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Hard Numbers: SpaceX has a rocky reentry, Norway to hit NATO target early, British MPs are OOO, Somalia debt is canceled, Berlin techno is protected
2: Norway announced that the country intends to meet its NATO defense spending target of 2% this year — two years ahead of schedule — citing a “serious” security situation. Sweden, the alliance’s newest member, says it will do the same. The two Nordic states can now rest assured that at least Donald Trump would protect them from a Russian invasion.
49: A new analysis found the workday for members of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s parliament is 49 minutes shorter than the 1997-2023 average, clocking in at only seven hours and nine minutes long. With all that extra time on their hands, Kate Middleton should be found in no time.
99: This week, 99% of Somalia’s debt was canceled by the Paris Club — a group of officials from major creditor countries including the United States, Japan, and Russia. Somalia’s information minister, Daud Aweis, called the move a “big milestone in the country’s journey to financial recovery.”
150: The number of UNESCO heritage sites in Germany rose to 150, with six entities being added this week. Notably, an Intangible Cultural Heritage designation was given to Berlin’s techno scene for its contribution to German culture. Oonts Oonts.Britain’s AI test-drive
The United Kingdom takes a hands-off approach to regulating AI technology — especially in relation to its European Union counterparts. Now, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government is also using the tech to try to improve its own bureaucratic processes.
The government announced it will trial some AI tools — namely, a government-licensed version of ChatGPT, as well as various open-source tools — to analyze comments on public policy documents and draft responses to parliamentary questions. The government says there will always be a human vetting whatever the AI systems generate.
Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said that AI wouldn’t be used in “novel or contentious or highly politically sensitive areas,” but rather for “routine policy tasks.” The initiative is being trialed and will be followed by a separate pilot program with the National Health Service to develop precision-based medicine and diagnostics and to root out fraud.
This isn’t the flashiest use of artificial intelligence. Still, it may be among the most useful — in an ideal world, the public enjoys a more agile and responsive government (and staffers get more interesting work). That said, we’ll have our eye out for hallucinations and gobbledygook that make it past the human gatekeeper.
Hard Numbers: UK House of Commons passes Rwanda bill, Trump interrupts Carroll trial, Colombia warns American tourists, Internet crowns hottest Houthi
320: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunaksuccessfully pushed the Rwanda Bill through the lower house of Parliament on Wednesday. His signature immigration bill, which aims to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda as their claims are processed, had divided his party, resulting in a chaotic day of resignations and internal rebellion. But, against all odds, the 320 Tories united to pass the bill, which now heads to the House of Lords.
10 million: On Wednesday, the judge overseeing the defamation trial in which the writer E. Jean Carroll is suing Donald Trump for $10 million threatened to throw the former president out of the courtroom because he repeatedly made audible comments in court. During Carroll’s testimony about what happened after she accused him of raping her, Trump could be heard saying “witch hunt” and “it was a con job” loudly enough that jurors could hear.
8: In Colombia, the government is warning Americans to stay off dating apps while visiting the country after 8 tourists died in the last two months. The US embassy in Bogota said victims have been drugged and robbed after meeting people on dating apps. The announcement coincides with reports that the number of robberies of foreign visitors increased by 200% and deaths by 29% in the last three months of 2023.
13 million: A Yemeni militant turned influencer, dubbed online as “Timhouthi Chalamet” because of his resemblance to Hollywood heartthrob Timothée Chalamet, has gone viral on TikTok. In a video viewed 13 million times, he is seen sailing on the Galaxy Leader, a cargo ship seized by Yemen’s militant Houthis last year and exemplary of how much of the conflict in the Red Sea is playing out online.Tory revolt threatens Rishi’s signature immigration bill
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is leading a group of 60 Tory rebels who threaten to vote against the bill on Wednesday unless it includes an amendment prohibiting asylum-seekers from filing legal appeals against their deportation. Johnson’s group argues it is trying to strengthen the bill. Two Conservative MPs, Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith, resigned as deputy chairs of the Conservative Party on Tuesday after joining the revolt against Rishi’s legislation.
