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The Situation Room

Big Tech Leaders Call for Artificial Intelligence Slowdown; Watchdog: "Alligator Alcatraz" Put Detainees in Metal Cages; Black American Breakthroughs at U.S. Open. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired September 14, 2026 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, Wisconsin congressman and Republican candidate for governor, Tom Tiffany, tearfully recounted the moment his plane made an emergency landing on a lake Saturday night.

Well, we had some sound here from Tiffany just talking about how the plane hit the water and they had to swim to shore. They escaped safely. And the congressman says he has stitches above his eye and that the pilot was also released from the hospital. The FAA is now investigating.

And the man charged with murder of 29-year-old Tasia Fortune is set to appear in court today. Fortune is the black woman who was found hanging from a tree in Jackson, Mississippi last month. Jackson Police announced that the charges against 51-year-old Jacques Ratliff on Friday after the medical examiner ruled Fortune's death a homicide. The police chief tells CNN that more arrests are expected. Wolf.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And this morning there are chilling new warnings about artificial intelligence and they're coming from the top leaders in the A.I. industry, Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Dario Amodei, they want the industry to work together to slow down the rapid acceleration. They fear that this independent super intelligence is racing toward a point that humans will no longer be able to restrain it.

But as the A.I. pioneers say slow down, President Trump wants the industry to speed up. He says if A.I. companies in the U.S. dial back their development, China could capture future control of the technology. And this morning, the president claimed the push for regulation is, in his words, "a sick conspiracy" end quote, against A.I. and data centers. The president's opposition to slowing down the A.I. industry is echoed by other Republicans up on Capitol Hill. As of now, the issue is split largely along party lines.

[11:35:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY), MINORITY LEADER: We should take decisive action now so that we can slow down, as the CEOs have recently acknowledged, slow down the pace of development in order to protect the American people and ensure that A.I. is proceeding safely.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: The problem is they all have a different prescription on what they say the regulation is supposed to be. The problem is they're all competitors. Each one of them wants to maintain an edge over the others. And Congress is obviously less qualified than the people who are pushing this frontier to know all the ins and outs of it. If we overstep it, I'm telling you again, Jay, it could be a national security threat for every American.

BROWN: And CNN has learned that top tech companies have discussed creating their own standards body for the industry. The CEO of Anthropic tells CNN how those independent evaluators could work.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DARIO AMODEI, CEO, ANTHROPIC: There is precedent for this. If you look at how banks are regulated, right, there's all kinds of -- you know, there's all kinds of rules about, you know, how banks are allowed to do their business, right, because, you know, we don't want to have financial crises. And one of the things that are done in some cases is, I think they're called supervisors in the financial industry, but they're folks who are independent of a company, who are embedded in the company day to day to check their practices. And I think we can do the same thing in A.I.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So, let's continue this conversation. Brad Carson is a co- founder of Americans for Responsible Innovation, a public policy organization focused on emergency -- emergent technologies like A.I. Could be an emergency, right? Thanks so much for being here in the Situation Room. So, what are your thoughts on possibly having these third-party watchdogs supervising these A.I. companies?

BRAD CARSON, AMERICANS FOR RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION: I think it's a good start. These third-party watchdogs need to have government oversight. They can't just do it on their own. They have to have meaningful safety standards that we all agree to, and they have to be transparent in what they reveal. And they have to have the ability to go to the government outside the companies and show us what they've found.

So, it's a good start. It's nowhere near enough. We need independent standards. We need more government oversight. We need protection of whistleblowers and many other things too.

BROWN: What do you make of what Mike Johnson just said there about regulation, Congress stepping in more could be a national security issue?

CARSON: I couldn't agree with him less. I think if we don't step in and do some kind of regulation of the industry to make the American people believe in A.I. again, that's the greatest threat to the A.I. industry in this country. We need to have a robust A.I. industry. We need to make sure we are the world leader in that. But the greatest threat to it now is that people don't think that A.I. is going to be used safely. One massive incident that we could have could stifle the entire industry for a generation.

BROWN: Potentially. I mean, you're getting these dire warnings of human extinction if something isn't done because A.I. could become self-controlling and there's nothing you could do about it. Even Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, had this to say. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAM ALTMAN, OPENAI CEO: I think it can simultaneously be true that if the world and the companies building this technology did not do things any differently, they've been doing them in the past, there might be significant risk. But it would be insane not to adjust the way we all work and the way that we make decisions and the way that our governments understand and put guardrails around this technology.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: What do you think about these warnings?

CARSON: I think you shouldn't take them lightly. When the company leaders themselves tell you that what they're doing could lead to catastrophe, you should take them at their word. When whistleblowers come out and say what they're doing could lead to catastrophe, we should listen to them. When great thinkers, including the founders really of modern A.I., like Yoshua Bengio or Geoffrey Hinton, say it could lead to catastrophe, we should listen to them.

It's a very real possibility that A.I. gets out of our control and leads to devastation and we don't want that to happen, of course, and reasonable guardrails are essential to foreclose that possibility.

