Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
US President Joe Biden looks on after he delivered his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Jan. 15, 2025.
Biden’s farewell speech sounds alarm
Biden emphasized the importance of democratic engagement and continued progress on issues like climate change, warning against powerful interests seeking to reverse environmental initiatives.
Rather than highlighting his own achievements, the speech called for a series of ethical reforms for government officials, including term limits and ethics reform for the Supreme Court, banning congressional stock trading, and a constitutional amendment clarifying that presidents are not immune from crimes committed while in office.
Biden ended his final speech in office by emphasizing the importance of American democratic institutions, noting that while imperfect, “they’ve maintained our democracy for nearly 250 years, longer than any other nation in history that’s ever tried such a bold experiment.”
President Joe Biden delivers a speech at the State Department on Jan. 13, 2025.
Biden wants AI development on federal land
Biden did express concern about the environmental impact of data centers, which consume loads of electricity to power them – and water to cool them down. “We will not let America be out-built when it comes to the technology that will define the future, nor should we sacrifice critical environmental standards and our shared efforts to protect clean air and clean water,” the president wrote in a statement.
The executive order also clears the way for the federal land to be leased to developers of “clean energy” as well, with Biden framing them as key to the expansion of AI capability in the country.
Biden has one week left. His chip war with China isn’t done yet.
On Monday, the US Commerce Department announced new export controls on advanced chips used to train and run artificial intelligence, the latest in a series of increasingly tough restrictions enacted by the Biden administration in the past few years. It’s primarily a mechanism for maintaining American dominance in artificial intelligence while also cutting off adversaries — first and foremost China — from access to the chips they need to level the playing field commercially and militarily.
Under the new export regime, the US will use a three-tier system: Companies from the US and 18 close allies, including the UK, Germany, and Japan, are fully free to buy these chips. Those from countries subject to US arms embargo, such as China and Russia, are completely cut off from acquiring high-powered chips. And countries from every other country will face a set cap restricting the number of AI processors they can buy each year without special permission. This latter group even includes strategic partners such as Mexico, Switzerland, and Israel.
“This policy will help build a trusted technology ecosystem around the world and allow us to protect against the national security risks associated with AI, while ensuring controls do not stifle innovation or US technological leadership,” US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a press release.
But the chip industry isn’t happy — particularly America’s most important chip designer, Nvidia, which said that the rules are “misguided.”
“While cloaked in the guise of an ‘anti-China’ measure, these rules would do nothing to enhance US security,” Ned Finkle, Nvidia’s vice president of government affairs, wrote in a statement. “Rather than mitigate any threat, the new Biden rules would only weaken America’s global competitiveness, undermining the innovation that has kept the US ahead.” The Semiconductor Industry Association criticized the timing — just days before the presidential transition.
Tinglong Dai, a professor at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, said that US companies are increasingly aligned with national security concerns and “face ever greater challenges to making a profit or even operating in China.” In that way, he said he expects that short-term discomfort will give way to companies falling in line with national security priorities.
Xiaomeng Lu, director of geo-technology at Eurasia Group, expressed concern about implementation. “Under this regime, only a small number of trusted allies have unrestricted access to high-end semiconductors,” she said. “Data centers located in over 100 countries will have to apply for licenses through an onerous process, even if they are owned and operated by US cloud service providers.” She added that the rules could discourage many countries from buying US products.
“This rule is not just about China, but it may make China’s chip smuggling efforts more difficult,” said Jacob Feldgoise, a data research analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. “The regulation could hurt American businesses, including AI chip companies and cloud service providers, but perhaps more importantly, the rule may hurt the United States’ relationship with a set of allies to which the rule didn’t give preferential treatment.”
Jeremy Mark, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, said that China is deeply embedded in the semiconductor supply chain, such as supplying important rare earth metals to chip makers. In this way, the US is risking a “serious trade conflict” in further cutting off China.
