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First Move with Julia Chatterley
Biden To Netanyahu: Protect Civilians Or Else; Biden's Tough Message For The Israeli Prime Minister; IDF Finishes Initial Probe Into Strike On Aid Workers; More Than 600 Still Missing Or Stranded In Taiwan; Taiwan's Search And Rescue; Yellen Sounds Warning On China; Disney CEO On Password Sharing; Disney's Share Scare; NASA To Study Rare Aspects Of The Sun And Earth During Eclipse; NASA To Launch Rockers And Planes During Eclipse; Major Money Heist; FBI And LAPD Investigate After Heist Nets Up To $30M; AWS Helps Fuel Growth In A.I. Ecosystem; Amazon Web Services A.I. Vice President On CNN; Singer-Songwriter Raye Speaks To CNN; Raye Weighs In On Impact Of A.I. In The Music Industry. Aired 6-7p ET
Aired April 04, 2024 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[18:00:00]
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Let's call it that. The news continues on CNN. I'll see you tomorrow.
JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN HOST, FIRST MOVE: It's 6:00 a.m. in Taipei, 11:00 p.m. in London, and 6:00 p.m. here in New York.
I'm Julia Chatterley. And wherever you are in the world, this is your FIRST MOVE.
A warm welcome to FIRST MOVE, as always. And here's today's need to know. A ceasefire push and a warning of consequences. President Joe Biden's tough
message for the Israeli prime minister.
The key to the Magic Kingdom? A password. Bob Iger set to lock down on password sharing for Disney+.
And $30 million dollar heist, a movie worthy haul, but how it was stolen remains L.A. confidential.
And no coding needed. Amazon Web Services has big plans to help clients access all the benefits of A.I. but without the hassle and the hard work.
We'll find out how and why. That conversation and plenty more coming up.
But first, a stark warning from US President Joe Biden to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, start protecting civilians or else. In their
first phone call since an Israeli strike killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza, President Biden cautioned that the U.S. will change
its Gaza policy if Israel does not take care of Israel immediate steps to better protect humanitarian workers and Palestinian civilians.
Kayla Tausche has more from the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: If we lose that reverence for human life, we risk becoming indistinguishable from those we confront.
KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tonight, a market shift in the Biden administration's policy on Israel. Secretary of
State Antony Blinken warning Israel must protect civilians in Gaza or face a change in U.S. policy.
BLINKEN: This week's horrific attack on the World Central Kitchen was not the first such incident. It must be the last.
TAUSCHE (voice-over): President Biden in a 30-minute phone call with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding an immediate
ceasefire, making clear his administration's frustrations are mounting alongside the civilian death toll.
JOHN KIRBY, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY SPOKESMAN: And he urged the prime minister to empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay.
TAUSCHE (voice-over): The two leaders speaking for the first time since Biden expressed public outrage over the deadly strike on a World Central
Kitchen convoy in Gaza. Netanyahu has said, it happens in war. The White House says Biden and Netanyahu didn't discuss the strikes in great detail,
but Biden told him the darkening humanitarian picture was unacceptable and Israel needed to take concrete and measurable steps or the U.S. could
reconsider its position.
KIRBY: We want to see more crossings opened up. We want to see more trucks getting in, the mitigation of civilian harm, particularly to humanitarian
aid workers, but obviously all civilians.
TAUSCHE (voice-over): National Security Spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. needs to see results soon or pursue a policy change, though without
providing specifics.
KIRBY: If we don't see changes from their side, there will have to be changes from our side. We would hope to see some announcements of changes
here in coming hours and days.
TAUSCHE (voice-over): Longtime Biden ally Senator Chris Coons, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says this strike is different
and that Biden's Democratic support in Congress is starting to wane over Israel.
SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): This particular targeted killing, which is hard to explain or understand, I would vote to condition aid to Israel.
TAUSCHE (voice-over): Joining a faction of lawmakers calling for Biden to take a tougher line on the Mideast ally, even as CNN learns, the White
House is still greenlighting new arms sales.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): We cannot approve the sale of arms to a country that is in violation of our own laws.
TAUSCHE (voice-over): Israel now on guard for retaliation from Iran, days after striking an Iranian government building in Syria, killing top IRGC
officials.
KIRBY: They did talk about a very public and very viable, real threat by Iran.
TAUSCHE (voice-over): And despite its outrage and in the face of those continued threats, the Biden administration making clear it stands with its
closest Mideast ally.
BLINKEN: President Biden reaffirmed the United States' strong support for Israel in the face of these threats and our commitment to Israel's
security.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[18:05:00]
CHATTERLEY: Stephen Collinson is with us now. Stephen, the language surrounding this does feel different. The urgency feels different. But
there is a lot of people once again saying today that President Biden has delivered this message before, that there needs to be greater protections,
whether it's aid workers or for Palestinian civilians, and not much has changed. How might U.S. policy changes was suggested there if the behavior
from the Israelis doesn't?
STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN POLITICS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: I think there's a fair perception where I would say it's different here for the first time
the United States has introduced the possibility that it could condition the terms of its support for Israel's war in Gaza if it doesn't see these
concrete and credible steps to protect civilians.
A lot of Democrats, you saw Senator Chris Coons there, are starting to talk in terms of limiting how Israel could use all of the weapons that the
United States has provided and will provide to Israel, you know, if it doesn't take these steps that the United States wants to see.
I think the big question now is how Netanyahu is going to respond. He has a long record of not necessarily ceding to pressure, not just from this
president, but from U.S. presidents over the last 25 years.
He has his own goals, his political limitations in Israel, and many people in Israel believe they are fighting a war that is existential for their
country. So, the stakes are huge for Netanyahu as well.
I think it's going to be very interesting not just to see how he responds to the very public pressure that the administration put after this call.
They didn't all have to come out and say this on television. And what happens if Netanyahu doesn't move? Then the president is going to have a
very difficult choice.
CHATTERLEY: I mean, the stakes are high, absolutely, for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The stakes are high, of course, for the civilians and
the aid workers that are working here, too, and, of course, for the hostages.
Personally, those stakes are also incredibly high for President Biden himself. We were hearing from congressmen and women there saying, look,
we're increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. It's a factor for voters, too, Stephen.
At what point does President Biden go, you know, I'm looking at this situation, and I can't continue to perhaps risk the votes in the elections
in November of 2024 based on my policy handling over Israel?
COLLINSON: I think we're getting to that point. This tragedy involving the aid workers was another pressure point for the president, even though some
people might say, well, did it take an attack that killed foreigners to move U.S. policy? Why did it not move after thousands of Palestinian
civilians were killed in this Israeli attack?
We are getting to that point. I think the president needs this to end as quickly as it could. The problem is there's no sign that Netanyahu wants to
end this war anytime soon.
In a few months, the president will be at the Democratic Convention, then will be into the stretch run of the election. There's a lot of evidence in
Democratic primaries that progressive young Arab-American voters especially in a state like Michigan that could decide the U.S. election are very
outraged at what's been happening in Hamas -- in Gaza and also blame the president for it.
This is a moral issue and one that may cause them to stay away. And in states where the election will be decided by several thousand votes, swing
states that will decide this election, that could be very dangerous for the president's hopes of a second term. So, enormous political stakes for the
president.
But this is also a president that has a deep emotional bond with Israel even if he has to take consequences against Netanyahu. I don't think it
will be something that he does with a warm heart. He really is committed to Israeli security, and that's another reason that makes this so interesting
and the fact that his admonitions in public before Netanyahu haven't been effective.
CHATTERLEY: Yes. There are no easy decisions here. Stephen Collinson in Washington for us there. Thank you.
Now, it's early morning in Taiwan with rescue teams working around the clock following that massive 7.4 magnitude quake Wednesday. At least 10
people have been killed, more than a thousand injured as hundreds other still remain missing.
We're getting more images too from the moment the quake struck on Wednesday. Here, you can see maternity staff desperately trying to protect
newborn babies at a hospital in Taipei. I will tell you they are all fine. That's the good news. Brave women there.
Ivan Watson has more on the rescues and the resilience of people.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A daring mountain rescue. One day after Taiwan is pummeled by a powerful earthquake,
emergency workers struggle, climbing over treacherous landslides, trying to bring victims home.
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Among those initially stranded, dozens of miners in two remote quarries. On Thursday, authorities announced their successful rescue, some choppered to
safety.
There were too many rocks falling like bullets from above, this miner says. We didn't know where to run.
The aftermath of some landslides visible from a moving train. Many paved roads to the disaster zone are still blocked. But on Thursday, the railways
resumed service.
WATSON: It has only been a day since this powerful, deadly earthquake rocked Taiwan. And already, this train to the epicenter is running on time.
WATSON (voice-over): In the small city of Hualien, residents still coming to grips with the earthquake's damage.
Though there are some scenes of real destruction, it also feels like this earthquake-prone community is quickly bouncing back.
The city government set up this temporary shelter in an elementary school.
WATSON: This is your home?
WANG MEI-FEN, HUALIEN RESIDENT: Leaving room.
WATSON: There's a hole in the wall. Wang Mei-Fen is camping out here with her husband and mother.
WATSON: Do you feel safe staying in Hualien?
MEI-FEN: I'm not afraid. I was born here.
WATSON (voice-over): Among those here, the mayor of Hualien, who was injured in the quake.
