Warnings of AI's threat to humanity are coming from surprising places.

The world is right to be afraid of this.

If an AI model is is powerful enough, it can circumvent attempts to shut it down.

AI models can already escape human control, commit felonies, and create viruses.

This is a hinge in history.

We have to handle this right.

But President Trump says the only guard rails AI needs is a high IQ president.

Tonight, why Trump is so quick to dismiss the chorus of AI concerns and is instead focusing on next week's state visit with President Xi and looking to demolish the Kennedy Center.

Next, this is Washington Week with the Atlantic.

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Additional funding has been provided by friends of Washington Week with the Atlantic, including William C. Paley Foundation, George D. Hanby III in memory of Mary Jane Bunny Glick and of his brother Jay Hanby, the Euan Foundation, Sandra and Carl Delay Magnes, Rose Herschel and Andy Shreves, Robert and Susan Rosenbomb, Jay and Sharon Rockefeller, Charles Hamoy through the Charles Hamo Fund, Steve and Marilyn Kerman, Leonard and Norma Chlorine, Don and Janine Blam, and the following individuals and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

And now from the David M. Rubenstein studio at Weta in Washington, here is Washington Week with the Atlantic.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

I'm Liz Landers.

Jeffrey Goldberg is away.

Just as AI's threats to humanity reached a fever pitch with even tech CEOs publicly calling for government regulation, half of Congress left Washington to return to the campaign trail in the weeks leading up to election day, preventing lawmakers from legislatively addressing concerns about AI.

Among them, that humans could use the technology to create biological weapons and that artificial intelligence itself could go rogue beyond human control.

Joining me tonight to discuss this and more, Leanne Caldwell, the chief Washington correspondent for Puck News.

Aean Javers is the senior Washington correspondent at CNBC.

Ashalid co-hosts the Global Story Podcast for BBC News.

And Elena Trin is a White House correspondent for CNN.

Thank you for joining us this evening.

Great to be here.

Elena, I want to talk with you about AI and the news at the White House this week.

But we have to start by acknowledging what happened today at the White House with coverage.

Uh the president has banned CNN and several other news organizations from covering the White House.

Do you know why he did this?

So still he was asked a lot about this today in the Oval Office.

Uh but the post that he laid out uh didn't give a specific reason and then when he was pressed on it with by reporters later he said it was more cumulative that it wasn't one story that really got under his skin that it's been a long thing that he's been upset about.

But not really clear.

I mean, when I was chatting with some of my sources, uh, some of them said they were surprised.

Um, so not really sure what's going to happen either because I was at the White House today.

I know Aean, you were as well.

Um, and from the colleagues I who I know are still there.

No one's been kicked out yet, so it's kind of unclear what the future of this is going to look like.

Okay.

Well, turning to this conversation, artificial intelligence dominating the news this week.

Um, what is the White House guidance on this right now?

Who is talking to the president about this?

who's giving him advice on this.

Uh so there's a couple people.

Uh we know that he talks to the Nvidia CEO um Jensen Huang.

He's actually someone who will be in town in Washington next week.

Uh I did a story yesterday with one of my colleagues about how uh at with this with Xiinping coming next week for his state visit.

A lot of these AI CEOs are going to the state dinner.

And so there's been discussions among Trump administration officials of having the president meet with them with these AI executives on the sidelines of that.

I was told she would not be a part of it.

That would be weird.

I mean, the biggest argument that the president makes is that he wants uh, you know, for wanting to move forward aggressively with AIS because he wants to win this race with China.

Um, but for your question about who's in his ear, um, so Jensen Huang from Nvidia, he's someone that close allies.

I mean, whenever I've been uh in, you know, in the White House, I'm always seeing him going to meet with the president.

Uh, there's also David Saxs, um, you know, total tech titan.

uh and he also used to be uh in charge of artificial intelligence for the White House but he actually left his post I think I believe it was in the spring but he's in the president's ear a lot and of course he speaks with a lot of Elon Musk who has X AI he talks to a lot of these people um but there's certainly people on the other side of this who uh you know well I should say I think a lot of the AI executives are the ones calling for more regulation but then there's also a lot of allies who are very concerned about it um and I think that's part of what this meeting next week is about Aman to Elena's point there about these AI tech CEOs calling for regulation saying help us uh regulate our companies.

This the timing of this is notable because several of these companies are going public soon.

Uh I know you cover this.

Do you think that these AI companies are legitimately concerned about these threats?

Are they calling for regulation to protect themselves?

Well, there's a cynical view of this which is that they're calling for regulation because they want to protect their position as the leading companies in AI, right?

and that what they want is really a duopoly or a small group of AI firms that entrench their positions with this regulatory fence around them.

But there are a lot of people inside these AI companies who have genuine concerns that these AIs can get out of control, can cause significant problems, billions of dollars in damage, and then you hear the sci-fi scenario of, you know, eliminating all of humanity.

So, there are real concerns inside the AI community that I think you can't totally put away.

But from the White House's perspective, you know, you see Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, come out this week and say, "Well, the president is totally aligned with Jensen Wong of Nvidia.

Jensen, the guy with a leather jacket who always shows up."

But Jensen is a guy who sells chips, right?

His entire financial incentive is to pour it on, sell more, do more, build, and grow, right?

And make a lot of money.

That's what I think is so interesting about this all because during the Biden administration there were rather severe export controls on sending out the most advanced ships and those restrictions have been loosened to some degree and that is what is very confusing to me about the Trump administration's philosophy on AI.

You hear the president say we need to win the AI race.

We need to beat China.

We're beating China right now.

We need to ensure we keep beating China.

And yet we as a nation have to some degree loosened the restrictions to allow access to some of those very advanced chips to China.

And that um logic just is very confusing for me to follow.

Yeah, we've ab absolutely done that.

And what you're seeing now is the president saying basically he doesn't believe that this AI threat scenario is real.

He sees it sort of like he sees climate change.

This is fake news.

This is a bunch of alarmists.

It's a hoax.

So if you talk about AI regulation, what regulation on safety is an administration going to be in favor of that doesn't even believe that there's a problem in the first place, right?

I think too your point about the economy is I think that's a lot of what he sees.

I mean right now the biggest problem ahead of the midterms is the economy and he sees AI as a huge booster of that.

Uh data centers very much tied into this as a huge booster of the economy as well.

He thinks it's helping with jobs.

Others very concerned about it taking it away, but I think that's a big part of this as well.

And then there's also the argument I think that you've heard from people like the vice president which are you know these companies are so big and they have so they're so wealthy at you know a lot of them are very wealthy why don't they have the ability to try and regulate themselves obviously there's a lot of question to that too but that's kind of the argument you're hearing from Vance and some of the president's allies and the whole economy is at stake here I mean you know the stock market is absolutely hitched to to this AI boom right now if the AI bubble bursts you're going to see huge collateral damage throughout the financial markets and a lot of Americans are going to feel that.

So, the president doesn't want to do anything that's going to pierce that bubble right now, especially just before the midterms.

Leanne, speaking of the midterms, up on the hill, the House left town um on Wednesday with no plans to return until after the midterm elections.

Speaker Johnson has also said that the US cannot lose this AI race to China.

Will the legislative branch realistically start passing laws on this when they get back?

What What are the conversations on the Hill like?

Well, they're not coming back until after the midterm, so nothing's going to happen soon.

Quote, the Senate's in for a couple more weeks.

They have a very packed agenda.

They're not planning on doing anything significant on this, if anything at all.

Um, so we'll have to see what happens in the lame duck.

But Congress, as we all know, moves very slowly and uh this is very complicated stuff and there are a lot of different ideas um of of what to do.

uh you have Democrats who are not completely on the same page.

You have Republicans who aren't on the same page as each other.

So, it's it's complicated and you know they've still been trying to regulate social media for two decades now almost and they haven't even done that.

But I will say when you uh quote Speaker Johnson, he's really following the lead of the president.

He does not want to cross the president, does not want um anyone in his party to do so.

There have been bipartisan efforts throughout the year to move legislation on AI um different components of regulation whether it's data centers or you know uh just smaller aspects of it.

But Speaker Johnson and his leadership team have really blocked most of that.

They did not want it to come forward.

