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Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen in Gaza City, on August 27, 2025.
What We’re Watching: Trump to talk Gaza plan, Niger’s anti-colonial crusade gives Russia an opening, Australia follows the money to Tehran
There is a US plan for Gaza
US President Donald Trump will convene a “large meeting” at the White House today to discuss a plan for managing Gaza once the war there ends. US special envoy Steve Witkoff even appeared to acknowledge that the US had a plan, adding that he hopes the war is resolved by the end of the year. The meeting comes as an inquest begins into Monday’s double Israeli strike on a hospital in Khan Younis that killed 20 people. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a “tragic mishap.”
Russia uses Niger to go nuclear on France and the West
Russia may be focused on its invasion of Ukraine, but that hasn’t stopped it from making other moves to weaken the West: Moscow has offered to build a nuclear power plant in Niger that could hurt parts of France’s nuclear industry. Niger, a uranium-rich nation in the Sahara Desert, has previously exported the metal to France for further refining, but the ruling military junta has been cutting ties with the former colonial power ever since overthrowing the government in 2023 – and Russia eyes an opportunity. The plan is fraught with challenges, though, and the plant may never come to fruition.
Australia identifies Iran funding to synagogue attackers
Australia is following the money in its investigation of the antisemitic attack on a Melbourne synagogue last year, with officials saying Wednesday that the funds that the alleged perpetrators received traced back to Iran. It’s possible that those charged didn’t even know Tehran was involved. This revelation comes after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday that Iran orchestrated this terrorist attack, as well as another in Sydney. Australia isn’t the only country probing the role of Iran’s government in carrying out terrorism: British and Swedish security forces have also warned that the Islamic Republic were attempting to use proxies to commit attacks in their countries.
A heart is shown on a computer screen
Hard Numbers: Deepfakes and pig butchering, Murati starts fundraising, Checking students’ work, The nuclear option, Perplexity’s money moves
100 million: Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, one of the biggest names in artificial intelligence, is expected to raise $100 million for a new AI startup with few public details. Murati, who briefly served as interim CEO of OpenAI last year following Sam Altman’s short-lived ouster, resigned from OpenAI last month. Murati said she wanted to start her own “exploration” of AI when she resigned and will reportedly serve as CEO of the new venture trying to do just that.
68%: About 68% of middle and high school teachers report using an AI checker for students’ work, according to a survey from March 2024. But Bloomberg, pointing to a rising number of students who claim to have been falsely accused of writing with AI, reports that popular AI checkers have a 1-2% error rate, calling into question their reliability.
99: Nuclear energy stocks are surging because of increased demand for power by AI companies in search of new energy sources. Oklo, a US-based small modular reactor developer – which counts OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as an investor – saw its share price pop 99% last week. Nuclear energy is considered a “clean” energy source because it has no carbon emissions.
8 billion: The AI search engine Perplexity is seeking to raise $500 million in a new funding round that would value it at $8 billion. Perplexity has positioned itself not only as a rival to OpenAI and Anthropic — leading AI chatbot companies — but also to Google, the longtime leader in the search industry.Russia invites Africa to go nuclear
In sub-Saharan Africa, about 600 million people, half the total population, lack electricity. And with the volatility in oil prices of recent years and the need to transition toward cleaner sources of energy, many African governments now want to invest in nuclear power. Russia, beleaguered by Western sanctions, would like to help.
Today, there’s just one nuclear power station on the African continent – in Cape Town, South Africa. Egypt, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda have already announced construction plans. Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear company, says it has signed cooperation agreements with Algeria, Burkina Faso, and Mali.
For Russia, commercial partnerships in Africa serve both economic and political purposes. They offer long-term revenue for a Russian economy saddled with sanctions and now deeply dependent for growth on wartime military production. They also provide political cover for a country that will remain isolated from the West for the foreseeable future.
For African countries that want to provide affordable electricity to hundreds of millions of people who need it – and without pumping more carbon into the atmosphere – it’s an opportunity for positive change.