WATSON: What happened?
WATSON (voice-over): A cabinet fell on me, he says. He attributes the relatively low death toll in his city to advanced preparation.
WEI CHIA-YAN, MAYOR OF HUALIEN (through translator): Here in Hualien, we grew up with earthquakes. Our teachers and relatives always taught us how
to react when earthquakes strike. So, we've known about this since we were kids.
WATSON: This ruined building is a terrifying example of the power of Wednesday morning's 7.4 magnitude earthquake. But look down the road here
and you see that most of Hualien is not damaged. It is lit up, intact, and very active.
WATSON (voice-over): Amid these scars, an impressive display of community resilience.
Ivan Watson, CNN, Hualien, Taiwan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHATTERLEY: Now, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is in China, bringing with her a tough, if not new message for officials.
Starting her three-day visit in the factory City of Guangzhou, Yellen warned about the dangers of overproduction, especially when it comes to
green technology. The secretary pointed out that global prices are under pressure because the world simply cannot absorb it all.
Brad Setser is the senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and he joins us now from Washington, D.C. Brad, always great to have you on the
show. It's not a new message. The timing also isn't great as China fights to get its economy back on track. How do you think this message was
received?
BRAD SETSER, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS AND FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE: Well, I hope China took the message
very seriously. It may not be a new message, but it is somewhat a message from Secretary Yellen. She has not previously expressed this level of
concern.
And I think the higher level is a function of the fact that, you know, China's capacity to produce solar cells and electric batteries is now a
multiple, not just of Chinese demand, but a projected global demand. But China, it is true, seems pretty dead set on this course.
So, I do hope Secretary Yellen's message is heard, but I also think she carries a new edge because the U.S. is likely to take steps to try to
insulate its own market from some of the distortions in China.
CHATTERLEY: There's two things here. There is the desire and the message that they also need to focus not on the manufacturing, on production, but
on consumption. Domestic consumption in the Chinese economy, which we've been talking about for years and years and years, tied to that, and they
have the demand, arguably, to take their own products, particularly where clean energy is concerned and cleaning up their own economy and their
manufacturing.
But there's also perhaps the risk, as you said, that the U.S. and other nations decide to protect themselves. And that means tariffs, barriers, and
more. Is that what you're expecting, Bred?
SETSER: It is, frankly, not just in the U.S. but in Europe. Why? Because China's production of solar cells, for example, goes far beyond what would
be projected to be needed for China to achieve a very ambitious domestic green transition. The same is true across other green technologies.
And countries around the world, the U.S., but also many in Europe, want some of the manufacturing jobs associated with their own clean energy
revolutions. That would be the most important point. China's policies are just affecting China's own green transition, they're impacting other
countries.
[18:15:00]
But the other perhaps more important point is for all the talk that has happened about China's need to increase consumption over the years, China
has actually done really little. China didn't send out checks and didn't expand unemployment insurance. It didn't do a lot of the things that we in
the U.S., that others around the world did, in response to the pandemic. Instead, it just relied really quite heavily on manufactured exports to our
zone recovery.
So, the notion that China is going to recover from the pandemic with exports, and then recover from its own property slump with exports, is
creating tension around the world. And so, I personally am very glad that Secretary Yellen is delivering a strong message.
CHATTERLEY: Do you think they deliver fresh tariffs, whatever it is, protection mechanisms for the United States before the end of this
administration, Brad? Are we talking months?
SETSER: That would be my guess. There is an ongoing review of the Section 301 tariffs, which would provide a mechanism for adjusting the level of
tariffs facing any clean energy goods.
Europe has an active investigation into electric vehicle subsidies, which would provide a basis for a European response. So, I do expect something.
CHATTERLEY: Wow. Brad, we'll get you on when those appear and get your views. Fantastic to chat to you, sir. Thank you. Brad Setzer there.
All right. Straight ahead, you're up to the minute weather forecast, as always.
Plus, don't mess with the mouse. After avoiding a boardroom trap set by activist investor Nelson Peltz, Disney's about to set one of its own for
password sharers.
And call it a case for the Beverly Hills Cop. Los Angeles officials investigating one of the city's most daring heists ever, tens of millions
in cold, hard cash, gone.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHATTERLEY: And welcome back to FIRST MOVE. TGIF to all our viewers waking up with us across Asia. And for the rest of us around the globe, not to
worry, Friday is on its way and not a moment too soon.
A Thursday Wall Street thud tops our "Money Move" today. The U.S. stock started the session higher but reversed course around mid-day finishing
down more than 1.3 percent for the Dow. Nervousness, I think, in part over Friday's crucial jobs report.
