Growing Uncertainty Over Iran's Future

Summary

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Amanpour – "Growing Uncertainty Over Iran's Future"

Date: March 17, 2026
Host: Bianna Golodryga (sitting in for Christiane Amanpour)
Podcast: CNN’s Amanpour

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Overview

This episode delves into the rapidly escalating crisis in Iran following the alleged Israeli assassination of top Iranian security officials, the destabilizing effect on Iranian society, and the implications for regional stability. The episode features in-depth interviews with Middle East analyst Karim Sajapour, a reported segment from Jomana Karachiev on the situation for Iranian civilians, expert commentary on Afghanistan with Fauzia Kufi, updates from Cuba with Patrick Ottman, and a deep dive into US military AI strategy and its consequences with AI scientist Heidi Kloff.

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Main Segments & Key Themes

1. The Crisis in Iran: Power Vacuum and Repression

[00:04–07:04, 07:04–20:30]

Key Discussion Points:

• Assassination of Iranian Leadership:
  • Israel claims responsibility for killing Ali Larijani (top security chief, de facto leader) and Salehmani (Basij chief).
  • The regime is thrown into uncertainty, with speculation about hardliner replacements.
• Societal Fallout and Crackdown:
  • State unleashes brutal repression on any signs of public celebration or dissent.
  • Security forces kill celebrating teenagers; regime threatens massacre of would-be protesters.
  • Digital blackout and propaganda intensify isolation and fear.

Notable Quotes & Moments:

• On Life in Iran, from Jomana Karachiev:
  "Celebrating the death of their oppressor... cloaked in digital darkness, a new wave of brutal suppression was already beginning."
  [03:06]
• On Regime's Priorities (Karim Sajapour):
  "This is a population trapped between two hells, the hell of war and the hell of a brutal authoritarian regime."
  [07:47]
• Iran’s Leadership Future (Sajapour):
  "Ladijani was someone unique... decades of both domestic and foreign policy expertise... In his absence, he leaves behind a much less competent regime... remains equally brutal."
  [07:47]
• No Room for Moderation:
  "If it was 9 out of 10 brutal and ideological, it's simply going to 10 out of 10."
  [10:38]

Insights:

• The regime is closing ranks, not moderating, after losing top officials.
• Pragmatism within the regime is relative and not equivalent to moderation.
• Deadly repression is the regime's main method of self-preservation.
• Uprising appears impossible amid such violence and fear.

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2. US, Israel, and Proxy Wars Impacting Iran's Regional Role

[11:06–20:26]

Key Discussion Points:

• Operations and Regime Stability:
  • Israel’s targeted assassinations aim to fracture regime security but may be insufficient due to replaceability of "apparatchiks."
• Regional Proxy Network:
  • Iran's regional proxies are severely weakened, missile launches have dropped 90% per some analyses.
• International Dynamics:
  • Iranian strategy hinges in part on manipulating US domestic and European public opinion to blunt Western resolve.

Notable Quotes:

• On Regime Power Structure (Sajapour):
  "There are only a few principles left of the 1979 revolution: Death to America, Death to Israel... not prepared to dilute that."
  [12:42]
• Iran's Regional Power (Sajapour):
  "For me, three important figures: the price of oil, US public opinion, and the number of missiles and drones Iran has left."
  [17:12]
• On US Public Opinion:
  "Iran has often relied on domestic public opinion in America to restrain the ambitions of American presidents... Now they're paying very close attention to public opinion in the US..."
  [18:56]

Insights:

• Leadership vacuum and loss of technocratic skills but not brutality.
• Israel’s strategy may not be enough to shatter regime control due to entrenched hardliners.
• Iran’s proxies are draining, but regime remains dangerous in its desperation.
• Tehran keenly monitors and tries to influence US politics.

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3. Report from Afghanistan: Civilian Suffering and the War on Women

[22:10–31:01]

Key Discussion Points:

• Afghan Civilians as Victims:
  • Pakistani airstrike kills at least 400 in Kabul, as Afghanistan faces internal and external warfare.
• Women's Rights Crisis under Taliban:
  • Taliban intensifies gender apartheid; latest edicts empower men to punish women, even legalizing aspects of slavery.
  • Rights, education, and safety for Afghan girls and women have nearly vanished.
• Appeals to the International Community:
  • Former lawmaker Fauzia Kufi urges global leaders not to ignore Afghanistan, warns impunity will spread.

Notable Quotes:

• On Taliban Edicts (Fauzia Kufi):
  "Women are among the lowest category, giving men in the family the power to do the punishment instead of court... legalizing and formalizing slavery."
  [24:51]
• On Rights and Impunity:
  "An animal has more rights than a woman in Afghanistan. As Meryl Streep once said... 'This is disgusting.'" [25:52]

Insights:

• Afghanistan’s war goes beyond bombs — it’s also gender apartheid.
• Global attention has waned, but the crisis is deepening.
• The Taliban’s rule is unsustainable, and systemic abuses are reaching breaking points.

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4. Cuba: Power Outages, Sanctions, and Political Strains

[31:01–36:04]

Key Discussion Points:

• Nationwide Blackout:
  • Closure of US oil pipeline/sanctions intensify blackouts, citizens protest, government struggles.
• US Political Rhetoric:
  • President Trump’s remarks about “taking Cuba” unsettle even non-revolutionary Cubans.
• Political Power Structure:
  • Nominal president Miguel Diaz-Canel considered a figurehead; real power remains with Castro family.

Notable Quotes:

• On Daily Life (Ottman):
  "My neighborhood, maybe four hours of power every day... people are on the edge."
  [32:22]
• On US Statements:
  "Those are the kind of comments that led Fidel Castro to fight his revolution... it's the kind of thing that makes people's blood... run cold here."
  [32:39]

Insights:

• Daily life in Cuba is severely disrupted by energy shortages.
• US policy and rhetoric have powerful psychological and political effects on the ground.

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5. The Dangers of AI in Warfare

[38:20–53:40]

Key Discussion Points:

• AI's Role in the US Military:

  • Expansion from purpose-built AI to generalist models (large language models, LLMs) in military command and control.

