Sen. Mark Warner On What Trump Is Risking With War in Iran

15:53Kara Swisher:I talked to several people who have done war planning, and they're like, there's plans of plans of how to do plans. And then they hadn't seen any plans. And this was a Republican who is also quite privy to a lot of things.

16:03Mark Warner:There has been no plans that we've seen. No, like, if this happens, then that. I mean.

16:09Kara Swisher:There's also no secret plans that Teg Seth has talked about. with those secret plans you know nothing about.

16:14Mark Warner:Kara, I only wish I could tell you, you know, don't worry. I can't tell you, but I'd have to kill you because I'm in part of the Gang of Eight, but rest assured, if they exist, he is once again not following the law

16:27Kara Swisher:by not sharing that with the Gang of Eight. So as you mentioned, Trump has said he won't settle for anything less than the regime's unconditional surrender. It's very movie-like. It's like he's talking about the Nazis or the Japanese World War II. Before the start of the war, intelligence reports warn that even a large-scale assault on Iran was unlikely to topple the regime. Everyone thought this. Very hard. They're very hardened people there. So what are the ways this war could end, and which one to you is the worst option and the best option?

16:57Mark Warner:Well, the best option, and I caveat it with maybe just he's done and he says, okay, we declare victory, and we've got, you know, tens of billions of dollars spent, and at least at this point, eight American servicemen killed and are we safer long-term or even short-term? And the intermediate would be, you know, it goes for another few weeks and you kind of come to the same conclusion, but, you know, you've attrited more of their ballistic missiles, you've taken out more of their military capacity. And I think the worst would be a semi-failed Iranian state that is still, you know, repressive, enormously aggressive.

17:39Mark Warner:And, you know, and again, one of the things that has not even been talked about very much, you know, could this reignite some kind of Sunni-Shia split across the whole region? So thank God, none of that is bubble. But if you're talking about worst case, that kind of interdenominational split within the Islamic community would be a really bad, bad thing.

17:58Kara Swisher:Yes, that's called dominoes, I believe, in diplomatic speak. So Trump, speaking of making it even more chaotic, has said he's thinking of taking over the Strait of Hormuz, where the oil flows through for people who don't know, and that the U.S. could escort tankers through the shipping channel to keep oil flowing. On Wednesday, three ships were hit in around the strait. It sounds disastrous and potentially disastrous to me. Practically speaking, what would escorting tankers look like for the U.S. military? It feels like we'll lose a ship. That's what it feels like.

18:27Mark Warner:Or if we may not lose a full ship, but we will lose sailors because, again, these small boats. I don't know. And again, President Macron from France has said he's going to send potentially French ships through. I have not heard – and I'm sure there must be a plan, but the Straits are so small how you – if you're thinking about something like an aircraft carrier, how you actually escort through, particularly if mines have been laid. So it's – you're not going to stop the mines or if they're sending out these small boats, I guess you can blow them out of the water. But I've not heard somebody come to us and say, hey, don't worry, we have a plan.

19:06We can do a frigates and elsewhere, smaller military vessels.

19:09Mark Warner:I just don't know the answer to that. And I think most of the commentary from retired military has been, you know, this would be very, very, very hard.

19:17Kara Swisher:Very hard to do. And it could make it even more chaotic if there was an explosion or something like that. We'll be back in a minute.

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22:29Kara Swisher:Let's talk about some of the long-term risks then. The regime seems, as you said, to be digging in, not looking for an exit ramp, as Trump expected. Clerics chose the Ayatollah's son, Moshtabah Khamenei, as the new supreme leader. He is, by most accounts, more of a hardliner, and of course we've killed his wife and children. What do we know about the stability of the regime right now and nuclear capabilities? Trump has said he got rid of them, but he didn't, or he said now he didn't. Talk about where they really are.

22:59Mark Warner:This is where I want us to not just be relying on the Israelis who've got better visibility into Iran than we do. This is where I just am not sure whether particularly our European friends who've got embassies still in Tehran, whether they still have better contacts, ideas about what the resistance might look like. You know, there was some conversation that even within the group of the, I think, 88 clerics, there was some, you know, it was not a slam dunk that this guy was going to be voted in. But this is, again, where I think we're flying a little bit blind. And, you know, usually the theory of the case is if you're going to have a resistance against an authoritarian regime, you've got to have a leader.