[18:20:00]
We also had rising oil prices. And then came those comments from the Minneapolis Fed president among the main culprits, Neel Kashkari, saying
out loud what a few of us have been thinking for a while that no rate cuts may be needed this year if inflation remains elevated.
Kashkari, though, have to point out, is what's known as an inflation hawk. He tends to make this kind of comments. Other Fed officials still say cuts
are coming, but his remarks only create more uncertainty over the Fed's future policy path.
There was one notable tech winner of the session, though, Meta, analysts from two Wall Street firms raising their price targets for the parent
company of Facebook, citing its strength in digital ads. The shares bucking the overall trade, as you can see there, up eight-tenths of one percent.
Meanwhile, green arrows for Japanese and South Korean stocks on Thursday. Markets in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Taiwan were closed for a holiday. We'll
see what Friday brings.
And in other business news, Disney CEO Bob Iger is pivoting from a bruising proxy fight to a new challenge, the password-sharing blight. Iger is saying
Thursday that the Disney+ streaming service will begin cracking down on pilfered passwords in June to help generate more cash, something competitor
Netflix was able to successfully do, of course.
Iger needing to prove to investors that his vision of the future is better than that of activist investor Nelson Peltz, who lost his bid to win two
Disney board seats on Wednesday. Iger also warning that the streaming landscape needs to be more streamlined, aka more consolidation.
Hadas Gold joins us on this. Hadas, he was warned that he needs to have more Netflix-like margins, well password-cracking down is one of the ways,
at least, to do it.
HADAS GOLD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and that's something Netflix did, and it worked for them, because actually in the two days after Netflix first
cracked down on password-sharing, according to the group Antenna, they increase the signups by 100,000 signups. So, it seems to work.
But if you're using mom and dad's Disney+ account or maybe even an ex- boyfriend's then that may be ending soon. Now, Bob Iger said that this will first be rolled out to certain countries in June with a wider rollout in
September, and it's part of cutting costs and trying to make their streaming business finally profitable.
And Iger did say in this interview with CNBC today that Disney is on track to have that profitable streaming business by the fourth quarter of this
year.
Now, you did note that he talked about also consolidation in this interview and not exactly saying who he thinks should be consolidated but
acknowledging that that is something that is likely going to be happening in the streaming business, a little bit ironic for a lot of people saying,
isn't that just kind of the cable package you would buy, but that seems to be coming.
One thing he did say though is that when ESPN launches its redirect to consumer app that he says that will be a great opportunity to combine that
already with other things in the family like Disney+, like Hulu.
Now, Bob Iger making these comments in this CNBC interview was sort of a victory lap of sorts after that shareholder vote yesterday, putting him
firmly in place as CEO and his strategy in the face of that activist investor Nelson Peltz who lost that battle.
But Peltz himself also giving a CNBC interview and where he accepted defeat but still sort of rattling things a bit. He said, you know, he hopes that
they could do all the things they assured us they are going to do. They're going to watch and see. But he warned, he said, if they don't do these
things that they talked about, you know, profits on streaming, turning around the studios, a succession plan for Bob Iger. And then, Nelson Peltz
warned he might be right back where he was yesterday.
CHATTERLEY: Or he could just sell the shares, as we discussed. Clearly that's not happening anytime soon. Hadas, great to chat to you. Thank you
so much.
Now, next week's eclipse has become a social event and a marketing bonanza, but it's also offering the opportunity for some high-flying scientific
research.
NASA will launch rockets and high-altitude planes during the eclipse in order to study rare aspects of the sun and earth. Sending up rockets could
help us understand more about how the sun works with big implications for things like communication satellites.
Bill Weir has more on the story. Bill, we love science. You know, in 1919 the eclipse was used to provide evidence for the Einstein's theory of
general relativity, aka gravity, and now, technology has moved on. So, talk to us about these rockets.
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is so fascinating. These days they're most concerned. The mysteries of the universe involve
the corona of the sun. Not the Mexican beer, not the virus, but the outer atmosphere of our sun here in the Milky Way, which is millions of degrees
hotter than the surface of the sun and stays consistent even as the sun goes through 11-year cycles of activity.
And we're at maximum activity right now. So, as that moon goes across there, it allows astrophysicists to study both from the ground but only for
four minutes or from the sky. And NASA has these amazing WB-57 airplanes. They can fly twice as high as a commercial flight and fly in the total
eclipse path for six hours, measuring that corona, how it changes, all kinds of science they can find.
[18:25:00]
But there's also the ionosphere that they're really intrigued by. This is the high atmosphere, the high sky way above us between deep space and
livable atmosphere and it's charged with these electrical particles that increase in intensity with sun activity, with solar power, even as you --
wherever you are on the planet. If in the U.K. or here, the sun comes up, the ionosphere sort of lights up like a scoreboard and then as the sun
sets, it fades.
Well, now that they have this artificial sunset in the middle of the day, they can measure the ionosphere calming down as the eclipse crosses North
America. And because you can't study that with planes, they're too low or satellites, which are usually in their own spot, they're shooting three
rockets right into the eclipse that will shoot out these sounding devices to measure the ionosphere, the electrical activity out there, the pulse
that happens as the sun sets.
And this affects both terrestrial communication, with radio waves, and satellite communications, which of course we're so reliant on these days
for GPS and weather forecasting and financial systems are now tied to the cloud up there as well.
So, if you think you're excited about this or your kids are excited, imagine being an astrophysicist at NASA, getting to take these flights and
collect more valuable data. A lot of this new science is just from the recent eclipses. And so, now, who knows what mysteries they might unpack,
maybe not on par with Einstein's, but very cool nonetheless.
CHATTERLEY: But you never know, Bill, and I'm sure they're having sleeveless nights --
WEIR: You never know.
CHATTERLEY: -- with sheer excitement. You're getting a sense of the energy here. Great to chat to you. Thank you. Bill Weir there.
WEIR: Good to see you, Julia.
CHATTERLEY: And you can join us Monday for the total solar eclipse as it travels from Mexico across America and into Canada. Our special coverage
starts at 12:00 p.m. Eastern in the United States. That's 5:00 p.m. in London.
And from a sheltering sun to blustery storms in today's "Weather Move," this year's Atlantic hurricane season shaping up to be one of the most
dramatic on record.
Early predictions show there could be 11 hurricanes in the period between June and November. Previously only as many as nine hurricanes have ever
been predicted by Colorado State University in its pre-season April forecast.
Chad Myers is at the World Weather Center for us. Chad, how often do those predictions come true or are totally accurate and precise?
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, I'll get to that. But last year, they predicted 13, 6, and 2, and it was 27 and 3, and I'll tell you what those
numbers mean. I'll tell you what those numbers mean in just a second.
What we're having here, I think this year, is because we have such a random high number, is that we already have a random high ocean heat content. We
are three to five weeks ahead of temperatures here in the Atlantic.
So, let's say you're going to run a marathon and you give somebody a 30- minute head start, then all of a sudden, well, you probably have a really hard chance of catching up with that guy. Well, if you give hurricane a 30-
day head start, you're going to have more hurricanes because there's just more time for these hurricanes to develop. 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit, 2 to
3 maybe degrees Celsius, warmer than we should be.
And then a change from the El Nino, which did heat up all of that water and heated up the earth to its highest temperature ever in 2023, and the warm
ocean temperatures, all of those things, what hurricanes want.
So, this year, storms, the number of named storms predicted 23. Hurricanes 11, major five. Last year, we'll get to this now, 27 and three, that's what
we had. They predicted 13, six, and two. So, they were even under. So, don't say, oh, you know, they're just saying the worst because it's the
worst. They were actually under where they should have been, yes, last year because of all the named storms we had.
So yes, the water is warm, the El Nino is gone, and the La Nina is there. Now, that doesn't mean that storms are going to make impact on land. They
could just be out there. We call them fish storms. They kind of float around for a few days, make some accumulated cyclone energy, and that's it,
make some big waves. But we have a significantly higher number of the chances of landfall of a major hurricane, almost 35 percent higher than we
typically do because of the potential for the bigger storms.
So, El Nino warmed the planet. It simply did. It had a lot to do with why we broke the records by such a wide margin. Of course, so did global
warming, but the El Nino added.
In a La Nina year, the earth tends to cool down a little bit, but it also tends to have less shear, right through here. Shear is that wind change,
that wind shift that wants to tear hurricanes apart. Well, if you take that away, hurricanes stay together so you get more and more storms. That's
what's going to happen this year. That's why the numbers are so dramatic.
[18:30:00]
Let's just hope they are all fish storms because there's a lot of potential out there.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, fingers crossed. Chad, thank you for the explanation as well. It's good to understand what's going on. Chad Myers there.
OK. Coming up, a record-setting caper thieves in Los Angeles on the run after the city's biggest ever cash grab. We'll tell you how much after the
break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHATTERLEY: Welcome back to FIRST MOVE. And a look at more of the international headlines this hour.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says the military alliance has no plans to send combat troops to Ukraine. This declaration follows a comment
from the Kremlin which said NATO was "already involved in the conflict." The alliance marked its 75th anniversary Thursday as it tries to shore up
long-term financial support for Ukraine.
A judge has rejected Donald Trump's latest request to dismiss his Georgia election subversion case. The former president argued that his efforts to
overturn the 2020 election were protected by political speech. The state racketeering case against Trump and his 14 co-defendants continues to inch
forward, though no trial date has been set.
Zimbabwe's president has officially declared the country's ongoing drought a national disaster. He said more than two and a half million Zimbabweans
will go hungry this year. The drought is linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon, devastating nations across Southern Africa, including Malawi
and Zambia.
Lamborghinis, Rolex watches, Cartier jewelry. These are just some of the luxury goods seized by European police investigating pandemic financial
fraud.
Prosecutors say an Italian criminal group used fake companies in order to qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars in grants from the E.U.'s
recovery fund. So far, 22 people have been arrested in connection with the alleged scheme.
[18:35:00]
Now, at least they were caught. Turning to another scheme, $30 million in cash. That's the amount stolen from one unlucky company and one of the
biggest cash heists in Los Angeles history. The theft happened on Sunday night at a facility where businesses store their money.
It's believed to have been a sophisticated operation. As you might imagine, the building had no shortage of safeguards. However, the burglars managed
to grab the loot without setting off any alarms. Josh Campbell has more on the story for us.
Josh, you know what I'm thinking and I'm sure the audience is thinking the same that this was an inside job. What do we know?
JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Julia, you know, I've spoken with law enforcement sources who indicated that that is one key
focus of this investigation. Did this group of burglars have some type of inside knowledge of this facility, specifically because, as you mentioned,
they were able to go in without tripping off any alarms? And I'm told that there's not just the building itself, but inside separate vaults, they made
their way inside one vault, again, without setting off any alarms and then made their escape.
And, you know, this whole thing seems like something out of a screenplay, from a movie, that may have been written here in Hollywood. But this is all
too real. As you mentioned, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles Police trying to identify who the individuals were who were
responsible for this.
And interestingly, this was on Easter Sunday on that evening. But because there was no detection of this heist, they actually didn't realize until
the next day on Monday that all of this cash, $30 million were missing. I'm told that law enforcement is now conducting interviews of people who were
in and around that building. They're also looking outward, specifically trying to gather surveillance footage from in and around that area to try
to see if they could determine what was the route that these burglars traveled on the way to that building and as they fled.
As course, here in the U.S., as in many places around the world, law enforcement has certain sophisticated technology such as license plate
scanners that are in and around the area, I'm told they're going through those as well to see if they see any suspicious vehicle to try to, again,
identify who this group was and where they may be now.
Final point I'll make is that this isn't the first big highest we've seen in L.A. It's certainly one of the largest. But back in 1997, there was
another group that conducted an armored car robbery. They ended up taking about $20 million and it took two years for authorities to actually
identify who that group was. I'm told it was because of a slip-up. There was one of the group members who tried to buy a home with cash, and that
cash was still surrounded by the original banding that went around those notes. The realtor looked at that and said, this is suspicious, called
authorities. That group was then taken into custody.
But again, still yet to be seen what happens here in this case and who this group is. We're told from law enforcement sources that certain actors might
include cartels who have been known to conduct some of these large-scale heist or sophisticated groups or just a bunch of people got together and
said, we're going to go where the money is, Julia. A lot of questions.
CHATTERLEY: Wow. Josh, so in that prior case, I mean, it was just luck, basically, that they found them.
CAMPBELL: Luck and dump criminals. Yes.
CHATTERLEY: Yes. Josh, great to have you. Thank you. Josh Campbell there.
CAMPBELL: You bet.
CHATTERLEY: All right. We'll be back right after this. Stay with FIRST MOVE.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:40:00]
CHATTERLEY: Welcome back to FIRST MOVE. Global tech giants are engaged in a multi-billion-dollar artificial intelligence driven spending spree.
Amazon, for example, is among them, with virtually all its units, including Amazon Web Services in on the action.
Amazon itself says it plans to spend $150 billion over the next 15 years, purely on the data centers required to help fuel the boom.
Now, meanwhile, Amazon Web Services or AWS is focused on making that A.I. access easy. They've launched platforms that help firms build A.I. tools,
for example, like chatbots, without having to go to all the expense and the effort of building and testing the underlying models themselves.
They don't even have to do any coding, which I think is good news. AWS uses models created by itself, Amazon and other tech players. It also provides
the obvious Cloud services that we know about and builds its own custom A.I. chips. They have a lot going on.
And Matt Wood joins us now. He's the vice president of Artificial Intelligence at Amazon Web Services. Matt, I'm doing my best to keep this
simple. And I think that's the key, really, of what you're trying to do. You're trying to give as many people and clients as possible access to A.I.
tools and sort of simplifying the process that they have to go through to get there.
MATT WOOD, VP OF A.I., AMAZON WEB SERVICES: Yes, that's absolutely right. I think part of the reason that so many organizations are excited about
artificial intelligence is that there's two really big changes happening at the same time.
