GZERO World with Ian Bremmer

The World Cup descends on North America this week, bringing with it billions of viewers, billions of dollars, and no shortage of political controversy. But according to Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper, none of that is new - the tournament has always reflected the world around it.

On GZERO World, Kuper and Ian Bremmer discuss how national teams have become flashpoints in debates over immigration and identity, why FIFA remains one of the world's most powerful and least accountable organizations, how Iran's World Cup campaign could become a geopolitical spectacle, and what the tournament reveals about nationalism, belonging, and power in the modern world.

Yet for all the politics, money, and controversy surrounding the tournament, Kuper argues the World Cup remains one of the few events capable of captivating entire countries and bringing billions of people together. The result is a tournament that reflects the hopes, divisions, and identities of the nations watching it. 

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From birthright citizenship to the independence of federal agencies, the Supreme Court is poised to decide a series of cases that could redefine the balance of power in Washington. Yale legal scholar and New York Times Magazine staff writer Emily Bazelon joins Ian Bremmer to assess what's at stake and whether the judiciary remains an effective check on presidential authority.

Bazelon argues that Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship is unlikely to succeed, but says other pending cases involving the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission could significantly expand presidential control over agencies that Congress intentionally designed to operate independently. "I think it's very likely the court will rule in the president's favor," she says of the FTC case.

The conversation also examines the Court's recent decisions on tariffs and voting rights, including a ruling that further weakened protections against partisan gerrymandering. Bazelon argues that the consequences extend beyond individual cases, contributing to a broader perception that the Court is becoming increasingly political.

Yet despite declining public trust, Bazelon sees reasons for cautious optimism. While Congress has largely failed to constrain executive power, she argues that the judiciary, particularly the lower courts, has repeatedly pushed back against actions that exceed legal authority. The bigger question is whether those guardrails will continue to hold as the Court confronts some of the most consequential constitutional disputes still ahead.

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Operation Epic Fury may be over, but the Iran war is far from resolved. On this week's episode, American Enterprise Institute Kori Schake joins Ian Bremmer to discuss the conflict's global ripple effects. 

With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to commercial shipping, the US finds itself in what Schake calls a Mexican standoff, unable to force Iran's hand without dramatic escalation, and unwilling to accept the humiliation of ceding control of one of the world's most critical waterways. Meanwhile, Washington's two biggest rivals are gaining ground. Russia is cashing in on higher oil prices at a moment when the Kremlin was under mounting financial pressure over Ukraine. 

In Beijing, the Trump-Xi summit took place with the White House in a weakened position. The US needs China's help pressuring Iran, and Xi knows it. As Schake puts it: "It's an important measure of just how much President Trump has lost in starting the war in Iran and pursuing it in the way he has, that he's having to go appeal to China, America's most powerful potential adversary, for assistance in delivering us from a problem of our own creation."

The costs for US allies are adding up too. Partner countries are absorbing economic pain they had no hand in creating, with energy prices squeezing European economies. Schake also raises a harder structural question: with Patriot systems redirected from Europe to the Gulf and munitions stocks stretched thin, the war has laid bare the limits of the American defense industrial base, and what it means for the credibility of US commitments around the world.

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Ian Bremmer's guest this week is author and Bloomberg defense tech reporter Katrina Manson, who spent years reporting on Project Maven for her new book on the Pentagon's AI push.

The program launched in 2017 with a narrow mandate: use machine learning to process drone footage. It has since expanded into something far more ambitious. Autonomous weapons, drone swarming technology, and AI-assisted targeting are now central to how the Pentagon talks about modern warfare.

The tech rollout is fast, but not reliable. Algorithms fail when the battlefield changes. The targeting process is accelerating to the point where operators are clicking through AI recommendations with little ability to question them. Manson says the military knows about AI's vulnerability "to sycophancy, to escalation, to bias and hallucination," and has not yet found adequate solutions. 

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Historian Michael Bustamante joins Ian Bremmer to discuss Cuba's economic freefall, Trump's end game, and the hopes of Cuban Americans.

This week, Ian Bremmer sits down with University of Miami historian and Cuba expert Michael Bustamante to make sense of the US-Cuba standoff.

Cuba is in its worst crisis in 30 years, with basic necessities like fuel, water and food in short supply. Between one and two million Cubans have left in the past five years, the largest exodus in the island's history. And the opposition is too weak, too scattered, and too decimated by exile and imprisonment to be a real political alternative.

Trump says 2026 is the year of liberation. But Bustamante argues the hard realities don't match his expectations, and a military invasion is unlikely. A purely economic deal, closer to Obama's 2015 opening, might suit Trump's deal-making instincts, and Cuba's government has signaled it could live with that too. But it would be a betrayal of everything Cuban Americans in South Florida have been promised. And for Marco Rubio, it would be a defining political problem. Together, Bustamante and Bremmer discuss the realistic outcomes -- will Trump get what he wants, and can the 80 years old communist regime survive this crisis?

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