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Amanpour
Interview with Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert; Interview with Former U.S. Secretary of the Air Force and Senior Fellow at The Center for American Progress Frank Kendall; Interview with Moderna Co-Founder and Chairman Noubar Afeyan. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired September 10, 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)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We refuse to be bystanders to further suffering and to the destruction of the two-state solution.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Pressure mounts on Israel as the U.K., France and Canada announce sanctions on illegal West Bank settlements. I speak to the former
Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
Then, purges at the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tightens his grip at home as America wages war abroad. Former Air Force Secretary Frank
Kendall joins me.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NOUBAR AFEYAN, CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, MODERNA: This is going to be a really translatable technology across many different infections.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- a breakthrough in the fight against cancer. The chairman and co-founder of Moderna joins Walter Isaacson to discuss how a new mRNA
vaccine could stop melanoma from returning and how it might be used to treat other cancers.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
Israel is facing mounting pressure from some of its long-standing allies. Britain, France and Canada have announced this week sweeping sanctions on
trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. It is a dramatic shift with the British foreign secretary accusing Israeli settlers of,
quote, ""ethnic cleansing" against the Palestinians living there. Israel has responded angrily, ordering the closure of the British consulate in
Jerusalem.
But that anger seems not to be shared by its closest ally, the United States, which has yet to push back against the sanctions or even say
anything publicly. And it comes as the reality on the ground becomes harder to ignore. The U.N. says settler violence is now at unprecedented levels.
While in the first three months of this year, more Palestinians were displaced from their homes than in all of last year.
And there is growing pressure from inside Israel, too. This summer, dozens of prominent figures signed a letter demanding action to eradicate Jewish
terrorism, as they said, in the West Bank. Among them was the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and he's joining me now from Tel Aviv.
Welcome back to our program, Prime Minister.
So, can I start, please, with asking --
EHUD OLMERT, FORMER ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Good evening, Christiane.
AMANPOUR: -- your reaction to the sanctions? Of course, your government has responded very angrily, saying that everything these countries are
saying is a lie. Do you feel that your country is facing an unprecedented level of pressure over some of its actions?
OLMERT: Well, first of all, I have to say how much I don't like to, but I have to admit that what Secretary Miliband said is precisely what I said
and many of my colleagues and friends and concerned Israeli citizens said over the last few months, blaming the group of -- a large group of Israeli
settlers in what we called an effort of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians living in the West Bank, with almost daily atrocities carried
out against innocent people, burning and shooting people in their homes, in their fields, everywhere they can find them.
And this is something that can't be ignored and can't be forgiven, and therefore I'm not in. And this is something that can't be ignored and can't
be forgiven.
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And therefore, I'm not surprised at the statement made by Secretary Miliband and the actions that were taken by Great Britain.
Now, how effective it will be, I don't know what to say. Definitely until the coming elections this government will do everything possible in order
to defend itself and accuse, of course, Great Britain, France, Canada and any other will join in with antisemitism and the hatred of Jews and the
hatred of Israel and so on and so forth. This is, of course, nonsense.
We in Israel, the former chief of staff of the Israeli army, former ministers in the cabinet, the chairman of the National Academy of Science,
myself and the ambassadors and others all join in with the same observation, the same conclusion that this is an effort of ethnic cleansing
perpetrated by many Israelis in the territories and it has to stop, and it has to stop as soon as possible.
And this is what actually the Israeli government should have done. The Israeli government should have taken measures against these settlers in
order to remove the stain of shame from the face of our country. They didn't do it, and therefore it became inevitable that some others who are
friends of Israel, but they care about human rights and basic values that we seem to have neglected altogether.
AMANPOUR: OK. Let me ask you there because you listed the types of people and the numbers and the broad cross-section of people who signed this
letter and who are protesting, and many of them appear to be essentially security hawks. It's not like they are, you know, people who don't want to
and have never, you know, defended their country, et cetera.
But one of the retired generals who signed along with you said, once a society behaves this way, that society is doomed. The former conservative
defense minister, Moshe Ya'alon, told an Israeli outlet, what is Jewish supremacy? Eighty years after the Holocaust, Mein Kampf, in reverse. The
master race is us.
Prime Minister Olmert, these are extremely, very, very -- you know, I don't even know how to describe it, but very pointed comments from an Israeli
about Israel and about Jews. What effect do you think these words will have on the Israeli population?
