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Fast-Spreading Canyon Fire Burns Nearly 5,000 Acres; Trump Executive Order Opens 401(k) Accounts to Private Assets; Scientists Testing New Ways to Prevent A.I. Going Rogue. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired August 08, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:30:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: New this morning, the Giffords Fire in California is on the verge of consuming 100,000 acres. That would make it the state's first mega fire of the year. Fire officials say it's only 15 percent contained.

Further south, we've just learned that overnight the Canyon Fire burned an area the size of a football field every two seconds along the L.A. County and Ventura County line. It's led to evacuation orders for more than 4,000 resident residents.

And then in Northwestern Colorado, two fires are burning there, 0 percent contained at this time. Colorado's governor has now mobilized the National Guard to help with the firefighting efforts.

There's a lot going on out west, so let's get over to CNN's Allison Chinchar. She's tracking all of it for us. And, Allison, what are you seeing?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Right. So, the scary part is how fast you just talked about how quickly that area is burning. If you're talking a football field every two seconds, that is roughly burning through the equivalent of Central Park in New York City in just 25 minutes. Again, you can see the fire behind me. This is the Canyon Fire. Again, it just exploded overnight last night. Here's another view of that fire as we head into sunset. You'll start to see the skies darkened, but then it makes it a little clearer exactly where the fire is located. Again, just incredibly fast how this particular fire has spread across the region, and it's one of many fires we are keeping a very close eye on here.

You've got the Canyon Fire right here, 0 percent contained, another fire, the Gifford, just to the west of it. That is 15 percent contained.

The unfortunate part is the weather conditions just really are not going to allow -- to help these firefighters out. Here's a look at the Canyon Fire again. Here's Santa Clarita just for some reference point. Now, here's the fire. We also do know that they have had evacuation orders set in place, and those are now highlighted on your screen by the red and the yellow colors that you can see here, just kind of giving you some idea of how and where they expect this fire to spread in the coming hours. And a lot of that has to do with the incredibly intense heat across much of this area.

Santa Clarita, the high temperature today into the triple digits. Several other areas expected to get into the 90s and triple digits as well. Not just today, but this is likely to extend into the weekend also. So, again, not really any relief in sight.

This isn't just for California. You've also got some of those heat alerts across portions of Arizona, but we widen the shot out, we also have them in Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, and several portions of the Central U.S. So, you're talking a lot of areas that are going to be impacted by these temperatures that are above average.

Well, now when you take those above average temperatures, you factor in incredibly low humidities and some gusty winds. Keep in mind those winds don't have to be very strong. They could be even 15 to 25 miles per hour. But you put it all together and you have ideal fire conditions which are under red flag warnings.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Allison, for that update. We'll be needed to keep a very close eye on that.

Still ahead for us, a new study finds A.I. models could be teaching each other bad behavior. The surprising way that researchers are trying to predict and prevent this from happening. Yes, that would be a good thing.

And also coming up for us, they were the ultimate it couple that captivated public fascination in the 90s, in part because of their style, how John F. Kennedy Jr. And Carolyn Bessette Kennedy became timeless fashion icons.

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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. This morning, big changes could be coming to your 401(k), or maybe we should say big options. This after President Trump signed an executive order making it easier for plans to offer alternative investment options, including private equity.

With us now, Madison Mills, senior markets reporter for Axios, who just wrote extensively on this. People should go check it out this morning.

I think this requires a lot of explanation. So, when we say private equity is going to be available in your 401(k), what exactly does that mean?

MADISON MILLS, SENIOR MARKETS REPORTER, AXIOS: Well, we don't know for sure that it's going to be available in everyone's 401(k)s just yet, but as you mentioned, the president signing this executive order instructing the Department of Labor to look into it. [08:40:09]

So, what could this look like? Well, private equity, private credit in particular, it's a method for investors to invest in private companies. You think the stock market, those are public companies. This is a way to get in on some of those private companies. And the benefit of that is these juicy returns. Wall Street loves private equity, loves private credit, but for individual investors, the issue is in the name, private. It's really opaque. So, you don't have as much access to company financials to do the due diligence necessary to suss out whether these are the right investments for you and your risk profile.

BERMAN: Right. Because when you have a 401(k), you get a series of options about where you put that money and they're big, broad, general options, usually. It's like age-based. You know, it's equity-based. You know, it's fixed income. What would this be even?

MILLS: Yes. And you think about your target date funds, right, like minus 20, 50 or something like that. And then, you know --

BERMAN: Mine's earlier than that.

MILLS: Not to point that out on you, John, but -- and, you know, it's tied to your risk over -- depending on what your age is. If you're younger, you may have more access to things like tech, for example. If these retirement funds start to put in private credit or private equity, maybe even crypto, for a target date fund that's a little bit more long-term, then you're having a little bit more access to that risk earlier in your retirement journey. But my sources, especially CFPs, tell me that the risk is not worth the reward here.

BERMAN: Why? Talk to me about the risks here.

MILLS: Because you don't have that access to information about what these company's financials actually look like and the fees are really high as well. We've actually seen retirement plan providers getting sued in the past because the fees are so high associated with these. This executive order aims to change that. It aims to make it a little bit less risky for retirement plan providers and plan managers to provide access to these types of alternative investments. But that's the risk, both for the retirement plan provider to have that litigation risk, and then also for you to potentially put -- I mean, it's your retirement, right? It's the biggest potential investment of your lifetime. So, do you want to risk it on something that you don't have a lot of transparency around?

BERMAN: Who does this benefit? Who seems to be pushing for this?

MILLS: Great question. Obviously the private credit providers themselves are very happy about this. The Apollos of the world, KKR, BlackRock, they have been pushing for access to the $12 trillion in retirement funds across America. And even just 5 percent of that is $600 billion of money that they could have access to now. Potentially a headwind to the stock market as well if we see retirement plans pulling out of stocks and putting that money into private credit. But, again, this is all very early stages. We don't know for sure yet whether or not this access is coming year 401(k).

BERMAN: When do you think we will know by? How quickly will this be?

MILLS: It's unclear at this time. I think it's going to depend on whether or not the retirement plan providers are ready to jump on this. My sources do say that they are really excited about it as well because of those juicy returns.

BERMAN: $12 trillion seems like a lot of reasons to try to push this. All right, Madison, it's great to see you. Thank you very much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: This week, we are highlighting a CNN Hero who has made it her mission to deliver food to people in need, taking action and serving up hundreds of thousands of meals over the past few years. Assistant Director Hillary Cohen, she focused her efforts on actually repurposing the food leftover on Hollywood productions, making sure it doesn't go to waste.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Action.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Working on a film set, it's this whole team of people, a prop department, a costume department, and electric department, and a lot of people that need to be fed. There's just so much food that's available, steak and salads, so much good food every day. When lunch was over, they would just throw it out. It doesn't make any sense.

I really was always told we can't donate the food. It's too hard if someone gets sick, it's liability. As an assistant director, I was the logistical planner of a set. This is just the logistical problem I think it's so easy to solve.

Every Day Action picks food up from film sets, corporate events, grocery stores to deliver the food to those in need.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Awesome. Thanks, guys.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nice to meet you.

We're the GrubHub. We take it from point A to point B.

At the beginning, it was just me and Sam, one of my co-assistant directors in the heart of COVID. We had this big cooler from Walmart, thermal bags, just picking the food up.

I always like to see what the fancy meal is of the day.

Film and T.V. set, that's like our bread and butter. All you have to do is give us a call sheet, sign liability over and the food's ours.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For decades, it broke my heart to throw food away. So, we're happy to do it. It's just like a lot work. They show up.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, it's so good to see you. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We pass off the food and we're all set.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We pay production assistant and background artists, and then they drive the food from place to place.

[08:45:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Salads, tuna, fresh (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There you go, Justin (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So it started with encampments.

Would you like some free food?

Then it's food pantries, nonprofits, anyone that's struggling with food insecurities.

Here's three meals, and I'm going to get you some sides too.

Giving someone that's hungry food is the best thing one can do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you so much. Oh God bless you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Of course.

And that's about 80,000 meals a year that we save from landfills.

I feel like my skill set is like called to do this now more than ever. We have to help each other.

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BERMAN: To learn more about this, go to cnn.com/heroes.

