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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Trump Threatens To Unleash "Hell" If No Deal By 8PM Tomorrow; New Details About Rescue Of U.S. Airman Inside Iran; Artemis II To Earth: "We Love You From The Moon"; Astronauts Name Moon's Crater For Commander Wiseman's Wife; Trump Says Iranian People "Willing To Suffer" For Their Freedom; The New Yorker Looks At Allegations That OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Has A Pattern Of Lying; Artemis II Crew Breaks Space Travel Record In Historic Moon Flyby. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired April 06, 2026 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE DUKE, NASA ASTRONAUT WHO LANDED ON THE MOON IN 1972: Young and I landed on the moon in 1972 in the lunar module we named, Orion. I'm glad to see a different kind of Orion helping return humans to the moon as America charts the course to the lunar surface. Below you on the moon is a photo of my family. I pray it reminds you that we in America and all of the world are cheering you on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Charlie Duke will be our guest tomorrow. AC360 starts now.
[20:00:42]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Good evening from the newsroom tonight as the crew of Artemis II has just travelled further from earth than any humans ever have and they've just seen places on the moon that no one has seen in person before. We're going to check in on their historic mission later in the broadcast.
We begin, though, back here on earth with the threatened deadline, the President of the United States gave Iran yesterday, now exactly 24 hours away. Today, he repeated the threat, saying the Air Force will start bombing targets vital to Iran and also to the tens of millions of civilians who live there.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We're giving them until tomorrow, 8:00 Eastern Time. And after that, they're going to have no bridges, they're going to have no power plants, stone ages, yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Make a deal with the U.S. to end the war, he said, or the entire nation population, about 93 million, goes back to the stone ages. Now, it's a thread that one of our guests tonight, former Army Judge Advocate General Margaret Donovan, singled out today in a piece for the website "Just Security," writing "... such rhetorical statements, if followed through, would amount to the most serious war crimes."
The President was also asked today if there's anything he would not bomb?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: You said that very little is off limits in Iran as far as targeting, including power plants, bridges, you've mentioned those --
TRUMP: Very little is off limits.
REPORTER: Are there certain kinds of civilian targets, though, I'm thinking --
TRUMP: I don't want to tell you that. I don't want to tell you that. We have a plan because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12:00 tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. I mean, complete demolition by 12:00, and it will happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: This latest threat, we'll call it the stone ages threat was first made yesterday on social media early Sunday morning, Easter Sunday.
Now, if you have a child in the room, you might want to mute the sound for a few seconds because I'm going to read to you exactly what the President posted on Easter Sunday. Our apologies for the language. It is how the President of the United States now speaks. "Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open the fucking Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell, just watch, praise be to Allah".
So, that was the new threat the President issued Sunday, which is to expire tomorrow night at this hour? Now, it actually replaces the previous threat the President made on March 26th, which replaced the threat he made before that, on March 23rd, which replaced the threat he made on March 21st.
Now, the March 21st one had a 48-hour deadline. I'm going to read you that one. "If Iran doesn't fully open without threat, the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various power plants, starting with the biggest one first."
Now he backed down from that threat two days later, on the 23rd, with the five-day extension, then the ten-day extension, and now two days.
His Easter insult calling the regime in Iran crazy bastards isn't surprising, but it's also not consistent with other recent statements he's made on the regime, like the one he made today. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You know, we got regime change. We do; we're dealing with a much different than before. We're dealing with different people. They're smarter, I think they're sharper and far less radical.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Allegedly now far less radical, also crazy bastards and the President hasn't been exactly straight on reopening the Strait. He now says it's important enough to bomb civilian infrastructure to the stone age. Yet just last Wednesday, he was saying this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won't be taking any in the future. We don't need it. The countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: So, we don't need it. But we also need to bomb Iran back to the stone ages if Iran does not reopen it. Then again, the President today also suggested we might want it to extract tribute from the rest of the shipping world.
[20:05:03]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Mr. President, are you allowed to or are you willing to end this conflict with Iran charging tolls for passage through the Strait?
TRUMP: Us charging tolls?
REPORTER: Iran.
TRUMP: What about us charging tolls?
REPORTER: Is that something you're considering?
TRUMP: I'd rather do that than let them have money. Why shouldn't we? Were the winner. We won. Okay? They are militarily defeated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, that's another claim he's been making since early on in the fighting, saying we won, while also saying the war is not over. Before his briefing today, the President and First Lady took part in the annual Easter Egg Roll, where he and she both weighed in on the war and where he with someone in a bunny suit just steps away, suggested the Iranian people whom he's threatening to bomb back to the stone ages want the bombing to continue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REPORTER: Madam First Lady, can you tell us your message to children who find themselves in a war zone.
MELANIA TRUMP, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Well, all of this is happening for their future. So, they will be safe in years to come.
