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Mideast, U.S. Grapple with Syria's sudden Collapse of Assad Regime; How AI Could Offer More Accurate Weather Forecasts; Labor Board: Love is Blind Contestants are Employees. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired December 13, 2024 - 15:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in Iraq on an unannounced visit today. After meeting with the country's Prime Minister, Blinken asked for a crackdown on Iran-backed militias in Iraq. The region and the U.S. are grappling with the sudden collapse of Syria's government and Blinken stressed the importance of Iran not being allowed to go through Iraq to move weapons to Shia militias in Syria.

Let's talk a little more about this now with David Sanger, CNN political and national security analyst and the author of "New Cold Wars, China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West." And David, you write for the New York Times today about this jockeying between who gets the credit, between the U.S. and Israel for laying the groundwork for the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime. What is President Biden saying and what is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, they're giving two very different accounts, Brianna, of what led to Assad's fall. President Biden's account is that the U.S., by steadfastly sticking with Israel, by providing the arms to Ukraine to hold off the Russians, and by continuing pressure on Iran, made sure that Bashar al-Assad had no one to turn to when the moment came that he needed them most.

If you listen to Prime Minister Netanyahu, you get a very different story. His story is, because he ignored President Biden's efforts to try to keep him from going to war with Hezbollah, for fear of a wider war at the time, he was able to attack Hezbollah, destroy its leadership, kill its leadership, destroy its missile stores, and that at the end of the day, it was Hezbollah that was not around to go defend Assad. And so Assad was left defenseless. And basically he says, had he not taken apart the elements of Iran's axis along the way, Hamas, Hezbollah, that Assad would still be there.

And what it tells you is that these two men are ending their time together sort of the way they began it. Fundamental odds about how you drive change in the Middle East.

KEILAR: Yes, and I mean, it's about legacy for both of them. But you might wonder if there could be more shared credit if they were on the same page a little bit more personally.

[15:35:00]

SANGER: Well, that's certainly true. These two have made no effort to hide how much they detest each other along the way. The fact of the matter is that you could make a case that both of these are true.

Certainly had the United States not come to the aid of Ukraine, the Ukraine war would have been over two and a half years ago. And I think the Russians probably would have been in a position to go help Assad stay in power. Instead, they fled as soon as it fell apart.

And I think there's a big interest for the United States now to go push those two Russian bases out of Syria. There's a large naval base there that gives Russia its access out to the Mediterranean. And it's one big naval base outside of Russia. And there's a big air base. So certainly you can score one for Biden there.

But it is also true that the Biden administration urged Netanyahu not to get into a war with Hezbollah. He was much more successful than anyone in Washington expected he would be. And that meant that the main instrument of power that could have helped Syria along the way, those Hezbollah fighters, they were otherwise engaged.

KEILAR: Yes, they weren't there to do it. There's so much that is in flux in the region right now. And Trump coming back into the White House adds another dynamic. So I wonder how you are seeing that impact things in the region potentially.

SANGER: Well, the first and most interesting was that President Trump last weekend, or President-elect Trump, sent out on Truth Social a message that basically said the United States should stay out of this. Now, whether he meant the immediate set of actions that were pushing out Assad or whether he meant stay out of Syria in a longer and more general way is a really interesting question.

He was tempted to pull the U.S. base in Syria, which has about 900 troops that are on an anti-ISIS counterterrorism operation. He was tempted to pull them out. He was talked out of it by his own aides.

The fact of the matter is that the U.S. has such interest in how Syria unfolds that it ends up being a stable country and one that does not harbor terrorists and one that does not upset the region that it's hard for me to imagine once he is in office in a little more than a month that he will conclude that the U.S. has no interest there. We have huge interest there. How he wants -- how much effort he wants to put behind that, we don't know. But it also tells you he's walking into a very different world, Brianna, than the one he left four years ago.

KEILAR: Yes, certainly is. David, always great to have you. Thank you so much.

SANGER: Thank you. Great to be with you.

KEILAR: So what if you could find out the weather two weeks in advance? Artificial intelligence might make that possible. We're going to explain how after a quick break.

[15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: As we take a live look at the nation's capital here in Washington, D.C., just one week left of autumn. And if you're anything like me, you're trying to figure out when are we going to have a nice day again? It's been so cold lately.

Artificial intelligence is actually helping us figure that out. It's increasingly reshaping our lives day to day. And pretty soon, A.I. could offer more precise weather predictions, get this, 15 days ahead of time. CNN's Chad Myers is here with a look at the future of forecasting.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, we've all seen weather maps that look just like this. But how do we know it's going to be clear in Texas? Well, the weather models tell us this.

We look at them, and this is one that I made a long time ago. I was an intern with the National Weather Service in Silver Spring, Maryland, 39 years ago. And this is what the weather model looked like.

Now we use some human intelligence and sorted that Celsius to Fahrenheit and kind of figured some things out and knew it was going to be a 55-degree low. But then supercomputers took over, and everything changed. It wasn't just digits. It wasn't just numbers. Now we could make graphics. Now we could take all of this data and push it forward five, seven days, make it so much better.

But this was still human intelligence. Now we have artificial intelligence. This is what our model looks like right now. This is how good we've come from just numbers to this. But can artificial intelligence make this even better, make it more accurate? And the answer so far is yes.

The Google GenCast looks like out to 15 days. It will help our old models do even better. In fact, out-forecast them in many locations.

Now the problem here with this artificial intelligence model is that we're only looking back 40 years and saying, OK, if this happened today, what's going to happen tomorrow? But is the last 40 years really going to be indicative of what the next 40 years really is going to look like? Maybe not.

[15:45:00]

But at least we have some hope, at least increased accuracy hope, that we could see things get better with artificial intelligence and the human element here, obviously, with the National Weather Service working in tandem, keeping everything together, making it better for us and keeping us even safer with the weather.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: I also have hope we'll have a day over 40 soon. Our thanks to Chad Myers for that report.

So this is a legal move that could really change reality TV as an industry. The National Labor Relations Board is filing a complaint against the hit Netflix show Love is Blind. What they want the show to do for its contestants when we come back.

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[15:50:00]

SANCHEZ: The labor board says they're not just contestants looking for love, they're officially employees. That's how the NLRB says that people on the Netflix dating show Love is Blind should be classified in the board's complaint against the production companies behind the hit show.

KEILAR: The legal move is a first for reality TV, and of course this show quickly became a hit by testing if people can fall in love without seeing each other. Watch it to see the answer to that. But Love is Blind is also testing the boundaries for worker protections on reality TV shows.

Joining us now is Seth Berenzweig, a business and compliance attorney and white-collar defense lawyer. And Seth, listen, I think we're going to talk about kind of what may happen here in the long run, but no matter what happens in the long run, is this filing some good news for contestants, at least in the issues that it raises and the fact that we're talking about this?

SETH BERENZWEIG, BUSINESS AND COMPLIANCE ATTORNEY: Well, it could be. We'll see what happens in the spring of next year because in April there's going to be a hearing that's been scheduled in this case. But this is really a big deal, and it really caught a lot of people by surprise.

The labor agency here in Washington has basically pulled a rabbit out of an employment law hat. They surprised everybody by coming in and really turning the law upside down by saying that reality TV contestants are employees, even though historically they have never been. And it has not been, probably because it is really not consistent with the traditional nature of an employer-employee relationship, where it's more of a long-term type of business relationship where the employee falls within the scope of employment and performs regular duties for the employer. Whereas on television, someone is in a short-term relationship, usually as a contractor, and these are people who are in a contest that can really leave in the short term at will. So this was something that's very unforeseen and has really turned that part of the industry upside down.

SANCHEZ: Yes, this show seems to specialize on short-term relationships. Seth, I wonder if you think that by any chance it would lead to contestants potentially trying to unionize at some point or to assert some more rights for themselves. BERENZWEIG: Yes, it could. But in order for that to happen, this hearing has to conclude in the spring, and it has to lead to a successful conclusion. One of the important background aspects of this case, which is also really interesting, is that you have a production company, Delirium TV, and I think it's actually ironic that their name is Delirium because they must have been a delirium when they got themselves stumbled up with their antics to get caught in this case.

They went after, in a heavy-handed way, a former contestant who had said some not-very-nice things in the background, and they slammed her with a $4 million-plus lawsuit, trying to hold her liable under a nondisclosure agreement, injunction, attorney's fees, and all the rest. And really in reprisal and in sympathy for that contestant, the agency came in and slammed them back and is now retaliated with a complaint deeming this individual and similarly situated people on television as employees.

Will it stand? It could. It also depends on what happens when the new administration takes over. But if this hearing does go forward, it can really fundamentally change the nature of how people are retained in the commercial space, especially as it relates to reality television.

KEILAR: The NLRB says Love Is Blind contestants should be paid for any lost wages while they're on the show. There were allegations about whether they were pushed too hard when it came to nondisclosure agreements. There's also at issue, you know, how they're treated.

And I think -- I think sometimes as viewers, people watch this stuff for its entertainment value, and it doesn't always occur to people as viewers that, oh, wow, this might have been kind of a terrible living situation or a terrible condition for this person, and this is bringing some of that into the light. And I wonder if you think some of these smaller protections, if any of these regulations, could they stand?

BERENZWEIG: I really don't think it's going to end up applying because it's really trying to fit a square peg into a round legal hole. Yes, if this theory prevails, there's going to be a whole penalty, a whole basis and layers of laws that would apply as if they're able to unionize. And in fact, the section of the Fair Labor Standards Act is part of the docket that says that this was the creative filing and the basis for it.

But the problem is that these are long-term benefits and protections for people who are really on short-term media projects. So it's difficult to see how this is going to work. But the agency didn't care because they found a very sympathetic plaintiff.

And the thing that's really interesting about this is that this could even extend beyond reality television. There are a lot of different variants on right now in television and podcasting. What is this going to do?

This could really overturn the entire apple cart in terms of employment law. So we'll have to really keep an eye on this. The Trump administration may really change this when their new general counsel comes into the board. They may try to pull the plug.

But right now, this is something that could be a fundamental change in the entertainment industry.

KEILAR: Yes, and how often do you have an incoming administration where a president knows a thing or two about reality television, as it were? Seth, thank you so much for your insight. Really interesting, and we will keep an eye on it.

When we come back, how a Japanese sake maker is planning to brew a batch that is literally out of this world.

[15:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Finally today, a Japanese sake maker is going where no sake has gone before. They are headed to space. The company behind iconic sake brand, Dasai, plans to send sake ingredients to the International Space Station to brew a first-of-its-kind batch.

KEILAR: This is fascinating. And Dasai says the difference in gravity could change how it ferments, creating a flavor that is truly out of this world. If it works, one tiny bottle will fetch an astronomical price, 100 million yen or about $653,000.

I don't know that I want it to taste differently, though.

SANCHEZ: I'd give it a shot. I think I know why Butch and Suni decided to stick around and wait for some sake up there. That explains why they got stuck in space, doesn't it?

[16:00:00]

They want in on this.

KEILAR: It's an interesting hypothesis that I think deserves a little more testing, Boris.

SANCHEZ: I don't know. They said that the capsule would work fine, and yet these folks are missing Thanksgiving and Christmas. They're stuck up there. I'd do that for some good sake.

KEILAR: "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts now.