• Accuracy and Reliability Concerns:

  • Systems like MAVEN have accuracy rates as low as 30–50% ("not far from flipping a coin" [40:22]).
  • Commercial models less reliable than old military-specific systems.

• Accountability and Bias:

  • "Human in the loop" is often illusory due to automation bias; humans trust algorithms, especially under pressure.
  • Use of AI muddies accountability for errors and civilian casualties.

• Security Risks:

  • Supply chains not vetted; adversaries can influence model outputs with small data changes.

• Failures and Atrocities:

  • February 28th strike on an Iranian girls’ school highlights murky accountability—was it an intelligence or AI failure?
  • US investigations sometimes can't determine if strikes were AI-mediated.

Notable Quotes:

• On AI Reliability (Heidi Kloff):
  "When you're looking at the averages of these models, their accuracy rate is as low as 50%. That's really not far from flipping a coin, is it?"
  [40:22]
• On Military Use of AI (Heidi Kloff):
  "We're moving towards something that's much less deterministic, much less predictable, and unfortunately not accurate or reliable either."
  [43:32]
• On Accountability (Kloff):
  "AI models make it really easy to obscure accountability because the use of these systems makes it difficult to distinguish if these civilian attacks... were deliberate or due to intelligence failures or due to the lack of AI accuracy itself."
  [48:28]
• On AI Company Safety Pledges:
  "Just like many other tech companies... they always end up dropping their safety pledges... it was never sufficient to guarantee any meaningful safety guardrails."
  [52:11]

Insights:

• Militaries prioritize speed and scale but risk catastrophic inaccuracy.
• Commercial AI is fundamentally unsafe for use in life-or-death decisions and lacks independent oversight.
• The move away from rigorous verification in favor of proprietary “black box” systems makes accountability—and true safety—impossible.

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Memorable Moments & Timestamps

• [03:06] – Karachiev’s vivid report from the streets post-Khamenei, describing fear after regime shootings.
• [07:47] – Sajapour’s analysis of Iran trapped “between two hells.”
• [14:48] – Deep dive into the inner circle and personality conflicts among Iran’s power elite.
• [24:51] – Fauzia Kufi’s detailed breakdown of systematic gender repression under new Taliban edicts.
• [40:22] – Discussion on how low AI accuracy rates undermine military decision-making.
• [48:28] – The challenge of pinpointing blame between intelligence vs. AI in deadly military errors.

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Conclusion: The World in Crisis and the Danger of Easy Answers

This episode underscores the vulnerability and suffering of civilians caught in authoritarian crackdowns, wars, and under opaque, dangerous new technologies. Whether in Iran, Afghanistan, Cuba, or in the crosshairs of advanced algorithms, the common thread is the collision between power, secrecy, and the human cost. Analysts and witnesses urge vigilance, skepticism toward official narratives, and an insistence on genuine accountability—before even more lines are crossed.

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Transcript

[Bianna Golodryga]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Amanpour. Here's what's coming up. Israel says it killed Iran's security chief, calling it a significant blow to the regime. Middle east expert Karim Sajapour joins me to discuss what's next. And Jomana Karachi reports on the Iranians caught between strikes and security forces. Then at least 400 reportedly killed in an airstrike on an Afghan hospital, adding yet more suffering for civilians there. I speak to former Afghan lawmaker Fauzia Kufi.

[Hari Sreenivasan]

Also ahead, when you're looking at the averages of these models, their accuracy rate is as low as 50%.

[Bianna Golodryga]

The role of artificial intelligence in America's military strategy in Iran and beyond. AI scientist Heidi Kloff joins Hari Sreenivasan to share her serious safety concerns about autonomous weapon systems. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Bianna Godrigo, New York, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour. Iran's top security official has been, quote, eliminated. That is according to Israel's defense minister who says Ali Larajani was killed in a targeted IDF strike.

[Karim Sajapour]

I was just updated by the chief of staff that the secretary of the National Security Council, Larijani and the head of the Basij, the central repression body of Iran, Salehmani, were eliminated last night and joined the head of annihilation program Kamani and all the eliminated members of the axis of evil in the depths of hell.

[Bianna Golodryga]

Larajani was one of Iran's top decision makers, some calling him the de facto leader since the assassination of his former boss, supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Shani's killing, if confirmed, plunges the nation and its future into even more uncertainty. The IDF is pressing on with its offensive, conducting wide scale attacks across Iran. And Iran is retaliating, launching strikes across the Middle east from the US Embassy in Iraq to energy facilities in the uae. For civilians on the ground, the reality is harrowing. Since the war began more than two weeks ago, more than 1300 Iranians have been killed in US and Israeli strikes. That is according to Iranian officials. The number is rising day by day. Now, for those hopeful for regime change, it's not just fire from the sky that they fear the government is explicitly threatening would be protesters who might look to take advantage of the chaos, even telling people not to mark tonight's traditional Zoroasterian festival of fire, which leads up to the Persian New Year of Nowruz. Correspondent Jomana Karachiev reports on the people caught between foreign bombs and a repressive regime

[Jomana Karachiev]

celebrating the death of their oppressor this is what the world saw coming out of Iran last month after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed. But cloaked in digital darkness, a new wave of brutal suppression was already beginning. Teenage brothers Ahmed Riza and Amir Hussein Faizi were among the crowds that poured into the streets on February 28th. This was the car they were in with their father, honking the horn in celebration. Security forces open fire on them, according to activists, killing the 15 and 19 year old boys. As the regime faces America and Israel from the sky, it is tightening its grip on the ground, determined to extinguish any ember of an uprising. Two months ago, it did just that, killing thousands of protesters in the bloodiest crackdown in the history of the Islamic Republic. Iranians, still reeling from the collective trauma of January 8th and 9th, now being warned, take to the streets and it will happen again.

[Bianna Golodryga]

Our team have their fingers on the trigger.

[Jomana Karachiev]

The chief of police threatening protesters they will be treated as the enemy and shot. The feared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps promising another massacre of protesters. This time, they say they will strike harder than they did in January. Messages we've received from Iranians inside the country describe a regime using every tool in its playbook to crush dissent.