TRUMP: We are fighting for children that are now in a war zone. We're keeping them as safe as we can possibly keep them. But were fighting for their parents, their grandparents. We're fighting for them. We're fighting for their future. And I will tell you, it was given to me loud and clear. The time the Iranian people are the most unhappy. When you hear bombs all over is when those bombs stop.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: The President had more to say alongside the Easter Bunny, and with hundreds of kids watching, including about the rescue of that airman yesterday, which we'll talk about more shortly.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They said normally when you're in very hostile territory and I don't think it gets much more hostile than Iran, they're capable fighters. They're very tough people, and there are others like that. You don't mind when the enemy is weak, but that enemy is strong, not so strong like they were about a month ago, I can tell you. In fact, right now they're not too strong at all in my opinion. But were soon going to find out, aren't we?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Want to get perspective now from retired Army Lieutenant General Karen Gibson and former JAG lawyer and combat veteran Margaret Donovan. General Gibson, do you see a reason for Iran to make a deal and open the Strait of Hormuz before the President's deadline tomorrow? And if not, how seriously do you take his threat to destroy their infrastructure?
KAREN GIBSON, FORMER DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE FOR U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: Yes, well, that's a great question, Anderson. And I think it's really the question of the day.
It's not yet in Iran's interest to make that kind of deal. However, given that their control of the straits is the principal leverage that they have for any kind of negotiation. And as I think we talked about last week, their strategy is to survive, to prevent total surrender, to preserve the Islamic regime. And to do that, they have to hang on to the straits, it is their principal leverage.
In terms of the President's threats, I think they have demonstrated an ability to absorb strikes at home while still exacting a cost on the rest of the world. And I think that's what those who make these kinds of decisions in Iran are prepared to do for at least several more weeks. COOPER: Margaret, as a former military lawyer, we quoted your piece earlier in the program. You said that there's no valid justification to destroy bridges and power plants -- under no scenario whatsoever?
MARGARET DONOVAN, FORMER JAG LAWYER AND COMBAT VETERAN: Not under no scenario.
COOPER: Well, you're talking about the rules of war.
DONOVAN: Yes, under the law of war. So, I think there's a lot of former military lawyers and legal scholars who have been very hesitant to say any bombing of civilian infrastructure is a war crime, because there are instances where you can do it. But the President's rhetoric this weekend for me, and I think for many others, changed our opinion on that, because what he's saying is basically every power plant in the country, every bridge in the country is gone, because I say so.
Typically, when you take out those types of targets, you're providing an individualized analysis to each target and how it may affect the fight. We're not seeing that here. We're seeing basically a direct threat to something that we know is going to be catastrophic to civilians. And as you pointed out a few moments ago, it doesn't seem like it's necessary because we've either defeated Iran militarily or we don't actually need to open the Strait of Hormuz.
And so, when you do what's called a proportionality analysis under a targeting a law of armed conflict sort of thought process, you would probably fail that target.
COOPER: So, you're saying because the President's statement saying that we've already won, they are defeated. There's been a lot of talk about their air defenses are completely destroyed, though clearly, they are able to shoot down some aircraft. But the President's own statements seem to contradict and indicate that it would be a violation of the law.
DONOVAN: Yes, I think it undercuts any justification. The things that he has said in the public record that has been made around that. And you should also remember that we have a Secretary of Defense who has publicly stated no quarter, no mercy. He has committed to not following what he calls our stupid rules of engagement.
So, if there is, for example, a later congressional investigation or even a criminal investigation, if there are suspected war crimes that happen here, everything that's been part of the public record is going to be part of that investigation, and commanders are going to be looked at as understanding what the public context was.
And so, I think on one hand, you know, I think soldiers are pretty used to hearing politicians say sort of nutty things, but this is the Commander-in-Chief that were talking about. So, I think you have to look at it a little bit differently.
COOPER: General Gibson, what would you expect or hope the President's military advisers are telling him about the threat to destroy Iran's power plants and bridges. [20:10:30]
GIBSON: So, I think Margaret's done a great job of laying out the principles that we apply that relate to the law of armed conflict, specifically discrimination, where you're not bombing a strictly civilian target, that it has to also have a military aspect to it. And another would be proportionality that you're not using more munitions than necessary to destroy something and then protection that you're doing your best to minimize collateral damage and human suffering in achieving that military objective.
I can tell you, sadly, I've been part of operations where we did destroy many bridges in in liberating the city of Mosul. I think we destroyed every bridge in that city because it was deemed militarily necessary to defeat ISIS once they were isolated on one side of the river. So, a military lawyer may in fact, as Margaret has said, looking individually at each target, identify a rationale, a military purpose for doing that.
