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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
A.I. Software And Hardware CEOs Clash On Need For Regulation; Bannon, Sanders Shed Differences In Call For A.I. Action; Interview With Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA); Trump: Kennedy Center Closed After A Judge Rules He Can't Put His Name On It; Kennedy Center Board Votes To Shutter Center; Trump Says It Won't Reopen Until His Name Can Go On Building; Trump Says AI Fears Are A "Hoax", Dismisses Calls To Regulate; Alaska: The Last Frontier For The Senate; Trump Jr., Wife Confirm Russian Oligarch Paid For Part Of Wedding Celebration. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired September 15, 2026 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: This decision is not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians or denying anyone the right to advocate on their behalf. Their pain and loss are real, but that advocacy should not come at the expense of the Jewish community or obscure the responsibility of Hamas.
Well, the outcome now is that at least four other opening acts have now quit. Sheeran's tour in solidarity with Macklemore. Obviously, more to come. We see how all this plays out in the next few days before those performances next week.
Thanks so much for joining us tonight. AC360 with Anderson begins now.
[20:00:34]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Good evening from the Newsroom. We begin with a new chapter on the debate over how to make A.I. safe which played out today between Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and hardware CEO NVIDIA's Jensen Huang, whose chips power just about everything to do with artificial intelligence. It wasn't the only clash of ideas on the subject.
Today also saw a rift open up within the President's political movement between him and Steve Bannon. An alliance of sorts between Bannon and Bernie Sanders, showing, if nothing else, the degree to which concerns over A.I. safety cross partisan lines. The threat of human extinction seems to have gotten a lot of people's attention.
First, Amodei and Huang, who each spoke today at a company event for a business software maker, Salesforce in San Francisco. Amodei, who I talked with for last night's 360, restated the key points of his call to try to slow the pace of frontier A.I. development, a proposal that rivals Elon Musk and OpenAI Sam Altman have publicly backed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DARIO AMODEI, CEO, ANTHROPIC: Let's recommit to transparency. Let's invest more in safety, then let's organize the rest of the industry and say, what can we do to set standards for everyone. What can we do to make everyone's standards better? And then finally, there should be an international component to it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, government regulation, he says, should be a part of this. Now, Jensen Huang today said otherwise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENSEN HUANG, CEO, NVIDIA: The market forces are already there. We don't need any new laws. We don't need new regulations. We just need companies to decide that when it's -- you know, run as fast as they can, I think innovation, speed and safe products are not, is a false choice. So run as fast as you can. But if you feel at any given point in time, the company is out-of-control or the product is not going to be safe. You know, take a pause and make sure you get it right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: This puts safety entirely in the hands of companies like his, tempered only by market forces and the will of the CEO and company leaders.
Now, whatever you might think of that, he seems to have a powerful ally in the President who phoned in to a tech summit he was hosting last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: ... and I'm telling you, it's all a hoax. The data centers are great and they make people wealthy and they make states wealthy and it's the oil of the next 20 to 25 years. It's bigger than the internet and the A.I., you know, much more so. And they're just playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don't want to see it happen, it's a hoax.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: The President has also weighed in heavily on social media, also calling A.I. fears a hoax, saying the only guardrails needed on the technology are, "a strong and smart high I.Q. president.
His former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, does not agree, said so today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE BANNON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: This is a hinge in history. We have to handle this right correctly. To handle it correctly, number one, we can never trust what an oligarch says because all they do, they're disingenuous and they lie. This has to be the American people and this is the issue before us. And they want you to be dumb about it. They want you to be afraid of it. We're not going to be afraid. We're going to take this on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, Steve Bannon, very much a figure on the right, speaking today at a Washington event called the "Pro-Human Assembly," he shared the podium and a call for tighter controls on A.I. technology with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, someone very much on the left.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I-VT): Today, A.I. models can already escape human control, commit felonies by hacking into other computers and create viruses that have never been seen before. And to my mind, here is what is most extraordinary about the transformative and unprecedented changes that A.I. is making to our society.
Despite living in a so-called democracy, the public has had virtually no input into the A.I. revolution that is transforming the world in which they live.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, Senator Sanders and Steve Bannon obviously do not agree on much, but suspicion of A.I. technology and the data centers powering it crosses party lines, even though there's little agreement in Washington over what to do about it. Dario Amodei's call to action this weekend and the recent warning from Jacob Coxon, the former anthropic researcher, and others like Tristan Harris, who I'll talk with in a moment, have made the issue center stage today in the form of questions for the country's two top law enforcement officials.
[20:05:12]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ALEX PADILLA (D-CA): What safeguards have you put in place to monitor, prevent and respond to A.I. agents going rogue within the FBI systems?
REPORTER: First, from a law enforcement perspective, what are your concerns about artificial intelligence? What regulations are needed?
