The US vs. Itself — and Other Top Global Risks in 2024: Ian Bremmer (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Ian Bremmer’s talk titled “The US vs. Itself — and Other Top Global Risks in 2024” at TED.

In this interview by TED’s Helen Walters, Ian Bremmer highlights the complex challenges the world faces due to rapid advancements in AI technology. He emphasizes the need for effective governance in managing the risks associated with AI’s misuse in various sectors, acknowledging the difficulty of keeping up with the pace of technological change.

Bremmer points out the increasing tension between the U.S. and China, particularly in the high-tech sector, where competition over AI development and semiconductor capabilities is intense. The U.S., alongside its allies, is implementing export controls to limit China’s access to advanced technology, leading China to respond by leveraging its dominance in critical minerals. He stresses that these geopolitical dynamics are making the transition to post-carbon energy less efficient and more costly.

The interview also touches on industrial policies by various governments to use their resources advantageously, which adds to the global cost and efficiency issues. Bremmer highlights the interconnectedness of global risks in 2024, emphasizing the importance of not only discussing these issues for business and policy decisions but also connecting with those close to us. He shares a personal anecdote from his visit to the South Pole, reflecting on humanity’s capacity to act as stewards of the planet.

Bremmer expresses concern over the lack of global leadership and stewardship, as many are focused on narrow, short-term interests. He concludes by advocating for a broader perspective and a deeper connection with others, drawing lessons from his experiences for navigating the challenges of 2024.

TRANSCRIPT:

HELEN WALTERS: Hello everyone, happy 2024, wherever you are. It is January the 8th, and I don’t know about you, but here at TED, we are looking forward to the year ahead with a sense of nervous anticipation.

As we all know, there is a lot going on, from war on multiple fronts to upcoming elections that some say will determine no less than the future of democracy. This is big, this is concerning, it’s often slightly confounding.

So, given all that, we want to move forward with eyes wide open, and who better to help us understand exactly what to pay attention to this year than President of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, Ian Bremmer. Ian, hi.

IAN BREMMER: Helen, good to be with you.

HELEN WALTERS: So Ian, you’ve just published your annual list of top risks for 2024, and I want to dive right in. The very first one that you describe is called “The United States versus itself.” So, tell us.

Political Crisis in the United States

IAN BREMMER: Helen, the United States today has an incredibly strong economy and military. Its political system is in crisis. The U.S. is the only advanced industrial democracy that cannot ensure a free and fair transition of power that is seen as legitimate by a majority of its population. That is what we are looking at in 2024.

And it’s happening against a context of a geopolitical environment that is very deeply unstable, with a major war between Russia and Ukraine, which is nowhere close to ending, with a major war between Israel and Hamas, which is nowhere close to ending. And so, both allies of the United States are deeply concerned about this, and adversaries are looking to take advantage.

Now, for 2024, we won’t have a new president. If there is a new president, that’s next year. So, why is it so risky now? Well, it’s so risky now because the country is so divided, and because Trump is likely to get the nomination, overwhelmingly likely. When he does, his policy pronouncements will drive the GOP. And they are not right now, as of today. So, in other words, overnight, he will gain the loyalty, regain the loyalty of the overwhelming majority of Republican leaders in state legislatures, in the House, in the Senate, and of Republican-leaning and right-leaning media outlets.

And of course, the ability to raise money and deploy that money for the election. That means that his policy orientations, as he expresses them, whether it’s cutting off Zelensky and the Ukrainians or showing the Iranians what, and that’s why they wouldn’t have gone to war against Israel and the US if he had been president, unlike Biden, or in terms of the border vis-à-vis the Mexicans, any of other issues, those are suddenly going to be drivers of one half of the US political system.

So it is a deeply concerning political environment, and one that the United States is not in a position to respond to effectively.

HELEN WALTERS: So Ian, you’ve written that there is an unlikely but plausible possibility that the US won’t actually even be able to hold a free and fair election on November the 5th. We’re going to talk more about the impact of artificial intelligence in a little bit. But the reality is that we have seen the impact of misinformation on elections before, but in the ensuing time, things have gotten much faster, much quicker. So, what should we be watching for there? And how do you think that is going to play out in November in the US?

