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Fareed Zakaria GPS

The State of Play in the Strait of Hormuz; U.S. to Withdraw Roughly 5,000 Troops from Germany; The Federal Reserve's Dilemma. Interview With New York Times' Chief Political Analyst Nate Cohn; Interview With University of Toronto History Professor Timothy Snyder; Interview With Wadhwani A.I. Center, CSIS, Senior Fellow Kateryna Bondar. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired May 03, 2026 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:41]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria, coming to you live from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz. The world waits to see who will blink first, Iran or America. I'll talk about that and more with Anne-Marie Slaughter and Admiral James Stavridis.

Then, despite the standoff in the strait and the high oil prices it's causing, the stock market is near record highs. Why? I'll ask Lloyd Blankfein, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Also, the MAGA movement and Hungary's Viktor Orban were closely allied for years. Now Orban has been ousted in a landslide. Is that a wake-up call for his friends in America? I'll talk to the historian Tim Snyder.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: We'll be back with "My Take" next week. Let's get straight to the news.

The war with Iran has entered its third month, and while a shaky ceasefire holds, diplomatic efforts between the U.S. and Iran seem to be at an impasse. Last night, President Trump posted on Truth Social that while he hadn't read the new peace proposal sent by Iran, he could not, quote, "imagine that it would be acceptable in that they have not yet paid a price, a big enough price for what they have done to humanity and the world over the last 47 years," unquote.

The Strait of Hormuz remains a central flashpoint in the conflict, with both sides blockading the crucial trade route, choking the global economy as the price of oil has skyrocketed.

Joining me now is Anne-Marie Slaughter, who will soon step down from her role as CEO of the think tank New America and become dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics in early 2027. And, of course, retired Admiral James Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied commander.

Anne-Marie, it feels like both sides are dug in. And when these things happen, usually the question is, who can bear the pain longer? What's your sense?

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, FORMER DIRECTOR OF POLICY PLANNING, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: Well, this really is a game of chicken, right? Who's going to blink first? I think the U.S. is in a really risky position because it's actually and ironically, like Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine -- Russia needs to win. The U.S. needs to win. Ukraine just needs not to lose. And Iran just needs not to lose.

And Iran has tremendous capacity to take pain. It's got an authoritarian government. It's got a people who are now much more allied in favor of that government than they were back in January with all the protests. And it is the little guy against the big guy. This is, you know, the U.S. has been here before, like Vietnam or Afghanistan. I really think the U.S. is more likely to blink first than Iran.

ZAKARIA: And to add to that, like Russia-Ukraine, for the little guy, it's existential.

SLAUGHTER: Exactly.

ZAKARIA: For the superpower, it's one of many things going on.

SLAUGHTER: Exactly.

ZAKARIA: Jim, when you look at the naval blockade, you know, how easy is it for the United States to keep this going indefinitely? How -- is there a path for Iran to get some of its oil out? You know, there have been talk about hugging the coastline and getting the oil out that way. What is your sense?

ADM. JAMES STAVRIDIS (RET.), CNN SENIOR MILITARY ANALYST: I've sailed the Strait of Hormuz close to 100 times as a sea captain, and I have participated in several blockades around the world. My conclusion is blockades are inherently very difficult to maintain. This is a thousand miles of coastline that we're blockading. It's an act of war, by the way. And there's always going to be leakage.

Just think the movie "Gone with the Wind," Rhett Butler showing up with beautiful cigars and silk scarves from Paris through the Lincoln blockade of the American south.

[10:05:01]

Having said all that, I agree with my good friend Anne-Marie. Congratulations on the LSC, by the way. And I would simply add, I think in the White House they are now starting to look at additional military options because this tale of two blockades is going to be difficult to sustain. So to conclude, Fareed, I think the president is looking at a --

probably a package of three different military options. One, go after more leadership, try and take out some of the intransigent members, the Revolutionary Guard. Number two, perhaps go after the oil infrastructure. Quite risky. Could lead to retaliation. And third, let's call it strategic preparation of the Strait of Hormuz in case you have to open it militarily, which may be the next move on the chessboard.

