Celebrating America 250
September 09, 2026
America’s next chapter is being built now. Bank of America is mobilizing $250 billion over the next 18 months to help finance the infrastructure behind it.
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The cascading consequences of 9/11 for America and the Middle East
44m
“This will devastate America and the region!” I howled as I watched the second plane slam into the Twin Towers in New York from my distant Beirut living room.
Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, a decade after the September 11th attacks, and al-Qaeda’s core leadership was dismantled. But my fears were not misplaced. Bin Laden achieved something more consequential than survival: he provoked the United States into a series of self-inflicted wounds that reshaped the Middle East for the worse — and eroded America’s own standing in it.
The US-led invasion of Iraq is the starkest example. Launched on a since-discredited premise linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda, it removed a ruthless dictator without a coherent plan for what came after. The resulting vacuum produced sectarian civil war, empowered Iran, and ultimately incubated ISIS, a movement more brutal and expansive than al-Qaeda. Rather than containing extremism, the war multiplied it.
Afghanistan followed a similar arc. What began as a justified response to remove the Taliban stretched into America’s longest war, costing trillions of dollars and vast numbers of lives. It ended in 2021 with the Taliban back in power, as though two decades of intervention had rearranged the furniture rather than changed the outcome. Bin Laden had reportedly hoped to lure Washington into precisely this kind of prolonged, bleeding entanglement, modeled on the Soviet experience in Afghanistan.
The war on terror also carried costs at home and abroad. Mass surveillance, indefinite detention, and profiling of Muslim communities damaged America’s moral authority and its relationships with Muslim populations worldwide, feeding the narrative of Western hostility toward Islam that extremist groups relied on for recruitment. Authoritarian governments across the Middle East and North Africa, meanwhile, borrowed the language of counterterrorism to justify their own repression, often with tacit American support.
In this light, the “victory” over al-Qaeda looks pyrrhic: bin Laden died, but the strategic overreach he helped provoke left the region less stable, and the United States’ global standing measurably diminished.
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Former top US official regrets Iraq becoming a ‘magnet’ for terrorism
18h
If Michael Chertoff has one regret from his tenure in the Bush administration, it's Iraq.
Chertoff, who led the Department of Homeland Security for four years after 9/11, said the US-led war there not only distracted from Afghanistan, but the unclear mission and lack of post-war planning ultimately turned Iraq into “a magnet for all kinds of attacks on Americans,” consuming resources and attention that could have been used elsewhere.
In an interview with Ian Bremmer filmed around the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Chertoff reflected on America’s counterterrorism strategy and the decisions that drew the country deeper into Iraq.
“There was uncertainty about how long we were going to stay and how we were going to deal with the disorder there,” he said. At first, Chertoff explained, there was a sense that Iraq’s instability wasn’t America’s problem. But that became harder to maintain as the US settled in for what would become an eight-year mission.
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The problem with "wars of choice"
19h
In 2003, the US led an invasion of Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction as part of the post-9/11 global War on Terror. No WMDs were found, but the US was drawn into eight years of a brutal, costly war.
Richard Engel, NBC's chief foreign correspondent, was one of the few American TV journalists on the ground in Baghdad when the invasion began. In fact, he was there when Iraqis and US forces famously toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein. “I was right there, and watched it happen,” Engel recalled. People were cheering and excited, he said, but that sentiment only lasted “a little while.”
In a discussion on GZERO World three years ago, Ian Bremmer and Engel reflected on the lessons from the Iraq war. While many Iraqis expressed their joy that “Americans were coming in and getting rid of Saddam,” the situation deteriorated quickly. The Bush administration made a lot of mistakes, while lingering resentment among Iraq’s Sunni Muslim community gave way to animosity.
For Engel, the key takeaway is to avoid “a war of choice” and the long-term, unforeseen blowback it can unleash. “War truly must be the last resort.”
The First Five Minutes: Using AI to detect wildfires
22h
Across California, AI linked to nearly 1,300 cameras is helping firefighters spot the earliest signs of wildfire smoke, sometimes hours before the first 911 call. Developed by ALERTCalifornia, along with fire departments, wildfire experts, and Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, the system analyzes millions of images each day and sends verified alerts within minutes, giving first responders precious time to act before a small fire becomes a major crisis.
Read more here.
How the AfD's rise could reshape German politics
22h
In this Quick Take, Ian Bremmer breaks down the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party's historic win in the Saxony-Anhalt state election and what it could mean for the country's political future.
The far-right party, considered extremist in many German states, came in first with 43.8% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, more than doubling its 2021 result. It is the first time since World War II that a far-right party has won a German state election outright. The center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the ruling party, came in at just 17.2%.
Ian explains the forces driving the AfD's surge: economic frustration, anger over immigration, and opposition to Germany's support for Ukraine. He also lays out the party's core positions, including ending Ukraine aid, lifting sanctions on Russia, leaving the EU, and rejecting what it views as ideologically driven policies from Berlin.
Though the AfD cannot form a government alone, Ian argues the longstanding firewall keeping other parties from working with them is likely to break. A weakened federal government and no national election until 2029 could give the AfD the runway to grow even larger.
