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Russia Claims Drone Attack on Kremlin, Ukraine Denies; New York City May See 1,000 Migrants a Day after Title 42 Expires; AI Pioneer Addresses Dangers of Technology. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired May 03, 2023 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, Russia is making a serious accusation that Ukraine tried to assassinate Russian president Vladimir Putin with a drone attack on the Kremlin. Ukraine denies this and President Zelenskyy's spokesperson is calling it a trick.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. bracing for a huge surge of migrants as Title 42 officially ends next week. How the Biden administration is now preparing.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: A new Alzheimer's drug shows promising results, slowing cognitive decline.

How soon might it become widely available?

We are following these major developing stories and many more coming in to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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BOLDUAN: Let's start with the very latest out of Russia. Russia now claims two Ukrainian drones were flown over the Kremlin overnight and claims the intended target was Vladimir Putin.

New video circulating online shows what the Kremlin claims is the attempted attack. CNN hasn't verified this video. Ukraine responded this morning, saying it had nothing to do with any incident. A spokesperson for Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia's allegation of an assassination attempt is a trick.

We just heard from Secretary Blinken on this and said he cannot validate the claims. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is live in Dnipro, Ukraine. Let's

Start and stick with the facts.

What do we know right now?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: We do have a statement from the Kremlin, making both a remarkably escalatory claim and one that exposes how weak security is in Moscow.

That statement from the Kremlin spokesperson says there was an assassination attempt on Russian president Vladimir Putin, who was not in the Kremlin when two drones Flew at the building. The remnants appeared to have landed without causing injury at that particular stage.

That is an extraordinary statement for the Kremlin to make and it is not backed up with concrete evidence. There is a video circulating on social media that appears to show smoke over the Kremlin. And that is something that you can easily falsify or manipulate.

Yet more proof required from Moscow but there is a few things that they can accuse another of, even already at war with it, trying to assassinate their president. Ukraine, very straight, two officials close to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, one saying we have no information about this at all, it's a trick.

The other saying we have absolutely nothing to do with this at all. We only defend Ukraine and get Russians off Ukrainian soil and reminding people this will possibly be used by Russia as justification for barbaric and indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian civilians.

Where we go from here, there are fears from comments by senior Russian officials and most notably the speaker of the Russian parliament, suggesting that now Russia should reach into their arsenal for weapons to finish off the Kyiv regime.

This could be a part of Russia's clumsy nuclear signal but no indication at this point in Russian posture in that regard. Many in Ukraine deeply concerned as to why this event has been admitted to or amplified in the way the Kremlin has done it.

What is it leading to?

What is it going to be used to justify?

Russia is already using all its military might in this war pretty badly and is possibly hours or days away from a Ukrainian counteroffensive, which could potentially damage its mere presence here. So a lot concerns in Ukraine and a very strange statement from Russia, showing both weakness and highly escalatory. Kate.

BOLDUAN: Great way to put it. Thank you, Nick. Sara.

SIDNER: Joining me for more on this is CNN's Alex Marquardt.

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SIDNER: Alex, the U.S. has now chimed in.

What are you hearing from secretary of state Antony Blinken?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Secretary Blinken echoing other U.S. officials, they simply don't know. It is clear Washington is in the dark and is scrambling to figure out what happened in Moscow.

Secretary Blinken saying we need to get all of the facts. Here's a bit more of what he had to say just moments ago.

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ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I can't in any way validate them. We simply don't know. Second, I would take anything coming out of the Kremlin with a very large shaker of salt. So -- let's see. We'll see what the facts are.

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MARQUARDT: So taking what Russia says about a Ukrainian attack "with a very large shaker of salt," raising the possibility that it could be a false flag attack or something else that Ukraine is not behind.

I heard from two separate U.S. officials, saying whatever happened here, we were not told in advance. Sara, since the beginning of this war, the U.S. has been very afraid of anything that could provoke Russia further, that could lead to a nuclear attack and escalate this war.

That's why you've seen over the course of this war this sort of incremental gain in the weaponry that's given to Ukraine from Stingers and Javelins to HIMARS, now to tanks. The U.S. is very afraid that weaponry that is too big would be seen as a provocation.