Every bridge in the country I think we'd have to look at, you know, what size are we talking about here? That's a lot of munitions. That's a lot of strikes. So, you know, any politician or government representative, whether Iranian or American, I don't take at face value every word that I hear because it is often hyperbole intended to shape opinion. It is trying to calm markets or influence investigations. It's hard for me to imagine our military destroying every bridge and power plant in Iran.
COOPER: Margaret, how much discretion does a targeter or someone actually conducting the war have in this situation?
DONOVAN: So, a target would be cleared by something called the Target Engagement Authority. So that would be basically the highest person on the chain of command who's in charge of an operation. It could be the CENTCOM commander for certain targets. It could be the President of the United States or the secretary of defense.
Oftentimes, when you're in these sorts of fast paced combat scenarios, you're not going to have a target engagement authority that high. You need it lower just to be effective while you're sort of going through the fight.
But in these in this case, you know, I don't have access to the rules of engagement. I don't know any classified rules that go into this, but it very well could be that the President is the target engagement authority or the Secretary of Defense's.
And so, in that case, the discretion is left up to the individual soldiers and officers really higher on the chain of command to determine whether or not what they're receiving is a lawful order.
COOPER: Margaret Donovan, thank you, General Gibson, as well, appreciate it.
Coming up next, far more inspiring news from the war zone, the safe extraction of the second crew member from that downed American F-15, his remarkable story of survival, the lengths his fellow servicemen and women went to get him out of enemy territory. It's a remarkable story.
And later, a former astronaut on Artemis II history making journey around the moon and into the record books.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ASTRONAUT: We surpassed the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth. We do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[20:18:02]
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COOPER: You hear that, small arms fire Iranians on Friday trying unsuccessfully to shoot down American helicopters with small arms fire. As that was happening, an American airman, one of two from a downed F-15E Strike Eagle was trying to evade capture. He was injured on his own in mountainous terrain with a bounty on his head.
In other words, he had more to overcome than most of us ever will, including climbing a mountain while hurt. CNN's Jim Sciutto has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN, CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The jet was from the 48th Fighter Wing out of Royal Air Force Lakenheath Base in England, according to a source briefed on the executive summary of the search and rescue operation.
U.S. search and rescue teams extracted one of the airmen shortly after the crash, but the fate of the second colonel remained uncertain for a harrowing 24 hours, he evaded Iranian forces, scaled a mountain ridge and awaited rescue.
PETE HEGSETH, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: When he was finally able to activate his emergency transponder, his first message was simple, and it was powerful. He sent a message, "God is good."
ADM. JAMES STAVRIDIS (RET), CNN SENIOR MILITARY ANALYST: This is a full colonel. So, this is somebody who's, you know, 45 plus years old, probably went to SEER school a long time ago who climbed 7,000 feet, uses his transponder, does it all on a broken ankle. I can't wait to see this guy.
SCIUTTO: Due to the terrain and hostile Iranian forces in hot pursuit, senior officials describe the operation as one of the most challenging combat search and rescue missions. The CIA helped deploy a campaign of misdirection to confuse Iranians over the airman's location and condition. JOHN RATCLIFFE, CIA DIRECTOR: We deployed both human assets and exquisite technologies that no other Intelligence Service in the world possesses to a daunting challenge comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.
SCIUTTO: CNN has learned that the elite Army, Delta Force and Navy Seal Team 6 were among the hundreds of special operators and intelligence personnel involved in the mission. The President said the massive undertaking involved 155 aircraft including four bombers, 64 fighters and 48 refueling tankers.
Because of the Iranian sand at the landing site, several of the aircraft could not take off again and had to be destroyed.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[20:20:30]
COOPER: That's Jim Sciutto reporting from Tel Aviv.
My next guest knows what it's like to attempt to evade forces in enemy territory. Former U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer and Apache Longbow Pilot Ron Young, Jr. were taken as a prisoner of war in Iraq after his helicopter crashed during the first days of the 2003 invasion. He joins me now along with CNN National Security analyst Alex Plitsas. Appreciate both of you being with us.
Alex, I just want to start with you. It is tough to overstate the extraordinary skill and bravery of not only the airmen who were shot down, but the troops who were involved in this rescue.
ALEX PLITSAS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I mean, this will go down as probably one of the most historic rescue operations in U.S. Special Operations history.
In 46 years after Operation Eagle Claw failed in the deserts of Iran, trying to rescue the hostages, largely because there was no interoperability among Special Operations Forces, poor equipment, poor training at that point, and poor interagency coordination.
The command was built to solve those problems and now, given another opportunity 46 years later, we see the success.
COOPER: It's amazing. How crucial do you think, Alex, was the deception campaign by the CIA?
PLITSAS: I think it was certainly helpful, we'll call it a shaping operation. So, it's meant obviously, it was as Jim stated correctly, to misdirect the adversarial forces that were in the area and some of the civilians. So, that was in combination with some physical actions as well.