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AfD’s big win sends shockwaves around Germany, Australia wants to give social media users an algorithm opt-out, Milei tests Falklands recognition by suing oil company
September 08, 2026
AfD trounces rivals in German state election
The far-right party won a landslide in Saxony-Anhalt this weekend, taking nearly 44% of the vote. The result left embattled German Chancellor Friedrich Merz “in shock” – his incumbent center-right CDU party finished a distant second, at 17%. The AfD, an anti-establishment party that opposes immigration and favors closer ties with Russia, has surged in recent years, especially in economically struggling parts of former East Germany. The party is now three seats short of a majority in Saxony-Anhalt. Establishment parties have ruled out working with the AfD, which German intelligence characterizes as “extremist,” but the party is aiming to pluck off enough defectors in order to form the country’s first far-right government since World War II. Meanwhile, two more state elections loom on September 20th: the AfD tops polls in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and is a leader even in liberal-leaning Berlin. Merz has pledged to remain in power, and to improve “communication” with voters.
Australia wants to allow social media users to opt out of algorithm
Australia plans to give social media users the ability to opt out of algorithms, as it continues to establish itself as a world leader in social media regulation. Under new legislation proposed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government on Tuesday, users would be able to choose to only see content from accounts they follow, as opposed to being fed content suggested by highly personalized algorithms. Companies that don’t comply with the proposed law could face penalties up to $79 million. Opponents accuse the government of censorship and algorithm “rigging,” while the social media lobbying group DIGI defended the tech as valuable for users wanting to discover diverse content. Countries including Spain, Britain, and Malaysia have since followed Australia’s ban on social media for children, which was announced late last year, though research shows it has only been partly effective.
Milei makes his move on the Falklands
Argentina is once again resurfacing its sovereignty claim over the British-controlled Falkland Islands. President Javier Milei’s government announced on Monday that it will file criminal charges against Israeli energy company Navitas Petroleum for plans to drill around the islands under a UK-issued license that Buenos Aires does not recognize. The territorial dispute is a long-running one: Argentina invaded the islands in 1982, but lost a 10-week war with Britain, accelerating the collapse of the Argentine military dictatorship. Successive Argentine governments have maintained the claim ever since and is officially enshrined in their constitution. But this latest push has an unusual source of momentum: President Donald Trump. He said last week that the US may review its officially neutral position on ownership of the islands amid tensions with Britain over its lack of support for the US war with Iran.
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In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, the global fight against terrorism was overwhelmingly focused on the Middle East. Al-Qaeda had found sanctuary under the Taliban, and the United States was about to embark on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that would define the War on Terror for the next two decades. Twenty-five years later, the geography of terrorism looks very different.
South Asia also remains a major hub of terrorism, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the most dramatic shift in the number of terrorist attacks has been toward sub-Saharan Africa. The rise of Boko Haram since 2009 in northeastern Nigeria helped turn the Sahel into a hot spot of terrorism.
Al-Qaeda affiliates have established roots in the region through militants pushed south from Algeria, eventually building relationships with local armed groups. ISIS followed a similar model, encouraging existing organizations to pledge allegiance to its global movement. Boko Haram did so in 2015, giving rise to ISIS’s “West Africa Province.”
The Sahel proved to be a fertile ground for insurgency. Weak governments and porous borders left huge areas with little state presence, while poverty, sectarian tensions, corruption, and abuses by security forces provided grievances extremists could exploit. A wave of military coups has further weakened institutions, and the withdrawal of French and other Western forces has created new security vacuums that military governments have struggled to fill.
The terrorist threat that defined the beginning of the 21st century hasn’t disappeared. But the conditions that allow it to thrive, and the places where those conditions exist, have changed significantly.
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The summer of 2001 was a slow one for journalists. It marked my first few months in the business, and I have long referred to that time as “the summer of shark attacks and Chandra Levy.”
Cable news had found its footing just a few years before, turbo-charged by the O.J. Simpson trial's round-the-clock drama, and it needed feeding. Shark attacks launched hundreds of reporters at beachside stand-ups from Florida to North Carolina, despite the fact that 2001 actually saw fewer attacks than the year before.
The disappearance of congressional intern Chandra Levy and her alleged affair with California Congressman Gary Condit had camera crews camped outside his apartment building constantly, as TV legal pundits offered endless theories on the mystery.
On the morning of September 11th, Levy's parents were reportedly on their way to tape an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. It was, as Time later put it, a media ecosystem turning fear into “infotainment.”
Then the planes hit, and everything changed.
As I sat on my couch that night, seeing the endless loop of images from the day and able to smell the rancid electrical smoke coming from downtown Manhattan, I blasted my resume out to any station manager whose email address I could find. Two days later, I was working at MSNBC. One of my first assignments was to find a large wall map of the world that clearly showed Afghanistan. (That’s the truth.)
Broadcast networks aired wall-to-wall coverage for 93 straight hours after the attacks. In many ways, it was the last moment when Americans turned to network anchors for the gravity and authority they brought. But when those networks eventually returned to regular programming, viewers who wanted more came to cable, and largely stayed.
