Ian Bremmer: Who Is Actually Running the World?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: What Now? with Trevor Noah

Episode: Ian Bremmer: Who Is Actually Running the World?

Date: April 23, 2026
Host: Trevor Noah
Guest: Ian Bremmer (Political Scientist, President of Eurasia Group)
Additional Host: Eugene

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Episode Theme Overview

In this insightful and candid episode, Trevor Noah sits down with geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer to explore who actually wields power in the modern world. The discussion spans the transformation of American identity, shifts in global leadership, the rise of tech companies as quasi-sovereign actors, and the challenges posed by AI and fractured information ecosystems. With Eugene adding perspective, the conversation is playful yet probing, peppered with humor and sharp cultural observation, making complex political ideas accessible and engaging.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Introductions & The Role of a Political Scientist

• Trevor expresses admiration for Bremmer's unique perspective:
  "You approach every topic or every idea with a, a different bent...it always feels like you're thinking about thinking differently." (04:00)
• Bremmer’s definition of his role:
  "I try to understand how different countries around the world interact with each other. Where the world's going. I'm a political scientist..." (04:39)

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2. Changing U.S. Identity and International Perceptions

• Discussion of U.S. Transformation Since the Cold War:
  • America’s global image has radically shifted since 1989—once the champion of free trade and immigration, now more insular and skeptical, even “tariff-first.” (06:09–08:08)
  • Historical icons like the Statue of Liberty now symbolize values ("Give me your tired, your poor") that contrast with current U.S. policy, which favors wealthy applicants and scrutinizes social media histories. (09:05–09:41)
• Quote:
  "Clearly that doesn't reflect who the United States is today...That is nowhere close." — Ian Bremmer (09:13)

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3. Fluid Global Values and National Identities

• Societies and their values are not static. The U.S. was once seen globally as principled; now, money and power dominate the perception.
  • Fact: "Maybe the most consistent thing since I was growing up is money...the almighty dollar." — Ian Bremmer (11:14)

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4. The G-Zero World: Erosion of U.S. Leadership

• Bremmer’s influential book and the concept of the “G0 world”:
  • U.S. no longer wants to play “sheriff of the world;” absence of global leadership is the norm. (12:10–15:28)
  • The world is fundamentally leaderless, with power diffusing and no single country filling the vacuum.
• How predictions are received:
  • Most thought it was "taking it too far" until reality caught up. (14:31–15:28)

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5. China’s Rise & America’s Relationship with Africa

• Key Point: While the U.S. lost interest in economic and people-to-people ties, China firmly rooted itself in Africa.
  • Over 1 million Chinese now live in Africa, compared to only around 8,000 Japanese.
  • U.S. frustration at China's growing influence is misplaced; it's the direct result of American disengagement. (16:02–16:24)
• Quote:
  "Every single person that's on the ground, those are relationships." — Ian Bremmer (16:11)

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6. Tech Giants as New Sovereigns

• Prediction: Within 5–10 years, Western tech companies (not governments) may act as global sovereigns—defining rules, experimenting on society, even rivaling nations in influence, especially around AI.
  • The U.S. lets tech companies leap ahead without effective regulation, unlike China, where the state retains control.
  • “Some of these technology companies are likely to act like states on the global stage.” — Ian Bremmer (18:34–19:32)
• Notable Quote:
  "We're going to spend all of our time being intermediated by that AI. Well, the company that controls that AI is going to have much more influence over us individually...than any government will." — Ian Bremmer (21:23)

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7. AI, Culture, and Societal Homogenization

• Cultural Loss: Globalization, Western pop culture, and especially AI risk leading to a homogenized society with declining local languages and traditions, as articulated by Eugene.
  • AI may become the biggest shaper of identity, more than family or immediate community. (24:00–26:14)
• Policy Response: Discussion of Australian law banning social media for those under 16 as a potential global model.

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8. U.S. Political Turmoil and Trump’s Impact

• Distrust in System:
  • Popular loss of trust in U.S. institutions is what fueled Trump and other anti-establishment figures on both left and right.
  • "Most people that voted for Trump thought that democracy was more important than the people that voted against it." — Ian Bremmer (27:56)
• Authenticity vs. Honesty:
  • Both Trump and progressive politicians like Bernie/AOC are seen as authentic system disruptors by voters, even if their politics differ. (31:52)

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9. Strategic Thinking—Defining the Problem Before Acting

• Bremmer’s definition: Strategic thinking starts with defining the problem, not just reacting to discomfort or challenge.
  • Need a common reality before discussing solutions.
  • Quote: "You can't even start to respond until you have identified the environment that you're in, the real, honest to God environment you're in." — Ian Bremmer (34:30–35:43)

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10. Fragmented Reality: The Crisis of Information

• Without access to the same basic facts (on vaccines, elections, etc.), Americans cannot strategically think—or act as a coherent society.
  • Quote:
    "You can't do strategic thinking if you are not together, at least able to understand the lay of the land, not what the solutions need to be, just the basic issues." — Ian Bremmer (52:09)

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11. Self-Reflection and Adaptability in Geopolitics

• Changing Models: Bremmer describes the necessity to let go of outdated analytic models (e.g., his “J-Curve” is now a “U-Curve”), emphasizing intellectual humility and readiness to be wrong.
  • “Every single thing I've written about, I have to be ready for it to be wrong.” (84:26)
• Geopolitical Buddhism:
  • Letting go of ideas as personal identity is liberating and essential for truth-seeking. (84:35–85:18)

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12. Societal Levelers & Shared Experiences

• Shared urban challenges (e.g., New York subways, South African blackouts) and common limitations (like time) act as societal levelers, fostering community and equality—contrasting with growing economic segregation elsewhere. (64:24–76:24)

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13. Advising World Leaders

• Bremmer’s experience:
  • "I'm kind of like a geopolitical therapist... What they really want to be doing...is spend a little time thinking about how the world is changing." (80:02–81:11)

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14. Persistent Big Questions for the Future

Bremmer’s ongoing puzzles:

• What happens when AI becomes more effective than humans in key domains—how do states and societies adapt?
• Social contract implications: what do societies do when white-collar jobs become obsolete?
• How can (or when will) global governance address shared threats—especially in AI, biotech, and information warfare?
• Will it take a major crisis for serious global cooperation to emerge? (103:19–114:06)

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15. Signs of Hope

• As U.S. global leadership wanes, many nations want to preserve shared institutions (U.N., IMF, World Bank). There is resilience in the system; more players are stepping up rather than collapsing. (114:21–115:24)
• Quote:
  "A lot of it is trying to find a way to ensure that we still have stability." — Ian Bremmer (115:24)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Tech Company Power:
  "We're going to spend all of our time being intermediated by that AI... the company that controls that AI is going to have much more influence over us individually than any government will." — Ian Bremmer (21:23)

• On Societal Change:
  "The American dream no longer works for them... More in the markets believe in a China dream today than Americans believe in an American dream." — Ian Bremmer (32:17)

• On Intellectual Flexibility:
  "Every single thing that I've written about, I have to be ready for it to be wrong. At some point it will be because the world's changing." — Ian Bremmer (84:26)

• On Shared Humanity:
  "You have to look for the internal and the external... these are ephemeral points." — Ian Bremmer (53:25)

• On Understanding Other Nations:
  "Just how disrespected [the Russians] feel? ...They have such pride, such Russian pride in their nation, in their history. It's not about money." — Ian Bremmer (91:19)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Definition of Political Scientist / U.S. Identity and Perception: 04:39–11:18
• Rise of Tech as Global Sovereigns: 18:34–21:23
• AI and Homogenization: 24:00–26:14
• Strategic Thinking, Problem Definition: 34:30–36:37
• Fragmented Information Crisis: 51:24–52:55
• Letting Go of Old Models: 84:26–85:18
• Advising Leaders: 80:02–81:11
• Signs of Hope for Global Governance: 114:21–115:24

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Tone & Takeaways

The episode is both playful and intellectually challenging. Trevor and Ian weave personal anecdotes, sharp critiques, and optimism through humor, empathy, and realism. The conversation leaves listeners with a nuanced appreciation for how power, identity, and technology are reshaping global politics and society—and how vital adaptability and strategic thinking are, both personally and collectively.

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Closing

Trevor ends with gratitude:
"Thank you for showing us a new way to see the world...learn to see it, meet the people who don't see it the same way you do, talk to them about why, understand it, and then you go from there." (116:49)

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For anyone seeking to understand where power is migrating in a world disrupted by technology, tribalism, and shifting alliances, Ian Bremmer’s perspective—grounded in openness and humility—is both sobering and inspiring.

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Transcript

[Ian Bremmer]

Foreign.

[Trevor Noah]

This is why you should always lie to your AI. I encourage people all the time to lie as much as you can.

[Eugene]

Tell me more.

[Trevor Noah]

And every time you type into your AI, like, whatever you use, I always encourage people to just throw it off the trail. Sometimes just be like, I'm a father of seven and this is my life, and, you know, this is what's happening.

[Eugene]

But you are a father of seven.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but if you're not a father of seven, you get what I'm saying? Just be like random things. I live in Bulgaria, and this is my story. And this is my.

[Ian Bremmer]

You do live in Bulgaria.

[Eugene]

Oh.

[Ian Bremmer]

I mean, you just don't tell people that.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, I thought I was worried about the future. I should be worried about the present. I've got two state actors here. I'm trying to help you.

[Eugene]

What you mean is.

[Trevor Noah]

This is what now? With Trevor Noah. All right, Eugene, let's play a little game. You know, make something fun. Two truths and a lie. Here we go. One, I've had to tell a world leader that their fly was undone. Two, when getting dressed, I don't do sock, sock, shoe, shoe. I do sock, shoe, sock, shoe. Three, I've been a Verizon customer for 11 years. What do you think?

[Eugene]

Very confused. First of all, why would a world leader own a fly? Because those things just come uninvited. Secondly, lying to your friends is not cool. There's never been a game.

[Trevor Noah]

No, Eugene, a fly is for, like, the zip is what? And then it's not a lie. It's a game where I'm trying. It's like I give you information. Okay, I lied. All three are true, Eugene. And in case you were thinking, you know, Verizon isn't as expensive as you think. In fact, if you bring in your ATT or T Mobile bill, the they'll give you a better deal. And the reason I've been with them for this long is just because I travel so much. I need a network that's reliable. That's right. A better deal on the best network with the most ways to save on plans, streaming and phone deals. Take your AT&T or T Mobile build to your local Verizon store today. Get your better deal and start saving for real. Based on root metrics. Best overall Mobile Network Performance US Second Half 2025 all rights reserved. You must provide recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person redeeming the deal. Additional terms, conditions and restrictions apply. So do you understand how two truths and do you understand it now?

[Eugene]

I understand that you didn't have to lie first before telling me that Verizon is the best.

[Trevor Noah]

No, I wasn't lying, Eugene. It's not a lie. I wouldn't lie to you. It's a game. Okay, I'm sorry I lied. Ah,

[Ian Bremmer]

Looking for a gift that was

[Eugene]

made to make Mom's Day.

[Trevor Noah]

Shop Etsy for all her favorites, like

[Ian Bremmer]

personalized jewelry or even custom stained glass artwork. Celebrate the heart of the family with Mother's Day gifts on Etsy Shop, the Etsy app.

[Eugene]

And also there's words you're not allowed to use on this podcast, which, long story short. Just long story.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, okay.

[Eugene]

You know, long story short. Nah, we want the long version.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Short story long. Yeah, is what we would like. That's, that's what we're looking for. Good to have you here.

[Eugene]

Thanks.

[Trevor Noah]

Trevor in Bremmer, I, it's funny, I, I, I was thinking about how to describe you, and I was like, you should just ask the man himself. Because I just think of you as a thinker, which I hope doesn't reduce you down to just one activity, but you are one of my favorite thinkers in the world, and that's how I came across you. I actually think the first time I came across your work was on Twitter. And I remember being like, who?

[Ian Bremmer]

Some of my best work is on Twitter.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean, isn't that all of us?

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

My short form work, the books I see. This is my friend. Ah, those 160 characters. How you nailed it. How you nailed it. No, seriously. And I remember even at the time noticing that you, you approached every topic or every idea with a, A different bent is the best way to put it. It always feels like you're thinking about thinking differently. And then even when I was getting ready for this interview, I was going like, wait a minute, how do you think of yourself? What, what would you say, like your primary job? Like, if a five year old was asking you, Mr. Bremer, what do you, what do you do? What would you say to them?

[Ian Bremmer]

I'd probably say, I try to understand how different countries around the world interact with each other. Where the world's going. I'm a political scientist. I wouldn't say that to a five year old. Yeah, okay, that's bad for a five year old. But that is what I think of myself as. I don't think of myself as like a president of a firm or entrepreneur or any of those other things. I've always been. Ever since I majored in political science as an undergrad, I thought of Myself.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, this is cool.

[Ian Bremmer]

This is what I want to learn about. I never traveled anywhere. Suddenly I start traveling around the world. Oh, that's awesome. Those people are really different than what I thought they were, and I want to get that. And so if you study human at that level, then you're kind of a political scientist on.

[Trevor Noah]

On this. On the lowest level, or rather on the simplest level. I think of it like there was a time, I remember reading a book about this. I think it was like in the 80s or somewhere there, when American companies were working with Japanese companies and they didn't realize how many of the things they considered respectful were disrespectful in Japan. And then whenever they had to go to Japan, that they had to give them a manual to say, hey, I know this is how you see the world, but in Japan, this is how they see the world, and you need to interact with them according to their worldview. And when I read a lot of your work, that's what I find myself thinking about is I go, we're living in a world where even on a geopolitical scale, countries sometimes don't seem to realize that other countries think differently to them. Is that a safe assertion?

[Ian Bremmer]

Completely. And not only that, but over time, these things are fluid. You know, when I started in 1989, when I started my graduate degree career, that's when the wall came down, Berlin Wall.

[Eugene]

And.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah. And the rest of the world had a view of the United States in the context of, like, that Cold War and winning the Cold War and those ideas. And it's only been 35 years, and the view of the United States around the world has changed radically over that period of who we are, of what we do and don't stand for. That's. That's super interesting. Right. And. And so generations change, too. The generation that remembered what it was like when you stood for something or you fought for something.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, generation.

