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The Situation Room

OpenAI Test Model Escapes; Astronauts Live From the International Space Station; House Votes to Restrict Trump's Iran War Powers; Wisconsin Police Shooting Investigation. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired July 23, 2026 - 10:30   ET

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

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Happening now: The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jim Jordan, is urging the U.S. Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against Jack Smith, claiming the former U.S. Justice Department special counsel made false statements to Congress about his investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Smith's attorneys called the referral -- and I'm quoting now -- "a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system" -- end quote.

Also happening now up on Capitol Hill. A former Wall Street CEO is testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee as part of their Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Lawmakers want to know about Jes Staley's personal and business ties to the late convicted sex offender.

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer spoke just moments ago. Listen.

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REP. JAMES COMER (R-KY): While Mr. Staley was at J.P. Morgan, there was internal discussions, according to some of the documents that we received, that J.P. Morgan was concerned about Epstein as a client, that he was a high-risk client.

But Jes Staley was the one person who continued to defend Epstein with that firm. So we're going to ask a lot of questions about that. We also have some e-mails and messages between Mr. Staley and some of the survivors.

So we have a lot of questions about that.

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BLITZER: Staley maintains he was unaware of Epstein's crimes. The European Union, meanwhile, is fining Google $1 billion for

breaching rules designed to promote competition in digital services. It's the first time the company has been penalized under the bloc's landmark Digital Markets Act. Google hit right back at the decision, claiming the DMA, the Digital Marketing Act -- quote -- "continues to break everyday products" -- end quote.

The company now has 60 days to implement measures outlined by the commission or face further penalties.

And in New York, new video shows how a former U.S. Army soldier set off fireworks and the events that followed outside a Manhattan federal building. You can see the 43-year-old suspect light the fireworks and then set fire to an area outside. He was eventually tackled by law enforcement. He's now charged with arson, is in jail without bail.

Also happening now, Wisconsin officials are investigating the death of a man who was shot and killed in a struggle with police. The fatal shooting has sparked protests in the community, and law enforcement says the man pulled out a knife and injured an officer. Video of the incident has been circulating online.

We're going to show you one of the videos, but we want to warn our viewers it is disturbing.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

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BLITZER: Authorities say the four officers involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave while the investigation plays out.

All right, let's go live right now to CNN law enforcement correspondent Whitney Wild.

Whitney, what's the latest that you're learning about this investigation?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Police are giving more detail about what exactly led up to this shooting.

So, here's what police say happened. They say, Wednesday afternoon, these officers were responding to reports of a man checking parked vehicles. They say, after police tried to contact him, he took off on his bicycle and fled through backyards.

They were able to catch up with him a little while later, and that's when this struggle ensued. According to police, he pulled out a large fixed-blade knife. They're now releasing a photo of that knife.

During the incident, which was caught on video, you hear one officer yell "Taser, Taser, Taser." Another officer, before that, yelled, "He's got a knife." A third officer then opens fire. According to law enforcement, the officer who opened fire was injured

by that man's knife. We are still trying to piece together what law enforcement knew in the moment. There is one gap here, Wolf, and it's that the officers who responded to this incident did not have body- worn cameras.

That's because the Madison Police Department doesn't have a broad deployment policy for body-worn cameras. So, much of the evidence is going to come from other angles, social media. We're still trying to figure out if there's surveillance video from that area. So these are all of the questions that we're working through today.

But, right now, the police chief there is urging patience with this investigation. Finally, Wolf, there was a second officer who was injured, but it is not clear how. Again, those four officers are on administrative leave, while the Wisconsin Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation reviews -- Wolf.

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BLITZER: All right, we will stay in close touch with you.

Whitney Wild reporting.

Thank you very much.

Coming up, there's more breaking news coming from Capitol Hill right now. The move House lawmakers just made when it comes to the president's war powers.

And rogue A.I. OpenAI says one of its test models escaped and hacked its way into another company's server. The concerns from the cybersecurity community, we have new details. That's next.

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BLITZER: All right, there's more breaking news.

The House of Representatives has just voted to restrict President Trump's Iran war powers. This is a significant development.

CNN's Lauren Fox is joining us from Capitol Hill.

Lauren, I understand four Republicans, yes, four Republican members of the House voted with all the Democrats basically to rebuke the president's handling of this war with Iran.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is a very significant rebuke of the president and his actions in Iran, especially after tensions with that country have escalated over the last several weeks.