OLMERT: Christiane -- well, first of all, I have to say, these voices are becoming stronger and louder in the public discussion in the State of
Israel. So, it must be understood, and I'm not trying to minimize the terrible impact of these events. That's why I call them what they are,
anti-cleansing, and I join in with what General Ya'alon and others said about it.
But there is a large part of the Israeli population which is sick and tired of this government and of these actions and doing everything in order to
stop it. Now, whether we will succeed to do it depends very much on the outcome of the coming elections on the 27th of October. But one thing must
be understood, it shows a part of the State of Israel, a part of the Israeli political bodies in the ugliest possible manner, which it is.
When you hear Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and Netanyahu and Minister Katz and others talking about all these events, there is no way that you can ignore
the chauvinistic, radical, fundamentalist, fascist manner of what they say. But it is important to emphasize at the same time that there is a large
part of the Israeli population which is completely against it and fighting publicly and trying to hopefully bring a change that will remove this
government from the national agenda of Israel and will bring in an entirely different attitude.
AMANPOUR: So, let me just ask you then. You don't have a crystal ball, but you are a former prime minister. You've run for elections. You know exactly
what's happening in your country. What do you think will be the outcome of this election?
OLMERT: Well, first of all, I think I made it clear what I hope, what I want.
AMANPOUR: Yes. But what do you think will be?
OLMERT: It's very tight. You must understand, and I'm sure you know it because you have visited here and you are so experienced in watching every
aspect of our lives for generations. So, you know that the impact of the 7th of October on the part of the Israeli population was very significant.
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People that used to share my points of view that thought that the two-state solution is the only possible way to resolve the historical conflict
between us and the Palestinians have shifted, have changed their mind as a result of the terrible impact of the massacre and atrocities which took
place, perpetrated by Palestinians, by Hamas. They started the whole thing on the 7th of October. So, there has been a change in the public opinion
still.
According to all the polls that were conducted for a long period of time, the block against Netanyahu is slightly bigger. Eventually, it will depend
on whether the winning side, I mean the side of the opposition today, led by, I believe, General Eisenkot, the former Chief of Staff, will agree to
cooperate with the Arab parties, at least one of the Arab parties. I hope that this something -- that this is something that will become possible.
No one will say it now before the elections because they don't want to lose possible support amongst a certain part of the population. But I believe
that it is not impossible that after the elections it will become possible and that will make it more decisive. But certainly, one must understand,
Netanyahu's block doesn't have more than 42 percent of the population in all the polls. And I hope that it will be even smaller.
AMANPOUR: It's still quite a lot, 42 percent, if you are him. Let me ask you, though, you mentioned the election, you mentioned Prime Minister
Netanyahu, and I want to ask you about a very explosive report in Haaretz, which comes from a book written by the journalist Shlomi Eldar and also
Ruti Yuval.
You've obviously read it, but I'm going to read it again for our audience, saying that the UAE president called Netanyahu 10 days before October 7th,
warning that Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, was planning a major move against Israel that could cause bloodshed and destabilize the region. It
goes on to say that Netanyahu reacted calmly, assuring that Israel was ready for any scenario.
Now, Netanyahu's office is saying this is a complete lie. What do you know, if anything, about any warnings? And early on after October 7th, we heard
rumors that maybe Egypt had warned Israel, in other words, your allies in the Arab world. What do you -- do you think this is possible?
OLMERT: Absolutely. I mean, it's been said and talked and written a long period of time that there was a warning from Egypt. Of course, you don't
expect any official from Cairo to confirm or deny. They would probably just avoid commenting on it. But we have a good reason to believe that they
warned Netanyahu a while before the 7th of October that something is coming up and that he should take the necessary precautions.
I have no doubt that what the Haaretz published is absolutely accurate. I have a good reason to believe that this is absolutely accurate. Netanyahu
was warned. But I remember an interview I gave you maybe a day or two days after the 7th of October and I said at that time already what happened was,
of course, the brutality and the murderous nature of Hamas, there is no question about it. This is the cause for the events on the 7th of October.
But at the same time, I said that the lack of Israeli response on the first few hours and even later was a result of arrogance and overconfidence that
we don't need to deal with the Palestinians. They can't do anything. We don't care what they say and so on because we can manage anyway. The
arrogance has characterized the government attitude, the lack of any serious attempt to deal with the Palestinians.
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Netanyahu really thought that he can buy Hamas with money and that's what he tried to do. And therefore, I think that when he was warned that there
is something, he didn't believe because who are these Palestinians that they can threaten the state of Israel and can take over 22 Israeli
settlements within few hours without tanks, without airplanes and so on and so forth.
