The Debate

Is it down to the Digital Age? Not only has the world become a smaller place but now, more and more power’s concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Elon Musk’s offer to buy the parent company of ChatGPT from Sam Altman’s OpenAI is the latest example of a whole new age, an age where a billionaire like Musk can also have one foot in government as he and Donald Trump arbitrarily purge the federal payroll.

Altman, who swiftly rejected Musk’s offer is here in Paris for the AI summit co-hosted by France and India. Are Silicon Valley tech titans to be courted or combatted at the dawn of an almighty scramble for the planet’s data and resources? Is it a battle for market share or a battle of values?

In writing global governance rules for AI, who defines what's public and what's private, what's free speech and what's censorship or stoking hate? And how much in common between those that are neither the US nor China in setting global standards that actually protect citizens rights and foster trust in these most turbulent times?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip. 

As France and India co-host an AI summit in Paris, we ask if technology has advanced too far beyond our control and that any well-intentioned bid by world leaders to forge common rules and guidelines is too little, too late?  

Right now, it’s Silicon Valley that’s got the money to draw the best and the brightest and the cheap energy to power the bigger and bigger data centres needed for AI. With a new US administration that’s ready to start a trade war with all those in its path, how does the rest of the world defend privacy, shared natural resources – including strategic minerals mined in places like China and Africa?

And what to do about a digital age that so far seems to concentrate so much power and wealth in the hands of a few? More broadly, is the technology evolving faster than humanity can process its potentials and its dangers? We'll ask our panel.

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Guillaume Gougeon and Ilayda Habip.

Does what goes for Greenland and Gaza also go for Ukraine? With the third anniversary of Russia's all-out invasion approaching and Kyiv on the back foot, allies are scrambling to figure out the "art of the deal" power plays of a US president they thought they already knew. Do you placate or push back when dealing with Donald Trump? Ukraine's president has been showing transactional flair by vaunting his country's rare minerals in exchange for protection from Vladimir Putin. Zelensky is now openly contemplating what Trump wants: direct negotiations with Moscow. We review terms and conditions and – on the day that France delivered its first Mirage jets to Kyiv – the degree of volatility that the coming weeks and months may bring for Ukraine and for a Europe that's still divided over whether to wean itself off its reliance on the United States for its own security.

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

Donald Trump has told the world in the company of a beaming Binyamin Netanyahu that "the US will take over the Gaza Strip". Should we take at face value what he's selling as a grand development scheme and what critics denounce as a quixotic pipe dream that can only lead to the ethnic cleansing of the two million Palestinians who live in Gaza? 

How does one rebuild Gaza after destruction on a biblical scale? In the aftermath of past wars, Gulf states footed much of the bill. The money went to housing, but was also sometimes diverted by Hamas. We gauge regional reactions after Tuesday night's bombshell announcement out of Washington. 

And where in the short term does the promise of a US takeover leave the current ceasefire deal? Did Trump just torpedo his administration's own efforts? What's the next surprise going to be?

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Guillaume Gougeon and Ilayda Habip.

One might assume that the new president of the United States has a pretty full in-tray. So at first glance, it was a bit of a surprise to hear Donald Trump lash out at South Africa, threatening to cut aid over its 2023 Employment Equity Act. There's obvious suspicion over who did the whispering in Trump's ear. South African-born Elon Musk has been locking horns with the ANC-led government of Cyril Ramaphosa over its refusal to sign onto SpaceX founder's Starlink broadband via satellite system. Musk calls post-Apartheid laws on Black empowerment "openly racist". Who wins this showdown? More broadly, are tech titans now dictating US foreign policy? How much power do they wield? And as the developing world goes online, who controls the personal information of citizens who log on?

Watch more'US driving South Africa and other Global South, non-aligned countries into the arms of China'

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

Forget soft power. It's all about hard bargains. Donald Trump is making good on his campaign promise of tariffs and is starting with his closest neighbours. We ask if it's all a big made-for-reality-TV drama that ends at the negotiating table. He has already hit pause on tariffs for Mexico. How much has the world's most powerful nation decided to throw its weight around? We gauge reactions.

