♪ >> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: we are in washington, and we begin this evening with politics. according to "the new york times," hillary clinton has a 72% chance of winning the presidency. the general consensus is that donald trump struggled in the first debate on monday, as clinton put him on the defensive. nielsen ratings estimates a record-breaking 84 million viewers watched the debate. the focus is now shifting to the second debate in st. louis on october 9. trump's advisor is said to prepare him more thoroughly.

joining me now is a columnist, and abby phillip, we will come to this program for the first time, a national political reporter for "the washington post." i am pleased to have both of them at this table. tell me where the narrative has gone since the debate. al: if conventional norms apply, and i remember jeff green phil -- jeff greenfield telling you that they may no longer do, but if they do, trump has had a terrible three days. i mean, he has been out there, he has renewed his attacks on miss universe, trying to insist he won the debate, he's angry at his advisors, and nothing is going right. and, so that is the state of play if conventional norms apply. charlie, i would like to make this electorate is not like a one point. speedboat. it is like a battleship. it does not move quickly. i don't think there is a huge change from monday night. i think the two things encouraging to the democrats are that he has so turned off a

number of young people. i was at a college in philadelphia. they were not that impressed with her, but they were really impressed with him. and secondly i think he offended , more african-americans who have been reasonably passive. he has attacked barack obama, who has a 52% approval rating. in that sense, it has been a good week for hillary clinton. i don't want to exaggerate it. it is still a close race. she has the advantage, but 72% makes sense, but that means there is 28% that could go the other way. charlie: what about this notion that he knows he did not do well, even though he says he did fine, and his team is preparing him differently? al: that may be. he hates to admit he did not do well, because that means he's a loser. we know what he thinks of losers. the next debate is a town hall out in missouri. and it is a lot harder to be on the attack at a town hall, because you are taking questions from ordinary citizens.

i think he showed the other night that he has never been in a one-on-one debate before. he dominated those 16 person and seven person fields. she has had a lot of one on ones, including against barack obama. i do not think he has done a town hall quite like this before, so he will have to prepare differently than the debate, with a fox news host. abby: there is a lot of talk, both among trump campaign strategists and also from his surrogates about the hillary clinton and bill clinton of the the way they are framing it is, 1990's. what hillary clinton did to the women accusing bill clinton of wrongdoing is what makes her unacceptable. but it is kind of a tricky situation that they find themselves in, because hillary clinton's approval rating at that time went way up, and she became immensely popular in the face of a lot of adversity.

there is some clear dissension in the trump campaign about whether this is the right route to go. it is clear that donald trump wants to go down this road. i think he feels most comfortable when he is going on the attack and when he is putting, you know bill clinton , on the defense on an issue that he thinks is very uncomfortable, and decidedly not politically correct. but at the same time, his advisors recognize that it is hard to frame an argument like that against a woman about her husband's behavior, and i think that's where the concern is. charlie: he wants to make an argument about being an enabler, but you can't do that without looking like you are attacking. abby: absolutely. and the clinton campaign is sort of smiling to themselves, because they have been preparing for this for quite some time. from the very beginning, clinton advisers have known that trump would be tempted to go down the road. they would never be sure that he

would find a way in that would never be sort of ham-handed, but they have been preparing for this, and i think they believe -- tot is easy to make defend hillary clinton's behavior against someone who himself has a long history of infidelity and multiple marriages and so on and so forth. so, i think they feel prepared to go down this road, but they also recognize that trump is less likely to do it in a way that is skillfull and execture -- and executed well. charlie: the interesting thing about this too is that he has had, in a strange way, is strong support from the evangelical community. al: he has. they have decided that issues like abortion and gay rights -- even though he has not said much more about that -- i agree, though. it is not just the thrice-married donald trump, but his two biggest surrogates are rudy giuliani and newt gingrich.

