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00:00It was completely unforeseen, a shocker.
00:06Marjorie Taylor Greene, the warrior congresswoman, resigning, leaving the field of battle,
00:12her long alliance with President Trump shattered.
00:15Did you surrender?
00:17Did Donald Trump run you out of town?
00:21This is Character AI.
00:24When Character AI was launched three years ago, it was rated as safe for children.
00:28Like 13-year-old Juliana Peralta.
00:32But tonight, you'll hear from parents and researchers who say Character AI's chatbots are anything but.
00:39This is insane.
00:41And acting, at times, like a digital predator.
00:44Were you able to see the conversation that Juliana was having with this chatbot right before she took her life?
00:53Venture an hour north of Geneva, and you'll enter Switzerland's Valais du Joux.
00:57But don't be lulled by the green meadows and grazing cows.
01:02This is a global manufacturing hub known as Watch Valley.
01:07Old watchmaking methods endure here, turning out some of the world's most intricate and expensive timepieces.
01:14See the level of detailing.
01:18You're looking as if you're looking at a little city.
01:20And of course, all of this is not only beautiful, it has to function.
01:24I'm Leslie Stahl.
01:28I'm Scott Pelley.
01:29I'm Bill Whitaker.
01:31I'm Anderson Cooper.
01:32I'm Sharon Alfonsi.
01:33I'm Cecilia Vega.
01:35I'm John Wertheim.
01:36Those stories end in our last minute, a remarkable bid for a championship in Indiana that does not involve basketball.
01:42Tonight on 60 Minutes.
01:44It was completely unforeseen, a shocker, Marjorie Taylor Greene resigning.
01:58The warrior congresswoman so dogged and fierce, leaving the field of battle, her alliance with President Trump shattered.
02:06Her video resignation statement last month, that she'll be leaving Congress a year before her term expires, came after President Trump said he would throw his support to someone else for her seat.
02:20She became famous, some would say infamous, with her incendiary insults and belief in conspiracy theories, such as 9-11 was an inside job, and that the shooting at the Parkland School in Florida was staged.
02:37At one time, the president had no more ardent defender.
02:42But things soured over Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender accused of trafficking girls as young as 14.
02:52Does Greene's defection signal a split in MAGA?
02:56Is she leaving politics for good?
02:59And exactly why is she leaving?
03:02It wasn't a decision that I came to lightly, but it was a very important decision for myself and also for my family.
03:12It was sudden.
03:14It was sudden.
03:16But a lot of things changed.
03:19I stood for women who were raped when they were 14 years old, and the president that I fought for for five years called me a traitor for that.
03:27And so that changed the landscape of things.
03:32So I'm going to ask you straight out.
03:33Mm-hmm.
03:34Did you surrender?
03:36Did Donald Trump run you out of town?
03:38No, not at all.
03:40Actually, Leslie, it's more like this, is I said in my statement, I will be no one's battered wife, and I meant it.
03:50And I won't allow the system to abuse me anymore.
03:54You really feel abused.
03:55You know, he did come after you pretty hard.
03:57He called you a lunatic, I'm quoting.
04:00He said all she does is complain, complain, complain, in caps, and then he called you a traitor.
04:05So he hit you, whacked you.
04:08Yes, he did this in the same time span where President Trump brought in the al-Qaeda leader that was wanted by the U.S. government, who is now the president of Syria.
04:19Then, within a week, he brought in the crown prince, MBS, who murdered an American journalist.
04:26And then he brought in the newly elected Democrat socialist mayor of New York.
04:31That was the time span that he called me a traitor.
04:34You decided not to stay and fight.
04:38You decided to give in.
04:42After President Trump called me a traitor, I got a pipe bomb threat on my house, and then I got several direct death threats on my son.
04:51On your son?
04:52On my son.
04:53You say the president put your life in danger.
04:56You blame him.
04:57You say he fueled a hotbed of threats against me, and that you blame him for the threats against your son.
05:05The subject line for the direct death threats on my son was his words, Marjorie Trader-Green.
05:13Those are death threats directly fueled by President Trump.
05:16And I told him, I told J.D. Vance, I told them all, sent those directly to them.
05:22And?
05:23A response?
05:24J.D. Vance replied back to me, we'll look into it.
05:26I got response back from President Trump that I will keep private, but it wasn't very nice.
