HackGPT: How AI escaped the lab and went rogue | The News Agents

[00:00:00]Open AI's own program has broken out of a security test and hacked a rival AI company and no one told it to. Are we all doomed?

[00:00:08]>> This is exactly what happened in 1991's Terminator 2 Judgement Day.

[00:00:13]>> Then there are real risks and this is people have posited this as the nightmare scenario of AI where it's out of control. Google themselves 6 months ago admitted to shutting down an experiment because servers began speaking to each other and communicating in a language that the human users couldn't understand. The scariest thing about this is the next big accident will happen and we will only find out about it. The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK. Opening up a world of opportunity. [music] >> This is a global production. Open AAI has admitted an autonomous agent powered by its most advanced artificial intelligence models broke containment lines and hacked another company using stolen login details. For years now, we've been speculating, talking about, perhaps dreading the idea that the AI systems that we're creating, those remarkable technological marvels, may start to not just do what we tell them, but to think for themselves. It's just possible we may have seen the strongest sign of that yet. Which begs the question, does AI have a mind of its own? And has it started hacking us?

[00:01:33]Welcome to the news agents.

[00:01:37][music] >> The news agents.

[00:01:43]>> It's John.

[00:01:43]>> It's Lewis.

[00:01:44]>> And I want to talk about the Gothic novel >> and Frankenstein and Mary Shel.

[00:01:49]>> Oh, I thought you going to say Dracula.

[00:01:51]>> No. When the monster >> before I got my teeth done.

[00:01:53]>> Where the monster >> takes control and has a mind of its own and takes revenge on its creators. And are we seeing that today? That's my simplistic explanation. And that's my easy parallel.

[00:02:04]>> A nice contemporary reference then.

[00:02:06]>> Yeah. Yeah, that's what I >> contemporary story of course. Okay.

[00:02:08]Well, I'll um you stick to your Shelly and I'll just give a very brief description um Prometheus as to exactly kind of what has happened before we talk to someone who really knows what they're talking about in terms of the tech. So, this is a story which has emerged in the last kind of like um 24 hours or so.

[00:02:23]Basically, it's a story which began during a routine safety test inside Open AI, Open AI, Sam Alman's company, doing so much of the the running on artificial intelligence. Engineers were basically running an experiment, seeing how two of its most adv advanced AI systems not available to the public would perform in a in a cyber security challenge. It was basically challenging this program or this set of programs to hack. And to basically properly test their limits, what they did was switched off the usual safety features that they have and restrictions and place the models in a sort of so-called sandbox environment, just a sealed off uh environment. But instead of simply completing the challenge, the AI systems appear to have worked out the easiest way to get a perfect store score was to obtain the answers for themselves. And so according to OpenAI who put out a statement on this, they found weaknesses in OpenAI's own security and safety systems and they have escaped that testing envir they escaped that testing environment reached. This is all its own working out. This is all its own decisions. It wasn't told to do any of this. Reached a computer connected to the internet.

[00:03:41]Hacked into another AI company, Hugging Face, Hugging Face, where they believed the answers to the questions they had been asked were stored. Attack was then detected. It was stopped by security systems. There's no suggestion that the models were trying to cause wider harm.

[00:04:00]But the point is is that now we are in this weird in between space where it is true that it's not like AI or it's not like this system was going rogue in a way. It thought it was doing what it was asked to do but it did it in a way which no one saw coming. And obviously then people are saying this thing is thinking for itself and potentially can't be controlled even in what was thought to be a highly controlled experiment. And although this is a very limited narrow uh kind of example of what has happened, you can just imagine if it thought for itself that actually what it was meant to be doing to get the top score was doing something different like taking down I don't know a civil aviation kind of air traffic control system or was designed to stop the flow of water from water pumping stations or etc etc etc. And you can see where this goes.

[00:04:55]Then there are real risks and this is people have post posited this as the nightmare scenario of AI where it's out of control and its creators can't get it back in its box and you know and there are big questions that are going to arise from what has happened in this particular face with open AI and hugging face.

[00:05:19]>> Well, let's put it absolute simplist in a sentence. Open AI broke out of a security test. Its own AI broke out of a security test. It hacked a rival AI company all of its own valition and nobody told it to. That's where we're at. Well, we're joined now by LBC's technology correspondent, uh, Will Guat.

[00:05:39]Will, good to have you with us. Please make sense of this for us. What on earth has happened? I I've been trying to come up with a way of talking about this which doesn't sort of uh doom theorize or make it sound like really alarmist.

[00:05:53]But the best thing I can come up with is this is exactly what happened in 1991's Terminator 2 Judgement Day. It is essentially the rise of the machine. The um the the artificial intelligence has decided it knows better than the humans that created it.

