July 2, 2025 • 6 mins
ABC News tech reporter Mike Dobuski joins the show for ‘Wired Wednesday.’ Today, Mike discusses all the tech stuff in the Republican spending bill and shares an update on Trump mobile.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's say good morning now to ABC's Mike Debusky.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Morning, Mike, good morning. How are you? And I will
say I'm with you on the bear. Actually I'm a
little out on the bear.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I know, I'm really I'm not happy with it.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Lost me after three after season three.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Yeah, season three was I didn't like it at all.
I loved season one, I loved season two. Season three
I was like what And then season four there were
moments of greatness, I think, but then it slid back
into the we'll talk about them more.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, Let's.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Talk about the issue at hand, and that is technology
that's wrapped into the big beautiful bill. So what are
some things that are in the bill that could affect us.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
So one of the big tech provisions that was going
to be in the bill was actually stripped out of
the Senate Republican spending Bill at the last minute. And
this was one that got a lot of attention, and
it's still worth talking about just because it could crop
up in another form, either as a standalone piece of
legislation or bundled into a future bill. It was known
as the AI Moratorium, and this was a provision that
(00:59):
was written by Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Ted Cruz
of Texas, and it essentially instituted a temporary pause on
state level AI regulation, meaning if you're a state government,
you for a set period of time would not have
been able to pass any legislation with certain carve outs
related to artificial intelligence. And originally that was going to
(01:21):
be a ten year pause, then it was a five
year pause. And the idea here that lawmakers and many
in the AI industry had was that they wanted to
prevent this patchwork from emerging across the country that these
AI companies were going to have to navigate either you know,
having Google sort of figure out conflicting laws in different
you know, parts of the country. And more importantly, these
(01:44):
smaller AI companies that make sort of more tailored services
to certain industries, whether it be you know, manufacturing or
medicine or what have you. You know, they don't necessarily
have the lawyers that Google or Open Ai has to
sort of figure out all of that sort of thing.
So the concern there was that this was going to
disadvantage smaller companies. It was going to hinder the larger
(02:05):
company's ability to focus on developing super advanced intelligence at
a moment when we're in an AI race with China
and we don't want to take our foot off the gas.
That was the argument in favor of this piece of legislation. However,
there was a lot of opposition to it. There's a
lot of pushback both from Democrats and from Republicans. Seventeen
Republican governors wrote to Majority Leader John Thune House Speaker
(02:28):
Mike Johnson calling for this AI moratorium to be stripped
out of the bill. And even in the AI space,
there was a little bit of pushback, with Dario Amidae,
who is the CEO of Anthropic, writing that this is
a blunt instrument that gives us the worst of both
possible worlds. It stops states from being able to legislate
quickly on a quickly developing technology, and it does not
(02:49):
allow for a federal backstop. Right there's no federal AI
legislation that these states could fall back on.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Okay, wait, so then my question, Mike, is as it
stands now since I was stripped out. Yeah, the takeaway
is that right now AI's on a free for all.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
The takeaway right now actually is that states still have
the ability to legislate on this and many do.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
You have that patchwork that you were talking.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
About, You still have that patchwork. And interestingly enough, there's
been some analysis of the more than one thousand state
level laws governing artificial intelligence in some capacity or another
that suggests that this idea that it's going to be
really hard for Google to figure out like all these
varying sort of state level laws, is maybe a little overblown.