The arrogance has caused the collapse of the security measures which we should have taken and be well prepared to handle when the time comes.
Unfortunately, we were not there.
AMANPOUR: Can you -- You know, I'm struck by what you said. I have reason to believe that, yes, he was warned. Can you tell me any more details of
those reasons?
OLMERT: Maybe one day I'll have to say it in court if Netanyahu will be powerful enough, I mean courageous enough to challenge the Haaretz and the
press. Again, I say, Christiane, I want to be very accurate. I have no doubt that the publication in Haaretz was accurate and I have a good reason
to believe that it was accurate. But journalists and even political persons are not always free to open up their sources.
AMANPOUR: Yes. And also, news has started to filter out that there's going to be possibly a suit. The prime minister is going to sue Haaretz over
this. We'll see where it goes, but that was what I just read in the news reports coming out.
OLMERT: He needs to sue Haaretz in order to cover himself until the elections. That doesn't mean that it will ever take place in real life.
AMANPOUR: Do you think in real life it will ever take place, what happened to you? For instance, I was in Israel covering the 2006 war with Hezbollah,
right, in Lebanon, and I reported that war along with many of my colleagues and it didn't go very well. I know you can argue, but let's not do that.
What we know is that afterwards, you, like is traditional in Israel, did face an after-action report and an accounting of what happened, what went
right, what went wrong, et cetera. Prime Minister Netanyahu has not faced that kind of similar investigation, internal investigation, since October
7. Do you think that will ever happen?
OLMERT: Well, if there will be a new government after the elections, I'm almost confident that the first decision, the first resolution of a new
government after the October 27 elections will be to establish an inquiry commission appointed by the president of the Supreme Court. There is no
question in my mind that this will be the first step of any new government in Israel. And for much better reasons than the ones that forced me to --
AMANPOUR: I want to ask you about --
OLMERT: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Well, yes, you think he's got more to answer for. In any event, you were very heavily criticized and you had to take that public criticism.
OLMERT: Yes.
AMANPOUR: I want to ask you about Gaza. Because, you know, the rest of the world is very focused on what Israel did in Gaza after the horrors that you
very accurately just described for us about Hamas' attack that day. One Israeli is quoted in the New York Times basically says, and this is quoting
the former head of a division, if I had to, I could make a legal defense of what the Israel defense forces have done in Gaza. But what's happening
today in the West Bank, it is indefensible.
It's interesting that the world is focused on Gaza and finds it indefensible and has used words like genocide and war crimes, et cetera.
But in Israel, you're all looking at the West Bank and not so much what happened in your name in Gaza.
OLMERT: Yes. Number one, I think I said to you at CNN in the interview that, and I wrote in the Israeli press, and it was published everywhere,
that war crimes were committed during the war in Gaza. There is no question about it. And thousands of people didn't have to be killed, and they were
killed, including children and women and people that were not involved. The question was whether there was a policy of the government.
And I said, while I don't support Netanyahu, as you can see, I don't think that there was a policy of the government.
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There were war crimes committed in Gaza, there is no question about it, and it can't be denied. It all started with this terrible massacre on the 7th
of October, but throughout the two years of fighting, much longer than was needed in the first place, there were also war crimes which were committed,
which is absolutely regrettable, but there was not a policy of genocide or a policy of war crimes, and therefore, I say that I think that the decision
of the International Criminal Court in Hague to issue an arrest warrant against Netanyahu and the then Minister of Defense, Gallant, was not
justified in the legal context of this.
While in Gaza, while in the West Bank, we are in full control. There is no enemy there. There is only an Israeli army and a very cooperative security
forces of the Palestinian Authority which are helping the State of Israel to defend against terror coming from Palestinians.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
OLMERT: There is no reason, no basis, that Israel will not take the necessary measures to stop the Jewish terrorists which are perpetrating
these atrocities, and therefore while there may be arguments about the responsibility and which level is responsible for what happened in Gaza,
there can be no argument about who is responsible to the war crimes and ethnic cleansing which is carried out by Israelis, by Jews, in front of the
eyes of the Israeli police, in front of the eyes of the Israeli army, that led people like General Ya'alon and David Harel -- with Professor CANNING
(voice-over): , the president of the Israeli National Academy of Science, to accuse the Israeli government of perpetrating these atrocities in such
harsh and unusual extreme terms as you just read out for me.
AMANPOUR: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, always interesting to talk to you and get your perspective. Thank you so much.