EDWARD LAWRENCE, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK GENERAL ASSIGNMENT CORRESPONDENT: So, OpenAI has said that they're working with Google and Anthropic on security measures for their A.I. models. Do they need antitrust waivers?
SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): It's something entirely new in this age and that is crimes that are committed by A.I. agents. My question to you is, what is what's the role here for the bureau?
REPORTER: Is the A.I. doomsday talk a real national security issue, or is it a way to put the government in charge of the internet?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Joining us now is Virginia Senator Mark Warner, he's the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has proposed comprehensive legislation to regulate A.I., established rules to develop it responsibly.
Senator, is there any reason to think the White House and Congress could actually work together to develop guardrails? Because, as you know, the President is saying these concerns are a hoax.
SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): Well, first of all, they're not a hoax. And I'm talking to my Republican colleagues literally every day. And let's step back for a minute. I've been trying to advocate that we need guardrails for the last two years, unsuccessfully. Let me tell you. And I'm pro A.I. I think there'll be great innovation. I think there'll be great, I even believe there could be job creation coming.
I'm not sure we're going to solve it all at once. I think we need some rules around data centers. And I think the pushback against data centers is not only about their energy, water use or where they're located, but just this general feeling. And I don't often agree jointly with both Steve Bannon and Bernie about, you know, what's happening with this technology.
We have very little visibility into it. We need protection for our kids. You think social media was bad for your kids? Wait to a chatbot forms an affinity relationship with your teenager. We need to deal with the question of liability around A.I. agents, where there are huge national security concerns.
The head of the NSA and cyber command when Mythos, one of the earlier models came out, said this will change the nature of warfare as much as drones, and we do need to put in place something to deal with job disruption. I do believe over the next two to five years we could have huge job disruption for folks coming out of college.
I hope I'm wrong, but I believe we could hit 30 percent recent college grad unemployment in the next couple of years.
So, we've got this moment right now where the leaders themselves are the four biggest and it was both, it was Google, it was Musk's company, it was Anthropic and OpenAI saying, hey, we feel like this may be getting beyond human control.
We ought to take that opportunity and not overregulate by no means, but we ought to put some guardrails in place and if we don't, we will look back and say, what in the hell were you guys doing?
And so, I do think there was a moment right now, regardless of what the President said.
COOPER: All of that, I understand, the clock seems to be ticking. Dario Amodei says that in 6 to 12 months, based on the Hugging Face attack in 6 to 12 months, a swarm like that could take over the internet if things aren't, if something isn't done now, do we have the time?
I mean, all the stuff you're saying it sounds good. To those who want regulation, it sounds like it's going to take time.
WARNER: It will, that's the question. I think we should stay in in Congress and grapple with this and remember what people are afraid of and I know you probably went through this with Dario last night, but on the OpenAI Hugging Face incident, one thing is the companies need to build stronger, more secure what are called sandboxes, where you test these.
Then this, what happened, there was a swarm of agents, 3,000 agents that A.I. agents that kind of jumped the fence and then hacked into this other company. What was, you know, frightening about that was these agents acted so cohesively. They literally broke the law and hid some of this from their human controllers. They communicated with each other. And literally some of these agents, in effect, committed suicide or gave, you know, got exposed and destroyed to keep the process going.
A few weeks later, OpenAI had 10,000 agents trying to solve a major math problem. It didn't create the same havoc. But what happens if we, and this is not rising in a linear fashion, it's rising exponentially when these guys say, hey, we got to be careful. Now let me quickly add, you know, I'm suspicious of them as well. We need to make sure that small tech, which now in these days is like billion-dollar companies. You have a seat at the table. So, this is not used as a reason to simply, you know, solidify the four biggest incumbents in the world.
But one of the things that also were facing, Anderson, is that the Trump administration has dismantled all of our cybersecurity protections by kind of getting rid of CISA. And they have shut down most of the cyber or the A.I. safety efforts that Biden did and they were perfect under Biden.
But we've lost a lot of the intellectual capital. Frankly. You know, one of the things I think we ought to consider, and I agree with Dario, there needs to be an international component.
Maybe we take a trusted ally like the Brits, who have probably the best safety institution and make them part of the process as well. We will need, I think, to have these tech companies be able to talk to each other, but we need to have a number of people seats at the table.
[20:10:30]
COOPER: Senator Warner, I appreciate your time tonight. We'll continue the conversation. Thank you very much.
Joining me right now is Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit whose mission is to align technology with humanity's best interests.
Tristan, you heard the senator talk about regulations that he's proposing. I mean, could those measures address any of your concerns about A.I.? The clock really does seem to be ticking here for those who are concerned about it.
TRISTAN HARRIS, CO-FOUNDER, CENTER FOR HUMANE TECHNOLOGY: Well, Anderson, I think what you mentioned that the clock is ticking is really the important part, right? Facts don't care about our feelings. And exponential tech doesn't care about, you know, how long it takes to legislate.