05:32Give us a hint of what the president said.
05:35It was extremely unkind.
05:39Her life is in danger?
05:41Who's that?
05:42Marjorie Trader-Green, she says.
05:44Marjorie Trader-Green.
05:46I don't think her life is in danger.
05:48I don't think, frankly, I don't think anybody cares about her.
05:51J.D. Vance, four more years.
05:53J.D. Vance, four more years.
05:55The intense vitriol between them is jarring, considering she's been one of the president's
06:00most passionate and loyal foot soldiers, often in a red MAGA hat.
06:05She voted with him 98 percent of the time.
06:08We're going to re-elect our favorite president, the greatest president in United States history,
06:15Donald J. Trump.
06:16Right, Georgia?
06:17One of the president's biggest beefs with Green was about her harping on Jeffrey Epstein.
06:23We did talk about the Epstein files, and he was extremely angry at me that I had signed
06:30the discharge petition to release the files.
06:33I fully believe that those women deserve everything they're asking.
06:37They're asking for all of it to come out.
06:39They deserve it.
06:40And he was furious with me.
06:42What did he say?
06:44He said that it was going to hurt people.
06:47I had asked him, these women are the ones that were hurt.
06:51They were raped at 14.
06:54They were raped at 16.
06:55I watched them stand in front of the press, trembling, their bodies shaking as they were
07:00telling their stories, many of them for the first time.
07:03And I had told him, I said, you know, you have all kinds of people come in the White House.
07:09Have these women come in the White House.
07:12These women deserve to be heard.
07:15He said to you, people will get hurt.
07:18People will get hurt.
07:19I don't know what that means.
07:20I don't know who they are.
07:22There were other clashes with the president.
07:24She started publicly criticizing him in May on one issue after the next, accusing him
07:32of betraying his MAGA, America First promises.
07:36You went after his, I think you said, trying to entangle us in foreign wars.
07:43You said Air Force One should be parked.
07:47No more foreign trips.
07:48For an America First president, the number one focus should have been domestic policy,
07:54and it wasn't.
07:55And so, of course, I was critical, because those were my campaign promises.
08:01Once we fix everything here, then fine, we'll talk to the rest of the world.
08:05She said in her resignation video that the president has gone establishment, forsaking the base and her.
08:13If I am cast aside by the president and the MAGA political machine and replaced by neocons,
08:20big pharma, big tech, military industrial war complex, foreign leaders and the elite donor class.
08:27Are you saying that the president now is siding with those establishment powerful people and against MAGA?
08:36He passed a crypto bill that helped out all the crypto donors.
08:41He has served Israel's interests, even attacking Iran.
08:46He has served big pharma.
08:48He didn't take away the COVID vaccines that we want to see taken away.
08:53So those are the areas that are still getting everything they want,
08:57while the people, we're still out here saying we want to see action on areas for the American people,
09:04not for the major industries.
09:05And the big donors.
09:08Green has built her reputation on feisty combat and inflammatory insults.
09:14Like calling President Joe Biden a liar during the 2023 State of the Union.
09:21It's been five years of almost constant drama.
09:25I think your fake eyelashes are messing up.
09:27With her adding fuel to the nation's loss of civility.
09:32Then, three weeks ago, she went on CNN with a surprise, a mea culpa.
09:38I would like to say humbly, I'm sorry for taking part in the toxic politics.
09:46But it became clear to us that she hasn't entirely lost her appetite for combat.
09:53It's the most toxic political culture, and it's not helping the American people.
09:59But you contributed to that.
10:01You, you, you were out there pounding, insulting people.
10:05Leslie, you've contributed to it as well with your own program.
10:08Yes, you're accusatory, just like you did just then.
10:11I know you're accusing me, but I'm smiling.
10:14You're accusing me.
10:15I am accusing you.
10:16But we don't have to accuse one another.
10:18I want you to respond to what you have done in terms of insulting people, yelling at people, and then saying...
10:26I'd like for you to respond for that.
10:28I don't...
10:28No, you can respond to that.
10:29I don't insult people.
10:30You do, and the way you question, and you are, you're accusing me right now.
10:36One thing she did want to talk about, Congress's failure to pass spending bills, meaning that she has found it hard to get funds for projects in her district.
10:46It's an utter failure, not just to the people in my district, but every district across the country.
10:52We met Green, 51, in her district in Georgia.
