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- [00:01]
A
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- [00:33]
B
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts, Radio News Joining us now to talk about the ongoing war, the big debate over funding that's happening today on Capitol Hill is the Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who is vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member as well, the Senate Finance Committee. It's great to see you, Senator. Welcome back to Bloomberg TV and Radio. We've got a lot of questions for you and may as well start with funding for the war. As Pete Hegseth continues to make the argument in this Appropriations Committee hearing, 37 billion was the price tag he offered for operations so far. But of course, the administration is asking for a lot more. When you consider the vote on this supplemental budget request, the number of active duty troops in your state, the number of defense contractors, your voice is pretty important here. Are you a yes or a no
- [01:23]
C
at this point, Joe? I'm a no because the Defense Department still has roughly $85 billion of unspent agree that we have, you know, taken down our stocks of munitions. They need to be replenished. Yeah, take a devoted already appropriated money. This was a war of choice. And the irony is to start a war of choice without a plan or a plan that we were going to bomb Iran into submission. The four goals that the administration laid out, regime change. How's that going? The current crowd is worse. Enriched uranium. We haven't gotten it out. It would take 15,000 troops on the ground getting rid of their missiles and drones. Obviously not the case. And straight of our moves seems to me with gas now back to $4 and diesel above $5. That's not working out as well. This was a war of choice. The president never made the case to the American people. It's dreadfully unpopular. We want to replenish those troops and I do take it from the funds that have already been appropriated that are sitting in sitting in basically the budget at dod.
- [02:29]
D
Well, of course DOD is asking for even more in the next fiscal year budget, one and a half trillion dollars. There is a question as to whether or not that regular appropriations process will and most often, Senator, we hear it will not be hence A continuing resolution that is going to be voted on in the House tonight and will reach your chamber shortly thereafter. Are you willing to cast that vote now to fund the government through December?
- [02:51]
C
I would rather make see if we it feels like throwing in the towel now when we've got weeks left before September 30th so that you know, I've not looked, you know was is it a clean cr, Is it not a clean cr? I have enough on my plate right now. I have not focused on this yet. If it comes over I'll take a good solid look. But you know the thing that I work because I do think there are some changes at the Department of Defense that are really important. They're trying to move to multi year contract. They're trying to see if we can squeeze more resources out. I mean the deputy secretary, Steve Feinberg who is a business guy have a lot of respect for but you can't ask the Democrats to write a blank check when they haven't said okay, usually there's a ratio between defense spending and domestic spending. They don't even want to talk about that yet. You can't you as we as in my state, we get through the election and if the big ugly bill law is actually implemented, we'll throw 300,000 Virginians off of health care coverage from Medicaid and I'm supposed to then almost double the defense budget when we're taking health care away so dramatically. This is not the way things ought to operate. And frankly the administration concentration on some of these one time items I don't think is really fully made the case
- [04:19]
B
says a lot about where we are when you're still looking for a top line and the leadership wants to vote on a CR before August recess because we can't get anything done. But you're right, you have a lot on your plate right now. And I'm wondering how you feel about the president's pick. I think I know to some extent to be the next dni. Should Jay Clayton have that job and then you get on to renewing fisa.
- [04:41]
C
Listen, I know Jay Clayton. I like Jay Clayton. I worked with him well when he was head of the sec. But I was bitterly disappointed when he came before the committee and couldn't even say who was elected president in 2020
- [04:55]
B
or when he played the tape that
- [04:57]
C
day he didn't appreciate or he didn't also was almost as much kind of straightened my credibility that he wasn't fully familiar with what Tulsi Gabbard had done in intervening in the obsession Trump has about losing the 2020 election and grabbing those voter files. And I just felt like he can't in good conscience say, you've ear my vote. I voted against him today. But I will also quickly say if he's going to get confirmed, I'd like him to get confirmed quickly. Because you know, what we do know, at least in my view, who is a disaster is Bill Pulte, the acting director who has no national security background at all. And his only in my mind qualification for the job was in his job as overseeing Fannie and Freddie in the housing markets. He was willing to take private mortgage information and politically weaponize it. What could go wrong if he's in charge of all 18 of our intelligence agencies?
- [05:51]
D
You mentioned 2020, of course. The President gave a primetime speech last week in which he alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election. You're vice chair of the Intelligence Committee and I wonder if you have seen intelligence yourself to the extent you're able to confirm or deny I can to suggest it or that that could be active in 2026.
- [06:10]
C
I was embarrassed by the President the other night, not as a senator, not as a Democrat. I was embarrassed that the president states would ask for this much time and go forward with a lives most responsible networks didn't even treat it as. And you've already seen, I mean the hypocrisy of this guy is jaw dropping. You know, he's saying China does all this and yet today he was asked about China. Oh no, they're better now. He can't even maintain the same story for five days. I think the speech was a disaster. I think we did a good job at pre bucking it. I can assure you the intelligence community, all 18 agencies. And the irony is, of course, who was in charge of the 2020 election? Donald Trump. It was his intelligence community. He was the President. They came back with a consensus view that all countries tried to influence China, Russia, Iran, Russia the most on behalf of Trump. But you never know whether the influence social media campaigns work or not. But no one interfered and changed a single vote. And then again, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole, but the idea that, oh my gosh, China's got a hold of our voter public information. Every country, friend and foe, I'm sure buys up the data of our voter files and to act like that is a great reveal, you know, was insane. So, you know, I do appreciate that, that one of the things I've been trying to do is get former members of the intel community, military to Speak the truth. So it's not just coming from a partisan.
- [07:48]
B
The rabbit hole goes pretty deep sometimes. Senator, we've got about two minutes left and I want to ask you about your state being home to data center. Ali out with an important bill to regulate the development of AI. There's been so much conversation about regulating development of data center. How about the technology itself?
- [08:07]
C
Well Joe, I'm obsessed about I think it can bring great positive but there's also a lot of downside. And so this is not a single bill and by no means do I think all my answers are the perfect words. But if we don't move quickly all of the innovation could be squashed because of frankly fear from the American people from both the left and the right. So on data centers I think there ought to be minimum federal standards around power usage, water usage, setback from communities, backup power, making sure communities know. And I don't think the company should get full accelerated depreciation until they meet those.
- [08:43]
B
Okay.
- [08:44]
C
I think on, you know, I think most of us would agree with kids, you know social media. We should have put some guardrails on social media is nothing compared to the ability what I can have to influence kids chat bots that encourage suicide non consensual nudes we've got to have and there's some bipartisan efforts here as well. We ought to have some rules about at least not having the government buy some of the systems that allow that. I also lay out, I think I'm one of the first people to lay out at least a framework of what duty of care ought to be around agentic agents they are going to be more and more the way we interfere, interfere, interact with the markets, with the finance system. Let's have some standard of care. I know our clock's ticking. I think we also in terms of with Methos coming out the Antwerping model and there have been four more models since then. This raises huge national security concerns and I think even the administration is realizing we've got to have some level of pre testing. I believe it needs to be mandatory before we put these out in the wild. And then finally I even believe there will be AI jobs created. But we could have a five year gap and unlike last transformations it won't hit the low skilled jobs. I think it's going to hit our college graduates. I will come back on air and pay pay the bet. I think we could hit 30% recent college graduate unemployment in the next two years and we don't even le.
- [10:04]
A
No.
- [10:05]
C
You know the best idea I may have heard is take a third of the business majors and turn them into health care workers. But we're going to need big ideas here and transformation.
- [10:14]
B
We've got to do more on this. Thank you, Senator. Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. We thank you.
- [10:19]
E
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