One of the biggest things Ukraine has been asking for is these long term missiles called ATACMS and the U.S. has firmly said to Ukraine that, whatever we give you, you cannot use inside of Russia.

We have seen Ukrainian attacks inside of Russia before. The U.S. has said Ukraine has that right because they are the ones being attacked. But the U.S. is not enabling or encouraging those attacks inside Russia. Sara.

SIDNER: We should mention that, when you look at this video closely, you can see two people walking up the dome and then once what appears to be the drone hitting the flag pole, nothing happens to the flag pole. The flag is still there, the pole not bent.

So interesting to just look at this video. And you heard from Antony Blinken, very skeptical about what Russia is saying happened here. Thank you so much, Alex Marquardt, appreciate it -- John.

BERMAN: Joining us is CNN military analyst, retired General Wesley Clark.

I want to point out to people, the distance between the Ukrainian border and Moscow is about 300 miles, almost a matter where you're going from. So 300 miles there. The drones that we know that the Ukrainians have used, these Turkish drones, have a maximum range of 186 miles.

So it's not even clear if the Ukrainians have the equipment that could do that, if launched from Ukraine.

So when you see the purported video of this, how do you assess this?

What do you think is going on?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I'm very skeptical of this because this looks to me like a typical Russian trick.

So if you go back to 1999, when Vladimir Putin was the new prime minister and wanting to become the president, he had his intelligence agencies blow up three residential buildings in Moscow and blamed it on Chechen terrorists.

He then unleashed a war on Chechnya, which made him a national hero. This looks like a repeat of the same play to me, John. Now there are a lot of technical issues here.

Could the drone get there?

Why would Ukraine think they could attack a dome on the Kremlin and hit Putin?

Really bad intelligence. And then somebody walking up the dome in the middle of the night, the United States should call for an international investigation to pull this out and make the Russians defend themselves.

But I think a key message here is this is most likely an effort by Putin to rally domestic support, to distract the news cycle and to pave the way for justification for an escalation of Russian military activity in some way.

BERMAN: Again, just so people know what the general is talking about, these are where the people are, that seem to be showing up on this purported video, walking up the dome, a cause some people suggest for skepticism.

I want to show you a map of some activity that has been taking place in Russia, leave aside what is happening in Moscow or what may have happened in Moscow overnight. But there have also been reported strikes here inside Russia and then in Russian-occupied territory in Crimea.

And then we've seen over time some strikes in the Belgorod area.

If Ukraine is doing these strikes, what is it that you think they're trying to do?

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CLARK: Those strikes would be related to the logistic support or training support or stockpiles of ammunition affecting the battlefield in Ukraine. And then that would be logical. And as the United States said, as your reporter said previously, this is justified. The strike in Moscow doesn't make military sense. BERMAN: I think that's an interesting point. If you read closely the

Ukrainian response here, they basically say the attack in Moscow would make no strategic sense, where you can understand why, if they are behind these attacks down here, they do have military value.

One of the things people have been looking at over the past few weeks is the idea of a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive happening sometime this spring.

How do you think -- what are the possibilities of how the Ukrainians would do this?

CLARK: I think that a smart way to do it is not to announce that it's beginning but to begin with partisan activity that attacks behind Russian lines, opens the doors in several different areas and deceives the Russians as to where the main Ukrainian effort might be and then looks for the opening and goes for the weakest spot.

They have nine armored brigades and they have other assets. And they're holding their cards very close to their chest right now. And that makes a lot of sense. We don't really have any information about what might happen or when it might happen.

And this is in keeping with the best military practices. But I do think that they will have to penetrate the front line of defense and attack it from behind to have the high chance of success that they need.

They've built up partisan forces for a long time in the city of Zaporizhzhya and probably Melitopol and other areas. And these forces have not always been disclosed. Some of them probably haven't surfaced.

So if you look at what the Allies did, before D-Day, for example, we activated the French Underground in France in 1944 that did a whole lot of damage to the Germans and made our D-Day success, in some ways, possible.

So I think the Ukrainians will be very smart and they'll use partisan activity behind the lines to kick things off. We may not get an early warning here in the West.

BERMAN: You would think that one of the key cards of success would be not to announce where it's about to happen. General Clark, thank you so much for helping us understand all of this. Sara.

