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Amanpour
Interview with Palestinian Democracy Activist Samer Sinijlawi; Interview with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen; Interview with Cambridge ANALYTICA WHISTLEBLOWER Brittany Kaiser; Interview with "Blockers" Author Michael Lewis. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired October 14, 2026 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
As Gaza tries to rebuild, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas postpones elections again for another year, making it more than two decades
since the last major vote. Democracy activist Samer Sinijlawi tells me why he's so worried.
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Facebook wants you to stay on the site for as long as possible. And two years ago, the algorithm was changed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- "The Social Reckoning." As fears grow over A.I., Aaron Sorkin's new film brings Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen's story to
the big screen. She joins me alongside another major whistleblower from Cambridge Analytica.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL LEWIS, AUTHOR, BLOCKERS": I thought of DOGE as kind of like a smoke screen for a deeper agenda.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- "Blockers." The acclaimed writer Michael Lewis speaks with Walter Isaacson about the plight of public servants in the time of Trump.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
Israel's election is fast approaching a hugely consequential vote with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoping to keep his grip on power. But for
Palestinians, the chance to make their voices heard in elections has been delayed yet again. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is
postponing the elections from this November until next September. The E.U. says it regrets Abbas' decision to delay. After all, it was more than 20
years ago since the last legislative elections when Hamas defeated the president's party, Fatah, leading to the group seizing full control of
Gaza. Abbas, now 90, was elected in 2005 and has ruled by decree since his term ended in 2009.
Samer Sinijlawi feared this delay. The democracy activist and leader of the political party Masar Jadid, or New Path, is joining me now from Jerusalem.
Samer Sinijlawi, welcome to the program. What went through your head when you heard this news?
SAMER SINIJLAWI, PALESTINIAN DEMOCRACY ACTIVIST: Well, it was a shock. It is a big disappointment, not only for me, but also for thousands, hundreds
of thousands of young Palestinians who saw from these elections a hope to change their life. What was postponed is not a simple election, it is an
opportunity for the young generation to peacefully participate in the political life. We keep convincing them that the ballot will change their
lives, and then the door keeps closing again and again.
So, it's making the argument for a democratic change very difficult. But anyhow, we are continuing in this race. We have declared that we will
continue as a candidate for the coming elections. We will use every possible peaceful legal and political means to cancel that decree. We will
continue to call for unilateral elections because simply the Palestinians are entitled to change their leaders and replace them, too.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Yes. So, let me just -- you kind of predicted this or feared this. And about four days before this postponement, you wrote in the
Jerusalem Post, when ballot boxes are closed, extremists offer other boxes filled with weapons, funerals, and false promises. We must not repeat that
mistake.
What do you think will be the result of this delay, given what you just wrote there?
SINIJLAWI: Well, let us go back to the elections that were fixed in 2021. These were cancelled, too. And, unfortunately, we faced the 7th of October
two years later. So, when you close the option of the ballots, the election boxes, the extremes fill the gap. You can understand that Palestinians are
under layers of layers of oppression and control. And something needs to be changed.
[13:05:00]
The failure of the current leadership to change the lives of the people. I understand that the obstacles come from the occupation. But any leadership
that claims responsibility should be able to do something about it. This current leadership, for 20 years, has been able to do nothing. It's just
counting the results of the actions of the others.
And the elections are hope for people. They give the people the possibility to choose their future, to change their future. So, I am very worried that,
again, by cancelling these elections, we might be simply waiting for the next earthquake to come.
AMANPOUR: Samer Sinijlawi, do you think there's anything, I hear what you said about excuses that are being made for cancelling this, and not just
excuses, but the real challenges of the occupation. Do you think that elections in Gaza could have been organized, and frankly, elections in the
West Bank, given the terrorism that is being meted on the Palestinian people by the settlers? And I use that word, Jewish terrorists, because
that's what Israeli officials, some of them, are calling these violent settlers.
SINIJLAWI: Well, the answer for the readiness of this election came from the Palestinian Central Election Committee. They said they are ready to
organize the elections in Gaza, and they said they are ready to organize the elections in the West Bank.
Now, I understand all the difficulties, I understand all the occupation actions on the ground, but these are permanent conditions. If we keep using
them as excuses to delay the elections, the Palestinian people will never have the right to vote. So, we need to challenge this. A responsible
leadership challenges these conditions, and not uses them to keep delaying the vote.
I am 100 percent sure that these elections would have worked perfectly, that the call for delaying the election was not based on these results or
these circumstances. The 25 people that convened in Cairo and decided that there is a Palestinian consensus on delaying the elections are the same 25
people that the elections is trying to replace them, that the Palestinian people are trying to go to the ballots to choose different people, younger
people.
You know, now the average age of the Palestinian leadership is around 75 years. The 60 percent of the voters are younger than 40 years old.
AMANPOUR: Samer -- exactly. And many of them have not had an election in their lifetime, those 40-year-olds, as you say. You have started a new
party. You were going to run in these upcoming elections before they were cancelled, or as some people say, delayed.
Do you actually -- who do you think would win these elections? Because, as you know, the PA says, well, you know, Hamas could win again, and where
will we be next? What was your sense of what faction might win a Palestinian election?
SINIJLAWI: Well, technically and officially, Hamas is not taking part of this race. They might go inside other lists in a coalition, but directly as
a Hamas list, there will be no Hamas list. So, I think this is an opportunity to hold these elections with almost 100 percent guarantees that
Hamas is not going to win these elections.
I think not the usual suspects. The elections could bring a lot of new players, young, independent lists. Our list, for example, is raising a new
slogan, a new political idea, from confrontation to dialogue, and simply politics that change the life of people while we are trying to achieve
independence as Palestinian people. Our slogan is a two-state solution, a Palestinian State next to the State of Israel, 100 percent security for the
Israelis and 100 percent freedom for the Palestinians, while we are trying through negotiation, and negotiation is the only means to achieve political
gains.
It might take one year, it might take five years, but while we are trying to achieve this, we need to be able to provide services to improve the
lives of our people. We need to make sure that the students are able to reach their schools, that the farmers are able to reach their land, that
the workers are able to reach their workplace, that people are receiving their salaries on time, that people are finding medical treatment and
medicines in the hospitals.
[13:10:00]
So, why shouldn't the Palestinians have better lives while we are trying to achieve freedom? These are the lines that we are introducing, and these are
new ideas. I think such new ideas will have a better chance to be examined and tested among the Palestinian population.
Currently, the traditional forces are sticking to a certain narrative, to a certain script, that is not producing anything for 60 years. So, we need
always to ask ourselves a difficult question. Is the path that we are going in leading to a better life for our children, or is it going to continue
their suffering? This question is valid always. And I think such elections are enabling the Palestinian people to choose between different
alternatives.
AMANPOUR: Let's just talk about the elephant in the room, which is the other side, Israel. You can't just achieve all this without negotiating.
You have said that it's better to try to persuade Israelis than to pressure them. But what do you think will happen if Netanyahu or any of that ilk are
elected again? Because they have said fundamentally, and it's not just about the election, they have said no Palestinian State. No Palestinian
State. And all the action that we see on the West Bank and certainly what we've seen devastate Gaza seems to be what they mean. No Palestinian State.
So, how do you negotiate and create a state or the pathway to a state under these circumstances? Because, as I say, the Israeli people also are not
exactly jumping up and down for a two-state solution right now.
SINIJLAWI: Well, that's why we are resorting to convincing, to touching the minds and the hearts of the Israelis. If we are not able, as
Palestinian people, to convince 51 percent of the Israeli voters in any coming Israeli election to vote for political horizons, to vote for the
two-state solution, we will never get it. The only way to achieve that is convincing the Israelis to resort to it.
70 percent from the Israelis, I know them very well, they are now hesitant to support the two-state solution, not out of ideology, but out of security
concerns. If we are capable to prove to the Israelis that there is a partner they can trust on the Palestinian side, that our national strategy
puts Israeli security on its basis, not to do them a favor, but to achieve our national interest, then something will change among the Israelis.
The Israelis are smart, and they can know when they have an opportunity. I don't think that the Israelis prefer to live forever in a greater Israel
that is not democratic, that is not Jewish, and that is not safe. Most of them will prefer to go to a smaller Israel that is safe, that is
democratic, and is Jewish. And this is the two-state solution.
So, we have the obligation, we as Palestinians, because we have a sense of urgency. You know, Israelis can wait another 10 or 20 years until they
settle their mind which direction they take with the Palestinians, which option they choose with the Palestinians. We cannot wait another 10 days
with 2 million people living in plastic tanks in Gaza.
So, we need to take the first steps. We need to start this change. When we start this change, we have an impact on them. We, the Palestinians, we have
exclusive power over all the other nations. We are the only one that can convince the Israelis they can trust us in their security, that there is a
legible partner on the Palestinian side they can work with.
And we, as Palestinians, we are ready to talk to any coming Israeli leadership. We don't want to define to the Israelis which prime minister
they would like to vote to. It doesn't matter the name of the prime minister. What matters is the choices, the policy of that prime minister.
Will that prime minister allow horizons for political change? Will that prime minister understand that the security of Israelis depends on the
freedom of the Palestinians?
We are opening the doors to start working with any coming Israeli leadership. And we expect that that elected leadership will also open the
doors.
AMANPOUR: I'm listening to a very reasonable argument that you're making. But I also know that many, many Israelis, maybe even the majority, believe
that this permanent war that Netanyahu has got the country in is the only way to keep themselves safe from another October 7th. So, that is what's
happening on the Israeli side right now.
I want to ask you why you are so convinced that you can convince. You, Samer, spent five years in jail when you were arrested as a teenager during
the first intifada.
[13:15:00]
You spent five years in Israeli prison. We're currently reading the horrors that are meted out to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons right now.
What did you learn from your time in prison?
SINIJLAWI: Well, my personal story is why I am so much committed to the Palestinian freedom. It's the story that I have lived. I was born in the
old city. I participated in the first intifada. I went for Israeli jail for five years. But I also engaged in 40 years of dialogue with the Israelis.
And I consider this the best investment I have done in my life.
I understand very much my Palestinian people. I understand very well the Israeli people. You cannot understand any conflict, Christiane, if you are
not able to see it through the eyes of the others. I can see this conflict through the eyes of a Palestinian because I am a Palestinian who lived this
conflict every day in his life. And I can see this conflict in the eyes of Israelis. And it is only two words. It's not a very complicated conflict.
It is security from one side. It's freedom from the other side.
The way I know the Israelis, and when I meet some Israelis, I tell them, I know you better than you know yourselves because I talk to all of you,
left, center, right. You don't talk to each other. I really know the Israelis very well. They are looking for a future with security. Security,
the fear in their hearts is real. We need to defeat that fear in their hearts.
Our enemy is not the Israelis. The real enemy is the fear inside the Israelis. And we have a mutual enemy, both us and the Israelis. It's
ignorance. Most of the Palestinians don't understand the Israelis and don't know them. The majority of the Israelis have never met the Palestinians.
They don't know the Palestinians, and they don't know that conflict in the eyes of the Palestinians.
We need to create leadership that will bridge this gap. I think building trust in a process of top-down can speed up the process. If the leadership,
on the leadership level, there will be trust, and trust you cannot get it if you ask it. You need to earn it step by step. Somebody needs to start
this, Christiane. And I think we the Palestinians now, because of the sense of urgency, we need to start this process.
So, raising the slogan in a very complicated and difficult situation like this, in this campaign, in this Palestinian election campaign, when there
is a lot of anger, when there is a lot of hard feelings, when two million people in Gaza are now entering their third winter under plastic tents,
it's a very difficult situation. And we come and we raise the slogan of, from confrontation to dialogue, it's very contradictional, but I have seen
that the young generation believes in it.
I have seen that the young generation sees the way out of the suffering through this way. So, it is appealing to the people. It is responding to
their needs. It's a vision that is practical. When you say that all I need is to convince Israeli, it is true, because we have learned. During the war
over Gaza, we have seen that nobody in the world has the power to pressure Israel.
The only way to get a political decision from Israel is to convince a majority of Israelis, and that should be our task, and it is doable. This
is not fantasy. Believing in something else is fantasy. Believing that the continuation of confrontation will lead us to somewhere is the fantasy.
AMANPOUR: Samer Sinijlawi, thank you so much, leader of the New Path Party, and we'll be watching. Stay with CNN, because we'll be back after
the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:20:00]
AMANPOUR: Despite dire predictions, the A.I. race is moving full steam ahead. Meta, formerly Facebook, just released two advanced models to help
power new digital assistance, trying to keep up with industry leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic. The company is still run by Mark Zuckerberg.
Now, a new film is reminding us of the Facebook founders track record. "The Social Reckoning" is a sort of sequel to director Aaron Sorkin's first hit
2010 film, "The Social Network," about this issue. And it recounts the story of Frances Haugen, who was a whistleblower, who leaked tens of
thousands of Facebook's internal documents to the SEC and to The Wall Street Journal. Here's a clip from the trailer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Connecting people, it's a virtuous mission, because some people are awkward. They get to be their best self when they're alone
at their keyboard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, what's the problem?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Something changed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Cops are being assholes because I'm white.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I wanted to find out who radicalized my friend.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We did.
Facebook wants you to stay on the site for as long as possible. And two years ago, the algorithm was changed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wait. Come one. We're trying to address hate speech and we're going to amplify and turbocharge it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The debate is over.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: So, picking up where we left off, a social reckoning is an instructive tale, especially as more and more whistleblowers come to the
fore, and they resign from A.I. companies. Haugen is joining us from Puerto Rico alongside fellow whistleblower. She's Brittany Kaiser, who resigned
from Cambridge Analytica in 2018. And together, they're working on an initiative to protect employees, those who sound the alarm. So, welcome to
the program.
Let me start with you, Frances Haugen. Just to remind us how bold it was and how scary it was to go against this mighty company, Facebook, when you
did, to tell the world, to try to tell the world, some of the dangers that were inherent in their procedures.
FRANCIS HAUGEN, FACEBOOK WHISTLEBLOWER: Blowing the whistle on a big tech company is a really complicated thing. Probably the largest barrier that
people have to jump over before they can even consider going to the public is being confident that what they're seeing is real. You know, the reason
why these cultures get so toxic is that there are lots and lots of stories that get told inside the company about why things have to be the way they
are. You know, it's impossible for us to hire more people. All companies have this problem. You know, whatever the rationale is for why it is,
change is not necessary.
[13:25:00]
And so, being able to admit to yourself that the thing that you see and the thing you're pretty certain of is real is a really hard thing. And I
struggled with that for a long time. And until they dissolved the civic integrity team, so the team I worked on within Facebook that was
responsible for keeping Facebook safe for elections, things like that, I was able to justify a lot of the things I heard. But once they dissolved
the team, that's when I knew the public was going to need to step in if Facebook was ever going to change.
AMANPOUR: Before I turn to Brittany, I just want to continue with you for a minute, Frances, because you were a true believer. You believed in all
the good that Facebook was promoting itself, connecting people, doing all that kind of stuff. But your main issues that you brought to the public, I
want to list them.
In the internal reports and studies you obtained, it shows that Facebook's algorithm encouraged political parties around the world to embrace
extremist ideas, drug traffickers and human traffickers openly were using Facebook services, Instagram increased rates of depression and eating
disorders, and how the switch to prioritize something called MSI, Meaningful Social Interactions, in 2018, had huge consequences for some
users.
When you brought this to your internal colleagues or supervisors, what did they say, and what is Facebook's position on these items that I just
listed?
HAUGEN: So, when I worked inside the company, I worked within a much smaller scope than that giant umbrella of areas of misdeeds. I focused
primarily within our threat intelligence org, which was, you know, a bunch of specialists, a lot of them ex-government, that worked on spotting things
like foreign actors interfering with political processes around the world, foreign actors committing espionage. That was my specific team. Or before
that, I worked on targeted misinformation.
When I raised concerns to my employer about the things that I was learning, we worked a lot with researchers who were actively, firsthand, on the
ground, studying ethnic violence issues related to social media in places like African countries, places like Southeast Asia. We were told, well,
we're doing more than anyone else in the world is doing. You know, there were lots of these stories. We can't hire any more people. It's impossible
for any big company to hire in Silicon Valley.
There were always excuses for why it was more couldn't be done. And so, I think this sense of learned helplessness is a coping mechanism when you
don't have support from above to actually deal with the big, messy problems.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Brittany Kaiser, you were the whistleblower for Cambridge Analytica. There was a case when you came forward about them harvesting and
using personal data from millions of Facebook user profiles to allegedly influence the outcomes of the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. and
Brexit.
Now, Facebook apparently was aware of this. I'll say their denial and all the rest of it in a minute. But what enabled you to come forward? What was
the breaking point for you?
BRITTANY KAISER, CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA WHISTLEBLOWER: The breaking point for me was seeing the presentation post the 2016 elections on what the
Cambridge Analytica team had done, the amount of data that was collected, the way that individuals were grouped and targeted, some specifically
targeted to not turn out for elections.
So, it became very obvious to me that not only were there data protection and privacy issues where data was being collected without explicit consent
from Facebook users and then used to target in elections, but also that it became very easy for our foreign adversaries to use social media platforms
in order to intervene in our democratic processes.
AMANPOUR: Now, a New Mexico jury recently found that Meta, as it's now called, had misled users about Facebook data practices, failing to disclose
that it sold user data to outside parties, as you've just explained. Now, the Meta spokesman has said the company disagrees with this verdict and
would continue to defend itself against what it says are efforts to distort its record. That is what you would expect people to say in this case. So,
what was it like going through this whistleblower process?
HAUGEN: Is that for Brittany or me?
AMANPOUR: Sorry, Brittany, Brittany, Brittany, Brittany, Brittany. Sorry, sorry.
KAISER: Yes, undertaking the whistleblowing process against -- undertaking a whistleblowing process against multiple large companies, as well as
different administrations that were involved in elections processes that were clients of my former employer, was definitely one of the scariest
things I've ever done. As whistleblowers, we call it a crisis of conscience moment, where you know that you might be the only person that has evidence
and is willing to take an action and do something about it.
[13:30:00]
So, you jump off a cliff without knowing if you have a parachute, and you dive deep with investigators, legislators, regulators, journalists, anyone
that's really willing to go through the process. I did 27 different government investigations, over 50 different lawsuits since, and nothing
has gotten better. In fact, in the age of A.I. or superintelligence, a lot of the problems that Frances and I identified in our whistleblowing
processes have become exponentially worse, especially data protection and national security issues that are caused by these technology platforms.
HAUGEN: And we don't need, you know, superintelligence of three or five years from now when the A.I. wakes up to be dangerous. A.I. of right now is
enough to run foreign interference operations that we would have never imagined in 2016.
AMANPOUR: Well, to me that's the point -- I guess that's a little bit of the point of this film, of your whistleblowing and me talking to you,
because clearly, we've had the whole issue of social media being unregulated, and now we've got the whole issue of A.I. being unregulated,
and it's, you know, exponentially more dangerous.
So, I just want to ask you, because you were a consultant, Frances, on the Aaron Sorkin film, Mikey Madison plays you. I wonder how you thought she
portrayed you, but also your earnestness about getting this out. And just tell me a little bit about, you know, the collaboration with a journalist,
in this case, the Wall Street Journal, who really got your story out. What was that like?
HAUGEN: So, every film is an adaption, or every inspired-by-a-true-story film is an adaption. And adaptions require creative choices. One of the
creative choices that Aaron made, I think, is strategically the right one, which is that he, in many ways, changed a bunch of things that I think a
lot of people would associate with me.
So, I'm almost six feet tall and 5'11". I was much blonder when I was in the age where I was doing this whistleblowing. I was a nationally
competitive debater in high school. I coached for four years in college. The character that is portrayed on screen is much smaller, both in
physicality, but also, she stumbles over her words at the beginning.
But you have to remember, to have a compelling movie, to have something that's exciting to watch, you need to have character growth. You need to
see the change. And you get to see the Frances Haugen character go on that journey and come out of it, I think, a more empowered person, like a person
who is more excited about life.
And the thing that I thought they did a really good job of capturing, in terms of the relationship with the journalists, this is one of my favorite
things about this movie, is when I started working with Jeff, there were things that I knew for sure. There were specific documents, for example, on
political parties reporting that they had intentionally changed political positions they promoted because they were easier to distribute on social
media after the MSI change.
You know, our -- what we got to choose in the ballot box was already influenced by Facebook, by people in Menlo Park, before we even got to
vote. So, there were some things I knew for sure, but there were lots of things I didn't know. And the movie does an amazing job of capturing the
joy of discovery. You know, like as you find the puzzle pieces, how do you fit them together, that teamwork and that kind of -- that joint process of
creation.
And I think when you have a really good whistleblower and journalist relationship, that's the kind of thing that gets unlocked, because both
sides have different kinds of information and different kinds of insights, and together you can see the whole picture much more completely.
AMANPOUR: I want to play a bit of the testimony by yourself in front of Congress, the real-life you, talking to the senators about Mark Zuckerberg
and what was going on. Let's just play this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HAUGEN: Mark has built an organization that is very metrics-driven. It is intended to be flat. There is no unilateral responsibility. The metrics
make the decision. Unfortunately, that itself is a decision. And in the end, if he is the CEO and the chairman of Facebook, he is responsible for
those decisions.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The buck stops with him.
HAUGEN: The buck stops with him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, shortly thereafter, or a few years after that, you know, Facebook is now Meta. Listen to this research from Pew last year. It found
that two-thirds of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of Mark Zuckerberg. And we see in the film Jeremy Strong playing him and his internal team
trying to humanize him for court and congressional appearances.
How would you describe him, Frances, in terms of his care for the effect on the public, the commons, so to speak? Because we see Jeremy Strong playing
what essentially appears to be somebody now focused only on winning and on the bottom line.
[13:35:00]
HAUGEN: So, Mark is in a very unique position for almost any human in the world in that he has been, you know, the king of Facebook since he was 19
years old. So, he holds more than half the voting shares for the company, which allows him to be both the CEO and the chairman. The only opinion that
really matters is his opinion.
I think part of the reason why his popularity numbers are so poor, so for context, at the height of DOGE in 2025, when people were keen Teslas, when
people were protesting in the streets about Elon Musk, his popularity numbers were still better than Mark Zuckerberg's, which is wild. I think
part of the reason why people have such an emotional reaction to Mark and such displeasure with him is that there have been a series of large
scandals.
Like Cambridge Analytica is one of the larger ones, but there have been multiple beyond that. I think the most recent around the creeper glasses.
So, you know, the augmented reality glasses with the little cameras in them. It seemed like he has not learned or like not incorporated the
feedback from the public.
And I'll give you an example. They recently launched a second version of the glasses that don't have a camera. So, you have a camera version and no
camera version. A journalist asked him, like, wow, like we notice you now have a version that doesn't have a camera. Is that because you heard the
feedback from people that they don't want to spy on their neighbors and their friends? Is it like you finally are like integrating some of that
privacy feedback? And he said completely with no self-consciousness. No, no, it's so much cheaper.
Like there's always going to be people who want a cheaper product. When you get rid of the camera, the frames look just like normal glasses. Like it
really concerned me when it comes to A.I., because if he he's either not being told the feedback from the public or he does not care about the
feedback from the public. We don't know which.
But when you have a single person who gets to direct one of the major frontier A.I. labs who is not taking seriously the implications of frontier
technology. That's a serious risk for all of us.
AMANPOUR: Brittany, you both, as I said, launched a whistleblower initiative. So, let's fast forward to some of what we've just been talking
about or stay in the real present about the real danger of A.I. without the human control. Do you think anything that you've seen or heard, whether
it's from the A.I. tech giants testifying, whether it' is lessons learned from the social media court cases and things that have ruled against them?
Do you think that there looks to be a way to govern A.I. in a way that social media was not?
KAISER: I think one of the biggest issues with A.I. or superintelligence is that these platforms and models are collecting exponentially more data
than social media was able to. Therefore, they can more cheaply, more quickly and more easily target people. And that means not just anyone. It
means especially right now, ahead of the midterms, Americans and target our democratic processes. It is very easy for our foreign adversaries to spread
disinformation at an exponential rate more than ever before. And we're starting to see this more and more.
And OpenAI and X. Both have identified hundreds of thousands of fake accounts funded by China that were spreading disinformation specifically
against A.I. and the building of data centers. I think this especially is a huge problem because it allows more of our data to be processed by our
foreign adversaries. And for us to use open-source Chinese models and give away our data and process our data abroad.
So, these issues right ahead of the midterms are probably the biggest thing that we need to think about when we're going to the ballot box. Do we have
legislators and future politicians that do care about these issues and are going to take action on it? Do they have that in their policy platform?
Everyone should be thinking about this when you go and you vote on November 3rd.
AMANPOUR: And we've got -- in our last one minute, I just want to ask you both to quickly opine. Is this ever going to be paced, paused, governed
unless you get world leaders? Let's just say Presidents Trump and Xi to actually have some kind of arms control agreement for want of a better
word. What do you think? Quickly, Brittany, and then I'll ask Frances.
KAISER: I think one of the biggest ways to protect ourselves and our national security is to make sure that we are implementing privacy centric
A.I. solutions like confidential computing, which I'm working on every day that allows us to use A.I. or superintelligence without giving away any of
our data. It's an encryption technology that means we can own it from end to end.
So, we can still use all of the great things that superintelligence will bring to ourselves, our families, our companies. But we never give away
that information that allows us to be vulnerable and targeted.
[13:40:00]
HAUGEN: I think it's unlikely that we're going to see international unified action until there's some kind of really bad consequence. You know,
just a few days ago, there was a big breaking story about the big A.I. labs, war gaming, major problems to water, air, banking, that kind of
thing. You know, I think we're going, I think it will get worse before it gets better.
But my hope is that when it becomes evident with the level of consequences, we are starting to see little bits of technology like chips that supervise
chips that may allow us to put in place regulations that would allow for them.
AMANPOUR: OK. We need to have a longer conversation about this. But for now, Frances Haugen and Brittany Kaiser, thank you so much indeed. Really
great to have your perspective.
Now, $276 million, that's how much another tech titan Elon Musk has donated to the Republican Party since July, hoping to keep them in power and
further wield his own influence. But as we know, it is not his first foray into politics. At the start of Trump's second term, Musk was brought in
ostensibly to cut government spending and bureaucracy. Just four months later, though, he made an abrupt exit.
In his latest book, Michael Lewis explores the civil servants who resisted Musk's efforts to dismantle government institutions, as he now tells Walter
Isaacson.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Michael Lewis, welcome back to the show.
MICHAEL LEWIS, AUTHOR, BLOCKERS": Thanks for having me.
ISAACSON: Your new book, "Blockers," looks at Elon Musk's attempt through the Department of Government Efficiency to remake the federal bureaucracy.
First of all, why did that story appeal to you?
LEWIS: Yes, there's a little bit of a backstory. I'd written a book about the first Trump administration, which it seemed to me a story of largely of
indifference and neglect. And it got me interested in the civil service. I mean, once I started kicking around obscure departments of government,
like, I don't know, the Department of Agriculture or Energy, I was shocked both by just how interesting what was going on inside them was, but also
the people.
And so, I had this sense that, like, I know as implausible as it sounds, that civil servants were a goldmine of characters. And Trump, too, comes
in, and they come in with a completely different agenda, a completely different spirit. That they are essentially -- I mean, whatever they said,
it was a massive power grab. And it was an attempt to remake this 2- million-person, nonpartisan workforce into essentially a loyalist operation that served the -- not the Constitution, but the interests of a single
person. I thought that these people are interesting. What's about to happen is going to so change the incentives inside the government that the actual
functions of government are going to change. How do you tell that story?
Like -- and DOGE, for me, was really just kind of the beginning of it. I mean, DOGE is the first 80 pages of the book or whatever, but DOGE, as you
know, goes away. And I thought of DOGE as kind of like a smoke screen for a deeper agenda.
ISAACSON: What is a blocker? That's the title of your book.
LEWIS: You of all people shouldn't have to ask that question. But the blocker was Musk's, and it's also a Silicon Valley favorite term for
someone who's in an existing institution who is like getting in your way when you want to move in and move fast and break things. And Musk told the
25-year-old young man he sent out to wreak havoc inside the various federal agencies, he said, find the blockers, find the blockers and eliminate them.
And not all of my characters, but most of my characters met the definition of blocker, but mostly what they were doing is just not refusing -- it was
refusing to break the law. I mean, they weren't impeding something that was legal. They were like trying to stop, I don't know, the Department of
Homeland Security from using tax returns as weapons. They were doing things that -- you know, they swore an oath to the Constitution. They swore an
oath to uphold the law, and they were blocking for very good reasons.
ISAACSON: There's a story, especially near the end of your book, that just blows me away, which is about a water fountain. Tell me that story and what
you learned from it.
LEWIS: Well, as a fellow writer, Walter, you know that sometimes a water fountain isn't just a water fountain. So, there was a character in DOGE
named Sahil Lavingia. And Sahil drew my attention and the attention of a number of journalists early on because he'd come in, he was a little
different. He was in his early 30s. He'd made his money. He'd come because he really wanted to fix something in government. He wanted to fix the IRS's
technology.
And instead, he gets shoved in the Veterans Administration, and he's told to cut contracts, and he kicks around inside the place, and he makes the
mistake of telling a journalist that actually the government's not as inefficient as I thought it was. And that and a couple of other things get
him fired from DOGE.
[13:45:00]
He then -- after DOGE washes out, he then comes -- is invited back in, and he comes back to do the thing he wanted to do. And he gets put into a
building in lower Manhattan that is where some IRS offices are. And it's like a neutron bomb hit. Like, there's nobody there. A lot of possessions
left behind. It's depressing as an office can be.
And he goes over to get a drink of water from the fountain. It doesn't work, and it sets him off. And he goes on this obsessive quest to fix a
government water fountain. And it takes months. It takes months, and it becomes a metaphor of how hard it is for someone to do anything in the
government and all the different boxes you need to check.
And it is -- but he does fix it. But it is -- I thought of it as a metaphor for a couple of things, not just that it's hard to do things in our
government. And yes, it's too hard to do things. And -- but the kind of fixes to those problems are in the Congress. Congress needs to do stuff.
But I thought of Sahil's story as actually a beautiful example of public spirit, like this interest in public service. Like he didn't just look at
it and say, this is a pain, and I'm not going to do it, and it's beneath me or any of that. He said, I'm going to figure out how to fix this. And once
I figure out how to fix this, I'll have figured out how to fix a lot more than this.
ISAACSON: So, what is it you can do about a water fountain? Why was it so hard? And what should they do?
LEWIS: Well, you know, what's funny is that the water fountain -- I think a lot of things are like the water fountain. It's like no one exactly is in
charge. That there are people who might be able to do something, and there are people who might not be able to do something. But there are a lot of
different people you can call. No one person is responsible, in this case.
So, but he was -- I mean, he was on the line to people in Seattle, people in Washington, never mind the people inside his own building who were meant
to be the maintenance people. So, I do think that -- I mean, it isn't just that all my characters, I think to a person in the book, at some point,
have some problem that has nothing to do with the Trump administration, that the problem is larger.
A quick example. One of the characters is a Greek immigrant named Alex Maranghides, who invents an entire fire science and science of wildland
urban interface fires. It's the fires we all talk about now. He's been on it for 25 years, and it's riveting the work he's done. To do the work, he
needs to use the big fire lab that's inside of an organization called the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He's able to do this work
because he runs the lab, and he can kind of set things on fire in between when the lab is free.
Until, I mean, he starts this work in 2003. But until 2008, when there is a completely unrelated accident in another lab, government lab in Colorado,
which leads to a congressional investigation, and all these rules passed, what do you have to do before you can do an experiment? And all of a
sudden, he has to have six signatures before he can go into his lab and set a fire.
And I think it's sort of like the way our government has been managed just generally for a long time. It's sort of like it's designed to prevent
anybody from being embarrassed or accidents from happening, but at a cost. At a cost. It's harder to do things.
These are real things to attack. I mean, these are things that a DOGE could have attacked, and that would have been interesting, but it would have
required going to Congress, and they didn't really have any interest in that.
ISAACSON: You profile Alex Maranghides, and there's an odd connection to the cabinet, to Howard Lutnick. Explain. That seemed like a larger metaphor
for some of the problems you talk about, too.
LEWIS: On the back end of actually the World Trade Center bombings, the 9/11, he had been brought in to understand why the Twin Towers fell,
because no one thought the fires could get as hot as they did. And he had - - inside of NIST, he had reconstructed floors of the World Trade Center and he had shown how the heat had melted the beams, kind of thing.
And it -- and so, there was a kind of poignancy to the fact that Howard Lutnick gets made Secretary of Commerce inside which NIST sits. And Howard
Lutnick had been the head of Cantor Fitzgerald, a firm all of whose employees had died, including Howard Lutnick's brother, when the Twin
Towers collapsed.
[13:50:00]
So, Alex Maranghides had basically explained what had happened to Howard Lutnick's old firm. When Howard Lutnick comes in to the Department of
Commerce and makes Alex's life -- his science, undoable, like credit cards taken away, you're not allowed to spend more than $1. If you want to spend
$10,000 on anything, I've got to personally approve it. I'm not going to be around to approve it, because I'm in the White House all the time. It just
got kludgier and kludgier.
And Alex -- you know, you talk to these people. These are not normal, like whatever people's picture is in their head of bureaucrat. Alex Maranghides
is working 80 hours a week, doing James Bond crazy things inside of fires, experiments that will blow your mind. He is an obsessed person. And he's
been an obsessed person for decades.
And he's exhausted. He's 56 years old. It's hard already, because the government is the way the government is. And all of a sudden, he looks up.
He says, I can't do this anymore. I mean, like, it's just -- he's made it too hard. And it's such a waste of talent and energy and this sort of
mission-driven approach to life to not - instead of getting behind them and helping them and trying to create a structure where they can do their
thing, to kind of get to treat them with suspicion and contempt and anger and all that stuff, it's so counterproductive.
So, Alex Maranghides is, you know, prepping his sailboat to sail back to Greece, where he came from. And -- but touchingly, like he quit in maybe
June of last year. For the last year, he's kept all of his government laptops and stuff. And he's been working for free to try to get some of
this knowledge, preserve some of this knowledge inside of the department.
ISAACSON: One of the other ones involves Kathleen Waters. And she was at the IRS. And it was a question about giving IRS data about undocumented
immigrants and giving out their address so that there could be enforcement against them.
LEWIS: So, Kathleen Walters was the chief privacy officer of the IRS. And that meant she's the human being between your tax return and any White
House that might seek to weaponize it against you. Soon after the inauguration, she starts to get pressured from the Department of Homeland
Security to release a database of 7 million returns of undocumented workers.
And this database, it was -- in the 1990s, Congress created a mechanism for undocumented workers to pay taxes. I mean, I didn't even know this existed,
but it's interesting. And like more than $100 billion in taxes have been collected from this population. And the IRS and the American government has
told this population, like, you're going to file this tax return, and we're not going to ask any questions. Like, we know you're not supposed to be
here, but this is a way for you to establish that you are part of the solution, not part of the problem.
And that database had the most recent, most current home address of these people. And ICE, something called the ICE Innovation Lab inside the
Department of Homeland Security, figured out that if they could get their hands on this, they could raid these people's homes in the middle of the
night. And Kathleen Walters said, you know, that's actually plainly against the law. This database has the same protections as the database of American
citizens' tax returns.
It ends up costing her job. And she -- after decades in the IRS, and no one ever thought she was partisan or not good at her job or anything like that,
she was just standing on principle. And some number of those returns got handed over to ICE. Whether it was $48,000 or $7 million, nobody knows. But
people around the country, people were rounded up using those returns.
ISAACSON: Does that make it less likely that these undocumented immigrants will pay taxes and that'll end up reducing taxes?
LEWIS: Oh, I think more than that. For sure, that's true. Like, for sure. Like, if all of a sudden, word is out in the community that if you file a
tax return, they're going to come and find you. Of course, sure, it's going to hit tax revenue.
But it's more than that. The government collects all kinds of data. It's a massive data collection machine. It's amazing what the government counts.
And it enables us to get a picture of the reality we live in. It enables people to make better decisions, whether it's climate data or economic
statistics or whatever.
[13:55:00]
And if all of a sudden data that's not supposed to be weaponized gets weaponized, I think it pollutes, corrupts the government's ability to get a
picture of the society. I mean, I think that this is not this looks like a little thing might even please some people. Oh, good. Round up those
people. But if in fact you can't trust the government with your data, then we're got a way bigger problem than undocumented workers not paying their
taxes.
ISAACSON: Michael Lewis, thank you so much for joining us again. Appreciate it.
LEWIS: Thank you, Walter.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: That's all we have time for tonight. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And
remember, you can always catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media. Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.
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