60 Minutes - 03/24/2024: The Right to be Wrong, AMLO, The Race to the Deep Sea

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether social media platforms have the right to decide what users can say on their sites. Correspondent Lesley Stahl speaks with: Rep. Jim Jordan, a misinformation researcher, and a former Facebook executive. Charismatic and controversial, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador – known by his initials AMLO – is a popular leftist. He promised to root out corruption and reduce poverty and violent crime. He sits down with Sharyn Alfonsi. The U.S. is conspicuously absent from the international race to explore deep sea mining. Bill Whitaker speaks with former diplomats and military leaders trying to break a Senate logjam, and with others standing firm in their opposition. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Big tech's out to get conservatives. That's not a suspicion. That's not a hunch. That's a fact. Conservatives are making serious legal challenges to the question of what constitutes free speech on social media sites. What are facts? What is misinformation? And is policing them censorship?

All of this being decided months before the 2024 election. I think you let the American people respect the American people, their common sense, to figure out what's accurate, what isn't. The crisis on the U.S. southern border has emerged as one of the most important issues in this year's presidential election. But it's this president, Mexico's controversial Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,

who may have more control over what happens there than anyone. Your critics have said what you're doing or what you're asking for to help secure the border is diplomatic blackmail. 168 countries, including China, have signed on to the United Nations Law of the Sea, a treaty that divvies up the international seabed for the mining of precious metals vital for everything from electric cars to defense systems. Absent from the treaty, the United States. The United States probably has got the most to gain of any country in the world if it were party to the Law of the sea convention. And conversely, we actually probably have the most to lose by not being part of it.

I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes.

As big tech firms wrestle with how to keep false and harmful information off their social networks, the Supreme Court is wrestling with whether platforms like Facebook and Twitter, now called X, have the right to decide what users can say on their sites. The dispute centers on a pair of laws passed in the red states of Florida and Texas over the question of First Amendment rights on the Internet. The Supreme Court is considering whether the platforms are like newspapers, which have free speech rights to make their own editorial decisions, or if they're more like telephone companies

that merely transmit everyone's speech. If the laws are upheld, the platforms could be forced to carry hate speech and false medical information, the very content most big tech companies have spent years trying to remove through teams of content moderators. But in the process, conservatives claim that the companies have engaged in a conspiracy to suppress their speech. As in this case, a tweet in 2022 from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely claiming that there were extremely high amounts of COVID vaccine deaths.

I have not misled anyone. I have not put out misinformation. Twitter eventually banned Greene's personal account for multiple violations of its COVID policy. Facebook and YouTube also removed or labeled posts they deemed misinformation. Big tech's out to get conservatives. That's not a suspicion. That's not a hunch. That's a fact. Confronted with criticisms from conservatives like Congressman Jim Jordan that the social media companies were censoring their views, and because of cost-cutting, platforms began downsizing their fact-checking teams. So today, social media is teeming with misinformation, like these posts suggesting

tanks are moving across the Texas-Mexico border, but it's actually footage from Chile. These are AI-generated images of, well, see for yourself. With social media moderation teams shrinking, a new target is misinformation academic researchers who began working closely with the platforms after evidence of Russian interference online in the 2016 election. Are researchers being chilled? Absolutely. Kate Starbird is a professor at the University of Washington, a former professional basketball player, and a leader of a misinformation research group created ahead of the 2020 election. We were very specifically looking at misinformation about election processes, procedures, and election results.

And if we saw something about that, we would pass it along to the platforms if we thought it violated one of their policies. Here's an example, a November 2020 tweet saying that election software in Michigan switched 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden. The researchers alerted Twitter that then decided to label it with a warning. I understand that some of the researchers, including you, have had some threats against them, death threats. I have received one. Sometimes they're threats with something behind them, and sometimes they're just there to make you nervous and uncomfortable, and it's hard to know the difference. This campaign against you is meant to discredit you,

so we won't believe you. Absolutely. It's interesting that the people that pushed voter fraud lies are some of the same people that are trying to discredit researchers that are trying to understand the problem. Did your research find that there was more misinformation spread by conservatives? Absolutely. I think not just our research, research across the board looking at the 2020 election found that there was more misinformation spread by people that were supporters of Donald Trump or conservatives. And the events of January 6 kind of underscore this. The folks climbing up the Capitol building were supporters of Donald Trump.