And stay with CNN. We'll be right back after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Now, further afield in the Middle East, a major gain for the Iran-backed Houthi militia, which has reportedly captured a strategic Red
Sea port city. It brings them one step closer to control over the crucial Bab al-Mandab Strait, which is a vital alternative route for global energy
supplies, while the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively shut.
Meantime, amid America's stalled war on Iran, another battle is playing out inside the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is pushing ahead with
his sweeping purges, which seems to have prompted the Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to resign last week after raising concerns about this with
President Trump.
He was talking about the loss of senior Army leaders, and it comes as the challenges are piling up, from a shortage of key air missiles to a mental
health crisis, some say, in the Navy, and all amid this endless war on Iran.
[13:25:00]
Hegseth's response has been to tighten his grip, firing top journalists at the military's independent newspaper, bringing in so-called military
influence, and, according to The New York Times, using polygraph tests on officers and civilians in a hunt for leaks.
Our next guest says many officers are, quote, "appalled" but afraid to challenge what they are seeing. He is Frank Kendall, who served as
secretary of the Air Force under President Biden, and he recently released the book, "Lethal Autonomy," and he's joining me now from Virginia. Frank
Kendall, welcome to the program.
FRANK KENDALL, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE AND SENIOR FELLOW AT THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: It's good to be with you, Christiane.
Thank you.
AMANPOUR: We've got a bit of a delay. Yes, it's good to have you because this is something that's being watched all over the world, the news that
keeps coming out of the Pentagon, people like yourself who are writing about it and raising the alarm bells.
What is it that you are most concerned about which forced you or took you to writing this public letter against what's happening in the Pentagon?
KENDALL: I'm very concerned about how our military is going to be used. It's already been used in some ways, which almost all legal authorities
believe is unlawful. The most egregious version of that is the extrajudicial killings of alleged drug dealers in the Pacific in the
Caribbean. Campaigns have been going on for about a year now. But they're initiating a war with Iran, which was never authorized by Congress, as
another example.
And so, far, none of our military leaders that I'm aware of have stood up and said, no, this is unacceptable. With the elections coming up, I'm very
concerned about how our military might be used in the context of the elections, either leading up to them, during them, or following them if
there's unrest.
And the part of the piece I wrote recently was to, you know, let our senior military leaders know that the things that they seem to be doing as defense
mechanisms, pretending everything is normal, and then kind of partitioning off their role in terms of advising and supporting the president to be very
nearly defined to purely military things, is really not appropriate. It's a cop-out. They have broader responsibilities than that.
AMANPOUR: OK. So, I want to drill down on that, because the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, said, I think it was at
West Point, that, you know, this is the -- we need to have some sort of beautiful ambiguity. I mean, I'm totally paraphrasing and getting it wrong,
but we should not conflate what we can do with what we should do. That's for the politicians.
So, I guess my question to you is, is there precedence? I mean, we all hear about the chain of command, that the military must do what the civilians
tell them to do. That's the whole point of the American democracy. What is it that you're saying military officers should be doing and have the
authority to do?
KENDALL: Our officers are taking an oath to support the Constitution. They don't take an oath to support the president. Now, there's a presumption
with the president that whatever the president tells you to do should be lawful, but that's not necessarily true. Lawyers are in place to advise
officers about whether orders are lawful or not.
Since the beginning of this administration, Donald Trump has put lawyers in place that are loyal to him that will justify just about anything he tells
them to do. I haven't seen any place where that has not happened yet. We talked about some of those examples earlier.
During the first Trump administration, Donald Trump ordered the chairman of the Joint Chiefs at that time, General Milley, to go to Portland and shoot
protesters. And Milley told him, no, I can't do that. And he was backed up by the attorney general at the time, General Barr -- Attorney General Barr,
and so he didn't do it. Trump has not forgotten that, as far as I can tell, and he has now put a chairman in charge of the Joint Chiefs, and he's
replaced, as you mentioned earlier, a number of commanders, purged them for lack of perceived loyalty, and put in place people he thinks will do
whatever they are told to do. Pete Hegseth has repeatedly emphasized that we're going to have maximum lethality, not, quote, "tepid legality."
So, we're in a situation where our senior leaders need to remember their oath, and when they're told to do something that's unlawful, unethical,
immoral, say no. And I'm not seeing any evidence so far that they're prepared to do that.
