There's Corruption in the 2024 Election | Ian Bremmer PT 2

Summary

Podcast Summary: "There's Corruption in the 2024 Election | Ian Bremmer PT 2"

Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu, August 16, 2024

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Overview of Episode Theme

In the second part of Tom Bilyeu's conversation with political scientist Ian Bremmer, the discussion dives deeply into the state of democracy and division in America, the influence of AI and technology on geopolitics and social cohesion, and the fragility of the upcoming 2024 U.S. election. Bremmer offers a global perspective on current crises, from war in Ukraine and the rise of populism to the transformative and destabilizing impacts of AI on society and governance. The episode's tone is searching, sober, and at times urgently cautionary, grounded in a desire to present facts over preference and empower listeners to engage more critically and actively in shaping their understanding of the world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Society’s Fraying Ties and Loss of Trust

• Widespread Lying & Erosion of Credibility: Tom Bilyeu opens by warning about how easily lies are amplified in the digital age, contributing to rising antipathy and distrust toward government. He emphasizes individual responsibility in building one's own model of the world rather than letting algorithms dictate beliefs.

  "Everybody, of course, you know that people are lying to you. It is a tool in everyone's arsenal." — Tom Bilyeu, [02:13]

• Manipulation by Algorithms: Tom stresses how people increasingly allow algorithms to form their worldview, making them susceptible to manipulation and polarization.

  "...people are not building their own internal model of what they believe the world is. They're letting the algorithms do that for them." — Tom Bilyeu, [03:23]

2. The Power and Necessity of Crisis

• "Goldilocks Crisis": Bremmer discusses how only sufficiently large crises (but not existential ones) force cooperation and progress among nations, especially in a "G-Zero" world lacking strong global leadership. He uses COVID-19 and climate change as examples of crises that failed—and are succeeding—to varying degrees in galvanizing meaningful action.

  "It's not like you can never make progress outside of crisis...In a gzero world...the most likely way to get an effective response is just like with the Soviets versus the Americans..." — Ian Bremmer, [06:48]

• AI as New Crisis Vector: Both see AI as a looming crisis that could either unite adversaries through necessity or accelerate fragmentation, given its disruptive risks and lack of coordinated international governance.

  "All of the things they're already worried about...are things that are, they better figure this out or they're in trouble." — Ian Bremmer, [10:56]

3. The Rise of AI and Geopolitical Shifts

• AI: Virtuous or Dangerous Competition? The pair contrasts competition in clean energy (potentially positive-sum) with AI, where uncooperative races may be dangerous due to proliferation risks.

  "...in the AI space, it is absolutely unclear that there is a virtuous cycle of competition. If we are not working together, the proliferation risk is much, much greater." — Ian Bremmer, [12:44]

• AI’s Impact on Globalization: Bremmer predicts that advanced AI will not be monopolized by the U.S. and China, but will proliferate widely, creating value and risk across the globe, including for non-state actors and rogue individuals.

  "...the value, the upside and the danger will be distributed all over the world." — Ian Bremmer, [16:07]

4. Democracy’s Crisis & the U.S. 2024 Election

• Loss of Shared Identity and Truth: Bremmer laments the erosion of a unifying national identity in the U.S. and the rise of performative, cynical politics, especially visible in younger generations.

  "I don't think we know what our country stands for. There's such incredible cynicism among young people..." — Ian Bremmer, [20:58]

• Danger of Division and Populism: The episode references historic “levelers” — famine, revolution, war — as means by which inequality is forcibly reset when elites become too entrenched, and worries about possible cycles of pain before renewal.

5. Election Instability Scenarios (2024)

• Trump vs. Biden: High Stakes, High Risks: The likelihood of civil unrest, information warfare, delegitimization of outcomes, and a system unable to create a widely accepted result is predicted, with particular concern for the destabilizing role of AI-driven disinformation and social media echo chambers.
  • If Trump Wins: Expect politicization of federal agencies, foreign policy upheaval, and a much more responsive, adversarial U.S. amid ongoing wars.

    "His first priority has to be to end all of the investigations against him, to politicize the DOJ and the FBI and the IRS..." — Ian Bremmer, [40:08]

  • If Biden Wins: Anticipate widespread unrest among Trump supporters, especially in red states, supported by AI misinformation and amplified by local authorities.

    "...a much greater likelihood that you will have civil disobedience, social instability, violence in a lot of red states, in a lot of red cities, and unwillingness to accept a Biden administration as legitimate..." — Ian Bremmer, [39:56]

• Social Media as Existential Threat: The fragility is magnified by social media's and AI’s power to fragment the nation and undermine consensus on any factual basis.

  "AI causing just a massive disinformation campaign in the build up to the 2024 election...that is the thing that freaks me out." — Tom Bilyeu, [49:41] "Those attacks would not work in Japan. They would not work in Germany...The United States [is] increasingly different." — Ian Bremmer, [50:32]

6. Big Tech as the Third Superpower

• Sovereignty over the Digital Realm: Bremmer asserts that tech companies hold more effective power over the digital world than most nation-states, capable of shaping society, economy, and even national security independently of governments.

  "Big Tech is essentially sovereign over the digital world. The fact that former President Trump was deplatformed...most powerful political figure on the planet...wasn't a decision that was made by a government." — Ian Bremmer, [50:54]

• The Unregulated AI Future: The spread of powerful AI with minimal regulatory oversight could drive enormous innovation and wealth, but carries simultaneous risks for democracy, social cohesion, and global security—especially if negative externalities are ignored.

  "The negative externalities will happen basically simultaneously with all the positive stuff..." — Ian Bremmer, [63:40]

7. Disinformation and the Fragmentation of Truth

• Collapse of Shared Reality: AI-powered microtargeting will further fragment information consumption, split citizens into isolated "truth" bubbles, and delegitimize authorities and institutions. The risk is a maximally efficient division, not just ignorance.

  "The thing that I'm probably most worried about in the near term...is the disinformation bucket. The fact that inside democracies, increasingly, especially with AI, we as citizens cannot agree on what is true." — Ian Bremmer, [67:57]

• Perspective vs. Truth: Tom offers a framework where what we deem true is just a product of layered perspectives and reinforcement, which AI and algorithms can exploit—making consensus even on objective reality difficult.

  "So much of what we perceive to be true is merely your interpretation of something...A lens that is not making an effort to give you what is true." — Tom Bilyeu, [75:33]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Political Division:

  "We aren't capable of having a free and fair election that the entire country believes in anymore. And that's kind of foundational to a well functioning democracy." — Ian Bremmer, [33:39]

• On U.S. Vulnerability:

  "Because the US is by far the strongest economy in the world. It's by far the strongest military in the world. Like, that's why there's such outsized impact from the United States." — Ian Bremmer, [35:00]

• On the AI Future:

  "What they're not doing...is figuring out how to deal with those problems. They're spending all their time trying to figure out how to save humanity, how to accelerate this technology. So if we don't talk about those negative externalities, they're just going to happen and they won't be mitigated, they won't be regulated." — Ian Bremmer, [63:40]

• On Flourishing and Human Connection:

  "Flourishing starts right here. It starts at home. It doesn't start online...You can't flourish if you don't have real relationships. That takes away...the essence of who we are as people, and yet we are all running headlong away from flourishing." — Ian Bremmer, [83:15]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:00]: Lying as a tool and the crisis of trust
• [04:33]: Ukraine and partition; risk assessments and crisis clarity
• [06:48]: The necessity of crisis to drive progress
• [10:56]: AI’s impact on geopolitics and competition
• [14:14]: The future of globalization and AI proliferation
• [20:58]: Loss of shared U.S. identity and cynicism
• [27:06]: Forecasting the world order and governance in 10 years
• [34:11]: U.S. against itself as top 2024 global risk
• [38:37]: Election scenarios and likelihood of unrest
• [49:41]: AI-driven disinformation risk in 2024 election
• [50:54]: Explanation of Big Tech as a new superpower
• [57:55]: Positive potential and externalities of unregulated AI
• [67:11]: Groups most vulnerable to AI-driven change
• [75:33]: Perspective, algorithms, and the breakdown of consensus on truth
• [83:15]: Human flourishing and the need for authentic human connection

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a multifaceted, globally minded analysis of democracy's present dangers and the world-altering impacts of AI and digital fragmentation. Bremmer and Bilyeu balance dire warnings about institutional breakdown and social media-fueled fragmentation with practical insights and cautious optimism. The core message is clear: the future will be shaped heavily by the convergence of crises, technology, and the choices individuals and societies make to either build resilient, open models of truth and governance—or succumb to division and manipulation.

