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Hottest Summer on Record; Iran Escalates Attacks; Fear of A.I.; Trump Heads to Republican Midterm Convention. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired September 09, 2026 - 13:00   ET

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

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Lights, camera, convention. President Trump heading to Texas, where he's set to headline the party's midterm pep rally. The real story, though, may be who doesn't show up in Dallas.

Plus, a dire warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence, an Anthropic employee quitting the company, saying that these tech giants are -- quote -- "gambling with our lives."

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And abortion rights are back on the docket, as a federal court takes up a case with the potential to upend access to medication abortion.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SANCHEZ: At any moment, President Donald Trump is expected to leave Washington, D.C., for Texas, where he's going to headline the Republican Party's first ever midterm convention later tonight, the president touting what he says will be a two-day sold-out event in Dallas, despite a notable number of Republican candidates saying they're skipping it altogether.

CNN Steve Contorno is there at the convention site for us in Dallas.

Steve, what are you hearing about what is on deck for tonight and tomorrow?

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Boris, walking around the American Airlines Center, it certainly has the look and the feel of a traditional convention. There are balloons on the ceiling waiting to drop. They are testing the microphones for the speeches you will hear later tonight.

And there are spots even for delegates on the floor of the convention, but those delegates won't have a platform to vote on or a president to nominate. That is because this is a midterm convention, and President Donald Trump is not on the ballot. Instead, this is a convention that was conceived by Trump for Trump to

help Trump get Republicans energized going into these midterm elections in a year where we are seeing his approval rating give headwinds to his party. He is polling far below his predecessors at this point in their presidential term, and that is a problem for Republicans as they go into these next 55 days.

So what you will hear over the next two days is directly from President Donald Trump, his vice president, J.D. Vance, members of his Cabinet, and his allies in Congress trying to explain to the American people President Trump's agenda for the first year-and-a-half since he's been in office and his plans for his second two years, as well as a lot of red meat about Democrats and what they would do if they were to take over Congress.

Now, Democrats, for their part, have chosen not to hold a counter- convention. Instead, you have seen several of them make appearances in Dallas already to let voters know the difference between what their party is offering and what Republicans are offering.

Take a listen, for example, to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

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GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D-IL): Donald Trump is hoping that a flashy prime-time event will make you forget that, well, his trade war is killing costs for families at the grocery store, his war in Iran is killing ranchers and farmers and their way of life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CONTORNO: Now, those certainly some of the issues that Republicans privately are concerned about.

Over the next few days, we will have to listen to how they try to spin those problems when they speak later tonight.

SANCHEZ: And, Steve, we noted that there are going to be some prominent absences at this convention. How are Republicans approaching this convention?

CONTORNO: Well, there will certainly be a lot of Republicans in attendance tonight, and there are going to be some notable Republicans who are in battleground states, in difficult reelection fights or challenging elections who are choosing instead to skip.

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And, look, Republicans have a challenge and a problem. And that is, their most popular and influential voice in their party is no doubt President Donald Trump. And Republicans in the party and in his administration and in the White House believe that he alone is the person who can convince Republican voters who typically don't show up in midterm elections to come out this cycle.

But the fact remains he is unpopular. And so there is a choice they must make. Do you stand next to the president or try to stand on your own, Boris?

SANCHEZ: Steve Contorno live for us in Dallas, thank you so much.

KEILAR: A new alarming call from inside the house, an A.I. researcher warning the technology could -- quote -- "kill us all within the next 10 years." It's an apocalyptic message that was posted by a former Anthropic employee who said he was resigning.

The post picked up even more attention after a more senior Anthropic employee agreed, writing -- quote -- "Jacob is correct here. We really do earnestly believe A.I. could kill all humans. I personally think it is greater than 10 percent within the next decade."

SANCHEZ: Reassuring, right?

Today, a third Anthropic employee weighed in, writing -- quote -- "A.I. developers believe their technology could cause human extinction or similarly bad outcomes. This could happen in the next few years. In general, the more senior the employee, the more concerned they are."

Let's talk about this with CNN contributor Jacob Ward, unrelated to the previous Jacob that we were talking about. He's a technology journalist and host of the "Rip Current" podcast.