AMANPOUR: You raise Pete Hegseth, and he's obviously under a lot of publicity and scrutiny over a lot of this, including over the conduct of
the Iran war, which we'll get to. But I want to play a little bit of what he said in a speech to the Pentagon staff soon after taking office, and
he's arguing that the personnel changes that we've just been talking about, whether they're purges or blocking promotions or firings, et cetera, are a
response to DEI initiatives under the Biden administration, in which you served.
So, here's what he says. I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is our diversity is our strength.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is our diversity is our strength.
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I think our strength is our unity. Our strength is our shared purpose. Regardless of our background, regardless of how we grew up, regardless of
our gender, regardless of our race, in this department, we will treat everyone equally.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And, Frank Kendall, you know that there's many people who have read what you've written and others and agree with you. There are others
also who say that actually there was way too much DEI under the Biden administration. How do you address that?
KINKADE: Well, first of all, the DEI initiatives that we implemented were largely started in the Trump administration as a result of the murder of
George Floyd and what happened after that. So, we didn't really change policies very much. They were, as Secretary Hegseth just said in that clip,
treat everybody the same. That's not new. That's fine.
There's a perception, apparently, that people were promoted and given positions solely because of their identity. That was never done. We put
people in positions because they have merit, because of their professionalism and their capabilities. We did try to increase the
diversity at the senior ranks because it's not very diverse there, and the force as a whole is diverse and doesn't see a similar force -- similar mix
at the top of the organization.
Pete Hegseth is 100 percent wrong about diversity not adding to strength and capability. That's very well established scientifically. Diverse groups
make better decisions. They get more points of view heard, and as a result of that, you get more options are considered and better decisions are made.
And I saw a number of examples of that when I was secretary.
If everybody's the same, there are a lot of things that the group is just not even going to think about because they have the same backgrounds and
they're very homogeneous. I've seen this over and over in all the organizations I've been a part of. So, he's 100 percent wrong about that.
He's right about the idea of being a meritocracy, and that's what we were, and that's what's continued.
AMANPOUR: Well, I want to actually drill down on that a little bit because one of the most, many people believe, outrageous firings was the firing of
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General C.Q. Brown, an Air Force general, many, many combat missions. He was in office when you were Air Force
secretary and he was actually appointed by Donald Trump, as you say, and, in fact, Donald Trump himself was very pleased with himself, saying that,
you know, he was a patriot and a great leader and that he, you know, appointed this black Air Force officer general to be the highest-ranking
military official.
And there's no doubt about his meritocracy, and he's written, not naming Trump or Hegseth or the conditions of his firing, but he has said that he's
very concerned that the military is being politicized.
KENDALL: I read that piece by General Brown, and I think he understated the situation, quite frankly. It's being politicized in a very dramatic
way. There are the purges at the top, you know, 25, roughly, senior officers. There are also a lot of people being pulled off a promotion list,
and what's happening to that now is that the military services are tailoring the people they send forward so that they get through, because
they want to get people through to go in and take British jobs.
The damage that's being done today will take at least a decade, I think, to repair. By the time we go through another two-plus years of this, it's
going to be deep and it's going to be significant, and it's very much politicization.
You know, when I wrote the piece, I thought there was a defense mechanism of pretending everything was normal and trying to pretend that people were
neutral. Since I wrote it, a number of people have reached out to me and said it's much worse than that. They're being actively politicized. They're
being actively told that they have to support the president, and that's what they're there for.
That's not what the military is there for. The military is there to support the country and defend the country, and to carry out the orders and to
fulfill the policies of the president, but they're not there as political operators working for the president as a political personality. This is,
unfortunately, driving a lot of people out. It's having an effect all through the force, and it's very dysfunctional for the force.
AMANPOUR: And when you say dysfunctional, I want to know your opinion on how it affects actual warfighting. I mean, look, we're in the middle, or
the United States is in the middle, of this seemingly unresolvable, at the moment, war against Iran. And there's been many, many, you know, we've been
trying to analyze this for the last six, seven months since it started, more than that now.
There's been, apparently, according to The New York Times, polygraph tests administered against those who they think might have leaked. The fact that
there's a lack of ammunition and dwindling supplies, President Trump has said, the leakers of these treasonous statements are being hunted down.
Long-term jail sentences will be sought.
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What do you think the impact of that kind of, you know, hunting these so- called leakers down? And if the leakers didn't leak this vital military information, what is the impact on actually trying to wage and win a war?
KENDALL: There's a suppression of any voices which are contrary to what the leadership wants to hear. There's a lot of intimidation. And I've had a
number of people come to me and tell me about instances where, you know, people have very consciously refused to deliver the truth to the secretary
because they know it's not what he wants to hear. And I think that may be happening at the highest levels. The Iran war is a very large-scale
example.
What Iran has done has been understood and expected for decades. There should be no mystery here, either about the resiliency of the regime or
what they would do if Iran was attacked. They've played out exactly what we would have expected. And yet nobody stood up and said to the, you know,
secretary or the president, you know, this is a big mistake. Here's what's going to happen.
So, here we are in a world we don't know how to get out of, in which Iran now controls the timing of when it's going to end, apparently. The
president admitted it as much just recently. So, here, it's a glaring example of the failure of the military people to be able to speak the truth
to the people in power and to affect their decisions by doing that.
AMANPOUR: And just to that point, he did say, President Trump, that he believed that the Iranians were looking at the midterms, would just carry
on through the midterms, and then they'd stop and all the oil prices would go down and the commodities and grocery prices would go down.
But the Wall Street Journal is reporting that President Trump's top advisers, including the vice president and the secretary of state, have
raised the prospect that Iran could carry out this war to frustrate President Trump to the end of his term, just like they did with the hostage
crisis to the end of the Jimmy Carter term and released all those hostages in 1980 when Reagan was inaugurated.
So, there are some people who are willing to tell him. Tell me how you read that.
KINKADE: It's gotten to the point where it's pretty obvious, and those people are talking about a possibility, and I think nobody knows exactly
what will happen. You know, you mentioned Donald Trump's latest, you know, prognostication on this. He has been so wrong so many times. I don't know
why anything he says has any credibility at this point other than note that he said it.
But Iran is in control of when this war is going to end, as far as I can tell. We have not been able to do anything that's changed that. And most
recently, escalation has occurred. It started with Iran's attacks on some of our warships, and we started attacking tankers, and then that's
escalated now. But there's no way that this clearly comes to an end. Iran has retained quite a bit of capability.
We have quite a bit of capability, too, and we can go on shooting at each other. The straits are going to be largely closed. It's in everybody's
interest to bring this to a conclusion and cut a deal of some kind. But right now, neither side seems to be willing to do that. The U.S., I think,
is very willing to do that. Donald Trump would really like to have this over. But Iran, again, is controlling the timeline. Now, we're seeing it
broadening.
You mentioned the borrowed (INAUDIBLE) earlier. That's an expansion of the conflict and an increased economic impact around the world.
AMANPOUR: I know it's a really difficult one to figure out where it's going and when. Frank Kendall, thank you very much for joining us on this
really important subject.
And stay with CNN, because we'll be right back after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:40:00]
AMANPOUR: Now, to a medical milestone. In a clinical trial, a vaccine developed by drug companies Merck and Moderna has shown promising results
in preventing melanoma, which is a type of skin cancer, from returning. It relies on mRNA technology, the same kind used in COVID jabs, and it's the
first time it's been repurposed to treat cancer. Scientists say this proves that personalized cancer vaccines can work.
Nubar Afeyan is the chairman and co-founder of Moderna, and he tells Walter Isaacson what this breakthrough means.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Nubar Afeyan, welcome back to the show.
NOUBAR AFEYAN, CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, MODERNA: Great to be here.
ISAACSON: Thank you. Earlier this month, along with the pharmaceutical maker, Merck, your company Moderna announced a new type of treatment for
melanoma cancer, an mRNA vaccine. Explain to me how that works on melanoma.
AFEYAN: Sure. Well, I think that most people will have heard about mRNA vaccines in the context of COVID, and since then there have been additional
respiratory vaccines in flu that has been developed as well as a disease called RSV. So, that technology is broadly out there.
What people don't realize is that actually long before the COVID pandemic happened, Moderna had been working on using this technology to tune the
immune system to fight back against cancers and to do so individually, one patient at a time, by taking the sequence of the patient's own DNA and
identifying certain mutations that could then be the basis for a treatment where the immune system recognizes these to be threats and goes after them.
ISAACSON: So, the messenger RNA, that's what mRNA is, is able to take that information about the tumor's DNA, the patient's DNA, and build a little
facsimile protein in the cell of a patient.
AFEYAN: That's right. That's right. And in fact, what's really amazing is that we started this project about 10 years ago and there was nothing to
precedent this because nobody could take this kind of information and stitch together something up to 34 different, what's called neoantigens,
new mutated versions of little peptides.
