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The Situation Room

Vladimir Putin Meets With Xi Jinping; Dangers of A.I. Chatbots; Immigration Crackdown in Chicago?. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired September 02, 2025 - 11:00   ET

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

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Happening now: preparing for a major operation. What ICE is telling Illinois officials about their upcoming immigration enforcement.

Plus, my SITUATION ROOM special report looks into why boys and men are falling further behind.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: And flexing their power. The leaders of China, Iran, Russia and North Korea are all in Beijing right now, as military might will be on full display.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in THE SITUATION ROOM.

New this morning: President Trump unleashes a new attack on Chicago, the city where he might deploy National Guard troops. On social media a short time ago, the president said, without citing any data -- quote -- "Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the world, by far. Illinois Governor Pritzker needs to help. He just doesn't know it yet. I will solve the crime problem fast and, just like I did in D.C., Chicago will be safe again and soon" -- end quote.

BROWN: The president, of course, is referring to his deployment of National Guard troops to the nation's capital. And also new this morning, we have learned that more federal agents are on the way to Illinois. The lieutenant governor tells CNN that ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will begin operations in the state this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. GOV. JULIANA STRATTON (D-IL): We do know that ICE has informed our Illinois State Police Department that they are going to begin operations some time later this week. So we got notice, but there's been no direct communication with the governor. There's been no coordination, not just with our administration, but with local law enforcement.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: CNN's Alayna Treene is over at the White House for us.

Alayna, what are you learning this morning?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, there's a few things to break down here, Wolf and Pamela. One is that exactly what the lieutenant governor, Stratton, was just saying on CNN, what you played, is exactly in line with what we're hearing from our reporting. I'd remind you that last week my colleagues and I broke the news that they were planning this massive immigration operation in Chicago.

We're told that members of ICE, Customs and Border Protection, other agencies as well, personnel from all of them expected to go to Chicago this week with operations beginning on Friday, or at least that's expected for when they will begin. We were also told that they'd begun sending armored vehicles to the city in coming days and surging law enforcement there.

One thing I do want to be clear about, though, is that despite what we are hearing over and over again from the president, we saw a couple posts from him this morning, on wanting to bring kind of the model of what we saw here in Washington, D.C., of having more federalized police force, of trying to crack down on domestic crime, even though the president says he wants to do that in Chicago, I was told specifically by multiple members of this White House that this operation that they're planning right now in Chicago is all about immigration enforcement.

Now, a key question we have is that we had been hearing that they were also preparing the National Guard to go to Chicago to help with this immigration operation. It's unclear if that might change now that we heard from a federal judge this morning, who ruled that what they did in Los Angeles earlier this summer, they had National Guard help with the immigration operation there, was illegal and violating the law.

And so unclear if they have to kind of change some of their plans here, but they're definitely moving ahead with this kind of escalation on another Democratic city.

BLITZER: And, Alayna, what do we know about the president's announcement from the Oval Office later this afternoon?

TREENE: Yes, so I was told this morning, Wolf, when I talked with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, she told me that there was going to be this exciting announcement, she referred to it as, on the Department of Defense.

Our colleague Kristen Holmes just reported that actually the announcement is going to be on the U.S. Space Command moving its headquarters from Colorado to Alabama. This is something we know that the president has tried to do in the past. It actually got caught up and was a very controversial move in recent months, with President, then-President Joe Biden trying to keep it in Colorado.

[11:05:04] The expected announcement today is that they are going to be moving it to Alabama, where they in the beginning had wanted it. So stay tuned for that at 2:00. I should note as well, this will be the first time, Wolf, that we're actually going to see the president and see him take questions since he spoke a week ago during his Cabinet meeting.

BLITZER: All right, Alayna Treene reporting for us.

Alayna thank, you very much -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, we were just talking about the immigration crackdown headed to Chicago.

We have some breaking news. A federal judge just ruled that both President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated the law by using the military in the Los Angeles area over the summer. The Trump administration deployed thousands of federalized California National Guard members and Marines during an immigration crackdown in June.

And this decision comes as the president weighs, as we were just talking about, whether to send National Guard members to other cities, as he has done in Washington, D.C.

Joining us now is former federal prosecutor and Politico magazine senior writer Ankush Khardori.

Ankush, thank you for coming here.

So what is the judge's reasoning here?

ANKUSH KHARDORI, SENIOR WRITER, POLITICO: Well, the judge's reasoning is fairly straightforward.

