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Amanpour
Interview with "The Nord Stream Conspiracy" Author and The Wall Street Journal Chief European Political Correspondent Bojan Pancevski; Interview with "Maybe Tomorrow" Co-Director Wafa Mustafa; Interview with "Maybe Tomorrow" Co-Director Waad Al-Kateab; Interview with Georgetown University Professor of Computer Science and "Deep Questions" Podcast Host Cal Newport. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired June 26, 2026 - 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.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOJAN PANCEVSKI, AUTHOR, "THE NORD STREAM CONSPIRACY" AND CHIEF EUROPEAN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: If one bomb explodes,
the mission will be incomplete. They have to lay eight bombs in total.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Ukraine takes the war ever deeper inside Russia, and almost four years after the Nord Stream Pipeline sabotage, I speak to journalist Bojan
Pancevski about the shadow war being waged far from the front lines.
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WAFA MUSTAFA, CO-DIRECTOR, "MAYBE TOMORROW": I had a father. He existed. He lived with me. I knew him, and it's not just in my mind.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- after Assad's fall, thousands of Syrian families are still searching for their missing. Filmmakers Wafa Mustafa and Waad Al-Kateab
speak to me about their powerful new documentary.
Also, ahead --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAL NEWPORT, PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY AND HOST "DEEP QUESTIONS" PODCAST: A.I. companies trying to convince their
customers that the products that they are creating are potentially going to cause massive devastation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- is the A.I. industry overselling fear? Hari Sreenivasan speaks to leading computer science professor Cal Newport about doom
trolling.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
Summer is officially underway, but in Russian-occupied Crimea, residents are facing fuel shortages, rolling blackouts, and canceled summer camps. It
is all part of a new phase in Russia's war, as Ukraine expands its campaign into the invaders' heartland.
A growing fleet of Ukrainian-produced drones is targeting the supply routes that keep Putin's war machine running. Ukrainian officials say the goal is
to isolate the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula and make Putin's war difficult to sustain. President Zelenskyy says the pressure is working.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): The majority in Russia is already complaining to Putin that his war has no end
in sight. All the current difficulties for the Russians should bring them closer to the idea that this is their war, and it is not just a stone from
the sky, and that their war must end.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: The expanded campaign comes after Ukraine launched its largest drone assault on Moscow since the war began. And now, The Wall Street
Journal reports the Kremlin is pressuring Belarus to open another front as Russia struggles on the battlefield.
And as this war increasingly resorts to sabotage and covert attacks on critical infrastructure, one of its biggest mysteries remains unsolved.
Shortly after the 2022 Russian invasion, explosions ripped through the Nord Stream gas pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea. Investigators are still trying
to figure out who was responsible.
Wall Street Journal chief European political correspondent Bojan Pancevski's thrilling new book, "The Nord Stream Conspiracy," reveals the
inside story. He tells me about one of the most consequential acts of sabotage in recent history and the secret team most likely behind it.
Bojan Pancevski, welcome to the program.
BOJAN PANCEVSKI, AUTHOR, "THE NORD STREAM CONSPIRACY" AND CHIEF EUROPEAN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Thanks for having me on.
AMANPOUR: So, this Nord Stream explosion, for anybody who's, you know, deep into the weeds of this whole big story, they'll remember it. And even
those not deep into the weeds, just remind us, though, set the stage for what happened on that day when it basically exploded.
PANCEVSKI: This was the 26th of September 2022, shortly after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And it was reported that
the world's largest pipeline system, offshore pipeline system, had lost pressure. And the next day, the footage, now iconic, was released by the
navies of Sweden and Denmark, showing this gigantic kind of bubbling in the middle of the Baltic Sea and essentially signaling that the pipelines had
been blown up.
So, that was a, you know, literal explosion. It was the greatest ever recorded man-made release of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. And it was
a geopolitical explosion because this was a piece of critical infrastructure and extremely controversial at that because a lot of people
opposed the construction of the pipelines because they believed it would make Western Europe, and Germany in particular, addicted to Russian gas
exports.
[13:05:00]
AMANPOUR: Which, to an extent, we discover that they were. You write in the book it was arguably the greatest act of sabotage in modern history.
And you've just explained what happened, the biggest release of greenhouse gases, a huge geopolitical shock, and a political crisis over how to source
energy.
What went through your mind the most? The minute you heard about this, what do you think? Who'd done it?
PANCEVSKI: Well, essentially, I sort of really found out what happened on the second day when I saw the footage on my mobile phone. And that's when I
started working on the story, essentially, because I knew this was a sort of gigantic story. It was obviously a sabotage. I think from day one that
was perfectly clear.
And interestingly, my first instinct was that it was the Ukrainians, which proved to be true later, as I found in my investigation. But, you know,
there were a lot of lots of theories kind of flapping around. Some people were briefing to an extent intentionally that it could have been Russia.
So, they were directing the media in the direction of kind of investigating Russian -- potential Russian authorship of this. Others in the camp that
kind of doesn't really support Ukraine blame the CIA. You know, there was a big story around whether or not it was the CIA. It was kind of obvious it
must have been a state actor.