And when you stitch them together and you put them into an LNP particle, when you then inject that into a patient, the patient then takes this code,
presents it on the surface of cells that are trained to then engage the immune system. And the immune system now says, well, I got to go after
these foreign things. And the only place in the body where these foreign things exist essentially is on the tumor. And so, the T cells then have
full license to go and find specific T cells for that patient alone.
The reason it's called a vaccine is that it is evoking the immune response. But truth be told, a vaccine usually has come to mean a prophylactic
approach, which is to prevent the disease. In this case, it is a treatment. So, we prefer calling it an individualized neoantigen therapy for cancer,
but the principle is the same. And that is let the immune system do the work. Just give it the instructions.
ISAACSON: And you say it's personalized. Does that mean every person's tumor is different and you make a new drug for each person?
AFEYAN: Indeed. That's the remarkable thing. It's a very -- it's the product of the type of computation approaches we developed over the years,
the automation we have such that we can, within weeks of getting a patient sequence, just like we did in the case of COVID, within weeks we turned
around with a vaccine that we can test. This is done now for individual cancer patients.
We know, the field knows, that every single person's cancer accumulates different mutations and it's very specific to that person. Now, we have
lots of cancer treatments that don't go after the specificity. They go after the general type of tumor. And what this one does is to say, no, no,
I'm going to make your body make a defense system against your tumor and boost the immune system's ability to recognize and then attack.
[13:45:00]
And the reason, Walter, this was a trial done in partnership with Merck and the whole program is, is because Merck is a leader in a complementary
approach that has already been in the market for many years, which is a product called Keytruda. And these things are a different approach using
antibodies that essentially create the right environment around the tumor such that a T cell can go and do its job.
So, previously, before Keytruda, what's called an anti-PD-1 antibody, was in the market, it's been had a tremendous effect on many, many cancers.
Tumors essentially put out signals that kept T cells at bay. The inventions of really very, very bright scientists figured out that if you could
suppress that, that break sign, T cells can get in.
Now, the question was, how does the T cell know what to go after? We now came in with a boost of that and showed in phase three trials, that's what
was announced a couple of weeks ago, that we could show statistically significant improvements in the recurrence-free survival in late-stage
melanoma patients, which is very encouraging.
ISAACSON: Just to make sure everybody understands, the T cell, it means you're using an immune system to try to kill that cancerous cell, and
you're programming that immune system for that particular cancer cell. Is that approximately right?
AFEYAN: That is very correct. And in fact, what's really remarkable is that in our bodies, these T cells, and there are many kinds of them,
particularly killer T cells, what's called, do this professionally throughout our lives. Over time, over age, and as our immune system
sometimes also weakens, sometimes the cancer essentially can figure out ways to evade the immune detection, and then it becomes a battle between a
cancer and our immune system. That's always been the kind of the way cancers ultimately prevail.
If we can give our immune system a boost and a direction to go after that cancer, we think that we can really provide the type of improved
performance that could lead to many cancers being held back.
ISAACSON: Your mRNA we've just talked about has done a treatment for melanoma. There's another one that came out that did pancreatic cancer not
too long ago. What other cancers are we going to see being treated by mRNA technology?
AFEYAN: So, the pancreatic cancer one, Walter, you're referring to, which is an exciting development by another biotechnology company, was actually a
small molecule drug, not using RNA, but it was an effective treatment for an otherwise super problematic cancer in pancreatic. So, there's a lot of
hope there, and there was an approved drug just a week ago or so, finalized approval. We are ourselves working, together with our partners at Merck, on
multiple other forms of cancer.
For example, a small cell lung cancer. We're working on muscle-invasive bladder cancer. We're working on kidney cancer. And these are -- many of
these are late-stage trials that we expect will begin to read out over the coming six months to a year time frame. And that will be interesting
because if we can show an effectiveness improvement over the state-of-the- art, then people will begin to realize what we hope to show, which is that the same mechanism of identifying a sequence, telling the immune system to
go after it, will potentially be beneficial in multiple kinds of cancer.
So, we have to generate the data, but as we do, we'll learn more. Each one of these teaches us what about the actual sequences makes them more or less
immunogenic, more or less effective. And so, there's a learning cycle, as in any medical research world, that we're going through. But yes, we are
working on, and there will be an expansion of these, no doubt, as the first wave of data came out in a very confirmatory way.
ISAACSON: Explain to me the new mRNA vaccine you're going to do for flu that's going to be released next week. How is that different from the
regular flu vaccine that I could get otherwise?
