The World Unpacked

A House of Dynamite, a new Netflix film, may be the most realistic depiction of a nuclear crisis ever made. Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim partnered with Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker) to capture the intimate details of the U.S. national security state as a president (Idris Elba) and his advisors confront the riskiest 19 minutes in human history.Oppenheim, the former president of NBC News, joins Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked. They discuss Trump’s missile defense plans, the filmmaking process, and Hollywood’s surprising influence on nuclear policy—from Dr. Strangelove to Crimson Tide.Find the episode transcript, video episode, and get the show direct to your inbox, here.Follow Jon on X (https://x.com/JonKBateman) here.

MS-13 brought El Salvador to its knees and has spread to a dozen other nations, doing battle with presidents as much as rival gangs. Yet despite its infamy, MS-13 is poorly understood: It has little in common with the cartels, traffickers, or mafias that it’s often lumped in with.What is the violent logic behind MS-13, and why has it grown steadily more powerful during both crackdowns and truces? Has President Nayib Bukele’s unprecedented brutality finally turned the tide against MS-13 in El Salvador, and does he have a plan for what comes next? If it takes an autocrat to slay a gang, should countries trade one beast for another?Steven Dudley, author of the award-winning book MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang, joins Jon Bateman for a gripping new episode of The World Unpacked.Find the episode transcript, video episode, and get the show direct to your inbox, here.Follow Jon on X (https://x.com/JonKBateman) here.

The end of USAID was among the biggest early controversies of President Donald Trump’s second term. The world watched in horror as Elon Musk’s DOGE took a chainsaw to U.S. foreign assistance, placing millions of lives at risk with brutal across-the-board cuts.But few people realize how much has changed since then. Behind the scenes, aid money was largely restored—for now. And instead of making grandiose fraud accusations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has begun embracing aid in public, laying out promising plans to address problems long recognized by technocrats.Rachel Bonnifield is a leading global health expert and proud member of the NGO ecosystem denounced by Trump officials—yet she admires much of their new strategy. She joins The World Unpacked to make a surprising case for many Trump reforms, while also warning of risks, including the potential for more disruptions in the coming months.Find the episode transcript, video episode, and get the show direct to your inbox, here.Follow Jon on X (https://x.com/JonKBateman) here.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has just convicted former president Jair Bolsonaro of attempting a coup to nullify his 2022 election loss. The country’s judicial system and Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a polarizing figure whom the co-conspirators had sought to assassinate, acted boldly, sentencing Bolsonaro to twenty-seven years in prison.Brazil is now the global leader in democratic accountability for “self-coups,” a once-rare phenomenon that has surged recently, even in places such as South Korea and the United States. That’s why the world is watching Brazil’s grand experiment—especially in Washington, where President Donald Trump has levied massive tariffs to punish what he calls a “witch hunt” against his former ally.Oliver Stuenkel, a prominent analyst of Brazilian politics, breaks down these events with Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked. Will Bolsonaro’s conviction restore democratic guardrails or further polarize the country? And what does it mean for the United States to intervene in the politics of a fellow democracy with unprecedented levels of economic coercion?Find the episode transcript, video episode, and get the show direct to your inbox, here.Follow Jon on X (https://x.com/JonKBateman) here. 

Nate Soares is one of the world’s leading AI “doomers” and co-author of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All—the New York Times Bestseller that everyone in tech is debating. In this debut episode of a revamped The World Unpacked, new host Jon Bateman talks to Nate about his provocative argument that superintelligent AI could destroy all humans in our lifetimes—and how the U.S., China, and other countries should band together to stop it.What is superintelligent AI and how soon will it emerge? Why are tech companies explicitly aiming to create something that the CEOs themselves—and respected independent experts—acknowledge is an existential threat? Is it feasible for the U.S., China, and other major players in the global AI race to agree to a worldwide freeze on the technology? And how did Nate come to these realizations—and mourn for what he sees as humanity’s possible lost future?Find the episode transcript, video episode, and get the show direct to your inbox, here.Follow Jon on X (https://x.com/JonKBateman) here. 

In this episode of The World Unpacked, host Isaac Kardon is joined by Alexander (Sasha) Gabuev, Director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin and one of the world’s leading experts on Russia-China relations. Together, they unpack the growing geopolitical competition in the Arctic—a region increasingly shaped by strategic cooperation between Russia and China, and generally neglected or misunderstood by U.S. policymakers.This conversation dives deep into the overlooked maritime theater connecting the U.S., Russia, and China. Kardon and Gabuev explore the security implications of a warming Arctic, the dynamics of great power rivalry, the potential limits of the China-Russia partnership, and what’s at stake for the U.S. and its allies.Article mentioned: https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/26/trump-greenland-arctic-russia-china-nato-strategy-geopolitics-security/

Subsea cables carry 95% of the world’s data—but remain largely invisible in global policy debates. In this episode, Isaac Kardon is joined by Carnegie experts Jane Munga and Sophia Besch to unpack the geopolitics, economics, and security risks surrounding undersea data infrastructure. From Africa’s digital development to Europe’s hybrid warfare concerns, they explore who owns these cables, why they matter, and how governments can respond to emerging infrastructure threats.Notes:Sophia Besch and Erik Brown, "Securing Europe's Subsea Data Cables," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December 16, 2024.Jane Munga, "Beneath the Waves: Addressing Vulnerabilities in Africa’s Undersea Digital Infrastructure," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 3, 2025.

In this discussion, Meg Rithmire, a Harvard Business School professor and expert in China's political economy, dives into the nuances of China's party-state capitalism. She explains how the Communist Party maintains control while engaging with private capitalists, showcasing a delicate balance between state interests and market dynamics. Topics include the lessons from the 2015 stock market crisis, the role of tech firms like Huawei in state objectives, and a comparative look at China's economic strategies versus the U.S. approach to competition and innovation.

The world is entering a new nuclear age—one defined by proliferating arsenals, eroding arms control, and rising geopolitical tensions. In this episode, Isaac Kardon sits down with international security expert and Stanton Senior Fellow Ankit Panda to discuss the return of nuclear weapons to the center of global strategy. As Russia issues nuclear threats, China and North Korea expand their capabilities, and emerging technologies like AI reshape the battlefield, the risks of confrontation are growing. Can new approaches to stability and deterrence pull us back from the brink? Learn more in this week's episode of The World Unpacked.Notes:Ankit Panda, The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon (Cambridge: Polity, 2025), https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/04/the-new-nuclear-age-at-the-precipice-of-armageddon?lang=en

As U.S.-China tensions deepen, Beijing is carving out a new role for itself—not just as an economic powerhouse, but as a global security player. What does China’s vision of “comprehensive national security” mean for countries caught in the middle of great-power competition? And how are smaller states navigating the shifting landscape of global security partnerships? In this episode, Isaac Kardon sits down with Sheena Chestnut Greitens to explore how China is providing security assistance to governments around the world—and how Beijing is reshaping the current landscape of international security cooperation.Notes:Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Isaac B. Kardon, “Security without Exclusivity: Hybrid Alignment under U.S.-China Competition,” International Security (Winter 2024-25), https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00504Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Isaac B. Kardon, “Vietnam Wants U.S. Help at Sea and Chinese Help at Home,” Foreign Policy (Jan. 2025), https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/13/vietnam-us-strategic-partnership-china-great-power-rivalry/Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Isaac B. Kardon, “Playing Both Sides of the US-China Rivalry: Why Countries Get External Security from the US—and Internal Security from Beijing,” Foreign Affairs (March 2024), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/playing-both-sides-us-chinese-rivalry