‘AI is transformative for the geopolitical order,’ political scientist Ian Bremmer says
Artificial Intelligence will have significant impacts on geopolitics and globalization, Ian Bremmer told CNBC.
Leigh Vogel | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Artificial Intelligence will have a significant impact on both geopolitics and globalization, according to Ian Bremmer, political scientist and president of the Eurasia Group.
“I think that AI is transformative for the geopolitical order, both in good ways and in problematic ways,” Bremmer told CNBC’s Tania Bryer for “The CNBC Conversation.”
On the plus side, AI could drive “a new globalization,” Bremmer said — at a time when questions about the state and future of globalization abound. The new technology could see the creation and development of a new global middle class get a boost, he added.
“Anyone with a smartphone will have access to it,” Bremmer explained, adding that he believes this will increase human capital around the world. Areas like medicine and education will be strengthened, while industrial and scientific processes will become more efficient, he suggested.
“In other words, I’m an enthusiast about what this technology will do for the world,” Bremmer said.
However, he also pointed to risks that could lead to negative disruption — and warned that the world is not yet prepared for this. For example, anyone can use AI to write code, but it can also be used to hack into systems or create malware, Bremmer pointed out. Similarly, it may be used to develop vaccines — but also viruses — he added.
“That means that the governance that occurs is going to have to be not just about governments, but the technology companies too. We’re not ready for that, but that’s the reality,” Bremmer said.
Policymakers catching up
Global leaders and policymakers may not be ready yet, Bremmer told CNBC, but they are catching up.
“A year ago, I can’t think of a single conversation I had with a global leader, anywhere in the world, where they were asking about AI — where they were fundamentally concerned about the implications of AI for their political systems, for the global economy, for national security,” he said.
“Today, I can barely think of a single global leader that doesn’t ask me about it.”
This includes countries around the world such as China, the U.S. and U.K., as well as international organizations like the European Union and G7, Bremmer explained. While learning about AI, they are assessing what they do and don’t know, as well as the role technology companies play, he said.
Since the AI boom began at the end of 2022, countries have been racing to understand and regulate the technology. It’s proved a significant challenge for lawmakers due to the incredibly fast growth of AI in the public domain, and the varying challenges it could bring — from job security to national security.
In June, EU lawmakers passed regulations that would require new AI tools, such as chatbots, to be reviewed before being released to the wider population, and ban elements of the technology such as real-time face recognition.
Elsewhere, China announced rules for generative AI services like OpenAI’s viral ChatGPT in July, stating that licenses may be required before such AI tools can be made publicly available.
Steps to AI regulation
But for AI to be properly regulated, a greater understanding of it needs to be established, Bremmer told CNBC.
“You can’t govern it until you know what it is,” he said.
“We need a United Nations-driven process, an intergovernmental panel on artificial intelligence, with the governments, the scientists, the companies together to understand the basic state of play of what AI can do, who the principal actors are, what the opportunities are, what the dangers are.”
For Bremmer, it’s crucial that countries and other actors work together in this field — rather than compete with each other.
“It’s not like nukes, where you have a few countries that have them and you stop everyone else from getting it,” he said. Instead, the decentralized, open-source nature of AI means that anyone will be able to access the latest developments and use them for either good or bad.
Global oversight is therefore key, Bremmer said, suggesting a “geo-technology stability board” as one possible solution. This would see countries and tech companies work together to “try to ensure that we don’t regulate people out of existence, but we have the ability to respond to ensure that the market of AI globally continues to function.”
“It cannot be the U.S. versus China,” Bremmer concluded.
Some countries have already indicated they would be open to collaborating on AI regulation, or at least engaging with peers on the topic. Top French politicians, for example, said they would work with the U.S. on laws around the technology.
The Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, June 9, 2023.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Silicon Valley executives and financiers publicly opened their wallets in support of President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential run. The early returns in 2025 aren’t great, to say the least.
Following Trump’s sweeping tariff plan announced Wednesday, the Nasdaq suffered steep consecutive daily drops to finish 10% lower for the week, the index’s worst performance since the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020.
The tech industry’s leading CEO’s rushed to contribute to Trump’s inauguration in January and paraded to Washington, D.C., for the event. Since then, it’s been a slog.
The market can always turn around, but economists and investors aren’t optimistic, and concerns are building of a potential recession. The seven most valuable U.S. tech companies lost a combined $1.8 trillion in market cap in two days.
