3/24/26: Israel Pushes Lebanon Annexation, Airport Chaos, AI Bubble Collapse

21:47Jeremy Scahill:Forced entertainment. It's like whenever the Southwest flight to Hawaii passed around ukuleles, I'm like, you might as well take that ukulele and beat me over the head with it rather than have to listen to other people. But I mean, think about that. That's madness to have to sit in some of these lines. I'm joking, but it's not funny. Like, it's absolute insanity. And yes, it's a result of the TSA, of the DHS shutdown. Yeah. Honestly, this is the irony, and we'll get to some of the political impacts. If Iran was not happening, this would be the biggest story in the country. Yeah. Every day on CNN or on our show, we would have line updates, like we were doing with gas prices.

22:23But it was an hour and a half yesterday. So now it barely rates at the very end of the show. And for good reason, because we're literally in the middle of a goddamn war. But this is the problem for Trump. There was potential to try and have some national debate. I think they would lose, but they could try. DHS, Democrats are holding us hostage. Now nobody cares. It's literally like, you know, A5 in the New York Times or something, if you think about the old newspapers. And that is massively to the Democrats' benefit because this is like a polycrisis now for Trump. You have a war. We have to spend the vast majority of his resources.

22:55Gas prices are going up. Everybody's very concerned. All of the pressure now with TSA breakdown, Americans have heard nothing about DHS or any of this other stuff about what the contours of the debate are. They're like, I need this shit to end now, now. They're like, I don't care what you have to do. It needs to be over. And so the political pressure on the White House is immense. It actually looks like this morning we might get some sort of deal. Chuck Schumer said that they're talking. The likelihood of that deal would basically be to carve ICE funding out of everything else and then fight about that later on.

23:26Kind of makes sense because ICE is already fully funded. That's part of the reason the agents are in the airports because they're the ones who are getting paid. But yeah, I mean, politically, nightmarish for the White House. Stuff like this always will fire back on the chief executive because he's the person

23:39Jeremy Scahill:who's in control. Of course. They have the House, they have the Senate, they're in control of the White House. So especially on an issue where I do think that this kind of caught people off guard because it's not a full government shutdown. So you haven't had all this discourse about, okay, what are the contours of the debate and what are they asking for and what's the holdup, whatever. people are just like, this sucks. I blame the president. And then the president went out of his way to go ahead and take on that blame because there was actually a deal that Democrats were willing to strike that John Thune was negotiating.

24:06Jeremy Scahill:And, you know, like Sagar said, it would carve out eyes separately. They would fund the rest of DHS. That means TSA agents would start getting paid. That's the crux of the issue is that TSA agents are not getting paid but are still expected to work. Well, there's going to be some certain percentage that is like, I need to earn a paycheck. I will not be at that job where you're forcing me to work for free. I will be at an actual job where I need to get paid because that is the reality of life. So you're having mass call outs of TSA agents, which is leading to these lines. So in any case, Trump came out and was like, no, no deal, because I want you to not only fund DHS, but I also want you to pass the Save America Act.

24:46We have E7.

24:46Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, put E7 up on the screen. This is just the punch bowl report. Trump to Thune. No deal. He made it very clear. You had actually let's go and play E3. Senator Kennedy, who is a Republican, talking about the dynamics here. And I believe this was over on Fox News talking about, OK, well, Trump is the one who said he doesn't want to deal. Let's take a listen to that. Senator Cruz and I came up with a plan. We said, look, it's a two step process. The Democrats have offered to open up everything but ice. Ted and I said, OK, let's accept their offer. And then at the same time, we would offer a bill for reconciliation where we don't need any Democratic votes to do whatever we wanted to do with ICE.

25:31And that way we're out of the shutdown and DHS is back open. We submitted that, Senator Crafoon submitted that to President Trump as his right. He said no, no deals with the Democrats. It would have worked. We could have had TSA paid by the end of the week. But the president said no deal.

25:53Jeremy Scahill:Would have worked, but the president said no deal. Sure enough. But E8 up on the screen. This is the president directly saying no deal. I think I don't think we should make any deal with the crazy country destroying radical left Democrats unless and until they vote with Republicans to pass the Save America Act. Far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate. That includes giving these same terrible people, the Dems, who are to blame for this mess, a$5 billion cut in ICE funding a deal, which even when disguised as something else, is unacceptable to me and the American people, unless it includes their approval of voter ID with picture, citizenship to vote, no male in voting with exceptions, all paper ballots, no men in women's boards, which just randomly got thrown into this thing too, and no transgender mutilization, which is not a word, of our precious children, put it all together and also let Leader Thune clearly identify those few Republicans that are voting against America.