i don't know anyone who maybe has a worse record. i don't know people with worse marriages than those two. newt gingrich was having an affair with his third right while he was trying to impeach bill clinton for lying about sex. i would not send those two people out to talk about marriage. by conventional norms, this is insane. abby: a radio host who is no fan of donald trump made this point earlier today. he said you have several men who have histories of infidelity and multiple marriages attacking a woman for her husband's infidelity. it is just playing into a stereotype of republicans that they are trying to run away from. that added to the flap over the miss universe contestant and donald trump shaming her for being overweight. you know i think for some , republicans, they are looking at the situation and really wringing their hands, because

this is sort of playing into stereotypes about attacking women that they have been trying to dodge for a long time. hurting. is already this doesn't help. charlie: unless he gets them, he has limited chances of winning. al: he can't win in colorado without them. to go to the point you just made it detracts from what might be , more winning issues for him. the clinton foundation, the e-mails which persist and won't , go away. every time he is attacking bill clinton for an 18, 19-year-old affair, and hillary clinton for sticking by her man, which is what the evangelicals used to say you should do, then it seems to me that he is losing an opportunity to talk about things that may resonate. charlie: and you had to that the fact that lots of people thought he did pretty well in the first 15 minutes of the debate. it he was in the room with somebody who had been secretary

he was in the room with somebody who had been secretary of state and a senator, and had been first lady of both the united states and arkansas, and he was there, toted tell, seeming presidential -- toe-to-toe, explaining his policies, and why trade may be at the source of economic dislocation. abby: trump has an achilles heel, demonstrated clearly monday night. he does not like being criticized, and that's one of the first things hillary clinton did when she got out there. she criticized him for taking money from his father to start his businesses. and that was the moment where he sort up to railed. he lost his cool and started to fire back at her for small flights. that continued and escalated all the way until the end of the debate, when she dropped a well-planned attack on him about his comments on miss universe alicia machado by saying -- charlie: and he did not handle

any of that well. if trump can stay disciplined and not go off the rails when he feels like she is being personally slighted, he has a chance of sort of competing with her on the issues, but the problem is that the clinton campaign knows he does not like to be attacked personally. that's why they planted those traps for him. charlie: tell me about young african-americans. abby: the thing that is true about young african-americans and millennials overall, they are unenthused by hillary clinton. i think in some ways their only experience with electoral politics has been with barack obama. with a candidate who they feel excited about, motivated by, and are inspired by, and she does not make them feel that way. it and they feel very much like they have to feel that way about someone in order to cast a vote for them.

so, it is challenging for her to overcome that, and frankly, it may be impossible for her to overcome that. that's where the surrogates come in. charlie: obama and sanders. abby: obama, sanders, michelle obama, the best of the group. and we saw this week, it is really amazing to see a first lady come out and command a rally-sized crowd. first ladies are usually in small rooms, doing hand-to-hand campaigning. michelle obama could fill a stadium if you wanted her to. she can command a stadium. that is very unusual, but it is a really powerful tall. and hillary clinton has a lot of challenges with getting african-americans to believe that she is trustworthy. i also think that michelle obama and barack obama play a huge role in that, because of their character with african-american voters, and with a 52% approval

rating with most americans, is very -- fairly unimpeachable. charlie: we will be right back. stay with us. ♪

♪ charlie: the battle of aleppo grew even more dire this week. a cease-fire between the u.s. and russia collapsed as forces relaunched an offensive on the rebel-held city. two hospitals were targeted by

airstrikes wednesday morning. lastly, a convoy was hit killing 20. analysts estimate close to 200 airstrikes pounded aleppo over the weekend. the latest assault is being described as the worst yet in syria's five year's civil joining me is the special assistant to the president and the white house coordinator for the middle east and gulf region from 2014 to 2015. also, clarissa ward, a foreign correspondent for cnn. i am pleased to have her from london. and i begin with this question for you, clarissa. how bad is it, and when will it ever stop? clarissa: charlie, i can't believe i am saying this, because every time we have this conversation i say i can't , believe it can get any worse, because the situation is already so bad. and yet, in the last week we , were seeing quite clearly that the ground is indeed worse.

that is primarily because the russian and syrian air forces have started to use what appeared to be bunker-buster bombs. this is a new low even by their standard. previously seen them use cluster -- previously, we had seen them using cluster bombs, homemade barrel bombs, also incendiary devices, but this is the first time we have heard about to -- we have heard about them using these bunker-buster bombs. casualties are high, more than 200 dead in less than a week. hundreds more injured. half of the casualties are minorities. all of this is happening against the backdrop of a siege that has been ongoing for months. you are talking about now, i spoke to people and aleppo today, and there is very little left in the marketplaces. just a few vegetables. nothing left in the stores. few gasoline to get around. very little diesel to power generators. there is no electricity. as you said this morning two , hospitals and a bakery hit. worsee situation is even

than it was a because go, and certainly, no end in site, charlie. >> it reminds some people of dresden, sarajevo, the absolute worst humanitarian situations and atrocities that we have seen for 70 years. charlie: i don't want to be naive, but how can the world stand to let this happen? >> the world's conscience should be shocked by what is happening in aleppo. the problem is, nobody has done -- nobody has not even a simple alternative to it, not even a viable so you know, you can sit one. there and say we can't let it happen, but then you start walking through it you put yourself in that situation, ok, what do we do? if the answer is, we respond with equal force and we use our own airstrikes. we have seen this sort of thing before come escalation if it leads to counter escalation by said,then as clarissa

could this get worse? charlie: it could get worse in aleppo and other cities held by rebels? philip: absolutely. aleppo has been the big prize. that is where the russian-syrian focus is right now. syria is a big country. there are 21 million syrians with the war started. sadly, so many of them have them been killed or displaced. but aleppo is just one of the battlegrounds that are still at stake, and if this goes on i think we will see more speeches, -- we will see more sieges more , refugees, and more killing. charlie: there is nothing to stop the airstrikes? philip: the world put so much hope in the cease-fire is because of the dearth of alternatives. the main alternative is counter just some counter escalation. many countries have been supporting the opposition for five years with arms to try to put pressure on the syrian government, and on the russians

and the iranians to come to the table and have a negotiated solution. we have seen their response to that. it is just more and more force. beyond that, the united states clearly has the military capacity to stand up to the syrian government and to russia, -- and to the russians but every , time that policy is put on the table, the president and those involved asked the question, what happens next? if you believe that a response by airstrikes from the united states believed the other side to say, i get it, it's come to the table and negotiate then , that is a fine idea and you can save aleppo. if, as is more likely, they were fighting for their lives, literally and respond with more , strikes against your side and counter escalation, then you have to go the next step, and where that may well end is the violent overthrow of the regime. you get back to baghdad or libya scenarios and possibly , millions of refugees that have been supporting the assad regime

are stood up to. that is why there are no easy alternatives, and why so much has been invested in this cease-fire. which is sadly crumbling before our eyes. charlie: the russians were part of the cease-fire. so, clarissa, the people clearly want it to stop. we have seen horrifying pictures of children. what do the people you know in syria want to see done? clarissa: they would like the international community to put a stop to the abject horror they had been living through now for five years. i understand what philip was saying, but inaction is a form of policy as well, and in action has consequences as well. you talked about the refugees that could be unleashed if the assad regime was to be overthrown. we already have a refugee crisis the likes of which we have not , seen in decades.

the european union has been in danger of unraveling practically because of the millions 11 spelling out of that country with the rise of these far right-wing parties responding to that mass influx of refugees. so, the reality is that 70% of the people on the ground inside syria are sunni muslims. they will never, ever except the regime of bashar al-assad. that is not me speaking from a place of personal bias. that is just the absolute fact and reality. you can talk to anybody on the ground who does not support bashar al-assad, and they will tell you there is no going back to how it used to be. there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. -- putting the genie back in the lamps. at this stage, that is simply not an option. then you start to look forward, what are the options? i agree with what you said about that is not me speaking from a place of personal bias. that is just the absolute fact the dangers of escalation. but the airstrikes have got to stop, because as long as the airstrikes go on, you can be sure that what you are seeing

happening on the ground in northern syria is the generation of one of the most dangerous incubators for terrorism and extremism that we have ever seen. and as long as we consider isis a major national security priority for the u.s., we cannot continue to ignore what is happening with the syrian civil war, because the two are linked. is the is providing giant, festering wound infecting the rest of the body. and it threatens to go way beyond the borders of just syria. these are not las vegas rules here. what happens in syria does not stay in syria. make sure i let's understand. you and i heard people this weekend to talk about this issue, are you saying that the focus needs to be on the civil war, because the civil war is breeding the terrible things in aleppo, so the u.s. and the world's focus has to be on the civil war and stopping assad,