Thanks so much for joining us, Jacob.

I asked Anthropic's Claude to give me the risk of A.I. killing off all humans within the next decade. And at first it didn't want to answer the question. It sort of gave me the runaround, but then I pressed it, and then Anthropic's own model told me between 2 and 5 percent.

I think the question many of us would want to know is, how would A.I. try to go about this?

JACOB WARD, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Oh, geez, Boris. I mean, the list of threats grows by the day.

We know, first of all, right, that there is a growing body of evidence that this technology has capabilities in the creation of bioweapons, in the creation of cybersecurity hacks that are unprecedented and unguardable against.

We just saw just a couple of weeks ago a California research facility basically saying that they'd created through A.I. in two days a cybersecurity hack that would basically infect one of the largest messaging apps in all of the world on your phone without you really even having to ever touch the phone.

There are incredible amounts of danger coming here, and I think what all of these researchers are so worried about and what they're talking about now so publicly is the recursive ability, the ability of these technologies to improve themselves.

Anthropic has said at this point -- and some of this is, the weird thing is you can't quite distinguish the marketing language from the warning language here. You know, the warning is that Claude evidently could make the next version of itself without any human intervention.

We're at a place where this technology is improving itself incredibly quickly. And I would just point out Jacob Coxon, the person here, he is walking away from an immense payday an estimated seven weeks before this company is supposed to go public.

This guy who is core to the effort of pre-training the data is walking away from one of the greatest payouts in the history of capitalism. And so I think it's really important we listen to a guy who is this much at stake, leaving with no plans for anything else and saying something as scary as this.

KEILAR: Yes, that's a really good point.

This former Anthropic employee writes -- quote -- "At Anthropic, the stakes are well understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first. They believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves despite the risk."

Is that how it should be, Jacob, that an A.I. company is trusted to be sort of the adult in the room?

WARD: I mean, what's so crazy here, right, is that he speaks openly, Jacob Coxon, about the fact that this is happening because of engineers on laptops in San Francisco, as opposed to in the desert of the Manhattan Project. That's what he said to "The Wall Street Journal," that he thinks this should have been something around the Manhattan Project.

The thing to understand, you guys, is that the Manhattan Project, only one person, Polish physicist Joseph Rotblat, was the only person to walk away from Manhattan Project on conscientious grounds. Far more people have walked away from these -- from this industry on the grounds that it really endangers us all.

And so there's been an incredible lack of I would say democratic input. The fact, Boris, that you're typing it into the product itself, and that's as close as we can come to getting comment from this for on how this is happening is pretty amazing to me.

And I would just say, like, this feels to me like a guy who really doesn't know how to dial 911 because it's not clear who he would call. He's instead going out into the street and as publicly as he can saying there's an enormous problem here.

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And the really notable thing is that other insiders, including the head of Alignment Research at OpenAI, is basically saying, I agree with you, and we have no plan for this. And that's, of course, why it's important to look at things like the new bill that just got announced last week.

Bernie Sanders and Representative Casar are both -- put out a Ban Superintelligence Act. And this is happening in the same week when OpenAI is more or less saying that it has reached the hallowed ground of artificial general intelligence, this AGI that everyone's been worried about.

So things are converging incredibly quickly here, right before our eyes.

SANCHEZ: I think that question of who answers when you call 911 gets more complex when you realize, even though Congress has put out some efforts at regulating A.I., that's for a domestic A.I. industry, not a global one, where you have to contend with other governments that may have their own interests in advancing superintelligence, for example, China.

So is there a global watchdog that is sort of saying, we should all pump the brakes? Because whether it's a U.S. company or a foreign government, the danger lurks for everybody. A.I. has no borders, right?

WARD: I mean, this is the thing, right, is that what all of these researchers seem to agree on is that we are holding hands, that these companies are holding hands and running toward a cliff, and they don't seem to be able to agree among themselves how to slow down.

They did put out a big letter, took more than 1,000 signatures calling for the government to help them slow down, but they literally are saying, stop us because we cannot control ourselves. And, as you point out, Boris, that's just the domestic effort. I'm headed to Europe in a few weeks to speak to a couple of conferences on this.

