Return to Transcripts main page
First Move with Julia Chatterley
U.S. House Speaker: We need to see Progress this week; OpenAI CEO to give Evidence about Artificial Intelligence; Former Google CEO Warns of Risks from AI to Society; Schmidt: Optimistic that we can Address AI Risks; Presidency to be Decided in a Runoff; U.S. Government at risk Running Out of Money by June 1. Aired 9-10a ET
Aired May 16, 2023 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:00:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNNI HOST: A warm welcome to "First Move", fantastic to have you with us this Tuesday and two big hearings today in Washington D.C.
Testimony from the head of failed bank SVB as well as the CEO of AI phenomenon ChatGPT. And debt ceiling talks today too, but will policymakers
agree progress is needed soon.
But there are no guarantee details on today's headline Popery and perspective from two key voices. Ian Bremmer, President and Founder of the
Eurasia group and GZERO Media will discuss the debt ceiling drama, Turkey's Presidential election runoff and Ukraine's spring offensive.
Plus, Eric Schmidt, the Former CEO and Chairman of Google and Author of the book The Age of AI and our human future, we'll be discussing the dangers he
sees for an AI driven amplification of all the worst traits of social media think floods have easily made deep fakes and endless levels of
misinformation.
He thinks we should in fact rise the age of internet adulthood to 16 years old to protect our children and enforce it. Congress, are you listening?
All of this ahead of Titanic Tuesday tests U.S. stocks on track as you can see there for a slightly softer open. Europe little changed overall,
though, in the U.K., Vodafone shares are down some 6 percent on news.
That it will be cutting some 11,000 jobs that are around 10 percent of its global workforce. It's part of the new CEOs turnaround plan to try and
boost profits. That's an interesting investor reaction to that news, a whole host of fresh data pointed to weaker global growth too.
Chinese retail sales, and industrial production numbers all coming in below expectations in April and just now U.S. retail sales numbers up a weaker
than expected 0.4 percent. That's actually half of what was expected. It follows credit data this week in the U.S. too showing rising debt levels,
and consumers finding it more difficult to repay loans.
Tied to that Home Depot today cutting full year sales guidance and warning that consumers may be more cautious about spending going forward their
shares down more than 2 percent pre market now where Wall Street ends up today however, will have a lot to do perhaps with the tone of this
afternoon's debt ceiling negotiations.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warning again yesterday on Monday that the U.S. government could run out of cash as soon as June 1. So that's just
over two weeks away. In the meantime, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says the two sides remain far apart.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): I appreciate the President finally willing to talk after 97 days. But there is no movement. We're only a couple of weeks
away. And if you look at the timeline to pass something in the house and pass something in the Senate, you're going to have something done by this
weekend and we are nowhere near any of that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHATTERLEY: Arlette Saenz joins us now from Washington. Arlette, the temptation is to ask you deal or no deal but actually listening to Kevin
McCarthy there. I'm less optimistic than some of the headlines coming out at the weekend. Are we further away today than we were then?
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Julia, the public messaging around this upcoming debt ceiling meeting has certainly been
vastly different when you hear the White House and hear House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's perspective on things. You heard the House Speaker they're
really offering this pessimistic view about the status of the talks.
This follows though President Biden really expressing optimism saying that he does believe that there is a desire on both sides to reach an agreement.
But sources have told us that behind the scenes, those staff level talks have continued in earnest with each side, calling them constructive even
though they are incredibly slow moving, given the very tight timeline that lawmakers have at this point to raise the debt ceiling.
Now, heading into this meeting, a bit later this afternoon, President Biden will be sitting down face to face once again with House Speaker Kevin
McCarthy one week after their last meeting. There another time constraint that they are facing in this moment is that President Biden is set to leave
for Japan tomorrow to attend the G7 summit.
Another issue that is incredibly important to this White House but as I've talked to have acknowledged that he could very well leave for this trip
without a deal in hands but with those staff level talks continuing. The House Speaker has said that he thinks there needs to be a deal by this
weekend because the progress up on Capitol Hill moving legislation getting a caucus on board, takes a lot of times, things are very slow moving there.
[09:05:00]
So really heading into this meeting today, there are kind of some low expectations from both sides about whether an actual agreement between
Biden and McCarthy can come to fruition. But it's those staff level talks where they are hoping to try to drive some more of the conversation that
this meeting will help shape some of the contours of what exactly they're discussing when it comes to raising the debt ceiling as that X date still
looms for June 1, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen outlined yesterday.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, and hopefully that warning is ringing in their ears while they're talking about all of this and to your point, I think posturing at
the same time. Arlette Saenz, thank you so much for that. And we're about to discover how much U.S. lawmakers know about artificial intelligence.
Sam Altman, the CEO and co-Founder of open AI, that's the company behind ChatGPT, is testifying in Congress about the risks and benefits to society.
Donie O'Sullivan joins us on this.
Donie, the hearing comes what just a few months after some of the biggest players in the industry warned that we need some kind of pause to get to
grips with how we best handle the application of artificial intelligence. What do we hear from Sam today? And let's be honest, how much do we think
lawmakers actually understand about this?
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think you hit the nail on the head there. I mean, Julia, it's hard to believe but it was only about five years
ago, I think that Mark Zuckerberg was called in front of Congress for the first time in 2018, Oxford or Cambridge analytical scandal.
So at that point in Facebook had been around for about 14 years and had already changed the world. So they are catching open AI and Sam Altman a
bit earlier in the AI process, as it were, open AI has been around for seven or eight years. But look, this, I expect to be a pretty surface level
hearing.
I mean, there is so much that, you know, it sounds cliche, of course, but AI is going to touch every part of our lives, whether it's from
disinformation, which we know all about ahead of next year's election, to jobs to the music industry, to fill them to everything else.
So, you know, having one hearing over the course of a few hours is not going to solve a lot. But I think really what it is going to be as an
introduction to this issue, and perhaps some congressional oversight of the issues around AI. But to your point about lawmakers and how they understand
this look, we all remember, you know, over the years, particularly the early social media hearings in light of the 2016 election here in the U.S.
lawmakers asking pretty clueless questions about how Facebook are about how Twitter works?
We may see questions like that today. But look, I will just say sometimes even you know, Altman himself. And also we saw the head of Google recently
talked about they don't even necessarily always know how these systems work, right? There are certain things that these AI models do.
That expert the people who designed them still don't quite understand how they end up doing certain things or how they're so good at doing certain
things. So we might be able to give lawmakers a bit of a pass today.
CHATTERLEY: Absolutely not! I mean, one could have argued that about Mark Zuckerberg back in the day as well, no one gets a pass here. But I think
you do make a very valid point. My problem and you've underscored it. Donie is that it's congressional oversight or complete overlooking because
they've been completely incapable of taking any action on the social media giants probability that they take any action in time on this. It's moving
way quicker.
O'SULLIVAN: It is moving so much quicker. And you know experts will be spoken to said, you know, you talk the social media revolution, as it were
happening quickly. This is happening exponentially faster than that occurred. And look, to your point, we haven't seen, of course, really any
effective regulation here, particularly in the United States, over the social media companies that are a bit different in the European Union to
some laws out of Brussels.
So look, I think the chances are pretty low. But I guess we'll see. I mean, one tangible thing, you know, that these models, like, how it works is
these AI models kind of taken a ton of data. So they read, you know, they can read millions of Wikipedia pages and books and audio books.
And the AI model kinds of trains on that language to figure out, you know how humans speak, how sentences are constructed. So there is some talk
about well, if where are those companies? Where's open AI pulling all that information from? If they're pulling us from you know, copyrighted
material, should the people who created that material in the first place, be reimbursed or compensated in some way.
And we're seeing that especially when it comes to the music industry, I mean, you can type into YouTube today hits from you know, AI versions of
songs by different artists that some of them sound really like the recording artists. But in reality, the artist never signed those words. So
there's a lot of debate around that.
[09:10:00]
CHATTERLEY: That's just the beginning.
O'SULLIVAN: Yes!
CHATTERLEY: Donie O'Sullivan, great to chat to you on this thank you so much.
O'SULLIVAN: Thanks.
CHATTERLEY: And some of those points after the break, we'll hear from the Former Google CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt, who has a sober warning about
the darker sides of the use of artificial intelligence. And what needs to be done to protect us from things like deep fakes, as Donie was saying and
misinformation and the potential amplification of the risks from social media.
In the meantime, the Former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank plans to apologize before a Senate committee in the next hour. Greg Baker also plans to
testify that no bank could have survived the run that gutted SVB back in early March. In his statements, the Former CEO said he was "truly sorry"
for how it impacted SVBs employees, clients and shareholders.
And Christine Romans joins us now. Great to have you with us, Christine, as always, he's going to blame a combination of rising interest rates and the
steep level of withdrawals, which is not wrong, but they should have been managing those risks surely. And where were the regulator's we've got to
talk about this today?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: This is a real banking industry post mortem. It really is! And I think you're going to see some
sharp questioning of this CEO and a couple others from Signature Bank as well, who will be there. So he points out very specifically, the language
from the Fed.