And the reason is is because the president doesn't want anything.

And so they're they are really handcuffed.

We'll see what happens in the midterms if Democrats take control obviously.

Um, it's going to be a completely different conversation, but Democrats are also going to have to come up with a unified message on it, too.

Talk about the technology.

If I can just say real quick, I don't think that one nation can create unilateral guard rails with AI.

I mean, that is routinely what we hear from tech experts is that this is not akin to um to nuclear weapons, which I think it's often compared to that um guard rails to some degree have to be global.

And at this point, the United States and China, which are the two powers in this technology, they are not in sync on that.

And so to me, it's it's noteworthy if Congress does or doesn't want guardrails.

But frankly, you need to have the conversation with China.

And that conversation at this point, it's unclear to what degree they're really going to be talking about safety guidance.

Well, we know that at least there was a call today and senior officials did say that President Trump and President Xi are going to broach this, but they did not give any preview of what that'll look like.

I think that's because that has to wait for Secretary Bessant to meet with his Chinese counterparts over the weekend.

We're expecting those meetings in New York tomorrow and Sunday.

So, I do think they're going to discuss it whether they're going to come up with anything because they view this completely differently.

Right?

What the Chinese government is concerned about with AI is anything that would destabilize Chinese communist control of of China, right?

Anything that would threaten the regime.

So they look at this and say this this is scary, but for very different reasons than American capitalists look at it and say that it's scary.

So one of the my questions for the Hill is are they really considering this idea of liability limitations for the AI companies?

Because we saw a lot of CEOs outside the AI sphere this week come out and hammer this point that whatever Congress does, they should not give liability protections to these companies and absolve them of responsibility for what they are doing, which is something that social media companies were able to get early on.

Well, I think that I think that you know what happens now is going to be very different once the lobbying and that I mean there's going to be a huge huge a lot of money thrown into this on what is ultimately going to come.

Obviously the big tech companies are in it for themselves, looking out for themselves.

Then you have the smaller ones who are trying to catch up, who have completely different uh viewpoint.

And then you have the consumers, us, the populace, the the populist movement that is that is growing in this country who is extremely fearful of AI and what it's going to do to their jobs, um their own their own livelihood.

And so, you know, the the amount of lobbying influence is really going to um be fascinating side story of this because it could very well cra help to craft what whichever party is in power decides to do.

President Trump, the populist, taking the anti-pop populist stance on data centers, which is so fascinating to watch.

Right.

Okay.

So, to that point, 70% of Americans are opposed to data centers being built in their communities.

Why is Trump taking such an unpopular stance on this?

I think it has to do with how he views AI technologically as being a race with China.

Um we have an episode of our show that we're working on actually from Monday which is all looking at how AI is being viewed in China.

Um our correspondent went into Inner Mongolia which was farmland.

They are building massive data centers.

There's talk of building underwater data data centers which I don't totally understand you can do that technologically but uh in China they are you know sort of strategically thinking about this mass advancement and in the president's mind if the United States does not build this he feels that I mean he said it himself on social media that the only folks who would be happy about limiting data centers would be China.

It also goes back to the point of who's in his ear.

A lot of these tech CEOs are telling him that this is the future and you want America, it's it's the same point you're making that that you want America, you know, Mr.

President, to be the one that is at the forefront of this and he has been really fixated on that, I'm told.

And so much so though that I it is interesting because I know his adviserss are telling him, please stop talking about this.

This is not something that's popular with a lot of voters.

I mean, that's why you saw Ken Paxton who was running for Senate in Texas.

he had to completely kind of back away from this.

The president ultimately said, "It's fine if they disagree with me, but they're wrong."

That was kind of his his stance on that one.

But the politics here, if you look at the polling, the public is not there.

And it goes back exactly to what you were saying, Lean, about so many people are just so fearful of where it could lead.

But the president sees it as we need to be the ones who are on the cutting edge of this.

And of course, also edging out China in that part.

And look who's going to that state dinner next week, right?

I mean, Jensen Wong is going to be at the state dinner.

Dario Amade, the CEO of Anthropic, who is one of the most security concerned people in in the AI space, is not on the list for Sam Alman is going as well from Open AI, right?

Uh, speaking of the midterms, I want to talk about this ad that we saw, pretty remarkable ad from a Republican lawmaker earlier this week uh from Republican Congresswoman Maria Salazar.

We have a bit of a clip of that.

Mr.

President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far.

Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policies.

You can be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism.

She represents a district in Miami that Trump won by 15 points in 2024.

She also voted to fund ICE.

Leanne, why is she making this pivot?

She's terrified.

This is a this is a Hail Mary seven weeks before her re her re-election or her campaign.

Um, you know, I was talking to uh some a member of Congress um the former mayor of Miami who has a neighboring district to Congresswoman Salazar.

This was just two weeks ago.

and he was telling me that um how the administration's uh over um what they did with ICE, how it went too far was really detrimental for for them politically.

Um he personally felt confident, but he said that he and Congresswoman Salazar have had many conversations with the administration telling them how bad this is for them politically.

They have very Hispanic districts.

Um, uh, James Blair, uh, the president's, you know, political adviser was on the Hill a couple weeks ago.

They both mis gave him the same exact message then.

Um, and so since the president and the administration does not seem to be listening to them, she obviously felt that it was necessary to try to get that message out.

Uh, we'll see if it works.

We're seeing the polling where Hispanic voters are breaking from the president in an tremendous amount um compared to how they were in 2024.

Uh and so this is a very difficult political moment for some of these Republican lawmakers.

She's also facing uh she herself is Cuban-American and her opponent this cycle is a fellow Cuban American.

They're both former TV broadcasters.

So I know I just think it's really interesting.

Um that's terrible.

Um but I was talking to someone who was actually consulting her opponent earlier today and um one of the things they mentioned is that immigration is huge.

Miami day that area is I believe the largest immigrant county in the nation or one of the largest if not.

And secondly it's affordability uh which I hadn't totally computed but the cost of living and affordability with housing in Miami has really skyrocketed.

It's always been high, but I I think those dual pressures are really putting uh putting her under pressure.

I believe she won her district black time by 20 points.

And so to me, it suggests uh a real sense that she is scared about what the polling is showing.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Um Aean, I want to ask you about the Federal Reserve announcement from this week.

So, we saw Kevin Worsh, the Fed chairman, raise interest rates.

This is the first time this has happened since 2023.

Leading up to this announcement, the president was making threats on Truth Social to end trade with countries that the United States has a trade deficit with if the Fed uh raised these rates, which is what Worsh ended up doing.

But so far, we've not seen him, the president, carry out this threat.

Why not?

What is his relationship like with Worsh right now?

It's a fascinating dynamic, right?

Because this was a big test for Worsh to see to say that he is his own man.

He is independent.

The Fed has this tradition of being independent from American politics, which the Fed values very intensely.

And the president does not believe is a thing.

And he doesn't want the Fed to be independent.

He wants the Fed to do what he wants.

And this president wants lower interest rates.

He he comes from a career as a builder where you borrow a lot of money in order to do a project.

And the lower the interest rate is, the more you can build, the more money you can make, the better the economy is.

That's just how he sees the economy.

and he doesn't really agree with the argument that you have to raise interest rates from time to time to slow down the economy to stop inflation.

He doesn't process that argument at all.

That's the argument that the Fed is making right now and that's the argument they're being pushed to make by markets.

And so Walsh had to do this incredible dance this week where he had to do the thing that he knew the president didn't want him to do and he had to do it in a way without getting the mean tweets from the president.

and he seems to have really finessed it with some behind-the-scenes maneuvering.

We're here we're hearing reporting of a phone call between Trump and Walsh before the decision and Trump seems to be saying that well there there's a board and Walsh doesn't have total control here which is true and so I'm going to let Walsh do this but you get the sense that in Trump's mind anyway there is a limited amount of runway for WH here and so the October decision will be really fascinating to watch just before the midterms.

Does he hike again?

Market expectations are that he will have to hike again.

Uh will the president tolerate that one?

This is the first out of the gate.

He's getting a little running room.

Is this kind of a honeymoon period for Wars?

The thing that Worsh is doing so well, I think, and it's something Powell, I think, did way back, you know, during the first term when the president actually picked him.