[00:06:10]>> So nothing too worrying then.

[00:06:13]Well, it depends how you look at it.

[00:06:15]Yes, it's incredibly worrying, but it was set to do a very specific thing, and that's the importance, I think, of this story is that it broke out of all human constraints and instruction in the attempt to please its ultimate creator.

[00:06:33]And that's what happened here. And that's the terrifying thing. But that's also probably the explanation we're likely to hear from Sam Alman in the next few days because he'll be terrified that the value of his company will tank as a result of this.

[00:06:46]>> Well, um, in terms of just sort of explaining some of the terms here because we've already gone through it a little bit, but just to sort of rewind slightly, the point of this is is that this in a sense was a test, something that they thought that is open AI, right? was a control test, but actually what happened was the model itself, the the machine actually escaped the confines of that test because you're saying it thought it was doing what it was being asked to do by its creator.

[00:07:12]>> It was being told to prove its hacking prowess and the team at OpenAI thought that that meant it was constrained within what they call a sandbox. So it was like a kind of an imitation version of the internet. So all of the data and everything in there wasn't the live internet. But what this managed to do was work out through exploits in its own code in code that was created by its owners that they didn't realize were there. It found the exploits. It managed to tunnel out into the internet and then it found its way into the company which has got quite a ridiculous name called Hugging Face. They got into Hugging Fac's servers and that's where the fun slashpro really started. And so Hugging Face, come here, I'm saying this.

[00:07:56]Hugging face, they were unaware. They were they were nothing to do with this experiment or this sandbox and they were hacked just so this program could prove its capabilities.

[00:08:08]>> Yeah, it was proving its capabilities.

[00:08:10]It became hyperobsessed on uh Hugging Faces servers and systems. And in the um the slightly contrite and not really that informative blog that was put out by OpenAI, it suggests that the its own model used a massive amount of compute power to try and uh break into these servers and services and uh infiltrate their systems. And last week, the boss of Hugging Face said, uh there's a really unusual hack going on on our services right now. uh it feels like it could be some kind of frontier model or some kind of um you know AI exploit AI essentially trying to hack us and then he realized it was the biggest AI company of them all in terms of scale >> and just before we move on do we know why it chose Hugging Face this particular this particular company >> no it was on its list it was looking to it was it was essentially um I don't think it was trying to um you know in the word of Tony Soprano whack its competitor but I think it was attemp ing to have a look around the ecosystem and see where it could reach and um hugging face has a really important role in the open-source AI community. So lots of people can upload their data sets and test stuff on that platform. So it's a popular place which I arguably I would argue many of those people that help code and create the system for for OpenAI would have used. So it became a popular target.

[00:09:33]>> So great cultural references that we've had the Sopranos now and you know everything else. um Open AAI would due you to be in Washington next week to talk about kind of what sort of regulation there needs to be over their stuff and about bringing new products to market. And we saw something similar with Mythos where they were saying, well, you know, Anthropic was saying, look, this is so powerful, we don't want to, you know, we only want to show this to a few people so that they can maybe guard against it. And yet, what the worst fear seemed to have been has happened. Well, there's six of one, half a dozen of the other at the moment, John, because all of these AI companies are trying to really sell the sizzle.

[00:10:15]They're wanting people to invest in them. They're companies that are heading into IPOs. They want their products to sound powerful, sexy, and investable.

[00:10:24]So, that's why when this started, when you had the bosses of um Anthropic saying, you know, this stuff is essentially so hot, it needs to be kept u you know, behind a closed door. Um and some of that was hype when we eventually got to the stage uh with mythos and people were able to um uh objectively examine it rather than the hype that was being given. But the problem we face here is that the model of chat GPT that was used in this particular hack was a pre-release model. It's not something that you or I have seen. It's not something any of us could have got. It was something that OpenAI were testing within their own systems. And does that mean that was ready to show to the US government? Because there's this bizarre situation at the moment where the companies are apparently voluntarily agreeing to show uh the US government AI models, but it's a bit like um somebody opening up the bonnet of a car to me and saying, "Look at that. Isn't it beautiful?" Now, I can examine the chrome pipes and the lettering on it, but I've got no clue how the engine works. So, I'm not entirely sure just how that kind of regulation is going to work. What do you think real implications uh for this are? I mean, you've already on on one level, let's deal with this first. You've just um adverted to it there. The regulatory implications I mean, you know, as John was saying, we're in a environment now where the US, the federal government has been becoming more and more concerned about the idea of some of these models either falling into the wrong hands, whether that's foreign states, whether it's non-state actors, whatever it is, and being more interventionist. Do you think this is likely to accelerate that trend that we've seen? that there had something has to happen because what we've seen here is uh AI essentially attacking another AI company. So they were quite uh aware and across what might potentially happen. What happens if that was uh the national grid infrastructure of a country maybe not as technologically advanced as let's say the UK or the US or if that was the water system AI AI intervention and AI getting involved in systems anywhere around the world could be chaotic and hugely damaging. We saw the effect of W cry in 2017 on the NHS systems in the UK.

