The World Unpacked

The new U.S. National Security Strategy is the clearest and boldest statement of President Donald Trump’s global vision. It reveals U.S. plans to dominate Latin America, transform politics in Europe, and seize commercial opportunities in Asia. Leaders around the world are closely studying this document.Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/decoding-trumps-foreign-policy-blueprint?Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman  

Ed Zitron, a tech commentator known for his critical insights on AI finances, shares his views on the current AI investment frenzy. He argues that the explosive spending could lead to a market crash, warning of potential risks to retail investors and the broader economy. Ed discusses the limitations of large language models and their unsustainable business economics. He critiques major tech firms' opaque AI revenue reporting and challenges the notion that advertising could save AI profitability. The conversation raises critical questions about the future of AI amidst this financial bubble.

 We’re living through an era of information disruption.  Novel technologies like AI and social media are unleashing pent-up social and political energies—releasing floods of new information and triggering intense battles for narrative control.While most analysts focus on small pieces of this puzzle, Alicia Wanless is a pioneering “information ecologist” who seeks to map the entire system. Her new book is The Information Animal: Humans, Technology, and The Competition for Reality.In a lively new episode of The World Unpacked, Alicia and host Jon Bateman discuss what 2025 has in common with 1625, how novels spark civil wars, and why our frantic efforts to tame information often do more harm than good. Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/why-information-refuses-to-be-controlled?Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman  

On November 5, the Supreme Court heard the most globally consequential oral arguments in years as Trump’s trade war faces a final legal reckoning. The Court will either strike down most of Trump’s tariffs, undercutting him in trade talks, or else hand U.S. presidents previously unimagined new powers over the global economy.Peter Harrell is a top trade expert and lawyer fighting the tariffs on behalf of 207 members of Congress.  He joins host Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to take stock of the ever-changing tariffs, peer into the Justices’ decision-making process, and predict the fallout for America and the world.Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/trumps-dollar200-billion-tariff-showdown-at-the-supreme-court? Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman   

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/