>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> president obama delivered the commencement address at the united states military academy on wednesday, taking the opportunity at west point to recast his broad vision of foreign policy and america's role in the world.

>> america must always lead on the world stage. if we don't, no one else will. the military that you have joined is and always will be the backbone of that leadership. u.s. military action cannot be the only or even primary component of our leadership in every instance. just because we have the best hammer doesn't mean that every problem as a nail. >> one day after the announcement of the residual force of service members that will remain beyond 2014 in afghanistan.

most troops will be out of the country in america's longest-running war. the president clearly thinking about foreign policy and it is said to mark a series from the president about foreign policy over the next 10 days in an attempt to respond to critics that say current u.s. policy is weak. he will give a speech about u.s. commitment in europe to warsaw. honoring u.s. veterans in normandy on the 70th anniversary of the d-day landings. the ceo of the center for american securities, a senior fellow at the brookings institution. an op-ed columnist. david is a washington bureau chief for the economist magazine. i am pleased to have all of them on this program. why did the president feel it necessary to make this speech now and the follow-up speeches as well? what does he believe is necessary for him to accomplish?

>> i think the white house felt it was losing grip on a narrative and i think the narrative that they don't want to hear is that obama's foreign policy is aimless or week and that our allies constantly need reassurance that we are not abandoning them. it was really like a state of the union address on foreign policy. it was literally and figuratively all over the map but i think he was trying to signal two different ways at once. a level of deep engagement on issues that he considers primary importance and a little bit of development of a kind of obama doctrine. the amazing thing about the commentary that has come out is that it is all over the place.

people are reading this as appeasing russia, other people are reading all kinds of things. these speeches are sometimes like rorschach tests and people are taking so much from them that i'm not sure the message they want to get out is entirely clear even to people who are the target audience. >> i agree with jeff that they have been under a lot of attack about america's role in the world and this is their way of hitting back saying that we do have a clear policy and i think it was a particular attack on his hawkish critics because he went out of his way to say that we've made more mistakes by over intervening militarily than we have through restraint. there is a strong element of restraint here but he is also

saying we are not pulling back from the world. america is not in decline. we are as strong as we ever were. he is saying i am not george w. bush. he says i want to go back to before george w. bush, i don't want to stay away from intervention but it will be more like bill clinton or george h.w. bush in the last administration. >> the president has said his foreign policy is similar to that of george bush 41. tell me your take away and what you thought was essential for the president to say. >> i think this was an effort to reset the narrative. this administration has had to deal with so many foreign-policy crises one after the other and they've gotten pushed into a very reactive mode and i think this was an effort to sort of

get back on the front foot and say hey, the u.s. does have a key leadership role in the world, and here is my framework. here is the new approach to counterterrorism. here is why the u.s. has to support international democracy around the world. the real issue is, how does this translate into policy? or does this set expectations that new policies will be rolling out in support of these elements? >> i think it is a little of both. he is trying to provide framework into which the piece parts fit. i think there will be some new initiatives like you mentioned

the counterterrorism partnership will then fund. a $5 billion fund devoted to helping build capacity, to deal with terrorist groups. i expect there will be other initiatives like this. >> did the president answer the question that you posed, what will we fight for? >> ultimately not in as much as that was the kind of question looking for a kind of positive answer. i think it was a very effective speech as a catalog of the mistakes he thinks america should avoid. and he was very effective in attacking sometime some strawman but critics that want america to go it alone and use military force when it is not appropriate. all that stuff is fine. where europe will be dismayed or

in the middle east or asia is that there are some hard trade-offs. and when those bite, he did not get an accurate sense of when it would fall. it would be very good to use p keepers in other countries. what if they don't turn up? >> the u.s. will use military force unilaterally if necessary when our core interests demand it. when do our core interests demand it and how do we recognize that? >> when our vital interests are directly threatened. the most visible examples have been in the counterterrorism domain whether it was arrayed against osama bin laden or the willingness to take strikes on individuals when they are continuing an imminent threat abroad. that has been the most visible