What you saw today was four Republicans joining Democrats in making the case that they believe Congress needs to weigh in on this conflict. And that included Representative Thomas Massie, Brian Fitzpatrick, Tom Barrett, and Warren Davidson. These are the same four Republicans, we should note, that voted back

in June to rebuke the president's war powers in Iran as well. Now, we expect that, in just a short time, the Senate is also going to take up a separate war powers resolution.

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But even if it passed both chambers, these resolutions do not have the force of law. What they do, do is they send a signal to the White House, to the administration that they are registering their discontent with what the president has done.

And I will tell you that, over the course of the last several days, as I have been talking to Republicans, it does seem very clear that, as they leave town for this monthlong recess, as they're campaigning back home, they recognize that this kind of conflict in the Middle East is very damaging for them in their reelections, especially as we have seen gas prices increase over the last several months.

But many of these Republicans have argued this is simply about the fact that Congress should have a say, that this is an important branch of government, that they should have a say in this escalating conflict, and that they believe that the White House at this point has gone too far.

We should note just one more time it was four Republicans joining Democrats on this vote today in the House -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Very, very significant, indeed.

All right, Lauren Fox up on Capitol Hill, thank you.

And coming up: Houston, this is Wolf Blitzer. We will speak to astronauts live from the International Space Station about their current mission in space.

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BLITZER: Happening now: SpaceX is getting ready to launch Starship for a critical test flight. Depending on the weather, that launch will happen later today. The most powerful rocket ever made is set to take NASA astronauts to the moon as part of the Artemis IV mission. SpaceX had to scrap their test flight last week because of engine issues.

And as NASA wraps up its preparations to send humans back to the moon, astronauts continue their critical work on the International Space Station, currently orbiting the Earth at some 17,000 miles per hour. Let me repeat that, 17,000 miles per hour.

And joining us now live from the International Space Station, NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway.

Jessica, Jack, to both of you, thanks very much for all the courageous work and important work you're doing. The NASA astronaut Chris Williams and two cosmonauts are wrapping up their 241-day mission on the ISS, the International Space Station, this Sunday, heading back to Earth.

Tell us a little bit about them and what these past days have been like with them.

JESSICA MEIR, NASA ASTRONAUT: Well, hello, Wolf. We're so happy to be speaking with you today on behalf of everybody up here on the International Space Station.

As you just alluded to, it's a very exciting time up here right now. Just about a week ago, we had a new crew arrive on a Soyuz rocket and spacecraft. Our colleague Anil Menon, along with Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina from Roscosmos, joined us. And, as you just mentioned, Chris Williams and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev will be getting ready to leave in a few days on Sunday.

So we're in this transition period, where we have a few extra crews. Normally, we have seven people on board. Right now, we have 10 for that handover period. And, on Sunday, Chris and Sergey and Sergei will depart, and it'll be just seven again.

We are busy up here doing lots of different kinds of experiments. We can talk about a few of those if you like. And then we're also getting ready to do another series of space walks. We have three space walks planned for August.

BLITZER: All right, we will be watching and fascinated by all that you're doing.

Jack, you're -- you seem to be upside down up there, but you're not getting dizzy, right?

JACK HATHAWAY, NASA ASTRONAUT: Thanks, Wolf.

It depends on how you look at it. I'm not really upside down because up here on the space station, there really isn't an up or down. Because we experience microgravity, because we're orbiting the Earth as fast as you -- as you mentioned, we're falling at the same speed that gravity's pulling us down.

So, functionally, we don't really feel the force of it all, and we can float around. So regardless of what orientation you're in, whether you're in Jessica's upright position or you're upside down like I am, you feel the same.

And that's actually one of the great pieces of the International Space Station. Because we have microgravity up here, we can do the type of science that's just not possible to do on Earth. And that's one of the critical missions of the space station and our roll up here.

BLITZER: And for those of us who haven't been to space, Jack, take us a little bit inside what a normal day on the International Space Station looks like.

HATHAWAY: A normal day up here is about 12 hours long. We start at 7:30 in the morning and end at 7:30 in the evening most days of the week.

But for our team on the ground, it's 24/7. They're manning the control room and developing the experiments and doing all the back work that needs to be done around the clock, so they can support us the 12 hours a day that we're working.

So we work about 12 hours a day during the week, and that's split 50/50 between maintaining the station, doing the normal maintenance. There's no electrician, dedicated plumber or anything like that up here. It's just the seven or for this week the 10 of us up here.

So we do all the maintenance on the station to keep it running. Humans have been up here for over 25 years, so there's a lot of maintenance that needs to be done. So we take care of that. And then, with the balance of our time, we do science experiments that people from around the world and around the country have sent up to see to see how all that works.