Transcript

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[Tom Bilyeu]

Welcome back to Impact Theory. I'm Tom Bilyeu and today we're talking with Ian Bremmer. In part two of this incredible conversation, Ian and I go over some of his powerful insights and provocative thoughts that you'll definitely want to hear. Let's dive right back in. One of the things that I talked to people about a lot is, hey, look, lying is a powerful tactic, but be careful because if you use it, it will work sometimes and then other times you will just become known as a liar. And when I look at the division that we're going through right now and what is it you know about this moment, and I can't speak to whether the rest of the world is falling prey to the same thing or not, but in, in a world where anybody can pick up their phone and live stream to the rest of the world and your lies are going to be found out terrifyingly fast and that is going to absolutely erode your credibility. And on top of that, now you get into a position where there's just the level of disdain and distrust that people are going to have creates the, the level of animosity towards the government that we're seeing now. And that's where you get that powder keg where all of a sudden a country which has a host of problems just all coming together at one moment really starts to be super unnerving. But when I look out at, at what I would want people to take away because I, I have a, I'm very much an individualistic thinker in that I think at the level of the individual. So I'm not good at what you're good at, which is global geopolitics. Like, you see how all the puzzle pieces add up. What I understand is the person. And so I will say, look, everybody, of course, you know that people are lying to you. It is a tool in everyone's arsenal. And the vast majority of humans are going to deploy that tool, even if only to make you feel like your ass doesn't look big in those jeans. Right.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's just.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It is going to be used.

[Interviewer/Host]

So the thing that you can do

[Tom Bilyeu]

is not be as gullible. I never thought I would be interviewing people on geopolitics, but once I started feeling like society is beginning to fray, and it's beginning to fray because people are not building their own internal model of what they believe the world is. They're letting the algorithms do that for them. They don't understand how they're being manipulated, and therefore they become easy to manipulate. And so the thing that I'm hoping to do with the show, because all I've ever wanted to do is empower people to make decisions, to make their life better. Um, and I suddenly realized that people really need to understand how the game works.

[Interviewer/Host]

Once you understand how the game works,

[Tom Bilyeu]

hopefully you can stop being mad about it and just start doing something about it. But speaking of doing something about it, when you look at. So we've got two wars that are happening right now, one potential war in air quotes, because you've made it very clear you don't actually think that America's going to be in a hot civil war. But how does this all play out? Like, I've heard you talk about, Ukraine is just going to have to accept that. That they are partitioned. But also, it felt like you had some anxiety about Trump coming in and just being like, you're going to have to accept that you're partitioned. What is. What is the. Oh, man, you talk about. The risk assessment that you guys do is based on fact, not preference. So knowing that you're not about to lay out your preference, what do you think is. Is the actual path forward?

[Ian Bremmer]

And this.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Russia, Ukraine and Israel, Hamas.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

That last point just links so much

[Ian Bremmer]

with what you were saying before.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Like, I have no problem with being wrong.

[Ian Bremmer]

At the end of the year, we

[Co-Host/Analyst]

go back and we see how we did on all this stuff, and we, you know, see, like, how that affects.

[Ian Bremmer]

When we do get stuff wrong, what do we.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Why did we get it wrong? What. What lessons do we take away from it? But the authenticity is absolutely critical. You know, I mean, for someone who's not a part of a political party and who travels all over the world. I feel like 10 years ago I spent most of my time talking with and engaging with elites because I thought, well, those are the people with power, and that's going to have the biggest impact in affecting change. But in an environment, as you say, Tom, where so many people are being driven by misinformation, becoming angry, becoming polarized,

[Ian Bremmer]

I feel like I have to spend

[Co-Host/Analyst]

a lot more of my time just talking to people, right? Just like being authentic about what's happening in the world. And it's not easy to sort of ball that up into pro Trump or pro Biden or pro American or pro anything, frankly.

[Ian Bremmer]

But we need more of that.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

We need people that are prepared to meet people where they are, listen to them, and talk about what we think is really happening in the world. And it's okay if you don't agree with all of it, because it's not about agreeing. It's about understanding. That's all it is.

[Ian Bremmer]

So there.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

You're right.

[Interviewer/Host]

So using my words, the book kind of wants for a crisis, hence the title, the Power of Crisis. You call it the Goldilocks Crisis, something that is devastating enough that people stop and pay attention, but not so devastating that we can't respond well to it. Is that the only way to get people to act, to cooperate in the way that we would need to cooperate? And does it. Like, when you think about the ideal state of the world, is it globalized or sensibly de. Globalized.

[Ian Bremmer]

First of all, it's a great question. And it's not like you can never make progress outside of crisis. Progress happens all the time outside of cris. We see new legislation that gets passed. We see, you know, new companies that are started. We see all sorts of. We see good works by people of other people on the street, you know, but. But, you know, it's one thing to say, can't we get. Can't we get the progress we need? In a family, you can. In a community, you can. When you're working together well within an alliance, you frequently can. In what I call a gzero world, where there's not a level of functional global leadership, where countries aren't working together well, they don't trust each other. They don't have the institutions that align with the balance of powers today. So it's not a G7 or a G20. It's really an absence of global leadership. I think in an environment like that, by far the most likely way to get an Effective response is just like with the Soviets versus the Americans, Reagan versus Gorbachev in the opening of my book, is if you have a crisis, if the aliens come down and, you know, it turned out that the pandemic wasn't a big enough crisis, didn't kill young people. It wasn't. I mean, you know, look at, look at what happened. The Americans pull out of the World Health Organization. The Chinese lie to everybody about not. About not being transferred human to human. The relationship got worse between the two countries. The Americans, we didn't provide vaccines to the poor countries around the world, even though we had people in the United States that didn't need them and were waiting on. That already took them and were waiting on boosters like it was the. It was a complete clusterfuck, pardon my French. And it's because it didn't feel like an existential crisis. It wasn't big enough to force us to cooperate to a greater degree. January 6th in the United States. I mean, maybe if Pence had been hung, maybe if some. I mean, God forbid, maybe if members

[Co-Host/Analyst]

of the House or Senate had been

[Ian Bremmer]

killed or injured or kidnapped for a period of time. But as it stood that evening, a majority of Republicans in the House voted not to certify the outcome. Why not? Because they're focused on the jobs. Because they knew it wasn't a constitutional crisis. They knew it wasn't a coup. So I do think that in this environment, in a dysfunctional governance environment, where people don't trust each other at the highest levels that are in power, where we don't have the institutions that can work, are proven to work, to respond to the crises in front of us. Yeah, we need a crisis. And the good news is that climate is clearly not only a big enough crisis, but also one that humanity, I think, is up for. And so that is forcing us. Every year, we actually are exceeding, radically exceeding in renewable energy production and reduced cost from what the International Energy Agency is predicting. Every year for decades now, we've been exceeding that. And that's because this crisis has been big enough and it's affecting everyone to mobilize our asses into action. And the question is, is AI a crisis that we can actually effectively respond to? There's no question the size is suitably great, that it should motivate us. And when I talk to government leaders around the world today, they are focused. They are focused on it. They're focused on it because of the size of the crisis, but also it's very interesting. So the US Government, it's Not just because they're suddenly all experts in AI. It's also because the three things that they are most concerned about is national security priorities, which is confrontation with China, war between Russia and Ukraine, and proxy war with the Russians and threat to the US democracy. They think, and they're right, that all of these are dramatically transformed by AI developments. So not only is AI coming as a big new thing, but also all the things they're already worried about spending a lot of time and money on and blood are things that are, they

[Co-Host/Analyst]

better figure this out or they're in trouble.

[Ian Bremmer]

So I do think the, the mo. The motivation to get this right is

[Co-Host/Analyst]

going to be there.

[Ian Bremmer]

I just, I hope we're up for it. And you know, again, I'm, I'm, I'm an optimist. I'm, I'm hopeful. I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, the fact that we're here and we're talking about it means that we're capable of doing something.

[Interviewer/Host]

My only fear is that with global warming, you can't win global warming and get a leg up over China or Russia, but you can win AI and get a leg up and be better. And I think that that one thing that people aren't talking about enough for sure is that AI is going to be an adversarial system, meaning bad guys are going to have AI and they're going to try to do things to hurt me with that AI and then others are going to build AI that is protective and try to stop the bad guys. And so you will have, just like with normal hacking, you'll have an ever escalating arms race of AI and so even if only with the best of intentions, we will end up getting to AI super intelligence because we're trying to stop somebody from doing a bad thing. And it's.

[Ian Bremmer]

This is.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Go ahead.

