How Singapore navigates a fragmented world

Tharman frames the moment as radical uncertainty, not a transition to multipolarity. The world where one dominant power oversaw security and open markets is gone, and nothing has replaced it. He calls on countries large and small to stop waiting and start building rules that respect sovereignty while addressing shared problems, through coalitions of the willing rather than a restored old order.

On great-power rivalry, Tharman believes the US and China can stay intense rivals in the economic sphere and even in AI while exercising restraint elsewhere. The clearest opening is ruling out AI-driven nuclear warfare — the one issue both sides have spoken on jointly. He stresses that there is no single AI race: foundational research, healthcare and robotics applications, and global standards are separate contests, and that should push both sides toward a framework where competition coexists with collaboration in drug discovery and other shared-benefit areas.

Singapore, because it is small and open, will feel AI's impact faster than most countries. The challenge is distributing the productivity gains across the whole workforce, which requires active public-private partnership and continuous skills training. Singapore's economic strategy has always been ecosystem-building with leading firms — not government versus private enterprise — so workers share in the prosperity.

Caption language: en · Fetched: 2026-05-02

The US and China are absolutely critical and they're critical both in areas of traditional security concerns. They're critical when it comes to uh nuclear and they're critical when it comes to security from uh AIdriven warfare. [music] [music] Hello and welcome to GZero World. I'm Ian Bremer and I'm coming to you from Davos, Switzerland, where I've been meeting with heads of state and business leaders and all the other totally normal people who gather here each year at the World Economic Forum. And today's conversation is with one of the most interesting leaders I ran into this week, Singapore's President Tharman Shanmugaratnam. Because if it was geography that made this southeast [music] trade hub rich, it's geopolitics that will determine its fate in the 21st century. And right now, things are a little awkward.

Singapore is a close friend and security partner of the United States, but its economy is also heavily dependent on China. And for a small country at the center of global trade, managing that tension is a matter of survival. And yet, Singapore has continued to thrive as a hub for finance and technology and cutting edge AI, all under a famously strict governing model. Oh, and the food is amazing. I talk about all of that and more, though maybe not the food, with Singapore's president. But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on. >> Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologess, and by Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional [music] funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Coup and Patricia Euan, [music] committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, and >> [music] [music] >> There's nothing Singaporeans hate more than a mess. Littering can cost you up to $1,500. Chewing gum is tightly restricted to medical, yes, medical use. No, I don't know what that means. Even failing to flush a public toilet can earn you a fine. It's all part of a system that treats cleanliness not as a suggestion, but as a civic obligation. And it's a lesson that made global headlines back in the 1990s when one American teenager found himself on the wrong side of a bamboo cane for vandalizing some parked cars. Hit it weird out. >> Once there was this kid who [singing and music] took a trip to Singapore and brought along his spray painting.

When he [music] finally [singing] came back, he had cane marks [music and singing] all over his bottom. But some messes are harder to clean up than others. And today, Singapore finds itself mired in a geopolitical muddle between its two most important partners. On the one side, a United States hellbent on upending decades of globalization with trade wars [music] and tariffs. And on the other, a rising China only too happy to reshape the global order in its own image. But I'm getting ahead of myself because Singapore, you have to first understand, is a bit of a miracle. Long before the skyscrapers and the sovereign wealth funds, geography determined Singapore's destiny.

The small island nation sits on the confluence of the strategically vital Mala Straight and South China Sea, and it has served as a vital trading post since as early as the 13th century. [music] When the Suez Canal opened back in 1869, Singapore became the key refueling stop, the key warehouse, and the key economic broker between east and west. And yet, Singapore's current wealth was far from certain. For much of its modern history, it was a small colonial outpost ruled by Britain, then brutally occupied by Japan during the Second World War. When it became independent in 1965, the ethnically divided and resource scarce country [music] was poorer by per person GDP than South Africa or Jordan. But today, Singapore's per capita wealth is among the highest in the world, beating out the United States, Hong Kong, and Britain.

Much of this success was thanks to its first prime minister and longtime leader, Lie Kuan Yu, who pushed for radical openness to global trade and foreign investment, especially from the United States, also supported multinational corporations. He paired this economic openness abroad with a highly controlled political system at home, establishing a soft authoritarian rule under a dominant party that persists to this day as a socioeconomic bargain that has mostly paid off for its 6 million citizens. Because as the world has gotten richer, so too has Singapore. But in recent years, that rising tide has turned choppy. Here's Singapore's president speaking at the IMF late last year. Multilateralism and the belief in the mutuality of nations is at its weakest in 80 years.

At the very stage when it is needed most in an era of increasing economic uncertainty and geopolitical competition, smaller nations find themselves being forced to pick sides. But for a country like Singapore, whose very existence depends on not picking sides, that's a real problem. Joining me to talk about how Singapore is navigating a global order of rising nationalism and plummeting trust is its president you heard from a moment ago Thurman Shanmuguratnam. Here's our conversation. >> President Tharman Shanatnam, it's so nice to see you. >> Wonderful to see you again. >> This is not our first rodeo here and but it does feel like it's the most uncertain, the most disruptive. Uh would you agree with that?

Well, I think by any objective assessment, uh this is a moment in global history where all the old varities are now past us and uh we don't know where we're heading to. In other words, this is not a transition to some new world order. It's certainly not a transition to multipolarity, a term that's bandied about, but suggests some some semblance of balance and some semblance of shared responsibility. We're not anywhere close to that. All we have is that we're no longer in a world where a single dominant power oversaw global security, open global markets and global public goods. We're no longer in that world and we don't know what replaces it. What we do have very salient is uncertainty, radical uncertainty. We have fluidity in international affairs, transactions occurring by the day and we keep waiting for the next hot spot.

So that's where we're at. But it means the task for countries large, medium and small is not to sit back and be intimidated. Not to be despirited, but to now construct a decent world order where you have a framework of rules that still respect sovereignty, that allows us to address the common issues that all countries are interested in, are self-interested in. In other words, they are major issues which are not merely global issues. not merely issues that attract globalists but attract every country in its own interests and our ability to collaborate on those issues is going to be critical to satisfy the well-being of our own people.

So, we've got to construct that new world order or I should say we've got to construct multiple alliances of the willing, coalitions of the willing that enable us to address these issues even if we're not going anywhere close to that old world order that we knew. Now I agree with everything you just said in the sense that um we have enormous uncertainty that um so many countries so many people around the world want something that feels like a rules-based order and it needs to be constructed essentially. But of course at the same time we have the United States which is driving the disruption not just by saying it doesn't want to play the global leadership role but actually sort of undermining a lot of the rules that otherwise a country like Singapore would like.

Whether it's the geopolitical actions in Venezuela or Greenland or it's the economic actions in terms of the tariffs and the interventions. China's been doing that maybe not as suddenly but we've seen that in the South China Sea we've seen it in Taiwan we've also seen it in terms of state capitalism so h how do add that add that to your equation what what the Americans and the Chinese are doing >> right >> well the vast majority of countries partly as a consequence of the 30 years of multilateralism that we've had the vast majority of countries believe in the international rule of more believe in open markets and are now wanting to do more to liberalize their own markets and strike up alliances and believe that there's something in climate change and global health and the new risk of AI where cooperation will leave us all better off.

The vast majority of countries believe in that and they are moving. They're moving and this may be a >> So you're saying the vast majority but not the most powerful. That that's the bit that I'm not hearing. >> That is true for now. Yes. >> And I'll come back to that because it may be it may not be a permanent state of affairs. >> The vast majority also now and this may be a blessing coming out of the current state of disorder are now moving a lot faster to develop new alliances, new coalitions in ways that I would not have expected 5 years ago.

