Well, we’re not even a week into this new year and it’s already starting to look a lot like 2022. The war in Ukraine spawns a coveted new variant sweeping across the US of our democracies, so what awaits our world in 2023 every year the Eurasian group sticks its neck out and tries to predict the biggest risks we will face in the next 12 months. These are just some of the problems you see bubbling up under Russia. President Vladimir Putin is the villain of peace for many since his failed invasion of Ukraine, so what will happen if his country becomes the most powerful rogue state in the world?
Too weak to win Too strong to ignore China is maximizing Xi Jinping as Chinese leader is shaving the country from the top down again, but how communist, how nationalist and how stable the world’s supplier of almost everything for decades, the United States was seen. himself as the proud exporter of Liberty and st Capability around the world now algorithms, anti-social networks and artificial intelligence are becoming the first global disruptors made in the US of but it’s not just the politicians and countries, water is at an all time low, whether it is for drinking, irrigating crops, generating energy or transporting goods for more. and more people the water has reached the last drop and the man behind this Outlook joins me now Ian Bremer is a political scientist and president of the Eurasia group joins us tonight from New York City Mr.
Burma welcome to the day in which you say this year’s risks are the most dangerous you’ve found in the 25 years you’ve been putting out these reviews how bad is that the most dangerous because it’s driven by actors who are the least constrained and have the worst information so we talked about several of them in the opening and I like the way he puts it a little bit I mean Putin Vladimir Putin made the biggest mistake in judgment of any major leader on the world stage in decades when he invaded Ukraine and he did it in part because he consolidated so much power in Russia into his own hands that he is surrounded by Yes Men, he gets misinformation and there are no checks and balances in what he does and as a consequence the world is so much worse dangerous because he made this tremendous mistake, well the fact is there are a number of aging dictators and
Tech Bros around the world that the same can be said to apply to them they are really powerful they are surrounded by yes men they they don’t have checks and balances, that’s where Xi Jinping is, that’s where the Iranian supreme leader is, and that’s also where the people who are driving a lot of these dangerous algorithms that are undermining democracy and those are the biggest issues that really concern me in terms of the impact of the geopolitical environment this year, but you, like many analysts around the world, are more concerned about Russia, he is number one on your list of risks for 2023. now as putin has his back against the wall you know who is in a war he can’t win but won’t give up How worried do you think we should be about a major escalation of the conflict this year?
I think we have to be very concerned and if we are Germany it is even higher than in the United States and the reason for that is we are not in a cold war with Russia we are in a hot war with Russia now it is a war of power and NATO is not fighting directly. we’re fighting through Ukraine but you know you see the most advanced military equipment being supplied to Ukraine literally every day this week Ukraine can defend itself and Russia can’t win this war on the ground they can’t win this war on the air and yet Russia’s position globally is deteriorating every day its economy is shrinking NATO is getting stronger and expanding Ukraine itself will be one of the most powerful military forces in all of NATO um and diplomatically, the Russians are isolating themselves, so the fact that Putin sees this as a war he’s losing against NATO on the ground in Ukraine means that this is going to affect NATO states more and more directly in what way and in what way it talks about cyber attacks of asymmetric warfare.
Can you elaborate a bit on what you should be preparing for for sure if you think about who was the most dangerous rogue state in the world before Russia, it was Iran, and on the one hand, Iran pushed through the Abraham Accords and brought these countries closer to the region but it’s because of the threats the Iranians were doing it was espionage their drone strikes ballistic missile strikes it’s terrorism it’s a proxy war all of that against countries in the region so if Russia is becoming a state scoundrel that’s what we’re talking about, it’s cyber attacks, cyber attacks, pipeline attacks, it’s espionage, it’s disinformation, all these things that are not only focused on Ukraine, but are increasingly focused on NATO states in the first place. line of NATO States such as Pola. and it will be more vulnerable but more widely in 2023.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we can continue to talk about this just as a Russian war against and in the Ukraine. I think it’s broader than that. I want to move on to the other items you mentioned on your list, you’re right in the report that this year is going to be a tipping point for the role of disruptive technology in society, what should we be preparing for there, what struck me most as we call Weapons of Mass Disruption and it’s the first time in 25 years that I haven’t written uh one of the parts of the report whose title was written by GPT chat and AI bot when we reported on the risk and in five seconds he came up with the title this is the year the turing test will be broken when human beings can’t tell the
difference online between what is a bot and what is a human um and that’s not just a distraction in the hands of rogue states and bad actors who will drive political polarization and violence that will drive conspiracy theories will deeply undermine democracies, especially weaker democracies around the world, so the reality of generative artificial intelligence it’s gone from being an interesting potential, you know, a productivity enhancement to suddenly also one of the most dangerous geopolitical and usage risks in the world. that, for example, to disrupt the stock markets to
undermine corporate players, as you saw, I mean, imagine a meme action like GameStop that, instead of being driven by a few people on a Reddit board, isn’t being driven by a large number of bots that are actually pretending to be humans is a much more immediate and explosively dangerous impact on the market many risks ahead we will bring it back to talk about the biggest opportunities this year at some point ian bremmer author of maximum risk of 2023 thank you very much for your time always good to see you