The Achilles Heel: U.S. Elections

IAN BREMMER: Well, the United States, as the most powerful country in the world, and as a political democracy which is in crisis, the most vulnerable part of the United States is its political system, and is specifically its 2024 election. That is the Achilles heel for the United States.

When I speak with intelligence leaders in the United States, they say that is what they are most concerned about. It’s the vulnerability of the US election. It’s not the Russians attacking the Americans militarily. It’s not a big fight with the Chinese. It’s not Iran. It’s the vulnerability of the US elections. And that vulnerability is a comparatively complex and soft target from a homeland security perspective, especially because Americans don’t live in the same information environment.

You know, we talk about climate change around the world, and everyone agrees that there’s 1.2 degrees of warming. Everyone agrees there’s 442 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. When you talk about the US political system, everyone does not agree that Trump tried illegally to overturn an election. I mean, in a normal democracy, in a well-functioning democracy, that would obviously be the top issue of debate in the election is the fact that you’re thinking about reelecting someone that is, you know, not interested in a democratic election.

That is not what is happening presently in the United States, not at all. And that is not Trump’s fault. Trump is a symptom, a very serious symptom, of the fact that US institutions have been delegitimized over decades, and it’s getting worse. And he’s a very happy beneficiary of that reality.

So yes, I do worry that American political institutions and specifically the electoral procedures are vulnerable to that, especially because the stakes are so much higher this time around. The stakes are higher for Biden and his team, because they believe that they may face an end to an effective multi-party transfer of power over time if Trump wins. A lot of them individually believe that they would face legal jeopardy from a politicized Department of Justice or FBI or IRS if Trump is in power.

They absolutely say that privately. And of course, Trump believes to himself, much more dangerous than the end of democracy, Trump believes that he would face jail if he and maybe even members of his family, if he were to lose the election. So the stakes are very high indeed in the United States. They’re very high indeed outside the United States.

An Unresolved Political Divide

HELEN WALTERS: I mean, I think the reality that you’re describing is that whoever wins, whoever the nominees are, Biden, Trump, whoever wins, things aren’t necessarily going to get better, right?

IAN BREMMER: Yeah, I guess I’m trying to say that neither Biden nor Trump have the capacity and the willingness to try to fix this. I don’t believe that Trump is interested, never mind having the capacity. I believe that he benefits from referring to his adversaries politically as enemies, as enemies of the people, and as painting them as an existential threat to the Republic of the United States. Whether they’re Marxists, they’re communists, they’re, you know, it’s a new McCarthyism, if you will. And that Biden certainly has the willingness to try to fix this yawning divide in the United States, but four years of being president hasn’t fixed it, right?

I mean, there was a belief among many Biden supporters that if you elected this guy, the United States was going to be able to become more normal. And Biden has had a lot of legislative successes, his infrastructure package that was bipartisan, that Trump was unable to pass, the Inflation Reduction Act misnamed, but nonetheless, significant amounts of money for investment into red and blue state jobs, more red states and blue state jobs, other policies as well. And yet, the divisions in the United States, the dysfunction of the US political system, the perceived illegitimacy of major US political institutions and the media has only increased under four years of Biden.

So, you have this very unusual environment where the most powerful leaders in the country are not able to fix the problem. And it’s not like there’s any diplomacy that’s happening between them.

Global Conflicts and Risks in 2024

I mean, the interesting thing about our view of the top risks of 2024 is that you have these three major conflicts, three major wars that are essentially happening in the world. You’ve got Russia-Ukraine, which has been now entering its third year. You’ve got Israel-Hamas, which is in its third month. And then you’ve got the US versus itself, which is kicking off right now.

And in all three of those cases, there’s no plausible environment in the coming year where diplomacy is going to reduce those tensions, is going to end or even contain that conflict. And in all three of those wars, the leaders do not share the same information space. They don’t even agree on the same basic set of facts. And that is an unprecedentedly dangerous geopolitical environment in your and my lifetime, so on.

