11AM Hour: Former Tesla President Jon McNeill, OpenAI President's First Comments on Executive Exodus & AI Heads to the High Seas 8/17/26

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Carl Quintanilla (1:03)

Good Monday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Leslie Picker here at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Sara Eisen is off today. We'll speak to a top market strategist this morning about why he's bullish on the biotech and defense sectors right now, plus the key catalysts that he's watching for in this market.

Leslie Picker (1:18)

Then former Tesla president Jon McNeill will join us. That says Tesla reportedly plans to unveil a design for a flying roadster. How that could set the stage for further integration of Tesla and SpaceX.

Carl Quintanilla (1:29)

The president of OpenAI addressing those recent departures from the company for the first time this morning on Squawk Box. We'll get you those comments, plus what he's saying when it comes to AI security. As for markets, a little bit of softening here after three straight weeks of gains. We're back to 77-73. VIX is still sub-15.

Energy's given up some gains this morning and so have yields. We did get to almost 529 on the long bond, coming back just about a basis point or two.

Leslie Picker (1:58)

We'll start with the latest developments on the war with Iran. Eamon Javars joins us now.

Ayman Javers (2:04)

On social media yesterday, signaling a pivot away from US ally South Korea and announcing he has scaled down planned joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises. The president cited warming relations with North Korea as one reason for the shift. He wrote on social media, These exercises are not only costly with much of the costs paid for by the United States as usual, but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile to a country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been president, has been unthreatening and respectful. Trump also cited South Korea's lack of cooperation in the military campaign against Iran as another reason for his shift, writing, I recently asked the president of South Korea if they would like to join us in the denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said no thanks.

Meanwhile, in a comment to Fox News this morning, the president threatened to, quote, bomb the S out of Oman if that country gets in the way of US efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Now, Omani negotiators have been in conversations with Iran about a new regulatory regime for that crucial strait, an agreement that reportedly could include fees or tolls for international shipping. In response to the president's comments, a senior Middle Eastern diplomat with direct knowledge of the talks told MS Now's Ian Sherwood this morning that Oman is focused on working toward a solution that leads to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. It's their primary objective, this official said. That comment, guys, though, doesn't really respond to the rost of the president's criticism or indicate if the Omanis are likely to back off this emerging agreement with Iran. So for now, it is still an open question as to who's going to control that strait, what the tolls will be and whether it will be in US favor.

Leslie Picker (3:59)

Yeah, there are a lot of open questions. Eamon, this also ends the 60 day ceasefire between the US and Iran. What happens now?

Ayman Javers (4:07)

Well, that ceasefire was largely defunct anyway. I mean, all sides had acknowledged that those talks had broken down. The president is signalling in his interview with Fox News this morning that there might be some back channel communications with the Iranians. So presumably on some level, there is some contact still between the United States and Iran. We haven't seen those stepped up attacks by the US in recent weeks. So there is sort of this cooling off period and the president had suggested that he wants to kind of just muddle through with the Iranians. So we may be in a situation, Leslie, where the situation kind of doesn't resolve itself for months and months. The president's signaling on television this morning, you know, he's fine if this goes through the midterm elections in November. So I think what had been billed as a four to six week excursion, as the president put it, obviously now he's contemplating going through the latter part of this year with this situation unresolved. I think markets should start to expect that this doesn't get resolved that time soon.