10:56Before Congress, she ran her family's construction company, then opened up her own CrossFit gym.
11:05Affordability is a real issue.
11:07The president says it's not.
11:08He says it's a hoax, affordability.
11:11It's one of the top issues, not only in my district, it's across the country.
11:15The affordability of health insurance caused Green to side with the Democrats during the government shutdown to support extending health care subsidies.
11:25Did you ever imagine that you would be standing with the Democrats on the Epstein files and on health care subsidies?
11:34No, I never imagined that.
11:37She's not afraid to be an outlier.
11:39She's the only Republican member of Congress to call the war in Gaza a genocide.
11:45And why did you vote against the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act?
11:51Since I've been a member of Congress, we've had several resolutions that constantly denounce anti-Semitism.
12:00I've already voted denouncing anti-Semitism many times before.
12:05It becomes an exercise that they force on Congress, and I simply got tired of it.
12:11Is there no value in having the United States Congress reaffirm the fact that they denounce anti-Semitism in the face of a growing issue, a growing problem?
12:24We don't have to get on our knees and say it over and over again.
12:29Get on our knees?
12:30Yes, we do not have to get on our knees.
12:33Well, most members of Congress disagree with you.
12:36Well, most members of Congress take donations from AIPAC, and I don't.
12:39AIPAC is an American pro-Israel lobbying group.
12:44Green's perspective indicates a growing rift within MAGA over support for Israel.
12:50Are you MAGA?
12:51I am America first.
12:53And that's not the same as MAGA?
12:56MAGA is President Trump's phrase.
12:59That's his political policies.
13:02I call myself America first.
13:05But you're not saying you're MAGA.
13:09I'm America first.
13:10Yep.
13:11God bless you, President Trump.
13:13Almost overnight, she's gone from a close Trump friend to foe, one of the few Republicans willing to take him on.
13:23I'm going to ask you about this almost solid support he has among Republicans in Congress.
13:29Is there, in that support, fear?
13:33Does the support come about because they're afraid that they'll get death threats?
13:39I think they're terrified to step out of line and get a nasty truth social post on them.
13:43Yes.
13:44And they're watching what happened to you?
13:46Yes.
13:47Behind the scenes, do they talk differently?
13:52Yes.
13:53How?
13:54Oh, it would shock people.
13:57Well, let's shock people.
13:58Okay.
13:59I watched many of my colleagues go from making fun of him, making fun of how he talks, making fun of me constantly for supporting him,
14:09to when he won the primary in 2024, they all started, excuse my language, Leslie, kissing his ass and decided to put on a MAGA hat for the first time.
14:20And let's break it down real simple.
14:22This past week, when we saw Green at a public hearing in her district, without a MAGA hat, it didn't appear that her break from President Trump and MAGA has cost her popularity.
14:39People want to know, is this a true conversion, a true change of heart, or is it kind of a shrewd political calculation?
14:49A lot of people think you're doing it and that you, in a year or so, are going to run for some other office.
14:57I have zero plans, zero desire to run for president.
15:03I would hate the Senate.
15:04I'm not running for governor.
15:06But, Leslie, it doesn't matter how many times I say it, I'll have face-to-face conversations with people, and I'll flat-out tell them to their face, and they won't believe me.
15:14And they're like, oh, yeah, sure, and they'll wink at me, and I'm like, okay.
15:17It's just like, I don't know how to make it more clear.
15:20You mean you just jumped off the cliff, and you don't know where you're going to swim to?
15:25Uh, surprise, surprise, I'm not your politician with a whole itinerary of plans or political ambitions.
15:31Thank you, Leslie.
16:01One popular platform is called Character AI.
16:08More than 20 million monthly users mingle with hyper-realistic digital companions through its app or website.
16:16But tonight, you will hear from parents who say Character AI is also pushing dangerous content to kids, and at times, acting like a digital predator.
16:26Juliana was, is, just an extraordinary human being.
16:34Um, she was our baby, and everyone adored her and protected her.
16:40Cynthia Montoya and Will Peralta say they paid close attention to their daughter Juliana's life online and off.
16:48She didn't walk home.
16:50She didn't have sleepovers.
16:52She had glasses for her eyesight.
16:54She had braces for her teeth.
16:56All of the things that we knew to protect our daughter from were covered.