Trump turned heads at his inauguration when he referenced William McKinley, the tariff-loving turn-of-the-20th century predecessor to Theodore Roosevelt, who tested the powers of the presidency and went to war with Spain to assert dominance over the Americas and the South Pacific.

On that score, Trump's threats to annex Panama seem to be yielding results, with the Central American nation telling his secretary of state that it's ready to allow Panama's participation in China's Belt and Road infrastructure initiative to expire. Will it be enough to quell talk of land grabs?

Editor's note: Since this programme aired, the US has also agreed to pause tariffs on Canadian imports. 

Produced by Théophile Vareille, Rebecca Gnignati and Ilayda Habip. 

For exiled Syrians, this is their Berlin Wall moment—the doors to a homeland they thought they'd never see again are suddenly swinging open. The heady days following December 8 and the fall of Assad's seemingly immovable regime have brought an unexpected Christmas gift: a return to Damascus. But as the initial euphoria fades, clear-eyed Syrians know better than to declare "and they all lived happily ever after". The lessons of the Arab Spring loom large, and the challenges ahead are daunting. How to navigate a landscape shaped by heavily armed factions: sometimes allies, sometimes rivals?

What to do with thousands of Syrian civil servants and state security employees left unpaid since Assad’s fall?

And as the international community moves to lift sanctions, the bigger question remains: how to channel money and efforts toward rebuilding a Syria that is not just revived, but reimagined?

Produced by François Picard, Théophile Vareille, Guillaume Gougeon and Ilayda Habip.

On his first full day back in power, US President Donald Trump trumpeted a $500 billion plan to build giant data centres for artificial intelligence. The photo op put the rest of the world on notice: the billionaire tech bros of Silicon Valley reign supreme, with the full weight of the White House behind them. Fast forward to Monday and the record $590 billion drop in the market value of US chipmaker Nvidia. Spooking the markets is the announcement that a Chinese startup can operate its latest AI model 18 times cheaper than Sam Altman's GPT-4. Is DeepSeek for real? Why the sudden surprise? If it upends America's dominance of artificial intelligence, does that mean a democratisation of global information systems or a showdown between superpowers that ultimately decides who rules the world?

Produced by François Picard, Théophile Vareille, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

Some 50 former inmates of the largest of the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau have made the trip to Poland for the 80th anniversary of the camp's liberation. How to process the collective folly of the industrial-scale mass extermination of 1 million Jews, along with 100,000 others, in the space of a few short years? The Holocaust shattered the belief that technology could only be synonymous with progress and on that score, the gas chambers serve as a cautionary tale.

How do citizens and nations remember the Holocaust in 2025? From the former Soviets whose forefathers liberated the camps, to nations at the other end of the globe untouched by World War II, what's the lesson?

The words "never again" ring hollow in today's world. An all-too-long list of genocides have unfolded since. How, then, to talk about it?

Produced by François Picard, Théophile Vareille, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

With public coffers depleted and an ageing population putting pressure on social safety nets, how can Europe mobilise the financial resources necessary to meet its triple goals of a decarbonised economy, effective defence and technological competitiveness? FRANCE 24's Charles Pellegrin puts the question to his panel of guests at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The EU's objectives are threefold:

• Completing the transition to a fully decarbonised economy in the face of global warming;
• Guaranteeing self-reliance in security in the face of Russian expansionism and US isolationism;
• Boosting European competitiveness in the tech sector to be able to fully rival the United States and China.

The cost of these goals was outlined in Mario Draghi's competitiveness report in September 2024: a whopping €800 billion. Achieving them would be no mean feat.

Watch moreCan Europe get its industrial groove back?

But public coffers are depleted and demographic decline is adding pressure on social safety nets. Capital and banking markets are shallow and fragmented. Yet on the other hand, private savings are at high levels.

So what can Europe do? Our panelists give us their take.

Read moreFull coverage of the World Economic Forum