One of them happening independently would be remarkable, but two happening at the same time, virtually never happens. The first is that there's just a
step function increase in the complexity of problems that can be solved using artificial intelligence.
So, whether that is building chatbots or natural language processing, even developing new drugs and new cars, you can do all of that with machine
learning in ways that you could never do even a year ago. That's the first thing.
The second thing is that there's just a broadening in accessibility. You know, previously, in previous years, you would have had to have had big
data science and machine learning expertise teams inside your organization to be able to be successful. But today, it's really, really
straightforward. You don't even need to, as you say, write any code, you can just start using these remarkable pre-trained models and start applying
them to your business.
CHATTERLEY: Give me an example of a client. And you obviously have lots of different options in terms of models. They may have their own data, they
may not. How do you take a client and say, OK, you clearly want to start utilizing A.I. It's going to be beneficial, perhaps, for your customers.
This is how we're going to prepare you, and this is how you're going to utilize our platform. Bedrock is the name of it, of course.
WOOD: That's right, yes. So, it's really interesting to see that some of the companies that are moving fastest in this space are actually the
regulated industries. Insurance companies, financial services companies, life sciences companies, healthcare companies, they've done a lot of the
work required to be successful because they've already set up all of their data, which is private and secure, and contains all the information that
they need in order to be able to understand the insurance policies that are on their books, and understand the risk associated to that.
Or to be able to -- like Pfizer, be able to start to use generative A.I. to understand how proteins and how molecules interact in order to be able to
potentially find new cancer targets. Or financial services companies like MUFG that are able to start to use all of their company and market
intelligence to be able to better deliver services to their customers.
So, throughout this whole industry, the use of the data that organizations already have sets them up really, really well to be successful with
generative A.I.
CHATTERLEY: It's fascinating, isn't it? Because for many of these companies too, privacy in particular is absolutely paramount. And perhaps
not the healthcare sector, but certain aspects of it and the financial sector, they tend to be in the sort of digital dark ages. So, it's quite
interesting that you're sort of balancing these two things.
[18:45:00]
When and if regulation finally kicks in, how is that going to impact the work that heavily regulated sectors in particular like this utilize the
tools that your providing?
WOOD: Yes, it is interesting. We've actually found that the regulators in this space are equally excited about the opportunity to able to do more
with this information. Just so long as that data that you mentioned, maintains its privacy and its security.
And so, there's this sort of schism that has opened up in, you know, some customers' minds, unfortunately, that in order to be successful with
generative A.I., you have to make some negative trade-off with the privacy in security of your data. That just is not the case on AWS.
With AWS, all of your data remains completely private. It remains complete secure. You can add your own governance on top of it. We don't use any of
the data that flows through our paid systems to improve the underlying models. The models don't learn through their use. The data doesn't travel
over the public internet. We don't have human reviewers. And as a result, these regulated industries and a whole host of others are able to be able
use that data with the sort of trust that it's going to remain private and secure as they're starting to apply it to these very remarkable foundation
models.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, I guess the benefit to your business as well is that if these aren't already Amazon Web Services customers, you can say, hey, you
know, you can build your A.I. tools on our platforms. And, oh, and by the way, we'll -- and you can use our Cloud services as well. And we'll
obviously protect your data.
Who else is doing this, Matt? Who are the competitors? Because there's clearly other big Cloud providers. You are using your own models. I know
you're providing and creating your chips as well, but I do feel like I have a lot of these conversations where everybody's getting involved in similar
things. Is there just that much capacity out there that there's enough room for all, or is it going to get increasingly competitive?
WOOD: I think there is just the single broadest amount of opportunity that I have ever seen for any technology. I've been at Amazon now for nearly 15
years, and I had never seen this level of engagement and excitement from our customers.
We've working with, you know, a large number of foundation model providers. We have made an investment in a company called Anthropic, which makes
available the currently best performing large language models for generative A.I.
We also announced just yesterday that the new Mistral Large from Mistral AI, a French company, will be available on AWS. We have our own models that
we build and we have, you know, multiple other partners as well.
And so, this is a world where having access to a breadth of options is going to matter disproportionately early on with the technology as we see
it now. But we also think over time that customers is going to want to be able to find the right use case to fit the right model, and over time,
combine those models to build more and more capable systems.
CHATTERLEY: Matt, this is not your sphere, I know, but there was a story that we've covered very broadly today across CNN about the use of A.I.
tools in weaponry and changing the face of warfare in the future. You don't have to comment specifically on that, but I do wonder what and how Amazon
and AWS prioritize ethical concerns, who's using your chips? How they're using your chip. It's not necessarily the concern about the technology
itself, it's about how others perhaps utilize that technology.
