From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker, from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

I'm delighted to joining us. If you're not already a subscriber, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcast and leave us a nice review, if you would.

This week,

the perilous state of the world. Could we already be in the early stages of a great power conflict on multiple fronts? Just like previous world wars, with China pondering military support

for Russia's war in Ukraine, another US intelligence agency concluding that the coronavirus

did start by leaking

out of a Wuhan lab, and heightened tensions over China's surveillance operations over the US,

relations between Washington and Beijing are deteriorating rapidly. All this, as China steadily

escalates its threats to recapture the island of Taiwan. Meanwhile, we had reports this week

that Moscow is offering Iran help

on its missile program in exchange for Iranian weapons for Russian forces in Ukraine. This is the CIA

director warned that Tehran's nuclear program is advancing at a, quote, worrisome pace. So do we now

confront the reality of a new axis of evil, perhaps, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran. Does the US have the strategic

capacity and readiness to deal with what looks like, a widening confrontation? I'm pleased to be

speaking about all this and more this week with my guest Ian Bremner, founder and president of Eurasia Group,

a geopolitical risk research and consulting firm. Ian's a widely read and followed commentator on

global politics and strategy. He's held positions at New York University, Columbia University, and the Asia Society, among others. He's the author of several books, including every nation for itself, winners and losers in a G-Zero world. That G-Zero world is a concept that Ian identified to explain a global context in which there's no dominant superpower. And Ian Bremmer joins me now. Ian, thanks very much for joining Free Expression. Very happy to be with you. Lots to talk about, lots of things happening in the world of geopolitics. Let's start with China. A lot of information coming out about China in the last week or so. And let's start with this journal report that we had earlier in the week about the US Energy Department concluding with a, must be said, a low level of confidence that the COVID virus did indeed leak from the Wuhan lab.

Now, they joined the FBI in concluding that, but there are several other agencies that think

it did not come from a lab. And in fact, came from the wet market and other intelligence

agencies are undecided. So this doesn't dramatically change the story. But

what does it mean if there is now at least a rising serious possibility that in the US intelligence

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