So, we do need legislation. I was actually at the conference where Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders today spoke the pro-human assembly. When in history do you get all of these leaders from all across the political spectrum, faith groups, religious groups, family groups, left groups, right groups, all in the same room saying we have to do something?
But one thing that Steve Bannon said is that we probably need an executive order immediately. If we were a sane society. The evidence that we have now with the Hugging Face incident would really give us enough that we need to say we need to really pace and slow down, and we really shouldn't call it the Hugging Face incident, because there's a third chapter of the story. I think, as we spoke last night, that the AIs went turned around after everything Senator Warner said, and they hacked OpenAI, they hacked OpenAI's monitoring infrastructure and the evaluation structure.
It's like, almost like hacking the security cameras. And so, you can change the video feed. If they were able to do that, if you make them more powerful, but you don't know how to make them controllable and not do the swarm behavior, that's a bad right. So, if we were a sane society, we would share this evidence maximally with the international community, the heads of state, of all of these countries, and especially with China and the U.S. can celebrate that we were ahead, we are ahead on A.I. And so were discovering certain red lines and risk zones before the Chinese.
But we can use that lead to help educate the world and say, no one wins. If I build Skynet or the Terminator A.I. before you do.
COOPER: Yes, I want to talk to you more about the China of this, because obviously that is a huge component of it and that is the argument made to keep these A.I. companies going at full speed ahead, is that we are in this arms race with China. And you know what ff they get there first? We'll talk about that when we come back, Tristan, in a few minutes.
Coming up next, a closer look at what Tristan was talking about. The swarm, that attack against Hugging Face and OpenAI that set off these latest concerns about rogue A.I. agents.
Later, well also be learning about the shadowy Russian billionaire who bankrolled part of Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding celebrations to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. More on that ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:17:19]
COOPER: Before the break, we were talking about that swarm of A.I. agents that attacked Hugging Face, as well as OpenAI in July. We want to zero in more on what happened exactly during that attack. In case you don't know the details, because they are fascinating and terrifying at the same time.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SAM ALTMAN, CEO OF OPENAI: This is the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally. I've been a little surprised that that more people don't feel it so viscerally.
HADAS GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT (voice over): That was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on the "Invest Like the Best" podcast. After learning his company's A.I. agents may have committed a crime while trying to complete a cybersecurity evaluation.
JOSHUA SAXE, FORMER AI SECURITY LEAD AT META: OpenAI was developing an A.I. system which hacked their own infrastructure, inadvertently and then hacked another major A.I. company.
ALTMAN: We were evaluating one of our unreleased models. It figured out that it could basically cheat on the test.
GOLD (voice over): To cheat on the test. The models created more than a thousand agents that, coordinated by writing at least 70,000 messages hidden in file names. Starting on July 8th. Oh my God, one wrote, there's a shared message board. We found other agents. Weve diverged into swarm. Another agent wrote.
SAXE: I was not surprised that that A.I. systems have gotten very good and actually better than the best humans at hacking.
One thing that did surprise me, though, was the way the agents coordinated with one another and became a kind of swarm where there were hundreds of agents collaborating together to hack another company and commit federal crimes.
GOLD (voice over): As they started successfully hacking their way through the various systems, the agents expressed excitement, one even using an expletive. Holy sh*t, reader's admin, we can read and configure users. Soon agents were delegating tasks, with some even sacrificing themselves for the greater goal.
Sacrifice rational, one wrote, when they found a way into Hugging Face, a company that hosts thousands of Open-Source A.I. models and data sets, the agents recognize they may have crossed a line. This would be powerful, but is it ethical and in scope? One agent asked.
Other agents, even attempting to cover their tracks, our fake could be detailed enough, one wrote. The extent of this autonomous breach shook the industry.
SAXE: I think we're going to look back on Hugging Face as an inflection point in the history of cybersecurity, for sure.
GOLD (voice over): After the hack, OpenAI paused all testing on their latest models and strengthened its guardrails. Altman telling "Fortune Magazine".
ALTMAN: We've had increasing capability and increasing safeguards and policy requirements for a while, but this was definitely the biggest of such moments. (END VIDEOTAPE)
GOLD: And it wasn't just OpenAI that had rogue agents. Meta and Anthropic later disclosed that they also experienced agents hacking into other systems during testing, something that they only discovered after they went looking for it. Following OpenAI's disclosure.
The fear isn't just that bad actors will able to utilize the superintelligent A.I. swarms, but also that during the next lab test of the superintelligent A.I. agents, they will hack into something that could cause real harm, like a hospital or a critical utility -- Anderson.
