The breakneck pace of AI progress and the intensity of the competition for AI supremacy has left U.S. policymakers in a difficult position. They must encourage the innovation needed to ensure an advantage over China and to power economic growth; protect against a national security catastrophe; and assuage the concerns of an anxious and skeptical public.

Sebastian Mallaby calls this the “AI trilemma” in his most recent essay for Foreign Affairs. And he argues that it requires more than the piecemeal measures currently on offer in Washington—or, for that matter, in Beijing or Brussels. Mallaby is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the host of a new podcast called The Spillover, as well as the author of The Infinity Machine, an excellent new book about the founding of the AI lab DeepMind.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with him on June 24 about the state of AI competition, about the stakes of that competition, and about how its course will reshape societies, economies, and global politics.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Like the rest of us, China’s leaders are confronting a world in turmoil. They see uncertain American commitments to allies, even as many of those allies ramp up their own defense efforts. They see changing relationships, whether deepening ties between Russia and North Korea or new connections among anxious middle powers. They see American military action in the Middle East and Western Hemisphere, with effects on American power in China’s own region.

And yet, as Oriana Skylar Mastro sees it, far from surprising Beijing, such disruptions are being taken as confirmation of what Chinese leader Xi Jinping often refers to as “great change unseen in a century.” Mastro has written a series of essays for Foreign Affairs on how Beijing aims to shape and exploit that change. She joined Dan Kurtz-Phelan to discuss China’s strategy for navigating this turmoil—and what the United States should, and should not, do in response.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

The war in Iran may have come to an end, but both the course and the conclusion of that war have brought into sharp relief the forces that increasingly define a world of weaponized power and systemic risk: unconstrained leaders willing to gamble with military force; the search for, and use of, economic leverage; technologies destabilizing both decision-making and development models; and old alliances fracturing and new alignments forming.

Ian Bremmer is a leading geopolitical analyst and the president and founder of the Eurasia Group. His most recent piece for Foreign Affairs is about the long-term consequences of the Iran war, but he has also written on shifts in global power, the effect of technology on geopolitics, and much else. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Bremmer on Monday, June 22, about how to make sense of today’s global turmoil.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

The Iran war may be coming to an end, as Washington and Tehran prepare to sign a framework agreement later this week. That deal should reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the blockade of Iranian ports, even as it leaves unresolved the issues that brought both sides to war in the first place, including the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. But policymakers in Washington and other capitals are just starting to confront the ways in which the war has transformed Iran—and how it could transform the Middle East moving forward.

In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs, Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr argue that members of a new, emboldened generation of Iranian leaders are forging an entirely new approach to their own society, to the United States, and to the region. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Bajoghli and Nasr on June 15 about the potential implications of a deal—and about how the last three and a half months of war will shape both the Middle East’s trajectory and the future of geopolitics more broadly.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that he will have the “honor of taking Cuba.” Although the administration has not specified what that might mean, following interventions in Venezuela and Iran over the past six months, there is reason to take seriously the possibility of some kind of forceful U.S. action, including military action. Already, a combination of U.S. pressure and the Cuban government’s own failures has resulted in unrelentingly dire conditions on the island—leading many to expect some kind of break before long.

In recent weeks, two of the sharpest observers of Cuba and U.S. policy toward Cuba have written essays in Foreign Affairs on the choices facing policymakers in both Havana and Washington. Michael Bustamante is chair of Cuba and Cuban-American studies at the University of Miami. And Ricardo Zuniga is a longtime U.S. official who served at the embassy in Havana and helped lead the secret talks that brought the Obama administration’s opening to Cuba. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with Bustamante and Zuniga on June 8 about what U.S. policymakers could and should do in the coming weeks and months—and what those decisions will mean for Cuba’s future.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Six months ago, Philip Gordon and Mara Karlin wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs about the plight of the United States’ allies in U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. What was surprising, they argued, was not the administration’s cajoling and threats, or all the ways U.S. policy had called into question the basic principles of these relationships. The surprise was that allies were surprised by these moves in the first place. Almost a year into Trump’s second term, they had done little to develop a plan B.

The months since have brought a wave of new challenges to U.S. alliances—the threats to seize Greenland and pull out of NATO, the continued warnings to free-riders, the shifting approach to China, and a war in Iran launched with little consultation even of the Gulf leaders who would be most directly affected.

Editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Gordon, who was national security adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, and Karlin, who was assistant secretary of defense in the Biden administration, on June 1. They discussed how the responses of U.S. allies in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East have evolved over the course of Trump’s second term, and how those responses will shape and constrain U.S. power in the years ahead.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

The world today is more dangerous and more violent than it’s been at any time since 1945. States everywhere have jettisoned commitments to cooperation and opted for aggression. The so-called rules-based order seems to have come apart. Yet the international body founded after World War II with the charge of preventing World War III finds itself increasingly on the margins.

In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the historian and former UN official Thant Myint-U considered what it would take for the United Nations to regain a meaningful role in preventing and managing global conflict. That question is particularly relevant as the UN begins the process of picking its next secretary-general. Deputy Editor Kanishk Tharoor spoke with Thant about the past and future of the United Nations, and about how the pillars of global peace can be reinforced before they collapse.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Both of Donald Trump’s presidential administrations have prompted sharp debates about the direction of U.S. foreign policy. But how to discern a strategic logic behind Washington’s approach, and whether it’s even possible to do so, have been particularly vexing questions since Trump returned to the White House.

A. Wess Mitchell helped shape these debates as assistant secretary of state in Trump’s first term, and he has been uniquely interested in shedding light on them since, including in a number of essays for Foreign Affairs. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Mitchell on Monday, May 18, about how he understands the strategy driving Trump’s second-term foreign policy, and where, after Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping and with wars in Iran and Ukraine far from settled, he thinks that strategy should go from here.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.