Geopolitical Economy Hour

por Radhika Desai

Warwick Powell: "OpenAI Could Run Out Of Cash By Next Year"

Why are the AI promoters who spent months resisting regulation suddenly asking for it? Warwick Powell, adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology, joins me to connect the doomsaying about AI destroying humanity, the new appetite for regulation and the postponement of OpenAI’s much-trumpeted IPO. With capital expenditure soaring and analysts seeing no pathway to profitability, these firms have every reason to seek protective cover from government, while open models from China that are almost as good and far cheaper cannibalise their market. He underscores the severity of the Dutch disease pulling workers and materials out of the rest of US construction and into data centres. In capitalism, the system adopts AI as a labour-replacing device replacing an ever-increasing number of workers. Courts in china, however, have prohibited laying workers off if they are substituted by AI. Now more than ever, we need to transfer ownership of the means of AI production from billionaire capitalists to the masses.

13 oct 2026

51:11

Aakar Patel: Do World Leaders Even Respect Modi? | Geopolitical Analysis Of India's Foreign Policy

Wherever Narendra Modi travels, he comes home with a medal, and much of the world's media treats him as a statesman and a voice of the Global South. Aakar Patel, columnist, chair of Amnesty International India and author of Price of the Modi Years, joins me for the first time to separate the image from the record. Aakar describes a foreign policy with two registers. One is theater performed for validation abroad, which harder leaders have learned to exploit. The other is the external face of Hindutva, which explains the fixation on Pakistan and the embrace of Israel.

11 oct 2026

49:50

Dimitri Lascaris: "Mark Carney Is The Greatest Political Scammer In Canadian History"

Mark Carney has a 70% approval rating and a global reputation as the man who stood up to Trump. But is any of it real? I am joined by Dimitri Lascaris of Reason to Resist, who calls it arguably the greatest political scam in Canadian history. The so-called trade war between Canada and the US is rather a skirmish that only covers under 5% of Canada-US trade. On everything else, however, Carney is in step with Washington, from 5% of GDP on the military and the scrapped digital services tax to support for the war on Iran. We examine how Carney is using the crisis to push through a neoliberal agenda, fast-tracking energy projects and inviting American capital to buy up Canada, while leaving trade with China and the BRICS largely untouched.

11 oct 2026

55:33

Michael Hudson: The AI Crash Is Coming, And You Will Pay For It | The AI Bubble Explained

Is artificial intelligence the technology of the future, or the next great bubble? Michael Hudson joins me for another Geopolitical Economy Hour to discuss the looming AI economic crash. Michael compares the frenzy to the dot-com bubble and the railroad bubbles of the 19th century, while the scale of this one outmatches all what we have previously seen. We examine Washington's plan to turn AI into a monopoly choke point on the world economy and to make everyone dependent on proprietary technology so AI billionaires can continue to collect monopoly rents. China's open-source approach, however, is built around finite tasks and is already undercutting it. Meanwhile, the surging electricity and water costs driven by skyrocketing data centre projects are falling on local communities.

6 oct 2026

55:11

Mohammad Marandi: "Dubai Is Never Going to Be Dubai Again" | Geopolitical Analysis Of Iran War

Is the war meant to break Iran now breaking Washington's Gulf allies instead? I am joined at the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow by Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran, who points out that seven months of siege and sanctions are strangling the oil-dependent Gulf monarchies that helped wage this war. With US bases around Iran destroyed or half destroyed, these states are emerging as diminished entities.

5 oct 2026

55:13

Roger Koppel: Will Europe Go To War With Russia? Ukraine Is Paying for Europe's Moralism

Will Europe go to war with Russia? At this year's Valdai Discussion Club conference, I am joined by Roger Köppel, owner of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche, former editor-in-chief of Germany's Die Welt, and a former member of the Swiss parliament. Köppel warns that the world is closer to a third world war than at any time since 1945, even though Europe is too weak economically, militarily and politically for any confrontation with Russia. He sees Europe's disease as the triumph of moralism over realism, and the Ukraine war as its ultimate expression. In his account, Europeans pay, Ukrainians fight, and Americans collect the profits.

2 oct 2026

56:01

Laith Marouf: Economic Blowback Of The Iran War Will Soon Hit The West

The US-Israeli war on Iran has entered an uneasy lull. But is this a pause, or the calm before something much bigger? Laith Marouf of Free Palestine TV joins me once again to take stock of West Asia after President Trump rejected Iran's proposals at the UN General Assembly and repeated his threat to annihilate Iran. Marouf explains why the Saudi war on Yemen, launched at the behest of Washington and Tel Aviv, has turned into a costly retreat, and why the US withdrawal from Iraq may be designed to leave chaos in its wake. We examine the so-called Mecca alliance of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey as a propaganda exercise rather than a military pact, the popular mood across the region, and why the economic war is hurting the imperial core more than Iran. We close on Lebanon, where Hezbollah is beginning reconstruction while the Lebanese state fails its people. The empire is in retreat, and its only remaining strategy is chaos.

2 oct 2026

45:27

Einar Tangen: How Trump Achieved Nothing at the Trump-Xi Summit | GEH W/ Radhika Desai

President Xi's visit to Washington produced almost nothing concrete. There was no progress on Taiwan, AI or the Iran war, just a trade truce extended to January. So why did Trump greet him at Andrews Air Force Base, something no American president has done for a foreign leader in 60 years? Einar Tangen argues the real outcome was symbolic but huge: the United States has finally had to accept China as a peer. We talk about how America got here, from the decline of its industrial capitalism to a political system that no longer has a plan, and about what Trump might try before the November elections. As Einar puts it, the unipolar moment is over, and it was a US president who ended it.

27 sept 2026

56:50

Richard Murphy: The Fed Just Raised Interest Rates. Recession is next | GEH W/ Radhika Desai

Kevin Warsh's first move as Federal Reserve Chair was to raise interest rates, and the establishment hailed it as proof of central bank independence. But what inflation is he fighting? Professor Richard Murphy, founder of the Tax Justice Network, joins me to explain why today's price rises come from war-driven shocks to energy and food, not excess demand, and why higher rates will only push us toward recession. Murphy argues that central bank independence is a sham, that NAIRU makes unemployment a deliberate tool of policy, and that 700 years of data point to a real interest rate of zero. What we are witnessing, he says, is class warfare, with inflation serving as cover to restore the return to capital.

27 sept 2026

56:15

KJ Noh: Will South Korea Go To War With Iran To Appease Trump? | GEH W/ Radhika Desai

For the first time in its history, South Korea has refused a US demand to send troops to an American war. This is the same country that sent over 300,000 soldiers to fight in the Vietnam War. Regular guest K.J. Noh joins me to explain what is behind President Lee Jae Myung's refusal to join Trump's war on Iran. The pressure comes from a militant labour movement in the streets, Iran's warning over Korea's Gulf assets, and a US empire exposed as a paper tiger. We trace this struggle back to the US-backed massacres South Korea was built on, and ask how far Washington will go to keep its most loyal vassal in line.

27 sept 2026

1:01:13

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