[Bianna Golodryga]

Every time you go outside, even just

[Hari Sreenivasan]

to go to the market, you see machine guns and do heavy guns on the streets. Everyone is afraid of the checkpoints. They are basically the regime's street level enforcers.

[Fauzia Kufi]

People are randomly being checked, their phones

[Bianna Golodryga]

being searched, being asked questions like what are you doing out here?

[Hari Sreenivasan]

They even arrest and take them for a further investigation.

[Jomana Karachiev]

Video trickling out only a small window into this new climate of fear. Iran is a superpower, they chant. Iranians are proud. Regime supporters roam the streets at night with a menacing. They are still here. They are still in control. State media, like so many times before, has been airing videos of those arrested allegedly confessing to being foreign agents. Text messages like this one warn those who find a way around the imposed Internet blackout will be treated as spies. This crackdown only expected to get worse as outside forces that want to overthrow this regime add fuel to the fire.

[Heidi Kloff]

We are now at the decisive stage of our final struggle. Await my final call.

[Jomana Karachiev]

The Israeli Prime Minister telling Iranians his forces are creating the conditions on the ground for them to rise up. As the IDF releases video like this, showing what it says are attacks on regime checkpoints that have become a major instrument of suppression and killing the regime's top leadership one after the other. An uprising seems impossible right now

[Hari Sreenivasan]

for

[Jomana Karachiev]

those who find themselves trapped into hells. From inside their homes, they still defiantly cheer against the regime that time and time again has failed to silence a people risking it all for freedom.

[Bianna Golodryga]

Thanks to Jomana, Karachi reporting there. For more, let's bring in Middle east expert Karim Sajapour, who monitors and analyzes Iran for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He joins me now from Washington, D.C. kareem, it is always good to see you. An honor to have you on the program. So let's just start there, where Jomana's piece left off. And that is the traumatized people of Iran, who she says seem just not capable at this point of coming to the streets with an uprising. To quote her, uprising seems impossible right now with the deaths, though they haven't been confirmed by Iran, of Ali Larajani and the head of the Basij militia. Does that possibility open up a bit?

[Karim Sajapour]

Bien. I think Jomana put it really well. This is a population trap between two hells, the hell of war and the hell of a brutal authoritarian regime. Ali Lalijani was one of the most important figures in the Islamic Republic. He's someone who was unique in that he had decades of both domestic and foreign policy expertise, experience. He had decades of institutional memory. And in his absence, he leaves behind a much less competent regime than before. But it is a regime which remains equally brutal. It still believes that if it doesn't stay in power, if it loses power, it's going to be killed. And for that reason, I think, as we saw last January, it remains a regime which the only thing it really does effectively is repression, and it's willing to kill, continue to kill many thousands of its population to stay in power.

[Bianna Golodryga]

With the system's top enforcers now gone, who is actually calling the shots in Tehran now?

[Karim Sajapour]

One of the most important people now in the aftermath of Ladijani's death, I think, is the speaker of Parliament, Mohammed Baghr Khaliba. He was already a very important figure, given his close relationship with the new supreme leader, Mojzeba Khamenei. Kalibaf also has a background as a Revolutionary Guard commander. And what I've noticed, Jomana, is that in these three weeks of war, it's a regime which has really closed ranks around the principles of the 1979 revolution. Even figures who maybe a year or two prior would have thought to be a little bit more pragmatic publicly, they've all doubled down on revolutionary ideology. And that's certainly the case with Golubovci.

[Bianna Golodryga]

And that is picking up on something that Iran observers have. The point they have made in the last few hours since reports of Levorajani's death, and that was that. If he was considered a moderate by regime standards, is it fair to assume, as some are, that he will inevitably be replaced by a hardliner?

[Karim Sajapour]

Well, we have to look at everything in the context of the realities of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ladijani was directly implicated on and the massacre of perhaps as many as 30,000 civilians last January. Exactly. So that is definitely not someone who is quote, unquote, moderate. But in the context of the Islamic Republic of Iran, he was thought to be a little more pragmatic, not necessarily internally, but in his willingness to talk to the United States or talk to Gulf countries. And it seems there's now reports, I don't know if it's yet confirmed, that he's being replaced by a guy called Saeed Jalili. Jalili is much more ideological than Ladijani and much less competent than Ladijani. So as I said, I think that Ladijani, the net effect of his killing is that it is a regime now which has lost its most experienced hands, but it's not moderating as a result. If it was 9 out of 10 brutal and ideological, it's simply going to 10 out of 10.

[Bianna Golodryga]

It appears that the goal here, specifically by the Israelis in targeting these top officials, is to fracture the regime's internal security. Does decapitating the Basij Central Command do just that?

[Karim Sajapour]

It's too soon to say, Bjana. I think that in contrast to Larijani, the head of the Basij that was today killed seemed to me more of an apparatchik, not really a great mind capable of leadership, but someone who is simply a thug. And thugs are replaceable in that system. But as I said, they have very few men at that top level who have both decades of domestic experience and international experience. Given how isolated this regime has been,

[Bianna Golodryga]

there had been reporting that internally there was a debate and tension between the IRGC and some of the more, we'll put them in quotes, pragmatic and moderate leaders and figures in this regime about who should replace the supreme leader and that Mojtaba had not been the preferred choice, not only by his, apparently not even by his father, but by Larajani as well. And yet we know that he had become his advisor in these short few days since Mojtaba has been appointed before Larajani had reportedly been killed. So if it's not La Rajani who is now advising the new supreme leader, who I would imagine is somewhere in a Bunker as well.