[Ian Bremmer]

Things like that doesn't matter anymore. Right. So, I mean, think about where China was 35 years ago. And I mean, you know, you go there and everyone was riding a bicycle, and now they're building better tech than we have in the United States.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Like, so it's not just this idea of, oh, countries are static. And I need to help you understand that when you go to Japan, it's different. It's also that your. Your own place is changing and how you're perceived as being is different than it used to be.

[Trevor Noah]

How far do you think America is from how many Americans? Think about it currently in the World. Oh, I. I think it's like, Like. Like, take us. Take us through a little journey. So let's talk about that period. There's the period where America comes out of these. These wars, physical and otherwise. Right. The Cold War is war, World War, Vietnam War, Vietnam War. But there's this moment, like America has this idea of itself, and the world has an idea of America, you know, And I think some people are still sort of set in that and stuck in it, but it's clearly changed. What do you think has been the biggest shift?

[Ian Bremmer]

There have been a few.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

One. A big one is that America used to be the place that wanted to trade with everybody. Free trade.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Now tariffs are the principal tool that the Americans are using economically. And it's not just about Trump. Most people in the U.S. democrats, Republicans, are saying, no, no, no, no, we don't want free trade. We want, like, you know, stuff that's built much more here, and we want more manufacturing here. And, you know, you think as well about immigration. And my grandma came through Ellis island, and the Statue of Liberty.

[Trevor Noah]

Where did she come from originally?

[Ian Bremmer]

They are Syrian Armenians.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

So they came over, and she's even on a little bench.

[Trevor Noah]

On a little. Oh, wow, that's amazing.

[Ian Bremmer]

Kind of cool to see still now. Yeah. I mean, I haven't been today, but I think so. Unless someone ripped it out.

[Eugene]

I mean, these two cold days.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah. She's out there in a bench, still there. My old grandma.

[Eugene]

And you're out here raped in cashmere.

[Ian Bremmer]

You and your textures.

[Trevor Noah]

Eugene loves textures.

[Ian Bremmer]

So, you know, and. And I. I think of the Statue of Liberty as a pretty iconic thing for the United States.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Ian Bremmer]

I mean, clearly that doesn't reflect who the United States is today. Right. I mean, like, welcoming immigrants from all over the world.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

That means hired your huddled masses. That is nowhere close.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Now it's give me your people who have $1 million to invest or $5 million to spend on citizenship.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

That's the new thing now. Yes.

[Ian Bremmer]

Sell me your golden visa.

[Trevor Noah]

Sell me your golden visa.

[Ian Bremmer]

Right. And also, let me see your social media history, by the way.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

The last five years, you know, when I first saw that, I didn't see the context. Of course, you'd immediately think, oh, that's China. You would think that from around the world. Right. You know, or you think it was Russia or some other authoritarian state that controls information. Turns out it's the United States. Most other people around the world would not have thought, that's not. That's not comport with their view of the United States.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm just thinking about how. How powerful the idea of a place is in that it can be so powerful that people don't notice when it is doing things that it said it did not stand for. Cause what you just said, I don't know why. It just jammed something in my brain.

[Ian Bremmer]

I saw the reaction immediately.

[Trevor Noah]

No, it literally jammed something in my brain where I went, if you put out a news headline tomorrow and said China is going to be scrubbing people's social media for anyone who comes into the country, they're gonna look through their social media for five years and they're gonna get access to your. How would most people react? They would go, I'm never going to China.

[Eugene]

Yeah, but they'll be like, of course I expect it.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And they'll be like, what kind of country does he bring my phone?

[Ian Bremmer]

Got to bring a burner, all that stuff, you know, it's a communist country. Don't trust them. Authoritarian. You know, United States is. These things are fluid nations are fluid governments. These old things. Our identity. What do we stand for? Who are we? I mean, maybe the most consistent thing since I was growing up is money. In terms of what the United States stands for.

[Eugene]

Yeah. The dollar.

[Ian Bremmer]

The almighty dollar.

[Eugene]

Yes.

[Ian Bremmer]

But when I grew up, the US didn't only stand for the dollar. It stood for other things too. And I think that's becoming the challenge.

[Trevor Noah]

You're always writing books about moments in time.

[Ian Bremmer]

Please don't forget tweets.

[Trevor Noah]

I'll never forget the tweets.

[Ian Bremmer]

Okay, good.

[Eugene]

Where you guys first met our.

[Trevor Noah]

Meet cutes. You're always writing books about moments and ideas that speak to those moments. A power, you know, how the world is moving at a certain moment in time. I always wonder, you know, especially from authors who tap into these. These moments in the Zeitgeist. I always wonder what they're seeing that we're not seeing that leads to them writing that book. And I'd love to know, like, what you're seeing now that would inspire a book that you would be writing for the future. What's capturing your attention and your imagination as someone who studies the world, maybe the.

[Ian Bremmer]

So the book that I wrote that probably was most prescient was back in 2011. And I'm gonna answer your question.

[Trevor Noah]

I just wanted to give you a

[Ian Bremmer]

thought about it and about the G0 world and this idea. Not that I had some crystal ball, but that it seems so over determined by big structural factors in the world, by the fact that the Russians, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we said that we wanted to bring them in. The NATO, Russia Council, the G7 plus one. We never really wanted to bring them in. They were angry about it. They blamed. And we said we wanted to bring China in. We did, but only if they were going to become Americans. Only if they actually accepted our economic system. They became free marketeers only because they're in right. They adapted their system and they became much, much more powerful. But they were still Chinese. So we weren't happy about that. And then the United States increasingly had a whole bunch of people saying, well, all that stuff that we used to do, like, you know, sheriff of the world and architect of trade and promoting democracy, we don't really buy that stuff. So you put all those things together, it seemed to me wildly over determined that the world wasn't going to be Pax Americana. It wasn't going to be G7 or G2 or G20. It was going to be an absence of global leadership, that the US wasn't going to play the role it used to. But no other country or group of countries could come together and replace, at least not for a period of time. And so it seemed to me wildly over determined, even if some of these things were going to change, that the train had so had so much momentum pulling out of the station and going downhill that, that the G0 was going to come. So I wrote that because, you know, a book should be something that stands up for a while. And the thing that I see now.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, before you move on from that, before you move on from that, I'd love to know how people responded to it at the time.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Because I find a lot of these books and these ideas are welcomed when they meet their moment or in hindsight. Yeah. But when you, when you release them, I'd love to know how people responded to you writing a book basically saying not only would America not be the de facto, you know, respected and loved power in the world, but power itself would diffuse it, you know, would find itself diffusing in this kind of way. How do people respond to that?

[Ian Bremmer]

I think they thought it was interesting.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, they thought it was intriguing.

[Ian Bremmer]

I think it played with a lot of different strands that people were picking up and looking at. There were a whole bunch of people that were looking at one or two

[Trevor Noah]

pieces of that puzzle.

[Ian Bremmer]

But most people at the time thought I was taking it too far. Yeah, I can imagine most people thought no, no, no, maybe it'll go that way. But actually we see a G2. It's going to be US, China, or actually it still packs Americana. And the US isn't in decline. I'm like, no, the US doesn't have to be in decline, but if it doesn't want to do these things, you know, then it is, it is personally removing itself from that role. It doesn't mean that the dollar suddenly is no longer the reserve currency. It doesn't mean the US doesn't have, you know, all of this military capacity, but it still has to be willing to play that role. So, yeah, I mean, I would say it, it did fine. It didn't undermine, you know, sort of my work or anything, but it wasn't like wildly accepted as, oh yeah, we all buy that in five, 10 years time that's happening.

[Trevor Noah]

It's interesting to me that people who work even in governments don't seem to understand concepts and ideas that in my opinion should seem obvious. Like one that really struck me was the relationship between China and Africa. Right. All the countries in Africa, the Biden administration would say, we see China striking up deals with. Why are African countries dealing with China? They shouldn't be dealing with China. They should be working with the US and, and you'd see all of these people come out and say these things. And I went, but America has abandoned Africa.

[Ian Bremmer]

They're not doing anything on the ground. Yeah, there are over a million Chinese living across Africa.

[Trevor Noah]

It's that. It's over a million.

[Ian Bremmer]

Well over a million.

[Trevor Noah]

Wow. Yeah, I didn't know was that high.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, it was something like 8,000 Japanese the last time I looked at it. And over a million Chinese. Wow. Same question. We need to do more there. I'm like, yeah, that's fine. But you know, every single person that's on the ground, those are relationships.

[Trevor Noah]

But now, okay, but help me understand this. How is it that a country can understand this until it doesn't? Is it because they take it for granted? Is it because they think that's the way it always will be? Like, how did the US Ostensibly understand the value of going and building bridges physically and metaphorically in these other places? And then all of a sudden go, it doesn't matter anymore. And then wonder why, like China would take over.

[Ian Bremmer]

I mean, two, two different types of answers. One's external, the other's internal.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[Ian Bremmer]

The external answer is that when you have a country that goes from everyone's riding bicycles and you aspire to have like a washing machine to microwave to a million, you know, to, to a billion plus person economy where they're middle income and they've been growing at over 10% a year on average for 40 years.

[Trevor Noah]

Damn.

[Ian Bremmer]

scale like, that's never happened before. So, I mean, you even had. When Biden first became president, you may remember this, where he had this, like, statement on China where he's like, they're never gonna compete with him.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, yeah, I remember this.

[Ian Bremmer]

And it's because he hadn't been there. He hadn't been there when he wasn't serving.

[Trevor Noah]

But do you hear what I'm saying? You're telling me that a president, not just of any a president of the United States looked at a country that most of the world was looking at as like a close competitor in terms of power and went, nah.

[Ian Bremmer]

How they think they rip us off, they take things that we make, they make them a little bit better. They steal intellectual property. All of which has been historically true. But today, Trevor, you've got Europeans that are cutting deals with the Chinese saying, we're willing to let you invest in our country, but only if you engage in technology transfers to Europe, to Europe, from China. Imagine that that wasn't happening even three years ago, and now it's happening. So these things, the point is, these things change quickly. So what's the next thing? The thing, if I was to go back to your earlier question, what is

[Trevor Noah]

happening now that you see could be happening then?

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah. And I think one of the biggest things is that technology companies are becoming essentially sovereign. As actors in the west, they are the ones that are not just writing the regulations, but they're actually creating the algorithms that they're deploying real time. They're experimenting on society and the economy and national security. And I think that within five, 10 years, some of these technology companies are likely to act like states on the global stage, that their level of power and influence will make them geopolitical actors. Not in China. In China, the state is controlling AI and the state is controlling what tech companies can do. But in the United States, really, that development has been just turbocharged. And I don't see the willingness or the capacity in the US Government to do much about that soon. And yet it's moving really, really fast.

[Trevor Noah]

Moving very fast.

[Ian Bremmer]

So we need to start asking ourselves, well, what does a global order look like when some of the principal actors are countries that do or don't have elections with citizens that they're meant to provide for? And some of them are companies with CEOs, owners and shareholders, and business models which don't look anything like governments. And we know that governments, some are rich and some are Poor. And some are more closed and authoritarian, and some are more open and democratic. We don't even have models to understand what different types of companies are and what their business models are and their alignment with governance or not. So that's a real mind fuck if you want to think about where the world is going. And I think we need to start. Like my field doesn't even have. Like, if you went to college and studied political science or international relations, there wouldn't be that. You'd have American politics, you'd have comparative international relations, you wouldn't have like a, a branch that would look at companies as geopolitical actors. And yet I would argue that we need to have that.

[Trevor Noah]

Now, I don't know if it's the same, but could it be similar, obviously, in a way more modern way, but could it be similar to what the world experienced in and around the Dutch East India Trading Company? Because there was a time when the ships that were trading around the world were owned by companies, companies that were almost more powerful than some governments because they carried the spices, they carried the gold, they carried the people, they carried the. Do you know what I mean? And, and their influence and their power was such that they could shift your

[Eugene]

fortune, decided who's who.

[Trevor Noah]

If they were on your side, they would give you a loan as a country, they would decide where your military goes or doesn't. Do you think we. Is it that or do you think it's even.

[Ian Bremmer]

I think it's even bigger than that. And the reason I think it's. The reason I think it's bigger is because if we imagine just a few years down the road, and you and I have both seen some of these presentations before. Yeah, yeah, we have, by the way, together. And the fact that you're gonna have AI that is trained on our data, which means it will know us better than anyone, better than any government, knows us, better than any spouse, member of our family, doctor, lawyer, accountant, what have you. And we're going to spend all of our time being intermediated by that AI. Well, the company that controls that AI is going to have much more influence over us individually and anyone else in a society that is deployed with that AI than any government will. And I think that now that may cause a reaction, it may cause a revolution, it may break a state, it may force the state to nationalize them, I don't know. But that is the trajectory we are presently on. And that's way beyond talking about any East India Trading company. That's like, you're not just your Citizenship, your entire humanity. You're going to become more than or less than Homo sapiens. You're going to be programmed by this thing. You'll become kind of a hybrid human being in some ways, but it won't be because of your relationship with the government, a passport or citizenship. It's going to be because your relationship with that AI, which is owned by a company which is created by a company.

[Trevor Noah]

That's a.

[Ian Bremmer]

That's a wild evolution of a geopolitical model that you and I have grown up with, just kind of not even questioning what the assumptions are.

[Trevor Noah]

This is why you should always lie to your AI. I encourage people all the time to lie as much as you can. Tell me more as much as you can. Every time you type into your AI, like, whatever you use, I always encourage people to just throw it off the trail sometimes just be like, I'm a father of seven and this is my life, and, you know, this is what's happening. Yeah, but if you're not a father of seven, you get what I'm saying? Just be like random things. I live in Bulgaria, and this is my story, and this is my.

[Ian Bremmer]

But you do live in Bulgaria. Oh, I mean, you just don't tell people that.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, I thought I was worried about the future. I should be worried about the present. I've got two state actors here. I'm trying to help you.