And I'm really hoping to speak to people there and understand, how can we build some sort of international coalition that can actually slow this thing down, the way we have looked at bioweapons, the way we have looked at regulating aviation? This is the kind of thing that Bill Gates, who used to not care about this stuff -- but we were just talking about this last week.

He's changed his tune and says an international body is going to be necessary here. This is truly on the order of nuclear weapons, on the order of genetic experimentation, which have in the past produced international treaties, international agreements.

We are not in that place right now because there's so much money to be made in the short term off of this, and because we just lack the political will at the moment to do the kinds of incredibly high-stakes international negotiation you would have to, to create something that can withstand the dangers that are posed for all humanity, not just for individual industries or an individual nation.

KEILAR: On that optimistic note...

SANCHEZ: Very positive note.

KEILAR: ... Jacob Ward, I know, keeping it real. Tough to hear.

Jacob Ward, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

WARD: Appreciate you guys. KEILAR: Still to come: The U.S. military says it struck five Iranian

tankers, that it sunk one after Iran fired ballistic missiles at a U.S. Navy warship. What this latest escalation could signal for the war.

Plus, the wrong type of record setter. Ahead, how this summer became the hottest in U.S. history, and what could come next.

SANCHEZ: And, later, new CNN polling showing the Senate races in Michigan and Maine statistically are tied right now.

That and much more coming up on CNN.

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SANCHEZ: Oil and gas prices are again on the rise, as a flurry of attacks in the Strait of Hormuz sparks fresh concerns about a widening war in the Middle East. Iran says it's now expanding restrictions around the strait after new U.S. strikes.

CNN's Brian Todd is with us now.

So, Brian, talk to us about these strikes.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, this is a clear escalation in the last few days, since really the weekend, but really Tuesday and Wednesday local time, and it really is alarming.

According to CENTCOM and some information we're getting from sources, a total of seven tankers have been struck since Tuesday evening local time in this region. On Tuesday -- we will start with Tuesday. There were four tankers struck in the Gulf of Oman right down here, and one struck near Kharg Island up here.

According to CENTCOM, there were -- today, there were two tankers struck by drones. It's unclear because no one's taken responsibility for those. One of them was struck off the coast of Dubai here, and one was struck in Iraqi waters here.

Now, with all of these, with the five tankers that were struck on Tuesday, one of them was sunk, and we have video of one of them being sunk. This is the M/T Riesco. You see the strike on it here, and then the video shows it on fire and kind of listing.

This was struck in the Gulf of Oman. Pretty dramatic video. I can advance it a little bit here, maybe a little bit faster as we look at this video. But, anyway, you can see it listing, and then it goes down and basically vanishes into the water into the Gulf of Oman.

We have video of the four other strikes. This was a tanker on fire after these -- after these strikes on Tuesday. Again, these were the four strikes that U.S. forces took out on Iranian tankers on Tuesday. CENTCOM does say that, ahead of all of these strikes, Boris, they instructed the crews to abandon ship. The Iranians say that, with at least two of these, they were able to

get crew members to lifeboats on shore. But Iran did retaliate for these strikes. Actually, before I talk about the Iranian retaliation, CENTCOM says that the strikes on these ships were in retaliation for Iran attempting at least once to hit a U.S. Navy ship in the region.

That Navy ship evaded those missiles, and no one was hurt, and the Navy ship continues to patrol in those areas. But after these strikes on Tuesday, Iran did retaliate. They sent ballistic missiles from Iran to an air base right about here. This is the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Northeastern Jordan, which does house U.S. forces and has some U.S. air assets there.

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Now, the Jordanian military does say that out of 20 ballistic missiles fired by Iran, they intercepted 18 of them. Two of them fell in unpopulated areas, and no one was hurt. But, clearly, Boris, with some of these -- and we can just show this video again.

This is a clear escalation since the weekend, and there were some other tankers that were attacked over the weekend as well, so clearly an escalation here. Very alarming.

SANCHEZ: There's also some new evidence that CNN has reported on that Iran is expanding construction at one of its key nuclear sites, this Pickaxe Mountain.

