AI Jobs, $100m Offers, & Two Plans for Iran 6/18/25
36:34 Share

America's beverage companies are investing in America.

We're American companies making American products with American workers in America's hometowns. We're local bottlers and manufacturers operating in all 50 states, employing more than 275,000 Americans in good-paying jobs, delivering for the nation because we believe in the promise of America and the people who make it great. Learn more at wedeliverforamerica.org. Paid for by the American Beverage Association.

I served in the army for 17 years and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, we face new threats from China, Russia, and Iran working together against our way of life. U.S. international assistance helps avoid costly wars, prevents terrorism, and keeps our troops out of harm's way. We must strengthen international assistance to stop threats before they reach our shores. But cutting international assistance puts our national security at risk.

Let's keep America safe. Bring in show music, please.

Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. Iran threatens irreparable damage if the U.S. enters its conflict with Israel. Retired four-star General Wesley Clark was once the Supreme Allied Commander of European Forces. He joins us today. I would strongly encourage the administration not to simply go in and use a couple of B-2s and try to bomb that big plant. The best option is to be prepared. We need to be tough, but...

There needs to be a two parallel tracks, a military track and a diplomatic track.

And AI revolution hits the labor market. Former Democratic presidential candidate and entrepreneur Andrew Yang is raising the alarm. We used to tell our kids, "Hey, if you major in computer science, you'll be good to go." And now those graduates are having a hard time finding jobs. Plus, $100 million on the table for some of those AI workers employed at OpenAI. And food dyes are out at another U.S. food giant. I'm calling it. The end of Lucky Charms.

It's Wednesday, June 18th. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand back, goodbye in three, two, one, cue, please.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan. Checking up, see if there's, are there B-2 bombers already there? I heard they're, we're going to talk Israel and Iran striking each other for a sixth straight day. Missiles seen here in the sky over Tel Aviv last night. Today, the Israeli military said more than 50 fighter jets

struck an Iranian facility in the Tehran area that produces centrifuges meant for enriching uranium. Current and former Trump administration officials telling NBC that the president is considering a range of options, including a possible U.S. strike on Iran, which would be on that Fordow facility. And we've been talking about it for days. It would take those unique bombs that only the United States has, the bunker busters.

I'm listening to different things. I've heard that it's a 30-hour flight, that the B-2s could be here. They need refueling on the way, and that the refueling assets are already in place. But I'm now maybe confirming some of the stuff Kyle Bass said, that at least six B-2 stealth bombers are in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. That's still about 3,400 kilometers from Iran. It

Yesterday, we don't know what the president is thinking, what was settled on in the Situation Room, but on Truth Social, the president called for Iran's unconditional surrender.

He said Iran's supreme leader was an easy target, but said the U.S. is, in his words, not going to kill him, at least not for now. Two U.S. officials telling NBC News Iran is prepared to strike U.S. bases and assets in the Middle East if it chooses to do so. But there are no indications that that is imminent. It's a battle between Iran.

uh the magas and the neocons and it's very interesting republican party right and it's got uh you know on one side there's tucker carlson and

uh steve bannon and uh and others and then on the other for isolationism and which they have but they've been involved calling for and said that's what we voted for was to not get involved the wall street journal is firmly in the neocon camp and urging every day with um in lead editorials for the president not to go the biden route and begin his presidency with abandoning afghanistan because it sent a very bad sign i mean arguing really

vociferously for the president to end this Iran nuclear threat once and for all and support one of our staunchest allies in the Middle East. And I would say at this point he's definitely considering the possibility of doing that. He says, we now, we control the airspace and

That makes it sound like, and the Journal points out, immediately, Iran said, as soon as Israel attacks any of our facilities, we're going to attack U.S. bases, and they haven't done anything yet. Yes. Because they don't want to poke the bear at this point. I mean, there's the implications on social media as well from Iran that they have the potential to already have a nuclear weapon, that they are kind of leaving that out there as a threat to lay over things. I think we'd know.