ZAKARIA: And if this negotiation gets going, it feels like the key issues are, you know, Strait of Hormuz has to be opened. What to do about the enriched fuel? And then the length of the suspension. Iran agrees not to. It feels to me like all Trump is looking for is a deal that he can say is better than Obama's nuclear deal.

SLAUGHTER: I think that's right. But I think that's going to be incredibly hard to do because honestly, had we kept Obama's deal, we would not be in this situation. And it's very easy also for Iran to just slow walk things and divide the issues so that the Strait of Hormuz issue is one, then they want to do nuclear talks later.

It's going to be hard for Trump to get to a place where he can say, I achieved my objectives. And that's in part also because his objectives keep shifting. He says it's about the nuclear energy.

ZAKARIA: Right.

SLAUGHTER: But he also just said it's about -- originally about getting the Iranians to overthrow their government, which is not going to work.

ZAKARIA: And now he says it's about 47 years, which, of course, Iran's nuclear program is not 47 years old.

Stay with us. Next on GPS, we'll talk about Donald Trump's decision to pull thousands of American troops out of Germany, a move widely seen as retribution for the German chancellor's disparaging remarks about the U.S. war in Iran. We'll be back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:11:47]

ZAKARIA: On Friday, the Pentagon announced that it would withdraw roughly 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany. The decision comes after President Trump's recent public clashes with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, over the German leader's criticism of the U.S. war with Iran. Trump has warned that this could be just the start of troop withdrawals from the longstanding American ally. The announcement has drawn criticism from both sides of the political aisle.

I'm back with Anne-Marie Slaughter and Admiral James Stavridis, who has a new book coming out, "2084: A Novel of Future War."

Anne-Marie, talk about this. The state of U.S.-European relations, just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. How significant is this? Is it just symbolic that the U.S. is withdrawing these troops?

SLAUGHTER: Well, it's retribution on personal diplomacy. And honestly, I think Chancellor Merz's perception of the president being humiliated in the Iranian war is accurate globally. This is cutting off our nose to spite our face yet again. Our troops in Germany are hugely important for U.S. power projection. And you hear that whenever wounded Americans are flown back, they're flown to Ramstein in Germany. That's a very important base. But also, we not only run our European operations and everything in Ukraine from Germany, we also run our African operations. AFRICOM is headquartered in Germany.

So this is -- 5,000 troops is symbolic. But to the extent this is going to be the administration's reaction to Europeans not liking what he's doing, we're hurting ourselves more than anything else.

ZAKARIA: And it's unusual. I mean, the Europeans criticized the Vietnam War. The French criticized the Iraq War. This is, I mean, we've usually viewed this as among democracies, you know, you're allowed to criticize each other every now and then.

SLAUGHTER: Yes. In 1982, the U.S. approval rating in Germany was 4 percent because of the fight over the intermediate nuclear forces deployment. But what's different this time is you're seeing Britain and France mobilize 40 to 50 countries on a plan to open the Straits of Hormuz and guarantee shipping after forces, after there is a lasting ceasefire. Now, they don't have the power to force that ceasefire, but you're actually seeing the 50 countries and again, Europe in the lead, acting as neutrals in a war between the U.S.- Israel on one side and Iran on the other.

That's not the indispensable nation anymore.

ZAKARIA: Jim, as a former Supreme Allied commander in Europe, what is your reaction to this announcement to withdraw troops?

STAVRIDIS: I'm tracking Anne-Marie. I'm going to broaden the argument and say there are other critical bases in Spain, for example. We have many guided missile destroyers based in Italy. Our rapid reaction infantry is there in Poland.

[10:15:04]

We shouldn't rattle this one because, yes, we have a lot of troops there. Total 100,000. So you're right. Marie is right. It's symbolic, but it could easily broaden and it could also generate kind of a whiplash from other European countries.

And finally, in one sense, this may cause Europe to pull together, but they may start pulling in a different direction from the United States, working more with China, working more with India and other countries. So we're going to potentially pay not only a military price here, but an economic and diplomatic one as well.

ZAKARIA: Yes. The idea of encouraging Germany to become the strongest military power on the continent of Europe strikes me as something that lacks a certain historical memory. Jim, you have this terrific new book out. You've been putting out

these series of books on, you know, future -- the future of war. Now you're up to the end of the 21st century. So tell us, when you look at what's going on in the Middle East with Iran, what part of this is early premonitions of what the future of war is going to look like?