example. >> it's almost like we want another speech because as president clinton put it, it depends on the meaning of the word score interest. and there was some clarity there and he did say when the security of our allies is in danger, it is stronger than when the united states phase is attacked. on the one hand, he's really talking about pretty hard realistic threats we will respond to, but he also talks about creating the framework for a world of tolerance and liberty. he talks about international norms. he is not simply a narrow realist here. there is language that suggests the united states has an

obligation to a larger world order. but remember he was elected as a president by a country weary of war. in some ways, the proudest line is when he declares the season of war over. >> let me go back to something ej said where he said obama seems to go on to return to clinton and bush 41. i would say it is not at all clear to me that obama would intervene in bosnia in the way that president clinton did or somalia, for that matter. i don't think those rise to his definition. let me use one of the primary examples of american interest. if you listen to him carefully, he believes that nuclear proliferation, wmds falling into the hands of fanatics are core

interests. i think what he is signaling or suggesting is that i am serious about having the option of using force. it was not as soft as some people might think. >> it seems that there is a sense that we have to be wiser about being drawn and the conflicts that our national interests are not at stake. and more careful about that than his predecessors. >> i think in the wake of iraq and the way that initial intervention and the mistakes made going into war, and i think it is something that has been on his mind. this is a president that wants to be the president to end the

inherited wars on his watch. he wants to hand off to whoever the new president is without a major war going on in which american troops are involved. and i think that is a noble goal in some ways, that the challenges you want to make sure that you draw down in afghanistan in a way that secures the hard-fought gains. the second caveat is that the world doesn't always cooperate. there will be challenges that need a firm response that we can't necessarily predict or control. >> does this speech show that the president wants to make it clear that there is any threat of terrorism and we must be prepared and have the resources to fight that? >> i think that the terrorism threat has morphed into racial affiliates that are more

widespread and he is trying to shift and adapt our strategy to be more tailored to that and be more sustainable to the american body politic in terms of something we can sustain over a long time. >> i think it is striking that terrorism more than any other question dominated the beginning of the speech when if you want to know what core interests are, keeping us safe from terrorism seems to be right at the top of this list. >> the one contradiction is the following. he talks about intervening sparingly and wisely and syria is an example where he did not intervene early. he speaks as syria as the epicenter of al qaeda influenced terrorism. there are a lot of people that believe had we intervened earlier, to support them more robustly, when they were more

moderate, that we might not be dealing with such a terrible al qaeda problem in syria right now. one of the big lessons here for president obama is that there is a price for action and there is also a price that comes with not acting. and in syria, you could argue that it is worse today because we did not help the rebels when they were more moderate leaning and had a better chance for success. >> i believe this president does not believe he should have acted two years ago when he was urged to do so and certainly has the strong opinions against a no-fly zone. >> we better understand who these groups are and we are

better able to distinguish them and have greater confidence in who we are supporting. i also think the conditions have changed. and the syria civil war has drawn jihadist terrorist groups from all over. that has taken it from being a civil war to being something that poses a threat potentially to the united states and other western powers. our skin is in the game in a different way than it was several years ago. that is also cause for change and a greater willingness to do more. >> the u.s. wants to lead but in concert with allies. and he wants to focus on nonlethal weapons, that we have more tools available. >> it is sort of a european approach to diplomacy.

it has been a rationalization of impotence. i think there were worrying flickers of that when he discussed some really hard trade-offs. and he was trying to have it both ways. is an autocrat a source of stability? he said it wasn't but you continue aid to the egyptian government because it is about security and that is the trade-off between the core interests and values. i think he was trying to have it both ways and kind of explaining an action in advance. >> it is fundamental between doing nothing and boots on the ground. there are all kinds of options

for american leadership and engagement and smart ways of influencing situations on the ground. i think the devil is in the details of how we actually engage effectively. >> where are we in the ukraine and in the conflict with vladimir putin and russia? >> the list he gave was not in any way a new list. these are all tools that we used to have, but we haven't used them enough. it was a kind of defense for his policy in the ukraine where he says we weren't going to go to war with russia over ukraine, but we seemed to have some sort of effect on putin's behavior.

we seemed to have some real effect into getting the europeans willing to take some steps that are economically more painful. they are putting a lot of hope in the winner of this ukrainian presidential election. the fact that he has relationships, we seem to think he is the magician that can tilt toward europe. >> one word that wasn't mentioned in that speech is crimea. russia invaded, occupied a piece of another country and the white house and europeans, for that matter, are acting as if it never happened. and so you can cast our current policy as containing them or boxing the man, but putin won something very important.

