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, Asma Halid 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 Hang.

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.

But 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 XAI 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 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.

The thing too to 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 are 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 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 about 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 u 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.

Of course, 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 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 erased 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 how 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 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.

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 OpenAI