STAVRIDIS: Let's add Ukraine to it. So if you look at the military operations in both Ukraine and the Middle East, one word pops into your mind -- drones. So unmanned, huge part of this. But what's coming, which has not arrived as yet, are lasers, which could change the balance of power between missiles and defenses. It is higher end cyber, perhaps the result of quantum computing coming very soon.

It's potentially biotech. Think human performance enhancement. And finally, it's new forms of energy. Perhaps fusion energy to the battlefield. All overseen by artificial intelligence. Just to conclude, the novel also looks at two immutable things in war. One is human character and the other is geography. Those are still with us, but the technologies are shifting rapidly. That's what "2084" ultimately is about, the fusion of those three things.

ZAKARIA: It sounds fascinating, and the idea of the permanence of geography is something we are realizing with the Strait of Hormuz.

Next on GPS, the Iran war has triggered one of the largest supply shocks in the history of the oil market. Yet Wall Street appears largely unfazed. What explains the disconnect? I will ask former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:22:13]

ZAKARIA: This week, Jerome Powell chaired his final meeting as head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, where, in an unusual move, he signaled his plans to remain on the central bank's board of governors as a voting member. This comes as Kevin Warsh, President Trump's nominee is set to take over as Fed chair if confirmed by the Senate.

To unpack what all of this means for the Fed's independence and the U.S. economy, I'm joined by former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Lloyd has published an excellent, very readable new memoir called "Streetwise."

Lloyd, first, a quick thought. Everyone is talking about this, but with all this stuff blowing up, energy markets, Strait of Hormuz blocked, you know, 20 percent of the oil in the world are blocked, why does the American stock market seem not to care?

LLOYD BLANKFEIN, FORMER CEO AND CHAIRMAN, GOLDMAN SACHS: Well, independent of what's going on in the Gulf, there's a tremendous amount of tailwinds going on where the economy is. We'd like growth higher, but it's pretty good. We'd like inflation lower. But it's not that high above what their goals are. And tremendous tailwinds. You have the -- you have the, you know, bigger than expected refunds coming in stimulative. You have the one-year depreciation expensing of expenses. There's a

lot of subsidy. There's a lot of stimulus going into the economy that was pretty good to begin with.

ZAKARIA: So --

BLANKFEIN: Now the one thing I should say pretty good to begin with before the mail starts going in, we do have that K shapeness of where people in the upper echelons are doing really, really well because they have assets benefiting from the rise in the inflation of asset prices. And then we have people on the lower end who don't have assets that are increasing their wealth and for whom the compound effect of inflation hasn't kept up with their wages.

So there we have the polarization in the economy right there, which leads to the political polarization.

ZAKARIA: And you do see, as a result of that, the dilemma that the Federal Reserve is in, which is, you know, if you get to a point where the economy starts slowing and consumer spending seems to have slowed everywhere except in A.I. spending. If you get to a situation where these oil prices stay high and oil prices staying high means commodity prices stay high, everything, you know, in some ways gets jacked up.

The Federal Reserve has this problem. It normally would cut rates to boost the economy.

BLANKFEIN: Right.

ZAKARIA: But you have all these high prices. So inflation could go up. And you saw this for the first time since 1992. You had four dissenting votes on the Fed board because people are divided on this.

BLANKFEIN: And dissenting, by the way, three of the four dissenters were basically saying we shouldn't be skewed in favor of a rate cut.

ZAKARIA: Right.

BLANKFEIN: Not that they wanted a rate rise, but we shouldn't suggest a bias towards a rate cut.

[10:25:03]

ZAKARIA: Right. Because of all these high prices.

BLANKFEIN: Yes. In other words, stability. Let's keep it where it is.

ZAKARIA: So what, you know, what would you do in this circumstance?

BLANKFEIN: Oh, I think they're doing absolutely the right thing looking at, you know, I hate to use this word. In fact, I'm going out of my way to use this word. People are wondering whether this oil price shock is transitory, just like we thought inflation was transitory. And so they're looking at it. And here's another thought experiment. Where would the equity market be if we didn't have the overhang of the sudden spike in oil prices and the residual anxiety that they'll persist for a while?

