Special Counsel Jack Smith filed motions on Monday to dismiss both the election interference and classified documents cases against President-elect Donald Trump. The cases were doomed the day Trump was reelected, as a long-standing Justice Department policy prohibits the criminal prosecution of sitting presidents.
Trump spokesperson Steve Cheung said the dismissals represent “a major victory for the rule of law,” while Smith said Trump’s victory set the need for the office of the president to operate unencumbered by prosecution at odds with the principle that “no man is above the law.” Smith is expected to retire before Trump fulfills a campaign promise to fire him. The motions to dismiss also vindicate Trump’s strategy of delay, with the mandate of voters sparing him further time in federal court.
The state cases in Georgia and New York are different. The federal government doesn’t have the power to simply make them go away, and even those who think Trump has the power to pardon himself in federal cases agree that he has no power in state issues. That said, the Georgia appeals court abruptly canceled hearings related to attempts to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Trump has multiple defendants who could face televised trials if the case goes forward, whereas in New York he is the sole defendant.
President-elect Donald Trump attends the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 14, 2024.
25: President-elect Donald Trump took aim at Canada and Mexico via Truth Social on Monday, posting about his plan to charge the countries — currently America’s No. 1 & No. 2 trading partners, — a whopping 25% tariff on all products entering the US. The tariff would be enacted on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump said, and would “remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”
49: Uruguay’s left-wing opposition leader Yamandú Orsiwon the small South American country’s presidential election with 49% of the vote in a neck-and-neck runoff contest on Sunday. It was yet another rebuke of an incumbent party — the theme of many global elections this year — but not to worry: Uruguay is remarkably stable, and Orsi is a moderate with no radical plans.
1: One crew member died on Monday when a DHL cargo flight crashed during its attempted landing in Vilnius, Lithuania, with surveillance video showing a huge ball of flames as the plane went down. Lithuanian officials said they could not rule out whether Russia played a role in the crash, following months of suspicions over Moscow’s possible role in other cases of sabotage against the German shipping giant. Germany, meanwhile, is sending investigators to Vilnius to aid with the probe.
3: Human Rights Watch has determined that an Israeli drone strike that killed three journalists in Lebanon last month was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians, which is a war crime. More than 3,500 people in Lebanon have died amid Israel’s invasion, and more than 1 million have been displaced from their homes in the 5.3-million-strong country.
300: Asylum applications in Ireland have spiked 300% so far this year – with a fourfold increase from Nigeria – compared to last. The rise has been driven by tougher immigration stances in the UK, including a quixotic plan to house asylum-seekers in Rwanda. The uptick is becoming a political issue in Ireland, with voters increasingly concerned by the impact of increased migration on scarce housing.
As Trump prepares to return to the White House, his foreign policy picks are already showing just how radically his presidency could reshape geopolitics. New York Times Correspondent David Sanger joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World to discuss just what a Trump 2.0 foreign policy could look like for some of the key geopolitical flashpoints today. From the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to the increasingly strained US-China relationship, the only thing we can say for sure is that the Trump sequel will look far different from the original.
And that uncertainty, Sanger tells Bremmer, is why Trump won the election. "If you voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, it was probably with a thought that these institutions need to be blown up." One of the biggest questions, however, is just how Trump will approach the Ukraine war, and if he'll follow through on his campaign pledge to end the conflict in "24 hours." "Trump would love to come in as the man who ended the Ukraine war" Sanger says, "But the only way I can imagine in my limited way for how you do that in 24 hours is you have a call of Vladimir Putin and you say, Vlad, what do you need?"
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
Although high grocery bills may have contributed to the Democrats’ losses in the US election on Nov. 5, Americans can be grateful that the cost of their upcoming Thanksgiving dinner is, in fact, declining. Prices for the holiday’s traditional staples have fallen for a second consecutive year.
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the average cost of a Thanksgiving meal for 10 people is projected to be $58.08 in 2024. That’s 5% lower than last year’s bill of $61.17 and down from a record high of $64.05 in 2022. Still, prices remain 19% higher they were in 2019, on the eve of the pandemic.
Key contributors to this year’s price drop include significant reductions in the costs of sweet potatoes (down 26.2%) and turkey (down 5.6%) after previous spikes. Some items like dinner rolls and fresh cranberries have seen price increases, as have the costs of eggs and chicken, owing to recent outbreaks of bird flu.
The drop in turkey prices is due in part to a decline in demand, as Americans increasingly choose other proteins to be the centerpiece of their meal. As a result, farmers raised only 205 million of the birds in 2024, down 6% from 2023, marking the lowest level since 1985.
How Trump 2.0 could reshape US foreign policy, with the New York Times' David Sanger
Listen: On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump will re-assume the most powerful office in the world amidst the global backdrop of two major wars, comparatively weaker US allies, more aggressive rogue states, and a more complex and competitive international architecture. On the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with New York Times national security and White House correspondent David Sanger to talk about what US foreign policy might look like under Trump 2.0.
"It's a Donald Trump administration," Sanger tells Bremmer, which means that ideological consistency is not the currency of the moment. Loyalty is the currency of the moment." Some of Trump's picks so far show how important loyalty is to him and also that he's no longer going to defer to any "adults" in the room. He wants a cabinet that empowers him rather than reining him in. Moreover, Sanger notes that Trump will be taking the reins of the world’s most powerful office with the full support of the Senate, House, and a deeply conservative Supreme Court. Oh, and those moderating guardrails—like Mattis and Kelly—from the first Trump term? Gone. In short order, the entire world will know what Trump unleashed looks like. Whether or not that's a good thing...only time will tell.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
- Trump's close call and the RNC: Brian Stelter and Nicole Hemmer weigh in on a historic week in US politics ›
- Biden vs Trump foreign policy: Political scientist Stephen Walt weighs in ›
- Why voters went back to Trump, with Molly Ball and Nicole Hemmer ›
- Will Trump's criminal conviction ruin his campaign - or American democracy? Insights from Susan Glasser and Preet Bharara ›
- How the US election will change the world ›
Trump’s return to power—amid global wars, strained alliances, and economic tensions—could radically reshape the world order. It threatens to deepen rifts with Europe, complicate Middle Eastern conflicts, and push US-China relations to a breaking point. That might not be a bad thing, according to Ian Bremmer. He breaks it down on Ian Explains.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).