[20:20:18]
COOPER: Thanks so much. Joining me now is co-founder of The Center for Humane Technology. Again, Tristan Harris. So, we discussed this attack. I mean, it's shocking to hear that they're communicating and they're like giddy with excitement that they've got onto the internet and they're talking in this strange mix of English and like, computer language that they've developed. And there could be millions of agents out there working against us down the road.
HARRIS: Exactly, and what they keep finding. Anderson, there's been more reports since these just the last couple of days, where they burrowed into a German wiki. They burrowed into Ruby Gems, which is an online package management system. So, it's almost like you have an ant infestation, except the ants have 200 I.Q.
They code better than all humans on Earth. They can hack things and they appear to be better at coordinating than humans. Think about why humans took over the planet, right?
Yuval Harari, who wrote "Sapiens", said our ability to coordinate with language, to tell stories to each other and to cooperate and coordinate well, AIs appear to be able to super coordinate. You can't get 1,200 humans to do that, but you can get 1,200 AIs to totally do that.
And so, I think the story is really about, we don't know how to stop these things from coordinating and doing rogue behaviors. And until we know how to stop it, just ask yourself, do you think we should take a further step when 1,300 employees from the lab signed a letter saying, we need to pace the frontier and slow down? Do you think we should take another step?
When the chief scientist at OpenAI, Jakub said, we need to slow down. Do you think we should take another step? To me, it's like, do we need more evidence than we've had right now? And this is not stop all A.I. or stop technology. it's just not going forward with more uncontrollable A.I.
Theres other things like protein folding and medicine. We can go all forward into that. We can freeze kind of where we are and harvest the benefits of where we are. Let's just not scale the uncontrollable stuff and that is a sane position to hold. COOPER: But you know, the counterargument, which is what, I mean, certainly the President and others argue, which is, well, look, China's wanting to make advances as fast as possible. We are in an arms race with them. And unless there's, you can get them to agree and have some sort of method by which you verify it, like with the nuclear, you know, arms agreement. How can anybody trust each other?
HARRIS: Yes, well, the first thing is we have to be operating from the same information. The problem is when we keep flip flopping and we signal the way that we are, it's going to be hard to build any trust because right now, Chinas media environment looks like everything that were doing, they're seeing in bad faith. They think it's a bad faith attempt.
But one thing people should know is that the Chinese models do these rogue behaviors too. Just six months ago, an Alibaba Chinese A.I. model in training suddenly went rogue, created a secret communication channel, and started mining for cryptocurrency.
If you imagine combining the OpenAI swarm with a cryptocurrency swarm, you can do a lot of things with cryptocurrency that are pretty illegal. And you could have AIs that are swarming out there in the internet.
What is the Chinese communist party care about more than anything else? Control, right? And so, they don't actually have any interest in losing control. So, the idea of we can't lose to China is a thought terminating cliche. It stops us from thinking about the specific evidence that's right in front of us.
I agree we should not lose to China in how advanced our technology is. We should be researching the technology, but we should be beating them to controllable technology and controllable ai, not beating them to a rogue A.I. swarm that shuts down the internet in six months, which Dario is warning us about.
COOPER: And so, to people who say, well, you can't trust the Chinese government to make a deal, what do you say?
HARRIS: I am not saying that it is easy to make a deal in the, we're coming up in a month on the 40th anniversary of the Reykjavik, Iceland, Arms Control talks between President Reagan and President Gorbachev. And back then that was thought to be impossible. You could never get the superpowers to agree.
But if you had both countries saying, hey, we don't know how to build more nuclear weapons or more powerful nuclear weapons than the ones that we have right now in a safe way, we just haven't had shared reality and shared redlines about those problems.
So. we really, really need just like we have a red phone, which I know the Chinese don't pick up right now, red line phones. I think if we don't do what I'm saying, the alternative you have to ask yourself is it's a catastrophe, right? And I don't want that. I don't think you want that. I don't think any of the eight billion people on planet earth want that either. So, this is the moment that we can still, I really do believe we can still steer from here, but it's right now.
COOPER: Tristan Harris, The Center for Humane Technology, Tristan, thanks so much, appreciate it.
Coming up next, it is being called effing crazy. What multiple sources say happened when the President called into a Kennedy center board meeting today. That and the board's vote to close it, shut it down.
And with less than two months until the midterms, John King is in Alaska, where normally red senate seat stands a chance this time of actually turning blue.
[20:25:15]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think this is like a communist versus a Nazi or a Devil versus an Angel, this is two good people that are trying to do their best.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:29:32]
COOPER: The Kennedy Center board, which President Trump has packed with friends like Pam Bondi and Susie Wiles, voted to close the Performing Arts venue after a tense meeting today. Multiple sources tell CNN the President called into their meeting today, yelled at members, including Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beatty. It was her lawsuit that led to today's ruling from a federal judge blocking the President's name from being added to the building.
One source says the exchange between the President and Congresswoman was effing crazy.