So, they also bombed roads leading up to it to physically prevent people from getting there. They jammed or destroyed command and control structures. There was a massive ordnance that were dropped by B-2s on IRGC command structures at the same time. So, a combination of all of those together led to a successful outcome.
COOPER: Ron, you went through an incredible experience when your helicopter was shot down in Iraq in 2003. Can you just kind of walk us through a bit of what you went through, what it's like, the feeling of to be in the air on a mission, and then all of a sudden, you're down on the ground. What was that like?
RONALD YOUNG JR., FORMER U.S. PILOT SHOT DOWN IN IRAQ: Well, when you're flying, I mean, that's your skill set. That's what you're really trained for. SEER all of that accessory training, but immediately, like when you're shot down, you have to flip to a new script. That's the way I like to say it.
Your brain just flips to a new map. You start running other checklists. And so, getting on the ground, we knew that we had to get to cover like he did. He went to the mountains. We knew he had to evade. However, the difference is in a jet, you're usually, you know, tens of miles away from the aircraft that was shot down.
However, in a helicopter, you're at the scene of the crash and it's making a lot of noise. So, it didn't take long for the Iraqis to get on us. And so, it's imperative that you get away from the aircraft because that's a billboard, you know, telling the enemy exactly where you're at.
COOPER: Does the training kick in very quickly once you're on the ground? I mean, does it -- I don't know how long it was from the time you'd been trained in a scenario like this, but does that automatically just come back?
YOUNG: Yes, it was much closer to the training I was I joined the Army in 1999, went through flight school. And so, I shot down in 2003. So, it was much fresher in my mind probably than it was for him.
But immediately when you're on the ground, I mean, all the panic, all the emotion, the adrenaline, the norepinephrine surging through your system, it's amazing. And I tell people, it's like, you know, typically on a good day, I'm working with an eight-bit processor, but this was like a supercomputer and I could search everything in my mind.
And what you find yourself relying on is directly on the training and the things that you were taught, because you really don't have much of a frame of reference for the situation. And a lot of it is trying to control your physiological emotions and get back to a place where you can think more logically, more clearly, more calmly, and make decisions that will hopefully lead to a better outcome.
COOPER: It's incredible.
Alex, do you think the downing of the fighter jet, does it change the calculus? I mean, clearly, you know, some of the things that the secretary of defense and the President have said about, you know, complete control of the skies. Obviously, there are still they still have capabilities to shoot down aircraft. PLITSAS: Yes, so there's still, you know, localized assets on the ground that could potentially shoot things down. So, you have shoulder fired missiles that can hit between 5,000 to 7,500 feet. In some cases, they're SA-7 MANPADS and there are still going to be pockets of air defense systems that are in the area.
So, the chairman tried to qualify some of those statements previously, saying there was localized air supremacy. And so, as we saw here, clearly there were still assets on the ground that were able to take down the aircraft.
COOPER: Yes, Alex Plitsas, thanks very much, Ron Young, it's great to have you on, thank you so much, appreciate it. Just ahead, what a member of the House Armed Services makes of the President's threat to Iran and the direction the war is taking.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:29:12]
COOPER: Tonight, just before the Artemis II crew entered their planned communications blackout. As they passed behind the moon, Astronaut Victor Glover sent a special message out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VICTOR GLOVER, ARTEMIS II MISSION PILOT: As we prepare to go out of radio communication, we're still going to feel your love from Earth. And to all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you from the moon.
HOUSTON: "Houston copies. We'll see you on the other side."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: At this moment, having successfully ventured around the moon, the spacecraft is now beginning its long return to Earth. We'll have more on the historic mission later in the program.
Meanwhile, today, President Trump reiterated his threats to destroy crucial Iranian infrastructure if the regime does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We have a plan because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12:00 tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business burning, exploding and never to be used again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:30:22] COOPER: Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna is here. He's a member of both the Armed Services and Oversight Committees and a leading proponent of the War Powers Resolution. As you know, the President's deadline is -- this newest one, is 24 hours from now, about 23.5 hours. Do you think Iran will capitulate, will open the strait? And if not, is it wise to be setting these deadlines and keep moving them?
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): It's not wise to be setting the deadlines, and it's immoral for the President to be threatening war crimes. That's what destroying power plants are. And he's using the same language as Gallant, who was the Defense Minister for Israel, used about Palestinians. He's saying the Iranians are animals. That's what Gallant called the Palestinians.
That is not how America acts in the world. We need to end the war, and we can do it with three things. We need an immediate ceasefire, stop the bombing. We need to make sure that we give Iran an ironclad guarantee that Israel or we will not attack again and involve China and Russia in that. And then we need to look at some of these sanctions and have a diplomatic solution.