[Eugene]

What you mean is,

[Trevor Noah]

what you're saying

[Eugene]

is actually very interesting, because in South Africa, on 16th December is a day of reconciliation, which has been Dengan's day. Before, it was commemorating the Zulus turning on the. On the Dutch, on the Afrikaner, basically, after they sent them on a conquest to go fetch cattle from the. From the Sutu king. But one professor was interviewed on radio, and he was saying that it is not about the history itself. It's that the history being taken away from the curriculum of a schooling system makes people lose their culture. Now, when everyone in a country that has 11 official languages start speaking one language, it's going to be very hard for them to think that they are different. And he says that mistake was done by Japan at some point where they focus too much on math and science, all the STEM subjects. And he says they paused and hit the brakes, and they were like, we're introducing arts and culture back into society again. And as you say now, our interaction with America and how we know America is through pop culture, right? Fast food, movies, music, cigarettes, alcohol. And that's all we know. And for a long time, that was American culture. But you Fast forward to 30 years from now, I mean, from then to now, if a South African visits America, there's very little that they see. In fact, we sometimes criticize other things and go, oh, we are far, far, far ahead.

[Trevor Noah]

We're far ahead of this.

[Eugene]

Yes. And that was always never the case. And also you go to South Africa and more, More and more kids speak less of their home languages or indigenous or vernacular. And I think what you're speaking to is. It's almost like. And like Trevor's saying, we're feeding into this homogeneous society that we're going to end up being.

[Trevor Noah]

Which will not need AI runs.

[Eugene]

Exactly. We'll not need a president to tell people what to do. They'll just find it from a, From a computer.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah. The algorithm that you have may be the thing that most determines.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Your community, your connectivity, who you are, how you think. Not your nation, not your actual physical community, certainly not your neighborhouse.

[Eugene]

Does not lie with you anymore as the parent. It lies with the computer because they can ask the computer what values of

[Ian Bremmer]

the United States that I have always found has been the locality. Like when I grew up in Chelsea, Massachusetts, my entire world was my family. And just a few blocks around me is the public school that I could walk to. And all those kids, and they came from different countries, but we were really, really tightly kn. That.

[Eugene]

That.

[Ian Bremmer]

That obviously is going to be blown apart when each of those individual kids has AI.

[Eugene]

Yes.

[Ian Bremmer]

Which is one of the reasons I think, that this new Australian law that is saying under 16.

[Eugene]

Amazing.

[Ian Bremmer]

No mas. Yeah, I, I think that clearly that should be global.

[Eugene]

No mass is a boxing term for when you've been. You're like, I can't take anymore.

[Trevor Noah]

You say, what?

[Eugene]

No mas.

[Trevor Noah]

Is that someone trying to say no more.

[Eugene]

But yeah, like, yeah, no masks.

[Trevor Noah]

How did that start?

[Eugene]

I guess when you bend the knee.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no mask. No masks.

[Eugene]

But it's a boxing term, right?

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, okay.

[Eugene]

If you've had enough, you're like, ah.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you think it's too late, though? Like some people say, ah, the cat's out the bag. It's too late for Australia to say kids can't have social media and that because now. Because now there's the kids. No, no, I'm just asking.

[Eugene]

No, yeah, yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Too late for hope. Never. Too late.

[Eugene]

Never. Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

I don't expect a question like that from Trevor.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, I'm asking you.

[Ian Bremmer]

I know.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm asking this.

[Eugene]

I was so disappointed in him as well.

[Trevor Noah]

Well, you.

[Eugene]

I looked at him as father I

[Ian Bremmer]

feel it from both of you.

[Trevor Noah]

Father of seven.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah.

[Eugene]

From Bulgaria and no hope.

[Ian Bremmer]

I mean, look what he's made of himself. From those humble backgrounds.

[Trevor Noah]

It was. It was actually a man by the name of Ian Bremmer who taught me to ask questions that you yourself wouldn't necessarily ask and to think in ways that you wouldn't necessarily think to get a better strategic understanding of how the world might work.

[Ian Bremmer]

Wow.

[Trevor Noah]

That's what he taught.

[Ian Bremmer]

That's. That's extraordinary.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. You should meet him.

[Ian Bremmer]

To meet him.

[Trevor Noah]

I was going to say, you should

[Ian Bremmer]

sound like a great guy. He really does. No, but I think we can do it. Of course we can. Now can we do it in the United States?

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Can. Can anything happen anymore in the United States? And I don't mean this in a facetious way.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

But, like, can anything happen in the United States?

[Ian Bremmer]

People believing that the US Was so broken, that the political system was so corrupt, so sclerotic, is what got us Trump. Most people that voted for Trump thought that democracy was more important than the people that voted against it.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Ian Bremmer]

Because. Because for them, the idea. And it's in the polls. They. They. Not. Most people didn't think that the election was about democracy, but for those that did more than voted for Trump than voted for Kamala in the last election, and it's because those people thought that the. The deep state, the administrative system.

[Trevor Noah]

The system.

[Ian Bremmer]

The system, yeah. Was so broken. Just like my mom used to. My mom, when she was alive, you know, she didn't finish high school. She cared a lot about me and my brother. That was her whole life. And she's like, these guys will never take care of you. Not. Not the government officials, not the CEOs, not the bankers, not the media, none of those fancy people. I got to fight for everything. And if I have to steal, I'll steal because it's my kids. Right.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

And. And I. You know, the. You have so many Americans over the past decades that feel that way about the government. That's what got you, Bernie. It's what you got you, Mamdani. It's what got you Trump. It's the same thing. Why did Trump decide that he was going to welcome Mamdani in the White House? Because fundamentally, he gets that. That's part of what got him there.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. He was saying. He said, like, we agree on a lot of stuff.

[Ian Bremmer]

Sure.

[Trevor Noah]

You know.

[Ian Bremmer]

You know, both in principle, saying we want to stick it to the man. Trump, of course, is also the man. So he's sticking it to himself.

[Trevor Noah]

It's really amazing that he's able to occupy both roles. He tries, you know. Yeah. No, in people's eyes is that he goes, I am the persecuted and yet I exist in the realm of the persecutor. Like, it's an interesting dichotomy that he, that he gets to occupy in that way.

[Ian Bremmer]

When I saw the, the felony convictions and the mug shot, that's when I was convinced Trump was going to win.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, really?

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Because that, because that made him seem like it is the deep state is a thing or can happen to anyone.

[Ian Bremmer]

The system was out to get him. Like, of all of the bad things that he did, of all of the real political cases that were out there and should have been brought, of the impeachments that were real Republicans that said, no boss. Right. It was the most ridiculous case that would not have been brought up as felony charges against another American that was politicized against Trump. That's where he got his felony conviction. And, you know, his entire election was a grievance based election. It's like, you know, they coming after you. I'm standing in front of them, you know, let them come after me. And they do want to take him down, right?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

And he was almost assassinated. Yeah. And it was this close.

[Trevor Noah]

It's this world of like everything. It's, it's interesting that you say the thing about same because I've seen people bristle at that comment. If you say Bernie and they. How can you say. But AOC had a live on her Instagram. I think it was after, I think it was the midterms. I forget which election it was, but she had done really well and most Democrats hadn't. And then she asked just her followers online, she said, have any of you voted for me and for Donald Trump? And if so, please tell me why. Because, you know, she was sort of posing this question. She went, it seems like we are completely different. How would you vote for me and him? I don't understand that. And it was fascinating to see the responses that people gave. They said, while the two of you are not politically aligned, you both agree that the system is broken. The system is broken. And you both present yourselves in an authentic way. Not honest necessarily, but authentic, which was an interesting semantic difference. And they were like. And we like that you both disrupt what was. Because it wasn't working for the rest of us.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And that was, that was an interesting insight to get from people themselves to say, oh, we're now living in a time where America especially, but in the rest of the world, you're seeing it as well. The system has pushed people so far that they're no longer incentivized by what's safe because it hasn't brought them safety, it hasn't brought them security, it hasn't brought them sustenance.

[Ian Bremmer]

The American dream no longer works for them.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. So they've gone more than the markets

[Ian Bremmer]

believe in a China dream today than Americans believe in an American dream.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, is that true?

[Ian Bremmer]

That is absolutely true. And that was not true when you and I were kids. So that's a radical transformation. We started this part of the conversation by you saying, can you still do things in the United States? Trump is living proof you can still do things in the United States. Number one, him personally, with the greatest political comeback in American history.

[Trevor Noah]

Truly.

[Ian Bremmer]

But beyond that, I would argue that we are in the middle of a political revolution right now. Trump is intending to ensure that there are no more checks and balances on his behavior as the executive of the United States. We see that with the way he is trying to weaponize the so called power ministries, the irs, the FBI, the Department of justice to do his will in a way that he thought they were weaponized against him. You see that with his efforts to ensure that the principal enemy to the United States are his political adversaries, that's a political revolution. I don't know that he's going to be successful, and personally I hope he's not. But I do hope he's successful in eliciting sufficient pushback from people that want to really change things.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, that's interesting. Just this idea of inspiring some sort of movement, some sort of idea, some sort of help us, help us understand, like, how to even begin thinking about these things. You know, like, you're a big fan of strategic thinking. And what I like is how you, how you break this down. I think a lot of people would consider themselves strategic thinkers, and based on your definition, they wouldn't fall into the category because I think most of us would think that if you ask anyone, are you a strategic thinker? And we're like, yeah, I think, should I walk on 42nd street or 45th Street? I think about that all the time. It's my strategy. And you're like, no, no, no. How you see the world is a strategic. Help us understand why you think it's so important to be a strategic thinker regardless of what station you occupy in life. Let's start with what it is.

[Ian Bremmer]

I think it's wanting to first define a problem before you act in response to it. Right. That the idea of something is uncomfortable and therefore I lash out. That's not strategic thinking. That's pain reaction. There are lots of problems, lots of challenges, lots of opportunities in the world. Right. You couldn't respond to climate change until you had a population around the world that recognized, oh, here's the science, here's what's happening.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[Ian Bremmer]

We've, we've got the following carbon in the atmosphere, and it's leading to these changes. You can choose to decarbonize, you can choose to invest in new technologies, you can choose to adapt. You can even say, actually, we're getting so much benefit from the economic outcomes of globalization with oil and coal that we don't want to do that other stuff. Maybe we. There are lots of different effective ways to respond, but you can't even start to respond until you have identified the environment that you're in, the real, honest to God environment you're in. And that is true in climate, it's true in technology, it's true in geopolitics,

[Trevor Noah]

it's true in the economy, it's true in life.

[Ian Bremmer]

I would say it's true in life.

[Trevor Noah]

Even in a personal relationship, it's first understanding what the situation is, who you

[Ian Bremmer]

are, where you are.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Eugene]

Where you are with the terrain, and then have a battle plan.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Because too many people want to get into the debate about what we should do before they've actually discussed where we are. And so, like this whole discussion of Trump good, Trump bad, let's first understand how we got to the point of Trump. Because Trump is not the reason the United States is in the present situation. Trump is a beneficiary, Trump is a symptom, and Trump is an accelerant. But Trump only happens in a political environment where very large numbers of people believe that the system is already broken. So to be a strategic thinker about what needs to happen in the US is you have to understand that. And that makes you then think, well, maybe the political establishment as we've been dealing with it for the past decades.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Is not the answer.

[Trevor Noah]

We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card.

[Ian Bremmer]

Imagine this.

[Trevor Noah]

You're at a checkout counter, you're ready to pay when you realize you don't have your wallet.

[Ian Bremmer]

Dun, dun, dun.

[Trevor Noah]

You could drive all the way back home and you could get it. But you remember that you have your Apple card on your iPhone so you can tap to pay with Apple pay.

[Ian Bremmer]

Imagine that.

[Trevor Noah]

No need to carry a wallet. But, you know, one of the things I do like about having my card on my phone is we live in a world where you lose your card and then you don't know where it is, and then you're like, what do I do? Well, if your phone is connected to your card and your card is connected to your phone, you know what's going on. The best thing about having the Apple card connected to your phone is you know what every transaction is. You know, like, sometimes you're like, what did I spend this month? The Apple card will show you one month. I had spent an obscene amount of money ordering videos online.

[Eugene]

Just videos?

[Trevor Noah]

They were just videos.

[Eugene]

What kind of videos?

[Trevor Noah]

That's not the point. The point is, I knew that I didn't want to order those videos anymore because I'd spent too much money on was videos on how to not spend money online.

[Eugene]

I felt like I'd been duped.

[Trevor Noah]

Point is, Apple showed me what I was spending my money on, and I was able to change my spend habits. And you can do it, too. I earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase with my Apple card. That's unlimited daily cash back no matter where I shop. Apply for Apple card in the wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval. Apple card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and [e-mail] youm know when the weather finally turns and everyone suddenly remembers they have friends? Well, that's when you know it's time to get outside, fire up the grill, and start planning all those sunny gatherings, pool days, weekend hangouts, Mother's Day, brunch, graduation. All of it. And what I like is keeping it simple. That's why I go to Whole Foods markets, because they make gathering easy. You've got quality meat, fresh organic produce, and those seasonal bakery treats that somehow disappear before the guests even arrive.

[Eugene]

Hmm.

[Trevor Noah]

I wonder who that was for.

[Ian Bremmer]

The grill.

[Trevor Noah]

It's all the good stuff. Organic chicken breast, $3.65 by Whole Foods market. Lean ground beef, ready to cook kebabs. That's the kind of setup where even if you're not a grill expert, people still respect what you're doing. Oh, and then you round it out in produce. Avocados, heirloom tomatoes, strawberries, mangoes, raspberries. Suddenly your table looks like you planned this for days. And if you want to go a little further, the desserts do the work for you. Mango yuzu, chantilly cake, strawberry pretzel cream pie. Those are the moments where people stop talking and just eat.