But we don't know whether they'll persist for a while. In some ways, the fact that it's so bad and has to be so bad means that probably something will have to happen to relieve that pressure.

ZAKARIA: But you lived through the 1970s and this was the dilemma in the '70s, right? Which was you had high enough inflation that it was hard to cut rates and yet the economy started slowing down and they called it stagflation.

BLANKFEIN: Yes, bad.

ZAKARIA: Yes.

BLANKFEIN: Bad. And we went there and we took some very, very difficult medicine and decided that the thing that was best for the country and even for every element of society was to stop inflation, which is, again, is kind of a regressive tax on people. And so we had that Volcker era where we had -- went through a lot of painful process. And people don't -- having lived through that, don't realize that the pressure that was on the Fed to release that pressure, but they kept going until the inflation issue was solved.

We are not there right now. Can we get there? Yes. It's a source of anxiety for us and certainly higher oil prices will, you know, leach its way into the rest of the manufacturing processes in the country. And that's a big problem. But it's a problem that we're anxious about, but we're not living with at the moment. So if you're the Fed on one case, it's very, very easy to vote for the status quo. And then let's go, you know, let's go in the background and evolve our contingency plans based upon what evolves.

ZAKARIA: When you look at this A.I. spending, do you think that at the end of the day, you know, the people are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, these companies?

(CROSSTALK)

BLANKFEIN: Yes. I think just announced $800 billion. What country spends what one of these hyper-scalers is spending?

ZAKARIA: Right. And yet do you think that they will get a return on this investment? I mean, take a company like OpenAI, you know, spending all this money. Will it get a return on their investment or is it at some point they're going to be a kind of moment of truth?

BLANKFEIN: I can't wait to come on 10 years from now and let you know. But it feels that way. And certainly the people who are -- the companies that are spending the money, look, not all technologies will work. And some of the technologies that do work and do add will, you know, I don't know that the world needs eight winners and eventually. So when we look back with hindsight, some of these investment dollars will wish hadn't been made, but you just don't know.

My -- as far as the technology is concerned, from what I hear from people who are operating companies, these technologies, this A.I. technology is really doing a lot for them. You know, you run things in, it's giving an analysis of things that you would have people working their way through on, you know, my old industry onboarding clients, risk management. It's really -- people see the benefit from it and are willing to pay for it. And you look at the growth in revenue to the hyper-scalers.

One other thing is the people who run these companies, these are not professional managers, just. These are founders whose wealth is totally tied up. They really believe at the core.

ZAKARIA: They're betting their own money.

BLANKFEIN: They're putting their money where their mouth is. And you know something? I'm betting with them on it.

ZAKARIA: Lloyd Blankfein, always a pleasure. And as I say, a really terrific fun book.

Next on GPS, gas prices are at their highest in nearly four years. And President Trump's approval ratings are at their lowest since the beginning of his second term, perhaps at historic lows. What does that mean for the president and the midterms?

Nate Cohn, chief political analyst for "The New York Times," joins me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:33:38]

ZAKARIA: About six in 10 Americans disapprove of President Trump's handling of the Iran war, and the president's own approval ratings have hit the lowest point in his second term, according to a CNN Poll of Polls. Yet there are few signs that President Trump is fundamentally changing course. Why?

Joining me now to discuss all of this is Nate Cohn. He is the chief political analyst at The New York Times. And he writes the excellent newsletter, "The Tilt." Nate, always a pleasure to have you on.

First, give us a sense --

NATE COHN, CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST, NEW YORK TIMES: Thanks for having me.

ZAKARIA: -- situate us historically. How low are Trump's ratings? They often say about him is that he has a high floor, but a low ceiling, meaning he's got a bunch of people who support him no matter what. But, you know, he's never going to get 80 percent approval rating because there's a huge bunch of people who hate him. So, is it still that same story or is the floor gotten lower?

COHN: Well, we might be about to find out. By our measure, the president's approval rating is down to 38 percent. That's down three points since the start of the war. And well, three points may not make or break a presidency. It does begin to put his numbers into a spot that is historically unusual for the president, and historically unusual for the last 18 years of polarizing presidents that we've had since 2008. The president's ratings are now significantly lower than they were at this point during his first term.

