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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. We booked our next guest on the show to talk about global affairs today before we knew that over the weekend far-right supporters of Jair Bolsonaro would storm government buildings in Brazil's capital claiming the election had been stolen. Sound familiar? Just like the insurrection in this country on January 6th, 2021, what's happening in Brazil and countless other moves by autocratic politicians and their supporters have shown us the threats to democracy are ongoing, urgent, and they represent major risks to the world.

Our next guest co-writes a list of the top 10 political risks around the world at the beginning of every year and has been coming on the show a whole lot of Januaries in a row by now to preview the year to come on Earth in that context. Ian Bremmer, you probably know that name, is the president and founder of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy firm and the media company GZero Media. He's the author of many books including The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats – and Our Response – Will Change the World.

The Eurasia Group has been publishing this list for many years as I say. While it's a challenge to predict what's coming, they've got a pretty good track record. Last year's list included predictions like we're done with the pandemic, it's not yet done with us, the Finish line depends on where you live, critically China's zero COVID policy will fail. Check, they got that one right, and disruptions to economically important tech supply chains like those for semiconductors will intensify, check. In 2021, in the midst of hope that vaccines would mean the end of the pandemic, the Eurasia Group wrote, "Countries will struggle to meet vaccination timelines, and the pandemic will have a legacy of high public debt, displaced workers, and lost trust." Check.

This year's risks have a lot to do with authoritarians consolidating power, Russia's war in Ukraine and economic and environmental crises. Ian Bremmer is here now to help explain why these risks could be the most impactful global risks of 2023 and now also to talk about January 8th yesterday Brazil's January 6th. Ian, these are always great, welcome back to WNYC.

Ian Bremmer: Brian, it's always great to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: Brazil wasn't explicitly on your list of predictions this year, but authoritarians concentrating their power and creating instability is a theme that runs through the list. What do you think the global implications of what happened yesterday in Brazil might be?

Ian Bremmer: It's really risk number three. It was a sentence that I really didn't enjoy writing at the time. I don't have it in front of me, but it goes something like this that the United States back in '89 when the wall came down, we were the principal exporter of democracy globally, not always successfully frequently with hypocrisy but nonetheless. Today, 30 years later the US is the leading exporter of tools that destroy democracy That is a serious problem particularly for countries with democracies that are more brittle than our own. Brazil is a great example of this, its social media, its algorithms that create more polarization and extremism.

Bolsonaro wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for Facebook and Instagram. You wouldn't have had thousands of people that were marching and occupying their most important government buildings violently over the weekend if it wasn't for the export of these tools. Unfortunately, we saw it, yes, in the United States two years ago on January 6 and now we're seeing it in January 8th in the largest democracy in South America. We're just at the beginning of this process.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think it has any chance of success that is the pro-Bolsonaro movement to overthrow the duly elected government of Lula da Silva?

Ian Bremmer: Not in the near term at all for many of the reasons why it failed in the United States. In Brazil, first of all, the Judiciary is strongly opposed to Bolsonaro in ways that are inappropriate for an independent Judiciary, frankly. The congress, all the major parties came out and condemned the activities immediately. The military leadership of Brazil, and remember Brazil's only been a democracy for 38 years, it used to be run by a military junta.

They don't want to come back and step into power. They want no part of this. You've already seen arrests of 1200 people that were involved in these demonstrations and this insurrection just yesterday. I have no doubt that they'll be able to keep that cleared out and defend these buildings going forward.

Bolsonaro meanwhile self is in Florida and has condemned the violent acts, not as strongly as he should and certainly wasn't saying anything in the run-up while his demonstrators were all sitting there waiting to act for weeks now. I don't see him as returning and trying to lead a coup. The problem is that this disinformation isn't going away, these conspiracy theories, the stop the steal in Brazil isn't going away.

Bolsonaro remains the most popular opposition leader in the country. One of the reasons why he's condemning the protests is because he wants to come back and run again. As Lula's popularity which isn't very high for a starting president right now, it's only in the 50s, will go down as the economy takes a bigger hit in the next year, too. The potential for serious political violence in Brazil metastasizing is very real.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we don't have a lot of time for calls in this segment. We only have Ian because of other commitments that he has till the bottom of the hour. If we want to take any callers for this segment, it will be people with ties to Brazil. Saul in Queens, we see you originally from Brazil, I see. Anybody else, from Brazil, in Brazil right now, originally from Brazil, close ties to Brazil, you can call in with a question or a little report on what's happening as you hear from your people there, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet@BrianLehrer.

Ian, when I asked you about Brazil, you related it to the number three of your top 10 political risks for 2023 on your list. Number three is weapons of mass disruption, and that's about the new technologies, social media enabling authoritarians. I'll tell people that number one on your list is rogue Russia, a humiliated Russia given what's going on in Ukraine, and number two is what you call Maximum Xi, that's Xi Jinping who emerged from China's 20th party Congress in October with a grip on power unrivaled since Mao Zedong, but also now failing with respect to the zero COVID policy. Can you talk about Xi Jinping?

Ian Bremmer: Absolutely. The thing that is so different about China today compared to five years ago or ten years ago when Xi Jinping first took power is that there are so many more yes men around him, so many less internal checks on his decisions. He doesn't get the information flow from those that might disagree or have expertise that could challenge some of his beliefs. That's a big problem for someone who is as powerful as he is with a China that's the second largest economy, not to mention in terms of their technological capabilities on the global stage.

That became a big risk immediately when they moved from zero COVID to maximum COVID just a few weeks ago. Now everybody gets COVID in China, but they're not in any way transparent with the rest of the world, the CDC, for example, the WHO. We won't know about new variants coming from China as the new epicenter of COVID until they hit us. That's a serious problem.

When you're making decisions like that, it's not just about COVID, it's also about technology policy, it's about the economy. We're not in a cold war with China, we're certainly not in a hot war with China. The base relationship with them is much more stable than it is with Russia, but you're still going to see a whole bunch of people around the world that will be impacted from a China that has no transparency, that doesn't provide as much data, and it makes decisions that suddenly have very dramatic impacts on the global stage.

Brian Lehrer: Also related to your number three risk which is weapons of mass disruption, drilling down on that a little bit more, one of the biggest tech trends that many industries are keeping an eye on is what they call Generative AI. We did a segment a little while back about people's experience with ChatGPT so far and the so-called Lensa AI app, artificial intelligence causing a storm on social media last month. Listeners might be surprised to hear the generative artificial intelligence is your third risk for 2023. There's long been this balance now between social media and other technologies enabling movements for democracy and enabling authoritarians to put down those movements. Do you think the balance has shifted clearly in the direction of the authoritarians?

Ian Bremmer: I'm very excited about the gains in productivity that we will all enjoy because of the explosion in generative AI. Indeed the title of the Risk Weapons of Mass Disruption was created, was written, if you will, by ChatGPT. I didn't come up with it. That's pretty cool. At the same time--

Brian Lehrer: Wait, tell us what question you asked ChatGPT that had come up with that title for that section of your report.

Ian Bremmer: We fed the outline of the risk into the ChatGPT and said to come up with a title for the risk.

Brian Lehrer: New York Post headline Writers, you're all going to be out of a job.

Ian Bremmer: Oh, I think that's probably true. I think you'll end up with like-- you'll have one or two people that do headlines that get them all the suggestions will come from the next version of ChatGPT when it comes out, and they'll be making tweaks and decisions, but the original work will probably be done by these algorithms. That's not the risk. The risk in the near term is that human beings later this year will increasingly not be able to distinguish between a human being online and a bot.

The political implications of that in areas where individuals are driving disinformation, bad actors are driving disinformation, whether it's Putin exporting it or whether it's anti-establishment leaders that want to burn it all down inside countries. That's pretty dramatic. The impact of conspiracy theories as a consequence around the world, anti-science, anti-mainstream media, anti-leadership is going to be explosive. It's the biggest challenge we've seen to representative democracies since we started writing these reports.

Brian Lehrer: Priscilla in Brooklyn, originally from Brazil. You're on WNYC. Thanks a lot for calling in, Priscilla.

