美参议员谈伊朗核谈判、美联储与AI影响

We're still in the negotiating phase, so it's difficult to judge a deal that we haven't got yet. Yep. What are your thoughts, your assessment of the process, and how this is coming together?

Well, let me let me start by just a word on Allen Greenspan who I knew. I know his wife, Andrea Mitchell, so I really today, we celebrate a great a great life. And I introduced Kevin Warsh at his hearing, and Kevin is a big admirer of Allen's as well. And he does it it'll be a different challenge, but we have the right man for the job. He's he's he's gonna help lead the Fed, I think, in a time of of of great change and and uncertainty. With regard to The Middle East, I think you have to start with the the beginning of of this is that the president Trump took a series of actions, which puts us in a position for a set of negotiations. So enormous progress taking the nuclear program way back under reducing their missile capability, their launchers. So Iran is in economic difficult straits and militarily has been have been dramatically affected. Now as we think about this MOU, there's three things that have to be achieved through this sixty day negotiation, alright, alright, which I think are are critical, the president has has more or less said this. Number one, the Strait has to be open with and un unhindered by Iran. There can be no control. Second, they have to give up their enriched uranium, and there has to be a path to no nuclear program. We we may have a step forward on this with the nuclear inspectors. And the third thing is needs to be paid for performance. In other words, each step along the way in terms of sanction relief has to be only coming when there's actual movement on the part of the Iranians. I think it's too early to tell whether that's happening or not, and we'll see as these negotiations proceed. But the president's goals were clear from the beginning, and I think that's what we have to stay true to. But there are two of president's goals that are not being addressed in this MOU, and that's the ballistic missile program, and that's the money to Iranian proxies. Do you expect the president to somewhere address these red lines that he has had for years since going back to his first term?

Well, the first one, we made a lot of progress on. So, I mean, the the the missile attacks that we've done on and the the the air attacks we've done on their missile program, on their drones, on their manufacturing capacity, on their launchers have been extraordinarily successful. So their capability is a fraction of what it was. How how far along we are, I think, remains to be seen, but but but there's been big progress. The second issue is whether they're going to actually stop the funding for Hezbollah and others. We've also made huge progress in taking taking down Hezbollah and Hamas. If we move forward on this path, we'll see whether there can be a a future commitment on financing of the terrorist groups. Right now, I think the focus is on the nuclear program. What role do you see congress playing in all of this, especially when it comes to the sanctions relief that the MOU addresses for the regime?

Well, it depends it depends what the, what the agreement turns out to be, but I I expect congress will have a role. And for this to be lasting and meaningful, congresses need to be involved and and hopefully have something that that we can approve leading into the next administration. I think part of the reason the Obama deal was ineffectual was that it was a never signed deal and was never passed by congress. I I wanna go back to Allen Greenspan for a minute because this is a really pivotal moment given that we're ushering in a Kevin Warsh era that potentially is going to be very different from what we've seen. Given where inflation is currently in Pennsylvania, given what you're seeing in markets, do you think it's appropriate to be hiking rates at this point?

Do you think that this is something that even the president would welcome? Well, I think I think Kevin was was wise in the company. She had you have two big forces coming at the economy at the same time. You have what's happening in Middle East. You have the oil shock and how that's affecting pricing, particularly in energy pricing, but it's affecting it's affecting everything. We've seen a lot of relief on that recently, which is a huge deal for Pennsylvania's working families. Gas under $4 makes makes a big difference. I was just in Pennsylvania for three days. They they talked about it. The second thing is this enormous capital investment, in AI and infrastructure, which, can have a significant deflationary impact and a huge increase in productivity. So I think it's gonna take a while to sort that through, and I think Kevin's being very wise, and the federal I think we'll we'll wait until it has a little more insight into which way things are headed. You made the point about a single voice. I think Kevin will be an incredibly articulate voice, but he talked in his hearing about a family family fights and the idea that there's gonna be a real open exchange at the table with conflicting views on the table. He's got some very strong views on the data and the data models and how they need to be updated. So I think it's gonna be a different Fed than under Allen Greenspan, but but but one more suited for the moment. Is the narrative that AI is just inflationary?

Does that work with voters? It might not be working with markets right now, but does it work with voters who are saying, hey. I going on? The the challenge, and I see this every day, is there's an enormous amount of misinformation. And make no mistake, the Chinese are behind a lot of that. Look at the hearings that are being conducted, in the house and the senate. There's been a lot of reporting on this. AI and data centers in China have an 85% popularity in America. They have about a 20%. A lot of that's based on misinformation. So one of the responsibilities I think we have in the in the public realm is to make sure people understand. AI, has offers enormous benefits, enormous opportunity. A lot of it still remains to be seen, and it has huge risk. And it's it's our job to guide this incredible moment of change in a way that lifts all boats to make sure that we mitigate the downsides to it. So it's too early to tell, I think, is the short answer. There was all these predictions about huge job loss. Certainly, it'll be disruptive, but in Pennsylvania, there's enormous growth in these skilled labor, electricians, welders. You can't get enough of them, and the white collar job loss has not materialized yet. So too early to tell in terms of what the impact's gonna be, but I think because of the uncertainty, that'll hopefully, lead to, you know, careful decision making before we make any moves. But, senator, the job a cop a copolypse that everyone was worried about apocalypse. Is that did you make that up?

Yeah. No. No. That came from AI companies themselves, not China. Yeah. They were the ones that are saying that this is going to ruin their jobs. I think I think this it could go through every moment of profound change, technological change in history. There's a doomer narrative, which I think is is very misplaced. I think it's scared a lot of people, but I also think we shouldn't be too Pollyanna ish. This is a moment of a lot of change, and we have to guide it. It has huge national security implications. We have to we have to be in the lead from a US perspective vis a vis China. It offers enormous opportunity in life sciences and health. And on the productivity and job front, I think, we're learning a lot as we go. Literally, the job creation that I'm seeing on the ground from energy infrastructure, from data centers is just absolutely remarkable. And, and and I lived through the, I lived through the Internet boom. And what we saw there, there were some of the same predictions that wasn't quite as consequential, but there was predictions about how