23:42Mark Warner:And, you know, we've had lots and lots of intel reports over a number of years that say, okay, we get rid of the supreme leader. Who's next? Is there some other viable leader? Is somebody going to, you know, reemerge that we could actually do business with? And the overall consensus was always no. And again, I'm just afraid that he's thinking the Venezuelan model where Dulcey Rodríguez, you know, the president now in Venezuela.

24:11Kara Swisher:Was close with Maduro.

24:12Mark Warner:Appears to be trying to do business with us, although that still leaves, you know, the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans who voted against Maduro maybe out in the cold. And –

24:22Kara Swisher:So does that person exist, a person in the U.S. can work with?

24:25Mark Warner:I'm sure, listen.

24:26Kara Swisher:And also has legitimacy, right?

24:28Mark Warner:Well, the regime is hated. I'm not a great student of Iran, but I've read enough intel. I've followed enough. You know, the fact that there was, you know, in the immediate aftermath of the killing, you know, some level of street celebration. But boy, oh boy, you got to have a leader. You got to have some organization. And when you've got this, you know, the IRGC, I think much different from even the Assad regime in Syria, you know, got 180 ,000 plus or minus folks. They not only are part of the security apparatus, but they own as an entity about half of the Iranian economy. So a lot of money, probably hated by many.

25:14Mark Warner:So if there's a regime change and it's not a few hundred that would get killed by the regime change, but potentially tens of thousands who have been so repressive for so long, they're going to fight pretty damn hard.

25:26Kara Swisher:Yeah, that's true. And speaking of flying blind, you said one of your biggest fears is the U.S. running down its stock of munitions to intercept ballistic missiles without knowing how many more Iran has. Talk about the risk of running down those stocks, even though generally speaking, the U.S. is in a much better position than Iran to keep dropping bombs.

25:43Mark Warner:Well, here's the thing we got to focus on. We have plenty of bombs to drop on Iran in the kind of the classic sense of airplane comes over, shoots a guided bomb down. What we don't have are the interceptors that can take down the Iranian ballistic missiles that are left or the Iranian drones. I go back to that$50 ,000 drone that we're spending a couple million dollar missile on. And this is, again, if there was even thinking about this coming around, why in the hell didn't they say, all right, Zelensky, who offered, I believe, we'll send a bunch of our drone experts. We'll send you a bunch of these right away.

26:23Mark Warner:They have perfected the ability to take down Iranian drones. They were going to start this war. Why the hell didn't they take up that offer? And my understanding is Zelensky made an offer to Trump in the White House, and, you know, nothing that got acted on. Now, I'm not sure we're going to have gotten them all into region, but it's just not the way you would do something that has this major ramification. Right.

26:48Kara Swisher:We don't have the right munitions. Yeah.

26:49Mark Warner:We got the right munitions to bomb the hell out of them. We don't have the right munitions to take down the Iranian attack back towards us. And that would hit the whole region.

27:00Kara Swisher:Right. We also saw an alert this week that Iran may try to activate sleeper cells outside the country, which they're well known for. When you think about the different ways they could wage asymmetrical warfare that hurts U.S. interest, what worries you the most, I would assume, in this country, right?

27:13Mark Warner:Well, it does worry me in this country, and it worries me that, you know, Kash Patel at the FBI has, over this past year, fired most of the senior expertise on counterterrorism, counterespionage. What worries me is that the, you know, the intel community, you know, has, you know, Tulsi Gabbard's been chasing, relitigating the 2020 election as opposed to like saying, how are we going to stay safe from terrorists? And then overall, and this is not, again, this part is not the Trump fault by any means entirely. You know, the intel apparatus moved away from counterterrorism to focus on counter adversaries like China and Russia.

27:54Mark Warner:That was, I think, overall the right move. But again, at this stage, a single incident or two with the World Cup coming and others. I mean, we are, if this goes on, you know, is again. We're vulnerable. We're vulnerable. Like you're never going to be totally. Of course not.

28:15Kara Swisher:No, in a very good, in a non-Cash Patel world, it would be hard enough, as you're saying. But are we ready to protect together? What is in place to do that if these people have left?

28:25Mark Warner:We still have, you know, lots of operations. We still have lots of personnel. And we've got a pretty good record of stopping, whether it's Iranian or other entities, as they try to launch these threats into America. And our NSA, our ability to listen in, our ability to break up these groups has been good. It's not like we've taken out a number of them, but at scale, and again, with some of the expertise that has been dismissed by Kash Patel, my level of worry is higher. And because this war is not popular already, I think the American people would be angrier than they are. I mean, a terrorist attack along with already, I think, 51 cents, 60 cents of additional gas prices going up.

29:16Mark Warner:And the amazing thing on the gas prices is that is because we're still burning down the oil that we've had or using the oil that we've had. and we're not really feeling the effects of the Strait to Hormuz being shut down.

29:30Kara Swisher:So every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Here's yours.

29:34Mark Warner:Hi, Senator Warner. This is Jason Rezaian. I'm a journalist with The Washington Post. I'm also Iranian-American and I lived and worked in Tehran for many years as a correspondent until I was taken hostage and held by the Islamic Republic for 544 days. what costs should the American public be prepared to pay for this war in terms of lost lives, destruction, environmental, and otherwise civilian infrastructure in the Middle East, but also to our own economy? And finally, there are currently six Americans that we know of who are being held hostage in Iran. What can be done and what is being done to free them right now?

30:18Well, Jason, I'm very aware of your story and have been part of the groups that were urging, pressing to try to get you released, and I'm thankful that that came to pass.

30:33Mark Warner:But again, as you said, after over 500 days, in terms of the six existing Americans that are still being held, I am not aware of, particularly at this moment of war, what is going on real time. In terms of the expectation of costs, we have been lucky to date that some of the strikes on some of our embassies haven't resulted in more casualties. Some of our strikes on our military or intel agencies or outposts around the region, that's been in a lot of ways, combined with good intelligence. But the honest acknowledgement. So if we're talking about, you know, even giving the administration all the credit, you know, a billion dollars a day of munitions cost, that doesn't count the cost of rebuilding what has been destroyed.

31:35Mark Warner:increasing gas prices on an economy that's already a bit wobbly, especially on the job front. And, you know, people struggling with affordability from groceries to gasoline. But as you know, this goes on virtually, whether we like it or not, kind of almost everything we make has a petroleum base to it. So it gets into every product. I met with one of the CEOs of the airlines today. And, you know, he said so far they're doing okay, but, you know, that's so far in terms of jet fuel costs going up. I don't say the airline, but he said the war is costing that airline$25 million a day.

32:13Kara Swisher:Yeah, yeah.

32:14Mark Warner:And if this goes for, you know, you can do the math. If it goes for six months, you're talking about$5 billion.

32:18Kara Swisher:Right.

32:19Mark Warner:And this could have a huge effect on our economy. And then finally, Jason, I guess I'd say I always believe that America is stronger with allies around the world. we have so burned so many of our allies around the world. And if we take these kind of actions that doesn't think through, you know, will they really be there next time?

32:41Kara Swisher:Right, right. Now, it's not over. In the last few months, the U.S. military deposed two heads of state, the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, even though the same government is still there. And the administration has made no secret the fact that it wants to do the same in Cuba. let's say for the sake of marketing that Trump is successfully either ending or severely damaging all three regimes. Does that make the U.S. safer and if so, should Trump get credit for that? And what are your thoughts on Cuba? Because, you know, Lindsey Graham can't keep himself, like, down.

33:11Mark Warner:It's hard to make an assumption and I'm not going to react to everything just because it's Trump. You know, if the Iranian regime had been gone and And Iran returned to not just a threat against us and against Israel, but against, frankly, other nations in the region and in Europe. You know, I'd have to give credit due, but at what cost? I mean, that's not going to happen today, tomorrow or next week. In terms of Cuba, I think the regime is on its last legs. I was hopeful they would have reformed. I don't think they had. I visited during the Obama period. And I always thought, Shane Schutten in Argentina, I love South America.

