(upbeat music) - Hello everyone, and welcome to Amanpour & Company.

Here's what's coming up.

- We have reclaimed our sovereignty, regained our liberty, restored our prosperity, and we have saved our country.

- [Christiane] Making billions for himself, dismantling democratic institutions, and waging wars in the Middle East.

The New York Times Chief Trump watchers, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, take us inside his White House with their bestselling new book, "Regime Chang".

Then, the off-camera war in Afghanistan, the Taliban ramps up its crackdown against women and girls.

Former US government expert Rina Amiri gives us the details on a deepening gender apartheid.

Plus.

- The concern that an adversary, notably China, would build a quantum computer that could break American government secrets.

- [Christiane] The coming quantum national security crisis, former deputy national security advisor, Anne Neuberger, speaks to Walter Isaacson about a new technological threat.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - [Narrator] Amanpour & Company is made possible by the Anderson Family Endowment, Jim Attwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta programming endowment to fight antisemitism, the Straus Family Foundation, the Peter G. Peterson and Joan Gantz Cooney Fund, Charles Rosenblum, Monique Schoen Warshaw, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Welcome to the program, everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

Unprecedented, that is the word used time and again to describe this second Trump presidency.

And it isn't without cause.

No US president has ever raked in billions of dollars in earnings as Trump did in 2025, raising alarm bells over self-enrichment and conflict of interest.

He's also using his executive power like no other, from literally, demolishing the east wing of the White House without any due oversight, to dismantling federal agencies, to waging war in Iran.

Trump is reshaping America's image at home and abroad.

And if it's hard keeping up with the President's behavior from the outside, imagine what's happening behind closed doors at the Oval Office.

A new book, "Regime Change", gives the inside scoop of the first 14 months of Trump's second term.

And clearly, there is a hunger for this inside story.

Just since its release last week, it has sold more than 300,000 copies.

And co-authors, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, who are the journalists at the New York Times, who are the chief White House correspondents, join me now from New York.

Welcome to both of you.

Maggie and Jonathan, it's actually interesting to talk to you now.

Every day there's a new story, but the one that's broken today is the self-enrichment by Donald Trump to the tune of about $2 billion in crypto and other dealings.

And your book has dealt, as some critics have called, with the administration's colossal financial corruption.

Maggie, tell me about how you dug into that.

And are you surprised by today's $2 billion news?

- So Christiane, and thank you for having us.

We have basically, scratched the surface of what is there and we write about it and focus on it inside the book.

We learned, you know, new details about not just how Trump and his family are operating, but also how even, you know, wealthy cabinet members end up trying to survive inside the government by making their own donations to the Trump library, like Howard Lutnick did in recent months.

In terms of the Trumps themselves, this is the first, this filing that came out yesterday, I believe, is the first concrete evidence of how much money is being made by President Trump.

And again, it only deals in ranges in some cases.

What we do know is that his net worth is off the charts bigger than what it was prior to this presidency.

He is wealthier than he has ever been in his life personally.

And so when he says, and he and the White House say there's no conflicts of interest, it strains credibility to put it mildly.

Even the New York Post has criticized the two Trump's sons, Don Jr.

and Eric, for the amount of money that they are making.

It's impossible to look at it through any other lens of the fact that Donald Trump is overseeing policy such as cryptocurrency regulation from which he benefits.

And again, he's not the first politician in history in the US to benefit financially from being in office.

This has been a problem with Congress certainly, over many years.

But the scale and scope is just astonishing.

And again, to stress this, we are only scratching the surface now as we did in our book on what is there, but I suspect we will learn more as time goes on.

What we tried showing is just how condensed and compressed a period of time this was for them making money primarily through this cryptocurrency vehicle.

- Yeah.

I'm glad you made that distinction that it's not the only, you know, example of politicians capitalizing, but the scale of it and the fact that it's the President.

We know many other presidential sons and others have also, you know, been tied to other sort of financial things, but never a president on this scale.

Jonathan, let me ask you something.

Why did you decide to write this book?

You know, Maggie did this amazing book in the first term, and you guys have been covering him for so long.

Why at this point in his second term did you want to write this book?

- Well, we decided to write the book in 2023 on the final act of Trump, whatever that would look like.

And of course, the contours of that story were not visible, then they couldn't have been.

We didn't know what was going to happen.

It could have been covering Donald Trump losing an election and potentially heading to prison.

So, we kept our minds open.

We just reported the heck out of it, like we've been doing for the last, you know, for me, it's 11 consecutive years.

For Maggie, it's even longer.

But when this presidency began, I would say within a month, Maggie and I realized that we were covering something that was quite unrecognizable, not just to his first term, but to any presidency that we've seen in our lifetime.

In some respects, different from any US presidency that we've ever seen.

And so, our task became much more focused, much more urgent, that we were covering the first year his return to Washington and trying to capture this presidency.