[Ian Bremmer]

I was gonna say that's a really good point and I've given a lot of thought to that because, look, we don't trust the Chinese at all. They don't trust us. They've invested billions and tens of billions of dollars into next generation nuclear, wind, solar, electric vehicles and the supply chains for all of that. Now, there are a lot of people around the country that are not particularly focused on climate, but they're focused on China. And they're saying, hey, we cannot let those guys become the, the energy superpower, post carbon. We've got to invest in it so that we're going to be the energy superpower. But the good thing about that is, hey, that's virtuous competition. Like if we end up investing more so that we're the dominant superpower, that just means cheaper post carbon energy, faster for everybody. But in the AI space, it is absolutely unclear that there is a virtuous cycle of competition. If we are not working together, the proliferation risk is much, much greater. I couldn't agree with you more on that point.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah. So now the question becomes, when you look at what we get on the other side of the crisis, the cooperation, the banding together to focus on one problem, does that lead us back to globalization? So we opened this up with globalization. Amazing. We were lifting some ungodly 160,000 people out of poverty every day for like nine years. I was absolutely crazy. The number of people that we pulled out of povert. But you get the rust belt pushback rise of populism. It's not good for everybody. And so needing to really be honest about that. But in this world, let's say that we get the right crisis, what are we steering towards? Is it re globalization or is it what I'm calling thoughtful de globalization?

[Ian Bremmer]

I think we are trying to move back towards globalization, but thoughtful globalization, where you are using the resources you have to more effectively take care of the people that are left behind, that you are constantly retooling your institutions and reforming them because the technologies are changing that fast. And that's something governments by themselves won't be able to do again. They'll have to do in concert. But with these new technology companies or governments will have to change what they are. They'll have to integrate technology companies into them. And that's. That scares you. That's more of an authoritarian model, frankly. But I, I do think that one of the reasons I. You've steered me a couple times now in a direction that historically I'd be very easily steered, which is to talk about US versus China. And I've resisted it. And the reason I've resisted it, even though US China is in a horrible place right now and the relationship is getting worse, it's not getting better. But I, I think it is more likely within 3, 5 years that AI companies cutting edge in all sorts of fields will actually be all over the world. I don't, I think this is going to be a proliferating technology for good and for bad. So I'm more concerned about individuals, rogue states, terrorist organizations doing crazy things as opposed to the US versus China that ultimately want stability in the system.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Right.

[Ian Bremmer]

But I'm also hopeful that it's not going to be a Small number of dominant companies in the United States and China that control all of the next generation AI. Actually, if you're at a position where you can run a near cutting edge AI on your own laptop or on your smartphone and millions and millions of people have access to that intelligence and they can do things with it, I don't think that a small number of mega tech corporations are going to control it. I mean, they may have platforms that they'll be able to charge taxes on, basically tariffs on. But I think so much of both the value, the upside and the danger will be distributed all over the world. And that's again very different than the way we think about geopolitics today. So I don't think the U. S, I don't, on the AI front, I don't think the US China fight is the principal concern to worry about in the next five to 10 years.

[Grainger Announcer]

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[Interviewer/Host]

Okay, well, so this is very interesting. One of the things that you talked about in the book is that when Russia invaded the Ukraine, one of the things that they did to try to appease the west and keep them calm was like, hey, we know you're really worried about hackers. We're going to go round them up, arrest them. And what happens to the ability to use political means to get these bad actors in line if they are proliferated everywhere and we have varying degrees of ability to influence.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, it, it's one of the reasons why I think you don't have an Interpol model or an IAEA model. It's why I think it's going to be, it's going to have to be much more inclusive with the technology companies. I keep coming back to this. I don't think that the US government by itself or the Russian government would be able to make that kind of a promise as easily. Russians are a little bit different here. Right. If you're a authoritarian state and you have real control of the information space, you know, maybe the vast majority of people working on hacking are under your authority. Maybe. But if AI really becomes as explosive and as decentralized as I believe it will, then the governments by themselves are going to have a hard time even maintaining control of the AI space. I'm not sure the Chinese model on this is going to work. I mean, in five and ten years time. Remember, they gave up on the great Chinese firewall and instead, because it was too porous, and instead what they did was they used the surveillance mechanisms and they had a whole bunch of people that were online that were basically nudging Chinese citizens towards better behavior and towards certain things that they should say and certain things against certain things they didn't say and that turned out to be more effective. AI, I think, is going to become, if it becomes a much more decentralized space, it's going to be much, much harder for an authoritarian state to do that, but certainly it'll be impossible for democratic state to do it. Now, the question you haven't asked me is, does that mean that democracy is sustainable? I mean, if the US government feels immediate national security threat from all these tech companies and they can't regulate it, you know, might the Americans start finding the Chinese model on AI much more attractive? I don't think so. And I don't think so because I think our system, because our system is so entrenched, it's so slow moving, it's so receptive to money, the companies are so wealthy, they have the ability to capture the regulatory environment again. I mean, never say never. It can happen here. If things are incredibly dangerous. Yes. I mean, you can take desperate measures. But short of the worst scenarios, I think that the United States is closer to kleptocracy than it is to authoritarian regime. If there's a way that the Americans are going to move away from democracy, it's probably not a Chinese model, right?

[Interviewer/Host]

Well, that's horrifying. I doubt my hope. It's funny. My brain tried to fill in what you were going to say and your answer is probably more true than what I was hoping you were going to say. But what I was hoping you were going to say was that we have such a strong shared narrative around freedom that we wouldn't make those. HE LAUGHS Ladies and gentlemen. HE LAUGHS yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Oh, my God. That used to be true when my dad was alive and after World War II, I just don't see it anymore. I mean, unless everyone's lying to the pollsters all the time, I. It just doesn't feel that way.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

I don't think we agree in the United States what our country stands for. I don't think we do. I don't think we know what our country stands for. There's such incredible cynicism among young people that they're just being lied to, that it's performative from their governments, from their corporations, from everybody, from the media. And some of it, I, some of it is very understandable. You know, it's, it's. I mean, it's painful, but like, our economy is doing well, so well. Our technology is doing so well. We have the reserve currency. It's not being threatened. We are in a great geography. It's very safe, it's very stable. There are so many things that are great. I saw that Jamie Dimon, you know, a few minutes that everyone was talking about standing up for America, but he didn't talk about our political system. And our political system is deteriorating and people don't believe in it the way they used to. And there are no. There. I've not seen any pushback against that in the last 20 years. It got worse under Obama, it got worse under Trump. It's gotten worse under Biden. It's clearly not just about those people. It's structural. There are a lot of things driving it. And that, that I don't see a, I mean, God forbid we had a 911 right now. I mean, I was here, I was in New York at 9 11. I saw the second tower go down. I saw the way that New York City rallied. I saw the way the country rallied. There was 92% approval for Bush, for Bush a month.

[Interviewer/Host]

And young people will not understand how crazy that is.

[Ian Bremmer]

And, and I don't think that could happen today.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

I don't think.

[Ian Bremmer]

I, I don't think it could happen even with someone who is as much of a unifier as Biden has been historically. And it certainly couldn't happen under Trump. And, and that's, that's really sad. That's really sad.

[Interviewer/Host]

Do you have a sense of how we unwind, that? This is the one thing my thesis is, has been on this, that until there is enough pain and suffering, which unfortunately historically means war, you don't get. The country won't come back together.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right.

[Interviewer/Host]

So we've obviously been more divided than we are now because we've been in open civil war in the past. But who. I don't see how you unwind these increasingly divergent narratives of left and right without real suffering.

