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Amanpour
Interview with FBI Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe; Interview with The New York Times Correspondent Thomas Gibbons-Neff; Interview with U.S. State Department Special Envoy and U.S. State Department Global Engagement Center Coordinator James Rubin; Interview with "Nexus" Author Yuval Noah Harari. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired September 16, 2024 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
A second apparent assassination attempt on Former President Trump. We look at the increasing political violence and tensions around elections in the
United States. Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We know that RT possessed cyber capabilities and engaged in covert information influence operations and
military procurement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- Russian media or Russian intelligence? The United States accuses broadcaster RT of being fully integrated with the Kremlin's
intelligence operations. State Department Special Envoy for Global Engagement James Rubin joins the show.
Also, ahead, how the flow of information has shaped us and our world. Author Yuval Noah Harari talks to Walter Isaacson about his new book,
"Nexus: A Brief History Of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI."
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. For the second time in two months, Former President Donald Trump has been the
target of an apparent assassination attempt. It happened Sunday, while the former president was playing golf at his club in Florida. A Secret Service
agent spotted a rifle barrel poking through a fence a few hundred meters away from where Trump was then playing.
The man in custody, Ryan Wesley Routh, spent time in Ukraine and recently wrote about other global hotspots, including Afghanistan and Taiwan, in a
self-published book. He had also criticized Trump on social media. This moment in American history is fraught as the rhetoric around the election
becomes more heated and political violence increases, and the nation is awash in guns.
One man who knows about political pressure is Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI. He was actually fired by Donald Trump for what McCabe
says was politically motivated reasons. He's joining me now from Washington, D.C.
Andrew McCabe, welcome back to our program. You know, when you heard about this, what went through your mind first? What did you think was cause for
this?
ANDREW MCCABE, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR, FBI: Well, Christiane, I'd have to say, what went through my mind first was just amazement, the fact that
we've had two similar incidents, two attempted assassinations on Former President Trump in just, I think, nine weeks. But it's a sad but kind of
expected commentary on where we are in this country right now, with the idea of political violence.
Law enforcement officers and intelligence officers like myself have been cautioning for the last several years that all the indicators are we are
edging in a direction in this country that will likely result in many more instances of politically motivated violence. We know this from the
increased level of threats that people -- especially government officials are facing at every level, state, local, federal, everything. And we know
that the law enforcement entities designed to protect these folks have said that they are completely overwhelmed, they're receiving more threats than
they really have the capacity to deal with.
So, it's a very dangerous time in the United States. And of course, we're in the very end of a heated political season with the presidential
election. So, it's a very toxic mixture of dangerous threats right now.
AMANPOUR: So, I'm going to get to some of the rhetoric in a moment, but I want to ask you first about guns. I want to know whether you think as an
FBI man that it's as much about guns as about the context or do you give weight to more or less? We do not know as yet what really motivated this
person.
As you say, it's the second time in two months. The first person was killed on site when he shot at President Trump and narrowly missed really getting
him. Where -- is it the gun culture as well?
[13:05:00]
MCCABE: Well, to be clear, Christiane, I don't believe that guns are causing these episodes of violence. Guns don't have an inspirational impact
on people, but they do have a tactical impact on people. The presence of guns, the ease with which just about anyone can put their hands on a very
lethal, essentially, weapon of war in this country makes the problem much more dangerous, much more immediate, and harder for law enforcement to
track.
And I would argue that same presence, the oversupply, if you will, of guns that we have in this country makes a lot of problems in this country worse.
So, you're far more likely to die of suicide by firearm if you live in the United States of America. You're far more likely to experience a mass
shooting where someone in your family may.
So, all of these things are made worse tactically and lethally by the fact that the people who are compelled to do them, for whatever reason, can
easily arm themselves with very destructive weapon.
AMANPOUR: This guy, Routh, apparently, he is the guy who went to Ukraine. He was involved in trying to get foreign fighters to -- you know, to help
the Ukrainians. The FBI obviously has some information on him from what's out in the public domain. They're launching clearly an investigation. What
is the -- I don't know the pattern of what they're going to have to do now. Is it a global surge? Because, you know, some of this was going on overseas
as well, his history anyway.
MCCABE: Yes, for this individual, it will definitely end up with kind of global leads, as we like to say. It starts very locally, right? You start
at the crime scene itself, preserving the evidence of what actually took place. Because unlike what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, here we have a
suspect who will -- who needs to be prosecuted. So, investigators and prosecutors are assembling the evidence they'll need to prosecute him.
But you also want to understand his motive, why he did it, what sort of things were driving him. And for that, then you start to expand beyond the
crime scene. You execute search warrants at his residence, maybe at his business, maybe at the homes or his vehicle or other places. You speak to
all those people, anyone who's been in contact with him.
