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Trump Speculates Intercepted Ship Had "Gift From China"; Parents Hold Capitol Hill Vigil for Victims of Online Dangers; Deaths and Disappearances of Scientists Spark Federal Probe. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired April 21, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

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[13:33:06]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": CNN has learned that the U.S. military has significantly depleted its stockpile of key missiles during the war with Iran. And according to experts, this reduction is so severe, it has created a near-term risk of the U.S. running out of ammunition should a future conflict arise in the next few years.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand is with us now with her reporting on this. It's some new reporting here. Natasha, walk us through what you've learned.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Brianna, so according to this new study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which was -- their findings were confirmed by three sources familiar with recent Pentagon assessments of U.S. stockpiles. The U.S. is running dangerously low on some of these key munitions that would be required to confront a near-peer adversary in the short term, like China, for example.

So while the U.S. does still have sufficient munitions to continue bombing Iran, for example, if the shaky ceasefire were to fall apart, if they were to need to confront an adversary like China or like Russia, for example, then that could pose significant problems for the United States.

Now, just to give you an example of how much the U.S. stockpile has been depleted over the last seven-plus weeks of war on Iran, according to this assessment and the sources that we spoke to, the U.S. military has expended at least 45 percent of its stockpile of precision-strike missiles, at least half of its inventory of THAAD missiles, which are designed to intercept ballistic missiles, and nearly 50 percent of its stockpile of Patriot air defense interceptor missiles, which are, of course, very key air defense munitions.

Now, the U.S. military has also expended approximately 30 percent of its Tomahawk missiles stockpile, which are those long-range munitions that are really key to attacking targets further away, more than 20 percent of its stockpile of long-range joint air-to-surface standoff missiles, and approximately 20 percent of its SM-3 and SM-6 missiles.

[13:35:00]

Now, this is important because these munitions take a while to be replaced, and according to our sources and this analysis, it would take anywhere between one to six years to replace a lot of these munitions. And so, this is a really big problem that we should note that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, he actually warned about. As the administration was preparing to potentially go to war with Iran, he was raising concerns, we're told, about this issue of depleted stockpiles around the world, particularly ones that could be very useful to U.S. allies like Israel and Ukraine.

So the Pentagon is preparing to ask for a supplemental from Congress for additional funding to try to replace these munitions, but it could still take quite some time before those are actually back in U.S. stockpiles, Brianna.

KEILAR: All right. Thank you, Natasha, for the reporting. Boris?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Joining us now to discuss this and more regarding the war with Iran is retired Army Major, Harrison Mann. He's a former Defense Intelligence Agency official, also the Associate Campaigns Director for Win Without War.

Major, thanks so much for being with us. When you hear that report, how much do these shortages concern you?

MAJ. HARRISON MANN, U.S. ARMY (RET.): They concern me, and for more reasons just than running out of ammo fighting Iran. Part of this is a math problem that we knew the answer for before this war started, right? We knew what our stockpiles were, and I used to work with the folks at the Defense Intelligence Agency who used to do their best to count how many missiles and drones Iran had.

And so, like, there's really two things that I want to draw out of here. One is that the folks, politicians and experts who were advocating for war with Iran, they were just kind of detached from reality. We've run out of up to 50 percent of strategic defensive interceptors a month into a war with a regional power, right? This is Iran.

And from that, we also got to kind of extrapolate folks who are advocating for war with China. That is a global power. The fact that we are totally unprepared for these conflicts is not an argument for us to gear up for war, but it should make us a little more introspective when we have people saying it's going to be a slam dunk and we really need to fight these wars.

The other thing I want to pull out of this, I think, you know, you could be watching this report about us running out of all these critical munitions and say, well, wait a minute, don't we have the most powerful military in the world? Don't we have the biggest military in the world? We just spent nearly a trillion dollars on the Pentagon last year. Why don't we have enough ammo?

And I think it's important for folks to understand, especially as we move into talking about supplemental funding or a new defense funding bill, that these hundreds of billions of dollars that Congress gives the president for war largely do not go into things that we would say we need for war. The reason that we don't have enough air defense interceptors is because instead we've been spending that money on like these big projects that are kind of designed to be expensive.

Like, I hate to describe it this way, but a lot of this $900 billion budget, and that's what Congress passed last year, nearly every Republican and over 50 percent of Democrats too, kind of becomes a slush fund for defense contractors. Raytheon, Lockheed, instead of producing the defensive capabilities that you say we might need, instead of doing things like paying to get black mold out of the soldiers' barracks, instead of going towards getting better bomb shelters for the hundreds of U.S. troops who've been wounded in this war, we're building big vanity projects like the F-35 stealth fighter, which we learned pretty early on in this war is not that stealthy. Iran caught it on camera and shot at it.

Or like Ford-class aircraft carriers that the toilets don't work on. And so I think it's really important to understand if you see these numbers and are shocked or worried by them, more money is not the answer. More judicious spending is.