Remember early on in the inflation crisis, saying the inflation issue would be transitory. And he points out in his testimony that language like that
the bank could not have foreseen. That it would have been the brisk pace of tightening in 40 years that they would have to manage through.
So on the one hand, saying I'm truly sorry, on the other hand, saying, but it's not only our fault here. You know, the federal regulators had said
this was primarily a case of mismanagement, bank mismanagement. While also in its own post mortem, the Fed as the regulator, saying that there were
mistakes that were made, there should be some tightening of regulations.
But it is a moment here where I think it will be humbling for these CEOs, some of whom will, there'll be one, Founder of Signature Bank, who will be
speaking later today, but just shows you how swiftly the rug was pulled out of these three companies. I mean, you look at that and this is something
that Greg Becker is going to mention today.
The fact that the previously largest run bank in the U.S., bank run was $19 billion in deposits of that over the course of 16 or 17 days, that's when
he says, I do not believe any bank could have survived a run of the velocity and magnitude of this one, social media, a new element here.
Now you can have people on social media, essentially, you know, in the 1980s last, you know, crisis, you had to have people had to stand and wait
in line to get their money out. Now, all you have to do is click a button, there were billions of dollars moving at a speed we've never seen before,
so, clearly a very different environment today.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, and a valid point. But unfortunately, they were so exposed to the technology sector, and someone should have been arguing and fighting
to diversify the portfolio. I guess, shoulda, woulda, coulda is classic, very quickly, stock sales in the run up to this. And in the two years,
actually, the last two years, I think it was over $18 million worth of shares sold by the exec team in this company SVB.
ROMANS: Yes, so the big question will be, are these regularly scheduled stock sales part of the normal course of business, as many executives who
are paid in part of their compensation is stock, you know, and then they regularly sell it? Or are these, you know, unscheduled stock sales and what
does that say?
Also, is there any kind of potential claw back here for those who are because shareholders were wiped out in this case here, right? So if a lot
of this compensation was based on an equity right should there be claw backs of some of the income from these executives and of these big banks?
That I think is a big question, which will be interesting. You will, I don't know that you're going to hear Congress ask those questions, since
there are very weak rules among members of Congress, who whether they can be selling stocks or financial institutions when they are briefed about
things that are happening in the financial sector. That's a whole aanother story.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, and a really great point. We'll see -- . Thank you so much for that. OK, straight ahead. As we've been discussing, the darker side of
AI Former Google CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt gives a sobering warning about artificial intelligence and how it could fuel the divisive nature of
social media.
Plus, potentially profound with huge implications for Europe, NATO and beyond as much at stake in Turkey's Presidential election runoff, we'll
explore with Ian Bremmer later in the show. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:15:00]
CHATTERLEY: Welcome back to "First Move", whether it's a conversation with an AI interface like ChatGPT, or a computer generated video telling us the
news. Recent leaps in artificial intelligence are given humans new powers of creativity. But with it come new risks and also responsibilities.
For an example just take a look at these fake images. Now, clearly the Pope hasn't been out and about wearing a puffer jacket. And take a look at this
one as for Former President Donald Trump, yes, he was arrested. But it didn't look like this. But the point is they actually look real.
Now our next guest argues we're about to see a lot more of these kinds of deep fakes, created without special skills or big budgets. And the more we
see, the more hesitant we're likely to be able to trust anything. It's just part of a warning from someone well qualified to raise concerns.
I'm talking about Eric Schmidt, the Former Google's CEO and Chairman. And now he's co-authored an op-ed in the Atlantic, which I recommend you read,
where he argues that artificial intelligence has the potential to amplify all of the worst aspects of social media. And he's also calling for five
reforms to help protect our societies.
And Eric Schmidt joins me now. Eric, great to have you with us, I'm really excited to speak to you about this. And the starting point, I think for the
conversation is that social media has already been pretty toxic to our society. If you overlay that, with the power of artificial intelligence,
you amplify everything, the addictive nature of it, the toxicity of the misinformation, and it's bad.
ERIC SCHMIDT, FORMER CEO & CHAIRMAN OF GOOGLE: You're exactly right. The mistake we made 15 years ago is we didn't understand human behavior. We
thought that everybody in tech, everybody in the world was sort of like tech people sort of reasonably well behaved in the rules of our society as
tech people. It's not how the world works.
