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Politics
100: On Friday, 100 boats carrying over 10,000 of the world’s top athletes will float down the River Seine in Paris to kick off the biggest global sporting event. For the first time in Olympic history, the opening ceremony will not be held inside a stadium — a decision that stirred plenty of controversy due to concerns about the river’s cleanliness. France invested $1.5 billion to clean up the river ahead of the Summer Games.
2-1: Morocco defeated Argentina 2-1 in the opening match of the Olympic football tournament on Wednesday, after Moroccan fans stormed the field to protest a goal by Argentina that tied the score. The game was suspended for nearly two hours before the goal was ruled offside and disallowed; play then resumed – in an empty stadium.
30: Russian-lawyer-turned-French-chef Kirill Griaznov wasarrested on Sunday and faces up to 30 years in jail for charges over an alleged Russian plot to destabilize France during the Olympics. In a raid on his apartment, documents were found linking the chef to Russia’s secret service organization, the FSB. Details first emerged two months ago based on a call French intelligence intercepted in which Griaznov reportedlytold a Russian intelligence agent, “The French are going to have an opening ceremony like there has never been before.”
70: Hundreds of thousands have traveled to Paris to watch and compete in the Olympic Games, but trade in the City of Love hasgone down by 70% this past week. Heavy security measures from the Louvre to Île-Saint-Louis have left many shops and monuments entirely inaccessible and other areas restricted to those granted a special QR code in advance.
President Joe Biden meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., July 25, 2024.
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting the US this week, Hezbollah released drone footage of an Israeli air base located roughly 31 miles south of the Lebanese border.
The drone footage once again raises questions about Israel’s air defenses, which also failed to intercept a recent Houthi drone that killed one person in Tel Aviv. But the fact that Hezbollah publicized the footage is more about sending a message on its capabilities than a warning of an impending attack; the militant group has been clear that it does not seek a wider war in the region.
Israel and Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon, have repeatedly traded cross-border fire since the war in Gaza began in October. Hezbollah has said it would stop attacking Israel if a cease-fire was reached in Gaza.
Both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were expected to urge Netanyahu to work toward a truce in Gaza when they met with him at the White House on Thursday. The meetings came a day after the Israeli leader’s controversial address to Congress, which was met with criticism from Democratic lawmakers. The speech also prompted anger in Israel and protests in Tel Aviv, with demonstrators calling for Netanyahu to focus his energy on a deal that would free the remaining hostages in Gaza.
Before heading home, Netanyahu is set to meet with former President Donald Trump in Florida on Friday, and we’ll be watching to see what emerges from that.
US artistic gymnast Simone Biles practices during an official training session at Bercy Arena in Paris on July 25, 2024, ahead of the Paris Olympics.
Every year, they try to tell us the Olympics aren’t political — and every year, we are reminded that’s nonsense. This week, French authorities made arrests to thwart suspected terror attacks linked to the Paris Summer Games, and just hours before the opening ceremony today, France’s high-speed rail network withstood attacks that resulted in multiple fires and delays.
The SNCF rail firm described it as “a massive attack aimed at paralyzing the network,” noting that fires were deliberately set to target TGV installations. At least 800,000 customers were affected as trains were diverted and canceled on Friday, and rail operators warn that needed repairs could mean disruptions extend through the weekend.
These disruptions in the run-up to the start of the Games are stark reminders that the Olympics have always been intertwined with politics and global tensions – and that there is a long history of them being more than just sporting spectacles.
From its earliest beginnings in ancient Greece, the on-field athletics have been a forum for off-the-rails politics: alliances, conflicts, and intrigues among the city-states. And in its modern incarnation, the Games have been no less political.
How could they not be? They’re a weaponless metaphor for war among nations. Who gets to host, compete, and win is a matter of priceless prestige and, of course, big money. What happens after the torch is lit is often a reflection of political battles that are going on elsewhere around the world.
This year will be no different. Here are three things to watch:
The US-China beef over dope. In 2021, nearly two dozen Chinese athletes tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs before the Tokyo Games.