SANCHEZ: There's also an aspect to this, specifically when it comes to Iran, and I'll get to China in a moment, but financially it's asymmetrical, right? I've heard some experts describing the U.S. weaponry as a Ferrari out in the skies over Tehran, and the Iranians essentially shooting like a Razor scooter at a Ferrari. It's way less expensive for them to take out the U.S. and Israel's equipment than the inverse. How does the U.S. make that more efficient? Does it need to adjust toward a more Ukrainian-like model?

MANN: So this is another reflection of our misguided priorities, I would say. Drone proliferation in the Middle East has been a threat for at least a decade. We saw them popping up in the Syrian civil war, and Iran has been a leader in this field. As you mentioned, Ukrainians out of necessity figured out much, much cheaper ways to deal with this threat.

Why haven't we invested in them? Again, these are because of decisions that Congress and successive military leadership made. And it's really unfortunate, because how did the first U.S. troops die in this conflict? It was a drone strike.

[13:40:00]

SANCHEZ: Yeah. I did want to get your thoughts on China, because this morning President Trump said the U.S. intercepted a ship that had "a gift from China." This is notable because as the President is saying that he was sort of surprised by this, we talked about last week the letters exchanged between he and President Xi of China, in which Xi effectively promised Trump that China would not be supplying ammunition to Tehran. Do you think a shipment of arms from China could have gotten sent to Iran without Xi knowing, without Beijing being aware of what was being transported to Iran?

MANN: I don't think that that would be possible, but we also have to note that the accusation here is a dual-use system.

SANCHEZ: I see.

MANN: So that could be electronics, it doesn't necessarily mean they sent them missiles. A lot of Iran's missiles and drones do depend on electronics, circuit board stuff that they can't manufacture domestically. So this could have been something routine or it could have been China testing the waters and trying to keep the Iranian war effort going. It's hard to be sure right now.

SANCHEZ: Major Harrison Mann, thank you so much for the perspective. Appreciate your time.

MANN: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

Families taking on big tech, parents outside Capitol Hill today fighting for online safety laws. We're going to speak to an expert about why they see these laws as critical for keeping kids safe.

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[13:46:00]

SANCHEZ: There's a vigil underway right now on Capitol Hill to remember the young lives lost to online dangers. This is live images outside the Capitol where some 60 parents are gathering, remembering kids who they say were harmed or even died from cyber bullying, chatbots, social media addiction, and other online influences. They're encouraged by court victories last month against social media giants.

KEILAR: But they're also frustrated. They are looking at what they say is a failure to get really protective legislation through Congress. And today, they plan to push lawmakers to enact the Kids Online Safety Act, which has been languishing on Capitol Hill.

Let's talk now with Psychotherapist, Tom Kersting. He wrote the book "Disconnected: How to Protect Your Kids from the Harmful Effects of Device Dependency." Tom, it's a really interesting time. We are looking at other countries that are starting to take drastic steps, right? And I wonder how you're looking at Congress, how they need to regulate online safety to actually keep kids safe, and if you think they're really capable of doing it.

TOM KERSTING, PSYCHOTHERAPIST: Yeah, I mean, the word on the street is already out there. I mean, we know, everybody knows that these things are harming our kids. Talk to any parent, come to my office and see what I see on a daily basis at my private practice. And the only reason I think they would balk is because big tech has so much power. And I would really hope that our elected officials, our lawmakers, aren't going to side with their donors over the populace.

And I think that's why you're seeing these people protesting on Capitol Hill. 60 people is a good start. And those are people -- these are parents who have suffered the worst consequences. But millions of people, even watching right now, parents who are sitting at home, maybe their kids haven't died by suicide, but it's like these devices and the social media, it's like a hand grenade that has come into the household and just destroyed everything.

SANCHEZ: Tom, last week, Europe launched an age verification app that would give users a sort of a digital ID card to prove their ages online. How is that being received? Do you imagine we could see something like that in the United States?

KERSTING: I would love to see that. I mean, you look what happened with, you know, Big Tobacco. They compared that to the lawsuit back in January against Facebook. The question is how do you implement that? I'm not a tech guy, but I think they could pull that off. I mean, think about the technology we have right now.

And some of the social media sites or companies are going to argue that they already have that, but there's not really any verification. So there's got to be some serious verification where a child who's under the age of, let's say, 16, they can't get on there, right? They just can't unless they're over the age of 16 or unless they have, you know, parental consent.

So we've got to figure that out. I think we can figure that out quickly. There's enough smart people in our country, but it's just a matter of actually doing it and I would say just taking on, you know, big tech.

KEILAR: For years now, we've been talking about social media, social networks, different apps that we see kids on, the problems they're creating for them. Now, we're talking about these A.I. chatbots, and it's pretty astounding how much they're in use by young people. How has this changed the landscape for kids and their parents?

KERSTING: Well, it's interesting. We use the word social media, you use that first. It's really anti-social media. It's the furthest thing from social media.

