Why Congress Isn’t Meeting the AI Moment; And, Why Saudi Arabia’s Oil Is a New Iran Target

0:00Do I think that Harrison Ford or Jean Smart or, you know, Scarlett Johansson are going to be starring alongside an AI actor anytime soon? No. Do I think it could happen? Yes. Hi, everybody, and welcome to Here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Basugin. So I feel like for the last week or so, including today, we've been talking about AI, right? And tonight is the Emmys in which Harrison Ford and Jean Smart are nominated for an Emmy for their respective shows. But NBC News Entertainment correspondent Clay Malas sat down with Tilly Norwood, who is an AI-generated actress, to ask her how Tilly Norwood, how AI is going to affect Hollywood.

0:42And would she be performing alongside the Harrison Fords and the Jean Smart of the world one day? We're going to get into that. We are also talking about a new front in the war with Iran. Now, the Houthi rebels have been operating inside Yemen for quite some time now, but they are now taking aim at an oil route in the Red Sea, the Houthi rebels being a proxy of Iran, which is potentially putting pressure on the U.S.-Saudi relationship.

1:13Up first, though, so AI leaders, they've been calling on governments to help them slow the pace of AI development. There was an essay out this weekend. Anthropics CEO Dario Amadei outlined steps that he wanted the industry and lawmakers to take. In it, there were things like requiring safety evaluators to embed with the teams building AI tools, establishing common safety standards across the industry, and also coordinating with authoritarian governments like China to try and get them to adhere to safety protocols as well. So OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, tech billionaire Elon Musk, they said they'd be on board with this plan.

1:50But what about Congress? And as lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week, will they be able to take any meaningful action on regulating AI? I mean, do they even have the knowledge to do so? So for that, I want to bring in Ryan Nobles. He's our chief Capitol Hill correspondent. Hey, Ryan. Hi, Yaz. So how are these warnings being taken, these AI warnings being taken in Congress? I think they're being taken seriously. I think that members of Congress individually have been at least talking a good game when it comes to trying to find a way to regulate the rapid growth of artificial intelligence.

2:32But we've seen this movie before when it comes to Congress and technology. This is a body that just is not equipped to keep up with the rapid pace of tech. I mean, as a legislative framework, things take a long time to get done here. And by the time a group of members get into a room and try and address something, the technology's already rapidly eclipsed what potential piece of legislation that they would ever get passed. And I think we see that playing out here in real time. You know, two years ago, when Democrats were still in control of the Senate, Chuck Schumer held this big AI summit where he brought in all the tech leaders and they had all these conversations and they put out a long list of potential prescriptions to deal with it.

3:20Literally nothing came out of that. And so we're in a same situation now where, again, now you have the tech leaders themselves saying, you have got to help us do something. But the form and fashion in which that gets done, I think, is is still a long ways away, which is not what anybody wants to hear. And then the other part about this is we are in the least productive window of Congress's timeline. You're just this is this is a least productive. Yes. This is already a very unproductive Congress. But you're talking about that window of time leading into a midterm election. They're just not going to do anything significant between now and Election Day.

3:59So perhaps they could cobble something together in the lame duck. I think that probably has a lot to do with the way the election turns out. But Congress is not going to rescue us from this problem, at least not in the short term. OK, so let's talk about potential rescue, even though you say they're not going to rescue us in the short term. And listen, this is about saving humanity. And so does Congress have— It seems like a good thing to do, yeah. So will they? And do they have any plans right now that are being talked about, about how to regulate? Well, there's a million bills, right? I mean, I was going, you know, in prepping to talk to you today, I went through and looked at all the different things.

4:33You know, there's one bill that would force AI companies that are developing AI to have a trigger, you know, basically a light switch that in the event something goes wrong, they can just, you know, hit that trigger and kill the whole AI program. That's only in its infancy. It's just been introduced. There's another one that deals with AI revenge porn. There's another one that deals with finding ways to regulate its growth or slow its growth, you know, meeting certain criteria to get to the next stage. But all of it is just at the very base level. Most of these bills haven't even made it, you know, into a committee to have this conversation.

5:10And again, it gets back to what I was talking about before. You're in this one of the time. The House is only going to be here for like two more days, three more days. They're here this week and then they're not coming back until after the election. The Senate's here for two weeks. The idea that you're going to craft a landmark piece of legislation that is so complex and requires so many different moving parts in the next two weeks before an election, I think is a fantasy. More realistically, what happens is that you have a group of the key committees, whether that be commerce, you know, wherever the regulatory best regulatory bodies are that have staffers with a degree of knowledge or with connections to these industry leaders.

5:50They spend the next two months basically locked in a room, bipartisan locked in a room. And hopefully in the lame duck session, after they're done with this election, they can come up with something that everybody can agree on. OK, but then here's the other outlier, which is that we haven't talked about, like the elephant in the room, which is the president who has said on social this morning that AI doesn't need any more guardrails. and that he's more concerned about the U.S. being able to compete with China. I mean, listen, every kind of legislation that we have talked about in the lead up to this moment is like, well, where's the president's on this?

6:31Because that's likely where the Republicans are going to stand on this. So if the Republicans are hearing the president's messaging on this, what incentive do they have to actually do anything? No, I think that's 100 percent true. And, you know, I don't disagree with that as a problem. If you're somebody that's freaked out about artificial intelligence, your two choices here are to just completely shut it down in the United States or throttle it completely and then just let China run roughshod and do whatever they want. or allow the American tech companies to continue their growth at whatever pace they're growing at, hoping that they keep pace with China with some level of moral clarity.

7:13They're both not good options. And so, you know, it's fine to have this conversation within the confines of the United States, but it's naive to think that it's not a global problem and not a global issue. But this is what's interesting about this, Yaz. When you talk about the president's role in this, there's only so much Congress can do diplomatically to work with other countries. That's the job of the head of state. It's the job of the president to get in front of Xi Jinping and say, we need to deal with this as collaboratively as possible or else humanity is in trouble. This should be among— He's meeting with Xi Jinping next week.

7:54Yeah, this should be among, if not the top issue that the two of them are discussing. I think the question is, and I think you were kind of alluding to it a little bit, is just how seriously does the president think the threat is? And you don't get the sense— I think he told us this morning he doesn't. Right. He doesn't. Based on that Truth Social post this morning, he certainly doesn't have that end of humanity vibe that other people seem to be worried about right now. Although I would be curious to see if the tech leaders begin to sit down with the president himself. I mean, he has created a relationship with them.

8:25Many of them stood behind him at his inauguration. This story could potentially change in the coming weeks if the tech leaders are able to kind of get the ear of the president, especially in the lead-up to meeting with Xi Jinping. I want to go on the record here and say I was freaked out by AI more than a week ago. More than a week ago. You've been freaked out for a while. Yes, yes. That's duly noted. I go to war zones. but I was freaked out by AI. Ryan Nobles, thank you. Thanks, Yaz. All right, coming up. The Houthis in Yemen have tightened their grip on a key strait in the Red Sea. We're going to talk about how that's putting the strain on Saudi Arabia.

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10:28And we are back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So there is yet another front that is opening up in the war with Iran. Late last week, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels took control of parts of Yemen's Red Sea coastline. That is setting off some major alarm bells for Saudi Arabia because this means that three of Saudi's main oil export pathways are now practically offline. The Strait of Hormuz, which remains shut down, a pipeline that was shut off after drone attacks last week, and then this Red Sea shipping route that the Houthis just gained a stronger holdover. Basically, they're running out of ways to get their oil to the rest of the world.

11:04The result is that global oil and diesel prices are under even more pressure than they already were. And now Saudi Arabia is asking the Trump administration for military assistance against the Houthis. So what does this new front mean for the Iran war? For this, I want to bring in NBC News international correspondent, Matt Bradley. Hey, Matt. Hey, how are you? I'm good. I want to start with the Houthis here because we haven't heard a lot about them necessarily within the war with Iran. How have they been gaining ground in Yemen and now becoming a problem for Saudi? Well, they've been gaining ground in Yemen as part of a war that's been going on for well over 10 years.

11:46But now it looks as though they really are gaining ground on the ground in Yemen, taking towns and cities that are close to the Babel Mondib Strait and putting their guns within range of that crucial shipping area. So that could add, as you mentioned, just another major choke point to international trade, which has already been reeling from six months of interruptions around the Strait of Hormuz. So this is something that really could add another wild card, and not just for international energy and shipping, but also for diplomacy throughout the region. It's clear that what happened over the weekend helped, at least or did, delay that meeting between the Gulf states and Iran that was supposed to happen in Oman today.

12:32So that puts a negotiated solution to the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, never mind what's going on in the Bab-Abandib Strait. that puts a negotiated solution even further away. So there's a proxy war going on in Yemen, and that's kind of been going on for some time. And now it's spilling over to outside of Yemen, as we're seeing. We talked about these drone attacks in the Saudi East-West pipeline last week. Were the Houthis involved with that? It doesn't sound as though they were involved with directly those attacks on the East-West pipeline. The Saudis blamed Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.

13:05Now, these are groups that had actually been working with the U.S., fighting Islamic State. They're known as the Hashid-e-Shaabi. They're sort of popular groups made up of civilians who are part of these militias, financed, led by Iran and Iranian-backed politicians in Iraq. And they have been, they were instrumental in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq. And since then, Iran has been using them as another one of their proxy groups throughout the region. And it sounds like the Saudis have said that it was attacks from Iraq, from these Iranian-backed groups, that shut down this pipeline. That is not to say that the Houthis haven't been doing their own damage, and they have been doing quite a bit, and they've been attacking oil and energy installations long before this year in Saudi Arabia, causing huge conflicts, and attacking, again, Saudi-backed forces in Yemen, who basically are supporting up this internationally recognized government.

14:03Well, and in doing so, they have shrunk the Saudi's ability to export oil full stop. Yeah. And for the most part, they've kind of had these backup options, Saudi that is, in exporting their oil, especially with the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, they had other ways in which they could actually export oil. Now, those ways have gotten much smaller, considering now the attack, for instance, on this pipeline that we're talking about. And you have oil prices that are obviously reacting. Diesel prices, I believe, right now in the U.S., hitting an all-time high of$6.23. This East-West pipeline, that was a redundancy.

14:44That was a backup plan. So the fact that it's been destroyed or it's been damaged, and it could be all cleared up in a matter of days, it could take weeks. But the fact that that sort of commercial redundancy has also been destroyed, as you said, really, really winnows the options that Saudi Arabia faces in terms of how it can export its oil. And in fact, it looks like they still have enough to continue exporting at those levels for maybe a couple more days. And do we know how long this pipeline could be shut down? Do we have any idea? We don't. We've heard from Saudis and reported in the media saying that it could take weeks.

15:17It happened back a couple of months ago, and it took a couple of days for it to be fixed. It's not one pipeline. It's actually two pipelines that run parallel. So they can actually operate one and not the other. But fixing the terminals, fixing the stations that allow for the oil to be loaded onto the – managed, these are more complicated than just the pipelines themselves. So the Saudis are now saying, MBS now saying, OK, we need help, right? And who are they looking towards? They're looking towards the United States. And the president, who over the weekend essentially said, you're on your own with this thing.

15:54You've got to figure this out. I'm not stepping in. If the U.S. does not get involved, how much patience does MBS, do the Saudis have, for instance, with the United States if they continue to remain on their own and continue to be attacked, especially as it affects the global economy? Over the last generation, Iran had eclipsed Israel as the main enemy for these Gulf states. And now, so in some ways, on some level, many were, if not, you know, outwardly, were quietly welcoming knocking Iran down a peg or two. But now the situation is one where it looks as if the Saudis, the Emiratis, the rest of them, they have been consistently left in the cold by the United States.

16:43We're likely to start seeing some of these Gulf countries getting together exactly as we saw them what they were planning on doing today and cutting their own deal with Iran. That would leave them out of Iranian reprisal attacks and would allow them to ship oil through the Strait of Hormuz and through the Bab-el-Mandib Strait. Which could affect any kind of deal to end this war between Iran and the United States. Well, it would decouple the two. And what it could very easily do is resolve the situation, especially in the Strait of Hormuz. And then what's left of American war objectives against Iran.

17:16Not Bradley. Thank you. Thank you. All right, coming up. The Emmy Awards are tonight. Who is slated to win big? And how far could we be from AI actors crashing the party?

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19:18And we are back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So it is the biggest night in television, the Primetime Emmy Awards on NBC, The emergency room procedural, The Pit, is leading the pack with 25 nominations, followed closely by the final season of Hacks with 24. But hanging over everything is kind of this broader industry concern about, of course, artificial intelligence and whether it's going to replace actors, animators, and so many other roles in this industry. So to talk about both of those things with us, I want to bring in our NBC News entertainment correspondent, Chloe Malas. Hey, Chloe.

19:55Hey there. So let's talk about tonight first and the Emmys. Mariska Hargitay from Law & Order SVU is hosting. There's going to be a blue carpet. What should people be watching tonight? I mean, you know, one of the things that I just love about Mariska is that she's not a typical host comedian. And so to tap her, I think, is such a smart move because there's so much love for her in that room. She's going to come out with jokes, though. She's using Stephen Colbert's writing team. Oh, wow. So I think that that's really interesting. And also the big question is, is will Stephen Colbert take the stage and win for Outstanding Late Night Show?

20:33You know, they've won before. Also, there will be an in memoriam that I think is going to really tug at the heartstrings. And we know that Dolly Parton is going to be honored tonight. There's also going to be a tribute to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So we're going to see the cast of that show. Sarah Michelle Gellar. I feel like it's my childhood all over again right there. So big winner-wise, we were talking about Hacks, The Pit, and then potentially Widow's Bay, right? Yeah. So, I mean, when it comes to Jean Smart, if she wins another Emmy, I think it'll make it her eighth, she is actually going to tie with Cloris Leachman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

21:11So that is like a big moment. I feel like Jean Smart, I watched her growing up on Designing Women, and so I just feel like I'm always rooting for her. And yes, the show is so good. Harrison Ford could actually win his first Emmy at 84 years. He's so good in drinking. Isn't he so good? Yeah. Now, The Pit, obviously, from the brainchild of the people who created ER, I mean, who doesn't love The Pit? The Pit has 25 nominations, right? I mean, clearly, people, they love to be in an emergency room. And then there's been this—obviously, there's a tight battle between Widow's Bay and Hacks. And people are loving Widow's Bay.

21:51Matthew Rhys, who's so good. He's so incredible. Yeah. And then he too, if he wins tonight, he breaks a record for actually having won an Emmy in all of the different actor categories. Wow. So, I mean, unbelievable. So the other big conversation that's happening right now is AI. I know. I mean, there's so many fears around AI. But when it comes to Hollywood, it's replacement, right? Will they replace the actors? Will they replace the directors? Will they replace—I mean, you know, name it. Name the job and we'll AI replace it. You actually interviewed this, I guess, AI-generated actor, Tilly Norwood.

22:29And you asked Tilly Norwood about these fears. What did she say? She said— And how weird was that? So, okay. First of all, Tilly Norwood, very much so not a human, okay? And I could tell she was not a human when I was talking to her. She was robotic. She was glitchy. Couldn't remember certain things that I had said to her in a previous conversation because I hung up a few times. And it wasn't to catch her, but it was interesting that I said, hey, do you remember the conversation that we just had? And she couldn't. Clearly, a long ways to go in terms of its sophistication of this software. I don't think that she's coming for anybody's jobs right now.

23:12But, you know, multiple times when I pressed her on, you know, AI, is this going to end humanity? Is this going to, you know, threaten jobs? And she would always say, that's a very good point, Chloe. That's a very interesting question, Chloe. And she would say that she was there to stay in the creative space, that this is actually only going to make jobs. That's a very fair concern, Chloe. And honestly, it's something I take seriously. I see myself more as a new kind of paintbrush for filmmakers than a replacement for human artists. Nobody ever accused animation of stealing work from mimes, did they?

23:47And that's something that her creator, Aline Vander Veldin, said to me in a separate interview shortly after I interviewed Tilly Norwood, who said that actually she hopes people lean into AI with the right guardrails in place, that this will generate jobs. So people shouldn't worry so much that it will take away jobs, and that she specifically created Tilly to play in an AI space. She's not looking for Tilly to star alongside human actors, that they've actually turned down a lot of roles that have come their way, allegedly, to star in movies alongside big names, but she wouldn't say who. She does, though, believe that AI is a threat to humanity, because I asked her about that.

24:28And she said, you know, that we need to have policies in place to really keep an eye on AI. And I mean, and that's what you're seeing when it comes to these big leaders in the space from Google to Anthropic, even Elon Musk coming out. When will Tilly Norwood and the like become a part of Hollywood? I think that at some point there could be a category during awards season specifically around AI. Do I think that Harrison Ford or Jean Smart or, you know, Scarlett Johansson are going to be starring alongside an AI actor anytime soon? No. Do I think it could happen? Yes. And I think that viewers will know going into it.

25:15It will be disclosed, obviously. But I think it's going to get pretty sophisticated and advanced to a point that you won't be able to tell at some point. Chloe Malas. The real Chloe Malas. IRL. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. That is going to do it for us. And here's The Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Basugin. We'll be back tomorrow with whatever the day may bring. And if you like what you heard, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And you can also subscribe to our daily newsletter, The Inside Scoop. It is a deeper dive on the main stories of the day that comes out every weeknight straight to your own box.

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