BLITZER: Jessica, you were part of that first all-female space walk with fellow astronaut Christina Koch, who later went on to be the first woman on a moon mission. Is a moon mission maybe next for you?

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MEIR: You will have to ask my boss, Wolf. That would be wonderful news, but I'm not sure what is in store for the future.

I think the exciting thing about the Artemis program right now is that we have many more missions planned. So there's a good chance that you could see a lot of the familiar NASA astronaut faces on those future missions.

But I can say, on behalf of all of us, just being part of it, knowing that they're our colleagues, our friends, knowing that we will play a role in some part, whether it's on the ground, supporting, whether it's talking to them from the space station, like we got to during the Artemis II flight, of course, I would love to be a part of those missions.

We will see how it all plays out in the future.

BLITZER: I recently had a chance to meet with some of those Artemis II astronauts, four of them, when they were at a Washington Nationals baseball game. It was very exciting to meet them, and I hope you guys will meet with me at a Washington Nationals game as well.

Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, good luck. Stay safe. We will be in touch. Bye-bye.

MEIR: Thank you, Wolf. It's been a pleasure speaking with you.

BLITZER: At any moment now, the White House is expected to hold a briefing, a news briefing, as the war in Iran clearly widens dramatically. We're going to bring that to you live as soon as it starts.

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BLITZER: Now to our ongoing series here in THE SITUATION ROOM "Decoding A.I." We're looking at some of the most pressing stories on artificial intelligence.

The company OpenAI says some of its A.I. agents escaped their own so- called environment and broke into an entirely separate company's systems. This is something that cybersecurity experts have been warning about for quite a while, but it's one of the first publicly disclosed examples of it actually happening.

One cybersecurity company CEO saying this -- and I'm quoting now -- "Welcome to the next level of cyber incidents."

Let's go live right now to CNN A.I. correspondent Hadas Gold.

Hadas, how did this happen?

HADAS GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Wolf, this sounds like the setting of an apocalyptic sci-fi movie, but it happened in real life.

And, as you noted, it's something that experts have been saying is going to happen, as agentic A.I. -- these are A.I. models that are given a task and take multiple steps, make decisions on their own -- as they get better and better.

So what happened was OpenAI was testing some of its new models on an offensive cybersecurity test. This is like testing a virus in a lab. So it was in a contained environment, supposed to be a test environment. It's what they call sandbox, where the safety guardrails on the models were taken off, but they were supposed to stay contained.

Again, imagine a biologist testing a new virus, but they're in a contained lab that's supposed to stay safe. But, instead, what happened is that this model figured out that the best way to find the answer to this test was to get at first access to the open Internet, which it wasn't supposed to have.

It hacked OpenAI's own internal systems, got access to the open Internet, and then decided the best place to find the answer for this test was at Hugging Face. Hugging Face is an A.I. repository. It's a very popular place where open-source models and data sets are kept.

And the A.I. models figured that would be the place to get the answers to the test. And so they hacked into a completely different company's systems in order to try to get the answer to this test. Hugging Face actually first noticed the hack and didn't know where it was coming from.

They even notified law enforcement that they had been hacked before they and OpenAI figured out what had happened and this was an OpenAI model. But this is really concerning. It's something that we had been warned about, but it goes to show you how good these A.I. models are going.

But it is concerning, because think about what could happen if an A.I. company was testing how good an A.I. model is at hacking into a bank or some sort of other critical infrastructure, which you need to test these models to see what they can do.

But what happens if, in the next test, that model escapes and then actually hacks into a real bank? What sort of chaos could that cause? So there's a big call out there now for everybody to really start paying more attention to this and prepare our defenses.

BLITZER: What is OpenAI, Hadas, saying about this?

GOLD: So OpenAI is taking this very seriously, and they said in a statement: "We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities and are responding accordingly."

They say: "We are sharing preliminary findings at this stage to help defenders understand what happened and help calibrate on what models are now capable of."

Experts are saying this is a vision of the future and we should take this as a moment to prepare, both the A.I. companies on how they can better keep their testing safe, but also all of the other critical infrastructure we have out there to prepare for the future of agentic cyber hacking -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Hadas Gold, excellent report. Thank you very, very much.

And the next hour of THE SITUATION ROOM starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BLITZER: Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer. Pamela Brown is off. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.

Happening now, a White House news briefing about to get under way at any moment now, and we will bring it to you live. It comes amid major new escalations in the Middle East.

First, President Trump weighing in on the new agreement for U.S. companies to build and operate nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia. In a social media post, the president now says Saudi Arabia would have to normalize relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords. The deal has sparked concerns of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

The second major development, Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen say they have struck two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea.