Month: May 2023

How Domestic Turmoil Caused by GOP Radicals Makes the U.S. an Unreliable Partner on the World Stage

We begin with reaction to the sudden cancellation of the Quad meeting in Australia and President Biden’s planned visit to that country along with his cancellation of the first trip by an American President to Papua New Guinea. This is happening because of the threat from far-right radicals on the House Freedom Caucus who hold sway over Speaker McCarthy who are prepared to default and do untold damage to our economy which has forced Biden to return earlier to Washington on Sunday in the hope of closing a deal with these legislative terrorists. Joining us to discuss concerns expressed by senior US diplomats that our domestic turmoil makes us an unreliable partner on the world stage is Cleo Paskal, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies focusing on the Indo-Pacific region and the strategic implications of the intersection of geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geophysical change. She has briefed government departments of the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union, India and many others and she is the author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map. Yesterday she testified before Congress on Chinese influence operations in the Pacific Islands.

What Does Trump Owe Rudy Giuliani and Will he Throw Him Under the Bus?

Then we look into explosive recorded evidence and 23,000 private emails threatening to expose Rudy Giuliani’s recent political dealings with Trump and his family including the possibility of selling pardons for $2 million a head to be split between Trump and Giuliani. This surfacing in a $10 million lawsuit from a woman who is suing America’s Mayor and accusing him of rape. We look into how much Rudy helped get Trump elected and whether the former president will throw his longtime friend and personal lawyer under the bus. Joining us is Lloyd Green, an attorney based in New York who was opposition research counsel to George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign and served in the Department of Justice and is a contributing writer at The Guardian. We discuss his latest article at The Guardian, “The fall of Rudy Giuliani, once the toast of New York, continues unabated.”

Regulation of Promising But Potentially Dangerous AI Technology is Necessary But is it Practical or Possible?

Then finally we assess the promises and pitfalls of AI which was the subject of Tuesday’s hearing before the Senate Subcommittee for Privacy, Technology and Law at which senators heard testimony from Sam Altman the CEO of OpenAI whose chatbot ChatGPT is in wide use. Joining us to explore what regulation of this potentially dangerous and fast-moving new technology is possible or practical is Jessica Melugin, director of the Center for Technology & Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute whose research focuses on technology issues including antitrust, online privacy, Internet taxation, telecommunications, social media content and net neutrality regulation.