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Co-negotiator of E.U. Artificial Intelligence Act Calls for Global Treaty on A.I.; House Lawmakers Grill Bessent on Iran War's Impact on Prices; Lai's Son Appeals for Father's Release Before Trump- Xi Meeting; U.S. Military Confirms It Has Deployed Weapons in Space; Dems Probe Oligarch Funding of Trump Jr.'s Wedding Celebrations. Aired 2-3a ET

Aired September 16, 2026 - 02:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[02:00:37]

ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from all around the world. I'm Rosemary Church.

Well, most tech leaders supported new calls to slow down advances in A.I. at the Dreamforce conference, but there was one notable exception.

Russia says it's ready to start a new round of talks on Ukraine, but says strikes won't stop during any negotiations.

And the U.S. military is admitting for the first time it has weapons in space. What that could mean for the future of global relations.

ANNOUNCER: Live from Atlanta. This is CNN Newsroom with Rosemary Church.

CHURCH: Well, let's begin in California, where leaders in artificial intelligence are offering up plans to safely develop the rapidly advancing technology. This just days after the CEO of a major developer, Anthropic, called for an industry-wide A.I. slowdown due to public risk concerns. On Tuesday at the Dreamforce Technology Conference, Dario Amodei reiterated the steps he believes need to be taken to protect humanity.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DARIO AMODEI, CEO, ANTHROPIC: Let's recommit to transparency. Let's invest more in safety. Then let's organize the rest of the industry and say, what can we do to set standards for everyone. What can we do to make everyone's standards better. And then, finally, there should be an international component to it, and that's essentially the three- step plan that I laid out -- that I laid out in the essay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: Three titans, including Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman, have also called for stronger safety measures. But the CEO of Nvidia, a global leader in A.I. computing, is pushing back against government regulation, Jensen Huang argues that the private sector should be responsible for producing safer A.I. models.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENSEN HUANG, CEO, NVIDIA: If you build a product or a service and you're not confident in its functionality, capability, or safety, then don't release it. And so, that's a very obvious thing to do. You pace yourself until you are confident you're releasing something that the market would appreciate. The market forces are already there. We don't need any new laws. We don't need new regulations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: The mixed messaging from A.I. leaders is sparking fierce debates in Washington D.C. as lawmakers weigh how to respond to public scrutiny, but members of the Trump administration are resisting calls for further government interference. Speaking to reporters, Attorney General Todd Blanche insisted that regulating A.I. is not the Justice Department's role.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TODD BLANCHE, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: We're prosecutors, not regulators, so we're not going to try to regulate A.I. A.I. is extraordinarily beneficial to our society. There's a lot of great work that A.I. does, and it's also something that conveniently has become a flashpoint this week. And the president spoke about that, and I very much agree with him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: Despite assurances from the Trump administration, both Democrats and Republicans are unifying around the need to address major A.I. safety concerns that led to an unlikely duo joining forces at Tuesday's pro-human assembly in Washington D.C.

CNN's Hadass Gold has the latest on Blanche's comments as well as the concerns being raised by Senator Bernie Sanders and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HADAS GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT: What really stood out to me about Tom Blanche's comments when he was asked by various reporters about A.I. was how much he was leaning into President Trump's, you know, statements that all these concerns about A.I. are a hoax and that that's not something that people need to be worrying about. And he even questioned the timing of all of these concerns around A.I., suggesting that it's only about influencing the midterm elections when we have, you know, the real data of what we've seen over the past few months of these A.I. agents escaping their test environments and hacking into other companies.

I mean, the A.I. industry right now is up in the arms and absolutely rattled by this, regardless of what is happening in the midterms. And Blanche's comments and the comments from the administration are interesting because they stand in stark contrast to what a lot of their base feel like. And actually, in the minutes before the attorney general took the podium, Steve Bannon, the former chief White House strategist, you know, one of the stalwarts of the MAGA movement, was speaking at a different event in Washington, D.C., where he was talking about how he is joining forces with people like Senator Sanders because of the concerns over A.I. Take a listen.

[02:05:22]

STEVE BANNON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: Senator Sanders did a very good job of summarizing the risk. Obviously, he and I have a quite different opinion of the President of the United States, but we're trying to raise above partisanship, and we have to, because this is a unique --

What I love about Max, when I met him a couple of years ago, I don't think you could find any two harder partisans than Bernie Sanders on the left and Steve Bannon on the right. And I think that speaks to not just Max, but to the threat is we have to rise above it. This is a hinge in history. We have to handle this right, correctly.