International Conflicts and Escalation

HELEN WALTERS: So let’s talk about these international conflicts. So you mentioned three of them, one, the United States versus itself. Let’s turn to the Middle East. Let’s talk about what’s going on with Israel-Hamas. Do you feel like this is going to spiral into a broader conflict?

IAN BREMMER: I do. I do. I’m not confident exactly what the avenue of that escalation is like to be, but I’m very confident there are so many avenues that that escalation can occur. And it’s not within the capacity of the United States or other major countries around the world or in the region to contain it. And let’s talk about a few.

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One, of course, is Hezbollah and the northern border between Israel and Lebanon. And that fighting, as we speak, is escalating. The missiles from Hezbollah into Israel, the Israeli assassination of a Hamas political leader in Beirut, the willingness of the Israeli defense forces to go against Hezbollah targets, that is escalating.

And it’s not just Prime Minister Netanyahu, though he’s very relevant, because if the war is over, he’s going to be out of power and he could very well face jail. But it’s also the entire Israeli war cabinet that believes that they cannot end this war and allow actors in the region that believe that Israel has no right to exist. They can’t allow them to maintain power the way they did in the status quo ante before October 7th. And that’s not just destroying Hamas, however that is defined to be, but also Hezbollah operating right on the border in contravention of the UN Security Council resolution.

Escalation of Conflict in the Middle East

So they intend to back Hezbollah off of that to degrade their capacity to attack Israel to a degree. There’s also a willingness of the Israelis to see that happen with the Houthis in Yemen, with Iraqi and Syrian radical Shia proxies of the Iranian government. The United States is now increasingly actively fighting all of those actors in Yemen, in Iraq and in Syria, and increasingly looks like it might be willing to target Houthis in their Yemeni bases themselves.

And that’s even before we talk about the radicalization of millions of Palestinians and their fellow Arab and Muslim supporters all over the world on the back of the suffering that they are experiencing, principally, but not only in Gaza. Gaza is not livable right now for two plus million Palestinians, but they have nowhere to go. Those pressures are going to grow. The Israeli government will be calling for their removal into other territories like the Sinai, which will be seen to be ethnic cleansing by almost everyone else, including the Biden administration in the United States.

Escalation and Global Impact

That radicalization will lead to lone wolf violence and terrorist attacks, will lead to coordinated terrorist attacks, not just in the region, but also in Europe, also in the United States. So when you add all of that up, what you see is that it is much easier to understand how this conflict will escalate substantially over 2024 than threading a needle to see how you might be able to contain it largely to Israel versus Hamas in this tiny strip of land that two plus million Palestinians are trying to live on in Gaza. That is where we are right now in the Middle East.

This is deeply concerning for the United States because the U.S., in their support of this Israeli war, is more isolated on the global stage than the Russians were even when they invaded Ukraine two years ago. This also is a serious problem, not just for U.S. projection of power around the world, especially with the global South, but also domestically among Biden’s Democratic supporters, a majority of whom are more inclined to support the Palestinian cause than the Israeli cause. And so this is, as the conflict escalates, a proximate danger to Biden’s re-election efforts, which he is keenly aware of, but has very little he can do about it.

Security and the Two-State Solution

HELEN WALTERS: Right. The interconnections and the kind of the tangled web becomes ever more tangled as more actors get involved. This is a really, like a stupid, a deliberately stupid question, but do you feel like any hopes for a two-state solution are vapor?

IAN BREMMER: They’re not vapor, but they ain’t close. I mean, I don’t see, in the foreseeable future, security, if I can use that term, will be provided by Israel and not by anybody else. And what that means in the context of Gaza is hard to define. It’s mostly about security for the Israelis. It’s not about security for the Palestinians.

But long-term, you can’t have a two-state solution unless you have effective governance that is seen as legitimate by Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank and the ability to defend themselves. The Israelis have made it very clear they have a right to defend themselves. And that has failed, in part, because the Israeli government was asleep at the switch before October 7th, Israeli intelligence, defense forces, and most importantly, their prime minister in government, who had other priorities, and also because they are surrounded by a number of organizations that do not recognize their right to exist in the territory of Israel.