New video of a helicopter crashing into a barge on the Mississippi River.

And a new pill promises a 12 percent weight loss, no injections, no diet restrictions. So, what's the catch?

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[08:50:00]

BOLDUAN: So, this morning a suspect is dead after he shot and killed his neighbor before ambushing two Pennsylvania State troopers who were responding to the scene. When the troopers arrived, they were fired upon, we're told, facing dozens of rounds, and both were wounded. The 61-year-old suspect then barricaded himself in. He was eventually shot and killed by police after refusing to comply with their commands. The two injured troopers were airlifted to a hospital and are expected to be okay. There's new video in showing the moments after a helicopter crashed into a barge on the Mississippi River yesterday. Authorities say two people from that helicopter, they were killed. No one else was injured though. Police say the helicopter was working on power lines before crashing into them, then hitting the barge. The fire also broke out, but was quickly extinguished.

And a potential game changer in the world of weight loss drugs, drug maker Eli Lilly says that it's new once daily weight loss pill helped people lose an average of 12 percent of their body weight in a phase three trial. The pill doesn't require food restrictions, could soon be an alternative to the very popular injectable weight loss drugs we've learned so much about. The company plans to submit the pill to the FDA for approval by the end of the year. John?

BERMAN: All right. This morning, a new twist in the fight to keep A.I. from going rogue. Researchers say they are now vaccinating artificial intelligence by injecting it with just a little bit of evil on purpose. There's this study that argues giving A.I. models a small dose of bad behavior during training could help prevent them from developing worse traits later on.

With us now is the editor-at-large for TechRadar, Lance Ulanoff. Lance, great to see you. Can you explain to me how this would even work?

LANCE ULANOFF, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, TECHRADAR: Well, you know, it is -- so, you know, that with A.I., when they're out in the wild and people are engaging with them, every once in a while, they start to act strangely or respond strangely, maybe they kind of lapse into an area where they tell you to do bad things. You know, they're not human, but, you know, all this modeling that comes from data across the web sometimes bubbles up in odd ways. And when they try and fix that, when developers try to fix it after the fact, the model just gets dumber. So, your experience with A.I. is sort of lessened.

In this case, during the training is when they try and do that sort of vaccination a little bad, will maybe do some good. That's their idea, that they put in the bad so it can recognize it and then excise it, take it out. And then after the fact, that means that the personalities of these A.I.s, as they are, will not get weird or get evil or get bad in some way. The only concern obviously might be if some of that bad is left in there.

BERMAN: Yes, I mean, that's the obvious question here. What could possibly go wrong? You're dealing with A.I., which is unpredictable. What could go wrong here?

ULANOFF: Right. I mean, that's the thing. These are really complex systems. I mean, it's quite impressive. Obviously, just yesterday we had OpenAI release GPT-5, the most intelligent model they've ever released. And, you know, people are always pressing these chat bots to see sort of how they can -- we talk to them as if they're human, right? We keep pressing them and pressing them. They hallucinate. Sometimes they get things wrong or they don't know something and sometimes they act strangely and so-called evil. So, this is a smart idea, but again, they've sort of said that it's hard to really know exactly how all of these things are going to work out in the real world. So, once you've put something in, are we 100 percent certain that, you know, in this case, it was anthropic, researchers can pull it all out cleanly and the model has no evil within it?

BERMAN: What's the trend line here? It is A.I. getting more under control or out of control?

ULANOFF: Look, we're still building it, right, still humans building it. But it is interesting that there's always times where we have things happen that we didn't anticipate. And we are working towards something called artificial general intelligence, where A.I. seems as intelligent as a human being. And at that point, would they be as unpredictable as human beings?

All I will tell you is that it is very important for people to remember we are what's called A.I. time, meaning that the development and the progression of this technology is moving faster than any other technology I have ever seen in my lifetime. And so there is a level of unpredictableness that is going to come with this.

[08:55:00]

But I always just remind people, engage with it, learn it, understand it, talk about regulation, and we should be fine.

BERMAN: All right. Lance Ulanoff, always great to speak with you, thank you very much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: John F. Kennedy Jr. And Carolyn Bessette Kennedy were one of the biggest it couples of the 90s. Paparazzi followed their every move from the streets of New York to the red carpet and beyond. Even their private wedding marked a major fashion moment, ushering in a new era of bridal style. From their beginning until sadly, their tragic end, their lives and their style sparked a fascination and lasting influence on American style that is still seen today.

Joining me right now to talk about that influence is Washington Post Fashion Critic Rachel Tashjian. And it's really good to have you here.

RACHEL TASHJIAN, FASHION CRITIC, THE WASHINGTON POST: Thank you so much for having me.

BOLDUAN: Thank you for joining me. Just before we jump into specifics, what is it, Rachel? What is it about them as a couple or their style as individuals that has just made them so iconic and so timeless?

TASHJIAN: Well, I think what the two of them share, aside from glamour and incredible good looks, is a kind of commitment to minimalism and a utilitarian way of dressing that was sort of unseen at that level of celebrity in the United States. And the reason it endures is that, you know, it was able to sort of -- both of them were able to integrate their ideas of what it meant to look fabulous, powerful, glamorous, into this idea of being like a working person who was living in New York City and taking the subway and riding their bike.

BOLDUAN: To me, it always was kind of like the beginning of my kind of fashion memory of what now has become kind of the trying, not trying fashion trend, right? Like Carolyn Bessette and the way she would look with just -- even just jeans and a T-shirt walking down the streets of Manhattan, when I would see an image of that, was something that really influenced me. It's just the way -- is that what it embodies? Is it also just kind of -- I don't know. There was this mystique around them as well. There was a little distance you could never really get into Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and even though they were so public.

TASHJIAN: Well, I think, you know, they were very public, but they also were obsessed with privacy. And, you know, the way that she dressed, I mean, I think a lot about Princess Diana and the way that she was maybe setting herself off from Princess Diana and that much more outsized glamour.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

TASHJIAN: You know, that like dynasty die, lots of rhinestones, lots of embellishments, and then you have Carolyn who is walking through the streets of New York, often wearing flip-flops, carrying an Hermes Birkin bag on the subway. I mean, that is, in many ways, just a lot more accessible and attainable to women. And, again, it's much more modern. I mean, this is still the way that women dress today.

BOLDUAN: Wedding style is always kind of a sign of the times.

TASHJIAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: And what Carolyn Bessette did with her wedding gown is just -- I mean, it's still -- you see it almost the same exact design in styles still today. We're showing just that simple, that silk, that very simple --

TASHJIAN: Column.

BOLDUAN: Yes, that column, exactly.

TASHJIAN: Yes, slip dress, essentially.

BOLDUAN: It was just -- I mean, it could not be more simple and could not have left a bigger impact.

TASHJIAN: Right. Well, I think what's funny is we look at -- we might look at it now and think, oh, that's nice because so many things look like this today.

BOLDUAN: Exactly.

TASHJIAN: But it's interesting to think about, again, Princess Diana, that was the wedding dress. Talk about the 20th century.

BOLDUAN: Talk about a difference, right.

TASHJIAN: And it was this woman in this coming out of this fairytale horse and carriage in an enormous, richly embellished dress that was all about indulging fantasy and fairytales of royal life. And then you have Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, you know, making this dress with her friend, Narciso Rodriguez, who she met while she was working at Calvin Klein.

And it could not have been simpler. There's no embellishment. There are no ruffles, nothing. It is a simple white bias cut column dress.

And I think, you know, it's interesting again to contrast it with Diana because you see this kind of American fairytale happening, which is something we always attach to the Kennedys, and she's sort of saying, rather than embodying some past fantasy or fairytale fulfillment, I am going to do a clean slate and look forward to the future.

BOLDUAN: There's also a lot of lesson in that, like that's still endures today about your personal style is a statement of is just -- it's more than just a statement of your style. It's a statement of who you are and what you believe.

TASHJIAN: Exactly.

BOLDUAN: That's what I see in that.

TASHJIAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: It's great to have you. Thank you so much, Rachel.

TASHJIAN: Thank you so much.

BOLDUAN: I really appreciate it.

You can -- the new CNN Original Series, American Prince, JFK Jr., premieres Saturday, August 9th at 9:00 P.M. only on CNN.

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