People use a lot of these tools to misinform to manipulate to do even worse things. And it's going to get a lot worse, because of AI. AI will allow you
to individually target people and make them believe things which are completely and utterly false.
CHATTERLEY: It's going to make it more addictive in your mind. It's going to make it more manipulative. And actually one of the examples that you use
is TikTok and the relative popularity of TikTok because actually, this is a platform that in your mind is doing this best, today.
SCHMIDT: TikTok is particularly good at targeting based on people's interests, and they do a very, very good job of it. The question is what is
it doing to young people's minds? In our article, we point out that young people below the age of 16 are not allowed to do many, many things in
societies because their brains are not as well developed.
[09:20:00]
And yet they have full access to every both good and evil thing that every adult does and the world include doing things like pornography and videos
of horrific crimes and things like this that you would never want your teenage child. And the data indicates that it's particularly bad for
preteens and in particular for preteen girls. Lots and lots of evidence that there needs to be regulation around the age of access to this, as well
as some other things as well.
CHATTERLEY: We'll come back to that, because I know one of the ways that you want to address this is talking about rising the age of internet
adulthood to 16. And actually enforcing it, which I think is perhaps the stronger point here.
But there's one other angle too in your warnings, which is the influence of autocratic leadership around the world, the TikTok equivalent in China, for
example, and how they flood the system with pro government information, similar story with Russia around the Ukraine war too, the power to
influence politics around the world, also an important factor.
SCHMIDT: So what I learned in running YouTube was that things that are seen cannot be unseen. And that's especially true of video. So when you produce
a fake video, which is going to happen a lot in this next cycle of elections, even if you tell people that it's fake, even if they know before
they watch it, it changes their behavior for reasons we don't fully understand.
So I will tell you that everyone, all the players, whether there are governments and or opponents, or corporations, or special interests, are
going to be producing things which are intended to either manipulate or misinform us using technology that has spread very, very broadly.
It's extremely easy to use this technology it's extremely easy to find it. The fact of the matter is the diffusion of this technology is accomplished
and it's available globally. You have no idea today, who made the video and the image that you're viewing on a social media platform today, you
honestly just don't know, how can that be OK?
CHATTERLEY: I mean, what happens in a society where you literally trust nothing, where your children can trust nothing?
SCHMIDT: We don't know what happens when societies beacon, that is the governance and the culture and so forth, are so easily manipulated. In our
article, what we suggest is that there are some relatively simple modifications that can be done. And before we talk about the specifics, I
should say that AI itself is an extraordinary achievement.
That the development of an AI doctor and an AI tutor, and so forth will raise intelligence capabilities all around the world. So please don't hear
that this is a reason to stop or whatever, we just have to manage it. When electricity showed up, people understood it was dangerous.
Thank God, they didn't stop electricity, they just figured out a way to live with it. We're going to have to live with this invention of this
incredibly powerful technology, with what I believe are some reasonably sensible changes in how the social media works. When I talk to political
leaders about AI, which is what I do seems like every day, all what they really want to talk about is social media.
CHATTERLEY: OK, so you actually are hitting on the point that, at least policymakers and lawmakers realize is the most immediate threat, I think.
And thank you for the qualification because it's not about the technology. It's the application of the technology that matters.
OK, I want to talk about your fixes. I'm going to list them, because then I think my big question looking at these and they all make perfect sense is
how likely we are to see policymakers actually act? Oh, oh, no, that was a long question. Can we try and get Eric back?
OK, we're going to take a break. I'm going to hold that thought and repeat that question. And we'll see if we can get Eric back. Stay with us. You're
watching "First Move".
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:25:00]
CHATTERLEY: Welcome back to "First Move", and I believe welcome back Eric Schmidt. I think we now have reestablished the connection I blame perhaps
hacking from one of the social media giants that may have been listening in. I'm joking.
SCHMIDT: No --
CHATTERLEY: Yes, it did save you from a really long question though. I wanted to talk about some of the solutions that you're talking about. And
I'll quickly whip through some of them. Every user on social media must be authenticated, AI generated material must be marked greater data
transparency, we know the EU has done it.
So the U.S. could do too, my personal favorite social media companies should sometimes be held liable for the content on their platform. Eric, it
makes perfect sense to me. What are lawmakers saying to you about the prospects of achieving any of this when they haven't tackled the social
media giants really up to now?
SCHMIDT: We've just started talking to the lawmakers. I think our recommendations are so sensible. And they're consistent with American
principles of free speech. Remember that the platforms have an exemption because of Section 230, which was in 1994.
