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Here's the Scoop
Trump’s U.N. Return: Nationalism Gets Top Billing; Nvidia’s Mega-Bet on ChatGPT Maker
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- [00:00]
Willie Geist
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- [00:24]
Dan Snow
So folks, you might have noticed, the weather's changing out there. The sun appears to be out, the days are longer. This is in the northern hemisphere, of course, and it's got me excited for road trips, days out exploring, and long walks to castles on windswept crags. And if you're looking forward to all that too, I've got the perfect companion podcast to join you on your adventures this summer. I'm Dan Snow, host of the Dan Snow's History Hit Podcast, where I whisk you away into the greatest stories in history. Join me on the high seas as we follow the swashbuckling escapades of Francis Drake. On the Spanish Main, we unravel the myths of the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae. I'll tell you everything you need to know about how the American Revolution started and what it would have taken for you to survive the Black Death in medieval Europe. Brackets, luck. This is the podcast you need if you seek to escape into history. And we can all use a little escape at the moment. Check out Dan Snow's history wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:27]
Yasmin Vesugian
Welcome to here's the scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugian. Today on the show, the $100 billion investment into the AI arms race, a guilty verdict on all counts for the man who tried to assassinate President Trump, and a very special contest. We're going to get to that later. Up first, though, if you are anywhere near midtown Manhattan this week, odds are you're stuck in gridlock. Thanks to the United Nations General assembly, more than 140 world leaders are in town for the 80th gathering and security is on overdrive. And that is an understatement. Overnight, the U.S. secret Service revealing agents had dismantled a network of electronic devices scattered across five locations in New York City. Officials say the system had the capability to shut down the city's cellular network and was even used to anonymously send assassination threats against senior U.S. officials. Investigators are now looking into whether it was designed to disrupt the UN Meetings. This security threat was announced just hours before President Trump's address to the United nations, his first of his second administration. The president's speech struck a nationalist tone. He started his speech to global leaders by talking about American dominance.
- [02:38]
Donald Trump
America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the earth. This is indeed the golden age of America.
- [02:56]
Yasmin Vesugian
At times, the president was confrontational, calling out other nations directly, many of whose leaders were seated in the audience in front of him. He even questioned the purpose of the UN Entirely.
- [03:08]
Donald Trump
What is the purpose of the United Nations? The UN has such tremendous potential, I've always said has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it's not even coming close to living up to that potential. For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up.
- [03:32]
Yasmin Vesugian
The speech lasted nearly an hour and spanned a number of topics, from the wars between Israel and Hamas and Ukraine and Russia to immigration and renewable energy. Want to bring in senior White House correspondent Garrett Hake, who is standing on a street corner in front of the UN So do not mind the noise. Hi, Garrett.
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Garrett Hake
Hey, Asmon.
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Yasmin Vesugian
Let's talk about the tone, Garrett. As President Trump addressed the UN this felt a lot like a campaign speech. Walk us through your impressions and what we heard.
- [03:59]
Garrett Hake
I definitely agree that this had all the feel of a campaign speech. I mean, I covered dozens, if not hundreds, of the President's speeches over the last couple of years, and this felt like it was designed to talk to his political base, who, by the way, loved it, ate it up. I mean, look at the mentions on Twitter of the speech, wanted to see him pushing back against this idea of a globalist community, which, in the President's view and in the minds of many of his supporters, has been eating the United States lunch here. He says that's not going to be the case anymore. You guys have to step it up. And by the way, the manner in which you should step it up should look a lot like what I've done over the last nine months. So kind of a muscular approach from the president, part lecture to Europe, but certainly very different from what they're used to hearing here at the UN I'm.
- [04:43]
Yasmin Vesugian
Glad that you used the word lecture here, because I felt that as well as I was listening, he slammed the United nations, saying the only thing that the United nations has given him was a broken escalator and a broken teleprompter. He said to the European countries, your countries are being ruined. Are we getting Any type of real time reaction to his speech from these countries, sitting in the audience, listening to the president address them in this way.
- [05:09]
Garrett Hake
It's interesting because so many of these countries, these foreign leaders really know what to expect from Donald Trump right now. This was not a surprise to them, at least not the tone and tenor of it. I think what you've seen instead is a desire to try to turn the other cheek a little bit. He met after the speech with the head of the UN who basically said, you know, thank you for pointing out the manners in which you think the US and the UN can be better partners. They don't want conflict with President Trump, in part because of something he said towards the end of the speech, which to me is one of the most important sentences of the whole thing, where he said, I like working with people who I get along with, and I.
- [05:42]
Donald Trump
Only do business with people I like. I don't when I don't like them, when I don't like them, I don't like them.
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Garrett Hake
To me, that's part of what's so important about understanding how President Trump works. It's all about personal relationships. And so no matter how hard he hits these other countries, they don't want to necessarily hit back and turn him into an enemy. I think to some degree, the hope is that he finds somebody else to focus his anger on or at least finds another topic as opposed to finds himself in a fight with any one specific country.
- [06:14]
Yasmin Vesugian
It's interesting, though, because he says that he likes working with people that he has relationships with. President Trump had that meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska last month over the war in Ukraine. He spoke today about how he expected more from President Putin.
- [06:30]
Donald Trump
I've also been working relentlessly stopping the killing in Ukraine. I thought that would be. Of the seven wars that I stopped, I thought that would be the easiest because of my relationship with President Putin, which had always been a good one.
- [06:47]
Yasmin Vesugian
President Trump is meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky today as well. What are we expecting from that?
- [06:52]
Garrett Hake
Well, on the last committee, I think it's fair to say that in the roughly a month since that meeting, there's been no substantive change in Russia's position, either on the battlefield or in negotiations. And I think that shows the limit of the good vibes that the president thinks he can lean on with some of these foreign leaders. He's talked about that in the past, too, that he'll get off the phone with Vladimir Putin and say to the first lady, well, I had a great call with the President just now. And she'd say, that's nice. He's bombed another school. So there are other people around the president who are very realistic about the limits of that relationship, but they also want to preserve it, because the White House feels like Donald Trump is the only person who can talk to both Zelensky and Putin, either at the same time or separately, and have some credibility with both of them. I don't know that that's necessarily true, but that's the White House's theory of the case on this. As for the meeting with Zelensky today, I think the expectations are pretty low that it'll lead to anything of significant substance. I mean, the White House has gotten everything that it's asked for from Zelensky. I don't know how much more remains to be said between Zelensky and the president. Zelensky's made it very, very clear he wants the president to step up economic pressure on Russia, step up military pressure on Russia, and the president's been unwilling to do that, at least alone.
- [08:03]
Yasmin Vesugian
There was also the recognition of a Palestinian state by, notably, France, the UK as well. What has been the reaction so far to the way in which the president addressed this and any possibility that the president has the capability to end the war between Israel and Gaza?
- [08:20]
Garrett Hake
The president's position on this was not a surprise. He and the White House have long telegraphed that they don't think this is good policy by their allies, that they think it essentially rewards Hamas for the violence of October 7, even so far past that, and they think it worsens the chance for peace as opposed to increase it. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State this morning, was very dismissive of this whole movement to recognize the Palestinian state, basically saying that those countries who have acknowledged one aren't really involved in the peace process and won't likely be significantly involved in the rebuilding process. You know, there is a meeting that the president's having today with some leaders from majority Muslim countries where this could become a bigger topic. But the president has been very reluctant to put any kind of direct pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, the singular figure in how decisions around the war get made in Israel. I don't know that we're going to move any closer to getting to the end of this war unless, you know, these other Middle Eastern allies whom the president is trying to court, can convince him to put more weight on Netanyahu, and hasn't happened yet.
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Yasmin Vesugian
There's a takeaway sense, Garrett, that their gloves are off at the president, especially after that speech that we just heard. This morning. Do you have that sense?
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Garrett Hake
I don't know when the gloves were ever on. I think the president came back into office this term feeling totally unencumbered by, you know, the traditional way of getting things done, particularly around foreign policy. He trusted his instincts before, but after spending four years in the political wilderness, being essentially written off after January 6th and coming back into office charting his own course on doing this, he's not interested in taking advice from anybody. He's going to do what he wants to do and, you know, let the consequences be what they may.
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Yasmin Vesugian
Put your local reporter hat on and tell us what it looks like outside the UN Right now. Any protests happening? How much press are you seeing? What's going on there?
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Garrett Hake
There were some pretty significant protests going on right about the time that the president started to speak. And I have to say, I mean, I've covered these big summits all over the country, some globally. I've covered big protests all around the country. The NYPD knows what they're doing. This is a very busy, very congested week in New York City every year. And the New York Police Department does a very good job of handling that with all of these foreign leaders who come and go, all of the foreign press that it takes to cover this, and all of the logistics that it takes to be able to bring the stories that happen here live to the rest of the world.
- [10:44]
Yasmin Vesugian
Garrett Hake, thank you. I appreciate it.
- [10:46]
Garrett Hake
You bet.
- [10:47]
Yasmin Vesugian
By the way, those Middle east tensions are about to spill onto the world stage at the UN all eyes turning now to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He's going to take the podium on Friday to face a growing bloc of nations recognizing a Palestinian state even as Hamas continues to hold hostages. Oh, and the Trump administration just slapped Iranian diplomats with a very specific shopping ban. No Costco runs, no Sam's Club hauls. And forget about splurging on Rolexes, designer bags, or even a fancy blender unless the State Department is signing off. All right, we are going to take a quick break. When we are back, we're going to explain why Nvidia is making it rain in the AI world. Who's ready for some football?