GOLD: And so, Boris, what Bannon was suggesting when it comes to China was just to completely cut them off from everything, from chips, from the technology, even from having Chinese students study in the United States. Obviously, that's a different tone than what the administration is taking ahead of this meeting next week, where I think the administration might be hoping that they can come to some sort of A.I. agreement with China and sort of calm the waters just a little bit of all of this concern.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Still to come, Russia's foreign minister says Moscow is ready to reconsider peace talks, but the fighting will not stop anytime soon. We will have the latest on the conflict with Ukraine. That's just ahead.

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[02:11:11]

CHURCH: We are following breaking news out of Ukraine, where Ukrainian Railways reports a new Russian strike on one of its trains traveling from Kyiv. The company reports all crew and passengers were evacuated thanks to a warning from its own monitoring team (AUDIO GAP) another passenger train was struck near Ukraine's border with Poland.

A Kremlin spokesperson says President Trump's idea for a ceasefire on energy site attacks is, "A very good idea." Both Russia and Ukraine have been targeting each other's energy facilities and fuel stations in recent weeks. Even after President Trump claimed both sides had agreed to stand down on those attacks, strikes continued. Dmitry Peskov says while the proposal is a good idea, it won't solve all issues. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DMITRY PESKOV, KREMLIN SPOKESMAN (through translator): It is very important to explain the following: ensuring the safe operation of oil refineries and increasing oil products output does not solve the broader global problem. The main issue is getting oil products to global markets.

Yes, if such a ceasefire was introduced, we would be able to fully supply our domestic market, given that oil refineries would operate without any threat, but we could stabilize that market in any case, and it is already close to being fully supplied.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: The Kremlin did not confirm an agreement had been reached. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also described the idea as a proposal and not a firm agreement. CNN's Clare Sebastian has more on the energy ceasefire proposal from London.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, there is no deal. There's no energy ceasefire in place at the moment. Overnight strikes from both sides certainly confirmed that. I think, look, both sides are keen to keep the U.S. on side. That's why you see these conciliatory statements. President Zelenskyy coming out, calling it a strong proposal. Ukraine is ready to support it.

The Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov also called it a very good idea. But I think this is this whole episode of President Trump first blaming Ukraine for the rise in diesel prices as a result of its attacks on Russian refineries and the subsequent decision by Russia to ban diesel exports, followed by the announcement of this so-called agreement between the two sides, that really plays into Russian hands. It comes just as the U.S. is trying to kickstart diplomacy. It really speaks of a default position from President Trump of reverting to taking Russia's side over Ukraine. And it puts Ukraine in a bit of a bind because it's going into this winter with a serious lack of interceptors to defend against Russian aerial attacks, and with deep strikes like those on oil refineries, really its best form of defense at this moment.

But meanwhile, of course, it has to balance that with the opinion of the U.S. President, who is grappling with these record-high diesel prices less than two months out from the midterms.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Meantime, another top Russian official says Moscow is ready for new talks on potentially ending its war with Ukraine. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Russia is willing to join talks with other parties if there's a true willingness to negotiate, but he says Russian troops will continue fighting amid any of those conversations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SERGEY LAVROV, RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER (through translator): We have stated repeatedly that following the collapse of the Istanbul Agreement due to Western interference, we will not halt the special military operation for the duration of negotiations.

If the U.S. had not backed away from the agreements reached in Anchorage, and if Europe had not pulled them away from those agreements, we would have been living without war for a year now. That is an obvious fact.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[02:15:07]

CHURCH: Joining me now is Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, where she is also deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Program. Thank you so much for joining us.

ORYSIA LUTSEVYCH, HEAD, UKRAINE FORUM AT CHATHAM HOUSE: Good to be with you.

CHURCH: So, let's start with what Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov is now saying. In the midst of this ongoing war, he's claiming Moscow is ready to hold a new round of negotiations on Ukraine and is willing to seek compromises within its established positions and framework, but adds that the fighting will not stop while any potential talks take place. He also says Russia wants to end the conflict and has never refused talks for a settlement on Ukraine. So, what's your response to all of that?

LUTSEVYCH: So, in that clip that you just played, actually, what Minister Lavrov said is that Russia is outraged at Europe and United States that it did not let them freely conquer Ukraine and did not pressure that President Trump did not succeed in his pressure for Ukraine's capitulation.