Apple slid 14% for the week, its biggest drop in more than five years. Tesla, led by top Trump adviser Elon Musk, plunged 9.2% and is now down more than 40% for the year. Musk contributed close to $300 million to help propel Trump back to the White House.
Nvidia, Meta and Amazon all suffered double-digit drops for the week. For Amazon, a ninth straight weekly decline marks its longest such losing streak since 2008.
With Wall Street selling out of risky assets on concern that widespread tariff hikes will punish the U.S. and global economy, the fallout has drifted down to the IPO market. Online lender Klarna and ticketing marketplace StubHub delayed their IPOs due to market turbulence, just weeks after filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and fintech company Chime is also reportedly delaying its listing.
CoreWeave, a provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure, last week became the first venture-backed company to raise more than $1 billion in a U.S. IPO since 2021. But the company slashed its offering, and trading has been very volatile in its opening days on the market. The stock plunged 12% on Friday, leaving it 17% above its offer price but below the bottom of its initial range.
“You couldn’t create a worse market and macro environment to go public,” said Phil Haslett, co-founder of EquityZen, a platform for investing in private companies. “Way too much turbulence. All flights are grounded until further notice.”
CoreWeave investor Mark Klein of SuRo Capital previously told CNBC that the company could be the first in an “IPO parade.” Now he’s backtracking.
“It appears that the IPO parade has been temporarily halted,” Klein told CNBC by email on Friday. “The current tariff situation has prompted these companies to pause and assess its impact.”
‘Cave rapidly’
During last year’s presidential campaign, prominent venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen backed Trump, expecting that his administration would usher in a boom and eliminate some of the hurdles to startup growth set up by the Biden administration. Andreessen and his partner, Ben Horowitz, said in July that their financial support of the Trump campaign was due to what they called a better “little tech agenda.”
A spokesperson for Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment.
Some techies who supported Trump in the campaign have taken to social media to defend their positions.
Venture capitalist Keith Rabois, a managing director at Khosla Ventures, posted on X on Thursday that “Trump Derangement Syndrome has morphed into Tariff Derangement Syndrome.” He said tariffs aren’t inflationary, are effective at reducing fentanyl imports, and he expects that “most other countries will cave and cave rapidly.”
That was before China’s Finance Ministry said on Friday that it will impose a 34% tariff on all goods imported from the U.S. starting on April 10.
At Sequoia Capital, which is the biggest investor in Klarna, outspoken Trump supporter Shaun Maguire, wrote on X, “The first long-term thinking President of my lifetime,” and said in a separate post that, “The price of stocks says almost nothing about the long term health of an economy.”
However, Allianz Chief Economic Advisor Mohamed El-Erian warned on Friday that Trump’s extensive raft of import tariffs are putting the U.S. economy at risk of recession.
“You’ve had a major repricing of growth prospects, with a recession in the U.S. going up to 50% probability, you’ve seen an increase in inflation expectations, up to 3.5%,” he told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.
Former Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates, left, and Steve Ballmer, center, pose for photos with CEO Satya Nadella during an event celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Microsoft on April 4, 2025 in Redmond, Washington.
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images
Meanwhile, executives at tech’s megacap companies were largely silent this week, and their public relations representatives declined to provide comments about their thinking.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was in the awkward position on Friday of celebrating his company’s 50th anniversary at corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Alongside Microsoft’s prior two CEOs, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella sat down with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin for a televised interview that was planned well before Trump’s tariff announcement.
When asked about the tariffs at the top of the interview, Nadella effectively dodged the question and avoided expressing his views about whether the new policies will hamper Microsoft’s business.
Ballmer, who was succeeded by Nadella in 2014, acknowledged to Sorkin that “disruption is very hard on people” and that, “as a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good.” Ballmer and Gates are two of the 12 wealthiest people in the world thanks to their Microsoft fortunes.
C-suites may not be able to stay quiet for long, especially if the recent turmoil spills into next week.
Lise Buyer, who previously helped guide Google through its IPO and now works as an adviser to companies going public, said there’s no appetite for risk in the market under these conditions. But there is risk that staffers get jittery, and they’ll surely look to their leaders for some reassurance.
“Until markets settle out and we have the opportunity to access valuation levels, public company CEOs should work to calm potentially distressed employees,” Buyer said in an email. “And private company managements should refine plans to get by on dollars already in the treasury.”
— CNBC’s Hayden Field, Jordan Novet, Leslie Picker, Annie Palmer and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway