Microsoft’s Brad Smith & Utah Gov. Cox: AI, Teaching, & Peace 9/9/26

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 is artificial intelligence out of control. Okay, so what what do you do? Anthropic has a public defection over fears that AI can kill humans and soon. Which decade? Oh, you're this decade. It's 2026 already. Is it safe in the classroom? Teachers and tech are teaming up. Brad Smith, president of Microsoft on why he's building an AI standard for school. Look, I don't think anybody wants a tech company to tell teachers how to teach. I know it's be serious, but they do want us, I believe, and we can ensure that in R stepping up with the kinds of guardrails that ensure, for example,

1:04that student data isn't used to train an AI model. And teachers union leader Randy Weingarten says those guardrails are key. If you can buy the touch of your prompt, get an answer. You are not learning how to think. Then can't we all just get along? Utah governor Spencer Cox with a warning for our communities? We've lost our healthy tribes. People are lonely, they're desperate for something. And so we're finding it in very unhealthy places. Politics has become religion for so many people. Plus Joe Kernan with a Telluride Film Festival report. Three hours you never really look away. There's times where you'd like to look away. The movie The Business World can't wait to see. There's a lot of cringe. It's Wednesday, September 9th, 2026. Squawk pod begins right now. Stand back you buy and three, two, one, kill first. Good morning everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CMBC.

2:05We are live from the Nasdaq Market Sight and Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Everybody's here. We're ready to go. An anthropic researcher saying that he quit the AI company because it along with open AI where he used to work are making a headlong rush towards superintelligence and his head in his words, quote, gambling with our lives on X. That researcher, his name is Jacob Coxon, writing the following. The people building AI earnestly believe that could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible. But I hear the same people express fear privately. Coxon said that anthropic employees understand the potential dire implications of self-improving AI, but they don't trust that open AI will shepherd the technology responsibly so they feel they have to do it themselves. Now, another anthropic researcher chimed in saying, we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans.

3:10He said anthropic doesn't have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and isn't clearly on track to do it. This is connected in many ways to the conversation we were having just yesterday on the set about the head of safety and other things at open AI, calling for, I don't know what it was calling for, but really explaining how they still don't understand how these systems even work and ultimately, therefore, what ultimately happened. And therefore, the question is the one that you asked yesterday was just, okay, so what do you do? You can drop out like this guy is doing, but we don't even believe that there's regulation that could necessarily change the dynamic because these folks are saying they don't even understand how it actually works. Which decade? This decade, I think. This decade. It's 2026 already. Yeah, four years. Four years. You're right, I might take that with the grain of solar. I mean, I've been, I've used the word singularity about a million times and it's used in,

4:16you don't know really what happened during the big bang. That was kind of a singular. We don't know what was happening before. You don't know what's happened. It's somehow used when you talk about black holes because you don't know. And it was also used a lot. When machine learning gets to a certain point, you don't know what's on the other side of it. So I certainly believe we don't know whether it's as dire as this. I'm not in position to, I mean, you don't, you take with the grain of solar, do you? It's okay. Not completely. You think we could all be dead by 2030? This guy's walking away from a lot. He's right before anthraff. No, I know. You know, I think there's some amazing things that could come, but I actually think it's possible that people will do something. I could see the sound. In 2050, maybe rule. Well, no, no, I think that what they're talking about, they're talking about robots taking over the world and in a proper way style. Would they be killing us or would we die from what? No, what I think they're describing is the possibility of a couple of things happening. One is just the ability for a human or the system itself to genuinely build or at least help people build

5:25terrible, you know, biotech. No, biotech. Biotech weapons. Path, path, path. A pathogen. So that's one way. But the other way is if you believe it can break into all of the systems and you could shut down, for example, if you could shut down the electricity grid, really shut it down in the middle of the winter, where people are going to die because all of a sudden they don't have access to electricity, they don't have heat and you can shut down utilities. You unleash these agents, you don't know what they're going to do. And I guess the football that Trump cares around with him has codes that I don't know why quantum computing couldn't figure out what the codes are to do that. You know, the bright side of all this, Andrew. What's that? At least we're not all going to die from climate change in 30 years. Put that on your back burner, baby. What you've been losing so much sleep about, or so the big tidow-y. Wait, headed for upper Manhattan. Probably you're going to be dead already. So I mean, think how great that is that we don't have to.