But now the platforms are recommending information, they have a rule in spreading good and bad information. And if they do really bad information,
they should have some level of liability for it. That's just seems obvious. You need to know who is on your platform. You don't necessarily have to
tell everyone.
But how do you know it's not a bot or an evil Russian person or something like that. And you need to know where it came from? I want to know if this
is an authentic picture in the sense of it was taken at the right time? Or was it modified with the puffer jacket and the Pope, the actual Pope is
bent over from illness and age.
You'd know that if you'd met the Pope, most people say, oh, it looks like a great Pope. How do you discover these things? There are technologies that
people are trying to do to detect whether these things, are fake. But the truth is that when the picture is written, we need to note that it was
written by a computer.
It needs to be generated and marked in a watermark of some kind to do that. We know how to do all of this we've just chosen not to do it. Part of the
reason we've chosen that is because the social media companies are essentially trying to maximize revenue. And the way they maximize revenue
is by maximizing engagement.
And the way they maximize engagement is by maximizing outrage. Part of the reason that everyone seems so upset is because the systems are designed to
make us, push us to the sides left or right. Right, they're not pushing us to the middle. They're pushing us away. That sells more.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, it pushes us to the extremes of views and society follows it. What I actually really love about this is its proactive rather than
suggesting look, a six month pause and we'll try and talk about this. I think we also have to be honest with ourselves that this technology is
here.
It's improving all the time we've talked about ChatGPT 3.5, and then ChatGPT 4, and the difference between these two things in such a short
space of time is enormous. We're not stopping this Eric we just have to shape it better that's the message.
[09:30:00]
SCHMIDT: You know GPT 4 did a pretty good job of what they call the AI safety card. And they tested for all the sort of worst things, how do I
kill myself? How do I hurt other people that and they did the best that they could. But it's a good warning that when these systems come up, they
have to actually be checked.
They have to have what is called AI alignment. They have to have what are called guardrails built into them. But many of the open source pieces of
software that had been distributed already have no such guardrails; they don't prevent you from making evil images and bad outcomes and spreading
them.
So the whole system has to get ready for an onslaught of immoral, illegal or manipulative images that we should not be presenting to every person.
This is not because it's not free speech. It's just because they're false. They're actually manipulating. They're trying to hurt people. The social
media companies need to police this. And if not, the government will have to regulate this.
CHATTERLEY: Probability that the social media companies do this on their own, Eric?
SCHMIDT: To the degree that there are worse and worse outcomes, they will be forced by regulation by shame by advertisers to do this. One of the
things that are missed is that advertisers don't want to be adjacent misinformation.
Advertisers don't want to be in a bad situation where people are being harmed. And so the advertiser -- the social media companies should
understand that it is in their interest to clean up their act with respect to misinformation, and we have the technology to do it.
CHATTERLEY: But you know, better than me that it's not the big advertisers that drive this. It's the small and medium sized enterprises that form the
bulk of the advertising and they need these platforms to exist. I'm not sure that's a valid threat.
I think, to your point, it has to be Congress that recognizes the dangers to society an axe. I want to just point out one of the other things,
because what grabbed me about your op-ed, first and foremost was it began with a discussion in a journalist goading Chatbot, Sydney on how to throw
off the yoke of human control?
And I'll put my hand up and say, I've tried this with ChatGPT too. One of the things that they were talking about was stealing nuclear launch codes,
creating novel viruses. And we've been through that. The third one was making people argue until they kill one another. And I think the first two
have got limits that exist already in society. And to emphasize the point I think that we're making social media doesn't and now's the time to act.
SCHMIDT: That's extremely well put. The reason we're alive today is because we couldn't get nuclear fissile materials so evil people couldn't build the
bombs. But an evil person a new Osama bin Laden can flood the zone, right with misinformation up to as long as he wants to.
So we need to address this now. I am optimistic that we can address this. And the reason I'm optimistic is that we should recognize that when this
stuff when the really bad things happen, which I believe will happen in the next few years, people will really be harmed, and nobody wants that.
So this is a case where the industry needs to do a little self-reflection, and the government needs to be a bit more aggressive. There's every reason
to think if you look at the European regulations, which are coming in place, Europeans are trying to get ahead of it.
The U.S. should do this in such a way that's consistent with free speech. We are in no way proposing limitations on free speech. What we're saying is
that it needs to be human speech. I'm in favor of free speech of humans and not of robots.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, I couldn't agree more on that. I have one more question and you're going to hate me for this. One of the quotes in the article was,
but whatever actions AI's may one day take if they develop their own desires. I know the point that you're making in the article and the
discussion that we're having is that actually that doesn't matter.