BROWN: What could that look like? And again, it's hypothetical at this point, but what could that devastation look like? How would it happen? I mean, are we talking about killer robots going around? Are we talking about major cybersecurity attacks? What are the scenarios?

CARSON: I don't think you have to be a science fiction novelist or a filmmaker to imagine scenarios where it could wreak a lot of havoc. For one thing, A.I. is increasingly controlling the systems that keep us alive. It's going to be controlling the electricity system, the payment system, the education system. It's going to be embedded in the military.

You could imagine a world where agents pursue a goal of their own, a goal that we once gave it, but we've now diverged from it in some way, and they pursue that continually in a way that works against human interest. These are ways that these systems could fail simultaneously. You know, vibe coding a super virus is something a lot of people talk about. We're not quite there yet, but within six, eight months, people think that's entirely possible.

So, there are obvious scenarios that just kind of extrapolate from current trends that can get you to a disastrous situation. BROWN: Do you share any of President Trump's concerns that slowing down American A.I. development through regulation would give China a potentially dangerous advantage?

[11:40:00]

CARSON: I think if we really care about what China's doing, we need to have export controls. We're giving them the chips that allow them to develop A.I. We're giving them the data that allows their A.I. systems to train. So, anyone who is serious about the China question, and it is an important one, needs to actually support export controls and not selling them all the data that allow them to develop these great models. And sadly, a lot of people sort of around the administration have not always been strong on those issues. So, that's really how we control China.

BROWN: I just want to ask you about what Vice President JD Vance said and the skepticism he relayed around why A.I. industry leaders are coming out right now asking for more regulation. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JD VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I have to say just personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier A.I. tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them. It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan Horse. So, I think we just have to be careful about this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: What do you make of that argument?

CARSON: I'm not sure what he's saying. I mean, I think the obvious way to evaluate what Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are saying is like they're sincere about it. They actually see internally how capable these systems are, the dangers they present. The whistleblowers all say it. The academics who watch the A.I. companies, the people who, again, founded modern A.I. all believe this.

So, it's not just the heads of the companies who are saying this. People have been clamoring for better regulation of the A.I. sector for years now. People are just now seeing after the Hugging Face incident that it's a very real possibility. And the kind of incredible capability improvements these models are having are really bringing these questions to fore right now.

BROWN: All right. Brad Carson, thank you so much. And tonight, watch Anderson Cooper's full interview with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. That's on AC 360 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern here on CNN, or stream with your all access subscription.

BLITZER: And just into the Situation Room, according to a federal watchdog report, 80 immigrants, 80 immigrants who were held at Florida's detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz were briefly held in small metal cages, some of them spending up to nearly two hours inside those enclosures. Let's go live right now to CNN's Priscilla Alvarez. Priscilla, the inspector general who reported the findings, he says it was, quote, "unlike anything they've observed in ICE facilities," end quote. Tell us about this.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Wolf. Disturbing findings by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general that visited Alligator Alcatraz in January of this year.

Now, it's worth noting that the facility has since closed. It closed over the summer. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that it was only meant to be temporary. You're seeing some images there from last year. The president himself had visited this facility. But as the facility began operations, there were concerns shared by detainees, by their families, by Democratic lawmakers about what was unfolding. And we now have a greater window into what exactly that was.

So, in addition to cramped conditions in these housing units, which you are seeing images of there, there was also these small metal enclosures. That's how the inspector general describes them. And they were in an area where they said that they were used as calming areas, in other words, to de-escalate a situation. That's according to the facility staff, or they say at some point, detainees asked to spend time in these enclosures.

What's remarkable about this, Wolf, is that the inspector general notes that they have not seen anything like this before. Not only were there these small metal enclosures indoors, but there were also at least two outdoors. Now, they say, and I'm going to quote here, the use of such restrictive spaces is highly unconventional and does not align with standards for humane treatment.

Now, this is a 34-page report. It also notes that after giving recommendations to the department, they scrapped those because, again, this facility is no longer in use. But the Department of Homeland Security had said at the time that it was the state of Florida that maintained authority on daily operations. And therein is the confusion. It's been the confusion since the start of Alligator Alcatraz. And even up until its end, who was accountable for the operations, what was happening, the conditions within this facility?

Now, the inspector general notes that when they are holding any facility is holding detainees, ICE detainees, that there needs to be a compliance with ICE detention standards. And that is what they were looking at here, where they found that, yes, there were some standards that were met, but many others that weren't. And perhaps the most revelatory part of this report is, again, those small metal enclosures. Because while we knew about concerns about drinking water, about bugs in the shower, about lack of personal hygiene, these enclosures clearly raised concern within the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general and are certainly going to raise more concern about the way this facility operated, even though, again, Wolf, it has since closed.

[11:45:00]

BLITZER: Were they locked in these small metal cages, if you will?

ALVAREZ: So, the inspector general notes that facility staff said they weren't locked, but they noted locks on the doors. So, that remains an open question. Again, I do want to note what you're seeing on your screen is from last year. This was before operations began. And those are the housing units, so the bunk beds with the toilet and sanitation areas.