6:28What's interesting, this guy's for sure. Sweat it out, literally. Sweat it out, for the goal. You'll outlive that part. That's a good news for you. Yeah. This guy's perspective, having worked at both Anthropic and at OpenAI and saying, look, it's really these two companies that are we're competing against Anthropic, can't slow down because OpenAI won't. It's not the Chinese that he's been doing. We do know, we do know, having been in this business this long, that if it bleeds it leads. How many people very smart, very connected, very in tune with what's happening would disagree with this completely? Are we going to rush them on and have the scary business? By the way, that's what I mean. So I mean, I would take all this with a salt lick based size. The reason I'm not taking it with a salt lick. Why not? Because Elon said it? Dario said it. Now you like, now you believe Elon. I always believe you. Okay.

7:28Elon said it. Dario said it. Sam has said it. So I'm not sure. None of us said we're all going to be dead by 2030. No, it's a greater than zero percent chance. The whole point of everything you've been saying for the past year or one, six years since this project began, was how dangerous it ultimately could be. Then why would any of them be plunging headlong into it? Because it really believes it. That's a question. Because there's the excitement on one end, this is that people have to handi-capping which version of it's going to happen. But. And because they're all saying somebody else will do it if I don't. Right. Which brings the question to me. I don't know. Do we need some regulatory form? And if we did, I don't know how to do that outside the United States. You know, it's like, do you get the top minds together from all these nations to agree to it? Because you fall back if it open AI and if we could do it, then we say, okay, the Chinese are going to do it. What reminds me of Lloyd's great line? What Dennis is doing about all the inequality and the rising of populism, he goes,

8:28I'm not that worried I have a dormant building. And I got to live out in Short Hill. I think I'm, you know. You think you're okay? I think I hope. I was going to say, Dennis from Google, who's really the OG of this whole business. All of these people at one point or another worked for Dennis. Uh-huh. He's the one, he's the one who's been working behind the scenes to try to build a global coalition so that you could actually create some real regulations around it. So can you go off the grid like Ted Kaczynski? I mean, could, would that work? I don't know, Joe. You can try. Dennis, tell they have the robot. You can try. You don't know if you can go. You wish you luck. Deep into, I don't know, the wilderness in Idaho. You can, but then if you have robots, this is where you get to the terminator side of things. Robots. I'm going to be much more optimistic. You know, the NFL is starting today. The White House escalating its trade fight with Canada. The US is going to ban imports of some alcoholic beverages,

9:32motorcycles and dairy products from Canada's starting September 29th. Some aluminum, furniture and cheeses. Oh my god, no. We'll be hit with a 50% tariff, but not banned. The moves are in response to Canada's tariffs this week on the US, which were in retaliation for new US tariffs from last month. On X last night, Canada's minister, responsible for trade issues with America, said he's in contact with US trade rep, James and Greer. He's been on the show. And Canada will work in good faith towards a better trade relationship when the US is ready to engage. You're going to talk at all about anything interesting you've seen. I want everyone to see that. Last question. What were you talking about? It's called You Can See Everything. And it was the highlight of the film festival in Telly Ride. I mean, leading up to it, it was we're all wondering what is going to be so monumental

10:34because it was so secret to this is the announced that every year there's a film that's going to be shown that you don't know what it is until you get there. This wasn't announced so everyone was seated and your phone was in a bag. You were able to keep your phone, but it was in a bag that you couldn't open almost like when you go and you can't take that thing off when you buy something. You had to have a magnetic. I got an old magnet. A magnetic. So I'll just, a couple of quick comments. Nathan Fielder's, like maybe my favorite filmmaker at this point. I have three hours and you definitely, you go in with one idea about Elizabeth Holmes and her husband and I think you exit with I did anyway with a different idea. But it's not mine. It's not a mainstream media take Andrew. So not a conventional wisdom. Well, don't say more. Don't say more. I don't want you to say more because I want to go see this film.

11:34You could go see it. But I have a much different view of her than it is. Let's discuss this in a month from now. I don't know how much I want to push this. I don't want to push this because it's going to, it's going to ruin the movie. But I'm curious. Three hours you never really look away. There's times where you'd like to look away. Because so. There's a lot of cringe. But then it takes three hours to have the whole experience of where you end up with how you feel about the whole thing. And there's a lot of, you know, my son's writing. You couldn't even write about it. You weren't even allowed to write about what happened. I don't want you to tell. No, you're getting trouble if you say anything. And it. I'm not sure whether whether you get trouble. But it's amazing. It's great for Tell Your Ride. It's the best film festival. I think I mean, Bennett, there's Cannes and then there's everything else. But in the US, it's just phenomenal. And this was great for the for Julie who runs it, who I know. And it was and it was really it was intense. I mean, it was really an experience.