A lot of these state laws sort of overlap with
(03:34):
one another. For example, about a dozen states across the
country have laws that have to do with protecting against
like political deep fakes and whatnot, so it's actually kind
of similar in that regard. So it's not, you know,
necessarily that these guys are going to be thrown to
the wind, though, you know, I was talking to some
experts yesterday who also say that this concern that the
(03:55):
smaller guys in the AI space could be left out
in the cold here just because they don't have, you know,
the backing or the money to pay for lawyers to
figure all of this out. You know, it is a
real one. So it's going to be interesting to see
if this crops up in any future legislation Marsha Blackburn,
as we said, co authored this bill, but she was
actually the one who reversed her position on it and
(04:16):
was kind of, you know, in favor of stripping it
out of the deal. So, you know, she teamed up
with Ted Cruz. Maybe those two get back together and
figure something else out. But you know, as of this point,
it is now up to the states to figure out
kind of how to regulate AI. We're still waiting on
the federal government for sort of more broad reaching governance
of artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Okay, and then here's my thought before we move on
to the Trump's self. One thing is why do they
need lawyers? Just ask their own AI. Hey, did these
bills overlap? Do they with each other?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Just ask your AI buddy.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Well, that gets at the crucial problem with AI, and
in fact, why many say that it needs regulation is
that this hallucinates and it makes mistakes. In fact, in
the law section of the in the law sector, some
lawyers have used artificial intelligence to summarize briefs to you know,
get more information on a case, and they've hallucinated. They've
made up crimes that didn't happen, accused people of all
(05:09):
sorts of things, This technology, for as advanced as it
is and for as much hype as it gets, is
still fundamentally flawed. Right, It is still imperfect, and it
still you know, you know, makes mistakes. It always needs
to be double checked, and that's why there is some
degree of need for governance. Here.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Here's my latest example. I just fact checked it because
I asked about the Dodgers' score this morning, and it's
said that the Dodgers in the White Sox played on
Monday night, July first, and I went, you know what,
there was no Monday night, July first, Tuesday night. Okay,
we don't really have time to talk about the big
(05:46):
beautiful mobile service.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
But is it moving along or is it stalled?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Well, it is changing, I think is maybe the takeaway here.
Two weeks ago, the Trump Organization announced that they are
going to be making a smartphone. They called it the
T one eight thousand and two Goals version, and they
said it was going to be a six point eight
in screen, it was going to cost five hundred dollars,
is going to be an Android device, and it was
going to be built in the USA. Well, now, the
website for this phone, no one has touched this phone
(06:10):
or played around with it at all. The website for
this phone has changed some of those you know, specific specs.
They've changed the size of the screen, and they now
say that it is proudly American, not built in America.
So it seems to imply that it's not going to
be built in America. No surprise there. No major smartphones
are built in America. We don't really have the infrastructure
to do that at this point without great cost and
(06:32):
great expenditure, which made many people skeptical of the Trump
organization being able to do that for a five hundred
dollars price tag. It seems a lot of that skepticism
was warranted.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Wasn't the T one.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
To eight thousand, like the name of the terminators?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
It was the T one thousand if I'm were calling
from two.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Okay, Mike Debuski, ABC, thank you so much. Appreciated.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
As always, of course, guys, take care.
Let's say good morning now to ABC's Mike Debusky.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Morning, Mike, good morning. How are you? And I will
say I'm with you on the bear. Actually I'm a
little out on the bear.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I know, I'm really I'm not happy with it.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Lost me after three after season three.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Yeah, season three was I didn't like it at all.
I loved season one, I loved season two. Season three
I was like what And then season four there were
moments of greatness, I think, but then it slid back
into the we'll talk about them more.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, Let's.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Talk about the issue at hand, and that is technology
that's wrapped into the big beautiful bill. So what are
some things that are in the bill that could affect us.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
So one of the big tech provisions that was going
to be in the bill was actually stripped out of
the Senate Republican spending Bill at the last minute. And
this was one that got a lot of attention, and
it's still worth talking about just because it could crop
up in another form, either as a standalone piece of
legislation or bundled into a future bill. It was known
as the AI Moratorium, and this was a provision that
(00:59):
was written by Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Ted Cruz
of Texas, and it essentially instituted a temporary pause on
state level AI regulation, meaning if you're a state government,
you for a set period of time would not have
been able to pass any legislation with certain carve outs
related to artificial intelligence. And originally that was going to
(01:21):
be a ten year pause, then it was a five
year pause. And the idea here that lawmakers and many
in the AI industry had was that they wanted to
prevent this patchwork from emerging across the country that these
AI companies were going to have to navigate either you know,
having Google sort of figure out conflicting laws in different
you know, parts of the country. And more importantly, these
(01:44):
smaller AI companies that make sort of more tailored services
to certain industries, whether it be you know, manufacturing or
medicine or what have you. You know, they don't necessarily
have the lawyers that Google or Open Ai has to
sort of figure out all of that sort of thing.
So the concern there was that this was going to
disadvantage smaller companies. It was going to hinder the larger
(02:05):
company's ability to focus on developing super advanced intelligence at
a moment when we're in an AI race with China
and we don't want to take our foot off the gas.
That was the argument in favor of this piece of legislation. However,
there was a lot of opposition to it. There's a
lot of pushback both from Democrats and from Republicans. Seventeen
Republican governors wrote to Majority Leader John Thune House Speaker
(02:28):
Mike Johnson calling for this AI moratorium to be stripped
out of the bill. And even in the AI space,
there was a little bit of pushback, with Dario Amidae,
who is the CEO of Anthropic, writing that this is
a blunt instrument that gives us the worst of both
possible worlds. It stops states from being able to legislate
quickly on a quickly developing technology, and it does not
(02:49):
allow for a federal backstop. Right there's no federal AI
legislation that these states could fall back on.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Okay, wait, so then my question, Mike, is as it
stands now since I was stripped out. Yeah, the takeaway
is that right now AI's on a free for all.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
The takeaway right now actually is that states still have
the ability to legislate on this and many do.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
You have that patchwork that you were talking.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
About, You still have that patchwork. And interestingly enough, there's
been some analysis of the more than one thousand state
level laws governing artificial intelligence in some capacity or another
that suggests that this idea that it's going to be
really hard for Google to figure out like all these
varying sort of state level laws, is maybe a little overblown.
A lot of these state laws sort of overlap with
(03:34):
one another. For example, about a dozen states across the
country have laws that have to do with protecting against
like political deep fakes and whatnot, so it's actually kind
of similar in that regard. So it's not, you know,
necessarily that these guys are going to be thrown to
the wind, though, you know, I was talking to some
experts yesterday who also say that this concern that the
(03:55):
smaller guys in the AI space could be left out
in the cold here just because they don't have, you know,
the backing or the money to pay for lawyers to
figure all of this out. You know, it is a
real one. So it's going to be interesting to see
if this crops up in any future legislation Marsha Blackburn,
as we said, co authored this bill, but she was
actually the one who reversed her position on it and
(04:16):
was kind of, you know, in favor of stripping it
out of the deal. So, you know, she teamed up
with Ted Cruz. Maybe those two get back together and
figure something else out. But you know, as of this point,
it is now up to the states to figure out
kind of how to regulate AI. We're still waiting on
the federal government for sort of more broad reaching governance
of artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Okay, and then here's my thought before we move on
to the Trump's self. One thing is why do they
need lawyers? Just ask their own AI. Hey, did these
bills overlap? Do they with each other?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Just ask your AI buddy.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Well, that gets at the crucial problem with AI, and
in fact, why many say that it needs regulation is
that this hallucinates and it makes mistakes. In fact, in
the law section of the in the law sector, some
lawyers have used artificial intelligence to summarize briefs to you know,
get more information on a case, and they've hallucinated. They've
made up crimes that didn't happen, accused people of all
(05:09):
sorts of things, This technology, for as advanced as it
is and for as much hype as it gets, is
still fundamentally flawed. Right, It is still imperfect, and it
still you know, you know, makes mistakes. It always needs
to be double checked, and that's why there is some
degree of need for governance. Here.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Here's my latest example. I just fact checked it because
I asked about the Dodgers' score this morning, and it's
said that the Dodgers in the White Sox played on
Monday night, July first, and I went, you know what,
there was no Monday night, July first, Tuesday night. Okay,
we don't really have time to talk about the big
(05:46):
beautiful mobile service.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
But is it moving along or is it stalled?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Well, it is changing, I think is maybe the takeaway here.
Two weeks ago, the Trump Organization announced that they are
going to be making a smartphone. They called it the
T one eight thousand and two Goals version, and they
said it was going to be a six point eight
in screen, it was going to cost five hundred dollars,
is going to be an Android device, and it was
going to be built in the USA. Well, now, the
website for this phone, no one has touched this phone
(06:10):
or played around with it at all. The website for
this phone has changed some of those you know, specific specs.
They've changed the size of the screen, and they now
say that it is proudly American, not built in America.
So it seems to imply that it's not going to
be built in America. No surprise there. No major smartphones
are built in America. We don't really have the infrastructure
to do that at this point without great cost and
(06:32):
great expenditure, which made many people skeptical of the Trump
organization being able to do that for a five hundred
dollars price tag. It seems a lot of that skepticism
was warranted.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Wasn't the T one.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
To eight thousand, like the name of the terminators?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
It was the T one thousand if I'm were calling
from two.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Okay, Mike Debuski, ABC, thank you so much. Appreciated.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
As always, of course, guys, take care.
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