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The 2024 Summer Olympics kick off in Paris, France, this week, as the world’s most elite athletes and over 300,000 spectators gather along the Seine for one of the most ambitious Opening Ceremonies in the history of the Games. But will Paris pull it off?
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins for a preview of what to expect at the 2024 Paris Olympics, along with security challenges and political concerns going into this year’s Games. Global conflicts loom large, threatening to overshadow the City of Light’s big celebration. Following the IOC ban on Russia’s Olympic Committee due to the war in Ukraine, Russia has been spreading AI-generated misinformation around the Games, increasing the threat of terrorism. The 2024 Games will be a huge challenge because the Olympic sites are embedded throughout the city of Paris and across France. The logistics are so complicated Jenkins predicts it will be “the most difficult Olympics to secure by a long shot.”
Look for the full interview with Sally Jenkins on GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, airing on US public television soon (check local listings.)
Season 7 of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, launches nationwide on 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 (🔔).
- What We’re Watching: Putin’s propaganda, new Iran-Israel feud, Title 42 tussle ›
- Ian Explains: Who does China and Russia want to win the US election, Biden or Trump? ›
- France’s center right splits over cooperating with Le Pen ›
- Politics, protest & the Olympics: the IOC’s Dick Pound ›
- Paris 2024 Olympics chief: “We are ready” ›
China's top diplomat Wang Yi speaks at a meeting with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts, Yoko Kamikawa and Park Jin, in Busan, South Korea, on Nov. 26, 2023.
12: Ukraine’s top diplomatmet with China’s foreign minister on Wednesday, signaling that China would like to play a more central role in finding a diplomatic end to the conflict. The talk comes after China’s previous attempt to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, a 12-point plan put forward in 2023, wasquickly dismissed by European leaders for being pro-Russia.
1,000: Ahead of Israel’s opening football match against Mali at the Olympic Games on Wednesday night, around1,000 French police officers formed an “anti-terror perimeter.” The game, along with a match between Ukraine and Iraq, have both been given the designation of high-risk because of their connections to global conflicts.
200,000: In New Zealand, an independent investigation found that more than200,000 people are estimated to have been abused by state organizations entrusted with their care. Many of the victims were children in foster care, and the abuse included sexual assault, electric shocks and chemical restraints, sterilization, starvation, and beatings.
600 million: UN officials said that levels of hunger are set to remain “shamefully” high in a report that predicts almost600 million people will be undernourished by 2030 – half of which will be in Africa, putting it on track to overtake Asia as the continent with the most hunger in the world. Hunger rates have jumped in the wake of COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and are likely to only worsen as climate change progresses.
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How will Biden dropping out of the presidential race overshadow Netanyahu's US visit?
Oh, was it happening today? I didn't notice, I was so busy focused on Biden dropping out. No, clearly, it is a massive benefit for Biden that it is now less of a deal. Probably means less demonstrations, means less media coverage. It is a big problem, right? I mean, you've got the US top ally in the Middle East, Israel, the leader is clearly disliked by Biden. Kamala Harris not showing up to preside over Senate. She's, you know, otherwise disposed at a prearranged meeting in Indianapolis. And then you've got Netanyahu going down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the guy that he wants to become president, former President Donald Trump. All of that is problematic for Biden but less problematic because US political news at home is so overwhelming and headline-worthy.
Can the China-brokered agreement between Hamas and Fatah help bring Palestinian peace?
Unclear. I mean, the fact that Hamas, which is seen as a terrorist organization, and rightly so in my view, by the United States, by most of the West, and certainly by Israel, now has a peace agreement with Fatah, definitely brings the Palestinians closer together. But frankly, since October 7th, the Palestinians have only become more radicalized as a population; just like in Israel, the Jews have become more radicalized as a population, both less interested in peace. The rest of the world is very interested in peace, but very hard to get from here to there. I do think there is a chance that we can still get that six-week agreement because the Knesset is going to be out of session until October, which means that Netanyahu doesn't have to worry about getting thrown out of office if he has a six-week agreement and goes back to fighting, the far right, by the time they could throw him out, the Knesset would be back in. That's interesting and worth looking at.
After a long hot summer of French politics, is the Olympics a rallying moment for Macron?
Not at all. He can't get a government together. That has proved very challenging for him. 2027 still looks like the end of centrism in France, at least for a while. Not going to stop me from watching the Olympics though.
Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell attend the informal meeting of European heads of state or government, in Granada, Spain October 6, 2023.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell announced on Monday that Hungary, which holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union, has lost the right to host the next meeting of foreign and defense ministers over its stance on the war in Ukraine.
The controversy: Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this month and accused the EU of having a "pro-war policy,” spurring an uproar in Brussels.
Hungary is also upset about Ukraine’s decision last month to adopt sanctions blocking the transit of oil to Central Europe by Lukoil, sparking fears of supply shortages in Budapest. Hungary relies on Moscow for 70% of its oil imports — and on Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil firm, for half that amount.
Budapest responded to Borrell by announcing that it would not refund EU members any of the6.5 billion euros they expected for transferring arms to Ukraine unless Kyiv allows oil shipments from Lukoil to resume to Central Europe.