What kind of limits, or at least, how do you think about the ethics surrounding artificial intelligence? Because I think the conversation
around that's only going to grow.
WOOD: Yes, I agree. And, you know, we have terms of use which customers have to meet in order to be able to continue to have access to our
services, they stipulate what you can and can't use those services for. You can't use them for anything that causes harm, for example.
But more generally, I think there's a broad conversation that we have with our customers about how you apply this technology safely and responsibly
inside your organization.
We actually make available a set of capabilities which help put guardrails around these models such as you control, you know, what information they
receive and what topics they will and will not discuss.
CHATTERLEY: So, you're providing those guardrails. Forget regulation. You're doing it yourself as a company?
WOOD: Yes, that's right.
CHATTERLEY: Yes.
WOOD: And they are configurable by our customers. So, they also get to choose the values that they can associate with their own models.
CHATTERLEY: Yes. Matt, great to chat to you. Thank you.
WOOD: Thank you.
CHATTERLEY: We'll continue the conversation. Matt Wood there, the vice president of Artificial Intelligence at Amazon Web Services.
And if you've missed any of our interviews today, they'll be on X and Instagram pages search @jchatterleycnn.
Now, singer-songwriter Raye taking the music world by storm. I spoke to her about her creative process and what she thinks about artificial
intelligence and its impact on the industry. She's got some funny thoughts. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:50:00]
CHATTERLEY: Welcome back. Singer-songwriter Raye is a pop powerhouse. She'll be performing on "Saturday Night Live" this weekend after sweeping
the Brit Awards last month. Raye also co-wrote one of the songs on Beyonce's new album. And I got the chance to speak to her this week. And I
talked to her about the difference between writing and performing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAYE, SINGER-SONGWRITER: I love to perform. I love to entertain. I love to sing. I love music. So, all of that is very like. yay, ah, you know. But
then when you're writing, I think it's a completely different vibe. I like to be comfortable, pull up in my tracksuit or my big extra-large T-shirt
and just kind of, you know, crack open a kind of honesty, don't know why I said it like that. But, you know, I think it's a space where you kind of
get to, you know, be open and be vulnerable.
And for me as well, I'm a people person. So, in times, I'm writing for other artists, you get to kind of have a really human moment,
conversations, and that will lead into deeper things, which will lead into a song. And I really love it. But they're two completely different
practices.
CHATTERLEY: Cracking open a can of honesty is a perfect way to say it because I think you do pour your heart out. What's your best advice for
young singers or songwriters today that are perhaps struggling, overwhelmed by the industry? What would you say to them is the best piece of advice you
can give them?
RAYE: I'd say probably the same advice that I try and give to myself, and there's a lot of things -- I think it probably goes for everything in life,
there's a lot of things that we don't have any control over. We can't control the weather. We can't control X, Y, and Z, but the things that we
can control are where we should focus our energies.
So, I can't control whether people are going to love my music or respond well to a song, but I could control how much I love it and how much I pour
into it, and being in a place where I'm like, I love this, you know, I don't know.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, focus on the things you can control --
RAYE: Yes.
CHATTERLEY: -- because those are the --
RAYE: And trust your gut, always.
CHATTERLEY: Yes. Can we talk about -- speaking of humans, can we speak about non-humans and A.I.? We had a whole bunch of recording artists this
week, very famous Katy Perry, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, all coming out signing a document, warning about the risks of A.I. and the risks to the
industry in particular. I didn't see your signature. Were you asked to sign? Would you have signed if you were asked?
RAYE: Do you know what?
CHATTERLEY: Yes.
RAYE: I've been really vocal about deciding to be an A.I. ally. And look - -
CHATTERLEY: The robots need you.
RAYE: I just think in 20, 30, 40 years' time, the A.I.s might look back on moments like this and be like, who was in -- who was an ally? Do you know
what I mean?
[18:55:00]
CHATTERLEY: You mean, they'll be asking that question?
RAYE: Yes.
CHATTERLEY: That kind of scares me. So, basically on a threat scale, you're at zero. You don't think you're going to be replaced by A.I. anytime
soon?
RAYE: Oh, you know, I understand that on a serious note that, you know, there's a perspective in which it can be intimidating. And look, I do think
there is a perspective that can't be imitated by my beliefs and that's just simply a human's recount of the human experience and that's essentially
what being a songwriter is.
You know, and I do think there'll be A.I. technologies and softwares that can develop amazing like pop songs and ear candy and things that are super
catchy and amazing. But, you know, technology is evolving in every industry and there will be good things about it and there'll be things that are
tough to adjust to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHATTERLEY: An A.I. ally. The fabulous Raye there.
And that just about wraps up the show. Thank you for joining us. I'll see you tomorrow.
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[19:00:00]
END