So, I had been reporting from Ukraine since 2014 from the front lines, but also from the capital, et cetera. And I was intimately acquainted with the
operation of Ukrainian special services. And I knew exactly what they were capable of and how bold were they in their actions. And I think, you know,
that suspicion proved to be correct later on.
AMANPOUR: Tell me a little bit then about who you discovered were responsible for it. How did they talk to you about it?
PANCEVSKI: Well, the people who orchestrated and executed this operation were members of a lead unit of Ukraine's armed forces at the time. The
masterminds were veteran special services operatives. They come from the intelligence services. They had become embedded in the army during the
full-scale invasion. And they and some officers around them kind of conceived the plot and the plan.
And eventually they hired or rather recruited civilian deep-sea divers, so- called technical divers. These are people who can go down 100 meters below the surface to the bottom of the ocean to operate there, to lay the mines
onto the pipeline.
And the reason why they did this was because they couldn't find people with that skill set within the special forces. As I found out in my research,
it's actually a very rare skill set. People like the Navy SEALs or the SPS in the United Kingdom don't really go to the bottom of the ocean. They have
different tasks, you know, put mines on ships or for the body of water. So, it was quite a challenge.
And in the end, they settled for what is known as proxies in the intelligence world, i.e., people who are not trained, who don't come from
the army or from the intelligence, but rather they are ordinary civilians with extraordinary skills and motivation.
AMANPOUR: Well, you know, it became known internally as Operation Diameter. And amongst this team, you say, of course, were the four divers
and a female diving instructor. And you write that this female diver was perhaps the reason the attack was a success. Why do you say that?
PANCEVSKI: Well, this was told to me by her fellow crew members and her superior officers. Essentially, she was the sole female member of the
entire operation of the entire team. And she's an extremely experienced deep-sea diver and an instructor, diving instructor. She had worked all
around the world and she's extremely bold and a strong character.
And there was a point where they ran into a storm during their mission in the Baltic because the mission unfolded in the latter part of September
2022, when the weather is pretty unpleasant at times in the Baltic. And there was a gale force storm and the crew kind of voted to abandon the
mission because they felt it was already, you know, a case of risking their lives. And they thought this was becoming too dangerous. You know, they had
to do something already life threatening. And then the storm was it was an extreme kind of hazard.
And the woman kind of motivated the men on board to actually persevere because she, I think, told them that she could do it herself if they would
let her and they don't really have to go down, et cetera. And so, they felt kind of, I presume, embarrassed. And, you know, she was a great motivator
in that. She showed a bit of leadership. That's the account that was shared with me from different sources on the boat and also the people in the
headquarters.
[13:10:00]
So, in that sense --
AMANPOUR: I can just imagine what they thought, Bojan, when she said, I'll go down on my own. You write that this female diver was perhaps -- well,
not just that it was successful, but she was incapable of fear and everything else and described as positively mad. So, you've just explained
why that -- how that is.
So, in this unbelievably hostile environment, climate wise, just describe to us the mechanics. They went down. Where is the pipeline? Is it on the
bed of the is it dug into the seabed? And what did they have to do, the human effort to get it disrupted?
PANCEVSKI: Well, the pipeline, it runs over almost over a thousand miles beneath the Baltic Sea. It connects Russia and Germany. And the operation
of the bombs were laid at a depth of around 80 meters. To go down at that depth you require a special skill set and the ability to breathe a
different mixture of gases because breeding oxygen at that level is actually toxic for the human body. So, you have to add nitrogen and helium,
et cetera.
And, of course, to operate on that kind of pressure, you have to imagine the surface of the water is extremely kind of troubled in the sea. I mean,
they used a small sailing yacht, which was thrown around by the gale force wind. And then they had to dive in that environment. The Baltic Sea is
extremely polluted.
And because of because of various reasons, the water is kind of dark and opaque and obscure. And you can't really see too far. At the very bottom,
this pitch-black darkness, and you can only see as far as your kind of torch light allows you to. It's -- essentially, you can just about extend
your hand and you can see that far. So, it's absolute darkness.
You know, you can imagine claustrophobic and pretty horrible. And then you're breathing in this mixture of gases and you have -- and the clock is
ticking, right? They couldn't spend more than around 20 minutes at the bottom because the period of climbing up then extends exponentially. There
is a period called decompression. They have to slowly, slowly, slowly come back to the surface.
So, once you're down there, the clock is ticking and you can imagine the stress levels, you know, the cortisol levels of these people. So, it was
quite a feat. And then you have to kind of stick the bomb onto the pipeline. And it was a kind of complicated contraption and ultimately
activate the timer.
And once they activated the first timer, the very first one, then the clock was really ticking. They didn't have there was no way back because one
bomb, if one bomb explodes, the mission will be incomplete. They had to lay eight bombs in total.
AMANPOUR: Wow. I mean, it just seems so incredibly, as you as you describe it, so difficult and so personally stressful. But this is -- you know, we
haven't got to the why yet. And you're going to tell me about the why. But this Nord Stream has been controversial even before the full-scale Russian
invasion. We know that every administration since George W. Bush's second term opposed its construction. Biden promised to bring an end to it if
Russia attacks Ukraine. You remember President Trump was scathing about Angela Merkel's, you know, red light -- or rather green light towards Nord
Stream, et cetera. You know, Poland, the U.K. didn't much like it.
