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Interview With Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI); Oklahoma to Require U.S. Citizenship to Enroll in School?; China's A.I. Advancement. Aired 11:30a-12p ET
Aired January 28, 2025 - 11:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[11:31:30]
PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: As the Trump administration escalates its anti-immigration fight, Oklahoma is taking the battle to the state's schools.
Today, the Oklahoma Board of Education is voting on a proposal that would require families to provide proof of citizenship or legal immigration status when enrolling their children in schools. At a public hearing last month, critics of the plan expressed their outrage.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every child, no matter their legal status, deserves equal access to education. And if you don't agree with that, then you're in the wrong job.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can't fathom what the purpose is for this, except to try and keep students out of school.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: CNN's Whitney Wild joins us now.
The proposal is a brainchild of Oklahoma's Republican state superintendent, Ryan Walters.
As you know, Whitney, he has had a series of controversial moves there in Oklahoma, some of which we have covered here on this show. He is actually an outspoken fan of Donald Trump, President Trump. Tell us more about why he did this.
WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, he spoke at this hearing -- or this board meeting, rather, today, which is going on at this minute, to try to explain the intention of this proposal.
And what he says is that this is purely for data collection. So the hope here is to get -- from Walters' perspective, is to get a very good understanding of what is going on the ground. They want to know how many students are legal citizens, how many students are immigrants who are here legally. And the effort here, he says, is to make sure that they can correctly
allocate resources. He spoke at the beginning of this board hearing about the costs of moving money around to try to fulfill needs of different types of students, students, for example, Pamela, who are English second language learners.
So they insist that this is a blind data collection to ensure that they are properly allocating funds. Here's what Superintendent Walters said at the beginning of this board meeting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RYAN WALTERS, OKLAHOMA SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION: Our rule around illegal immigration accounting is simply that. It is to account for how many students of illegal immigrants are in our schools. We want to make sure that all that information is gathered so that we can make decisions on where resources go, where personnel goes, and we can continue to make sure that Oklahoma is leading the country in education reform.
But to do that, you have to have information. You have to have the data around where your kids are coming from.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILD: Pam, there are so many questions around the intention of the proposal. And so, when he's talking about resources, the question is, does that mean they will put more money into schools with students who may be undocumented or take money away?
And so these are all the questions that are surrounding this board vote. We still do not yet have a vote on this proposal. But, Pamela, I was speaking earlier today with someone who is very much against this proposal, and he just flat out does not believe that this is the blind data collection they are saying it is.
The major concern here -- beyond just the concern about how resources are going to be allocated, the concern here is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. It is a very slippery slope. The more you collect and demand data about people's immigration status, the concern is that that will eventually mean that students aren't showing up to school or additional ICE actions based on this information, Pam.
BROWN: All right, Whitney Wild, thank you so much.
And coming up: The stunning rise of DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence company, is sending shockwaves through the world of A.I.
[11:35:00]
I will speak to Elon Musk's A.I. safety adviser up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Well, this morning, stocks are evening out after the Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek took Wall Street and the tech world by storm.
Chipmaker Nvidia opened at a slight increase, slight, of 2 percent after losing nearly $600 billion in market value following a surprise advancement from DeepSeek. On Monday, the Chinese company announced an A.I. model called DeepSeek-R1 that rivals the capabilities of American competitors.
And DeepSeek says their technology operates at a fraction of the cost.
Joining us now is Dan Hendrycks. Dan is Elon Musk's A.I. safety adviser and director of the nonprofit organization Center for A.I. Safety.
[11:40:04]
And, Dan, I know you informally advise folks in the Trump administration and Congress as well on this. Just bring us in and help us understand this, the implications, your reaction to the rise of DeepSeek and the shockwaves it's now sending through the tech world.
DAN HENDRYCKS, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR A.I. SAFETY: Yes, glad to be here.
I think DeepSeek is definitely an advance, but this advance actually came from U.S. company -- the U.S. company OpenAI. OpenAI announced their reasoning advance a few months ago, and this caused all the major players to try and replicate it.
As it happens, this advance doesn't require nearly as many resources, just on the order of millions, as opposed to billions, to try and imitate. So, as a consequence, China was able to imitate this, despite having far fewer A.I. resources like A.I. chips.
