Ian Bremmer: AI and clean energy are reshaping the US-China rivalry

- YouTube
What happens when the Chinese government decides that its own people can't be trusted with the state-of-the-art AI tools being developed by American companies? At the GZERO Summit in Japan, Ian Bremmer explored the tech-driven US-China rivalry. The US remains a key player in AI innovation, developing tools that are improving efficiency, health, and access to information on a global scale. Yet China’s rising dominance in clean energy, particularly in electric vehicles, solar, wind, and next-generation nuclear power, is compelling global alignment. "If we don't want to work with the Chinese, it won't stop them," Bremmer said, underscoring the inevitability of China's post-carbon influence.

As these technological races accelerate, it remains clear that the US and China will continue to shape the future in distinct and often opposing ways, leaving other nations to navigate the complex terrain between these global giants.

Click to watch Ian Bremmer’s analysis and his full 2024 "State of the World" speech.

More from GZERO Media

Supporters of Jose Antonio Kast, presidential candidate of the far-right Republican Party, wave Chilean flags as they attend one of Kast's last closing campaign rallies, ahead of the November 16 presidential election, in Santiago, Chile, on November 11, 2025.

REUTERS/Rodrigo Garrido

This Sunday, close to 16 million Chilean voters will head to the polls in a starkly polarized presidential election shaped by rising fears of crime and immigration.

A robot waiter, serving drinks at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair, in Paris, on May 24, 2024.

  • Magali Cohen / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

Imagine sitting down at a restaurant, speaking your order into your menu, and immediately watching a robot arrive with your food. Imagine the food being made quickly, precisely — and without a human involved, because the entire restaurant is fully roboticized.

- YouTube

Forget the fancy cars, futuristic gadgets, and martinis “shaken, not stirred.” In his book "Sell Like a Spy: The Art of Persuasion from the World of Espionage", Jeremy Hurewitz tells GZERO's Tony Maciulis that intelligence officers are a lot more like therapists than James Bond-style action heroes.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI, Rama Duwaji, MIRA NAIR, MAMOOD MAMDANI during an election night event at The Brooklyn Paramount Theater in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025.
(Photo by Neil Constantine/NurPhoto)

Last Tuesday, a self-identified democratic socialist who ran on making New York affordable for the 99% won the city’s mayoral race in a landslide, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo. And the reactions have been predictably hysterical.

A fruit and vegetable stall is lit by small lamps during a blackout in a residential neighborhood in Kyiv, Ukraine, on November 6, 2025, after massive Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure in October.
(Photo by Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto)

As a fourth winter of war approaches, Russia is destroying Ukraine’s energy grid faster than it can be rebuilt.