COOPER: Where does the Strait of Hormuz fall into that -- on that item list?
KHANNA: Well, that's the only way, in my view, that we get the Strait of Hormuz open. If we don't give Iran a guarantee that they're not -- they're going to be safe, they're going to think, well, Israel's saying they want to mow the lawn.
COOPER: Is it acceptable to you if Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz?
KHANNA: No. But right now, look, gas was $2.30 before the war. Gas has gone up to $4. So it's obviously not working, the war. The only way we're going to get out of this is to have some kind of diplomatic solution. And that would require us to stop the bombing and to figure out how we convince Iran that we're not going to continue to bomb them.
COOPER: So is the number one agenda item for you to get from Iran that Iran will not develop a nuclear program, or is it the Strait of Hormuz or both?
KHANNA: Right now, the number one is to open the Strait of Hormuz. The second one is that, yes, Iran should not be nuclear, but we know that they are -- they don't have the capacity to put the enriched uranium on ballistic missiles. And we know that it would be a negotiation to get the enriched uranium. The enriched uranium is underground.
The person who got the enriched uranium out was President Obama. He had 97 percent of it out. Then Donald Trump tore up the deals. But at this point, the question is just a binary choice for President Trump. Either he's going to go and have utter war destruction, collapse the global economy, commit human rights violations and war crimes, or we need a diplomatic solution to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz. COOPER: There are some who suggest, you know, that the President is playing a non-rational actor, you know, scenario. The idea that another country is concerned because they start to believe the leader of the United States is not a rational actor, you know, it's a crazy man theory.
KHANNA: Well, first of all, I don't want my President threatening war crimes and treating people like they don't have any dignity. I don't care what the international theory is. That's not how the United States of America should act.
Secondly, it hasn't worked so far. I mean, they have not opened the Strait of Hormuz. It's just led to escalation. The idea that we can, quote unquote, "bomb" them in the Stone Age or just threaten them has been ineffective. If the price of gas keeps going up, they're going to continue to destroy ships.
They are sort of fighting for their survival. And President Trump should have a deal. And Democrats then should not -- should say, OK, if he has a negotiated settlement, we appreciate that. We're not going to play politics. There's too much at stake.
If the President tomorrow said that he has announced a deal, that there are going to be some negotiations on sanctions, that there's an ironclad guarantee he won't attack, I'm not going to go out there and say, oh, President Trump, you're appeasing Iran. I'm going to say, thank you. Finally, diplomacy prevailed. We need cooler heads to prevail.
COOPER: Do you think any Republicans have come across to your way of seeing this on a war powers resolution?
KHANNA: Well, Thomas Massie and I, as you know, had it. We had Davidson with us. Several folks, Nancy Mace and others, have said that ground troops for them are the red line. I do believe if President Trump puts in ground troops, then we're going to see eight, 10 Republicans in effect.
And the other thing is, if he actually starts carte blanche bombing power plants, that that would be war crimes. And you would see some Republicans starting to speak up.
COOPER: Congressman Ro Khanna, I appreciate it. Thank you.
KHANNA: Thank you.
COOPER: Appreciate your time.
Up next, the Pentagon confirming AI is being used in the war. A new report from The New Yorker magazine asked the question, can the leader of OpenAI, Sam Altman, be trusted? I'll talk with Ronan Farrow, who's on the byline.
And more on the President shifting messages on Iran from Veteran War Journalist Scott Anderson. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:39:17]
COOPER: As the astronauts aboard Artemis II were making their historic flight near the moon today, mission commander Reid Wiseman reached out with a special message to his daughters, Ellie and Katherine, who were at mission control, putting his hands together in the shape of a heart. And the crew paused to honor Wiseman's wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.
Led by mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, they renamed one of the moon's craters, Carroll Crater.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A number of years ago, we started this journey in our close knit astronaut family and we lost a loved one. Her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie. And if you want to find this one, you look at Glushko, and it's just to the northwest of that at the same latitude as home. And it's a bright spot on the left. And we would like to call it Carroll, and you spell that C-A-R-R-O-L-L.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:40:24]
COOPER: Carroll, a bright spot on the moon. The crew shared an emotional moment as they honor the commander's wife.
We'll have more on the extraordinary Artemis II mission coming up. But back to Iran, at his news conference today, President Trump claimed that the Iranian people are willing to suffer through bombing campaigns, including the destruction of their country's infrastructure, if it would lead to the downfall of the regime and ultimately to their freedom.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We've had numerous intercepts. Please keep bombing. Bombs that are dropping near their homes. Please keep bombing. Do it. And these are people that are living where the bombs are exploding. And when we leave and we're not hitting those areas, they're saying, please come back, come back, come back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: He also said that Iranians currently live in what he called a violent and horrible world. We're joined by veteran war journalist Scott Anderson, who has reported throughout the Middle East for more than 30 years. He's the author of "King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution, A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation."