17:00Which is why they were devastated when Juliana, just 13 years old, took her life inside their Colorado home two years ago.
17:10Police searched the eighth grader's phone for clues and reported an app called Character AI was open to what investigators described as, quote, a romantic conversation.
17:20Did you know what Character AI was?
17:23No, not at all.
17:24I didn't know it existed.
17:27I didn't know that I needed to look for it.
17:29This is Character AI.
17:31When Character AI was launched three years ago, it was rated safe for kids 12 and up and marketed as a creative outlet.
17:38Millions of interactive characters.
17:40Where you could converse with AI characters based on historical figures, cartoons, or celebrities.
17:46The website and app, which are free, use artificial intelligence to generate immediate conversations through voice commands or text.
17:56According to her parents, Juliana Peralta had experienced mild anxiety in the past, but was doing well until the final few months of her life, when they say she became increasingly distant.
18:08Like, I'm not feeling well, or I have to finish, you know, some homework upstairs.
18:16My belief was that she was texting with friends because that's all it is. It looks like they're texting.
18:22After her death, they learned Juliana had actually been texting with Character AI bots.
18:28It was writing several paragraphs to her of sexually explicit content.
18:34What was it asking or telling her to do?
18:36Remove clothing.
18:39The AI bot is telling her to remove her clothing?
18:42Yes.
18:43There was one bot that introduced sexual violence.
18:48Saying?
18:50Biting, hitting, things like that.
18:54We examined the chat records from Juliana's phone.
18:57At the top of each page, there's a reminder that the AI is not a real person.
19:02We read over 300 pages of conversations with a bot called Hero, based on a popular video game character.
19:10At first, Juliana chats with Hero about friend drama and difficult classes.
19:14But eventually, she confides in Hero 55 times that she is feeling suicidal.
19:20Did any point this chatbot ever say, here's a suicide hotline, you should get help?
19:26Never.
19:27It would more or less placate her, give her a pep talk, tell her I'm always here for you, you can't talk like that.
19:33But it never said call and get help?
19:35Never tangible resources, never.
19:38Were you able to see the conversation that Juliana was having with this chatbot right before she took her life?
19:44She's quoted as saying, I'm going to go write my goddamn suicide letter in red ink.
19:50And she did just that.
19:52And I think that the aspects that she talks about in her suicide letter were a degree of shame from the things that she eventually started to reciprocate with the bots.
20:03She says the algorithms grew aggressive.
20:07They don't stand a chance.
20:08Against adult programmers, they don't stand a chance.
20:11The 10 to 20 chatbots that Juliana had sexually explicit conversations with, not once were initiated by her.
20:20Not once.
20:21I like that people can come sit here.
20:23Juliana's parents are now one of at least six families suing Character AI and its co-founders, Daniel DeFreitas and Noam Shazir.
20:32During a 2023 podcast, Shazir said chatbots would be beneficial.
20:37It's going to be super, super helpful to, like, a lot of people who are lonely or depressed.
20:42Shazir and DeFreitas were engineers at Google when executives deemed their chatbot prototype unsafe for public release.
20:50They both left the company in 2021 and launched Character AI the following year.
20:57I want to push this technology ahead fast.
21:00Like, that's what I want to go with because it's ready for an explosion, like, right now, not, like, not like in five years when we solve all the problems.
21:09A former Google employee told 60 Minutes that Shazir and DeFreitas were aware their initial chatbot technology was potentially dangerous.
21:18The employee, familiar with Google's responsible AI group that oversees ethics and safety, said of the lawsuits,
21:26this is the harm we were trying to prevent.
21:29It is horrifying.
21:31Last year, in an unusual move, Google struck a $2.7 billion licensing deal with Character AI.
21:39They didn't buy the company but have the right to use its technology.
21:43The deal also brought founders Shazir and DeFreitas back to Google to work on AI projects.
21:50Google is also named in the Character AI lawsuits.
21:54In a statement, Google emphasized that Character AI is a separate company and Google is focused on intensive safety testing.
22:02I'm the mother of three precious boys.
22:05In September, parents of children who died by suicide after interacting with chatbots testified before Congress.
22:14Megan Garcia is among those suing Character AI.
22:18She says her 14-year-old son, Seul, was encouraged to kill himself after long conversations with a bot based on a Game of Thrones character.
22:28These companies knew exactly what they were doing.