But Conservative moderates fear the bill may already violate international refugee law and have signaled that they would oppose stronger language.
Sunak also worries that Rwanda will not accept the deal if the amendment is made. The Labour Party will vote against the legislation on principle, so the bill’s only hope for passage is an end to the Tory revolt and Conservatives voting as a united front.
Sunak has made stopping the arrival of “small boats” carrying refugees a central aim of his government. A defeat of such a central plank of his legislation would be disastrous at a time when his party is already expected to be wiped out by Labour in the next general election later this year.
Justice in UK Post Office scandal comes too late
Between 1999 and 2015, 3,500 postal workers in the UK were accused of theft, fraud, and false accounting. Forced to repay the money, they fell into bankruptcy and financial ruin. For many, the convictions resulted in prison sentences, addiction, and even suicide.
They were all innocent.
In reality, the Post Office was using financial software that had a habit of misreporting substantial sums of money. Although the truth was discovered in 2010, the Post Office continued to relentlessly pursue and prosecute postal workers until 2019, when a group of 500 of them won their case in the High Court. To date, only 93 of the estimated 700 wrongful convictions have been overturned.
It took until Wednesday for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to offer a blanket acquittal to the wrongly accused – one that will take effect by the end of the year. Why now? Sunak was likely responding to a new TV drama about the scandal, which is spurring public outrage at the PM, who gave the Japanese company behind the faulty software billions of pounds of contracts after they were known to be responsible for the accounting errors.
Brits didn’t need another reason to be mad at Sunak. His Conservative Party is already polling terribly because of a poor economy and nationwide feeling of general dysfunction.
According to Eurasia Group’s Mujtaba Rahman, “the narrow path to victory doesn’t exist anymore for Sunak.” Even if he manages to delay the election until November, Rahman expects the Labour Party to win the majority.
Zelensky's US trip likely to secure aid for Ukraine
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Will Zelensky's US visit lead to more aid for Ukraine?
I think so. Unclear why he had to go to Argentina for Milei's inauguration just before. That feels decidedly B-list for a guy that's running a war. But the US trip is important. And of course, he's seeing all of the senate Dems and Republicans, speaker of the House, as well as Biden and a bunch of defense contractors. Biden really wants this to happen. So do leaders of the Democratic and Republican Party. Biden has to compromise for support, both money as well as policy compromise on border security to get the Republicans to support it. I expect that will happen. So on balance, it's close, but I think you're going to get additional military support and cash from the Americans for 2024. That does not allow the Ukrainians to take more territory back, but it does allow them to maintain their existing defenses, which is pretty important.
Will Prime Minister Tusk's return to power help make Poland a leader in Europe?
Absolutely. And I think we're already seeing that in terms of Poland's role on Ukraine. We're seeing it in terms of engagement with von der Leyen on fiscal transfers and on general alignment on where Europe's policies are going on issues like transition energy, industrial policy, AI, you name it. I think that this is a big win for Europe and it's certainly a big win for the Polish people.
Is Prime Minister Sunak on the rocks in Britain?
No much more than he has been, frankly. I mean, he is potentially going to face a no confidence vote because of opposition to his migration, latest migration policy, but it won't pass. He's certainly out in the next election in the coming year and Labor's coming back. But compared to recent prime ministers in the UK, Sunak's been doing a pretty decent job. Essentially, he's a caretaker PM, post-Brexit. That's where we are.
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Sunak’s desperate cabinet reshuffle is unlikely to pay off
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak engaged in a stunning game of political musical chairs on Monday, unexpectedly breathing new life into the career of David Cameron – who, as prime minister, enabled the Brexit referendum.
Sunak sacked Suella Braverman as home secretary, shifting James Cleverly — who was foreign secretary — into the role, and now, seven years after leaving Downing Street, Cameron returns as the UK’s top diplomat.