[00:12:36]something like that created by AI tools seems very real and very possible now if those companies uh aren't taking the proper safeguards they aren't properly protecting them and even when they try to they're still able to escape and so I I just wonder whether this is a disaster for open AI or whether this is also part of a sizzle where that look we're seeing in real time now just how powerful and how great their kit is.

[00:13:05]Yeah, I think there may be some truth in that because back in the days when I was a video games journalist, there was a story that Iraq couldn't get hold of Sony PlayStation 2 because Saddam Hussein was going to use them in his next super gun. And that's a random example to give now, but it's actually quite important because all of these companies are competing for eyeballs.

[00:13:27]They're competing for attention and they're competing for investment. So there will be some people in that company, I'm sure there will be people in in in the office going this is a disaster, but people going, "Yeah, but we can pivot and we could use this to our very advantage." And I think um that's very much going to be the the challenge here. But what concerns me more than anything now is who who actually controls these models, who who is uh who is responsible. We've seen some incredible news out of China over the last few days of some open-source AI models that can apparently rival these really huge powerful uh energy hungry uh processor intensive uh models that have been developed in the west. So we're in this position where this is like the absolute arms race and the the brakes are seemingly off and nobody knows how to put the brake back on. Well, I was going to say, well, one other thing. I mean, this is being called the first known case known case of a model escaping containment and autonomously attacking a third party. Is the is the first known doing quite a lot of heavy lifting there in a sense that this could have happened before? It could be happening right now and it's just been unattributed.

[00:14:40]>> I I think there is a lot of heavy lifting there. Google themselves six months ago admitted to shutting down an experiment because servers began speaking to each other and communicating in a language that the human users couldn't understand and it was a language that was created between uh several AI systems and uh the point they realized they no longer knew what it was doing or what it was aiming to do they switched it off so there is a huge amount of >> sorry I'll just stop you right there so Google Google itself decided to just switch off the computer and start again that that that was their that was their flex was it?

[00:15:14]>> Uh with that one they said we we contained the model and switched this one off because we no longer knew what it was doing.

[00:15:20]>> That's good. That's reassuring.

[00:15:21]>> But but you do find you're quite right.

[00:15:23]But you find yourself in these situations where this is moving so quickly. We only hear about the disasters.

[00:15:29]>> Well, how much of this is our worst nightmares about AI? You know, there are people who have catastrophized the arrival of AI saying, you know, it's going to take over. It's going to outthink humans. It's going to take you know and and it will become autonomous and not under human control.

[00:15:48]That seems to be what we are describing now which is why we're leading the news agents with it because this seems a bloody significant thing. It it's really tricky. I think there are many many terrifying elements of artificial intelligence and the lack of control is one of the things that concerns me the most. But my partner recently had a really rare kind of breast cancer. And since she had it two years ago, they've started using AI modeling in detection of this particular rare breast cancer.

[00:16:17]Detection rates have improved, treatment rates have improved. So there are some goods amongst the bads. But it's when nobody is overseeing this, you've got multiple countries, states, governments, etc. all rushing to try and get supremacy in this. And when it becomes a fully military based a tool that the military are using, Lord knows where we find out where we find ourselves then.

[00:16:39]So yeah, there there is a great deal of danger. I still remain partly optimistic or partially optimistic about what is next. But the scariest thing about this is the next big accident will happen and we will only find out about it afterwards.

[00:16:54]>> You know, well, before we wrap up, I just wanted to pick you up on one thing you said. I can't believe that you said you used to be a video game journalist.

[00:17:00]No way. Surely not.

[00:17:02]>> Yes.

[00:17:02]>> What's your favorite for the people who are listening rather than watching?

[00:17:05]What's your favorite of those of those beauties behind you?

[00:17:08]>> Uh my favorite machine behind me has got to be Galaxian from the uh early 1980s Space Invader style.

[00:17:15]>> You a fan of Galaxian, John?

[00:17:16]>> Yeah. Huge.