But there may be more to the story. “There has been clear, bipartisan support in Washington for export controls, and that has empowered several government agencies to act,” Mark said. “However, it’s not clear how much the latest initiatives have been driven by a White House decision to hand Trump a fait accompli.”
Trump won’t want to appear weak on China, but he also doesn’t want to alienate important industry players. Dai said he expects Trump to maintain a tough stance on China and to “tweak the current export rules — because he’s Trump after all.” The rule doesn’t go into effect for companies until May 15, Feldgoise noted, giving Trump time to revise the rules if needed.
As for China, the country is forging ahead even without access to the top chips. Recently, the Chinese startup DeepSeek released an open-source large language model that has impressed outsiders. This development proves it’s “possible to build a quality model with less advanced chips,” Lu said. Meanwhile, the new Commerce Department restrictions will “undermine US companies’ competitiveness in the face of robust competition from China,” she adds.Foreign policy in a fractured world: US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on global threats and Joe Biden's legacy
Listen: Outgoing US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan joins Ian Bremmer in front of a live audience at the 92nd Street Y in New York City for a rare and wide-ranging GZERO World interview about the biggest geopolitical threats facing the United States, Joe Biden’s foreign policy legacy, and how much will (or won’t) change when the Trump administration takes office in 2025. The world has changed dramatically since Biden entered the White House in 2021, and Sullivan has been the driving force behind some of the administration’s most consequential–and controversial–decisions over the past four years. The outgoing National Security Advisor reflects on his time in office, from managing strategic competition with China to supporting Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion to navigating the US-Israel relationship. He warns that bad actors see presidential transitions as moments of opportunity, so it’s imperative that we send a “clear and common message” to both friends and adversaries during what he calls “a huge, plastic moment of turbulence and transition” in global politics.
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.
President Joe Biden appears to get emotional when the crowd chants ÒdonÕt give upÓ before he delivers a speech to a large crowd at Renaissance High School in Detroit on Friday, July 12, 2024.
Biden unleashes pardon power
President Joe Biden set the record for the largest act of clemency on Thursday, reducing the prison sentences of 1,500 people and pardoning 39 others. The 1,500 former prisoners were serving terms that would have been shorter if sentenced under today’s laws, and most had already been reintegrated into their communities since being relocated to home confinement during the pandemic. Most of those pardoned had committed nonviolent drug offenses in their early lives.
It is traditional for presidents to exercise their pardon power at the end of their terms. Biden has said that he will continue to do so in his remaining weeks in office, with Democratic lawmakers urging him to commute the sentences of the 40 people on death row, as well as take actions to address mass incarceration and systemic racism in sentencing disparities.
But the practice is more controversial than ever since Biden blanket-pardoned his son Hunter, who had been convicted on gun and tax charges, a move critics have called a self-interested abuse of power. Biden has also floated the idea of issuing preemptive pardons to a range of current and former officials Trump has threatened to target. Doing so may limit Democrats’ ability to credibly criticize Trump if he follows through on his plans to pardon Jan. 6 insurrectionists on his first day in office.
U.S. President Joe Biden stands with his son Hunter Biden, who earlier in the day was found guilty on all three counts in his criminal gun charges trial, after President Biden arrived at the Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware, U.S., June 11, 2024.
Biden pardons son after promising not to do so
So much for the rule of law. After previously promising to allow the justice system to handle Hunter Biden’s federal felony gun and tax convictions, outgoing President Joe Biden instead issued a "full and unconditional pardon" to his son on Sunday. “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” Biden said, noting that he felt his son was singled out for political reasons.
The younger Biden’s serious problems with drugs, infidelity, and questionable overseas business deals were frequent targets for Republicans over the last four years, including as part of an aborted attempt to impeach the president. He’ll now avoid possibly decades behind bars, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for less time.
President-elect Donald Trump responded to the pardon by posting on social media, “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” (Nope). Trump is calling the kettle orange when it comes to familial clemency: He pardoned his son-in-law's father Charles Kushner after the 2020 election and just appointed him ambassador to France. But Biden is singing a similar to tune to Trump by pointing to the politicization of the justice system.