[10:35:01]

They're lower than they were for Joe Biden or Barack Obama during their presidencies. They actually look a lot like George W. Bush's approval ratings at this point in 2006, after Hurricane Katrina, stuck in the war in Iraq, gas prices rising, a pretty similar story. We know what happens from here for George W. Bush. Of course, his ratings fall into the 30s and the 20s.

Time will tell whether the Iran war and high gas prices go on long enough for something similar to happen to Trump. But I think it's fair to say that this is starting to look more like the kind of presidency that can do lasting damage to the party than the kind of presidency that we've seen over the last couple of decades. Polarizing and unpopular, but not one that upends our political deadlock.

ZAKARIA: Trump is a very shrewd political actor, and he's particularly sensitive. People often say to two things the stock market and polls, and certainly the first term, I felt like you could tell that. What I've been struck by the second term, Nate, is whether you look at the ICE issue, whether you look at, you know, the war, he seems a little less concerned about that. He seems to be -- I don't know. My theory is that he's decided that if you stay -- if you stay -- if your base stays with you, you're going to be fine or something like that.

When you look at the second term, are you struck that he seems a little bit more impervious to, you know, the public's -- public approval ratings?

COHN: I think that the president is certainly going farther than he did in his first term. On issue after issue, whether it's ICE, as you mentioned, or the tariffs, or how far he confronts the courts or his willingness to use military force abroad, the president just goes farther than he did in his first term.

That said, I think, you also see that the president often pulls back in response to the stock market and public opinion. He de-escalated tariffs after Liberation Day. He backed down from a confrontation with the courts over Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He did pull out of Minneapolis in the end. Even in Iran, I think you can see signs that public opinion weighs on his decision.

He seems to want a way out of this. He's reassured the public at every step that the war is going to end soon, that we've accomplished our objectives, that Iran wants a deal. And he did sort of unilaterally impose a ceasefire rather than escalate, as so many presidents have in the past. Lyndon Johnson chose escalation. Obama chose escalation in Afghanistan. George W. Bush chose a surge.

Donald Trump hasn't made that decision yet, and there were escalatory options like seizing Kharg Island which was discussed in the media. So I think you can still see signs that the president is -- feels constrained by public opinion, even if, unlike his first term, he goes so far that he seems to pay a greater political price before pulling back.

ZAKARIA: And what kind of price is he paying with his base? I mean, this is, you know, nonintervention in Middle Eastern wars seemed like a cardinal issue, you know, almost a matter of faith for people who were MAGA. And yet now you see these polls where for the first time, you are seeing some slippage in his -- in his poll numbers. People who voted for him in 2024 are less willing to support him. This is the first break in his -- in his sort of MAGA wall.

Is it -- is it real or do you think, you know, you have a few high profile defections like Tucker Carlson? Is this -- is this more than just the celebrity -- some celebrity commentators? And do you think those drops are significant?

COHN: I think they are significant. I mean, I don't think we should overstate them either. The preponderance of the president's supporters are still behind him. You don't see signs that congressional Republicans are defecting from him or breaking from him on other issues. But you do see signs of it among elite media commentators, as you alluded to.

And once the president's approval ratings fall into the upper 30s or even lower, then you start talking about the possibility that Republicans are going to lose pretty badly in the midterm elections so badly that it could threaten their control of the Senate. That's a real political consequence that the president will face.

And even though that may not be because MAGA voters start voting for Democrats, it's still in part because the president is unable to keep the coalition of voters that has stood by his side over the last few years in his court.

And so, you know, again, I think it's unrealistic to expect the complete collapse of President Trump's support. Even presidents like Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, they still had approval ratings in the 20s and everything went wrong for them across the board.

I don't think we can quite say that Donald Trump has experienced a catastrophic and comprehensive failure across all dimensions of policy at this stage, or at least viewed in terms -- at least viewed from the perspective of his base. But there are still political consequences that he'll endure as a result of the losses he suffered to this point.

ZAKARIA: Nate Cohn, always good to have you on. Thank you.

COHN: Thanks for having me.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, what will the defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary tell us about the future of MAGA and far-right movements around the world?

[10:40:04]

I'll talk to the historian Tim Snyder when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: In a stunning upset last month, Hungary voted out Prime Minister Viktor Orban and voted in pro-Europe center-right Peter Magyar. Orban's rule, which lasted 16 consecutive years, was marked by corruption, suppression of the press, and an alliance with Russia.

