teenage climate campaigner greta thunberg has delivered an angry address at the united nations climate change summit in new york. she accused world leaders of failing young people, and said her generation will never forgive them if they fail to combat global warming. a huge two—week operation is under way to bring thousands of tourists back to britain after thomas cook collapsed. the uk government has requested an investigation into the travel company's bosses. there has been growing criticism over the salaries of executives. human rights groups in egypt say more than 500 people have been detained after demonstrations in several cities on friday and saturday. the authorities have yet to release the official number of arrests. under president abdel fattah el—sisi, there has been a wide—ranging crackdown on protests.

now on bbc news, stephen sackur speaks to microsoft's president, brad smith, on hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. remember the time when the internet was trumpeted as the tech tool that would deliver us a golden age of knowledge, freedom and democracy? well, now we are in a darker, more cynical place. the digital revolution has generated fears about lost privacy, mass surveillance and systemic misinformation. have the corporate titans of tech failed us? well, my guest today is brad smith, president of microsoft. how do we ensure our astonishing technological advances are harnessed for good, not harm?

brad smith, welcome to hardtalk. thank you, nice to be here. you have served an extraordinary amount of time at microsoft, the best part of three decades. you have seen the evolution of our attitudes towards information technology and the internet in particular. i have referred to the sort of great positivity, the optimism, in the early years. would you agree that these days, we are much more anxious and fearful about what the internet does, and how it might betray some of our values? i think that's the case. we live in an age of anxiety overall, i would say. we talk about the forces that are disrupting our lives,

and even when we're not talking about technology, when we are talking about globalisation, income inequality, we are actually talking about forces that have been unleashed by technology. so we do live in a time when technology is both a tool and a weapon, and we need to address both sides of that coin. interesting you use this phrase, and you have written a whole book with its title front and centre, "tool and weapon." let us address this notion of information tech and the internet being a weapon. who is to blame for the weaponisation? i think in some sense we should look all around us. i would look first and foremost at certain governments that clearly are weaponising technology. we have authoritarian regimes launching cyber attacks that disrupted, on a single day in 2017, one third of all of the nhs hospitals in the united kingdom. but it's broader than that. we see cyber—criminals, we see concerns about our privacy from unintended consequences.

the one group you left out there were the giant tech corporations themselves, of which you are of course a representative, a very senior one. is it not time to conclude that the tech giants, and of course in the western world there are the big five, which includes microsoft, and we can list the others later, these tech giants became too big, too powerful, too full of hubris? i don't know if the tech giants are too big or too powerful, but we all need to step up. we need to think more broadly. we need to assume more responsibility. i do think that the industry needs to mature and really acknowledge quite explicitly the challenges that technology has created, and notjust the benefits. i do want to talk about the evolution, because it is very germane to the microsoft story itself. it's not so long ago, let's say in the mid to late—1990s, that many people studying the tech sector referred to microsoft as "the evil empire."

you were the first of these giant companies that ruthlessly exploited technology to dominate the marketplace. looking back, do you think that was actually a mistake, the attitude that was brought to the table by microsoft? we made more than our share of mistakes. and i think it is an interesting story, because we had to learn. part of what we had to learn was to look in the mirror and see ourselves not as we wanted to see ourselves, but as the way other people saw us. we had to learn to connect with the world. we needed to assume more responsibility. we needed to compromise and accept regulation as it was imposed on us, and in that story, i do think there are parallels for the tech sector as a whole today. because it was tempting, of course, this was personified perhaps by bill gates more than anybody else, tempting to see this sort of geeky, extraordinarily smart

business leader in a new enterprise, tech—oriented, who really was sort of in it for the purity of developing the knowledge. but of course bill gates wasn't really like that at all, just as mark zuckerberg recently isn't really like that at all. he's notjust the uber—geek, he's a ruthless businessman out to suck every dollar of profit that can be made from his dominance of the market. i would not endorse a statement that broad. what i would suggest is that in the world of technology, people start companies with a great idea and they move very fast. one of the lessons to be learned is that while it is important to move fast, one should never move faster than the speed of thought. and i think if you look at the history of digital technology, it has had a tendency at times for companies to move fast — the old slogan was "move fast and break things." i think the new slogan is...

just to interrupt you on that point, do you think microsoft was guilty of that, in its determination to absolutely dominate and rule the operating system market for pcs? i think that what we learned was that we needed to think more broadly. there is a singularity of focus that you often find in very successful tech companies, and microsoft was among them. and then you reach a point where you just have to recognise that the impact that you are having on others, other people in your industry, the world as a whole, is so much greater that you have to step back and internalise that, and that's the key to accepting more responsibility. interesting. if that is the place that big tech is at today, do you understand the calls being made across the political spectrum in the us right now for the breakup of the biggest companies?