Scott, thanks so much for being here.
SCOTT ANDERSON, AUTHOR, "KINGS OF KINGS: THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION": Thank you, Anderson.
COOPER: Does it make sense to you that the President says Iranians want the U.S. to keep bombing?
ANDERSON: No, I -- no, it sounds like lunacy to me. Certainly most Iranian people at this point are not supporters of the regime. They would like regime change, but they know that this is not the way to go about doing it. There's not going to be a popular uprising in Iran. They tried that in January. 35,000, 40,000 people were slaughtered as a result. This is not going to bring about regime change in any way.
COOPER: What do you think -- I mean, Iran suffered huge losses during the Iran-Iraq war --
ANDERSON: Right.
COOPER: -- which a lot of people sort of forget about. Has Iran ever faced the kind of threat that the President -- and that this war suggests to them?
ANDERSON: No, they haven't. But I also think that, you know, what you have in Iran is -- if you compare it to Iraq for a moment, you know, the Iraqi invasion, Saddam Hussein -- there was very much a pyramid structure of the rule in Iraq. And if you got rid of Saddam Hussein, there were very few people out of vested interest in the Iraqi regime maintaining.
In Iran, by contrast, you have hundreds of thousands, millions of people who have a vested interest.
COOPER: Whether it's the Revolutionary Guard Corps or the --
ANDERSON: Basij (ph) --
COOPER: -- Basij militia?
ANDERSON: That's right. And these people have nowhere to go. You saw in Iraq, the Army actually melted away in a very -- it was the occupation that where everything went south. In the initial war, there was very little American casualties. That's going to be fundamentally different if the Americans go ashore --
COOPER: I mean, in Iraq, the Ba'ath party, which was, you know, there was the whole De-Ba'athification campaign, which, you know --
ANDERSON: Which was a disaster.
COOPER: -- it seemed like a good idea to some people at the time. Turned out to be a disaster. All those -- a lot of those people who suddenly lost access to power had access to weapons --
ANDERSON: That's right.
COOPER: -- and they became leaders of rebels and insurgencies.
ANDERSON: That's right. And if you replay that same scenario in Iran, those people are not going to lay down their weapons. They already have the weapons in hand and they use those weapons to kill 35,000 40,000 of their own people two months ago. And they will have them no matter how much the Americans take out their sophisticated weaponry and airstrikes.
COOPER: The President has talked about, you know, hitting desalination plants. You were on the program last week talking about there's already a water crisis in Iran. So knocking out desalination plants for civilian populations, it's one thing in a country where the government is, you know, responsive to the needs of its civilians.
ANDERSON: Right.
COOPER: In the Iranian regime, the government suppresses its opponents. They don't care whether a lot of people die.
ANDERSON: That's right. And if -- as Trump has threatened, if they go, you know, ahead and start knocking out desalination plants, power plants, you're going to see a catastrophic, you know, human disaster happen in Iran very, very quickly. Yes, there is an acute water shortage. They're already talking about depopulating Tehran three or four months ago because of the water shortage.
So you're going to see -- you're going to see starvation. You're going to see people dying of thirst very, very quickly if that happens.
COOPER: It seems that the President is already saying there has been regime change because there are different bodies in the seats than there were before. He says they're less radical.
ANDERSON: Right.
COOPER: Do you think there's truth in that?
ANDERSON: No, no. It's the same regime. I think the President is desperate to try to -- he talked about -- you know, this was about regime change. He talked about that from the beginning. So I think he's just changing the definition of what regime changes.
COOPER: Right.
ANDERSON: This regime is not going to agree to lay down its weapons. It's not going to surrender.
[20:45:05]
COOPER: Scott Anderson, I really appreciate your time.
ANDERSON: My pleasure.
COOPER: Thanks so much.
The U.S. is waging this war using artificial intelligence, specifically Anthropic's clawed A.I. system. According to recent Senate testimony from a Pentagon official, unconfirmed reports say it's for intelligence analysis. That's despite the company recently blow -- their recent blow up with the Defense Department after Anthropic said it did not want its A.I. systems used for autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance.
Now, the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a, quote, "supply chain risk," a term previously only used for companies connected to foreign adversaries and seemingly tried to cut all government ties with the company. A federal judge has now blocked the Pentagon from using that designation against Anthropic.
And early last month, just days into the standoff, OpenAI, one of Anthropic's rivals, announced its own deal with the Pentagon, claiming it got the safety measures Anthropic wanted and more guardrails as well. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, is the focus of a fascinating deep dive in the latest edition of The New Yorker magazine.