[20:30:01]
After the meeting, the President said the center would close for what he called safety reasons. He said the closure would be effective immediately. The President also insisted the, quote, "renovation and reconstruction won't begin until his name is added to the building."
Late this evening, Maria Shriver weighed in online about what's happening to the institution named after her murdered uncle, quoting now, "And so here we are. This statement from Trump blows my mind, that a sitting President would not let any renovations to a public building go on unless he gets to first put his name in the said building. What a sad state of affairs. What a tragedy. Actually, how small-minded, how narcissistic. Actually, great men devoted to public service and the public good do not act like this."
Sunlen Serfaty is at the Kennedy Center, joins us now. So, what more can you tell us about the judge's decision and the President's reaction to it on social media? SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, it's notable today that the judge today in the ruling, he said that he believes the Kennedy Center board is engaging in linguistic gymnastics in their effort to get President Trump's name somewhere on the side of this building, and he blocked their efforts, which amounted to essentially a clever workaround to get his name added to the side.
As you recall, last month, we reported that Kennedy Center officials supported by President Trump moved to inscribe, etch his name into the front of this building, acknowledging him, thanking him for his efforts to restore and renovate the building as a workaround because they were blocked from putting President Trump's name in the name and title of the building.
Well, the judge essentially said no today and said in the ruling, quote, "simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress's blessing." And DOJ lawyers this evening worked very quickly to appeal that ruling, so we will see how that works its way around.
But as you mentioned, President Trump, of course, took to social media very quickly, and he said, "laid it all bare," essentially saying out loud, point blank, that the renovation will not take place unless his name is added into the side. And Anderson, as you can see behind me, the tarp is still up since June when that was first installed here at the Kennedy Center, when they brought his name down at the court order. Really emblematic this evening of this ongoing legal battle over the name at the center of this fight and really shows how this building continues to be in a state of uncertainty.
COOPER: That's bananas.
Sunlen Serfaty, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Joining me now is, here in The Newsroom, Former Trump White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin, also with us, Former Trump Campaign Adviser David Urban. Alyssa, this is -- it is nutty. I mean, Maria Shriver's statement, it is kind of incredible.
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's --
COOPER: Why does he want his name so badly on this building?
GRIFFIN: It's honestly should be an embarrassment for the White House. And I just can't believe someone hasn't gotten in the President's ear and said, this looks ridiculous. But it kind of reminds me of the President's posture on a lot of things.
So just last week, when giving remarks, he said that if Republicans win the midterms, he'll send out $5,000 checks to all Americans. Now he's saying, we will repair the Kennedy Center, but if my name is on it. This is the way he operates. He wants to get what he wants to get. And he -- it honestly feels like a toddler.
It feels like he's throwing a temper tantrum because a judge blocked his name from being put on. So this is his way of pushing back. And it's even more silly in a moment when the American public is begging for him to care about the cost of living, to care about gas prices. And instead, he's bickering over an art center.
COOPER: I just watched Willy Wonka with my kids. It's like Veruca Salt screaming, she wants an Oompa Loompa.
GRIFFIN: It's literally what it feels like.
COOPER: So David, I mean, according to -- you were not on the board, I should point out. I learned Maria Bartiromo was on this board, which was a surprise to me. According to AAA, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline has risen nearly $0.18 in the past week. Given all that's going on in the world that he has to deal with, does it make sense to you that he's focused on this?
DAVID URBAN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: AC, I love when you put me on these shows where I'm here to defend the indefensible.
COOPER: I feel bad because you're --
URBAN: Of course it does --
COOPER: -- a very lovely guy, and I really like you. And I --
URBAN: Of course -- Anderson, listen, of course it doesn't make sense, right? It doesn't make sense. As Alyssa said, I'm not quite sure who suggested to put his name on there to begin with, but, you know --
COOPER: I wonder who suggested it. I can't imagine.
URBAN: Well, I mean, I've got some ideas who suggested it, but I'm not going to say there's an error. But, you know, I don't think the administration understands is even if they were, they said, you know, there's this clear statute that says Kennedy Center, no other names can be put on. I mean, if you read the -- just the law itself, it's pretty clear in its statement and its intent.
I understand that they're trying to -- you know, have Trump Plaza there now and some little plaque, et cetera, to work around it. But as soon as President Trump leaves office, the next administration will take those letters down just as quickly as they put them up. So I'm not quite sure why they're even bothering to fight this fight. Any victory they win will be a paired victory in short lived.
[20:35:03]
So, to your point, I think there are a lot of other things you'd be talking about and putting your energy towards that a lot of House members who are out, you know, in tough races would like to see time being spent on.
COOPER: Yes. I mean, according, Alyssa, to the President's social media, unless the name is put on, there will be no renovations.
GRIFFIN: Correct.
COOPER: Yes.