>> where russia will be noticeably absent. that topic will be front and center. >> if there is an obama doctrine, can you define it? >> i don't know that i have a bumper sticker but i think something along the lines of smart selective engagement. and i think it is an emphasis on the smart meaning not always military and selective meaning not everywhere all the time. this is the thing. he is trying to convey a very nuanced message with some internal tensions and it is very hard to do in a bumper sticker.

>> how would you grade foreign policy in this second semester? >> thanks, charlie. this is a president that has avoided making catastrophic mistakes. we have to face the reality that inaction is often the wise move or that nonmilitary steps are useful. i've spent a lot of time overseas in countries allied with the u.s. and the leaders are almost uniformly a easy about our world leadership and people clamoring for more leadership. i would give it in the sea or be range. -- c to b range. >> he gets us out of iraq which is a simple objective. there are huge problems, and he tried the surge in afghanistan

which he probably has some second thoughts about that there was progress made their. and he killed osama bin laden. the voters felt this was quite an effective foreign policy. i think the mixed signals that started coming from the syrian difficulty he did it very well in the first semester and trying to get back into shape in the second semester. >> david? >> each time, there is rational, sensible, sober case to be made about how he's behaved. colleagues of mine here from allies all the time that they worry about america's commitment. this idea that america is moving to bls dispensable nation.

-- being an indispensible nation. maybe you are the comforted. never be will comforted. >> it seems to me that this notion -- it is ever present in his mind. michelle? >> he places priority, i don't think it's a bad goal. i don't think this is a president -- fighting to try to create more bandwidth and focus on the domestic agenda. for the economy, growing jobs, infrastructure.

he is constantly fighting that battle to try to preserve more bandwidth for a domestic agenda. the world doesn't always cooperate. the u.s. has this indispensable role to play. he can't not step up to that. >> i think the title on the council of foreign relations is very much an obama position. i think presidents are partly the product of what came before. reagan's presidency was built on the perception that we were somehow week at the end of the carter years. the obama presidency is built on the perception that we were reckless during the bush years and that the fines of what -- a lot of what he has chosen to do.

>> a lot of it is course correction. you just have to be careful that you don't over correct. >> presidencies often come apart in the middle east. jimmy carter, reagan almost, george w. bush. any smart and sensible president would try to avoid having the wheels come off in the middle eastern conflict. and other people in the white house have said this privately, but it has become public. the bumper sticker, mainly, is don't do stupid stuff. that is not fdr. it's not mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall, but in reaction to eight or 10 really difficult years, it's not the worst

approach to take for some of these problems. >> thank you all. david and michelle, thanks. great to see you all. we will be right back. stay with us. ♪ for 16 years, google has helped us navigate the information superhighway alongside its core business investing in the internet of things. one such project is a driverless car. they have relied on modifying existing vehicles and yesterday it unveiled its own prototype. it has no steering wheel, no breaks, no gas pedal. it takes all responsibility from the human driver and relies on a combination of radar and laser sensors. ron medford is the director of safety. i am pleased to have both of them at this table to talk about this development.

welcome and congratulations. take me back through the evolution of trying to produce a driverless car. >> we started google five years ago with a vision of how to make transportation better. we looked at safety on the road. you can get from one place to the other, but we kill an amazing number of people on our roadways every year. 33,000 people per year. >> the biggest killer of teenagers. >> it is the leading cause of death from four to 34. not gun violence or cancer. when you look at mobility, huge swaths of our society don't have the privilege to drive. lots of people have had to have a conversation with elderly grandparents where they need to take the keys away.

