NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas - Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Biden says he has decided how to respond to deadly drone attack on U.S. base; House Committee moves forward on Mayorkas impeachment; Undercover Israeli forces kill 3 militants in bold hospital raid and more on tonight’s broadcast.

Tonight, President Biden says he's decided on a response to the drone attack that killed three U.S. troops in Jordan. The president today saying he's determined how the U.S. will retaliate for that deadly attack and that he holds Iran responsible for supplying the weapons. How and where will the U.S. strike back? And the mother of one of the slain soldiers speaking out the moment she learned her daughter was lost. Also tonight, the showdown on Capitol Hill, House Republicans pushing impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over border security, how he is firing back. The undercover raid, Israeli forces disguised as doctors and Palestinian women storming a hospital in the West Bank.

The suspects, they were hunting. The dramatic video shown at the trial of a school shooter's mother, images of her crying in a police car after the massacre, and what she said about her son. An atmospheric river known as the Pineapple Express set to slam the West Coast with heavy rain. Our NBC News exclusive, my conversation with the CEO of Microsoft. I ask him about the rise of AI and the threat it could pose to our elections. This is NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt. Good evening and welcome.

President Biden today says he has decided on a response to this weekend's deadly attack on American soldiers in Jordan. Three U.S. troops were killed and 30 injured in the drone attack on a U.S. military outpost on Sunday. The president not telegraphing whether the U.S. response will be a military one, but has said his administration intends to hold all those accountable at a time and in a manner of our choosing. The president holds Iran responsible as a supplier of weapons to the militants. Iran is denying any involvement in Sunday's attack. Tonight, a region already embroiled by war in Gaza and attacks on shipping appears to be teetering even closer to the edge. Peter Alexander has late details from the White House. Tonight, President Biden says he's decided how he'll respond to that deadly drone attack

on U.S. troops by an Iranian-backed militia. Do you hold the decision how he'll respond to the attack? Yes. The president today pressed by NBC's Gabe Gutierrez if he holds Iran responsible for the attack. I do hold them responsible in the sense that they're supplying the weapons to the people who did it. The commander-in-chief's decision comes shortly after a U.S. official says the president spoke with members of his national security team this morning. Following this Situation Room meeting Monday, where the president and his top aides analyzed several retaliatory options the Pentagon had presented to him. President Biden's under pressure to respond after U.S. troops were killed by Iranian-backed militant groups for the first time since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, the latest in more than 160 attacks by militias against bases with Americans

during that time. The president has ordered limited strikes in response, but they have not deterred the Iranian-backed groups. Sunday's attack at a remote outpost in Jordan, Tower 22, while U.S. troops were sleeping. The Pentagon is examining whether the explosive enemy drone got past air defenses in a moment of confusion when a U.S. drone was also landing. The president today speaking to the families of the three service members killed 46-year-old Sergeant William Rivers, Sergeant Kennedy Sanders, just 24, and 23-year-old Sergeant Breonna Moffitt. Her parents devastated by the loss. If we knew what we know now, we would have just said, I love you so much.

Just make sure that she knew that she wasn't alone. And that we love her. Tonight, Republican critics say President Biden has not done enough to confront Iran and to deter the attacks. And they're doing nothing that is meaningful. And now we have more gold star families because of it. And it's infuriating. And so, Peter, the president has not revealed what his response will be, including whether he'll take action inside Iran, but giving a clue about what he hopes will not

happen. Lester, the president today said, I don't think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That is not what I'm looking for. His words there. Meanwhile, the president today said, I don't think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That is not what I'm looking for. His words there. Meanwhile, the White House says President Biden will be there at Dover Air Force Base when the bodies of those three U.S. service members return home this Friday. Lester. Peter Alexander starting us off from the White House. Thanks.

Republicans moving forward tonight with impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, accusing him of allowing millions of migrants to cross the border. Ryan Nobles is at the Capitol tonight. Ryan, where does all this go? Lester, right now, a House committee is debating the merits of these articles of impeachment against Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It will likely become a vote for the entire House of Representatives. Republicans are accusing Mayorkas of willfully ignoring the law, and they say that President Biden's border policies have led to a record 8.6 million migrant crossings since President