[Ian Bremmer]

Ooh, ooh.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, I almost forgot. This is one of my favorite options. You let Whole Foods Market do most of the work. Prepared foods has everything. Quiche Lorraine, deviled eggs, family sized salads, cut fruit, veggie trays. You name it. You just show up relaxed, and people assume that you've been cooking all morning. And then you act been cooking all morning. And if you really want to take it easy, well, then let Whole Foods Market catering handle it all. Same quality, same great ingredients, just none of the stress. Because at the end of the day, it's not about the grill. It's about the people around it and who prepared it. Me. Thank you very much. I'll take all the credits. Shop for all your summer favorites at Whole Foods Market. If you're trying to be a little more intentional about what you wear day to day, well, Quince can help you with that. They've got pieces that feel easy, comfortable, and still put together. The fabrics feel elevated. The fits are clean. It's the kind of clothing where you don't have to think too hard, but you still look like you did. And I've realized that's actually the goal. You don't want to be standing in front of your closet negotiating with your clothes. You just want to put something on and get on with your life. Quince makes that easier. Think 100% European linen shorts and shirts starting at $34. Lightweight, breathable, especially when it's warm, but still structured enough that you don't feel like you just rolled out of bed. And what surprised me is how they're able to price everything. It's about 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands because Quince works directly with the factories and cuts out the middlemen. So you're getting premium materials just without the mockup. I picked up one of their linen shirts recently, and it has been in constant rotation. Don't get me started on those sweaters. Oh, so comfortable. You know, it's just those pieces that just work. You can wear it out, you can wear it casually. It's comfortable, it breathes. And every time I put it on, I'm like, okay, this feels like I made an effort and it didn't cost what I thought something like that would. That's the balance. I like clothes that feel good, look good, and don't make you overthink it. So refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com what now? For free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com. what now for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.

[Eugene]

People are always hopeful of younger leaders having better ideas. Is that true in politics? And do you think it will be true for the US as well?

[Ian Bremmer]

Well, I think younger people are increasingly the majority. So whether or not they have the answers, they will be the answers. So understanding those demographic changes, super, super important, right? Like Saudi Arabia. I was just in Saudi Arabia a little bit ago.

[Trevor Noah]

What's it like?

[Ian Bremmer]

It's so different than 10 years ago, than 20 years ago. I mean, it's literally they're going through like a reverse Iranian revolution. Now they have leadership, which is, of course, deeply confident, and it's a monarchy and it doesn't brook political opposition. But they are transforming how societies work. It's not just that women drive, it's that they work. It's that they're educated, they're going out, they're like, there's a dating culture in Saudi Arabia now. It feels normal to an outsider in a way that 10 years ago, it felt like an alien, repressive society.

[Trevor Noah]

Now, you see, this is something that I feel like you're the perfect person to speak to about this because you have to think of it. This is literally your job. And this is what you consult on and this is what you work in. This is what you write about. This is what.

[Eugene]

How.

[Trevor Noah]

How do you think any given person in any given country should think about other countries and the journey that they're on in terms of getting to the place that we think they should get to? And I know that sounds like a word jumble. It's like a word salad.

[Ian Bremmer]

There was a lot there, Trevor.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah, but I.

[Eugene]

Father of seven.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, from Bulgaria.

[Trevor Noah]

I haven't slept in a long time, guys. So I think of it like this. Many people in the United States would say, nobody should do business with Saudi Arabia. No one should go to Saudi Arabia. No one should do anything in and around Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia doesn't have free speech and they oppress gay people and it's a terrible place for women, et cetera. They'll say all these things, right? They'll say them. Some of them being very true. Some of them may be outdated. They've changed, but people haven't changed knowing what has changed, right? I remember asking someone this question, not being pro Saudi Arabia at all, by the way. I just said, but America wasn't always pro gay rights, right?

[Ian Bremmer]

Correct, Obviously.

[Trevor Noah]

So do you think America should have been boycotted and sanctioned then? And people were like, well, no, but.

[Ian Bremmer]

But sanctions on South Africa, of course worked. Right. Because here was a country that really didn't want to be isolated.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Ian Bremmer]

But helped make them.

[Trevor Noah]

But did it work? Or did the apartheid government at some point realize they were just running out of steam?

[Ian Bremmer]

Both.

[Eugene]

But because of the sanction.

[Trevor Noah]

No, but that's what I'm asking.

[Ian Bremmer]

Like, I mean, it accelerated the process. Right. There's no question. Without that international pressure, it wasn't going to move so much. And look, Americans, young people in America feel a lot differently about Israel and Palestine today.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Than they did 20 years ago.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Ian Bremmer]

You know, I'm growing up in the United States, Israel, principal democracy, and still a whole bunch of forefathers, parents, you know, saying, hey, what happened in World War II? That that's why they have a state that can never happen again. You have to support that. Today you've got Israel as by far the strongest country militarily in the region, able to determine outcomes with comparative impunity against its adversaries. And you have Palestinians who are living with next to nothing and they feel like the little guy. They feel like the oppressors. There are a lot of young Americans that automatically are just not going to align with the stronger power.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Ian Bremmer]

Irrespective of where right and wrong and history and the rest play. So the point is these things change. And I think this is kind of like a throughput of the conversation that we're having. No time is it's not just how you think about other countries, it's also about how you think about other countries and your own country over time. What's the trajectory? Are you making progress? No. The arc of history isn't always towards progress. It has to be moved by people, by leaders towards progress. And right now in the United States, we're living through a very uncertain time. If you'd asked me, 1989, if you'd asked me in 1989 when Gorbachev was in the Soviet Union, asked me to describe the Soviet Union as a country, is it a dictatorship or not? Is it an empire or not? And I would say, I don't know because it was in process, Right. It was. It was going through an extraordinary political revolution and it could have collapsed. It could have not. But it's all pregnant with possibility. The United States today is like that.

[Trevor Noah]

Damn.

[Eugene]

Yeah. Same with South Africa. With a sanction. It could have gone either way.

[Ian Bremmer]

Could have gone either way at the time.

[Eugene]

And Most people think apartheid lasted very long. It wasn't actually very long because obviously, for it to become a republic, from the British giving it to the Afrikaners, they realized that sanctions will take them back half a generation, actually, because they had just acquired all this wealth.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Eugene]

And for a way to keep the wealth was to obviously relinquish power, but still keep the levers of power. And we're dealing with it now, 30 years after the first elections. So nothing much has changed. And you're right, it's just people adapting. And I think it was just young ideas of the people who were in government at the time of the apartheid government who said, look, strategically, if we think about this, if we relinquish power, appease the west and then put these people in power, we can still control the money. And it was true.

[Ian Bremmer]

And it was true for a long time, actually, Becky, it was certainly true.

[Eugene]

100%.

[Ian Bremmer]

100%.

[Trevor Noah]

And even to your point of. That is like, Nelson Mandela had to be. It's funny when you talk about people's perceptions of things changing over time. Nelson Mandela was widely seen as the person who was orchestrated the impossible. He threaded a needle that was impossible to thread because he said, power is going to shift over from a minority to a majority. There will be no widespread spread bloodshed. There won't be any war. There won't be any purging.

[Ian Bremmer]

There can't be pogroms against these people.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. There won't be any IDI Amin. There won't be anything like that. They will still be involved in the echelons of power.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And. And at the time, people went, oh, this is the only way it could be done. Because the west, for instance, might just shut South Africa off. It might sort of do like a. Like turn us into a Haiti, for lack of a better term, where they go, like. No, they would, though. They go. They could have just shut down South Africa and go, like, we're putting sanctions on you. Even though you have freed yourself, we're putting sanctions on you.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And he did that. But it's interesting to see how, like, a generation later, there are many people who go, he did the wrong thing. It should have been a revolution.

[Eugene]

Mandela affected us.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Eugene]

Because if you think about it properly, after the first elections, there were two terms that ran concurrently, and two races heard them differently. The first one was transitional government. So white people still understood that they still had the levers of power. You had fed WD clerk, Sting being a secondary president, and then Rainbow Nation was for the black people. All of us were together in this whole thing.

[Trevor Noah]

I love the rainbow nation.

[Eugene]

One had no power, and guess which one we went with.

[Trevor Noah]

I loved the rainbow nation.

[Eugene]

Yeah, we still in a transitional garment, whether we like it or not and all.

[Ian Bremmer]

But again, it's the domestic and the international, and you have to look for the internal and the external. And, you know, if the United States is going to be Israel's protector no matter what, then the behavior of the government and the way that the people react is going to be different than if suddenly they had the view that, oh, my God, the Americans might actually be turning against us. And then we're in real trouble at that point because we no longer have that support. Right. And that's true for so many different countries around the world that are going through significant transitions. The reason why the United States is so unusual is because the US Is going through a political revolution at the same time that it is the most powerful country in the world.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, that's interesting. That's really interesting.

[Ian Bremmer]

So that.

[Trevor Noah]

Because commonly it would happen when it's not going well.

[Ian Bremmer]

So many countries around the world are not happy with what the US Is doing, but they don't want to get into a fight because it's dangerous for them. And not just Mexico, not just Canada, but the Europeans. Right. I mean, when publicly, when they're meeting with the Americans, they're trying to find a way to, oh, yes, you're brilliant, and we got to find a way to work with you, and we appreciate all your efforts. And we'll get to the right peace deal with Ukraine, and we'll get to the right trade deal between the two countries. Only the Chinese have hit the Americans back hard, and the Americans backed off.

[Trevor Noah]

So when we're looking at that world, you know, you said that first rule first. Understand the lay of the land first understand the situation before you react or respond to it. We are currently in a situation where, as you said, you know, power's diffuse, People can work in different worlds. Like, you know, a good example is America being, like, the number one exporter of soy to China and then Brazil, I think, basically taking that spot from

[Ian Bremmer]

them and then the Americans taking it back now.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, because now going like, we're gonna work that deal. We're gonna find who we pay with that. It's such an interesting, complicated puzzle that's constantly moving. So what is step two? When you have the information that's only applicable to now in this moment, what is step two of strategic thinking?

[Ian Bremmer]

Well, let's first recognize why step one is so hard today, because if you're living in an environment where the basic, like the block and tackling of just what the information is, is completely divided on the basis of your political tribal affiliation, oh, man. Then you can't get to step two.

[Trevor Noah]

How many times have we had this conversation? Can I tell you? It doesn't matter who we've spoken to. Whether it's comedians, whether it's news anchors, whether it's politicians, whether it's analysts, whether it's political science. It doesn't matter who it is. Almost everyone has agreed on one thing, and that is one of the greatest threats facing society today is the fact that we are not getting the same information. Not that we don't agree on it, just that we're not getting the same information.

[Ian Bremmer]

So you can't do strategic thinking if you are not together, at least able to understand the lay of the land, not what the solutions need to be, just the basic issues. The facts around a vaccine and its efficacy, the facts around an election and its outcome, and the fact that it was or was not free and fair, These are fundamental things that Americans today are incapable of agreeing on because their information ecosystems are completely different, are politicized, are treating them like products, because we're not going to do strategic thinking as an American nation absent that, not possible. And we will therefore slip farther behind our competitive environment, our competitive advantage to other countries that can do that strategic thing.

[Trevor Noah]

So when. When you see something like that, as somebody who studies the journey that countries are on and. And how nations rise and fall, is it absurd to think that America could sort of, like, eat itself from the inside out? If everyone believes that nothing is real and nothing works and nothing. Cause at some point, what people stop doing is they stop believing, they stop caring, and then they just. They sort of just like, give that power to something or someone else. You know what I mean? People just walk away.

[Ian Bremmer]

I mean, I think as someone who's traveled all over the world and has spent most of my life studying other countries that have gone through transitions, when the US As I've grown up, has been much more stable. And so people think, oh, it's always gonna be this way. You recognize that. That these are ephemeral points.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

That the US could go in a very, very different direction. That the institutions that you think are strong might not stand, that the leaders that you think will stand up for something might not stand up for something. And that could lead to widespread social movements in the United States, but it could also lead to wide repression and violence. I don't think that those things are imminent or likely today, but I recognize their possibility. You have to. Anyone that has studied Latin America or the Middle east or Eastern Europe or other part or Southeast Asia, anyone that has studied any of those countries, even like Brazil, has gone through so much similar politically from what the United States has recently. And very few Americans would say, oh, our country's like Brazil. No, actually, these political dynamics are very similar. And if you end up with a political class that feels like if they lose, they lose everything. You heard Steve Bannon say this the other day, if we lose, we're all going to jail. If they really feel that way, if it's not just about losing an election, but if we lose, they're investigating us, they're throwing us in prison, ourselves, our families, maybe.

[Trevor Noah]

Well, now you don't. Now you don't even want to allow an election to become. Why take the chance now?

[Ian Bremmer]

You have to control the outcome when it becomes about everything.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, that's terrifying.

[Ian Bremmer]

That's terrifying. And that happens in so many different countries. You cannot tell me that there is something so exceptional about the United States, so unique in human history that it could not happen in the United States. It's a country that had a civil war where it literally tore itself apart over ideas. And it could happen again. Of course it could.

[Eugene]

There's that phrase that always scares me. The political class and what it breeds. Right. I think we don't talk enough about that. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

What element of it does breeding make you uncomfortable? Which part?

[Eugene]

Once you have people that will cling onto power by any means necessary, then they start determining about, I mean, how the culture of that country is going to be like the one person that's going to get into power, who's going to slip in after all is said and done, is going to want to stick in there. And we see it in this country, right. Someone brings in their relative, they get power, then they have the people that are around them that have political power as well, then it becomes a little cabal. In a class that goes and negotiates deals with other countries, but they're not necessarily acting for the country. Then they start determining who's a figurehead that stands in there, but they're the ones who control the levers of power.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean, in South Africa, we see it as well, where it's like one of the great fears of any leader is losing the power, not because they want to do things for the country, but because they're scared of what will be done to them, to themselves.

[Eugene]

Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Because of what they've done.

[Eugene]

Yes. But obviously, in our country, it went with it. It was political struggle, credentials first, and then it became political dynasties, you know, children of people who went and struggled. And then obviously, there's like, our version of the Kennedy.

[Ian Bremmer]

President Trump was clearly willing to go a lot farther than I think anyone around him, his advisors, the Republican leadership, had imagined that he would at the end of the first term. When he lost to Biden.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

When he lost a free and fair election, both in terms of calling the Georgian election officials and saying, you gotta do something for me, in terms of January 6th, all of these things. Which is why so many Republicans turned against him with that second impeachment unprecedented in US History. That is exactly the sort of thing that people underestimate. And it's not just about Trump. When you see some of the decisions that are being made by the Attorney general right now, it's inconceivable in today's environment that the US Attorney General would open an investigation against a member of the Trump administration in good standing. And yet that's exactly what an attorney General is supposed to do. That's only changed in the last year, and yet there are so many examples of that happening in other countries around the world.

[Trevor Noah]

When you're analyzing a lot of this, I've noticed in, in a lot of your work, you. You sort of. You sort of take the approach that I feel like a doctor does with, with medicine or with surgery, where they, they, they almost don't have, like, an emotional feeling towards a cancer, for instance, or they just observe the thing.