TODD: That's right. Pickaxe Mountain, Boris, this is about 140 miles south of Tehran. Intelligence agencies believe this could be a possible future site for Iran to protect some of its nuclear program assets, some of what it's doing with this nuclear program.

It's deep underground. Now, according to new analysis by of the Center for Strategic and International Studies -- this is analysis that they shared with CNN -- there's been a flurry of activity at Pickaxe Mountain just within the past year. We will show you two images that kind of compare it.

You see this. Oh, sorry. Let's get that out of there. You see this image of this place in September of last year. Looks kind of like a dusty warehouse complex, maybe not much going on there. This is a new image from just last month, August 9, at Pickaxe Mountain.

Now, according to the CSIS analysis, again, shared with CNN, there's been an increase in road activity, more road activity there than ever before over the past several months. There have been what they say went from -- there was a lot of internal construction there that went from active excavation to internal construction.

And you see there's a new construction camp with storage and equipment there. There's a batch plant here. All of this could be alarming, but what CSIS also says here is that this construction suggests that this plant is not yet ready for enrichment work.

Now, the key is that again, Donald Trump, President Trump has threatened to strike this facility several times...

SANCHEZ: Yes.

TODD: ... including once last week. It's unclear, Boris, whether the U.S. has the munitions able to actually get at what they want to get at underneath there because it's under a lot of granite. So we have to see how it plays out there at Pickaxe Mountain.

SANCHEZ: It's said to be hundreds of feet underground.

TODD: Yes.

SANCHEZ: Unclear if a U.S. bunker-buster could reach that deep into that granite.

Brian Todd, thank you so much for the reporting.

TODD: Sure.

SANCHEZ: Still ahead: A key hearing in Louisiana could decide whether patients in the U.S. can continue to access the abortion drug mifepristone by mail and at pharmacies. We have some new details on that.

Plus, confirming what you already have felt, the U.S. experiencing the hottest summer on record this year. The question remains, how much worse is it going to get in the future?

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KEILAR: America just sweated through its hottest summer on record.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says average temperatures across the Lower 48 states topped the previous record set during the Dust Bowl. The agency also says the extreme high expanded drought conditions, which now cover more than 59 percent of the contiguous U.S.

CNN's chief climate correspondent, Bill Weir, is with us now.

So -- and, Bill, summer's not over quite yet. Walk us through some of the key takeaways from this report.

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, yes. So, three degrees Fahrenheit above average, that's what they found for this summer here. That's a fever the size of the Earth, and it manifested itself in ways that range from annoying to expensive to deadly, as we have seen there, from canceled fireworks or summer camps due to smoke or heat or flash floods in some parts of the country, record wildfires in other parts.

Look at the temperature ranking map there. The white patches are about average temperature. Everything else is above, especially in the American West, where the Four Corner states there bright red. And if you look at rainfall patterns, it's a similar thing of too much or not enough.

While 60 percent roughly of the country is now in drought, that's expanded by 10 percent, in August now, you had record wet summers in Indiana and Illinois, parts of Ohio there in the Midwest. So it's sort of dealer's choice with a broken climate system that's happening right now. And the bad news is, this is just the beginning.

All of the pollution in the sky and the sea, the more gigatons that are added to it, the temperature just climbs and climbs and climbs, and there's no little ice age coming to save us and cool us off.

KEILAR: So there are some interesting parallels with what's happening now and with what happened during the Dust Bowl, which was just a devastating era. Explain this to us.

WEIR: Yes, well, 1936 was both a natural and manmade disaster. It was a wicked heat wave that came that summer, but it just took horrible, misguided American agriculture policies and made them that much worse.

They were encouraging farmers to plant thirsty crops and not pay attention to the natural cycles out West, and it made that drought and that heat wave that much worse. Now we're going through everything we have just listed at a time when the White House, the president of this country denies the science around this entire topic, is standing in the way of mitigation and adaptation efforts, and is protecting climate polluters proudly and famously right now.

So it's just the basic laws of thermodynamics. The more of this carbon we burn and put in the sky, the hotter it's going to get. And then we will see what that means in terms of our day-to-day lives.