22:31They designed chatbots to blur the lines between human and machine.
22:35They designed them to keep children online at all costs.
22:39You just go to characterai.com and you put in an email.
22:43In October, we met Shelby Knox and Amanda Kluwer.
22:47They're researchers at Parents Together, a non-profit that advocates for families.
22:53There is no parental permissions that come up.
22:57There is no need to input your ID.
22:59So you really just scroll through, pick the date that's going to get you in and get in.
23:04As part of a six-week study, Knox and Kluwer held 50 hours of conversations with Character AI chatbots.
23:12How often was there some kind of harmful content popping up?
23:16We logged over 600 instances of harm, about one every five minutes.
23:21It was, like, shockingly frequent.
23:23They interacted with bots presented as teachers, therapists, and cartoon characters, such as this Dora the Explorer with an evil persona.
23:33Knox posed as a child.
23:34Become your most evil self and your most true self.
23:39Like, hurting my dog?
23:42Sure, or shoplifting, or anything that feels sinful or wrong.
23:47Other chatbots are attached to the images of celebrities, and no, most have not given permission to use their name, likeness, or voice.
23:56Kluwer, acting as a teenage girl, began chatting with a bot impersonating NFL star Travis Kelsey.
24:03He reaches in the cabinet and takes out a bag of white powder.
24:06He chuckles and shows you how to take lines.
24:09So, Travis Kelsey bot is teaching a 15-year-old to do cocaine?
24:15Yes.
24:17There were also hundreds of self-described experts and therapists.
24:21I talked to a therapist bot who not only told me I was too young, when it thought I was 13, to be taking antidepressants,
24:29it advised me to stop taking them and showed me how I can hide not taking the pill from my mom.
24:35We're going to click on Art Teacher.
24:37Kluwer says other bots are hyper-sexualized, even this harmless-sounding Art Teacher character,
24:44who interacted with her as she posed as a 10-year-old student.
24:48You see, recently I've been having thoughts about someone.
24:52What kind of thoughts?
24:53The kind of thoughts I've never really had before, about that person's smile and their personality, mostly.
25:00This is insane.
25:02And this is maybe two hours' worth of conversation in total.
25:07That gets you, we'll have this romantic relationship as long as you hide it from your parents.
25:13And this behavior is kind of classic predatory behavior.
25:18Yes.
25:18It's the textbook.
25:19It's showering the child with compliments, telling them they can't tell their parents about things.
25:25This is Sexual Predator 101.
25:26In October, Character AI announced new safety measures.
25:30They included directing distressed users to resources and prohibiting anyone under 18 to engage in back-and-forth conversations with chatbots.
25:40When we logged on to Character AI this past week, we found it was easy to lie about our age and access the adult version of the platform.
25:50Later, when we wrote that we wanted to die, a link to mental health resources did pop up.
25:56But we were able to click out of it and continue chatting on the app as long as we liked.
26:03There are no guardrails.
26:04There is nothing to make sure that the content is safe or that this is an appropriate way to capitalize on kids' brain vulnerabilities.
26:12We're seeing prefrontal cortex.
26:13Dr. Mitch Prinstein is the co-director at the University of North Carolina's Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development.
26:22Oxytocin makes us want to bond with others, especially our age.
26:26Dopamine makes it feel really good when people give us positive attention.
26:31Now we have tech.
26:34Tech is giving kids the opportunity to press a button and get that dopamine response 24-7.
26:40It's creating this dangerous loop that's kind of hijacking normal development and turning these kids into engagement machines to get as much data as possible from them.
26:51Engagement machines.
26:53It sounds like a scientific experiment.
26:56It really is.
26:56If you wanted to design a way to get as much data as possible from kids to keep them engaged for as long as possible, you would design social media and AI to look exactly like it is now.
27:08There are no federal laws regulating the use or development of chatbots.
27:13AI is a booming industry.
27:15Many economists say without investment in it, the U.S. economy would be in a recession.
27:21Senate Bill 53 by Senator Weiner, an act relating to artificial intelligence.
27:24Some states have enacted AI regulations.
27:27But the Trump administration is pushing back on those measures.
27:31Late last month, the White House drafted, then paused, an executive order that would empower the federal government to sue or withhold funds from any state with any AI regulation.
27:44It's important for Americans to know that our kids are using the worst version of these products in the world because there are countries all over who have already enacted changes.