26:42Jeremy Scahill:They will never be elected again. In other words, lump everything together as one and vote. Kill the filibuster and stay in D.C. for Easter. If necessary, make America great again. I mean, obviously, like, he's clearly shouldering the blame for this. Chaos at American Airports. It's happening during a time when many families are traveling for spring break. So it's going to impact more than just, you know, the business. It obviously would. But right now is a time of year when you're going to have more just like ordinary middle class families who are planning their Florida trip or whatever for their kids spring break.

27:13Jeremy Scahill:and you also see the high priority he puts on this Save America Act, which he thinks is going to give him more, and it will, will give him more power to mess with the midterms where he knows he is politically screwed. If you look at it right now, I mean, the irony too is about the filibuster. You and I are like, yeah, do it. You know, kill it. Yeah, we're like, great, okay, sure. You can pass it now. And then, you know, in the future, other people who are in power can pass whatever they want. So let's go. Democrats take the Senate in the fall. I'm ready, all right? Kill it. I'm happy to see it gone.

27:43You want to pass Save America for two years? We can actually get some things that, you know, happen. I used to be somewhat of a defender, like I understood. But at this point, it's just, it's too much. And I've even seen this restoration of, what is it called? The talking filibuster. I think it's a reasonable type of deal. It's too wonky. But the point is, is it actually would make it so that, yeah, the party in power would be able to do what they want. And if you don't like it, you can elect whoever you want in order to actually pass what they want. Same thing, what you were talking about. If the Democrats take the Senate, then yeah, every piece of Trump legislation literally ever will be dead for the entire president.

28:16There would be like a two-year-long government shutdown, basically, if they wanted it to under the administration. That's the point. It would actually make the government more responsive. But as of this morning, it actually does look like there could be some deal. A bunch of senators huddled with Trump last night. Potential breakthrough last night where Trump met with Senator Katie Britt and a few others. Chuck Schumer said both sides are talking in a serious way. Pressure's growing. It would probably come down to what we just said, passing funding for everything but ICE. And because ICE is already fully funded, it would push it out to the future.

28:50Under the potential deal, it would be restored under the HSI investigation team would apparently be restored, requiring them to have, what is it called, more investigatory actions and not reassigning the HSI agents to immigration enforcement on top of a few other deals. So there might be some contours around it. But like right now, from what we can tell, it actually does look like this might be ending. And it's simply because of all of the chaos with TSA and in the airports. I also think Trump, I don't know what they're thinking with the ICE deployment. Because look, you know, you guys know my feelings about immigration.

29:28I've got my problems with ICE. But at the very least, like the one thing politically I would tell you not to do is to take the most politicized law enforcement agency in the country. and then put it in front of all of the people who are flying. You don't want to be seeing that, you know? You don't want that in front of your own eyes. It's like, imagine if you could take one of the more unpopular parts of your presidency and then just remind everybody constantly that it exists. You don't want that, all right? You kind of want it out in the shadows. Do we have the images? Can we show everybody?

30:01Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, I mean, it's an idiotic idea on every level, and it's also doing nothing to help the situation because they're not trained as TSA. All the images that I've seen of these guys are them just hanging around, doing absolutely nothing. Have you guys seen that meme of the guy who's like pushing, like trying to make it look like he's pushing his subway car? They're like, those are the, you know, the ICE agents. We gotta get some height. I'm just gonna say it. We gotta get some fucking weight requirements. Oh yeah, Neil Team 6 has arrived at the airport. In any case, they're basically just standing around doing nothing except making people uncomfortable and angry, which, you know, they're already standing in a long ass line feeling uncomfortable and angry.

30:41Jeremy Scahill:So there you go. Steve Bannon says this should be a trial run for sending them to the polling stations in November, which I certainly don't think is completely off the table. But I did see one person say, Sagar, that this made sense to them because they've often wanted to be shot in the face when they were waiting in a long airport line. Okay. Do we have time for me to rant a little bit here? All right. Can I just say this? if you, where are you going that's so important to stand in line for four hours? I'm just gonna say it. I understand the spring break and all of that. Look, flight credit exists.

31:12You can cancel. I guarantee, if you bitch and moan at a company enough, they will give you a refund. Stay home or drive. I was telling you, somebody, lady that tweeted this morning, she's like, my daughter waited in line for eight hours and missed her flight, she's sleeping in an airport. And just to make sure, where are you going that's so important? Like outside of a family emergency, don't go. You know, just don't go. if you have to go for work, I guess, even then, can you not talk to your boss? You're like, yo, man, I'm not waiting in line for six and a half hours. Yes, I know, that's from a point of privilege.

31:40I just, I feel like there's probably a way that is around us.

31:44Jeremy Scahill:But imagine, okay, this is your one vacation. You have booked your stuff. It's not refundable. We'll go later. You can't get it back. We're going later. You've been waiting for this. I told you, there's no such thing as non-refundable. There's no such thing. There is, of course, a thing of non-refundable. It says it in the file. If you call an app, call the credit card company, challenge a transaction. You book an Airbnb. They're not giving you your money back. It's not happening. No, you can't figure it. So if people have dropped a bunch of money, they're like, all right, well, I guess I'm going to suffer for a day so that I can get this vacation that I saved up all year.

32:11Jeremy Scahill:So I have some empathy. I will say Tim Dillon did a very funny bit on this. What did he say? He was talking about Americans traveling abroad while we're destroying the world. He's like, get your ass back. No one wants to see you right now. You're going to watch us drop a bomb on a school, and then you're going to go and enjoy like a vineyard in Italy. He's like, stay home. Do not go anywhere. No one wants to see your face. If you're on vacation, go to Florida. I feel conflicted because, you know, I hate the Euros too and their snobbishness, you know, Iran. It's like as if your bases aren't being used right now.

32:45Your governments aren't sucking on the teat of the USA and you don't need those tourist dollars to float your shitty economy. So I'm not going to give too much to them. The only thing that I will sympathize with the Euros is whenever they complain about how Americans will go to Europe like in the middle of the summer, and they'll wear like gym clothes while all the other Italians are wearing like, so, and you know what? They're right, right? It's gross. That would be the thing that you would have to say. Can you imagine sitting in a Tuscan shop and you're wearing an Italian linen cut fine suit, you're like 76 years old, and then some guy walks in with an Under Armour T-shirt that says, protect this house, with a T-shirt and one of those sunglasses that like wraps around in the back and then mispronounces the word like latte, and then fumbles with Euro coins or something, that would disgust me too, all right?

33:32So I'm with them. I'm with them on that front.

33:34Jeremy Scahill:You gotta be comfy when you're a tourist. No, no. You're doing a lot of walking. No, no, no. Comfy shoes, comfy clothes. They walk plenty in leather shoes. It's not hard, all right? You could buy some decent shoes. They're made for that. We're not. Okay, all right. Let's get to the next guest. Brendan Steinhauser, standing by. iVeam is built for losing weight and moving forward. iVeam is built for feeling your best and seeing results. iVeam is a medical weight loss program built for you. Their approach is individualized, virtual, integrative medicine. 99.2 % of patients who completed the IVM weight loss protocol achieved meaningful change, dropping an average of 45 pounds.

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35:36Jeremy Scahill:So we've covered here extensively the battle between Anthropic and the Pentagon. We've also talked about some of the ways AI may be deployed within the Iran war and previously, and currently still in Gaza. So joining us now to speak about those concerns and a lot more with regard to AI is Brendan Steinhauser. He's the CEO of the Alliance for Secure AI. Great to meet you, Brendan. Good to see you. Good to see you. Yeah. So let's go ahead and put this element up on the screen. This is some reporting from Lever News that effectively what they're finding here is Trump is trying to push the requirements they were trying to force on Anthropic.

36:11Jeremy Scahill:They're trying to push this government wide at this point. So the headline here is Trump Contracting Clause Would Override AI Safeguards. I'm just going to read a little bit of this article so people get a sense of it. The Trump administration is quietly advancing a sweeping new contracting clause that would empower federal officials to force AI companies to scrap safety protocols, eliminate privacy protections and follow other Trump directives as a condition of doing business with the government, according to a draft text reviewed by the lever. What do you make of this? And what did you think was sort of the central fight or the importance of the battle between Anthropic and the Pentagon?

36:47I think the central fight was that Anthropic has certain principles and red lines as a company that it doesn't want to cross. And those include making sure there are safeguards on having a human in the loop on autonomous weapons. They don't want to see so-called killer robots just going around and striking targets without a human being in control and making those decisions. And also, they don't want their technology used for surveillance of the American people. They don't want to see a police state created in the United States of America, especially powered by Anthropic's technology. And so that's where they drew their red lines.

