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New Day
Preparing to Evacuate Kabul Embassy; Biden Weighing Afghan Policy; Duchess of Cambridge Self-Isolating; Jeff Bezos Retires; Pope Recovers from Surgery; COVID Explodes in Russia; World War III may be Cyberwar. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired July 05, 2021 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[06:32:19]
JOHN AVLON, CNN ANCHOR: Developing this morning, sources are telling CNN that U.S. officials are actively updating emergency evacuation plans for the American embassy in Kabul. There are concerns about the potential for escalating violence in the region while U.S. troops near complete withdrawal from the country.
Anna Coren has the latest from Bagram Air Base, which is now controlled by the Afghan military after U.S. troops pulled out last week
ANNA COREN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: John and Brianna, we are here at Bagram Air Base. This the first time we've been given access to this facility since U.S. and NATO forces departed on Friday.
And what is wrapping up behind me is a high-level meeting of the National Security Council delegation sent by Ashraf Ghani to assist what the Americans actually left here at Bagram Air Base and how the Afghans can use it moving forward.
We were taken to the airfield, the runway, which is two miles long. This was the height of activity at the height of this war where fighter jets, cargo planes and surveillance aircraft would depart and land constantly. It is now absolutely deserted.
There are air hangers in the background that have been locked. The Afghan still don't have access to them.
And then, around here, you can see it's like a kiat (ph). There are hundreds of cars, SUVs, pickup trucks that have been left by the Americans for the Afghans.
It comes at a time where the security situation in this country is deteriorating rapidly. We know that the Taliban have taken more than 150 districts just in the past two months. The vice president of Afghanistan said that there are tens of thousands of people fleeing the countryside because of the fighting, coming to the cities. And that was backed up by the United Nations, which said more than 56,000 people have had to flee four provinces in the northeast, which is where fighting is extremely aggressive.
John and Brianna, back to you.
AVLON: Anna Coren from Afghanistan. Thank you very much.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And new this morning, President Biden's withdrawal from the nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan may be almost complete, but how is he going to stop it from once again becoming a safe haven for terrorists? Sources tell CNN that his administration still hasn't finalized its policy for pursuing terrorists in the country once U.S. troops are gone.
Let's bring in CNN's Katie Bo Williams to talk about this.
I will say, it seems like something that probably should have been figured out before a drawdown.
KATIE BO WILLIAMS, CNN REPORTER: Right. So, for months now the Biden administration has been reviewing the rules, the standards that the CIA and the DOD have to operate under in order to use lethal force in Afghanistan once U.S. troops have departed.
[06:35:10]
Now, what do I mean by lethal force? I'm talking about drone strikes. I'm talking about even potentially commando raids.
And part of this review has been looking at whether or not to kind of raise the bar, raise -- tighten up the rules that the CIA and DOD have to operate under once U.S. troops have left and the United States is no longer officially at war in Afghanistan.
As you suggest, this kind of reviewing, this kind of policy-making process is to be expected as the United States weighs -- as it, you know, drops down in this war and like -- and moves into a new footing.
But it is -- it is notable that this hasn't happened yet, even as the -- even as the withdrawal is accelerating. We've seen troops leaving Bagram. We've seen troop numbers dropping to their lowest number yet.
What that means in the short term, status quo continues. DOD and CIA continue to operate under essentially the same rules that they've been operating under. But it does leave them in a little bit of a position of limbo as they sort of wait to find out what the rules that they're going to be playing by in the long-term or in the long run once -- again, once U.S. troops are gone and Biden is saying this thing is over.
Now, why does this sort of weedy rule setting, policy process matter in Afghanistan? It really highlights the delicate balancing act that Biden is trying to strike here in between ending a war with an adversary that is still fighting and yet not losing critical counterterrorism capabilities in a country where the United States is still worried about al Qaeda, still worried about ISIS.
KEILAR: And so you're pursuing all of these questions. Congress is aa well. How is Congress reacting to what seems to be kind of a lack of answers?