[Eugene]

Oh, yes.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you get what I'm saying?

[Ian Bremmer]

I do get what you're saying. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

A lot of the time I'll, I'll read your work or I'll.

[Ian Bremmer]

I'm a little disturbed about it, but I get what you're saying.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no. Because I wonder if you. It feels like you've had to find a way to observe something unemotionally and then respond with your emotions if you wish to. But first, go. This is what I see.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, I'm glad you put it that way, because, I mean, at least the doctor analogy, doctors are human beings. They're not robots, they're not automatons. They actually really care about their patients. But first they have to do no wrong.

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly.

[Ian Bremmer]

First they have to try to understand and respond to what it is they're dealing with. Now, I could never be a doctor because I can't handle blood. Right. And so many people say that, but it turns out I can Actually emotionally handle all sorts of political distress. I don't get wound up.

[Trevor Noah]

A lot of. A lot of people can't at all. A lot of people can't.

[Ian Bremmer]

And I have no problem, by the way, I personally believe, and I've said this publicly, that Trump is unfit for office. I believe that for reasons we can talk about if you want, but I have no problem. When Trump does things that are legitimately successful, when he does things that are more successful than Biden, and there are many of them, I have literally no emotional problem. That's what I mean, saying that publicly,

[Trevor Noah]

but that's what I mean.

[Ian Bremmer]

It's obvious that that is the case, and people get mad at me. You know, people that think that. Well, wait a second, hold on, hold on. You, like, you can't say anything positive about Trump, but what do you mean? Like, if he's successful, then you want me to call balls and strikes, right? Don't you want me to tell you what I actually think? You just want to be your monkey, as you know, Jon Stewart used to say.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but where do you. But where do you think you got that from? I mean, living in a country where, as you said, it's become more and more tribal in and around politics. But where do you think you got that from? And what do you think you're holding onto?

[Ian Bremmer]

Well, first, I grew up with nothing, right? I grew up in the projects. I wasn't part of some political elite in the United States, so I didn't feel connected to that. Secondly, I traveled all over the place. Starting when I was a kid, 16, I went to the Soviet Union.

[Trevor Noah]

Why?

[Ian Bremmer]

Because I was in college. Because I was pushed ahead when I was younger, and it was an opportunity to go someplace for someone that had never been anywhere, and the Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain. And then you find out, wait a second, the kids that are here are a lot like the. Like me. And, And I get really offended. Like, I know that there are a whole bunch of people out there, like, you know, you shouldn't think that just because you're black you think this way, or just because you're a woman, you think this way. A lot of people think that because you're an American, you think a certain way. And I. I get hugely offended by that personally. Like, the idea that I would hold certain political beliefs and values just because of what country I happen to randomly be born in. That's like a CR. Thought, right?

[Eugene]

Well, your grandmother will argue the random part, but.

[Trevor Noah]

But that was my grandmother.

[Ian Bremmer]

I'm not my grandma. I Didn't say that.

[Eugene]

To say that.

[Trevor Noah]

Can I tell you, it is so funny. I remember talking to somebody about this once and I said, one concept that has, has truly, truly, truly always evaded a certain part of my brain is like patriotism. In, in. In the sense where people are, you know, where they go, like my country. Then I'm like, I'm not saying don't love your country, but you also have to admit it is pretty random that you didn't choose it. For the most part, people didn't choose it.

[Ian Bremmer]

I'm Catholic, not my fault at all. And there are a lot of weird things about Catholicism that I do not support. But I grew up as a Catholic and I don't want to renounce it.

[Trevor Noah]

That's what I'm saying. It's just like this world where you go, just this random thing happened and I'm willing to accept parts of it and be proud of it. But also, I admit the randomness of it. I am American, which is random. But it doesn't mean I have to only think one way. Because of that, I'm an American.

[Ian Bremmer]

I'm also a Scorpio, right?

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, no. That explains a lot, though.

[Ian Bremmer]

I know it does.

[Trevor Noah]

No, that explains a lot.

[Eugene]

I mean, I'm a Scorpio.

[Trevor Noah]

Classic Scorpio. Yeah, I knew that. Classic Scorpio as well.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, see? But equally, any of these things, I

[Trevor Noah]

don't know, I just learned. You must just say that when anyone tells you their star sign, the first thing you must do is like, ah, classic. And then you say the star sign. It doesn't matter what it is.

[Eugene]

Classic Sagittarius.

[Trevor Noah]

You just say that and that, that's

[Eugene]

what you did there.

[Trevor Noah]

And.

[Eugene]

Classic Sagittarius.

[Trevor Noah]

Classic Sagittarius.

[Ian Bremmer]

But I am a New Yorker and that I chose.

[Trevor Noah]

There you go.

[Ian Bremmer]

And I put a lot of time into that. And I really believe in being a New Yorker. And I was offended at the beginning. You remember that guy that was on LinkedIn who Seinfeld called some asshole on LinkedIn.

[Eugene]

I don't know.

[Trevor Noah]

This way.

[Ian Bremmer]

At the beginning of the pandemic.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

And one of the, like this, this influencer on LinkedIn, and that's actually what he was known for, was being influenced. He was well known, said that he was. That New York was never going to come back. This was it for New York.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, I remember this. I remember this.

[Ian Bremmer]

And I was so personally offended.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I remember this.

[Ian Bremmer]

You know, like if you told me that America was over, I would, I could be clinical about that. I Am passionate about that.

[Eugene]

If only people knew there was a chink to your armor. Your politics and mass murder. Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Not emotional, but New York, New York. LinkedIn. Kill, kill LinkedIn. Who is that asshole? I couldn't believe it. I mean, this is such an amazing city. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And Jerry wrote this whole thing about, like, go out and see what it's gonna be. It's like one. Just one. One cycle of experiencing this. And it was actually a beautiful, like. Like piece, like an F. You go out there and see what it's like. Once you've lived in New York, you can never live anywhere was the idea behind it.

[Eugene]

Oh, I see what you're saying.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Cause this guy was like, new York's done. And Jerry was like, okay, go.

[Eugene]

Go somewhere else.

[Trevor Noah]

Go anywhere else.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And when you've had a few weeks of this and a few. You're gonna see what's gonna happen to you. You're gonna come back to the city and you're gonna. And honestly, almost everyone who left came back. Anyone who could sort of came. Everyone went to Miami. Everyone Florida, Everyone came back to New York.

[Ian Bremmer]

I agree that, look, there is a real affordability crisis.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. But that's not saying the hard place to afford.

[Ian Bremmer]

The hard place to live. Your poor.

[Trevor Noah]

The people.

[Ian Bremmer]

But I came here and I still loved it. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

The people who could afford were the ones with. I don't like it. And it's like you're gonna.

[Eugene]

But maybe what you guys are explaining is why the world has fallen in love with America. Because we think the whole America is New York, like a melting pot of cultures and ideas, and it's fast and it's moving, and anything is possible. If you make it here, you can make it anywhere. Do you feel like that about New York? Is that why you.

[Ian Bremmer]

Because I think New York is everywhere. It's. Everybody's here, and everyone walks and everyone takes the subway, and it's a pain in the ass, and it's smelly, and sometimes it's a little dangerous, and there's grit. But. But we all. But amer human beings. It's. We want to overcome. Right. We give our best. When there's some pushback, when there's some resistance in the band and it's not. New York does that every day, all the time. It does it when you're sleeping, it's still noisy. It does it when you wake up in the morning. There's nothing easing about this place. But every single thing, every piece of progress that you make in New York, you earned it. You had to work for it.

[Trevor Noah]

It's a grind. Place is a grind. The other place is a grind.

[Ian Bremmer]

But it's rewarding as hell.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

And the people are so cool. And they're from everywhere. You have no idea what they do.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Who they are. You can bump into anyone in New York. It doesn't matter.

[Trevor Noah]

Well, I've said one of the things that I think makes New York such a special place is the fact that you can't opt out of many of the shit things of New York. And so because of that, like in South Africa, I noticed. I know it's a crazy thing to say, but we. We. We had load shedding, Right. The power blackouts and like, the government, because of. Because of corruption, they didn't build up the power stations the way they should have. This whole long thing. Long story short, we have these.

[Ian Bremmer]

You said you can't say that.

[Trevor Noah]

What do you mean?

[Ian Bremmer]

Long story short?

[Trevor Noah]

You're right.

[Ian Bremmer]

You said long story long, literally before we started.

[Trevor Noah]

You can't say long story short. No, you can't.

[Ian Bremmer]

No. Oh, I can't?

[Trevor Noah]

You can't.

[Ian Bremmer]

But you can.

[Trevor Noah]

You. You're our guest. I will still expand on the story. One thing that you can't say. Okay, fine.

[Ian Bremmer]

You can't say literally is the one thing you said.

[Trevor Noah]

The rules of the Netherlands.

[Ian Bremmer]

It was the rule. It was only one rule.

[Trevor Noah]

No one is above the law except the lawmaker. That's how it works.

[Ian Bremmer]

Kind of like the United States. That's what it is. It's a revolution. I've just put on a. I've just pardoned myself. I see.

[Trevor Noah]

That's what I've done. So we started having these rolling blackouts in South Africa. Terrible thing for the country economically. Terrible thing for people. Couldn't get around. Traffic lights were out, you name it. Stores would go down.

[Eugene]

But it.

[Trevor Noah]

It created the strangest thing that I think most South Africans never considered.

[Eugene]

Chinese solar panels.

[Trevor Noah]

That too. Oh, and it was, by the way, China's killing it. Because of that, everywhere in the world, even internally, they're just like. The solar farm game is on another level. Shout out to China.

[Eugene]

The.

[Trevor Noah]

The thing it created was a commonality that you couldn't escape. Every South African, rich, poor, young, old, black, white, Indian, you named it, experienced the electricity going out at the same time, at the same time. It was this thing that all of a sudden connected you. And that's what I think New York does, is like you can't escape the traffic. You can't escape the subway, you can't escape the walking you can't escape the cold or the hot or the humid or the smells or the sounds or the. You can't. Do you remember when Jeff Bezos. Remember when Jeff Bezos wanted to build he. He wanted to build a helipad on his apartment building or something? And New York was like, where? And he was like, no, I want my helicopter. And they're like, nah, buddy, come.

[Eugene]

Come to the.

[Trevor Noah]

Through the tunnel, like all of us. No, no, they're like, nah, buddy, there's no helicopters here. No, no helicopters are flying over the city like that.

[Ian Bremmer]

And 9 11. Was that. Of course, yes.

[Trevor Noah]

That changed everything. They're like, not none of this.

[Ian Bremmer]

No, no.

[Trevor Noah]

But my. But that's my point is like, I think what it's created is a city where while they're still definitely class will determine what you can and cannot do in different way. But still, members clubs haven't really blown up in New York, like, where you pay to be part of. Because the cool is still like the thing. You know what I mean? You go to a bar where people wanna stay in line. Exactly.

[Ian Bremmer]

You know, if it's a really cool thing. Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Half of New York is just people waiting in a line for a bagel they've ordered.

[Eugene]

I stood in line today and I was like, I don't like this poverty mentality.

[Trevor Noah]

You think around the corner of my house, New York is sort of as like a cool thing.

[Eugene]

It's an experience.

[Ian Bremmer]

There's a bagel place around the corner from my house. One of the most well known bagel places in New York is called Apollo Bagels. Shout out to Apollo Bagels. They just opened like six months ago, and there's always lines around the block. And so when Mamdani won as mayor and people said there's gonna be bread lines, I went outside and I took a photo of the breadline, and everyone's smiling and there's like dogs and everything. I was like, oh, my God. Red lines. In New York, the Mamdani effect is already in place. And of course, because it's social media, people think I'm serious.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man. Like, well, what do you mean?

[Ian Bremmer]

He's not even mayor yet, you idiot. I'm like, yeah, you got to stock up. There's even going to be bread when Mamdani becomes mayor. People, we need more of a sense of humor.

[Trevor Noah]

Can I tell you? I wish there was, like, a joke filter that you could put on the Internet to tell people other than writing this is a joke at the end of. I don't know, it's just lost its. You know. Yes. You just.

[Ian Bremmer]

You have to just put it.

[Trevor Noah]

You have to own it.

[Ian Bremmer]

You have. Just get right in and let.

[Trevor Noah]

This is a man who's not worried about being shot in the streets. I will own none of these things, Ian. I will own none of them. Yeah, I tweet far and few between now because no one, literally, to your point of not understanding a reality that has become part of the reality fracturing, is that humor has lost its context. Humor has lost its. Oh, you were making. And then I've even seen people go. Even when they find out it's a joke. Well, you shouldn't make that joke because

[Ian Bremmer]

someone might not have a sense of

[Trevor Noah]

humor because it might be a breadline. And it's like, yeah, but that was the joke. That was the thing that we're living in. But I don't want to forget. Wait, what's step two? Because we said step one is understanding the lay of the land. What do you do then? When you're strategic thinking? What do you.

[Eugene]

Once you all have a common thread?

[Ian Bremmer]

It depends on that.

[Eugene]

But.

[Ian Bremmer]

But it depends on who you are and where you want to go. The reactions of different actors. Once you understand what the problem is or what the opportunity is, that's when you.

[Trevor Noah]

So you just make your choice.

[Ian Bremmer]

What's your discount factor? How much does 10 years in the future matter to you compared to tomorrow? How much flexibility do you really have as opposed to do you pretend you have? Right.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean, is this how you live? Like your. How much do you apply this to your daily life?

[Ian Bremmer]

A lot.

[Trevor Noah]

Give me an example of.

[Eugene]

Just like my man was in a queue for a bagel.

[Trevor Noah]

He wasn't in the queue. He took a picture of the queue.

[Ian Bremmer]

I was in the queue.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, he was in the queue.

[Ian Bremmer]

I took it as a participant.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, okay.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah. I feel like it's good to participate.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no. I don't know.

[Eugene]

Well, you called exhibit one.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. No, you called it.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Was the bagel worth it?

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Trevor Noah]

Some people say that these things feel like they're worth it because of the. Because of the queue. Others say that that's not true.

[Ian Bremmer]

What do you think I am. I believe that the experience is part of it. Yes, absolutely.