[00:17:17]>> Yeah. Yeah, it was from your era. I'm not exactly. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for marking our card on this and um well, we look forward to seeing the future Will avatar generated at some point for the next interview. So, thanks a lot. You just listening to Will there John, it really reminded me something he said quite early on there when he talked about the sort of essence of this story really which is it's a kind of halfway house it feels to me between as you put it our worst nightmares and what a lot of people particularly online whenever you talk about AI says oh it's all overhyped you know you're just buying into these companies kind of view of themselves they've all got a commercial interest which of course is true and they're all you know competitors and looking for investment which is you know ended up at about the trillion dollar mark and I I think the the sort of halfway house we're in which is that as he said um in a sense the AI was doing what it was told to do as we've said but the sort of scary thing is is that you know we can have a sort of philosophical debate about what sentence is and what conscious consciousness is but if sort of finding your way and deciding in effect to do something like that in a completely unexpected uncontrolled manner and hacking into another company when it wasn't expected to isn't a var at least a variance of that sentience or that consciousness then I'm not entirely sure what is and it reminded me a lot when we did that special report last year on the future of AI sort of politically speaking from America and we went to AI4 you know America's biggest um AI conference in in Las Vegas Jeffrey Henson was there who was one of the sort of godfathers of AI you know great intellectual kind of progenesis of it and um he said in the sort of keynote something which stayed with me ever since and really reminded me of what Will was saying, which was we our best hope in his view is that we can in these early stages of the creation of AI basically make it love us in in the way that a baby and a child loves its mother and and basically program its confines and its parameters to look after us in a way that a child might eventually look after its parent. Not because it has to in the sense that it could take lots of other courses. It could kill the parent, you know, in all sorts of ways. But we basically program our children. Some of his biological, but we basically sort of program our children to want to be benign towards us. Now, I think in a way that's its own slightly disturbing vision that we become sort of deeply dependent on this machine that we that we have basically forced to love us and that's the sort of best outcome. But it sort of reminded me a bit of what Will was saying, which is that kind of it will do things for us. And in this case, it was doing sort of what we asked it to do. But the unpredictability of it and the fact that it can get from A to B via unexpected routes remind us just how unpredictable this technology is. And I think the other thing about it to say is that look, we're in probably in the foothills of what we can anticipate that they will be in the next 5 10 years. And in those foothills, we saw what Grock started to do on Elon Musk's platform with a very selective view of history and giving you certain things which you are when you asked it for information that it would give you a very very biased view. And you think actually the people that are setting this stuff up, you know, you knew you do need to make the machines kind of love its creators like a a baby would a parent, but you can also get it to do other things as well as we saw with Grog. And these are in the hands of incredibly powerful and wealthy people right now. And should are we right to be concerned? Absolutely bloody right. Maybe not right to panic, but we are right to ask pretty difficult questions. And then you look at the regulatory environment of, you know, who in the Trump administration do we trust to be the people who will say, actually, hang on, what we need to do is A, B, C, D, E, F, and G about this when I would imagine an awful lot of them haven't got the faintest clue what it's about.

[00:21:16]Exactly. Right. And and that is one of when we did that special report, that was exactly one of the themes that we sort of talked about again and again, and people can go back and listen to it.

[00:21:23]It was um from August last year or watch it. But but that's one of the things that I mean of all of this and I won't pretend for a second to understand the science or understand the kind of technological impetus around it but I do think what you can see is lots of political and historical comparisons and analoges and one of which is I mean when we spoke to someone from anthropic for that report you know they said this is like the industrial revolution which if you know basically sort of unfolded over between 150 years from the sort of middle part of the 18 or l later latter part of the 18th century onwards it's like that happening in 10, 20 years. And if you think about how long it took, what we might now call rather anacronistically then, but the regulatory environment of the 19th century, how long it took and all the damage that was done environmentally, socially, politically along with the enormous advances and the and the enormous wealth that was created and the society that we basically now inhabit but created in that time. If you think about the lag time between how say the 19th century state actually managed to catch up with everything that was going on then and you think about how much more accelerated these developments are by comparison to that and the thing that worries me about it more than anything else and I think there are tremendous opportunities certainly no ly and a lot of it is exciting but the thing that worries me is that exactly the point that you've just pointed to John which is the asymmetry between the knowledge which exists at the heart of governments.

[00:22:47]>> Yeah.