if we are going to name them, then it would be amazon, apple, alphabet, who of course have google, then there would be microsoft, than facebook. there are people, and i'm going to quote for you, senator elizabeth warren, a hopeful presidential candidate in the democratic party, calling for the breakup of those big companies, because she says they "fundamentally threaten the balance of power in our democracy." i do believe we need to... i'll say, strengthen the democratic side of the balance of power in democracy. i don't believe you need to break companies up. i don't believe that's the best or even fastest path to restoring the power of governments, especially democratic governments elected by the public. we learn from microsoft's own experience, that while the government in our case 20 years ago, actually pursued a break—up of the company, it could accomplish what it wanted in the end without doing that. and you can move a lot faster as a government to doing it in a different way.

let's talk about regulation, what you call guardrails in your book. the idea that you can find a way of working, private sectors, the big tech companies, working alongside the state government to develop meaningful, effective guardrails, to ensure that the public is well served. tell me what you think these guardrails should look like, that we don't have today? i think one should start by asking what problems we want to solve, and then you create guardrails to solve each one. certainly we look around the world today and there are plenty of technology problems that need to be solved. there are issues around privacy, there are issues around cyber—security. there are issues around the use of artificial intelligence in, say, something like facial recognition. there are economic issues, especially the impact that technology is having onjobs

and the future of the economy. and in some places in the world there are some guardrails in place, say, in europe, around something like privacy. but almost everywhere you look, i think we need additional guardrails. we need to guardrails that will be essential for the decade ahead, the 2020s, and we need to start building those now. let's get specific, and let's start with privacy and data. goodness knows technology allows every single one of us now to use our smartphones and our laptops and our tablets to acquire and use information, and thereby to also provide information about ourselves to tech companies such as yours. in the united states, there is a law which in essence says that the tech companies can't be held legally responsible for online content that is on their platforms. is it your contention that law must now change? actually, yes. section 230 of the

communications decency act. it was created in the 1990s when the internet was really just taking off. the notion was that the best way to enable the internet to take off was to give to interactive services immunity that journalists, networks, television and radio had traditionally faced for content. i don't think that one should just abrogate what was created in the ‘90s, because i think that would probably virtually suffocate social media. but the time has come to accept that there needs to be some exceptions and some new responsibilities for companies, including our own, in this space. you say including your own, but the sceptic in me says to myself, here is the guy, one of the top officials at microsoft, suggesting a change, making himself look like a real public—spirited corporate leader, but actually, a change which will hamstring facebook and twitter and some other content carriers, but it won't really affect microsoft at all. this is an easy hit for you.

well, i would actually say there are two things to consider. first, one of the largest social media networks in the world is linkedin, owned by microsoft. it has 650 million members around the world. i think it's always important for us to make sure that we're willing to assume the responsibilities we suggest for others. and secondly, at the end of the day, i don't think we should pursue a path that fundamentally impairs the ability of any service to deliver the value that people really expect and rely on, whether it's from us or from anyone else. this needs to be an exercise in identifying how we protect what we value, but create more responsibility, and there are real practical steps under way this year to do that and i think those are the things

we should learn from. let's talk about the degree to which the big tech companies and governments are capable of cross collaboration, of working on these problems together. i am very mindful that, for example, earlier this year, after a terrible mass shooting in christchurch, new zealand, the new zealand prime minister and the french president tried to work together and brought companies such as your own on board to get a sort of clarion call, a declaration together, of collaboration, to ensure that hate speech, for example, is taken down, taken off the internet. but frankly all these months later there is no sign that's actually working. i actually think we are making important progress, and we will continue to make important progress. i think tremendous credit is due to new zealand's prime minister, jacinda ardern, and to president macron, and other leaders. i happened to be in wellington, new zealand's capital, less than two weeks after the christchurch terrorist attack. i had the opportunity to sit down

with prime minister ardern. the work that began led two months later to the christchurch call. you know what i'm going to say. donald trump and the trump administration do not seem to be interested injoining this initiative, and if the us won'tjoin, what on earth use is it? well, it's interesting. in the world today, if your goal is to actually change the features or conduct of american technology companies, you actually don't always need the united states government. look at what happened in the wake of christchurch. new zealand moved, australia passed a new law, just two weeks after that the british government introduced a new proposal. the french and germans have moved forward and the american technology companies have actually changed a number of important aspects of their services that were exploited by the christchurch terrorist in a way that we should never want to see exploited again, all without the support of the us government.

but i have to be honest with you, mr smith. when you tell me that the new zealanders are on board and the scandinavians are on board and the french and maybe the uk government to, it doesn't really surprise me. it seems to match the rhetoric we hear from politicians in those countries. i'd be much more interested and frankly impressed if you told me about the russians, the chinese, the north koreans and indeed donald trump and the americans were signing up to what you have at some points called the geneva convention that's needed to control technology across the world. these countries are the problem. and they're not interested in your solution. i actually think one should consider it from a different perspective. we need to build coalitions of the willing, especially among the world's democracies. there are roughly 75 democratic nations in the world, roughly half the world's population live in them. so, for example, under the leadership of a number of western countries, including the uk, france, germany, people came together

in paris last year to sign a new cyber security agreement. all 28 members of the european union, 25 of 27 nato members, the us was missing, but progress is advancing. but address my wider point about other people missing. in 2017, if i had been in a british hospital and had computer systems wiped out by a malware attack that came from north korea, it would be no great consolation to know that the scandinavians have signed up to a geneva convention for internet safety. what you're not telling me is, while we can continue to have any confidence in the security of our data, of our information flows, when we know there are people in north korea, russia, china, and a host of other countries committed to developing ever more sophisticated cyber warfare. but that is exactly the point. if you're going to defend the world's democracies from the world's authoritarian regimes, you start by building

an alliance of the world's democracies. it's the basic principle that led to the creation of nato. it's the basic principle that won world war ii and it's the basic principle we need on the 21st century to defend the world's democracies from these authoritarian attacks. interesting point, but maybe you are being a bit naive, because i'm also remembering that in 2013, you and many others from big tech were called into crisis meetings in the white house under the 0bama administration because you discovered, thanks to the leaks of edward snowden, that the us state, the government of america, your government, its national security agency were illicitly tapping into electronic communications for their own national security purposes, unknown to the millions of people whose data was accessed. why should we trust america? when did any government in the west? one should have some facing democracy and be to protect it. i actually think, as we described in our book, that the snowden

disclosures in 2013 were one of the great inflection points for technology of the past decade and it did awaken us all to things we did not know. it led us, as a company, to file not one, but four lawsuits against the 0bama administration. we went to the united states supreme court, we took steps that led to greater legal protections and that's the other side of the coin. if we protect our rights and democracies and protect ourselves from authoritarian cyber attacks, that's not going to solve the problems of the world, but it's fundamental to the progress we need to make. i am really sensing your passion for this, but i'm also wondering whether you are not being deeply naive and perhaps some people watching this will say a bit misleading. because we've established that state actors across the world, frankly, on their record, can't be trusted to follow your principles, but also on the private sector

has repeatedly failed to follow your principles. we only have to think about facebook and the data released at cambridge analytica and the fact that millions of facebook users weren't to know their data was being accessed for political purposes and we can, frankly, look at microsoft and even the recent past, you've been reprimanded in ireland, there was a published report showing that linkedin, one of your companies, was applying algorithms to personal data to suggest network connections, addressing email addresses, accessing email addresses of millions of people who had no idea that they had been accessed, and that was a linkedin responsibility. dutch officials pointing to microsoft collecting personal data without informing users. why should we trust any of the actors in this sector? i don't think that this is about sitting back and just hoping that people do the right thing. i think it is about engaging people,

perhaps most especially the public at large, so that we all take the steps to ensure that the right thing is done. i think that the fundamental point that you are making actually is a valid one. one of the stories we share in the book was that meeting with president 0bama in the white house in 2013. i was there and as we in the tech sector were pushing the white house to put in place more checks and balances on the nsa, there came a moment in that meeting when president 0bama looked at us and said, "i have a suspicion the guns will turn. "you all in the tech sector have as much or more data "in the government, there will be a day when the demands "that you are trying to place on the government will be "placed on you." he was right. it was a prescient observation. so, if you're accepting the premise that, frankly, we should be sceptical about the state actors in the big tech companies, let me bring it back to the individual and all the people watching and listening to this interview. we all generate enormous — most of us how — enormous amounts of data.

why can't we have ownership of that data and at least have a transparency as to what our data is being used for and by whom? well, i actually think that is something that is an important goal and it needs to be a reality around the world. so when? well, interestingly, for any country that is today in the european union, that is the law of the land. it became the law of the land in may of 2018. people in the eu have the right to go to a digital service and find out what information a company has about them. they have the right to correct and if it's wrong, to delete it, to move it to another provider and i will say, we need to bring those rights to the rest of the world and i will also say, microsoft today is the only company in the tech sector that said last may that we would take the rights that european law gave to european customers and we would extend that to all of our customers everywhere in the world. and we've found that customers, people everywhere actually value these rights.

in the future, artificial intelligence appears to be the next great step in the sort of tech story. in the west, and particularly the united states, it seems ai and innovation within it is being driven by the big tech companies. in china, for example, it seems the state is committing itself and vast resources to investment in al. which approach do you think is going to win out? i think at the end of the day, you are going to see ongoing competition between both approaches. i don't think this is the kind of thing where one approach is going to win and one approach is going to lose. i actually think the real question shouldn't be who will do better, the us or china? the real question is, how do we ensure that artificial intelligence becomes a little bit

more like electricity in the sense that it needs to be a tool that any company, any government, any nonprofit can use anywhere. we shouldn't want it to be an invention that drives wealth or income or power to just a couple of places on the planet. in the course of your long career and having seen what has happened to the tech sector, what's happened with privacy business, how states abused and misused information technology, are you confident that we human beings, as a species, are going to develop autonomous "thinking machines" in a responsible way? i think you've just asked what may well be one of the single most important questions for our generation of people because think about it in the terms you put it. where the first generation the history of humanity that is giving machines the power to make decisions that historically could only be made by people. if we get it wrong, every generation that follows will likely pay a price

for our mistakes. does that mean that we should be optimistic or pessimistic? i actually think it means we need to be determined. it is of fundamental importance that we get these issues out on the table, we enable people to understand them, we start to bring together notjust technical people from the tech sector, but people from broad communities to really come to terms and enable us, especially among democratic societies, to put laws in place that at least increase the probability that we will get this right. so, optimist or pessimist? i am both, but mostly i say it doesn't matter. it only matters that you're determined. we are determined to do what we can, to not just think about this from a technology perspective. it's why, as we share in the book, if you go to the vatican, we meet with the world's religious leaders, with philosophers. if we are going to ensure that computers reflect the best

of humanity, we need to ensure that all of humanity is reflected in this conversation and we just have to stay on this every day. brad smith, it's a great way to end this interview. thank very much for being on hardtalk. thank you. thank you very much. hello once again. whilst some spots, particularly across northern and eastern britain, started monday decently enough, well, eventually weather fronts piled in from the atlantic. here we are on tuesday. you get the sense we may well be in for something of

a repeat performance. in fact, tuesday could be one of the wettest and windiest days that many areas will have seen for quite some time. in the first part of the day, it's the southern half of britain that's likely to see the very worst of the conditions on offer. as i take you on through the morning and on into the afternoon, you'll notice that some of those really dark blues and greens gradually work their way ever further towards the north, and it will be a fairly slow process as well. that's why we think some spots widely could see 30—a0mm of rain, others could get up to 70mm millimetres of rain. some of the gusts, aomph, possibly even 50mph in exposed locations. just to give you a sense of the spread of those gusts, even into the north of scotland, where you don't see the very worst of the rain, it will be a windy day. and then late on, we may welljust ramp up some rain and some stronger winds yet again. initially into the south—west, but then widely across the southern counties of both england and wales on what is not going to be a particularly cold night given the amount of cloud around on the strength of the wind as well, mainly the west and south—west.

here we are on wednesday, and once that side of the feature has worked its way off to the near continent, actually wednesday is going to be one of the quieter days of the week. once that wind and rain has cleared away from east anglia and the south—east, then there is a fair amount of dry weather. yes, there will be a spotting of showers in the heart of scotland, not so much wind. you may feel like standing around that day, but probably not on tuesday. here we are on thursday. a new set of weather fronts working in from the atlantic. if you've seen the forecast in recent days, these forecasts have sped up, it looks like they would hang around for the first part of friday. bar the far north—eastern quarter of scotland, it looks as though eventually they clear the eastern shores of the british isles, leaving behind a drier prospect, albiet fairly late in the day for some. and then we mayjust gang up those of those showers in western areas to give the odd longer spell of rain. and all the while, the wind quite a significant factor on the day on friday.

so essentially, it's a day of sunny spells and some showers. but, as i say, some of those showers ganging together on many fronts to give some longer spells of rain. and again, we're darkening up some of these blues so i would be not at all surprised if you heard the odd rumble of thunder in the heaviest of those downpours. the top temperature on the day of about 18.

this is the briefing, i'm sally bundock. our top story: the un secretary—general, antonio guterres, thanks young people for leading the charge against climate change. he says the world is waking up to the problem. pressure is building, momentum is growing, and action—by—action, the tide is turning. decision day at the uk's supreme court. judges prepare to deliver an historic verdict on prime minister borisjohnson's decision to suspend parliament. thousands more thomas cook customers are being flown back to britain, amid questions over multimillion—pound salaries paid to company bosses. and, balancing the right to privacy

with freedom of speech,