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Anthropic Says, Claude Chatbot Working to Build Its Own Successor; Gas and Diesel Prices Surge Again, Impact Cost of Other Items; U.S. Sending Drones for Expected Drug Ops in South America. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 18, 2026 - 10:00   ET

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

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news, it is already happening. A chatbot has started building a new and improved version of itself without human help. Why this could make A.I. even harder to control.

Plus this, new video of ICE arresting two teens. Their mother tells CNN they were just on their way to join the Marines when this happened.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Also, a new U.N. report says the deadly U.S. strike on an Iranian elementary school may have been a war crime. How the U.S. State Department is now responding.

And gas prices go up another three cents overnight. What airlines are doing to combat rising fuel prices.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.

BROWN: And we begin this hour with that breaking news. And once again, A.I. concerns are front and center. We have learned that Claude, that's Anthropic's artificial intelligence agent, is helping to build the next version of itself. Anthropic says, quote, models accelerating their own development could make it more challenging for humans to understand or control these systems.

And this comes just days after the CEO called for an industry-wide slowdown, writing, quote, since roughly this summer, A.I. has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI's growing ability to build the next generation.

So, let's go live now to CNN AI correspondent Hadas Gold, who has had a very busy week to say the least. Hadas, walk us through the significance of this and Anthropic -- and why Anthropic is sharing this information.

HADAS GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Anthropic is saying that Claude is now building about 20 percent -- 26 percent, or doing 26 percent of its model research development. I want you to look at this chart to see how quickly this has developed. You can see that back in February, it was essentially at 0 percent of Anthropic's research and development work was being done by its own A.I. Now, we are at 26 percent in a matter of months.

You can just imagine that this is recursive. This is a loop. As it gets better and better, within just the next few months, we'll probably be at 50 percent. And then at some point, Anthropic will likely have most of its work done by its models.

Now on the one hand, this is cool. That's great. It's interesting. It helps speed things up. But the other hand is the concern over what's known as recursive self-improvement, and that's where these models will be so good, so fast, so advanced at improving themselves and changing themselves, it'll be hard for humans to monitor.

Anthropic says partly in a statement they have not yet reached that fully autonomous level, but at that point, the engineer won't have -- won't even have to bring an issue to Claude's attention. Claude would be trusted to monitor for failures itself, scope the investigation, design and implement the fix, test it, and deploy its own production.

And the whole concern here, guys, is about how much access does the human have. How much of -- how much can the human stay in the loop here to be able to properly monitor and make sure that the A.I. is doing what we actually want it to do, and to keep it safe, to keep it from going rogue like we've seen other A.I.s do?

BROWN: And we've also seen hackers using an A.I. model to get into another A.I. model. Tell us about that.

GOLD: Yes, this is something that A.I and cybersecurity experts say. They say this is the real fear that they have. Not so much of, you know, A.I wiping out humanity, but how good hackers are having it now with these tools.

So, OpenAI actually offers a bug bounty. So, if you are a good-guy hacker and you find a way in to break into their systems, you flag it for them and you get rewarded, and that's what happened here. This group of independent hackers, Wall Street Journal first reported this, say that they actually used Anthropic's Claude, one of their most advanced models, to find a way into an OpenAI employee's ChatGPT account, which actually gave them access to read and suggest changes to OpenAI's internal software.

And the way they did this is kind of a roundabout way. They found a bug in a how community discussion forum uploads images. So, it was through the way that they upload images, they found this bug. They asked Claude, hey, can you create a code that helps us break in finding this bug?

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And they say that they were successful.

OpenAI apparently rewarded them a few thousand dollars for doing this, and OpenAI told me that they thanked these researchers for contacting them, for sharing their findings, and they have now fixed those bugs that they found. Guys?

BROWN: I mean, yes, the scary part about this is these are good guys, right? These were researchers. What about if a bad actor tries something similar?

GOLD: Could've easily been bad guys.

BROWN: Yes, exactly. Hadas Gold, thank you so much.

BLITZER: And there's more breaking news we're following this morning, the cost of war reverberating as close as your corner gas station. Americans are reeling from the soaring cost of fuel, whether it's filling the gas tank or checking off a shopping list of groceries or other items.

Take a look at this. This morning, the national average for gas is $4.47 a gallon. Since the start of the Iran war less than seven months ago, gas is up almost a dollar and a half, and diesel keeps climbing into record territory, $6.45 a gallon today for the essential fuel for trucking, freight trains, and farm tractors. Since the start of the war, diesel has skyrocketed more than $2.5. And because of the surging prices, United, American, and Southwest Airlines are now cutting cheaper flights.

BROWN: And here is another number for you. 46, that's how many days until the midterm elections, and Republican lawmakers know that inflation and the rising cost of living overall are key issues with, when Americans cast their votes.

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REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): What our candidates are doing is they are on the ground in their districts talking to the people with authenticity and frankness. Of course, gas prices are too high. When we get that thing resolved and the trade war moves, that will have a direct effect on that, and it will help to bring down grocery costs.

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): To say there's not an affordability pro -- There's always an affordability problem.

Republicans would do well to say, whether we created all of it or not is irrelevant. It's a recognition that some people are struggling. We run the government. We own it. We've got to fix it.

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): I think Congress needs to take whatever action is available to get down the cost of everything, gas, diesel, healthcare, mortgages, I mean, all of the above. Everything is too expensive.

And right now in Missouri with the cost of gas so high, I mean, farmers are having a hard time.

That's a killer. It's -- you know, it's tough times.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: CNN Political Director David Chalian is here with us in the Situation Room, and CNN Business Senior Reporter David Goldman is in New York.

David, let me start with you. What are the voters dealing with right now when it comes to their money?

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: Well, I mean, it's more expensive to fill up your car. It's more expensive to heat your home. It's more expensive to fly, too. We just learned that United, American, and Southwest, in a conference, all said that they're going to cut cheaper flights. Why are they doing that? Because it's not profitable. Why not? Because airfares are up 23.4 percent. They have to charge more to make up for the fact that jet fuel is on the rise.

$4.53 is the spot price today for jet fuel. That is up 92 percent since the start of the war. This means that people are going to either have a more difficult time finding an inexpensive flight, or they're going to have to pay more to fly, either business class or first class, or even in an economy seat. This is starting to affect people at home. Wolf?

BROWN: Yes. And when you look at that, David Chalian, you have to wonder, you know, we see the reality. What are the perceptions of voters, and how is that reflected in the polls when it comes to Democrats and their growing margins?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: Pam, it's such a good question because the single biggest difference between Donald Trump's first midterm election as president in 2018 and where we are now eight years later, he wasn't all that popular then. That helped drive Democrats winning Congress then. He's less popular now.

But on the issue of the economy, this is the game changer. Even when Donald Trump was unpopular broadly with the American people in his first term, he was still given credit on the economy. They were still seeing this sort of a calling card of his, right, and a strength of his.

That is no longer the case. He is severely underwater with the American people on his handling of the economy because they see some policy choices that he's made, whether the Iran war impacting their gas prices or tariffs impacting inflation and overall prices, they directly tie his policy choices to their economic pessimism.

And that's what's driving what you see there on your screen. This is the major factor that is driving it. This Democratic advantage in what we call the generic Congressional ballot, you know, if the election were held today, would you vote for the Democrat in your district or the Republican?

If you look at that, let's say that plus eight in the middle there from The New York Times and CBS polls there you see, that's about what the national House margin was in 2018 when the Democrats had that big blue wave, same kind of an advantage, eight, eight and a half point advantage. [10:10:04]

BROWN: Interesting.

BLITZER: And I want to go back to David Goldman. David, is there any indication at all that relief for the American public is coming any time soon?

