US-Iran Talks, Texas ICE Shooting Trial, China AI Race

0:00Ladies and gentlemen, with a call to action, Leila Faddle. Good morning, Up First listeners. In a world that changes fast, staying informed really matters. Follow Up First on your podcast app so the day's top stories are waiting for you when you wake up. The U.S. and Iran negotiate in Geneva today over Iran's nuclear program and possibly much more. The Trump administration keeps building up military assets in the region. What happens if talks fall apart? I'm Stephen Skape with Leila Fathol, and this is Up First from NPR News. Nine people go to trial today over a non-fatal shooting outside an ICE detention center in Texas.

0:44Defendants say a protest got out of control, while prosecutors label it terrorism. The administration is going to go to great lengths to try to paint a picture of any far-left perceived violence as being Antifa-oriented. And Chinese artificial intelligence is growing fast, even with U.S. limits on advanced chips. In the global AI race, what matters more, being first or doing it better? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

1:17Representatives from the U.S. and Iran are due to negotiate in Geneva today. It's the second time in as many weeks the two sides will be discussing limits on Iran's nuclear program. The U.S. is said to want concessions from Iran well beyond nuclear issues, and its ally Israel wants a lot more. Americans have paired the talks with a threat positioning military force in the region. NPR's international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam is following these developments, and she joins me now. Good morning. Morning, Layla. So, Jackie, this is another round of talks today between the U.S. and Iran.

1:52Can we expect any sort of breakthrough? Well, it's a good sign that both sides are still open to negotiations. As with the last round of indirect talks in Oman, it would be U.S. Special Envoy Steve Wyckoff and the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, meeting with Iran's Foreign Minister, Abbas Arachi. Although President Trump said Monday that he would be involved in the talks indirectly, both the U.S. and Iran are still firm in their demands. President Trump doesn't want Iran to possess nuclear weapons and so wants zero enrichment. But Iran insists it has the right to enrich uranium for research and civilian uses.

2:29There are other important issues to address, such as Iran's ballistic missile arsenal, its use of proxies in the region, and a stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Okay, so it sounds as though both sides are dug in on key issues. Is there any sense of compromise? Well, Iran has indicated it could be open to curbing, not eliminating its nuclear program, and it brought a large technical team with it to Geneva as a gesture that it's serious. I spoke with Sanam Vakil, and she's an Iran specialist at Chatham House, which is a London-based think tank. And she says Iran is in a weaker bargaining position than the U.S.

3:06because it's in dire economic straits. Here she is. The Islamic Republic needs sanctions relief. The country just saw massive protests spread across Iran, really precipitated by collapsing currency and high inflation. But, you know, Leila, thousands of Iranians were killed by security forces during those protests, according to human rights groups. So any concessions by the U.S. could be seen as rewarding the authoritarian regime. And in fact, Trump recently said regime change in Iran would be, quote, the best that could happen. And this, of course, as a second aircraft carrier heads towards the region.

3:42Yeah, so Trump continuing to signal that military intervention is possible. And Iran is not the only thing Witkof and Kushner are dealing with, right? They're also holding discussions on the war in Ukraine. Just as we are about to mark the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion, what's going on with those negotiations? Well, you're right. Witkoff and Kushner are addressing these two major crises on the very same day. And there are even lower expectations of a breakthrough with the Ukraine talks and the Iran ones. This is only recently Ukraine and Russia have done face-to-face meetings, and that could indicate some pressure by Trump.

4:16You recall during his presidential campaign, he said he'd stop the war in one day. Now he says he wants a deal by June, but there is no real end to the war in sight, and it's set to enter its fifth year next week. That's NPR's Jackie Northam. Thank you, Jackie. Thank you.

4:39Nine people are set to go on trial today in a federal court in Fort Worth, Texas. They're standing trial in connection to a non-fatal shooting outside an ICE detention facility last July 4th. On that date, about a dozen people protested outside the Prairieland Detention Center, which is in Alvarado, Texas. They objected to President Trump's immigration crackdown and deportation efforts. Police and prosecutors say shots were fired and a local police officer was injured. Penelope Rivera with member station KERA in Dallas joins me to talk more about how the federal government is prosecuting this case.

5:13Good morning. Good morning. So tell us more about the shooting. What happened? So the people that gathered there that night said that it was meant to be a noise demonstration with fireworks to show solidarity with those inside the facility. According to the affidavit, 11 people showed up around 10.30 p.m. and some people started setting off fireworks while others graffitied cars in the parking lot. Then 20 minutes later, when a local police officer arrived, someone from a nearby woods began shooting. Those 11 protesters were arrested for being there that night, but there's now 19 people total charged for having an alleged connection to the incident.

5:49But different defendants face different charges. Okay, so people at protests get arrested often, but this is different. What's unusual about the charges the federal government is bringing in this case? So what's unique about it in this case is the type of charges that the federal government has filed. Eight people are facing providing material to support terrorist charges. one of the nine is accused of attempted murder of a federal officer. The U.S. Attorney's Office called the indictment against the nine defendants, the first in the country against a group of violent Antifa cell members. Jason Blazekis, executive director of the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, said there's no doubt that something bad happened the 9th of July 4th.

6:31But he says it's a stretch to connect this case to prosecute protesters as members of Antifa. I think we see the blueprint with the charges from July 4th that the administration is going to go to great lengths and really act as a contortionist to try to paint a picture of any far left perceived violence as being Antifa oriented. Last September, the Trump administration declared Antifa a domestic terrorist organization, and it's the first of its kind in history. What are the defendants saying about the charges? Well, prosecutors called the shooting an ambush and a coordinated attack against law enforcement.

7:07And I've communicated with six of the individuals and arrested in connection to the protest. That includes Megan Morris. She told me that she attended to show support for those detained at the Prairieland Detention Center and had no indication that anything violent was meant to occur that night. This whole narrative that the government wants to spin about a pre-planned ambush, that's ridiculous. That's a suicide mission, right? I have a family. I have friends. I have all these things that I would not give up just to roll up and commit some senseless act of violence against a random police officer.

7:40She pled not guilty and maintains her innocence. So what could the repercussions of this case be? So there's no federal criminal statute to charge people for domestic terrorism like there is for foreign terrorism. And it's still unclear whether the president has the authority to designate people or groups as domestic terrorists. According to former federal prosecutors I've talked to, if the government succeeds in getting these individuals convicted, it could have nationwide implications for how alleged left-wing movements are prosecuted. That was Penelope Rivera from KERA in Texas. Thank you, Penelope.

8:16Thank you.

8:25several chinese tech firms have released new ai models over the past couple weeks and more are expected to do so these models create videos power chatbots things that american consumers are now familiar with but our tech correspondent john ruich finds a special reason to watch them John, what is it? Well, they're from China. China has a very robust AI sector. Whatever China does, the world should be paying attention. We saw this last year when this Chinese company called DeepSeek produced an AI model that was actually quite good and quite inexpensive. It was a real surprise here because the U.S.

8:59government had been trying to stifle Chinese AI with export restrictions to deny access to the best chips in the world. But what DeepSeek seemed to show is that you did not need those top chips to make competitive AI. That freaked out a lot of people. Tech stocks tanked. The dominant maker of those chips for AI, NVIDIA, saw its stock price plunge 17 % in one day. Wow. And now the Chinese are releasing more AI models. So does that show that the fear of a year ago was relevant? Well, markets have bounced back from then. NVIDIA is up more than 50%. And for now, the sort of consensus has kind of reestablished its footing, if you will, that these advanced chips are actually critical for leading-edge AI development.

9:40Actually, DeepSeek and other Chinese firms seem to admit that a lack of advanced chips is a limitation. We reached out to DeepSeek but haven't heard back. But what's interesting is the geopolitical dynamic between China and the U.S. is in flux a bit, and that's relevant here. How is that? Well, those chip export restrictions from the U.S. seem to be loosening under President Trump. In December, he approved the sale to China of a certain type of advanced chips. It's not the best that money can buy, but they're very good. But there's a caveat. Xu Lan is a Chinese public policy expert at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

10:12He says the U.S. chip export restrictions have hurt Chinese AI companies in the short run. But in the long run, I think that embargo really, I think, served as a stimulant for China to develop its own chips. Yeah, the Chinese government is really pushing for self-sufficiency in chips. And some of the analysts I spoke to think China's leadership may actually be wary at this point of allowing too many advanced U.S. chips in. They just don't want to stifle that self-reliance drug. OK, so if the Chinese do not want to buy the most advanced chips from outside anymore, even if they could get them, and if they also aren't ready to make the most advanced chips themselves, how are they able to compete in this global race?

10:51In a way, they're kind of running a different race than the U.S. I mean, U.S. companies are focused on creating the best, most cutting edge, large language models. Experts say China at this point is content being what they call a fast follower, basically being a few months behind with the technology. Here's Samuel Bresnik, a fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. There's a belief there that they don't necessarily need to be the top innovator of this technology, but that if they adopt it better than the United States, they can get a real advantage. So the focus in China is not on being first or best, but it's about adopting the technology widely.

11:30How is China positioned to do that? You know, first, the government has really made it a national priority to promote AI use across society. So in manufacturing, in agriculture, in health care, even in government. Secondly, companies like DeepSeek and many of the other Chinese models are what they call open source, which means that anyone can download them, use them, modify them. Some experts say that's an advantage. Open source models are free, right? So if your aim is not necessarily to be the most advanced, but to have your technology be the most widely used, then this might be a race that you can win.

12:05NPR's John Ruich will continue listening for your reporting on this. Thanks. You're welcome.

12:15We also have this news. Jesse Jackson has died. He was 84. The shorthand for Jackson is civil rights leader, though the phrase doesn't really capture him. For a generation of Americans, Jesse Jackson was a link to the past, an aide to Martin Luther King, present during King's assassination. Jackson also was very much present, mounting campaigns for the presidency in the 1980s. Our time has come all the way from the statehouse to the courthouse to the White House. Our time has come. Jackson ran in 1984 and again in 1988, calling his movement the Rainbow Coalition. He remained in the public eye for decades after that.

12:59He spoke against apartheid in South Africa. He called for a Palestinian state. And he sometimes courted controversy. People questioned his account of the King assassination. And in 2008, when Barack Obama was running for president, Jesse Jackson came on NPR to apologize for a crude remark about him. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington covered him. He was aggressive and shameless about jumping in front of the microphone. And at the same time, we know in this modern age that you've got to market yourself. You've got to market your brand and have power. And he made sure he was always top of mind.

13:33Jesse Jackson used that brand to advocate for the poor and a more equal society.

13:42And that's up first for Tuesday, February 17th. I'm Layla Faldin. And I'm Steve Inskeep. Whether you are into skis or snowboards or sleds or skates, which I'm not since that fall, Up First Winter Games has got you covered. It's a new video podcast from NPR. You find it every afternoon at youtube.com slash NPR. It's hosted by A. Martinez. Who's that? I don't know. Today's episode of Up First was edited by James Heider, Alfredo Carbajal, Cara Platoni, Mohameda Bardisi, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hines.

14:23And our technical director is Simon Lasso Jansen. Our supervising senior producer is Vince Pearson. Join us again tomorrow.