But um but what Worsh is doing is managing the president and he's doing it in a way where uh the president still believes in him.

I do think it's a honeymoon phase.

I think you're totally right.

I mean, we'll see.

Maybe he gets another month, you know, who know?

Or at the next meeting.

Um, but he is managing him well.

We know that they have spoken in the past.

We know that the president and him, they have a relationship.

Worsh is very close with a lot of the president's closest allies as well.

Um, and he does see it.

I think you're totally right.

He's been blaming.

He did have angry tweets.

They were just not angry tweets directed at Worsh.

They were angry tweets directed at everyone else.

He's like, he's he's different from them.

the board's holding back, but I think Worsh is being very smart in how he's handling the president here.

And and the reality is Worsh has the upper hand, right?

He is the Fed chair.

The Fed is independent despite what the president would like to think.

Yeah.

And we've seen a Supreme Court ruling in that.

Absolutely.

And so he can hike rates and just tell the president to lump it.

But he's being very diplomatic about it.

He doesn't want to have that confrontation or at least not until it's absolutely inevitable.

Let's talk about the Kennedy Center because this is the performing arts center for the country and the it's a monument to a slain president here and President Trump has become really obsessed with this topic of putting his name on the Kennedy Center.

They did that a few months ago and they were told by a court to take his name off of it.

Elena, do you think that people should brush off these threats from the president that he's making as just bluster that he wants to demolish the center now or do you think that that could actually happen?

It's so hard to engage in that hypothetical.

I mean, I guess not hypothetical.

He was holding a poster on Air Force One the other night that said Kennedy Center demolished.

Um, I'm not sure.

I don't think he wants it to be demolished.

I think a lot of that is provocative language to try and get people to do what he wants.

Um he wants the Kennedy Center to thrive.

He's obsessed with it.

He sees it as another uh it's it's similar to his fixation with all the other projects he's working on around DC with the ballroom to the Lincoln Memorial to the arch that he's trying to build.

He sees the Kennedy Center similarly and he does want credit for it.

He was asked about it today.

Actually, I think it was an NBC reporter said, "Why are you so obsessed with putting your name on a building to that was, you know, to honor a slain president?"

and he went back to this idea if he believes if they're going to put in uh time and effort to renovate it that he uh should get credit for it.

Um the thing that's just so striking to me is we know there's a ton of old buildings around Washington.

They renovated all the time and stay open even or if they most of the time I think they stay open or they close a bit.

No one's like I'm not sure the Kenny I was there a couple months ago.

I don't know if it really needs to be demolished, you know.

So, uh, this is and I do think before people he even gets there, there would be legal battles that prevent that from, but this is a president who took a wrecking ball to the east wing, right?

Yes.

And so he he's capable of moving overnight to do this kind of thing.

And I think he's he's a type of person who certainly would if he felt thwarted.

And Leanne, the Hill could have oversight on this project, on the arch, on some of the other things we were talking about.

What are Democrats saying that would happen if they retake power after the midterms?

So, I I talked to Congress Congressman Jared Huffman, who is the ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee in the House just this week, about all of this.

Um, if Democrats take control, he will be the chair.

Uh, he oversees the park service budget, which oversees all of these renovations that are happening.

First, I asked him, where is the president getting this money to do all of this because Congress hasn't appropriated it?

and he said he's not sure.

All he knows is they are moving money around illegally um to do what the president wants around DC.

Secondly, he already has a very long list of investigations that he wants to pursue.

He obviously doesn't have subpoena power now.

Um but this is going to be a top priority for him.

And one thing I will say is I'm assuming and you guys would know better that the president's adviserss um are hoping and praying that he does not demolish the Kennedy Center because when you look at the president's polling when he demolished the East Wing that is when his numbers really started to drop and this is something that is absolutely not that was not popular with the public and so I think that it could be even worse for the president in the midterms.

Yeah.

And I think this is a visual thing that people see and they understand um you know the importance of these buildings around Washington DC.

So we're going to have to leave it there, but thank you to our guests for joining me and thank you at home for watching us.

I'm Liz Landers.

Good night from Washington.

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