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The United States will no longer play global policeman, and no one else wants the job. This is not a G-7 or a G-20 world. Welcome to the GZERO, a world made volatile by an intensifying international battle for power and influence. Every week on this podcast, Ian Bremmer will interview the world leaders and the thought leaders shaping our GZERO World.

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Caravan of Taliban soldiers with guns held upright

Podcast: Don’t believe the “Taliban 2.0” hype, cautions journalist Ahmed Rashid

Listen: With the US gone and the Taliban back in control, Afghanistan faces a long winter. Mounting food insecurity and a crumbling economy have left many Afghans feeling abandoned. The international community could help solve this humanitarian crisis, but can they trust the Taliban? Ian Bremmer sat down with journalist and author Ahmed Rashid to learn more about the Taliban today. Few people know more about the Taliban than Rashid, who wrote the book on the group — literally. In the months after 9/11, his critically acclaimed 2000 study Taliban became a go-to reference as the US geared up to invade Afghanistan and knock the militant group from power. Twenty years later, how much has the group changed since the days of soccer-stadium executions, television bans, and blowing up world heritage sites?

Transcript

Listen: With the US gone and the Taliban back in control, Afghanistan faces a long winter. Mounting food insecurity and a crumbling economy have left many Afghans feeling abandoned. The international community could help solve this humanitarian crisis, but can they trust the Taliban?

Ian Bremmer sat down with journalist and author Ahmed Rashid to learn more about the Taliban today. Few people know more about the Taliban than Rashid, who wrote the book on the group — literally. In the months after 9/11, his critically acclaimed 2000 study Taliban became a go-to reference as the US geared up to invade Afghanistan and knock the militant group from power. Twenty years later, how much has the group changed since the days of soccer-stadium executions, television bans, and blowing up world heritage sites?

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.
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Winners and losers of the Iran war, with Kori Schake



Operation Epic Fury may be over, but the Iran war is far from resolved. On this week's episode, American Enterprise Institute Kori Schake joins Ian Bremmer to discuss the conflict's global ripple effects.

With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to commercial shipping, the US finds itself in what Schake calls a Mexican standoff, unable to force Iran's hand without dramatic escalation, and unwilling to accept the humiliation of ceding control of one of the world's most critical waterways. Meanwhile, Washington's two biggest rivals are gaining ground. Russia is cashing in on higher oil prices at a moment when the Kremlin was under mounting financial pressure over Ukraine.

In Beijing, the Trump-Xi summit took place with the White House in a weakened position. The US needs China's help pressuring Iran, and Xi knows it. As Schake puts it: "It's an important measure of just how much President Trump has lost in starting the war in Iran and pursuing it in the way he has, that he's having to go appeal to China, America's most powerful potential adversary, for assistance in delivering us from a problem of our own creation."

The costs for US allies are adding up too. Partner countries are absorbing economic pain they had no hand in creating, with energy prices squeezing European economies. Schake also raises a harder structural question: with Patriot systems redirected from Europe to the Gulf and munitions stocks stretched thin, the war has laid bare the limits of the American defense industrial base, and what it means for the credibility of US commitments around the world..

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How AI is transforming warfare and the US military with Katrina Manson


Ian Bremmer sits with Bloomberg defense tech reporter Katrina Manson, who spent years reporting on Project Maven for her new book on the Pentagon's AI push.

The program launched in 2017 with a narrow mandate: use machine learning to process drone footage. It has since expanded into something far more ambitious. Autonomous weapons, drone swarming technology, and AI-assisted targeting are now central to how the Pentagon talks about modern warfare.

The tech rollout is fast, but not reliable. Algorithms fail when the battlefield changes. The targeting process is accelerating to the point where operators are clicking through AI recommendations with little ability to question them. Manson says the military knows about AI's vulnerability "to sycophancy, to escalation, to bias and hallucination," and has not yet found adequate solutions.

Bremmer and Manson also take on the US-China AI race, the IDF's use of AI in Gaza, and what the Anthropic contract dispute reveals about the fault lines between commercial AI ethics and military requirements.


Subscribe to the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.

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