Welcome to the Rest Is Politics US. I'm Katty Kay.
And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. All right, so we got an AI warning. You're the guru on AI. So what's going on in Washington, Katty?
Well, I'm very glad to say I'm not the guru on AI. I'm about as much of a guru as all the people are on Capitol Hill, and they're certainly not gurus. So, it's been, I think, a very dramatic week in America. I think we, I hate being hyperbolic, but I think we will look back at this week as a turning point in the whole issue around AI and the politics around AI. On Saturday, Dario Amodei, the head of Anthropic, wrote a nearly 4,000-word essay in which he laid out a plan for slowing down AI, which included embedding evaluators, getting AI companies in democratic countries to coordinate with each other to slow this down in order to police it more effectively and then having some kind of global coordination as well. I read the whole thing and what he says has happened is that over the course of the summer, just this summer, Anthony, AI has been advancing, as he says, drastically faster. And he is concerned, this is what he says in the essay, that a swarm could take over the entire internet within 6 to 12 months. The essay is really worth everybody reading. It's very sober, but anyway, you're hearing these alarm bells and you have Sam Altman, Elon Musk all saying Dario is right. We need to do something fast. But Anthony, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, he was on Meet the Press this weekend. And what does he say? Does he say we need to go fast? We need to get Congress back. They're on holiday at the moment on recess. Do we need to, you know, move fast because this stuff is getting accelerating every single day? No. Dear Mr. Johnson says, 'We do not want to rush into anything. We do not want to rush. We want to take this slowly. We want to get the heads of the AI companies who don't agree on anything to talk about this a little bit more. We want a lot more talking, Anthony, and a lot less doing when it comes to AI.' I mean, just it was a weekend of head-bending extremes.
Tell him why he's saying that. Why is he saying that, Katty?
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Well, I mean, he is saying that because the boss, Mr. Trump, also came out this weekend on the edges of his golf tournament in Ireland totally downplaying the risks of AI. Mr. Trump said, 'It's going to be great. There are a lot of very negative forces that are bringing up the risks. That's not going to happen. It's going to be great. We're going to win. The winning is going to be bigger than you've ever seen and we have to defeat China.' So Trump is saying something that the rest of his party is now listening to, including people like JD Vance and David Sacks who are dismissing the safety warnings that are coming out as an incumbent's ploy to lock out all of the competitors. So the fight is not necessarily left versus right. The fight is those people who want to accelerate AI versus the people who actually know about this saying hold on a second guys if we accelerate AI humanity could be extinct within the next decade. And there is Donald Trump saying no keep going because I think I don't know what you think. I'm just looking at the kind of startups that Jared Kushner is involved in his $30 million AI startup that he launched last year and think there are a lot of people around Donald Trump who think they can make money out of this and so they don't want to slow down. Is that too cynical?
Well, I, you know, I think you're just too nice. I think you're too nice, Katty. I mean, that's not cynical enough for me. You just cannot be cynical enough for me because all of what you said is true, but there's an underlying factor why the House is closed. It has to do with Thomas Massie and it has to do with the Epstein Files Transparency Act 2 that he promised he would push in the House and he would force the House to vote on which you and I both know there's over 300 members of the House that would vote on the disclosure of these files and let state attorney generals and victims and members of Congress sue the Justice Department for releasing the files. They failed to release the files and follow the rules. And so what did Trump say to his lackey Johnson? Close the House. Send them all home. So the House is going to be open for 4 days. And that's the only time we're going to have between now and election day. So that the Epstein situation is completely crowded out. So you want the AI to kill people? I don't care. I don't want those Epstein files getting out. And you're going to make that happen. And so he'll blah blah on Sunday news and all that other stuff. Everything you said is true. But you got to understand Massie only has until January and his number one goal is to get those files out and their number one goal is going to be stopping him.
So Massie has told me he thinks the files are never going to come out. And that the Justice Department will stop it. I'm going to push this one step further though. I think there is definitely that is why House is out because they don't want the files to come out. You do have some bipartisan cooperation on this. You've got Ted Lieu, a Democrat, Nathaniel Moran, a Texas Republican trying to introduce the Kill Switch Act. There are a few members of Congress that understand the urgency of this. But I am not convinced, Anthony, that even if Congress was in session, even if they were called back into session, there is either enough political will, enough institutional knowledge of what AI really is and what the risks are, and enough young people who get the tech to actually do anything. How much confidence do you have in Washington's ability even if there were not the Epstein files to actually move fast and put in some kind of regulatory framework and even though Johnson says we don't know what to do and the AI companies don't even understand it that is not true there are people like Amodei who have proposed frameworks how much confidence do you have that Washington would be able to get its together and do anything? I don't have much confidence in Washington to do anything at the moment because I don't.
I have low level of confidence but there's a very popular figure in the Democratic party and his name is Barack Obama and President Obama, that was interesting wasn't it, was interesting, he's gone to his buddies in the Democratic party says guys this polls at 68% okay so 68% of the American people are calling for a pause which you and I both know is very rare cross-partisan issue, the whole thing related to AI. And he believes if the Democrats move on this, consistent with what Dario is saying in his essay, Democratic leadership will be able to rein back in some of these tech donors. And he's also saying privately, Katty, because I know some of his friends, he's saying, 'Hey, man, whoever breaks on this first gets a populist issue, Katty, that isn't about the culture war.' You know, the young people and the people that are voting for the Zoran Mandanis or even the wackadoodles that are voting for Trump, you know, this is a big populist issue, the AI issue. And so Obama is begging his fellow brethren, brothers and sisters of the Democratic party to take hold of this issue before Trump and his team does. And what's interesting about that is that Obama is very reluctant to wade in. And he did it at a donor event, but he knew it was going to get out. He has not made it a habit to give instructions to Democrats running for office. He's been very hands-off. Maybe some people say he's been too hands-off and that he hasn't got involved enough. So to hear him say this could be a winning issue. Combine affordability with a real push for AI safety and regulation and you could make this a popular issue that as you say Anthony I think is popular amongst Democrats and Republicans. But how do you then answer Trump saying it's all going to be great? Oh and by the way my son-in-law has investments in this and my kids have investments in this. That's a little aside, but it's all going to be great. And anyway, if we take our foot off the pedal, China is just going to sweep in. But then you have Xi, who is due in 10 days for a meeting with Donald Trump. Xi is also calling out whether he's believable or not, he is also calling for some kind of international cooperation. So you got Trump saying on the same weekend, whoever wins AI wins. It's an, oh, and then this was great. It's an expression I came up with and it's true. And then you got Xi saying actually no, we need some kind of international cooperation on this. I mean, one's talking cooperation, one's talking conquest.
So, Katty, all of that I sort of agree with.
You mean you sort of agree with because you don't think the China rivalry is real or you think No, the China rivalry is real and America should not take its foot off the pedal in order to stay ahead of China. I think the China rivalry is real, but I think that these guys know they can create the same way if you have a quantum computer, I can create quantum resistance to protect the encryption from being broken by the quantum computer. They know they can create large language models that effectively check and balance all of the different large language models that are out there, including the Chinese large language models. They know that and I know that. The question is, are they willing to do that? Because what that does is it liquidates their power, right? That creates more decentralization in the marketplace than any of those guys really want. Because remember they're all motivated by profits and you know more decentralization means that you'll have a flatter profit scale and you'll have less margins. Okay, so that's another big debate that's going on. But my question to you and this is very cynical question. So I want you to put your cynical hat on and think like a Wall Street person for a minute. Is this essay really about that or is there an underlying reason that he wrote that essay? And the underlying reason is the capex spending for these companies is wildly out of control. They all want to go public. Anthropic is saying they've been profitable the last two quarters. Nobody has seen the S1 because they haven't filed the public offering yet. But the question is are they looking around saying this is a match sailing race. Let's put out this statement. Let's agree. Let's have Altman and Musk agree with Amodei and let's get the capex spending down, okay? Leading into the IPOs of these companies so that we'll have more underlying profits to show the investors and then once we get the public money in place, we can go off to the races again. Am I being too cynical? Because if I am, push back on me.
I would say clearly there are IPOs coming up and that complicates it. As actually Sam Altman said over the course of this weekend, I read Amodei's letter, you read the top half of it where he lays out why he's doing this. And it's possible that two things are true at once. That they are thinking about their IPOs. They're thinking about how to stay ahead. They want to exclude others by putting in a regulatory framework that might exclude others. That's what David Sacks is saying that this is regulatory capture. Look, it's working for me. I don't want other people coming into this. But Amodei has been talking about this for a long time. Elon Musk actually has been talking about this for a long time. And Amodei's argument and it's not just Amodei. The whistleblowers who are coming out of the companies, they are not trying to influence the IPOs at this stage. They've left. Right? There are enough people in the last few weeks who actually understand the technology who are saying we are getting to a point where this technology will be more powerful than our ability to control this technology. So I think the concerns are genuine. I don't see how you can look at what has happened in the last few weeks and think oh this is all just a business play. I mean it just doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, I would urge people to read Amodei's letter particularly the top half of it where he talks about what's happened over the course just of the last few weeks in this technology. And I mean maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is just a Mar-a-Lago moment.
May not be a business play, but they are benefiting like it is a business play. So again, I'm not trying to be cynical, but these guys act like crocodiles and they act like reptiles. Let's see how this whole thing unfolds. But I do know and I do believe this that they will continue on course until regulated. Rahm said something the other day, Rahm Emanuel, and I was like, well, he's totally right about that. So, let me share with people. Rahm said, hey, I've been in government for 30 years. I've never had one industry come to me in government. White House chief of staff, member of the Congress, worked for Bill Clinton, worked for Barack Obama. No one ever came in and said, 'Hey, hello. I'm here to get regulated.' Never heard one person say that.
It is interesting that actually the heads, the three biggest heads of the three biggest companies are all putting their hands up and say it is time to get regulated. And maybe you're right. They don't mean it at all. But I actually think I've spoken to people who know these people better than I do who think actually they would need regulation because otherwise the concern is a kill switch or some kind of political backlash that shuts this whole thing down. And it may be too late for that because these models may be now more powerful than that and won't let us shut them down. But there is certainly a new sense of it is the only thing in Washington since I've been back that people are talking about which is new. That's new. It wasn't like that a couple of weeks ago except for the speaker who thinks we should go slowly. So nothing will happen. By the way, guys, if you're waiting for Washington to do something, go back to sleep. Take a nap. Take it easy. Put your feet up because you won't miss anything anytime soon.
Trump is telling Zelensky, 'Stop targeting Russian oil refineries, saying the attacks are hurting the world.' I'm laughing on the inside and crying on the inside at the same time at that remark, Katty, because if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine, the war would be over. If Ukraine stops its attacks, they're going to lose their civilization, their culture, their language. And I just want to point out to people quickly, I did get some feedback that I was using Putin talking points the last time we were on related to Ukraine, and I apologize for that. I now get how different the cultures are, how different the language is, and what would you like Zelensky to do? Why would he be willing to even think in that way? It's sort of ridiculous, Katty.
Yeah, I mean, I think you only really need to look at the Kremlin's response, right? Who is happy about what President Trump said over the weekend and this plea he has, this dictat he's put to Zelensky to stop attacking the refineries? The people who are happy, the Kremlin. You've got Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov coming out and saying any call for Kyiv regime to stop striking peaceful economic infrastructure can only be welcomed and then of course he was given the opportunity to say that Russia would also not strike Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and energy infrastructure and he did not take that opportunity. So Russia sees this as a permission slip from the president that they can go ahead and carry on attacking Ukraine and Ukraine's infrastructure while the American president asks its ally not to attack Russia. I mean, the crazy thing about this is that over the weekend we had news that the Russians had struck a train on the Polish-Ukrainian border, which was a train station that dignitaries had been passing through on their way back, including Boris Johnson, on their way back from a conference in Kyiv. And when Trump asked Zelensky not to attack the refineries in Russia, he didn't at the same time mention that attack on a train. So it's okay for the Russians to attack the train. One of which, if it had been just at a different moment, could have killed several European leaders. But it's not okay for Zelensky to go after the refineries. And I think the fact that he found a way to talk about Ukraine hitting Russian diesel, but he couldn't find it in himself to bring up the drone that hit a train on the Polish border kind of tells you all you need to know at the moment about where the White House is putting the pressure, right? I mean, we've seen this movie before. Every time we think that maybe they're going to cut Zelensky a bit of slack or they admire Zelensky's leadership, he then does something like this.