But nuclear power plants generally take a decade or more to build, so it will be years before African countries benefit.
How will Henry Kissinger be remembered in Europe?
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm.
How will Henry Kissinger be remembered in Europe?
There's always an amount of controversy around the person who's been around in politics in powerful positions for such a long time as he was. But primarily, I think he would be remembered as a great European. He was an American, no doubt. But he came out of the tragedy of Europe and he was deep concerned with all of the lessons that could be learned from the failure to preserve peace in Europe time after time. His first academic and his first book was about the Congress of Vienna. And then book after book after book, that was really around the same theme, how to preserve peace also in the age of nuclear weapons. And that, of course, from the European point of view, is not an insubstantial issue.
Is the nuclear renaissance going on in Europe?
Sort of. I would say. There are still countries that are very much opposed. The Germans are, the Austrians are, there might be others. But I noticed that in Dubai, COP28, there was now signed declaration by a number of European leaders as well to triple global nuclear power by 2050. So no doubt nuclear power will make a substantial contribution to the efforts to create a much greener and much more sustainable Europe in the decades to come.
The world’s nuclear threats and what the IAEA is doing about them
Note: This interview appeared as part of an episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, "Rogue states gone nuclear and the watchdog working to avert disaster" on January 16, 2023.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi witnessed first-hand how close we came to another Chernobyl disaster thanks to fighting near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer asks Grossi about the world's nuclear threats and what the IAEA is doing about them. Grossi views himself as a mediator — if leaders are willing to listen to him.
Grossi, known as the top nuclear watchdog, discusses the most urgent problems he is monitoring. Kim Jong-un called for a exponential increase in his country's arsenal. Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has turned his country into the world's most dangerous rogue state. His military also controls the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine. Putin also has at his fingertips the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, even a little larger than America's, nor has he been subtle about his willingness to use it. Meanwhile, Iran, Russia's most important military ally, has been steadily at work developing its own nuclear weapon capabilities.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Rogue states gone nuclear and the watchdog working to avert disaster
The nuclear fusion breakthrough, explained
Everyone is very excited these days about nuclear fusion. But what is it?
In very simple terms: a thermonuclear reaction that actually creates more energy than it requires, , Ian Bremmer explains on GZERO World.
That's what a bunch of US scientists pulled off a month ago. It lasted ... a few trillionths of a second.
Still, successful nuclear fusion one of the biggest biggest scientific breakthroughs of the century. And the race is on for America to build the first commercial fusion plant before China does.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Rogue states gone nuclear and the watchdog working to avert disaster
- Rogue states gone nuclear and the watchdog working to avert disaster ›
- Jennifer Granholm: On clean energy, US is "putting our money where our mouth is” ›
- China's innovation means it's winning, says investor ›
- What We're Watching: Morocco plays French politics, 11th-hour EU/Hungary deal, big energy milestone ›
Iran getting the bomb? Not as close as you might think
The 2015 Iran nuclear deal is pretty much dead in the water right now. And perhaps the train has already left the station because Tehran is too close to enriching enough uranium to get the bomb.
So, is it too late?
“Having the nuclear material does not mean [that] automatically that you have a nuclear weapon,” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World. Still, Grossi would like more cooperation from the Iranians.
The IEAE, he says, "wants to provide the diplomatic, technically neutral platform for a good understanding. I hope this message is heard in Tehran.”
Watch the GZERO World episode: Rogue states gone nuclear and the watchdog working to avert disaster
Podcast: Nobody wins in nuclear Armageddon: Rafael Grossi's plan to keep us safe in time of war
Listen: What keeps the world’s top nuclear watchdog up at night? It's not only Vladimir Putin threatening to use a tactical nuke in Ukraine. On the GZERO World podcast, Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, joins Ian Bremmer to discuss the most imminent nuclear threats. He discusses his recent trip to an embattled Ukrainian nuclear power plant, the path forward for Iran after a scuttled deal, and how to keep North Korea in check, a rogue state amassing an entire arsenal of nukes.
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