And crucially, you try to seize and examine every piece of computer media that he may have had, whether it's a laptop or a phone or a tablet or any
communication devices, hard drives, thumb drives, all that stuff, because you want to read everything he wrote. You want to understand the sorts of
messages and communications he was having with friends and associates. All those pieces help the investigators understand what truly drove this guy.
They are looking, first and foremost, to see if anyone had knowledge of this. If anyone helped him. Helped him plan it. Helped him fund it.
Anything like that. And then, also, to see if he was talking to other people who might also be inclined to engage in the same sort of criminal
behavior. But that's how they really piece together a rich picture of the subject.
AMANPOUR: Now, as we know, America has had a very sad and violent tradition, not just of gun violence, but of directly targeting presidents.
We've had presidents who've been assassinated and those who have been nearly killed, whether it's Ronald Reagan, the missed attempts against
Gerald Ford, as you mentioned to me before we came on air, towards the Obama White House, towards the Clinton White House. It's just, you know, a
lot of this kind of violence.
So, I want to talk to you about the rhetoric that we started off talking about. The latest from Donald Trump in an interview with Fox said, quote,
"Talking about Biden and Harris, their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at when I'm the one who's going to save the country and they're the ones who
are trying to destroy it from within, both from inside and out."
Well, as an FBI official, how do you assess that kind of public statement from the intended victim here?
MCCABE: Well, I think in the broad sense, there is no question that the overheated political rhetoric in this country is clearly having an impact
on the population of people here who are extreme enough in their views that they might be compelled to engage in violence. The problem that I have with
that statement is, unfortunately, it is yet another example of a statement from Former President Trump that is having exactly that kind of effect on
this country, right?
In that statement, he's not -- he didn't say, gee, the rhetoric is too heated. I'm going to take it down a few tones. I'm going to recommend
everyone in my -- who supports my campaign to start to rein their language in and to stop engaging in these kind of word bombs on Twitter or wherever
else he posts. No. Instead what you hear is he's attacking his enemies as being responsible for destroying the country. He's the only one that can
save it. This is exactly the kind of rhetoric that we're talking about.
[13:10:00]
The sorts of words that push people to believe that there's no choice for them, that they have to step forward and act violently to eliminate the
person they blame or to potentially help the person they're supporting. Cesar Sayoc is another example. A Trump supporter who sent mail bombs to
people in media and other folks that he thought were enemies of Donald Trump. So, this is very much a double-edged sword.
We would do well if all politicians pledged to a more kind of restrained verbal jousting. But I find that kind of hard to believe in this day and
age that it'll actually happen.
AMANPOUR: And I think we do have to point out that, you remember, Steve Scalise was badly wounded when he was shot at a congressional baseball
game. And, you know, and he was -- by a Bernie Sanders supporter. Sometimes this stuff goes both ways.
But it's very, very weird, for instance, to hear Elon Musk, who owns one of the biggest social media operations in the world, tweeting earlier and
asking why no one was trying to assassinate Biden or Harris, as if he was encouraging it. He then deleted it and said it was a joke. But it's very
alarming that kind of rhetoric in public and definitely a sort of a third rail.
And I just wonder a lot of focus on the Secret Service and a lot of criticism for what happened the first time around and potentially now,
although, they spotted this one. What are the challenges for the Secret Service?
MCCABE: Well, they have a lot of challenges, and I think, you know, we're just about on the verge, I think, of receiving some of the reports of
investigations into what actually led to the problems and the attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania. So, we'll put that on hold for a
moment.
But yesterday is a really interesting example, because by some measures, the security apparatus that the Secret Service had in place actually worked
the way it was supposed to, the advance agents who were there to kind of clear the area and protect the president before he arrives to wherever he's
going on the golf course. They perceived the threat. They addressed the threat. They neutralized the threat in that moment.
But when we put it in the overall perspective, it's clear that that's not sufficient. Even though it was successful in the moment, they've got to
think bigger about creating a broader and more complete perimeter around this president simply because of the vast number of threats he faces.
So, they are challenged with a lack of resources. They have been challenged with some questionable leadership in their recent history and it's, you
know, asking for more things in Congress in these days of limited budgets is never popular, but if we want our political leaders to be protected, we
have got to support institutions like the Secret Service and oversee them to make sure that job gets done correctly.
AMANPOUR: Andrew McCabe, thank you so much indeed for joining us.
And now, among the facts that we do know about the suspect, Ryan Routh, is that he was interviewed last year by a New York Times reporter on foreign
fighters in Ukraine. That reporter, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, is joining me now live. Welcome to the program, Thomas Gibbons-Neff.
Can I -- well, I just first want to ask you, what went through your mind when you were putting two and two together, realizing that this name was
attached to the person that you had once interviewed?
THOMAS GIBBONS-NEFF, CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, I got a phone call yesterday afternoon and I had to rack my brain, I mean, over a few
seconds. But it was sad, but it kind of felt -- I don't want to say expected, but, I mean, not completely surprising.