12:35I can't wait for it. Yeah, it was great. It's great. Open AI is saying its artificial intelligence has solved one of the world's toughest math problems. It is called the Navier Stroke's existence and smoothness problem. And it concerns the rules that describe how liquids and gases move. It's one of the seven unresolved math problems that were dubbed millennium prize problems. This is back in 2000. Until now, only one had been solved. Open AI published its findings along with the 165 page proof. Companies said it took as many as 10,000 AI agents working together on the problem for about 88 hours to find the solution. It took millions of dollars in computing resources. So that's the exciting part about AI. And the scarier part is if you can do that, what else can you do? It will be next. Coming up on SquawkPod, how AI could and should be used in classrooms around America. Microsoft is teamed up with the American Federation

13:36of Teachers to set up guardrails to protect students. AFT President Randy Wengart joins us. On letters, recommendation letters. If you're a guidance counselor and you have 100 to write in a weekend, if you use it as the first pass, and then you personalize it, that's OK. But that is different than as a kid not knowing anything. And Microsoft President Brad Smith. We don't want to slow down innovation where we need it, but we need to ensure that safety and trust go forward at the same cases innovation. And right now innovation is going faster. We'll be right back. It's NFL Kickoff Time. Exclusive NFL team valuations with sports business expert, Michael O'Zania. NFL is by far the most profitable league. NFL team valuations now on CNBC.com slash sport. Your listening to Squawk pod from CNBC with Joe Kernan,

14:38Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Here's Joe. Our next guests are unveiling legally enforceable AI protections for schools nationwide. Join us now, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith. Morning. You're on frequent guests. And American Federation of Teachers, President Randy Wengarton. And we are plotting your efforts wondering how it came about. And we want to hear about exactly what it means and what's involved. But off camera, the first thing we said was does any of it matter if we're all dead in a couple of years from what we were talking about earlier from Anthropic. And I mean, this is, I don't remember many times in history where we've had something that universally is sort of so dangerous that we're plunging headlong into. Well, it's not the first time. Let's remember World War II ended. I don't tell it yet. And we talked about nuclear weapons. And we found a way now to avoid war for 80 years and harness the power of the atom for nuclear power.

15:41Now we're dealing with AI. It can be used to do dangerous things. It can be used to do good things. It's got to be controlled. Well, this is the leader of the second largest trade or teachers union in the country, or one of the largest tech companies. We found a way to work together over the last few months and forge what is a legally binding and enforceable contract to keep students safe, their data private, provide more transparency to parents. We're not here to say that we have found the solution to everything that will be needed, but this is part. Can you explain it, Brandon? So who contacted? Who did die? We contacted them. So look, we saw what was going on with AI a few years ago. And there has been a long-term relationship between the FL and Microsoft as a way of trying to work together when you can labor an industry

16:45in terms of actually making America better. So through that, we said to Brad, look, we're seeing that AI is about to control us. We want teachers in classrooms to actually be in control to be in the driver's seat. So we started that AI Institute over a year ago. But part of that was we needed to ensure parents and teachers that data was going to be safe, that their data was going to be private. And you can't do that unless you do it with the tech providers because they do the infrastructure. So from that point on, we said, let's get to an agreement on safety and privacy. And over this summer, Brad and I and our teams, we were trying to do this with Anthropic and with OpenAI as well. And I suspect that they will come along very shortly.

