Friday Focus: Trump’s Davos TACO, Carney’s vision for Canada, and an AI deepfake blurs the lines of reality
Friday Focus: Trump’s Davos TACO, Carney’s vision for Canada, and an AI deepfake blurs the lines of reality
Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to full length editions of the Friday Focus podcast with Janice Stein. Your donor membership comes with other great perks like a livestream pass to our mainstage debates and advanced access to full length episodes of our other weekly podcast with Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne.
Rudyard and Janice begin the show with the remarkable-sized TACO Trump delivered this week, whipping the world into a frenzy over threats to take over Greenland. His tough talk turned into a whimper after a meeting with the NATO Secretary General and a framework of a deal that has not been accepted by European leaders. What happened behind closed doors that made Trump back down from these threats? How did the bond market play into this? Meanwhile Mark Carney’s Davos speech was well received by the European elite, but what is his plan for Canada? How will he enact sweeping and fundamental change in this country that match the substance of his speech? In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice discuss an AI-generated video impersonating former UN Ambassador John Bolton discussing Mark Carney’s China visit. The convincing video – which has been viewed over 180,000 times – is a reminder of how easily AI can be used in interference and influence campaigns by foreign governments. What if 2026 is the year we can’t tell what’s real and what’s not?
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