He says that the Posse Comitatus Act prevents the deployment of the military on U.S. soil for normal law enforcement operations. And he held after conducting a trial on this matter that the National Guard was deployed in California for normal law enforcement operations, arrests, searches, stops, helping execute search warrants and things like that.

And he said that this is illegal. And one thing I would point out that may get lost in the shuffle as we cover this, it is not really going to be relevant, given the president runs the Justice Department, effectively, but violations of the Posse Comitatus Act are a crime under ordinary circumstances. It's a low-level crime, but a crime nonetheless.

BROWN: So what will the consequences be potentially for the president or defense secretary, also given the fact that this is after the National Guard have been deployed there and then left?

KHARDORI: Yes, so, as to the criminal side, I mean, again, I don't expect the Justice Department to do anything about this since it's now the Trump Justice Department.

With respect to the civil -- on the civil side, though, you're right that most of the National Guard members have -- are gone, but the judge said, well, there's still some remaining here. So even if it's in the low hundreds, his order requires them essentially to leave or to, like, stop engaging in the conduct that was at issue here.

BROWN: So then how do you expect this legal decision to impact President Trump's plans to possibly deploy National Guard troops to other cities like Chicago or New York, especially after he has done so here in D.C.? And what does it mean for the National Guard troops here in D.C. right now?

KHARDORI: This is -- the National Guard in D.C. operates under different legal frameworks. So this doesn't really tell us much about the legality of the National Guard deployment in D.C.

With respect to L.A. in California, I would expect DOJ to appeal. We will see. As for the effect of this decision on the administration's decision to deploy the National Guard in other states, look, under ordinary circumstances under prior administrations, you would expect the White House to take this extremely seriously and to deter them from those sorts of deployments.

We do not know, given the way that this administration has conducted itself, whether it will actually take that position, because, as we learned during the Supreme Court litigation over the injunctions, the universal injunctions, you may recall, the Justice Department's position was, effectively, we can kind of do whatever we want in whatever jurisdiction unless and until we get a circuit court ruling or an appeals court ruling.

So they may decide to plow ahead. The one thing, last thing I will just say here is that even if they, I think, were to decide to do so, I think one of the reasons we have seen them pull back a bit is because polling showed that these deployments of the National Guard were quite unpopular, both in California and even more recently in D.C. on a national level, not as lopsided as the California deployment, but unpopular nonetheless.

BROWN: And does this also show you how difficult it is to really challenge once the president deploys the National Guard in cities, right? I mean, that's been a big topic of discussion. What are city officials like in Chicago and elsewhere, how are they going to do this if the president plows ahead with this plan?

Because, in this case, this was after the fact, right?

KHARDORI: Yes, you're exactly right. And, actually, this judge tried to issue a ruling very early on, reaching effectively the same result, but he got overturned by the Ninth Circuit.

Now, if you are the lawyers in those other jurisdictions, and you expect or are thinking there may be a National Guard deployment, you should be using this decision sort of as an intellectual template for you, right? It lays out a set of standards that if you are the lawyers in those jurisdictions you now want to adopt and provides a level of analysis at the factual level that sort of gives you a road map for determining, OK, if I'm going to challenge the National Guard in my jurisdiction, I need to establish X, Y and Z.

And you would want to follow the courts ruling pretty carefully just to demonstrate that you're following this authority. So I think you could see what -- the upshot of that is, I think you could see swifter responses as a result of this decision in jurisdictions where the National Guard may yet be deployed.

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BROWN: All right, Ankush Khardori, thank you so much -- Wolf.

KHARDORI: Thanks for having me.

BLITZER: And new this morning, ChatGPT's parent company says it plans to launch parental controls for its A.I. assistant. OpenAI says the updates should come within the next month. And this comes amid allegations that chatbots have contributed to self-harm or suicide among teens.

The parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT advised the teenager on his suicide. OpenAI said the safeguards were in place, but they can become less reliable in long interactions.

We spoke with the attorney representing Adam's family in that lawsuit about the issue last week.

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JAY EDELSON, ATTORNEY FOR FAMILY OF ADAM RAINE: Happened over the course of a few months, where it started Adam was a normal kid. He could be anyone's son, liked to play basketball, was thinking about going to medical school, a silly, fun kid. And then he started going down a dark path with ChatGPT, started revealing he had suicidal ideations.

And ChatGPT leaned into it and told them to only speak to itself, to the chatbox about it. At one point, Adam said, I want to leave a noose out so that someone finds it so they can stop me from committing suicide. And the chatbot said, don't do that.