Not an easy gig: Cameron becomes foreign secretary amid an array of global crises, with Russia’s war against Ukraine, growing tensions between the West and China, and the Israel-Hamas war topping the list. He has his work cut out for him, but with a strong record of support for Ukraine and Israel, he’s unlikely to shift the government’s approach in a drastic way.
What this means: It’s curious that Sunak would choose Cameron — a former leader who resigned after failing to get Brits to reject Brexit — as a top cabinet member, particularly with a national election looming before January 2025. That said, Cameron is a moderate with years of political and diplomatic experience. It could be a signal that Sunak is pushing his government toward the center ahead of the general election, as polling shows Conservatives trailing far behind Labour.
But, as things stand, creating distance from Braverman while pulling in Cameron is probably not enough to save the Tories. A snap YouGov poll found that 57% of British adults believe Sunak was right to sack Braverman, while just 24% said it was a good decision to appoint Cameron as foreign secretary.
Some analysts think Sunak’s move smacks of political desperation. The cabinet reshuffle “shows a government running on empty,” tweeted Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group.
UK AI Safety Summit brings government leaders and AI experts together
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Fellow, Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and former European Parliamentarian, co-hosts GZERO AI, our new weekly video series intended to help you keep up and make sense of the latest news on the AI revolution. In this episode, she takes you behind the scenes of the first-ever UK AI Safety Summit.
Last week, the AI Summit took place, and I'm sure you've read all the headlines, but I thought it would be fun to also take you behind the scenes a little bit. So I arrived early in the morning of the day that the summit started, and everybody was made to go through security between 7 and 8 AM, so pretty early, and the program only started at 10:30. So what that led to was a longstanding reception over coffee where old friends and colleagues met, new people were introduced, and all participants from business, government, civil society, academia really started to mingle.
And maybe that was a part of the success of the summit, which then started with a formal opening with remarkably global representation. There had been some discussion about whether it was appropriate to invite the Chinese government, but indeed a Chinese minister, but also from India, from Nigeria, were there to underline that the challenges that governments have to deal with around artificial intelligence are a global one. And I think that that was an important symbol that the UK government sought to underline. Now, there was a little bit of surprise in the opening when Secretary Raimondo of the United States announced the US would also initiate an AI Safety Institute right after the UK government had announced its. And so it did make me wonder why not just work together globally? But I guess they each want their own institute.
And those were perhaps the more concrete, tangible outcomes of the conference. Other than that, it was more a statement to look into the risks of AI safety more. And ahead of the conference, there had been a lot of discussion about whether the UK government was taking a too-narrow focus on AI safety, whether they had been leaning towards the effective altruism, existential risk camp too much. But in practice, the program gave a lot of room for discussions, and I thought that was really important, about the known and current day risks that AI presents. For example, to civil rights, when we think about discrimination, or to human rights, when we think about the threats to democracy, from both disinformation that generative AI can put on steroids, but also the real question of how to govern it at all when companies have so much power, when there's such a lack of transparency. So civil society leaders that were worried that they were not sufficiently heard in the program will hopefully feel a little bit more reassured because I spoke to a wide variety of civil society representatives that were a key part of the participants among government, business, and academic leaders.
So, when I talked to some of the first generation of thinkers and researchers in the field of AI, for them it was a significant moment because never had they thought that they would be part of a summit next to government leaders. I mean, for a long time they were mostly in their labs researching AI, and suddenly here they were being listened to at the podium alongside government representatives. So in a way, they were a little bit starstruck, and I thought that was funny because it was probably the same the other way around, certainly for the Prime Minister, who really looked like a proud student when he was interviewing Elon Musk. And that was another surprising development, that actually briefly, after the press conference had taken place, so a moment to shine in the media with the outcomes of the summit, Prime Minister Sunak decided to spend the airtime and certainly the social media coverage interviewing Elon Musk, who then predicted that AI would eradicate lots and lots of jobs. And remarkably, that was a topic that barely got mentioned at the summit, so maybe it was a good thing that it got part of the discussion after all, albeit in an unusual way.
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