[10:45:05]

But Orban and his ruling Fidesz party were also a kind of model for far-right authoritarianism and conservative movements around the world, notably the U.S. conservative policy initiative Project 2025 drew inspiration from Orban. So, what does Orban's defeat mean?

Timothy Snyder is a historian, author, and professor at the University of Toronto. He joins me now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Welcome, Tim Snyder.

TIMOTHY SNYDER, HISTORY PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO: Glad to be with you.

ZAKARIA: So you have been pointing out that Viktor Orban's loss is actually significant, not just in Hungary, because he was a kind of international figure and maybe in some ways at the center of this sort of international right-wing populism.

SNYDER Yes. I mean, it's important enough when an authoritarian loses an election in any country. It's more important when that country is the country which has been blocking important things from happening in the European Union. But as you say, the greatest significance of this is that Budapest under Orban was the most important node in financial, symbolic political cooperation between Moscow, Europe, and the United States of America.

So whether other folks realize it or not, this is a body blow to a Vance or a Trump. People who have benefited from Orban, benefited from his ideas, benefited from his example, and also from money that passed through Budapest.

ZAKARIA: So Orban, when he wins, you know, the background, is that a kind of almost fluke situation he wins the second time with a huge majority, a two-thirds majority, and then uses that to amend the constitution in various ways. In addition, he then intimidates the press, sets the tax authorities on them, gets his friends to buy the press.

What I'm trying to get at is he put in place a lot of things that tried to perpetuate his power. So first, I mean, it's heartening that democracy can come back from that. But how much of that is still in the -- how much is Hungary still an illiberal democracy? He proudly called it an illiberal democracy. SNYDER: Yes. I mean, let's pause on that for just a moment, because Orban created this model. And the model has been followed in the U.S. There's a reason why Orban was a hero to Heritage and to CPAC. And it's not just that he funneled money to them, which he did. It's also that he was a template. You get control of the constitutional situation, which, as you say he did by having a constitutional majority. In the U.S. you do it by having pliant justices in the Supreme Court.

You get control of the media by having friendly oligarchs control it, which is a situation not exactly foreign to events now in the United States. And you try to intimidate independent journalists, bully them down to a small place in the media landscape, and you gerrymander and you have dark money. All of that stuff came from Hungary.

Hungary, unlike us, is a parliamentary system. And now Magyar, the leader of the opposition, also has a constitutional majority. So they, unlike us, their government changes immediately. They will be able to pass laws very quickly. And some things will in fact change right away.

Hungary will no longer block aid to Ukraine. Hungary will no longer be a node in this international network that we talked about. I agree that it will take some time, probably to change personnel in state TV and things like that, but I think we'll see the changes going pretty quickly.

ZAKARIA: So now let's talk about that -- the larger issue of what does it tell us about, you know, about history that you can -- you can reverse things the way that they have, because many people felt Orban had just set the system up in a way that the opposition could never win. He had won four elections. He had amended the constitution. The media was pliant. What happened?

SNYDER: Yes, I love that question because it was like this was one more end of history, right? You know, the communism came to an end and we say, this is the end of history. Liberal democracy got to have liberal democracy. And then there's the rise of this, whatever you want to call it, far-right, nationalist, right, populist, right. And then those guys, and you especially see it with a figure like Vance, those guys now say, oh, there's no alternative. Like, the history is over.

ZAKARIA: This is the new normal.

SNYDER: Yes, it's going to be us from here on out, right? Get used to it. And then you see, history goes on and it's full of unpredictable things. But yes, we can analyze these unpredictable things. And in Hungary, it's very interesting.

I think, in terms of the substance, what worked is that Magyar, again, the guy who won these elections, he was able to put together what we would call affordability with democracy. He was able to say, look, it's abuse of power, it's oligarchy, it's corruption in the center, which is making your lives worse. Right? And so we have to become -- we have to have better rule of law, clean elections, free media in order for you to have a normal life. And that's correct. But politically, it takes some work to put it together. And then in terms of the procedure, the lesson from Hungary is that big protest actions and elections work together.

