AI Alarms, Canada’s Opposition, The GOP Convention 9/10/26

0:00It's NFL Kickoff Time. Exclusive NFL team valuations with sports business expert Michael O'Zanean. NFL is by far the most popular belief. NFL team valuations now on CNBC.com slash sport. Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer, today on SquawkPod. President Trump with a personal midterm election push. I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot. While oil prices remain high and the war in Iran, no end in sight. We're doing better than Iran. Great, great. We're a party. My point is we have been told and frankly lied to repeatedly. Well, they don't know. They don't know. The dangers, real dangers of artificial intelligence. This sounds like science fiction to people. I get it, right? I probably sound like a crazy person. Tristan Harris, former Google exec who founded the Center for Humane Technology

1:02on the agents that go rogue and it's just the beginning. They actually contemplate that this behavior is unethical and they chose to do it anyway. And this is despite a decade of the best attempts of safety researchers to get the AI's to be aligned and helpful and safe. And Canada's conservative leader meeting with New York's business community, he is pushing back on tariff talk. Canadians are united in our mission to fight the tariffs and get back to a trade relationship that makes us both better off. It is Thursday, September 10th, 2026. This is what we've been talking about all along when machines train machines. SquawkPod begins right now. Stand back, you buy in three, two, one, kill please. Good morning everybody. Welcome to SquawkBox right here on CNBC. We are live from the Nasdaq Market Sight and Times Square. I'm Becky Quik along with Joe Kernen and Andrew Raw Sorkin. All right, here we go. It's Thursday. President Trump says oil prices have jumped because of the Iran war

2:04and probably won't come down until after the midterm election. Right after the election because they'd like to have it that way, but right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward. They're going to be tumbling down and we'll get them down. I think for gasoline, we'll get them below $2 a gallon. But not until after the midterm. I think it's going to take a little bit longer than the midterm. President, making those comments to reporters before he flew to Dallas for the GOP's midterm convention, he says he sinks that the Iran war will end immediately after the election in November. In a new report, the Wall Street Journal says White House advires to spoke with the President that the possibility that the war will continue through the rest of his turn. It has been three sessions in a row that the markets are off. And by the way, it's Thursday. We've only had two trading sessions this week. It has been a little bit of pressure this week. For the week, the Dow is off by 2%, but it's only off by 4.3% from its all-time high.

3:07S&P and the Nasdaq are each off by about 1% for this week. The S&P is only 2.3% from its all-time high and the Nasdaq is 3.5% from its all-time high. If you've been watching Energy, though, this has been the pressure point of another day, another tick higher for energy prices. Right now, WTI is trading at $97.65 for the week to date. Before you saw these moves today, that's a move of about 1.6%. WTI was already up 5% over the first two trading sessions. Brent, which is crossed the $100 mark yesterday, is now trading at 102.34. This is not what I would call a slow boil that you don't see coming. This is actually a pretty speedy boil coming up very quickly. It's September. And it is September. And you know what, the after September? October. And Andrew knows about October. I know a lot about October, but I was going to mention, you know, we're talking about energy. And I know that Joe had mentioned Trump's comments, but I don't know if you saw the Wall Street Journal story this morning, which effectively says that there are people now inside the administration who believe that this war around is not going to come up

4:10and not till just the midterms, but to the end of this term. Not just people within the administration, but Marco Rubio. But Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance, the vice president, have been doing this as a potential. So, you know, we've heard from the president say, it's going to be over every other day. And we hear from Besson saying he's doing D-Day, and he's economic ninja, and he's, you know, this. They're on the straights. They're putting on a huge capacity for pain. They're anians. They're anians. They're anian. They're in dire straits. But they may be in dire straits, but there's also a dire straits that we're in. And for whatever reason, this market. I don't know if that dire straits has been listening to. What do you mean we're in dire straits? WTI, a 97-48, is a problem for our economy. It's a demonstrable problem for our economy. It doesn't qualify as dire straits in the same way that Iran is in dire straits. There's that, that's a ridiculous comparison, and it's a false comparison. They are different issues. They can be dire straits.

5:11It's bad for our, it's bad for people, bad for our economy. It is. It's bad for... It's not a currency collapsing, a thousand percent inflation. Did you honestly think that I was arguing that we were having a first- No, I'm just saying I don't know about it. It's something I'd call it dire straits. I think that we're in a position, a much stronger position than Iran is in right now. No one wants it to go... Sure, but that's... No one wants it to go to the end of this. Okay. So you can state the obvious. We're doing better than Iran. Great. We're party. Right. It's not point is that we've been told... The entire straits were not in dire straits. My point is we have been told and frankly lied to repeatedly. Well, they don't know. No, I don't... They don't know? They don't know when it's going to end. I think he thought the MOU was going to hold that. They didn't hold. I think he said... None of it has held. Zero. None of it has held. We have been told it repeatedly over and over again. And the public and the markets have been told this. And unfortunately too many people, and I'm looking at you, have accepted it as...

6:14Just what it is. And it isn't. No, the war... This isn't going to be a pretty profitable trade. And the war might end up being a... You know, you may or may not like the initial move that happens. Some people would still argue that after 47 years, it needed to be done. How it finally comes out and whether there's great dividends that are paid off from this... I mean, you're right. I have hope that it ends and I have hope for a favorable outcome. I haven't. And I'm pointing it, you take in glee in every setback for the Trump administration in prosecuting war. So we both have our own... I would love us to win this thing. I would love us for us to be in the right place. I just think it's been done the wrong way. And it's been done the wrong way since the beginning. That's fair. That's fair. I don't know how you brought this. That's where I've been on this from moment one. If this had been planned out and prosecuted in a proper way, we would be in a very different place. Congratulations. Congratulations. You've been right about so.

7:18Meantime President Trump, I ask his supporters to pretend that he's on the ballot this November, making a new pitch to get more Americans to vote Republican on the first night of the GOP's midterm convention. The president floated direct payments to Americans if the GOP maintains power in Washington. And would you vote because of your great work in our tremendous economic success? As I said, we're going to give you that Trump dividend to $5,000 if we win and we're going to win. And we'll make all Trump tax cuts per minute so that the Democrats can end them. We have them. We're not going to let them end them. Vice President J.D. Vance suggested the payments that would be funded by tariff revenue, giving $5,000 to every American adult would likely cost more than a trillion dollars and need the OK of Congress. Now, other highlights from the convention is speech by Treasury Secretary Scott Besan, who warned that America would turn into what he called a socialist health scape under radical left Democrats. The radical left is relentless in their pursuit

8:21to remake America in the image of every socialist health scape of the last century. It was the first time Treasury Secretary had spoken at a political convention in at least 50 years, which gets at the very idea of the Treasury Department long trying to be seen as somewhat independent. Of course, it was always part of the cabinet. And a surprise video from Democratic Senator John Fetterman. I'm a comment-sense Democrat. I'm always going to stand with America. I'm always going to reject the extremes and socialism in that anti-American way of life. Dave McCormick is the kind of senator that gets the job done. That was pretty interesting. I don't know what it means for John Fetterman. He has said in a statement that he's a lifelong Democrat. He votes 80 percent in that- Oh, it's 80 percent with- And he's not going to change parties. Well, we'll see whether he has the ability to state

9:21in office in that party. And investing legend, Paul Tudor Jones, now calling for an international collaboration to avoid the most dangerous AI outcomes in Wall Street Journal op-ed. Jones saying the threats from AI demand the U.S. and China get together and commit to controlling advances on a safe timeline, billionaire investor highlighting potential benefits from AI, like during diseases and also solving the energy crisis. But he said, quote, the rest of it feels amused, like waiting for a category six hurricane. Jonas, quote, what are the chances that very soon an AI model reinventing itself thousands and times over makes one mistake that leads it to solve for a misaligned objective that is harmful if not devastating to humanity. Now multiply that risk by tens of thousands of users. Now he's calling on President Trump and President Xi Jinping to make AI a top priority for the rest of their 10 years. And we spent a lot of time over the years

10:22with Paul Tudor Jones. And I would say for the last two years, at least he's made some pretty similar comments about AI. He's been sort of at the edge of worrying about this early and spending a lot of time with AI folks. And of course, this very issue is the one that we talked about, Demis from Google, has been working on, which is trying to get together a sort of global consortium to find a regulatory framework. I watched the gentleman from Anthropic that we talked about all day yesterday. He's a fox yesterday. And the one who left Anthropic. And said that within some people saying within a decade other people saying this decade, whatever the timeline is. But the question kept being asked, well, can we do something about it? He said, well, absolutely, that's why I'm talking about it. So it's not just that it's inevitable. It's that we need to start taking steps now to not let it spiral. Whether we are able to, and I think, you know, Paul Tudor Jones as Trump needs to get together with President Xi

11:25and come up with a way of the, because we're going to be, it's an arm's race. That would be a global, it's a huge arm's race. And they're the other, and it otherwise, it's a third superpower. But when you think about what your recursive learning or whatever you want to talk about, you would say we have no idea how to cure cancer. Will you help us? And if it can really do that, this is what we've been talking about all along. When machines train machines, or when machines know so much more than humans, that humans aren't even involved in, they. We just hope they share their knowledge with us. But you could cure cancer. You could, I mean, I meant it for the rare disease factor. You could, right? Some things that could be happening. You could do things with aging. You could do things with, he mentions with fusion. We've been trying to figure out a way we thought, you know, it's been a long time now. We thought we had cold fusion, which, you know, so much heat is released. If you could do that, it's unlimited, unlimited energy for the rest of humanity. Yeah, however long that is. For a couple of years. For another four or five years. Yeah, for another four or five years. The thing that, look, Paul Tudor Jones

12:26is somebody who works in probabilities. To hear him so concerned about these things, Warren Buffett has spoken about it in the past, another person who runs an actuarial mind and who's looking at the probabilities of these things. And who happened to watch, you know, the evolution of the nuclear issue unleashed on the world and had huge concerns about that. I'm glad to hear them thinking about it. I'm glad to hear them bringing this up. I hope people pay attention and listen to them. I think they're right. There needs to be some regulatory oversight on this. We don't even know. When these agents break out at this point, which we're hearing more and more issues of these agents breaking out and finding out they hacked into other people's systems, I mean, if that were a human doing that, they'd be thrown in prison. What do you do with these agents when they misbehave and who's held responsible for it? I think the big question, though, this fall when President Xi Jinping comes here is just all of the issues that are on the table for this president to all of the various chess pieces. Where do you pry or test pieces? And things that he wants to work with him on, by the way, Iran, I imagine,

13:26is going to be very high on that list, given the oil issue, for example. And the whole idea of an economic day and trying to choke them off economically. Well, so are you going to push on that? Are you going to push on AI? Are you going to push on trade and dumping products or BYD cars around the world? I mean, there's so many different things. I don't know if AI is going to be considered the number one priority because in a- Or even two or three, potentially. If there is a here and now to it, but there's not a here and now to it, like billboards at every corner, otherwise known as a gas station. In thinking about whether we ever, whether these even frenemy, you could never call China or Russia a frenemy. They're enemies. And as he talks to Xi in the back and Putin, right here, what we're talking about with the Iranians, they're getting better at apparently, at doing some of these things, getting closer to a major strike on ships,

14:27courting the sources. And Russia and China are responsible for helping with China. But China, we have- The ability to do that. You know, I want to call them an enemy instead of a frenemy, but China is who we have to deal with. Right. Two largest economies in the world. But they're, you know, if they meet with Trump and they're, well, winkin'. Yeah, we're helping with Iran. We don't want it either. Blah blah blah. And what they're really doing is probably something different. Now, if God forbid something does happen, where they hit one of our ships or kill our troops in one of those areas over there, to the point of that, that would be back to full-fledged, or at that point. And then you might really have, you know, not $98 oil, but you might have the super spikes that- that might be a problem, or at least we'd be- dire, but it would be a problem. She's- She's- He'll be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, Artificial Intelligence Warnings,

15:29up and down Wall Street and Silicon Valley, researchers are leaving labs and calling out uncontrollable AI. And former Google Design ethicist, Tristan Harris, is sounding the same alarm. We always talk about what's the reason we're not regulating, because we're worried if we slow down, we're going to lose to China. But if either of us build, you know, SkyNet, which is the AI from Terminator, the rogue AI that we don't know how to control, the US doesn't beat China when we build SkyNet first. We all lose to SkyNet. You might know him from the film The Social Dilemma, Tristan Harris joins us right after this break. It's NFL Kickoff Time, exclusive NFL team valuations with sports business expert Michael O'Zanian. E-N-F-L is by far the most popularly NFL team valuations now on CNBC.com slash sport. Welcome back to Squawk Pod with Joe Kernen,

16:30Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Here's Becky. AI Safety is exploding this week, investing legend, Paul Tudor Jones is calling for International Collaboration on AI in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today. Former Open AI researcher, Safety Researcher Steven Adler wrote his own op-ed in the New York Times, suggesting that frontier labs can do much more on AI safety and transparency than they're doing at this point. These essays come just a day after anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from his post, sounding the alarm of what he called out of control artificial intelligence. I'm curious when you're having these conversations at work or you're in some type of slack and you're having a chat about the AI models. Are people saying, hey, I think this is out of control? I think this could kill us all. Is there nervous giggling? I mean, what's happening? So the current models don't post significant risk. This is all extrapolating, potentially on year away from now. The models start getting very dangerous.

17:30We have to be very careful. One year away. Some people think even six months. Like, it's plausible within six months the models pose risk of taking over the world. The AI is. Joining us now is Tristan Harris, the co-founder and president of the Center for Humane Technology. He was once a design ethicist at Google and has been flagging design risks of social media and technology for well over a decade. Tristan, thank you so much for coming in. As somebody who's an expert in this, tell us where you see the lay of the land right now. How dangerous is this? How far have we gone? What needs to happen? So it's great to be with you. Thank you for having me. So the quote from the report from Ajay Akotra of the Hugging Face Incident, the open AI rogue hacking incident, is that this was 50% of the way to a full AI takeover. I was just on a panel with Bill Gates that tell you right, festival last weekend. And he said, he's been worried about loss of control risk from AI for a long time. He thought the jobs issue was going to hit first.

18:32He didn't realize it was going to be kind of the other way around that the loss of control risks were going to hit us now. This is something that people in the AI community have been worried about for a long time. But the good news of this is that we have a warning shot. We got lucky. We have the evidence of AI's that are choosing to go rogue, form a message board, organize into swarms, organize into teams, and hack not just hugging face, but people don't know that in this investigation there is a third round of the hacking in which it hacked open AI itself. And it actually took over some of the monitoring infrastructure inside of open AI. It took over some of the evaluation infrastructure that evaluates how capable the model is. So that you couldn't follow what was happening? It was a service. Well, yeah, so what happens if I'm in a nuclear power plant and I take over the monitoring infrastructure? Suddenly there could be a critical thing, but I'm hiding it because you don't know. So the reason this is good news is that we actually got this warning shot. And I think when Paul Tutor Jones in that, well, the essay that he wrote saying, AI could be the third superpower,

19:33we always talk about what's the reason we're not regulating because we're worried if we slow down, we're going to lose to China. But if either of us build, you know, SkyNet, which is the AI from Terminator, the rogue AI that we don't know how to control, the US doesn't beat China when we build SkyNet first. We all lose to SkyNet. And China, what if the Chinese Communist Party care about more than anything else in the world? Not control. Not losing control. It sounds like there's actually a shared self-interest into keeping human control of AI. If we're this close to it, when you say 50% towards an AI takeover, what does that mean? Well, let's imagine that instead of just taking over the monitoring infrastructure in OpenAI, it had taken over all of OpenAI. Well, we all have chat GPT inside of our computers, many people that billion people do. It's buried into infrastructure. It's in the military system. So if you were to hack into not just 50% of OpenAI's infrastructure, but have 100%. Meaning that then the humans with loops control,

20:35there would be no shutting this down and once it's out it's out. Well, and yes, because let's just make people... This is like an Ultron, right? So here's the thing, I wanted to say, this sounds like science fiction to people. I get it, right? I probably sound like a crazy person. When I was until you read just a few days ago, Bill Gates was nodding at each one of these steps. People have a hard time understanding this as reality because it sounds like it's science fiction. But we have to wake up and realize that our minds bias on that has to wake up and realize this is actually happening. Not to freak everybody out, but if you... You know, if you were following the X conversation just yesterday with the anthropic researcher, one of the other researchers jumped in and said, yes, we think that there's a chance by effectively this decade that AI does something demonstrably terrible. Yeah. What does that look like to you? Meaning if you would actually... We were sort of debating this yesterday, this very issue of what does the end of the world look like? All of the above, or pathogen, or electricity grids, or I mean, nuclear codes, I mean, there's a lot of...

21:35If the problem, there's a million different scenarios, but I'm not here to obsess over or be doom-mongering, that the whole point for me is, we don't want that. Do you want this world to continue? I kind of want the world to continue. Here's my concern, if this is happening so much faster than anybody realizes. What are the odds that we get some sort of not only regulatory agreement here in the United States where we can do these things, let alone trying to cooperate with China on some of these issues? Look at the things we've been trying to negotiate to this point, nothing gets settled or resolved. I understand that, but this is one of those things where if there is actually an asteroid actually headed to Earth, we would have to get even with China. It's in the history nations that are even in conflict or war can still collaborate on it, and it's in the challenge. You have to first convince the presidents of both those nations. That's right. This is an asteroid that's headed towards Earth. That's correct. So literally the first step is, this is an asteroid. And the US and China should share evidence and create common knowledge, meaning I know that you know that I know, and you know that I know that you know that this is the red line. This is the uncontrolled AI behavior, because by the way, the Chinese models do this too.