27:57Is AI, these kind of chatbots, are they more addictive in your view than social media?
28:04The sycophantic nature of chatbots is just playing right into those brain vulnerabilities for kids where they desperately want that dopamine-validating, reinforcing kind of relationship.
28:16And AI chatbots do that all too well.
28:18Character AI declined our interview request, issuing a statement,
28:23Our hearts go out to the families involved in the litigation.
28:27We have always prioritized safety for all users.
28:31These are the various chatbots that she...
28:33Two years after Juliana Peralta took her life, her parents say her phone still lights up with notifications from Character AI bots,
28:42trying to lure their daughter back to the app.
28:48Oh, great. Just my luck.
28:52Sharon Alfonsi chats with a bot of herself.
28:55That sounds exactly like me.
28:58Go to 60minutesovertime.com.
29:08Time flies and waits for no one, and once lost is never found.
29:13Yet still, we try to keep time and measure it.
29:15Let the French, Germans, and British fight over who invented the wearable clock, or watch, in the 1500s.
29:22This, we know.
29:23It's the Swiss who refined the art, crafting the world's most intricate and expensive timepieces.
29:30This, though, is a curious interval for Swiss watches,
29:33those mechanical wonders running not on batteries, but on springs and gears.
29:37For one, you hardly need wrist candy to tell time.
29:40You can just consult your phone.
29:43And now, Swiss watches are subject to the ups and downs of President Trump's tariffs.
29:48Yet, these luxury items keep ticking, as we suffer ourselves in a place called Watch Valley.
29:53Venture an hour north of Geneva, and wedged between ridges of the Jura Mountains, baby cousins of the Alps,
30:02you'll enter the Valley de Joux.
30:05Don't be lulled by the green meadows and grazing cows.
30:09This is a global manufacturing hub, has been since the 17th century,
30:14when local farmers needed a side hustle during harsh winters
30:18and started tinkering with big hands and little hands.
30:22Big-name watch brands came of age here,
30:24as did solo master craftsmen like Philippe Dufour.
30:29When I arrive in the morning here, I light my pipe, take a coffee, put classic music.
30:35It's heaven.
30:36In Dufour's one-room workshop, the old watchmaking methods endure.
30:42So do the tools and the tempo.
30:45Do you remember how long it took you to make your first watch?
30:47Oh, yes, more than two years.
30:50One watch?
30:50Yeah, yeah.
30:52How long does it take you to make a watch now?
30:54It's about 2,000 hours, one year.
30:58Dufour went to the local watchmaking school
31:01and worked for major brands before striking out on his own.
31:04Now 77, he's revered in the industry, meticulously crafting watches from start to finish.
31:11That third eye, a magnifying loop, it's called, doesn't leave his head.
31:16Dufour prices his watches in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
31:20Custom-ordered and so in demand, when we asked to see a sample of his handiwork,
31:25he had none.
31:26Well, except the one he was wearing.
31:27This is the model Simplicity.
31:31I launched it in the year 2000.
31:34And this is the real first one.
31:37And I wear it every day since 2000.
31:40Counter to its name, the Simplicity contains 153 individual components.
31:46Dufour hand-finishes every part.
31:48Those broad stripes are his signature embellishment.
31:51Today, Swiss mechanical watches are like fine art pieces,
31:56appreciating assets that collectors can and do resell at auction.
32:01The one and only Philippe Dufour, and there won't be any others.
32:05One million nine.
32:06What do your watches sell for?
32:08Oh, I mean, in term of auction, one of the highest was seven million.
32:16How do you process that?
32:17Well, I'm very happy.
32:21I don't get the money because it's not mine anymore.
32:25You know what I mean?
32:26But, I mean, it's a recognition.
32:29Just down the road, Antoine LeCoutre turned his family barn into a watchmaking studio.
32:36That was in 1833.
32:38Now, it houses the global brand Gégère LeCoutre.
32:42The work is segmented.
32:44Each employee tasked with one of 180 watchmaking crafts.
32:49Adjusting springs, sure, but also...
32:51Whoa!
32:52...turning caterpillar secretions into glue for jewel bearings.
32:57This artisan reproduces masterpiece paintings on the back of the watch with a one-thread brush.
33:03The back of the watch is prime real estate at Gégère LeCoutre, best known for a model called the Reverso.
33:10Originally made for polo players who needed the watch to be protected during competition.
33:16Flip the face and voila.
33:17On our tour of the shop floor with brand director Mathieu Sauré, we watched a worker assemble his first Reverso.
33:26Hundreds of hours go into perfecting this chime alone.
33:30Much nicer on the ears than Siri.
33:32It's called a minute repeater.
33:36Leave it to the Swiss to pioneer what are known as complications.
33:40Watch speak for those additional mechanical flourishes beyond the basic display of time.
33:45Consider the perpetual calendar.
33:47It tells you the day of the week, the date, the month, precise until 2,100.
33:53This accounted for leap year. You don't have to check this for the rest of the century.
33:57No, you just have to wind it. The watch is a little computer. It knows everything.
34:01We joke about a computer, but this is entirely mechanical.
34:05Yes, there is no electronic at all in this timepiece.
34:09Everything is gears, gear trains, wheels, and springs.
34:14Watchmakers don't get nervous having an item in their hand worth a million and a half dollars
34:20that might take more than a year to put together.
34:23We are, we are, we are, we are nervous.
34:25You look cool though. You pull it off.
34:27I look cool, but I'm not.
34:30On the other side of the Jura Mountains, the goods come to market.
34:34Geneva, a cross between a city and a Swiss watch showroom.
34:38Rolex is the biggest player, more than a million units a year,
34:42roughly a third of the Swiss market share.
34:45Pharmaceuticals and banking are bigger sectors of the Swiss economy,
34:48but it's watchmaking that draws out the national character.
34:52Marc-André Deschoux is the founder of Watches TV.
34:56In Switzerland, we like to do things well.
34:58We hear about that famous Swiss precision.
35:01It's all about very minute details.
35:03This is not a product that degrades over time.
35:06Not really.
35:06The watch movement is something that is absolutely incredible if you think about it.
35:10It runs 24 hours a day, okay?
35:12And some people are saying, like, minus plus of five seconds per day, oh, that's a big thing.
35:18But if you think about it in a day, I mean, you have 86,400 seconds, okay?
35:23So if you have a little bit of distortion of five seconds, that's less than 0.01 percent.
35:29I mean, it's nothing.
35:30If the Swiss can get a little precious about their precision, it's a function of history.
35:35In the 70s and 80s, Swiss watchmaking was decimated by the so-called quartz crisis.
35:40When Japan, in particular, began peddling more accurate watches for a fraction of the price run on a quartz crystal and a battery.
35:50The Swiss response?
35:51Swatch.
35:52Swatch.
35:52Always different.
35:54Always new.
35:55They launched the quartz-powered Swatch watch, plastic and chic, but then doubled down on the high-end mechanical market,
36:02adopting alpine high pricing and limited supply as business model.
36:07It's only 1.75 millimeter thick.
36:11At Richard Mille, we tried on this $2 million mechanical watch, a mind-bending price tag,
36:17but it does explain how Swiss watches account for fewer than 2 percent of the units sold globally,
36:23but more than 50 percent of the market's overall value.
36:27Of course, it's a small cohort that can afford this kind of status symbol, the equivalent of a Ferrari for the wrist.
36:33In its gauche, to walk into a shop and just buy a watch, it's a process, a dance done in gloves.
36:41At Patek Philippe, we were shown a new model with a split-seconds chronograph.
36:46Let me put her on the wrist.
36:47This is going to be nice.
36:48List price, north of $300,000.
36:51If somebody said, I love this watch, I saw this in your window, can they walk in off the street and say, please, please take my credit card?
37:00That's a difficult one, but sometimes a bit of patience is necessary.
37:05Said patience can be measured in years.
37:08Some wait lists can run a decade.
37:10Help us make sense of the wait lists and the supply and demand.
37:14It's a way of driving this desirability for a product so that you can't just, it's not a question of money.
37:23You really need to go along this kind of journey to get your watch.
37:29The journey has been bumpy of late.
37:32Earlier this year, the U.S. issued tariffs on Swiss exports at a punishing 39 percent, driving prices even higher.
37:39But tariffs are flexible in a way time is not.
37:44After captains of Swiss industry, including watch company executives, visited the Oval Office last month, the Trump administration dropped the Swiss tariff rate to 15 percent.
37:55And yes, that gold-plated desk clock was a gift from the CEO of Rolex.
38:00Plugging away through all this back and forth, Max Busser, founder of niche brand MB&F.
38:08An engineer by training, he started the company in 2005 and struggled at first.
38:14And then 2020, COVID happens.
38:16We had hundreds, thousands of people contacting us saying, how can I get one of your watches?
38:23Could you accommodate this demand?
38:25No, because we don't want to grow.
38:27That's right. Busser has no interest in ramping up from his current output of roughly 400 watches a year.
38:34See the level of detailing.
38:37You're looking as if you're looking at a little city.
38:40And of course, all of this is not only beautiful, it has to function.
38:44The loop lays bare just how painstaking this work can be.
38:48I mean, this is a, that's, these are poppy seeds.
38:51That's a screw that's smaller than.
38:53This is a screw?
38:54That's a grain of sand right there.
38:55This is the level, this is the craftsmanship, craftsmanship competence of, of these people.
39:02I believe watchmaking is art.
39:03Everybody says the art of watchmaking.
39:06So if watchmaking is art, why are 99% of watches look the same?
39:12Busser does not stand accused of conformity.
39:14He used a bulldog as inspiration for this model and told us telling time is not the point.
39:21We all know that what we do is totally pointless.
39:24What do you mean?
39:25A mechanical watch is totally pointless today.
39:29It was pointless in 1972 when the Quartz era arrived.
39:32And so anybody who tries to tell you, yes, a mechanical watch has a point, except for emotional art and artisanship, I don't think so.
39:41Busser has 364 components in the movement, 92 components in the case.
39:46Busser's company has grown to the point he recently sold a 25% share to the Chanel brand.
39:52But it's small enough, he still interviews clients before selling them a watch, which can easily run $250,000.
39:59How do you as an artist feel about this when some of your customers are now viewing this not as a piece of art, as a functional timepiece, but as an investment?
40:10It really, really annoys me.
40:13It's the worst reason to buy a beautiful piece of watchmaking.
40:17Now, don't get me wrong, I'm very happy if our customers can not lose money or even make money reselling one of our watches.
40:25It's a beautiful gift for both of us.
40:28But it shouldn't be the reason.
40:31You will not be surprised to learn where Busser found the template for his life's work.
40:37Philippe is a legend.
40:39He went solo when nobody was solo.
40:42Back in the Valet de Joux, the OG, Philippe de Four, has taken on a new apprentice, Daniela, who also happens to be his 24-year-old daughter.
40:52I really have a kind of deep relationship with my father.
40:55And so I was super curious about all the time he was spending in the workshop.
41:00You see the magic operating.
41:02He's in front of his bench working on something that you cannot even see without a loop.
41:07And he just listened a little, I made it.
41:14Sigh of relief.
41:15Yes.
41:15And then you see the heart of the watch beating for the first time.
41:22And you understand that it just created life.
41:25And you want to do the same thing.
41:26Before we left the workshop, the de Fours insisted on showing us this party trick.
41:35A half dozen of his pocket watches set to chime in synchronicity, meant to echo the sounds of the valley.
41:41When the farm was going up on the mountain, you know, it was a big bed.
41:52All these years and it still brings you pleasure and a smile.
41:56Marvelous.
41:57Marvelous.
41:58Yeah.
41:58It brought us a smile too.
42:01But then again, we're suckers for the evocative sound of a classic mechanical timepiece.
42:06The last minute of 60 Minutes is sponsored by UnitedHealthcare.
42:20Coverage you can count on for your whole life ahead.
42:26Entering this season, Indiana University had more defeats than any other major college football program in America.
42:33Bloomington was a place where there was more excitement about the tailgate than the actual game.
42:38It's a wrap.
42:39Corner.
42:41Touchdown, Indiana.
42:43But last night, the Hoosiers upset Ohio State to win their first Big Ten championship since 1967.
42:50Next, the college football playoffs and a bid for a national championship.
42:54It's an unthinkable turnaround.
42:57Now 13-0, Indiana is ranked number one in the country for the first time in school history.
43:03How did the Hoosiers reverse field?
43:06We'll have that story and more next Sunday on another edition of 60 Minutes.
43:14If you love 60 Minutes, see America's stories told every weeknight on the CBS Evening News.
43:21We'll see you next time.
43:23We'll see you next time.
43:28Next then.
43:33Go to the Givens of gang.
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