Podcast: This Long Bloodstained Sand
Listen: When President Trump decided to officially withdraw American troops from Kurdish-controlled Syria, many people, including some in his own administration, were shocked. But the Kurds, themselves? Today's guest says, "Not so much." In this episode, Ian Bremmer breaks down the long and tragic history of the Kurdish people, the group's geopolitical significance in the region and beyond, and the many times the U.S. has left this ally stranded politically or militarily. This show also contains a field interview with NYC pizza magnate Hakki Akdeniz, a Kurdish immigrant who came to the U.S. broke and homeless. He now has a booming business, more than 3 million Instagram followers, and he's giving back by feeding homeless people on the city streets.
Listen: When President Trump decided to officially withdraw American troops from Kurdish-controlled Syria, many people, including some in his own administration, were shocked. But the Kurds, themselves? Today's guest says, "Not so much." In this episode, Ian Bremmer breaks down the long and tragic history of the Kurdish people, the group's geopolitical significance in the region and beyond, and the many times the U.S. has left this ally stranded politically or militarily. This show also contains a field interview with NYC pizza magnate Hakki Akdeniz, a Kurdish immigrant who came to the U.S. broke and homeless. He now has a booming business, more than 3 million Instagram followers, and he's giving back by feeding homeless people on the city streets.
How AI is transforming warfare and the US military with Katrina Manson
Ian Bremmer sits with Bloomberg defense tech reporter Katrina Manson, who spent years reporting on Project Maven for her new book on the Pentagon's AI push.
The program launched in 2017 with a narrow mandate: use machine learning to process drone footage. It has since expanded into something far more ambitious. Autonomous weapons, drone swarming technology, and AI-assisted targeting are now central to how the Pentagon talks about modern warfare.
The tech rollout is fast, but not reliable. Algorithms fail when the battlefield changes. The targeting process is accelerating to the point where operators are clicking through AI recommendations with little ability to question them. Manson says the military knows about AI's vulnerability "to sycophancy, to escalation, to bias and hallucination," and has not yet found adequate solutions.
Bremmer and Manson also take on the US-China AI race, the IDF's use of AI in Gaza, and what the Anthropic contract dispute reveals about the fault lines between commercial AI ethics and military requirements.
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Bloomberg reporter Katrina Manson joins Ian Bremmer to discuss Project Maven, the program that brought AI to the heart of US warfare, and the risks that come with it.... More >
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer