Key Iran Negotiations About to Begin

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1:26Well, as you heard, Artemis II will splash down tonight, and that will make history. History that, as Nicole was just saying, we can share together. That's the good news. We also have to face what's happening on this earth, which remains divided and at war in the Middle East because of choices made by President Donald Trump without consulting the Congress, the American public, in a war that he increasingly is trying to wind down or get out of. The United States is preparing for new ceasefire talks here this weekend in Pakistan. Vice President Vance will lead the delegation. He is on a kind of a MAGA tightrope.

2:02He's been voicing opposition to the war for weeks, according to leaks in the New York Times and other outlets that make you wonder, in that tight, usually national security protected circle, who is it that keeps wanting everyone to know that if this war doesn't work out so well or is already unpopular, J.D. Vance was against it? Well, the Times doesn't reveal its sources. You'd have to just be an expert at politics to ask the question qui bono. But there are people clearly pushing the message that J.D. Vance will help get us peace and didn't like this war to begin with. Some articles say it's the highest stakes assignment of his career.

2:37And you saw he was just boarding there. Here's what he said before getting on Air Force Two. We're looking forward to the negotiation. I think it's going to be positive. We'll, of course, see, as the president of the United States said, if the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we're certainly willing to extend the open hand. If they're going to try to play us, then they're going to find that the negotiating team is not that receptive. So we're going to try to have a positive negotiation. The president has gave us some pretty clear guidelines. That's pretty standard talk, really.

3:07If you're a diplomat or a senior government official, nobody's going to say they want to be played. Of course, you have to go out and do these meetings. For the United States, the problem really is advances. It's been President Trump, the buck stops with him, waging this war without clear objectives. Indeed, if we had objectives that were clearly stated, such as completely disarming Iran, we haven't achieved them. If we had objectives about the energy markets, obviously we're worse than where we started. And so without knowing what the United States actually needs or wants to get out of this war in order to leave the war on a policy level does put everybody in a tough spot.

3:42Trump's saying there's a reset, but he's also loading up ships with the best ammo, the best weapons ever made, better than what we did previously. He goes on to say, if we don't have a deal, we'll be using those weapons. Trump also told the New York Post that they will ramp up attacks as needed. This continues what has been widely derided as a kind of erratic set of messages from the president. When you look at the oil market and the choke point at the Strait of Hormuz, It's mostly closed under Iran's leadership this week. We have a time lapse of the last day, which gives you a quick summary of how few ships are making it through.

4:20In normal times before Trump started this war, you'd see up to 100 a day. Here you have just a couple there dotting around. That's courtesy of a traffic site that monitors the energy markets. Oil prices are high. There was a dip over the ceasefire, you can see, but still much higher than where we were. And that is raising prices on Americans. We're now at a two-year inflation high. Remember, that was the very issue Trump campaigned on against Biden, who had his own inflation problems. But now we've got wars of choice, policies the president could do or not do that are stoking the high prices. We're also seeing consumer confidence crash to its lowest point ever.

5:03This is actually below COVID.

5:08Buckle up. These are some weak numbers. Consumers are being stressed by higher energy prices. The president of the United States ran on this idea that he was going to lower inflation in the United States. And between the war and tariffs, we are not there. Another very extremely low level on expectations. First true picture of what the conflict has done to the inflation story here in the United States. Inflation rose to 3.3 % in March, the hottest reading in two years. Gas prices are up. All prices are up under inflation. The oil markets are roiled. You don't have to be a Mideast expert to see that broadly speaking, the American consumer with this crashing confidence is in a worse place than before the war began.

5:59That doesn't mean nothing has been achieved. There are folks who think that Iran got away with too much for too long. It is considered a kind of a pariah among many of its Gulf state neighbors. If you had a popularity contest, Iran would be one of the least popular countries and regimes. It's the same regime. Trump hasn't changed that in the modern world that we live in. But that doesn't mean that this war, the way that Trump has waged it, is helping the United States interests, United States public, or even our regional allies. I want to bring in Max Boot, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, Washington Post columnist, a veteran of so many of these debates.

6:38And you're not pure dove, at least over the course of your decades, right? You're not a pacifist. And I think you, you're not known as a pacifist. And you and others would speak clearly about what is wrong with Iran. I want to be careful to give that nuance. There's a lot wrong with that government. But the policy question always comes back to how is this policy working? Your view of that today as we go into the talks this weekend under Trump. Well, I mean, you're right, Ari. I mean, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's an evil, awful regime in Iran that slaughtered tens of thousands of its own protesters earlier this year.

7:14So, you know, this is a regime that we want. We want to see them lose this war. But unfortunately, I don't see them losing the war right now. They have no doubt suffered major damage. No question about that. They've lost a lot of military resources. They've lost a lot of economic resources. But President Trump has not achieved his stated war aims. He has not eliminated the missile program. They were still firing missiles and drones right up until the second of the ceasefire. He has not eliminated the nuclear program. They still have nearly 1 ,000 pounds of enriched uranium, which the U.S. has not gotten out of the country.

7:47He has not ended the regime in spite of his ludicrous attempts to claim that regime changes already occurred, when in fact what's happened is there have been some personnel changes at the top, but it's the same regime. And now what's really galling and upsetting is that as a result of this war, Iran has basically closed down the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz, which is the waterway through which 20 % of the world's oil passes, it was wide open when this war began. And now it's basically closed, except the ships that the Iranians want to see passing through there. And President Trump is remarkably cavalier about something which is a disaster for the global economy.

8:26He's basically saying, oh, well, it'll open up naturally. You know, he's not perturbed that he said that the ceasefire, which they announced this week, was predicated on Iran allowing free and full passage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Clearly, that hasn't happened. And that's not true. Right. He was shown up. He was either lying then because he just wants to sell a vision or he was shown up. Both are just different types of problems. And I'm just curious what you think of the way the Pentagon in the United States under Trump has officials claiming things that clearly are not the case.

9:01Because, yes, our military is effective, but killing and bombing is different. It's tactical. That's different than winning. And yet they're claiming that we've already won, which would be news to the public. I just showed all of the problems. Here's those claims. Operation Epic Fury was a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield. A capital V military victory. Over the course of 38 days of major combat operation, the Joint Force achieved the military objectives as defined by the president. This is a victory for the United States of America that the president and our incredible military made happen.

9:44Max? I guess they're able to claim it's a victory because the goals that Trump set for the war seem to change on a daily, even hourly basis. So almost anything that happens can be marketed as a victory. But, you know, when you have Iran shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, and it's still shut, I want to emphasize that, that looks more like a capital D defeat than a capital V victory to me. They're going to have a very hard time spinning this unless the Strait of Hormuz opens up again, because you're going to see the impact. You've already seen the impact on oil prices, but you're not going to see oil prices come down if the current condition remains in effect.

10:20And now there are suggestions that the Iranians basically want to get paid for opening up the strait, whether they're going to be paid by ship owners or whether they're going to be paid by getting billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets back. Either way, this is a very bad look for an administration that was castigating, you know, people like President Trump were castigating President Obama for, you know, giving$1.6 billion or whatever the figure was in cash back to the Iranians. And they're giving far more. They've already given more because they've relaxed sanctions on Iran. So Iran is actually making money out of this war.

10:54I mean, they're suffering a lot of damage. But just in terms of oil sales, they're making more money from oil sales now than they were when this war began. I mean, how is this an American victory? Yeah. When you lay it out, it is. It's nonsensical. And it all comes, it's all coming downhill from wanting to claim things. So he posts about the ceasefire. That's how he started the week, essentially. And it doesn't matter the days later. We don't have the opening, as you mentioned. and we're all paying the high prices for it. Max Boot, thank you. Good to have you kick off the program as we look at the negotiations this weekend.

11:26I'll tell folks that Nicole and I started the hour discussing the splashdown by Artemis. You're going to see that on the news tonight. Still ahead, scrutiny on Trump's plans for a massive arch, more efforts to celebrate himself. But next, we turn to one of our special reports. I'm very excited to present this to you as we look at what Democrats are doing to fight back against big tech. If you feel like AI is coming for your jobs and the phones are coming for your kids, we put something together to present this to you with two very special guests when I'm back in 90 seconds.

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13:28We're living through intense times. We have an accelerating pace of change and people have grown accustomed, it seems, to this life of the instant internet information world that we have, the constant phone usage, and remarkable but also clearly dangerous technology that's coming at us and coming at our jobs. We know tech billionaires increasingly run the stock market in our economy. They partner with the Trump White House. And many of them dictate everything from how AI will remake the job market to deploying lethal missions at the Pentagon. We mention this site because there's more and more information about what's going on in what are largely secretive, still often privately held, AI companies.

14:11They might be more important than a lot of the companies on the stock market, but they're not transparent and governed that way. Take this new investigative report about one of the biggest AI companies backed by Microsoft. You've probably heard about ChatGPT. It's from OpenAI, and journalist Ronan Farrow, who's at the New Yorker and at one point used to work here, draws on more than 100 interviews, including several with Altman and private notes and other internal messaging systems, to look at how this increasingly powerful person operates. A board member told The New Yorker that there's a strong desire to please people by Altman, but an almost, quote, sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences of deception.

14:54They say he's basically unconstrained by truth. There are internal memos that allege he was deceiving executives about safety protocols, which is a big deal when you think about how sweeping these companies are and their impact on the rest of us. Now, Altman's company is pushing back a bit. They told one outlet that the piece is basically rehashing previously reported material sourced from people with agendas. And that's just some of the investigative pressure on what at least some evidence suggests is a liar running a very important company. Meanwhile, Altman's also in the news because police arrested a suspect reportedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at a gate near his home.

15:37So you can see there is a lot of different pressures and different scrutiny on the people in charge. I mentioned that the markets are largely cut out of this because AI might be one of the fastest changes to how we get information, which affects, of course, news, media, democracy, but also how we all work and live. You might look up in a couple years and find these companies haven't even gone public, but they've wiped out millions of jobs. And the question becomes, do we get a say about this in this democracy before it is too late, before all those jobs are gone? Are these billionaires are even more powerful with a stranglehold over our information and our phones and what our kids watch?

16:17And I'm not trying to be alarmist. I'm just saying this is all happening now. It might be too late by the time everyone wakes up, which is a point that some Democrats are now making. We need to develop a sense of urgency. If we are not careful, this is a type of technology that will overpower us and the people will never forgive us for that. All of this harm has occurred not in spite of, but because of the absence of federal legislation to regulate AI. There is literally an existential threat to the existence of the human race. We need to make sure the AI revolution works for all of us, not just the tech billionaires.

16:58sounds fair. Some of that sounds pretty sensible. And there is plenty of big talk. The AI companies almost seem to like stoking the idea that what they have is existentially threatening because it makes it sound more important and makes them more money if people think it's really that big a deal. And some politicians from Trump to Sanders exaggerate or oversell. We're familiar with that. and they talk about the existential threat as a reason to get more support for their agenda, including regulating these companies. Now, here's the way I'm going to put it, because I'm going to try not to have an agenda like either of those forces, the billionaires and the politicians.

17:37I'm just going to tell you, as someone who follows the news and law, that if there is a chance of an existential threat, let's call it a 10 % chance, then yes, our society and your government has a very good reason to try to regulate against that if this is a existential nuclear level threat. And now let's say one rung down. Let's say it's not an existential threat to everything. Let's just say that it risks 10 or 20 million jobs in America. Again, if there's a non-zero chance of that, don't you want your government looking into this? Sanders and AOC have introduced a bill to at least try to regulate the proliferation of these data centers for AI so there's better regulation.

18:19And that's going fast. And there's billions literally pouring into that. Meanwhile, there are other levers. It's not just Congress, especially when you look at how few things Congress gets done. We do have civil courts in this country. And we've reported on this program about how Facebook's parent company and Google had to pay millions when they lost this case over how their products are hawked to young people and how addicting they make them. Axios has found that Meta, the Facebook company, is deliberately removing ads for attorneys who see clients harmed by social media on Meta. The technical term for that is, it's pretty messed up.

18:56But all is not lost. Journalists, like those I mentioned, are reporting on this. And we have to do some heavy thinking about this much concentrated power. There's a longtime writer in this space, Elizabeth Spires, who also points out the anti-intellectualism of some of these tech billionaire elites that they target knowledge from elites below. That would include writers and the media and the free press. A bedrock conviction among the oligarchs, she argues, that they've mastered everything and have nothing left to learn. Or take the Atlantic writer Thomas Chatterton, who says there's a problem with what he calls powerful men who think any introspection is dumb.

19:38America's tech oligarchs are, he argues, pathologically unreflective. They see it as a waste of time to look inward and consider what makes a life worth living. Humanity, equality, diversity, the things that many people think are important in a society. He notes the people who seem least interested in introspection are those whose work is most profoundly shaping our reality. Mr. Williams, who I just quoted, and our friend Jelani Cobb are here for a special conversation on this. Next.

20:37to make sure the AI revolution works for all of us, not just the tech billionaires. Confronting big tech and AI before it's too late. That's what some liberals there you saw are calling for. And we have a special conversation on this tonight. I invited two people who've thought about a lot of these issues. Thomas Chatterton Williams is an Atlantic staff writer, quoted his piece. And Jelani Cobb is dean of the Colombian School of Journalism, a staff writer for The New Yorker. Welcome to both of you. One of the problems with talking about tech is sometimes you only end up with the techies. And while they know the tech part, which is cool, and I've had some of them on here, I wonder if the human part is as or more important to humans.

21:14And so I'm curious what you think of this massive power and how tech billionaires, or AOC calls them oligarchs, increasingly have control of our economy, our labor markets, our sources of information and journalism. There are a couple of things here, right? One, when people start talking about existential threats, the first thing that you reasonably go to is nuclear arms. You know, these are controlled by governments. These are not just kind of random corporate entities that all have control of nukes. But when we develop a technology that could have that scale of existential threat to human existence, we see—people have seen the film Oppenheimer.

21:57We see that he is wracked by guilt and torn up by the implications of what he's done, even as he's done it in the midst of a war that posed its own series of threats and so on. And the part that we don't talk about, we think something we thought about during the Cold War, we don't think about very much since then, is that Oppenheimer's Soviet counterpart, Andrei Sakharov, had a similar experience. Engineered the Soviet atomic bomb and then said, this is the weapon that we should never use and spent the rest of his life fighting for human rights and arguing against nuclear proliferation. And so that is the kind of character, the kind of person that you want to at least have some sort of moral concern about what the implications of this kind of weaponry or technology can be on the other side.

22:52Which is why I thought Ronan, of course, is like my colleague at The New Yorker, so maybe I'm not an unbiased source, but I thought Ronan's piece on Sam Altman was really interesting in exactly that regard because they're asking, does this person even have that sensibility? Does this person have that kind of consciousness about the powers of the technology that he's in charge of? Hmm. Well, it gets at one of the main problems with this area when you contrast it with the type of stewards of nuclear weapons and nuclear technology. You have a class of people that have amassed more power and wealth in individual hands than have ever been in such small possession.

23:32and they don't just ignore this kind of stewardship, but they openly disdain the kind of introspection and self-awareness and reflectiveness that allows you to have a kind of theory of mind for others and extend empathy. And I think we should all be highly alarmed by the kind of adolescent Nietzscheanism that is on display here, where it's just act and then forget. A strong man does. A weak man sits around and stews and thinks and worries and apologizes. I think these people behave in ways that most of humanity is not aligned with yet. They're the architects of the collective reality that's supposed to become aligned with humanity.

24:09It's a strange paradox. It really is. And I feel as someone who's living in the news every day and obviously covering all these big things. And yet this is one of the big things that's just outside of you. But it's really big. And you inspire, as I quoted in this setup, because you're both looking at what you mentioned, which is what's the framework for these people? She goes on to write that many of these Silicon Valley elites believe deep intellectual work has no value. They disdain for it and it's fueled their attacks on higher ed humanities learning for its own sake, which they believe has no purpose beyond digitization and monetization.

24:46One of the things that really struck me in this week that we've been talking about the New Yorker profile of Sam Altman is a 2018 piece in the New York Post where it was reported that he had joined a wait list to digitize his brain. The catch is that the process kills you. So he's willing to part with his biological life to make himself a PDF filer, to become a living chat bot. It's terrifying, but this is the person that's actually the architect of the reality we're all going to be stuck in. And they're making decisions, but there's no democratic process where we get to weigh in and say that.

25:26I mean, most of us, I would venture to say, would not be comfortable having physician-assisted suicide to become a machine. Yeah. Well, and Jelani, this goes back to what I showed from the Congress. we have more rules in federal law for trains than for AI. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Because also we have this kind of ethos that is so severely anti-regulation, especially around technologies like this. But I want to go back for a second to something you said when you're talking about the disdain for anything that smacks of self-reflection. or it is seen, you can see that manifesting itself in the way that we laud STEM now in disdaining humanities.