Why it matters: Since Russia's invasion, member states that gave weapons to Ukraine have been able to ask for compensation for transferring munitions, giving Hungary monetary leverage to get the oil it wants. Hungary and Slovakia asked the European Commission on Monday to mediate with Ukraine, and the issue would go to court unless the EU executive body acts within three days.
EncroChat and Europol logos are seen in this illustration taken, June 27, 2023.
Europol, Europe’s policing agency, said it’s seen a marked increase in AI-generated child sexual abuse material, aka CSAM. And they predicted it’ll get worse: “The use of AI which allows child sex offenders to generate or alter child sex abuse material is set to further proliferate in the near future," the agency said in a statement. The technology also makes it easier for perpetrators to cyberbully and sexually extort victims for financial gain.
In a new report, Europol warns of the dangers of deepfake child abuse material. But it also says that the advent of AI makes it difficult to detect what’s real and what’s fake. And AI-generated images could be trained on real CSAM. Massive AI training datasets have been found to include numerous instances of CSAM.A kamikaze drone with a warhead is performing a demonstration flight during the 2nd Drone Racing Tournament by the Federation of Military Technological Sports of Ukraine in Bilohorodka, Kyiv region, north-central Ukraine, on July 21, 2024.
Ukrainian startups are rushing to manufacture AI-enabled drones that could give them an edge in the ongoing war with Russia. Swarmer is one such company that’s working on the technology, which allows for automated drone swarms in which humans only intervene to sign off on aerial strikes.
AI-enabled drones could also prevent Russian signal-jamming because they’re not dependent on maintaining connections with human pilots, a problem that increasingly undermines existing drones. By one estimate, Ukrainian drones are only achieving a 30-50% target hit rate currently, but that could improve to 80% with AI, Max Makarchuk of Ukrainian accelerator Brave1 told Reuters.
Ukraine has become a testing ground for AI warfare. While much of that technology comes from US companies, the need for defense technology has also spurred innovation in the domestic Ukrainian market.The guard has changed in Britain. For the first time in 14 years, the Labour Party is back in power, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who took office on July 5.
Starmer was set to introduce a long-awaited artificial intelligence bill last Wednesday as part of the King’s Speech, in which Charles III read out the new government’s agenda. But the AI bill was pulled at last minute from the address for undisclosed reasons.
We’ll take a look at Labour’s agenda for potential AI legislation — what they’re planning, when it could come, and how their focus will differ from their Tory predecessors. But first, let’s examine Rishi Sunak’s legacy and whether he accomplished his goal of being a global leader on AI.
What did Sunak accomplish?
Sunak’s crowning moment was the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park on Nov. 1-2, 2023. The summit, held at the famed World War II codebreaking facility, was a global gathering on artificial intelligence safety aimed at international cooperation to deter AI’s worst-case scenarios from occurring. The Bletchley Declaration, the resulting document, was signed by the UK, the United States, and the European Union, but also, notably, China, along with two dozen other signatories. (And Sunak got to pal around with tech CEOs such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman, xAI’s Elon Musk, and DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman — who has since joined Microsoft.)
Bletchley was an important international agreement, but it also signaled that the UK’s leadership — under Sunak, at least — would be light-touch. He didn’t call for AI legislation, preferring to deploy Bletchley as a voluntary global corporate and government agreement.
Nick Reiners, a senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, said the hyperfocus on “existential risk” of AI is somewhat of a niche Silicon Valley obsession, a crowd that Sunak was interested in appeasing. “He saw AI as a way to build a legacy in a short time and this issue was something that animated him personally.”
What’s on deck for Labour?
Scott Bade, also a senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, doubts Starmer will follow Sunak’s lead on AI, but said he won’t throw away the standing that Sunak won for the country either. “Starmer does not have a signature global issue yet, and is unlikely to see AI as that issue,” Bade said. “But I'd be surprised if the UK didn’t keep showing up at the table to build on what Sunak did since this is the niche Britain now has in AI global governance. It will just be dialed down a peg or two.”
Compared with Sunak’s existentialist concerns, Starmer should be more focused on the short-term harms of artificial intelligence, Reiners said, citing workers’ rights and bias as examples. And with that comes the promise of actual legislation.
The bill that Labour was set to introduce would have reined in the most powerful large language models — but actual regulation seems to have been pushed off. In his speech, King Charles read off bills about cybersecurity as well as digital information, which seem to have won out over the AI bill, at least for now. “My suspicion is that they opted not to present this [AI regulation] now as they didn’t want to upset their growth narrative,” one tech leader told the Financial Times. Reiners said that departmental limits on parliamentary bills per session could be a constraint as well, and that AI was a lower priority.
When an AI bill is introduced, expect it to still be light-touch relative to the more expansive European AI Act. “I would say the UK is still generally respected as taking a thoughtful innovation-friendly approach to regulation in general,” Reiners noted.
The UK is home to successful AI startups such as Stability AI, maker of the image model Stable Diffusion, Google’s DeepMind lab, and the digital avatar company Synthesia, which we profiled in last week’s edition. And big AI-focused US tech companies, such as Microsoft and Salesforce have recently invested in the country. With the country’s economy on the ropes, Starmer’s challenge is to introduce legislative reforms that won’t totally scare off Big Tech.Latest
Biden's exit overshadows Netanyahu's US visit
Europol’s CSAM problem
Ukraine aims to produce game-changing drones
From Sunak to Starmer: What’s next for AI in the UK?