AMANPOUR: Why not? What impression did you get of him?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I mean, my first conversation, I think I only talked to Mr. Routh once on the phone. He just seemed like a very, you know, driven guy
with a noticeable southern twang, but also operating in a reality that I could see, but didn't really relate to or think was maybe the reality that
you and I operate.
AMANPOUR: So, what -- I mean, what kind of things was he saying? Because it appears from your reporting that he wanted to help Afghans, the ones who
are in Iran get out to fight in Ukraine. Did he concoct some sort of wild sort of thesis on this or what?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Right. So, I was put in touch with Mr. Routh through a colleague of mine who I worked with in Kabul and he had gone through a
source of his who was trying to get out of Iran after fleeing Kabul in the summer of '21.
[13:15:00]
And, you know, by the time I talked to Mr. Routh, he had hundreds of names, he had spreadsheets, he sent a video of, and he just had this grand plan
where he would get all of these Afghan refugees from various countries, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and get them somehow to Ukraine. And, you
know, he was talking about military transports from Erbil to Poland and said very self-assuredly but absolutely not attached to any type of
realistic goal.
And talking to a former recruiter for Ukrainian foreign legion, they said that he kept bringing names to them with no means to get them into the
country and eventually was kind of laughed out of the room.
AMANPOUR: Wow. Thomas, a few days ago, your colleague, I believe it's the same one you just mentioned, Najeem (ph), he spoke with Routh a few days
ago. He described him as being financially despondent, living out of a car, $60 left in the bank. Did you guys have any -- well, did Najeem (ph) had --
have any sort of foreboding that he might do something rash?
GIBBONS-NEFF: No. So, Najeem (ph) talked to kind of the intermediary, an Afghan in Iran, who is -- who was still very close with Ryan. And yes,
that's when he basically reported that, yes, he was out of money, living on a car, but still sending money to Afghans.
AMANPOUR: But no inkling that he might, you know, do something crazy?
GIBBONS-NEFF: No, there was none of that there.
AMANPOUR: And can I ask you finally, and then this is -- you know, I'm just asking you as a fellow reporter. Has the name Ryan Routh been publicly
stated by the law -- by law enforcement? Is this the actual guy?
GIBBONS-NEFF: As far as the guy that I spoke to in last year and this guy, the one who was arrested, I mean, I think the picture is lined up. I don't
know. But I'm pretty sure, yes, that's his name.
AMANPOUR: And, Thomas, you are the national correspondent focusing on the gun culture, if I could put it that way, in the United States. Talk a
little bit about the intersection, I guess, of your work and your reporting and kind of what happened and a little bit of what, you know, Andrew McCabe
of the FBI said, the fact that, I think, it's 120 guns per one person in the U.S., what challenges it poses?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Yes, I mean, I think you look at Butler, Pennsylvania, you look at, you know, Florida yesterday, I think the weapon in question was a,
you know, Soviet IL SKS (ph), I think that was just reported, which is, you know, an old rifle developed in the 1940s, that it cost a couple hundred
dollars and is still fairly accurate up to a few hundred yards, and you can pick them up in a lot of places.
And, I mean, you think about, you know, how much the U.S. spent over the so-called global war on terror, on firing Hellfire missiles at farmers
planting roadside bombs, and, you know, you can pay $500 and take a shot at, you know, former president, and it's happened twice. I mean, I think
it's a pretty, you know, scary trend. How could it not be?
AMANPOUR: And I said, you know, 120 to one, it's 120 per a hundred people. What's your next story?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Yes, that that's -- it's like, that's always the question. I think it's probably going to be this for a few days and then surface for
air and figure out what's next.
AMANPOUR: All right. Thomas Gibbons-Neff, New York Times, thank you so much indeed for your reflections on this.
And with fewer than 50 days until the election, the U.S. government is trying to get ahead of any attempt by foreign powers to meddle in the vote.
On Friday, the State Department revealed declassified intelligence that suggests Russian state funded broadcaster RT, formerly known as Russia
Today, is fully integrated with the Kremlin's intelligence operations worldwide.
My former husband, Jamie Rubin, leads the State Department's Global Engagement Center, which highlights propaganda and disinformation efforts
by hostile states, and he joined me from a very busy State Department lobby to discuss all of this.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Jamie, welcome to the program. We're obviously going to get into all the things that your department and the State Department has been doing
about Russian disinformation in a second. But first, the alleged attempt assassination against Trump, a second time. The president and vice
president have come out with their statements.
[13:20:00]
Do you think though, given your role with this information and propaganda and the toxic atmosphere, that any of this plays a role in this political
violence in America right now?