From what they are saying right now, they are still continuing their maximalist agenda, where they are trying to conquer all of Donbas and inflict a massive terror campaign against civilians, transport system, energy system, and basically freeze Ukraine to submission against ahead of next winter.

The talk about readiness to negotiate is just a smokescreen, like we are seeing now on screens. In actually, to delay the right decisions in support of Ukraine, including with military capabilities to strike the targets inside Russia, where it's bombing Ukraine daily and now nightly through these horrific attacks.

CHURCH: As you say, Lavrov's comments come as Russia and Ukraine continue their strikes on each other's energy infrastructure. Despite President Trump claiming they had agreed to stop, Ukraine's President Zelenskyy says there's no energy ceasefire until Russia stops, adding that Moscow would need to commit to peace before Kyiv would de- escalate. How likely is it that the U.S. can secure Russia's genuine readiness to end the war and stop attacking Ukraine's critical infrastructure? LUTSEVYCH: It is very important to look at the facts, and I'm sure

American and European intelligence has plans of Russian campaign ahead of this winter to really keep and dialing up pressure on Ukraine, on Ukrainian political leadership, including attempted killings and destroying Ukrainian economy, isolating Ukraine from its ports in Odessa and from its land corridor to E.U.

So, it's very unlikely that having these plans in mind, any negotiations will be in true faith, because Putin still believes in his theory of victory, which means throw in the mass of people, the mass of missiles, the mass of drones, and also escalate horizontally against NATO, as we are seeing these incursions into a NATO airspace and now NATO fighter jets taking down drones, attacks near on the Polish-Ukrainian border.

So, all of this has to be taken in a context, and from what we know, it is very, very unlikely that any ceasefire could be achieved any time soon.

CHURCH: And President Trump called on Ukraine specifically Monday to stop striking Russian oil refineries and tried to blame diesel shortages and high prices on Ukraine strikes on those sites. When the world knows it's the Iran war that's the main cause behind price hikes, as global protests attest to.

So, what do you think President Trump's motives might be for suggesting this falsehood?

LUTSEVYCH: Well, it looks like President Trump is looking for a scapegoat for, like you said, quite an unsuccessful campaign that led to a blockage of the Straits of Hormuz, and Ukraine is an easy target for that. It is obvious that what Ukraine does with Russian oil refineries is first of all taking off cash revenues from the Russian budget to finance the war, and also undermining a supply of diesel on its own market that is used for Russian armed forces to wage the war also on land and in the sky.

So, it is unfortunate that the democracy like Ukraine is being blamed by another large democracy instead of being in the alliance of support against autocracies.

CHURCH: Thank you, Orysia Lutsevych for joining us and sharing your analysis and perspective on this issue, we do appreciate it.

[02:20:04]

Well, Poland is reinforcing security at its border with Ukraine after recent Russian drone strikes nearby. The country's defense minister says the government's decision comes as Russia's actions, "Threaten the security of all of Europe." It comes amid reports of a drone being shot down in Lithuania that officials say, "Most probably came from Russia." And the Danish Armed Forces says a Russian warship targeted a Danish military helicopter with two emergency flares as it photographed the vessel in international waters.

NATO Secretary General says potential strikes close to NATO territory reflects President Vladimir Putin's desperation and his desire to, "Sow fear and terror."

Well, two Russian strikes hit near Ukraine's border with Poland over the weekend. One hit a train near where a group of former security officials and world leaders were traveling. Russia's defense ministry claims the train had been transporting military cargo.

Still to come in this hour of CNN NEWSROOM, warnings are growing louder on the dangers of A.I. and the pace of its development. Our Clare Duffy sits down with the godfather of A.I., Geoffrey Hinton. Back with that and more in just a moment.

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[02:26:06]

CHURCH: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Rosemary Church.

Well, A.I. safety risks are sparking bipartisan efforts to rein in the rapidly advancing technology. During the pro-human assembly in Washington D.C., Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democratic socialist, appeared on the same stage as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Both men called for urgent action, raising concerns that A.I. disproportionately benefits tech billionaires while endangering the American public.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): Today, A.I. models can already escape human control, commit felonies by hacking into other computers, and create viruses that have never been seen before. The big tech oligarchs must no longer be allowed to determine the future of humanity.

