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GZERO Wrapped 2023
‘Tis the Spotify Wrapped season! (Or Apple Music replay season, for those of us out of step with the cultural zeitgeist). In the spirit of everyone sharing their most-played tracks of the year, the GZERO team decided to look back at some of our top-viewed articles of 2023. You’ll never guess who wrote our top pick …
Plus, check out GZERO’s totally real and definitely not photoshopped 2023 Spotify Wrapped playlists from some of your favorite politicians.
#5 What should Israel do next?, by Ian Bremmer, October 2023
Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attack – and Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza – was a giant inflection point for global politics this year, so there’s no surprise that our audience looked to Ian Bremmer for emotion-free analysis amid a trove of disinformation about the war. TL;DR: Ian says Israel has the right to defend itself from attacks on its civilians, but perpetuating a humanitarian catastrophe for the world to see will reduce its moral legitimacy and damage its international standing.
#4 Wagner and Russia’s next moves, by Tasha Kheiriddin, August 2023
This summer (feels like a lifetime ago), Vladimir Putin faced his biggest challenge to date and survived an almost coup. Increasing tensions between the Russian Ministry of Defense and the paramilitary Wagner Group came to a head on June 23, when Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and his troops marched toward Moscow. The rebels ultimately turned around before reaching the Kremlin, but Putin couldn’t let this level of public dissent go unpunished. Prigozhin died in a mysterious plane crash two months later, leaving many to question the future of the Wagner Group in Russia and around the world.
#3 Canada caught up in US-China maritime tensions, by Carlos Santamaria, June 2023
With so much going on in the headlines, disputed waters in the South China Sea might not be at the top of many people’s reading lists, but it was for our readers. In June, China sailed a warship very close to a US destroyer and Canadian frigate (which was legally in the area, according to the United Nations) in the Taiwan Strait. Although a somewhat benign incident, it’s important to remember: More intimidation leads to more risk of miscalculation … that could trigger armed conflict.
#2 Cuba tells Russia to back off, by Willis Sparks, September 2023
A story that went a little under the radar this year (but shouldn’t have): Cuba uncovered a human trafficking ring that sought to coerce Cubans to join the war effort in Ukraine. It wasn’t too surprising that Russia was looking for more troops: Putin enlisted citizens from neighboring countries and even recruited prisoners to fight in the war in exchange for their freedom. What was surprising: Cuba’s willingness to publicly release a statement speaking out against its longtime ally, Russia.
#1 The Dollar is Dead, Long Live the Dollar, by Ian Bremmer, April 2023
Economists, analysts, crypto bros, and my overly informed uncle at Thanksgiving dinner have all been guilty of getting swept up in hysteria about the end of US dollar dominance in the global economy. The fear is not unfounded, as countries from time to time discuss diversifying away from the US dollar, and its share in foreign exchange reserves has indeed declined in recent years. But GZERO’s founder and President Ian Bremmer reminded us … the share is still nearly twice that of the euro, yen, pound, and yuan combined. In short: Everyone needs to relax. The dollar is safe … because you can't replace something with nothing.
The next global superpower?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here. A Quick Take for you and my Ted Talk has just landed. So yes, that is what I want to talk about. Kind of, what happens after the GZERO? Who is the next global superpower? Do the Americans come back? Is it the Chinese century? No, it's none of the above. We don't have superpowers anymore. And that's what the talk is all about.
I think that the geopolitical landscape today unnerves people because there's so much conflict, there's so much instability. People see that the trajectory of US-China relations, of war in Europe, of the state of democracy and globalization, all is heading in ways that seem both negative and unsustainable. And part of the reason for that is because it is not geopolitics as usual. It's not the Soviets or the Americans or the Chinese that are driving outcomes in the geopolitical space. Rather it is breaking up into different global orders depending on the type of power we're talking about.
There's a security order of course, and people that think that international institutions and governance doesn't work anymore, aren't focusing on hard security cause NATO is expanding, and getting stronger, and involving not just the Nordics, but also the Japanese, and the South Koreans, and the Australians. The Americans are building out the Quad and they're building out AUKUS, in part because of growing consensus on Russia among the advanced industrial democracies, growing concerns about China. But then also you have at the same time that the US-led national security institutions are getting stronger, the global economic architecture is fragmenting and it's becoming more competitive. And the Europeans are driving some rules, and the Chinese are driving others, and the Americans are driving others. No one's really happy about that, and it's becoming less efficient, and that's because it's a multilateral economic order at the same time as it's a unilateral unipolar security order.
