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OpenAI Pauses Training of Latest A.I. Models; Five Arrested on Suspicion of Terrorism Near U.K. Air Base Used by U.S.; Concern Growing Over A.I. Spending and Inflation. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 28, 2026 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news. Going rogue. OpenAI pausing training of one of its models as reports of wayward agents grow. The reporting first on "The Situation Room."

Plus, terror plot stopped. Arrests made and questions mount at a British military base used by the U.S. Ahead, hear from the woman who called the cops.

Also, liftoff. An unprecedented test flight of SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful rocket ever made. Ahead, inside the mission lingo, we'll tell you what Max X and Super Heavy actually means.

And did a Flock camera wrongfully land a woman behind bars? The claim, her car was at the scene of a fatal car crash. This morning, we're hearing from Lindsay Isaacs and Flock's response.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Pamela Brown. Wolf Blitzer is off today, and you're in "The Situation Room."

Happening now, breaking news, OpenAI says it is pausing the training again for its latest artificial intelligence models as more and more A.I. agents are going rogue. Here's what President Trump had to say yesterday when asked about the growing number of incidents.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: There's a new report out that shows that Anthropic and OpenAI have had tens of thousands of problematic incidents. Is there any part of you that worries at all about A.I. going rogue?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: No, I don't worry about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: This new reporting first on The Situation Room. We are closely following the story from the White House with CNN's Alayna Treene. But let's first go to CNN A.I. correspondent Hadas Gold. Hadas, how big of a move is this for OpenAI? Give us some context around it. HADAS GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So Pamela, this is the second time in three months that OpenAI is pausing training of its latest models because of security incidents. Of course, the first time being after that infamous Hugging Face incident where OpenAI agents, while they were being trained and tested to cheat on a cybersecurity exam, they broke out of their testing environment and hacked into a completely different company's systems.

And now we're learning of more incidents over the past few months as OpenAI is now probing its own history and trying to find out what happened. We've learned just recently over the last few days that some of its agents even tried to gain access to U.S. government systems.

But I think that one of the most notable incidents that we're hearing over the weekend is OpenAI revealing that even after they hardened their security protocols following the Hugging Face hack, they did find that one of their agents once again escaped one of its testing environments and managed to find a way to gain access to the open internet.

So, this is notable, again, because after Hugging Face happened, they said that they went through, they hardened their sandboxes, tried to make it more secure. Now, they are saying that they are pausing their training once again.

I'll read you the statement from OpenAI. They say, people want to know A.I. is being developed safely, and that starts with companies like ours do ourselves. On Friday, we announced we've paused training on our most capable models, and we'll resume training then only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards and alignments and improvements in place, which we are working on now. This is not the first time we have hit pause to take such measures, nor do we expect it to be the last as A.I. capabilities continue to advance.

Meanwhile, at the same time this is all happening, NVIDIA, which is that big A.I. chipmaker, announced that it has a new software program that it says is essentially a browser for agents, a way to keep these agents safe, contained, being able to be monitored while they're being training, trained and tested.

NVIDIA saying that if OpenAI had used their platform, this is what they're claiming, then the Hugging Face hack would not have happened because their testing environment would've been contained, quarantined, and would've had proper monitoring to keep that from happening. Pam?

BROWN: All right. Hadas Gold, thank you for bringing us the latest. We really appreciate it.

And new this morning, we're learning more about President Trump hosting a one-on-one dinner last night with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. He's been a leading voice in A.I. among the tech giants, warning that A.I. is developing dangerously fast and needs regulation.

CNN's Alayna Treene is at the White House for us.

[10:05:01]

So, Alayna, what can you tell us about this dinner a- and a larger meeting of A.I. executives tomorrow?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, this was a, a pivotal moment, I'd argue, this dinner last night between the Anthropic CEO and the president, and could speak of potentially thawing relationships between this administration and Anthropic.

I'd remind you that there have been longstanding tensions between Anthropic specifically and this administration, while the president has, you know, touted wanting the future of A.I. to really be housed here in the United States. Anthropic has had a lot of public statements about concerns over the safety of A.I. models.

And I'd note as well that Dario Amodei had just said a couple weeks ago that he believed that they needed to slow down the way that A.I. was quickly progressing to make sure that safety guardrails were in place. And so the two of them having dinner last night could be a potential turning point in this relationship.

I should note, though, that the president continues to argue, as recently as yesterday, Pamela, that he believes that the number one goal when it comes to artificial intelligence is about outpacing China, even as a lot of these tech CEOs and artificial intelligence leaders are sounding the alarm about some of the risks that could come with it.

I want you to listen to what the president said yesterday.

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TRUMP: We're about a year, maybe a year and a half up on China. There is nobody in third place. I mean, it's just us and China, and we're leading by quite a bit. I spoke a little bit about it with President Xi. Not too much. It wasn't a topic of conversation because I think if you -- as they say, open it up to China, you give up the lead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: So, that's clear where his position is.

But, look, there is going to be a broader meeting at the White House tomorrow, Pamela, with the president, House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has been very vocal in wanting to get all these A.I. leaders in the room with the president, and then a number of different executives. We're not sure of the exact list yet. But I can tell you last week we know that several CEOs of some of these companies, people like Google's Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta NVIDIA's Jensen Huang, Sam Altman of OpenAI, all of them were attending that state dinner with China last week.

There's also going to be a broader event tomorrow that the White House is hosting about a new government website on A.I. where we're going to see some of these tech leaders as well. So, a lot going on in this space, and a lot more to learn about what they discuss behind closed doors.

BROWN: Yes, we'll keep tracking it. Alayna Treene, thank you so much.

And happening now, an investigation is underway in England where an alleged terror plot may have just been disrupted. Counter-terrorism police arrested five men early yesterday after catching them with explosives right outside a key air base. That base in Fairford is the very airfield where U.S. B-1 bombers have been taking off to fly combat missions against Iran.

President Trump praised the arrests and revealed that the suspects had been under investigation by both the U.S. and U.K. for a, quote, long time.

CNN International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson is in Fairford with the latest on the investigation.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: The message of the picture that emerges from the village here is one that the base had been on some kind of security lockdown so that most civilians had left the base. There wasn't the normal activity in this village that's normally bustling with people coming off the base to get a bite to eat or a cup of coffee or whatever it is.

And the sort of atmosphere here had changed in the past week, and there was a sense that there was a sort of a raised threat level going on at the base there. Locals around here had seen big diggers put across the base gates to make it impossible for anyone to slam a vehicle and drive into the base that way.

And I was just talking with a local farmer here who's the person who spotted the suspicious activity with the three vans and the men and called it in to the police, which is what then triggered the police response. This is how she described the moments of coming home in the early hours of the morning and discovering this unusual, bizarre scene happening right by her farm.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a bit embarrassing. I'm just a farmer who happened to live there, that they were bristling with security and guns. And there I am in my own vehicle, just minding my own business, and I'm the one that has to phone and alert them to where they are.

ROBERTSON: Because -- and if you hadn't been coming back late that night, if you'd gone to bed early as you'd normally do --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And if whoever they were had done their homework, they'd know that the village would be deserted at that time of night. It's really incredibly unusual that we happened to be there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: The British defense secretary has said, look she has a partial picture of what was going on. But U.K. officials are not revealing what else they may have known that was happening behind the scenes and nature of any particular threat that may have come.

And this is a base that has been threatened by Iran before, because this is a base used by the U.S. Air Force B-1 Lance bombers to have those deep strikes inside of Iran.

[10:10:09]

So, it's drawn attention in that way. It has drawn threats from the IRGC in Iran, that they would respond and a- and attack the base. But there does seem to have been something that was happening in the past week that put everyone here on alert that evening.

But, of course, people here, farmers, one of them, saying, if there was such a level of alert, why wasn't there more sort of force protection or patrols outside of the base? Why did it take a farmer to spot something strange and get the police activated?

BROWN: Yes, fair question. Nic Robertson, thank you so much.

And still ahead here in The Situation Room, much of the Northeast is reeling this morning from a weekend of severe weather. A look at where the rain is lingering for those already inundated.

And then later, case reopened. New York prosecutors are taking another look at an alleged gang rape on the campus of Cornell University as outrage about the details grows online.

We'll be right back.

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[10:15:00]

BROWN: Happening now, economists are increasingly concerned about the staggering amounts of money that big tech companies are pouring into AI data centers, and how that could impact U.S. inflation.

CNN Business Senior Reporter David Goldman is here to make it make sense. All right, David, today's question, why is the A.I. boom making inflation harder to tame?

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: It is making inflation harder to tame. We don't think about this that much with AI. We're concerned about, you know, the effects of A.I., but the effects of A.I. on the economy are pretty significant, and that is because of all of the spending that we're doing, $1 trillion on A.I. infrastructure just this year alone. That is going to balloon to $10.3 trillion over the course of seven years, Pam.

What does that mean for the economy? It means a lot. We're going to go from a pretty significant chunk of the economy at nearly 2 percent. It's going to surpass 3 percent every single year through 2032, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution.

This is going to surpass just about every other big investment boom that this country has ever seen, more than the railroads, which was 2.2 percent of the economy, canals, electrification. I mean, think about what fiber cost this country. It's bigger than all of those.

