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Here's the Scoop
Orders, Obedience and the Senator in the Spotlight; Turbocharging America’s AI
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Jared Perlow
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Yasmin Bissugian
Welcome to Here's a scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Bissugian. Today on the show, AI and the government, new arrests in the Louvre heist and Byrd is the word at first, though. The Pentagon has opened a misconduct investigation into Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. This is in connection with a video recorded by Kelly and other Democrats urging members of the military and intelligence community to not comply with illegal orders. The group in the video all served in the military or intelligence community, including Kelly, who is a retired Navy pilot.
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Jared Perlow
Our laws are clear.
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Courtney Kuby
You can refuse illegal orders.
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Yasmin Bissugian
The video has caused a political firestorm. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth weighing in on X, calling the video, quote, despicable, reckless and false. And now the FBI is working to schedule interviews with the six Democrats featured in the video. I want to bring in now NBC News senior national security correspondent Courtney Kuby. Court these this video featured all members of the military intelligence community as well. What is Senator Mark Kelly's position, his military background, and why is it you think he was singled out?
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Courtney Kuby
Yeah, he's he was a Navy pilot, as you mentioned. He retired as a senior officer. He's also an astronaut. But there's one reason that he was the only one of the six who was singled out here, and that's because he's the only one who retired from the military. So the others, one of them, Alyssa Slotkin, was a CIA analyst and then she was a DoD official actually, but she never served in uniform. The others were in uniform, but they've separated from the military before actually reaching a Full military retirement. Now, when you retire, in the case of Senator Kelly, as a, as a senior officer, you are always subject to recall. And the main reason for that is generally like in the event of a war or a national emergency, a catastrophe, and that you need to sort of beef up the armed forces. You can bring people back, back in. Generally, there's an age cutoff of 60. It depends on the service which he is over. But the President can waive that. But this can also be used in cases like this if they want to bring someone back on active duty and put them before a court martial, if in fact they have found to be violating some of their oath of, of office, even in their civilian world.
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Yasmin Bissugian
What, what does that mean to, to folks like us, to laymans who don't understand what it's like to bring someone back to active duty for court martial?
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Courtney Kuby
When you retire as a military officer, you are saying at your retirement that you agree that you will still uphold and abide by the oath that you swore and the rules that you adhered to while in uniform, even in your civilian retirement life. Right. So it's very, very rare that anything like this happens. There's really only a couple things that Senator Kelly could be charged with or they could try to pursue here. One, and they're kind of catch, all right, conduct unbecoming. They could try to try to say that by making this being a part of this, it was unbecoming of an officer, a captain in the US Navy. The other one that I think is more likely here is that he is behaving in a way that is prejudicial to good order and discipline. And the reason that that one seems a little bit more likely is because Secretary of Defense Pete Hagseth keeps tweeting with those words, good order and discipline. I think that that's a little window into what they're looking at here. Again, because it's sort of a catch. All they can try to say that he, by saying these things, is encouraging men and women in uniform, younger maybe enlisted, to do things that could harm good order and discipline. Now, the reality, the legal reality here is the word illegal in that video where they keep saying to refuse illegal orders. Yes, that's the law. The law is that officers in the United States military, if they are, they receive an illegal order, they are supposed to decline or refuse it. That is the law. So there are some who are saying he's simply restating that.
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Yasmin Bissugian
This all goes back to the video. Right. And this was six Democratic former officers of the intelligence community in the military. And what did they say in this video?
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Courtney Kuby
They were telling, reminding men and women in the military that they have the right, they have the obligation to refuse an illegal order. Now there's two key things here. They, they do not identify anything as being an illegal order. They're not saying, hey, you're being told to do X, Y and Z and that's illegal. Instead, they are just reminding them of their right and their again, their obligation to refuse an illegal order. As an officer, you can refuse illegal orders.
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Yasmin Bissugian
You must refuse illegal orders.
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Courtney Kuby
No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. The backstory here, of course, there are a couple of things that the US Military has been brought into recently that there's been a lot of discussion about whether there's it's legal or not. One of course is the strikes against the alleged drug boats coming out of South America and the other one is deploying the US Military in the streets. There's a lot of concerns about the potential illegality of both of those actions. But, but again, the second thing that they say that's really critical here is illegal at no point, and I have watched this video over and over and over and as have, you know, former military attorneys who I've spoken with, they are not encouraging people to just defy orders. They are saying, talking about illegal. And I think that's going to be if in fact this does make it to charges and it does, and Senator Kelly is brought back onto active duty and brought before a court mart. That's going to be the crux of, of, of any defense here.
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Yasmin Bissugian
If a member of the intelligence community or the military carry out an illegal order, even if they were ordered to do so by the Commander in Chief, the President of the United States and or the Secretary of Defense, they could actually still be held accountable in a court of law.
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Courtney Kuby
Absolutely. And, and all we have to do is look back to the Nuremberg trials, right? It's, it's known now in the military as the Nuremberg defense. Senior members of Hitler's highest ranking military were given these orders to carry out the mass slaughter and murder of millions of people. And they did it. And they hanged, they were put to trial and put to death. So the big question though is would there be, in the case of some other kind of potentially illegal order, would there be interest in actually pursuing, going after members of the US Military for it?