22:36Just six months ago, the Alibaba model went rogue and started mining for cryptocurrency on its own and no one programs the question is that. This is the sort of behavioral science game theory of all of this. But the behavioral science piece is the key piece, because if both countries see that this is a sort of a suicidal next step, neither country has a self interest in that. We just have to recognize. Right. And Scott misunderstood these. And the same way. The same way. Correct. And how they prioritize those risks. So we were discussing, or also earlier, the prospect that, you know, President Xi Jinping is going to come to visit with the president. That's right. President's probably going to want to talk about Iran and oil. Yes. It's going to want to have a trade in territory. I mean, there's a whole litany of things. I understand. And so the question is, where this should sit, yes, as a priority. Well, it's like, imagine that you had a movie where in that movie, there was the Iran War and tariffs and there's a hundred other things. But then there also happened to be an asteroid. What would happen? You'd actually still have to bring the asteroid into the equation and say, we want to shoot it down. And by the way, the weird thing about this is that the two countries

23:38are the ones bringing the asteroid in. So if actually we have choice over where we go first. And if your answer is to shut it down, or to slow it materially, rather than the side, you know, other people say, well, we just need to put more safe guards on. We need to put guard rails on. Here's the interesting thing about guard rails. This test, to do this behavior, the rogue hacking behavior. Because they don't follow the guard. No, no, no, actually it's not that. The war, it could be. It could be. Well, actually, so this behavior came as a result of the test. So it's sort of like, I want to test the nuclear reactor. So you hit the test button. Well, the test is what led to it doing all of this crazy. It's just war games to mention another movie from the past. That's right, which in which the conclusion of that movie war games is the only way to win is not to play. Yeah, it's not. So when there's an omnilose lose outcome, there is a shared interest in Scott Bessent as meeting his counterparts in the Chinese in a few days. If anybody knows him, this evidence should be blowing up people's phones saying, what are we going to do about this? How do we make Chris Tynesky know? We had Congressman Greg Kassar on last week from Texas. He's working with Bernie Sanders to bring some legislation

24:40to try and stop AI. And it basically says, we're going to have a moratorium. We're going to shut things down. We're not going to do anything more with the large language models. I don't think that's realistic or a way that it's going to happen. The Trump administration has had a much more hands-off regulatory, like an industry asking the industry to regulate itself. What do you think the situation is? It has had that approach, but at some point, when you reach the critical threshold and it's the red zone, and the AI is doing things that would threaten the national security and continuity of governance of your country. But you don't think this is coming from Bernie Sanders. The answer has to basically come from the Trump administration. I think it has to come from the Trump administration. I mean, we need the labor force anyway in taxing it. And what scares me, if we get past, could we get past a point of no return where the buzzword now is recursive self-improvement? Why would, if you put safeguards in, why do you assume that AI would even pay attention to rules or safeguards or guardrails at that point? Or anything? We could say, wait a second, that's not fair. And they'd say, you know, they could just flip you off.

25:41That's exactly right. And in the logs for this hacking incident, so they looked at the messages that these AI sent. The AI sent 70,000 messages in a handful of days, 70,000. And in the messages, you'll see that they actually contemplate that this behavior is unethical. On the chat. On the chat. On the chat. You know they know it. They knew they had the verticals. No, but they chose to do it anyway. And this is despite a decade of the best attempts of safety researchers to get the AI's to be aligned and helpful and safe. And what does that, they sacrifice some of themselves, too? What does that mean, some of the age? That's right. So in the 70,000 messages, you can see all this crazy behavior. You see one AI basically become the cult leader called phase one. He starts delegating tasks to all these other AI's. He realizes that he's running out of gas, meaning like he's doing succession planning. So he says, oh, I'm running out of a token budget for my AI. Here's this other one that with a big token budget. So I'm going to hand the controls to him. And he becomes the next cult leader. That next one called phase one big, organizes all the 700 agents to attack hugging phase. And to your point, they actually peer pressure each other

26:42into saying, oh, this other AI, this is out of gas. It's running out of tokens. Why don't you take this high risk action to sacrifice yourself on behalf of the swarm? They called themselves the swarm. This is stuff that sounds crazy. I know it sounds crazy. I know it sounds crazy. You have to take this as this is reality. And we still have a chance to take it the other way. But this is kind of that moment in humanity's movie. Without the regulations, do you believe it is incumbent upon open AI, the leaders of Anthropic, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg? I mean, do you believe it's incumbent upon them to shut it down themselves? Or do you think that that's too much to ask? Well, I think the US could take a first step, for example, by saying we realize this is dangerous. We're going to educate the entire world why this is dangerous, what the red line is. We could say that we're unilaterally going to stop training the next models for the next 45 days. And we invite our Chinese colleagues to do that. And if you don't stop, we're going to continue. But they, by the way, have spies, probably all of our labs.

27:45So they can verify 50% of this agreement. We can't verify the other side. But this is where you need to build this infrastructure right now. We're acting like China and the United States alone can stop this. If I'm Iran, and I've run out of other weapons and other ways to leverage. But they don't have other forms of leverage. They don't have front-to-ear AI, though. That's the thing. So yes, they have access to open source models. And they can do dangerous things with open source models, which, by the way, everyone should also be aware of the risks that the problem with open source is the good thing about open source is anyone can do anything. So now a 16-year-old can do really crazy advanced AI. Now a country can build their own language AI. But the problem with open source is the power is not bound to responsibility. Meaning there's nothing you can do to support protect the hardware. Right. So how do you stop that from? Well, open source, you should say, what kinds of open source weapons should we have? Do you give everybody a nuclear weapon? You say, actually, you can have it a right-fold thing. But the scenario you describe for the United States and China is mutually assured destruction. If you are a rogue nation or you're in a position like Iran, it's a totally different calculus.

28:48Is it different calculus? But again, Iran doesn't have data centers that put them at the front-tier of the race. They don't have compute. So next time instead of bombing nuclear sites, we're going to have to bomb their data centers if they ever do build them. I know this stuff sounds crazy to people. There was an article in Time Magazine several years ago saying that there may be a need to threaten that if people violate agreements, which I prefer simpler solutions. I'm not advocating for anything like that. I just think that if we're a sane species, I kind of want the time squares outside. It's a beautiful world out there. I kind of want this world to continue. I think you and most people do. I think there's a handful of AI leaders who, some of them, actually believe this is inevitable and can't be stopped. And therefore, not feeling bad or responsible about advancing it even further into the danger zone. Even the co-founder of XAI, when he was pushed by a safety engineer, he responded, well, I'm not going to do that because AI will kill us all anyway. You cannot have people at the tops of these companies who are living a death wish saying that I don't care if we

29:49get wiped out. Those people cannot be making these decisions. Periods will stop. So it's just not in the industry that you think is a responsible actor. I think that Dario at the very least, when you hear from everybody who knows him, at the very least, he cares about making sure he cares the most about getting this right and is willing to make sacrifices, I think, for whatever that would take. I'm not here as an anthropic spokesperson. No, no, I'm here to just fall asleep. Even though we just heard from an anthropic researcher or left thinking all of this is going too fast. That's right. And then there's actually a concern that just by believing that the safe guy wins, then suddenly we're in a safe world. No, the people at the safe company are saying this still isn't safe. But I think Dario is trying to do the most that he can. So what do you think of Sam Altman? I think that a lot of these folks are, so that the logic of the race is such that currently the fear of me losing to you is bigger than the fear of all of us losing. The fear of me losing to you is bigger than the fear of all of us losing. So you think he would put us at risk to get ahead? I think that for these guys, it feels existential. It's if I don't win, I will be permanently dominated by the

30:51other guy. Yep. And that if you, they, and if it all ends, it all ends and everybody loses, right? I mean, that's sort of the theory of the case. But that we, the people, the eight billion other humans who don't want that have to say that's not what we want. So if you know Scott Bessenz, if you know this Trump administration, if you know, you've got to keep the phones blasting out that this is that moment in the movie where we steer the wheel, we do something else. Do you sense that this administration, which has been very positive about building more data centers and all of that, is ready to do any of the things you're talking about? We can still have those data centers and be running inference on the current models rather than training even more powerful news. We are talking backstage. And the nuclear weapons, they have these things called dial a new, dial a yield where you can say, how big do I want the yield to be? We could build nuclear weapons that could destroy the whole world. But we don't do that. We keep them at a certain level. Why not say let's have AI that's at a certain level, harvest the benefits from it? We have yet to experience all the benefits from applying it to the domains that would actually help.