WILLIAMS: Yes. I mean I think you're seeing some growing frustration on The Hill. For months, lawmakers from both parties have really been pushing the Biden administration on the nitty-gritty of like, OK, what is your plan to continue to pursue terrorists here after you have sort of lost visibility into the country because, you know, again, remember, when you pull out conventional troops from Afghanistan, you really lose the backbone that America's intelligence network in Afghanistan has been built on for the last 20 years. So they've lost a tremendous amount of visibility, of capability, to sort of see and then carry out lethal strikes there. And so I think you will continue to see Congress pushing for specifics here.
KEILAR: All right, we will be watching.
Thank you so much, Katie Bo. Appreciate it.
WILLIAMS: Thanks.
KEILAR: Jeff Bezos is retiring today. Just how rich did Amazon make him? We're going to break down what the founder and CEO is taking with him.
AVLON: Plus, FaceBook's Mark Zuckerberg posting this July 4th message. We're going to attempt to explain what might be behind it.
KEILAR: Please do so. Please do so.
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[06:42:13]
KEILAR: The duchess of Cambridge is self-isolating. Kensington Palace says Kate Middleton came into contact with someone who has since tested positive for COVID.
Let's go the Max Foster for the latest here from Hampshire, England.
Max, important to note, she is vaccinated. So why is she going ahead here and self-isolating?
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: They are the U.K. rules, I think, still based on the science that potentially could be carrying the virus even though you've been vaccinated. She has, according to a source I spoke to today, received both vaccinations.
This all goes back to Friday. The reason we found out about it is because she was due to go to a series of engagements today. They've been cancelled. She was told on Friday that she'd been in contact with someone who's tested positive for COVID-19. So she's been isolating -- in isolation since Friday.
A statement from the palace saying, her royal highness is not experiencing any symptoms but is following all relevant government guidelines and is self-isolating at home. I can show you some images of her last week at Wimbledon. She was also
at the euro football championships as well. A lot of people making the point that she wasn't wearing a mask at Wimbledon. In fact, the rules at Wimbledon are that you have to wear a mask when you're moving around, when you're standing up, effectively. But when you're sitting down, you don't have to wear a mask.
We know that, you know, some of the competitions coming up at Wimbledon will be full capacity. So this is also a debate about whether or not you should be wearing masks, whether or not these sporting events should be at full capacity when the Indian variant is rife here, frankly, even though hospitalizations aren't reflecting the case numbers necessarily.
KEILAR: All right, Max.
Max Foster live for us from England.
Appreciate it.
AVLON: All right, Jeff Bezos' quasi retirement becomes official today. The Amazon founder stepping down as CEO, handing the reigns to Andy Jassy. He should be OK in retirement, though, because he's worth an estimated $197 billion, making him the richest person on earth.
CNN's Christine Romans joins us now.
Christine, nice work if you can get it. I mean good for him.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: He's -- yes. He is one of a kind.
Look, he is not your typical retiree, no question. Later today he steps down as the CEO of Amazon, the company he founded that changed the way we shop and made him the world's richest man. He founded Amazon 27 years ago in a garage in Washington state. Started as an online bookstore, became a global powerhouse. He's 57 years old. He retires with a nest egg of nearly $200 billion with a b.
Bezos in a retirement league of his own. The typical American retires at 65 with a net worth of around $266,000. That's for American retirees 65 to 74. He's retiring with almost 740,000 times what the average American has when they retire.
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Oh, and, guess what, he made $75 billion or so during COVID when the world turned to online shopping in droves. He's handing off the day to day operations and the CEO title to Andy Jassy. He's going to focus instead on new products and early initiatives and spend more time on his space startup, Blue Origin. In just 15 days he's going to head to space on the first crew flight of the New Shepherd. That's the rocket made by his company Blue Origin.
AVLON: Fifteen days before going to space. Those are some fascinating statistics. I want to talk to -- about billionaire fascinating news, which is one
word for it.
All right, Hydrofoil surf boards, cool.
ROMANS: Yes.
AVLON: Flag waving, cool.
ROMANS: Yes.
AVLON: John Denver, arguably cool.
ROMANS: Yes.
AVLON: Add in Mark Zuckerberg and it's palpably weird.
I want to play this video for you and get your take.
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JOHN DENVER, MUSICIAN (singing): Country road, take me home, to the place, I belong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: An electric foil surfboard, an American flag. He put it on Instagram. He just said, Happy 4th, everybody. And it was mocked kind of mercilessly. There's some really kind of funny (INAUDIBLE) --
AVLON: What were some of your favorite takes?