And they were misinformed by these false claims. And that motivated those actions. This is wrong. We know it's wrong and it's about protecting the First Amendment. Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. So how big a problem is mis- and disinformation on the web? Well, I'm sure there's some, but I think, you know, our concern is the bigger problem of the attack on First Amendment liberties. Congressman Jordan's Judiciary Committee produced a report that concluded there's a censorship industrial complex where the federal government and tech companies colluded with academic researchers to disproportionately silence conservatives, which Kate Starbird vigorously denies.

But Congressman Jordan says her group unfairly flagged posts like this tweet by Newt Gingrich. Pennsylvania Democrats are methodically changing the rules so they can steal the election. What I care about is the ability to speak and to speak in a political fashion and not have the government come after you for doing so. He complains that government officials put pressure on social media companies directly. A great example, 36 hours into the Biden administration, the Biden White House sends a email to Twitter and says, we think you should take down this tweet ASAP. Just a call alone from the government, he says, can be unnerving. You can't have the government say, hey, we want you to do X.

Government who has the ability to regulate these private companies, government which has the ability to tax these private companies. He says that White House email to Twitter involved a tweet from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and everything in the tweet was true. That tweet implied falsely that baseball legend Hank Aaron's death was caused by the COVID vaccine. Did they take it? Turned out they didn't. Thank goodness. And that post is still up. Kate Starbird says the social media platforms also often ignored the researchers' suggestions. The statistics I've seen are just for the Twitter platform, but my understanding is that they responded to about 30% of the things that we sent them. And I think on the majority of those, they put labels.

But just a third? But just a third, yeah. And do you suspect that Facebook was the same? Oh, yeah. These platforms have their own First Amendment rights. Katie Harbath spent a decade at Facebook, where she helped develop its policies around election misinformation. When she was there, she says it was not unusual for the government to ask Facebook to remove content, which is proper as long as the government is not coercing. Conservatives are alleging that the platforms were taking down content at the behest of the government,

which is not true. The platforms made their own decisions, and many times we were pushing back on the government. Can we talk about a specific case? It's of Nancy Pelosi. It's a doctored tape where she looks drunk. We want to give this president the opportunity to do something historic. This was the video of then-House Speaker Pelosi, posted to Facebook in 2019, slowed down to make it seem that she was slurring her words.

Did it come down? It did not. Why? Because it didn't violate the policies that they had. So did she put pressure on the company to take it down? She was definitely not pleased. She definitely wanted the company, yes. And it really damaged the relationship

that the company had with her. The conservatives' campaign faced a setback at the Supreme Court on Monday when a majority of the justices seemed poised to reject their effort to limit attempts by the government to influence social media. The court is deciding in separate cases whether the platforms are like news organizations, with a First Amendment right to control who and what information appears on their sites.

Congressman Jordan argues that the tech companies shouldn't remove most of what they call misinformation. I think you let the American people respect the American people, their common sense, to figure out what's accurate, what isn't. Well, what about this idea that the 2020 election was stolen? You think that these companies should allow people to say that, and individuals can make up their own mind, and that there should be... I think the American people are smart. Look, I've not said that.

What I've said is there were concerns about the 2020 election. I think Americans agree with that. No, they don't. You don't think they think there were concerns with the 2020 election? Most people don't question the result. That's all I'm saying. They don't question whether Biden won or not. Right? Right. Most people don't question the outcome.