[Ian Bremmer]

Well, I mean, there was this great book that was written by a Princeton historian about the three great levelers, and it talked about how in societies, whatever the governance mechanism, historically, they tend to get more unequal and people with access to power get closer access to power over time, unless one of three big things happen, famine, revolution or war. And that's a little depressing because that implies that you have to have that kind of great, kind of serious crackdown crash before you come out and create more opportunities for people. But I also am seeing, I mean, coming out of the pandemic, there was an enormous amount of money that was spent on poor people. It wasn't just like after 2008 when you bailed out AIG and Lehman Brothers and the bankers this time around, I mean, you bailed out everybody. You bailed out working mothers, you bailed out small and medium enterprises. And it made a difference. And inflation has hit hard, but now finally, working class wages are actually growing faster than, you know, than inflation. And then the average wage. And that wasn't true for decades. So maybe there is a bit of a lesson in that. Maybe there is a bit of a lesson when people are seeing that, you know, it's the wealthiest with their legacy capabilities that are getting accepted to the major universities, the best universities, and not others. And there's a backlash against that. And maybe that forces greater transparency. Maybe it turns out that AI becomes, with all the wealth it can generate, becomes more of a leveler for people in the United States that will have access to opportunities they hadn't had before. Maybe it allows globalization to pick up again. And not everybody's boat will rise at the same speed, but at least everyone's boat will be rising for a while. Coming out of the pandemic, we had 50 years. If we look at humanity as this little ball of 8 billion people, we had 50 years where overall we had extraordinary growth. And if you watch Steven Pinker and Hans Rosling and all of these pro globalization folks, it is true we created not just very, very wealthy people, but also a global middle class. And anyone looking at the globe without a nationality, just like you're an average person, you don't know where you're going to be born. You don't know what family would you want to be born in the last 50 years? Yes, yes you would. And hopefully you win the lottery and you're in the United States like you and me, but, you know, anywhere, if you, that's the time you'd pick. But the last three years you wouldn't. Because the last three years, suddenly human development indicators have gone down. More people are, you know, forced migrants. More people are, you know, born into extreme poverty. And, and people are getting angrier as a consequence of that. Well, I mean, I think there's a good chance that with AI we will have a new globalization that will create far more opportunities. But we need to be very careful about those negative externalities. And so far, it's very early days, but we're not addressing them yet.

[Interviewer/Host]

So, given all of that, paint a picture for me of the near term, let's call it the next 10 years. The. The world is shifting and changing. What does the world order look like as we look out into the future? And I'll contextualize that with you've got things we've talked about here. You've got the war in Ukraine. You've got a dynamic between the US And China being radically upended by the proliferation of AI creating potentially powerful or at least destructive entities anywhere, which make it harder for us to yank levers of political persuasion. Um, with all of the unique cocktail that's brewing now, how does one begin to conceptualize where the world is heading over the next 10 years?

[Ian Bremmer]

Well, I can't imagine wanting to be alive at any other time. I mean, we talk about the Anthropocene, where human beings, first time in history, we have the ability to actually shape the future of humanity. And our role on the planet that we're on, that's pretty extraordinary. And, you know, what does that mean? I think that means that governments and governance will look radically different than anything that we have lived with. We've lived for all of our lives for 50 years, you and I, on average now, we've lived in a fairly stable system. The Soviet Union collapsed, US Was in charge. China's had an extraordinary rise. But generally speaking, the global order today still looks more or less like the global order you had 50 years ago. Henry Kissinger recognizes it. Right? He was 50, now he's 100. But it feels like geopolitics still function the way they used to. You've got heads of state, you got governance. You still have the U.N. you know, you've got the IMF, you know, you've got the World Trade Organization. You've got these big things that more or less. I mean, I was just at the Security Council. Security Council's kind of the same Security Council we had before, from the 70s. But, you know, whatever. It's not, it's the rules, the UN Charter, it's all there. You know, you could have been born a long time ago. In 10 years time, I think we'll still recognize the tectonics on the planet. I think the demographics, we can talk about. We can talk about how Japan will be Smaller and how China's peaked out and how India's growing and that we pretty good sense in that climate. We've got a pretty good sense of what climate's going to look like and extreme storms and the rest of the. But government, how government works, how the geopolitics work, how the world is ordered, ruled. I think it's going to look radically different in 10 years, I really do. Certainly in 20, but probably in 10. I think that a big piece of the power that determines who we are and how we interact with people will be driven by a very small number of human beings that control these tech companies that may or may not know what they're doing and that may or may not be with intentionality. And we don't really know what their goals are. And those goals can change.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Right?

[Ian Bremmer]

I mean, I, I talked a little bit in my TED talk, which I haven't really talked much about, which is kind of good is I talked a little bit about how, you know, when you and I were raised, it was nature or nurture and, and that determined who we were and that now for the first time in humanity, we are being raised by algorithm and that we have a whole generation of kids whose principal understanding of how to interact with society will be intermediated by programmed algorithms that have no interest in the education of that child. That is a subsidiary impact of what they are trying to do. Those algorithms it. What it is trying to do. And, and a lot of the interactions that will take place with those kids will be AI interactions, not just intermediated, but the actual relationship will be with AI, which by the way, if I could wave a magic wand and do one regulation in the world today, I would say anyone under 16 cannot interact with an AI directly as, as if it were a human being unless it's under human super direct human supervision. Because I just don't want people to be raised by anything other than people until we understand what that means.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Even at the level of education.

[Ian Bremmer]

Again into. I want that to be directly controlled by, supervised by a person. So yes, I think education, I think a doctor. I'd love to have AI being used, you know, for medical, you know, on medical apps for kids. But I'm saying if you're having a relationship with something, including with a teacher, I don't want kids to have a relationship with an AI educator unless it's, unless it's overseen by an adult. Until we know what it does to the kids, you know, we just don't know. We just don't know. And I, I worry about that a lot. I wouldn't want, I mean, I don't have kids. If I had them, I, I'd worry about that. I know my mom wouldn't have allowed that and thank God for it. So yeah, I think that we're going to be different as human beings. I mean, you know, you talked about Yuval no Harari recently, who I find very inspirational as a thinker and you know, this Homo Dias concept that he comes up with. I think that young people today are already something a little different from Homo sapiens. And I don't know exactly what that is. None of us do because we're running the experiments on them now. I'm not comfortable with that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

In modern day America, could we actually find ourselves in civil war?

[Co-Host/Analyst]

No. In, in fact, in fact, since, since

[Ian Bremmer]

you're asking that question, I, I literally

[Co-Host/Analyst]

just a few moments ago responded to someone, it was

[Ian Bremmer]

David Rothkopf. I did not have full fledged civil war on my bingo card for 2024. I think I need a new bingo card. And I wrote, I would definitely stick

[Co-Host/Analyst]

with your old bingo card. So no, I understand that. We have like 25 governors that are all lined up saying gotta defend the border and don't want to listen to the Supreme Court. This is not about civil war. This is about a democracy in crisis. This is about two sides that are very antagonistic towards each other. The stakes are very high, especially for the leaders of both of these political parties. And there is no effort to engage in diplomacy. There's no effort to see things from the perspective of the other side. And in fact, they really don't even share basic understanding of political facts. And when you look at that and you compare it to Russia versus Ukraine or Israel versus Hamas, then you start to see that there is a real line through of comparison. And that is unfortunate. It's not that we're going to start blowing ourselves up. It's more that we aren't capable of having a free and fair election that the entire country believes in anymore. And that's kind of foundational to a well functioning democracy. But, but unfortunately that's not where we are this year.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, definitely what I was hoping you were going to say, but now set the table for us. When I read the report that you put out, you list the United States against itself as the number one threat that we face.

[Ian Bremmer]

Why?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Walk me through the. When you talk about, you've said social media is an existential threat to democracy. Obviously we've got Trump versus Biden as the likely race. What are the Pieces that are on this. Maybe chessboard is a better analogy that have you listing this as the number one concern.

[Ian Bremmer]

Well, first, let's, let me explain what

[Co-Host/Analyst]

it means to be number one. So what's the methodology behind my madness?

[Ian Bremmer]

Right.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

And you know what we're looking at? We're measuring likelihood, imminence, and impact. And so, I mean, if you look at this year's report, Africa's not in it.

[Ian Bremmer]

Why not?

[Co-Host/Analyst]

I mean, all sorts of horrible things

[Ian Bremmer]

that are really risky are happening in

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Africa, but the economic and diplomatic and security impact on the rest of the world is negligible. And I'm sorry to have to say

[Ian Bremmer]

that, but it is what it is.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Like, I can't make it other than what it is. And where in the United States, you know, the, the fact that the US

[Ian Bremmer]

Democratic process is pretty broken and that

[Co-Host/Analyst]

that is having a significant impact on policies that the US Enacts with massive implications for the rest of the world. Because the US Is by far the strongest economy in the world. It's by far the strongest military in the world. Like, that's why there's such outsized impact from the United States. It's a big deal. So, for example, Trump has not yet got the nomination. He will.

[Ian Bremmer]

Right?

[Co-Host/Analyst]

I mean, I think that's pretty much a hundred percent short of a really unforeseen health event. There's really no mechanism for anyone to get, for Nikki Haley to get a single state.

[Ian Bremmer]

I expect that she'll drop out before

[Co-Host/Analyst]

South Carolina because she's not going to want to lose her home state by 30 points. I think she's politically savvy enough to avoid that fate. But even before Trump gets the nomination, just by putting his thumb on the scale and saying, I don't want a deal on the border in return for $61 billion of Ukraine aid, because I want to run on that issue against Biden, who's failing on the border right now, and Mitch McConnell, who is no Trump fan but is now loyal because Trump now owns the Republican Party again, gets on board and the speaker of the House gets on board. And so what happens to Ukraine? You're not getting that 61 billion.