33:55Mark Warner:You know, I think we've never, we always look east, west, we never look south. But the idea, even when so many of the South American, Central American regimes would be glad to see Maduro go, we'd be glad to see the Castro regime moved on, they sure as heck don't want to return to the days of the United States, the gringo being the kind of patron or the paternalistic influence over all of that region.

34:21Kara Swisher:Gunboat diplomacy.

34:22Mark Warner:Yeah, gunboat. And just kind of, I think we'd finally built to the point that we looked at Central and South America as partners. We needed to do more, obviously, to slow down the traffic flow of people coming into America. But to go back to the old days of the gringo with the big guns, I'm not sure that, again, helps us. Since so many of these countries, though, around through South America, one of the things I don't think most Americans realize, most of them have already moved away their vast majority of their trading relationship with China, not with the United States.

34:57Kara Swisher:Yeah.

34:57Mark Warner:And I don't think us being kind of the big powerhouse, we're going to run the whole continent, North and South America, is going to move them away from China.

35:07Kara Swisher:What are the chances of a Cuban invasion or Cuban action?

35:11Mark Warner:I don't know, other than the fact that I would say the Cuban regime is – I think this is Trump is right, is on its last legs without the oil that would come from Venezuela with the fact that people are still trying to get out of Cuba at record rates. If he could navigate a transition in Cuba, I would – I think that would be better for the Cuban people. So, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that. And I still think, well, I'm glad Maduro's gone. I'm not sure the Rodriguez administration, which is still the Maduro folks without Maduro there, is actually making life better yet for the Venezuelans.

35:51Mark Warner:Maybe in terms of the fact that they're going to, with reopening the embassy and potentially getting the increase of the Venezuelan oil again, that may start to trickle through to the Venezuelan people. But so far.

36:04Kara Swisher:Still the same people.

36:05Mark Warner:My report says not so much.

36:06Kara Swisher:Yeah. All right. Now, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the war right now seems to be Russian President Vladimir Putin. The U.S. has started loosening some of the oil sanctions on Russia, which undermine the U.S. and European pressure campaign against the war in Ukraine. And soaring oil prices will boost the Kremlin's main source of funding for that war. How does the war weaken American strategic interests in other parts of the world, Ukraine being the center of that? There is – the one thing we absolutely know, that the only geopolitical winner thus far into this war is Vladimir Putin. If the Iranian regime had collapsed very quickly after Syria and after Hezbollah, you could argue that Putin was weakened because his client states.

36:46Mark Warner:But if the Iranian regime remains and they have now got – because we've released some of the sanctions, particularly as soon as the sale of oil to India, we've given Putin a lifeline of additional funds because it didn't get a lot of attention here. And I'm not even talking about necessarily American sources, but a lot of the Europeans when I was at the Munich Security Agreement were actually slightly more optimistic on Ukraine's chances because the Russians were taking such a cost in their economy. and just, you know, any country that's lost close to a million men killed, not one get killed, you can only maintain that for so long.

37:29But this gives, I think, fresh at least fuel to the fire for Putin.

37:33Mark Warner:And that's not a good thing. Not a good thing.

37:35Kara Swisher:So in talking about the war, Democrats have been visibly torn between their justified opposition to a brutal regime, you yourself have just said it, and their opposition to Trump's unilateral decision to go to war. As a result, it feels like the Democrats have a muddled message. the problem with the process, not the decision to bomb Iran and kill its leader. Why center on process, especially when Trump was already deeply unpopular before the conflict? By the way, the Pentagon reportedly may ask Congress for an additional$50 billion in emergency funding. Where are Democrats on this? And will you vote against it if it comes for the Senate?

38:08Mark Warner:You know, I want to see what the request is for. Remember, the Pentagon got a huge boost up in the big, ugly bill last summer.

38:14Kara Swisher:Mm-hmm.

38:16Mark Warner:So to say, you know, you have an emergency here when you've got a series of additional funds, you know, you've got to make the case. When they make the request, and I'm sure they will, you know, where do we stand at that point? Is there an end point? Is there a more articulated goal? Are we still got these four goals that we've been bouncing around on?

38:38Kara Swisher:Can we see the plan?

38:39Mark Warner:So, you know, I'm not going to do an absolute no. I'm not going to sure as heck not do an absolute yes. I want to see the circumstances and see the request what it's for you don't want to obviously nobody wants to hold the lives of our service members at risk if they're not getting the munitions or the the tools they need to defend themselves um so this is the kind of conundrum a little bit once the war is this war is started you have to back them you have to you have to obviously we all would back the troops we're no I think our country thank god has moved past that kind of, you know, venom around Vietnam, where even if they didn't like the war, you took it out on the troops.

39:13Mark Warner:That was awful. The goals, even if it's like he declares victory tomorrow and gets out, I actually think we've probably made America less safe because a wounded Iran that's still got all of these capacities, who knows where they'll stop. I mean, the remarkable thing about the supreme leader, the guy that we knocked off and the Israelis knocked off on their first day, He was a bad guy, but he had actually restrained Iran from, you know, weaponizing their enriched uranium. He had held back on tax against America and our interest. I got no belief or bet the son, he's not a kid, I think 55, 58, something like that.

39:55Mark Warner:And I think he has been wounded too. There's a lot of reporting on that. Who's, you know, going to be probably more anti-American than his dad since we killed his dad, wife, and kids.

40:05Kara Swisher:Right. Right. So but go back to the process part of that question. Why center on the process? Voters, especially Democrats, want the party to make a clear position here. Is it important to focus on the process of how it happened? Because this is how it always happens with Trump. He just moves forward and says, oh, well, come and arrest me if you want kind of thing.

40:22Mark Warner:Well, if the position is and this is probably the position of of most at this point. Stop it tomorrow. Stop, stop, stop, regardless of the outcome and regardless of the consequences. I just like, you know, as important as it is to have a soundbite answer, I'm too deep in the weeds on this. You know, it's hard to say stopping tomorrow when he did, I think, something careless and irresponsible to start without making the case. Or it's much more than process. But to stop tomorrow, I think my job is also to say, is that going to make America safer or less safe?

41:01Kara Swisher:Right.

41:02Mark Warner:And to me, that's unfortunately at this point, a bit of an open question.

41:07Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

41:15Mark Warner:How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer?

41:18Kara Swisher:Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, new vehicle discount, storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. Hi, I'm Brene Brown.

41:33Mark Warner:And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to The Curiosity Shop.

41:36Kara Swisher:A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning.

41:42Mark Warner:It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to The Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday.

41:57Kara Swisher:For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man.

42:03Mark Warner:And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat.

42:10Kara Swisher:I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first.

42:20Mark Warner:America first.

42:22Kara Swisher:Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building.

42:27Mark Warner:But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox.

42:36Kara Swisher:The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive.

42:43Mark Warner:You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America, actually.

43:02Kara Swisher:So I want to shift to something because another thing that's going on here is we've been talking about the war in Iran, but there's a major story related to the Pentagon's decision to label AI company Anthropic a supply chain risk, a designation historically reserved for foreign companies. The Pentagon's decision was huge. Implications for how the U.S. conducts war in the future, and Anthropic was involved in the Venezuelan situation. I suspect their technology has been used in this operation. It has. And Anthropics announced it's suing. And obviously, after the Pentagon's decision, Sam Altman announced that his company OpenAid swept in to make a similar deal.

43:36Kara Swisher:He claimed it included some of the same guardrails that killed Anthropics' deal. I'm skeptical. But talk a little bit about these two related things and the impact on these companies that are becoming more critical.

43:47Mark Warner:The idea of designating an American company as supply chain risk is, I think, completely unprecedented. We've done that with foreign companies, but never with American companies.