ROMANS: Well, one was like, you know, hey, you know, partying like, you know, a federal judge just dismissed FTC.
AVLON: That's good. That's a good --
ROMANS: The anti-trust suit against my company.
But, yes. I don't know. Do you -- cool, uncool?
AVLON: Just odd. I mean -- I mean, look, again, he's clearly living his best life, but it is a very weird little video that will launch a million memes, I imagine.
ROMANS: It did. And I didn't know what that gadget was. I was kind of tooling around looking for it. It is an electric foil surf board and they're kind of expensive but they look cool. I mean, I don't know if it's on my, you know, bucket list but --
AVLON: I'm guessing he can afford it.
ROMANS: I'm guessing he can afford a lot of them.
AVLON: All right, Christine Romans, thank you very much, as always.
ROMANS: Good to see you.
AVLON: Oh, wow.
KEILAR: The rest of the collapsed condo in Surfside, Florida, demolished overnight as a tropical storm bears down on the state.
So how soon before this search and rescue operation can resume?
AVLON: And, there he goes again, saying the quiet part out loud. Donald Trump apparently confirming parts of the prosecution's case against his company. That's next.
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[06:51:22]
AVLON: This morning, Pope Francis is recovering from surgery. He underwent the procedure just hours after holding the traditional Sunday prayer in St. Peters Square.
Delia Gallagher is live outside the hospital in Rome.
DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, John.
We've just received the latest medical update on the pope's condition. They say he is doing well. He is awake, responding and breathing on his own. They say the operation yesterday took about three hours and it had to do with the lower left colon. The pope was suffering from a stenosis (ph), which is a narrowing of the colon.
The pope is 84 years old and this is something experts say that can happen to the elderly. The operation was under general anesthetic. But by all accounts, the pope is doing well.
The prognosis, John, is for seven days at least here at the Gemelli (ph) hospital in Rome barring any complications, they say.
John.
AVLON: Delia Gallagher, thank you very much.
KEILAR: COVID is exploding in Russia right now. The country reporting its highest number of daily cases since early January. They're reporting more than 25,000 cases here in just the past 24 hours, 663 deaths. Russia has set a new record for daily deaths five times in the last week.
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MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I'm Matthew Chance in Moscow.
And Russia is continuing its run of record-breaking COVID infections, posting nearly 25,000 new cases on Sunday, more than 24,000 in the past 24 hours, according to official figures. Some of the highest tallies since the pandemic began. Russian scientists say the highly infectious delta variants of the
virus is spreading across the country, a strain which state media says that Russia's main vaccine, Sputnik V, may be less effective against. Officials say low overall rates of vaccination are also playing a factor in the surging infections.
Russia has one of the highest level of vaccine hesitancy. Many Russians simply don't trust the jab. Last week, President Vladimir Putin urged Russians to listen to experts rather than to the rumors about the virus and the vaccine.
In addition, tough new rules have also been put in place, effectively compelling people who work in close contact with the public to get vaccinated by next week or face dismissal.
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KEILAR: All right, Matthew Chance, thank you so much for that.
John.
AVLON: China is warning Taiwan to prepare for war and flexing its military might, but experts warn that the bigger threat to Taiwan and western democracies like the U.S. isn't from military attacks but cyberattacks.
CNN's Will Ripley is live in Taipei with more details on the growing tensions.
WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, the experts I'm speaking with here in Taiwan paint a chilling picture. They say you can wake up one morning, your phone doesn't work, your lights and your water are cut off, no way to get money from the ATM and no gas at the gas stations. They say that is a very realistic scenario if there was a multi-prong cyberattack, 20 million cyberattacks right here in Taiwan every single month. And experts say the majority of them are coming from mainland China.
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RIPLEY (voice over): Prepare for war. The menacing message of mainland Chinese propaganda, aimed at the islands of Taiwan. Military intimidation in real time. Twenty-eight Chinese war planes entered Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone. Taiwan calls it the largest air incursion every recorded.
In this exclusive interview, Taiwan's foreign minister, Joseph Wu, tells CNN China is engaging in psychological warfare.