because he is the perpetrator of these crimes? clarissa: it is a chicken and egg situation, unfortunately. everybody would like to just deal with isis on its own. it is much easier, we just go in and do strikes and we don't have to have many troops on the ground and we can rely on our allies. we don't seem to have much in on the way of good allies on the rebel side. but as you said, during the conference we heard several , people saying the same ideas, much more intelligent people than i am, charlie. you cannot solve one problem without dealing with the other. they are inextricably linked. charlie: is there a priority to do something about assad right now? philip: first of all, let me say that clarissa's description of the consequences is exactly right. nobody should underplay that at all. humanitarian first and foremost.

also they are destabilizing europe, fueling sectarianism and fundamentalism around the world and terrorism. all of this in part derives from this terrible killing, bombing sunni muslims on a daily basis. currently consequences. -- horrific consequences. it you started blasting me about dresden. some of these parallels are also important to keep in mind. in dresden, it was also unacceptable and horrific. and so, we went to war, and we invaded and occupied, and did whatever it took. in discussing these alternatives and reminding us why we are still trying to get this sort of cease-fire is i , don't think anyone should believe that there is a light option that resolves this problem. we also mentioned --

charlie: there is no light footprint solution. philip: no like for current -- no light footprint solution. people want to believe that just a couple of airstrikes, which he read in a paper as a recommendation, let's just hit some airfields and helicopters. if you believe that hitting runways or helicopters, or even shooting a plane out of the sky, leads a soft in russia to come -- leave russia and assad to come to the table and agree to a transitional government, if you believe that that happens, then let's do that. i think much more likely is you hit some airplanes and some runways and some troops, and they are fighting for their lives, escalating further, not just in aleppo but other places, and it is back to you. where that probably ends is u.s. escalation where we have to shoot russian planes, violently overthrow their sovereignty, and -- overthrow their assad regime

and that's how these things end. , how it ended in iraq. we had a no-fly zone for more than a decade, sanctions for more than a decade. ultimately it is a problem. charlie: he was in power. philip: he was in power, and ultimately to the degree that he was a problem, we had to go in and occupied. charlie: is that the only thing that can bring assad down, that kind of invasion? philip: i think close to that. close to that for the reason i said. there are a lot of people that are backing them, simply fighting for their lives. and they are afraid that the alternative to him -- charlie: and iran will not stand by and let that happen to assad? you assume? philip: five years of evidence suggests that they feel they have a very profound interest in avoiding regime change in damascus. not that they love assad. if he were to be gone, that would be fine with them. what they oppose is that it states and allies coming in and

throwing -- and overthrowing the regime. a principled regime change everywhere. they want to avoid the notion that if people take up arms against their local dictator, the united states, nato, and the west comes in and helps them overthrow. they have a sort of principled thing. but, beyond that, i think they believe that the alternative to a sod -- the alternative to assad is not the stable, moderate government that we would like to see, but jihadism, afghanistan, somalia. we keep doing the opposite. that is the reality we have to confront. charlie: and we have no leverage with them, obviously. philip: we have some, and i think we should use more. the criminal response to not implement a new cease-fire now should increase, lead us to do things to increase pressure on russia. i think they're making a mistake even in terms of their own interest, because they are going to provoke even more fundamentalists and terrorists

who will turn their sites on russia. they're going to alienate their relations with the arab world which might involve sanctions. , there needs to be a price for the russians and what they do. we offer them an out. this cease-fire in a way was that -- cease-fire was and white out for russia. they can protect their interests in syria, they can be seen as a major power in the middle east, they could work with the united states to fight who they considered their enemies, these extremist groups in syria. that was a real out. it was not pleasant for us. nobody here wanted to do that, but they could have, to a degree, declared victory. instead, we are seeing them push that away, do what they are doing in aleppo. i think they need to play a price for that. charlie: so there are no opportunities in the rest of this administration. philip: i think so. it only ends when the russians understand they're going to pay a price. aleppo cannot hold all of syria.

russians can bomb aleppo as much as they want. there are 250,000 people there who will continue to refuse to live under this regime and the , regime does not have the manpower to hold it. they are fighting a lost cause, and they need to realize that. charlie: some are arguing that there was a power vacuum and the russians have moved into it, and they are doing what they wanted to do, which is to keep someone in power because they hate the idea of chaos, and hate the idea of tribalism, too. so, back to what the president ? ys -- what would come after is the president right, or is there an alternative that would come after that he is not thinking about, clarissa? clarissa: let me get quickly to this idea of what russia stands to gain in this, because you touched on an important point. right now, russia has, i would

argue relatively little to lose. , it is costing them a fair amount of money, fair enough. it is not costing them a huge amount of casualties or loss of life, because it is primarily from the air. it is giving them leverage on the diplomatic field. russia does not care about the u.s. naming and shaming them in the united nations and elsewhere on the world stage. and when you talk to phil gordon about russia having to understand they will pay the price, i am curious as to what that prices? right now, i don't right now, i don't think russia feels they have any price to pay. and we talk about the u.s. diplomatic efforts, if there is not something underlying that diplomatic effort, if there is not some major leverage, it most often would probably be the threat of force, then acidulated -- then essentially what you are , talking about is u.s. diplomats asking the russians nicely to please help them out. every senior western diplomat that i have spoken to behind

closed doors has said that they feel they are being asked to perform miracles with their arms tied behind their backs. because they go to the russians, and they say all of this, and the russians don't care. the russians are pursuing their at national interests relatively little cost to them, and there is not very much that i don't see that the u.s. can do with the status quo in order to make a difference. now, in terms of what the president has said about what the future would be, again, if you have private conversations, charlie, and i know you know this better than most with white house officials and former administration officials, they will tell you there is an enormous amount of pressure on the president at the moment. there has been a lot of criticism about the lack of a robust syria policy on behalf of of this white house administration. there is a strong feeling among many that president obama will continue to be haunted by this for decades to come, but the

response of the white house in the face of this kind of oppressive pressure, while it may not be in the public arena, but in the elite circles of washington, the pressure is there, and the response has been not to say we made a mistake, but to double down and say this is the best decision we ever made. and that is our story, and we're sticking to it. philip: two things. on the russians, i agree there should be more pressure, but it's not a walk in the park for russia. there is the financial cost and the risk, which i think is a most a certainty that they will be provoking terrorist attacks. they did a similar thing. they may feel like they have a handle on it, but there has been some ambitious terrorist retaliation against russia, and i think they should probably be prepared to see the same. like i said, they are intervening relations with a lot -- they are alienating relations

with a lot of countries in the region and in europe. there are significant financial sanctions over ukraine. charlie: which are still in place. philip: which are still in place and are hurting the economy because of the low oil prices. and which is hard to imagine even though syria is not ukraine, is the russians were somewhat constructive in syria. i think you would see some european countries saying, you know what? they are being helpful. we can work with them. let's move forward and try to have a positive relationship. i think in the long run, they can't accomplish their goals either. that is why there has always been some hope for this cease-fire. which is really the only way forward for them. in terms of the president's reluctance to use force -- charlie: because he says he doesn't know what is going to happen or get bogged down in a quagmire. been there, done that. phillips: been there, done that. i want to underscore, the threat of force, you have to be willing to use it. people want to be able to get

away with the threat of force. the threat is not going to get it done. you have to be willing to use -- you have to be willing to actually do it. think about libya. in libya, we also wanted to use leverage and threats to get gaddafi to stop doing similarly horrific things. and ultimately, to leave. we made a no-fly zone, we provided aid to the rebels. how did that and? i think it is a perfectly haveimate argument to say a problem with is the suggestion that we don't need to do the really big and hard things. we will threaten with force or do a bit more leverage or an airstrike. it doesn't get it done. charlie: you can be nothing but depressed.

thank you, philip. thank you, clarissa. great to see you. clarissa: thank you. charlie: back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