The title that we have for the book "Regime Change", actually, has nothing to do with foreign regime change.

We came up with the title before he went into Caracas with Delta Force and snatched Maduro out of his bedroom, before he went into Iran on the Netanyahu regime change mission.

It was that it occurred to us that we were covering a form of regime change in our own country.

And I think, sometimes as a reporter, the most challenging thing to do is to actually, see what's in front of you and to describe it clearly and to report it accurately.

And that became our mission with the book.

- Yeah.

And the subtitle is inside, I mean, I'm paraphrasing now.

I don't see the book in front of me, but "inside the imperial presidency".

And you report how Trump, really with nearly unchecked power, hellbent on retribution, is trying to remake not just the presidency, but also to cement his legacy.

And you indicated that one of the reasons he might've, you know, or maybe the only reason you discovered that he wanted to run again was to stay out of prison, because of, you know, the trials and things he'd been through before.

So, you mentioned Iran.

Let me talk to you both about that, because again, that's massively important and it's in the news.

And Trump went to war against another country where we from the outside clearly see that there was clearly not enough war planning and war gaming of all the issues that could come and bite the United States and Israel.

You have incredible scoops on this.

Maggie, take me through some of the situation room reporting that you were able to do.

What it led to, what it told us.

- So, one of the first excerpt that we put out in the New York Times actually was, it was months ago at this point, was reporting for this book about how the US went to war in Iran.

And it still remains, you know, immodestly the most expansive look at how this took place.

And there were a series of remarkable meetings inside the situation room, but one was on February 11th when Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister, goes down to the situation room complex, which is something of a secure, you know, sanctuary for national security and for foreign policy and for classified information.

And this is a very small group of some of his advisors, top officials in the US government, President Trump, Netanyahu across the table from each other.

Trump was not in his normal place at the head of the conference table in that large conference room.

He was sitting directly across from Netanyahu whose advisors were beaming in from on screen, some of them from Israel.

And Netanyahu makes this case about not just going to war, but about possible regime change scenarios.

He plays for Trump a video montage of possible replacement leaders in a new Iranian regime.

And the US officials found these to be not really, really palatable or believable options.

They did an analysis overnight.

The CIA Director and Secretary of State ended up briefing Trump the next day.

And they explain that Netanyahu's discussions of regime change were in the words of John Radcliffe, the CIA Director, "farcical".

In the words of Marco Rubio the Secretary of State and national security advisor, it was BS, except he said the word.

Trump, when in the room with Netanyahu, listened to this presentation about how things could go, it was very sunny and said, "Sounds good to me," which most advisors took to believe that he was really open to this.

He was still open to this the next day, despite getting warnings from his own advisors.

He said, regime will be "their problem", although it's not, regime change, excuse me, but it's not clear who they were.

Nonetheless, he was clearly impressed with the Israeli military's planning as laid out by Netanyahu.

He was impressed by the Hezbollah Pager operation many, many months earlier.

He was impressed by Israel's execution of the 12-day war the following year.

And Trump was feeling flush with his own power and his own abilities and the US military's abilities after that Caracas effort where he sent in Delta Force to grab Maduro shortly after New Year's Day, earlier this year.

Trump was warned, Christiane.

We really can't emphasize this enough, what could happen.

Dan Cain, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did lay out what could happen here.

The Strait of Hormuz could close.

There would be munitions depletion.

There was no one on Trump's team who though this was a good idea, but the only one, the closest was Pete Hegseth.

The only person who really vocally got into it with President Trump was JD Vance.

And it cost him with Trump, because Trump got irritated with him.

But in our reporting, and we show this in the book, Trump was always more hawkish on Iran than his own team and was always much more receptive to Netanyahu's pitch than his advisors.

So, this idea that Netanyahu kind of, you know, misled Trump or puppeteered him into war, it's just not the true.

It's much more nuanced.

Did he advocate?

Sure.

But Trump knew what he wanted to do.

- Yeah.

I mean, you report the President kept saying, you know, "It sounds good to me," when Netanyahu was doing this pitch in the situation room.

What do you think, Jonathan, it was then?

Because Tucker Carlson has said the same thing.

He tried to dissuade Trump.

He went in and he says in an interview, in fact, with the New York Times that he tried, you know, told him all the potential pitfalls and what might happen.

And Trump says, "Don't worry.

It's all going to work out."

Jonathan, how do you account for that?

How do you account for the fact that almost, you know, even if his cabinet and people did tell him stuff, clearly, it didn't get through.

You do write a lot about the sycophancy of the second term cabinet.

- Well, I think, Maggie's last point is really important, which is that, yes, it's true that the risks of this operation were presented to Trump.

Cain did in particular.

But nobody besides Vance made a forceful case to Trump against this war.

Cain did not view that as his role.

Mark Milley, in his previous role, Cain views Milley as someone who he doesn't want to replicate.

Milley would certainly have been much more forcible in his advice.

Rubio was not forceful in arguing against this.

No one was really except for Vance.

So, there's that element of it.

I think, there's another element, which hasn't been really talked about that much, which is, what happened the year earlier in the 12-day war?

From Trump's perspective, there were always people, like Tucker Carlson telling him, you know, "It'll be the end of your presidency, if you go into Iran."

Remember, he was told in the first term, "Don't kill Qasem Soleimani.

Don't withdraw.

Don't move the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.

There'll be riots in the streets.

Don't withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

There'll be chaos."

And each time that Trump in his mind is validated, it's a form of moral hazard in a sense.

You know, you take these risky decisions and they work out for you.

And the 12-day war, I think, was almost the pinnacle of that, maybe even more so than the Maduro operation, because from Trump's perspective, Israel goes in, it looks spectacularly successful to Trump.

And then he, of course, joins and drops the big bunker busting bombs on Iran's nuclear sites.

And Iran responded very tepidly.

They really fired off a pretty meek volley of missiles that were heavily telegraphed.

There were no US casualties.

And based on our reporting, Trump concluded that the Iranian regime was a paper tiger.

And so, this was incredibly enticing to Trump.

You had a situation where he could be the president, the first president, 47 years of presidents trying to deal with this regime.

I could be the one to finally deal with it.

And I think, in a gut instinct, despite what the intelligence community was saying, despite what his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs were saying, at a very deep gut instinct, Trump believed that this would be a fast war.

This regime would collapse very quickly.

And when that's your core belief, problems like running out of weapons, those problems sort of get tossed aside, because if the war's only going to last a week or two, you're fine.

You're not going to run out of long-range weapons.

But it became pretty clear within a couple of weeks that Trump's assumptions were wrong.

- Hmm.

Let me ask you, because there's a line from your book where he's basically saying, Maggie, when you went, I think, when it was when you guys went back to fact check with him, he said, "Essentially, I've won every effing time," but he says the word.

"And I'm tired of winning and winning and winning and just getting bad effing press.

It's about time that you tell the truth," okay?

So he's living, from that sentence, to me it seems, he's living in a zone where any real information that gets to him or any actual truth that you all report is viewed as bad news.

And I guess I wanted to ask you, people who write about Trump often, like you've done, like many do, often are told of having Trump derangement syndrome.

But actually, you're just reporting the facts.

- Right, it was an interesting moment.

So, Jonathan and I, I should just note that this interview that we did with Trump, which was a fact-checking interview, was 17 days into the Iran war.

It was March 16th.

We went to the Oval Office.

We expected to see maps on the desk.

We did not.

You know, instead he had the pictures of maple trees and when he said he was picking trees for the White House, when you lifted those up, there were ballroom designs and so forth.

And there were many other moments in that interview that were of note.

But again, we wanted it to be a fact-checking interview.

He has always been very focused on his press, Christiane.

And he's obviously, as you know, not the first US president to not like his press.

But he is the first US president in my memory who so rigidly uses repetition to insist that his version of events is the correct one.

And I used to make this analogy in term one about how it was a little like the children's book, "Harold and the Purple Crayon", you know, where Harold is running around drawing his own city in the middle of the night and his own version of reality.

It is true that he does not like accurate coverage of himself.

There's no question that he can point to specific stories that, I'm not talking about by us, I'm talking about by anyone, where the author might have done something differently or he might have, you know, a corner of a legitimate case, or whatever.

But in general, you know, we are just describing a fact set that he does not like.

And his current makeup of this White House, particularly, how they have constructed and taken over the control of the White House press pool.

The fact that he has an aide named Natalie Harp who you know, supplies him with a constant stream of good news.

His information ecosystem of his own is much more tightly wrapped and controlled than it used to be.

And so, it is less clear exactly how much of, you know, the actual information is coming through to him.

His own pollsters know, his own advisors know.

They provide information that make clear what the state of the world is and what the state of how voters view his administration is, but he will always continue presenting how he sees it.

And it has no impact on how we cover things, Christiane, one way or the other.

We're just going to report the truth.

And, you know, as best as we can.

- Yeah, and as you've sort of said, I mean, the polls and all the others show that actually, right now he's not really winning on a whole group of things, but actually, losing quite a lot.

I want to ask you, Jonathan, I know Maggie said it, but I want to ask you, because it involves both of you.

Maggie said that this book, "Reporting it, almost killed both of us physically and mentally."

How so, Jonathan?

- Well, to sort of understand how difficult it is, you know, you've read the book.

It's not sort of what I would call wispy Trump coverage, which is, you know, Trump is thinking this thing that it's almost like you're covering smoke, you know?

This is in this room, on this day, at this time, with these people around the table.

By the way, the room is the situation room or the Oval Office, the most guarded rooms in the country.

This is what was said and this is what happened.

And in many cases, it's information that they don't want to be out.

Verifying that information, confirming it, and writing it and publishing it, is inordinately difficult for just one scene.

But to do that again and again and again is just a completely brutal reporting exercise.

And my wife has told me I'm never doing another book.

So that's basically, what Maggie's describing, I think.

(Christiane chuckling) - Before I turn back to Maggie, I want to ask you, what do you think his greatest skill is?

- Oh, look, there's no question.

I remember going to, Trump is, you know, people misuse the word charisma.

Actually, you know, what they're often referring to is charm.

But charisma is, as I understand it historically, very, very rare.

And it's almost the power to compel someone to join a cult.

I remember going the first, you know, campaign that Trump ran in 2015 and '16, I've covered politics in two countries.

I've never seen an emotional, almost physical reaction from a crowd to what people in the audience for Trump were showing.

I remember just before the election, going to a rally in a barn in Virginia.

It was like 1:00 am.

And watching this woman, she was carrying her child.

And Trump was talking and it was almost devotional.

And so, his mass charisma as a mass communicator, we haven't seen his like in my lifetime.

We've certainly had charismatic politicians.

Barack Obama obviously, had a huge movement, but Trump's goes even deeper.

And I don't think that's a subjective statement.

I think, anyone who has gone to enough Trump events and seen that when somebody's dressed head to toe in Trump paraphernalia, you're watching something different that transcends normal politics.

- And Maggie, finally to you, what do you think his darkest side is?

And I guess, what do you think will happen, if he does lose or the party does lose in the midterms?

- Well, without putting him on the couch too much, but just, you know, objectively, he is very retribution minded, very payback-minded.

Again, many politicians are, but very few put it into an operational effect the way he does and is.

We have seen many elements of it.

We describe in our book, you know, pretty detailed scenes about him talking with advisors about exactly what he wants to see in terms of indictments, in terms of ordering up a presidential memoranda to investigate specific people, whether it be Chris Krebs, whose sin was saying the election system was safe, or Miles Taylor, a former DHS official, who became very critical of Trump.

What that means for the future, what I do know, Christiane, I'm very loathed to make predictions about Donald Trump on one hand, because, you know, it is a fool's errand in a lot of ways, and he is the most regenerative public figure I've ever covered.

So, what things, you know, end up looking like remains to be seen.

But normally at this point in a lame duck presidential term, you can see I can see what the general architecture of the rest of the term will look like.

You know, the House flips on an unpopular president's party, and there's a lot of oversight and investigations.

I don't think we know quite what happens, if the House flips, maybe the Senate flips, and the entire administration, at minimum, slow walks and at maximum, just doesn't respond to subpoenas and efforts for oversight.

They can still call House Democrats people outside the government like the Trump sons, like the Lutnick sons, like Steve Witkoff's sons.

But even that, I think, will be challenging.

And so, we just don't, it's something of a black hole when I try to look at what might come.

I don't know.

- Yeah.

Well, there are also sort of riley humorous moments.

Particularly, I hope everybody reads the book and finds the passage about the historian who you discovered was actually, a Florida caddy who compared Trump favorably to William the Conqueror, Alexander the Great.

Trump showed you that document to say, "See, this is what they think of me."

Thank you so much indeed.

Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, thank you so much.

"Regime Change".

- Thanks for having us.

- As President Trump tries to find a permanent way out of his war on Iran, the initial memorandum of understanding between them appears heavily tilted towards Tehran.

Just as his negotiations to get the US out of Afghanistan in 1.0, which largely skewed towards the Taliban, the extremist Islamic group, which is now in power.

The Pakistani military and the Taliban have traded airstrikes killing dozens of civilians over the past few days.

It's yet more pain for the people of Afghanistan who face the double bind of violence from abroad and from the Taliban's repressive laws, particularly, for women and girls.

Here's an excerpt from correspondent Isabel Young's report from there last year.

- [Isabel] For 20 years, Afghan women and children were promised progress, but they now live under a Taliban regime that stands accused of carrying out gender apartheid.

Basic rights like leaving the house and going to school have been stripped away from Afghan women and girls.

Their options are increasingly limited.

(person speaking in foreign language) - Salam alaikum.

What are you studying?

- Holy Quran.

- So, here in the Taliban's Afghanistan, they are still not allowing girls over the age of 12 to attend school in a modern sense.

Until recently, USAID has been funding a series of secret schools across the country for girls to attend, but obviously, that funding is now dried up.

So, one of the only options for girls is to attend these madrases, these religious schools, where predominantly the focus is on learning a very strict interpretation of Islamic rules and Islamic principles.

Hi, Salam.

How are you?

You're cramming for exams right now?

- Yeah, sure.

(both laughing) - And how old are you guys?

- I'm 17.

- You're 17?

- Yeah.

- I'm 14.

- I'm 16.

- Okay.

And you're all in the same class?

- Yeah.

Same class.

- What do you want to be when you grow up?

- I have a lot of dreams.

I want, either I want to be a surgeon or a translator.

I like languages and also like doctors.

- So, if you want to be a surgeon, what are your options?

- [Student] Abroad, I guess, my options, yeah.

- I wanted to be a doctor in the future, but when Taliban came to Afghanistan, all of the doors closed.

- Will you stay?

- I want to stay.

I love my country.

I want to stay here forever, but like, I do also want to study.

- [Isabel] Do you think the US has abandoned Afghan girls and Afghan women?

- Kind of.

- We wanted to speak with the principal of the madrasa.

A longtime supporter of the Taliban, he sees nothing wrong with the status of women's rights or girls' education in Afghanistan.

So many of these girls have so many hopes, so many big dreams.

How can they hope to achieve them when so much of the curriculum is about learning religious studies and they're not able to go on to higher education to college, because the Taliban forbids that?

(Shafiullah speaking in foreign language) - Because the Taliban have given you the curriculum, what a lot of people who might be watching this will think is that these girls, bright as they are, are being brainwashed into the Taliban's ideology and that Taliban is weaponizing education here.

(Shafiullah speaking in foreign language) (Shafiullah speaking in foreign language) (student speaking in foreign language) - [Isabel] Perhaps more than anyone, this generation of young Afghan girls are living under a Taliban regime that seeks to largely erase them from all forms of public life, like so many others now abandoned by those who once came to their aid.

- Now, since Isabel's report, matters have just gotten worse.

A new child marriage law has been enacted and not only the US, but now the EU and neighboring Iran are cracking down to deport Afghan migrants.

Now, Rina Amiri is the former US special envoy for Afghan women, girls, and human rights.

And she's joining me now from New York.

Rina Amiri, welcome back to our program.

Can I first ask you, in the context of what we've just been reporting, it was quite extraordinary to see reports of protests against Taliban rule in the far western city of Heart, right next door to Iran.

Both men and women apparently chanting education, work, freedom.

What did you draw from those protests?

- Christiane, first, thank you so much for having me and for putting attention to this really important issue.

And Isabel captured it right.

It is gender apartheid that what is taking place inside Afghanistan.

And the protests show, one, that this is not about Afghan culture and this is not about religion.

This is extreme repression by an extremist regime.

And despite the extraordinary risk that people face, they came out into the streets.

They put their lives at risk, because they are desperate for the world to know the plight that their families face, that the women and girls of Afghanistan face.

It's a desperate situation and what they don't want is the world to normalize this or to explain this away as Afghan religion or culture.

- So for a while, you know, all the criticisms of the 20 year American experience and NATO experience in Afghanistan, actually, they did bring rights for women and they did bring education rights.

That's for sure.

Now, the UN says 250,000 more girls are out of education and permanently excluded are creating a whole lost generation that could really work for the betterment of Afghanistan.

Are you hearing directly from girls and women there?

Are they trying to work around, you know, those girls who talked to Isabel were determined in their own way to keep learning no matter how.

- That's absolutely right.

You know, during those 20 years, I would frame it that the international community created space and it was Afghan women and girls themselves that led the change.

And it's part of the legacy of Afghanistan.

This is not something that the West was bringing into the country.

And Afghan women continue and are supported by their fathers, by their families, are determined to continue to forage ahead and to fight against what is an extreme and barbaric regime.

There's no country in the world that has erased half of its population the way that is being done in Afghanistan.

And these women and girls are tremendously resilient, courageous.

They have underground schools.

They're, as you saw, they're protesting.

They're looking for every tool and resource to continue their fight.

And what they're asking for, they're not asking to be saved.

They're not asking for billions of dollars of assistance.

They're not asking for an invasion.

They are asking to be supported.

They are asking for the world to not legitimize the Taliban and to support these women who are models of courage that we should all be mobilizing behind.

- You know, I'm going to get to what you just said, not legitimize the Taliban, but first, on an important issue.

The UN now says, because of everything that's been going on, that about 28 million people in Afghanistan are living in poverty.

That's a statistic covering 28 million people.

And one of the, you know, sort of fallouts is that more and more young girls, children are being sold off essentially by their families into child marriage.

How bad is that situation right now there?

- It is a situation in which of those 28 million, women and girls are bearing the brunt, like every country in the world that faces a humanitarian assistance.

In Afghanistan, it's even more extreme, because of the Taliban's extreme policies.

Women and girls have lost the access, even to the ways that they're trying to struggle.

They have lost those tools.

You know, maternal health clinics, mobile clinics to address maternal mortality, infant mortality.

They're gone.

Limited resources to enable women to set up their own organizations.

That has really been hit.

Underground schools, because as you noted earlier the statistics that I've heard is that there's over two million girls, women and girls left out of school, and that within a couple of years it's going to be four million.