Priscilla: Hi, Brian. Thank you for shedding light on this. My heart is broken. I spent the whole night watching the videos from Brazil and reliving the horror of January 6th here, and seeing how even this can be exported. This model, the tactics. I wanted to talk about the role of the media in this after the election, Tucker Carlson spent many segments encouraging Brazilians to align with Trump and Bolson to replicate the January 6th in Brazil.

It seems like he was successful in that. I wanted to talk about the role of public media. I'm a supporter of WNYC and of public media. I'm also a journalist by training. I think the people who fund this vital, vital work need to think about funding it cross-regionally and internationally because these trends and the need for independent public media is a global transnational need. It's not just something in the US.

Brian Lehrer: Priscilla, is there a meaningful opposition media or a multi-point of view media in Brazil in your experience?

Priscilla: Compared to the US, it's fledgling, but there definitely is a vibrant, emergent independent media scene. [unintelligible 00:13:39] and several others are helping break this, but it's underfunded, it's under visible. I want to encourage folks to look for those sources. I also wanted to say that there's a protest being organized today at 5:00 PM in Union Square to stand up for democracy in Brazil. Invite folks to join that and encourage people to look for these independent sources.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that the threat is not over? Apparently, the revolt at the Supreme Court, at the capitol, at the President's palace was put down yesterday and was cleared, and a lot of people have been arrested who were involved. We just heard from Ian that Bolsonaro himself is not trying to leave this charge from Florida. Do you think the threat is over?

Priscilla: I don't think it's over. I think the risk now-- they arrested 1200 people is the latest count. I think the risk now is that these people, many of whom had their bus rides paid for were paid also to go to Brazilia for this protest. They need to find out who are the big bucks financing this. I'm not surprised, and I'm very suspicious of the Financers also being from the US.

There are many ties between Steve Bannon and Bolsonaro's crew. It's not a coincidence that Bolsonaro's in Florida right now. This is my point about us really looking at the trans-regional collaboration on the extreme [unintelligible 00:15:06] around this.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. I'm going to leave it there for a time because we only have Ian for a few more minutes. You want to comment on that possibility. I don't know if you have any information about funding from the US or connections with Steve Bannon global authoritarian right-wing movement or anything like that.

Ian Bremmer: Steve Bannon's been out there talking about the fact that this election is stolen and the Brazilians need to respond to it. There have been other former Trump advisors that have been very involved, also, Bolsonaro's son Eduardo has been promoting a lot of that on his social media site, Donald Trump Jr. does in the United States.

The analogies are pretty strong. There will now be a January 8th commission that is set up by Lula to look into the financing. There's a lot of speculation that some of it comes from the United States. We will see. Of course, it will be completely partisan. The Bolsonaro supporters will say that it's a witch hunt and that it's all fake. It's going to be a feature, not a bug for them that'll only make them more strong in supporting their cause that this election was illegitimate and was stolen by the left.

Not true at all, but nonetheless, that's the perspective. Now it's a serious problem in Brazil. The issue, it's going away in the sense that we're not going to see more big, violent demonstrations occupying the government in the coming weeks or months.

This is not the end of radical extremism in Brazil. It's growing. It's absolutely growing. The investigations in an environment where the institutions themselves are de-legitimized in the eyes of those people is not going to help. That's the sad reality.

Brian Lehrer: I know you gotta go in one minute. Let me ask you to do one more from your top 10 political risks of the coming year. List number nine, TikTok. Boom. Talk about that.

Ian Bremmer: The fact that with so many young people having grown up now online you do have, and this is a risk, but it's also an opportunity, and so many risks, of course, are.

You have a generation that is by far the most diverse both racially as well as globally diverse that is active online and believes that activism is more effective than voting in getting real political change that's been most impactful in their engagement on climate issues, but it's going to affect political and business issues across the entire spectrum. It has the potential to be useful in affecting change around the world. It felt like it was worth a mention on the list.

Brian Lehrer: We have to leave it there with Ian Bremmer, president and founder of both the Eraser Group and GZero Media. They put out this list every year at the beginning of the year on the top likely political risks of the coming year. Ian is also the author of many books, including The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats – and Our Response – Will Change the World just published last year by Simon and Schuster. As always, Ian, thanks for being here.

Ian Bremmer: Thanks, Brian. Be good. See you.

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