and they're left without the ability to interact with society. that is the need. in 2009, we kicked off the project and the idea was to see if it was even feasible. the first was to drive 100,000 miles on public roads. the other was to drive 1000 miles on interested groups. -- interesting roads. instead of taking the freeway, go up over the mountains. along the coast. to prove that the technology can work. we can get to a point where the first time you can do this without touching the steering wheel. after about a year and a half, we made it through that. we spent some time working on freeway driving. we had a system that we went out to 140 employees where they commute to and from work.

they would drive themselves to the exit and drive off. people loved it. one woman had an hour and a half commute and she never cooks or exercised. she wouldn't give it back. she would cook for her family every day and exercise and it was amazing. but what we also saw was that it was hard for people to pay attention when they needed to. they would get distracted and they would trust it. they worry about the people to stay attentive and reengage with driving. when we thought back to our vision of helping everybody, we realized we could spend time trying to debug this problem or push harder on making the car work. a year and a half ago, we reset and focused on that here in if the car is going to drive

everywhere, what should it really do? what should it be like? that is were we kicked off the prototypes. >> people were fascinated by the idea of driverless cars. there was focus on the road. >> trying to make a smart road so the vehicles would know where to go and adjust never happened. you can realize why. trying to put enough infrastructure in place and pay for it, it was never very feasible. having the car do it on its own is the most effective way to do it and we have finally reached that point that we can do that. >> people have been trying to do this by modifying existing cars. >> we have built this car from the ground up, putting sensors were they need to be, the kind of sensors or it can see 360

degrees and 200 meters around the vehicle, it has never been done before. like reacting to everything in your environment. >> can it distinguish what might be and what might not be? >> we are making rapid progress being able to classify objects to know what they are. that is part of the development process. >> i want to stay with this. if it was easy, it would have been done some time ago. what is the biggest challenge? >> it is really about understanding the world and predicting it. and this is one of the really exciting things that we have been able to do with google. we've had our vehicles on the road and we've done 700,000 miles of driving.

we've gathered that data and we can use the data to have the algorithms learn what a person looks like when they're about to change alain and where is the cyclist about to move? these are the projections that the human brain does constantly. >> how does it distinguish between what might be a person versus an animal? >> we look at the shape of the object and how it's moving. there are these different complicated feature vectors that the engineers design and we throw a whole bunch of data at this machine and it figures out this collection of features means that that's a person or that is a tree or that is a car. >> and if that is wrong, what will it do? >> that means it is leaving extra space, it is always things

that allow us to have margins to deal with situations where it might slightly miss classify things. >> for me, it is making sure that we do everything we can to do the testing necessary to prove to ourselves that it is safe. and there is commitment to do that. making sure that adequate testing is done and google has already tested 700,000 miles and all of that data has been collected and we can simulate scenarios. we are and a strong position to make sure we have it right. >> he formally headed up this operation. he said if you put too much intelligence into a car and it becomes creative. i assume that that means with too much information it begins

to take chances? >> i'm not sure exactly what he meant by that. we do use a lot of machine learning but we do that off-line and we have a really amazing system that allows us to review how it reacted and how it would react given the new things that it learned. we can predict a lot of the behavior of a vehicle. you're not going to see the same cyclist in exactly the same place every time but you learn enough and gain enough confidence that it will behave the way you wanted to. >> right now, the car can't detect for someone requesting emerge through eye contact. it still can't understand the universal language of urban traffic honking. >> that is fair. and of the things we learned early in the project was there

is a lot of myth around this. that you've got to be able to see one another and make eye contact. you can send a message with how you position the vehicle. that signals to the other people around you that you're going to go. we have been thinking about how to do that in a safeway that allows folks to get that the car is moving. >> how important is what google has done? >> i think it is vital and distinguishes what it is doing. this allows a company to know exactly where it is in the world and know what to expect as it figures out the difficult issues in the environment. >> it has to be more precise than google maps today? >> the features and the geometry and the detail are necessary.