So absolutely, the Israelis have a right to ensure the security of their people. But the Palestinians have that right, too. The difference is that the Israelis not only have the right, they also have the capacity. They’ve got Iron Dome, provided in large part by the United States, financed as well. They’ve got an incredible asymmetrical military advantage, not only over the Palestinians, but over everyone in the region. They only need to apply it effectively without killing tens of thousands of civilians.

While the Palestinians have the right to self-defense, as is continually enshrined in votes at the General Assembly by the vast majority of countries from all over the world, including American allies, they just don’t have the ability. And you can’t talk about a two-state solution until you can get the Palestinians the ability to govern themselves and defend themselves. And we are very, very, very far away from that. And since we’re just talking about 2024 today, there is no two-state solution in the cards for 2024.

As we think about a longer-term environment, there will be no peace in the region until you find a plausible solution that is sustainable, where Palestinians feel like they can raise their children with security and economic opportunity. We would all want only that for our kids, and they presently do not have that. They don’t have anything remotely close to that.

The Prospect of a Partitioned Ukraine

HELEN WALTERS: All right. So one of the other risks that you determine in the report is one of partitioned Ukraine, which is not a phrase that Ukrainians are going to be excited about, but it’s one that you actually think is going to become a reality in 2024. So tell us what’s going on here.

IAN BREMMER: Yeah, I want to be clear that writing about partitioned Ukraine is not a personal preference. It is not something I think we should want. It is not something that the Ukrainians will recognize. It is not something Ukrainian friends and allies will recognize. But Helen, you and I know that there are many things in the world that we want that are not so, and it turns out that we live with them for a very long time. I mean, the North Koreans, we do not accept that they have nuclear weapons.

They don’t really care if we accept it. They have nuclear weapons. The denuclearization is not happening, right? So, that’s a reality. Ukraine is presently partitioned. And their ability, as much as the Americans in principle would like them to be able to take their land back, and they have every right to be able to do so, the invasions in 2014 and then in 2022, right, were illegal. The Ukrainians did nothing to, you know, force them. And yet, they can’t take their land back.

The Decline of American Support for Ukraine

The American ability and willingness to continue to lead in providing military support that would allow the Ukrainians to get the 18% of their land that is presently occupied by the Russians and has been for a year now, that just does not exist in 2024. And in fact, the bigger danger is that the trajectory of this war is at a turning point. And that not only will the Ukrainians not be able to get their land back, but that they might not have the people to continue to fight to keep the land they presently have.

And that their ability to get ongoing support, especially from the Americans, when this is becoming a political divide in the US, far away, Israel-Palestine higher priority, US elections higher priority, Trump, if he is elected, at least 50-50, I’d put it a little higher than that, frankly, though I don’t have a lot of confidence around it, would end support to Zelensky, no question.

Ukraine’s Vulnerability and Transatlantic Alliance

This is going to make the Ukrainians feel incredibly vulnerable and increasingly desperate. That is what we’re looking at in 2024. And of course, that not only threatens Ukraine’s territorial integrity ongoing and Zelensky as a leader, but it also threatens the integrity of the transatlantic alliance, which had been getting stronger over the last couple of years post-Russian invasion, and threatens the integrity of NATO as an ongoing alliance, the most important military alliance on the planet today. So, there’s a lot going on here. And presently, the outcomes don’t look great.

HELEN WALTERS: So, you have an interesting phrase in the report that stated, “Ukraine is at risk of losing, Russia has no way to win.” So, what does that stalemate actually look like in practical terms?

IAN BREMMER: So, Ukraine’s at risk of losing. Ukraine doesn’t have to lose. There are still outcomes where the Ukrainians can win, even though they will be de facto partitioned. Now, that may not sound easy. And it’s not.