AFEYAN: Well, look, the regular flu vaccines that are available typically are either basically proteins that are made using eggs. This is an old, old
technology, but a reliable one. And so, therefore, there's an expression of the protein, the actual antigens you want to introduce into the body,
purified, converted into a vial, and then given. This is a protein-based vaccine.
There's also other vaccines that are made in other systems that are what's called heterologously expressed, or let's say basically using traditional
recombinant DNA technologies. Those are the current state-of-the-art, and they've been around for a very, very long time.
[13:50:00]
We are doing the same thing but with mRNA, where we take an mRNA specific to the particular strains of flu that are prevalent, and then we create a
cocktail that then ends up being in an LMP delivered, much like the other applications of mRNA. And same immune response, but now going after
different messages, different targets allow us to combat the seasonal flu.
While we're at it, I should mention we've also been working on a potential pandemic flu strain. As you know, H5N1 is a highly problematic bird flu
that's been causing havoc in many different animal species, not yet as much in humans, but it is a threat. So, we are as well using the technology, but
a different set of variants to go after H5N1.
So, this is going to be a really translatable technology across many different infections. You may know that we have a vaccine under late-stage
development against norovirus, for which there isn't a vaccine, the one that causes traveler's diarrhea. There's other vaccines that we're also
considering.
So, you know, this is going to be a platform. It's -- we believe it's here to stay, and it's got to earn its place alongside the traditional vaccine
technologies, which have served humanity quite well and will continue to do so.
ISAACSON: When we talked earlier this year on this show, you talked about the cuts that were being done in research funding by the Trump
administration, said those could have bad negative effects on our ability to keep up with China and others in creating drugs. To what extent could
this new drug that you've done from melanoma, this new treatment from melanoma, could it have happened without federal research dollars? And are
you still worried about the cutback of federal research dollars?
AFEYAN: Yes. I mean, I think, Walter, and you know this very, very well, because you studied the whole scientific enterprise. The academic research
underlies all of the downstream applied work that then leads to important products that humanity benefits from, whether it's drugs or new energy
solutions or new sources of food, et cetera.
So, I think of it as the foundation. If we can -- if we loosen the foundation, it really becomes problematic on what you're trying to build
above it. So, the way it works is that people will do science, as I mentioned earlier, move unknown things into the domain of known things by
experimentation, by critical thought and debates. That process then becomes a substrate from which we then make products, whether it's the mRNA for
cancer or many, many other drugs and solutions.
So, if you starve the underlying foundational science, you know, sometimes people call this basic research. I don't particularly subscribe to that
because there's nothing basic about it. It's actually all enabling. Enabling research would be a better descriptor because without it, we can't
do these other things. So, it's by definition of enabling. But the difference between enabling research and applied research, which is what
industry often funds, is that in applied research, you have to have a product in mind.
In enabling research, you just have a capability in mind. You know, what if I could make a material that's 100 times stronger than any other material
man has ever seen? Well, answering that question will allow you to make lighter airplanes, will allow you to make, you know, rockets that go. All
of these things are interdependent.
So, to me, any scientific success in the form of products should be a reminder that the foundation is what we need to reinforce. By the way,
other countries that are competing absolutely are following the example that the U.S. set back going back to the mid part of the last century and
benefited from. I think this is an important debate the country is having.
We've expressed our views that the scientific method is the best way for us to navigate the unknown. And everybody is welcome to participate in it. And
the key difference, though, is that in the world of science, you have to argue with facts. Opinions and facts cannot be interchangeable.
And I think this is where the politicization of science, not quite political science, but politicized science is problematic because there
it's really people's opinion that dominates, not the facts. And I think we have to be able to say, no, no. I no more want somebody's opinion to govern
what medical treatment I receive, but rather facts and what the society, the industry -- the medical society that is expert decides.
[13:55:00]
Then I would, in trying to rely on where we should invest money, research money, we should be consistent with the way we are funding the research
establishment and then reap the benefits of it through the entrepreneurial engine we have in this country that is, that is incomparable to anybody
else. I think we have a huge advantage there.
ISAACSON: Noubar Afeyan, thank you for joining us again.
AFEYAN: Thank you for having me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Possibly really exciting for the future. And finally, get off your high horse and carefully in this case, meet Hugo, the tallest horse in
the world who towers over his owner. The six-foot five stallion is one of the new Guinness World Record holders. Other winners include the world's
narrowest car, a foot juggler, and even a giant hairdryer. And one woman from the United States spent a decade collecting over 13,000 model frogs.
Now, she says her task is complete. We thought we'd have a bit of fun from all over the world to end our show today.
That is 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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