United States President Joe Biden makes a statement on the general election.
Hard Numbers: Biden addresses Trump’s win, Earth keeps getting hotter, Starvation imminent in Myanmar, US forgives Somalia’s debt
74: In the wake of Kamala Harris’ loss in the presidential election, President Joe Biden addressed the country from the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, 74 days before he’s due to hand the keys back to Donald Trump.In his speech, Biden stressed that he would ensure a peaceful transition of power, called for unity, and said that he hoped the result would restore Americans’ faith in election integrity.
2.5: For the second year in a row, scientists at the European Climate Agency report that Earth is the hottest it’s ever been, breaking 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to preindustrial averages. While factors like El Niño and volcanic eruptions are playing a part, they say the data clearly shows an unprecedented sequence of record-breaking temperatures that would be impossible without the levels of greenhouse gasses being emitted by humans.
2 million: Two million people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh, are on the brink of starvation because of trade blockades and violence that have led to a “total economic collapse,” according to the UN. People in the region are seeing their incomes plummet because of the violence while food prices are soaring due to junta-enforced trade blockades, creating a deadly cycle of conflict and economic crisis.
1.14 billion: The US has decided to cancel $1.14 billion of Somalia’s outstanding loans, a quarter of the country’s outstanding debt. The government has suffered under the crippling bill, borrowed under the era of Siad Barre’s military dictatorship, that went unpaid during the three decades of civil war that followed its collapse in the early 1990s. The forgiveness was part of an IMF and World Bank program that aims to relieve the poorest countries of unsustainable debt levels.
President Joe Biden meets with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House in Washington, U.S., Sept. 26, 2024.
Will a lame-duck Biden be bold before Trump takes over?
President Joe Biden has been a lame-duck president ever since he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. But now that the election is over — and Donald Trump is president-elect — Biden no longer has to worry whether his decisions will hurt Kamala Harris’ chances of winning.
Could Biden potentially use this newfound wiggle room over the next few months to take steps that might’ve been politically damaging for Harris before Election Day?
Here are two areas of greatest attention:
The president, for example, could make good on warnings to Israel that his administration would cut military aid if humanitarian conditions in Gaza don’t improve. Such a move is “on the table” but would “still run into significant political backlash in the US,” says Eurasia Group’s US director Clayton Allen.
Plus, now that Bibi knows that Trump is heading to the White House in January, the effectiveness of conditioning assistance would be limited, says Allen.
“Bibi knows that things are going to get better for him in two-and-a-half months,” adds Allen, and would be unlikely to shift course in Gaza over a move that Trump could undo once he’s in office.
Biden could also take action by declining to veto UN Security Council resolutions seeking to hold the Jewish state accountable for its actions in Gaza. His administration has done this before, refusing to veto a resolution calling for a cease-fire back in March, stoking Netanyahu’s ire. But these measures would be largely symbolic, accomplishing little with Netanyahu, who has already signaled that the UN’s views on the Jewish state’s prerogatives amount to a hill of beans.
Another move could be approving the use of long-range weapons by Ukraine on targets in Russian territory, which the US has imposed restrictions on so far. That is a “more likely potential shift” than Biden taking any major steps to challenge Israel, says Allen, noting that the administration was already considering a move like this even before Trump won.
There could also be steps taken to “try and codify some sort of security commitment to Ukraine via the NDAA process,” adds Allen, referring to an annual defense funding bill, but that would depend on garnering support in Congress.
But at the end of the day, the lame-duck period is unlikely to yield lasting changes in policy, a fact that Zelensky seemed to acknowledge in his congratulatory tweet to Trump, in which he told the president-elect that he hoped to work together to achieve a “just peace.” Trump, for his part, has pledged to end the war within 24 hours after assuming office — but hasn’t expanded on how he’d accomplish this.