The World Anti-Doping Agency, aka WADA, declined to investigate further because the samples were collected by Chinese anti-doping officials who said the athletes had been contaminated by hotel food (really, they said this). WADA had no authority to push further, it said. The athletes are now in Paris, ready to compete.
The US government, however, has opened its own probe into WADA’s response. This has greatly annoyed the Olympic bigwigs. On Wednesday, the IOC awarded the 2034 Winter Games to the US on the condition that American leaders fight to scrap the investigation. Fat chance of that happening.
The US and China locked in a dispute about science that a multilateral organization is feebly trying to tamp down? It’s COVID-24!
The long shadow of Gaza: In 2023, Russia — along with its mini-me, Belarus — was banned from Olympic competitions over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
This year, Israel has been in the spotlight over its invasion of Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. With the ICC having issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes, pro-Palestine activist groups have called for Israel’s isolation and exclusion. A far-left French politician caused an uproar by saying Israeli athletes were “not welcome” in Paris. More officially, the Palestinian Olympic Committee has petitioned, in vain, for Israel’s exclusion on the grounds that the invasion has killed hundreds of Palestinian athletes.
Meanwhile, days before the opening ceremony, German sportswear company Adidas was in hot water for selecting Palestinian-American model Gigi Hadid, an outspoken supporter of Palestinian aspirations, to be the face of an ad reintroducing a 1972 model sneaker. Critics immediately pointed out that it was poor judgment: 1972 was the year Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Critics of the critics, meanwhile, said it was unfair to conflate support for Palestine with terrorism.
Whether it’s protests or political statements, expect the war in Gaza to figure prominently in the Games again before long.
The state of the stateless. In a competition among nation states, there is one group of athletes who represent none. This year there are 37 athletes on the IOC’s Refugee Team, the largest contingent of refugee and asylum-seeker athletes since the team was created in 2016.
They hail from 11 countries, including Syria, Sudan, Iran, and Afghanistan, which have seen some of the world’s worst refugee crises in recent memory. They include female breakdancer Manizha Talash, who fled the Taliban; weightlifter Yekta Jamali Galeh, a refugee from the Iranian theocracy; Syrian-born taekwondo fighter Adnan Khankan, who fled the civil war as a child; and Eritrean runner Tachlowini Gabriyesos.
The team itself has stoked controversy: Havana, for example, has disputed the inclusion of two Cuban athletes who it says are defectors and not victims of persecution or displacement.
But the refugee team’s growing size is a reflection of a broader, grim reality: There are currently 110 million people displaced from their homes around the world – the highest number since the World War II era.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators wave Palestinian flags outside Union Station, on the day of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill, in Washington, U.S., July 24, 2024.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress Wednesday afternoon amid protests both inside and outside the US Capitol. He framed the war with Hamas as part of a larger conflict between the United States and Iran, and proposed an alliance of anti-Iran nations to be called “The Abraham Alliance.”
In doing so, Netanyahu cast Israeli troops as fighting on the frontlines for American interests, echoing similar sentiments about Ukrainians fighting on behalf of Western democracy. That said, he thanked President Joe Biden multiple times for his support and also lavished praise on former President Donald Trump. He’ll meet with both men this week before going home.
“It was a curious speech. On the one hand, Netanyahu went out of his way to thank Biden and note Israel’s debt to the US, and then followed it up immediately by listing Trump’s achievements,” noted Eurasia Group expert Greg Brew. “But overall, it struck the expected tone, emphasizing that Israel’s confrontation with Iran was really about protecting America.”
Netanyahu’s speech met with mostly warm reception in the halls of Congress, though a few boos were occasionally audible amid the applause. However, over 100 Congressional staffers called in sick in a coordinated protest action, and Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris declined to attend due to a scheduling conflict.
On the streets around Capitol Hill, more than 5,000 people — whom Netanyahu called “Iran’s useful idiots” — marched in protest. They chanted “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” and accused Netanyahu of genocide, while also directing considerable invective at riot gear-clad police lining the route. Around 1:40 p.m., GZERO witnessed police on Constitution Avenue detonate a tear gas canister, which caused a mild panic in the crowd and forced at least six protesters to seek care from on-site medics.
