Ian Bremmer on Trump’s Mideast Trip and What It Means for the U.S.

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you Bianna. And Ian Bremmer, welcome back to the show. 

IAN BREMMER: Always good to be with you, Walter.

ISAACSON: Last time we were here, we talked about global recession, meaning that our institutions these days aren’t keeping up with the changes that are happening in the world. Now Donald Trump has done that tour of the Middle East, especially the Persian Gulf, and done a very transactional type of foreign policy, enlisting all of the Persian Gulf into sort of an economic orbit with the United States, maybe weaning them from China. How big of a tectonic change might that be?

BREMMER: I think it is an incremental shift. Let’s keep in mind that when Trump was president first time around, his first trip was also to the Gulf. He went to Saudi Arabia. You remember all of those leaders collected, and they grabbed the orb together. They were talking about counter terrorism, counterinsurgency. Not as many deals got done, though this time around. You’re right. The commercial numbers were a lot bigger. Trump had a lot more CEOs, some of the world’s biggest CEOs in tow with him on that trip. Also, notably this time around, he didn’t go to Israel. And there’s a lot more tension between him and Prime Minister Netanyahu, especially on the back of some of the diplomacy that Trump is trying to get done. But I mean, the fact remains, as in 2017, Trump’s best relations with the leaders that he has on speed dial are with the leaders who have consolidated a lot of power in the Gulf States, particularly MBS in Saudi Arabia, MBZ in the UAE. And I think those relations are only getting stronger, only getting deeper and yes, more, if you will, strategically transactional with Trump himself, with the United States and with the business community.

ISAACSON: And how does that play off against China? Some of the Gulf States had been getting closer to China. Is this sort of part of a rebalancing the way Kissinger and Nixon may have done of China and Russia?

BREMMER: Well, of course, these are oil producers, and the United States isn’t taking any oil from the Middle East, of note. That is overwhelmingly going to China and will continue to go to China. So those, those commercial interests aren’t going away. And the, the Chinese are gonna continue to do a lot of investment on the ground in those countries. But when we start talking about national security, and here, not just in terms of the presence of US military bases and the sales of material, but also critically, when we look at advanced technologies and artificial intelligence, there, we are seeing a real decision by the Emiratis. First and foremost they wanna work AI with the United States and its corporations, and they’re gonna take the Chinese out of their system. And there’s a lot of pressure and a lot of effort to do the same with the Saudis and other major Gulf states. And I, I think that is a shift as we think about the future of the Gulf. Yes.

ISAACSON: But is there some danger that us sending advanced AI, advanced chips and all to the Persian Gulf, that they could end up in Chinese hands?

BREMMER: Of course there is. And there’s also a danger that long term the United States is offshoring the production of – that comes from these data centers, the training that comes from being so reliant on the compute that will be driven by the energy that is abundant and cheap in this region. I mean, Trump says he wants all of this to be inshored to the United States. He’s not happy with Apple when they move their production to India as opposed to China, even though India is more trusted by the United States. Why – 

ISAACSON: Well, wait. So how does he justify then out-shoring a lot of the AI stuff to the Persian Gulf states?

BREMMER: Well, it’s inconsistent, Walter, you’re right to point it out. I suppose he justifies it in part because there’s a great asymmetry in the size of the economies, in the fact that the United States provides all this military support. Hopefully, there’ll also be some guardrails in whatever Trump does to replace the diffusion rule on AI and semiconductors that the Biden administration had put in place. So I think what Trump is trying to put together are, are rules that say that most of the, of the sales that come out of these centers in the Gulf will have to go to the United States, that the most of that data is gonna have to be with American companies. And only a small percentage could go to any other country in the world. Say 7% is a max. That’s, that’s the quantitative measure that I’ve heard talked about. But then you need people in the White House with competence to formulate and implement what is essentially gonna be a multi-agency rule. And, and that’s, you know, as we know from the Trump administration, there’s not a lot of time spent on the details of how you get policy actually done. So how long it takes to get that done and how, how capable the eventual rules will be I think is something we’re gonna – is something to be seen.

ISAACSON: It seems to me, and I think you’ve written about it in one of your latest pieces, that the world has sort of divided on AI between more open countries and then more status countries that try to centralize it. How does the Persian Gulf countries fit into that?

BREMMER: Well, you have the, the Chinese who have shown that they’re very capable, even with constraints from the US on semiconductors, they can build some of the world’s most advanced models in artificial intelligence. And the state controls what those companies do, determines who the winners and losers are going to be, and how they deploy those algorithms and who has access to them. So the state really captures the corporations. In the United States it’s very different. In the United States, in many ways, the technology companies are capturing the state. They’re writing their own rules. They’re determining how they will be governed. And they spend a lot of money to ensure that they have that access to the government. But the capture really comes from the technology companies.

Now, as I said in the Persian Gulf, there is a desire to align with those American corporations, at least right now on ai. And a lot of money is being spent, and a lot of infrastructure is being developed to facilitate that on balance, that is a win for the Trump administration and the United States. I think there are two questions that it raises.

First of all, to what extent – if it’s the tech companies and not the government that are writing the rules – do American citizens get taken care of? How do you ensure that you have rules that work for the average American as opposed to just for the profitability of the most powerful companies in the world?

Second of all is, what happens to governments that aren’t playing dominant role in ai? I mean, there’s another big model out there that you didn’t ask a question about, which is Europe. And in Europe, the, the government’s superpower is the regulatory environment, but that isn’t driving the creation of any companies at scale in the tech space. And so does the EU just lose, even though they have a model that, in principle is looking out for rule of law, in principle is looking out for a more sustainable society.

Right now, I’d say the Gulf States are looking a lot faster, more nimble, more savvy in aligning with how this power is changing than the Europeans or the Japanese are.

ISAACSON: If you look at the entourage that President Trump brought with him to the Middle East, it’s all the great techno billionaires, you know, from Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Andy Jassy of Amazon, Jensen Huang, Google’s president Ruth Porat, Alex Karp, about two dozen others. What do you make of that?

BREMMER: This is the commanding heights of the American economy. The US is increasingly driving a military industrial, technological complex. They are in a technology cold war with the Chinese, one that they intend to contain China and win. And these corporations understand that being as close as possible to the American president is the best way for them to, in the short term, take care of their shareholders. Are they thinking long term? Are they making decisions that will potentially undermine them with a future administration? Might they be subjects of investigations for some of the decisions that they’re making? I, I think they need to be careful in, you know, how close they fly to the sun. Frankly, I think they might be better off making fewer headlines and being a little bit more hands off the administration that they have been. But there are, as I said, because this is something that a lot of companies have been dealing with for a long time, doing a little more of it, even then you might be comfortable with, feels a little bit like the frog in the boiling pot. You know, the water’s getting warmer, but you’re comfortable with warm water.

ISAACSON: I wanna read you something that president Trump said in a rather remarkable speech, the speech he gave in Saudi Arabia, which is, he said, “the great transformation has not come from Western interventionists giving lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs. No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh, Abu Dhabi were not created by nation builders or neocons, or liberal nonprofits. These so-called nation builders wrecked more nations than they built. And the interventionists were intervening in complex societies they did not even understand.” Do you see this as an emergent Trump doctrine, or was that just some random statements?

BREMMER: I thought it was a great applause line for Trump. It spoke to the incredible national pride of the Saudis in the room. And there was a lot of applause. And I think that applause was genuine. The United States historically, as this Exceptionalist Nation frequently believes it has all the answers for other countries irrespective of the hypocrisy and not always living up to those things at home. And the US has made a lot of mistakes in trying to nation-build in other countries, most dramatically in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And of course, both of these had a lot of impact on American allies in the Gulf, but I wouldn’t take that too far. 

I mean, the reality is that when the Saudis and the Emiratis were trying to build global countries that had access to the rest of the world, they were bringing in expertise from the United States. And not just consultants, but engineers and coders, right, and planners. And, because these are small countries that didn’t have that expertise themselves. And I, I do think that the United States is at its best when it brings its best to its friends around the world. And also when the United States helps educating those countries. I mean, the Saudis and the Emiratis are doing very well by creating, forging partnerships with America’s best institutions of higher learning, with America’s best hospitals, with America’s best research labs. They’re bringing those in. And that’s not because the Americans are arrogant, it’s because these countries recognize that the US is world class there. Where the US is not world class is its political leadership lecturing them on how to run their countries. That is a place where the Americans not only have done a bad job outside the US, but frankly have done a bad job for the average Americans. And we see the results of that. In election, after election after election.

ISAACSON: The opening potentially to Syria – he met with the new interim president there – Is this being done, do you think in consultation with Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel or are they being sidelined?

BREMMER: I think they’re being sidelined. I think that Trump is not particularly happy with the Israeli Prime Minister. He doesn’t feel that he’s interested in listening to the US. You saw that Israel and Netanyahu, that was the first country invited to meet with Trump after Liberation Day and that was a give by the Americans. And Netanyahu came over and, you know, said he was gonna zero out his tariffs and was expecting, you know, that a deal from the Americans. And Trump said, no, you should be really thankful we give you billions of dollars in military equipment. We’re gonna continue to do that.

And by the way, we’re gonna start talking with the Iranians and we’re not gonna ask you about it. And I think you’ve seen the same thing in terms of the deal cut with the Houthis. That doesn’t include no attacks on Israel, just includes no attack on American ships. I think this is Trump, who is by far Israel’s number one supporter globally – that remains the case today. They’re helping them defend themselves. They’re providing massive military aid. They’re certainly giving them huge amounts of covered to continue the war on the ground in Gaza, and frankly in the West Bank too. But that doesn’t mean that they’re gonna coordinate with them their broader military moves in the region. 

If you remember Walter, three months ago, all everyone was talking about diplomatically was, will Trump come in and cut a deal that brings the Saudis into the Abraham Accords, right? And that will help them facilitate an opening to Israel. Well, it’s very clear to Trump that’s not happening. And so he’s given up on that, and he’s moved on to let’s work with the Saudis, let’s work with the Emiratis, we’ll work with the Gulf States. We trust them. They’re very transactional. They’ll give us lots of money, including me and my family directly. And that is the way that we can cut a deal with Iran. And, you know, Bibi will continue to provide support for Israel, but we’re not gonna coordinate our diplomatic approach or our economic approach to the region with him. That is absolutely where we are today.

ISAACSON: Trump’s family members have so many dealings in the Middle East and so much money coming in and out. Do you see that becoming an issue? And what corruption bothers you in that?

BREMMER: I I wish I saw it becoming an issue. I don’t, Walter. I think the reality is that the United States for a very long time has been the most kleptocratic, the most coin operated of wealthy democracies in the world. It’s the billions and billions that are spent by special interest on every election, and they expect, and they see a return on that investment. It is deeply transactional. And so when Trump comes out and he launches a crypto coin for himself and for his family, when Trump comes out and he supports major deals for members of his family with the countries that the US is doing diplomacy with, that’s, you know, frankly, it’s even more kleptocratic. But the companies around the world. They’re used to writing big checks for access, they’re using writing big checks, even for people that can get them access to members of the family. That’s, it’s more obvious for Trump than it was for Biden, but it happened under Biden too. So I don’t think you see –

ISAACSON: Well, wait, don’t you think that this is not just a continuation of what’s been happening – but Eric Trump going to Dubai when they’re giving $2 billion, the UAE to this I don’t know, world Liberty financial coins? 

BREMMER: Yeah.

ISAACSON: That seems to be a different league.

BREMMER: I mean, the, this is the problem. The United States has been actively talking as if it has the best example of democracy in the world for decades. And it doesn’t. And it doesn’t. And it doesn’t, specifically because people around the world feel like you can pay to get access to a different legal system. You can pay to write your own regulations, you can pay to get outcomes you want. And by the way, I think that’s not true in terms of autocracy.

So when Trump goes after the law firms and says, I’m gonna extort you because you’ve decided to represent someone that deserves representation, and this is an attack on foundational rule of law in America, the law firms react to that because they’re not used to dictatorship in the United States. Companies are used to kleptocracy. When Trump goes after universities and says, we’re not gonna let allow you to educate students in a manner that you see fit, universities respond and say, whoa, whoa, whoa. We won’t tolerate that. So I don’t believe that the US is on the precipice of becoming a dictatorship. But I do believe the US has been driving speedily on the road to kleptocracy for a long time now, and I think Trump has his foot on the gas, that’s the way I would put it.

ISAACSON: Ian Bremmer, thank you so much for joining us.

BREMMER: Great to be with you, Walter.