Hard Numbers: US doubles Maduro’s bounty, Trump appoints new Fed member, Modi and Lula combine forces, & more

August 08, 2025

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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro addresses supporters during a march marking the first anniversary of his victory in the disputed July 28 presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela July 28, 2025.

REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria

$50 million: The US doubled its bounty to $50 million for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s arrest. The reward is linked to a 2020 case at the US Department of Justice that accused Maduro and other Venezuelan officials of narco-terrorism, corruption, and drug trafficking. Venezuela has dismissed the move as “political propaganda.”

7: US President Donald Trump will nominate Stephen Miran, a tariff advocate and critic of current Fed chair Jay Powell, to temporarily join the seven-member Federal Reserve board, a move analysts say could be positioning Miran to take over for Powell once his term is up in February of 2026. Miran is known for supporting the goal of structurally weakening the US dollar – more on that here.

50: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hopped on a call to discuss a unified response to Trump’s tariffs, which currently stand at 50% against Brazil and 25% against India. The call comes the day after Lula announced he would try to rally BRICS countries to push back on the US leader’s trade policy.

8: Check m8. OpenAI’s model beatElon Musk’s Grok, and Google’s Gemini model came after a three day chess tournament this week. The competition took place between eight AI companies' normal AI products – rather than models designed for chess – testing their reasoning skills at a task they are still improving at.

Strategic abroad, shaky at home: Friedrich Merz’s first 100 days

Friedrich Merz, leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, gives a statement after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sacked Finance Minister Christian Lindner, before a session of the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, in Berlin, Germany, November 7, 2024.

Reuters/Liesa Johannssen

Hard Numbers: US doubles Maduro’s bounty, Trump appoints new Fed member, Modi and Lula combine forces, & more

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In this episode of Ian Bremmer’s Quick Take, Ian discusses the upcoming meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska.

In a first-of-its-kind deal, Nvidia and AMD will hand 15% of revenues from AI chip sales to China over to the US government in exchange for export licenses.

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Subscribe to GZERO Media's newsletter: Signal

Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman discusses rising antisemitism—and what he sees as the Trump administration’s weaponization of it to attack higher education.

As Trump targets elite universities with lawsuits and funding cut threats, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman warns that critical scientific research— not to mention the pursuit of truth itself—may be on the line.

Harvard Law's Noah Feldman unpacks the Trump administration’s legal and political escalations with elite US universities.

It has passed very strongly. #PUPPETREGIME

Twelve days of war earlier this summer demonstrated that Iran has little capacity to defend its cities or its nuclear facilities from Israeli and US strikes. But it still likely retains some uranium supplies, so it has options.