>> this is an interview i did with larry page. at the ted conference talking about his interests in driverless driving. >> what is it about you and transportation systems? >> i was frustrated with this in college. i had to get on a bus and wait for it and it was cold and snowing. and then there's research how much it costs. i became obsessed with transportation systems. >> and that began the idea of an automated car. >> 18 years ago i learned about people working on automated cars and became fascinated. it takes a while to get the projects going but i am super excited about the possibilities. there are 20 million people or

more injured a year. the leading cause of death for people under 34 in the u.s. >> you are talking about saving lives? >> saving space and making life better. los angeles is half parking lots and roads. most cities are not far behind, actually. it is crazy that that is what we use our space for. >> how soon will we be there? >> i think we can be there very soon. we have driven well over 100,000 miles now. i am super excited about getting that out quickly. >> there is your leader. some people say that driverless cars were once held back by technology. they are now held back by the law. >> not the law, per se, but regulations. many people believe the law

somehow is standing in the way of technology. i don't think so. i think the laws everyday solving new technology problems and finding ways to deal with new issues presented by technology. i don't see where this is a big problem. i think the current system can deal with that. i don't think the law is a problem. a few states are beginning to regulate the technology and as you know, we are in california. they are currently regulating the technology and we make sure that they understand how it works to give us the flexibility necessary to be able to innovate and be effective. >> you could not have done this in 1999. you had to have sensors, programs. but when you look at it today,

how fast can these cars go? what is the spacing required? what are the limitations? >> we have had our vehicles go 104 miles an hour on a runway and a closed course. the controls can drive fast. but there are practical limitations. these vehicles will be interacting with human drivers. they are on the roads with human striving and we need to behave in a way that is normal for other people. i understand how you might drive and you understand what i'm going to do so we have this social norm that matters. a lot of the effort is making sure that they behave in ways that people expect. we will be able to pack them and double the carrying capacity without spending more on roads. >> how expensive will they be? >> they will be affordable. that's part of it. it shouldn't be a toy for the one percent of the one percent.

this is something where the value is for everyone. the technology has to be at a price point where we can use it. >> they want to make cars that make drivers better. we want to make cars that are better than drivers. >> sounds like something i might have said at one point. but that is the goal. >> back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

>> his recent short story collection received a story prize -- his message was both simple and powerful. try to be kind for others. they posted a transcript online and within days, it had been shared more than one million times. some thoughts on kindness. what am i having here that is

different? >> i wrote a 20 minute speech that i thought that was the length. i called and they said it was eight minutes. as a short story writer, pretty good at cutting it back. it is pretty similar to the speech itself. it was kind of surprising. i didn't expect it to go beyond that day. it is the eight minute length that had to be urgent. you just -- and that i was giving it syracuse kind of loosened me up a bit and made me think, i am just going to speak from the heart and don't worry about being incredibly literary or rhetorically sophisticated.

i'd given a version of the speech in 2004 to our daughter's middle school graduation and i thought, real simple, kind of urgent thing that i really believe. it whether it is corny or not, i'm just going to say it. >> can you sum it up by saying it's about kindness? >> in that setting where people are more open than usual, kindness is not this kind of amorphous optional thing, but an essential human characteristic and it should be part of a valid intellectual concept. an artist or citizen should take some time to think about it. i was trying to validate the idea for these kids that although we often think of

things like courage and incentive and energy are proper virtues, some of these other ones, they are nice but optional, these are all part of being powerful human beings. >> david did the speech this year at syracuse and said that graduations speeches run the risk of giving banal advice, clichés, and an effective graduation speech is a very rare thing. one of the best i ever read was george's last year because it was simple and deeply felt and had a certain clarity about it. that's pretty good. but your friend gave a commencement in 2005 and it went viral. he said that this is water, some thoughts delivered.

because that was a friend, did you know of that? did it influence you? >> when i rotates to the first time, i didn't know. time, i it the first didn't know. when you ask a question about kindness, they have kind of buddhist or eastern underpinnings. when you ask a question about kindness, we are kind of trapped in these selves. and by sort of vigilantly controlling the borders themselves, you wind up being selfish. dave talks about the fact that one of the strange fictions we live by is our own centrality. we are the most important element and i also mentioned

that we understand ourselves to be separate from the rest of reality in a way that isn't true. and we understand ourselves to be permanent and solid in a way. at the end of life, we get the bill for this false thinking and i argue that along the way, you also get the bill. every time you say i wish i had , been more present for this, paying the bill of this false idea of your relation to the world. >> simple is worth a lot. >> i had a friend that edited it and you get to a room that's hot and in the dome, it is echo and filled with people that don't necessarily want to hear you talk. it had the effect of focusing the mind a little bit. it was a great kind of exercise to say, eight minutes.

