← Armstrong & Getty On Demand
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This is an iHeart podcast.
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Guaranteed Human be afraid. Be very afraid. But of what? What are the top risks for 2026? It's Armstrong, you getty extra large.
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Because four hours simply isn't enough. This is Armstrong and Getty Extra Large.
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Well, this is always fun. We look forward to it. Like a kid looks forward to Christmas. Talking to Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, about the top risks of the year 2026. Looks to be Harry, indeed. Welcome, Ian.
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How are you?
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Hey, good to talk to you guys. Happy New Year.
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C
First of all, to Joe. I like this list, too, but you look forward to it like you did as a kid. To Christmas. That seems a little weird.
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It's marketing hyperbole.
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C
Secondly, before you get into the list, Ian, I was going to ask you.
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About this coal all the time. And, and, you know, love fossil fuels in this country.
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So, yeah, it's not beyond me with a couple of drinks in me to beat up a mall Santa out of resentment for, you know, my disappointments.
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C
Before we get to the very cerebral list, I've wanted somebody about this. They do this on network television all the time. And I saw it happen to you a couple of times where they tease you and you're sitting on a couch or a green room or something like that, and they say, coming up next segment, we'll have Ian Bremmer. And then they put the camera on you. Is that as uncomfortable as it looks like? Am I supposed to smile or wave or give a thumbs up or what am I supposed to do here?
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It was most recent on CBS Morning News with, you know, Gail and company, and it was a shockingly long tease. And when I say shockingly long tease, I mean, there was no fluffing involved in this, Right? It's just me looking down the can and I don't know, I mean, I gave it my best stare. I mean, I thought it was. I don't know if you guys were turned on.
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C
No, it's tough. It's a tough situation. I don't know what you're supposed to.
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Do, but you handle orchid, orchid, orchid. Yeah, TV people are good at that. We're, we're, we're ugly audio guys. And so occasionally, though, we've been in TV settings where they say, all right, say that line, then smile. Hold it, hold it, hold it.
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C
And we're like.
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And you know it. The smile turns into a grimace, turns into some weird, you know, I've taken a blow to the head expression. But, yeah, exactly.
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C
Anyway, so we are super into AI stuff. Around here. So my first question off the bat about risk 8 AI eats its users. I was just reading Bloomberg's prediction that companies mostly are still going to be all in on AI. How do you feel it's going to play out this year?
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I believe they will be all in on AI, but there's going to be a lot more pressure to commercialize it, to make money, to provide returns to all these shareholders with enormous amounts of money that being spent on these large language models only getting more complex with more data, more chips requirements, more energy requirements. And I think that's fine for a lot of companies that are doing business to business, that are doing industrial purposes, defense purposes. But for the companies that are selling AI to consumers, they're going to need to make profit any way they can. And that means testing these things real time on society, on us, on our kids. And I think that's actually quite a dangerous risk for our political system and for our, our mental well being.
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C
Well, I noticed we talked about this right before the end of the year Open Altman announcing that they're going to like focus on the chat GPT, the thing that people kind of like and not so much the getting to, you know, artificial general intelligence as much. So that's what you're talking about.
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It is. And you know, we all know that social media, when they decided that they need to start making a profit, it became much less community oriented, much more addiction and engagement oriented. Well, AI is a hell of a lot more capable at programming us, at changing our behavior, making us believe that we're talking to people when actually we're talking to things that have no affect and are just trying to get the outcomes they want out, it wants out of us. There are people like that in society. We call them sociopaths. We don't want to be around them. Right. And yet when it comes to AI, we're like, hey, go for it, train it on us. And that just seems like it is not destined to go well, especially because the race is so well funded, it's so fast and it's not effectively regulated at all because we all just want to win. We just want to, we think it's so amazing. We want this to go faster and faster. And I do get the fact that, you know, whenever we talk about government involvement, we also talk about red tape and we talk about entrepreneurs not being able to do the things they're great at. But here we are talking about public safety and we should care, we care about that with vaccines. We test those first. We care about it with GMO foods, but somehow when it involves like actually programming our minds, it no longer matters.
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Wow, I'm glad to hear you say that. We're big fans of Peter Boghossian around here, who's written extensively about the effects of technology and social media on kids especially. And I just think giving superpowers to the sort of technology we've all already decided is absolutely pathological, especially for youngsters. Seems incredibly dangerous, but there it is on your list of risks.
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Yeah. And it's also showing up in risk number two in a very different way that risk number two.
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C
Oh, good.
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I was just about to ask about that.