PANCEVSKI: Absolutely.
AMANPOUR: That was because they thought it gave -- it had them over a barrel, right? The Putin had them over a barrel.
PANCEVSKI: Well, essentially, they believed that Nord Stream was a geopolitical project rather than a commercial project. The former
Chancellor Angela Merkel maintained that this was a purely commercial project. You know, it's part of the private economy. There's no need to
worry. And it provides cheap gas for Europe's biggest industrial powerhouse, Germany. And in fact, it did work like that. So, in a sense,
both parties were right in the end.
In my book, I described the explosions as a kind of a crescendo of 20 years of policy and policy debate that went up in smoke, both with the attack on
the pipeline and the full-scale invasion, because the idea behind the pipeline really, from a German perspective, was to make -- you know, it was
policy turned steel and concrete, because the idea was that if you become so entangled commercially with a formerly hostile power like Russia or the
Soviet Union before, a conflict will be will become impossible. The idea was to remove that tension, that potential of conflict by becoming
economically intertwined.
But the people who actually blew up the pipeline told me it played the exact opposite role, because once you build this pipeline, you pave the way
to war. And Putin kind of launched a full-scale invasion because he was convinced whatever. The gas will keep flowing. The oil will keep flowing.
[13:15:00]
To an extent, he was right. Even after the launch of the full-scale invasion, the European Union continued, and Germany, to buy hydrocarbons
from Russia because it's a zero-sum game. You can't just shift overnight when you don't have other suppliers.
So, from that perspective, it's extremely interesting. I found that both sides had a point, you know, like, you know, you could argue both sides.
AMANPOUR: These guys obviously believe that they were heroes of the resistance against the war. Tell me how they spoke to you about what they
did. And crucially, and this is still sort of an open question, how much did the Ukrainian government know? How about the head of the armed forces
at the time was General Zelenskyy? How about President Zelenskyy? What did they know? And was it green lit?
PANCEVSKI: So, the motivation first, it was pretty simple. Their idea was to cut the revenues that the Kremlin was receiving from the sale of
hydrocarbons that fed into the war chest of Vladimir Putin. They felt that Russia is using the money it got from sales of gas and energy, etc. to fund
the war on their territory. So, that was pretty straightforward.
The secondary motivation was to break the bonds, the geopolitical bond between Moscow and Western capitals, including Berlin, which was
personified in a way embodied in this pipeline. It was an operation of the military forces. The highest-ranking officer who approved the mission was
indeed the then commander of the armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, who is now an ambassador to Great Britain.
President Zelenskyy denies knowledge of this operation. He continuously denied knowledge in the past couple of years since the first news was
leaked that Ukraine may have been behind this. His advisers are also denying this.
People around General Zaluzhny say that General Zaluzhny did in fact brief at one point the president that this operation among many was underway. So,
you know, we may never find out. We may -- you know, General Zaluzhny may choose to speak about this publicly at some point. We don't quite know. But
for the time being, you know, these people claim that the president was informed. The president denies that in the strongest of terms.
But I think what is important to say, I spoke both to the people who carried out the attack as well as with the German investigators who are
hunting them. And to an extent, my investigation was corroborated by the official investigation in Germany. And I believe a suspect has been
apprehended by Germany and they accused this person of being involved in operation. And the German prosecutors will say, this was an operation that
was conducted on behalf of Ukraine.
AMANPOUR: It really is fascinating. And there's still sort of unknowns. But also, the real split in how different nations view the two and the
seven -- well, the seven, the people -- the whole team. A lot of allies of Ukraine, you know, believe that, well, you know, they did what they had to
do.
And actually, towards the end of your book, they talk about they would do it again. And apparently, Putin has already this month said that the
remaining intact pipeline could start pumping gas tomorrow. And in your epilogue, the general, the man you name as a general, told you, by all
means, let them fix it so we can blow it up again. Were you surprised when you heard that?
PANCEVSKI: No, not at all. I wasn't surprised at all. That's the spirit, you know, that reigns in those quarters. And I think it's absolutely true.
And I know this from my own reporting that as soon as the Trump administration started negotiating with the Kremlin over a possible
settlement in Ukraine, the Russians brought up the issue of Nord Stream. They publicly even spoke about it.
Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, very early on last year, said that that's one of the conditions they're working towards, reopening the
pipelines. Putin recently said, as you said, that it only takes a press of a button to restart the intact. One line of the pipe is still relatively
intact. It's only damaged, a little bit damaged.
Ultimately, the pipelines can be fixed. There is a consortium of sorts in the United States led by American businessmen. They seek to acquire the
pipeline, to kind of Americanize it, to make it an American company property in order to restart the gas trade. So, this saga is by no means
over. And I don't believe that the Russians are ready to give up on this project.
AMANPOUR: Well, Bojan, it's fascinating. And just to end by what an elder statesman of Ukraine's Intelligence Community told you, that the
perpetrators will one day, they will be given the medals they all deserve. So, you can see how various different sides think of the people who did
this.
[13:20:00]
And, Boyan Pancevski, thank you very much. It's a really fascinating story.
PANCEVSKI: It was my great pleasure. Thank you for having me on.
AMANPOUR: A heck of a story. Later in the program, the Assad regime has fallen, but for tens of thousands of Syrian families, the search for their
missing loved ones is far from over. When we come back, the story of one daughter's extraordinary struggle to find her father.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Now, Vladimir Putin is not only facing serious setbacks in Ukraine, he also lost a major ally when Bashar al-Assad was forced to flee
Syria. For the families of Assad's victims, however, the end of his regime has not brought the answers they need.
More than a decade ago on this program, we broke the story of a Syrian military defector known only by the code name Caesar. He had smuggled out
thousands of images that provided some of the first irrefutable evidence of the Assad regime's systematic torture, starvation and execution of
detainees.
Today, tens of thousands of Syrian families are still searching for their missing loved ones.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WAFA MUSTAFA, CO-DIRECTOR, "MAYBE TOMORROW": My name is Wafa Ali Mustafa. I'm a Syrian journalist. My father was arrested and forcibly disappeared by
the Syrian regime.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Now, that is from the documentary "Maybe Tomorrow," a story of loss, love and of a daughter who refuses to let her father be forgotten. I
spoke with Wafa Mustafa and the acclaimed filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab about this powerful new film.
Waad Al-Kateab and Wafa Mustafa, welcome to our program.
WAAD AL-KATEAB, CO-DIRECTOR, "MAYBE TOMORROW": Thank you.
WAFA MUSTAFA, CO-DIRECTOR, "MAYBE TOMORROW": Thank you.
AMANPOUR: Wafa, you were only 23 when your father was arrested and he basically disappeared and you were all forced to leave Syria. We really see
your spirit, his spirit through the film. But I wanted you to tell me a little bit about your father, what he meant to you, what he meant to the
whole family.
MUSTAFA: Thank you so much for having us and for this opportunity to talk about my father but also, of course, to talk about all of Syria's
disappeared. My father, Ali Mustafa, he was called Abu Samad by his friends. And, you know, Abu Samad comes from resiliency.
And he was a very, very powerful, very tough guy but he was also at the same time very kind. He was a young man with big dreams. He always fought
for freedom and justice even before the Syrian revolution started. He was a great lover. He loved my mom in a very amazing, kind way. He taught us a
lot, me and my two other sisters. He taught us a lot about, you know, how much it's important to sacrifice for our communities, how to be selfless
and how to believe that freedom and change are possible even when they seemed very, very impossible in a country like Syria.
AMANPOUR: And, Waad, you have been very well known not just for your daily reports for Channel 4 during the actual war by Bashar Assad but then, of
course, for Sama, which was Oscar-nominated. And it's a very personal journey that you recreate. What made you, Waad, decide to take on Wafa's
story, also in a personal sort of diary way?
[13:25:00]
AL-KATEAB: Yes, thank you so much again for having us. I think I've known Wafa since we were both born. Our both mothers were friends since they were
at school. And we've been very close, two families to each other. We born - - we were born in the same city, raised up in a very similar situation.
And when I made "For Sama," I think the first thing I thought of after the film was going around the world was really Wafa's story. And I thought
about it in the same way how I wanted to tell my own story and own it and be able, you know, to fight all the loss that we had through different
ways.
So, I contacted Wafa, and I thought, like, let's do this together. I believe that, you know, Wafa has a lot to say to the world. And she will
say it in a very different way. But I thought, you know, through cinema and films, we can do something a little bit different. And hopefully, you know,
it stays more to fight all this ignorance and, like, waiting and also for, like, everything Assad was trying to do, which really erased everything
that was going on in Syria.
AMANPOUR: Your father, Wafa, apparently said, according to your mother in the film, write things down, document things so that your memory doesn't
block things out. Tell me about that. What that meant to you, write things down, document them?
MUSTAFA: To be honest, I mean, I was raised -- like Waad said, also in a similar environment where both our families were quite political in a
country like Syria, where politics, you know, could kill you easily, could cause you, you know, imprisonment for decades.
And my father, I would say, you know, it took me years, you know, thinking about this question. Why did he say -- why did he encourage us a lot to
write and document? And, I mean, you can imagine at the beginning of the revolution for I was 21. And to be honest, I thought, you know, I mean, how
long it could take, right, for a regime change. I thought, you know, it will be maybe a few months maximum, a year. And the world cannot just turn
a blind eye to what's happening to us.
And I think, of course, my father knew better because he was an older, right, you know, an older fighter. And he wanted us to keep the memory. I
think now I know very, very well how much my father believed in the power of memory and in the power of documentation and in the power of, you know,
presenting, preserving the narrative.
And I think, you know, maybe I've tried to do that in different ways throughout the past years. You know, I've been to the U.N. Security
Council, to the U.N. General Assembly. I've been to different protests. I've been to different events.
But I think that, you know, when we thought about this film, I think one of our main goals was to preserve the narrative about what has happened not
only to my father, because this is a reflection of what has happened to millions of Syrians and millions, you know, of people, not even -- not only
in Syria, but in many other countries.