X basically did what Jordan proposes. After Elon Musk took over in 2022, most of its fact checkers were fired. Now the site is rife with trash talk and lies. Little would you know that this, said to be footage from Gaza, is really from a video game. Eventually, ex-users added a warning label. In this post, pictures of real babies killed in Israeli strikes are falsely dismissed as dolls. The toothpaste is out of the tube, and we have to figure out how to deal with the resulting mess. Darrell West, a senior fellow of technology innovation at the Brookings Institution, says the clash over what is true is fraying our institutions and threatening democracies around the world. Half of the world is voting this year, and the world could stick with democracy or move towards authoritarianism. The danger is disinformation could decide the elections in a number of different countries.

In the U.S., he says, the right wing has been flooding the internet with reams of misleading information in order to confuse the public. And he's alarmed by the campaign to silence the academic researchers who have had to spend money and time on demands from Jim Jordan's Judiciary Committee. There are people who make the accusation that going after these researchers, misinformation researchers, is tantamount to harassment and that your goal really is to chill the research. I find that it interesting you use the word chill because, in effect, what they're doing is chilling First Amendment free speech rights. When they're working in an effort to censor Americans, that's a chilling impact on speech. They say what you're doing, they do, is a violation of their First Amendment rights. So us pointing out, us doing our constitutional duty of oversight of the executive branch,

and somehow we're censoring, that makes no sense to me. We, Americans, we're looking at the same thing and seeing a different truth. Well, you might see different things. I don't think you can see the different truth because truth is truth. Okay. The researchers say they're being chilled.

That's their truth. Yeah. You're saying they're not. So what's the truth? They can do their research. God bless them. Do all the research you want. Don't use, Don't say, we think this particular tweet is not true.

Well, that's their First Amendment right to say that. Well, they can say it, but they can't take it down. Well, they can take it down, and they don't. They just send their information to the companies. But when they're coordinating with government, that's a different animal. Well, of course, they deny their coordinating. We just went round and round. I wonder if there's a way to measure the shifting meaning of misinformation.

Starbird says she and her team feel intimidated by the conservatives' campaign. So while they will continue releasing their research reports on misinformation, they will no longer send research reports on misinformation, they will no longer send their findings to the social media platforms. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade.

Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Immigration, the border, and the economy

have emerged as key issues in this year's presidential election and may determine who wins the White House. But the person who could tip the scales for either candidate is another president, Mexico's president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, widely known by his initials, AMLO. Charismatic and often combative, AMLO won a landslide victory in 2018 on the promise to root out corruption, reduce poverty, and violent crime.

Now 70 years old and in the final stretch of his term, we met the president in Mexico City for a candid conversation about his handling of immigration, trade, the fentanyl crisis, and the cartels. And he told us why he thinks when Donald Trump says he's going to shut down the border or build a wall, he's bluffing. President Trump is saying he wants to build a wall again. On the campaign.

But you don't think he'd actually do it? Because? Because he needs Mexico. Because we understood each other very well. We signed an economic, a commercial agreement that has been favorable for both peoples, for both nations. He knows it, and President Biden the same. But what about the people that'll say, oh, but the wall works?

It doesn't work. And President López Obrador says he told that to then-President Trump during a phone call. They were supposed to be discussing the pandemic. It was an agreement not to speak about the wall because we were not going to agree. And then you talked about it. That was the only time.

And I told him, I'm going to send you, Mr. President, some videos of tunnels from Tijuana up to San Diego that pass right under U.S. customs. He stayed quiet, and then he started laughing and told me, I can't win with you. We met President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at Mexico's National Palace earlier this month. With six months left on his six-year term, Lopez Obrador at Mexico's National Palace earlier this month. With six months left on his six-year term, Lopez Obrador's power in Mexico and influence in the United States has never been greater. The White House witnessed it here last December when a record 250,000 migrants overwhelmed the U.S. southern border with Mexico. President Biden called you. He sent his Secretary of State.