Speakers at a rally held before the march praised pro-Palestinian activists for their efforts in the US. “The reason Joe Biden is not at the top of the nomination for the Democratic Party today is because of you, my friends,” said activist Linda Sarsour, addressing the crowd. “The reason why Kamala Harris is not presiding over the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech is because of you.”
But few at the rally expressed hope for much change from a potential Harris administration — though Gabriel, 68, a retired driver from Maryland, said he thought Harris might “see Palestinians with more empathy.”
We’re watching how Harris talks about Israel on the campaign trail, as well as whether the young people who showed up in Washington will reignite protests on college campuses this fall.
Hard Numbers: Jamie Dimon’s promise, The godmother of AI, Some Japanese companies ignore AI, College football doppelgangers
JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon speaks at the Boston College Chief Executives Club luncheon in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., November 23, 2021.
5,000: Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said that he has about 2,000 employees working on data analytics, machine learning, and AI, and he predicts that number will blossom to 5,000 in the next few years. He also said the company has 400 AI-related projects, which should double to 800 in the next year alone.
1 billion: Computer scientist Fei-Fei Li, known as the “godmother of AI,” founded a startup called World Labs four months ago. It’s already valued at $1 billion. World Labs is a computer vision company, focused on understanding three-dimensional objects in the physical world. The company raised $100 million from Andreessen Horowitz and other venture capital firms in its latest funding round.
40: While nearly a quarter of Japanese companies have adopted AI, more than 40% told Reuters in a survey that they have no plans to do so. Another 35% say that they have plans to adopt the technology in the future. The AI industry is trying to prove itself not only to consumers but also businesses, so corporate adoption is key to its long-term success.
11,000: The college football video game “EA Sports College Football 25” is already a sensation in the US — a long-anticipated follow-up after the game studio ceased its college football title more than a decade ago. In order to build the real on-field players, EA used AI technology to turn 11,000 player headshots into in-game avatars in mere seconds.VP pick United States Senator JD Vance Republican of Ohio and Usha Vance after Former US President Donald J Trumps speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Fiserv Forum on Thursday, July 18, 2024. Monday night was Trumps first appearance since a rally in Pennsylvania, where he sustained injuries from an alleged bullet grazing his ear. Trump recounted the story in his speech, and also talked about Biden, immigration, and other topics.
On July 15, Donald Trump announced that he has selected JD Vance as his running mate. Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, rose to prominence after publishing his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” but his humble roots took him first to Yale Law School and then to the world of venture capital. He’s hailed as a politician with strong ties to Silicon Valley, and also as a politician fiercely critical of Big Tech. “What do you get when you cross a tech bro with a luddite?” Eurasia Group's Jon Lieber responded when we asked him to summarize Vance’s views.
This apparent contradiction is further highlighted by Vance’s recent statements on artificial intelligence. He has advocated for reduced regulation of the AI sector, and has claimed that tech companies’ focus on existential risks of AI are a lobbying tactic to elicit friendlier regulations.
He also shows a surprising regard for FTC chair Lina Khan’s leadership on antitrust enforcement under Joe Biden, saying that Khan has been “doing a pretty good job” especially in bringing suits against bloated tech companies. Khan notably supports AI regulation.
“I would assume someone who puts the concerns of working people and families first and foremost in his policy orientation would be relatively hostile to specific policies that accelerated the adoption of disruptive technologies,” Lieber notes. “But on the other hand, I would also think this will result in only a limited number of policies that actually attempted to curtail them.”
Lieber suggests that Vance's policy focus might include “restrictions on minors’ access to social media, data privacy rules, and investigations into tech companies for monopolistic practices.” He sees Vance as fundamentally opposed to centralized power, which could have mixed implications for AI innovation.
“This could be either good for AI innovation if you think it will happen in a decentralized way, or bad for AI innovation if you think it can only come from large incumbents with massive resources to spend on energy, compute, etc.,” Lieber said.
Some of Vance’s contradictions may become clearer over time, but they could easily be dwarfed by the whims and policy goals of Trump.
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
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