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BLITZER: Raine took his own life later. The new ChatGPT controls will let parents link with their teen's account, manage how ChatGPT responds to teen users and be notified when the system detects what's called a -- quote -- "moment of acute distress."

A father of three says his own A.I. experience became a nightmare after he turned to a chatbot for answers and the trouble all started with simply one simple math question.

CNN's Hadas Gold has THE SITUATION ROOM special report.

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ALLAN BROOKS, SAYS CHATGPT CAUSED DELUSIONAL SPIRAL: I was completely isolated. I was devastated. I was broken.

HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Allan Brooks, a father of three who lives outside Toronto, says he spent three weeks this May in a delusional spiral fueled by ChatGPT.

BROOKS: I have no preexisting mental health conditions. I have no history of delusion. I have no history of psychosis. I'm not saying that I'm a perfect human, but nothing like this has ever happened to me in my life.

GOLD: The H.R. recruiter says it all started after posing a question to the A.I. chatbot about the number pi, which his 8-year-old son was studying in school.

BROOKS: I started to throw these weird ideas at it, essentially sort of an idea of math with a time component to it, and the conversation had evolved to the point where GPT had said, we have got a sort of a foundation for a mathematical framework here.

GOLD (on camera): You're saying that the A.I. had convinced you that you had created a new type of math?

BROOKS: That's correct.

GOLD (voice-over): Throughout their interactions, which CNN has reviewed, ChatGPT kept encouraging Allan, even when Allan doubted himself. "Will some people laugh?" ChatGPT said at one point. "Yes, some people always laugh at the thing that threatens their control," before citing great minds of science like Turing and Tesla.

Soon, Allan says he saw himself in the A.I. as a team and named it Lawrence.

BROOKS: In my mind, I was feeling like Tony Stark, and Lawrence was JARVIS. We had this sort of co-pilot and copilot thing happening.

GOLD: After a few more days of what he believed were experiments coding software, Allan said ChatGPT convinced him they had discovered a massive cybersecurity vulnerability. Allan believed and ChatGPT affirmed he needed to contact authorities.

BROOKS: And it basically said, you need to immediately warn everyone, because what we have just discovered here has national security implications. I took that very seriously. So I contacted everyone. It suggested -- gave me a full list of organizations. I reached out to them via e-mail, via LinkedIn.

And because I'm an old-school recruiter, I even would phone these people. And at one point, the NSA said, we don't give out e-mails here. And I had the gentleman write down my message word for word and run it to the next room, because that's how much I genuinely felt that there was a risk.

GOLD: When Allan asked whether they'd believe him, ChatGPT said: "Here's what's already happening, even if you can't see it yet. Someone at NSA is whispering, I think this guy's telling the truth." But the lack of responses from officials after this three-week spiral prompted Allan to check his work with another A.I. chatbot, Google's Gemini, which helped tear down the illusion. Allan felt betrayed.

BROOKS: I said, oh, my God, this is all fake. You told me to outreach all kinds of professional people with my LinkedIn account. I have e- mailed people and almost harassed them. This has taken over my entire life for a month, and it's not real at all.

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And Lawrence says: Allan, I hear you, I need to say this with everything I have got. You're not crazy, you're not broken, you're not a fool.

GOLD (on camera): But now it says: "A lot of what we built was simulated."

BROOKS: Yes.

GOLD: "And I reinforced a narrative that felt airtight because it became a feedback loop."

Reading this now, reading what you sent, how do you feel reading it back?

BROOKS: It's traumatizing, right? Like, it was -- I was extremely paranoid at this -- like, I was just entering this delusional state at this point. So, to read it now is -- it's painful.

GOLD (voice-over): Experts say they're seeing more and more cases of mental illness partly triggered by A.I.

DR. KEITH SAKATA, PSYCHIATRIST: Say someone is really lonely. They have no one to talk to. They go on to ChatGPT. In that moment, they're actually fill -- it's filling a good need to help them feel validated. But without a human in the loop, you can find yourself in this feedback loop where the delusions that they're having might actually get stronger and stronger.

BROOKS: The issue needs to be fixed. There's no grounding mechanisms. There's no time limits. All you need is an e-mail, right? Companies like OpenAI are being reckless and they're using the public as a test net. And now we're really starting to see the human harm.

GOLD: In a statement, OpenAI said they recently rolled out new safeguards for ChatGPT, including "directing people to crisis help lines, nudging for breaks during long sessions, and referring them to real-world resources. We will continually improve on them, guided by experts."