So I think that's -- what this means is that there's an even -- more even playing field, and the U.S. companies have less of a moat. It's a lot easier for other competitors, small competitors, to catch up, including from China, and this makes the A.I. race much more competitive.
(CROSSTALK)
HENDRYCKS: So the administration will need to think about, what are we going to do about A.I.? How does the U.S. prevent China from getting ahead?
BROWN: And there's an argument that, because of the tight export controls on China, it may have sort of spurred this on and sped up China's advancement when it comes to A.I.
As you know, DeepSeek says it spent only $5.6 million training its new R1 A1 model, but -- A.I. model, I should say. Of course, there are lots of questions about those claims. But what do you say about that argument?
HENDRYCKS: I think that the export controls are the main way the U.S. has an advantage. So China has -- and China the U.S. are tied on the specific A.I.
algorithms, the data that can go into them. China has more of an ability to have energy to train these A.I. models with, but the U.S.' main advantage is our computational resources, our A.I. chips.
And if anything, I think this points in the direction that we should have had tighter export controls and more enforcement officers making sure that there was less smuggling happening. This would have made China less competitive in making these models. But, in the future, chips will still be very important.
If the A.I. models get much more capable, then the amount of chips the U.S. has versus China has is very important, because it determines the number of A.I.s that you can be running at once. If China can only be running 100,000 A.I.s and the U.S. can be running 10 million A.I.s at once, that makes a substantial difference in the economics.
BROWN: Who's ahead right now in the A.I. race, China or the U.S.?
HENDRYCKS: I think it's basically tied.
And one can assume that, for the intelligence of the models, this will continue to be the case. If China was really far behind, they could just steal the model. Right now, they're making their own, but if they're really far behind, they could just hack and steal. And they also have -- A.I. companies employ -- often 30 percent-plus their employees are Chinese nationals.
So it wouldn't be that difficult to figure out what's going on at these A.I. companies behind closed doors. This is sort of -- so I don't think it makes sense to start a Manhattan Project. This would be like having a Manhattan Project where you have 30 percent of your scientists be Soviets.
So given that talent at these companies is multinational, I don't think it's really an option to try and securitize the labs, make sure everybody has security clearances, lock them down, and make sure the U.S. has an edge there.
I think the U.S. and China will be around at the same level as far as the smarts of their models, but the number of models that they can run is a different dimension. And that, we could -- that, the U.S. could beat them on using chips or having more chips.
BROWN: Why should every American listen to this interview right now really care about this? Because some of this is like high level. You're talking about chips in China and GPUs.
And I think sometimes people have a hard time understanding the direct impact. Help us understand that. And what is Elon Musk thinking?
HENDRYCKS: Yes, so, as far as direct impacts, right now, A.I. still isn't that capable. I mean, I use it every day. A lot of -- hundreds of millions of people use it every day, but it's not reshaping the economy right now. However, there is some very rapid improvement happening behind the
scenes. So, the A.I. models are getting much better at coding and mathematics and a lot of these very complicated subjects.
So a lot of people in the industry after the -- OpenAI's reasoning advances recently are thinking that it's possible that you get a substantial or very concerning amount of software automation potentially by the end of this year.
So that could substantially change the economy if software engineering is largely automated and other types of forms of digital labor. So it's on the horizon right now. A.I. is not causing substantial impacts, but it's on such a fast trajectory. I mean, last year, the rate of improvement was maybe a performance on the key measures will go up a few percent every few months.
[11:45:15]
Now it's about a few percent every few days. So things are moving very quickly, and China was able to catch up because things are moving so quickly now. Earlier, it was a lot harder to make progress, but, with this new paradigm, in the course of two months, they were able to go from being a year behind to caught up to where everybody else is.
BROWN: You say it's a tie now. Wow.
Dan Hendrycks, thank you so much.
We will be right back.
HENDRYCKS: Thank you.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:50:14]
BROWN: Well, tomorrow, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to testify at the first of two confirmation hearings. He is nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Senator Tammy Baldwin sits on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Senator, thank you for joining us.
So, Kennedy will appear before your committee on Thursday. What do you want to ask him?
SEN. TAMMY BALDWIN (D-WI): Well, I'm not going to tip my hand in terms of the questions.