43:56Kara Swisher:Right. And a company that, you know, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google,

44:01Mark Warner:there's a lot of large language models out there that are really good, but nobody would disagree that Anthropic's not one of the best. um now you could go back and fly spec whether dario the ceo of anthropic should have been you know is out there this much in the department of defense what they did but the thing that just why i'm so much on you know anthropic side in terms of the uh of the court case is that you know arbitrarily saying your supply chain risks because you think issues like you know whether we should create an AI-driven weapon without a human in the loop or that we should turn over completely unprecedented surveillance tools that AI models could provide without a freaking debate.

44:47Mark Warner:I don't want to trust Pete Hegs-Eff with making those decisions. So I very strongly feel that the government's overreached. I think if there is no process, and it's, again, as arbitrary as Hegs, Theft, and Trump, you know, without, I think, any real justifiable cause saying, we can declare any of you supply chain risks, you are our best and brightest really going to try to even do business with the government.

45:11Kara Swisher:So their argument is that Anthropic is a private company, can't tell a government to use its products, which is what Anthropic was trying to do. On the other hand, it sounds reasonable to say the government shouldn't use these tools to illegally spy on American citizens or kill opposing soldiers without human oversight. It's also their, if they don't want to sell it, they don't have to sell it, right? That's usually our way. Where's the line of this power from your perspective? I mean, you've been on both sides of the equation.

45:34Mark Warner:I've been on both sides. It is a really hard choice. You've got to make some concessions to work with the government. I get that, and particularly DOD. And you know you're doing business with an entity. This job is to both protect Americans and, you know, kill the bad guy. But to do that without a debate, particularly in an area where we are in such uncharted territory as AI, it just doesn't make sense to me. This is why, you know, I put a bill out today, bipartisan bill that's going to try to say, let's do an Economy of the Future Commission trying to model after the cyber solarium to say, we got to put some ground rules in place around AI.

46:13Mark Warner:But you know, Carol, you know, we have completely stunk at putting any guardrails on social media. You know, the power of all these companies has only exponentially grown. The idea that we're going to sort this through quickly. And I'm not only questioning about, you know, have we unleashed, and I'm pro-AI in terms of, I think, ultimately, it will be very beneficial even around jobs. But, man, I am spooked about the economic disruption, particularly for, like, recent college grads over the next five years. You know, the doom scrollers I don't fully agree with, but they're not without some argument that we ought to go through.

46:48Mark Warner:The moltbox bot stuff about, you know, these agentic AI agents kind of creating their own network, their own religion. You know, that's a pretty spooky place. Or just, you know, go back to Anthropic, you know, the fact that Claude, their best model, has, in just the last two and a half months, completely disrupted the software industry for a few days on the markets because the movement on these AI tools is absolutely as fast as anything Altman or Dario or any of these guys said. And usually the prognosticators, the advocates are wrong about how long it's going to take. This time they may be right.

47:24Mark Warner:And somehow we got to, and you're part of this debate and I'm part of this debate. We got to somehow force the countries to come to grips with the fact that we can't punt this.

47:33Kara Swisher:Does this incident complicate the situation and does it make us less safe? With Claude was really important from what I'm talking to. A lot of people are like, we don't want open air. We wanted Claude. Like that's our best and brightest. Well, there are things like, you know, if you've got a ship and you've got an AI defense system that automatically responds to an incoming missile, that to me is less problematic, obviously.

47:55Mark Warner:We have variations on that already to, you know, what some people have said, we're going to launch, you know, a thousand drones all at once. And once they're launched, you know, we're going to have no control. They're going to be able to go after targets they want because you don't have any kill switch or you don't have any ability that once launched. Yeah, agency. You got control. Yeah, agency. So I don't pretend to know the answers on that, but I sure as hell don't want to turn that all over to Pete Hegsseff to arbitrarily make a decision on a short-term basis.

48:27Kara Swisher:So what's going to happen with this anthropic thing from a guess from you?

48:30Mark Warner:You know, I hope. I saw that Microsoft, I even think, filed an amicus brief. I think even Altman, you know, said he supported some of the privacy issues.