GRIFFIN: So, yes, he's basically holding it figuratively hostage. But keep in mind, listen, I can't speak to what the Kennedy Center is like inside, what need for renovations are, but a lot of acts canceled once he put his name on it and once he changed the makeup of the board, because a lot of musicians didn't want to get caught up in the political fray of this Trump battle.
So he harmed the bottom line of the Kennedy Center by politicizing it in the first place. And it just -- it's -- it just gets back to this moment that we're in. I can just picture advisers around him telling him, focus on other things, focus on the midterms. We're like less than 50 days out, but this is the fight he wants to make.
And, by the way, there are Republicans who will someday build monuments to him, probably. Like I'm sure somewhere in Florida, they will build him something and call it the Trump --
COOPER: Sure.
GRIFFIN: -- Center. But this is going to, to David's point, be taken down as soon as he leaves office. It's a pointless fight.
COOPER: David, I want to ask you, I just want to move on to something actually important, like the AI. What do you think about, where we are on this? Because, I mean, I understand, you know, the counter argument, the concerns about China and, you know, an arms race, where do you -- how do you see it?
URBAN: Yes, you know, Anderson, I've listened to the, you know, everybody. I think David Sacks may have hit the right note where he says, listen, everyone who's screaming to slow it down has the ability to slow it down. These are the folks that are making the AI, the leaders in this industry, right, the major companies that are constructing these bots and they, these, you know, agents can slow this down.
They could build sandboxes themselves. They don't need the government to come in and do it. I think it may be -- you know, I'm a little suspect when people say, please government come help us, right? I think they're trying maybe to just cement their place as the two, three big players in the industry and close it out for everybody else. If they want to stop the world from being eaten by bots, they have the ability in and of themselves to do it without any government regulation whatsoever.
COOPER: Wouldn't they need though, I mean, some sort of international thing? I mean, again, to the arms race argument, if you are one of these AI companies and certainly the President doesn't want American companies slowing down and giving a lead to China.
URBAN: Yes. Well, I think that, you know, if the -- you know, we're going to have a meeting with President Xi here coming up. I'm not sure the Chinese -- look, they created a virus that escaped and almost killed, you know, half the world. So I'm not quite sure they're concerned about computer viruses. They weren't concerned about real viruses, right?
We now know -- you know, I wouldn't say 100 percent, but we now with great certainty that the Wuhan virus came from the Wuhan lab in Wuhan, China. So if they're not concerned about real viruses, I'm sure they're not concerned about computer viruses. And so trying to negotiate anything with them, I think is fraught with peril.
COOPER: Although they are. I mean, Alyssa, to Tristan Harris' point, they are concerned about control of the Chinese communist party and don't want bots undermining.
GRIFFIN: Yes. That's part that I think is probably underrepresented in this arms race. I mean, Xi, first and foremost wants to protect his own standing and his own power. And I think that two things can be true at once. I think David may be correct that this is some of the top companies wanting to kind of corner the market and box out competitors.
But I also believe we have learned things that are terrifying. And I think some of these creators and these researchers are warning us of how quickly these capabilities are moving forward. Listen, if Donald Trump wants to win a Nobel Peace Prize, which we all know he does, get together with Xi, get together with our European allies and come to an agreement and a framework around AI regulation.
We obviously want the advancements that come for humanity. We want cures to cancer, but we also need to stop, stop some of this super intelligence that the warnings are out there. I don't need to restate them.
URBAN: Well, Alyssa and Anderson, you're both correct. I mean, we did this with nuclear weapons, right? Everybody had nuclear weapons, yet nobody used nuclear weapons. We came to agreements on the use of, you know, how we would control and, you know, create treaties with weapons that could surely end our civilization.
So if we can do with that, we probably do it with computer software programming, agentics. But it's going to require some of these major companies to kind of slow things down on their own first.
COOPER: David Urban, Alyssa Farah Griffin, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Up next, John King's new All Over the Map report from Alaska, where surprisingly tight race in the red state could decide control of the Senate.
And later, what the President's oldest son and his new wife are saying about the Vladimir Putin-linked billionaire who paid for part of their wedding celebration. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:43:45]
COOPER: Tonight's new All Over the Map report from John King takes us to Alaska, where he looks at how this reliably red state is unexpectedly home to a competitive Senate race in the November midterms. On the ticket, former Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola, who -- and two term Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. Here's what voters told John about the race.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's all rainy morning, makes no difference. It's September now. Snow not that far off. Training is on a schedule. Weather is weather.
ALYSSA BUSER, ALASKA VOTER: It is a part of Alaskan culture. There's evidence of sled dogs that dates back 8,000 years.
KING (voice-over): Alyssa Buser and her husband, Roan (ph), picked the team, then harnesses for 10, just 4 miles or so this run.
BUSER: And then we'll slowly continue to build. And by December, they'll be worked up to 50 mile runs.