SIDNER: Another bus filled with migrants is expected to arrive in New York City in less than an hour. It's the second bus arriving today that was sent by Texas governor Greg Abbott. Texas and three other states along the border with Mexico are bracing for an influx of more migrants.

There are just eight days to go until Title 42 is lifted. That is a policy that had allowed U.S. officials to quickly deny entry and return migrants to Mexico. CNN's Polo Sandoval is joining us now from the Port Authority of New York. How is the expiration of Title 42 going to impact New York at this

moment?

And is this the beginning of what we are going to be seeing?

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Sara, what it is, it's a pretty simple formula the city has experienced first-hand, when they see any increase 2,000 miles south of here on the southern border that almost certainly equals a significant uptick in New York City as this continues to be one of the main destinations for so many migrants, either because they know people here or, which is the case, for the most part, because they've heard about the services here.

What we saw this morning was another bus arriving here at New York City's Port Authority bus terminal except this particular bus was paid for by the Greg Abbott administration in Texas. This is something that we've seen before.

The governor in Texas sending migrants to other cities, including New York, Washington, Denver as well. He says it is to provide relief to border communities because of the numbers they're seeing.

But the criticism renewed by many critics is saying that this is political theater and people are being used as pawns. Now in terms of the numbers, whether they're coming here on a Greg Abbott-chartered bus or coming in on their own, there is nearly 60,000 asylum seekers since last spring arriving in New York.

And the result has been quite the burden on New York City as they struggle to keep their financial head above water to pay for all of this, spending well over $800 million and the concern from New York's immigration commissioner is the numbers, because of the Title 42 expiration that's upcoming, is that those numbers are just going to rise.

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MANUEL CASTRO, COMMISSIONER, MAYOR'S OFFICE OF IMMIGRANT AFFAIRS: We have been welcoming 200 to 300 people a day for many months now. With the arrival of these buses, we could potentially see over a thousand people arrive per day.

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CASTRO: That's just unsustainable for New York City. We are concerned that we might end up seeing asylum seekers living on the street. We are working as hard as we can to avoid that, especially with children and families.

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SANDOVAL: We should mention a majority of the migrants are not coming on an Abbott-chartered bus. They're coming on their own. Also city officials here renewing that call for the President of the United States to step in and try to, at least officially, respond to this, possibly in the form of an executive action. SIDNER: All right. Thank you so much, Polo Sandoval there, live for

us from the Port Authority. Kate.

BOLDUAN: Still ahead for us, no laughing matter. Late night going dark, production on late-night talk shows and "Saturday Night Live" on pause until further notice as the massive Hollywood writers strike sets in.

Plus there's encouraging data for Alzheimer's. Lilly has a drug that has significantly slowed cognitive decline and the next step could be FDA approval.

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BERMAN: New promising data in the fight against Alzheimer's. Eli Lilly says its new experimental drug significantly slowed cognitive decline. That's the ability to think clearly and do daily activities, slowed that decline by 35 percent. The drug could soon go to the FDA for approval. CNN medical correspondent Meg Tirrell joins us now.

First of all, Meg, welcome. It's great to have you here. Walk us through this drug and how it works.

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, Alzheimer's advocates are calling this the most exciting phase III Alzheimer's data to date. They're saying this could make a significant impact on the progression of this disease.

So we know that Alzheimer's is characterized by these plaque buildups in the brain called amyloid. And this drug works in particular by removing that plaque. In previous studies, we have a brain scan that shows two patients that got the drug and that significantly reduced their plaques in the brain over time.

They're the yellow kind of disappearing on that slide versus the bottom line, the patient that got the placebo and didn't get the drug and the brain plaques are still there in the brain.

In this trial they showed that that translated into improving how fast people progress with the disease, losing their cognition and their ability to function. But this drug did not come without side effects.

We saw brain swelling and the microhemorrhages or small bleeds. Most of these were mild but there were a few severe cases and even two deaths in the trial associated with these side effects. So that is something that doctors will have to sort through with patients if this gets approved in determining who this is right for.

BERMAN: The timeline for that for approval might be, Meg? TIRRELL: Yes. So Lilly says they will work quickly with the FDA -- Lilly is the drugmaker. They're hoping for approval by the end of the year. And then the question is how much does this drug cost and how does it get paid for?