Narrow Path for Ukraine’s Victory

But let me throw you out a scenario where the Americans are able to provide another $20, $30 billion this year. The Europeans continue to provide significant economic support, harder with the Hungarians opposing, harder with the Germans and their emergency budget situation. But it can happen. And some of that could be taking some of the frozen assets, legally problematic of Russia, and applying them to Ukrainian reconstruction.

On top of that, you fast track EU integration and reform in Ukraine. And you fast track NATO membership, which cannot happen tomorrow. But it could happen within, you know, say you get all the countries together, the NATO allies, and say, within two, three years, you’re going to provide them NATO membership. It will not include territory that the Russians are occupying, because you’re not going to go to war directly with the Russians.

But it will mean that these countries will defend Ukraine in the remaining territory. That is a narrow path. But if it happens, you will have 80% of Ukrainian territory that has a far better trajectory for their people than Ukraine ever could have imagined had the Russians not invaded. None of that will make good the the 8 million people who have been displaced, the tens of thousands that have had war crimes committed against them, the children that have been abducted and forced into Russia, and on and on and on.

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I am not minimizing the crimes that have been committed that they will remember for generations in Ukraine. But I’m saying that Ukraine still has a path to win, given what their country looked like and was facing before 2022, or before 2014.

Russia’s Pyrrhic Victory

But irrespective of whether Ukraine can accomplish that or will lose, the Russians will not win. And what I mean by that is Russia absolutely will be able to maintain control of a strip of Ukrainian territory, bombed out, right, and not productive, and years, if not decades, to turn that land around economically.

But Russia will now be facing the rest of Ukraine with a visceral hatred for all things Russia for generations. I mean, think about, you know, sort of the Turkish genocide against the Armenians and for how long that drove this historic enmity. That’s what we’re talking about. This is like, you know, Hutu-Tutsi stuff, right, in Rwanda and Burundi.

The Consequences for Russia

That’s what you’re talking about. And you have an expanded NATO, including Finland, far more territory for the Russians to have to defend, which ostensibly was the reason that the Russians went to war against Ukraine, is because they didn’t want NATO to be encroaching. Well, they’re encroaching a lot more now. Hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian assets that they will not have access to, trade of Russia with the Europeans, with the United States, no more, right?

I mean, the Germans much more quickly moving to a post-carbon energy transition with no more Russian gas because they cut the Russians off. An enormous cost to Germany, but greater cost long term to the Russians, not to mention the million plus Russian civilians who have fled. Young men, capable, smart that got out of Dodge to anywhere, to the Emirates, to Georgia, to anywhere that would accept them so they wouldn’t have to fight. And those are people that you could have used productively in the Russian economy.

Russia’s Diminished Global Position

So, I mean, in this environment where Russia’s only true friends providing military support for them are Belarus, North Korea, Iran, right? I mean, this is, with friends like those, right? I mean, this is, there’s no way. I mean, I understand that if you’re, if you’re a tanky, as they call it, if you’re supported by the Kremlin and you’re posting dutifully on Twitter X, that you will oppose everything I just said, because it’s your job.

But I mean, for those of us that take a blue sky approach, which is that we look at it and we kind of understand the science, it’s impossible to say the Russians are winning here. And that is, that’s a great cost to the rest of the world, to the rest of the world. This was the worst misjudgment, in my view, of any major leader on the global stage since the wall came down with Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in 2022. And not only was it a horrible decision, it was a horrible decision that was facilitated by the Americans and the Europeans, who after the 2014 invasion, much smaller, didn’t do anything.

In fact, they kept doing business with Russia as usual. They hosted the World Cup. Presidents said, okay, we’ll still go over. I mean, there were lots of signs that Putin got that said, these guys don’t care. So we’re going to get away with this. And unfortunately, they were really, really wrong.

The Exciting and Challenging World of AI

HELEN WALTERS: All right, let’s change the subject a little bit. We mentioned artificial intelligence earlier, and obviously 2023 was the year in which generative AI went mainstream. So, it’s exciting and it’s mind-blowing. And it’s also led to something of a schism between some people who are super excited about its creative potential, and then others who can’t believe that we’re barreling towards existential end of humanity with such nonchalance.

