Global News Podcast - President Trump suggests AI restrictions

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

Donald Trump suggests introducing controls on artificial intelligence following OpenAI's admission that it lost control of systems under test. But the US president said any restrictions should not allow China to win the AI race. Also: Germany says deportations to Afghanistan are no longer limited to criminals. A special report from a train journey across Iran. A mystery illness kills elephants in Kenya. BTS decides not to compete in the Grammys - we find out why. And fancy a private tour of Stonehenge? It could be yours.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail] Photo: A mobile phone display showing the icons of artificial intelligence (AI) apps Deepseek, Chatgpt and Gemini. Credit: Hannibal Hanschke/EPA/Shutterstock

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Pete Ross and in the early hours of Thursday the 30th of July, these are our main stories. President Trump says his administration is looking at ways to set controls on artificial intelligence. As further details emerge about a rogue AI bot that hacked into several companies. The South Korean tech giant Samsung has announced a huge jump in second quarter profits, driven by a surging demand for its memory chips for use in the AI sector. The communist government in Cuba has moved to open several sectors of its state-run economy to private firms and with a continuing US energy blockade.

Also in this podcast... In my opinion, America has sort of lost the war. It's lost this way. This campaign became about oil. and the Strait of Hormuz. It's all about money. The people mean nothing. They're irrelevant.

As fighting between Tehran and Washington continues, how do people in Iran view the war? It's the artificial intelligence nightmare which many predicted coming true. Like the supercomputer, Hal 9,000, in Stanley Kubrick's science fiction film 2001, a space odyssey, the technology recently went rogue. But the breach is worse than previously thought.

The company, Open AI, has revealed that a cyber attack two weeks ago by its chat GPT agents on Hugging Face, another AI-related company, went much further than just one firm. Such is the fear of what artificial intelligence could do that more than 1,000 people who work in the industry have signed a petition, which calls on the United States government to slow the release of the most advanced AI models. On Wednesday, President Trump, who's previously been reluctant,

to impose controls on US AI companies, said he wanted to set some boundaries. We're looking at controls. We're also making sure that we lead. So we're leading China in AI by a lot. China has virtually no controls. It's freewheeling a little bit. So we have to be careful in both ways.

We don't want to restrict them. We're all of a sudden, we come in second to China. Whoever wins with AI is going to win. That's how big it is. So it's bigger than the Internet ever was. It's bigger than anything ever was. So I don't want to restrict. I know many of these people. I don't want to restrict them from doing great work.

The boss of Open AI, Sam Altman, who's previously lobbied for loose regulation on AI to help maintain US dominance, says this latest security breach has given him reason to reconsider that stance. He told the venture capitalist and podcaster Patrick O'Shaughnessy that he now accepted that AI needs controlling. This is the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally. I've been a little surprised that more people don't feel so viscerally. So, you know, we paused training. But then there's, like, long-term questions about what do you do if this is, like, going to be the new rate of progress,

or we may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels. So why is Mr. Altman so worried? My colleague Gita Guru Murthy heard more from our cyber correspondent, Joe Tidy. It's completely unprecedented. incident. It is the first fully autonomous cyber attack we think in history. It all started with Hugging Face. It's like a kind of app store for AI tools and models. They came out a couple of weeks ago saying we've been a victim of a cyber attack. We think it was the first fully autonomous

attack by an agent. We don't know who it was behind it. And then that started a sort of who done it in the cyber security in AI world, which nation state was it that was behind this or which cyber crime group. And then it was a bombshell last week. It was announced by OpenAI. It was us. It was our bot that went effectively rogue during an examination. This was a bot that was two different types of models that were designed to be expert hackers. And they took the guardrails off it and they put it in this simulation, this kind of examination called exploit gym and said, right, see how good you are at hacking. And it was meant to be contained in a sandbox, which is like a really secure container in computing. the bot decided to break out of that container and try and find the answers, the shortcut to that

examination. That's how it hacked a hugging face to try and get those answers. And now we find out that there were three other publicly available services. This is kind of corporate speak. I take that to mean organizations or companies. They wouldn't say they open AI went back and forth with them all day long. They wouldn't say whether or not it was companies, but that's the meaning behind that statement. And of course, that means that it's a much more serious situation where not only was this out of control, but attacking one company but four. Joe, you know that there's been a lot of calls from those concerned about safety

of these sorts of potential incidents. What's the reaction been to the fact that Open AI took a few days to actually disclose the initial incident and now, you know, even more time to disclose to everyone that it was actually wider. Wouldn't they have known immediately? Yeah, and I think, you know, in truth, I think it's more to come

because Open AI has still not yet published its full investigation report. We expect that they say in the coming weeks, but I wouldn't be surprised if we hear more statements from them in the next few days. I think there is a lot of shock right now in the cyber security world that firstly this could have happened. There's kind of two things really. First of all, that open AI perhaps didn't secure the models correctly. The sandbox wasn't secure enough. They made some potentially irresponsible errors of judgment there. That's some of the views from the cybersecurity

world. The other side of it is that there is genuine concern about have we reached a new point in the AI sort of model development where they are able to do this kind of thing completely unprecedented in terms of the speed and scale in which these bots attacked. 17,600 different moves were made over the course of four days by these bots, which swarmed out and fanned across the internet once they broke out. Interestingly, Hugginface, they've been really good at telling the cybersecurity why exactly what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of these hacks. And they said that although they were eventually overwhelmed, the bots acted in really

strange and kind of unexpected ways. They were clumsy and repeated actions that they'd already completed, not the kind of way that a human hacker would be. course, they found a way, which is what people are worried about, that this could be a sign of things to come. Sam Altman, for his perspective, is now saying that he is very shocked that this could have happened, and he's sort of framing it as these bots are too powerful to control now, but of course people in the cybersecurity world would say that that's a mistake from open AI. Joe Tidy. Well, just as some might be arguing for more caution when it comes to AI, tech

companies are continuing to invest heavily, not least in data centers. And now the big South Korean company Samsung Electronics has announced a giant leap in second quarter profits amid surging demands for AI chips. So what's driving these record profits? I asked our Asia Business editor, Morafogarty. Well, it certainly is the AI boom. I mean, Samsung has said that the investments that we're seeing around the world in building AI data centers means that you need more servers. And to put in ties those servers, you need chips that are made by Samsung essentially. Let me just headline extraordinary numbers here. Net profit was up 56% compared to the previous quarter, so the first three months of this year. But in South Korea, we actually look at operating profit. That's a better gauge of how companies are doing. And compared to the same three months a year ago, operating profit was up 1,800%. They made $62 billion in operating income in that quarter, which is extraordinary. And again, it's mailing memory chips to these AI data servers and centers around the world.

Those are indeed some pretty big figures you mentioned there, Mora. But given what we've just heard about the sort of growing concerns around AI and its development, how long do you think we can continue to see these sort of profits rise at this kind of rate? So it depends on a couple of things. First is whether we're building too many data centers, first of all, right? Are we building more than is needed? But we haven't quite seen that concern seep over. into the chipmakers in South Korea.

That certainly is a question that's being asked of the big kind of chip makers and tech companies in the U.S. And we did see a big, you know, drop in shares earlier in the week when we had that kind of global sell down of chip stocks. But for now, the South Korean companies are still seeing pretty good business. The other thing, of course, is that they sign multi-year contracts with these, you know, other companies like, you know, Open AI, for example. and so they do have some buffer.

They will see profits, of course, increasing. The question is just whether we'll see the stellar profits increase. Morafogarty. As the fighting between Washington and Tehran continues, the BBC has travelled the length of Iran by train, capturing a country at a pivotal moment in its history. From north to south, crossing thousands of miles of the country's crucial economic backbone,

the train carries people from every corner of Iranian society, each with their own story. The BBC Senior International Investigations correspondent, Nal Al-Maghafi, gained rare access to parts of the country that foreign journalists normally cannot enter and spoke to those on her train journey. We're on the overnight train from Tehran to Bander Abbas. It's a 22-hour journey that takes you from Iran's political heart.

in Tehran to its most strategic coastline. I've been taken aback by just how nice this train is. I mean, we're staying in a cabin with two beds and four plush chairs. I'm really looking forward to being on this train and speaking to Iranians about what life has been like as this war has gone on. It's in every Iranian's nature to adapt to the circumstances. It was hard, it was frightening, we were worried, we were anxious, but we still tried to live within those very conditions to have a life,

to keep our daily routine, to remain hopeful for the future. In the restaurant carriage, I met Azadei, a lawyer, and Sepidei, a beautician. Although they were cautious to speak in public, they agreed to an interview in their cabin. Actually, I love Iran very much. I love it so, so much. But when I see my youth slipping away and my goals, my dreams and all my hope being lost, I have no choice but to leave for the sake of progress to reach my goals. I have no choice. You know, we saw before this war a lot of young people, a lot of people across Iran go out and protest.

There were a lot of people that had hope that this war would mean a big change would happen in Iran. What do you think about that and how do you feel about how things have played out? I'll start with Azadegh first. Have a think about it. Manorjee, Jean-Ovenant. She doesn't want to answer. She doesn't want to answer this. No, that's fine.

That's fine. Years of crippling sanctions, soaring inflation, and anger at Iran's leadership pushed hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets. Speaking out against the government can come at a heavy cost. So we gathered some anonymous testimony. A mayor took part in the protests. When we got there, there was a very... large crowd. People were throwing stones and the police and the besiege had weapons in their hands

and were shooting. Mostly we saw tear gas and then we clearly saw the police getting down on the ground, taking up at Klaschnikov and aiming at people. And we were completely shocked at how easily and how casually they were taking aim and firing at people. A few doors down, I meet a member of a football team. Abtallah's heading back home to Minab. On the first day of the war, the town became the scene of one of the conflicts defining tragedies. They attacked a school that was full of children. They were all seven, eight or nine-year-old students. I was really upset. Our whole country was upset.

There really was a strange grief across the whole of Hormuzgan province. The day of their funeral was something else too. I don't know. Everyone who went there wept. It really was an extraordinary day. For some, this war has not achieved what they'd hoped for, Amer again. In my opinion, America has sort of lost the war. It's lost this way.

This campaign became about oil and the strait of Hormoz, and we want to save the strait. It's all about money. The people mean nothing. They are irrelevant. The people are no longer a consideration. Iran is no stranger to political friction. The tensions between Tehran, Tel Aviv and Washington

have been decades in the making, but they are only now playing out on the battlefield. And as both sides compete to shape the legacy of this war, the impact is still being felt not just on this train, but across the world. The BBC's senior international correspondent Nawal al-Maghavi is reporting from Iran on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC's Persian service. These restrictions apply to all international media organisations operating in Iran. And you can watch Nawal's full report Inside Iran, The People and the Power on BBC Eye Player

or BBC World Service YouTube if you're outside the UK. Germany has deported an Afghan national without a criminal record for the first time since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Berlin said the deportation of Afghans would no longer be limited to serious criminals. It marks a shift in the German government's immigration policy under the Chancellor Friedrich Mertz. And means rejected asylum seekers could now find themselves being put on flight

and return to Kabul. It comes despite continued concerns over human rights and the treatment of returnees in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Our global affairs reporter, Ambarasana Tirajan, told me more. Germany has been deporting Afghans those who have been convicted or accused of very serious crimes like murder

or even child sex. offenses, and according to German officials, they have deported more than 200 people in the last few years. And in fact, the deportation picked up momentum after a meeting between the EU and Taliban officials in Brussels last week. Now, why this has become an issue? In the latest one, on Tuesday, about 30 people were sent on a chartered flight directly to Kabul. and one of them was not accused or not sentenced with any other offenses. So that has triggered concerns among other Afghans in Germany. There are an estimated 400,000 Afghans living in Germany.

That's the largest Afghan population in mainland Europe. And Germany received about quarter of a million asylum applications since 2015, and especially after the Taliban took over when they ceased power. in 2021, more people came and looking for asylum, and many of them arrived through this illegal route via Iran and then Turkey, then crossing through this Eastern Europe and then into Germany. So the spokesperson for the Interior Ministry was saying that it was possible that there may be some Afghans without any legal papers, without any valid documents, can be sent back. So this was the first case. So they were trying to defend

the case. Now, the mood in Germany itself has changed in the past few years, especially after the Conservative Chancellor, Friedrich Merce came to power. There are anti-immigrant political parties, the right-wing parties gaining momentum, gaining strength. And in addition to that, there were, you know, quite a few incidents, violent incidents linked to a few Afghans. So this actually added to this anti-immigrant rhetoric and fear. Do we know what conditions are like in Afghanistan for people that have been deported back. What's the situation like there? Now, since the Taliban came to power, the UN and other agencies are talking about how more than 50% of the Afghan population, they depend on some sort of aid from the international agencies.

The economy has literally collapsed. And there are no industries, no job opportunities. And then women and girls, they can't go to universities and secondary schools. There are no rights for women. Almost they are removed from public life. That's what the accusation is. and many of the dissidents have been either killed or put in jail. Some of the reports were saying those who were sent back, many of them were sent to jail and they were facing torture and the Afghan rights activists were writing columns in various papers. How can you send people back to the Taliban authorities

who are very brutal in the treatment of a dissidents on people whom they don't like? So the situation is really bad. What kind of jobs they're going to get? What kind of livelihood they're going to get? So this is some of the arguments put out by rights groups and Afghan activists in Europe that Germany and other countries should stop sending those who are not convicted of any crime back to the country. And Barra San Etirajan. Still to come in this podcast?

You'll be able to come into the stones from 9 o'clock in the morning. And that's a point in the morning when there's no one else around. Visitors to Britain's famous prehistoric site Stonehenge are being offered. for the chance to win rare private access. This is the Global News podcast. Cuba is under huge pressure from the United States to carry out drastic political and economic reforms. With the Caribbean island facing acute shortages,

partly as a result of America's energy blockade, the communist government has moved to open several sectors of its state-run economy to private firms. So, which sectors will be impacted? My colleague Oliver Conway asked our global. Global Affairs reporter, Mimi Swayby. This long-awaited list of newly permitted activities for the private sector includes petrol stations, elderly care, pharmacies, transport and renewable energies, among other things. Now, as you probably can imagine, there are lots of loopholes and grey areas.

Interestingly, self-employed people still have the most restrictions. There's now a specific category for activities which are not authorised for self-employed. That includes manufacturing and assembling vehicles and mining. But the wider idea of opening up sectors to private firms, be that local or foreign, is injecting more money into the economy, making, for example, transport run better. But it does show the desperation of the Cuban authorities to try and increase their economic status at the moment, which is in disarray. So they're allowing the market in a bit. Will it be enough to satisfy Washington? Washington have made it clear that their whole pressure campaign, including the fuel blockade on the island, which has been imposed since January, including indicting former leader Rao Castro, is all about regime change. So these new measures will ease life perhaps slightly for Cubans, but it won't appease President Trump. Anything which is incredibly important to maintain and control power in the country is being very much still controlled by the human authorities.

that doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon. And how hard is life for Cubans at the moment? Cuban officials, including President Miguel Diaz Canal, has accused President Trump of genocidal campaigns against the island. And Cuba is suffering. It has had a crisis before President Trump imposed his blockade, but now it has exacerbated rolling blackouts, water shortages,

shortages of the most basic goods. This pressure campaign really has shut down the island. Island, so to speak. Places in Havana, the capital, go without power for 20 hours a day commonly. People are having to completely alter their lives to try and utilise the power when it comes on at 4 a.m in the morning to do their cooking while they can. Health facilities are really struggling. Many are largely dependent on generators. Lots of intensive care units have been shut down. Pregnancies and births have been hugely complicated due to these power outages and a lack of medicine in many cases.

Mimi Swaybe. An investigation has been launched in Kenya after 15 elephants were found dead in a month near Ambocelli National Park. The Kenya Wildlife Service said 10 of the elephants exhibited signs of paralysis before being discovered dead a few days later. Initial tests suggest that a toxic substance may be involved.

Oliver Conway spoke to Thomas Macuana in Nairobi. We've spoken to the chief area warden of the Ambelleli conservation area and he says that this started happening last month again but the kenya wildlife service did not come to address this situation and investigate it further until recently so a lot of community leaders within the kajado county that holds this area they accuse the kenya wildlife service of being slow to act and endangering more elephants in the process do we have any idea what caused this no we don't not yet that's because the kennial wildlife services still investigating these samples and they say that the preliminary findings point to toxins

within the samples that they've taken but this could be from anything it could be from poisoning it could be from natural causes naturally forming algae in the water that they drink it could be because of the plants that they consume within this area and it's not unhard of in the continent of Africa this has happened in Botswana it's also happened in Zimbabwe worst in Botswana around 2020 when almost 330 elephants died of naturally occurring algae. So this is a huge threat to a conservation area that has almost 2,000 elephants in total and straddles between Kenya and Tanzania. So it might be natural, but it might also be deliberate. If it is deliberate, what would the motive have been? It could be many things, but important to also say that the carcasses that were

found were found without injury. But that doesn't rule out. poisoning and this could be because of human wildlife conflict that is not unhard of in these areas. This has happened before but it's illegal to harm an animal in any way. A source within the ranger community also told the BBC that the number could be double what is being reported. But the fact that they were untouched the bodies means it probably wasn't poachers. Probably wasn't poachers because when you try to get to an elephant and you're trying to get to specific parts of an elephant, it could be tasks but the elephants that are being

harmed here, mostly young elephants, according to the warden chief of that area. And if it is a natural cause, how can the authorities do anything about that if it's, say, a toxic plant or something? Then it would mean investigating exactly where these plants are and trying to control that. The scientists would answer better how that happens, but it's a big threat. 2,000 elephants within those areas and both countries, Kenya and Tanzania being affected potentially if this becomes big. but the conservation warden, he said that the livestock within those areas

who feed on the same pastures that the elephant feed on, they are not harmed, nor the livestock is dead. And these numbers of elephant deaths are usually something close to them because this is unprecedented. We have figures that are not as big but exist of elephants dying during droughts that occur because of climate change. But this is unheard of. It's only the government labs that can give us answers

to the question why. Thomas Macquana in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. One of the biggest pop phenomena around the group BTS have announced they will not submit their music for consideration at the 2027 Grammy Awards. The South Korean megastars had been widely tipped to be in the running for several of the top honours,

including album of the year. But the decision comes off the back of changes to the categories, as our music correspondent Mark Savage explains. This is really interesting because it comes a month after the Grammys announced that they were introducing a new category called Best Asian Pop Music Performance. And it's quite a big deal. It means that artists from Korea and Japan and China are all getting the chance to compete. But there has been some contention over the idea that this segregates those artists, that they are in some way not going to be able to compete in the main categories if they're siloed off into this new category. And that seems to be what behind BTA.

decision to withdraw from the ceremony altogether because in their statement, which was posted to each of the seven members' personal Instagram pages, they said, we hope that music can be heard and loved for what it is rather than being divided by region or language. They certainly wouldn't have been able to put forward their big single from this year Swim, because that is almost entirely, I think actually entirely sung in English. And that is one of the stipulations of this category. the rules say that there must be meaningful use of one or more Asian languages, and that language must be identifiable in songs that are multilingual. However, there are songs on the BTS album, notably one called Aliens,

that are predominantly in Korean and would presumably have been eligible for this prize. I suppose we'll have to see if other major K-pop artists follow suit, or whether they're all rubbing their hands with glee today because suddenly they don't have to compete with BTS. You know, if you're a member of Stray Kids or in Hypen or 17 or the seraphim or islet, you know, any of those bands that have had big crossover hits this year, you're probably thinking, brilliant. Mark Savage. Stonehenge in Britain is one of the world's most famous prehistoric sites.

The giant standing stones arranged in a circle date back nearly 5,000 years. As you can imagine, it's very popular with tourists. In fact, there are so many that it's often hard to get a sense of the majesty of the place because of the crowds. But now the organisation that runs Stonehenge, English Heritage, is giving a few visitors the rare opportunity to win private access to the site in southern England, as our correspondent David Silito reports. For those who want to experience Stonehenge at moments such as the summer solstice,

it can be a crowded and noisy experience. Occasionally special guests such as here... How cool is this, though, really? Amazing. President Obama has been given a chance to experience the stones without the crowds, albeit with the camera-plex of the accompanying press. But now, that opportunity will be open to one lucky visitor every day over August, as the head of Stonehenge, Georgia Butters, explains.

Anyone who books a ticket in August, you will then be entered into a prize draw, and we will draw one booking every day, and we'll let people know at least 24 hours before. So you'll be able to come into the stones from 9 o'clock in the morning, and that's a point in the morning when there's no one else around. So what will they experience? Stonehenge has its own special acoustic. This is what it sounds like in the early hours

with a little wind blowing through the stones. On a still sunny August day, there'll be a chance to reflect alone on a site that's older than the pyramids with probably the sound of a few sheep and the distant rumble of the sun. traffic on the A303. Sounds very peaceful. Well, except for the cars.

David Silato. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at global podcast at BBC.co. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. And don't forget our sister podcast, the global story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of the Global News podcast was mixed by Massoud Ibrahim

and the producer was Ira Khan. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Pete Ross. Until next time, goodbye.