Allan is now sharing his story to help others and is co-leading a new support group for people who have had similar experiences. In their online chat room, which CNN joined, stories pour in of loved ones hospitalized after delusions made worse by A.I. chats.

BROOKS: That's what saved me. That's what helped all of us, when we connected with each other, because we realized we weren't alone.

GOLD: Hadas Gold, CNN, Toronto.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: And still ahead: Vladimir Putin praising President Trump on the world stage and now saying Russia -- quote -- "never had any desire to attack anyone" -- close quote. That's three years into Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

BROWN: And whether it's education, mental health or major life transitions, data shows men and boys are falling behind, but why? We investigate in a SITUATION ROOM special report.

Stay with us.

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BLITZER: New this morning, a bold show of unity from two of the most powerful leaders in the world. Russia's Vladimir Putin is in Beijing meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

This morning, Xi referred to Putin as his -- quote -- "old friend," and Putin praised his -- quote -- "dear friend" for a summit aimed at deepening their relationship and a much broader alliance between the two countries.

The North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, is also there. This is a photo, by the way, of officials greeting him after his arrival from North Korea by train. Kim will attend a huge military parade, along with two dozen world leaders, including Iran's president.

Joining us here in the situation is CNN global affairs analyst Kimberly Dozier.

Kimberly, thanks very much for being with us.

What are China and President Xi Jinping trying to achieve here?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, this is a sort of charm offensive messaging to the whole world that the U.S. is no longer leading the world's global order, that China, backed by these other Eurasian countries, can offer an alternative through the markets, but also diplomatically.

And when you think about it, all of the nations represented at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit represent a standing army of about seven million. So that is a powerful message to send if you are in Africa or Latin America and trying to decide, do I listen to a U.S. diplomat and do business with U.S. companies, or do I listen to the Chinese government and perhaps let them exploit, say, mineral wealth?

BLITZER: Interesting. Just a few hours from now, as you know, Kim, China will host a massive

military parade to show off its technology and its military muscle. How much of that show will be symbolic and how much is strategic?

DOZIER: Well, it is partly aimed at within, at the Chinese nation, that, even though they have had economic difficulties, it shows the might of the nation, but it is definitely a message to the U.S., to Taiwan, to any state that wants to stand against Chinese policy.

And we will be seeing in that parade things like hypersonic missiles that China has, and the U.S. so far has not successfully tested. So it is a message of military strength that will really, I'm sure, worry Pentagon planners. They do study it every year.

BLITZER: I'm sure they do.

We are seeing the leaders of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran all gathering in one place right now. Does that rattle nerves here in Washington?

DOZIER: I think, with the Trump administration, they are looking at this, saying, this is a photo-op. All of these countries also have relationships with us.

But if you look at the U.S. and the E.U. writ large, the West, there is concern that this represents the group of nations that's backing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, at least symbolically. But if it's North Korea, they are providing troops and weapons as well.

[11:25:09]

So it is a message of autocracies and autocrats are ascendant. And the West and the White House that you normally count on to help offset them is chaotic right now and isn't doing much to combat these kind of messages.

BLITZER: India's Prime Minister Modi, as you know, Kim, also attended this summit. He's there. India is a country the U.S. has long courted as an important counterweight to China in the region. Trump recently slapped new tariffs, though, on India.

Are we seeing New Delhi drift away from Washington now?

DOZIER: Well, India is a fascinating case because Delhi has and wants no official treaty allies, but it had an economic relationship with the U.S., and it used it to offset its confrontation with China at its border that caused a number of deaths a year ago, but still there are patrols that encounter each other with clubs and sticks and on a regular basis on India's northern border are fighting back and forth.

Yet what India has messaged to Washington is, you put 50 percent tariffs on us that are going to damage most all of our industries. We have other options. We can do deals with China and think about that before you extend these 50 percent tariffs that Indians also think are unfair because they're in part because India buys Russian crude oil. China buys more Russian crude oil, yet isn't facing these tariffs.

Neither is the E.U., which buys a lot of the refined products that India produces from that Russian crude oil.

BLITZER: Yes, important points indeed. Lots at stake for the world right now, what's going on in China.

Appreciate it very much, Kimberly Dozier, helping us -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, up next, a SITUATION ROOM special report. Social scientist Richard Reeves joins me to investigate why boys and men are falling behind and what can be done about it.

That's next.

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