JAMES RUBIN, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT SPECIAL ENVOY AND COORDINATOR, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT CENTER: Well, it's hard to say what
would particularly motivate an individual to do something as horrible as this. The president, the vice president have spoken to the fact that
there's no place for violence in American politics.
But I certainly believe that around the world, the fact that information has been generated by Moscow, by Beijing, that has tended to overwhelm the
normal discussion of politics, the normal give and take of politics, to exaggerate the differences, has created more division in our country and
countries around the world, that's the hope of the Russians, that's the hope of the Chinese, to promote internal divisions. But I think we're
strong enough to overcome them.
AMANPOUR: Can I just ask you, since you mentioned Russia and China, a lot are sort of looking at Iran now. Has Iran taken up a major role in this,
you know, many years of disinformation and hacking and attempting to influence American elections?
RUBIN: Well, again, the GEC, where I work, doesn't focus on American politics. We focus on what goes on around the world. I am aware of the fact
that our director of national intelligence has spoken to the fact that Iran has done things inside the United States.
Most of my work, however, is focused on what Russia and China do around the world, in Africa, in Latin America, in Europe, where the Russian government
has now used RT, its official television station, and the leader of that station admits they're doing exactly what Russia's president wants them to
do, which is to use disinformation to try to divide our countries, to use disinformation to try to somehow mask the simple fact that Russia has
violated the first rule of international politics, thou shalt not invade thy neighbor.
Russia invaded Ukraine, and everything they've done through the information space has been to try to mask that fact. And hopefully, and most Americans
I know and most people around the world understand that that simple violation can't be masked.
AMANPOUR: OK. So, let's start by -- I'm going to run this little bite of Secretary of State Blinken, your boss, when he announced this latest you
know, escalation, in other words, outing RT on Friday from the State Department. Let me just play this soundbite.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Thanks to new information, much of which originates from RT employees. We know that RT possess cyber
capabilities and engaged in covert information and influence operations and military procurement.
As part of RT's expanded capabilities, the Russian government embedded within RT a unit with cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian
intelligence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, this is not just a U.S. investigation, apparently Canada and Britain have accused RT as well of the same kind of things. Can you detail
what they're actually doing to in -- you know, in this case?
RUBIN: Well, you're right, Christiane. Canada, the United Kingdom has joined us. Canadian intelligence reports they agree that Russia's
television station, RT Rossiya Segodnya, has been used for multiple purposes. What it's called when it does that is up for grabs within the
intelligence community. People don't know exactly how to describe it. But what it does is not in question.
I'll give you a very concrete example, RT, under its current leadership, working with Russian intelligence operations, are trying to prevent
President Sandu from being re-elected in Moldova. That would be a tragedy if an outside power intervened in the elections in Moldova and prevented a
very pro-western candidate from winning.
But worse than that, Christiane, they are using that mechanism to try to generate violence if their preferred candidate doesn't succeed, try to
generate violence so that there's some sort of political change, what they might call a red color revolution. So, that's the level at which this
organization working with Russian intelligence is going to try to, to intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries.
We've been working with Moldova. We've been working with. Our British colleagues, our Canadian colleagues, and I have to say, I'm very lucky that
Secretary Blinken is the secretary of state who understands the power of information in these matters, and has given me the opportunity to, for
example, in a meeting with President Sandu, to lay out for her, the president of Moldova, all the things that RT and the Russian government is
doing to try to undermine her government.
[13:25:00]
He's also worked with his British colleague last week to get these allegations made public, which is not an easy thing to do. And now, we're
going to generate what I hope will be a very important diplomatic campaign that Secretary Blinken will lead so that countries around the world
understand that by having RT in their country, they're not only having a -- as Secretary Blinken called it, a firehose of lies and disinformation, but
they're also having an entity that will work using covert activities to try to undermine governments when they don't like the policies of those
governments.
AMANPOUR: So, you know, you mentioned the head of RT. She is an expert troller, and she basically said, you know, yes, yes, we are doing this. And
she, in fact, said, you know, my life will not have been in vain. In other words, we're doing this, we're doing it successfully all around the world.
We're spreading our narrative.
Do you think this particular instance now is about trying to shape different countries like Moldova, the United States, whoever, in their
views on Ukraine? Is it specifically targeted in other words?
RUBIN: Well, yes, the U.S. government also has. U.S. government funded television, U.S. government funded radio, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free
Asia, The Voice of America, those are funded by the U.S., but they don't take orders from the president. But that's the difference between a
democratic government's -- governments funded radio station, and what she's talking about, where they're taking their instructions directly from the
Kremlin.
Yes, that's their objective, to try to somehow mask the very simple reality that Russia has done in a dramatic way, in a completely unacceptable way,
taken hundreds and thousands of troops and are slaughtering people of Ukraine simply for being there. They're trying to invade and take over
their neighbor. That's rule number one of the international system. They know the whole world is against that. So, they're trying to use this poison
they insert into the information system to try to mask the simple truth.