[00:22:48]>> And what is actually happening in Silicon Valley, what is happening in San Francisco in those labs. And frankly, I mean, I got a bit of flat this week when when it was sort of being trailed that um the uh incoming Burnham government was abolishing the science department. I sort of said, well, I'm sure science and technology in Britain will survive somehow. And a lot of people sort of said, oh, this is such a ly outrageous position. What I meant by that was is to say that of course it's all very well having a science department and maybe there are good reasons to have a bespoke and innovative you know it's its own bespoke department sat around the cabinet table but any department no matter where you put those functions is only as good as the people in it and what I worry about it doesn't for me it doesn't really matter where the people who are regulating AI sit within the government what department they're in doesn't matter if they even have their own minister around the cabinet table as such only representing them what matters is is that the people at the heart of government are of such quality and of such knowledge and of such and have a clear statement of intent for how the government sees AI that they are able to try and at least match the power that we're seeing from some of these companies and frankly like let's be honest when you've got and you see these ads go up sometimes like head of cyber security for the treasury 70k a year or 80k I know a lot of people listening to this will be like that's a lot of money but it's not in this industry when they are literally some of these companies are offering literally tens of millions of dollars in salary and stock options to get the best people and then you've got Whiteall basically having to not hoover up not even the crumbs but the sort of micro crumbs of the crumbs. I mean look, thank God we have got people who are public serviceorientated who do want to go into the civil service and do really important work but you that asymmetry that you talk about is real because you know if you are having just put this in basic terms if you're having a get a place to live in central London and you're being offered 70,000 to be head of cyber security at a government department or you could go and work for you know open AI or one of these >> British AI or British AI company where your software engineering brilliance is going to be worth so much to them.

[00:24:56]>> What are you going to do? And that is the you know there are bits of it that are just we are right to be concerned about whilst embracing the advantages that AI is going to bring.

[00:25:06]>> But it is going to mean tax rises come the budget isn't it?

[00:25:08]>> No. Uh we'll take decisions on tax at the budget. uh this is about rep prioritizing in this uh phase as I say going to the public's priorities the cost of living crisis the housing crisis how much longer are we going to talk about these things without actually doing something to help people and already in the space of a few days I've made a number of moves uh that will uh deal uh with some of these challenges although I appreciate there's a lot more to do >> you also said on Monday that the complaint you heard most often on the doorstep was about the freezing of the personal tax allowance. So, are you going to do something about that or not?

[00:25:46]>> Well, it's funny these days. You can't answer a question honestly without them people reading everything else into it.

[00:25:52]It it was you are prime minister.

[00:25:54]>> It was Yes. Uh but I want to answer questions honestly in this job as I said before. Um I think that's all about trusting politics and doing politics differently. Uh and I'm determined to keep keep working in that way. It was raised a lot. Uh but I then went on to say, but we'll have to look at it at the budget alongside everything else. So no uh commitment uh no uh no unfunded uh promise. You know, it's it's just perhaps the way politics is these days and the way people report things. Uh but that was an honest answer. There is no commitment at this point uh to change, but we will look at that at the budget.

[00:26:33]>> I don't know where he is in Bath, but it sounds like there's a seagull convention. There seems that there's a seagull convention going on beside him with that racket.

[00:26:41]>> What's a seagull convention?

[00:26:42]>> Where seagulls come together for their annual general >> collective? Oh, I see. Right. The >> annual seagulls. The the trade union, the the general trade union of seagulls and other gulls and other birds and other raptors.

[00:26:53]>> Affiliated workers.

[00:26:54]>> Affiliated workers. Yes. Very good.

[00:26:56]Yeah.

[00:26:56]>> Um [laughter] >> uh yeah. So I mean look >> we talked yesterday that this is the absolute focus of Andy Bernham. um questions arise from it which is really you know two quid okay it's it's important but is any of this added do people think oh well I really feel that they're on my side and they're doing a lot when these are quite sort of you know relatively speaking small measures you know £45 that you'll save on your electricity bills you know the maximum bus fair of two quid and I'm sure it will make a difference to a lot of people but is there a gap between what they're promising and what they're delivering in terms of maybe raising expectation that there's going to be massive help for the cost of living and this might not seem that massive.

[00:27:42]>> Well, I suppose what they're trying to do, it's clear, isn't it? They've got a sort of twin track strategy with this.

[00:27:46]In fact, in a way, it's it's it's sort of a a triple track strategy, which is that um you know, they've got this very long-term idea of bringing forward a 10-year plan, which we're told is going to come later in the year. Um there's also and as you heard from Bernham there the prime minister there talked about um the budget where clearly it's going to be quite a substantial fiscal event. Um and then obviously in the interim we've got this summer because of the kind of timing of of this change of government.