STEVE BANNON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST UNDER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don't think you could find any two harder partisans than Bernie Sanders on the left and Steve Bannon on the right, and I think that speaks to not just Max to the threat is we have to rise above it. This is a hinge in history. We have to handle this right correctly.

To handle it correctly, number one, we can never trust what an oligarch says, because all they do, they're disingenuous and they lie. This has to be the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: The warnings about the pace of A.I. development aren't just coming from the United States. CNN's Clare Duffy went to Canada to speak with Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, known as the Godfather of A.I., for his thoughts on the potential risks of the technology.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: Leading voice Geoffrey Hinton has long been a leading voice in raising concerns about the risks posed by A.I. Now, some in Silicon Valley are calling for a slowdown of AI's development because of those risks.

But Hinton has also invested in growing the A.I. ecosystem in Toronto, Canada, where he completed his Nobel Prize-winning research. I visited him there earlier this summer.

GEOFFREY HINTON, GODFATHER OF A.I.: A.I. has got two sides to it. It is going to do tremendous good, but it has also got a lot of dangers like mass unemployment, child sex abuse videos, fake videos for corrupting elections. I wish I had thought about those issues sooner.

Look, when nuclear weapons arrived, they arrived at the end of the Second World War, when people were totally fed up with war. They didn't want more wars, and governments were much more reasonable than they are now.

Now, we've got people like Putin and Trump and Xi. It is a terrible time to have to deal with the new technology with governments like that.

DUFFY: Now, Silicon Valley remains the heart of A.I. development, but Hinton said that it is essential to Canada to become less reliant on A.I. technology, especially as. We've seen this trade war explode between the two countries. He says that Canada needs to have A.I. companies in the country that it can tax if A.I. ends up taking thousands or millions of jobs away from humans, as many expect it will. He said that tax will help cover the costs for the Canadian employees that lose their jobs. Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Well, the European Union's leaders appear divided in the wake of the recent A.I. doomerism debate. A European Commission spokesperson says the E.U. is in favor of developing A.I. innovation, but warns that companies have to prove their services are safe to operate in the bloc.

Meanwhile, the president of the European Central Bank is warning that the E.U. risks being left behind in the A.I. race. Just last month, the E.U. began implementing the next phase of what it calls the world's first comprehensive A.I. law.

Well, joining me now is Brando Benifei. He is one of the two principal parliamentary negotiators who led the A.I. Act through the European Parliament. Brando, thank you so much for joining us.

[02:30:00]

BENIFEI: Thank you very much. Thank you.

CHURCH: Of course. So President Trump dismisses warnings about A.I. as a hoax, while others see it as a possible existential threat. But concerns about the fast pace of A.I. advancements brought two opposite ends of the political spectrum together at an event in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday with Democratic Socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders, and MAGA fundamentalist, Steve Bannon, both calling for urgent action to rein in A.I. So how does that get done? And could the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act offer perhaps a framework to do that globally?

BENIFEI: That's precisely the point. In the last weeks, for this work, I've been traveling around the world, in fact, in California, in South Korea, in London. And in all these places, you see that some things are moving in terms of regulating A.I. on certain areas like transparency or copyright protection or against surveillance.

But still now, the E.U. is the only bloc that has developed a framework called the Code of Practice for the Most Powerful General Purpose A.I. Models to actually measure with public governance and remedy if there are excessive risks to problems relating to risk of loss of human control, of mass cybersecurity risks, et cetera.

So our framework that just, as you said, has become operative just a few weeks ago in terms of operative powers for the European Commission to actually act upon the big developers has become the benchmark for what we can do at a global level. But we need to be honest, as the big developers in terms of amount of new A.I. products and pace of A.I. research are U.S. and China. We need them to be part of this effort.

We provided an example and we are developing it, and everyone is looking at us. You earlier interviewed Physics Nobel Prize, Geoffrey Hinton, has been part of this effort. We have worked with the best scientists on this. Now we need also U.S. and China to join.

It happened to me too to sign an appeal that was signed also by --

CHURCH: Right.

BENIFEI: -- Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon. So this is becoming, as it was said earlier, like a unifying topic for across the political spectrum.

CHURCH: And I do want to talk about China in just a moment. But first, what kind of challenges do you expect to confront when enforcing this new A.I. Act?

BENIFEI: Well, the main problem is the extreme power of the actors that have to be checked upon. I want to be very frank. We cannot wait for a blog post of Dario Amodei or an interview by Sam Altman or a rant by Musk to understand if there is a risk or if the risk is overcome.