The headline, "Sam Altman May Control Our Future. Can He Be Trusted?" New interviews and closely guarded documents shed light on the persistent doubts about the head of OpenAI for many within the company and elsewhere.
Ronan Farrow joins us now. He shares the byline with Andrew Marantz. Ronan, thank you so much. This is fascinating.
RONAN FARROW, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Good to see you.
COOPER: You've been working on this for a long time --
FARROW: More than a year and a half.
COOPER: More than 100 interviews for this. What for you are the big headlines?
FARROW: Well, you talked about the Pentagon standoff. That is a microcosm for a broader pattern we describe of allegations of Sam Altman telling conflicting stories to different people at the heart of an industry that could really shape all of our futures. In the case of the Pentagon standoff, both within that narrative, we see a situation where Sam Altman was telling his employees, sending memos within his company, making public statements saying while there was a standoff between Anthropic, this competitor, and the Pentagon, where Anthropic was pressing for certain red lines.
They wanted their technology to not be used for domestic mass surveillance --
COOPER: Right,
FARROW: -- for autonomous weapons. He was saying we support that and we don't want to do anything to undermine them. And then what we report here after talking to many defense officials and looking at documents around this is he really was in concerted negotiations by then.
Emil Michael, the Under Secretary of War who was involved in that situation and leading the talks, reached out to him and Sam was, in Emil's words, ready to jump. This is also important in terms of the outcome, Anderson. In that situation, at the end, Sam Altman and OpenAI announced that they essentially had fixed the problem.
That they had assurances that their technology wouldn't be used in these ways. But essentially every credible legal analysis out there looks at what was obtained and says it's back to square one. That they have a provision that says any lawful use is possible.
COOPER: What's -- the backstory on it too is Dario Amodei, who's the CEO of Anthropic, used to work for OpenAI. Left, I mean, the -- along with his sister, Daniela, and other, like, six or so others, or five others from OpenAI, to found Anthropic, they have previously said that they had safety concerns. You got access to, like, notes that I think Dario Amodei had kept about those concerns that nobody's ever seen before.
FARROW: Dario Amodei, memos that were sent by another co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, accusing Sam of, the quote is, "lying." That actually precipitated an episode a couple of years ago where Sam Altman was fired by executives and board members. And then five days later, he was able to come back and get rid of those employees (ph).
COOPER: Which was perceived and kind of the story became, it's these rogue direct board of directors, this rogue board who went after Sam Altman. Sam Altman was well known. Most people in the world didn't know who was on the board. Sam Altman won that battle.
FARROW: He absolutely won that battle. And that too is a microcosm for a bigger story here about essentially money talking and talking more powerfully than safety concerns. OpenAI was established as a nonprofit. It was supposed to have a mission that was oriented around protecting humanity from a technology that people inside this technology, not everyone agrees with this, but insiders, specifically the ones who founded OpenAI made the argument that this could wipe us all out.
You could have the Terminator Skynet scenario of an AI goes rogue and kills us all, but you don't have to believe anything that extreme to understand the dangers. Already, this is being used on battlefields. This is being used to identify chemical weapons. This is being used for political disinformation. This is woven into our infrastructure.
COOPER: Also, just -- I mean, Dario Amodei has said the potential on unemployment for white collar jobs --
FARROW: Millions of jobs exposed --
COOPER: Right.
FARROW: -- to disruption. So --
COOPER: But, you know, nobody has voted on it. I keep saying this. Nobody has voted on this, whether we want this as a society.
FARROW: Well, I hope that this kind of discussion in this kind of piece can change that because the entire reason that Sam Altman was fired has been insufficiently exposed and explored.
[20:50:06]
We talk about a legal investigation that sort of cleared him to continue at the company, but it was all kept out of writing. And when you scratch the surface, what you see, Anderson, is a persistent pattern of colleagues earlier in Sam Altman's career and around this situation at OpenAI saying again and again that he was saying conflicting things to different people, sometimes on serious things like he'd, you know, tell board members that features of a model that could potentially be dangerous had been tested, and then they go out and look, they hadn't been.
And sometimes it's just interpersonal stuff. Like you mentioned, the Amodeis, part of what deepened that rift is we obtained documents showing interactions where Sam, for instance, in one case accused the Amodeis, there's Dario and his sister who also worked there, of plotting a coup. And they called in an executive that Sam had said was the source of this information.
The executive said, I never said that. And then Sam, to their faces, as people in the room tell it, said, oh, well, I never said that in the first place either. So people really felt gaslit. And in this case, with a technology with these stakes, there are people who say no CEO should lie this much, and it's just a business management problem. But there are also people who say this has real danger.
COOPER: Yes. It's a fascinating article. It's in The New Yorker right now.
Ronan Farrow, thank you so much.
FARROW: Thank you, Anderson.