17:46But we Brad saw it and saw the need. And so we did it more than for the AI Institute. We said, let's make this procurement policy for schools across America because there's no trust. Parents have no trust. Teachers have very little trust in AI. So what this agreement is is literally a standard, 10 different aspects of a standard to ensure that kids' data will be private. That when they use kids, use AI or parents, or teachers use AI in schools, kids' data will be private. Now that's what will happen in Microsoft products throughout the country if a school district wants it. And that's what's going to happen in our AI Institute. Do you also have a huge concerns though about whether students are using AI to cheat, to get the answers or whether they're learning how to, like how do you tackle that part of it? I have all those concerns. And in May, I did a speech called Devices Down, Hands On, Eyes Up,

18:52to try to do a whole blueprint on all of this. My main concern is, I mean, this may sound blasphemy. My main concern is not cheating. My main concern is learning. My main concern is cognitive offloading. And that, you know, what Jonathan Hade and Jared Kovie and others have seen. So that's why we called for no screens, K through two, which in LA and New York are now doing. We called for no AI facing instruction, you know, kids, AI kids facing instruction in elementary schools because we need to actually create the kind of critical thinking and knowledge that kids need. They need to develop the musclevert. But this is different. This is about ensuring that parents have transparency and that their data is better. Do we talk about the practicality of this? So I've got kids, you guys have kids. They have laptops, they have iPads, they have phones.

19:55They bring all three of those things on occasion to school and sometimes they don't. How is it that somehow this is all going to work such that when they're using it in school, it's protected and when they're at home and they go on some other, I mean, the thing that I can't figure out about this is, it's great that this service will have the privacy on school machines, but it doesn't change anything if all the other machines don't are not using the same thing. Well, what if we actually, from what we've now negotiated or forged, what if we actually could get that into law? What if we, the part about ensuring privacy of data. We already have FERPA and HIPPA and all these laws that are supposed to protect student data, but they're outdated. They never envisioned AI. So what if we could actually use this standard

20:55to update our laws? We finally, we have forged something that could create that basis instead of lawmakers saying, oh, I don't know how to do it. I also think Andrew, the way we've designed this is to think about what we each do well and what we don't do well. Look, I don't think anybody wants a tech company to tell teachers how to teach. I mean, let's be serious, but they do want us, I believe, and we can ensure it in R stepping up with the kinds of guardrails that ensure, for example, that student data isn't used to train an AI model. And whether the student is using that application at school or home, we have a contractual obligation, we'll put it in place with every school district in America so that regardless of where the student is, that obligation persists. And if you go through the contract, the AFT is going to publish it this afternoon, everybody will be able to read it. And I think what you'll find is these are the types of protections that our kids need, and they should, really, I'm quite disappointed.

21:57Can I just go to Becky's question? Because we've got a glossed over it. So the calculator, I remember HP was going to, no one was ever doing long division again. Do kids learn long division? Do kids learn calculus that does the muscle memory to do those things that no one can do anymore? Did it matter that they don't have that now? And is this 10 times worse? What AI could... Look, it's 10 times, let me do this about social media and social studies in English as opposed to about math. Just because of math. So if you, what makes AI both more powerful and more scarier is that if you can, by the touch of your prompt, get an answer. You are not learning how to think. It was math though, but this is different. But what happens is,

22:59so the first calculators could help you do long division. They could not help you do calculus right now. I can't know. Yes, I said the first ones. But if you don't have the muscle to think, if you don't have the muscle to discern fact from fiction, if you don't have the muscle to think about what is fact and what is opinion, if you can't ask the follow-up question, this is why now, project-based instruction is so important. If you can't look at each other, like we're doing right now. Yeah, I get me one more question then. But I want to... But the second, there's three pieces to this agreement. One is the actual data protection that we need to use, that the tech companies are the ones who can do that. But the second is making sure that teachers have more control over their classrooms. And that is something that we have to do with school districts.

24:01Meaning, teachers actually have to control the tech. Teachers should be in charge. The tech should not be in charge. Yeah, they took away our kids' phones and New Jersey this year. And I'm all in favor. But you have to understand the tool in order to be in charge. We need to control the tech. What do you mean? You're taking the phones away or you're actually doing something to the actual tech. It's one, that's a physical... Physically putting it in a different room is it. It's a combination. You're doing things for the actual tech. For example, our technology will be designed and provided in a manner that teachers make the grading decisions, they don't delegate that to AI. If you have an agentic feature, it needs to be a feature that a teacher can turn off. Now it's getting more interesting. So you know a whole bunch of teachers are now doing report cards and letters to parents and other things using AI. Should they? Teachers should not be doing grading. You can do a first pass in terms of an evaluation of a paper.