- [11:31]
Willie Geist
All season, the Today show takes you inside the game.
- [11:34]
Yasmin Vesugian
We are going to get this party started.
- [11:36]
Willie Geist
Join us every week as we go behind the scenes with your favorite NFL teams for the biggest stories on and off the field.
- [11:43]
Donald Trump
Big game tonight.
- [11:44]
Willie Geist
Plus game day recipes that dial up your tailgate.
- [11:47]
Yasmin Vesugian
Football food, soup to nuts.
- [11:49]
Willie Geist
From stadium lights to game day bites, the Today show is your home for all things football every morning on NBC. Hey, guys, Willie Geist here reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with one of the biggest stars in the world, Gloria Estefan, on the extraordinary life story of a young Cuban exile who became a music icon. You can hear my conversation with Gloria for free wherever you download your podcasts. This week on Meet THE press, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk and as President Trump vows to crack down on what he calls the radical left, Kristen Weger sits down with Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator Rand Paul. Plus, a Meet the Moment conversation with Mel Robbins this week on Meet the Press.
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Garrett Hake
Listen to the full episode now, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [12:47]
Yasmin Vesugian
And we are back with here's the scoop from NBC News. The chip giant Nvidia announced this week that it is funneling up to $100 billion into open air. OpenAI, of course, we know from its big chatbot product, ChatGPT. This deal is going to allow OpenAI to use Nvidia's technology for its data centers to train and run new models. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang touting the deal on cnbc.
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Garrett Hake
This partnership, I mean, this is, you know, monumental in size. There's never been an engineering project, a technical project of this complexity and this scale ever.
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Yasmin Vesugian
Now, Nvidia has been dropping some major cash lately. They also announced a $5 billion investment in intel just last week. So to figure out what's going on and why it's happening now, I want to bring in Jason Abruzzes. He's our assistant managing editor, NBC News Digital. Hi, Jason.
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Willie Geist
Hey, thanks for having me.
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Yasmin Vesugian
Can we take a step back for a moment and just if you could explain to listeners exactly what Nvidia is.
- [13:48]
Willie Geist
So Nvidia makes chips. And that sounds real simple, right? Like, we have heard about chips for as long as we've heard about computers. Intel, inside the Pentium chip. Like we, you know, if you grew up with computers, these are all things that are familiar with you. But at some point, chips moved from becoming just what power computers to what many in the technology world now see as powering the future. AI has to run on something. You need compute power. These chips are the best. They are the engines that power AI. And the incredible thing about it is that there are very few companies capable of making the chips necessary to power and develop and improve AI models. Nvidia is one of them.
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Yasmin Vesugian
So, Jason, what is in this deal, this $100 billion that Nvidia wants to spend, and what do these companies OpenAI and Nvidia actually want to do with this money.
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Willie Geist
So there's not a lot of details on it right now, actually. And we know that this is also just like an agreement to spend up to $100 billion. Now, I think we can surmise from what these companies do how something along the lines of how this is going to go. Nvidia makes chips. OpenAI needs those chips to develop their AI. So OpenAI now has a much closer relationship with this very important chip maker. Nvidia has a much closer relationship with one of the leading AI companies in the world. Theoretically, that's mutually beneficial. It is saying that, like, you know, I make ice cream, like you make refrigerator trucks. We should be in business helping each other out. There's no reason for us to compete. We're trying to do similar things. We just have slightly different businesses.
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Yasmin Vesugian
Is there any sense that OpenAI was having any money issues?
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Willie Geist
No, I don't think so. I mean, they've been consistently raising money at higher and higher valuations. You know, this is still a private company, so we don't. They're not traded on stock market, so we don't know on a daily basis what their stock trades at. But based on how much they've been raising, they are already in the hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap. But at the same time, the amount of investment that they are going to have to make and spend on chips, on energy, on data centers, on all the things that help you build AI, it's incredibly money intensive.
- [15:54]
Yasmin Vesugian
What also, though, seems obvious is that Nvidia does have the cash to burn. How long has it taken them to get to this point in which they have $100 billion to throw at OpenAI?
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Willie Geist
It's one of those things. It happened probably, if you look at the timeline, slower than you think. But it also feels like it happened overnight. It's not that long ago that OpenAI first came out and really shocked everybody with ChatGPT3 and helped kickstart really the biggest rush around AI. Now, things had been happening in the AI space for many years. Nvidia was chugging along, doing its thing. It originally was making chips for video games because, like, video games are another thing that, like, take, you know, very intensive compute power to render these digital worlds right. They were originally doing that, but they got so good. And as AI grew, people realized, hey, these chips are really powerful. We can use them to train our AI. And Nvidia goes, sounds like a good business. Let's get into it. They become, you know, the leading AI Chip maker. But it's really in probably the last three years that they have gone from, this is a really important big company to wow, this might be the most important company in the world.