[Trevor Noah]

So it's like a theme park ride.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah. Like if you buy a nice bottle of wine and people tell you it's a nice bottle of wine, you're going to feel it's a better bottle of wine because of the experience of having gone through that.

[Trevor Noah]

When they tell you there's only 400 of these in the world. Yeah. It's like I went to a theme park. I went to Six Flags, and I used to go to Six Flags all the time before anybody knew who I was.

[Eugene]

Why is it called Six Flags?

[Trevor Noah]

I have no clue why they call it Six Flags. There's just Six Flags there.

[Ian Bremmer]

There are six. Literally, there are Six Flags.

[Eugene]

What's on the flags?

[Ian Bremmer]

Different colors.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, different colors. It's not like flags of countries, triangle flags.

[Eugene]

Okay.

[Trevor Noah]

But I used to go all the time, and, you know, you wait and then you ride the roller coaster and you do your thing. After I got the Daily show once, I was going and then they, like, saw that I was coming, and they're like, hey, are you. You coming to Six Flags? They're like, oh, you don't have to wait in any of the lines. And I was like, oh. I mean, now I've achieved. This is. This is what I've worked for, and

[Ian Bremmer]

it didn't mean as much to you.

[Trevor Noah]

Can I tell you one of the worst experiences I've ever had for a few reasons? One, I didn't realize how much of a theme park was fun because you stand in line with your friends for hours and just talk and laugh, and you get bored together. You hear screams the whole time, and you keep going like, I wonder what this is going to be like for me. And then when you walk to the next ride or back from it, now you're decompressing. You're thinking about a process. We went on, rode the same ride, like, four times back to back, only rode the best rides, didn't stop at any other rides along the way. We had headaches, and we learned nothing more about each other as friends. It was the shortest theme park day I've ever had.

[Ian Bremmer]

Wait, why did you read that? Wonderful.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you know what happened? You can't just go on a roller coaster.

[Eugene]

Back to back to back to back

[Trevor Noah]

to back to back.

[Ian Bremmer]

There was the New York Times interview with the woman who had. She was a little disabled.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

And she didn't take her. Like, she had a. She couldn't walk properly, so she needed to have, like, you know, sort of a walker or something.

[Eugene]

Okay. Okay.

[Ian Bremmer]

And she wanted to bring her daughter to. To Disney. And it was a huge, huge thing. And she had to save up. And it was. And it described her entire experience.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Compared to the experience of the guy that brought his family that can, like, pay to make sure they had, you know, a guide in advance. They got into everything and talked about how Disney in America, when Disney was started, it was the great Equalize. The one place that like, you know, was meant to be this idealist experience that everyone together could have together. And now it's not.

[Eugene]

Once you put on the Mickey or Minnie ears, we're all equal.

[Ian Bremmer]

And it's not. And it's not at all. And that is. There's still a few bits of it. Like, for example, the fact that the characters run around and everyone can take photos with them. But for most of the experience, it's become completely segregated.

[Trevor Noah]

It has.

[Ian Bremmer]

And so. And that. And people. People don't like that. Shocking. They don't like that in. In aviation. Shocking. They don't like it in sports. Shocking. And New York is one of those places which is a great leveler. There's so much about the city that no matter how much money you do

[Trevor Noah]

or don't have power. Fewer things you can escape.

[Ian Bremmer]

There are fewer things you can escape. And. And I. But I do think that there's self selection. I think a lot of people that. Like this are people that have decided that is strategically interesting for them.

[Eugene]

Yes, that's what I was about.

[Ian Bremmer]

And I'm not sure that's true for everybody.

[Eugene]

Exactly that. I'm sure people are in a position of privilege. You can complain about those. Kind of.

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly.

[Eugene]

Like a poor person who's gotten two days off to take their family, then they've been saving for a year. They would love to go on all the rides. But for you, because you're cosplaying and you're thinking, I love the struggle of waiting in line and.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no, no.

[Eugene]

One turkey leg at a time.

[Trevor Noah]

There's not. That's not what I'm saying. First of all, that was a poor impression of me.

[Eugene]

I'm sorry. I think you could do much better.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I've seen. I've seen you do much better impressions of me. That was a terrible one.

[Eugene]

First of all, I'm so sorry.

[Trevor Noah]

That's not bad.

[Eugene]

Okay.

[Trevor Noah]

That's not bad. No, this is what I'm saying. It's not about the. It's not about.

[Ian Bremmer]

It's better than any impression I would have attempted, which would get me canceled

[Trevor Noah]

in a lot of processes. No, I hear what you're saying, but I don't think it's that I disagree with you on this. I don't think it's that. It's not about idealizing a struggle or. It's not that cosplay. Yeah. It's under. It's rather understanding some. Okay, so think of it. Like with parents. You and I have spoken about this. One of the strange gifts that comes from having a parent who doesn't have money is that when they say no to you for something that you want, it's because they don't have money. Mom, can I have that toy? No. Why? We can't afford it. Mom, can I have that cereal? No. Why? We can't afford it. Those clothes? No.

[Eugene]

Why?

[Trevor Noah]

We can't afford it. It's a really simple response to a request. Right. It is hard to think that there's a world that exists that would create some sort of friction or a terrible relationship when you have to explain the no for no reason. Does that make sense?

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So there's people who have money, and the kid goes, can I have that? No. Why? Because. No, but why? Because I said so. Because I say. Now, I'm not saying that one is a gift in the nicest sense.

[Eugene]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

But everything in life comes. You know, my motto is, every gift is a curse. No matter what you say. A big country. Good for you. Also bad for you. Good luck uniting a big country.

[Ian Bremmer]

Oil. A curse.

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly.

[Ian Bremmer]

It's a curse.

[Trevor Noah]

Oil is like, you know, and we gotta talk about Venezuela's oil. By the way, I wanna know what you think about this whole saga. But, like. But what I mean about these things is I didn't realize. I don't want to wait in lines more, but I didn't realize what I was getting by being in the line. Does that make sense?

[Eugene]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I genuinely didn't realize it. And I. I think the same holds for like, a New York or one of those places is. You don't realize what the hassle of having to be on the subway does for you as a person until you don't have it. Most things that are a hassle have some sort of benefit that you aren't able to appreciate until you remove the hassle. And then you go, oh, shit. There was a side of this that I didn't know.

[Ian Bremmer]

So this brings me back to the strategic thinking question and how one goes. The second step and the fact that New York has this great equalizer forces people to behave in ways that are somewhat similar. There's one thing that I can think of that is a great equalizer. No matter who you are, no matter what your station in life is, no matter how rich, how poor, how powerful, how powerless, there's one thing we all have. We have the same exact amount of it as well. This time.

[Trevor Noah]

Time.

[Ian Bremmer]

All we have. It's all we have. That's the great equalizer. And so really, once you understand the environment, the opportunity, the challenge, the thing that you most need to key on is how do I respond to that in terms of how I want to be spending my time?

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, oh, I like that.

[Ian Bremmer]

And I spend a lot of time personally thinking strategically about that. What are the things that I want to be doing? I want to travel. How much do I want to engage in the following ways with the following people? What do I want to spend my time doing? I've organized my company that way. I organize the people that work with me that way. The kinds of things I work on and I don't work on. Yeah, it's all about the time that I'm actually spending.

[Trevor Noah]

Don't go anywhere because we got more. What now after this. You know those things you keep telling yourself you're going to do? I should file my taxes earlier this year. I should go to the dentist. I should finally clean out that one drawer that somehow became a storage unit. You know, you should do it. You just don't. And for a lot of people, therapy falls into that same category. It sounds like a good idea in concept. You think, yeah, that would probably help. But then the process starts to feel intimidating. How much does it cost? Does insurance cover it? How do you even find the right person? And when would you have the time? So instead of figuring it out, you just put it off? Well, that's where Ruler makes a difference. Rula is a healthcare company that helps make accessing mental health care feel more straightforward. They work directly with insurance providers, so you can see personalized cost estimates upfront, no guessing, no surprises. And sessions average about $15. With insurance, you can sign up and find a therapist in as little as five minutes, and appointments can be available as soon as the next day. And what I appreciate is that by removing those common barriers, the cost confusion, the time, the search, it starts to feel more possible to actually take that first step. Because sometimes the hardest part isn't deciding you need support, it's figuring out how to begin. And when that part becomes simpler, everything else becomes a little easier to face. So head to ruler.com that's r u l a.com to find a therapist the easy way. The Chevy Bolt is back and better than ever, with over 2 and a

[Ian Bremmer]

half times faster charging with public DC

[Trevor Noah]

fast charging and huge tech upgrades and a bold new look, all in America's most affordable EV. We are so back. Learn more at Chevy.com Bolt 2 1/2 times faster charging with 150kW DC fast charging 2027 Bolt when compared to 2023 Bolt EUV. Actual charge times will vary. See the Owner's manual for details and limitations. Based on comparison of $28,995 MSRP of the 2027 Chevrolet Bolt LT with the latest available competitive information out on the road, it helps to have a partner like the Love's Rewards app. Download Luv's Rewards today to get sweet discounts and earn points on food, fuel, drinks and more. Every time you scan Love's Rewards, save

[Ian Bremmer]

and Earn at every turn.

[Trevor Noah]

Terms apply. See website for detail details. Do you, do you ever have to advise like governments and I know you work with companies, but do you ever have to advise governments?

[Ian Bremmer]

I talk to foreign leaders all the time.

[Trevor Noah]

Do, do they take your advice or do they just listen to you?

[Ian Bremmer]

You know, I think in for many of them, I'm kind of like a geopolitical therapist because these are people with no time.

[Trevor Noah]

What a line.

[Ian Bremmer]

They're the busiest people.

[Trevor Noah]

They're the busiest people.

[Ian Bremmer]

They have no time. The fact that they're giving you an hour and half an hour if you're a head of state, is like the most valuable thing they could possibly give you. And what they spend most of their time working on is really, really pressing, immediate, narrow problems. And what they really want to be doing, because they're head of state or they're a foreign minister or they're what have you in a position of real authorities, they want to be able to spend a little time thinking about how the world is changing. Oh, and that's really what I think we end up spending most of our time doing is giving them a little bit of that that they don't have. And I'm not blowing smoke up their ass. I'm not telling them what they want to hear. I'm very happy if we have disagreements on stuff because I don't need anything from them. You know, I'm not working for them. I'm not taking money from them. It's just a, it's a sharing of information.

[Eugene]

For a person like you who's met every sort of powerful person in the world, I suppose this question might be a bit weird because revealing our strategy when we do this podcast, we always think our guest must, must not feel the transition between them having a normal conversation with just anybody and being interviewed. It's not an interview. So they must get through a pathway. They can get through what they do, and then we can just also understand who they are. So what strategy did you think you're going to use to get through to who we really are as hosts of this podcast. When you're thinking about.

[Ian Bremmer]

I feel like I know Trevor a little, both as a public figure, but also because we've met informally a few times. I feel like we're simpatico. I certainly have a warmth towards his curiousness and his knowledge and interest in policy and global stuff, which meant that I and I didn't have a strategy, I'd have a strat. I'd have much more of a strategy. But someone I've never met before, I don't know who they are, I don't know what engages them. I don't think that there might be a gotcha, that kind of thing here. It's much more. No, no, I'm going to show up and I'm going to see what Trevor's going to talk about and I want to be maximally open to that and I want it to go whatever direction is going to be most interested and that's okay. And that's what I do on stage with an audience. Like, I don't necessarily know exactly what I'm going to talk about, but I see the audience, I see what they react to and then I move, you know, and so, I mean, we moved a lot because I said something early on that I saw really touched Trevor. Right. And that was really interesting. That was a moment where suddenly he was like, oh, wait a second, technology does this. I hadn't considered that before. Changed his worldview a little bit. Oh, let's mine that because that's a point of friction, but also curiosity.

[Eugene]

Yeah. Open mindedness is a big part of strategy. Right?

[Ian Bremmer]

Open mindedness is essential to strategy.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Again, not necessarily open mindedness in understanding yourself, but open mindedness and like the fact that everything external is changeable. And any opinion that you hold about the rest of the world, you better be open to having a change. Because even if it's not changing now, it will change in the future. You will. Like, you're going to be wrong about almost everything over time. What they say about predictions, either make a prediction or offer a timeframe. Never give them both. Right. And so like, these things change. I wrote a book called the J Curve and it was about a relationship between the company countries openness and its stability. And at the time, countries that were most open were also most stable. A big piece of that was because technology was helping to drive that, the communications revolution. Like if you had access to the Internet, that was a threat to authoritarian states, but it was a Strength for democracies today. Top down technologies are much more consolidating and much more powerful. The surveillance revolution, the data revolution. If you're a big monopoly platform or a government with access to data, you have a lot more influence and you can create a lot more stability. You have a lot more power. The J curve today looks more like a U. This was a seminal thing that I spent years of my life on. It was really important to my career. I teach it now and I tell my, my students it's no longer applicable. It's changed, it's wrong now. And so every single thing that I've written about, I have to be ready for it to be wrong. At some point it will be because the world's changing.

[Trevor Noah]

I feel like this is such a liberating, it's just a liberating viewpoint to have in life, if we all felt like that.

[Ian Bremmer]

Because I think it's kind of like geopolitical Buddhism.

[Trevor Noah]

It really is though. But because if we hold onto our ideas as if our ideas are us, then we are afraid to let go of our ideas because we feel like we're letting go of a piece of ourselves. If somebody challenges our ideas, we feel like they're challenging us. But if you can, as you say, separate yourself from the idea, then it can change. It can be challenged, it can be wrong, it can move, it can shift. Do you know what I mean? It's essential. It can create a world.

[Eugene]

It's 100% that. I think also interpersonal relationships are a good training ground for that. I think for you at that age to go all the way to the Soviet Union and meet other young people and exchange ideas, I'm sure when you came back to New York to your peers, you were someone else, right?

[Ian Bremmer]

Well, at the time it was going back to Boston, which is where I was living back then. Yeah, it was completely different. I had felt like I had like this huge experience that had opened my mind to stuff that I thought was impossible before.

[Trevor Noah]

What was the thing that shocked you the most? I know you said when you were there the kids were the same as you, but what do you think shocked you the most? From what you had been told about the Soviet Union, what changed Ian's mind when he was actually there?

