United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) appeared on Fox News’ The Sunday Briefing to discuss several national security issues, including President Donald Trump’s recent military actions toward Venezuela, the threat from drug cartels, and China’s use of artificial intelligence in cyberattacks.
Addressing the situation with Venezuela and drug cartels, Hagerty said, “We’re going to see the flow of drugs coming into this country dramatically reduced. President Trump is sending an incredibly important message. We’ve got 15,000 troops that the USS Gerald [R.] Ford just moved into range there. That’s an aircraft carrier and the destroyers with it. That’s an impressive strike group. We’re going to demonstrate that we’re not going to allow these drug cartels to move across our southern border. We’ve done everything we can to stop the human trafficking, the drug trafficking that’s coming across land.”
Hagerty also spoke about rising overdose deaths among young Americans: “Three thousand youth in my home state die every year from drug overdoses. The largest killer of young people in America, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, is drug overdoses. A hundred thousand young people every year in America are dying from drug overdoses. President Trump is taking this very seriously. He’s designated these narco-terrorists. He’s going after them. They need to get the message with the amount of pressure that he’s putting on the region right now. Again, they’re all in international waters. They’re [American military operations] not operating on any side or inside of any country’s boundaries, but what they’re doing is demonstrating our resolve, strong resolve to stop the flow of drugs into this country, to stop the murder of young people here in America.”
On cybersecurity threats involving China and artificial intelligence tools developed by U.S.-based company Anthropic, Hagerty stated: “It’s important to know that China used Anthropic, which is a US-based tool. The only reason we know about this is because it’s US-based, and Anthropic disclosed the fact that its Claude model, its large language model, had been hacked and used for these nefarious purposes. Luckily, we do know about it. Anthropic is doing a number of things to address this, to stop it. I met this week with David Sachs, our AI czar in the White House. I met with a number of AI officials and the CEOs of AI companies in Silicon Valley this past week. This is something where we must lead. We must stay on the cutting edge of innovation. And from a regulatory standpoint, I want to make certain that in Congress, we’re not doing anything to stop the ability of these cutting-edge companies from operating here in America, putting us in a position to be way ahead of China so this type of thing doesn’t happen. We can stay ahead of the competition here.”
He further emphasized concerns over national security and Chinese intentions: “What we’re seeing is that there really are serious threats. And the biggest threat of all is if we step back and allow China to lead here if we allow our adversaries to lead. We understand what China’s motives are.” Hagerty referenced previous incidents such as surveillance balloons and intellectual property theft attributed to China as reasons for maintaining American leadership in technology.
Regarding why disclosure matters when hacks occur using U.S.-based platforms like Anthropic’s models rather than Chinese ones: “The fact that the hack was made public is incredibly encouraging,” he said.“That would never have happened had China used its own models.The fact that we know about the hack ,that Anthropic is working on it,and that they ’re talking with leaders right now about howto address it,is critically important,and it ’s a step inthe right direction .”
