The World Unpacked

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...

  We’re living through an era of information disruption.  Novel technologies like AI and social media are unleashing pent-up social and political energies—releasing floods of new information and triggering intense battles for narrative control. While most analysts focus on small pieces of this puzzle, Alicia Wanless is a pioneering “information ecologist” who seeks to map the entire system. Her ne...

On November 5, the Supreme Court heard the most globally consequential oral arguments in years as Trump’s trade war faces a final legal reckoning. The Court will either strike down most of Trump’s tariffs, undercutting him in trade talks, or else hand U.S. presidents previously unimagined new powers over the global economy. Peter Harrell is a top trade expert and lawyer fighting the tariffs on beh...

A House of Dynamite , a new Netflix film, may be the most realistic depiction of a nuclear crisis ever made. Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim partnered with Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow ( Zero Dark Thirty , The Hurt Locker ) to capture the intimate details of the U.S. national security state as a president (Idris Elba) and his advisors confront the riskiest 19 minutes in human history. Oppenh...

MS-13 brought El Salvador to its knees and has spread to a dozen other nations, doing battle with presidents as much as rival gangs. Yet despite its infamy, MS-13 is poorly understood: It has little in common with the cartels, traffickers, or mafias that it’s often lumped in with. What is the violent logic behind MS-13, and why has it grown steadily more powerful during both crackdowns and truces?...

The end of USAID was among the biggest early controversies of President Donald Trump’s second term. The world watched in horror as Elon Musk’s DOGE took a chainsaw to U.S. foreign assistance, placing millions of lives at risk with brutal across-the-board cuts. But few people realize how much has changed since then. Behind the scenes, aid money was largely restored—for now. And instead of making gr...

Brazil’s Supreme Court has just convicted former president Jair Bolsonaro of attempting a coup to nullify his 2022 election loss. The country’s judicial system and Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a polarizing figure whom the co-conspirators had sought to assassinate, acted boldly, sentencing Bolsonaro to twenty-seven years in prison. Brazil is now the global leader in democratic accountability for “s...

Nate Soares is one of the world’s leading AI “doomers” and co-author of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All —the New York Times Bestseller that everyone in tech is debating. In this debut episode of a revamped The World Unpacked, new host Jon Bateman talks to Nate about his provocative argument that superintelligent AI could destroy all humans in our lifetimes—a...

In this episode of The World Unpacked , host Isaac Kardon is joined by Alexander (Sasha) Gabuev, Director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin and one of the world’s leading experts on Russia-China relations. Together, they unpack the growing geopolitical competition in the Arctic—a region increasingly shaped by strategic cooperation between Russia and China, and generally neglected or...

Subsea cables carry 95% of the world’s data—but remain largely invisible in global policy debates. In this episode, Isaac Kardon is joined by Carnegie experts Jane Munga and Sophia Besch to unpack the geopolitics, economics, and security risks surrounding undersea data infrastructure. From Africa’s digital development to Europe’s hybrid warfare concerns, they explore who owns these cables, why the...

How should we understand China’s unique variety of party-state capitalism? In this episode of The World Unpacked, Isaac Kardon sits down with Dr. Meg Rithmire, a renowned scholar of political economy in China and the James E. Robison Professor at Harvard Business School, to discuss how capitalism functions in a party-state that tries to maintain “rule by market” without ceding too much control to...

The world is entering a new nuclear age—one defined by proliferating arsenals, eroding arms control, and rising geopolitical tensions. In this episode, Isaac Kardon sits down with international security expert and Stanton Senior Fellow Ankit Panda to discuss the return of nuclear weapons to the center of global strategy. As Russia issues nuclear threats, China and North Korea expand their capabili...

As U.S.-China tensions deepen, Beijing is carving out a new role for itself—not just as an economic powerhouse, but as a global security player. What does China’s vision of “comprehensive national security” mean for countries caught in the middle of great-power competition? And how are smaller states navigating the shifting landscape of global security partnerships? In this episode, Isaac Kardon s...

In this episode of The World Unpacked, Isaac B. Kardon sits down with Ashley J. Tellis, Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Andrew Yeo, Senior Fellow and the SK-Korea Foundation Chair at the Brookings Institution. They explore how the role of overseas bases has changed over time and how the U.S., China, and Russia—among other co...

In this episode of The World Unpacked, Isaac Kardon is joined by Darcie Draudt-Véjares to explore how the shipbuilding industry is reshaping global security and industrial policy. They discuss Washington's faltering commercial shipbuilding sector, China's rise through state-led integration, and South Korea and Japan’s dominance in high-tech ship production. Can the U.S. rebuild its maritime power—...

In President Donald Trump’s second term, Latin America has taken center stage in U.S. foreign policy—but not without controversy. From aggressive deportation flights to economic coercion and even veiled threats of military action, the Trump administration’s confrontational stance is straining relations across the region. In this episode, Oliver Stuenkel joins Sophia to unpack how these development...

After over a year of devastating conflict, Israel and Hamas reached a three-phase ceasefire agreement in January 2025, brokered by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States. The deal allowed for significant increases in humanitarian aid deliveries, prisoner and hostage exchanges, and discussions for a potential permanent ceasefire. This episode was recorded on March 11, ten days after the scheduled comp...

Nearly a week after the tense Oval Office meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky, and just days after the Trump administration’s abrupt decision to pause military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, serious questions loom over America’s commitment to Kyiv’s security. At the same time, the White House appears to be exploring a thaw with Moscow—including potential sanctions re...

What's going on in the Korean Peninsula following the impeachment of South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol? How will evolving politics shape Seoul's future relations with North Korea? How will domestic political shifts in the U.S. shape foreign policy and great power relations among Washington, Beijing, Seoul, and Pyongyang? Asia Program Fellow Darcie Draudt-Véjares and Senior Fellow Chung Min Lee...

Rising sea levels and climate-driven flooding are reshaping the global economy, with major implications for the U.S. housing market and the global economy. As millions of homes face increased risk, mortgage defaults could surge, home values may plummet, and financial instability could spread worldwide. Governments will soon need large-scale strategies to relocate coastal populations and manage mou...