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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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Nagorno-Karabakh protests | GZERO World with Ian Bremmer - the podcast

Special podcast: View from "fully blockaded" Nagorno-Karabakh during Armenia's conflict with Azerbaijan

Listen: The people of the small Armenian enclave known as Nagorno-Karabakh have no way to get out. Recently, the long-simmering conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh has once again heated up with Armenia accusing Azerbaijan of blocking the only road that connects the disputed region with Armenia. The Azeris deny this and blame Russian peacekeepers. There are extremely heated opinions on both sides to this issue. Regardless of where the blame lies, the humanitarian risks to the region are growing. 30,000 kids cannot go to school as roads and gas have been cut off. Food can't be brought in because the airport is closed. In a special edition of the GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer speaks to Ruben Vardanyan, who last month became state minister in charge of Nagorno-Karabakh, which the Armenians refer to as Artsakh. Vardanyn discusses the blockade and reality on the ground, his region's hope for democracy, and the history of Artsakh's 30-year struggle to break free of Azerbaijan, whose government does not recognize the territory as independent.

Listen: The people of the small Armenian enclave known as Nagorno-Karabakh have no way to get out. Recently, the long-simmering conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh has once again heated up with Armenia accusing Azerbaijan of blocking the only road that connects the disputed region with Armenia. The Azeris deny this and blame Russian peacekeepers. There are extremely heated opinions on both sides to this issue. Regardless of where the blame lies, the humanitarian risks to the region are growing. 30,000 kids cannot go to school as roads and gas have been cut off.

Food can't be brought in because the airport is closed. In a special edition of the GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer speaks to Ruben Vardanyan, who last month became state minister in charge of Nagorno-Karabakh, which the Armenians refer to as Artsakh.


Vardanyn discusses the blockade and reality on the ground, his region's hope for democracy, and the history of Artsakh's 30-year struggle to break free of Azerbaijan, whose government does not recognize the territory as independent. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, people living in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted in a referendum to become free from the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic. Now, Russian peacemaking forces won't commit to staying very long in the region, and the European Union and the US have called for an end to the blockade. How will a resolution be reached, and what impact might this have on the Armenia/Azerbaijan peace agreement?

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.

More from GZERO World Podcast

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..

Three months into the Iran war, the Strait of Hormuz is in a standoff and the geopolitical fallout is spreading fast. Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute breaks down with Ian Bremmer... More >

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.

Bloomberg reporter Katrina Manson joins Ian Bremmer to discuss Project Maven, the program that brought AI to the heart of US warfare, and the risks that come with it.... More >

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This week, Ian Bremmer sits down with University of Miami historian and Cuba expert Michael Bustamante to make sense of the US-Cuba standoff.

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North Korea's nuclear gamble pays off, with the WSJ's Jonathan Cheng

The Kim dynasty has outlasted every threat for 80 years. Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Cheng explains how, and why the Iran war just made Kim Jong Un seem untouchable.

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