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Yeah, hit it. Yeah, well, because here you've got the Americans doubling down on being the strongest petro state in the world. 13.5 million barrels day of oil production, plus Venezuela, and they have the largest oil reserves proven in the world. All of which is great for American power. And the United States is refusing to keep investing in solar and wind and batteries and all the things that are getting much cheaper in terms of energy because those are woke climate energies. Well, the Chinese aren't particularly woke, but they do know that they need as much energy as possible and they are investing massively in the electric stack and they're becoming an electro state while we're a petro state. The only problem is the electro state is becoming a lot cheaper at producing electricity every year. So we're going out there selling 20th century oil, gas and coal to countries and they're going out there selling 21st century energy infrastructure to countries. And who's going to be better at powering the AI? Who's going to be better at feeding their people? And the answer is the Chinese. That's not a position the Americans should be in.
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You mentioned the term the electric stack. Help us understand that. What is that?
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It's everything that is necessary to produce huge amounts of electricity that is powering our economy. So again, it's nuclear, it's wind, it's solar, it's batteries, and it's all the infrastructure and the critical minerals that go into that and the supply chain and the processing all around the world. The Chinese have been investing in that assiduously for decades now and the United States has not. That's why when Trump met with Xi Jinping, there was such a concern about critical minerals because the Chinese were capable of shutting them off to the US and therefore shutting down American corporations and factories.
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That story that came out right before the end of the year with China building that just ginormous the world's Never seen anything like it. Ability to produce electricity got a lot of attention.
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That's right. So much more than the Americans are actually bringing to market every year. And that's not something that the US Is prepared politically to actually compete with at this point.
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So then how does that fit in with risk 7, China's deflation trap? I mean, can they continue to make these kind of decisions with their economy and the situation it's in?
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Yeah, the ordering of the risks is meant in terms of impact, likelihood and imminence. So seven is a lot lower than too. And the issue here is not that deflation doesn't matter. They've had 10 quarters of deflation sequentially. That's a lot. And they don't have consumer demand and they got massive corporate debt and they're not really willing to make the stimulus bet to change that. So what's happening is China is exporting their problems. They're manufacturing an enormous amount very cheaply. Involution, that competition is the way that's called domestically. And that's created a $1 trillion surplus that they've exported all over the world in 2025. That number will go up in 2026. So it will cause some backlash and that will undermine China's position with some countries, even as they have all these cheap goods and cheap energy that countries will want. But it is a much lower order risk that the Chinese are capable of both managing and kicking down the road than the US versus China energy risk, which is a lot bigger stakes and a lot more urgent.
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So just for your edification. Yeah. Well, it's interesting that China is both undeniably an awesome rising power and a highly, highly troubled, you know, economy and society at the same time, but both are true. So I know some of your risks are pretty Trump US Politics oriented, but we talk about those so much. We were kind of excited to talk to you about the things we talk about a little less, if that's okay with you. I mean, for instance, Europe under siege and Russia's second front, boy, the state of Europe, we could go on and on about that. What do you see as risks there?
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Well, you gotta bring Trump in and the United States in here because it turns out that the Europeans for decades had been making a big bet that the United States would continue to support collective security in the transatlantic space, would continue to support free trade, rule of law, and the promotion of democracy. And of course, the United States is not doing that, and Trump is not the driver of it, but he is certainly a symptom. He's a beneficiary and he's an accelerant. And that is causing a massive problem for Europe. Number one, because Trump no longer wants to support Ukraine. He's having Europeans spend all the money doing it. And to Trump's credit, frankly, taxpayers are no longer paying for that. But also the Greenland situation. Also Trump saying he doesn't want a strong eu. He wants to support the Eurosceptic parties that want to bring the Europeans apart, like the AfD in Germany and the National Rally in France and Reform Party Farage in the UK and all of that is happening after the Europeans have not sent on defense. They don't have high productivity. They don't have the tech companies. They're not really growing. So they've got a great social contract that takes care of the people, but they can't afford it. And they matter less to the United States than they used to. So the Americans go into Venezuela and they take out Maduro. And the Europeans are all privately saying, oh, my God, this is illegal. This is bad rule law. But what do they do? Publicly? They don't say they were monitoring the situation because they don't actually have the power to do very much about it. And that's a big problem for Europe.
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It's a big problem for the whole world.
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And Russia's second front is your risk number five. What's that all about?
