Catch up on GZERO's coverage of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 78)
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Quick Take

The UN will discuss AI rules at this week's General Assembly
The UN discuss AI rules at the General Assembly | Quick Take | GZERO Media

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take to kick off your week. I'm in New York. Of course I am, because the United Nations General Assembly high-level meetings are kicking off. They will be all week. And of course, that means incredible amounts of traffic. We can handle that because we've got subway that works and a walkable city.

But what's going to happen this week? Interestingly, I think the most important topic of the week, and it's not because of personal bias, is artificial intelligence. And the reason for that is because, unlike every other topic where people generally know what outcomes they want, they just can't get there. They can't move fast enough. Climate change, for example, ending the Russian war in Ukraine, for example, multilateral finance to support lower developed countries. Moving on the Sustainable Development Goals for human development across the world, which has been slipping with the pandemic and with the Russia war. No, in AI we don't know what people want.

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Putin hosts Kim Jong Un at arms summit
Kim Jong Un meets Putin | Quick Take | GZERO Media

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here kicking off your week with a Quick Take from London, as you can see.

And Kim Jong Un is now in Russia, Vladivostok, on his armored personal train. People always love to talk about the fact that the train is armored. I guess that's to ensure that if you try to take it out, you're going to have to try really, really hard to meet with Vladimir Putin.

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Elon Musk's Starlink cutoff controversy
Elon's Starlink cutoff controversy | Quick Take | GZERO Media
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take. Wanted to talk about Starlink, and the big story coming out with Walter Isaacson's massive blockbuster bio. It’s about to come out on Elon Musk and hearing that Elon had taken away Starlink for attacks, Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, wouldn't give them permission. Also southeast Ukraine, stop some of the fighting that was going on there. And his concerns that this was going to lead to nuclear war, his concerns that this would have targeted Starlink, targeted Elon Musk directly, why would he want to make those decisions? He's just, as he quotes with Walter Isaacson, just wants people to have Netflix and chill and instead he's a belligerent in the war, doesn't want to be using this for war.
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Modi (not Xi) leads G-20 summit
Modi (not Xi) leads G-20 summit | Quick Take | GZERO Media

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and I. Happy post Labor Day to all of you. I'm in London for a very, very brief trip, but I wanted to talk a little bit about the G-20 summit coming up this weekend.

Big news to start, Xi Jinping is not coming. Why not? Lots of speculation, lots of news, lots of ink being spilled except for the fact that people should have known about this a while back. One, the Indian government had been informed at least a month ago that Xi Jinping wasn't planning on attending. And secondly, the Americans have been working on a meeting with Xi Jinping and Biden for months now at APEC in San Francisco in November, and that was widely expected to be the next time the two men would be in the same place at the same time.

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The new BRICS expansion and the Global South agenda
The new BRICS expansion | Quick Take | GZERO Media

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. And a happy end of summer back to school. Labor Day is coming up in a week and I am going to be back and at it in New York and around the world. But for now, a Quick Take and want to talk a little bit about the BRICS.

You saw the summit last week in South Africa, the headlines going into the summit, at least from the United States and its allies, was all about how Putin wasn't going to be allowed to attend. He had to attend virtually. One of the members of the BRICS, they can only send their foreign minister. Doesn't that show that, you know, the International Criminal Court means something, even though the Americans aren't actually a signatory to it? But that wasn't the real story.

The real story is that after a significant amount of Chinese diplomatic effort to expand the BRICS and make it more meaningful, which other members were skeptical about, there was significant success and an announcement that there will be six new members invited to join at the beginning of 2024. That's a very meaningful expansion. Egypt, Ethiopia, Argentina, UAE, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Presuming this all goes ahead, the BRICS will be the most important grouping of the so-called Global South. And I use that term advisedly because it's not quite clear that China is really a member of the Global South. It's much more important economically as a creditor of the Global South and increasingly wanting to have great influence over it, which a lot of members of the Global South want to resist. I'll get into that in a minute. But still, if you compare to what's been going on among the developing members of the G-20 to try to set a common agenda that more aligns with their interests as opposed to those of the United States and its allies in the G-7 who have become increasingly tight-knit post-Trump and post the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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Prigozhin presumed dead
Prigozhin presumed dead | Quick Take | GZERO Media

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Yevgeny Prigozhin, former head of Wagner Group and would-be putschist against Vladimir Putin's Kremlin and Russia, is no more. It was an unprecedented story, that coup attempt against Putin's regime. This was the man who, of course, had been built up and so loyal to Vladimir Putin with the most powerful paramilitary organization in the world, fighting a battle on the ground in Ukraine and fighting against the Minister of Defense and others, losing that battle and deciding to turn his forces against the Russian regime. First, in Rostov and capturing the seat of the Southern command, and then marching him probably on to Moscow, where at the final moment he backs down and agrees to a quote unquote deal with Putin. Putin, who went on national media and referred to Prigozhin as a traitor.

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Trump's new rival, Vivek Ramaswamy
Trump's new rival, Vivek Ramaswamy | Quick Take | GZERO Media

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a happy Monday to you. Want to turn to US domestic politics for this week's Quick Take in part because there's been a surge in the GOP among the candidates. We've had Trump way out in front, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the major challenger pretty much for the last several months until this last week, with an outsider Vivek Ramaswamy in a couple of polls showing up as number two. Certainly enjoying a surge. So thought it was worth taking a little bit of a look at him.

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