And those are two things that we kind of feel right now, and it's not super comfortable. It's not super stable. The pieces move and they rub up against each other. The Americans trying to have more dominance in certain areas of the economy. When you can make it about national security, like if you talk about critical minerals and transition energy economies or semiconductors, for example, you see all that investment moving away from Taiwan and towards the US, the Netherlands, Japan, other countries. And you can see other areas where the Chinese have more influence in commercial ties and are getting more diplomacy oriented towards them in the Global South, for example, in the BRICS, and now France saying they want to go to BRICS meeting and that's not about national security, that's about economic integration. So these things, they're like tectonic plates and they don't align comfortably. And when they don't and when they move, sometimes you get an earthquake, sometimes you get a tsunami.
But then you have a global digital order. And the digital order, at least today, has no global institutions, has no real domestic regulatory structure and it's dominated by a small number of individuals that run tech companies. It's Meta, and it's Google, and it's Microsoft, and it's Elon and Twitter, and you know, it's individuals and tech companies. And these companies right now are devoting almost all of their time, almost all of their money, almost all of their labor towards getting there first, wherever there is, making sure that they're not going to be made bankrupt or undermined or creatively destructed, if you will, by their competitors, whether that's in China or whether that's, you know, sort of just a few miles down the road in the Valley or someplace else. And because that's the entire focus, or virtually the entire focus, and because the governments are behind and there's no international architecture, it means that at least for the next few years, the digital order is gonna be dominated by technology companies, and the geopolitics of the digital order will be dominated by the decision making of a very small number of individuals. And understanding that I think is the most important and most uncertain outcome geopolitically.
I'll tell you that if I could wave a magic wand, the one thing that I would want to have happen is I want these AI algorithms to not be distributed to young people, to children. If there's one thing I could do right now across the world, just snap my fingers, wave a wand and that regulation would be in place. Because, you know, when I was a kid, and we were all kids, right, except for the kids that are watching this, it was, you know, how you grew up was about nature and nurture. That's who you were. Emotionally, it's who you were intellectually, it's how you thought about the world. It's how your parents raised you, how your family raised you, your community raised you, and also your genetics. But increasingly today it's about algorithms. It's about how you interact with people through your digital interface that's becoming increasingly immersive. And the fact that that is being driven by algorithms that are being tested on people real time. I mean, you don't test vaccines on people real time even in a pandemic until you've actually gotten approvals and done proper testing. You don't test GMO food on people until you've done testing. And yet you test algorithms on people and children real time. And the testing that you're doing is AB testing to see which is more addictive, you know, which actually you can more effectively productize, how you can make more money, how you can get more attention, more eyeballs, more data from people. And I think particularly with young people whose, you know, minds are going to be so affected by the way they are steered, by the way they are raised, and by the way they are raised by these algorithms, we've gotta stop that.
I think the Chinese actually understand that better than the West does. And you know, it's interesting, you go to Washington, you say, "What do you think we can learn from the Chinese?" Not a question that they get asked very often. It's a useful one since they're the second largest economy and they're growing really fast. I would say when they decided that they were going to put caps on video games for kids, that was one that I remember, everyone I knew who was a parent of a teenager said, "I wouldn't mind that happening in the United States." Something like that on new algorithms, social media and AI for young people, I would get completely behind. And I hope that's something we can do.
But there are a lot of issues here, huge opportunities that come from AI, massive amount of productivity gains in healthcare, in longevity, in agriculture, in new energy development, in every aspect of science, and we'll get there because there's huge amounts of money, and sweat equity, and talent that is oriented towards doing nothing but that. But the disruptive negative implications of testing those things on 8 billion people on the planet, or anyone I should say, who's, you know, connected to a smartphone or to a computer, so more than 50% of the planet, that is not something we're taking care of and we're gonna pay the cost of that.
So anyway, you have just heard some of my TED Talk and what I think the implications are, I hope you'll check out the whole thing and I look forward to talking to you all real soon.