But what we're talking about here is another area where they described these small metal enclosures, the ones outside, almost identical to a phone booth, where facility staff said they used them to deescalate situations. The average amount of time for the 79 detainees the inspector general found to have been used or placed in these enclosures was just under an hour, the least amount of time, a few minutes, the most amount of time, nearly two hours.

BLITZER: Priscilla Alvarez with her latest reporting, thank you very, very much, Pamela.

BROWN: All right. Wolf, coming up, a tough loss for America at the U.S. Open final, but black American athletes still made history. We're going to look at the incredible breakthroughs that are changing the face of tennis forever. Up next.

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[11:50:00]

BLITZER: It was a truly incredible finish at the U.S. Open. 23-year- old Ben Shelton came incredibly close to ending a 23-year Grand Slam title drought for American men. But in the end, Germany's Alexander Zverev took the crown in four tight sets, securing his first U.S. Open title and his second major of the year. Zverev was so locked in during that final match point he didn't even realize he had actually won. Here's how he described that surreal moment to our Patrick Snell.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEXANDER ZVEREV, TENNIS PLAYER: I thought it was 5-1 instead of 6-2, so I thought I have one more game left, so I was quite focused, also quite calm, but then I was luckily on the side of my team and they're all screaming that it's over. So, I'm very happy that it was.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: All right. joining us now is Cari Champion, standing contributor and host of the "Flagrant and Funny with Cari Champion and Jemele Hill" podcast. Cari, thanks for coming on. So, even though Shelton didn't walk away with the trophy, black tennis players made some truly historic, inspiring breakthroughs at Meadows this year.

Let's start with Ben Shelton. He is the first black American man to reach the U.S. Open final since the legendary Arthur Ashe all the way back in 1972. When you look at just the sheer scale of that, what does Ben's achievement mean for black sports history? CARI CHAMPION, CNN CONTRIBUTOR AND HOST, "FLAGRANT AND FUNNY WITH CARL CHAMPION AND JEMELE HILL" PODCAST: Well, first, for black sports history, it's amazing. I do believe, and I'll go back to what Arthur Ashe said when he actually made it to Wimbledon finals and won, not necessarily 52 years ago, but when he won, he said, I hope that I am leading the way. I hope there'll be more men who, black American men who play tennis, who see what I am doing, who want to be a part of the sport because it's so, and I'm paraphrasing here, because it's given so much.

So, to see Ben Shelton at the young age of 23 years old in this space playing and understanding the legacy, right, the rite of passage, if you will, for some, it was really special. Not only did we watch Ben, again, sadly not win, but not only did we watch him make this final, the last time an American had made the final at the U.S. Open, men's final at the U.S. Open was Andy Roddick back in '03. And so, there was so much more history to be made.

I thought it was a win, not only for the history of African-Americans, but even more importantly, for where we think men's tennis is going here in the United States. It's been a while. We've had a drought and it would be beautiful to see us rise up and play in a way in which that represents our country.

BLITZER: You know, it was interesting, Cari, because Black American athletes certainly seem to dominate throughout the U.S. Tennis Open. We saw the first ever all-Black men's singles semifinal between Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe. Coco Gauff fought her way to the semifinals and Taylor Townsend won the women's doubles title. What are the breakthroughs, tell us about the direction that this sport is now headed?

CHAMPION: Now, tennis is -- and as we all know, it's obviously an international sport. But in some of these sports that feel as if you don't see a lot of diversity in terms of African-Americans playing, you always look to find these moments that says this actually is opening the doors for others. You're showing people what can happen.

Venus and Serena did a fabulous job of opening that door. And I think what we're watching with Coco Gauff, and she's even said as much, thank you so much for everything you all did for us. That is the reason why I'm here today and that I believe. Coco won, Coco Gauff won the U.S. Open in 2023, and she continues to fight and play at such a superior level.

And when I look at her and Taylor Townsend, who are very unapologetic about the fact that there may be only a few, but that doesn't mean there can be more, that lets us know that this sport in particular, especially here at home in America, is opening the doors. It's saying, guess what? We accept all, we want all. And it's not necessarily always been that way.

Tennis is an expensive sport, so sometimes it lends itself to people who have more privilege and more dollars. But these ladies are showing that all can coexist. And when you get this opportunity to shine bright, they did it so well. Congratulations to Taylor Townsend. It was really special. She gave a phenomenal speech about what it means to be African-American and winning in this moment. And then we have Coco Gauff, who consistently shows up in her space and she takes up all of the room and says, love me no matter what. And she carries herself like a true champion.

[11:55:00]

BROWN: Oh, she does.

BLITZER: She's a great champion. Indeed. I watched it. I loved every minute. Cari Champion, thank you very, very much. And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning. You can always keep up with us on social media, @wolfblitzer and @pamelabrowncnn.

BROWN: And we'll see you back here tomorrow morning and every weekday morning at 10:00 Eastern for two hours. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague Dana Batch starts after a quick break.

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