[Ian Bremmer]

So is that a risk of Ukraine or is that a risk of the United States?

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Oh, that's a risk of the United States. And you know, I spend a lot of my time talking to leaders of different governments around the world. They are maximally concerned about this Chinese leadership, far more concerned about the US Election than the, than the election in Taiwan, for example, where so many people were Saying, oh, it could be war, it could be transportation.

[Ian Bremmer]

No, they're worried about the U.S. the

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Europeans are worried about the U.S. the Mexicans and Canadians are worried about the

[Ian Bremmer]

U.S. so that, that's why there are

[Co-Host/Analyst]

such major knock on implications from this election.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right. When they say they're worried, what is the, the doomsday scenario for people? So there's assuming that you're right, there is Trump is going to be running against Biden, one of the two is going to win. If you were to to play out the scenarios, one, let me ask you, if the election were held today, who would win?

[Co-Host/Analyst]

I'd say Trump would win today fairly handily. I would say for in November, right now, My view is 6040 Trump. But I have very low confidence in saying that because there's so much that can happen in the next nine months.

[Ian Bremmer]

Fair.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so let's run those scenarios. What one, talk to me about the lead up, because that's the thing I think is a huge litmus test if you were to ask me what I've spent the most time thinking about. It's what does it look like in a world with AI at the level that it's at, in an election that is so contentious and so high stakes globally, what does that look like? But then also I want to specifically walk through the scenarios of what does the world look like, say in the immediate six months after a Trump victory? What does the world look like in an immediate six months after a Biden victory?

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Well, so first of all, the stakes are so much higher for these individual leaders. If Trump loses, he's going to jail. And I mean, we've got 91 indictments. There will almost certainly be convictions, at least in the Washington, D.C. case before for the election though, he'll be out on bail. But so the stakes for Trump are far higher than they were before. That means the implications of him losing are, is something he needs to avoid at all costs.

[Ian Bremmer]

The efforts that he and many of

[Co-Host/Analyst]

his supporters will take to avoid that and maybe even to interfere with that

[Ian Bremmer]

are far greater than they would have

[Co-Host/Analyst]

been in 2020 or in 2016. And certainly the impact if Biden wins of Trump then going to jail and taking the government taking that action against him after, you will have heard the entire Republican Party saying that these cases are fake and they're politicized and they're trumped up and they're a witch hunt. And they will say that because they will all be loyal to and endorsing Trump has the potential to have far more Disruption from saying that the election was rigged. So assuming it's not a massive landslide,

[Ian Bremmer]

where you can't get away with saying

[Co-Host/Analyst]

that Trump would still say it, but that you can't. It doesn't make sense, then, you know, I do think there's a much greater likelihood that you will have civil disobedience, social instability, violence in a lot of red states, in a lot of red cities, and unwillingness to accept a Biden administration as legitimate president in 2025. I think that's a very big and real possibility. Now, if, if Trump wins, there are several things that are really different this time around from 2016. One thing that is different is his priorities. He is, his first priority has to be to end all of the investigations against him, to politicize the DOJ and the FBI and the IRS that he believes are already politicized against him, and, and impose his own loyalists on those in the bureaucracies of those organizations so that he can go after his enemies that want to lock him up. He's going to want to lock them up. And indeed, there are many senior advisors to Biden that feel like they're likely to be imprisoned if Trump is able to pull that off. So we're talking here something that looks a lot more like Peru or Hungary than looks like Canada or Japan or Germany. Right? And we're normalizing all of this because, you know, we're getting used to it over a number of years. We're like, okay, well, now we have presidents that get impeached a couple times, and the impeachment's kind of broken. It's only political.

[Ian Bremmer]

So, okay, that's the way it works.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

And, you know, we see what happened with the speaker of the House who's thrown out by a small number of, of, of caucusing members of his own party. And that means that you can't promote legislation that they don't like. That's the way it works now. That's not the way it's worked historically, and it's not the way a functional democracy works. But in this environment, if Trump wins, that is what we're looking at. And then there's also the international environment, which is very, very different. 2016 to 2020, there really weren't any major global crises going on while Trump was president. This time around, Trump will be president with a minimum of two major wars that are going on. And he's promised he will end the war in Ukraine on the first day. He says it. It's just a talking point. He says it all the time. What he means is that he will force the Ukrainians to accept the present delineation of land, and when they refuse,

[Ian Bremmer]

they will be cut off. They'll say, you get a ceasefire for that.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Well, they say, no, this is an existential crisis for NATO and for the

[Ian Bremmer]

eu because there are a lot of

[Co-Host/Analyst]

frontline countries that think that that is an unacceptable outcome. But there are others, like Hungary and Slovakia, as well as political movements inside Europe that are gaining in popularity, like the New National Front in France or like the alternatives for Deutschland in Germany, that will be aligned with Trump, not with their governments. And Trump will reach out to them in directly engaged foreign policy. Something that absolutely isn't happening right now under the Biden administration. And we've had for the last several years a very coordinated NATO and transatlantic relationship. This suddenly becomes an immediate crisis for the Europeans and for NATO. So, I mean, just to play out a little bit of what that means, that's, that's some of what we should be thinking about, and it's certainly a lot of what American allies are thinking about as we head into this election season.

[Ian Bremmer]

Hmm.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so I want to go back to the civil unrest. So if Biden is elected, what do you like? Let's use 2020 as our benchmark. So we had a lot of civil unrest in 2020. Having lived through it in LA, where a lot of it was popping off it, it was serious. But certainly seeing that sort of move through the system, obviously we were nowhere near that. Spilling over into a civil war that to me feels like peak sort of tinder pile, given that we had all been locked down. And so there was. There was a just a sort of screaming sense of injustice everywhere. And then you get to January 6th, which I guess technically was 2021, and again now we've been locked up even longer. And there, there's a real undercurrent of not only is there a massive amount of social injustice, but there's also the government may actually be coming tyrannical. And so that felt like a, a powder keg moment that I don't feel like we will have in 2024's election, barring an economic turn. So if you had to, to gauge off of the instability that we had in that period versus what you expect after this election if, if Biden wins, where, where do you peg that level of reaction?

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Yeah, I think, first of all, I think the global challenges are much greater

[Ian Bremmer]

than the domestic ones.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

So you, you mentioned the point, you know, barring an economic unforeseen issue in the US The US Performance of the US Economy is actually quite strong right now.

[Ian Bremmer]

Now, people don't necessarily feel that way

[Co-Host/Analyst]

because the, the leading indicator that determines how you feel about the economy in the US is, is what your political affiliation is, which is senseless, but is true. And that gets to the problem of democracy, the completely different information environments. But you certainly do not have people locked down under the pandemic. You certainly do not have an economy that is in crisis. But other economies around the world are going to get hit very badly by this. US Democracy in crisis is a much bigger problem for the economies in Europe, for example, or in Asia, for example, than they are for the United States. And that is meaningful. But the report, the risk report that we write is a global report. It's not just a report that looks at the United States domestically. So I do think it is the geopolitical backdrop of this instability and the erosion of political institutions in the United States that poses a big issue. I mean, remember, Trump came in last time around and he pulls the US out of the Trans Pacific Partnership. This ends those negotiations, pulls the US out of the, the Paris climate talks, pulls the US out of the Iranian nuclear deal, all of these things, but they happen in peacetime.

[Ian Bremmer]

And so it doesn't really matter that much.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

That happens in wartime when people are feeling crises and when other countries are feeling major economic stress. After three years of pandemic, that's a very different story. So if anything, this would make me more structurally bullish on the dollar and on the US Stock market, because in a world that is much more unstable, you're going to the cleanest dirty shirt. And, and that's not crypto, right? I mean, it's not NFTs, and it's certainly not China.

[Tom Bilyeu]

How dare you, Ian Bremmer.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

I'm sorry. It's certainly not China, which is facing very serious, so, so serious economic challenges that they're, they, they really don't want Trump and they, they had no problem with Trump in 2016. And this time around they're saying we

[Ian Bremmer]

can't handle the chaos.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

We, we just want a stable election. You know, so that, that is really interesting. I don't think there'll be another January 6th because everything will be locked down around that. They, that the, the preparations for that will be in place. I think it's much more likely the kind of instability we'll see will be much more like what we had in Portland, Oregon. But again, in red states where you have large numbers of disenfranchised MAGA types who Are many of whom are armed, many of whom will see a Biden administration as a second Biden administration as an absolute destruction of everything that they see as holy. And they will likely be supported by a lot of local police and maybe some local members of the armed forces. And that. That's a fairly serious impact, in my view. That's the biggest thing that I think is likely to come about in a relatively narrow Biden win where there will be massive information that people that oppose Biden will believe that the election was stolen and was stolen badly. And they'll be. And that disinformation will also be magnified by artificial intelligence, which we've already seen with those Biden fake Biden robocalls in New Hampshire. Just the tip of the iceberg. There were voters that were told with a Biden voice and they were targeted directly with their real phone numbers and their real names. You know, you are not to go out. We don't want you to go and vote in the primary because that's. We want you to vote in the general election, not in the primary.

[Ian Bremmer]

That.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

That's artificial intelligence. Real cheap. And there are lots of bad actors in the country and outside of the country that would love to foment chaos through, through those mechanisms.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, there, there's no doubt about that. That in my layman stance were I putting out my report of risks, AI causing just a massive disinformation campaign in the build up to the 2024 election, continuing to bifurcate people into different camps where we don't share any facts, that, that is the thing that freaks me out. And I think that that's going to get better before it gets worse.

[Interviewer/Host]

Sorry, that's going to get worse before it gets better.

[Ian Bremmer]

And.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, so.

[Ian Bremmer]

But the reason that we put that

[Co-Host/Analyst]

in the U.S. risk and not in the AI risk is because it is the vulnerability of the U.S. and the, the already the willingness to believe conspiracy theories, the, the dysfunction and fragmentation of the political system that makes the US Election so singularly vulnerable to those sorts of attacks. Those attacks would not work in Japan. They would not work in Germany. Like people would not go out onto the streets with pitchforks in response to that. The United States increasingly different.

[Interviewer/Host]

Why do you think Big Tech will become the third superpower? And what are the dangers and opportunities if it does?

[Ian Bremmer]

Big Tech is essentially sovereign over the digital world. The fact that former President Trump was deplatformed from Facebook and from Twitter when he was president, most powerful political figure on the planet, and he's just taken off of Those networks, and as a consequence, hundreds of millions of people that would be regularly engaging with him in real time suddenly can't see it. That wasn't a decision that was made by a government. It wasn't a decision made by a judge or by a regulatory authority, or even by a multinational organization like, you know, the un. It was made by individuals that own tech companies. The same thing is true in the decision to help Ukraine in the war. In the early days, the US didn't provide much military support. Most of the military capacity and the cyber defenses, the ability to communicate on the ground was stood up by some tech companies that they're not allies of NATO. They're under no obligation to do that. They've got shareholders, right? But they still decided to do it. I think that whether we're talking about society or the economy or even national security, if it touches the digital space, technology companies basically act with dominion. And that didn't matter much when the Internet was first founded, because the importance of the Internet for those things was pretty small. But as the importance of the digital world drives a bigger and bigger piece of the global economy, a bigger and bigger piece of civil society, a bigger and bigger piece of national security, and even increasingly defines who we are as people, how we interact with other human beings, what we see, what we decide, what we feel, how we emote, that is an astonishing amount of power in the hands of these tech companies. And yes, there are some efforts to rein them in, to break them up, to regulate them. But when I look at artificial intelligence in particular, I see these technology companies and their technologies vastly outstripping the capacity of governments to regulate in that space. So does that mean that suddenly you're not going to be citizens of the US you're going to be citizens of a tech company? No, I'm not going that far. But certainly in terms of who wields the most power over us as human beings, increasingly you would put those companies in that category. And that none of us, even five years ago were thinking about this seriously. And certainly when I was studying as a political scientist, this is my entire career. You know, the geopolitical space is determined by governments, right? Like them or hate them. And some of them are powerful, some of them are weak, some of them are rich, some of them are poor, some are open, some are closed, some are dictatorships.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

Right?

[Ian Bremmer]

Some are democracy, some are functional, some are dysfunctional, but they're in charge. And that increasingly is not true.

[Interviewer/Host]

As you look at that potential or not potential, as you look at that growing reality how does that play out? Does this become the one thing when I look at that that I really start getting paranoid about is that AI, especially quantum computing, I'm maybe less familiar with, but sort of lingers in the back of my mind, become one of two things. Either weapons used by governments even, even if it's not against their own people, though I do, especially with authoritarian governments, I get very paranoid about that. But even if they're just used as warfare against other countries, that sort of quiet, invisible battle freaks me out. And then also I worry very much about this becoming the new battlefield for a cold war between the US and China specifically. Do you see us as moving towards that? Because the tech will make that increasingly easy to fight an invisible war.

[Ian Bremmer]

I do think, of course, that all of these technologies are both enabling and destructive. And it all depends on the intention of the user. And in some cases, you know, it's someone who's just a tinkerer that makes a mistake or that's playing around and, you know, it explodes. I'm not particularly worried that the robots are going to take over. I'm not particularly worried that we're on the cusp of developing, developing a superhuman intelligence and that we are suddenly irrelevant or we're, you know, held hostage to it. That's in other words, I mean, I know that you love the Matrix, we talked about that a little bit before the show. This is not my 5, 10 year concern, but the idea that this technology is going to proliferate explosively, I mean, vastly beyond anything we ever were concerned about with nuclear weapons, where 80 years on it's still just, just a handful of countries and no corporations, no terrorist groups, no individuals to have access to those nukes. No, no, no. AI, with both its productive and destructive capacities will not just be in the hands of rogue states, but will also be in the hands of people and terrorists and corporations and, and they'll have cutting edge access to that. So I mean, it would be easier to deal with if it was just about the United States and China. And we can talk about the United States and China and how they think about that technology differently and how we're fighting over it and how it has become a technology cold war. I think that we can say that that exists right now. Not a cold war overall, but, but a technology cold war. I think that exists. But I think the dangers of AI are far greater than that. It is precisely the fact that non governments will act as principles in determining the future of the digital world and of society and national security. As a Consequence. And governments right now, governments still seem to think that they're going to be the ones that will drive all this regulation. And in the most recent days, the United States is taking just a few baby steps to show that maybe they recognize that that's not the case. But ultimately, either we're going to have to govern in new institutions with technology companies as partners, as signatories, or they're not going to be regulated. And I think that that reality is not yet appreciated by citizens. It's not yet appreciated by governments.

[Interviewer/Host]

Ooh, okay, so tell me more about that. What does the world look like where this technology is proliferating like that and is not regulated?

[Ian Bremmer]

Well, if it's not regulated at all, that means that everyone has access to it. So let's look at the good side first. Let's be. Let's be positive and optimistic, because I'm a believer in this technology. I think it does all sorts of incredible things. And I'm not just talking about ChatGPT. I'm talking about the ability to take any proprietary data set and be maximally efficient in extracting value from it, helping allowing workers to become AI adjacent in ways that will make them more productive and effective. I look at my own firm, Eurasia Group, we've got about 250 employees, and we did a town hall with them the other day. We do one every quarter. And we were talking about AI, and I said, I don't think there's anyone in any of these offices globally that will be displaced by AI in the next three to five years. Not one of my knowledge workers. But I said, all of you will be AI adjacent. And if you're not, if you're not learning how to use AI to dramatically improve your work, whether you are an analyst or whether you're on the business side or you're in finance, or you're, you know, on the IT help desk, or you're a graphics person, an editor, whatever it is, you will become much less productive than other employees that are doing that, and that will be a problem for you. So we need to get you the tools and you need to learn. And I think that that's true in almost every industry imaginable. It's true in education, it's true in healthcare, and for new pharma and vaccines. It's true for new energy and critical infrastructure. And what's so amazing about it, one of the reasons why it's taking us so long to respond to climate change, even now that we all agree that it's happening, we all agree this 420 billion parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, we all agree there's 1.2 degrees centigrade of warming. Like that's, that's no longer in dispute. And yet it's really taking us a long time to get to the point that we can reduce our carbon emissions.

[Co-Host/Analyst]

And the reason for that is because

[Ian Bremmer]

you need to change the critical infrastructure, right? You need to move from one entire supply chain oriented around carbon to another one oriented around something new, whether that's solar or, you know, green hydrogen or you name it, right? When you're talking about AI, you're talking about first and foremost creating efficiencies using your existing critical infrastructure. Which means you have no vested corporations that are saying we don't want that. No, every corporation is saying, how can we invest in that to create greater profitability? Everyone, every, every oil company is going to use AI just like every post fossil fuel company is going to use it, every bank is going to use it, every pharmaceutical company, whether they're using, whether they're in MRNA or they're in traditional, you know, vaccines that are, that are developed as we have over decades now, I think that we truly underestimate the impact that will have in unlocking wealth, in unlocking human capital. And it's going to happen fast. It's not decades as it took with globalization to open markets and get goods and services to move across the world. It's years, in some cases it's months. And that to me is very, very exciting. So that's the positive side, and frankly, that's what the positive side looks like without regulation too. Because I mean, look, there are trillions of dollars being spent on this rollout and it's being spent by a lot of people who are hyper smart, they are hyper competitive, they want to get there first before other companies that are in that space. And they don't need any further incentive to ensure that they can roll that out as fast as possible. So you and I can, we can say whatever we want, but it's not, you know, further subsidies are not required, right? Like that is just going to happen. That is going to happen. But what they're not doing, and I'm sure what you want to spend more time on with me is not the everything's going to be great or you know, what they call this E Dash act, the, you know, sort of exponential accelerationists who just believe that if we just put all this money in it, then we're going to, we're going to all become a greater species and it's just going to happen. But there are going to be a lot of negative externalities. And we know this from globalization. I mean, the miracle of your and my lifetimes thus far before AI, the miracle was we managed to unlock access to the global Marketplace for now, 8 billion people, trade and goods and capital and investment and the labor force, the workforce. And that created dislocations. It meant that there were a whole bunch of people that were more expensive in the west that lost their jobs as inexpensive labor that was very talented in China and India gained jobs. But, but that led to unprecedented growth for 50 years. There were also negative externalities, and those negative externalities played out over many decades. But it's when you take all of this inexpensive coal and oil and gas out of the ground and you don't realize that you're actually using a limited resource and you're affecting the climate. And so decades later, we all figure out, oh, wait a second, this is a really huge cost on humanity and on all of these other species, many of which are already extinct and no one's bothered to pay for them. Well, with AI, the negative externalities will happen basically simultaneously with all the positive

[Co-Host/Analyst]

stuff I just talked about.

[Ian Bremmer]

And just like with climate, none of the people that are driving AI are spending their time or resource figuring out how to deal with those problems. They're spending all their time trying to figure out how to save humanity, how to accelerate this technology. So if we don't talk about those negative externalities, they're just going to happen and they won't be mitigated, they won't be regulated. And there's a lot of them. And, you know, we can talk through what they are, but I mean, there's, you know, just, just to put in everyone's head here that kind of like climate change, right? We all wanted globalization. I'm a huge fan of globalization. We all hate climate change. We wish it hadn't happened. You cannot have one without the other. And, you know, the fact that we were so focused on growth and that all of the powerful forces are, let's have more stuff, let's get more gdp, let's extend our lifespans, let's improve our education, let's take people out of abject poverty, all of which are, you know, laudable goals, some more, some less, but things that we all like. But there were. There were consequences that no one wanted, no one dealt with, no one cared as much about, because they're not as directly relevant to us as the shiny apple. That's right. In front and that that is what is about to happen in exponential fashion with artificial intelligence.

[Interviewer/Host]

All right, so we've got the shiny object syndrome, myself included. I am, I am deploying AI in my company as fast as I can, but at the same time, I am very worried about how this plays out. You've already touched on job loss. You're not super worried about that in the three to five year time horizon.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I may be a little more worried

[Interviewer/Host]

about that than you, but I gave a same, a similar speech to my company which is I have literally zero intention to get rid of anybody, but I do have the expectation that all of you are going to be learning how to use AI And I know that that is going to mean I'm going to get efficiencies out of my current workforce, which means I won't be hiring additional people. So while the people I have are safe, it certainly creates instability in people in terms of looking for a new job, the kind of mobility I don't think people are going to be scaling as quickly as possible. But my real question for you is, given that you have a global perspective, which, which I've come to late in the game and for longtime viewers of mine, I will just say the reason I become so obsessed with this. You and I were talking about this before we started rolling. I come at everything from the perspective of the individual. And I think that that culture and all these knock on effects are all downstream of the individual. And if we want a good society, we have to be good individuals. But we have to take the time to say, what is that like, what are we aiming towards? What's our North Star? What are we trying to get out of this? So for me the punchline is human flourishing. I won't spend time in this interview defining what that means. Certainly my listeners have heard me talk about that before. But what do you think about? I, I assume you will roughly, given the, the talk that you just gave, will roughly say something similar. We want good things, we want to pull people out of poverty, we want to clean up the environment. There's going to be a lot of things we want to do that I think more or less are about human flourishing. What then is the collision of a new technology like AI becoming so ubiquitous in an unregulated fashion that gives you pause? Is it us, China? Is it a rogue actor making bioweapons? Like, what's the thing that when you look near term we'll say the three to five year time horizon, what gives you pause?

[Ian Bremmer]

So there are a few things And I don't, even though I said I don't think I'm going to fire anyone because of AI, I do worry that the same populist trends that we have experienced in the developed world in particular over the last 20 years can grow faster. If you are a rural living in a rural area, or you're under educated and you're not going to become AI adjacent in the next five years, 10 years in the United States, in Europe, and those people will be left farther behind by the knowledge workers that have that opportunity. And so I'm not saying they're going to have massive unemployment, but I worry about that.

[Interviewer/Host]

What do you think about like picking fruit and stuff like that with robots that make your radar for anything near term?

[Ian Bremmer]

Again, not, not so much. So I, again, I would say no. Let me tell you why I say no about that. Because when I think about what CEOs do with their workforces, generally, they take those productivity gains, they pocket them. You know, they pay out good bonuses to themselves, to their shareholders, maybe they invest more in growth. But as long as growth is moving, they're not getting rid of a whole bunch of people. They like the people that they have, they want it. They're always thinking the trees are going to grow, you know, sort of to the heavens. And then when they face a sudden contraction, a recession, or even worse, a depression, then suddenly they look at everything around them and say, okay, where can we cut costs? And if we've suddenly, if those workers, if a lot of those workers aren't

[Co-Host/Analyst]

as efficient as they used to be,

[Ian Bremmer]

and you get new technologies suddenly, it's not like you're incrementally getting rid of people every year. It's that you've taken a huge swath out of the workplace. So I don't think that that's going to happen suddenly in the next few years because we're coming out of a mild, narrow slowdown right now and the next few years should look better. I more think about what happens the next time we're in a major cyclical downturn and combining that with where we've gotten to with the AI productivity buildup at that point. But I still think that in the interim you're going to have people that aren't gaining the productivity benefits from AI inside western economies. And those are the same people that have been hit by the Fentanyl crisis. Those are the same people that haven't had good investments in their educational systems. Then around the world, the people the digital have nots, the people that aren't even online. So they won't be able to use these new AI tools to be, to improve their knowledge, to have access to better doctors. So they'll be left behind this new turbocharged globalization. And that's a lot of sub Saharan Africa first and foremost. So I do think that there are two groups of people that even in the next five years that will suffer comparatively and will be angry politically and will create social discontent. So I didn't mean to imply that I didn't care about that or that I thought it was off the screen. It was more that I don't see that as a firm of literally 250 people. Like, we're tiny. And if you tell me that we're going to have a lot more efficiency, I wouldn't actually hire less. I'd hire more because I want to get to 500 people faster. There's just more things that I want to do without taking any outside investment. But that's a tiny, tiny issue compared to the other stuff we're talking about. The things that I'm probably most worried about in the near term, three years, let's say, I'd say, are three buckets. The first is the disinformation bucket. The fact that inside democracies, increasingly, especially with AI we as citizens cannot agree on what is true. We can't agree on facts. And that that delegitimizes the media. It delegitimizes our leaders and both political parties or the many political parties that exist in other developed countries. It delegitimizes our judicial system, rule of law. It even delegitimizes our scientists. And you can't really have an effective democracy if there is no longer a fact space. I mean, we're seeing it right now in a tiny way with all of these indictments of Trump. And it doesn't matter what the indictments are, doesn't matter how many they are. It doesn't matter what he's being indicted for. What matters more to the political outcome is whether or not you favor Trump politically. If you do, then this is politicized, it's a witch hunt. And, you know, Biden should be indicted. And if you don't, then Trump is unfit. And every indictment doesn't matter what it is before you even get a result of it, then you know he's guilty. And. And that with AI becomes turbocharged.

[Interviewer/Host]

I want to get into why that happens. So my first question on that is pre. It's definitely pre AI because I think

[Tom Bilyeu]

this started breaking down with social media.

[Ian Bremmer]

Great.

[Interviewer/Host]

How prior to social media. Do you think that we were able to come to a consensus on truth?

[Ian Bremmer]

Well, a couple of reasons. One is that a lot of people got their media from either the same source or from overlapping and adjacent sources. So you had more commonality to talk about politics to the extent that you talked about politics. Second, it was mostly long form. So you would read a newspaper article, you would listen to a radio show, you would watch a television show, you weren't just getting the headline. Because today if you go on CNN or Fox News on their website and don't look at the headlines, just look at the pieces, the pieces actually overlap a fair amount. If you look at the headlines and then if you look at what headlines you're being filtered to, then the news that you're getting is completely different. So I think that's a reason too. And of course, the fact that people are spending so much more time intermediated by algorithms means they're spending less time randomly just meeting their fellow other. And that's even true with the rise of things like dating apps, right? I mean, as opposed to just happening to date someone you were in high school with or in college with, or, you know, you meet at a bar. I mean, if you're meeting that person through a dating app, you're already being sorted in ways that will reduce the randomness of the views that you're exposed to. So in all sorts of tiny ways that add up that are mostly technologically driven, we become much more sorted. Sorted, not sorted though, sorted probably too, as a population. And then you put AI into this and suddenly this is being maxed. So another example, you'll remember that, I think it was David Ogilvy who, the great advertising entrepreneur, who once said that we know that 50% of advertising dollars are useful, 50% are useless, we just don't know what 50%. And of course now we know how to micro target. Now we know that when we're spending money, we are spending it to get the eyeballs of the people who are going to be affected by our message. They will be angered by it, they will be titillated by it, they will be engaged by it, they will spend money, they will become more addicted by it, all of those things. And when you do that, you more effectively sort the population as opposed to throwing a message at the wall. But everybody gets the message. And so it is not the intention to destroy democracy, it is not the intention to rip apart civil society. It is merely an unintended secondary effect of the fact that we've become so good at micro targeting and sorting, that people no longer are together as a nation or as a community. And AI perfects that AI allows you to take large language models and predict with uncanny capacity what the next thing is. And the next thing for an advertising company is how I can effectively target and reach that person and not the other person who doesn't care about my.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, and keep them engaged. So let me give you my thesis on this. This, I think, is one of the most important things for us to all wrap our heads around. I've thought a lot about why is there a sudden breakdown in truth? And the more I thought about, okay, what is true? How can we go about proving it? The reality is that so much of what we perceive to be true is merely your interpretation of something. So you're going to get a perspective on something built around what I call your frame of reference. So your frame of reference is basically, it's your beliefs and your values that you've cobbled together sort of unknowingly throughout the course of your life. It becomes a lens through which you view everything. But it is a very distorted lens that is not making an effort to give you what is true. It's making an effort to conform to the things you already believe are or ought to be. And so when people confuse that for objective reality, then you have a problem. And so when you introduce AI, what? Well, one, when you introduce algorithms, you get massive fragmentation. So now I can serve you just the things that you're interested in. So like, if you go to my feed, you're going to niche down into like really weird things around video game creation, which is something that I'm very passionate about, that somebody else isn't going to see. And so you get already that fragmentation. You layer that on top of your perspective, which you're coming with those, those pre distortions. Then you layer that on top of the algorithm has an agenda that may not match your agenda.

[Ian Bremmer]

And.

[Interviewer/Host]

And now all of a sudden you get into these echo chambers that are feeding back to you your same perspective. They're eliminating nuance. By giving you, like you were talking about headlines earlier by giving you, like, this is the talking point. And so now you start, everything becomes predictable. If I know you're on the left,

[Tom Bilyeu]

I know what you're, you know, on

[Interviewer/Host]

a basket of concepts, I know where you're going to fall. If you're on the right same basket of concepts, I know where you're going to fall. And so once you get rid of that nuance now all of a sudden, again we're not optimized for truth, we're optimized for party line. And because that then feeds into a sense of tribe and I belong and ease of thought, quite frankly, which is one of the things that scares me the most, is like, oh, I don't have to think through that issue myself. I just need to know what my party line is. Cool, Got it. And now I go. And as we get more and more fragmented now, it becomes, okay, I know what my party line is in my very deep fragment here. But I don't know what's true. And I no longer even know how to assess what's true. In fact, I probably think again, because that distortion reads to me as objective reality. So I think it is true. And so now you have all these people who are like, this is true, like there's not, there's nothing you could tell me that will make me think any different because I believe this to be true. And so now the question becomes, if I'm right, that truth is perspective and interpretation. And, and the, you're, you're soaked in the, the perspective and interpretation of others, so they, they reinforce, so it becomes perspective, interpretation and reinforcement. And so that becomes quote, unquote, truth. Outside of science, for lack, no, because even science, we run into the same problem, so what do we do?

[Ian Bremmer]

Same problem, science. Yes.

[Interviewer/Host]

So, so in a world where the only way I can think to get on the other side of this quagmire is to go, I want to achieve this thing. And I'm going to state this is my achieve, my, my desired outcome. This is the metric by which I will determine whether I have achieved said outcome. And then instead of asking what's true, I just ask what moved me closer to my goal. Is there any way else around that, that you see? Or is this just a one way street to fragmented catastrophe?

[Ian Bremmer]

No, there are lots of ways out of it. We're just not heading towards any of them. I mean, no, you look at your Twitter feed or your X feed and you've got the people you're following. And if you willing to spend the time, you can curate a following feed that has people of all sorts of different backgrounds, inclinations from all over the world, and I do that. But it takes a lot of time and effort and you need expertise to

[Co-Host/Analyst]

be able to do that.

[Ian Bremmer]

You have to be able to research and figure out who those people are. You have to know some people in the field. Most people don't do that. But of course the for you feed is much More titillating the 4U feed is very entertaining. It engages you, it angers you and, and it, and it soothes you at the same time, you want more of that. And that of course is driving you exactly in the direction you just suggested. Now a lot of people will say, well, okay, you watch CNN all the time. You should watch some Fox as well. No, that's not the answer. The answer is not watching Fox because you will just hate watch Fox because you've already been programmed to realize that everything that the people on the other side saying is false. And so they're all evil. And so all that's doing is validating your existing truth. No, what you really need to, I tell, I tell young people this all the time. You really want to understand and get outside what's happening in the United States ecosystem. Watch the CBC or Al Jazeera or Deutsche Welle or NHK in Japan. Just watch their English language news once a week for half an hour, an hour. It's not very exciting, but it's like a completely external view of what the hell is going on in the United States and the rest of the world. And that forced you. First of all, it's long form, right? It's not the headlines beating you down. And secondly, it's like you don't actually have your anchor of all of the things that, that are stirring you up. They're not even playing with that. They're just kind of reporting on the best they can tell what the hell is going on. And then they're occasionally talking to people like that are locals and whatnot, but from every side. That, that's very valuable. But the thing that worries me about AI, I don't believe that AI is becoming much more like human beings. They're not faking us out by, by just being, by being able to replicate me. I think what's actually happening is technology companies are teaching us more effectively how to engage like computers. I mean, you and I in person, in a conversation, in a relationship, a work relationship, a friend relationship, a sexual relationship, whatever it is, there's nothing a computer can do that can tear us away from that. But if we spend our time increasingly in the digital world where we are driven by, where all of our inputs are algorithmic, well, computers can replicate that very easily. And so if they can only make us more like computers, then no, it's not like the matrix where you want to feed off us in terms of fuel. It's much more that we're very valuable in driving the economy. If you give us all of your attention and data and. And that is the way that you create, right, a. A maximal AI economy. It also happens to be completely dehumanized because we all know that human beings are social animals. We know if you stick us in a room or you stick us in

[Co-Host/Analyst]

a desert island, we're going to, like,

[Ian Bremmer]

engage with each other, talk to each other, figure out things about each other. Doesn't matter what color we are, what sexual orientation we are. We will figure it out. If we're stuck, if we have no choice. But if you. If you take us and you. And you use our most base, most reptilian impulses and you and you monetize those so that we're the product. Oh, no, no. Then. Then you lose everything we built as human beings. All the governance, all the community, all the social organizations, the churches, the things of the family, the things that matter to us that we're losing. That we're losing. The things that make us rooted and make us sane and make us care and make us love. I mean, flourishing. Flourishing starts right here. It starts at home. It doesn't start online. Flourishing starts. Those are tools that we need to use to create wealth. But you can't flourish if you don't have real relationships. That takes away. It strips away the essence of who we are as people, and yet we are all running headlong away from flourishing.