AMANPOUR: Now, the Syrian Network for Human Rights says that over 177,000 Syrians were disappeared between 2011 and 2025. That is the years of war by
Bashar Assad on your communities. Some of this disappearing is actually happening right now, as well, even under the new Syrian government. And
many Syrians think justice has been slow. And, actually, there's some -- you know, there's some pushback against even those who are trying to have
accountability for what's going on under new Syria.
Waad, how do you describe what's happening in new Syria today? I call it new Syria, but post-Assad Syria.
AL-KATEAB: Yes. Thank you so much. I think this is really very important for us, because part of why we wanted this film to happen is really to talk
about what has happened to Wafa's father and to many other people, but also to ensure that this should not have a space in the new Syria that we want
to.
And we know, of course, you know, from the states that's going on around, from what's going on, like, we're not even there. Like, we're not even
nearly there. And the fact that, you know, today in a new country where, like, as you just mentioned, post-Assad, like, disappearance and people
who've been kidnapped, been, like, going around Syria in different areas by the transitional, like, government today, but also by other parties who are
also, like, involved today.
And for us, it's really, like, the Syria that we hope to see is a Syria where it's equal, it's safe, it's -- there's freedom of speech. It's
everything we've been chanting for since 2011. And, you know, talking about this pain that the families are going through that no one else should go
through, not in Syria, but also not everywhere around the world.
[13:30:00]
MUSTAFA: I think part of the issue today is that enforced disappearance is dealt with as if it's a crime of the past, but it's not in the past. Not
only because many people like me still don't know the truth about what has happened to their loved ones and their perpetrators are still,
unfortunately, like, living their lives and not being held accountable.
But as you said, because new cases are happening, and to be honest, I think what we wanted to say through this film is that to show what we call the
violence of waiting that the families of the disappeared experience, hoping that it will contribute to the efforts that are advocating for ending
enforced disappearance once and for all.
AMANPOUR: Wafa and Waad, because you -- you know, you're obviously the filmmaker, there's a really good scene, I found it really, really good in
terms of accountability and justice and that whole court process, where you, Wafa, are filmed sitting in front of many, many pictures of the
disappeared, you know, at the time when your father -- you didn't know what had happened to your father. It was the first ever criminal trial brought
over state-led torture in Syria. It's in Germany. It's from the year 2020.
And I want to play this clip because it's you engaging with the defense lawyers, i.e., the lawyers for the guys accused of this state-sponsored
torture and disappearance. Here's this scene.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm just interested in what you are doing. I'm one of the defense lawyers. Let's have a look at (INAUDIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wafa is one of the families.
MUSTAFA: Thank you. This is my father, and today he completes 2,522 days in Assad detention centers. I don't even know if he's alive or not. All
people who protested in Syria, this is what we want, actually, freedom, justice and a state of law. But I just -- I hope that he didn't deny it all
and say that there was no torture. I just want him just to acknowledge that it happened.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, listen, I'm really struck by that because there you were confronting the defense lawyer and asking him at least to give you that
dignity and not to try to, you know, deny that that had happened.
Now, I don't know what they did in court and whether those on trial admitted that there was torture. But in the trial, the former colonel was
sentenced to life in prison and a former junior officer was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. He then was released afterwards in 2025.
That surely must give you some confidence in the justice system.
MUSTAFA: I think this is -- to be honest, this is a very difficult question. I mean, I don't know what the justice system is because, you
know, for years we've hoped, of course, as you see, I mean, in this scene, I've -- you know, I went to Copland's. I've advocated for the disappeared.
I've wanted just, you know, this very technical process to have this, you know, human side and to be reminded of, you know, the faces and the names
of the disappeared and thus, make it more accessible for the families who are not even in Germany and who do not really know what's happening in
Copland's.
But for years we've advocated for justice to be, you know, taking place in Syria by Syrians, by national authorities, of course, after the fall of the
regime. But today, to be honest, you know, the way the transitional government is -- you know, is approaching transitional justice is not
assuring for me. It's very, very concerning.
And unfortunately, you know, I would say that in a year and a half we had two massacres and there is, you know, random killings in different places.
There are random cases of enforced disappearances. And there are, which is very, very dangerous, I would say, there are, you know, economic
settlements with, you know, Assad businessmen and other perpetrators and war criminals who were involved with supporting the Assad regime.
So, I think the justice system for me today is the families and their efforts and their voices and their determination to still fight despite
all, you know, the change, but also the lack of change.
AMANPOUR: Just to say, you know, justice is very slow and everything you're desperate for is totally justified, should happen, but it's very
slow. But this month, a major trial has begun in Austria against two former Assad intelligence officials. So, in some lanes, it is being taken very,
very seriously, the issue of justice and accountability.
But finally, and of course, I've stayed away from any spoiler alerts about what happened to your father. What did you find out?
[13:35:00]
So, I'm not necessarily asking you to give away the plot. You decide between yourselves. But there is some very powerful scenes at the very end
of the film, where at one point you go in, you see all sorts of documentation, but you also see some traces of your father. So, you know he
was there for that period of time.
I'm going to first ask Waad. I don't know whether you were there. I don't know whether you were shooting that, Waad. But in terms of storytelling and
what happened, tell me about that, because it was really chilling and really very, you know, edge-of-your-seat moment.