25:02You can do a first pass in terms of AI. Personally, I would not do that. But you cannot give a grade based upon AI. It has to be... I'm going to make it more complicated. Wait, wait, wait. Should a teacher be building their lesson plan with AI? Should a teacher be building the actual classroom discussion with AI? I mean, this is to me where it gets much more interesting. So this is so Andrew, you can use AI. So I use AI sometimes for a first pass on things. I use AI because I know the material. If I just taught at Cornell last week, I used AI to actually say, I did my lesson plan, but I used AI to say, what am I missing? Am I missing something? But I know the work. So AI as an aid, AI as an assist, like AI as the Encyclopedia Britannica used to be, using that that way, I think is fine. Making it the decider is not fine.

26:03And so on letters, recommendation letters, if you're a guidance counselor and you have 100 to write in a weekend, if you use it as the first pass and then you personalize it, that's okay. But that is different than as a kid not knowing anything. Say, you don't know anything about the War of 1812. And you use AI to do your paper and all of a sudden AI is wrong and you're talking about the Civil War not the War of 1812, you're not learning anything. Randy, the yesterday we had reading scores that came out that showed in this country, 15 year olds, readings, abilities, matched up to the rest of the globe, fell to the lowest levels that we've seen in 25 years. And the same, look, I'm not, the reading, the pieces of scores were terrible. The reason I did the speech I did in May is I am alarmed by the fact that people are not reading. We as a union give out a million books a year. Like Dolly Parton, all the books she gave out,

27:05we need to instill a love of reading, but what's happening is kids are not reading anymore. There's not, kids are not reading at home anymore. The screens have taken over. But let me just get to the last point of, so it's data privacy, it's the teachers having more control over classrooms. But the third point is this transparency for parents. And that's part of what Microsoft is doing as well. Microsoft owns, they own the equipment, they own the AI. If we can make this more transparent for parents, if they know what controls a school district has, what controls Microsoft has, all of a sudden we put parents back in a driver's seat as well. So it's these three points. And look, it's a first start. It's a floor. And we want to try and ensure that people are safe and kids are safe.

28:06Well, let me just ask you on that point. Look, there's all these questions about what AI agents are doing, whether we can control them, whether we can find those things. Today we talked about how OpenAI had this new win in solving a math problem. But there's a professor out there, a mathematics professor at NYU, Tristan Buckmaster, who says, Hey, OpenAI ripped off some of my stuff. He was using a tool on OpenAI, on OpenAI's Codex platform. OpenAI said, we didn't use this prompts, we didn't do any of those things. But then they later acknowledged that the deidentified user data from their systems could have theoretically helped improve the underlying models over time. So how do we, I love that you're trying to protect this. How do you know that the agents don't get out there and do something that you aren't anticipating? Well, first of all, it all starts with rigorous design and safety testing. And I think what you're seeing is in industry that frankly in some places is still young. I think the fact that we bring 51 years of experience in technology is a strength, not a weakness.

29:10And we've been focused for a decade now on building out very robust car rails. Doesn't mean there won't be a day when somebody at Microsoft needs to learn from something that didn't work quite the way they imagined. I do think there is a rule for rule of law. I mean, every technology that has ever been important is subject to the rule of law as well. So you're calling for more regulation? I think that what we need is more self-regulation. And I think there is a role for law, for regulation as well. And we'll have to find the right balance. We don't want to slow down innovation where we need it. But we need to ensure that safety and trust go forward at the same pace as innovation. And right now, innovation is going faster. Going back to reading. And Netflix is so bad. There's nothing. I think that's a good advice. I think we're going back to reading. 1929. I think I'm going to start with. There you go. I think I'm going to start with that.

30:10You have a copy for me? I think you've got a copy. You probably signed it. You should buy a copy. Of all the P9s, if you should buy a copy. I'm going to be nice to be a sign it. You should buy a copy. Still to come on SquawkPod, the lack of civility in our politics and the governor who wants to do something about it, Spencer Cox of Utah wants to be a peacemaker. I think we save our country by having a conversation with your brother or your uncle, your friend that you haven't talked to because they voted for Trump. So we don't talk to them anymore. It's NFL Kickoff Time. Exclusive NFL team valuations with sports business expert, Michael O'Sanius. NFL is by far the most popular belief. NFL team valuations now on CNBC.com slash sport. This is SquawkPod. Up in Andrew. Hugh. You're watching SquawkBox right here on CNBC. I'm Andrew. I was working along with Joe Kernen and Becky Quake.