Because we're doing enough damage incorrectly perhaps using AI overlaying what we have already in society that's doing damage. But do you imagine one
day that the AI will have those capabilities, particularly if we don't create the guardrails today, to utilize it properly?
SCHMIDT: The guardrails are really important. In the case of the Sydney example that you spoke of earlier what really happened was Sydney had been
trained on romance novels and included all of these narratives of falling in love with the journalists' wife and so forth.
It just got confused and it frightened the journalist and produced a profound article. But the fact of the matter is that it no one was harmed
by that misbehavior. In the future, it is likely that these systems will be able to have memory.
There'll be current that is that there'll be trained and they will be capable of recursive self-improvement. When that happens, that is they can
actually begin to get smarter and smarter. We're going to have a different regulatory set of problems, but we need to fix the ones we highlight now
first before we attack that one.
[09:35:00]
CHATTERLEY: Yes, couldn't agree more. And final point there is huge upsides, Eric that you wrote about in your book. Can you just give us the
bright side of how this is going to be changing the world for the good, be it science, and be it education, if we get all this right?
SCHMIDT: This wave is the biggest wave I've ever seen in my career. And I've seen five or six of them. Open AI ChatGPT got hundred million users in
basically two months; it took Gmail roughly five years to get to the same point. The rate of adoption is phenomenal.
In science, and in particular, in biology and drug discovery, people are using these technologies to advance solutions to problems that have
bedeviled humanity for decades and years and centuries. This is all good.
Can you imagine having a universal AI tutor that speaks to each and every child, and each and every adult in their own language, and figures out how
to make them better educated, smarter, better citizens in their countries and that sort of thing?
Can you imagine lifting up the standard of medical care globally, so that everyone has the access to a pretty good doctor, if there's evidence now
that these systems can pass medical exams and legal exams these are going to be incredible amplifiers for the people who are trying to help people,
educate people globally?
And I defy you to complain about that. It's just obvious that this technology will make us smarter. We just have to police the downsides. It's
like every other fundamental technology, and it's profound.
CHATTERLEY: Yes. Eric, always a pleasure thank you so much for your time!
SCHMIDT: Thank you very much.
CHATTERLEY: Thank you. Former CEO and Chairman of Google we'll speak soon please. We're back after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHATTERLEY: Welcome back to "First Move"! To Ukraine now and air defense batteries were called into frantic action overnight. Officials calling it
an exceptionally fierce Russian air attack. But saying most of the bombardment was repelled. The Head of the Military says 18 missiles of
different types were intercepted, including hypersonic weapons.
It comes after President Zelenskyy secured billions of dollars' worth of new military aid during his three day trip to visit European allies. And
Nic Robertson joins us now. Nic, I think President Zelenskyy would call that a successful trip. It was clearly needed though given the ongoing
challenges back home?
[09:40:00]
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Hi Julia, I'm really sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you at the moment. I'm going to have to
ask you to just hold off for one second while we fix the problem here.
CHATTERLEY: OK Nic, we'll leave you there while we try and re-establish connections and I'll take a quick break. There's something going on. There
are gremlins in this show. We will do our best to re-establish connections. In the meantime, we'll be back after this stay with "First Move".
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHATTERLEY: Welcome back to "First Move"! And I do believe we've managed to re-establish connection with Nic Robertson. Nic, can you hear me?
ROBERTSON: I can indeed.
CHATTERLEY: Fantastic just testing. Just bring us up to speed with what's been happening.
ROBERTSON: Profound if you will attack on Kyiv by the Russians complex and profound because they appear to be trying to sort of again penetrate the
air defenses in Kyiv. And the air defense is standing up to that test by the Russians.
Six of their high speed hypersonic consul (ph) air launched missiles fired at Kyiv from the north of the city, according to officials there and this
is a missile that goes 10 times the speed of sound, all of those were told intercepted.
Then there were the nine cruise missiles more of a standard speed cruise missile fired from the south coming off ships in the Black Sea. Those were
intercepted. And then there was three of the land based S-400 missiles, which were a big land based missile fired from the East Russian territory.
So clearly the picture emerges here of Russia trying to target and get missiles through to Kyiv the capital from multiple different directions at
the same time in the night, apparently defeated. Russia was claiming to have hit U.S. patriot battery defensive battery system in Kyiv no evidence
to support that at the moment.
Its areas like this in the East of Ukraine, however, were those air defenses that have been supplied by Ukraine's allies are not so dense on
the ground and not able to protect the front line in the troops and here in this area still very intense fighting around Bakhmut.
The push and pull for territory in the center of that city is intense. We know that Russia has been forced to pull troops out of the line in other
areas to put them into Bakhmut and the Ukrainians offensive in the areas around Bakhmut, ongoing but not apparently at the moment taking a lot of
territory.
CHATTERLEY: Fascinating Nic, great to have you with us. Thank you so much for that update. Nic Robertson there! OK to Turkey now and campaigning has
restarted ahead of runoff presidential election set for May 28th.
Well, the outcome may be uncertain investors it seems a predicting a win for incumbent President Erdogan. The Turkish Lira hit a fresh record low
Monday. The stock market fell 6 percent and the banks sub index the financials fell by more than 9 percent.
[09:45:00]
The high stakes election brings with it potentially profound implications for security across Europe, the entry of Sweden into NATO, and the role of
Turkey as a regional powerbroker amid Russia's war in Ukraine. And joining us now is Ian Bremmer, President and Founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO
Media. He's also the Author of "The Power of Crisis: How three threats and our response will change the world".
Ian welcome, as always. Turkish society claiming seemingly split down the middle and we can't blame low turnout because it was incredibly high. Is it
advantage Erdogan at this moment in the runoff?
IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER, EURAISA GROUP AND GZERO MEDIA: It is. The economy has been doing badly. And of course, Erdogan responded poorly
to that horrific earthquake that was such a national tragedy over the past months. And yet he was still able to pull out almost a majority.
It was almost a first round win. He will almost certainly win this election in the second round. I mean, it's a slam dunk; it's not really open to much
question. And a big part of that is his charisma, his appeal to nationalism, to populist forces to Islamic conservatism, as well as the
lower classes and providing a lot of payouts to them in the last couple of months before the election.
CHATTERELY: You also described this as a free and fair election, you have described and I'm going to use the phrase structural advantages to the
incumbent. I guess you don't have to degrade the integrity of election institutions, if you're willing to suppress media exposure for the
opposition is a classic example?
BREMMER: That's right. It's a free election. It's not a fair election. It's an unfair election. Free in the sense that both parties generally agree on
the outcomes. There was no stuffing of ballot boxes illicitly and indeed Erdogan said before the election that he would accept any outcome that's
rather different than what we saw Former President Trump say on CNN just a week ago.
But in part, that's because Erdogan feels comfortable that he has so much more control, vastly more media attention given to Erdogan than his
opposition that is structural and by design. The state either owns the media or overwhelmingly influences the media. And that's even true with
social media.
We saw that with Twitter, they were going to be shut down if they weren't prepared to shut down a number of targeted opposition supporting accounts,
literally in the days before the first round election.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, you said it free but not fair. What about the geopolitics? Does there are the broader architect now if this mean status quo is
maintained, if he does win in the run up, as you're predicting when we can argue what it means now first? Sweden's entry to NATO does it clear the way
for that? And I guess what the quid pro quo?
BREMMER: It does clear the way for that. I'd be very surprised if they don't approve Sweden, within a couple of months of Erdogan second round
win. Some of that will be Sweden's willingness to behave differently going forward with Kurdish opposition members that are living within Sweden,
that's been a sore point for the Turks.
Some of it will be from the United States and a willingness to sell advanced military equipment, including aircraft jet fighters to the Turks,
which had been held up in the United States politically. I think that's going to go forward as well.
So Erdogan wants to always squeeze as much leverage as he possibly can, from his geopolitical position. He is, you know, one of the only leaders in
the world that's in NATO that can talk to both Putin and Zelenskyy, for example.
He was critically involved in the negotiations of the food and grain deal that we saw on the Black Sea between both sides. That's been useful, but an
every step of the way Erdogan wants something for his involvement. And given how badly his economy is performing. It's not so surprising he does.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, and a necessity to extract. I want to move on and talk about Ukraine. Russia, there's clearly a physical war that's ongoing.
There's an inflammation, a war, a morale war that's taking place.
If part of the plan of the counter offensive, I think, for the Ukrainians was in some way to build anticipation, and perhaps use Russian troops'
imagination against them. Can we argue that what we're seeing perhaps in Bakhmut suggests its working?
BREMMER: Yes, it's funny that NATO leaders even two months ago were telling the Ukrainians you should just give up on Bakhmut; it's too much of a
bloodbath. You're going to lose it. You need those troops in other places.
And actually, it turned out that the Russians were even more incompetent and degraded in the morale than NATO leaders had anticipated and the
Ukrainians have held on and over the last four or five days they've even taken back several hundred meters very, very tough slog of land.
[09:50:00]
But this is not where the counter offensive is going to be fought. What the Ukrainians intend to do is they want to break the land bridge that the
Russians have between Russia and Crimea. Over the next few weeks, you're going to see them with probing attacks, try to understand with artillery,
and with small advances, where the Russian forces might be weakest at the front lines and in depth.
And then at some point relatively soon, Zelenskyy will give the order. And that order is going to be a counter offensive, a land war that the world
has not seen, since World War II. It will be tens of thousands of troops on both sides, fighting in the trenches, it's going to be incredibly bloody
thousands are likely to die.
And we're going to watch this play out. I'm not sure that the international community is prepared for what we're going to see just the level of human
suffering. That really we haven't seen in military sense in our lifetimes. It's going to be very, very tragic and painful months, but hopefully one
that the Ukrainians will be able to succeed in getting some of their land back.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, more suffering after a year of it how's that going to pay back in Russia, the images that you're creating? I mean, Putin gave that
speech on Victory Day in Russia, and he compared the invasion in Ukraine to the defeat of Nazi Germany. The point where you're making those kinds of
comparisons, you're sending really stringent messages to your audience at home. What's going on?
BREMMER: Julia, no opposition will be tolerated. And you and I have not seen any demonstrations in Russia of any scale since that mobilization that
took place months and months ago. Putin's level of control in the country, it remains near absolute.
So it's not as if you're going to break his regime, his economy has managed to be more resilient over the last year, despite all of the sanctions,
despite the freezing of their assets than most in the West had anticipated.
But the performance of his military has been disastrous, and they have lost either through deaths or injury. Almost all of the troops that were
originally fighting on the ground in that initial invasion, it's staggering to think about the Russian losses, 50 percent of their tanks, 40 percent of
their total armed infantry, vehicles all gone.
And they're not going to be able to rebuild them anytime soon, while the Ukrainians are getting billions and billions of dollars of the most
advanced Western weaponry and training and intelligence. So I mean, hopefully what this means is that the Russians don't get another bite at
this apple.
That if the Ukrainians take significant land back and you have negotiations, that the Russians don't come back and threaten Ukrainian
sovereignty in three or five or 10 years. And Ukraine gets to have security guarantees from the west gets to join the European Union and gets to
rebuild their country, because let's face it; Ukraine has been fighting in a war for almost a decade now since 2014.
And for most of that decade, the West largely did not care. There is a level of necessity of responsibility of the West to the Ukrainian peopling
that and I think an obligation that now is starting to be fulfilled.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, this needs to end. I do love reading your notes, because they generally amuse me whenever they come. And one of the lines that I
want to just quote it, the dumbest recurring character in U.S. politics, brackets, no, not the one you're thinking -- close back now. We're not
going to have this conversation again. You're talking about the debt ceiling.
BREMMER: I am. It is the dumbest recurring character. The idea that the United States has a big credit card that we've taken out all of these bills
and now we're like now we're going to threaten not to pay those bills is one of the most preternaturally stupid things that the West might threaten
to do.
It's it truly is threatening to punch yourself in the face repeatedly. And the fact that the Republicans and the Democrats seem to show such joy for
it is kind of painful. But the thing is it's so stupid that no one's taking it seriously.
That's why the markets aren't going down. That's why the allies the G7 you're going to see in Hiroshima and Biden is going out there this Friday.
The debt limit is not going to be a significant issue, and that's because none of the American allies actually believe the Americans will ultimately
be that stupid.
[09:55:00]
And I know we're talking about Congress Julia, and so it shouldn't be a high bar. But I actually think that the world is right on this one. I think
we'll get through it.
CHATTERLEY: Yes. Forgive me for just face planting, as we discuss it self- inflicted problem -- among many.
BREMMER: It'll come back. We'll do it again.
CHATTERLEY: I know exactly. I will be here again. Yes. Ian great to chat to you thank you! Ian Bremmer, President and Founder of Eurasia Group and
GZERO Media! Thank you so much for that.
And that just about wraps up the show. If you've missed any of our interviews today, there'll be on my Twitter and Instagram pages you can
search for @jchatterleycnn. In the meantime, "Connect the World" with Becky Anderson is up next. Thank you for watching.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:00:00]
END