AL-KATEAB: Yes. So, thank you. I mean, first, I wasn't there, unfortunately. And I wanted really to be there not for the film, but also
to be with my friend on such a really sensitive situation like that. To be honest, like, while we were talking about the film and seeing what was
going on, and our friend who was with Wafa filming, it was more about really how to reflect the reality of what Wafa and other families are going
through, through this experience, which is, unfortunately, no closure.
And that really was part of, again, the effort for the transitional justice and the accountability that we are asking for, is for answers, for truth,
for people knowing what happened. And in the film, you don't really know what happened, because Wafa, until now, doesn't know what happened.
And the fact that you know how the film can and should reflect, you know, what these families are going through, it's a way of, like, a love to her
dad, but also, like, hoping that, you know, this continuous effort of looking and searching for people who cannot just, like, you know, move on
and let go. Like, these are their beloved ones. These are people who are, like, lived with them in their entire life, and they cannot just, you know,
like, let it go without a real answer, a real accountability as well.
AMANPOUR: So, Wafa, and we don't have these pictures, people have to see this film to see this dramatic denouement. How did you feel when you found
scratchings, essentially, words from your father on the wall?
MUSTAFA: Very surreal, to be honest. I mean, even when we were in Sheffield and we premiered the film and I watched it, it was, I mean, it
was very, it still had the same impact on me. It's very surreal, to be honest.
I -- you know, I -- it's very difficult, you know, the level of -- because in first (ph) disappearance is mainly about -- you know, about memory, and
it fights your brain, you know, like, for years, I've -- because it was very painful. For years, I've had to fight myself every day to remind
myself that I had a father, he existed, he lived with me, I knew him, and it's not just in my mind, you know, it's not just in my head. It's that
painful. It makes you -- to be honest, it forces you to, like -- it makes you question whether you're hallucinating or not.
So, seeing the writings and seeing his words, which were, like, very, very sad and very painful, but also full of love and, you know, full of, like --
you know, I mean, I'm -- it's just heartbreaking that -- to see that, you know, he was thinking about us, because for years, I think the only thing I
had in my mind is that I hope my dad knows that I did not forget about him and that I did not let him go and that I will not give up on him and that I
will make sure that everyone on Earth knows what -- who he was and what he believed in and what he deserved to see in this country and that he did not
-- and not any other Syrian deserved to be tortured to death.
AMANPOUR: Wafa Mustafa and Wael Al-Kateab, thank you very much indeed. The film, "Maybe Tomorrow."
AL-KATEAB: Thank you.
MUSTAFA: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: We wish them a lot of luck. Coming up after the break, are the companies building artificial intelligence also fueling unnecessary fear
about it? A leading computer scientist says the doomsday rhetoric needs to stop.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:40:00]
AMANPOUR: We turn now to the growing debate over artificial intelligence. The heads of some of the world's biggest A.I. companies have warned of
catastrophic consequences from the technology they are building. But computer science professor, Cal Newport, says that messaging is misleading.
And he's joining Hari Sreenivasan to discuss why he believes an A.I. industry should stop what he calls the doom trolling.
HARI SREENIVASAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Cal Newport, welcome back to the program. Your most recent piece says, dear A.I. companies, the
doom trolling needs to stop. First of all, what does that mean? Who is it? Who needs to stop doing what?
CAL NEWPORT, PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY AND HOST "DEEP QUESTIONS" PODCAST: Well, doom trolling is my term for this
completely strange and arresting and novel behavior of A.I. companies trying to convince their customers that the products that they are creating
are potentially going to cause massive devastation or other negative consequences down the line.
I think OpenAI does this. Anthropic, in particular, is a big practitioner of doom trolling. And it was actually a recent report that Anthropic
released talking about how they were concerned that Claude Code was on a path towards recursive self-improvement that could lead them to lose
control of A.I. altogether, that finally had me snap and say, this type of communication strategy, this has to stop.
SREENIVASAN: What is the purpose? What can be gained by using a message like this where maybe they feel like they're factual, but at the same time,
like, how do you create a market for somebody who wants to use this product?
NEWPORT: There's many possible explanations. I don't know which one is the most prominent driving the strategy, but partially it does make your
technology seem more important. You care a little bit less about exactly how much revenue you're making when you consider this company might be
producing the most powerful tool that's ever been built. It's also a recruiting tool.
So, in San Francisco culture where a lot of the top engineers currently live, this doomerist mindset of A.I. becoming this harbinger of a new
digital end times is actually really, really prevalent. So, speaking this language could help you recruit. It could also be, as some have suggested,
regulatory capture strategy where you say this is a dangerous technology that needs regulations and you hope that those regulations are such that
the big companies can abide by them, but it holds back your competitors from being able to make progress.
But I think more than any of those other explanations, it's just in the Silicon Valley culture to talk this way about A.I. I think they have
completely normalized this idea that machines at some point are going to perhaps even replace humanity or like significantly change our existence
and that this is not necessarily a bad thing. It's quasi-religious for a lot of people in Silicon Valley culture right now. It's eschatological. It
is about the sort of future of what's going to happen.