31:11Our next guest is on what some are calling a crusade for civility in the US. You're going to us right now as Utah governor, Spencer Cox, his new book, Inspired by Charlie Kirk's assassination nearly one year ago is out. This week it's called Off-Ramp, How to Be a Peacemaker, in an age of contempt. And it's something I think we could all use a little bit of right now. So what's the answer? We're all desperate for the answer. I don't know if we can get there. Well, Andrew, what we find is in the research that 70% of Americans hate what's happening in politics right now. They're desperate for something different. And the purpose of the book was to lay out, first of all, how bad it is right now. I mean, we know that threats against Congress have increased 10 fold over the past 10 years. That's not a 10% increase. That's a 10 times increase. Of course, we've seen political violence and attempt and political violence in Ohio just this the past couple of days. But there are answers out there. We've been working with the Stanford Depolarization Lab

32:13where we got governors together on stage, Republicans and Democrats talking about how they can disagree without hating each other. We can actually work to solve problems incredibly popular with everybody that watched it, had a true depolarizing effect. But more than all of that, what I'm trying to do is to convince people to start having debate again, real conversations. Too many Americans have lost a friend or a family member to politics four times more than just 10 years ago. It feels like everybody says that they don't want to be polarized, that they think polarization is terrible and all of that, right? And we want to all get back to the middle. I mean, I say it by the way. And I know that's how it's so funny. See, and that is why it's polarized. Exactly. And so, but then, despite people saying that's what they want, in terms of what they do, what they watch, what they say or do on social media, how they actually behave seems to be at odds

33:13with what they say they want to do. Sure. And that's normal human behavior from the very beginning of time, kind of the nature and all of us leads us towards this depolarization. That's why the American experiment is so rare that it worked and that we found ways through that. One of the things that we have learned is that the algorithms and social media are incredibly damaging to our souls and to our country because of the way they prioritize the extremes within us, but within the political parties as well. The incentive structure right now is not lined up for this. And so we have to make conscious decisions to do less of this. We're just talking about Moab and Utah. Get off the screens, get outside and touch grass. God's convincing time to get. Yeah, he was showing off. He said, but Charlie Kurtz in a mercy. Yeah. You're not, no one's read your book yet or something because it's not helping. Which just came out yesterday. So there's tattoo artists that are advertising neck tattoos

34:15for where Charlie Kurtz got chubb. People overtly still celebrating. That's right. Charlie Kurtz, let's ask an answer. And so in terms of polarization, I mean, maybe I am polarized because I don't want to have anything to do with those people. Yeah. I'm not going to make amends or they are. It's totally unacceptable what I see mostly coming from one side. I completely agree. And we should call out the contemptible behavior. We absolutely should call that out. And what I will say is that that is a very, very, very small. That's what I think. But they're big on Twitter. But they are big on Twitter. That's, I mean, you just made my point for me. This is the problem, right? The algorithms I saw it within an hour of Charlie Kurtz assassination. We're dealing with this. I made the mistake of pulling out Twitter, opening it up and seeing people celebrating. When the truth is I had thousands, tens of thousands of people from all over the country, Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, who reached out and said, this is unacceptable.

35:17We want to be part of the solution. How do we help? But you don't hear from those people. That's America. But why do you think the discourse has gotten as ugly as it has? And do you agree there's kind of, and do you think it's ugly across? I mean, I think what Joe just described is pretty ugly. And I don't know if that's a left view or a right view or what kind of view it is. I actually am not sure what is going on there. But I mean, how do you see how we got to this place? Beyond the social media of it all? Yeah, look, so there's plenty of research out there. We talk about it, talking to the experts. We're lonelier than we've ever been before. And if you go back, we don't need a history lesson. But 1830, Alexis Tatoffield comes to America and he says there's something really unique about America. They have these associations where they come together to do stuff, to build schools, to build hospitals, volunteer associations, faith-based associations. Later on, we get rotary clubs.