37:22They've had those principles for a while. But the Department of War decided that they were going to basically bully and browbeat the company into getting what they want. And ultimately, Anthropic was designated a company that was supposedly a threat to national security, a supply chain risk, which I think is pretty ridiculous. And then OpenAI came in and said, OK, well, we'll adhere to those rules, essentially. Even though we claim that we have the same red lines, they decided to make the deal. But I think it's a very concerning thing for all Americans who are concerned about our civil liberties and concerned about big tech getting too close to a government that has shown some quite authoritarian tendencies.

38:01Yeah, I mean this is what I worry about right now. We're in a war. This is a literal wartime. And the very day that this was all happening, the next day we launched the operation against Iran. So what's your assessment now? Currently, we've already seen all of these. I mean, the very first day of the campaign, a girls' school is struck. We know that. We don't know yet whether AI was used in that. But it does highlight some of the problems with target packages. And this is with alleged human oversight. So imagine if you're hallucinating answers, you could hallucinate targets in a situation like this.

38:35So does the fact that we're already in a war amplify your warnings and your analysis here? Absolutely. I think we rushed to integrate AI into the Pentagon, into everything we're doing. Certainly, there were reports of Claude, the tool that Anthropik has created, being used in the raid on Maduro in Venezuela. And by all accounts, that went quite well. But to your point, when you have a problem with control over AI, when we basically have acknowledged we can't control it, there are times where it not only hallucinates, but it kind of does the opposite of what its owner is intending for it to do, that's a real problem.

39:11And so, yes, you can see things lead to targets, innocent civilians being targeted and killed. You could see eventually a situation where AI decides to kind of override its human overseers. We've already seen that in other arenas. There's no reason to think that it won't happen in the military. And so when you talk about losing control of the most powerful weapons powered by the most powerful technology with artificial intelligence, we're entering some very scary territory. And I think there have to be guard rails imposed by Congress.

39:40Jeremy Scahill:Brendan, can you tell people a little bit of your backgrounds, just so that they understand the political perspective that you bring to this? You were an organizer with the Tea Party. How did you come to this particular fight? Yeah, I have a long background in Republican politics as a strategist and a grassroots organizer. I also have a master's degree in statecraft and international affairs from the Institute of World Politics. I've always had an interest in international affairs, and I kind of saw these worlds collide a little bit with the rise of artificial intelligence. I've been reading about the topic for some time, and then one of my good friends actually was in the Trump administration, the first admin at the Pentagon, and his job was at the Joint Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence Center there.

40:20And so he's one of the people that recruited me into this space is he's telling me to read this and read that and talk to this person and talk to that person. And he has expressed a lot of these concerns publicly. And it really convinced me that I needed to get involved in this because it was going to be the fight of our time. Yeah, Brendan. So within that context, we have watched now White House, which effectively is joined at the hip with these AI companies, I think for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, though, really is valuation. I mean, after Liberation Day, the valuations of these AI companies and their financial engineering has been propping up American GDP, the data centers, our stock markets.

40:57But part of the issue that we see right now is that the Iran war may be threatening all of that. So let's put F1, for example, up here on the screen. The FT is reporting that even without energy shocks, there's a good chance that the closure of the Straits of Hormuz will pop the AI bubble and lead to a stock market crash. This is from energy costs, high-tech valuations, a lot of the Gulf Arabs who are invested in these VC companies. So if we do see some sort of burst, what impact do you think that will have on this situation and the issues you care about? Well, I think it's very demonstrably true that AI has propped up the economy, that a lot of the numbers that we see that are often kind of bragged about might be somewhat artificial and driven by a lot of circular financing between these various companies.

41:43And so if there is an AI bubble and it burst, it could be very bad for the American people, very bad for the world economy, in fact. And look, the other thing that's happening right now is we're seeing job losses occurring and hiring freezes due to AI. In fact, we rolled out a website called jobloss.ai to track those numbers. And we've already seen 100 ,000 jobs lost due to AI this year and going back into last year. And so it's a really concerning situation. And yeah, if we have the Strait of Hormuz closed or even contested and not fully open for some time, you could see energy prices continue to rise.