AMANPOUR: Do you think there is any mechanism to counter this? Because everybody now talks about sanctions because of, you know, what you just
outlined on -- but sanctions, do they really work and particularly in this instance will they work?
RUBIN: Well, Secretary Blinken has imposed the strongest possible blocking financial sanctions. So, that means for Rossiya Segodnya around the world,
when they want to work in dollars, it's extremely difficult. We hope that will put a damper on their activities around the world.
But the real issue here is not the supply side of this poison, it's the demand side. And so, what we're hoping to do, through this diplomatic
campaign, is to inform the world, and that's where we hope to have success, by informing the world of who these people really are, what they really do,
how they use their offices and their TV capabilities to try to get governments around the world to change their policies.
You're talking to me from London. In Europe, RT is formally banned. Their broadcast licenses have been removed. Other countries will make decisions
for themselves. But we certainly hope when they make those decisions, and that's what we're doing about it, we're trying to expose so that we can
disrupt their activities by helping other governments come to their own decisions about how to treat this non-television station activities and the
propaganda and lies that come out of RT.
AMANPOUR: OK. So, swerving a little bit to an issue that was made public, you know, weeks ago, last month, in fact, that is the prisoner swap. Evan
Gershkovich swapped along with others, being held by Russia for a number of Russians, including a chief, we might call him a villain, a convicted
assassin, a Russian held by Germany.
How did this work? Because you were quoted as being part of this, you know, idea, along with the State Department hostage envoy, Roger Carstens. You
have been trying for a long time to get this one for one swap. It didn't work. Everybody wanted to get Gershkovich, everybody wanted to get Navalny
out, it didn't work. So, how did it -- what were the back story?
RUBIN: Well, the back story on this is really quite fascinating, and I certainly hope that someday the full details of it get told, but I can tell
you a few things that are interesting, which is that often in these negotiations, the real wizards of them are what we call the back channels,
and what that means is individuals who can speak to governments and get them to tell them things they wouldn't say to another government directly.
[13:30:00]
So, for example, my colleague, Christo Grozev, who I know you've had on this program, worked with the Navalny team, and I learned from him some
important information. I learned that, indeed, the Germans were prepared to release this cold-blooded killer, only if there was a moral imperative to
do so. And the moral imperative they saw was initially was the release of Navalny, who had become a folk hero inside Germany.
And Secretary Blinken was able to take that idea of bringing into the equation a new person. In other words, enlarging the problem. Sometimes
when you get stuck -- I think this comes from President Eisenhower, when you get stuck, you have to enlarge the problem. So, Secretary Blinken
enlarged the problem by raising with his counterpart, the foreign minister of Germany, Anna Baerbock, the idea of releasing Krasikov, who was somebody
that we knew, again, from these back channels, from Christo, that President Putin really cared about him. They had gone shooting together, they'd done
work together. Putin really wanted to get him back.
So, by getting this information, Secretary Blinken was able to go to Anna Baerbock and raise the question with her. Now, she pointed out this real
problem. It's called moral hazard. How do you deal with a situation where somebody is a cold-blooded killer and he hasn't finished his sentence? He's
already been sentenced, but he hasn't finished it. What do you do about that?
This was a successful operation in which the president did the hardest thing, which was to get the German chancellor to agree to release Krasikov,
but then Jake Sullivan, who works for him, Bill Burns, the head of the CIA, as all of this has been, I think, pretty much most of it talked about
publicly, were able to kick into gear this unprecedented trade, the largest single exchange of prisoners.
And we got 16 people out. Not only all of the prisoners that were held, but -- and the Russians got eight, because this was a very, very complex deal.
We enlarged the problem. Sixteen for eight. There were several countries involved, including Turkey, where they all were transferred.
AMANPOUR: I don't know whether you can give me details, but how did you know Putin would go for it? That's one question. And then, also, you didn't
get Navalny out.
RUBIN: Well, that's something tragic. And obviously, the people responsible for Navalny's death are well known. And they sit in the
Kremlin. That's why he's dead. Was it possible to get Navalny out? We'll never know.
We do know that President Putin really, really cared about Krasikov. We know that he was prepared to do a lot. We heard through these back channels
that he might have even traded Navalny for him. But that never had time to come to fruition because he died. Why did he die? Only President Putin
knows the answer to that, but he's still responsible for it, as President Biden and Secretary Blinken has said.
The back channels were the ones that were able to tell us through, you know, sometimes governments don't speak to each other freely. They don't
speak hypothetically. They don't ruminate on possibilities. They don't say, well, if we did this, we could do that. If you did this, we could do that.
That's what you can do through the back channels.
And Roger Carstens and Secretary Blinken, I provided information to from these back channels, that told us two important things. One, that there
were circumstances under which Germany would trade Krasikov, would give up this moral hazard and put him in the equation.