♪ charlie: reid hoffman is here. he is one of silicon valley's savviest and most respected investors. in 2002, he cofounded linkedin. the social networking site for career-minded professionals. in microsoft announced plans to june, acquire linkedin for more than $26 billion. the deal is expected to close

later this year. hoffman is a partner at greylock, the venture capital firm which has backed some of tech's biggest successes over the past decade. including that's on facebook, dropbox, and airbnb. he has also taken a public stand on the presidential election and has pledged to donate up to $5 million to veterans of donald -- if donald trump releases his tax returns. i am pleased to have reid hoffman back at this table. welcome. reid: thank you. charlie: let's take what is in the introduction, first of all. you want donald trump to release his tax returns, and if he does, you will give $5 million to veterans' organizations. reid: a young marine vet from iraq launched this campaign. we, as people who put our lives on the line, deserve transparency in our presidential candidate. i looked at this and thought it was brilliant. it was the right alignment of people who have demonstrated the

deepest public service together with, well, if you want to be a public servant, you should be transparent. i said this is great. i will match this. it i will do the $5 million. i will do the $5 million if donald trump releases his taxes the way presidential candidates should. and the reason is because we have the right as a people to know who are the people who want to represent america? the income taxes don't lie, or if they do, you are in big trouble with the irs. your problems are just beginning. charlie: because they can put you in jail. reid: yes. why do you think he is not doing this? i mean, you saw the secretary of state in the debate. she ticked it off 1-2-3-4. do you have something to hide? you are not as rich as you say you are. or you say you are. you don't give as much to charity as you say you do.

all those kinds of things. reid: it is appalling. it could be that he is not as , and youe says he is must to say he is a really successful businessman. it could be that he is gaming the taxes. he says he is smart because he doesn't pay taxes. it's like no, no -- we are american citizens. we have a duty to our country. we are proud about the americans. you only pay what you owe, but not paying taxes is not smart. charlie: it's also an insult to the men and women who cannot hire fancy lawyers and all sorts of people to come in and minimize everything at every step. reid: exactly. be proud to be an american. right? be part of the country. is he as philanthropic as he claims he is? we can look at the trump foundation. he hasn't given money to that for years.

charlie: are you simply against donald trump or are you in favor of hillary clinton? reid: i am strongly in favor of hillary clinton. i thought one of the best lines of the debate was when she said she prepared for the debate and she prepared to be president. i think that's a good thing. she has great ratings as secretary of state. great ratings as first lady. she is probably the most prepared candidate in american history for knowing what the skills are for the job. and the job requires skills, and that's the point. charlie: but you should know, and they're people who can argue about the accomplishments of the obama administration while she was secretary of state. there are arguments about what they achieved and did not achieve and how they could've achieved more. reid: we can always to more. that's silicon valley, what did we learn and we can always do more. you got to remember, this administration started with this disastrous iraq war, that was handed to them the financial , crisis, and a bunch of other

things. given these crises, how well did you do? i think the administration did very well given those crises. charlie: ok, but can you understand to, there are a lot of people, a good part of the system that works for you doesn't work for them. they are hurting. if somebody comes along and says nobody has fixed it for me, nobody has made it better for me, i am open to a new argument. reid: yet. i think that's a great thing. we as leaders have failed them. we should be doing much better to give them a future to believe -- give them a future that they are included in. how can we enable better middle-class jobs and better inclusion? what are the things we do in order to do that? linkedin is part of my thing, helping people understand how to invest in themselves and connect to opportunity. that being said, i understand the anger.

i understand that, look, you guys say this globalization, immigration help says, but it doesn't help me. businesses have moved away and i can't get a job. and i am 55 years old. reid: and as americans, we should work on that. and it ought to require the best brains beyond washington to work on that. reid: i 100% agree. and i think hillary clinton is the best person to fix it. i think trump asserts, i will fix that. no background in doing that. a slogan does not fix the serious problems. charlie: charlie: he says he will fix it by punishing the chinese so that they don't have an unfair advantage. reid: yeah. look, there may be placed negotiate the china trade arrangement. that may be an important hing to -- important thing to do. but trump's history is a long wreckage of nonfunctioning relationships.

we want a functioning relationship with china. that's good for the rust belt. how to negotiate it well requires skills. that's the reason why someone who has been doing it is important. charlie: having the chinese built factories in america may be the thing to do. reid: that i'd be -- the japanese build factories here, so that may be possible. charlie: in a moment of humor, what is this? a game that you can buy in your local game store your it reid: just online. trumpedupcards.com [laughter] i had an idea of making a card game like apples to apples or cards against humanity. i we had so many people laughing out loud and thinking it was actually informational, that we set all right, we should make a public version. we should make a version that

everyone can get. we made it in the appropriate trump gold [laughter] . . [laughter] the idea is you can play with your friends and think about what does it mean that a reality tv star is running for president. charlie: let me turn to your company, lincoln. $26sold it to microsoft for billion is the figure. how long ago did you form this company? reid: almost 15 years. late 2002, we started working on it. it has been a labor of love. like all labors of love. charlie: ok. and what place was facebook at that time? reid: facebook in 2002 had not been started yet. had not been founded. charlie: mark was not at harvard. reid: he had either just got to harvard or was just getting , into harvard. at that time, people used friendster.

most people may not remember. charlie: you decided on my -- what online needed a place where people with similar interests in their professional lives could communicate with each other. reid: the thought was we'll have , different identities online. having your professional identity online makes a jobsrence in what kind of you can find. and the best way to improve the system is to enable people to help each other. if i am connected to you and you say hey, do you know about this thing, that can be a great economic opportunity. that was the basic idea. charlie: how many people use it now? reid: over 430 million. over 430 million. and facebook has 1.3 billion. reid: it may be bigger than that. who knows? [laughter] charlie: where can it go. what is the possibility with linkedin? reid: we hope to enable every professional, not just lawyers

and doctors, but a coffee store manager, anybody, to be able to change their economic trajectory, to better themselves in terms of what kinds of ideas,cs, jobs , information, connections, learning opportunities, anything that allows you to invest in yourself and have a better economic outcome. charlie: why did you sell it? reid: well, we, both jeff and i jeff weiner, the ceo -- we are , both in service to the mission. how do we enable our investors -- our members to have the best possible experience of investing in themselves? it was a long, thought-out experience, and we said microsoft's primary mission is making organizations productive. our primary mission is making individuals productive. the -- but microsoft is about individuals -- organizations and

we care about individuals. one plus one here can be much greater than two. is it five? is it 10? that way we can add in our missions are essentially friends and collaborators. this can help us reach our mission. there are a ton of people who use microsoft products every day. office, can underlie windows. there are things we can do. charlie: so, when you looked around at the big five, they seemed like the big fit. reid: yes. in order to get to our mission to help individuals with their best possible economic opportunities, to help them be more productive. those are the things we care about at linkedin. look, we are perfectly happy with people being entertained. deawe're perfectly happy with people having a public discourse on funny cat pictures or anything else. that's great. it should be part of peoples lives. it's awesome. that's not what we do.

what we do is help you get to the best possible ways of doing your job, or the best possible -- job. charlie: has there been an acceleration of growth in the last couple of years? reid: it has been a light acceleration but a light acceleration of big numbers. it took us 468 days to get to our first million members, and now we are at over 430. charlie: let me talk about other things going on out there. there is much talk about twitter. i hope you're not on the board of twitter. [laughter] reid: i'm not. charlie: i don't mean i hope you're not, but you might have be able to talk about it if you are on the board. who is going to buy it? there's talk that -- reid: so, i have no inside information on that. i have read about disney and the press. i have read about salesforce in the press. salesforce because twitter is a place where a lot of people

express satisfaction in customer -- express dissatisfaction in customer service. the customer service cloud might be integrated. that's the speculation on salesforce. twitter is about was happening right now. customer service is a small part. that would be a surprising acquisition from my view. disney, also. obviously, with sports and everything else, they want to strengthen online, but twitter is about now. twitter is about, what is happening right now what is a conversation right now? it does a good job of that. when i look at the speculation of the possible buyers it , confuses me a little bit. and i don't know -- i literally have not talked to jack dorsey. i have no inside information. charlie: talk to me about virtual reality. reid: so there have been many , cycles when people describe virtual reality as the next big thing. and we are in another one, and each one is better. if people have not checked out

virtual reality, we are at the point where they should. maybe all classes will be in virtual reality. may be all discussions and conferences. show the "charlie rose" will be in virtual reality. there is a lot of prospect. i think before we really see those science fiction futures, we will begin to see more mass-market adoption of either a movie thing, or and toy entertainment thing. the technology is definitely good enough. are we there yet? maybe three years. charlie: you mean film a movie in virtual reality? reid: the way you show up to experience the movie. charlie: you would actually, if you were watching a movie that had been made for virtual reality, you would feel like you are on the set, there, sitting at the table. you would feel like you were sitting at this table. you would look at him, look at me, feel all of that. reid: yes.

each individual -- we would all probably have the same experience, although maybe not. but you would be a character in the movie. that is the way you would experience that. i think we are certainly going to see it. the only question is when. three years? five years? seven years? ? years tbd. charlie: to be determined. artificial intelligence, which i am enormously interested in, give us the lay of the land. give us a sense of why everybody, whether it is facebook, google, or whether it is anybody. everybody wants to do it. ibm, and people like bridgewater and people like call big investment companies are saying they are building funds to , invest in virtual reality -- i am sorry. i meant artificial intelligence. [laughter] so, there may be some

virtual reality ones, but we mean ai. charlie: and it's already here. reid: so, most of the techniques being used for these amazing results, whether it's alpha go done by deep mine from google, whether it's these great results in radiology being able to read , charts better than doctors, self driving cars, all of these things, the techniques have evolved, but there has been a game changing new algorithm, which is actually the cloud, and a lot of cpus and data, and then you can use techniques developed over the last decades on a bigger scale. that is essentially what has created the new current ai revolution. what it allows, the way to think about it is, decisions that human beings can do in a second can now be done by computers. classification of images,

parsing of language, because when you are driving, you have to make decisions like stop, brake -- all of that can be done in a second. all of that classification comes through these learning networks which allow the programs through integration of multiple human lifetimes of data, that is part of the computer does it. in just so much data that he can make decisions and that under a second thing like a human. everything from self driving to medical to parsing language, to literally, the skype the limit. charlie: watson, for example, with ibman, says they have simply compiled all the literature that there is, all the books that there are, they have put that in the brain of watson. reid: yes. charlie: but man put the

material in the brain of watson, and then -- man/woman -- and then watson performs these remarkable feats, providing essential information to understand disease. reid: yes. the watson work on disease, radiology, is great. all of these libraries, all of these books, all of these electronics, you can essentially ingest all of them. this is how important is revolution is. not only will there be large companies, like google, microsoft, ibm building ai programs -- part of what is , is that in the cloud they will be offering these ai techniques to their customers to say come bring your data and , applications and we will provide ai services to make it

a lot better. that is how broad the sets of artificial intelligence techniques will be. so when an app developer can use the services. it's unlocking human creativity across almost every domain. charlie: and what it can do is simply figure out, because of algorithms in the development of the app it can figure out how to , analyze all of this information that has been collected by these different companies for different reasons. reid: yes. basically, what happens is they are classifiers. is this a or b? should i go left or right? it is making classification decisions. and there is supervised learning and unsupervised learning. for teaching -- supervisors, human goes in and says, ok here , are the cases where you should decide this is a, and this is where you should decide it is not a.

unsupervised gives a very broad -- a simple example is ok, a robot, i want you to move from this side of the warehouse to that side of the warehouse, and i am not going to teach you how to move. i am not going to teach you how to walk, roll, hop. i am simply going to give you a score based on your gps locator moving toward the right thing. right? most of them learned to walk. some learn to roll. some learn to hop. [laughter] can you keep doing it. and that is unsupervised learning. you are not actually teaching at the actual specifics other than giving it a high score. charlie: it teaches itself. by doing what? trial and error? reid: so, what happens is the ai algorithms are smart enough that they build subgoals in the -- subgoal classifiers. they realize when i move my legs this way, my score of getting to my and goal gets better.

so, that's good. so now i am teaching myself how to walk. how do i learn how to do that better so i can walk? that kind of thing is the magic of what we are seeing. with algorithms and modern artificial intelligence. ♪

[static buzzing] ashlee: this is -- colossus. ♪ ashlee: the machine raced to decrypt german messages by analyzing thousands of words and coded texts in seconds.