Now, A.I. is like a next level that frightens me, and we could argue that there's some great attributes, there's things you can get, you can gather information very quickly. But what I worry about, I hear teenagers in my office every day tell me that most of their friends use A.I. to write their papers and do their homework. So I'm concerned about critical thinking, you know, developing the ability to study, to socialize with people.

There's even these chatbots. They have therapists. I mean, to me, that's insane. You know, you're going to get therapy from a chatbot. The therapeutic relationship is a human-to-human connection. I worry about it, and I think it's so fast as well.

[13:50:00]

I think somebody up on top is going to have to slap some regulations. I'm not a big fan of government oversight, but when we're talking about our children and suicidality, and a mental health epidemic, and families being torn apart, we got to do something. SANCHEZ: Before any action from Congress, or even self-regulation that these companies might partake in, what would be your advice to parents with kids that are at that age, where it starts becoming dangerous for them to access these apps?

KERSTING: You know, the hard part, Boris, is that the parents already know this. You know, they already understand this, but there's so much pressure. Like, if you're the parent that is saying, I'm not getting my kid a phone until they're 18, right? You may say that, and you may try to do that, but it's like a double-edged sword.

Like, that kid is going to feel like they don't fit in, and the parents is going to be parental peer pressure. I have dealt with people who have pulled it off, and those individuals that are now in their 20s that didn't get smartphones until they were like 18-years- old, tell me that they are so grateful that their parents didn't give.

KEILAR: OK. Well, the final question then, Tom, is how did their parents withstand the pressure? I mean, did they just have a conviction of knowing this isn't the path? What was it?

KERSTING: Yeah, well, you know what you could do? There's something, you know, we call these things smartphones. There's something called -- I call them a dumb phone.

KEILAR: Yeah.

KERSTING: Now, one company is Gabb Wireless, right? But it looks just like a smartphone. So if you have a 10 or 11 or 12-year-old, fine, let them have that. All they can do is text and make phone calls. The danger lies in the depths of it. You know, when they can access the social media, the algorithms can start pumping things that they know they're interested in, and then they get dragged down that rabbit hole for up to eight or nine hours a day.

So ultimately, you know, what I worry about is our kids are spending more time in a cyber world. How can we expect them to thrive in the real world when they get there one day, if they've never really lived in the real world?

KEILAR: Yeah, the dumb phone may be the smart way to go. Certainly is, as we're seeing. Tom, thank you so much. Always great to talk with you about this. It's so important.

KERSTING: My pleasure, thank you.

SANCHEZ: A string of disappearances and deaths involving scientists is now prompting a federal investigation. We have the details next.

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[13:56:56]

KEILAR: New today, federal investigations are underway after at least 10 people connected to sensitive U.S. nuclear and scientific research died or disappeared in recent years. In a new statement, the House Oversight Committee says the incidents "raise questions about a possible sinister connection." And they are now reaching out to multiple agencies.

CNN's Natasha Chen has been looking into this for us. Natasha, what can you share?

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, this has just been a wild experience researching this, because the circumstances of these dozen or so people vary widely, from people whose deaths had been publicly reported and explained with suspects arrested to people whose disappearances truly leave detectives stumped.

Now, I've tried to reach out to as many family members and close friends of these people as I could, and the reactions also range widely, from some of them laughing this off as ridiculous to others hoping a federal investigation will finally give them some answers.

Now, the request for briefings from the FBI, the Defense Department, and Department of Energy, NASA, comes from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee. Here's the Committee Chair, James Comer.

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REP. JAMES COMER, (R-KY) CHAIRMAN, HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: When I first heard about this, I thought, well, that can't be true. That sounds like some kind of crazy conspiracy theory. But once you see the facts, it would suggest that something sinister could be happening, and it would be a national security concern.

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CHEN: But there is nothing sinister in the eyes of Julia Hicks, the daughter of Michael David Hicks. He's a scientist who died in 2023 and was named in Comer's letter. There were internet rumors stemming from no publicly listed cause of death or available autopsy.

But his daughter told me yesterday, she's the one who found him when he passed and he had known medical issues. She said he worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for nearly 25 years on near-Earth comets and asteroids, how to deflect them from Earth, nothing that she feels would put a target on his back. She told me, I can't help but laugh about it, but at the same time, it's getting serious, referring to this congressional attention.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have disappearances like that of Anthony Chavez, 78-years-old, who disappeared last year from Los Alamos, New Mexico. He was retired and had been a foreman overseeing construction of new buildings at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to police.

A detective there told me he's at a loss. Clues show them that Chavez was home the day before he was reported missing, all his stuff left behind. And though he was a hiker and could have gone to one of the many canyons in the area, it was also pouring rain that day, and he didn't bring a jacket. Chavez's best friend told me he tried to get the FBI involved initially, but he was hung up on and says, it's about time the feds look into this. He believes Chavez was abducted. I asked him to elaborate on that, but he said the Chavez family asked him not to say anything more.

Now, the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, posted last week about what she called recent and legitimate questions about these troubling cases, that they would holistically review all the cases together and leave no stone unturned. Brianna?

KEILAR: Really interesting. --