COOPER: Coming up next, a former space shuttle astronaut on today's milestone, literally for the Artemis II astronauts who have now traveled more miles from Earth than anyone ever and seen what no one has seen on the moon until now.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[20:55:42]
JIM LOVELL, APOLLO 13 ASTRONAUT: Hello, Artemis II. This is Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell. Welcome to my old neighborhood. It's a historic day, and I know how busy you'll be, but don't forget to enjoy the view. So Reid, and Victor, and Christina and Jeremy, and all the great teams supporting you, good lick and Godspeed from all of us here on the good earth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: That was the wakeup call from Apollo 8 astronaut and Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell. He did not live to see this day. He died last August. But the sights would have been familiar. For Apollo 8, a trip around the moon was the mission and a triumph on a badly damaged Apollo 13. It was the only way home and a miracle of teamwork for NASA.
Tonight, the crew of Artemis II is now homeward bound, having traveled farther from Earth, 252,000 miles than any Apollo astronaut and having observed parts of the lunar surface unseen by human eyes until now.
With me now is Former Space Shuttle Astronaut Mike Massimino. So, Mike, there was a line that struck me in a New York Times update today by reporter Kenneth Chang. He said, "Of the more than 100 billion humans thought to have ever lived, the four astronauts aboard Artemis II have now ventured farther than any of them."
I'm wondering what's going through your mind and your heart tonight as you see all of this unfold.
MIKE MASSIMINO, FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT: I'm so proud of them, Anderson, the way they perform their duties today. But I tell you what, I really felt like we were with them today.
COOPER: Yes.
MASSIMINO: You get to see amazing things when you're up in Space viewing the planet, seeing the stars and the moon but you don't get to share it usually. You're usually doing something else. But their job today was to share it, share both the technical things they saw about the geology and the aspects of the moon that were important from a scientific standpoint, but also the emotions, the naming of the crater, which you covered earlier.
You got to see the camaraderie and the love between the astronauts and the ground and the teamwork. And it was just a very inspirational day. I think anyone who got a chance to watch will never forget it.
COOPER: Yes. I mean, you really felt like you were inside with them --
MASSIMINO: Yes.
COOPER: -- inside Artemis II. It was a very human experience, not something you see just --
MASSIMINO: Yes.
COOPER: -- you know, through a telescope or on TV, but you feel like you're really inside. You stress this is not, though, just a sightseeing trip. Can you talk about --
MASSIMINO: Yes.
COOPER: -- how you see the scientific purpose of this?
MASSIMINO: Yes. So this was a big science part of their mission. They've been training for this mission for years. And this day in particular was the day. I mean, the launch was great. I think the landing is going to be interesting. But this day in particular was one that I was most excited about because they're seeing things that people have never seen before and using a very well-trained human eye and brain and their ability to make judgments and what is important and what's not important to report.
What they're coming up with is the features of the moon, the craters, the lava flows, the textures, different colors that they see. They've been trained to spot these things and to report them because we want to get as much information on the moon as possible, because this is a lead up to more things to check out of a lander and then the eventual landing and settling on the moon and building on the moon.
And then from there going on to Mars and so on. And this was the first step of that. And today was a big day. Today was about understanding the moon and describing it to everyone. And what was the advantage not only of the technical aspects of that, but also the human, the emotional part of it that we got to share in.
COOPER: You've had dinner with the four astronauts when they were announced as their crew. What was that like? What kind of people are they? I mean, we got a glimpse of it today.
MASSIMINO: They are great people. They're four of my favorite people. I think they're the best that we have to offer. And, yes, I had dinner with them. They were in New York the day after they were assigned.
And I remember I saw Reid. I was waiting for him outside the restaurant and I saw him coming. And I walked toward the crew and I gave Reid a big hug and I said, Reid, I'm more excited for you guys than I was when I got assigned to my flight. And he said to me, Mass, I know how you feel because I'm going to be more excited when we have a crew going to land on the moon than I am about my flight.
So that's what we feel about what we're doing. It's something that we've dreamt as astronauts for decades of getting a chance to do, of going back. You played Jim Lovell earlier, following in those footsteps. It's taken us 50 years, but now we're taking those first steps. But they are wonderful people.
And I think it came through on their descriptions, on their camaraderie and their interactions with the ground, the respect they have, the professionalism.
COOPER: Yes.
MASSIMINO: They're really four wonderful people and I'm very happy for them. I don't think you could have had a better crew to do this.
COOPER: Well also, Reid, for his children to be down on Earth --
MASSIMINO: Yes.
COOPER: -- watching and in mission control and naming the crater --
MASSIMINO: Yes.
COOPER: -- after his wife, Carroll, who's died.
Mike Massimino, thanks so much. I appreciate it. Remarkable day.
That's it for us. The news continues. The Source starts now.