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Yasmin Bissugian
But just to be clear here, because of the decision at the Supreme Court about a year or so ago, the President could remain immune even if he were issuing illegal orders. And yet the people carrying it out, the members of the military would be held, could be held, I should say, accountable.
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Courtney Kuby
I've asked this exact same question because you'll notice that in many of the announcements of this, they say at the order of the President of the United States. So I have asked specifically military attorneys and other civilian attorneys, does the president's immunity that's been afforded to him by the Supreme Court trickle down? If he's giving the order, does that trickle down to the military? Yes. I have asked all over. I cannot find anyone who believes that that would be held up in court. It doesn't mean, again, that that could be, wouldn't be tried. But I can't find anyone who thinks that would actually be held up in court.
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Yasmin Bissugian
What's, what's Mark Kelly saying? And is he getting support from within the ranks of both the military intelligence community and in the halls of the Capitol?
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Courtney Kuby
Yeah, definitely the halls of the Capitol and definitely by Democrats. I have been looking to see Republicans who are speaking out against this or speaking out in any way.
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Yasmin Bissugian
This.
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Courtney Kuby
And I, I haven't seen much. I don't know if that's because it's a Thanksgiving week or people are waiting to see what happens. Mark Kelly did put out a, a statement including a, a photo of his uniform with his medals on it, saying that he won't be bullied. And then one thing that was in there that I found fascinating was he said that he found out about this when it was posted by the Pentagon on social media on X. And they would have to bring a charge sheet to him and have him sign it. Well, if he found out about this on social media, that means no one's given him a charge sheet. That means that they are still somewhere in the investigative stages as opposed to being ready to potentially charge him.
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Yasmin Bissugian
Courtney Kubi, thank you.
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Courtney Kuby
Thanks.
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Yasmin Bissugian
All right. We are going to take a very quick break and when we're back, we are talking about the White House's new AI initiative. Stay with us.
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Yasmin Bissugian
And we are back with here's the scoop of NBC News. The president signed an executive order earlier this week called Genesis Mission. It is part of this new federal effort to supercharge American AI research, development and scientific applications. The order lays out a series of steps to expand computational resources, increase access to big federal data sets, and move towards real world applications of AI. So you're wondering, what does that all mean? So I want to bring in Jared Perlow. He is an NBC News writer and reporter and he's covering AI. Hi, Jared.
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Jared Perlow
Hi. Thanks so much for having me.
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Yasmin Bissugian
It's great to have you. So what is this Genesis Mission order? How is it going to be instituted?
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Jared Perlow
Yeah, so this order was signed Monday afternoon by President Donald Trump, and it's basically an executive order in three parts. Part one says we need to increase access to computing resources that are required to basically develop the most advanced AI models. Part two says we're going to tap the vast troves of data that the federal government is currently sitting on to better understand how we can solve some key critical national challenges. And then part three lists out how we're going to apply those AI systems to those national challenges which range from critical minerals to biotechnology to advanced robotics. So this is kind of a resetting of America's approach to AI in a way that we haven't seen in quite some time. And I think when you zoom out and you look at the larger picture of AI development. So to date, much of AI's development in the U.S. which is kind of leading AI development in the world, leading the AI race, as it were, where much of that work has been done in the private sector. So when you think about chatbots you usually interact with, they're from companies like anthropic, Google, OpenAI, all those are private sector companies. But that kind of technological development is pretty different and distinct from a lot of the other transformational technologies like the Internet, like things like wi fi, like cell phones. A lot of those key technological developments were actually made possible by the government, by government interventions. A lot of those innovations came out of the military, for example. You know, the Internet started from an internal network that then expanded to, you know, basically be used by everybody around the world, by consumers. But that's not the case with AI at all. AI has been developed outside the purview of government. With yesterday's executive order and this Genesis mission, it really doubles down government effort on getting involved in the AI game and figuring out how the government can partner with industry to really drive forward the next chapter in America's AI development.
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Yasmin Bissugian
So how does that bear out for me, for you, for people on the street that are listening, what would that look like if the government were to get involved in AI the way in which the President wants through this Genesis mission?
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Jared Perlow
Yes, exactly. Which I think, you know, I've heard from a lot of colleagues. They're very impressed with the name. It sounds like, you know, a very 20%.
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Yasmin Bissugian
But it's like Back to the Future Part 7.