36:18And all of these good things that gave us purpose, gave us meaning, gave us belong, and gave us friendships, they're all disappearing. People don't go to church anymore. These faith-based organizations don't exist. These volunteer organizations don't exist. We've lost our healthy tribes. People are lonely, they're desperate for something. And so we're finding it in very unhealthy places. Politics has become religion for so many people. Growing up, I didn't know who the Republicans and Democrats were in my town. With September 11th coming up, doesn't you get a eyebrow raise with some of these DSA candidates? And what they've said in the past about deserving September 11th? Oh, and the answer. And of course, but now... And Mamdani, you say he's the most popular person to you? He's on record. His wife is with these comments, that are... I'm not defending him. I'm just suggesting to you the right now. I'm suggesting to you if you're a Republican trying to run in this state right now. And I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about our previous guests. Right, yeah. It is very hard to overcome. And you know, I think as well as anybody, if you look at the polls in this state in particular,

37:21his chances are... And I'm sorry for his sake. I know. Very, very chowel. But I just don't think it's hard to find where the insanity on which side it... Now, do you equate not wanting trans athletes? And is that the same type of nastiness as... You think... We have a guest here, so I don't know why... I would... I would... I would entertain. I would deflect that. If I were you, I would deflect that. No, I don't understand why I would deflect that. Can I just say how important this is? Like, so... So, I'm not saying that we all need to be nice to each other. This fall's equivalency is a joke. We could use some niceness, for sure. What I'm saying is we need actually more real debate. I'm not asking anybody to put aside their... Their firmly held beliefs. I'm not asking anybody to compromise their values. What I'm asking people is, let's actually have debate in this country. This is healthy. We should have these discussions. These discussions aren't happening very much anymore. We just yell into a vacuum.

38:23We find the worst person in the other party and try to accuse you of being a part of whatever the worst person is in your party is. And they'll do the same thing. Let me write that down. Let me ask you something. I think you have something really important to say. But just how much of this is we don't spend time together with people from other parties. We don't spend enough... We're looking past some of these things. How much of you think is the social media? How much of this is you just don't think we spend enough time. So this is what has changed. Now it's so easy with the modern tools to only hear what you want to hear. To surround yourselves with people who are just like you. People have been saying that for 34 years with cable, you can look at different spectrums. And it certainly started there. I mean, with now artificial intelligence, again social media where they have our algorithm, they know exactly what's going to keep our eyeballs on there. So we don't have to look. Part of this is you have to spend more time with people who are different than you. I'm really worried about the number of people.

39:23It's about four times what it was just 10 years ago who have lost a friend or a family member to politics where they don't talk. This isn't just about... Again, I'm not going to save our country by coming out with a book or saying we need to be better to each other. I think we save our country by having a conversation with your brother or your uncle, your friend that you haven't talked to because they voted for Trump. So we don't talk to them anymore or they voted for Mondami. So they're dead to me. Like we didn't use to do that very much. And the research is very clear on this. This is a new thing in American life. And it's so toxic. It's so bad for us. We're going over to a run out of time. You mentioned AI and it's one of the cut tops we've been talking about almost incessantly. Where do you land on data centers in your state right now? Yeah. So we've been front-center in the data center debate. What I've said is they're going to be built. We're in an arms race with China.

40:25We need American models to win. And we can do this the right way. And it has not been done the right way. We did some things the wrong way in Utah. The process was not good. The hyperscalers were not good. Partners were not good. We can do this in environmentally friendly ways. We're all in on nuclear in Utah. We're one of five states that was chosen for a nuclear lifecycle campus. We're doing incredible work with different types of energy in our state. The Furvo project, which I know you guys have reported on that is geothermal is exploding right now. We're going to deal with Furvo to be an off-taker there. So look, we can do this in a way that protects people. Protects the ratepayers. What do you think of states like Texas now increasingly in New York and others who are up in arms? Well, again, we're up in arms in Utah too. But you just have to do it the right way in a way that helps people instead of hurts people. Then saying this, we launched a human AI initiative in Utah.

41:26We got to make sure guys that the computers work for us and that we're not working for the computers. I don't trust the AI companies to get this right. I don't trust the hyperscalers. They destroyed the destroyed entire generation of our kids. We sued Meta. We were the first out of the gate on holding them accountable. We're going to have to work together. These are choices. What do you make for example, Meta by the way has come out with plans to effectively pay communities, you know, create stipends for firemen and policemen and other things. Is that you think do do absolutely that's really is that enough? That's what they should be doing. Yeah, well, it's certainly part of the conversation. And again, I think the environmental protections you can't use all the water. We know there's they have new technologies that can stop that from happening. They're going to get me more efficient. The chips are going to be more efficient. They're going to use less energy, less water. So we can solve those problems, but we have to make sure we keep our jobs and our souls. And that is Squawk Pod for today.

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