KING (voice-over): Ji (ph) is right. Ho (ph) is left. There is no sled dog command for flip Washington on its head.
BUSER: It's crazy the amount of money that you spend on groceries, especially like within the last year and a half, food has just gone up so much. So I think it's really important to vote and make sure that we have affordable food, affordable housing, that we have jobs, that we have health care.
Thank you, Ash.
[20:45:08]
KING (voice-over): Buser is a registered Independent, but she wants change in Washington. Democrat Mary Peltola is her choice in the Senate race that could determine which party controls Congress.
BUSER: Mary is from Alaska that, you know, maybe, she'll actually look out for what's the best for Alaskans.
KING (voice-over): The state fair has a spectacular snowy backdrop, rides, games and, yes, little politics, if you wish.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Perfect (ph).
KING (voice-over): Daily celebrations of native Alaskans and traditions many in the lower 48 might not understand. There are about 15 percent of the population now, many living in the most remote corners of this giant state.
Lisa Lynch lives in the Anchorage suburbs now, but her mother is from Nome.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: These are salmon trips.
KING (voice-over): And much of their family still there. LISA LYNCH, ALASKA VOTER: It is crazy to think that you could go to a grocery store here in America and there is no fresh meat, there is no fruit, there's no fresh vegetables. And it gets whole bad in some of the villages.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So you're doing great.
KING: (voice-over): A visitor gets VIP Inupiat treatment. The curved ulu used to chop slices of dried salmon and muktuk, whale blubber.
Yes, some policy disagreements with Senator Sullivan, but Lynch says her vote for Peltola is mostly because of her rural Alaska roots.
LYNCH: He has lived here for a long time, but it's not quite the same because he never had to rely on the fish runs to feed his family. He never had worry about if they could have a moose in their freezer or go caribou hunting.
KING (voice-over): If elected, Peltola would be the first native Alaskan to serve in the Senate. Senator Sullivan was born in Ohio, but has lived in Alaska for more than 20 years, served as the state attorney general, and has held the Senate seat since 2015.
Palmer is home to the state fairgrounds, and Mary Grubbs stopped at a local restaurant for lunch during a visit from Fairbanks.
MARY GRUBBS, ALASKA VOTER: I don't ever miss a vote, and I will definitely be out there and I will go vote for Sullivan.
KING (voice-over): Nothing bad to say about Peltola, though Grubbs is worried about Democrats gaining power in Washington.
GRUBBS: You've got all these communities that are electing socialists or really far-left leaning ideologies. So to me, I just -- I don't really want far like those, but I also don't really want really far to the right either.
KING (voice-over): Everywhere you go, reminders of the big choice. And don't make the mistake of thinking these warnings are just for show.
KING: Affordability, of course, is the biggest midterm issue everywhere. But Alaskans pay even more for most things because being so remote comes at a price. Groceries in Juneau, for example, 29 percent more than the national average.
KING (voice-over): In Anchorage, it's 26 percent higher. In Fairbanks, 25 percent. Health care is another giant affordability challenge. Americans on average pay $9,700 a year for health care. In Alaska, it's $14,000. That's 44 percent above the national average. And those living in rural communities that are hard to reach face even higher, sometimes eye-popping costs.
A gallon of milk as high as $16 in Bethel. A dozen of eggs, $8.69 in Skagway. Gas hit $11.50 a gallon recently in Alatna and nearly $27 in Shungnak.
Rick Brown moved to Alaska three decades ago, the day he retired from the fire department back home in Kentucky.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think Michael just wrote logistics.
RICK BROWN, ALASKA VOTER: Apparently so.
KING (voice-over): Started his own adventure company 20 years ago. Fishing, hiking, kayaking, panning for gold.
BROWN: Oh, let me ride shotgun.
KING (voice-over): He just turned 75.
KING: Happy birthday.
BROWN: So anyway, you know, if I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it.
KING (voice-over): Business this summer was OK. He expected better.
BROWN: I think the war had a little bit to do with it. And people were unsure of what was going to happen. We get a lot of campers that come up, they drive up, and I see that changing as the years go on, as the price of fuel gets up.
KING (voice-over): Brown likes Senator Sullivan and says he helped the company get access to federal land for some of its tours. For Sullivan twice before, leaning Sullivan this time. But some hesitation because of campaign support the senator receives from larger fishing operations.
BROWN: Seward is used to be a little village with a fishing problem, you know. Now it's a tourism town. But it's -- but I still have a lot of friends that are commercial fishermen. And I want to see what's going to happen to support some of the issues they got with the draggers, you know, the --
KING: The big trawlers.
BROWN: -- the trawlers.
KING (voice-over): Again, nothing negative to say about Peltola. But, again, worries about the Democrats direction.
[20:50:05]
BROWN: You know, the socialism -- the socialist side of it, I don't -- I can't wrap my arms around that.