I mean, they are not driven by public interest. They are driven by their own interests, and it's normal. They are entrepreneurs. They have their objectives. It's fine. But the public has to be the one having the technical capabilities, the resources to actually put this into control. We cannot rely on voluntary cooperation. We need, obviously, to work with all the developers, but we need to have democratic control over this.

CHURCH: And you mentioned China. If a global treaty were signed, how would you ensure that countries like China specifically, follow regulations on A.I.? Is that even possible, given its government recently unveiled a comprehensive strategy to make China the world's A.I. leader by the end of this decade? It doesn't look like China intends to rein in A.I., does it?

BENIFEI: So this is a difficult topic, obviously, because we need to have the main actors involved. This doesn't prevent some countries to start a stronger and closer cooperation. I think also, the American public would like democracies to work together. I'm really convinced of this.

But we also need to engage with non-democratic countries. This was also the appeal, in the sense I can fully agree, the appeal that came from Amodei. We need to work also with China.

[02:35:00]

And I understand the problem of accountability. But to be honest, humanity also had to confront these kind of challenges when working on nuclear containment, on management of nuclear weapons. We had to find ways. And I think it's again the time that we find ways to put our humanity into protection from existing risks that are not to be underestimated.

CHURCH: Brando Benifei, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your perspective and analysis on A.I. advancements.

BENIFEI: Thank you very much.

CHURCH: Appreciate it.

Well, the Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates later today amid concerns about persistently high inflation. It will be the Fed's first move higher in three years and could signal the start of a new hiking cycle over the next few months.

The Fed meeting comes as a federal budget watchdog says the war with Iran is expected to cause a spike in U.S. inflation in the first quarter of 2027. The Congressional Budget Office says the war will add roughly half a percentage point to inflation, largely due to high energy costs.

On top of the impact on the economy, the CBO estimates the war has cost taxpayers roughly $38 billion. That figure does not include the cost to repair U.S. bases and facilities damaged during the war. The CBO estimates the war will continue to cost the U.S. $2 BERMAN: to $3 billion per month.

Meanwhile, anti-war protesters interrupted Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, several times as he testified before House lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Bessent has been leading the Trump administration's efforts to squeeze Tehran economically, and he defended the president's handling of the war.

Lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee grilled the Treasury Secretary on the economy as well as high prices stemming from the Iran War.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. AYANNA PRESSLEY, (D-MA): Since the war started, gas prices are up 52 percent. Yes or no? Are you aware of that?

SCOTT BESSENT, UNITED STATES TREASURY SECRETARY: Gas prices are up --

PRESSLEY: Gas prices are up 52 percent Since the war started. Are you aware of this issue? Yes or no?

BESSENT: From what to what? I think that's not a good number.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: Skyrocketing fuel prices have sparked protests around the world. In the south of France, dozens of fishermen blocked a major fuel depot on Tuesday in part to protest rising fuel costs.

Protesters have also taken to the streets in Portugal, Guatemala, Syria and the Philippines in recent days.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: Panic set in on board an Iranian plane as violent shaking collapsed a cabin ceiling on Monday. Mashhad Airport officials say a detached tire tread prompted an engine technical alert after takeoff. According to Iranian state media, the plane returned safely to the airport with no injuries reported.

Well, we have much more coming up on the show. A Russian oligarch with ties to President Putin reportedly paid for part of Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding celebration. A look at ProPublica's investigation. That's still to come. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[02:43:08]

CHURCH: Welcome back, everyone. The U.S. Congressional Executive Commission on China is set to hold a hearing titled " A Son and Daughter's Appeal to Xi Jinping to Release Their Dad, Jimmy Lai." This comes ahead of the Chinese leader's meeting with President Donald Trump in Washington next week. Lai, a British citizen and a prominent critic of the Chinese Communist Party, was sentenced to 20 years in prison earlier this year. He was arrested shortly after Beijing imposed Hong Kong's national security law in 2020 and was found guilty of two national security charges as well as a sedition charge.

CNN's Jim Sciutto spoke with his son Sebastian Lai, beginning the interview by asking about his father's health.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEBASTIAN LAI, SON OF HONG KONG MEDIA PUBLISHER JIMMY LAI: It's a -- it just keeps getting worse and worse as one would expect. He turns 79 at the end of this year. And by the end of this year, he would have spent six years, all of which in a maximum security prison, in solitary. So, you know, besides the very real mental health damage that does to a person, there's a very real physical health damage as well. And you know, I heard that he has nice heart palpitations, heart issues, his nails are falling off, his teeth are rotting. He has trouble even getting up. I mean, you know, the weather in Hong Kong goes to 30, 40 degrees Celsius.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yeah.