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Well, the fact that all of this is happening while the Russians see that the Americans are not willing to hit them hard, they're willing to hit the Ukrainians hard because the Ukrainians are weaker. That's the best way to get the Ukrainians to capitulate and end the war, in Trump's view. Well, Russia sees that they know they don't have to stop, and that gives them more space to escalate in their backyard the way Trump is escalating in his backyard. What does that mean? It doesn't mean tanks into Poland, but how about weather balloons into Lithuania? How about drones into Poland and Romania? How about Russian ships dragging anchor and destroying fiber optic cables in the North Sea? How about all the money they're spending on all these people inside the frontline NATO countries to engage in espionage and destruction of critical infrastructure and even assassination attempts, as we saw against the CEO of the largest German defense company last year? Russians are escalating that. And that is a hybrid war that NATO frontline states will increasingly respond to. And it's a lot more dangerous for the world than the war going on, which is largely contained at this point between Russia and Ukraine.
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Well, a lot of those things you just described, drone or parachute or whatever, could certainly be described as attacks if you wanted to. And then an attack on one is an attack on all with the NATO countries. Do you think that holds if one of these countries is attacked by Russia, Would we honor that? Article 5.
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I think that the Europeans are unconvinced that it would. I think that it. There's a very big difference between sending in a whole bunch of tanks and invading a country and doing all the stuff that we just talked about, which are clearly attacks. But it's harder to say that you're at war. And the Russians are very aware of that. You saw that the Danish Prime Minister just in the last 24 hours said that if Greenland is invaded by the US that would be the end of NATO. Well, sure, but Greenland is not going to be invaded by the United States. They're not going to send in the airborne. What they're going to do is affect local elections and spend a bunch of money. And some of it will be overt, some of it will be covert, some will be public, some of it will be private sector, some will be the Trump family, that kind of stuff. And is that going to destroy NATO? How do you respond to that? I mean, this is the playbook, right? Is this gray war that is, you know, sort of under the surface. It's not sending in American bombers and that's a lot harder to respond to.
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Ian, my final question for what it's worth is I was reading a bit of risk number 10, the water weapon, which was interesting. And I was looking at the chart of the most water starved places on earth and that included of course, large swaths of Africa. I was a little surprised that there wasn't more emphasis on Africa as it is so big, so populous, there's so much wealth there, much of it untapped, and so much instability. What's your quick take on Africa going forward?
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The big piece there was the Sahel because that's where you see ISIS like organizations becoming a lot more powerful. The so called coup belt of Africa, where a swath right across north central Africa. All these countries that have had coups and have no effective governance whatsoever and a lot of Islamic radicalism is emerging and no resources to speak of. There are certainly parts of Africa that have a lot more money, but they are really tech starved, they are electricity starved and those are the tools that you need to unlock the human capital of a billion people and make them participate in the global economy. So we've got to electrify Africa. And then we have to get these people access to new tools, to new technologies. And that is happening much more slowly than it needs to.
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So before we let Ian Bremmer go, we gotta ask you about risk number one, obviously, US Political revolution. What are you talking about there?
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I'm saying that you've got a president that believes that the political system was weaponized against him by the Democrats in the US that that's why you had unprecedented two impeachments and all of these felony charges and convictions and even an assassination attempt or two. And whether or not you agree with that, he believes, his supporters believe that that means that with urgency, they must weaponize this US System against the Democrats, the administrative state, the power ministries like the Department of Justice and the FBI, and end the checks and balances on the president. And I expect that Trump will not succeed in this revolution, but he is certainly trying his best, and that is leading to significant norms and institutional checks being broken pretty much every day. Since the United States is the most powerful country in the world, that kind of political turmoil internally, especially because it'll have long term consequences in the United States and globally, has to be your top risk.
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I really enjoyed your comparison of Trump with fdr, another great norms breaker in American history. That was thought provoking.
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I thought it was important because he's the most revolutionary president in history. So you look at, okay, well, who did more? And you know, FDR tried to break norms and he failed. His big efforts to go outside the system, the effort to pack the court from 9 to 15, he couldn't do. The effort to purge the Democratic Party of all those that weren't loyal to him, he failed at. And he ultimately had to get the New Deal and the expansion of the executive. He had to do that through the legislative process. And so there were dramatic transformations of how powerful the US Government was, but the checks and balances actually became stronger, not weaker, after fdr. In the case of Trump, of course, it's very, very different from that. Everything he is focused on is an effort to ensure that the presidency operates above checks and balances and above rule of law.
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So this has got nothing to do with your risks, but I wonder what your thoughts are on it, because I think about it a lot when Trump. I just, I was just doing the math the other day, and my oldest son is going to be able to vote in the 28 presidential election, and I can't believe that. But when Trump leaves the scene, are we going to go back to anything like the olden days, or is this just our going to be this way for a while?