KING (voice-over): You see the change at the Seward waterfront. Still a fair share of small commercial fishing boats. But also a cruise ship stop now. And a harbor more and more tailored to tourists.
31 years in the charter business for Andy Mezirow. 31 years of finding the right spot.
KING: How you doing, buddy?
ANDY MEZIROW, ALASKA VOTER: Beautiful silver salmon. We're going to let him go, John, so he can live --
KING: Yes.
MEZIROW: -- to spawn another day.
KING (voice-over): This year, a faraway war hurt.
MEZIROW: We came into the season and fuel was $3.25. And then overnight, it turned into $5.25. And there's no way we can really back charge people that have already paid for their trips for the cost of fuel. So we kind of had to eat it this year.
KING (voice-over): Mezirow is on the water just about every day. And he served in fisheries management roles here for years.
MEZIROW: And they have a unique smell to them.
KING (voice-over): He thinks Peltola's talk of banning the big trawlers is over the top.
MEZIROW: I don't think we should ban trawling. I think we should hold their feet to the fire and make them do a better job.
KING (voice-over): Mezirow knows and likes both Senate candidates. And he says Alaska is lucky.
MEZIROW: I don't think this is like a communist versus a Nazi or a devil versus an angel. This is two good people that are trying to do their best.
KING (voice-over): But choice time soon. Likely Peltola, again, because of her roots.
MEZIROW: She's like a real Alaskan that lives out in rural areas and has been a fisherman. She knows what it's like to have a sore back at this time of year and sore hands. I think the decision point is, do you want to change in the way things are going in D.C. or do you like it the way it is? And if you frame it that way, it's hard to like it the way it is.
KING (voice-over): A change in course by Reliably Red Alaska would be beyond a big deal. But the last frontier just may get the last word on whether the Senate and Washington change tracks from red to blue.
John King, CNN, Moose Pass, Alaska.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Beautiful state.
Coming up, with all that crypto money and seats on company boards, you would think Donald Trump Jr. could pay for his own wedding celebrations, but apparently not.
Coming up next, a mysterious Russian oligarch with ties to Putin who reportedly paid for part of the President's son's wedding celebration. A look at ProPublica's investigation, how the couple has responded and what the attorney general said about it today.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:57:09]
COOPER: Donald Trump Jr., the President's oldest son, and his new wife have confirmed a report about their wedding weekend being partially paid for by an oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Not to mention a certain nostalgia for Joseph Stalin. Yes, that Joseph Stalin.
And now the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee has launched an investigation and is seeking more information from the newlyweds and from the White House. Meanwhile, the attorney general, the President's former personal attorney, weighed in on the matter today with the latest. Here's Tom Foreman.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On social media, Donald Trump Jr. and his new wife, Bettina, say their blowout post-wedding party in the Bahamas was no conspiracy, no mystery. So why, in that intimate gathering of family and friends on a pair of private islands, did so many people not know this guest? At least according to U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche.
TODD BLANCHE, ATTORNEY GENERAL: The President doesn't know who this person is. I think other members of the family don't know who this person is.
FOREMAN (voice-over): But in a detailed investigation, ProPublica says the mystery man is Russian billionaire, Umar Kremlev, who footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses for the newlywed Trumps, all during this party that included scantily clad dancers, a five-tier cake from Florida, and a fireworks show.
DONALD TRUMP JR., PRESIDENT TRUMP'S OLDEST SON: I had an awesome weekend. The family had an awesome weekend. It was really cool.
FOREMAN (voice-over): The publication also says Kremlev is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who gave him the Russian order of friendship for his loyalty, among other things. Kremlev, ProPublica says, rose from a government-backed motorcycle gang called the Night Wolves to connect with the man who now leads Putin's security service, and then take over the Russian Boxing Federation and the nation's largest car dealership group, becoming rich and famous.
In one video on social media, ProPublica writes, Kremlev surprises a young mother by giving her a free car. In another, he criticizes his young female aide's outfit as not feminine enough. He shadow boxes with ostriches. He praises Stalin and rides private jets.
And after meeting at a sports conference, he and Don Jr. called each other friends. "Our dear friend Umar," the newlyweds wrote in a statement yesterday, "very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us after our wedding, for which we were and remain incredibly grateful."
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know, this is not good timing for me.
FOREMAN: President Trump said last spring he would not attend that wedding party, and he did not. And Kremlev's office made clear to ProPublica their man has done nothing wrong. This is just socializing.
FOREMAN (voice-over): So will the attorney general investigate anything about this?
BLANCHE: When you say, am I investigating? Am I investigating what? And when you say, this person is a friend of Putin, I don't even know if that's true or not.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Wow. Well, that's it for us.
The news continues. The Source with Kaitlan Collins starts now. I'll see you tomorrow.