You hope. Yeah, you hope we would know that. We had a lot of... And Israel had a lot of people, I think, on the inside. Yeah. I mean, it's a little unnerving to watch how it's played out on Truth Social, too. Just different than what we've ever seen in the past in terms of a president who...

you know, seems to be negotiating from his truth social point. I don't know if the goal is still diplomacy here or... You don't know with him. Right, we just don't know. The journal says don't fall for it. Even if they lose this war with Israel and they maintain the ability, apparently that's what they want to do. And don't fall for this endless...

diplomacy where, you know, we've had agreements before that they don't let us in. They don't let anyone see. They don't let anyone see what they're up to. And that would happen again. So you could get rid of everything and

You know, no one's talking about boots on the ground. No one's talking about a forever war. We've had a forever war with Iran since 1979, basically. And they've, you know. Cold war, though. It hasn't been cold to people on the, you know, on the different ships that were attacked and on barracks and Hezbollah and Houthis and Hamas and everything else. It's been a hot war. Are we calling for an end to the nuclear program or are we calling for an end to the regime? You would think it would. Right.

But I don't, they sort of props them up, the whole nuclear. I think that's why they're so. Why they've been able to do what they've been able to do. And why it's so precious at this point to the regime. Right. Because you would think, what do you need it for? I mean, I know other countries have it, but this isn't the age of hopefully pulling back and decelerating nuclear proliferation because the weapons hopefully can never be used by anyone. Is it still a deterrent?

Did you know we have Turkey doesn't have nukes, but there's nukes stationed there. There's a bunch of them there under our control, like a lot, a lot of them. So they're everywhere. They're everywhere. And they're something that hopefully we never see used again. The yeas are 68. The nays are 30. The bill as amended is passed.

All right. In the meantime, the Senate passing what is known as the Genius Act. It's meant to create federal guardrails for U.S. dollar peg stable coins. That legislation mandates that stable coins be backed by liquid assets and includes provisions on auditing and anti-money laundering compliance. It also opens the door to a broader range of potential stable coin issuers, including banks, fintech companies and retailers even.

The Senate vote on that bill was 68 to 30. Its fate in the House is uncertain, though. Lawmakers there have their own pending crypto bill, which is dubbed stable. So we'll see how these two are able to get passed, if they're able to get matched up. And still a question on that.

Meanwhile, JP Morgan moving a bit further into the crypto world. The bank telling CNBC it's planning to launch its own stable coin like token called JPMD on Coinbase's public platform.

blockchain called Base. This would be what's known as a deposit token. They're meant to serve as digital representations of commercial bank deposits. An official with J.P. Morgan's blockchain unit telling CNBC the bank sees institutions using JPMD for digital asset settlement and for doing cross-border business-to-business transactions.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman detailing alleged efforts by Facebook parent Meta to poach some of his top AI talent. Altman told a podcast hosted by his brother that Meta offered $100 million signing bonuses to OpenAI employees

But none of what he called OpenAI's best people have jumped ship as of yet. CNBC hasn't confirmed the offers, and it's unclear how many were made or taken at this point. But competition for top AI talent is ramping up in Silicon Valley. Just a few days ago, Meta invested more than $14 billion in startup scale AI and tapped its boss to head a new AI team,

I don't know how long. We're all just poaching each other's teams. I don't know how long the $100 million is for. I was quickly going to look up the top 10 major league baseball. It's like a baseball player, right? If you sign him. I mean, what's Aaron Judge's latest contract? It's a lot. I don't know. I have to look it up. No one's quite at a...

10 figure, but they're getting pretty darn close. 360 million for nine years for Aaron judge. Yeah. They're, they're, they're getting up like at 500 or halfway. Yeah. Probably there. I mean, this is the thing though. These are, if, if you're really in this race and the leaders in the race are sometimes weeks ahead of the guy behind them, um,

You're going to pay up for the top talent. It could add billions to your... And there's a limited number of people who are doing this, and you're right, it could add billions to your market cap. It could be multiple. It puts a huge amount of pressure on OpenAI to actually go public so they can kind of offer sweeteners to keep some of these people here. And to go to a for-profit model from what it's been to this point. Now...

Altman in this podcast where he was talking to his brother said stuff like, well, I don't think it makes sense that you're going to have a good culture when you're just throwing money at people and not talking to them about the work or other things that are out there. I don't think you're going to have a good culture in that workplace. Right. A hundred million dollar signing bonus. It's not after tax. Okay.

General Mills announcing that it will remove artificial colors from its full line of U.S. products by the end of 2027. It's going to be tough. This is the maker of Lucky Charms, but it said that it would remove synthetic dyes from all of its U.S. cereals and food that is served in K through 12 schools by the summer of 2026.

It said nearly all of its school offerings are already made without artificial colors, as is 85% of its U.S. retail portfolio. This follows a similar announcement from Kraft Heinz yesterday morning. And Joe, this is something that the...

HHS, FDA has been pushing that they'd like to see. When they originally came out with these guidelines, people said it was toothless, that it would only kind of encourage the industry to do this, but they didn't have any teeth in this ability to be able to do it. Like the people that eat the cereal, right?

But now you're actually seeing companies that are doing this and going along with it, which I'm all in favor of. What about Froot Loops? Froot Loops, really? What will it look like? I think they got that from cherries and grapes. No, but will it just be-- can you do it some other way? Well, you can use beet dye, like beet and other things. Unfortunately, I think some of the other dyes that are out there are made from beetles or something that they crush up.

- Protein. - Is it better if it's natural? - Yeah, I think so. - But think of all the cereals. I mean, there's none of them that aren't-- - Cheerios. - Cheerios? - Artificially colored. - Yes, that's true. - Frosted flakes. Well, I guess that's got the frosting on it, but maybe unfrosted flakes. - I mean, Lucky Charms is like a leprechaun or something, isn't he? - Yes. - I mean, those charms have to be green.

Well, they're all different colors. They actually have rainbows. They have purple. They have yellow. I'm calling it. See, there's some of them right there. The end of Lucky Charms. And they're not lucky. They won't. Look at those. Look at that. White marshmallows. All right. That doesn't do it. Becky Charms. Yeah. Cheese will be next.

Coming up next on SquawkPod, retired four-star general and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark has some advice for the Trump administration on how to deal with Iran. Keep putting out a few tweets on this, but you've got to actually have serious negotiations behind the scene. But where to start? He says have a military plan and a diplomatic one. Give up on your aggressive plans in the region. You're not going to be a regional hegemon.

Give up on the nuclear. Open up everything. And if you need nuclear energy, fine, you can buy it from us. Diving into the complicated geopolitics with the Decorated General right after this. This episode is brought to you by Square. Your favorite neighborhood spots run on Square. Did you know Square can help you turn your small business idea into a huge success? Even that genius idea for moving with monkeys. The pop-up workout class taught by, yes, real monkeys.

Square isn't just a point of sale for local businesses anymore. What began as a little white card reader is now a behind-the-scenes powerhouse, helping you manage finances, schedule your team, and cover cash flow gaps when they come up. With Square, you could keep things at moving with monkeys running smoothly, even if one of your instructors won't stop flinging bananas at the clients. And whether you're expanding to new cities or growing your loyal following of primate-loving fitness buffs, Square is with you every step of the way.

Square helps you tackle today's to-dos and dream big for tomorrow. Go to square.com slash go slash squawk to learn more. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash squawk. Square. Meet you there.

I served in the army for 17 years and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, we face new threats from China, Russia, and Iran working together against our way of life. U.S. international assistance helps avoid costly wars, prevents terrorism, and keeps our troops out of harm's way. We must strengthen international assistance to stop threats before they reach our shores. But cutting international assistance puts our national security at risk.

Let's keep America safe. How will you shape the future of energy with confidence? What does it mean to deliver affordable and reliable energy for all?

This is Squawk Pod. I'm Becky. Thank you.

You're watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan. Reports say President Trump is considering a potential U.S. military strike on Iran after he posted yesterday demanding Iran's unconditional surrender. Joining us right now is retired four-star Army General Wesley Clark, who served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Europe.

He's the chairman and CEO of Wesley K. Clark, an associates consulting firm. And sir, thank you for being with us today. General Clark, how do you read all of the signs that we've all been trying to get our arms around and figure out what's happening here?

Well, I think it's not so much a matter of reading the signs. It's a matter of trying to think through the right way to do this. We've had numerous failures in this before. So I think you can't get mesmerized by looking at aircraft and sorties and what happens if a pilot gets shot down and all the military details. I know they're fascinating to the public. The issue is, what's the end state? And how do you get there? So it seems to me we're approaching...

a period of maximum diplomatic leverage.

Hopefully, behind the scenes, someone is applying that leverage against the Iranians in direct conversations that are not public. We did this in Kosovo. We bombed for about three weeks. We then started the negotiations. It took another four weeks. Israel's got the momentum. Israel's going to be able to use hard bombs and not missiles, so they've got plenty of ordnance on it.

And you've got to keep the option of the U.S. strike alive. To do that, Israel has to shift from the nuclear to working against the Iranian deterrent forces that would strike the United States or block the Strait of Hormuz.

So it's time to go after the short-range missiles, those boats that the Iranian Navy uses, where the mines are stored before they're released. Take all that out. We know where it is. Maybe the Israelis do, too. We can certainly share that intelligence. And as we ramp up that pressure, we have behind-the-scenes dialogue, and it's like a live-and-let-live situation.

You open up, you say the Iranians, you open up all your nuclear facilities. You're going to lose them all. You're going to take them all out. We won't change the regime. That's up to you. If you need energy, we'll be happy to supply you our nuclear reactors. You pay for them with your gas and oil, and you work with us.

It would be a feasible way to go in, and I would strongly encourage the administration not to simply go in and use a couple of B2s and try to bomb that big plant that's deep underground. That's not going to get us where we want to be. We've got to think about this thing from working backwards planning.

What's the desired end state? If you've got an alternative government and you can really get regime change and you're pretty sure that government is going to give up all the nuclear secrets and work with the West and its neighbors, great.

I don't think there's that plan in place. I don't think those people are in place. We do have a pro-Western population in much of Iran. That's a good asset for us. The regime is weak. But I would certainly be working two paths parallel.

the military path to take out their ability to retaliate if and when we do intervene, and that's the targets along the Gulf. And second, the diplomatic path to try to work some kind of a live and let live in which they renounce their hatred of Israel and the United States. And in return, we say, keep your supreme leader,

I think that certainly sounds like a good idealistic place to begin. But how likely do you think it is that this regime would not only give up its nuclear ambitions, but also change its entire code that it's had to this point with, you know, death to Israel, death to the United States? Depends on how desperate they really are. And obviously, they're not desperate enough yet.

So, but look, the momentum is on Israel's side and they've got to keep this campaign going. You can't expect you're going to get an easy end result.

When we went after Serbia in 1999, many of my European friends are saying, well, I'm sure they're going to surrender after a day or two, right, because of NATO. But they didn't. They hung in there. They hung in there. And it was tough for them to give up on Kosovo. This is a much tougher proposition. There's got to be more pain inflicted by the Israeli strikes. And they've got to recognize there is no way out for the regime. And then they will

adopt something like a live or let live as a last, last choice. If they want martyrdom regime, they'll get it. A live or let live scenario. Look, it's been pointed out that when Gaddafi did that in Libya in 2003 and was later taken out, that that is the fear of any regime after that situation to say, you said that if we gave up our nukes, we could stay.

And there were a lot of us at the time who said, you're making a big mistake because he's given up everything. We couldn't stop the hawks from wanting to go in and just get rid of Gaddafi. It was all part of the neocon plan really from the late 1990s. You're going to get rid of all

All these regimes, the Syrians, the Libyans, the Sudanese, the Somalis, and finally Iran. It's been 20 years of this. We've made a mess out of the Middle East in many respects. We've created a huge wave of immigrants. And we may still need to go after Iran. Look, we can't allow them to have a nuclear weapon.

And that has to be the unanimous opinion of Democrats and Republicans. They can't be looking to say, well, maybe these Democrats are going to say, no, no, it's too tough. No, we need to be tough. But there needs to be a two parallel tracks, a military track and a diplomatic track. It sounds like I mean, just based on what we've been seeing, potentially that's the case. You think that's what we're doing at this point, those two tracks?

Well, I think there is an effort in that direction, but I'm not sure that we have really established where we're going with the diplomatic track. I do think the president's wise not to have said anything yesterday after the National Security Council meeting.

Hold another one on Sunday after the golf game and keep the pressure on and keep putting out a few tweets on this. But you've got to actually have serious negotiations behind the scene. Can Steve Woodcock do it? I don't know. But maybe you pair him up with Wendy Sherman, who did the agreement and knows the Iranians and knows some of these people. Put the two of them together and let them go in there and root around. But start with a statement of principles.

Give up on your aggressive plans in the region. You're not going to be a regional hegemon. Give up on the nuclear. Open up everything, and if you need nuclear energy, fine, you can buy it from us. Those are the sort of four foundational principles that they should be working on. Of course, that leaves adrift all of their terrorists and the Houthis and so forth. Yeah, and that's the whole idea.

Cut those people off. Let them come to their own agreements and common accommodations with us. We definitely need to trust because that sounds like a pipe dream. And I don't know, Wendy Sherman, we'd get more of what we already got. I don't I don't know. It's no pipe dream. OK, I did this.

With the help of everybody else in NATO, this is the way it has to go. They would have to fundamentally change. It's like a tiger changing its stripes for them. It's not no longer they hate Israel more than life itself. And if it could happen, fine. But and, you know, once they agree to something, they a lot of times they.

You know, there's dissembling and they're duplicitous and no, you can't go in. I mean, we've seen that movie. We've seen that movie before. What about a targeted strike that takes out by trying it? You don't give in trying for forty nine years or whatever. It's going to try it. What's what's to lose? You're going to do anyway.

But if you shut your mind to the diplomatic piece, you've got a nation of 91 million people. And what are you going to do when it's over? You just talked about the problem of Iraq in 2003. You know what's happened in Libya. Can we learn a lesson from this or not?

Well, we're still not talking about regime change. We're still not talking about regime change. We're talking about most of the people that we've had on that are promoting the Fordow strike are saying that the president does that, the United States does that and says, I'm satisfied. And then you go from there with the diplomacy. I don't think it's wise to go into war without knowing how it's going to end.

Now, you may think that's a smart way to do it. You wouldn't do it in a business. The war is already going on. It's not us. In a military operation. Right. The war, as you know, the war is already going on. We're not we're not part of it at this point directly, but that's already happened.

Well, we are part of it. We're certainly considered part of it by the Iranians. We have maximum diplomatic leverage. And you absolutely have to know where you're going in something like this. You don't just take one step forward and say, now let's look around. We're a little bit deeper in this. Now what?

That's what Rumsfeld did in Iraq. And how did that work out? We did this in Libya with Obama. How did that work out? So let's get our policy and strategy in place. The president's in an ideal position right now to do it. But it sounds like you're saying two tracks, but you're not even...

Saying you're threatening with the military track, but you don't really intend on using it. You're saying that's not really a viable option. That's you. You have to intend to use it. Absolutely. Well, you just are giving me a thousand reasons why we can't.

No, I haven't. I've told you the two tracks. I've told you it's preferable if you don't have to use it. But you have to be prepared to use it. Absolutely. Now, if this is too subtle, then that's our problem in America. We see things in black and white terms. It's not the way to handle the power that we have. This is a defining moment for America's 21st century. Can we see this in multiple dimensions? Or are we simply like,

like a light switch. We're either in or we're out. Either kill them or don't. It's not that simple. And we need to really look at this in a two-track solution. Keep that military option on. Be ready to use it. Let the Israelis go further. But if there's a way to salvage this without, if you can put the restraints on the Iranian regime, if they comply, then you

Keep the military option until you get the agreement. It may take several weeks. It may take a lot of pressure. It may take even Russia going in there to convince them. But isn't it better to have a diplomatic solution that defangs this regime entirely than it is to stir up 91 million people and have another wave of refugees and chaos in the region?

That's up for the Trump administration to decide. I hope the president makes the right decision. General Clark, thank you for your time today. Next on Squawk Pod, former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. He's speaking out, well, he's been speaking out about artificial intelligence's impact on jobs. Was it a book party that I attended for you? Yeah, a book event. Six years ago. The AI revolution is happening faster than he expected, and some could be left behind.

Right now, the beneficiaries of AI are going to be a small handful of firms. And then the average 22-year-old or truck driver or whatnot is going to be just looking around saying, where did my job go? We'll be right back.

I served in the Army for 17 years and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, we face new threats from China, Russia, and Iran working together against our way of life. U.S. international assistance helps avoid costly wars, prevents terrorism, and keeps our troops out of harm's way. We must strengthen international assistance to stop threats before they reach our shores. But cutting international assistance puts our national security at risk.

Let's keep America safe. Don't just ride the index. Seek to outperform it with FELC, the Fidelity Enhanced Large Cap Core ETF. Unlike passive ETFs, FELC is run by a team of experts to adapt to market conditions and pursue upside potential wherever it's hiding.

And while you get the potential outperformance of an actively managed fund, you can still buy and sell it on your terms, just like any other ETF. Discover FELC, the Fidelity Enhanced Large Cap Core ETF, part of Fidelity's suite of active ETFs. Learn more at fidelity.com slash FELC.

Stand by, Joe. Here's Mike. Cue.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says artificial intelligence will lead to a reduction of its corporate workforce eventually over the next few years. He wrote in a memo to employees that they should figure out, in his words, how to get more done with scrappier teams. That's nice. Joining us now, former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. It's it's a daunting future we have ahead.

Mr. Yang, obviously, and you've been, I said we, I was at a, was it a book party that I attended for you? Yeah, it was a book event. Six years ago, talking about

this on the horizon and the need for maybe even back then, a universal basic income. I guess at this point you're thinking, wow, it's accelerating faster than you even thought. - Yeah, it's here even faster than I'd imagined back in 2019 and 2020. And I talked to CEOs who are replacing thousands of

customer service workers with AI, entire design departments, even coders are being supplanted. And Becky and I were just talking about how we used to tell our kids, hey, if you major in computer science, you'll be good to go. And now those graduates are having a hard time finding jobs. It's starting to appear in the numbers for recent college graduates and entry-level white-collar work. If you're a science fiction person,

I was gonna ask you whether the whole Luddite course that we've heard for 150 years, that it's never actually, it's always been better technology long-term. Maybe not always, but many times even more jobs are created from the technologies that being the place, whether it's internal combustion engines or whatever you wanna look at. You would argue this time,

is different with AI. And then it's not, I mean, then if you, like I said, science fiction, not just displacing us from work, but maybe just displacing us all together a hundred years from now. Yeah.

We have to take a lot of those science fiction style scenarios very seriously, Joe, in my opinion. And the most common job in 29 states is still being a truck driver. You have robot trucks just now hitting the highways. They'll be gone. Dario Amadei, the CEO of Anthropic, said, look...

"We're gonna automate away a lot of the entry-level white collar jobs." And he's right because I talked to executives at these companies who are doing exactly what Andy Jassy is talking about on Amazon, looking around saying, "Hey guys, instead of hiring a bunch of 22 year olds, maybe we should have AI do that work." So I fear for the next generation

because all of the experience that maybe we got in our 20s and 30s, there might not be that kind of ladder available to them. Look, Andy Jassy said that he wants employees to kind of take advantage and learn how to use AI, learn how to do their jobs better, maybe make things easier. Maybe it takes care of some of the grunt-level work you don't like doing, but it allows you to have more space and room to do things creatively. Should we be afraid of that? Well, what this...

means in real life, Becky, is you have a department of six people, let's say coders or designers, and then you end up eliminating four or five of them, and then there's one designer or coder empowered by AI. So there's going to be a beneficiary in the organization, but you're just not going to need as many people in that department, and that's going to play out over and over again. Pope had some interesting things, and he's getting involved.

Last Pope was big on climate change. This might be important. He says, Leo, the worlds of science and politics need to immediately tackle this problem without allowing scientific progress to advance with arrogance and

Harming those who have to submit to power and he's gonna host a lot of you but right now it's just breakneck There's no there's no governor's on what's happening whatsoever I mean if you think about the incentives of the individual firm It's just a go-go-go as fast as possible because there there's like a bit of an arms race and yeah compute Literally the data in the model literally and then they'll look up and say our competitor is China. So I got a go-go-go and

The question is what happens to people? And I'm someone who, look, I'm not anti-progress, anti-innovation. I think all that stuff is very positive, but you have to be clear-eyed about the impact on people, on organizations, on workers. And in my estimation, this fourth industrial revolution is the most dramatic thing that's happened to our society

in history, AI might be the most radical breakthrough in human history. And so we have to think much, much bigger about what that's going to mean. That allows more spare time. That allows people to become so rich from AI that maybe you can do UBI and not everyone has to work five days. You gave me a thumbs up. Is that the answer for you?

To me, that is the answer. The question is, how do we get from point A to point B? Because right now, the beneficiaries of AI are going to be a small handful of firms. And then the average 22-year-old or truck driver or whatnot is going to be just looking around saying, where did my job go? And they're not going to be experiencing that kind of value. That, to me, is what government and politics are for. That's what got me into...

the Democratic race in 2020. Unfortunately, right now, our political class is very, very far away from these problems. And one of our goals should be to try and bring them together the way the Pope's describing. All right. So what do you think of the... I don't know if you call it a rider, but the...

the initiative that's trying to be pushed into the budget bill, the one big beautiful bill right now that has made it through the House version. We don't know what's going to happen with the Senate entirely because of the Byrd rules and others, but it's a move to say state attorney generals, other states have no way of setting any rules or guidelines or laws around AI that it should be only allowed at a federal level.

By the way, there are backers, a lot of the big AI names that are backing and kind of lobbying for that. Oh, certainly if you're an AI company, the last thing you want is a hodgepodge of state rules that you then have to navigate or run afoul of. And a lot of these fronts, including social media, by the way, what you see is you see a federal hands-off approach and then the state's

at some point step up and say, you know what, I don't love this treatment of customer data. They're trying to avoid that in AI. If you're going to have that, then you would need a buttoned up

sensible approach from the federal government. - Like show us the federal guidelines before you say nobody else can do it. - Yes, exactly. But the incentives for the corporates will be, let us do whatever we want. And then even for the individual legislators, they'll be like, oh, do I wanna mess with the AI guys? Not really. So you're going to end up with a Wild West approach. - What do you hear? You say that you talk to CEOs who are talking about all the people they're getting rid of, jobs that they're replacing with AI.

What do you say to them? What's your approach to say, hey, this may not be great in the long term? I say come clean. I say just, and by the way, Andy Jassy making those public statements, Dario Amadei making those public statements, they're signaling to us, God,

guys, we are going to be getting rid of a lot of workers. We're going to get leaner and meaner. So please, please, if you're in government, do something about it because their responsibility is not society-wide. Their responsibility is just to make their organization successful. And

those interests are going to diverge from the average workers pretty sharply. It used to be when you guys saw a company increase headcount, you'd say, okay, good, they're growing, they're healthy. Increasingly headcount is going to be a bad sign. And you're gonna look at them and say, wait a minute, what are you guys doing wrong? - That's always been the case on Wall Street though. I can think back 20 years and even longer than that, whether you talk about on the floor how they're laying people off and the stock goes down. - They do, yeah, there's a bump when there's a cutback in workers, but you can take that

and dial it up to 11. - Just wondering what's gonna get us first, physics because of nuclear oblivion, biotechnology because of something that escapes a lab that's much worse than COVID or AI. So that's like pick your poison. - All the sciences. - Yeah. - You know, maybe- - But we don't, as we're developing these things, we never take a step back and say, is this going to work? They tried with biotechnology too. There were a lot of

you know, governing bodies that said, hold on. And tried with nuclear. But we're not even trying with AI. That is the case I'd make, Joe, is we can do better than this. We should ask and demand more from our leaders. And if you look at the numbers, since, you know, I like looking at polls and whatnot, 90% of Americans want a different approach to AI than what they're getting.

forward as your party, forward party? Yes. Is that like leaning forward, like MSNBC? The genesis was it's not left or right, it's forward, and that's where most people think that's what they were saying at the time. But I mean, heck, I didn't know there was a CNBC tie-in. No, MSNBC. Oh, MSNBC. They were saying lean forward, don't lean left or right. Good to have you on. And now, you know, I don't know. There's

we may drop a bomb on ford there's all these things happening right now the world is a scary place and by the way do you talk to leaders in washington about these things and ask what they think on some of these like the idea that okay it's all right to have a federal moratorium on other regulatory oversight coming from the states or or other jurisdictions but where where is our national policy yeah

And there are individual senators and lawmakers who agree with me that there should be guardrails, but there's not a consensus approach. Thank you very much.

We are clear. Thanks, guys.

♪

I served in the army for 17 years and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, we face new threats from China, Russia, and Iran working together against our way of life. U.S. international assistance helps avoid costly wars, prevents terrorism, and keeps our troops out of harm's way. We must strengthen international assistance to stop threats before they reach our shores. But cutting international assistance puts our national security at risk.

Let's keep America safe.