GOLDMAN: Well, you heard it from Speaker Johnson. If the war ends, then these gas prices will probably fall. That's true, because we saw that. We saw the Strait of Hormuz reopen in June, and we saw now we're at $4.47. We were under $4 when the Strait of Hormuz reopened in June, but then it closed again, and this is a very difficult war to solve, obviously. It's been going on for nearly seven months.

So, what's going to happen? Well, I want to take a look at this gas price map behind me, because you can see that where we have fewer refineries, gas is more expensive, on the West Coast. But in the future, we're going to have a problem in New England. Why? Because diesel prices are on the rise, double what they were before the war.

How do you heat your home in New England? Largely through heating oil, not necessarily natural gas. Heating oil and diesel are very similar. It's going to be a very expensive winter for folks in New England. This is not going to get any easier any time soon.

BLITZER: Yes. And as you correctly point out, regular gas is going for over $6 a gallon out on the West Coast, over $5 a gallon here in the D.C. area. I checked the other day when I was filling up my car as well. So, it's expensive, and it looks like it's going to stay like that for a while.

BROWN: And now you're seeing, Wolf, several Republicans distancing themselves from Trump. What do Republicans need to do to close the gap?

CHALIAN: It's a good question. You are seeing some distancing, which by the way, is pretty natural. When you are running for reelection in a party where the leader of the party is woefully unpopular, you try to find some distance, to not be entirely attached to that.

Here's what I think you can think of for what Republicans in these final 46 days are looking at as the tools to potentially mitigate some historic losses here. I think of them as three Ms. There's the map, which they altered a bit on the House side with the mid-decade redistricting. That advantaged Republican probably six to eight House seats they sort of squeezed out of that before anyone voted, so that's one thing they're hoping to keep losses down.

There's money, which is the outside spending avalanche from Donald Trump's political organization and its allies, which is starting to be unleashed on T.V. screens. And there's the message that that money is paying to deliver, which is all about taking down the Democrats as communists, socialists, so far outside the mainstream of American politics. They're hoping to portray with the rise of the Democratic socialist left inside the party, they're hoping to paint the whole party with this broad stroke of you cannot trust the alternative. That is the main thrust of the messaging that they're paying to get across all voters' screens this fall.

BROWN: We'll see if it works. David Chalian, David Goldman, thank you so much.

And coming up, former Trump White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin will join us. She'll share what she'd tell the president about midterm messaging as millions of Americans struggle with these rising prices.

BLITZER: And still ahead, fiery crash. An F-16 fighter jet burst into flames during a training exercise. Up next, how the pilot escaped.

BROWN: And then later, speaking out, we're hearing from the lone holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy mistrial, as well as Patrick Clancy, her ex-husband.

Details ahead live in The Situation Room.

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BLITZER: And now to a CNN exclusive report. We've learned that the military is sending drones to South America for anticipated counter- drug and counter-terror operations. It's the latest shift as the Trump administration escalates military campaigns in the region. Sources telling CNN that drones now used over Africa will be transferred to the U.S. military's Southern Command.

CNN Senior National Security Reporter Haley Britzky is here with me in The Situation Room. So, what more are the sources telling you, Haley, about these latest operations?

HALEY BRITZKY, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, Wolf. So six sources saying that these MQ-9 drones, which are used for collecting intelligence, carrying out precision strikes are being sent from Africa Command to U.S. Southern Command, saying that these are coming ahead of anticipated counter-narcotics and counter-terror operations, particularly possible operations in Ecuador.

So, this is obviously coming on the heels of administration officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, praising a lot of these countries in South America for welcoming in the U.S. military, carrying out these joint operations and sort of partnering with them closer. But it also raises concerns about what we have in Africa.

And, you know, as you know, no military commander is going to say, we have enough assets and equipment. Don't send any more. They certainly always want more of that. But there is a concern that so much of this is putting Africa consistently at the end of the military's list of priorities.