There's so much inertia in the system u not just bureaucratic inertia but political inertia and that's now dissipating precisely because of the urgency of the moment precisely because everyone is now having to sit up and realize that we have to exercise agency and we exercise agency among small countries medium-sized countries and some large countries. Most of the largest problems in the world no longer require leadership by a single dominant power, but they require enough of a solid core of countries comprising enough of world trade, enough of world carbon emissions, enough of world expertise and technological innovation so as to be able to provide a new foundation for some form of multilateralism. that will no longer be singular, will probably be multiple and organized by domain.

>> So you'd surely put the EU Merkasaur deal in that category. >> It's a good example because how long were they working on it? >> Decades. >> Decades. Probably 30 years. It got going very quickly. >> After April the 2nd, >> after liberation day, >> um the CPTP is now talking to the EU. Very serious conversations. It'll take some time, but there serious workmanlike conversations.

uh ASEAN is is um moving faster and ASEAN's also getting involved in discussions of CPTP and that's in trade but in other areas too in global health on everything to do with the climate and increasingly and this is the the area where we are least prepared developing some form of global governance around AI so as to maximize and unleash the gains that its potential that it's potentially capable of giving countries including developing countries whilst guarding against its worst risks is going to be critical. >> Yeah, I want to get to that. But before we get to AI, you you mentioned we've got these areas, you mentioned number of them, compelling areas where we're seeing all sorts of additional trade rules of the road and economic rules of the road.

um because there are lots of countries that together are meaningful in being able to put to construct that, >> right? >> If I look at security, >> I see much less of that, >> right? >> Because the global economy looks like a global order that has a whole bunch of countries that are really relevant, >> right? >> Um I don't see that in the security space. Are you necessarily much more pessimistic in the ability to create governance and collective security in that environment given the the consolidation of power around a much smaller number of countries that aren't necessarily as willing to hedge >> the way that you are suggesting? >> I think the key will be US and China. Um Europe has already shifted its posture on security as a matter of necessity >> towards Ukraine. Uh Ukraine as well as some other potential new threats.

>> Uh the US and China are absolutely critical and they're critical both in u areas of traditional security concerns. Uh they're critical when it comes to uh nuclear and they're critical when it comes to security from uh AIdriven warfare. I think it is possible for the US and China to come to some form of understanding uh where they will continue to be rivalous continue to be uh intense rivals in the economic sphere even in AI whilst exercising restraint in others and even collaborating um in some fields because it'll be in their common interests. Uh most obviously to take the example you've given, both the US and China want to rule out AIdriven nuclear warfare. >> The one area that they've actually spoken together on AI. >> That's right. >> Yeah. >> They can also move further in AI uh to rule out some of its worst dangers.

Um I think it is um it involves a shift in mindset both amongst the leading private sector players as well as uh governments around thinking about who's going to win the AI race. There is no one AI race. There's several AI races. There's foundational research. there's implementation and implementation in a whole set of different domains from uh healthcare to robotics and factories to many other areas. Uh there's about standards and the dis dissemination of standards globally which then get countries to buy into your AI stack versus someone else's. There's a whole set of races and it is most unlikely that either the US or China uh is going to win an AI race and that that lean should lean us towards thinking about a framework in which they continue to compete but they actually find ways in which you can get win-win.

You can get collaboration in AI that strengthens its productivity potential that spreads the solutions that are being used in some areas whether it's drug discovery or some other areas spreads them as widely as possible at a low cost rather than develop AI stacks that are separate from each other. It's a classic case of the benefits of interdependence but now magnified uh quite greatly by a era of AI. So do you think that on AI governance and collaboration is the biggest challenge right now that it's just too fast moving? Is the biggest challenge that um the companies are making so much money and they've captured the regulatory process that the the governments are incapable of even starting to consider it?

Is it is it the lack of trust between the US and China that's disentangled the researchers from talking to each other, working for each other? where how do you order the challenges because I I completely agree with you that it's the hardest area right now that's most essential to get cooperation. >> I think you summarized it well. Um it is quite different uh from the remarkable packs that were arrived at during the cold war between the US and the Soviet Union. Yeah, it's quite different from reaching nuclear arms control. First, because it's not being developed or monopolized by states, but by the private sector, it's moving very fast, much faster than states are capable of comprehending.