That is not just hitting women and girls, that's hitting the entire country.

And it's creating a country in which the lack of support and assistance, it's enabling extremism.

It is hitting the forces of moderation.

And it is a country that is left this desperate.

It's not going to be a stable country, and it's going to create the security concerns that brought the world to Afghanistan in the first place.

- Let me just ask you again about a law that the Taliban has passed.

Basically, it's a decree on divorce.

The UN is criticizing it.

In this decree, it says, "Upon reaching puberty, the minor has the option to dissolve the marriage that a relative may have contracted for her."

So, on the one hand, they're saying, "Yeah, it's tradition.

Little girls get sold into marriage.

Nothing can happen to them until they reach puberty.

And then when they reach puberty, they can ask for a divorce."

On the other hand, it could be legitimizing very, very, you know, child marriages.

How do you read that?

- Yeah.

No, you know, the gains that Afghan struggled for are being reversed.

And one of them is addressing child marriage.

Now, children as young as nine years old are being forced into marriage.

And as you noted some families, it's out of destitution and just desperation.

They're selling off their daughters.

But the Taliban is enabling it by removing the regulations that were at least there on paper to prevent that.

And they are leaving these children at extraordinary risk.

- Very, very, very, very quickly, we've got 30 seconds.

How should the world not legitimize the Taliban?

Because EU is meeting with them to talk about deportations, and the rest of it.

- The EU should not be meeting nor any other country.

Yes, there may be a necessity to talk to the Taliban about logistics about, you know, whether it's deportations, which I have a lot to say about, or anything else.

But there are already existing diplomatic channels.

This was not a logistics decision.

This was a political decision.

And we recognize that this is legitimizing the Taliban.

- Okay.

Rina Amiri, thank you very much indeed for joining us to put a spotlight on this ongoing problem.

Now, it could soon become one of the biggest national security risks of our time.

Experts warn that quantum computing risks making today's encryption protections obsolete.

Exposing everything from government secrets to banking data.

China and Russia's projects are already in motion.

Former US Deputy National Security Advisor, Anne Neuberger, argues that the next global arms race won't be over missiles, but a battle for quantum supremacy.

And she joins Walter Isaacson to explain what this is and what's at stake.

- Thank you, Christiane and Anne Neuberger.

Welcome back to the show.

- It's wonderful to be here.

- For the past year, and especially, in the past couple of weeks, we've been hearing about all the potential risks, national security risks, that can come from artificial intelligence.

But your new piece in foreign affairs looks at the next risk we may face, which is quantum computing.

Explain why.

- Absolutely.

So, our world really relies on cryptography.

The padlock on our browsers when we're shopping online, we're accessing our medical records.

And frankly, the cryptography that protects the nation's secrets as it moves around the internet.

That cryptography relies on a math equation, which would take classical computers a very long time to solve.

Because of the difference in the way quantum computers potentially process information there is a mathematical algorithm that says that a quantum computer of the right size could potentially break that encryption that our world's digital trust rides on.

And the belief is that that's coming sooner rather than later.

Google really kicked off a lot of interest in this when they moved their timeline to move to a new generation of cryptography that can resist a quantum computer when they move that timeline closer to 2029, as did the Trump administration in its recent executive orders on quantum.

- You know, when we break cryptography, like in World War II when they broke the enigma code of Germany, and Germany finds out, well, they just add another couple more rotors and it makes it impossible to break again for a while.

Why can't we just do that?

- It's a good question.

You know, cryptography today, so think about, for example, when you're shopping online.

That padlock has an entire ecosystem behind it that allows you, one individual sitting at home, to connect to any number of entities around the world, whether that's a store, you know, a digital storefront in Tokyo, or whether that's your medical records that may be stored on a cloud anywhere around the world.

So, that broader ecosystem is a lot larger and broader than when we think about a military application.

We are pretty much both ends of that communication are known.

So as a result, that entire ecosystem that implements the cryptography needs to be updated with a new generation of cryptography.

The last time we did that as a global, you know, ecosystem of businesses and individuals and governments, it took us roughly 10 years.

So, it's not something that happens at the snap of a finger.

And that's why governments have started that transition, companies have started that transition, because quite frankly, if we had a surprise announcement that, or learn via intelligence that an adversary had a quantum computer, we couldn't just, as you know so well, add a couple of rotors and be safe.

There would be a lot more that would need to happen.

- Well, let's try to explain what quantum computing is.

I know there's great physicists once said that anybody who says they understand quantum mechanics doesn't.

But quantum mechanics tells us that like a normal computer uses zeros and ones, but quantum mechanics tells us there can be something in between, that could be something that'd be both zero and one at the same time.

And that they can even affect different particles way at a distance.

Is that how quantum computing works?

- You did a really fantastic job at describing it.

And the way you put it is exactly the crux that takes us sometimes.

You know, it's hard to wrap our minds around.

We're traditionally thinking of computing as, like you said, a zero or a one, an on or an off.

And because quantum, essentially, quantum computing relies on the strange behaviors of atoms at very, very cold temperatures where they can indeed maintain a connection between on and off so they can be both at the same time.

And that allows for certain kind of computation that classical computers can't do.

And that's for example, the reason that, potentially, cryptography is at risk.

It also explains a more interesting, a more positive advancement in quantum, which is quantum sensing.

Because quantum sensing relies on essentially, core measurements of the Earth's gravity and the magnet at the core of the Earth, it can do position anywhere around the world as a result, navigation and precise time in both a very ultra precise way and without connecting to the global constellation of satellites, known as GPS, known as China's Baidu, that is typically the way commercial airlines, military ships figure out where they are and what time it is anywhere around the world.

So as a result, we're starting to see quantum sensors and their role in helping in a world where there is far more both GPS denial and spoofing happening today.

- So, what you're saying is that these quantum computers can break codes, cryptography, and they also can be much better than GPS at doing location sensing.

Let's do location sensing.

How would we use that and are we using it?

And is China using it?

- So today, to give one example of how, you know, ships try to do GPS spoofing.

So if, for example, Iranian ships or the dark fleet tries to bypass sanctions, what they'll do is they will turn off this beaconing system that ships use to notify each other where they are just to avoid collisions.

And they will try to, via something called GPS spoofing, make it look like they are in a different place from where they are.

That's, for example, how you may have ships transferring sanctioned oil or ships transferring weapons in a way that they try to hide from intelligence collection or from satellite systems around the world.

Or for example, we saw it in Russia's Middle East operations.

They would do GPS denial.

They would essentially, block ships, planes, people from connecting to GPS as part of kind of trying to hide military operations that may be occurring.

That has real danger for commercial aircraft, planes that use GPS to connect and figure out traffic, figure out navigation routes.

And it also causes real complications for military operations.

So, because GPS sensors, because quantum sensors, operate without ties to that satellite constellation, they're a really effective way to essentially, figure out where one is, navigate, and as a result, have links without connecting to those satellite systems.

So, that technology is more mature than the technology of potentially breaking encryption of a quantum computer that is large enough to actually, break encryption.

So, I think, we'll see applications of quantum sensors first.

- Well, you say in your piece that China is already using quantum sensors on submarines and other things.

And one of the things you point to is they're able to do so, because we didn't put export controls.

Is that why don't we just put export controls or are export controls pretty useless in this day and age?

- So China is, for that reason, starting to deploy quantum sensors in its different military systems.

You know, the technologies around quantum sensors are broadly available and we find it's pretty hard to make export controls enforceable in a number of these areas, because some of the technologies are dual use.

There are non-military applications of it.

For example, quantum sensors, there are legitimate uses for commercial aircraft that want to navigate through GPS denied zones.

And as a result, it's a tougher set of technologies for us to export control, because there are legitimate non-military uses.

- You say we can't fix it the way we used to with the old machines, which has add a few gears and rotors.

You say it takes the entire infrastructure from beginning to end will have to be changed.

Explain what that would require and how long that would take.

- Absolutely.

And it's already started, frankly.

So again, I'll use the example of, you know, the padlock that comes up on our browser when we're accessing medical, or financial records, or shopping online.

So, behind that padlock is something called, is our digital certificates that validate that when you think you're visiting amazon.com, it really is amazon.com.

And it validates to amazon.com that you are indeed who you say you are.

So, that allows you to set up a trusted connection to enter your credit card information.

Similarly, on the broad pipes that, for example, like cloud computing companies or social media companies use to transmit information at scale, they similarly implement that kind of end-to-end encryption to allow bulk traffic to be secure as well.

So, what it takes is both the main digital infrastructure companies, like Google, for example, announced that they are implementing elements of post-quantum cryptography in Android 17.

Like Apple that has implemented post-quantum cryptography, this new kind of cryptography across iMessage.

Those companies implementing it ensure that the broad amounts of traffic actually have post-quantum keys.

Post-quantum keys are very, very large.

So potentially, they take longer to process and compute.

And that's why, you know, for these companies making the transition, it's also not so quick and easy.

They have to ensure that the systems they've built in the past can actually, work with these much larger keys and potentially, slower computation.

They don't want it to be slower.

So, they have to make some changes there as well.

So, that gives you a picture of both kind of the stack all the way to your laptop, as well as the broader pipes that the world's digital traffic runs on.

- Well, one of the things that struck me in what you just said, it's also in your piece, is that Google is doing, you know, a post-quantum cryptography and that Apple is going to have to do it.

And that a lot of the quantum computing is done by major companies and corporations.

That's also true in artificial intelligence.

This isn't the government doing these things.

It's Anthropic, or OpenAI, or Google doing it.

Explain to me how that makes it either easier or harder for us to solve this problem.

- It's a really interesting point.

And there's also a really interesting contrast between the American quantum ecosystem and China's quantum ecosystem to your earlier question.

You know, in the US, for some quantum applications like breaking encryption, the main customer is the government, the national security community that may want to figure out another country's secrets.

And as a result, for example, in the Trump White House recent executive order, you see the request, the demand for the Department of Energy to actually, work with the private ecosystem to build a quantum computer.

So, what you have in the US ecosystem is government demand, and in some cases, government money, kind of both leading to driving, encouraging the private sector ecosystem, which is made up of both very large companies, like you noted, as well as smaller startups.

In China's ecosystem, what China's really good at is driving massive state capital and creating these advanced technology hubs.

In quantum's case, that's in a place called Hefei, where they have the combination of universities, R&D labs, and large amounts of government capital, because China has said quantum is one of its top technology goals for its current five-year plan, all coming together.

So, it's much more of a state-driven ecosystem competing with the US ecosystem, which is a mixture of state capital and demand, and really an innovation base of large and small companies alike.

- So, is China ahead of the United States?

- China's ahead in some areas of quantum technology, like quantum communication, allowing, you know, ostensibly secure communication across the quantum wire.

America is ahead on quantum hardware, building out the very cold equipment and some of the unique components of quantum computing that are very different from classical computing.

But what's really most important is who has the commercialization of applications first, you know?

Who can deploy quantum sensing first to allow to navigate safely in a GPS denial environment?

Who can build a fault-tolerant, big enough quantum computer that could potentially, you know, break cryptography and, you know, have impact in stealing another country's national security secrets?

- So, this quantum computing though, is this really a race?

And if we lose to China, we're in real trouble?

Or is the problem that the competition just makes all sides go faster and that's the problem?

- It's a good point.

It's the latter.

Because at the end of the day, if we can deploy a new generation of post-quantum cryptography, we believe we'd be secure against China's deployment of a quantum computer.

And that's why you've seen the US government pressing and accelerating its timeline from the original one of 2035 that was set in the first quantum directive during the Biden administration to the now updated 2031 timeline in the latest Trump executive order, because of a sense that there's been advancements in quantum hardware that force us to bring that date closer so we can be secure against an adversary deploying a potential quantum computer.

- As you say in your piece, we've been cooperating with our allies, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan on creating quantum computing and perhaps post-quantum cryptography.

Is China coordinating and working with Russia?

And is that a problem, if Russia gets this?

- We've been cooperating even with China on the post-quantum standards.

We're in a global world where we need globally secure digital infrastructure, you know, for American banks who do business with Chinese banks or American companies that do business all around the world.

So as a result, it's in all of our interests to have secure post-quantum standards that we all implement together.

With that said, the competition and the race is really in building a quantum computers in the hardware space.

And we do cooperate very closely, as you noted with Japan, the UK, France.

China has deepened its cooperation with Russia and deployed a secure quantum link with South Africa almost 8,000 miles away.

Some question the value of quantum communications simply because in order for that to really be a secure link, it still needs that quantum secure two ends that require the deployment of post-quantum computers and as a post-quantum cryptography.

So as a result, I think, many in the US system really question Chinese advancements in quantum communications and quantum key distribution and believe that the US edge in quantum hardware and the partnerships.

Japan notably has a real ecosystem in quantum, will actually prevail.

- President Trump has just signed two executive orders dealing with quantum computing and post-quantum cryptography.

What did those orders do and are they enough?

- They did two important things.

First, on the defense side, they accelerated the transition of US government systems to this new generation of cryptography that can protect and still be secure against a quantum computer.

That was accelerated by several years to 2031.

That reflects, as we talked about, the developments that have been happening in quantum hardware and the concern that an adversary, notably China, would build a quantum computer that could break American government secrets.

So that was the first part.

And that was an important part.

The second key part was that it tasked the Department of Energy to build a quantum computer working with the US private sector ecosystem.

And then it also set some timelines for deployment of quantum sensing and military applications to help navigate through GPS denial zones and potentially, manage against an adversary's attempts to disrupt military communications and coordination by disrupting GPS.

So, a number of important things that those executive orders did, both defending and innovating.

- Anne Neuberger, thank you so much for joining us.

Appreciate it.

- It's always a pleasure to be with you.

- And finally, a more awe-inspiring sort of technical breakthrough.

The Rubin Observatory is now online on a 10-year mission to shoot images of the universe with depth and detail never seen before.

Sitting on a mountain in Chile, researchers say the observatory will reveal unimagined insights into the biggest mysteries of the universe, calling it the greatest cosmic movie ever made.

The observatory is named for Vera C. Rubin, a pioneering astronomer whose observations from the 1970s provided convincing evidence of dark matter.

And that's it for our program tonight.

If you want to find out what's coming up every night, sign up for our newsletter at PBS.org/Amanpour.

Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.

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