AMANPOUR: I just want to put it out there, Krasikov was convicted of assassinating Putin's opponent in broad daylight in Germany. So, that's who
he is. Can I just ask you then, look, if you could, as a nation, as diplomats, as an administration, come up with that kind of deal with an
adversary like Putin right now, do you think it's possible to come up with some kind of deal to end this war in Ukraine?
RUBIN: Well, I think that's -- first of all, as usual, Christiane, that's a good, good question. That's the big question of our time, frankly. This
is the biggest war that is going on in the world, that's gone on in the world in decades. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of troops
battling it out World War I style every day along battle line of control. This is a major war. Solving that war is extremely important.
Unfortunately, the war was started by President Putin, and he's going to have to figure out when he wants to give up, because he's not going to
succeed. He's going to fail. He's not going to take over Ukraine.
AMANPOUR: Obviously, this weekend has been full of the conversations between the British prime minister, the American president lifting the
restrictions on how to use weapons that are -- you know, that are given to Ukraine. Will that happen?
[13:35:00]
RUBIN: President Biden and Secretary Blinken, my direct boss, have only said that we're working with our British colleagues. We have the same
objective, how to put into the hands of Ukraine the weapons they need to defend their territory and defeat this invasion. And President Biden and
Secretary Blinken and prime minister of Britain talked about that just in the last couple of days. That's an ongoing subject and I'm not going to get
ahead of them.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Jamie Rubin from the State Department. And that conversation goes right to the heart of our next guest's thesis. In his new book,
"Nexus, A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI," bestselling author and historian Yuval Noah Harari looks at how we got here
and what we need to do next in an age where artificial intelligence poses unique challenges. And he's joining Walter Isaacson now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you. And Yuval Noah Harari. Welcome back to the show.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI, AUTHOR, "NEXUS": Thank you. And it's good to be here again.
ISAACSON: Your bestselling book, "Sapiens," was about how we, meaning our species, homo sapiens, became dominant, and it's mainly about how we were
able to form networks of cooperation. Your new book, "Nexus," is about communications and how they help to form those networks, but it's rather
pessimistic. I think you say, the way these networks are built predisposes us to use that power unwisely. Tell me about that theme.
HARARI: Well, the basic question of the book, of "Nexus," is if humans are so smart, why are we so stupid? We've named our species homo sapiens, which
means wise humans, and we know a lot more than any other animal on the planet. We've reached the moon. We can split the atom. We can decode and
write DNA, and nevertheless, we are on the verge of destroying ourselves and much of the ecosystem.
So, this is the paradox at the center off the book. And, of course, humans have been concerned with this paradox throughout history. And many
mythologists and theologists, they blame human nature, that there is something wrong with human nature, which causes us to be self-destructive.
The book "Nexus" gives a different answer. The problem is not with our nature, it's with our information. If you give good people bad information,
they make bad decisions. They make self-destructive decisions. And we are now seeing it all around us. You know, we have the most sophisticated
information technology in history. And at the same time, we are losing the ability to talk with each other, to listen to each other.
You know, there is maybe one thing that Democrats and Republicans in the United States can agree on, is that the democratic conversation is breaking
down. Everybody accuses the other side, of course, but the basic fact is that this ability which sustains democracy to hold a reasonable
conversation, it is breaking down at exactly the same moment that we have supposedly the best information technology in history.
ISAACSON: You say the flaws aren't in our nature, it's in our communications networks.
HARARI: Yes.
ISAACSON: What are the flaws in those communication networks?
HARARI: The basic misunderstanding is about what information does and what information is. Information isn't truth. This naive view which dominates in
places like Silicon Valley that you just need to flood the world with more and more information, and as a result, we will have more knowledge and more
wisdom, this is simply not true because most information is junk.
The truth is a very rare and costly kind of information. The basic function of information, in most cases, is not to reveal the truth. The basic
function is to connect, to connect large numbers of people into networks. And the easiest way to connect large numbers of people is not with the
truth, it is with fictions and fantasies and mass delusions.
ISAACSON: And what should be done about that? Should governments actually step in? We're watching that happen a bit.
HARARI: Two things that should be done at the governmental level, and there is something to be done on the individual level. On the governmental
level, the two most obvious things to do is to ban fake humans, that we don't want algorithms pretending to be humans and thereby distorting our
information systems.
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If you go online, let's say to Twitter, and you see that the story has a lot of traction, a lot of traffic and you think, oh, a lot of humans are
interested in this. So, I should also get involved, but actually it's not human, it's bots and algorithms. This should be banned.
So, we shouldn't have the situation when algorithms that pretends to be humans are running our conversations. The other thing is that corporations
should be liable for the actions of their algorithms. Whenever you talk about it with the big tech companies, they immediately raise the flag of
freedom of speech. We don't want to censor our users. The problem is not with the human users.