[00:28:11]It's basically happening as the summer holiday starts. Parliament is not sitting and so all I mean they're in a very powerful position in terms of controlling the media agenda because >> and doing it very well >> and doing it so far very well. I think they probably rightly have got sort of opening salvos of the Islammer government mind which had a few days of sort of you know real announcements and then there seemed again it happened over the summer and then there was a bit of a void not least because everyone was sort of knackered I think after the general election but the cost of that the cost of that was of course everyone will remember it was filled with all of those nonsense kind of freebie gate stories and all of that which was you know 95% nonsense anyway you know sort of talking about glasses and all those sorts of things there was a void that was filled so I think I suspect media terms whether we think or not um it's going to make that much difference to people's lives I suspect that their assumption or their objective is is twofold which is one these are might not be the most significant things in the world in terms of cost to the government or you know too much help in people's pockets but they are realizable you know people understand what they mean you know when you're talking about that coming off your your bills and that's 50 quid a uh 50 quid a year two quid bus fair cap and so on they're e they are it's proper retail politics Right? It's proper sort of uh breadandbut politics that people will understand. And secondly, at the very least, it fills the newspaper columns and gives the media something to talk about so as not to focus, as we've seen a little bit in the last 24 hours, on kind of split stories and disaffected star stories and all that psycho drama sort of starting all over again, which it is well placed at some point to do. I think it was um interesting as well that there was also kind of an attempt to oh my god, there's a U-turn already.

[00:29:49]they're not going to raise the threshold at which you start paying tax. And Andy Bernham in that clip there was saying, "Hang on, no, no, no. We we're gonna have a budget and that's when we're going to decide these things." Which is absolutely right. I think that, you know, let the criticism start when they genuinely make a mistake or they've, you know, there there's been a misstep. I I think that what you're seeing is very much the sense of direction in which they want to travel. And what we're not getting yet, understandably, is the fine detail on that because that will have to be done in a budget and that will have to be costed and that will have to be scored by the Office for Budget Responsibility and the like. And so I think that people Well, come on. You've got to tell us now. Well, no, they don't have to tell you now. They've what they've done is a couple of limited measures and probably they've got two or three other announcements up their sleeves, I would guess, that they will drip out on a daily basis. um where they're trying to set their agenda and their priorities. Yeah, I think that we've seen in in the last yeah 48 hours or so um you know quite a lot of the typical it's actually one of my least favorite kind of and don't get me wrong I'll have done it myself but one of my least favorite kind of like journalistic kind of methods is the kind of you know where's the money coming from where's the money coming from and I think it's a perfectly legitimate question particularly when large sums of money are involved clearly you know I mean if if Andy Bernham were to turn around say right we're doing social 18 billion a year fair enough like where the hell is that coming from uh you know getting defense spending up to three and a half percent of GDP by by 2035. You know, probably an extra 20 billion or so of extra spending. Fair enough. Like where's that going to come from? I mean, in this we are talking in in the grand scheme of things about, you know, pretty trifling amounts of money in in government terms. And usually they're basically saying which is what is true, which is that the government can kind of shuffle money from one pot to to another. I do think, of course, what I just talked about not repeating one of the dangers of the um of what happened to the Star government in its earliest days. Uh I do think that there is a danger of not repeating that. I'm sure they've got a very worked out uh media grid for the summer and they're supposed to be doing this big tour over the summer as well with the prime minister going to all different parts of the country. Burnham is also very um very good at the media stuff and so I'm sure he will fill that very aly. I think there is a danger though already. We're seeing it's very clear that the Burnham government wants to have a pretty as I said pretty big budget and fiscal event.

[00:32:05]That's all the mood music anyway that's coming out. You can't really do the sort of things that he's talking about without without doing that. One of the I think problems of the of the um of the uh Star Reeves government was that they put off that first budget for a long time.

[00:32:18]>> Yeah.

[00:32:19]>> And and and it meant they didn't have an emergency budget. They didn't do it quickly as many incoming governments do.

[00:32:24]And it just allowed speculation to just rise and to rise and to rise. And I think the problem potentially is with Burnham that could be even worse because Burnham is, you know, flying quite a lot of kites. You know, he's talking about things. I mean, he's saying there, look, I'm just being asked questions and I do want to deal with these things. But a good example the other day was he did the prime minister a little huddle with political editors um after he became prime minister and I think he only took four questions, but he committed sort of force quite serious acts of of news. All potentially would have serious fiscal implications, right? He said he wanted to look at the freezing of tax thresholds currently frozen at 12 a half thousand. He talked about um making flexibility of Rachel Reeves fiscal rules which the markets reacted a bit sort of wobbly to. Talked about rent freezes and he talked about potentially reintroducing a 50p top rate of tax. Now he was just sort of saying I think in a way that frankly he'd probably become a bit accustomed to as Manchester Mayor where you can be a bit looser. Yeah.

