White House press shop adjusts to proliferation of AI deep fakes

When an image showing what looked to be a bombing at the Pentagon started to spread online last week, the stock market dipped momentarily. Kayla Tausche, who covers the White House for CNBC, quickly started fact checking. Popping into Lower Press — the cluster of desks and offices behind the briefing room where many press aides work — she found principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton and asked about the reports.

“There was initially confusion about where it was coming from (I said ‘RT-style unconfirmed viral accounts’) and then exasperation,” Tausche told West Wing Playbook.

Dalton moved quickly, connecting with the Pentagon and National Security Council before telling Tausche there did not appear to have been a bombing. Once additional tweets suggested the phony image had been generated by artificial intelligence, Tausche followed up with Dalton to apologize for the diversion.

“She said, with visible frustration, that she is dealing with these types of inquiries on a daily basis, with greater and greater frequency,” Tausche added.

The White House press shop has found itself on one of the many front lines of the AI battles. Aides there, who collectively handle hundreds of media inquiries a day, have already been briefed by experts on the potential national security risks posed by images and videos that have been altered using AI, according to an administration official.

Outside the press shop, the White House has scaled up its efforts to assess and manage AI’s risks, impressing on AI companies during meetings on campus that it’s their responsibility to ensure their products are safe. It updated the strategic plan for AI research and development for the first time in four years and last week launched a process to work toward developing an AI bill of rights.

“Everyone is trying very hard to be sensitive, to issue these warnings but without predicting what could happen, and that's because they don't know,” said Kara Swisher, a prominent tech-focused journalist. “Most people, if they're being honest, would tell you they don't know what's going to happen.”

The administration’s knockdown of reports of the Pentagon bombing — backed by a tweet from Arlington, Va., first responders — was part of a swift debunking that helped the market recover after the S&P fell 0.3 percent, a momentary loss of some $500 billion in value.

But days later, another AI-generated deep fake popped up in the form of a video showing a purported Microsoft Teams call between anti-Russia activist Bill Browder and former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko arguing for the easing of sanctions against Russian oligarchs. Both fakes were easy enough to spot for those familiar with AI. But as the technology develops and improves, AI-generated text, audio and video could quickly become indistinguishable from that produced by human beings.

On Tuesday, prominent industry officials, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, issued a succinct but jarring statement aimed at seizing the attention of global leaders: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement said.

When asked about the statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say if the president shares the belief that AI, if mismanaged, could lead to extinction. She only acknowledged that AI is “one of the most powerful technologies that we see currently in our time” and that the administration takes risk mitigation seriously.

There are various proposals floating for regulating AI — and Big Tech more broadly — on Capitol Hill, including legislation released earlier this month by Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) to create a new federal agency to oversee the technology.

“We remain concerned about an uptick in deepfake videos and manipulated images spreading on social media platforms,” said White House assistant press secretary Robyn Patterson. “As the technology for creating fake videos and images improves, it’s important for the media and the public to be aware of this trend, which we expect to grow, if not exponentially.”

While there are huge potential upsides with AI that are already triggering a global arms race to harness and capitalize on the technology, the unanticipated bumps could be severe, especially amid the coming presidential election.

“It’s not that one piece of content is going to be devastating; it’s the collective, scaled approach to inauthenticity that’s the problem. People can do this at scale now,” said Sarah Kreps, a professor at Cornell University’s Brooks School Tech Policy Institute and one of three AI researchers invited to speak to Biden’s new working group on the matter within the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. “It can look like massive numbers of citizens are supporting a particular issue when they’re not.”

In a country where sectarian partisanship has already given rise to misinformation and the spread of conspiracy theories, AI may only deepen the public’s growing mistrust of facts. “It just creates this ecosystem of distrust in a democracy where trust is such a foundational pillar,” said Kreps.

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Fox News, backed by Trump White House lawyer, fights subpoena in leak lawsuit

A former Fox News reporter is fighting in court to scuttle a subpoena demanding that she reveal the source behind a series of stories that aired confidential details of a counterintelligence probe into a Chinese American scientist.

That scientist, Yanping Chen, is suing the FBI for damages, claiming that the leaked information was part of a campaign to damage her after federal prosecutors ended their six-year investigation of her without bringing charges. Chen, who operated a graduate education program based in Arlington, Virginia, also subpoenaed Fox and Catherine Herridge, now of CBS — to force her to disclose the source of several 2017 stories.

Notably, Fox News and Herridge are being represented by Patrick Philbin, a former top lawyer from Donald Trump’s White House. Philbin, who decried media leaks during Trump’s first impeachment trial, appeared in court Tuesday to help Herridge fend off the effort to expose her source.

The FBI initially suspected that Chen had lied on immigration forms about her work on the Chinese space program, and she was the subject of two search warrants and seizures of her devices. But she was informed in 2016 that she would not be charged with any wrongdoing.

Within a year, Herridge was reporting on key aspects of the probe, as well as on the divisions within the government about the decision not to charge Chen. Chen says the reports were followed by a sharp drop in enrollment and funding for her graduate program.

Herridge’s reporting included “snippets of her immigration forms, a summary of an FBI interview with her daughter, and personal photographs of her and her husband,” according to U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper.

Chen sued the FBI, DOJ, Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security in 2018 seeking damages, an admission of wrongdoing from the government and prosecutions of any violations of the Privacy Act that may apply to her case. But after dozens of depositions failed to unmask the potential leaker, Chen turned her sights to Fox News and Herridge, which Chen’s attorneys say is a last resort.

The lawsuit has steadily advanced for five years despite generating little attention. Yet it represents the collision of a wide range of Washington interests and issues, carrying implications for how journalists’ First Amendment protections are balanced against the need to prevent leaks of sensitive government information that implicates privacy rights. Cooper noted in court Tuesday that while Congress passed the Privacy Act almost five decades ago, lawmakers have “not seen fit to pass a reporters’ shield law.”

“For better or worse,” the judge added.

Philbin, who works in the Washington office of the firm helmed by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, sought to conduct Tuesday’s proceedings under seal, a nod to the voluminous details about the case that have been redacted from public view and the potential implications for the FBI’s counterintelligence operations. But Cooper declined, at first, to close the hearing to the public, instead urging Philbin to make broader legal arguments without delving into the sensitive details of the case. Cooper later sealed the hearing to permit the parties to delve into the sensitive details of the case.

During the public portion of the hearing, Philbin contended that Chen had failed to pursue all possible leads about the source of the leak before turning to a subpoena for Herridge. Chen’s inquiry centers around the existence of a PowerPoint document that contained details of the FBI’s probe that later wound up on Fox. Philbin said that while Chen narrowed down potential sources of the leak who “possessed” the PowerPoint to a handful of officials, she omitted a much larger number of people who had “access” to the file. That includes a counterintelligence “squad” of eight to 12 people who worked in an office where the PowerPoint was stored on a CD, he said.

Philbin’s comments prompted Justice Department senior litigation counsel Carol Federighi to interject, warning that he appeared to be veering into subjects meant to be kept from public view. Federighi intervened a second time when Philbin began to describe some binders that included pictures similar to information contained in the PowerPoint.

While journalists have won considerable protection in state courts and enjoy near-immunity from subpoenas by prosecutors in federal criminal cases due to DOJ regulations adopted by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Privacy Act lawsuits remain treacherous for members of the press.

In 2008, a judge handling a Privacy Act lawsuit brought by former government scientist Steven Hatfill ordered former USA Today reporter Toni Locy to pay escalating fines of up to $5,000 a day and attorneys’ fees for defying an order to identify her sources for stories about a federal investigation into Hatfill’s potential ties to deadly anthrax attacks in 2001.

Locy said she could not recall which sources provided specific information about Hatfill, but a judge rejected that.

While Locy’s appeal of that contempt order was pending, the U.S. government settled with Hatfill for $5.8 million, mooting the contempt fight.

Shortly after the settlement, the Justice Department informed Hatfill’s attorneys that investigators had ultimately concluded that Hatfill was not involved in the anthrax mailings.

Chen’s effort to seek damages comes just three months after the Biden administration shut down a China-focused anti-espionage program, known as the China Initiative, claiming it had created a false perception about Chinese Americans and U.S. residents from China.

Philbin has been a figure of intense interest in recent years for his presence in the White House during the crucial chaotic weeks at the end of Trump’s term, when Trump attempted to subvert the 2020 election and rebuffed calls to calm his supporters for hours as violence raged at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Philbin has interviewed twice with prosecutors now working for special counsel Jack Smith. But he’s also been seen entering the federal courthouse for various civil matters that he and his firm are involved in.

Philbin had a harsh assessment about media leaks during Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial on charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress over allegations that he pressured Ukraine’s president to launch a criminal probe of Joe Biden. At the time, Philbin assailed congressional Democrats for what he said was animus toward Trump, exemplified by leaks from closed-door depositions.

“The testimony that took place was selectively leaked to a compliant media to establish a false narrative about the president. If that sort of conduct had occurred in a real grand jury, that would have been a criminal violation.”

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NATO deploys more troops to Kosovo amid violence

NATO on Tuesday deployed additional forces to Kosovo, a day after peacekeeping troops were injured in clashes with Serb protesters in the country.

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Minnesota wanted to curb health spending. Mayo Clinic had other ideas.

Mayo Clinic issued an ultimatum to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Democratic lawmakers earlier this month: Kill a proposed health affordability bill, or say goodbye to $4 billion in new hospital investments.

Minnesota lawmakers responded quickly — by watering down an ambitious proposal in the final days of the legislative session, which ended last week.

The threat from the world-renowned health system is the latest salvo against attempts to rein in rapidly growing health spending — and demonstrates how those efforts sometimes founder against industry heavyweights.

“We don’t want to hurt our hospitals. We want them to thrive — especially Mayo Clinic, with their reputation of being an international health care provider. But we also care about working families and their ability to get health care,” said former Minnesota state Rep. Jennifer Schultz, a Democrat who introduced the bill last year.

Following Mayo’s threat, Minnesota lawmakers scaled back their proposal to establish a health care affordability board that would have had the power to fine hospitals, doctors and insurers for out-of-control cost growth.

Hospitals have similarly, if more quietly, pushed back on proposals in other states. In Connecticut and Oregon, they have opposed giving the state more power to limit the growth in health care costs. And in Massachusetts, hospitals are pushing the state to “reimagine” their spending targets, including accounting for unpredictable hospital costs like travel nurses and rapid inflation.

“People are so afraid to touch this because [hospitals] are the economic engines,” said Massachusetts state Sen. Cindy Friedman, a Democrat who chairs the legislature’s Joint Committee on Health Care Financing. “It’s a business, and people are making huge amounts of money. … That’s what you’re up against.”

Nationally, health care spending has tripled since 2000 — totaling $4.3 trillion in 2021 — and the U.S. spends nearly twice as much on health per person as comparable countries, according to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker. Nearly a third of that spending is on hospitals, 20 percent on physicians and clinics, and 9 percent on prescription drugs.

Reducing health care costs remains a top concern for voters, coming in just behind the economy in a Pew Research Center poll earlier this year.

“When we talk about health care costs and health care costs being out of control in the United States, the flip side of that is one person’s cost is another person’s income,” said Cynthia Cox, vice president at KFF and director for the program on the Affordable Care Act. “And so this is a tough political battle for state policymakers, for that reason.”

And as Minnesota lawmakers learned this session, grappling with politically powerful hospital systems — which are often among the largest private employers in the state — is often a one-sided fight.

The proposal Minnesota lawmakers passed last week was a shadow of the original. Instead of a board empowered to levy fines, the bill requires state health officials to review health care cost growth but gives them no authority to set targets. Lawmakers also gutted a separate nurse staffing proposal in the final hours of the legislative session over Mayo’s and other hospitals’ concerns.

Mayo Clinic, in a statement, thanked lawmakers and the governor for working with them.

While the health system’s threats are the most overt attempts to kill efforts to control health spending, the Mayo Clinic is not alone in pushing back against state efforts to bring down costs.

Take Massachusetts, which pioneered a health care cost growth benchmark program in 2012. The heralded program sought to tie health spending to the state’s economy and fine providers who failed to limit cost growth.

While lawmakers say the Bay State has made strides over the past decade — such as driving increases in health care spending to below the national average — cost growth has still exceeded the state’s target in five of the nine years it has reported data.

In recommendations to the state legislature, the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission, which oversees the program, has only once sought corrective action from a payer or provider for excessive cost growth. It is asking the legislature to give it more authority to do so and to impose greater fines.

“This is all about greed and money,” Friedman said. “I have no problem with people making a profit. I really don’t. But there’s profit, and then there’s obscenity.”

The Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association, in a statement, said it remains “strongly committed to cost benchmarking” and the Health Policy Commission’s mission. But the organization has expressed concerns that the benchmark has not kept up with inflation and does not take into account unpredictable expenses hospitals are facing today, like the costs of traveling nurses, cybersecurity measures and infrastructure improvements.

State programs in other parts of the country, such as Connecticut and Rhode Island, rely on health systems and insurers to voluntarily control costs. Health officials in those states argue that the lack of enforcement power doesn’t mean the programs aren’t working. They say there is value in the reporting and analysis that comes with these programs.

In Rhode Island, for instance, officials tout their program as a partnership between government and industry. The state’s Cost Trends Project Steering Committee, which developed the state’s cost growth target, is co-chaired by the state health insurance commissioner and one representative each from the insurers and providers.

Health officials in Oregon said their payers and providers have been on board with their program, even though it includes financial penalties for noncompliance. Sarah Bartelmann, cost growth target and health care market oversight program manager for the Oregon Health Authority, said the industry saw the policy as the “lesser of two evils” — the other proposal on the table at the time was hospital price controls.

But industry concern has grown as the state ramps up implementation, she said.

“There’s been some pressure there and some interest in making sure that there are outs or off ramps before anyone is penalized,” Bartelmann said. “I’d say as the program gets more and more real, there’s been more and more concern.”

Still, a bill advancing through the Oregon legislature this year that is supported by the state hospital association proposes carving out frontline workforce costs from the state’s benchmark, blocking the state from holding payers or providers accountable for growth in those areas.

California, meanwhile, is setting up what could be the strongest benchmark program in the nation. If payers and providers fail to meet the cost growth target, which has yet to be set, they will be required to testify at public meetings and work with the state to come into compliance. If they fail to do so, the state, like Massachusetts, can impose corrective action plans and, unlike Massachusetts, escalate financial penalties.

“It is not the first tool in the toolbox. It’s the last one. But it is an important one to make sure that we’re having effective, earnest conversations on how to address spending growth that, speaking on behalf of nearly 40 million Californians, we think is unacceptably high,” said California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly. “Hopefully we never have to use it.”

Conservative think tanks argue that benchmarking programs create perverse incentives for payers and providers to cut costs, regardless of financial penalties. They also say that companies’ desire to avoid being dragged before a public review board to explain their finances could result in cost-cutting that might harm patient care.

“No one wants to be called out and shamed for being the high-cost provider. No one’s going to want to have their books opened up by this board,” said Peter Nelson, a Minnesota-based senior policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment and a senior advisor at CMS under the Trump administration. “The naming and shaming issue is a real issue that will drive behavior, and the concern is that this behavior is not going to be focused on what’s best for the patient.”

Proponents of containing cost growth, including lawmakers in Minnesota, say that while they may not have gotten everything they wanted, especially regarding enforcement powers, more authority may come with time.

“I don’t intend to have this be the last legislation on accountability that comes forward,” said Minnesota state Rep. Liz Reyer, a Democrat who sponsored the health care affordability board bill. “I’m very convinced actually that as a result of research that is done by this legislation, we will have a much stronger case to say, ‘And now we shall move forward, because we can see the need.’ If it gives me more substance to use to advocate, that’s what I’ll be doing. I’m not letting this go.”

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9 injured in shooting near beach in Florida

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — Nine people were injured Monday evening when gunfire erupted along a beach boardwalk in Hollywood, Florida, sending people frantically running for cover along the crowded beach on Memorial Day.

Several of the victims were taken to a children’s hospital, police spokesperson Deanna Bettineschi said. However, authorities have not yet released the ages of the victims or provided details about their conditions.

A preliminary investigation shows that an altercation between two groups resulted in gunfire, police said. One person has been detained and another suspect is being still being sought.

The shooting happened about 6:30 p.m. on the broadwalk near a convenience store, a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream store and a Subway sandwich shop.

Alvie Carlton Scott III said he was on the beach when all of a sudden he hear numerous gun shots go off. He said he hid behind a tree and then fled the area after a police officer told people to run.

Jamie Ward, who was also on the broadwalk, said several young men were fighting in front of the stores when one pulled a gun and started shooting.

Videos posted on Twitter on Monday evening showed emergency medical crews responding and providing aid to multiple injured people.

Police said there would be a heavy presence of officers as the investigation continues. Officials were also setting up an area for family members to reunite.

“Thank you to the Good Samaritans, paramedics, police and emergency room doctors and nurses for their immediate response to aid the victims of today’s shooting,” Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy said in a statement.

Hollywood Beach is a popular beach destination about 11 miles south of Fort Lauderdale and 20 miles north of Miami. The beach was expected to see more visitors than usual with the Memorial Day holiday.

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Silence speaks volumes as Switzerland still reels from bank meltdown

The Alpine nation is trying to process exactly what went wrong with Credit Suisse — and what to do about the bankers who took it over the edge.

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McCarthy rallies support for debt deal amid hints of mutiny

Speaker Kevin McCarthy hunkered down in a mostly desolate Capitol building on Monday to build support for his debt limit compromise, dogged by claims of promises he made to become speaker.

For days, the California Republican has said he could “get to yes” on House passage of a cross-party agreement to prevent the nation from defaulting on its $31.4 trillion in debt. Already, the task is appearing stickier than simply rounding up enough floor votes to pass the deal he struck over the weekend with President Joe Biden.

With a passage vote set for Wednesday, a few Republicans have suggested using the Rules Committee to block the 99-page package from making it to the floor. And Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) further hinted at that strategy Monday afternoon.

The Texas Republican said on Twitter that an “explicit” agreement was made during private negotiations in January to elect McCarthy to the speakership: No bill could get to the floor without “unanimous” Republican support on the Rules Committee, on which Roy serves.

Any holdups like a delay in teeing up House floor debate would cost leaders precious time in clearing the bill through both chambers before the expected deadline for maxing out the nation’s borrowing authority. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s latest forecast pegs that X-date as June 5, now just a week away.

Republicans working to rally support for the bill are already casting doubt on Roy’s claim of a secret promise.

“If those conversations took place, the rest of the conference was unaware of them. And frankly, I doubt that,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) told reporters at the Capitol on Monday.

“I'm a rules guy. When somebody tells me something has to happen a certain way, the first thing I do is get out the rule book,” Johnson said. “And when I checked, there wasn't a rule that something has to come out of the Rules Committee unanimously.”

While McCarthy spent Memorial Day working to build consensus from his Capitol suite, Biden administration leaders tried at the same time to rally support for the deal among Democrats. In a series of virtual meetings Monday afternoon, top White House officials briefed lawmakers on pieces of the package that have drawn the most ire among their own, including changes to energy policy, spending limits and increased work requirements for antipoverty programs.

White House budget director Shalanda Young has been reminding lawmakers that the ultimate goal in negotiations was to avoid a debt default and that striking a bipartisan compromise makes it easier to fund the government for the fiscal year that kicks off in October.

Besides waiving the debt limit beyond the 2024 presidential election, the legislation would essentially freeze non-defense funding for the upcoming fiscal year while increasing defense funding by about 3.5 percent. “That’s about on par with previous budget agreements,” Young said on NBC's "The Today Show," noting her experience in negotiating prior bipartisan spending deals in her decades as a top House appropriators aide.

"This deal was compromise," Young said. "Neither side gets everything they want."

The White House scored some good news over the weekend after the leadership team for the New Democratic Coalition — a 98-member voting bloc of centrists who are among the most likely to back the bill — released a statement announcing the group’s support for the bipartisan agreement. The Congressional Black Caucus was also doing its own whip Monday afternoon, according to a Democratic aide who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely about the discussions.

Meanwhile House progressives, who have expressed frustration over the new work requirements in two government assistance programs — TANF and SNAP — are still mostly nos, according to the aide, who described it as the typical push and pull from members. All things considered, the aide said, there was optimism about the deal passing the House this week.

Even though the debt limit package would lock in spending limits for the fiscal year that starts in October, Republican lawmakers are already talking about negotiating further cuts in the coming months.

“This is the beginning,” Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) told reporters on Monday. “We've certainly wanted to see additional cuts in spending. Whether we can get that across the finish line through the appropriations process, it remains to be seen.”

The Congressional Budget Office gave Republicans an initial estimate Monday of the debt limit package’s potential effect on federal spending, predicting that it would cut about $2.1 trillion if funding caps are followed for six years, according to lawmakers.

Myah Ward contributed to this report.

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