[10:50:01]

You don't just wait for Election Day and try to get through to it and hope your votes are going to be enough. You have to have a big protest movement to energize people, to teach them their vote as part of something significant and larger, but also, frankly, as a deterrent mechanism. Because if you have big mobilization potential, that makes it harder for people to rig the election when the day comes.

ZAKARIA: Tim Snyder, pleasure to have you on.

SNYDER: The pleasure is mine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, there is no better theater in which to view the future of warfare than in Ukraine. I'll ask an expert to unpack it all next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:55:14]

ZAKARIA: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that for the first time since the war began, the Ukrainian army recaptured a Russian position using only unmanned drones and robotic systems. He said no human Ukrainians were on the ground in the fight, and thus Ukraine suffered zero casualties. The announcement highlights how rapidly Russia's war in Ukraine has become a battle of technology on both sides.

Joining me to help understand all of this is Kate Bondar. She is a senior fellow at the Wadhwani A.I. Center at CSIS, and she was previously an adviser to the government of Ukraine and had responsibility for military reforms. Kate, this is a fascinating announcement. Is it as big a milestone as it sounds, or is it just the war has been heading in this way?

KATERYNA BONDAR, SENIOR FELLOW, WADHWANI A.I. CENTER, CSIS: Yes, Fareed. It actually shows the trend how war has been developing since almost like 2023, because this announcement is not the first unmanned operation conducted both by Ukraine -- by Ukrainian side and by the Russian side. And we have seen previously a lot of unmanned operations conducted by robots.

These were striking operations when we had drones in the air, and they collaborated with other drones, striking valuable targets. We've seen operations conducted by robots for evacuation of wounded soldiers. And now Ukrainians and Russians are both using very actively robots in kill zone to provide logistics and deliver goods to soldiers in trenches. So actually, it's not the first time that we have seen this, but it shows how the warfare is developing in Ukrainian war.

ZAKARIA: Now, you wrote a very interesting "New York Times" piece you called "Russia Is Building Tomorrow's War Machine." So, we always think about this as a Ukrainian story. But you focus in this on Russia. Help us understand, you know, how good has Russia gotten at drones?

BONDAR: Yes. So I think we covered -- on the West here we cover Russia way less than Ukraine. And it's really important for us to understand what our adversaries are working on, what they're doing and the direction they're thinking into.

And what I found is actually very interesting because we have seen the first deployment of fully autonomous weapon system in actual battlefield, because autonomy and automation is nothing new to the warfare. We have Patriot systems working in autonomous mode. But what Russia has done really differently, it has deployed fully autonomous system and it is A.I. enabled.

So, it works without any human intervention. And it works fully autonomously at finding the target, selecting the target, and engaging the target without confirmation for the operator. And I think for us here, it's really important to see and understand what our adversaries are doing because Russian experience is translating directly to Iran right now and threaten U.S. forces in the Middle East.

ZAKARIA: People often say with A.I., you've got to keep the human being involved. You've got to keep the human in the loop. But it does seem as though the A.I. moves so much faster that if you're in a competitive dynamic, like a war, if the other side is taking the human out of the loop and is making targeting decisions 10 times faster than you are, you're going to have to take the human out of the loop. Isn't that the reality that these A.I. systems are kind of going to battle each other without the human beings involved?

BONDAR: Well, it's hard to predict, but it is totally possible that we will end up with this loop where we have autonomous decision making developing really fast, and then translating these decisions to autonomous systems, which are able to execute these decisions without human intervention. So in such a way, with the help of A.I., we can actually have fully autonomous warfare like kill chain. So basically, identifying targets and destroying them. And this can happen in milliseconds.

So I think we're at this crucial moment where we need to really understand how technology works, which risks it has, because there is one very important point that I want to stress. Russia doesn't care about civilian casualties. Russia doesn't care about ethical principles of autonomous weapon systems deployment, and that's why they are moving so fast into technology development and deployment that here, in the West, we need to actually make a decision how we deal with this technology, which some experts called a new nuclear bomb.

[11:00:09] And I can agree with them because if we achieve this fully autonomous kill chain, this loop where human doesn't make any decision, that can be really destructive for humanity in the future.

ZAKARIA: On that sobering note, Kate, pleasure to have you on.

BONDAR: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.