And I think the rest of the country is just waking up now to just how sort of strange and eccentric these type of belief systems have been in Silicon
Valley because now we all have to face them. And we're saying, what are you talking about? You're going to destroy us all. Why would you build this?
But that's a completely normal idea if you're over in that part of the country.
SREENIVASAN: OK. You're a professor of computer science. Should we be looking at this technology just like a technology? Or, look, I mean, Sam
Altman, the head of OpenAI, has compared this to, you know, nuclear power. And that comes with a whole other set of risks and rewards that we think
about. I mean, is this that grand venture that we're about to go on where we need a completely different frame of looking at it than an operating
system upgrade or a new tech gadget?
NEWPORT: I mean, I do think it's something we do need to be careful about. But when I say we need to be careful about A.I., I think about the long
trajectory of this technology, not in particular the tools that are being built right now, which are typically large language models with various
harnesses or programs connected to them. But I think the right way for them to deal with this technology is like a normal technology.
Here is a product. Here are the benefits. Here are the costs. Here's why we think those benefits are worth the cost. And, of course, we take full
responsibility for any safety concerns.
[13:45:00]
If you approach the product that way, you're able to advance the technology without accidentally stumbling into something that could be more dangerous.
That's the way I want to see us talking about is product by product, treat this like a normal technology, and we should all be very wary about
potential dangers and harms, including the companies themselves. These are things to take responsibility for, not things to just shrug your shoulders
at and say, well, what can we do?
SREENIVASAN: You know, just in the past few weeks, there's been this back and forth between Anthropic and the Pentagon, and there's been concern
about this new model that they came out with, which they said was so dangerous that we're only going to give it to a few different companies
around the world, and we want to make sure that everything's set up.
And then now, it almost seems like this campaign of saying that this is so powerful, this could crack the encryption of banks and find all these
different vulnerabilities and holes, has worked to a point where the administration says that no foreign national is allowed to use this tool,
right? Is this so dangerous that the kind of the regulations that they were asking for, did you get basically what you said you should? I do think they
got what they were asking for, right?
NEWPORT: Now, I believe as a computer scientist who have studied these models that Mythos did not represent a revolutionary jump over previous
models when it comes to its ability to find software vulnerabilities or exploit them. That's a serious concern of models, but it was something that
we've seen in every model going all the way back to GPT-2.
So, I think they -- to make this model seem more exceptional six weeks ago or seven weeks ago, whenever this was, I think they turned up the rhetoric
on just how dangerous this was. We can't release this model. They had meetings at the White House to try to convince the White House how scary
this model was. They had meetings with reporters. And then six weeks later, they said, oh, it's OK. We added some guardrails. It's fine again.
So, yes, I think in some sense, the White House was maybe embarrassed or upset that, hey, you came to us and convinced us this was the most
dangerous thing to have been released in years. And now, with sort of just minor standard guardrails are releasing it to the public, we feel like we
were a little bit duped.
Now, there's other things that are probably going on in this story, but that thread is one that we have to pull is that if you tell people that you
have summoned a super weapon, you don't also then get to say it's $20 a token or whatever. Now, we're going to release it to the public.
SREENIVASAN: In a perfect scenario, if I had total trust and faith in the government to say you are looking out for my best interests and nothing
else, and you've taken this, you know, very well thought out and it's like careful approach, I don't necessarily know if the people who are kind of at
the levers, whether it's this administration or the next one or the next one after that, can I separate their alternate agendas, their other
interests from regulating this kind of a technology.
NEWPORT: Well, I share your concerns about the current administration that clearly they're not implementing this sort of regulatory oversight in a
consistent or transparent way. There's all sorts of connections with administration and Anthropic's competitor, OpenAI. So, that's a confusing
mess.
But I do think going forward in the future, is it possible to have consistent and transparent regulation of these type of A.I. models? I think
absolutely, because we do it with so many other sectors of the consumer product market. I mean, you can't sell me a car, if the government hasn't
given it official, you know, safety rating, if you put something dodgy and dog food, we are going to push back and say this is unacceptable. So, I
think it is possible. And I think it's time or will be time soon to move past this stance of this is somehow an exceptional technology.
I think that companies like to talk about this, like they are the reluctant stewards of an inevitable technology. And they're sort of just watching
from afar as this thing develops, like virologists watching COVID-19 spread across the country. But this is not the case. These are companies that are
building specific products for specific business plans. It's not an inevitable technology that they're stewarding. It's products they're
building. And you need a third party, as we do with all other consumer products, to say, if this is potentially very dangerous for the American
public, we want to be involved.
And I want to say that danger should involve mental health. I think we're completely underestimating the toll, the mental health toll in terms of
anxiety and stress that the last two or three years of doom trolling has caused. I get messages from people who are miserable because of this
messaging they're hearing from these A.I. companies again and again, and that matters as well.
SREENIVASAN: You know, in a way, the messaging we're talking about here has succeeded in shifting public opinion, right? I mean, it seems like
forever ago, but it wasn't that long ago when the first one of these generative A.I. models came out. People were like, wow, this is pretty
cool.
And now, it's like, OK, you're telling me that it's going to totally displace white-collar work. You're telling me that this could potentially
turn into that "Terminator" scenario. You were telling me that it uses gobs and gobs of water and energy, and it's going to make my bills go up and
make my water in the aquifer dirty. Now, the majority of people are cautiously skeptical.