LAI: -- in the summers and he's in a little concrete box, so he more or less bakes in there.

SCIUTTO: Not air-conditioned at all? I mean, that's more than 100 degrees, you know --

LAI: Yeah.

SCIUTTO: -- in terms of Fahrenheit, but there's no air conditioning?

LAI: From my understanding, there isn't.

SCIUTTO: Wow. President Trump raised your father's case directly with Xi Jinping, as you know, during the summit in Beijing.

[02:45:00]

But Trump said that based on the reaction he got from Xi that it was going to be a tough one to get him free. Are you confident that the president will raise your father's case again?

LAI: I think -- I don't think the president is a man who gives up and I think, you know, as they say, the hard fights are the ones worth having. And so I think the president said in an interview as well that this is something he hears about, that he will he will keep on raising. So I am confident and obviously, incredibly grateful for the support that we received from the president.

SCIUTTO: Why do you think the Chinese government is so interested in keeping your father behind bars?

LAI: At this point, it's almost irrational. Multiple countries want him out. The president of the United States has stated multiple times and in front of Xi Jinping as well, that he wants my father to be freed. Other world leaders have gone over and asked for him to be freed. The G7 issued statements. Many countries around the world, the European Parliament, the European Union have called for my father's release.

He's already been in there for almost six years. His health is failing. They had, you know, an incredibly long amount of time to prove his guilt given 20 years, but all they've essentially found is that he's guilty of journalism. He's guilty of something that is -- that, you know, at least until very recently in Hong Kong was completely legal. A man who has sacrificed everything that he has for liberty, for beliefs that underpin most of democracies in the world or all the democracy in the world.

SCIUTTO: And which did for a long time in Hong Kong. I mean I lived there, and Apple Daily and other newspapers were quite comfortable criticizing the Chinese government.

LAI: Exactly. And that's what made Hong Kong -- that's what made Hong Kong this place where many people want to go to.

SCIUTTO: Yeah.

LAI: Because you could have those freedoms that were respected. China, obviously, signed a joint declaration with the United Kingdom promising these freedoms to be respected.

So at the end of it, they have this man who for many people around the world is a symbol of liberty, is a symbol of the cost of liberty, and is a reminder of a broken promise by the Chinese government to the United Kingdom, but also to the people of Hong Kong.

So killing him would just be cruelty. There's no upside, it's all downside from here.

SCIUTTO: When you say killing him, you mean allowing him to die in prison?

LAI: I mean that given the conditions he's in and given the fact that he's completely innocent, and it's not just my opinion it's the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, completely objective body, and as well as many countries. It is killing him. They're killing innocent men.

SCIUTTO: Your father recently decided not to appeal his conviction and 20-year sentence. Why? Why did he make that decision?

LAI: Appealing the -- I can't exactly speak on his behalf, but appealing it will -- is essentially trust in the Hong Kong legal system.

SCIUTTO: Right, as a fair legal system.

LAI: Exactly, as a fair legal system, and this is a legal system that's given him multiple sham sentences, including a year, for example, for lighting a candle and saying a prayer at Tiananmen Square vigil.

SCIUTTO: Right.

LAI: I think anybody listening to this will know how insane that is. For a lease violation, he got five years nine months. And for journalism, he got 20 years.

For his refusal to give up his conscience, for his refusal to give up his conscience, for his refusal to -- for his commitment -- SCIUTTO: Yeah.

LAI: -- to his beliefs.

SCIUTTO: Is it basically, the decision not to appeal a realization that if he's going to be freed, it's going to be because President Xi decides to free him as a diplomatic gesture or a humanitarian gesture or something along those lines?

LAI: I mean at this point, you know, the truth is the humanitarian gesture wouldn't even be an excuse, it would just be because he is unfortunately dying.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Hong Kong's government gave us a familiar response to these comments, calling Jimmy Lai by his birth name. It says, quote, "All cases including the Lai Chee-ying's case and all other cases on offenses endangering national security are handled strictly on the basis of evidence and in accordance with the law."

Regarding his health and prison conditions the government said, the Correctional Services Department has been ensuring that the custodial environment for persons in custody is safe, humane, appropriate and healthy. In accordance with the law, these include adequate lighting and good ventilation as well as appropriate and timely medical support.