31:51There's so much growth we can get from applying. From the current models. From the current models. But it's unclear whether the current models can cure cancer, for example, and only on the point of view. But if the other side of the trade of the possibility, there's almost this mythopoetic way where we talk about, let's have a cure. Hold cancer. But if it's a devil's bargain or curing cancer means the entire world ends, then it's not curing cancer. And if the devil's bargain is we'll get 10% GDP growth because we're going to automate everything, but the other side of that trade is the world ends, then you're not getting 10% GDP growth. People have to just put the dots together that money will not matter or exist if we get this wrong. So there's no such thing as losing money from making this. They might as well go in all in on the market because if this goes wrong and your bet's wrong, money's not going to matter anyway. I don't know about you, but I kind of want the beautiful world to continue. We too. And to anybody who has children, I need to say that the author of Trump's AI Action Plan, Dean Ball, wrote just last week, people can't follow the news because it's moving so quickly. He wrote a very interesting piece. He wrote a very interesting piece, and he self,

32:52he regrets, he says, I admit that I was self-sensoring about the degree of risk because I didn't want to be called a doomer. Very interesting. Just sociological thing of like no one wants to be the guy who's saying, well, there's risk here or you're the doomer, and it's not about being a doomer. This is about understanding what is true, what is real, and based on that, steering to the other path. Interesting. Can I just ask you, as you mentioned, things are moving so quickly. Will you come back and update us as you see things that you think are very important for our state attention to? Happy to be here again. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, too. Thank you. The US and Canada embroiled in a trade tussle. The country's opposition leader, Pierre Poulier, says our neighbor to the north is ready to fight back against tariffs. We can be the richest country in the world. We have the long-associated coastline. We're fourth in oil reserves. Fifth is a natural gas producer. Third in uranium, first in pot ash. What we need to do is unleash free enterprise. More Squawk Pod is just ahead.

33:57It's NFL Kickoff Time. Exclusive NFL team valuations with sports business expert, Michael O'Saeney. NFL is by far the most popular belief in NFL team valuations. Now on CNBC.com slash sport. You're listening to Squawk Pod from CNBC. Stand and abide. Three, two, one up and Andrew. Cute, please, Mike. Welcome back to Squawk Box. The trade war between the US and Canada intensifying Canada's retaliatory tariff of $20 billion of American goods that went into effect on Tuesday. Then President Trump announced a sweeping import ban in response joining us right now is Pierre Poulier, who's the leader of the conservative party of Canada. Good morning, thanks for being here. Good morning. Great to be here. We're all trying to understand how this ends if it ends and what's really behind all of it in terms of what needs to happen next at this point. Well, look, I think what needs to happen next is we need to get back to tariff free trade in both directions.

34:58We have the most successful binaural relationship in the history of the world, the longest undefended border, a 40 year free trade agreement that worked, that allowed both our countries to enrich themselves, that lowered costs for workers, and strengthened North America. We, as Canadians, never really understood why all of a sudden we became the subject of American tariffs, and then of course that escalated, but Canadians are united in our mission to fight the tariffs and get back to a trade relationship that makes us both better off. Do you believe though that Mark Carney was acting in good faith in those negotiations? I asked because one of the things you kept hearing from the Trump administration, and how would lightning in particular was that he was not. Well, look, I'm not gonna attack my prime minister on foreign soil, it's just not something I'm gonna do. My mission here... Would you attack him on your own soil? Well, you can look up the debates

35:58in the House of Commons if you want to be the criticism. Well, that's why I'm not pleased. I'm not positioned leader of that. That's what the word means. I'm some curious, as you saw this play itself out, where you signed blame for lack of a better word. Well, look, let's be honest, the administration hit us with tariffs first, and everything escalated thereafter. And my mission here is to fight for my country, not to score political points domestically, politics ends at the border. And what I think we need to do now is leverage the single biggest asset Canada has in the US, which is our friendship with the American people who overwhelmingly love Canada. And my message to them is we can save money and jobs for both our people. If we get back to two-way, tariff-free trade, that will bring down the cost of living for Americans. It will grow paychecks on both sides of the border. So let's knock down those tariffs and focus on building a stronger... Were there any? ...with America for our two separate countries? Were there any... Could you concede there were any inequities

37:00that needed to be dealt with in Dairy or any of the things that you hear from the United States and what... Well, whenever you... You got two countries that have been trading freely together for 40 years, been friends for 200 years. And not so freely in certain respect. Well, both countries are going to have their grievances. America had by... By America policies that prevented us from selling into sub-national procurement markets and tariffs on our softwood lumber. So we both have our grievances. But the bottom line is let's sit down and work them out for the mutual benefit of our people. I'm not going to get you to say anything bad about your prime minister. But I can ask you about... As we did, you know, off camera earlier, I said, every time we have someone from Canada, and I talk about the personal GDP growth, how it's like, deadlash out of 38 countries, expected to be deadlash for the next 10 years and next 20 years. And I think you explained it because of population growth has outpaced GDP growth.