Quick Take: Pandemic and the presidential election
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. Yet another exciting week in the run-up to the US elections. Not the only thing going on, though, not at all. I mean, first of all, coronavirus continues to be by far the biggest story in the US, in Europe, as we have a major second wave, and indeed in many countries around the world. Also, we're seeing a lot more instability pop up. I mean, we've had every Sunday now for about three months massive unprecedented protests in Belarus. They're not slowing down at all. We see major demonstrations, including anti-royal demonstrations in Thailand, Pakistan. You've got significant instability right now, of course, we'd seen in Lebanon over the past months. Why is this all going on? Is this a GZERO phenomenon?
I would say not quite, but it is related in the sense that the reason you have a leaderless world today, the reason you have a GZERO world is because increasingly, political architecture and institutions have been weakening and they aren't aligned with the geopolitical order. Similarly, the reason why you're seeing so much more instability these days is because a lot of people feel like their own domestic governance has not been fit for purpose, certainly in the United States and the big social movements and the growing divide between red and blue on the back of an unprecedented economic crisis and pandemic in modern times that is hitting not just everyone together, but really those economics are on the back of the working class and the middle-class, what people are increasingly calling a K-shaped recovery, where Bezos is now worth almost $200 billion, anyone in the knowledge economy is doing pretty well.
You can socially distance. You can work at home. Your jobs are doing fine. Your 401ks are fine. The markets are popping. But what if you don't have any of that access? What if you're not in a job like that? What if you don't have stocks in a portfolio? Well, then your life has gotten a lot harder and you're feeling that support for those that say they're going to do better for you doesn't really make your life any better. I thought it was really interesting that we had these big rallies in the last couple of days from President Trump and we'll see them again every day for the next couple of weeks where he's saying, if you elect Biden, he's going to listen to the scientists.
If you're a PhD, you say, "Well, okay, that's a good thing, right? We want the experts being listened to." But if you're someone for whom life has been getting worse for them decades now, not just in the last four years, but for a long time, you feel like you've been lied to. That's not just political leaders from one party or another. That's the media, that's the scientists, that's everyone out there with their so-called facts and great education who may be really smart and they may be really smug, but they're not helping you, and in that regard, the fact that President Trump can still have a 40% approval rating and say the sorts of things he's saying and respond the way he is responding to this coronavirus shows you how deeply the system has eroded.
Whether Trump wins or whether Biden wins coming up, these problems are not going away. They're much more structural, and I do get the sense that a lot of people in the foreign policy establishment in the United States and the foreign policy establishment in the US, both left and right, is largely anti-Trump and they see how much Trump is disliked outside the United States in many, most countries around the world, America first as an overt strategy and tagline doesn't surprise you that it's not going to work very well if you don't happen to be American.
But I think there is a broad belief that if we just get rid of Trump, if Biden comes in, then everyone's going to flop to the United States as a leader again. Number one, that's just not the case. I mean, the erosion of American leadership was happening well before Trump. The feeling that the United States was increasingly hypocritical in the way that it led, I mean, you think about the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, you think about Guantanamo, you think about failed promotion of democracy internationally at the same time that America's own democratic capabilities at home are increasingly seen by its own people as not fit for purpose, nevermind the way that the Canadians or the Germans or the Scandinavians or others who might look at the United States would increasingly see the United States is not such an effective model.
Well, you need to realize that it's not like everyone is just sort of gagging at the bit for anyone but Trump and now we're going to love the United States again. It's going to be much more fragmented. This GZERO world is not a product of Trump and it's going to persist beyond whether it's one or two Trump administrations. I guess, I've always thought that's more important. I mean, I do worry about the further acceleration of the erosion of American institutions happening under a president that doesn't care particularly for rule of law and doesn't really believe that in the strength of representative democracy or human rights, he's much more transactional his orientation. So certainly, I've seen that whether it's the executive or corruption in the civil service, or whether it's the effective functioning of the legislature in the US, all of those things have been eroding for some time, but they're eroding more quickly under the Trump administration.
But I mean, so too, is the media having its legitimacy erode in the last four years, and I would argue that's largely self-inflicted how they've chosen to respond to a very divided and commercially very enriching political landscape for them. How social media has chosen to ignore the importance of coexisting well with a civil society and fabric that supports it because they'd rather ensure that they can maximize eyeballs, advertising and revenue, and the business models are not particularly aligned.