Biden took office. Now, Mayorkas has said this is nothing more than a political stunt. He's called the accusations against him baseless. He could be the first cabinet secretary impeached in nearly 150 years. It is unlikely, though, that the Senate will convict him. Lesser. Ryan Nobles, thank you. In the Middle East, a dramatic undercover operation in a hospital today by Israeli commandos killing a member of Hamas they say was planning an imminent terror attack. Here's Raf Sanchez. Tonight, security video showing the

dramatic 530 a.m. raid inside a hospital in the occupied West Bank. Those are undercover Israeli commandos, some disguised as medical staff in scrubs, others as Palestinian women in headscarves, their weapons reportedly equipped with silencers. Israel saying the commandos killed a Hamas operative who was planning an imminent terror attack, along with two members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Tonight, those groups acknowledging their members were killed. One was shot at close range while sleeping in his hospital bed, according to medical officials. The Palestinian Authority condemning the raid as a war crime. Israel, of course, has the right to carry out operations to bring terrorists to

justice, but those operations need to be conducted in full compliance with international humanitarian law. It comes as a potential deal to pause the fighting in Gaza for two months and free hostages held by Hamas hangs in the balance. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu under pressure from the far right of his cabinet tonight saying he won't release thousands of terrorists from Israeli prisons, a key Hamas demand. Hamas saying it's studying the proposal, but insisting any deal must end the war, something Israel has rejected. And the families of some of the six American hostages met with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Washington tonight. They got an update on U.S. efforts to broker a deal to free their loved ones. Lester.

Raf Sanchez in Tel Aviv. Thank you. Now to the unprecedented trial of a Michigan school shooter's mother. Prosecutors allege Jennifer Crumley ignored repeated red flags about her son. And today, the jury saw a dramatic video of her in a police car after the massacre. Here's Maggie Vespa. Tonight, recorded in a squad car and played for a jury, a Michigan mom coming to terms with her son's rampage. This is a s***.

My son just ruined his life. I'll never see him again. to terms with her son's rampage. Jennifer Crumley now facing involuntary manslaughter charges for the 2021 Oxford High School shooting during which her then 15-year-old son Ethan killed four students. Prosecutors playing this video from the hours after. In Ethan's two bedrooms, investigators found boarded up windows, a BB gun, and targets riddled with bullet holes. In his parents' bedroom, an empty gun box. Prosecutors arguing Crumbly and her husband, who will be tried separately, ignored warning signs their son could be violent. The defense arguing there's no way she could have prevented the shooting.

Oxford's then dean of students also testifying today. The defense arguing administrators could have done more, including searching Ethan's backpack, which contained a gun. Your conclusion was that the shooter's son was not a threat. There was no threat. Maggie Vespa, NBC News, Chicago. We are watching a powerful storm, a pineapple express heading toward the West Coast tonight with 11 million people under flood alerts. Parts of California could get three to six inches of rain and up to three feet of snow in the mountains. And by the way, they're buried in

snow in Anchorage, Alaska. The city has received more than 100 inches so far this season. Now to our exclusive interview with the CEO of the world's most valuable publicly traded company. Microsoft has boomed as Satya Nadella has gone all in on artificial intelligence. I asked him about its risks and the upcoming election and what comes next. AI feels new to most of us who really kind of discovered its potential within the last year or so. But we talk about the exciting things, detecting and perhaps treating cancer, and then we talk about the worrisome thing, fakes, fraud, disinformation. We've seen that already in the political arena. Does it give you pause as to what the potential and how far you can take this?

Absolutely, in the sense that one of the things that I feel that's very healthy is we're not just talking about all of the things this new technology can do, but we're also talking about the unintended consequences. We have learned, even as a tech industry, is that we have to simultaneously address both of these. How do you really amplify the benefits and dampen the unintended consequences? We're marching down the road to the first AI election. Are you holding your breath as to see how AI can help and how it may be weaponized? In fact, it goes back again. This is not the first election where we dealt with disinformation or propaganda campaigns by adversaries and election interference. So,

therefore, I think what we have to go back again is, for example, I think we are doing all the work across the tech industry around watermarking, detecting deep fakes and content IDs. There's going to be enough and more technology, quite frankly, in order to be able to identify the issues around disinformation and misinformation. Then the question again comes back to how do we build consensus between parties, candidates, and the norms around what is acceptable, not acceptable. You've had the benefit, I presume, of being able to peek around the corner and see what's out there, see what may be coming. Does any of it make you want to put up a stop sign? With all of the technology, I am more in the camp of,

let us make sure that the technology ultimately is just a tool. Microsoft promotes its AI-powered co-pilot software as just that. This is not about replacing the human in the loop. In fact, it's about empowering the human. It's an assistant. It's an assistant. You've talked a lot about guardrails in the past and the need to regulate this industry.

What is it that needs to be under control? When I think about it, there are many, many areas we talked about even in our conversation, which is there is things people talk about if there is AI takeoff, right? One of the existential risks people talk about in AI is what if AI is so powerful that it's not in human control? That obviously is an existential issue for us. In our interview, we also discussed AI's impact on jobs.

I think there will be new job creation, new skills picked up. And yes, there will be overall displacement in the labor market, which I think will be much more dynamic than we give labor markets credit for. I do want to ask you about the New York Times lawsuit against your partner, OpenAI, and yourself about the idea of using their content, using New York Times content to train AI. It does kind of open up a thought about where this information comes from and who ultimately benefits.

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that is going to be very, very important is both what is the copyright protection as well as what is fair use in a world where there is transformative new technology. I think that that's really where the copyright laws have to essentially now be interpreted for what is a new transformation technology. We have done this in the past. I'm sure we'll come out with the right set of guidelines on what is used for training. And we talked about the recent hack on Microsoft corporate systems that the company says was carried out by a Russian state-sponsored group. It set off some alarm bells on Capitol Hill in the sense of how much reliance the government

has on Microsoft. Tell me about the alarm bells in Washington state at your headquarters. You know, when you have an adversary who is a nation state or a country that has got institutional sort of strength or organizations that are both well-resourced and are relentless and attacking, I'm glad that we have the capability we have to even detect what they're doing. I really, really hope, whether it's the U.S., it's about Russia or China in particular, these are the three powers who need to come together and really settle on some Geneva Convention. Because if this is about two nation states attacking each other, and especially

civilian targets, then we are in a very new world order. And it's a breakdown of world order, which I think we've not seen before. Part of my interview with Microsoft's Satya Nadella. Still ahead, the fentanyl crisis, our exclusive look at whether new cooperation with China will make a difference in battling the overdose epidemic. It's been called the worst drug crisis in American history, the fentanyl epidemic. The U.S. has said chemicals from China are fueling it. But today, after years of frosty relations, U.S. and Chinese officials raised hopes of stemming the flow. Janice Mackey-Frayer is in Beijing. With the opioid crisis ravaging the U.S.,

the first direct cooperation in years from China, aimed at limiting the trade of substances from China's vast chemicals industry to drug cartels in Mexico, where it's synthesized to make fentanyl 50 times more powerful than heroin that's killing so many Americans. That's the framework for meetings between U.S. and Chinese officials here. For Americans who are wondering, can it really work, what would you tell them? I would tell them? I would tell them that this is an important step. We obviously have areas of disagreements with China, but there are areas of mutual cooperation.

These renewed talks follow a deal struck by President Biden and China's President Xi Jinping. The tradeoff? Removing a Chinese police forensics facility from a U.S. entity list. Sanctions that included the National Narcotics Lab. NBC News was given rare access to the lab, where Chinese authorities say they're tracking new chemicals used by drug traffickers. As a chemist, I know that if you put these chemicals in the control list, they will quickly shift to others. Still, China sees the crisis as a U.S. demand problem. Yu Haibin is deputy director of China's Narcotics Control Bureau. We need to collaborate even more closely than the criminals do, he says.

I understand there are doubts in the U.S. about China's sincerity. U.S.-China relations have stabilized, though on fentanyl, experts are skeptical beyond what both sides cautiously call a good first step. Janice Mackey-Ferrer, NBC News, Beijing. And still to come here tonight, we'll peer into Apple's bold vision of the future. We're back now with Apple's new vision of the future. Some say it's a game changer, but others ask, is it worth the price? Days before it officially goes on sale, Savannah Sellers has an inside look. Apple's foray into mixed reality with its Vision Pro headset hit stores Friday, but NBC News tech contributor Joanna Stern helped us get an early look. This thing does a lot of cool things, but it is a first generation product. And at $3,499, it's a pricey product calling into question.

Who's this for right now? There's probably two groups of people this is for. Apple diehards and then software developers who are thinking about developing their apps for this new platform. I just had to put my contacts in. Yeah, you can't wear glasses with it, but you can get these special lens inserts with your prescription and it works great. Your eyes now essentially your cursor. It is amazing how it knows what I'm looking at. And a simple pinching movement replaces a mouse click. This command center feeling is really interesting. It's designed for office work, entertainment, even household chores. If we were cooking, you'd have that up on the right-hand

side of your kitchen. So let's make a timer for five minutes, pinch and hold, and drag it over here to this. Wow. Tech enthusiasts do have their critiques, including the headset's weight and the external battery pack. It's bulky. It's heavy. It has a short battery life. It can be buggy, but it is very cool. What makes this different is that you are seeing your real world and possibly a glimpse of the future through tech-tinted glasses. Savannah Sellers, NBC News, New York. And that's nightly news for this Tuesday. Thank you for watching, everyone.

I'm Lester Holt. Please take care of yourself and each other. Good night.