[Karim Sajapour]

I do think it's the person of Mohammed Baghel Kali Baf, who is the current speaker of Parliament. And one thing that Ayatollah Khamenei, you know, he firmly believed in the Principles of 1979. We call them hardliners. They call themselves principalists because they say they're loyal to the principles of the revolution. And really, there's only a few principles left of the 1979 revolution. Death to America, Death to Israel. And they still believe in the Islamic ness of the regime. They're not prepared to dilute that. And for them, even things like the mandatory hijab, which increasingly few women adhere to in Iran, they're not willing to give that up because they believe that is the flag of the Islamic revolution. And so Ayatollah Khamenei's longtime view is that when you're under pressure, you can't abandon your principles. And he believes that, for example, the collapse of the Soviet Union was hastened by Gorbachev's attempts to reform it. So I see this as a regime as of right now, it's not prepared to meaningfully change its identity and compromise. And for that reason, Yana, I don't really think that we're going to see a resolution to this conflict between Israel and Iran or the United States and Iran anytime soon.

[Bianna Golodryga]

Yeah. The president just moments ago saying he thinks this is going to wrap up very quickly. Obviously, a lot of pressure on him to do just that, specifically about what's going on the Strait of Hormuz and the impact that that closure is having on oil and gas prices. As I do every week in reading your reporting and your pieces, the Last pie you wrote in the Atlantic insists that instead of a pragmatist, this war has spawned what you say is an Iranian Kim Jong Un. In Mujtaba Khamenei, you say he lacks his father's revolutionary credibility and relies on brutal enforcers, specifically like Hossein Tayeb. Can you tell us who he is?

[Karim Sajapour]

So, Hossein Tayeb, as I quoted a gentleman in that piece, who had been a prisoner in the Islamic Republic's even prison for eight years, he referred to Hossein Ta' B as one of the most evil men in the Islamic Republic, the worst of the worst. Someone who's been implicated in mass imprisonments, hostage takings, tortures for decades. And he was someone who was the head of Revolutionary Guard Intelligence in the past, who had even been actually expunged from the regime's security networks, because even in the context of a brutal regime. He was thought to be too radical. And so these are the types of people around Mojtib Al Khamenei. Given Mojtab Al Khamenei's lack of legitimacy, his lack of popularity, he has no choice but to really try to stay in power through brutality. And I'm skeptical, Bjana, that he's going to be someone that we will be talking about for many years to come. The Israelis obviously are trying to assassinate him. But he also does not seem someone who is well placed for this role. He's never really formally held a public position. He's never given a formal public speech. And we know now that he's injured, he's in hiding. His ability to communicate with his underlings has been totally penetrated. And he's really inheriting an impossible situation, a population which profoundly opposes his regime and fighting a war against America and Israel.

[Bianna Golodryga]

There is a piece I'm sure you've seen that has been widely circulated. I believe the president has even posted it as well. It's an Al Jazeera piece arguing that Operation Epic Fury is actually a massive strategic. And the author goes on to say that looking at the data, Iranian missile launches are now down 90%, that the proxy network is fragmenting. I'm going to quote from the piece. What the critics described as an expanding regional war is better understood as the death spasm of a proxy architecture whose authorizing center has been shattered. Now, he's specifically talking about the military strategy here and less the political. But do you agree with his assessment that Iran's ability to project regional power at this point has been greatly diminished?

[Karim Sajapour]

That is absolutely true, Bjan, and I think it was even true before this war had started that Iran's regional proxies had been significantly diminished by Israeli hard power since October 7, 2023. For me, there's kind of three important figures to pay close attention to. One is the price of oil, because so important part of Iran's strategy is to continue to spike the price of oil. The second number to pay close attention to is domestic public opinion in the United States. If oil prices and domestic public opinion are continuing to trend upward, I think the regime will continue to fight. But the third number, which you alluded to in the Al Jazeera piece, is the number of projectiles that Iran has left, its missiles and drones. We know that they probably don't have in the tens of thousands left, but they probably still have in the thousands left. And they have to be careful about how they use those because that's not something that they cani don't think they can continue to fight at this pace for the next six months.

[Bianna Golodryga]

Right. Because then if they use them, ultimately the launching pads from which they were launched will be the primary target. And we know that they are running out quickly of launchers which have been a prime target of both the United States and Israel. Last question. You said something that I found very poignant last week on our air. And you said that the ally Iran is trying to summon is the American public right now. Explain what you mean. And could you add to that potentially our NATO allies and European allies, which the president of the United States has now publicly ridiculed and criticized for not getting involved in this war.

[Karim Sajapour]

So, Biana, in the 47 year u. S. Iran Cold War, Iran has often relied on domestic public opinion in America to restrain the ambitions of American presidents. Perhaps the best recent example of that before this war was the 2003 US invasion of Iraq under George Bush. And at that time, there was a lot of talk that after deposing of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, there was a possibility of moving the war eastward to Iran. And what Iran did after the invasion of Iraq was to turn Iraq into an inferno. All they wanted to do was sabotage the Iraq war to hamstring George W. Bush's mandate for taking that war to Iran. And unfortunately, they succeeded in that realm. And now they're paying very close attention to public opinion in the U.S. including within the MAGA movement, which they believe is opposed to this war. On state television, they put on voices like recordings of people like Tucker Carlson. So they are very much focused on domestic public opinion. And you know, that ultimately, I think, is going to be the most difficult question for President Trump. Can he continue to show resolve despite the fact that an increasing majority of Americans have real concerns about this conflict?

[Bianna Golodryga]

Karim Sagapur, always a pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much for joining us.

[Karim Sajapour]

Thank you, Biana.

[Bianna Golodryga]

And do stay with cnn. We'll be right back after the break. We turn now to Afghanistan, where another conflict is spiraling. Today, Kabul is reeling from a deadly strike on a hospital where Afghanistan says at least 408 people were killed in a Pakistani airstrike. Islamabad denies that, but it comes as the two neighboring countries have been exchanging fire for weeks, with Pakistan claiming the Taliban are sponsoring militant attacks. Meantime, another war is raging on the ground in Afghanistan, and that is the war on women and girls. The Taliban are now declaring that men may beat their wives as long as they don't break bones. It's horrific it is just the latest edict and a string of archaic rollbacks since they took over nearly five years ago. My next guest calls this gender apartheid, and she is demanding for world leaders to recognize it as such. In a speech at the European Parliament on Monday, former Afghan lawmaker and peace negotiator Fauzia Kufi called on the international community to put more pressure on the Taliban regime. And she joins me now live from Brussels. Fauzia, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for taking the time. Let me start with this strike on an Afghan drug rehab center which we said killed at least 408people. The Taliban is threatening to retaliate over accusations that they are harboring terrorists. Where is this escalating headed in your view?

[Fauzia Kufi]

Thank you, Bianna, for having me. For five decades, the civilians, the people of Afghanistan, the defenseless, have been dragged into the war that it has never been their war. And as a result, civilian casualty, one after the other. One of the things the Taliban were proud and they were claiming was the security that they were claiming that they were able to establish. However, we see recently that they were in conflict with the neighboring countries internally as well. And also like the Pakistan strike, you know, the civilians must be protected under any circumstances. The Taliban claim that they are countering other military extremism, including the ttp, that Pakistan is claiming that they are using Afghanistan soil. I think this is a valid concern that, you know, the world must hold the Taliban accountable. We believe, you know, the civilian cannot continue to pay the price for, for the careless and reckless Taliban act. When they were fighting with the Republic, they were killing people in a different way. Now they are dragging people into a war which is not our war. It's not the war of people. It's not over any value that we put ourselves around that it's over something that we don't want that in our land. If it's TTP or isis, we don't want them in our land because we are paying the price. And so I think it's a war that is going to escalate further and unfortunately, the civilians will be the further victim of this. So therefore, I think Pakistan must be very careful not to play with the public sentiment when it comes to their attacks. There should be an accountability to this war and the culture of accountability should be in a way that civilians must be protected under any circumstances because they're the same people who are being suppressed by the Taliban. And as you said, there is already another war that is launched in Afghanistan and that's the war against civilians. Against people, against the ordinary people, and more than that, against the women in Afghanistan.

[Bianna Golodryga]

So with this as a backdrop of perhaps the two countries being on the brink of an all out war, as we noted for our viewers in the introduction, you are one of the few Afghan women who actually negotiated with the Taliban directly. You survived an assassination attempt and you just addressed the European Parliament. As global attention on Afghanistan fades and has faded, I would argue for a number of months, if not years now, what is the most urgent message you want to send to the world about what is happening in the country?

[Fauzia Kufi]

I think that the important thing is that Afghanistan is like an open wound and the fact that there is conflict in Middle east and the world is basically, you know, at its worst shape to be alive now, Afghanistan must not be, you know, dropped out of the world agenda because as I said before, not only in terms of militant extremism, groups that are using Afghanistan, but also Taliban will use this opportunity to further suppress women. As you know, they entered this war with Pakistan. They issued on the 4th of January yet another edict which is called the Pedakot procedure, which further suppress women and literally divide the society into four categories. And women are among the lowest category, giving men in the family the power to do the punishment instead of court. And this is in a situation where women access to court and official justice system significantly declined because the protection mechanisms that were there to protect the law on violence against women that we tabled in the Parliament, the Ministry of Women's affairs that was there to protect women, the independent Human Rights Commission or other civil society organization, even media, independent media is not there to report about that. So people are. Women are left with no protection means. And yet the men of the family are giving the responsibility to punish the woman. In one of the articles, as you said, it actually legalizes the mate. Legalizes if your master or your supervisor or somebody who is owning a human being has the power to punish another human being. Basically legalizing and formalizing slavery. In another article, it says if a woman has been beaten to a point where her bones are fractured or she finds bruises, she can go to the court and only if she can prove that the husband will be sentenced to 15 days. While if an animal is hurt, the person who has the perpetrator could be sentenced to five months of imprisonment. So an animal has more rights than a woman in Afghanistan. As Meryl Streep once said in a session that I was with her in nations. This is disgusting. We're living in 21st century. I think the world is just, you know, Walking away from what's happening in Afghanistan, Taliban feel emboldened. They need to be pressurized because they promised during the peace talks when I was part of it, that they would respect women rights, that they will allow women to go to school. And they were portrayed as Taliban 2.0 by some of the diplomats, including some that negotiated with them. So we must hold them accountable because this culture of impunity should end before it reaches every doors in your own borders.

[Bianna Golodryga]

You just summarized in great detail and very effectively what a top UN official recently called Afghanistan. And that is a graveyard for human rights. What are you hearing directly from women and children there and girls who are surviving now or trying to survive under such repressive rules?

[Fauzia Kufi]

You can imagine if a human being is not working, she or even he. Because it's not only the women who are experiencing this chaos and suppressive measures, but the men as well in the society. They don't have jobs. The economy is basically declining. There is 5 billion deficit according to some credible reports. Deficit to our economy because of the fact that women are not in the job market. They're being killed by the war that they have not chosen. It's not their war. And then they're being suppressed. 21st of March, just in few days will be the beginning of a new education year in Afghanistan. And it's five years since our girls have not been to official school. Universities are closed. A huge mental health crisis in Afghanistan. I would say not only women are suffering from that mental health crisis, but men as well. And people are just when I talk to them, they're waiting for a change. They are expecting the change now or next day. And you know, Afghanistan is a country of so much unpredictability. So we must actually prepare ourselves for that change. We should not think that the Taliban will be there for because from a political theory perspective, but from a society, somebody who has lived in Afghanistan, social perspective, I know the situation is not sustainable. The Taliban will not be able to sustain it by suppressing half of the society and also making it hard for the other half, which are the main. So this is a situation that we must all work before it's too late. And Afghanistan become another insecurity hub for the global community.

[Bianna Golodryga]

And the final question, the recent move by Marco Rubio to designate the Taliban as a state sponsor of wrongful detention. I would imagine that you support that declaration. Are you now looking for the United States to take more actions, perhaps in the form of sanctions, but then with that comes concern about what that means for those civilians on the ground and I mean more additional sanctions.

[Fauzia Kufi]

I read the statement by State Department on Afghanistan being as a state that is favoring the hostility and hostages. I think that we should really use the term carefully because it's not Afghanistan. My country name should not be associated with any wrongdoings of the Taliban. It's the Taliban and of course, any measures. And Americans did it. The State Department did it for their own interest because their citizens are being, you know, abducted by the Taliban. What about 18 million women who are actually who dreams are abducted whose, you know, aspiration for a better life is taken away from them. We must that is to change their life as well.