So I think it's important for us to understand that these issues are much more structural than the election that we're going to have in the next couple of weeks. Also, because lots of other countries continue to experience these things challenges, and the next two years are still, irrespective of who's leading the United States, largely going to be defined by how humanity both collectively and the deeply fragmented are responding to this continued coronavirus. We now have caseload in many countries across Europe that is higher than it was during their first wave. Deaths are certainly going down. In the United States, deaths are going up from a month ago, but they're down from where they were in the early wave.
Science is responding more effectively to the crisis, but we are nowhere close to out of this and we won't be until we have a vastly more effective and broader testing regime, until we have much better political leadership and until we have vaccines that are distributed and across the world in sufficient amounts with education that people are going to take them. we're talking about still another couple of years where that's defining the way that the global political environment and economic environment actually works, and in that regard, I think irrespective of how this us election turns out, you're still going to be in this period of extraordinary crisis of headlines on a daily basis, whip-sawing you from issue to issue.
Yes, if Trump is gone, Twitter will drive you a little less crazy and there won't be as many headlines driven by it. But the country I think is going to be every bit as divided, in fact, in many ways more so in part because the election will be seen as illegitimate by many, and in part more importantly, because the economic impact of this crisis is going to be so much harder for people.
Final thing I would say is that in 2020, the healthcare response to coronavirus has been radically mixed and differentiated around the world. Some have done very well in response on the healthcare side. We know who those countries are. It's Japan, it's South Korea, it's Germany, it's Canada, it's others. Some have done a poor job on the healthcare side, frankly, including our own United States, the United Kingdom and many others, Brazil. But economically, almost every major economy in the world has done a really good job in the first year of this crisis, responding to it. All the central bank governors, almost all the ministers of finance, the US Secretary of Treasury, almost all the major legislatures in the world have responded adequately or more than adequately to the nature of the economic crisis.
In 2021, the primary issue is not going to be the healthcare fallout. That will be better, in part because we've learned a lot. The death rate is going to go down, in part because the effectiveness is going to be better. You'll have more treatments, you'll start to have vaccine, all those things, but the economic impact is going to be much worse and I fear the economic response is going to be much more differentiated and haphazard, and that is one of the reasons why we need to pay a lot more attention to coronavirus in 2021, even as there's going to be such fatigue from talking about and dealing with the pandemic, but most human beings around the world are still going to be experiencing it and that's that bottom of the K.
Keep in mind that the one thing the K-shape recovery really doesn't teach you is that when you hear about a K, you think, "Well, both legs of the K are actually equivalent." Not true. That top of the K only reflects about 10% of the population in the advanced industrial economies. The bottom of the K is pretty much everybody else. Going to have to address that in a serious way in the next year. Thanks everyone. Be safe. Avoid people. Talk to you soon.
Chris Coons on the Biden Doctrine: What is Joe Biden’s foreign policy vision?
"Neither America first, which is ultimately America alone, nor America the world's policeman," Sen. Chris Coons told Ian Bremmer in describing VP Joe Biden's approach to foreign policy should he win the presidential election in November. In the latest episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, Sen. Coons provides details of how U.S. relationships with foreign governments and multilateral alliances could change in a Biden presidency. He also defended President Obama's track record, saying "I think it is a mischaracterization of the Obama-Biden foreign policy for President Trump to say that we were picking up the tab and fighting the world's wars and that we were disrespected." Coons stated that Biden would work to restore U.S. involvement in alliances like NATO, and shore up global support to pressure China on labor and environmental standards. The exchange is part of a broad conversation with the Senator about COVID response and economic relief, Russian interference in elections, and the 2020 presidential race. The episode begins airing nationally in the U.S. on Friday, July 10. Check local listings.
We Need Another Vote
Members of Parliament rejected holding a second Brexit referendum. "A political crisis in the UK." David Miliband, former UK Foreign Secretary, sits down with Ian and discusses the need for another Brexit vote.
A post-American World
In a post-American world, what will the Middle East look like? Richard Haass , President, Council on Foreign Relations, provides a picture of what the future holds on GZERO World.
Ain't Nuthin but a 5G Thang
The development of 5G, or 5th generation mobile networks, is such a big deal that it's been compared to the invention of electricity. There's only one problem: China's cornering the market. Ian explains and then digs in deeper with Keyu Jin, China expert at the London School of Economics. And on Puppet Regime, Marie Kondo stops by the Oval Office.