So, you just have to see the management drama at OpenAI that happened at the end of 2023 to understand some of the stakes here. But this isn’t just about Silicon Valley. And I think it’s important that we all recognize that this is actually going to affect all of us. So, what do you think we should be focused on when it comes to AI? And what are we going to see in 2024?

IAN BREMMER: Well, I am both of those things. I’m an enormous enthusiast about AI. I think it’s a transformative technology for everyone that has access to it. And we’re just seeing the beginnings of that. One of the reasons I’m most excited about AI is because it is transformative, not just in displacing existing powerful people and institutions. So, climate change, people get very excited about the transition. But to do that transition, you’ve got to end oil.

AI’s Impact Across Industries

And so fossil fuel players and those that are attached to them, infrastructure, transport, and the rest, have a lot to lose. AI, even if you’re a coal miner, you can and will use AI to be much more effective at mining coal. AI, you’re like a traditional airline company. You can use AI to reduce energy intensivity in the contrails. You can do that tomorrow.

So, it’s astonishing how much uplift we will get from productivity and efficiency in every sector, from all sorts of corporations, and from individual workers by using these tools, by deploying these tools. So, I’m very excited about how much we will get out of AI to unlock human potential broader and faster.

But I don’t spend much time talking about that usually, because you’ve got a lot of people and companies that are worth trillions of dollars collectively that are spending all of their time and effort doing that as fast as humanly possible. And they have to, because if they don’t, they’ve got very smart and well-bankrolled people breathing down their neck that would be very happy to displace them. That’s the principal AI displacement we’re going to see in the next 24 months will be of AI players that get taken out by other AI players because it’s so cutthroat and fast.

But there aren’t people that are spending their time thinking about what are the challenges for the common good? What are the negative externalities that come from AI? I mean, so you think about the last industrialization, and Americans in particular, my country, we are so great at the private market when it comes to profits. We’re capitalists when it comes to the markets, because when we do well and money is to be made, we make sure that we deploy that and the shareholders get it and we’re focused.

But when there are losses, we are the world’s best socialists. It’s not us. It’s like somebody else. Everyone’s got to pay for it. We’re not responsible, preferably the kids. So maybe not now, but maybe later. And we’ve seen that with climate change. Very happy to make all the money from industrialization, but I mean, the cost of emitting more carbon, not it, not our problem.

The Urgency of AI Governance

Well, that’s a long, global, slow process over generations. AI is a very fast transformative process over like five to 10 years. And the negative externalities are going to happen essentially simultaneously with all of the positive productivity and efficiency gains. And we need a governance environment where those are accounted for and paid for.

And in the near term, I am not talking about the robots taking over existential risk of artificial general intelligence. I’m talking about AI being used by bad actors or indifferent actors with challenging business models in ways that will undermine stable society. I’m talking about, in particular, disinformation and how it can be deployed to undermine democracy. And I’m also talking about the disruptive nature of proliferated AI tools in the hands of large numbers of governments and institutions and individuals that are bad actors or tinkerers that want to destroy things or are thinking about it.

I mean, whether they’re using AI for malware or they’re using AI to build viruses or lethal autonomous weapons. And I think that that is really becoming a risk only for the first time in the coming year in elections like the US election, especially as the next generation of AI comes out. And this is moving three times faster than Moore’s law. So every six months, you’re getting a doubling capacity, which is not an environment that traditional governments are able to respond to.

It’s too fast. It’s too powerful. And you’re also getting those tools in the hands of hundreds of millions of people in very, very short order. So there is governance. It is coming fast. It is urgent. But in 2024, the speed of the technology is much, much faster than the speed of the governments. And that gap will create crises.

HELEN WALTERS: I mean, we’ve seen, you know, from the whole of the OpenAI kerfuffle that happened at the end of the year, you really see these tensions kind of playing out in real time. And there are people within large corporations who are trying to do the right thing internally. But then, of course, competition is actually driving them to move faster and faster so that they don’t get left behind, given the fact that, as you say, there are these kind of bad actors outside of these organizations who are also trying to do their thing with the open-source technologies that are being released, etc., etc. What actual governance is possible in that environment?