48:40Kara Swisher:He's on every site. He's on it, in case you're interested. I care.

48:43Mark Warner:I know your relationship.

48:44Kara Swisher:But I just would say this. And I like him, but he's on every side.

48:47Mark Warner:Yeah, I would just say this. This is why we were so crappy on doing anything on social media. That is child's play compared to implications around this AI debate. So we got to get our shit together and not think incrementally. And I just, I did a couple of AI forums today off the hill. and I want to be optimistic, but I just hope we don't have to go through some god-awful event that says, holy crap, why didn't we think about this ahead of time?

49:17Kara Swisher:Right, and the companies have power they possibly shouldn't have. You've seen that with Elon Musk and everybody.

49:22Mark Warner:Well, we've seen the power. And also, I think they've got to share the responsibility. We could spend a whole other program on just the economic misdistribution, maldistribution, job elimination. I don't think it has to happen, But as we've talked in the past, you know, with a lot of these AI tech big guys, you know, empathy would not be the first word that comes to mind.

49:45Kara Swisher:No. In fact, it's not even in the top 100. So last question, the fact that we're having this conversation about the bombs are falling to run only underlines this urgency. Let's circle back to the war. There have been a lot of comparisons to the Iraq war and fears were repeating that mistake. But at least with Iraq, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of military force there, and a big majority of the public initially supported intervention. In hindsight, we know Bush administration built that support on untruths about Iraq's nuclear capabilities. But conflict with Iran is unique because a clear majority of Americans oppose it at the outset.

50:20Kara Swisher:If this drags on longer than the administration anticipates, what happens? What does it mean for the country? I was talking to a very prominent Republican senator, and he said, if it's not over in 15 days, it's over for the Republican Party in a lot of ways. I don't know if that's the case. What do you think?

50:36Mark Warner:What I would say is, you know, there have been so many incidences that I thought, oh, my God, this will be the breaking point for my Republican friends. And, you know, and again, I'm guilty as charged as still trying to be bipartisan. But, man, I have lost a lot of faith with these guys and gals that, you know, there will not be a constraint put in place. And we don't have to get a bunch, but until, you know, a good number of Republicans step up and say, is this really not only the precedent we want to set, but is this the way we want to have our country governed by a single individual without any congressional constraints?

51:14Mark Warner:if they keep ceding power. But we bring up our resolutions. We argue and fight. But in a system where you still got to get 51 or 218, 217, 18 in the House, we got to get some folks to get religion that this is not the way the country ought to work.

51:33Kara Swisher:Well, there was Marjorie Taylor Greene. We weren't expecting that plot twist. I want that one. Yeah, it's like strange things. If she can come out, come on, guys, this shouldn't be that hard. Well, she's consistent with what she said at the beginning. She's a consistent voice. In that regard, other things, let's leave that aside. But last question, what could it mean for the country as a whole if you had a game in out? They're not moving or constraining him. You're unable to. What does that mean until at least November? Well, it means that if we don't all get out and vote like hell, we're screwed.

52:07Mark Warner:It also means what really scares me, and we ought to talk another time about this, As much as I'm afraid about what happened in Iran, I am almost equally, if not more, afraid about this president at this moment in time is going to interfere in a major way in our elections.

52:22Kara Swisher:Or attempt to.

52:23Mark Warner:Or attempt to. And I'm not as worried about trying to change the vote after the votes are cast, but I am concerned about using, even God forbid, a terrorist event or a piece of raw intelligence as a reason to change states, close polls, move in troops. and, you know, if that happens and we have a truly corrupted election, I don't know how the country ever comes back.

52:50Kara Swisher:Oh, man. All right. Not to end on that note, but I got to go. Thanks, Senator Warner.

52:54Mark Warner:Coming back next week for a cheerio presentation. Have you watched heated rivalry? I'm so happy.

53:00Kara Swisher:Anyway, go vote, but I really appreciate it. Thank you.

53:05Mark Warner:Thank you, Carol.

53:11Kara Swisher:Today's show was produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Michelle Eloy, Catherine Millsop, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Eamon Whalen. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On With Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.