But, in essence, I want to ask why he thinks he knows better than everyone else. He thinks he knows better than the experts about vaccines. He thinks he knows better than women about reproductive care. Look, he has been a leading purveyor of misinformation and conspiracy theories, particularly around vaccines, but about other things too.
He thinks cell phones cause cancer. He said that he would fire 600 members of the NIH scientists on day one if he is confirmed. And let's drill down a bit on the vaccines.
Before the polio vaccine, half-a-million people worldwide died or were paralyzed each year. Before the measles vaccine, well, we can say that it saved 60 million lives since it first started being administered. And so this is dangerous to have somebody who believes these sort of things lead the largest health agency in the world.
BROWN: Is there anything he could say to win your vote?
BALDWIN: You know, there isn't at this point. I did have a chance to meet with him one-on-one privately earlier before the hearing.
And he did nothing to ease my concerns that I have just shared. He is one of the leading purveyors of this misinformation and conspiracy theory, and it is downright dangerous. I think about all of these nominees through the lens of whether they will help or harm Wisconsinites.
And we don't want parents worried about their children getting measles or mumps or polio, for that matter. And we also are very supportive of the mission of the National Institutes for Health and their research into breakthroughs to treat and cure cancer and Alzheimer's and diabetes and so many other debilitating illnesses.
He would be so dangerous in this job.
BROWN: So, when you did meet with him, did he provide any reassurance on the vaccines? As you know, he has said he won't take vaccines away from the American public. What do you say?
BALDWIN: Look, when somebody shows you who he is, you believe it. He said on a podcast that no vaccine is safe or effective.
He has pushed out conspiracy theories and disregarded the experts. He's also cherry-picked a study here or there that he thinks backs some of his claims, but it goes against the overwhelming view of the scientific community.
And so, again, I think that, when somebody shows you who he is, you should believe him.
BROWN: I want to talk about all the other news that is happening. The Trump administration is pausing all federal grants and loans, as well as foreign aid.
Your colleague in the Senate fellow Democrat Chris Murphy is sounding the alarm of the president's actions in these first days of his administration -- quote -- "The freezing of federal grants, the firing of all inspector generals, the immunization of political violence, does everybody not see what's happening, that Trump is trying to collapse our democracy and probably our economy and seize control? Call it what it is." What do you say to that? Do you agree?
BALDWIN: I absolutely agree with my colleague.
And this is defying all the checks and balances. This is virtually a Trump government shutdown. And we're already hearing from constituents. Police departments, fire departments are wondering whether their grant funding is going to come through.
School lunch programs are wondering whether, tomorrow, they will be able to serve students in their schools lunch. We're hearing from Head Start and childcare that they think their ability to provide services is a huge question mark right now.
And so he has invited chaos, and it is kind of tantamount to a Trump government shutdown.
BROWN: First of all, what is your understanding of the actual impact? Because I know we're hearing from a lot of different groups, but I think we're also trying to wrap our head around the direct impact immediately.
And, also, what do you say to the counterargument of, well, Trump was very open and transparent when he was on the campaign trail and all of these Americans voted for him to be in office? What do you say to that?
[11:55:07]
BALDWIN: Look, the president's responsibility is to implement the laws and bills that Congress passes. And he is flouting them instead. And that is a serious challenge to the checks and balances that need to be in place.
He can have his input going forward, but, right now, he is charged with implementing the law of the land. And these measures have been passed into law, on a bipartisan basis, I might add.
BROWN: So, you -- so your concern is, look, for example, the congressional funding, this is the appropriate money from Congress, and he can't do what he's doing.
BALDWIN: That's correct.
BROWN: So what are you going to do about it as a member of Congress?
BALDWIN: Well, we are going to stand up and fight. We are also certainly exploring the legal actions that can be taken and coordinating, all of us, with our governors and our state attorneys general, because this is something that cannot just -- we can't be rolled over.
And this is going to have potentially dire impacts on our constituencies.
BROWN: Senator Tammy Baldwin, thank you. And please keep in touch with us in terms of if you do actually take any of those actions you laid out.
And thank you all for joining us. I'm Pamela Brown on a very busy Tuesday. You can follow me on Instagram, TikTok and X @PamelaBrownCNN.
Stay with us. "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" starts after a short break.