Humans produce enormous amounts of content, some of it is hate and greed, but there is also a lot of other good content. The problem is that the
corporate algorithms of Twitter and Facebook and TikTok and so forth, they deliberately spread the hate and the fear and the greed because this is
good for their business interests. And this is what they should be liable for, for the decisions and actions of their algorithms, not for the -- what
the human users are doing.
ISAACSON: You've talked about humans having some misinformation, and then you've talked about the way the algorithms work. Is there a difference
between an organic information system, meaning human information system, and an inorganic one?
HARARI: Yes, there are many differences. One is that organic entities like us, like human beings, we work in cycles. There is day and night, winter
and summer. Sometimes we are active. Sometimes we need rest. We need sleep. The algorithms are tireless. They never need to rest. They are not organic.
And what we see in the world now is that they increasingly force us to work according to their pace. There is never any time to rest. The news cycle is
always on. The markets are always on. The political game is always on. And if you force an organic entity to be on all the time, to be always active,
always excited, it eventually collapses and dies.
And, you know, the most misunderstood and abused word in the English language today is the word excited. A lot of people mistake the word
excited for happy. Like they meet somebody, they say, oh, I'm so excited to meet you. Or like you publish a new book, oh, this is so exciting.
Now, excitement is not always good. Excitement for an organic being, like a human being, means that your nervous system and your brain are very
engaged, very active. Now, if you keep an organic system very excited, all the time, it breaks down, collapses, and eventually dies. And this is what
happens now to democracies all over the world. This is what is happening to humanity. We are far too excited. We need time to rest. We need to kind of
slow down.
And because we give increasing control of the world to tireless non-organic algorithms that never need to rest and can just increase the excitement all
the time, we are breaking down. We need more (INAUDIBLE) not excitement in politics, in economics, in many fields.
ISAACSON: When we talk about artificial intelligence and we say how it's going to change the way we distribute information and either empower people
or empower tyrannies, sometimes people reflect back on the last huge advance in information technology spread, which was Gutenberg 500 years ago
doing the movable type printing press. You kind of debunk that.
You say artificial intelligence is very insidious compared to the pretty good things that come out of the printing press.
HARARI: Well, there is a myth that, you know, Gutenberg brought print to Europe. And as a result, we got the scientific revolution and all the
wonders of modern science. This is a very, very inaccurate, misleading view of history.
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Almost 200 years past from the invention of print until the flowering of the scientific revolution, during these 200 years, the main effects of
print on Europe was a wave of wars of religion and witch hunts and things like that, because the big best sellers of early modern Europe were not
Copernicus and Galileo Galilei, almost nobody read them. The big best sellers were religious tracts and were witch hunting manuals.
ISAACSON: But it also was the Bible, and that helped take power away from the Roman Catholic Church, and allow more individual religion.
HARARI: Yes, it certainly broke the monopoly of the Catholic Church, but again, not in favor of science, but in favor of more and more extreme
religious sects. And you got, again, this wave of the walls of religion in Europe, culminating in the 30 years' war, which was arguably the most
destructive war in European history, at least until the two World Wars of the 20th century, for the same reasons that we see the spread of fake news
and conspiracy theories and so forth right now.
When you make the production of information easier, what you get is not necessarily facts, what you get is a lot of junk information, a lot of fake
news and conspiracy theories and things like that. If you want the truth, it's not enough to have a technology of -- to produce information, you need
institutions, costly institutions that make the effort to separate reliable information, which is rare, a kind of information from the flood of
unreliable information.
And in early modern Europe, it took 200 years to create such institutions, like newspapers, like scientific associations. You know, in scientific
journals, they don't run after user engagement. The algorithms today on social media are exactly like the first wave of publishers in the 15th and
16th century. In the 16th century, they also ran after user engagement. We want user engagement. And they discovered, in the 16th century, that if you
produce a book by Copernicus with all these mathematical calculations about the movement of the planets, nobody buys it. It's boring.
But if you publish a witch hunting manual that tells you that there is a worldwide conspiracy of witches led by Satan, and they have orgies, and
cannibalism and child sacrifice, and they try to take over the world, and some of your neighbors in the village, they are part of this conspiracy,
and these are a few signs how you can identify these witches in your town, in your village and kill them, these were the big best sellers. And this
led to this craze of the witch hunt, which was not a medieval phenomenon.
In Medieval Europe, witch hunting was a very rare -- I mean, people didn't care so much about witches in Medieval Europe. The witch hunts were a
modern phenomenon, ignited in part by the print revolution and by this flood of witch hunting manuals, which were good for user engagement and
very bad for everything else.
ISAACSON: One of the things you say about artificial intelligence that makes it fundamentally different from every previous part of the
information revolution is you say that artificial intelligence, A.I., are going to be full-fledged members of our information networks possessing
their own agency.
