Project Syndicate

If the risk Europe faces is losing access to frontier AI models, the solution is not necessarily to chase the labs that created them in the hopes of eventually pulling ahead. Instead, it is to build the capacity to make surviving that loss possible, such as by investing in AI infrastructure and training capabilities.

Even as multilateralism faces an existential threat, multilateral development banks are not only surviving but thriving. Thanks to MDBs’ ability to borrow at costs close to that of the US Treasury, they have created a new class of de facto risk-free assets that could help underpin the global financial system.

What is the apparent fragility in the US bond market telling us? Since markets tend to be less wrong than those who comment on them regularly, their signals must be taken seriously, especially when they coincide with a relative softening in US inflation figures and other high-frequency economic indicators.

Pro-democracy activists often turn to Eastern and Central Europe for inspiration, while Asia’s remarkable democratic breakthroughs receive far less attention. Yet the continent’s recent struggles offer valuable lessons for those seeking to resist the global advance of authoritarianism.

The AI debate has largely focused on productivity gains and job displacement, but its consequences will reach much further By revolutionizing how we combat disease, wage wars, and stimulate income growth, AI could fundamentally alter the terms of human existence.

For a while, the world’s advanced economies (other than the US) were rapidly losing ground to their emerging counterparts. But the BRICS' catch-up momentum has stalled since 2016, not because the G7 has been doing better, but because everyone has been doing worse.

After hundreds of millions of dollars were invested by developing-country governments, and before a single watt of energy was transferred, the CASA-1000 infrastructure project in Central Asia has effectively failed. The international institutions that conceived, financed, and promoted the project must answer for this.

Democracy is most vulnerable when voters can no longer distinguish genuine abuses of power from partisan attacks. Authoritarian leaders exploit that uncertainty by blurring the line between misconduct and political theater, making legitimate criticism look like just another witch hunt.

The world is undergoing a historical and cultural rupture. Just as Hollywood and other American exports once gave the rest of the world a glimpse of modern life and the future that awaited them, China is now doing the same for African, Latin American, and even American young people.

Even with the Russian economy suffering from low growth, high inflation, and relentless Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on energy infrastructure, President Vladimir Putin has thrown fiscal caution to the wind and allowed the government’s budget deficit to balloon to 2.8% of GDP. It isn’t likely to end well.

The Trump administration’s decision to prioritize national competitiveness over multilateral frameworks has deepened the fragmentation of AI governance—and expanded the opening for China to organize its own system. But China's approach is similarly shaped primarily by its own geopolitical ambitions.

As advances in generative AI continue, US policymakers should heed two lessons from the opening of trade with China. But that will require them to rethink the conventional wisdom about deindustrialization and the decline of manufacturing employment.

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo’s recent selection of an honest successor to a corrupt attorney general represents a decisive victory for the country’s democracy. Arévalo succeeded not because he abandoned institutions to save democracy, but because he trusted institutions enough to work through them.

In evaluating the trade-offs of joining the European Union and giving up their own currency, Icelanders must recognize that the costs of eurozone membership are smaller than what past data suggest. If anything, being within the eurosystem would make a repeat of Iceland's post-2008 banking crisis exceedingly unlikely.

Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji’s recent death elicited widespread accolades for his role in pushing the market-oriented reforms that unleashed decades of economic growth. But Zhu also oversaw two major policy shifts that have had dire implications for China’s demographic outlook.

As delegates gather this week in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, for the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, momentum is building toward a more ambitious global response to land degradation. In fact, there are five promising signs that this time could be different.

After a year of commentators lamenting the extent to which Donald Trump had emboldened the world’s autocrats, the political tables may have begun to turn. Not only is Trump deeply unpopular globally, but any government that gets into bed with him is effectively offering proof of its own corruption.

Once again, the International Monetary Fund finds itself begging for resources to support poor countries facing a public-health emergency. It is an old problem, but one for which there is a remarkably simple solution.

Those who worry that the renminbi, yen, and won are undervalued vis-à-vis the dollar are usually focused on the large trade and current-account surpluses that China, Japan, and Korea run with the US. But coordinated intervention in currency markets will not address the fundamentals underlying these imbalances.

Even if AI-related job displacement is less severe than many feared, corporations will need to be enlisted in minimizing its effects in the name of social solidarity. To that end, governments should consider what policy incentives are in place, and large employers should consider their own long-term interests.