[13:50:00]
NEWPORT: Yes, which I think is a tragedy. Like, this should have been an exciting technology. Large language models at scale are interesting. They
can parse human language. They can produce structured language with a sort of prodigious fluency. There's a lot of cool things we can and will build
with this, and instead, we terrified the whole country.
Now, the fact that they did this leads me to believe that this is not some grand game of 4D chess. But again, it's a collision of worlds, a way of
talking in Silicon Valley that doesn't play at scale. Let me give you an example. For most of the fall and coming into the winter, there was a
relentless drumbeat on this message of white-collar jobs are going away, right? And it led to all this coverage of, like, what are we going to do
when there's no white-collar jobs left, right? Because they're all going to go away.
And then around the time Anthropic and OpenAI started talking to bankers about an IPO, we had this sudden turnaround this spring, where suddenly Sam
Altman said, I was wrong about A.I. taking jobs, and I'm glad to be wrong. And you have Jensen Huang from NVIDIA saying, this is stupid. This is just
CEOs trying to sound smart. And we had even Dario Amodei said, I know for two years I've been saying 50 percent of new white-collar jobs will be
automated. I didn't really mean that. I meant parts of those jobs will be automated, not the jobs themselves going away. So, they switched hard on
that message.
But then, because now you had a lack of whatever, interesting stories or fear or whatever they were looking for, they leaned hard into the recursive
self-improvement A.I. superintelligence message. So, as one message went away, they found another one. So, it is pretty erratic.
SREENIVASAN: I wonder if we didn't learn enough from our societal entanglement with social networks and social media, right? Because when you
say that, you know, look, we -- most consumer products can't be released if we know that they're dangerous. And here we are, even in the relatively
early stages of generative A.I., we already have cases of chatbots just really hallucinating in the worst way possible.
I don't know, what, are we waiting 15 to 20 years to figure out what kinds of harms can be there? I mean, how should we navigate this from a
legislative perspective or from a global perspective?
NEWPORT: I mean, I think we did take way too long to understand what social media, but now we finally are. And because of that, there will be a
much smaller window and a much smaller amount of sort of trust or leeway we're going to give the A.I. companies, right? So, there's a similar
playbook that both are trying to pull.
So, in the heyday of social media in the 2010s, the playbook that the social media leaders used was to say, this technology is inevitable. This
is the evolution of communication. It's the digital town square. We are just the stewards of this technology. But obviously, it needs to be here
and it's going to have some harms, but to stop it would be like trying to stop the printing press.
We have finally had enough of that argument. I think the recent losses in courts with Meta and Google and the hundreds of lawsuits that are coming
behind those has shown that from a litigation perspective, the court system is saying, you're responsible for harms. You cannot hide behind this is a
fundamental communication technology that can't be restricted. You can't fully hide behind the First Amendment.
I think that has profound implications for the A.I. leaders because they are also trying to say, this is just an inevitable technology. If it's not
us, it'll be someone else, and we're just doing our best to try to steward it. The courts could step in and say, no, you're liable. We're starting to
see this. There was an important ruling recently in Germany that said LLM creators are responsible for the text that the LLMs produce. You can't say
that text was the LLMs, we just created it. If that becomes an international precedent, we might have much tighter constraints on these
A.I. companies much faster than it took for social media.
We trusted the Silicon Valley way too long as this is the future, and we let so many harms build up over a decade to 15 years that I don't think
we're going to make that same mistake again.
SREENIVASAN: Do you see this trickling down into like, you know, I'm on WhatsApp groups with different parents about the influence of A.I. and
technology in elementary and middle and high schools, right? They're wondering like, wait, wait, are we rolling this out too soon? Is this
actually going to stunt my child's ability to solve critical problems and have good ability to think?
So, I wonder, like, what in the next five years, 10 years, when students come to your classroom, is there going to be a difference in how they think
about solving problems?
NEWPORT: I mean, I do think it's an issue to which we need a national solution. We shouldn't leave individual schools and school districts at the
mercy of the sales forces of these ag tech companies. They're all going to be telling them, if you don't sign a big deal to get Gemini access to your
fourth graders or whatever, that somehow they're going to be left behind in the modern economy. It's really difficult for individual schools and school
districts to resist that.
So, I think we need national standards from nongovernmental agencies that are saying this is what we actually recommend, because I do think it's a
problem.
[13:55:00]
My biggest concern is actually writing. I mean, I think that the production of words from on a blank page just using your brain is one of the most
cognitively demanding and cognitive growth enhancing activities that we do. And it's one of the core things we do in education to make your brain
stronger. To have a A.I. model write for you, I think it's like bringing a pulley system to the gym to lift the weight for you. It completely defeats
the purpose of the institution.
And so, we need strong guidelines about when A.I. is and is not appropriate, because otherwise we will just be taken down district by
district, school by school by relentless ed tech marketing and sales.
SREENIVASAN: Professor of computer science at Georgetown University, Cal Newport, thanks again.
NEWPORT: My pleasure.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: That's it for now. Thanks for watching, and goodbye from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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END