So, what this looks like as far as operations coming in the near future is still yet to be seen. But military in Africa is still dealing with anti-ISIS operations and against groups like Al-Shabaab. So, these assets are really crucial in so many different theaters around the world. And there's limited amounts of them obviously, Wolf.

And so, what this looks like for what the military can continue doing in Africa is certainly a concern for officials right now.

BLITZER: It certainly is. All right, Haley, good reporting. Thank you very, very much.

BROWN: All right. Coming up here in the situation room, quote, I didn't have any doubts. The holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy case is explaining his decision.

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CNN's Jean Casarez is following that story this morning. Jean?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We have heard so much about the holdout juror, but not from him. We now have a statement from the person that refused to concede to 11 other jurors.

We'll be right back.

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BROWN: Happening now, for the first time we're hearing from the one holdout juror in Lindsey Clancy's murder mistrial, and Patrick Clancy is also talking about how he has dealt with his grief since his ex- wife, Lindsay, killed their three children.

[10:25:00]

He told CBS he still talks to them.

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PATRICK CLANCY, LINDSAY CLANCY'S FORMER HUSBAND: I talk to them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you say?

CLANCY: Help me, all the time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do they help you?

CLANCY: I like to believe they do.

It's a way I stay connected to them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Lindsay Clancy's defense argued that she should not be held criminally liable for killing the children, and said she was experiencing postpartum psychosis at the time.

CNN's Jean Casarez, as you well know, has followed this trial since the beginning, it ended in a mistrial, and joins us now. So, Jean, what is this former holdout juror and his attorney saying now?

CASAREZ: Well, for the first time we're hearing from him. We have heard from so many jurors that were on the other side talking about him as the lone holdout, that he would not follow the instructions. The foreperson sent several notes on him saying he would not participate, he just wouldn't talk, he wouldn't reason out what his theories were.

Well, here is now what he is saying. He's gotten an attorney also, which is interesting, and through his attorney we got this statement. He says, quote, I didn't have any doubts. As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence present. Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presents, I thought it was enough proof that she, Clancy, knew exactly what she was doing and planned.

So, this shows us, Pamela, a completely different focus than what we have heard from the other jurors that have spoken out. This appears to be a juror that deliberated and had an opinion that was different from the other 11, and he held firm.

BROWN: Yes, really interesting that he's releasing this statement now. We'll see if he speaks anymore beyond the statement.

And, Jean, I want to ask you about this other case that you're following today, these opening statements beginning in Caleb Flynn's murder trial. He's a former American Idol contestant and pastor who's accused of killing his wife. What will you be watching for today and in the coming days?

CASAREZ: Well, we have just heard the opening statements, and they were shocking, truly, on both sides. But the prosecution began their opening statement, and this is someone who made it to Hollywood with American Idol, and he credited his wife, Ashley Flynn, who is the victim in this case, two young children they had in the home.

But the prosecution began by talking and relating text messages that he was saying to his mistress. We had no idea he had a mistress, had her, according to the prosecution, for a long time, but he texted in a way that he wanted his wife dead.

Let's listen to a little bit of the opening just minutes ago from the State of Ohio.

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PAUL WATKINS, MIAMI COUNTY, OHIO PROSECUTOR: I was up until 4:00 A.M. last night crying, literally trying to think of ways to kill her and not go to jail. If I could literally kill her and not go to hell, I would do it in a heartbeat. That is how dark and how hateful I feel.

Those two messages are Caleb Flynn's own words. They're words about his wife, Ashley, words communicated to his mistress.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CASAREZ: The defense in their opening said that was a theory in his mind, but it will not be borne out by the evidence. They cannot prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. There is speculation, and it is just theory. They rushed to judgment, and it was an intruder that came in and shot his wife two times in the back of her head as she was sleeping, Pamela, months ago, February of this year.

BROWN: Jean Casarez, thank you. Wolf?

BLITZER: And coming up, midterm pitch. Is the GOP's message on the economy getting through to voters? We'll discuss with President Trump's former White House communications director, Alyssa Farah Griffin. That's coming up next.

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