HARARI: Yes.
ISAACSON: In other words, they're going to have their own will. They're going to decide what they want to do. Are they going to have consciousness?
Are they going to have planning? Are they going to have free will?
HARARI: You don't need consciousness and feelings in order to have goals and aims. When OpenAI developed a GPT-4 and they wanted to test what this
new A.I. can do, they gave it the task of solving CAPTCHA puzzles. It's these puzzles you encounter online when you try to access a website and the
website needs to decide whether you're a human or a robot.
Now, GPT-4 could not solve the CAPTCHA. But it accessed a website, TaskRabbit, where you can hire people online to do things for you. And it
wanted to hire a human worker to solve the CAPTCHA puzzle for it.
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Now, the human got suspicious. It wrote to GPT-4 online, what's happening? Why do we need somebody to solve CAPTCHA puzzles for you? Are you a robot?
The human asked, are you a robot? And GPT-4 said, no. I'm not a robot, I'm a human, but I have a vision impairment, which is why I have difficulty
with these CAPTCHA puzzles, and this is why I want to hire you. And the human was duped and solved the CAPTCH puzzle for GPT-4.
Now, GPT-4 has no consciousness, it has no feelings, it was -- it didn't feel anxious when the human kind of questioned it, it didn't feel happy
when it managed to fool the human. It was given a goal, and it pursued this goal by making up, for instance, excuses that nobody told it what to do.
That's the kind of really amazing and frightening thing about these situations.
When Facebook gave the algorithm the aim of increased user engagement, the managers of Facebook did not anticipate that it will do it by spreading
hate filled conspiracy theories. This is something the algorithm discovered by itself. The same with the CAPTCHA puzzle. And this is the big problem we
are facing with A.I.
ISAACSON: You conclude, Nexus, your book, with a statement that, the decisions we all make in the coming years will determine whether summoning
this alien intelligence, meaning A.I., proves to be a terminal error or the beginning of a hopeful new chapter in the evolution of life.
So, I have that question, what do you mean by we? I mean, you said that it's just in the hands of a very few people, how do we, as people who don't
run Twitter, Facebook, how do we get involved?
HARARI: Hey, it starts from voting for the right people in elections that will reign in the immense power of these tech giants who are not elected by
anybody or not really accountable to anybody. And these crucial decisions about shaping the future of humanity needs to be made by people who
represent the majority of us and not just by a few billionaires and engineers.
Secondly, it's choices we -- each of us makes every day. The key thing is to avoid the trap off technological determinism. The idea that once you
develop a certain technology, it can only go one way, and there is nothing for us to decide here. It's never the case. Every technology can be used in
a lot of different ways. You can use a knife to murder somebody or to save their life in surgery.
In the 20th century, we saw that electricity and steam power and cars can be used to create totalitarian dictatorships or liberal democracies. It's
the same technology. This is also true in the 21st century with A.I. It has enormous positive potential to create the best health care systems in
history, to help solve the climate crisis, and it can also lead to the rise of dystopian totalitarian regimes and new empires. And ultimately, even the
destruction of human civilization. And the choice, which way it will go, it's a choice that all of us need to take part in.
ISAACSON: Yuval Noah Harari, thank you so much for joining us.
HARARI: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And finally, in a night full of stars, sentimental reunions, and big wins at the Emmys, came a first for one Hollywood legend. Jodie Foster,
the two-time Oscar winner, took home her first ever Emmy for Outstanding Leading Actress in the spooky hit show, "True Detective: Night Country."
In her speech, she's thanked the indigenous people of Alaska where the show is set, and her co-star Kylee Reese, who is of Native American descent
herself. When I sat down with both of them earlier this year, Foster reflected on why she wanted to make sure that Kylee and the character she
plays were at the center of the story.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JODIE FOSTER, ACTRESS, "TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY": I really wanted to remind us that we were doing something that really isn't done very much.
She has to have the central voice of the film, be an indigenous voice, to be looked through those eyes in a way, not just because we're doing
representation, but because we really want to be in that body and really understand it from that perspective.
And so, for -- to do that, I'm just here to support. So, I kind of reverse engineered my character of Liz Danvers to support Kylee's character's
journey.
[13:55:00]
AMANPOUR: That doesn't happen often.
FOSTER: Well, you know, there's a funny thing that happens when you turn 60, I think, is -- at least for me, I feel like there's like some weird
chemical that starts going off in your body and you just don't care.
And part of that not caring is that you suddenly realize that it's so much more fun and more satisfying to recognize that it's not your time, it's
someone else's time. And it's up to you to help support them and bring whatever experience and wisdom you have to that process. And you get to be
part of a team, which is amazing. It's so much better than doing everything on your own and being all nervous and anxious about yourself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Amazing insights. That's it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast.
Remember, you can always catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media.
Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.
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