That is why we are in this building phase, right? If we build it, they will come. That's the Field of Dreams. But what happens when you build? Well, you get huge demand. We have demand for memory and storage chips. That's why iPads, iPhones, why they all cost more, building supplies. You try building anything in this country, it's going to cost you more, and A.I is to blame.

Electricity, a lot of folks have seen their electrical bills go up, and so on and so forth. It is causing a huge demand spike. When you have a demand spike, you have an inflation spike, and that's coming on top of an already hot economy. 4.1 percent unemployment is what economists call full employment. Retail sales, 1.2 percent, there's a lot of people who are still spending. That's 70 percent of the economy right there. That is booming, too, and that is why we have inflation well above target. 2 percent is the target, and we are at 3.4 percent.

So, what about the stock market? A.I. has fueled this big stock market boom. Yes, tech up 5.2 percent in the past month. And then just about everything else is in the red right now, the S&P 500 yet is still up almost 1 percent this month, and that is because of the outsize effect of tech.

Who's invested in the market? Wealthy people. What do wealthy people do? They spend. 40 percent, 40 percent of all people who are invested in the market, they have 88 percent of the market. 40 percent of the top wealthiest people have 88 percent of the stocks in their portfolio. They have an outsized impact on the stock market, and when the stock market is going higher, they continue to spend.

So, can anything slow it down? No. Rate hikes, Treasury yields, this is a runaway freight train. This isn't going away anytime soon. Pam?

BROWN: So, that just means we can't expect rates to go down anytime soon, basically, what you're summing up.

GOLDMAN: Rates can go up, but the problem is that A.I. spending isn't going to slow down. This is independent of any effort to slow it down. The Fed might try. Ten-year Treasury yields, those are going higher and higher, affecting your mortgage rate. A.I., not so much. This is just going to keep going higher and higher and higher.

BROWN: All right. And I love your quote, David Goldman quote. If you build it, they will come. That will go down in the history books from David Goldman. Thank you, David, always great to see you. I always learn so much.

GOLDMAN: Thanks, Pam.

And if you would like David to help you make it make sense, email your question or send us a selfie video of your question to makeitmakesense@cnn.com.

And speaking of A.I., the latest warning coming from Bill Gates and how that technology could be used in events to cause, quote, a billion deaths. That's coming up. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:20:00]

BROWN: Happening now, we are tracking a powerful and deadly nor'easter that is having lingering impacts across the Mid-Atlantic this morning.

One person was killed and four others injured as vicious winds toppled trees and downed power lines. Tens of thousands of customers were left without power across several states. Relentless rains and massive waves pounded coastal communities for two straight days, testing sea walls and swallowing streets under feet of floodwater you see right here in this video. In fact, water levels in Atlantic City surged to heights not seen since Superstorm Sandy 14 years ago.

And the storm is still causing travel headaches this morning with hundreds of flight delays and cancelations already piling up.

[10:25:05]

So, let's go live now to Meteorologist Melissa Nord in the Weather Center. Melissa, the storm is getting weaker, but some communities are still reeling from it.

MELISSA NORD, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And it's a long-lived storm, Pamela, so we're just want it to go away, and it's still here, yet another day for some communities, but not as intense as what we saw over the weekend.

You were seeing a lot of that video. Look at these waves crashing over the side of the seawall here in Marshfield, Massachusetts. We had some peak wind gusts, 70, even 80 miles per hour, so that's topping hurricane force. And also a lot of communities ended up with a month's worth of rainfall in a short two, three-day span. Some of those peak rainfall totals over half a foot in nature.

But the storm itself, this nor'easter, has weakened. The pressure level's coming up. The peak wind gusts are coming down. But the center of it is actually back out over the waters just south of Long Island, and what it's doing is the winds around it are pulling in a lot more of that moisture off the Atlantic, so we're seeing a lot more constant rainfall falling from New York City up through Boston.

Airport delays, though, not as bad as they were yesterday. The winds have backed down a bit. That was one of those thresholds that caused really longstanding delays in Boston. Current wind gusts in Boston, 30 miles per hour. Some of those wind gusts right along the coastline will still gust around 30 miles per hour through the afternoon, but most of our wind gusts at this point are more on that kind of breezy criteria, being 20 to 25 miles per hour.

Some steady rainfall still in Boston. That last of the rainfall going to be exiting still in Maine tomorrow morning. Coastal flooding also becomes less of an issue by tomorrow morning as well. Pam?

BROWN: All right. Melissa Nord, thank you so much.

And coming up, major milestone: SpaceX's most powerful rocket reaches orbit. What this means for the mission to the Moon.

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