My time at MSNBC gave me a front-row seat to a historical shift. Story selection and coverage changed in an instant, but simultaneously the ever-expanding media landscape was eroding trust in the institution overall.
According to Pew Research data, the attacks led to a sustained increase in foreign policy and global conflict coverage on evening newscasts. After years of cutting foreign bureaus and pulling back from geopolitics, American media was suddenly reminded, at catastrophic cost, that the world doesn't wait for a slow news cycle.
Public trust in the press also briefly surged in the aftermath of 9/11. According to Gallup data, 89% of Americans said the media’s coverage was good or excellent. But then began a long, largely unbroken decline.
In the 1970s, roughly 70% of Americans trusted the mass media to report the news fully and fairly. By the late 1990s, that had slipped to around 53%. It briefly held there in the early 2000s before falling below 50% in 2004, and it has never recovered. Today, only 28% of Americans express a great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media, an all-time low.
The attacks on 9/11 united us in ways I hadn’t seen before or since, but as the years of aftermath unfolded, a patriotism vs. skepticism schism began to grow. I remember in the weeks leading up to the US invasion of Iraq looking up at the monitors in our control room to see a segment on “freedom fries” airing on Fox News, as an MSNBC anchor was about to interview a Code Pink anti-war activist.
More than 20 years later, those ideological divides are even more present in many publications and programs. On September 11, 2001, 90% of Americans said their primary source of news was television. Just 5% cited the Internet. Today, more than half of the population gets its news from social media. Filter bubbles, algorithms, and echo chambers are the new broadcasts of our time, offering countless choices about whom to believe and what to believe.
The attacks didn’t cause that change, but they set in motion forces that are still at play today. September 11th also marked the end of the long era of collective experience, decades of gathering around a television and watching the same events in real time as tens of millions of others.
Just as the global goodwill extended to America on 9/11 would prove fleeting and evaporate in the smoke of the Iraq war, so too did the credibility the media had earned by covering that day with such gravity. Both are still waiting to be reclaimed.
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Don't fly off the handle.
Far-right AfD poised to win big state election in Germany, Nigel Farage engulfed in new scandal, Pentagon says location data was used to attack US troops
September 04, 2026
Far-right AfD set to win German state election on Sunday
The party, which opposes immigration and favors closer ties with Russia, has a double-digit polling lead in Saxony-Anhalt, a former East German region where many people have felt economically and socially left behind since reunification in 1989. That poses a big dilemma for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right CDU party, which is polling second in Saxony-Anhalt: it has ruled out a coalition with the AfD, which German intelligence has classified as an “extremist” party. But it’s also rejected cooperation with the far-left Left party, which is currently polling third. To prevent the AfD from forming Germany’s first far-right local government since World War II, Merz may have to make some bitter compromises. And this weekend is just the start of his woes. The AfD, which has surged in national popularity and is now the second-largest party in the Bundestag, is set to make gains in two other upcoming elections in the former East this month as well.
Farage in hot water after undercover donations sting
Two of Nigel Farage’s aides have stepped down after undercover journalists caught them on camera appearing to arrange clandestine foreign political donations to his far-right party, Reform UK. Another video shows Farage himself thanking the journalists, who posed as an American businessman and his British son, for their support. British law requires disclosure of all political donations and bans contributions from foreign sources. This is not the first time that Farage has come under fire for undisclosed donations. Earlier this summer, he triggered a by-election after an investigation was launched into an undisclosed £5 million ($6.7 million) personal gift from a crypto billionaire. At the party’s annual conference today, Farage said he had “not done anything wrong” and that the new report had been “entrapment.” This latest report could affect his previously high chances of becoming Britain’s next prime minister, with his favorability rating falling to 23% in August.
The Pentagon addresses location data vulnerability
The US military is disabling advertising trackers on military-issued phones and computers following reports that commercially available location data was used to locate and attack American troops in the Middle East. The Air Force, Army, Navy, and US Special Operations Command have all taken steps to limit the tracking technology known as mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs), which advertisers use to track usage locations and other useful advertising data across users’ devices. It’s not the military’s first run-in with the risks of location tracking. In 2018, the Pentagon restricted the use of GPS on mobile devices in war zones and sensitive locations after US intelligence analysts noted that GPS data from the popular running app Strava inadvertently revealed the locations and layouts of military installations worldwide.
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Gall-Peters, Mollweide, Eckert IV – take your pick. There are plenty of world maps that show Africa in closer proportion to its true size, and today the UN General Assembly will vote on a resolution encouraging governments, schools, and international organizations to use them. Led by Togo and backed by the African Union, the push targets the centuries-old Mercator projection, which dramatically enlarges landmasses farther from the equator. The vote is nonbinding, but supporters hope it will make more proportional maps the global norm.
Think you know what's going on around the world? Here's your chance to prove it.
From Tokyo to London, global bond markets are rattled. What is driving investors to sell off government bonds around the world?
- A) A better ROI on crypto
- B) Fears about rising inflation and unsustainable government spending
- C) NFTs are making a comeback
Take the quiz to see if you guessed correctly!
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