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I don't think Trump is the cause of this. I think he's a symptom. I think he's a beneficiary. I think he's clearly an accelerant. But if you look at the demands from average Americans who thought that their elites, their leaders, not just in politics, but in media and in corporates and banks and others, universities, that they were doing very well, but at their expense and, and running these forever wars on the backs of the poor and disenfranchised and engaging in foreign free trade and globalism and exporting labor on the backs of them, and letting in all these immigrants on the backs of them, however much you do or don't agree with those outcomes. These things have been coming for decades and they've not been addressed. They've not been addressed by the Democrats effectively or the Republicans effectively.
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I agree with you. And that's how you get Trump. That's how you get Bernie. That's how you get the Tea Party. A lot of that.
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I was gonna say it hasn't been addressed in France or Germany either.
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They've been addressed badly in France and Germany too. At least the United States, though, it hasn't addressed it. And the trust and legitimacy isn't there. At least you've had growth. And growth helps, right. If you're gonna have a poor social contract, at least if boats are rising and, you know, but an affordability crisis makes it harder. Stagnant wages makes it harder. And you know, the one thing that Trump has been very popular at, of course, is no new wars. And, and here you talk about Iran, you talk about Venezuela, and yes, bombs are flying, but that's not what people. Americans aren't angry at bombs flying. American kids love shooters. Come on. That's what they spend all their time doing. But they don't want you to send them into the. And that is what Trump is not doing. In fact, I think if the United States were required to send troops to Venezuela, I bet he'd go the Russian route and he'd send mercenaries because he really doesn't want to send American men and women into harm's way.
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Interesting. Always stimulating. Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group. Eurasia Group's top risks for 2026. Ian, always appreciate the time. Let's talk again soon.
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Talk to you guys. Be good.
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Thanks. So that's interesting and I absolutely agree with him and not the first people to have come up with this, that the times, you know, Called for Trump more than he made the times, you know, and Bernie too. Bernie fits into that, obviously with a lot of the same complaints and gripes. And if the Democratic Party hadn't intervened, he would have been their nominee. Couple of different times. So it's not going to end with Trump leaving the scene. But what I wonder is we have a. People are upset about the elites and the way things are working and working class people and all that stuff. Now wait till we have a giant economic crisis, which we absolutely could have.
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Given our levels of spending beyond our means. I think it's inevitable.
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Right. And the unsettled nature of the world and everything like that. We hit a really, really tough economic point.
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Who knows where our politics go at.
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That, at that time.
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Right, right. And I would argue that the Trump to your question about whether we go back to the good old days. Well, no. Is the answer to that. And I know you know that. But the, the Trump situation is so unique because Trump is so unique. These times are odd. They are changing so quickly. J.D. vance will not be. Picture the Trumpiest, most loyal, obvious heir apparent. It's probably JD I don't know Stephen Miller, God help us, and I agree with him a lot. But even JD Vance could not be do Trump like Trump did Trump and get the same reaction and, or lack of reaction, the same cooperation, the same opposition. It would just, it would be different. You know, the world keeps us spinning and changing.
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C
Yeah, I was trying to find. God, I had this. I never got this on the air. Darn it. Gavin Newsom's post on New Year's Day and it was 100% out of the Trump playbook. I'll get it on the radio show tomorrow. But it was basically happy New Year to everybody except the evil MAGA Republicans who want to destroy. You know, it was, it was, it was trying to emulate Trump, you know, the way Trump does that on Merry Christmas, except for my, you know, awful enemies who, blah, blah, blah.
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And I thought, well, here's your answer.
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To whether we're not going back to the olden days or not. Gavin Newsom, the most likely person to be nominee, at least at this point for the Democrats, thinks that's the way to get elected president, is to be like Trump.
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Today he does.
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Today he does.
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I think when it goes out, it'll be like wearing your disco wear in 1980 when it goes out of style. When it's out, it's all the way out. And people will be like, not only, hey, that's the politics of five years ago. They'll be pissed off that you continue, you know, to use it.
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Hope you're right. I'm not sure.
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Well, it might be the new kind is worse. I don't. I don't know, but. Excuse. I'm sorry. I gotta concentrate on this for a second. I'm entering my code using my credit card. There you go. Went through. Good. I just bought a million acres in Greenland, so it's in far northwest Greenland. I hear it's pretty this time of year.
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Good for you. Well, there you go. The risks for 26. We'll see how it turns out.
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Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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Extra large. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.