distill it to eight minutes and then you really have to trim away the banalities and the clichés. >> so many people that have acted courageously, it is always like i had no choice. what else would i have done? it was the thing to do. >> one of the scariest things to me is that it might depend on the day. let's say you have somebody -- say i'm going to run a marathon today. and i had never run before. it will not be successful. since kindness comes and goes, it makes sense to start early and start training a little bit. obviously, that is what religion is.

that was kind of one of the messages. maybe turn your mind to those things. >> do we not think of interpersonal relationships the way that we should? >> the idea of anonymity believes to me like a license to kill. evil behave really badly when the name is not attached to it. but i have never met kinder or more mindful kids. when i was a kid in the 70's, i don't remember us being nearly >> how was it expressed? >> we teach these really high-level writers in a workshop format and they are just really wonderful it being specific in their comments but not ever harsh. there is a real kind of -- i remember our generation as being

a little bit in a call and afraid of sentimentality that you would rather say something harsh. these guys are really comfortable with, i think, positive emotion and expressing it. >> was there it -- was there a pivotal moment is that assertivism is realism. >> i was working after i graduated and just sort of not having a lot of success. in that sense, you could see that absurdism is realism close to the bottom. your efforts don't amount to anything and people mistake you for someone less capable than you are. >> when people talk about you, your work is being postmodern or dark, does that ring true to you?

do you think what you write is dark? >> i think art is a purposeful exaggeration. it is kind of like a puppet show that we do in order to touch on certain essences of life. i think that you might have a really kick things off to the dark side. or if you wanted to talk about kindness, i don't imagine i could do it with a bunch of well fed and happy people. you have to put an earthquake there. the darkness is kind of like luring out the light. untested virtue is not a virtue. >> untested virtue is not virtue. >> you've got to put it the way you would in an engineering test

and stress it and see what human beings do. >> better than you can get added to reality. i am not really convinced of that. that real stories can't be as powerful. >> may be the intention is. i don't see fiction as necessarily trying to show you life. i think it is trying to present you a very beautiful exaggerated story that is not life at all. a blackbox where something happens that's not random and you come out of it alive. almost like a roller coaster. you are not really inclined to discuss it. you are just thrilled. and for a creative artist, the first thing is to thrill somebody.

>> when would you give another commencement speech? >> i don't think i will. that one went pretty well. >> and there was the guy that went to pittsburgh that wrote the book and died, i think, about giving your last lecture. did you ever read that? >> i have heard parts of it but i don't think i've read it. >> celebrity in the sense of the word not that he was famous but because people responded to what he had said. push comes to shove and you strip it down. what do you want to say? talk about the importance of kindness. >> i was on a plane from chicago and one of the engines went out. it was panic. people screaming and it was an amazingly clarifying experience. i was incapable of thinking. all i could think was the word no, repetitively.

but when things calmed down, it was amazing. i do not think i will never write another book, it was absolute denial. in this space of three days, it was clear that the goal is to open yourself up and don't be afraid and try to be in proper relation to other people and love other people. as those things do, we kind of close down again. what you realize is, these things -- you can get better at it. but it is hard going. it is the work of a lifetime. >> thank you for coming. >> glad to be here. >> congratulations to george saunders, some thoughts on

kindness which we all could do a bit with. see you next time. ♪

>> live from pier 3 in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west," where we cover innovation, technology, and the future of business. i'm emily chang. apple senior vice president says this is product pipeline is the best he's ever seen. he did not elaborate at the code conference but under pressure to deliver its next blockbuster product, announcing buying beats yesterday with cofounders jimmy iovine and dr. dre. google is giving information after 700,000 miles of