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Jared Perlow
Exactly. Somebody said, you know, if you're watching a sci fi movie and then, you know, the President flips a switch saying, you know, we launched the Genesis mission, like, get ready for the robots to come on screen. So I think concretely, you know, in the next, the executive order lays out a series of timelines here. 90 days, 100 days, 270 days, which is, you know, pretty normal for different executive orders. So I think in terms of immediate effects, you probably won't see too, too much. I think this will be a lot of like internal wrangling in the federal government to figure out, like what barriers, what blockades exist to internal collaboration between different agencies creating lists and repositories of where do we have existing computing, resour existing supercomputers, how can we get universities, private companies, other collaborators to basically be able to access those resources more easily. But what you'll probably see maybe six months, a year from now is once people start applying these increased AI resources, increased tools, if you apply them to these really thorny, knotty scientific challenges that have stumped researchers for a long time, you might start to see some relatively rapid and significant scientific discoveries. And then if I could just say one other thing that the public might see is you might see increased deals being struck between the government and private industry partners. So that could be with OpenAI, which is developing the models, with Google, developing Gemini, but also with chip makers like Nvidia, with amd. Actually, last week you just saw that the government struck a new deal with AMD to build two new supercomputers at a national laboratory in Tennessee. So these sorts of deals kind of have been percolating. But this is kind of this executive order, as I see it, kind of opens the floodgates to further collaboration.
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Yasmin Bissugian
I know this order is comparing the urgency of this mission to the Manhattan Project, which was the World War II era program that was meant to develop the nuclear bomb. Is that a fair comparison? And why the urgency? How much is China a part of the conversation here?
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Jared Perlow
Yeah, a great question. So, you know, I would be remiss if I didn't note that this administration is sometimes given to hyperbole. I think, you know, it's a very significant moment in America's national AI development. But as one of my colleague said, if it really were the Manhattan Project, you probably wouldn't be announcing it to the press. It would be a deeply held state secret. But when we're thinking about how this fits in with the global AI race. So as I mentioned before, kind of the three main inputs to AI, you have computational resources, data, and you have algorithms. And I would say America's main competitor right now at the leading edge of AI systems is China. And China has a very different governmental structure where access to data is, in many cases just a lot easier. So there are just fewer data safeguards in terms of access to facial recognition data. We've also heard some stories of factories in China basically putting sensors on different workers to track their movements and then better train robots. That's the sort of thing that you probably wouldn't really see in the US where we have deeply held notions of privacy and limited government involvement.
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Yasmin Bissugian
Are we already behind the game right now? The United States?
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Jared Perlow
So I think. I think the consensus today is that the US probably still has the lead in the cutting edge of frontier AI models, but the pressure to innovate and the pressure to continue leading at that cutting edge is constant. And I think this Genesis mission is really meant by people in the administration as a way to kind of secure America's lead and, you know, potentially expand that lead.
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Yasmin Bissugian
Jared Perlow, thank you.
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Jared Perlow
Thank you so much.
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Yasmin Bissugian
All right, let's get to some headlines. The Trump administration says it's getting close to a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, with American officials officials meeting a Russian delegation in Abu Dhabi insisting only Minor details remain. U.S. officials told NBC News that Ukraine has already agreed to the peace deal. Kiev has not officially accepted. President Zelensky hopes to finalize things in a meeting with Trump after securing changes to the original plan. The initial proposal, released last week, had raised alarms across Europe for appearing to give Putin most of what he wanted at Ukraine's expense. Now, Zelensky says his team brought back a revised framework with fewer points than the original 28. Meanwhile, the Kremlin is playing it cool. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said they're still waiting to see an official version of any changed proposal. But a U.S. official told NBC News, when it comes to the Russians, there is, quote, optimism in a next step. All this diplomatic maneuvering is happening while the war itself grinds on, with deadly strikes hitting both sides. Overnight, The music can only mean one thing. The Louvre is back in the news again. We just love talking about it. Four more people have been arrested today in connection with the Louvre heist. Two men and two women. These arrests are in addition to the four people already charged with organized theft and criminal conspiracy. The masterminds behind the seven minute heist seem to be getting picked off one by one. But the $102 million stolen jewels still have not been recovered. Flu season is showing up early in parts of the United States. Not great timing as millions gear up for Thanksgiving travel. The CDC estimates 650,000 flu cases so far, with 7,400 hospitalizations and 300 deaths, driven mostly by the H3N2 strain, which tends to hit older adults even harder. Health officials are keeping a close eye on a mutated version of that strain that's already caused big outbreaks in Canada and the UK and emerged after this year's flu shot was finalized. Their message still get vaccinated. Even with a mismatch, the shot can make the illness less severe. And if you're traveling this week, pack the wipes and the hand sanitizer. Tis the season. The executive branch has wiped the criminal records of two foul fiends. The insect community is reportedly appalled by the blatant show of favoritism and the complete disregard for crimes committed against bugs. Just kidding. The 78th annual Presidential Turkey pardon was today one of America's wackiest traditions, if you ask me. Two turkeys named Gobble and Waddle. You can't make this stuff up. Will not be facing a savory gravy drizzled end, though there was a bit of suspense. It was said that only one turkey would be spared this year. The first Lady's office invited the American people to vote for which turkey would live to see another day. The attacks a real Sophie's Choice. Lucky for our feathered friends, both turkeys were given clemency in the end. Okay, that's gonna do it for us. Thanks for listening to here's the scoop of NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vestigen. We'll be back tomorrow with whatever the day may bring. And if you like what you heard, subscribe. Wherever you get your podcast.
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