JOSEPH WU, TAIWAN'S FOREIGN MINISTER: They want to shape the Taiwanese's people's cognition that Taiwan is very dangerous and Taiwan cannot do without China.
[06:55:05]
RIPLEY: More than 23 million people caught in the crossfire. A battle between Beijing and Taipei, a fight for their hearts and minds.
I'm flying to the front lines, across the Taiwan Strait, to the small island of Kinmen, more than 200 miles from the Taiwanese capital, just six miles from mainland China.
Kinmen is the only place in Taiwan that saw actual combat during China's civil war ending in 1949. Many buildings bear the scars. The fighting, ferocious. Nationalist forces fended off communist troops, effectively shielding Taiwan's main island, warding off a Chinese invasion.
ANDY YANG, MAGISTRATE, KINMEN COUNTY, TAIWAN (through translator): Kinmen people often say, only those who experienced war can understand its horror. We have the right to say loudly we want peace.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a place we call Doudung (ph).
RIPLEY: Long-time tour guide Robi Yong (ph) takes me underground to one of the island's massive military bunkers, once top secret, now abandoned. He also shows me how China's relentless artillery barrage left the island with mountains of old shells.
RIPLEY (on camera): When the battle ended, the shells kept flying. Local historians say half a million of these landed on Kinmen between 1958 and 1978. But this was not artillery. These shells were full of communist propaganda.
RIPLEY (voice over): The beginning of what experts call a decades' long disinformation war. A war supercharged by social media.
RIPLEY (on camera): How dangerous is disinformation?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The danger here is that -- because I mean the main goal of all this disinformation in -- campaign is to create chaos and create distrust.
RIPLEY: Is China doing this exact same thing in the United States?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, definitely. And also in Australia, Canada, and also Europe.
RIPLEY (voice over): Beijing denies disinformation warfare. China's Taiwan Affairs Office has previously calls Taipei's accusations "imaginary." Experts say the threat goes well beyond disinformation. The Taiwanese government says it's hit by 20 million cyberattacks every month. Targets include defense computer systems, finance, communications, even critical infrastructure.
ALLEN OWN, CO-FOUNDER, DEVCORE (through translator): In information security, we believe World War III will happen over the Internet.
RIPLEY (on camera): Basically every aspect of our life for which we rely on computers could immediately be turned off?
OWN: Yes. RIPLEY (voice over): Taiwan's major gas company, CPC, was hit by a
major malware attack. A ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which U.S. intel believes came from Russia, paralyzed the U.S. East Coast.
TSAI SUNG-TING, FOUNDER, TEAM T5: Just imagine what just happened in United States. You could do nothing.
RIPLEY (on camera): Cyber is a bigger threat in your view than nuclear weapons?
SUNG-TING: Yes. Yes, from my point of view, because it is happening every day.
RIPLEY (voice over): Taiwan's president, Tsai Ing-wen, named cyberattacks a matter of national security.
Back on Kinmen Island, this 30 foot loud speaker spent decades blasting anti-communist propaganda to the mainland. A supersized reminder of how much things have changed.
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RIPLEY: The two headlines that really stand out, experts believe that cyber is a bigger threat than nuclear weapons and they think that World War III could break out online.
Now, we tried to get specific reaction to this story from the Taiwan Affairs Office in the mainland. We also reached out to the foreign -- ministry of foreign affairs in Beijing, and they have yet to respond to CNN's request for comment, John.
AVLON: That is a very disturbing report. Will Ripley, thank you very much.
NEW DAY continues right now.
KEILAR: Hello I'm Brianna Keilar, alongside John Avlon on this NEW DAY.
Did Donald Trump just publicly admit to the alleged crimes against his company? What his new comments mean for the case.
AVLON: Matthew McConaughey chalks up America's problems by saying the nation is just going through puberty. We'll discuss.
KEILAR: Plus, Howard University students rising up against Phylicia Rashad after the school's dean defended Bill Cosby. We're going to speak live with one of those students.
AVLON: And, as the world gets closer to the Olympics, three controversies erupt involving pot, vaccines and swimming caps.
KEILAR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. It is Monday, July 5th.
[06:59:51]
And developing overnight, demolition crews detonating the remaining portion of Champlain Tower South 11 days after it collapsed.
