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The rise of Elon Musk's DOGE under Trump
If you ask the individuals working for DOGE, if you ask Elon Musk, they're doing the right thing. They are undertaking a revolution to save the United States,” Drummond says, “If you ask any of the civil servants or the federal workers who've lost their jobs, there is a deep sense of concern, of dread that this revolutionary effort will destroy so much of what powers this country.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Will the Trump-Musk relationship last?
How long will President Donald Trump’s relationship with Elon Musk last? The alliance has so far defied predictions from the left (and parts of the right) that a relationship between two famously impulsive and mercurial billionaires would eventually lead to conflict. Instead, Musk is everywhere in the Trump administration—attending cabinet meetings, shaking hands with world leaders, smiling in the Oval Office. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has embedded itself across nearly every federal agency. In many ways, the relationship is mutually beneficial: Musk has an almost limitless checkbook to bankroll Trump’s political operations, and DOGE is helping him deliver on a campaign pledge to “shatter” the deep state. Meanwhile, Musk has become the most powerful person in Washington, not named Trump. But the president also has a history of discarding allies when they are no longer valuable and many of his close advisors have become his harshest critics. So, can the Trump-Musk alliance survive for the long haul, or is it destined to go up in flames?
Watch the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television this weekend (check local listings) and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.
The Kremlin
Are Russia and China trying to recruit disgruntled US federal employees?
A Naval Criminal Investigative Service document said US intelligence had determined that foreign officers had been instructed to look for possible targets on LinkedIn, TikTok, RedNote, and Reddit, focusing on employees who indicate that they are “open to work.”
Shooting the messenger. Some in the US intelligence community have reportedly raised these concerns internally, but Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said the ones flagging the issue are the problem. She said internal discussions at the CIA about this are a “threat” and questioned the loyalty of those involved.
“They’re exposing themselves essentially by making this indirect threat — using their propaganda arm through CNN that they've used over and over and over again — to reveal their hand, that their loyalty is not at all to America. ... not to the American people or the Constitution. It is to themselves,” Gabbard said.
The ChatGPT logo, a keyboard, and robot hands are seen in this illustration.
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Gov
This product launch serves a dual purpose: OpenAI is both advancing its business strategy of becoming a government contractor, and it’s advancing its political strategy of becoming more enmeshed with Washington. In December, OpenAI reversed course on its longstanding prohibition of its tools being used for military purposes and partnered with the drone maker Anduril on defensive systems for the US military.
Announcing the government version of ChatGPT, OpenAI framed its mission as a global one. “We believe the US government’s adoption of artificial intelligence can boost efficiency and productivity and is crucial for maintaining and enhancing America’s global leadership in this technology,” the company wrote. Part of the sales strategy: convincing the government that it needs to use the latest large language models to stay ahead of its rivals, namely China.
Graphic Truth: Where the US government gets its revenue
The US government currently raises about $5 trillion a year in revenue. That plus another $2 trillion in debt are what make up the nearly $7 trillion that Uncle Sam spends annually.
But where does that revenue actually come from? Here’s a look at the breakdown.
Bear in mind, as you look at this, that incoming US president Donald Trump has suggested he wants to replace the income tax with his new tariffs. Would that be possible?
It’s true that until the income tax was implemented in the early 20th century, tariffs provided the lion’s share of US government revenue. But that was a time before social security, medicare, or a modern military when the government spent barely $500,000 a year.
With Trump’s tariffs expected to raise, at best, about $300 billion per year, using them to replace income taxes would entail an unfathomably radical shrinking of the US federal government.
A general view of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) building, in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Antitrust is coming for AI
The US government's two antitrust regulators struck a deal to divvy up major investigations into anti-competitive behavior in the AI industry. The Justice Department will look into Nvidia’s dominance over the chip market, while the Federal Trade Commission will investigate OpenAI and its lead investor, Microsoft.
In December, the FTC opened a preliminary inquiry into Microsoft's $13 billion stake in OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT. It’s an non-traditional deal, in which Microsoft receives half of OpenAI’s revenue until the investment is repaid, rather than traditional equity. But Microsoft also flexed its muscles after the sudden ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last year, offering to hire him and any defecting OpenAI employees, effectively pressuring the company to rehire him — which it did soon after. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority also began probing the relationship between the two firms in December.
Meanwhile, Nvidia has become the undisputed leader of the AI chip industry with their powerful graphics processors powering the training and operation of generative AI models. The company recently disclosed in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that its pole position and market dominance has attracted regulatory scrutiny from the United Kingdom, though it didn’t specify the nature of the inquiry.
Noah Daponte-Smith, a United States analyst for Eurasia Group, sees this announcement “largely as a messaging exercise intended to show that DOJ [and] FTC will be just as dogged on antitrust issues in the AI space as in the rest of the Big Tech arena.” He sees the decision as more of a continuation of Biden’s aggressive antitrust regime than a policy position on the regulation of AI.
“My sense is that AI regulation will have to occur more through Congress and through executive actions not focused on competition,” he added.
3 themes to watch as US election season begins
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
With the Iowa caucuses coming up, what are the big themes to watch in American politics this year?
Monday of next week is the first day the official kickoff of the US presidential campaign season, even though it feels like it's already been going on for six years. It really only starts on next Monday with the Iowa caucuses begin. Donald Trump has a big lead in the Republican primary. Nobody's challenging President Biden on the Democratic side. And so here are three themes to watch throughout this election year.
The first is, can anyone beat Trump in the Republican primary? Right now, it's down to basically Trump, the top of a field of contenders. And then you have a distant second, former South Carolina governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. And in third place, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, with some also rans like Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy, who don't really have a chance. Of that bunch, Haley is probably best positioned to make a deep run into the primaries because of her ability to consolidate the fundraising apparatus behind her in the last several months. DeSantis could still come on strong with a strong showing in Iowa, but it's really going to take a lot of money to last through the March Super Tuesday caucuses. And right now, Haley looks like the best bet. But to get there, she's going to need to win a state. Right now, she's behind in Iowa. She's close, but still behind in New Hampshire. And she’s still behind in her home state of South Carolina. So the thing to watch for is field consolidation in late January, maybe early February, And if Haley can actually get some momentum to beat Trump.
The second thing to pay attention to are Trump's criminal trials. And a major question for 2024 is how much do these things hurt him on the campaign trail? Certainly being prosecuted by the Democratic prosecutor in Manhattan and Biden's DOJ has helped Trump consolidate his position on top of the Republican field. But it seems like the conventional wisdom is that it probably hurts Trump in the general election. Now, this may or may not be true. Voters already have been accustomed to the fact that Trump's been accused of various crimes. Trump himself is running on delegitimizing the system that's put him on trial, and that's going to be a continued theme throughout 2024. And the question for the general election is right now, Trump is beating Biden in head to head polling matchups, which are not very reliable this far out. Does that advantage start to erode as Trump's criminal trial stay in the news throughout the summer? And what happens if he's eventually convicted of a crime? And the one to watch is probably the DC election interference case that the federal government has brought in the District of Columbia.
Final thing to watch for in 2024, what happens to the state of the economy? Biden's approval ratings are relatively low for an incumbent seeking reelection in the high thirties. That's a pretty bad sign. The economy's been fairly resilient so far with low unemployment and decent wage growth. But Americans are still saying they're very unhappy about the state of things. Inflation has been a huge part of that. High grocery prices, expensive services are all things that Americans are dealing with on a day to day basis. Does the economy flatline or tank in the first half of 2024, which would be a real disaster for the incumbent President Biden? Or does it continue to muddle along and potentially improve as inflation fades in the rearview mirror, which would be a tailwind for the incumbent? And you'd expect to see that in rising approval ratings throughout the spring and summer.
Thanks for watching. This has been US Politics in (a little over) 60 Seconds.
The U.S. Capitol.
The US government is heading toward a shutdown. What does that mean?
The US government looks set to shut down this Sunday after House Republicans indicated that they would not support a bipartisan Senate bill that would fund the federal government past this weekend’s deadline.
Absent a last-minute agreement, many federal agencies could soon shut down, while millions of federal workers could be placed on furlough without pay due to a lapse in funding from Congress, which controls the purse strings.
What led to the current stalemate and what does it mean?
You might recall that, back in June, House Republicans agreed at the eleventh hour to raise the federal debt limit to avoid the government defaulting on its loans for the first time in history. As part of that agreement, Republicans and the White House agreed to spending caps on funding bills for the next two years that aimed to avoid this sort of impasse until after the next presidential election.
But that is now up in the air as a number of “tear-it-all-down” Republicans are refusing to fund the government – an annual procedural measure – and are calling for deeper spending cuts. Crucially, they also oppose ongoing funding to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, overseeing one of the slimmest congressional majorities in decades, is hesitant to pass a funding bill with the backing of House Dems that these vocal members of his own caucus oppose, fearing they would call a vote seeking his ouster. What’s more, to appease the right flank of his party, McCarthy gave his caucus the go-ahead to start an impeachment inquiry into President Biden (the hearing will kick off Friday), but that doesn't seem to have gotten the hardliners to back off.
Indeed, this whole dance makes for very bad politics for the GOP considering that 77% of US voters don’t want the government to close.
What happens if the government shuts down? While some government departments – like the military – will continue to function, hundreds of thousands of workers (out of 4 million government employees) will be told to stay home without pay. The last time the government shut down in 2018 for 35 days, it cost the US economy a whopping $11 billion.
Plus: We asked Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, to share his view on how long the shutdown may last. Hear what he had to say here.