The World Unpacked

NATO’s future remains in doubt as Donald Trump again threatens to pull U.S. troops from Europe. But the practical stakes of these debates aren’t always clear. What military capabilities does Europe stand to lose? How long would it take to replace them? And how might Russia exploit any gap?  Sophia Besch, a German expert on European defense policy who has worked inside NATO, joins The World Unpacke...

The U.S. and Israel just fought a second war over Iran's nuclear program—and one of the world's leading nuclear experts says America lost. Iran's uranium stockpile sits fully intact in tunnels too deep to reach, and Tehran walked away with more leverage in nuclear talks. James Acton, a physicist and longtime analyst of Iran’s program, joins host Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to give a detailed...

A U.S.-China war over Taiwan would be catastrophic for all sides and the world. Preventing such a war requires understanding how it might unfold—from start to finish—including worst-case scenarios.  How much warning would there be? Where might China strike first? Which countries join the fight? Can Taiwan defend its coasts? Would nuclear threats determine the outcome?  Charles Hooper is a retired...

The wars unleashed by October 7th have left the Middle East deeply fractured—Iran battered and defiant, Gaza destroyed, Israel militarized, the Gulf insecure and divided. And an even bigger disruption lies just ahead: the oil revenues that built the modern Arab world will halve by 2050, forcing countries to redesign themselves.  Marwan Muasher—a former foreign minister of Jordan and now a VP at th...

Theo Baker is no ordinary college senior. His student newspaper articles brought down Stanford’s president. Now he’s written a book about the making of the young tech elite. How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University reveals the “Stanford within Stanford”—the unofficial pipeline linking Silicon Valley investors to top students. It’s a pathway to power unlike any other, fue...

Russia’s surprising recent Internet shutdown did more than disrupt daily life: it also crippled the regime’s own communications and propaganda. It’s one of a series of strange events—from a diminished Victory Day parade to crackdowns on businesspeople and celebrities—that suggest growing disorder and confusion within the Russian state. Alexandra Prokopenko, a former Moscow insider who quit over th...

There’s been remarkably little public debate about a potential U.S. attack on Cuba.  President Trump said last week that he “will be taking over” Cuba “almost immediately”—and similar threats led to military action in both Venezuela and Iran. Javier Corrales, a political scientist at Amherst College and the son of Cuban exiles, joins The World Unpacked to game out this crisis. Javier and host Jon...

AI-powered bots and slop content are everywhere now, making it harder to tell who’s human. Will the Internet become so bot-ridden that it’s simply unusable? Or will people be forced to prove their identities online—giving up privacy and eroding democracy? Nick Pickles battled bots at Twitter and is now chief policy officer at Tools for Humanity, the Sam Altman-founded startup that reads eyeballs w...

Elon Musk is one of the most influential figures of our era.  He remade the space, car, social media, and AI industries.  He shaped the Ukraine War.  He helped put Donald Trump back in office and became Washington’s most powerful official.  How can one CEO alter the fate of multiple nations—and what does that say about our world? A provocative new book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed , argues...

The world is still making sense of Viktor Orbán’s historic election loss in Hungary—a small country with outsized global significance.  Why were Orbán’s generational efforts to stack the electoral deck not enough to prevent his landslide defeat?  Is this a warning sign for right-wing populists in America, Europe, and elsewhere who’ve modeled their own movements on Orbán’s? Tom Carothers, a top dem...

Think tanks—the non-profit research centers that try to influence policy—are strange and mysterious places.  Depending on who you ask, think tanks are invaluable sources of expertise, intellectual hired guns serving powerful interests, or relics of a bygone era when facts mattered and political leaders actually read things. Tino Cuellar is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peac...

President Trump was meant to fly to Beijing this week for major trade talks, but instead he’s staying home to manage the Iran War. It’s an apt metaphor for America’s decades-long failure to refocus on Asia and reckon with China’s rise. Does Trump have a plan for dealing with America’s top rival? If so, what is it? Ali Wyne is a perceptive analyst of U.S.-China competition and author of America’s G...

The U.S. is fighting its first full-scale AI war in Iran — but key details remain largely hidden from Americans and the world. Which military decisions are being automated? How well does AI really perform on the battlefield? Can guardrails prevent fatal errors? Katrina Manson’s timely and deeply reported new book, Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare, lifts the lid...

The Iran War marks the second time in two months that Donald Trump decapitated a country without real legal justification.  But is this any different from the many times that past U.S. presidents—and other great powers—have violated international law?

Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed almost a week ago — so who’s running the country? Will Iranians seek change in the streets, despite the brutal crackdown they faced in January? Could Kurdish militias march on Tehran under U.S. and Israeli air cover? Should Westerners trust exiled oppositionists like former crown prince Reza Pahlavi? Karim Sadjadpour is one of the few people who can an...

Just weeks after ousting Venezuela’s leader, Donald Trump is now courting crises on two other continents.  Trump’s quest to own Greenland continues to roil Europe, while the Middle East braces for war as a U.S. armada barrels toward Iran.

In this episode of The World Unpacked, Sarah tells host Jon Bateman why systemic corruption looks nothing like how we picture it, how anti-corruption advocates are co-opted as enablers, and what to say if someone asks you for a bribe. There’s a gnawing feeling in America and the West that a self-serving elite has corrupted society’s rules in its favor. The Epstein files have finally pulled back th...

The same populist forces that brought Donald Trump to office could also enable a politician from the progressive left to succeed him. How would a president in the vein of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Zohran Mamdani change U.S. foreign policy and the world? 

Americans have been deeply dissatisfied with the economy for many years, even as standard metrics continue to show strength and prosperity. This gap between popular and elite thinking has helped populism surge and sparked intense debates about whether old economic assumptions—and policies—need wholesale revision. Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbo...

The Paveway bomb, invented by Texas Instruments in the 1970s, was the first truly precise munition.  It revolutionized America’s air campaign in Vietnam and allowed whole new kinds of “limited” U.S. wars in Libya, Iraq, Serbia, and beyond. But Paveway’s true legacy was psychological: it seduced generations of U.S. leaders into believing that tactical precision creates strategic victories with few...

You’ve probably heard of “lab-grown meat,” the sci-fi-sounding idea of 100% real meat made without animals. Yet few people understand how close this vision is to becoming reality—and how much it could change the world.  A healthier, more efficient meat source could soon rewire global supply chains and help catalyze a new bioeconomy. Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show...

Drones are no longer the future of war. They’re now a defining weapon in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and beyond—altering the course of conflicts and reshuffling the balance of military power. The pace of change has caught many by surprise, with state and non-state groups racing to mass-produce, diversify, and protect their rapidly evolving drone arsenals. Find the episode transcript and streaming audio,...

The Trump administration apparently seeks regime change in Venezuela and may soon attack the country. But American leaders have so far refused to openly state their intentions, stifling public debate on the momentous choice ahead. In an urgent conversation you won’t hear elsewhere, the last U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela makes a forthright case for ousting President Nicolás Maduro—with American forc...

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: h...

The AI boom is the biggest investment mania in decades, channeling trillions of dollars into data center infrastructure.  If investors bet right, they may usher in technological breakthroughs that produce vast wealth.  If they’re wrong, they could crash the U.S. stock market, trigger a recession, and spread financial contagion globally. Ed Zitron was among the first to call AI a bubble.  His unspa...