[Bianna Golodryga]

Yeah. That is where the focus should be. You're so right to point that out. Fauzio Cufi, thank you so much for joining us. We turn now to Cuba where millions of people are without power after the island's electricity grid collapsed on Monday. Take a look at Cubans as they gathered in the streets to protest the situation. Cuba has been plagued by blackouts for years, but this nationwide outage comes after the Trump administration effectively cut off the island's access to foreign oil. Cuba relies on that oil to generate electricity. Meanwhile, here's President Trump speaking on Monday.

[Patrick Ottman]

I do believe I'll be the honor

[Karim Sajapour]

of having the honor of taking Cuba. That'd be good. That's a big honor.

[Patrick Ottman]

Taking Cuba. Taking Cuba in some form.

[Karim Sajapour]

Yeah, taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it, I think I could do anything I want with it.

[Bianna Golodryga]

Let's bring in correspondent Patrick Ottman, who's in Havana with more. Patrick, first, the reaction to those comments from the president that he'd be honored to take Cuba. And most importantly, how are those Cubans there responding and reacting to heightened sanctions and the fact that they now don't have electricity?

[Patrick Ottman]

You know, power is slow coming back on in pockets of this country. But I think for the majority of people, they are now, you know, now more than one day into the largest power outage we have seen this year, the first island wide power outage that has taken place since the oil embargo was implemented by the Trump administration. That, of course, is putting stress on an already overworked, already very, very old and underfunded national power system. And so the longer this goes on, the worse it gets. But we should point out that even before this latest nationwide power outage, you know, people are getting, you know, my neighborhood, maybe four hours of power every day. So it's just barely enough to get by. But it's certainly not anything approaching what you consider A normal life. And so people are on the edge. You've seen people going and protesting, actually in one instance attacking the headquarters of the Communist Party, per to Donald Trump's comments. That's kind of comments that led Fidel Castro to fight his revolution. According to him and his supporters over the years. It's the kind of thing that makes people's blood, many of them run cold here, that the United States would essentially take over this island. Cubans are very nationalistic, very proud, even those who don't support the revolution. But increasingly when I talk to people, they said they just want to get this economic crisis over with, no matter how that would occur. So people are at the end of the rope. People are exhausted by the last months of constant power outages and just the increasing difficulty of life on this island. But of course, many people probably aren't even aware of, of the comments because they simply don't have power or Internet at the moment.

[Bianna Golodryga]

And how are they responding to reports in the New York Times that the administration is effectively looking for the president of the country, Miguel Diaz Canel, to step down? He is not the one who most believe wields the most power, but this would be a largely symbolic, but a big symbolic move on Cuba's part. Is there any validity to that from what you're hearing?

[Patrick Ottman]

I think, you know, it's so interesting because of course, Miguel Diaz Canelo, president of Cuba since revolution, first leader whose name is not Castro. But you're very right that Raul Castro, even though he is retired, is the ultimate authority on this island. 94 years old, and there are no signs. I've followed Raul Castro for many, many years and seen many of his speeches and covered, you know, his entire presidency here. And there are really no signs that he would ever give in to US pressure. Of course, times are just so different now. Life is getting so much harder. And unlike previous administration that tied in the screws economically on Cuba, now you have an administration that is openly talking about perhaps using military action or, you know, whatever course of measure they need to. Certainly, just as oil blockade feels like checkmate, it's an island that's on fumes. So Miguel Diaz Canel was handpicked by Raul Castro. He certainly could be unhand picked. But the question then becomes, have you essentially kind of split the government? And do people realize that the loyalty that they've given to the revolution, to the Castros, to the government over the years is not being returned to them? It's hard to imagine that they would essentially go into that they would accept this kind of U. S Demand of who the president of this island is. But we are, of course, at the end of the rope when it comes to the economy here.

[Bianna Golodryga]

All right. Patrick Ottman reporting live from Cuba for us. Thank you so much. We'll be right back after this short break. I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. This week on the podcast Terms of Service, as our guest David Pogue writes in his new book, 27% of the world's population now uses Apple devices. That means if Apple users were a country, it would be the most populous in the world. As the company turns 50 years old this year, I wanted to take a look back at how Apple came to have such a huge influence in our lives.

[Heidi Kloff]

The Macintosh was completely different. It was the graphic interface. It was the first time the masses had a mouse and menus so you didn't have to remember the commands and

[Bianna Golodryga]

windows that overlapped and you could copy and paste and little icons.

[Heidi Kloff]

Everything people know now.

[Bianna Golodryga]

But at the time it was revolutionary

[Heidi Kloff]

and opened up using computers to vast new realms of people.

[Bianna Golodryga]

Listen to CNN's terms of service wherever you get your podcasts. This week on the assignment with me, Audie Cornish, George Severis, co host of the podcast United States of Kennedy which digs into America's enduring fascination with this mid century Camelot.

[Karim Sajapour]

You know, I don't want to be

[Hari Sreenivasan]

too controversial about the Kennedy family overall and part of it is the hunger for power and influence, of course, but the other part is he understood early on the intersection between entertainment and politics.

[Bianna Golodryga]

Listen to the assignment with me Audie Cornish.

[Hari Sreenivasan]

Streaming now on your favorite podcast app.

[Bianna Golodryga]

Now the US Is reportedly deploying artificial intelligence to help help fight its war with Iran as the Pentagon pushes for less human oversight over the use of this technology. Our next guest is sounding the alarm around the safety and reliability of these tools, particularly in facilitating what is called a quote kill chain. Heidi Kloff is the chief AI scientist at the AI NOW Institute and she shares her concerns on the growing use of AI systems in the military with Hari Srinivas Bjana.

[Heidi Kloff]

Thanks. Heidi Kloff, thanks so much for joining us. You are someone who helped pioneer the field of AI safety. And as an engineer, what does it mean and what does it look like in practice?