[Ian Bremmer]

I think the fact that they knew as little about me and us as I knew about them. I thought that somehow, because I hadn't traveled anywhere and because I knew how cloistered I had been again, projects, public school just a few blocks, I thought that would be true of other kids. That they'd know a lot more because they were like, I was going to Moscow, and that was a big city with millions of people. Absolutely nothing. So, for example, you remember the Sharper Image?

[Trevor Noah]

The. The gym, the store? What was.

[Ian Bremmer]

What was the Sharper Image? It was a weird little store that sold everything. Gimmicks, gadgets.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it was like little gadgets.

[Ian Bremmer]

So I, I there we used to have. In the days before smartphones and all the rest, we had cordless phones. And the Sharper Image sold a cordless phone that, you know, you could probably talk. You know, it had a little, like, antenna.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

So you could probably talk 50ft away from the base. But this cordless phone was not only cordless, but it also was waterproof, and it floated so that you could have a phone call. In your pool.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Oh, in your pool. And I remember having a conversation about, like, the different stuff, because, you know, they all wanted, like, Levi's jeans or Marlboro cigarettes. That was like, the big thing, access to that kind of stuff. Bring ballpoint pens, because their pens suck, you know, all that kind of thing. And I was telling him, I said,

[Trevor Noah]

you bring for me ballpoint, please. Ballpoint PM

[Ian Bremmer]

would be very nice. I pay much money for ballpoint.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, what pens did they have?

[Ian Bremmer]

Oh, my God. You know, I mean, they were like Skillcraft pens, but down three notches. You remember those? Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

My brain can't imagine a world without a ballpoint pen.

[Ian Bremmer]

I know. And it hasn't changed very much. Like, we still make those. They're still cutting edge in 20, 24 pen. They really were. Well, see, we were early today. They were. They were late, apparently. So. And this is why they're in Ukraine today, is to go get ballpoint pen. They have all the ballpoint pen.

[Eugene]

I can only imagine you had customs, two suitcases full of ballpoint pens and blue jeans.

[Ian Bremmer]

So we were, you know, we're talking,

[Eugene]

what is the reason for your business? When I tell them of goods?

[Ian Bremmer]

Let me see your pockets. So they were talking about this, and so I told them about this store. There's a store at Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market. Quincy Market, as we'd say back in Boston, Another little touristy area. And there was a sharp image there. And I said, you know, they have these stores. It's not cheap, but they have all this crazy stuff. There's all kind of stuff. So I told him about it. I said, well, there's a light. There's a lamp. And if you touch the lamp and it's a metal Lamp. It'll turn on. They didn't believe me. Didn't believe me. I had no way of showing it.

[Eugene]

They didn't.

[Ian Bremmer]

Photo. I told them about this phone that you could use. First of all, the idea. Phone has to have a cord.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes, of course. Okay. And.

[Ian Bremmer]

And you wouldn't use a cordless phone in your bathtub.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, of course not.

[Ian Bremmer]

But. But there are people. My aunt had a pool. My aunt, she built a house. And she was like the one middle class person in the family. She built a pool.

[Trevor Noah]

I told them about this uncle.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Always the one rich unto uncle.

[Ian Bremmer]

They did not believe that this was possible. That you would have. That a private home, would have a pool in your backyard and you'd have a phone call. And it wasn't like this blew their minds.

[Trevor Noah]

I love that you thought you were blowing their minds with the phone. It's cordless. You can talk anywhere in the pool even. And they were like, wait, wait. You have your own body of water in the back of your house?

[Ian Bremmer]

No, no.

[Trevor Noah]

Look, Ian, you can fool us with some things. How can man made lake just be

[Eugene]

at back of house?

[Ian Bremmer]

You have tanker traffic on this.

[Trevor Noah]

It is a crazy concept when you think about it. Yeah. But having a swimming pool is one of the most ridiculous ideas ever. One of the things that I found out about that like blew my mind was you can draw a direct line between places that have a shit ton of swimming pools in their houses and the racism laws that were in the country. Really? Yeah. In the United States, almost nobody had a swimming pool. And then they changed the laws and they said black people could swim in public pools. And then remember, like. And then.

[Ian Bremmer]

And then suddenly white people said, I gotta have pools.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. And then obviously there was the fights and there were, you know, people. Was it Mr. Rogers who had his friends feet in the pool with him, if you remember that. And people were like, Mr. Rogers, how could you do this? You're gonna have a black man in this little pool thing with. And then pools did this in America. All of a sudden people were like,

[Eugene]

all right, I'm not going public anymore.

[Trevor Noah]

Not only did private pools blow up, public pools started getting shut down. People were like, well, maybe we shouldn't fund public pools. South Africa as well. Public pools used to be like the thing. I grew up swimming in a public pool. And then after, like democracy fully, like when people were like, ah, maybe we

[Eugene]

just swim at home.

[Trevor Noah]

We just swim. Everyone just swims at home.

[Eugene]

The cordless thing.

[Ian Bremmer]

We need civic spaces. Yeah. Places where we can meet these People, these kids, Public phone.

[Eugene]

I mean, floaty phone. Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. So you're with the Russians, you're telling them about the public phone?

[Ian Bremmer]

No, I just blew their minds. And I just. The fact that I hadn't. There were so many different components of that that I hadn't remotely considered would be strange or interesting to them. And it allowed us to like have this wild open moment about how different we were, but we were the same kids.

[Trevor Noah]

What having that experience combined with you doing what you do. What do you think we misunderstand about Russia right now in this moment in time? And I say this as somebody who has always, not always, maybe for like the past like six years, been fascinated by how America has misread Russia over the years and then acted based on that misreading. Is there something that you think the world doesn't understand about Russia right now?

[Ian Bremmer]

Just how disrespected they feel? I mean, this is a country that's lost empire. This is a country whose total economy is smaller than Canada. This is a country that used to take such pride in having the best culture of anyone in the world that all of their college kids had read all this incredible literature and knew all the top arts. And now the government has stopped investing in this completely, in science. They had the world class scientists, Soviet Union collapse and all these American companies would go, and IBM and Boeing and they'd hire the best scientists, mathematicians, and they don't have that anymore. And you feel this sense, they have such pride, such Russian pride in their nation, in their history. It's not about money. It never was about money. You know, remember this is the whole system of, you know, they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work. Yeah, right. But the personal connections and the history and this is a place that, yes, there's a lot of suffering, there's a lot of tragedy, but you get through it because there's a sense of responsibility and greatness and they have lost so much of that.

[Trevor Noah]

I know you can't predict another reality, but do you think it would have been different if the US and the world had done a better job of bringing Russia in post?

[Ian Bremmer]

Of course.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you think it would have?

[Ian Bremmer]

And I also think it would have been different if their own oligarchs that were connected were not so rapacious, were not so kleptocratic, did not rip everybody off and take that money out of the country for themselves, both of those things. So the economic shock therapy that the Americans offered to them was nowhere near what was useful for them given the ability to Strip out the wealth. And also the fact that the Soviet Union dropped in America's laps, you kind of won it. You didn't fight it over it. It wasn't like World War II, where you almost lost your way of life. For everybody here, it was like, well, we don't need to rebuild these guys. We rebuilt the Japanese, we rebuilt the Germans. These were our enemies. It wasn't just our allies. We rebuilt them, and then we created the UN that was American.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

I mean, it's kind of funny because now you have Americans saying UN Globalist. Those were actually our morals. They were our ideals. I'm very proud of you. I love having it in New York. And I think that one of the reasons why Americans today don't like the un, especially elites, is because we feel a sense of shame that we no longer are living up to the values and standards that we create. And so, yeah, I think those things really matter. And I think that we did not cover ourselves in glory in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, because it was. Because we were doing so well. We were kings of the world. Everyone just was gonna be like America, so we didn't have to do anything. Let them come to us.

[Trevor Noah]

When you look at Venezuela today, I was joking with Eugene about this the other day, and I said, as much as America will say certain things, it is funny how half of the stories slash, all of them sort of end in oil. Doesn't matter what it is. You know, they'll be like, oh, Iran, terrible regime, and they're plotting in the oil. You know, Ari Raq, Saddam Hussein, this evil person, weapons of master oil. You know, what. What they're doing.

[Ian Bremmer]

Gaddafi oil, Gaza, oh, my God.

[Eugene]

Nigeria oil.

[Ian Bremmer]

We don't care as much. No, that was the counterpoint.

[Trevor Noah]

That's true as well, though. But I'm saying, being in there, if there's somewhere America goes into, though.

[Eugene]

Oil.

[Trevor Noah]

Oil.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm sure it's not that simple. I'm sure it's not that simple. But if you are, and you are literally somebody who studies this for a living, what do you make of this situation? Are these the actions of a country that might end up fighting another war with a country that happens to have oil?

[Ian Bremmer]

No.

[Trevor Noah]

No. You don't think.

[Ian Bremmer]

First of all, because Trump, I think, really does fundamentally understand that the US has gotten involved in a lot of very expensive, long wars, and he's willing to do anything to stop that. He doesn't want boots on the ground and many years on him.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

I mean, he ended the war in Afghanistan by cutting a really crappy deal with the Taliban. But at least the end of the war. Yeah, right. And then Biden was kind of stuck actually ending. Ending the war, but Trump made that happen. And. And so I think the likelihood that. That Trump under any circumstances would say, okay, let's send a whole bunch of young men and women to go and fight in another country. I don't think he's doing that.

[Trevor Noah]

The funny thing, though, they'll send them in the U.S. i think it's. Yeah, the funny thing, though, is I think it's more money thing. I don't know. Did you. Do you remember the. The. I think it was around Syria when Bashir al Assad was. He launched one of his. One of the. One of many of, like, his most heinous campaigns. It was just like a moment.

[Ian Bremmer]

Just chemical weapons or. You mean before that?

[Trevor Noah]

I think it was around that time, but there was an image of a young child on. On the COVID of the New York Times. I think it was on the front page. This child and his, like, ashen face. Just post, like a strike or something. And I think it was Ivanka Trump who showed the image to Donald Trump. And he was so moved by her being so moved that he said he's gonna respond. And then they bombed a few parts of Syria, right. And then afterwards he came out and they were like, oh, is this gonna be a full scale? And he came out and he was like. He's like, we're not. We're not. He's like, we bombed them. And he's like, you know how much it costs? 1.1rocket. I can't believe. He's like. Like, had I known, I wouldn't have sent it. I wouldn't have shot it. One of these, I wouldn't have shot. I wish I could take it back. He's like, I wouldn't. And it was interesting to me that he, from what I observe of him, is more against war because he doesn't like the country spending the money on it.

[Ian Bremmer]

I think he's gotten more used to it, as we've seen with Iran and the 12 Day War. I think he's gotten more used to it with all the rockets against the. The ships, the little tiny boats that are bringing the drugs. I also think that personally, this is a guy who did everything he could using his personal connections to avoid the draft.

[Trevor Noah]

The bone spurs.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yes. And he understands that that was something that one should avoid. That war was scary for him, and war is scary for a lot of young men and women. So I think he comes to that. I mean, honestly, historically, whatever it is, I think there are lots of reasons why there's talking about going in. I think that for Marco Rubio, who comes from Florida and has a very strong Cuban constituency and a bunch of Venezuelans, too, and they see this as a dictatorship and they see Cuba as a dictatorship, and he's always wanted to remove these brutal leaders and he thinks if you get rid of Maduro, then you can stop the dominoes with Cuban. He might not be completely wrong about that, but it's not, not an immediate direct effect. I do think that the oil matters. Rick Grinnell, who was the special envoy without portfolio for Trump and was involved in the first administration as well as ambassador to Germany for a while. You may remember, tall guy, was a Fox News guy. He was engaged on the Venezuela brief at the beginning of the administration, had been talking to the oil companies in the US and was trying to see if a deal could be made that would allow them, would, would have them, you know, crack down on the drugs, but would get the Americans to actually invest more broadly in Venezuela. Also, a lot of illegal oil going, evading sanctions from Venezuela using these ghost tanker fleets.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Through Cuba to China, by the way, same tankers that the Russians and the Iranians use. Which is why Putin called up Maduro to support him after the Americans seized a tanker.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Ian Bremmer]

Because it was like, wait a second, we use that tanker. So it was kind of interesting. I, I absolutely think that because Grinnell effort didn't work, that now, you know, you're seeing this is this country has more oil reserves than any other country in the world.

[Trevor Noah]

Geez, I wouldn't know that.

[Ian Bremmer]

Proven oil reserves more than Saudi Arabia, more than the United States.

[Trevor Noah]

Geez, I didn't know that.

[Ian Bremmer]

And so Trump, certainly, if Maduro is gone with whatever military government is immediately in charge and maybe some transition eventually to someone that could be elected, the deal he's going to, he doesn't care about democracy in Venezuela. He cares a lot about cutting an investment deal where the Americans are going to get a big piece of that oil, just like the critical minerals deal that he forced Zelensky to sign if he was going to keep providing intelligence and defense support to the Ukrainians. So, yes, I do think the oil plays, but I don't think it's been the principal driver.

[Trevor Noah]

I wonder when I hear some of these stories if, I mean, I don't know if it was ever true, but I sometimes wonder if America has given up its moral authority and Moral superiority to be able to, like, say these things in the world. I actually think. To. I think it was. I think it was Israel's prime minister or somebody high up in the government who came and gave a speech at the U.N. you know, when people were complaining, they're like, oh, Israel did this. And you. When they bombed in Qatar, right? And they were like, oh, to do this on another nation's soil. And then they were like, well, America did it. And they listed off like a few other countries and like, they did it. They're like, so how are we different? And it was an interesting moment because it was weird that the response to why did you break the international law? Was we all do. You know what I mean?