What did they say to you and what did they ask for from you? For us to try and contain the flow of migration. A month later, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reported the number of migrant crossings dropped by 50 percent. So what did you do between December and January that changed that number so dramatically? We were more careful about our southern border. We spoke with the presidents of Central America, with the president of Venezuela, and with the president of Cuba. We asked them for help in curbing the flow of migrants. However, that is a short-term solution, not a long-term one. Mexico also increased patrols at the border,

flying some migrants to the southern part of Mexico and deporting others. But by February, the number of migrants crossing into the U.S. began to rise again, and the Border Patrol expects a sharp increase in that number this spring. Everybody thinks you have the power in this moment to slow down migration. Do you plan to? We do, and want to continue doing it. But we do want for the root causes to be attended to, for them to be seriously looked at. With the ear of the White House, President López Obrador proposed his fix,

that the United States commit $20 billion a year to poor countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, lift sanctions on Venezuela, end the Cuban embargo, and legalize millions of law-abiding Mexicans living in the U.S. If they don't do the things that you've said need to be done, then what? The flow of migrants will continue. Your critics have said what you're doing or what you're asking for

to help secure the border is diplomatic blackmail. What do you say? I'm speaking frankly. We have to say things as they are. And I always say what I feel. I always say what I think. If they don't do those things, will you continue to help to secure the border? Yes, because our relationship is very important. It is fundamental. For much of the last six years, President López Obrador has held a televised 7 a.m. press conference five days a week. During our visit, he was dissecting fake news.

The briefing lasted more than two hours. Is it a pulpit or is it a press conference? It is a circular dialogue, even though my opponents say that I'm on a pulpit. Time is the only luxury AMLO seems comfortable spending. When he took office, he sold the presidential jet and his predecessor's fleet of bulletproof cars in favor of his Volkswagen. He uses his daily briefings to rail against the elite and enemies, real and perceived. At times, it can feel like a political telenovela. At a briefing last month, the president stunned the audience when he read the cell phone number of a New York Times reporter

who was pursuing what he viewed as a critical story of him. It looks like you were threatening that reporter. I didn't do it with the intention of harming her. She, like yourself, are public figures. And I am as well. But you know this is a dangerous place for reporters, and you know that threats often come in texts and phones. When you put her phone number up behind you, you realize what you were doing.

No, no, no, no. What did you think you were doing? It's a form of responding to a libel. Imagine what it means for this reporter to write that the president of Mexico has connections with drug traffickers and without having any proof.

That's a vile slander. So then why not just say it's not true? Because libel, when it doesn't stain, it smears. Lopez Obrador's bare-knuckle brawls with the press are in sharp contrast to the softer approach he's taken with drug cartels. He dissolved the federal police and created a National Guard to take over public security. And he invested millions to create jobs for young people to escape the grip of the cartels. According to the Mexican government, homicides have dropped almost 20 percent since he took office. The president calls his approach,

hugs, not bullets. How is that working out for Mexico? Very well. There are still 30,000 homicides in Mexico, and very few of those are prosecuted. So there's an idea that there's still lawlessness in Mexico. Is that fair? Of course we prosecute them. There's no impunity in Mexico. They all get prosecuted. It's a small percent. More than before. According to Mexico Avalia, a Mexican think tank,

about 5% of the country's homicides are prosecuted. And a study last year reported cartels have expanded their reach, employing an estimated 175,000 people to extort businesses and traffic migrants and drugs into the U.S. Can you reach the cartel and say, knock it off? No, no, no, no. What you have to do with the criminals is apply the law. But I'm not going to establish contact, communication with a criminal, the president of Mexico.

Are you saying you don't have to reach out to them or communicate with them? No, no, no, no. Because you cannot negotiate with criminals. The head of the DEA says cartels are mass-producing fentanyl, and the U.S. State Department has said that most of it is coming out of Mexico. Are they wrong? Yes. Or rather, they don't have all the information, because fentanyl is also produced in the United States.

The State Department says most of it's coming from Mexico. Fentanyl is produced in the United States, in Canada, and in Mexico, and the chemical precursors come from Asia. You know why we don't have the drug consumption that you have in the United States? Because we have customs, traditions, and we don't have the problem of the disintegration of the family. But there is drug consumption in Mexico. But very little.

So why the violence then in Mexico? Because drug trafficking exists, but not the consumption. Lopez Obrador says threats by U.S. lawmakers to shut down the border to curb drug trafficking is little more than saber-rattling. That's because last year, Mexico became America's top trading partner. They could say, we are going to close the border, but we mutually need each other. What would happen to the U.S. if they closed the border? You would not be able to buy inexpensive cars if the border is closed.

That is, you would have to pay $10,000, $15,000 more for a car. There are factories in Mexico and there are factories in the United States that are fundamental for all the consumers in the United States and all the consumers in Mexico. Last year, the Mexican economy grew 3 percent, and unemployment hit a record low. But critics say Mexico's economic growth isn't because of the president, rather in spite of him. López Obrador directed billions to signature megaprojects like an oil refinery in his home state and a railroad through the Yucatan jungle, costing an estimated $28 billion. What about infrastructure? Aren't there more dire concerns like, you know, clean water, roads, reliable energy when you're trying to attract business to Mexico?

We're doing both, fixing the roads and building this train. It will link all the ancient Mayan cities and is going to allow Mexicans and tourists to enjoy a paradise region that is the southeast of Mexico. Lopez Obrador has spent unapologetically on social programs, doubling the minimum wage, increasing pensions and scholarships. His approval rating has remained high,

upwards of 60% for most of his presidency. Your critics say that you're popular because you give people money. What do you say? I would say they're partly right. Our formula is simple. It is not to allow corruption, not to make for an ostentatious government,

for luxuries. And everything we save, we allocate to the people. Do you think that you've been able to get rid of the corruption in Mexico? Yes. Completely? Yes, basically,

because corruption in Mexico started from the top, down. But Transparency International reports no improvement in the corruption problems that have plagued Mexico for decades. Huge crowds gathered last month, accusing the president of trying to eliminate the country's democratic checks and balances. In June, Mexico will have one of the largest elections in its history. In addition to the presidency, 20,000 local positions are up for grabs. The cartels have funded and preyed on local candidates.

Last month, two mayoral hopefuls were killed within hours of each other, raising fears of a bloody election. I can travel throughout the entire country without a problem. There is no region that I cannot go and visit. The number of government officials and candidates murdered rose from 94 in 2018 to 355 last year. You don't view that as a threat to you, obviously, but do you view it as a threat to democracy?

No. There are some specific instances. There is no state repression. But if a candidate's afraid to run because they may be assassinated, isn't that a threat to democracy? Generally, they all participate. There are many candidates from all the parties. His hand-picked successor, Claudia Scheinbaum, has a commanding lead in the polls and could become Mexico's first female president. Lopez Obrador told us when he leaves office he will retire from politics and write books. But what he does next at the border, or doesn't do, could shape the next chapter of the United States. Something akin to the California gold rush is happening in the eastern Pacific,

an international mad dash, not for one precious metal, but for vast quantities of minerals scattered across the ocean floor, vital for everything from electric cars to defense systems. To avoid a free-for-all, 168 countries, including China, have signed on to the United Nations Law of the Sea, a treaty that divvies up the international seabed. Conspicuously absent is the United States, kept out of the race by a group of Republican senators who say the treaty undermines American power. Despite efforts by five presidents, ratifying the treaty has hit a wall in the Senate year after year. With seabed mining set to begin next year, China is in place to dominate it. Now, a group of former diplomats and military leaders is trying again to break the

logjam in the Senate. A thousand miles from U.S. waters, between Mexico and Hawaii lies this patch of Pacific Ocean. It looks tranquil but it's a locus of fierce competition. To see what's at stake you have to plunge to the bottom. See those potato sized rocks? They're filled with cobalt, nickel, manganese and copper, some of the most valuable metals on Earth. All right, start coming up. In 2019, we went along on a pilot expedition as a crew with Canada's metals company hauled its sunken treasure to the surface. That many of them down there.

If they found a deposit with this much metal concentration on land, it would be a bonanza that nobody would stop talking about for years. Today, the race is on for the estimated trillions of dollars of strategic minerals on the ocean floor, vital for next-generation electronics. Countries that ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty now are testing giant robots that vacuum the minerals from the sea floor. They're carving up and laying claim to parcels on the seabed covered with rich balls of ore. China has five sites, 90,000 square miles, the most of any country. The United States,

none, blocked from even putting a toe in the water by its refusal to ratify the treaty. We are not only not at the table, but we're off the field. The United States probably has got the most to gain of any country in the world if it were party to the law of the C Convention. And conversely, we actually probably have the most to lose by not being part of it. John Bellinger is a partner at the D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter. In 2012, he testified in favor of the treaty at Senate hearings as a former legal adviser to George W. Bush.

He told us Bush was no fan of U.N. treaties, but he supported this one, not only for codifying access to the deep seabed, but also for safeguarding the free navigation of U.S. ships around the world. Bellinger told us support was so broad in 2012, he thought it would be a slam dunk. President George W. Bush is in favor. That's right. U.S. intelligence? Yes. Military? Yes. Major business groups?

Big oil? Yes. And environmental groups as well. Hard to find any treaty or probably any piece of legislation that has such broad support. Yet it failed. The Conservative Heritage Foundation convinced 34 Republican senators to turn thumbs down, saying it would subjugate the United States to the U.N. My problem is with sovereignty.

The law of the sea was sunk. It surprised me that a number of senators would tell us in the government, we know better than you. We know better than our U.S. military. We know better than U.S. business. Does the American position make any sense to you? It honestly does not. The opposition was not on national security reasons or on business reasons, it to me seemed just a reflexive ideological opposition to joining the treaty. Since 2012, while repeated attempts to ratify the treaty have failed, China has made deep-sea

mining a national priority. It already has a near monopoly of the critical minerals on land. Now it's set to lock up the bounty on the sea floor. It already has a near monopoly of the critical minerals on land. Now it's set to lock up the bounty on the seafloor. Ambassador John Negroponte, a former director of national intelligence in the Bush administration, told us China's aggressive actions should be setting off alarms. What's changed since 2012? The People's Republic of China and its more assertive behavior on the international scene, particularly in the South China Sea.

And then with respect to deep seabed mining, they're eating our lunch. They've got access to five sites. Right now we have access to none. John Negroponte is one of a number of senior Republicans urging the Senate to reconsider and ratify the treaty. If it doesn't, the U.S. can't get a license from the UN-backed International Seabed Authority to mine the ocean bottom. It won't have a say in drafting environmental rules for mining the deep. Absent the U.S., China is the heavyweight in the room. So does it seem to you that we're just sort of giving this resource to the Chinese without any pushback from us?

We are conceding. If we're not at the table and we're not members of the seabed authority, we're not going to have a voice in writing the environmental guidelines for deep seabed mining. Well, who would you prefer to see writing those guidelines? The People's Republic of China or the United States of America? It just doesn't make sense to a conservative to say, these minerals that are in the deep seabed are so important to the United States, we are done without those. Let's put an international bureaucracy in charge of getting us access to them.

Stephen Groves is a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. He was a special counsel in Donald Trump's White House. In 2012, Groves testified that the U.S. didn't need anyone's permission to mine the seabed. His views haven't changed. What businessman in the right mind said, I'm going to invest tens of billions of dollars into a company that I will then have to go and ask permission from an international organization to engage in deep seabed mining? But no general counsel, no board of a company, if faced with a clear right under a treaty that says you can go and do this, or taking an action that's flatly contrary to the treaty, of course the companies are going to say, I want to take the clearly lawful route before I invest billions of dollars. Lawyer John Bellinger told us U.S. companies interested in mining the seabed want the legal guarantees of the treaty. But even as other countries move ahead,

Stephen Groves insists American companies are staying away not because the U.S. hasn't ratified a treaty, but because deep sea mining isn't viable. If China wants to go and think that it's economically feasible to drag those nodules up to the surface and process them, let them do it. The United States has decided to stay out of the game. The one U.S. company that had rights to the deep sea bed got out of the game. That's Lockheed Martin. U.S. companies will tell you it's because there's uncertainty. What U.S. companies? Lockheed.

Lockheed is out of the game. Lockheed will tell you that their investors, their counsel, all say, if we don't have this treaty, we're not getting into this. They're already out of it. They quit. Because we are not supporting them in any way. That's a business decision they made. Lockheed Martin has not quit. The defense giant had rights to four Pacific seabed sites.

It sold two and is holding on to two in case the treaty passes. But Lockheed told us if the U.S. doesn't ratify the treaty, it can't dive in. Ambassador John Negroponte told us the Heritage Foundation is standing in the way. What Heritage is saying is we don't even want to give them a chance. We know the answer already. And I think that's sort of hypothetical thinking. The pragmatic approach would be to say,

OK, let us have access and see what happens. And we could end up being even more dependent than we are today on China for access to these minerals? If they end up being the largest producer and we're not producing at all, that might place us in a difficult economic position. But national security fears of China's growing prowess in the deep are about more than mining. Last week, a letter signed by 346 former political, national security, and military leaders

warned that China was taking advantage of America's absence from the treaty to pursue overall naval supremacy. Over the last decade, and I've done the math, China has built 20 percent more warships by tonnage than the United States Navy has. They built 160 warships, where the U.S. Navy built 66. It is a truly massive expansion in naval power. Thomas Shugart is a former U.S. Navy submarine warfare officer and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He told us China is flexing its maritime muscle by claiming the

South China Sea as its private ocean. It has challenged the treaty's navigation laws that ensure safe passage by harassing passing ships, including the U.S. Navy. It has fired water cannons at its neighbors, caused collisions, even flashed a military-grade laser at ships. Stephen Groves at the Heritage Foundation says that's why the treaty is meaningless. It's China, who is a party to the treaty,

who doesn't obey the rules of the road. They're the ones getting into near collisions with U.S. vessels in the South China Sea. The United States respects and adheres to international law. It is the Chinese who are the scofflaws here. And the idea that the U.S. joining the treaty would somehow change that Chinese behavior has no basis in reality. Every time the U.S. points at them and says, you're violating the law, they very quickly

turn back and say, well, you're not a signatory, so what do you have to say about it? We are in a messaging contest and an effort to win hearts and minds all over the world against what is clearly our greatest strategic competitor. Former submarine captain Thomas Shugart told us being outside the treaty undercuts American credibility, while China is laser-focused on building its maritime power. He told us China's deep-sea miners have a second mission, collecting information for the Chinese military. The technology that these companies use to mine the seabed, do they also have a military application?

Absolutely. If you're going to find submarines in the ocean, you need to know what the bottom looks like. You need to know what the temperature is. You need to know what the salinity is. If China is using civilian vessels to sort of on the sly do those surveys, then that improves, could improve their ability to find U.S. and allied submarines over time as they better understand that undersea environment. Back in D.C., Ambassador Negroponte's group is lobbying the Republican holdouts. We decided to call the senators who torpedoed the treaty in 2012 to see if anything had changed.

We found their opposition as strong as ever. With the U.S. Senate locked in stalemate, China is forging ahead. Now, an update on a story from earlier this month called Operation Lone Star. A new Texas law bypasses the federal immigration system by giving state and local law enforcement agencies authority to arrest, detain, and deport migrants who enter the state illegally. Governor Greg Abbott says the U.S. Constitution gives the states the right to repel what he calls an invasion. Do you really, truly believe that invasion is the right word to be using here? Invasion is the word that's used in the United States Constitution.

Invasion or imminent danger. I use them both. This past week, federal courts considered whether the law should be put on hold while its constitutionality is decided. The Supreme Court removed that stay, only to have it renewed by Fifth Circuit judges while they consider the arguments. The Texas law's fate, like the border crisis, remains unresolved. I'm Cecilia Vega. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.