42:18You could see people paying more money at the pump. You could see supply chain risks, of course, related to not only oil and gas, but semiconductor chips, because so much of the manufacturing relies upon some of these minerals that are coming out of the Strait as well. So it could be a really dire situation economically. And my hope for the president, look, as a Republican, I mean, my hope for the president is that he sees all this and gets ahead of it. And Republicans in Congress sort of wake up to what's going on and get ahead of it. I haven't seen a lot of signs on that so far, but we're starting to hear a few a few things here and there in Capitol Hill that do give us some hope that they will figure this out and get ahead of it.

42:55Jeremy Scahill:Can you talk a little bit more about, you said the website you run, jobloss.ai, to track the direct job loss from artificial intelligence, which I imagine is a tricky challenge because I know a bunch of these companies have said, well, basically what we're going to do is just not hire more people and allow people to sort of naturally leave. That's something that Amazon has talked about in some internal memos, for example. But based on what you can see, what are the industries where displacement is occurring at the fastest rate? Certainly a lot of the technology companies are utilizing AI themselves, and especially in a lot of this white-collar work, whether it's administration or sort of operations, you're seeing a lot of the white-collar jobs actually being some of the first to be automated.

43:40But the industry that got hit already the hardest right now is kind of the software engineering side of things as well, because now something like 90 % of coding is being done by AI. So we're seeing that happening. we're seeing white collar work getting hit. And a lot of these companies are saying openly, you know, they think a lot of the consulting world, accounting, you know, even eventually paralegals and lawyers, especially young lawyers are going to face hiring freezes. They're going to face a very, very difficult situation in terms of getting a new, getting a job. And so I think a lot of entry level work is at risk and that's what we're seeing kind of now, but I think we're going to see massive job losses this year and it's going to be due mostly to AI.

44:21Some companies are hiding that fact. Other people are actually saying it openly and it's very hard to track. But we have a methodology that attempts to get as close to the truth as we can on that.

44:31Jeremy Scahill:The last thing I wanted to ask you about is you've had, you know, a crazy amount of A.I. already destabilizing reality. All you need to do is go on Twitter and try to figure out what the hell is real and what the hell is false and try to program a show, by the way, and figure out, you know, sort from fiction. It has never been more difficult. And you have, you know, the probably the two biggest examples of this is you had all the we put F2 up on the screen. All these rumors that Bibi Netanyahu had been killed and everybody was analyzing this video in particular, but other ones as well. This was a video he put out explicitly to say, guys, I'm alive.

45:08Jeremy Scahill:Here I am getting coffee. And, you know, even with this, there were all sorts of like anomalies where people are looking at this and going, no, no, no, this is A.I. You had Trump talking about how the new Ayatollah, Mishchaba, that he's not sure he's alive. And so far, we haven't seen any images or video of him. There have just been statements that are put out. So there's a theory that, and some of the images that have been put out of him have actually been AI enhanced. The other theory is just that he is in hiding because he would be assassinated, likely, if there was any ability to tell his location.

45:41Jeremy Scahill:But in any case, I'd just love for you to speak to that social impact of the way that already reality has been completely destabilized by this technology. And no one seems to be grappling, our lawmakers do not seem to be grappling with what that means and how to get this under control so that we don't get into this totally postmodern world where literally you can invent your own reality and believe whatever you want to believe. And it's a really big problem now. It's going to get worse. You're going to see it more and more in political ads in the midterms this year. The words disinformation and misinformation get thrown around a lot.

46:18They become very politicized. But they do have a real meaning. And misinformation, just things that are untrue, that people are spreading, sometimes not by their own volition. It's information that's out there that someone heard or made up. Or maybe they made a funny video. They weren't intending to mislead anyone. But that's happening. And then there's disinformation coming from governments, coming from political actors, coming from political parties and figures. And that's information that's knowingly false, meant to mislead people. So lying about someone being dead, for example, and then creating a video or creating content to share to get people to spread that information, that's disinformation.

46:55Those are both big problems. They're going to get worse. And I think the best advice that I have to people is to really be skeptical and really check your sources and figure out who are the journalists and who are the thought leaders that you trust to tell you the truth. That's going to become more important than ever. You know, people that you know that have character integrity that will at least give you their best analysis and their best information that they have. that's what you're going to have to rely on because looking at random accounts on the internet is going to get worse and worse in terms of trying to get good and accurate information.

47:28And so AI is just going to make this so much more difficult and state actors and non-state actors are participating in it. So we have a lot to be worried about. Brennan, thank you so much for joining us, man. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. Great Wednesday show for everybody tomorrow. I think Ryan's going to detail his Cuban travels. Oh my goodness. That'll be exciting. A lot to say about that. Yeah, that's right. All right. They will see you all then.

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