IAN BREMMER: There’s a lot of governance that is possible in that environment, but it’s not clear how quickly we can get there. So, I mean, the EU has their AI Act, which is quite comprehensive in the way it thinks about regulation and transparency of foundational models and testing of those models of AI and in making sure it’s not just being done internally, and in watermarking and trying to make sure that people are aware of what kind of images they’re seeing and what’s been, and audio and what’s being driven by AI and what is not, and also the deployment of AI models and what kind of data they have access to, all of those things.

And the U.S. has an executive order, which is not as powerful as legislation, which is not coming anytime soon, given the divided nature of the U.S. government, but still represents a step change in how you think about regulating these technologies. But these processes are happening much more slowly than the tech is rolling out.

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So, I think what governance will get you is it will identify the actors that are critical, both inside governments and in the private sector. It will have them talking about the issues that really matter and better set up so that when a crisis occurs, and it will, that they will be able to identify and respond to it collectively and much more quickly than they would absent that governance structure.

So, in this regard, AI is a little bit more like the financial sector, where we all know that we need a functioning financial sector. And that’s true whether we’re capitalists like in the U.S. or we’re state capitalists like in China. You’ve got a free, you know, sort of convertible currency, or you’ve got a closed market. It doesn’t matter. We all know we need a financial market.

But we also know that in a global financial market, that individual actors can cause systemic crises. And so, we need a stability board that when there is a crisis, everyone identifies it and responds immediately so that we don’t have a global meltdown, that we don’t face the depression.

That’s what governance is going to need to be able to do on the AI front. And the thing is about AI, we’re not just talking about, oh, someone’s making a run on the market and this company is going to go bankrupt. The risks that potentially come from AI and misuse of AI are in many, many different types of technologies and applications. So, you’re going to have to essentially build the ship as you’re steering it, because the dangers are going to change very quickly.

The U.S.-China High-Tech Rivalry

HELEN WALTERS: No problem. We’ll do that just fine. Okay. So, there is another part to the tech challenge of 2024 that is actually around the building of tech, and that’s about the minerals and the materials that actually go into building tech. So, your hunch within this report is that governments are going to turn protectionist. They’re going to disrupt the flow of minerals that are needed to build all of this technology. So, what should we be paying attention to here, and how much of a risk do you think that this is for the future?

IAN BREMMER: Well, one is it’s related to the high-tech front, which is the biggest fight between the U.S. and China, which thankfully has a more stable and more managed relationship in 2024 than they did coming into 2023.

One of the big areas of tension is on the high-tech side, and the Chinese are trying to develop AI, the Americans are trying to develop AI, but the U.S., with their allies, are now taking semiconductor capabilities and trying to ensure that they are being built in trusted countries, and they’re putting export controls on semiconductors, cloud computing, related infrastructure, and so the Chinese don’t have access to the most valuable stuff.

Now, China doesn’t build its own high-tech semiconductors, and they are, you know, by most counts, about 10 years behind, and they don’t have a really good way to counter that, aside from investing as much as they can inside their own country to rebuild it. So, some of what they’re trying to do is see if there’s a way to engage with the Americans that might loosen some of those export controls, and that’s one of the reasons, the principal reason, actually, why China expressed the willingness to join a new Track 1.5 dialogue with the Americans on artificial intelligence.

But the Chinese response has been, well, you guys are dominant in semiconductors, but we’re dominant in critical minerals, in the exploitation and in the supply chain, and also in the development of a lot of the new post-carbon energy generation and infrastructure, solar cells, wind, batteries, that kind of thing, electric automobiles.

The Geopolitical Implications of Critical Minerals

And so, the Chinese are basically saying, we’re going to look at some of those critical minerals that we dominate, and we’re going to put licensing regimes on those. And if you stick with the problems you give us on semis, we’re going to start putting export controls there. Now, the difference is, the Americans will still be able to buy all of that stuff. It will just be more expensive.

So, the Chinese can’t cut off the Americans the way the Americans and the South Koreans and the Dutch can cut off the Chinese, but they can make it really painful. And ultimately, all of this is about relative power. All of this is about relative gains. It’s not about destroying, the Americans aren’t going to destroy China and vice versa. But it does mean that as the world barrels towards an effort to transition from primarily fossil fuel developed energy to primarily post-carbon developed energy over the period of one generation, that it will be far less efficient because of this big fight between the United States and China.

And at the same time, we are seeing a number of governments around the world put industrial policies in place to provide subsidies for their own workforces, governments that have access to a lot of these critical minerals that are saying we can use this to get up the supply chain. So, we want to make sure that you’re investing that new technology in our country and not just exploiting us for our resources, all of which is creating significant politically induced costs in that big sector of the global environment at a time that you want those costs to be as low as possible, so you can move away from fossil fuels.

The more expensive the critical minerals are, the bigger the barriers, the harder it’s going to be to go from coal and oil and gas to all of this new sustainable stuff. That is, in 2024, that’s becoming a significant fight.

HELEN WALTERS: Everything everywhere, all at once, everything is interconnected is, I think, a theme of this conversation. So, I flag for everybody that there are 10 risks that you are flagging this year. We have not had time to go through them all, so I would highly recommend that you go and read the full report. I’m going to, spoiler alert, just flag something that you wrote right at the end of the report, Ian, that I think is really beautiful and worth holding close as we go into 2024.

But it is critical we don’t just talk about these global issues to help make business and policy decisions, but also to connect to those closest to us. If we can’t make a difference with those we know and love, we are lost. Ian, you are a poet, it turns out.

A Personal Reflection on Global Challenges

IAN BREMMER: I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I’d like to believe I care about my fellow people, and this is a tough year. Look, I mean, I just came back from the South Pole, of all places. It’s a place that I’ve always wanted to visit. By virtue of my job, I travel all around the world, and this is this massive continent at the bottom of the planet that I’ve never been to, and it just looks like this big thing of ice.

But this also felt like a year that being off the grid and connected to the planet, but not like in the headlines, in the news every moment. It was very useful, just in terms of clearing my head a bit. But also, as a political scientist, being in a place that for 60-some years now, we’ve managed to govern, if I can use that term loosely, in a way that protects it for future generations and for the planet.

And there used to be all of these competing territorial claims by all these different countries, and now we actually have a treaty that says we’re not going to have any resource exploitation, we’re not going to use this for military bases, we’re just going to use it for science, and we’re just going to keep it for the planet. We’re melting it, I know, because of global challenges, but the reality is it still kind of is the way that we wanted it to be. It was the first arms control agreement that was ever signed between the Americans and the Soviets back in 1959, and the treaty holds true until 2048.

And when I talked about it, when I just came back, I had some people that were saying, oh, well, you know, 2048, the Chinese are going to be looking on how they can exploit it, and the Russians, it’s not going to last. It’s like, you know, if we’ve got something that works and is going to work until 2048 in today’s environment, that’s a win, right? I mean, we don’t know where we’re going to be in three months right now. And it turns out that we, as human beings, are capable sometimes, when we put our minds to it, of being stewards. And we need to do more of that.

The thing that worries me the most about 2024 is we have a lot of very big, very real fights happening right now. And no one’s acting like a leader. No one’s acting like a steward. People are all focused on a very narrow view of what’s at stake for them, and the people that like them. And that’s not humanity, right? It’s very ephemeral. And when we all leave this planet after this very short spell that we have here, we all go back to the same place. We’re all the same atoms.

And we need to take a little bit of time to connect with the people around us to remember that. That’s what I took away most from my little trip down to the bottom of the planet. And I’d like to try to hold that with me as we get through 2024.

HELEN WALTERS: May we all borrow that. May we all have that sensibility in mind as we go through this year. Ian, thank you so much for your time.

IAN BREMMER: Thank you, Helen.