[Hari Sreenivasan]

So AI safety has a lot of different definitions to different types of people, but I come from the traditional safety engineering discipline which is about making sure that systems are safety critical. So things like airplanes, nuclear plants, our infrastructure, if it fails, human lives are at risk here. And that's a Very different type of discipline than what people think about in terms of AI safety. And over the years AI safety has really become about existential risks or this fear that these AI models will become super intelligent and then become a risk to society at large. But the difference is here, the risks that these AI companies talk about when they talk about AI safety are really hypothetical. They're not concerned with the everyday risk that AI models can pose to human lives. That's very different from safety engineering, which is my discipline, which thinks about the human lives that are affected from sort of like the failures that could occur from our infrastructure. And so I often view AI safety as sort of safety revisionism or that that term has been co opted because we've moved very far away from trying to make sure that our systems are accurate and reliable towards this idea that we're going to build some super intelligent being that's going to solve all of our world problems. And I think it's very important that we always focus on the science and how these systems actually fail, rather than hypothetical sci fi situations that actually don't help us make these systems reliable at all.

[Heidi Kloff]

There is this kind of life threatening scenario that people are getting familiar with, which is how is AI being used in warfare? How do you see AI contributing to the way that militaries are carrying out their actions?

[Hari Sreenivasan]

When you're using things like generative AI or large language models for writing an email, these models getting something wrong is very low risk, right? No one dies, nothing changes. But then when you move to trying to implement them in safety critical systems like in defense, you're literally determining the lives of people, right? This is very much high stakes. And when you're looking at the accuracy of these systems, they shouldn't be near any sort of targeting at all. So for example, Maven, which is currently being used by the US in Iran, has low accuracy rates. Two years ago an investigation came out that showed their accuracy rate are as low as 30% in some situations. And overall when you're looking at the averages of these models, their accuracy rate is as low as 50%. And you know, that's really not far from flipping a coin, is it? Right? This sort of 50, 50 random chance. And I think that should make us question why are these systems even near targeting at all if they're this inaccurate? And you know, again, there could be other uses of AI where you know, there are life or death consequences, but in the case of military, that very much is what's at stake.

[Heidi Kloff]

So help us kind of explain the differences in how the military uses it.

[Hari Sreenivasan]

So first I want to preface with the fact that AI has been used in the military since the 1960s, but it's a very different type of AI than what we're seeing today. Back then and up until a few years ago, they were using what we call sort of purpose built military AI models where they were very task specific and they were trained on specific tasks with specific data for some mission. And that's very different from what we're seeing today in the use of generative AI or things like large language models, where they're being implemented in what we call decision support systems, which are essentially tools that bring together a lot of data like satellite images, social media feeds, intercepted communications. And that model then uses all this information to make military recommendations, including targeting recommendations. And I think a lot of people are probably confused about this type of term because we're also hearing a lot about autonomous weapons systems. And the difference between decision support systems and autonomous weapons systems is that autonomous weapons systems are allowed to select and engage with targets without oversight from a human being versus decision support systems that do have the so called oversight right. And it's questionable how much oversight there really is that tend to provide a game like or a chatbot interface that a military operator then uses to approve AI target target recommendations. But overall AI is being used in every part of what we call the kill chain. So things like intelligence, surveillance, and now we're looking at the selection and then the strike of the targets as well.

[Heidi Kloff]

You're talking about taking something that wasn't designed for the military, the large language models. And we're kind of putting that into the military's needs. How do we measure how accurate those systems are in the type of tasks that we're asking in the middle of war?

[Hari Sreenivasan]

I mean, that's a very good point. If you have vision models, things that have been trained to detect a tank, they already had low enough accuracy rates before we had the Air Force that had a targeting model which they felt had 90% accuracy and actually in practice only had 25% accuracy. So we were already dealing with these issues long before large language models were being implemented within sort of military decision making. Unfortunately, it is the case and has been shown by a lot of research that commercial general models are much less accurate than military purpose built models. And so we have an issue where we're actually going towards models that have reduced accuracy in terms of military context. And they also have security issues. And I think we're not talking about this enough because they are built on a commercial Supply chain. The supply chain is not vetted as we typically would see with a military system. So there's actually security issues as well. It's not just a safety issue. They can build backdoors into these models. We have seen operations from Russia and China that put out a lot of different types of propaganda to try to skew the outputs of large language models. And anthropic themselves have admitted you only need to change about 250 documents or data points for a model to be able to change its behavior. So we have multiple issues here. And so it's very unfortunate that instead of trying to improve on these task specific models that we've had before, which again had their own accuracy issues, we're moving towards something that that's much less deterministic, much less predictable, and unfortunately not accurate or reliable either.

[Heidi Kloff]

There's a video message from the head of US CENTCOM last week and he said partly humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot. But advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds. So I'm trying to figure out here, if you're saying that these models are inherently not as accurate and reliable as we think, and if these decisions are made so fast, even when a human gets that information in front of them, is there sort of a bias where I might say this is probably good?

[Hari Sreenivasan]

Absolutely, there's definitely a bias here. And that's why Human in the Loop is typically not a very meaningful solution. In our field, we have what we call automation bias, which is this idea based based on decades of research showing that humans often trust the recommendations of algorithms without corroborating with other sources to check if those recommendations were correct or not, even if they're required to by law. In the case of military decision making, and this is especially the case in military context, when operators typically only have a few seconds to make determinations on whether or not to act on algorithmic output. For example, with map, the military is hoping to reach the point where it can select a thousand targets in a single hour. And then they claim that a Target Excel of 20 people can replace previous operations that had 2000 personnel instead. So this creates the very conditions where automation bias would thrive. Especially when you have things like Palantir's platform maven that kind of obscure where the AI output really is or doesn't really make it easy for you to trace or verify the that decision. And either way, a lot of these models are, you know, have enormous scale. So they're black boxes.

[Heidi Kloff]

What's interesting right now is that there's this back and forth between Anthropic and the Pentagon. And the core of the argument seems to be at least publicly reduced to the idea that Anthropic is saying we don't want these models used for autonomous weapon systems. We don't actually think they're accurate enough, and we don't also want them used in the mass surveillance of U.S. citizens. My question is, are they reliable enough for the decision support systems that you're mentioning in the surveillance and intelligence gathering in the first place?