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Yasmin Vesugian
And it's also the investment, it's the money, which is what we're getting at now. What could come of it.
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Willie Geist
So this has become a little bit of a, a trend. Companies are announcing these deals with huge dollar amounts and investors seem to love this stuff. It's continually driving stock prices up because these numbers and they think the business is going to be booming in years to come. Now, the other end of the spectrum is this. If I am Nvidia and I'm giving OpenAI $100 billion to essentially spend with me to buy my kids, I know.
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Yasmin Vesugian
Just essentially keeping it in house.
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Willie Geist
It gets a little circular. Like if you and you and me, Yasmin, if I paid you $500 for something and then you paid me $500 for something, well, both looks like we both made $500, but nothing really happened. So there is a creeping skepticism that I think probably creeping is understating. It is a pretty loud skepticism right now that a lot of these deals are starting to cloud the reality of the challenges these companies face. Because at some point they are going to need to make a lot of money from you and me, from companies that will pay them. They can't all just keep shuffling money back and forth. The negative side of the answer is there are concerns that these kinds of investments are just a sign that there's not much upside in the immediate future for these companies, despite their huge valuation.
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Yasmin Vesugian
Jason Abruzas, thank you.
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Willie Geist
Sure.
- [18:18]
Yasmin Vesugian
Appreciate it. All right, let's get to some headlines. The Supreme Court has taken up a big question. Can the President fire federal trade commissioners without cause? It all started with President Trump's attempt to remove Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the lone Democrat at the FTC. Trump is challenging a 90 year old precedent from the 1930s that limited executive power over independent agencies. The Trump administration arguing the FTC wields more executive power today so the President should have more say. The case has sparked dissent amongst some justices who argue that allowing the firing could undermine the independence of agencies. For now. The SCOTUS decision allowed the administration of fire Slaughter while the case plays out. The case is expected to be heard in December. Slaughter's lawyers saying giving the White House unchecked power over independent regulators could have, quote, seismic consequences for the economy and everyday Americans. A federal jury in Florida has found Ryan Routh guilty of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump representing himself. Ruth was convicted on all five counts after a two and a half week trial. Prosecutors said he aimed a rifle at Trump while he was golfing last year. The jury deliberated just over two hours before returning the verdict. Moments later, Ruth tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen, prompting US Marshals to wrestle him from the courtroom as his daughter shouted, dad, don't hurt yourself. He was later brought back in in handcuffs with no visible injuries to complete the proceedings. Utah and Arizona are seeing one of the biggest measles outbreaks in the country right now. 25 cases in southwestern Utah, 42 in Mojave County, Arizona. In Utah, nearly all the cases are unvaccinated school kids. And here's the bigger picture. A joint investigation by NBC News and Stanford found that a decade ago, Washington County, Utah had a 93% MMR that is the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Today it's dropped to 79%. Mojave County, Arizona saw the same slide from about 91% to 78%. That may not sound like a huge drop, but it makes all the difference. You need 95% coverage to keep measles from spreading. And as vaccination rates are falling, the CDC is saying the US Is now seeing more measles cases than at any time in more than three decades.
- [20:47]
Willie Geist
You make the rocking world go round.
- [20:51]
Yasmin Vesugian
Queen wasn't exactly singing about brown bears when they belted out fat bottom girls, but honestly, it feels like the perfect anthem for Fat Bear Week. Alaska's brown bears are once again stepping into the spotlight. Who knew they were actually in the spotlight? Each fall, fans from around the world cast their votes in this light hearted competition celebrating the bears that have packed on the most pounds to survive the long winter ahead. The 12 contestants are going to face off in a single elimination bracket style tournament. With all voting done online@fatbearweek.org the winner is going to be crowned on September 30th. Is it weird that I'm kind of jealous of a bear? Why can't we all just bulk up, crawl under a blanket and call it hibernation season as well? Well, that's going to do it for us at. Here's a scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugin. We'll be back tomorrow with whatever the day may bring. And if you like what you heard, then like us back. Subscribe to Here's a Scoop wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Jenna Bush Hager from Today with Jenna and Friends reminding you to check out my podcast, Open Book With Jenna. In this week's episode, I sit down with special guest Hoda Koppe. We catch up on life after the Today show, her new app Joy 101, and her book Jump and Find Joy. You can listen to the full conversation now by searching Open Book with Jenna. Wherever you get your podcasts.