[Ian Bremmer]

Of course I do. And it is. On the one hand, the fact that the United States has historically held itself up as some exceptional, indispensable nation means that even though the Americans have given so much more in foreign aid, even though the US has played so much more of a leadership role in the IMF and the World bank and doing so many things that really matter and philanthropy also, and promoting Americans to do that. But when the hypocrisy happens, and let's face it, for the US the hypocrisy happens at huge scale in Iraq or in Abu Ghraib or in Guantanamo. And so many examples of this, or with the global financial crisis, so many examples of. Then suddenly all of these other countries are pointing fingers and the Americans were never as much of a shining light beacon on the Hill as we put ourselves out. And let's face it, we almost didn't get involved in World War II. And that would have been a huge mistake. We were late to the game. And it was only because of Pearl harbor and it was. The America first concept started then with Lindbergh and the movement of why would we care about these Europeans way over there? Has nothing far, has nothing to do with us. Here are shades of that today, right in the National Security Strategy document, for example, and with Trump saying, you guys have your problem. Ukraine's far away. But still, if you had to compare the United States with what the Chinese would do globally or what the Russians would do globally over the last 50, 60, 70 years, you would unbalance. Take the U.S. now, the question is today, would you still make a strong call for that? That not as clear. A lot of countries around the world would say that the United States has become actively adversarial. A lot of countries would say that. The Canadians would say that, which is crazy.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, Canadians never say Anything mean.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah. And now they do, and they won an election on that. And their population is saying, we got to find a way to just work more with the Europeans, work more with everybody than the Americans. And they're so incredibly integrated with the US Economy. It's not like. And security. It's not like they have much of a choice. Choice. But it's hugely popular in Canada to say we can't. We can never go back to the trusted relationship we used to have with the U.S. damn. And their tourism down to the U.S. has fallen off a cliff. They're really upset because they feel like we no longer stand for the things that they thought we stood for. And if the Canadians feel that way, who are basically Americans, just a little older. Right. Then how do you think the other people feel that don't have those relationships with us?

[Eugene]

Right.

[Ian Bremmer]

Huh. That's sad.

[Trevor Noah]

What are some of the questions you have now that you haven't yet found the answers for in the world? Yeah, just things that you're pondering and puzzling through, but you haven't yet struck on a satisfactory answer.

[Ian Bremmer]

Well, I want to know when artificial intelligence can provide answers on a large number of topics that are. Are as good or better than human beings. I want to know what that does to political power. I want to know how the Chinese Communist Party deals with that. When Xi Jinping is supposed to be like the oracle from which all information comes down. Is it repression? Does it change their system? I'd love to know that.

[Trevor Noah]

Maybe they'll just have like a. They'll just. Their AI I think their solution is the easiest. They just have to make sure that their AI just says, like you say to. To AI in China, hey, what's happening here? Or what do you. How do I fix this? And then their AI must just be like she says. I just asked she. And she was saying that you should put your.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Put the cupboard together like this. You know, she actually told me how this works. Chat ccp.

[Ian Bremmer]

Like this, you said.

[Eugene]

Yeah, sometimes it would be like. That's what she said.

[Trevor Noah]

That's a nice one. That's what she said.

[Ian Bremmer]

That also works. That actually works together.

[Trevor Noah]

Look at this.

[Ian Bremmer]

We got a show here.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean, this is. This is doing something. No, honestly, I genuinely think. Think this is just me with my. Just wandering through the street's brain. I have no company, nor do I have any credentials. I think AI is going to be a greater detriment to free nations than to nations that have a stranglehold on their politics and their populations. Because There they can work to constrain the thing, whereas in the other one they're like, ah, it's like, let it go and see what happens. And then it's like, oh, okay, well,

[Ian Bremmer]

that was the whole point. That's why the J curve became a U.

[Trevor Noah]

That's.

[Ian Bremmer]

That is the whole point. That's what I mean.

[Trevor Noah]

That's what I'm saying. They, I think, I'm not sure those

[Ian Bremmer]

are free nations for very long. If it turns out that the companies control the algorithms, the AI, and suddenly you're not a citizen, you're actually just a product of a business model.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, okay. So that's one thing you're pondering.

[Eugene]

Unelected leader all of a sudden.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you do.

[Ian Bremmer]

I mean, a second big thing I want to know is what happens with the social contract when people that are white, white collar knowledge labor increasingly no longer has productive stuff to do.

[Trevor Noah]

Can I tell you, that is one of the biggest ones that people take for granted. Because it's exactly that. It's a social contract that keeps us all moving along. And when it's gone, think of everyone in an office whose job is only about moving information around and remembering it and dispersing it. And if your company makes a system that does that everywhere, maybe you can tell me this. Cause I've never gotten a satisfactory answer from CEOs and from companies. I go, why would you do this? As I understand.

[Ian Bremmer]

Why would you do what?

[Trevor Noah]

As I understand business. The point of a business is to provide some sort of service to somebody who will then pay you for it. But like Henry Ford understood you need

[Ian Bremmer]

the people that can buy your thing. Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

So he paid his workers a certain amount of money and he made his car a certain price so that they themselves could buy it.

[Eugene]

Yeah, his first consumers.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. But if companies are gonna make themselves fully AI, AI will advertise, AI will plan trips. AI will do the work. AI will. Then where's the business?

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, well, that is a huge, sometimes a huge question. And you worry that, first of all, some of these people are so racing ahead, are so short term in their orientation that they're not worried about that, just want to get there first and cash out. Because the models and the money that's being raised is so extraordinary as driving the economy. And second, of course, there's a collective action problem to it. If you don't do it, someone else is going to. Right. So there's the race level of it, you know, and then there's also the disbelief. It's the view that yeah, there'll be other jobs. There's always other jobs. Something else will come up.

[Trevor Noah]

I do believe that. But I think the issue, to borrow from what you were saying, is time and government, everything can be figured out. The problem is, do you have the time to figure it out? Do you get what I'm saying? If everyone loses their jobs over a hundred years, let's say the job of candle maker goes away over a hundred years, I think people will be fine. But if tomorrow a job that is done by a lot of people disappears instantly, you don't have time to figure out what the next job is.

[Ian Bremmer]

I hope that's right. And I think that's right. But of course, it didn't work out that way for horses, right? I mean, you know, suddenly you have steam power and the horse population goes down.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no.

[Ian Bremmer]

What it was in one generation because, you know, horses are then used.

[Trevor Noah]

Our population might.

[Ian Bremmer]

Well, I hope not. I'm just saying that I know that when you suddenly have technology that surpasses the total capacity, the total productive capacity of that entity, you no longer need the entity.

[Trevor Noah]

No, but this is where I think, honestly, on a human level, I do think we will create a new thing. Cause all jobs are invented. The issue is, I don't know that we'll have the time. This is where I'm agreeing with you. I go, you do it too quickly. And then. You understand what I'm saying. Yeah. What do you think you would do in. In the revolution?

[Eugene]

Making candles?

[Trevor Noah]

No, like, genuine. Like, do you. Do you. Do you. Do you ever think about, like, Ian, what do you think you would do? You think you're part of helping?

[Eugene]

No.

[Trevor Noah]

I honestly wonder that you don't think about this at all?

[Eugene]

No, no, I don't think about it.

[Trevor Noah]

Like, let's say it all goes to shit. The thing's falling apart. The people now is like. Where do you see yourself in the mix? I always think front lines, planning.

[Ian Bremmer]

I'd be a dissident.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, you'd be a dissident.

[Ian Bremmer]

Absolutely. Because, I mean, if you think about back in the Soviet Union before the collapse, yeah. There were lots of people that tried to do what I do. They just didn't do it, like, for money. They didn't do it legally because it was illegal. So what did they do? I mean, they, you know, they did samizdat literature. They do, like, informal coffee house conversations. But they still tried to bring truth to people, to the fellow citizens. So if that were to truly happen in the United States, I'd still do What I do, I would just do it it less effectively and I'd be repressed for it.

[Trevor Noah]

You'd be on the front lines, Eugene.

[Eugene]

I, I, I think that with everything that changes, things have been changing since the beginning of time. But I think it's the people that have institutional memory that are lamenting the change. Sometimes I think the younger generation is not as worried about the changes that we're facing. I mean, there's kids who don't even know what a house phone looks like.

[Trevor Noah]

Well, this is, I hear what you mean.

[Eugene]

So what we are lamenting is the world as we know it. It's no different from, from how when you're in a queue, you were lamenting being in a queue.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eugene]

You remember?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Like the world that didn't exist.

[Eugene]

Yeah. I'm thinking what we are doing now, we are almost, we are here to preserve what was. Even in conversations like this, we, there will always be a job for these kind of people. It's almost like the books of the future. There'll always be people who remember how things were and will try in their small circles to keep things the same. The person who bakes the bread themselves, although.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm with you.

[Eugene]

So this idea sharing will always be, and we've been saying this, that what we're not realizing is the portals to this information for the future is digital media, the podcast, the, the YouTubes, people in hundred years time, if they want to really know how things were done, just like how people are making handcrafted binders for books, they will go and listen to how things were done. There'll be a person who's interested in disseminating the information and getting things done. But what we can't stop is things changing. They are always going to change, especially if there's money involved. Change is inevitable. And like you said, it's a race now. If you don't do it, someone else will.

[Ian Bremmer]

Bob Iger, I think was right about this is you. You've never, no one's ever been successful trying to stop technology. So I mean, it's not about saying we're not going to do, do it, it's going to happen. The question is being aware of what it is and trying to align yourself with it. How do you want to spend your time given how fast it's changing?

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay. And then what's like a third question you have? So the first one, the second question was about AI?

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah. The third one is about whether or not we are going to have increasing global governance to respond to global challenges. Right. So you think about how so much of these new technologies, how fast they move. Are we going to have a US China agreement the way we did after the Cuban missile crisis between the US and Soviet Union so that we didn't blow each other up? We created a hotline. We didn't have any arms control until we almost blew up the world. Do we have to wait before we almost blow up the world to have agreements on how we're going to try to manage collectively these new technologies that are incredibly powerful to advance humanity, but also are really dangerous in the hands of the wrong people? Bad actors that would want to create a bioweapon or that would want to sort of knock out an economic marketplace or flood the world with disinformation and fake videos that can't just be handled in a country by country basis. There are adversaries out there. We need to make sure that we're not using them against each other. And right now we don't have any AI arms control. We don't even have the beginning of that negotiation. And so we don't have 20 years for that. And so this administration's gonna have to engage. Very interesting. You probably saw that Trump gave this long speech at the UN this year back in September.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, the one where he said basically you guys suck. And yeah was. It was. I mean, the funny parts of the speech. It's the one, the escalator speech. Complain.

[Ian Bremmer]

But it was really interesting. At one point he actually said there was something. He said a new program that he wanted the US to start that he asked the UN to be a part of, which you'd never expect him to do that. He said, I'm really concerned about the spread of bioweapons and we want to have like a new US led global initial initiative on that and the UN has to play a role now that he didn't come up with that.

[Trevor Noah]

But.

[Ian Bremmer]

But the point is he didn't kill it and no one around him killed it. You can't do this stuff unless there's some kind of global cooperation. It can't just be America first on protection of the world from these advanced technologies. There are some things in the world we still have to cooperate on and yet we're not moving in that direction right now. Almost none of the big political trajectories are towards more cooperation. It's all towards fragmentation. It's all towards picking a side. There's some stuff that we need to actually work together on. So I'm really interested to see how does that start to happen? Happen? And does it. Does it require a big crisis?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Ian Bremmer]

Or. Or can we start to actually plant some of the seeds to allow for that without.

[Trevor Noah]

So, just so that you leave us on a good note, what have you seen geopolitically that's given you, like, a fuzzy, warm feeling?

[Ian Bremmer]

The fact that as the United States is playing less of a global leadership role, that other countries around the world actually don't want these institutions to fall apart. They may not be able to be the United States themselves, but they want these things to work. They want countries around the world, even China, it's like, no, we still want the un we still want to pay our dues for the un. We want these. We still want the imf. We still want the World Bank. We still want their programs. We still want the World Food Program. We think these things are important. We still want trade agreements. So if the US Isn't going to be able to do all the trade right now, well, then the EU and Mercosura will try to sign something up. And India will work with, you know, Australia. There's more of that. So there is an effort to create more resilience in the system. And it's not. Everything is not just about, oh, my God, the United States isn't going to be papa. And so we all have to cower and be on our best behavior or else he's going to strike us. No, there's actually more than just the US out there, and a lot of it is trying to find a way to ensure that we still have stability.

[Trevor Noah]

I love that. It's what I told my seven kids. Now that I'm not around, you guys are gonna step up. You're gonna do something for yourselves.

[Ian Bremmer]

I'll take three, he'll take four.

[Eugene]

Can we move to where?

[Ian Bremmer]

Bulgaria.

[Eugene]

You bring a whole lot of ballpoint pens and ooches.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man, that's my favorite one is the ballpoint pens and the blue jeans.

[Eugene]

Just.

[Trevor Noah]

You doing that in. Did you ever go back and meet any of those people?

[Ian Bremmer]

Oh, God, yeah. Of course.

[Eugene]

You did?

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man. On LinkedIn. It's amazing.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, it was really cool. Not on LinkedIn.

[Trevor Noah]

No. When did you first go back and connect? Like, who did you like?

[Ian Bremmer]

Oh, it would have been. I mean, probably three years later. Two years later. 88, I think it was.

[Trevor Noah]

You went back and then you.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I stayed. I was pen pals with these kids again. This is pre Internet.

[Trevor Noah]

That is so.

[Ian Bremmer]

So you're then writing notes to these kids?

[Eugene]

Yeah, it was wild with your fancy ballpoint pen.

[Trevor Noah]

Just flossing in their faces.

[Ian Bremmer]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Dear Vlad, I write this to you elegantly and with the smoothest precision that a ballpoint pen can provide.

[Eugene]

And then Vlad was like, dear.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man, that's.

[Eugene]

I'm glad.

[Trevor Noah]

That's dope. That's really beautiful. Well, thank you very much. Thank you so much. And thank you for showing us a new way to see the world. Yeah, I think that's, you know, that's honestly one of the things that you've changed most in my life, which I appreciate. Just the idea of, like, learn to see it, meet the people who don't see it the same way you do, talk to them about why, understand it, and then. Then you go from there. I really appreciate that.

[Ian Bremmer]

Thank you. That means something. Thanks a lot to me.

[Trevor Noah]

This is really fun. Thank you.

[Eugene]

Yeah, so much.

[Trevor Noah]

That's really cool. What now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius xm. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jess Hackle. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiou. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannis Brown. Random other stuff. Stuff by Ryan Hooth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of what now.

[Ian Bremmer]

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[Ian Bremmer]

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[Trevor Noah]

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