Avsnitt
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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 U.S. general who served as one of the Pentagon’s top China strategists and spent years living in the country. He joined Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to give a step-by-step scenario for the war that no one wants.
Find the episode transcript, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/how-a-us-china-war-would-unfold
Host:
Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBatemanGuest:
Lieutenant General (Ret.) Charles “Hoop” Hooper: https://x.com/LTG_CHooper00:00 Introduction
01:42 Understanding China Through Military Engagement
09:54 How a Taiwan Conflict Could Begin
20:27 U.S. and Allied Responses
35:04 Global Economic Impact
39:03 Taiwan's Defense Prospects
47:14 Nuclear Escalation Risks
52:28 Avoiding Conflict and Looking Ahead -
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 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace—joins The World Unpacked to make sense of a region in flux. He explains why Washington should get tougher on Israel, Gulf countries may already have peaked in power, and the end of oil could be a good thing.
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Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/in-the-new-middle-east-no-one-is-in-charge
Host: Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman
Guest: Marwan Muasher: https://x.com/MarwanMuasher
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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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, fueling the AI gold rush and remaking Stanford itself.
Theo joins Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to debate the deeper meaning of Stanford’s tech ties. Is it a normal and necessary part of capitalism, or a devil’s bargain corrupting education? And what does Stanford’s story say about other civic institutions fighting for their souls as AI eats the world?
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Guest:
Theo Baker: https://x.com/tab_delete
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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 the Ukraine War, says that Vladimir Putin has lost focus on running the country. She joins Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to explain the erosion of Russia’s social contract and share stories from her new book From Sovereigns to Servants: How the War Against Ukraine Reshaped Russia’s Elite.
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Guest:
Alexandra Prokopenko: https://x.com/amenka
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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 Bateman discuss Cuba’s economic vulnerability, its political staying power, and why Trump might wind up making a deal with the Castros very similar to one made by Barack Obama.
Host: Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman
Guest: Javier Corrales: https://x.com/jcorrales2011
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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 with an Orb. On this episode of The World Unpacked, Nick joined host Jon Bateman to explore the brewing authenticity crisis, the geopolitics of privacy, and the surprising legacy of a 1993 New Yorker cartoon.
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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 that Musk has pioneered a new form of capitalism that fuses technology with political power. On this episode of The World Unpacked, authors Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff explore Musk’s historical meaning and debate the politics of technocracy with host Jon Bateman.
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Guest:
Benn Tarnoff, Quinn Slobodian
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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 democracy scholar with deep ties in Hungary, joins Jon Bateman on a special episode of The World Unpacked. Tom explains why Orbán lost, why his successor Peter Magyar isn’t the anti-Orbán that many assume, and why “electoral autocracies” around the world are less stable than they seem.
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Guest:
Tom Carothers: https://carnegieendowment.org/people/...
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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 Peace, a premiere foreign policy think tank. He joins host Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to pull back the curtain on this hidden world. Tino takes on the skeptics and makes an impassioned case for an “idea sector” independent of government and industry—even in the age of AI.
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Guest:
Tino Cuellar
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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 Great Power Opportunity. He joined Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to explain why Beijing hasn’t saved Iran; what Washington’s bipartisan “consensus” on China still misses; and how Trump should negotiate when he finally sits down with Xi Jinping.
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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 on this hidden world. In this episode of The World Unpacked, Katrina tells host Jon Bateman about the creation of America’s AI war machine, the rise of Palantir, and the fully autonomous weapons already being tested.
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Guest:
Katrina Manson — https://x.com/KatrinaManson
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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?
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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 answer these questions. On this special episode of The World Unpacked, Karim and host Jon Bateman go inside Tehran’s power structure as the Islamic Republic faces one of the greatest crises in its 47-year history.
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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.
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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 the curtain on hidden ways that powerful people network together to advance their own interests and evade accountability.
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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?
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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 inbox, here
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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 costs.
Jeff Stern, an intrepid chronicler of modern conflict, tells this story in his new book The Warhead: The Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon in the Age of Modern Warfare. He joins Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to explore the past, present, and future of precision warfare.
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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 direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/the-global-race-to-reinvent-meat?
Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman
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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, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/every-war-is-now-a-drone-war?
Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman
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