But I think it's and also the fact that whilst you can count nuclear warheads uh it's much more difficult to count algorithms and the manyfold u effects of algorithms. But I think if we are realistic about how we go about this if we are realistic in wanting to control the worst to guard against the worst that AI could bring um something can be achieved. We gave the example of of nuclear war and making sure that AI is not in control, right? >> But in many many other areas, the risks of runaway misinformation, uh the the risks of um cyber warfare, not I don't mean in the security domain, but in many other uh areas, there's common interests. Um there's enough common interest to rule out the worst while you compete over the best.

And there's enough common interest also in disseminating as widely as possible the productivity improvements that come from AI so that the market grows for all the dominant powers in AI. And I would just say that whilst the US and China are critical in this u small countries and medium-sized countries are part of the game. They've got to be at the table because sometimes it's the most vulnerable countries that are the first to want to institute guardrails and the major powers eventually come on board. So Thurman, one of my favorite quotes is from William Gibson, the author says, "The future's already here, but it's not evenly distributed. " We talk about AI. Uh Singapore has been one of the most technologyforward countries in the world.

advanced industrial economy six million peopleish 60% diffusion of AI how do we if we look at Singapore as near future >> in that regard how do you experience AI differently in your country than a lot of other countries do what are you already seeing happening in the way the government works and the way society functions >> right well every uh city or economy or firm that's more exposed opposed to AI uh is going to face a challenge. Uh we will face the challenge faster than some countries which you know don't have the basic digital infrastructure which is going to be a problem for them because they're not going to be able to take advantage of AI as much but we face the challenge quicker.

Our advantage however is that we've always faced the challenge faster than other countries because we are small we are very open and we rely on technology as a source of competitiveness. So we look at AI like every other form of productivity improvement as a plus and the real challenge is that we want that plus to be distributed up and down the workforce. That is going to be a challenge everywhere in the world and it's not obvious that we're going to succeed. It requires very active public private partnership.

We always knew that when we talked about skills upgrading, skills, continuous skills training, but it's going to be much more of a priority in future and it's going to be more important than ever before because I think if you think about about this challenge not as a a threat from a new technology, but if you think about it as a challenge of how to how do you maximize human capital, how do you achieve mass flourishing of a society? It's actually something on the supply side. is about something you do to build up people's capabilities. If you build up people's capabilities, something works out. Something works out. It works out for them and it works out for your whole economy. You manage to move on to a new phase of competitiveness.

So focus on capabilities even if you don't go about it by way of traditional industrial policy trying to get an exact matching of demand and supply uh and and thinking you can predict the future. If we look forward in 5 years, is the Singaporean government going to be as powerful in Singapore or are private sector companies going to be a lot more influential? >> Well, you know, our whole model of economic policy in Singapore was quite different from the traditional model in Northeast Asia, for instance. It was always a model of watching the market, following the market and allowing the market to work better and faster.

So a whole industrial strategy, a whole economic strategy consisted of talking to leading companies local and foreign, finding out what their plans were for the future and then saying let's try and create an ecosystem to make this happen faster and makes make sure that workers can benefit. So we were always involved in ecosystem building. That's what the governor government was about. It was never about government versus private enterprise. It is about creating ecosystems where private enterprise can do well for itself but most importantly where our people can be part of the prosperity. >> President Thurman Shan, it's always good to see you. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Cheers. [music] >> That's our show this week.

Come back next week and if you like what you've seen, or even if you don't, but you want to create your own economically vibrant but politically [music] restricted city-state, you have come to the right place. Sign up for our most excellent newsletter. It's called GZERO Daily. Funding for GZERO World is [music] provided by our lead sponsor, Prologess, and by Cox, a family [music] of businesses. Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Coup and Patricia Euan, committed to bridging [music] cultural differences in our communities, and