Maryland Gov. Wes Moore & the AI Buildout 9/15/26

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Bring in show music, please.

Katie Kramer (1:00)

Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod.

2026 is midterm election in under 50 days. Will public opinion on technology and AI weaken the Republican agenda and the majority? Maryland's Democratic Governor Wes Moore.

Wes Moore (1:17)

I think there's a collective, honestly just bewilderment in the way that we've been approaching AI collectively.

Katie Kramer (1:24)

The artificial intelligence inflection point, the pace and the power. We'll hear from the manufacturing CEO who built a new company to fill the gap we aren't talking about. How to make it all run. Flex's Revathi Advaithi.

Revathi Advaithi (1:38)

I will tell you we're behind on infrastructure in every way.

Katie Kramer (1:42)

Across the country.

Revathi Advaithi (1:43)

Across the country, mainly talking the US at this point in time, particularly around the power sector.

Katie Kramer (1:51)

Plus, these AIs, do they really want to kill us or just take over our lives and economy and tear away any sense of human community?

Joe Kernen (1:59)

By the time it really happens, I'll be wheeling myself around and just shaking my fist like I do at clouds. You're already doing that, so we're there.

Katie Kramer (2:09)

It's Tuesday, September 15th, 2026 Squawk Pod begins right now.

Andrew Ross Sorkin (2:15)

Stand Becky by in 3, 2, 1 Cue, please.

Rebecca Quick (2:20)

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square.

I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernen and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Hi. Good morning.

Andrew Ross Sorkin (2:33)

Meantime, President Trump now doubling down on his defense of AI and American businesses, moving full speed ahead, he says, into the technology. In a series of social media posts yesterday, the president backed data centers and called claims that AI could take over the world a hoax. In an early afternoon Truth Social Post, the president asked, when in the history of business did anyone see the leaders of an industry call for regulation that, if strongly implemented, would drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy? Earlier, he blasted Anthropix CEO Dario Amadei and said, the only controls or guardrails that AI needs is a strong and smart, high IQ president, and the USA has that in spades!

At one point, the president called Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as Huang was on stage at the All-Inn Summit in Los Angeles. Huang ends up putting the president on speakerphone, where he again called fears over AI a hoax.

SPEAKER_10 (3:30)

Data centers are great and they make people wealthy and they make states wealthy and it's the oil of the next 20, 25 years. It's bigger than the internet and the AI. You know, much more so and they're just playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don't want to see it happen and that could be political people and it could also be China and we're not going to let that happen.

SPEAKER_11 (3:53)

It's a hoax and you're right, we're not going to let that happen, sir.

SPEAKER_10 (3:58)

No, we're not going to let it happen and the robots are not going to be taking over the world and that's not going to happen.

Andrew Ross Sorkin (4:06)

President Trump also recently spoke with another top tech leader as MSNOW saying that Open AICO Sam Altman met with the president backstage at the GOP midterm convention last Thursday following the viral warning from former anthropic researcher Jacob Coxson about his concerns about what's happening with AI.

Joe Kernen (4:26)

We're going to beat it to death but I don't know, I slept okay last night. I told you the one thing that gives me pauses is Musk. I mean, if Musk hadn't said it, I'd be writing it off probably almost completely. But I'm just a little bit bummed because I haven't even had a chance to breathe a little easier about the climate apocalypse. Now that that's over and immediately back to this. What is shocking is that Skynet and the possibility of Skynet, it seems so science fiction like with Terminator. We've actually had someone say, I think it was yesterday, I guess it was yesterday, maybe last week, that if you had overall AI controlling thousands of really functional human-like robots. And drones. And drones.