BERMAN: But a significant development because this is some of the first major movement we've seen in a drug trial. Meg Tirrell, great to have you, thanks so much. Kate.

BOLDUAN: Vice President Kamala Harris is set to sit down tomorrow with top officials from companies like Microsoft, Alphabet ad Open AI, all considered to be at the forefront of AI innovation at this point.

A key focus of the meeting, though, the risks the technology now poses. This meeting comes at a really interesting moment, when AI is becoming more accessible and also fears that it could soon get out of control. And those fears are also growing.

Those concerns very notably or shared by one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence. Geoffrey Hinton left his job at Google in order to sound the alarm on the technology he helped conceive, saying, in part, "It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things."

Joining us now is Geoffrey Hinton.

Thank you very much for joining me. You made very clear you didn't leave Google in order to criticize Google. You left in order to speak out specifically about the dangers of AI that you see in the offing.

What are the dangers that you want to warn everyone about?

DR. GEOFFREY HINTON, AI PIONEER: There are lots of known dangers, like manipulating electorates and putting people out of work. But that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the existential threat that these things will get to be much smarter than us and will take over.

They'll take control. And I've started worrying about that recently because I recently came to the conclusion that the kind of digital intelligence that's being developed from these chatbots is very different from the biological intelligence we have.

BOLDUAN: I am curious if I can push you on that further because I wondered what the tipping point was for you, when you realized that this was dangerous?

What was it that changed your view?

HINTON: OK, for about 50 years, I've been trying to build models on computers that would help me understand how the brain learns. And it's always been the case that the computers didn't work as well as the brain. And I always felt they were inferior versions of what the brain is doing.

[11:25:00] HINTON: Very recently I realized they might actually be much better than the brain. You could have 10,000 copies of the same model that are all identical because they're digital. And when one copy learns something, all the copies know it.

So it's as if you have 10,000 people and whenever one person learns some new skill, all of the others automatically know it. And that's kind of frightening.

BOLDUAN: It is. The CEO of Google's Deep Mind said just yesterday, Geoffrey, to "The Wall Street Journal" that he believes artificial general intelligence -- and I could be wrong but it is a little bit of what we are talking about here and what the fear could be -- artificial general intelligence could be here in just a few years, is how he described it.

Do you think the timeline looks like that?

HINTON: Yes, I think he has been right. For a long time, I thought it would be like 30 to 50 years but I think he's right and it's coming quite soon.

BOLDUAN: Quite soon. The question is what to do about it and I think there's the personal and the policy. The solutions seem really where the problem and the conundrum is here and not just the existential threat that you are laying out from AI.

You've said that tech companies are most likely to be able to take the lead in keeping AI under control. I hear that.

But aren't tech companies just too invested into the desire to be first and best, not only to mention out how financially invested they are in the success of this?

HINTON: I agree that's a big problem. But if you think about the existential threat, it's that is these things will take control and wipe all of us out. So for the existential threat, we are all in the same boat and that should encourage us to collaborate.

And you can think of it as an external enemy that causes all the internal warring tribes to finally realize they should get together to not allow the external enemy to take over.

BOLDUAN: The big question is, how do you convince lawmakers to get this right because, I will say this in covering Congress for a long time, Congress and Washington are very slow to get in front of anything in terms of regulating technology and understanding technology, full stop.

Even if the United States were to be able to move to better control AI in the way you are discussing, how do you get other nations, I'm talking specifically like China, to do the same?

How do you not disadvantage the United States to take a part while other nations would just let it run? HINTON: Well, the point is the existential threat of the machines taking over puts us all in the same boat. It's like a global nuclear war, where people realize we all lose. And that was enough to make people collaborate to avoid it.

BOLDUAN: It's scary to think what it's going to take to get everyone to realize that it would be an existential threat against all of us. But your warnings and perspective are so important, as you have often been called the godfather of AI. It's wonderful to have your perspective on this. Thank you very much.

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BOLDUAN: Lots to discuss, Sara.

SIDNER: It is day two of the Hollywood writers strike and film and TV production companies are already feeling the impact. Details on how far apart the two sides are and what comes next in this labor dispute.

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