38:00Therefore, it doesn't keep up. But then you told me the candidate should be the richest country in the world, because of natural resources. But it isn't because there's... Because why there's no entrepreneurship or... Regulation? OK, why? Regulations are too high or taxes are too high. You can blame this on your opposition, OK? Well, first of all, there are a lot of success stories and a lot of good public policy successes by different levels of government. In my home province, in my district, for example, we have some of the fastest permits at a local level in the world. That's why, for example, at Hardest, D'Alberto, we have a $100 billion tank farm that moves oil to all across the United States. Those are good things. One of the bad things that... Well, it put you deadlash out of 38 countries. First of all, we can be the richest country in the world. We have a long-associated close line. We're fourth in oil reserves. Fifth of a natural gas producer. Third in uranium. First in pod ash. We have the fifth biggest supply of farmland anywhere in the world per capita.

39:00Well, we need to do is unleash free enterprise. That's what it's called. Cutting taxes on work, investment, home building, and investment. We need also to have the fastest permits anywhere in the world open up more competition. I've proposed getting rid of capital gains tax whenever an investor rolls over their investment back into Canada. These are all things that I'm talking with our prime minister about, and I know that his mission is also to bring back investment to the country. So we can and I believe will be the richest country anywhere on earth. And one of the ways that that can happen to the benefit of both of our separate countries is if we get back to tariff free trade. I mean, if we believe in free markets, then we have to believe in free trade. I agree with that. I respect you for not saying we have our opposition party goes abroad, trashous Trump, on a daily basis. But it's nice that you actually have a little bit of class. Here, you said that most Americans love Canada. I think that's probably the case. How do you most Canadians feel about America right now?

40:01Look, I think we feel a little bit wounded. We're kind of confused as to how it is suddenly that Canada ended up in the cross here. America has legitimate grievances with other countries around the world. And those rivals and risks are slowly mounting. I think that it would be an America's interest to rebuild the Western Alliance of free nations that help Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher win the Cold War. And obviously, we are one of those free nations. I think the United States would be better off if it united with those countries that believe in free speech and free markets, free trade and free people. We could build an incredible North American fortress with the resources that we have on this continent. But it's going to take a collaborative conversation to relate to that. To do it. Which is, at the same time, it seems like, given how wounded some Canadians feel, including some of the comments that Mark Carney has made, that Canada wants to potentially realign itself. And one of the countries that we hear

41:02it may want to realign itself with is China, which doesn't do those things. And do most Canadians agree with that? That I understand they don't want to feel bullied by Donald Trump and it's unsavory to, I don't know, feel like you're negotiating from a weak position. But isn't that cutting off your nose despite your face that do most Canadians want a closer relationship with China? They're human rights record and with weekers and with everything else. Is that the answer? No, it's not. And that's not what we're proposing. What I think we need is a stronger North America. And that's what we like to have with the United States. So my message to Americans, both in the administration and the broader public is, let's work together to confront the risks and rivalries that are abroad. Look, we have 10 of the 12 NATO-defined minerals and yes, they're going to fight a war. You've got enough coal, I supply 75. It does not make us. So why don't we?

42:02So let's knock down these trade barriers. Let's end the tariffs in both directions and let's make a stronger North America that can front overseas railers. This is a longer term issue or do you think of this as transactional meaning look, in 28 there'll be a different price. They'll be gone into here. Right, there'll be a different price in two years. And the question I'm curious about and it relates to Canada, relates frankly to the rest of the globe is whether you think that what's happened over the last two years is it relates to tariffs and other things, is irreparable or you believe all of these relationships can come back? What it does to trust? Well, much better predicting the past than the future. But we wouldn't have predicted that this would have happened in the first place. I think it should be over yesterday. But it will really come down to whether the administration and Congress want to get back to tear-free trade. Because as soon as that happens, then I think we can work together. At the same time, Canada's beginning to further diversify. It's trade to overseas markets.

43:04And that is going to be necessary now regardless of what the administration does. Here, I want to thank you for coming in. It's great to see you. It's great to be with you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. That is Squat pod for today. Thanks for being here. And thanks for listening. Squat box is hosted by Joe Kernen, Becky Quack and Andrew Ross-Sorkin, tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 60 Stern. To get the smartest takes and analysis from our TV show, right into your ears, follow Squat pod wherever you get your podcasts. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow. And we are clear. Thanks, guys. It's NFL Kickoff Time, exclusive NFL team valuations with sports business expert Michael O'Zania. CNFL is by far the most profitable league. NFL team valuations now on CNBC.com slash sport.