[Hari Sreenivasan]

I mean, that's a fantastic point. You know, when you consider automation bias with their lack of accuracy and the CEO of Anthropic himself admitting that these systems are not reliable, then it's very much the case that if they believe their models aren't reliable, reliable enough for autonomous weapons systems, they're also not reliable enough for decision support systems. And we should be questioning altogether whether or not these systems can be successfully used in military settings, especially targeting.

[Heidi Kloff]

So there was a horrible, horrible mistake on February 28th when a missile hit an Iranian girls school in southern Iran. It killed more than 170 people. In the preliminary investigations right now showed that the US was responsible. And I wonder if was this an intelligence failure or was this an artificial intelligence failure? And how will I know?

[Hari Sreenivasan]

Well, the lack of clarity surrounding the situation of whether or not AI was used in the school case actually touches on a very important point that shows how AI models make it really easy to obscure accountability because the use of these system makes it difficult to distinguish if these civilian attacks were in fact deliberate or due to intelligence failures or due to the lack of AI accuracy itself, as you said. Or it could be a combination of all three. For example, the AI could have been used to determine this intelligence based on the data it was given and then that intelligence was then used for targeting. But the black box and inaccurate nature of AI makes that really, really difficult to determine. And a recent investigation actually showed that a strike on a civilian Iraq and 20, 20, 24, the US Central Command admitted to not knowing whether some strikes were in fact AI recommendations or not. And if the Department of War is in fact deliberately not recording when AI based decisions are being used, then it shows that AI is really being used to muddy the accountability here, especially for the liability of the decision makers in the chain of command.

[Heidi Kloff]

I've got to imagine that part of their pitch to the Departments of War in any country that they might be working in would be, listen, I can Help save lives. Right. I can help you prosecute this without putting boots on the ground. I have now intelligence systems that will help you target, that will help you find exactly the right targets that only the military invest kind of installations. And I can minimize civilian harm. What's wrong with that?

[Hari Sreenivasan]

Well, I think that the, the angle that they're actually selling, you know, in combination with what you just said is speed. Right. They're saying that you don't have to put boots on the ground. It's because speed gives you an advantage in these types of military operations. And I think it's actually very dangerous that speed is somehow being sold to us as strategic here by these companies. Because large language models, you know, can just become a cover for indiscriminate targeting when you consider how inaccurate they are. Right. And so you're not only just muddying that accountability, you're using AI to legitimize the speed in combination with their low accuracy rate. And it might just become a high tech version of carpet bombing. And so I think militaries need to be very careful in assessing the claims, you know, that these AI companies are putting forward. For example, I actually believe that defense standards are some of the most strict and rigorous standards that there are. Right. They require very high reliability rates for a reason. Right. Again, lives are at stake. And also if military equipment fails or you're overusing your missiles for civilian targets, that's not an advantage for you in warfare. And yet here we are being told by these companies that this is an advantage. And we're signing away these contracts where we're no longer having that rigorous defense oversight. These companies are often grading their own homework. And so they're saying, we will implement this new system for you. And we, because we're the only people who understand the system, evaluate it for you. So we're actually moving away from these rigorous independent verification that defense used to carry out during procurement process and just believing what these AI companies are saying.

[Heidi Kloff]

You can already see that there are these competitive forces that are also affected by speed. Right. I mean, there was a recent statement from the chief science officer of Anthropic who said, you know, they basically decided to drop their flagship kind of safety pledge. They said, we felt that it wouldn't actually help anyone for us to stop training AI models. We didn't really feel with the rapid advance of AI, that it made sense for us to make unilateral commitments if competitors are blazing ahead.

[Hari Sreenivasan]

Well, I think, you know, just like many other tech companies that have come before them, OpenAI for example, or Google, they always end up dropping their safety pledges and dropping themselves or justifying the strollback by claiming that their rivals didn't adopt similar measures, which forces positions. And this really implies that they believe they're sort of the rightful developers of capabilities that they themselves admit will accelerate the arrival of the very risk that they feared. And I think, you know, it shows that these voluntary policy again co opt these safety terms to give a veneer of safety, but ultimately it was never sufficient to guarantee any meaningful safety guardrails. And that is exactly why we're meant to have independence and oversights over what these companies are doing, because for them, they can just look at the term safety and change it to mean whatever they think it's suitable at the time. So for example, in the case of anthropic, they overemphasize on what they call cbrn, which is the AI having capabilities to develop chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological weapons. And their entire safety framework was sort of based on that, when you should be much more concerned with the targeting accuracy if you're putting these models in sort of military decision making. And so I think we need to be careful when and they're putting forward this idea of safety.

[Heidi Kloff]

Chief AI scientist at the AI NOW Institute, Heidi Klaff, thanks so much for joining us.

[Hari Sreenivasan]

Thank you for having me.

[Bianna Golodryga]

And that is it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can always catch us online, on our website and all over social media. Thanks so much for watching and goodbye.

[Hari Sreenivasan]

From New York,

[Karim Sajapour]

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta,

[Bianna Golodryga]

host of the Chasing Life podcast.

[Heidi Kloff]

Dr. Majeet Fatouhi is a neurologist, a neuroscientist.

[Karim Sajapour]

He is author of a new book. It's called the Invincible Brain.

[Heidi Kloff]

What you're suggesting is that you can

[Karim Sajapour]

improve your brain throughout your life. Our brain has a repair kit in

[Bianna Golodryga]

place just in case something happens. Tap into that repair mechanism and improve your brain.

[Heidi Kloff]

In the absence of trauma or stroke,

[Bianna Golodryga]

when you exercise, you increase the amount of bdnf.

[Heidi Kloff]

When you learn something new, you increase

[Bianna Golodryga]

the number of synapses. When you eat a healthy diet, you reduce inflammation and you can then increase the size of hippocampus. In other words, the improvements in the brain are not subtle. They're so prominent, they're so profound that you can see it on mris before and after.

[Karim Sajapour]

Listen to Chasing Life Streaming now. Wherever you get your podcasts,