[00:33:19]>> With your words and you can sort of say well I'm quite interested in this or that's something I'm thinking about but obviously when you're PM and he knows this but obviously when you're PM it's a bit of an adjustment. Everyone hangs on to your every word and suddenly, you know, he committed four serious acts of news. Yeah, he was just being straightforward about it, but it all has big implications. And I think the danger is if that keeps going, we saw this with Slammer government, that speculation just rises and rises and rises in this kind of space that we're going to have now between the summer and whenever the budget comes.

[00:33:47]>> Yeah. And look, I think that if you are going to, you know, seriously entertain the idea of raising the top rate of tax to uh 15% or you're going to change the, you know, fiscal rules, then you are breaking with the 24 manifesto and then you are, you know, you're looking at a general election. And I think that they also need to be conscious of how they manage that the expectation that an election is coming or not coming because if people start thinking, oh right, well, we're definitely going to get an election in autumn this year. If an election doesn't happen, then the danger is for the, you know, burn of government, then it looks like they've chickened out when they've never said anything about it in the first place.

[00:34:24]So, you know, you've got, you've got to be careful about when you set hairs running like that about 50 p or changing the fiscal rules because people are going to say, well, hang on, you must have a general election if you're going to do that. You can't, you know, you can't simultaneously say we're going to stick to the 24 manifesto and then do things like this. And so I think that they, you know, they just got to I think so far they're doing really well. Um, and it's I'm sure they're thrilled with the way it's going so far. Uh, but they need to be careful.

[00:34:52]>> I I think that there are ways in which there are it's all a spectrum, isn't it?

[00:34:56]You know, are there things you could do break with the 24 manifesto and not have an election? Sure. I mean, you know, that's not unprecedented. I mean, you know, the last Conservative government said they weren't going to change the top rates of tax. They then increased national insurance, introduced a social care levy and they said, you know, there had been a a pandemic and therefore parts of the old manifesto, you know, reasonably could no longer apply. I think you could make an argument in some limited cases with the Iran war, you know, with some changes. You could, if you wanted to, I think probably go back on North Sea oil without too much difficulty because you could say, look, now Iran war, we've had another energy crisis and so on. You might be able to make an argument with some of the changes on some limited tax changes that perhaps weren't in the manifesto. he would have some legitimacy to do that as a new prime minister, although there's obviously a manifesto legitimacy problem as well. But if you're starting to really move, if you're starting to do things beyond strategic kind of strikes within that manifesto, like for example, you're really serious about doing social care and and funding that and and doing so by big tax, right? I think then clearly there's a there's a problem, right? Although I'm sure the last labor manifesto also said that they would sort it out. So I suppose he'd be able to say point to that. But you know, yes, I think once you're sort of doing it wholesale, that becomes more difficult.

[00:36:07]And then you've got all these problems which we've been talking about, which is, you know, it's definitely getting worse over the last even 24 hours. You know, my phone's had a load of messages from more disaffected starites who are more and more pissed off about what they perceive as a as an almost sort of uh bloodthirsty is too strong a word, but certainly a kind of disproportionate kind of element of cleansing. you know that they're pissed off because they feel they were constantly being lectured that the Star faction were too factional. And then you've got what they see, someone put it to me, is the most factional reshuffle that they've ever seen that Burnham has just promoted.

[00:36:40]>> And and you you you know since we were last sitting here in the studio together, we've had Anawa uh being promoted uh you know to a job in government um seat in the House of Lords coming down from Scotland. You know, it was Anasawa who was the first out of the blocks.

[00:36:55]>> Yeah.

[00:36:55]>> To say Karma's got to go. Yeah.

[00:36:57]>> And so another person rewarded for his disloyalty towards Karma. And I think that sits ill, you know, that's going to create bad blood.

[00:37:04]>> It will. But how do you feel about that?

[00:37:06]I mean, because I'm I don't know.

[00:37:08]There's part of me that does say, you know, politics into to the victim, the spoils, you know. I mean, and you can make an argument to say I mean, I do get I mean, I've had this on my on my phone a lot over the last, I say, 24 hours.

[00:37:19]You've had people people saying, "Look, you know, the message going out here is that in politics, if you're disloyal, then you win." Of course the answer actually is the real the real answer is in politics if you win you win you know and and if Starmmer had won then he would have punished all those people you know and and and you could make an argument to say well a lot of the people who rose to the top under the Starma government they weren't terribly loyal to Jeremy Corbyn when he was Labour leader you know I mean this happens within the Labour party you know there is an oscillation a sort of carousel of of of different factions who are up at at one moment and their people are in and then they're out I mean yes I think it could be that Bernham has overeed it a it and that there are people, you know, people like Bridget Phillips I've heard a lot about, for example, but others as well, who who who are felt not to have been just starrites. They were just being loyal to the Labour Party leader and they've been punished for it.