[02:50:00]

About the claim that the sentence is punishment for journalism, authorities wrote, "Over the years, the defendants were using journalism as a guise to commit acts that brought harm to our country and Hong Kong. They say he had also repeatedly colluded with foreign forces to beg for sanctions and engage in hostile activities against the central government and the Hong Kong government.

Well, coming up here on "CNN Newsroom," the U.S. says it's ready to tackle threats from anywhere, with the military turning to space to make that happen. The details, coming up.

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CHURCH: Welcome back, everyone. A top Pentagon official has confirmed the U.S. has deployed weapons in space, saying the country is ready to defend against threats wherever they exist. It is the first public acknowledgement after years of warnings of potential space threats by China and Russia. Brian Todd has details.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: An extraordinary acknowledgement by a top U.S. official of the presence of U.S. weapons in space. This is believed to be the first time that a U.S. official has ever acknowledged the presence of American weapons in space. This came from Air Force Secretary, Troy Meink at a conference outside Washington, saying that the U.S. has deployed weapons in space and will use them to defend American forces. Meink said the United States now has, quote, "On-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action." Now, Meink did not provide specifics about the weapons, and when he was pressed on specifics, he refused to give any details. He was vague, possibly because there are treaties in place restricting the placement of certain kinds of weapons in orbit, including the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which bans nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in orbit.

It does not ban the use of conventional weapons in space. It is also not known exactly when these American weapons were deployed into space. CNN has reached out to the Space Force for comment on this.

China and Russia have been challenging America's dominance in space in recent years. The U.S. military has repeatedly warned that China and Russia are testing new offensive space capability, like Russians' satellite constellation training missions, as U.S. officials phrased it. U.S. officials say that this Russian system could demonstrate attack and defend tactics for combat in space.

Also, U.S. officials saying that China is developing what they call a nuclear-capable partial-orbit hypersonic missile.

Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

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CHURCH: Democrats in Congress have launched an investigation into reports that a Russian oligarch paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for President Trump's son's wedding celebrations in the Bahamas. The inquiry follows a report by ProPublica. CNN's Tom Foreman has the latest.

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TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On social media, Donald Trump Jr. and his new wife, Bettina, say their blowout post-wedding party in the Bahamas was no conspiracy, no mystery. So why in that intimate gathering of family and friends on a pair of private islands did so many people not know this guest? At least according to U.S. Attorney General, Todd Blanche.

TODD BLANCHE, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL: President doesn't know who this person is. I think other members of the family don't know who this person is.

FOREMAN (voice-over): But in a detailed investigation, ProPublica says the mystery man is Russian billionaire, Umar Kremlev, who footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses for the newlywed Trumps, all during this party that included scantily-clad dancers, a five-tier cake from Florida and a firework show.

DONALD TRUMP JR., SON OF PRESIDENT TRUMP: I had an awesome weekend. Family had an awesome weekend. It was really cool.

FOREMAN (voice-over): The publication also says Kremlev is close to Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who gave him the Russian order of friendship for his loyalty, among other things.

Kremlev, ProPublica says, rose from a government-backed motorcycle gang called the Night Wolves to connect with the man who now leads Putin's security service and then take over the Russian Boxing Federation and the nation's largest car dealership group, becoming rich and famous.

In one video on social media, ProPublica writes, Kremlev surprises a young mother by giving her a free car. In another, he criticizes his young female aide's outfit as not feminine enough. He shadow boxes with ostriches. He praises Stalin and rides private jets. And after meeting at a sports conference, he and Don Jr. called each other friends.

"Our dear friend, Omar, the newlyweds wrote in a statement yesterday, very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us after our wedding, for which we were and remain incredibly grateful."

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You know, this is not good timing for me.

FOREMAN: President Trump said last spring, he would not attend that wedding party, and he did not. And Kremlev's office made clear to ProPublica, their man has done nothing wrong. This is just socializing.

FOREMAN (voice-over): So, will the attorney general investigate anything about this?

BLANCHE: When you say, am I investigating, am I investigating what? And when you say, this person is a friend of Putin, I don't even know if that's true or not.

FOREMAN (voice-over): Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.

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CHURCH: I want to thank you so much for your company this hour. I'm Rosemary Church. "CNN Newsroom" with Polo Sandoval is next, after a short break. Do stay with us.

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