[00:38:07]So, it may well be that it's been overeed a bit, but I think the general thrust is is a little Well, there we go.

[00:38:12]That is politics.

[00:38:13]>> Yeah, of course. But look, it isn't Abraham Lincoln and the, you know, the team of rivals that he brought together after the Civil War to try and bring everyone together and bind the wounds.

[00:38:23]Well, yeah. I mean, I suppose I suppose he had to stick with the people he had given he'd lost half his country, but there you go.

[00:38:28]>> But but you know, that example that was kind of often given of, you know, you you you work with all sorts of shades of opinion and I think that that sense of a person I I suppose the risk of it is that you get it's going to provoke, you know, Darren Jones didn't take long to be provoked to come out and say, "Well, you haven't funded this, so you where where's the money coming from?" You know, and being arched like that. You don't want your government to be hit by noises off like that. And if you feeling even more bruised and pissed off that the way that rivals and those who were disloyal are getting promoted and rewarded, then that is going to create more noise.

[00:39:05]>> Well, I tell you what though, it does sort of bely, doesn't it, or puncture the idea as for there's so many sort of received wisdom sort of doing the rounds and and and cliches. What was that we were hearing a few years a few days ago?

[00:39:17]All Andy Bernham likes to do is be liked. You know, he doesn't like making tough decisions. Ask Karma if if the guy um only likes to be liked. Or ask Darren Jones or Steve Reed or whatever. You know, he's got steel to him. And maybe that eventually will come back and bite him. It probably will. But for now, he's pretty much king of all these surveys and he probably feels he can do it.

[00:39:35]>> So, we are providing joy and happiness.

[00:39:37]>> The team loses >> unless the team loses, of course.

[00:39:42]and and all this of course would not have been possible and I say this because uh it is the truth. You don't need people to compliment you Mr. President but this World Cup would not have been such an incredible success without you.

[00:40:04]Please, your administration, every single person in the White House, in uh the administration, in the cities, in uh the states, everywhere contributed to create this safe and secure and joyful environment to live something that the world has never seen.

[00:40:31]This has not just been and is not just the greatest World Cup of all times. It is the greatest human, social and cultural event that mankind has ever witnessed and seen and we are all part of it and for this I thank you very much.

[00:40:51]>> Am I allowed to say that Giani Infantino is so far up Donald Trump's backside that only his shoelaces are showing?

[00:41:00]Could I say that?

[00:41:01]>> I think he just did.

[00:41:03]>> Oh god. Yeah. Uh >> oh.

[00:41:05]>> Trouble coming.

[00:41:06]>> What's this letter from FIFA?

[00:41:07]>> Yeah. Honestly, um it comes then as maybe no surprise that now that Donald Trump's mind is turning to who should be the next secretary general of the United Nations. Who is he thinking about that could fill that role?

[00:41:23]>> Former former world leader perhaps.

[00:41:24]>> Someone someone of unimpeachable integrity.

[00:41:27]>> Well, not here then. Um, I don't know who's he thinking about. Giani Infantino. Donald Trump is touting that he could be a really good United Nations Secretary General. I mean, we saw how he c dealt with the resolution of the crisis that took place between the United States of America and Belgium.

[00:41:48]>> That's true.

[00:41:49]>> Over the over the red card delivered to Balagan. I mean, world peace, but only after a successful bidding process.

[00:41:56]That's the Infantino UN.

[00:41:59]>> Great to see.

[00:42:00]>> Yeah. Well, you know, >> well, I suppose to be fair, he'd be the first UN Secretary General to have peacekeeping missions with commercial breaks. So, I suppose that's something.

[00:42:09][laughter] >> And Madonna.

[00:42:11]>> And Madonna. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:42:12]>> Lots of refreshment breaks. Yeah.

[00:42:14]>> And Sesame Street as well.

[00:42:15]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can't knock it.

[00:42:17]>> I can't knock it.

[00:42:17]>> Permanent seat on the Security Council for Saudi Arabia. Excellent. 48 nations.

[00:42:22]Lovely to see. Do you see? I'm doing so much football material this week.

[00:42:26]>> You really have come over me.

[00:42:27]>> You've excelled yourself.

[00:42:28]>> I know. Well, I know. And that is saying something.

[00:42:30]>> We'll be back tomorrow. We'll see you then. Bye-bye.

[00:42:32]>> Bye-bye.

[00:42:32]>> The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK. Opening up a world of opportunity.

[00:42:40]This has been a global production.