this is "gps," the global public square. happy new year and welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from new york. today on the show, an in-depth look at what 2019 may bring with it for america and the world. a nuclear treaty with north korea, a big beautiful wall on the southern border, a new middle east crisis? i will ask ian bremmer, rounda true ha and david miliband about that and more. then, this week, china landed a rover on the dark side

of the moon and weak chinese sales made apple miss its target. what can we expect from the other superpower in 2019? i'll talk to the man trump calls the leading authority on china. >> he was saying that china has total respect for donald trump and for donald trump's very, very large brain. also, 2019 will surely bring some momentous decisions. how should house democrats approach their investigations of the trump presidency? how should trump deal with china? how should countries deal with the climate crisis? how should anyone approach any decision? well, steven johnson has written the book about just that. but first, here's my take. it is nearly the midpoint of donald trump's four-year mandate, a good time to take

stock of what has been the most unusual presidency in modern times. in fact, one would probably have to go back to andrew jackson to find anyone who has occupied the white house with as much tumult, drama, and disruption. watching his first two years in office, what is striking about donald trump is that much more than any president i have watched or read about, he is a gambler, unconstrained by precedent, history, norms or official advice. trump simply acts on his impulses and his ideas. sometimes this can be refreshing. he's forced washington to take a closer look at assumptions about china. he asks what exactly is being accomplished by america's military interventions in the middle east. he's focused attention on the problems of the working class in an age of globalization and technological revolutions. but the problem is that trump's same style, impulsive, erratic, disruptive, means he has no thought-through policies of his own. his management style is so

imperious and narcissistic that he struggles to retain talented officials. he has no background in policy, nor any inclination to learn anything about it. so, he simply wings it. the result is that he has many balls up in the air and no clear plan as to how to catch them. he took us to the brink of war with north korea, hoping to get pyongyang to cave. when it didn't, he simply declared victory and moved on. he's begun a trade war with china with no clear sense of the deal he actually wants. he insults key allies for no reason and has no strategy. and now he has shut down the government with rhetoric that leaves him little room for a face-saving compromise. so far, the effects have mostly been bewilderment and a sense of unease as people try to understand where all this is leading and whether things will settle down. well, let me tell you, they won't. trump thrives in an atmosphere of chaos where all the attention is focused on him and nothing is

ever normal or settled. as the pressure increases from the house democrats, robert mueller, china, expect more impulsive, emotional decision-making, not less. the greatest risk, of course, is that one of these days, in one of these arenas, one of those balls drops. we've experienced donald trump in normal times. what will it be like for america and the world to watch donald trump when some great international crisis hits, as it so often does? buckle your seatbelts for 2019, and let's get started. >> lets bring in my terrific guests for their thoughts on 2019 and what the year ahead will bring. david miliband is the president and ceo of the international rescue committee. he was the foreign secretary of the united kingdom from 2007 to

2010. rana faruh sank cnn's business columnist for "financial times." ian bremmer is founder and president of the eurasia group, a political risk consulting firm that operates around the world. rana, let me ask you, when you look at 2019, it does seem economically we are entering a more troubled period. >> yeah. >> the two great engines of growth over the last decades have been the united states and china. >> yep. >> both economies seem to be slowing, and central banks around the world, which have been providing cheap money so that people could get low-interest mortgages and loans, seem to be turning off the tap. >> i think you're right. i think that we're at a real inflection point. and if you look historically, recovery cycles tend to go in 8 to 11-year periods. we're ten years into a recovery cycle. so if you just take it on historical data, we're due for a slowdown, probably this year or next year, and i think that that

probably is going to be the case. how quickly it comes and how sharp it is depends on a couple of things. one, how the u.s./china trade conflict goes. china is definitely slowing down. it was even before there was conflict with the u.s., but it's really feeling short-term pain. i think longer-term pain is going to be felt by the u.s., but already you're seeing companies like apple downgrading their results. you're going to see more companies saying look, china's slowing, our business is not as good there. that's going to hit the u.s. economy. the other question, of course, is interest rates. we saw the fed hike rates and we see donald trump trying to politicize the fed, which frankly is an unforced error. you know, if there's been any institution globally that's done a lot to stabilize economies in the last ten years, it's been the central bankers of the world. but they're at a difficult balancing point. regardless of what else is happening in politics, there is a big debate about how much inflation we can expect to see. the numbers are good in the u.s. we have a slowdown in china and europe. that could affect the global picture. at the same time, you have

technology spreading throughout lots of different industries that may be slowing inflation. so, should they hike, should they not? that's the big question for 2019. >> quickly, you mentioned when you talked to american chief financial officers, most of them expect a recession this year. >> yes, more than half of cfos at u.s. big companies expect a recession. about 80% of economists think we're going to see a slowdown this year or next year. >> david miliband, looking at the world geopolitically, what do you see? >> well, i think that in 2018, we saw what it means for the global ship of state to have no anchor. and the great danger for 2019 is that we have an age of impunity. in 2018, we saw the murders of khashoggi, but also the mizeration of the people in yemen. we saw hospitals run by the international rescue committee in syria, again, bombed by russian/assad forces. and the idea that we're living in a world where not just the institutions, but the norms and values of the postwar period are no longer upheld is a very

dangerous prospect. when you add it to the economic picture that rana has produced, what you see is economics and politics pulling in opposite directions, and in potentially very dangerous directions. >> david, how much of that was inevitable with the rise of china, with the resurgence of russia? in other words, these norms were western norms, they were american norms. is this inevitably the world we're entering? >> no, i don't think so. a man whose name i can't quite remember talked about the post-american world. who was that? >> a brilliant man. >> in a book ten years ago. but the postamerican world doesn't need to be the wild west. talk about china, they have had enormous benefit from the global multilateral systems, but they're also investors in it. and i would argue that we're seeing in global politics the old adage that nature abhors a vacuum. and when you create a vacuum, all sorts of actors can move in and it's easier for maligned

actors to move in than for benign actors. and the danger, let's be honest, the pivot to asia that president obama announced years ago was based on a reality of shifting economic power. the great danger is that the chinese leadership calculate that far from investing in the global multilateral system, they're better off either building their own or opting out of it, and that is the political challenge. the russians is obviously a different case. they are exploiting weakness and there is no sanction. and when there is no sanction, that's how you end up with the bombing of hospitals or the killing of journalists. an age of impunity is one in which global rules are not enforced. >> ian bremmer, for the last two years, what we have watched is a rising populist tide, almost everywhere, but there are many people who think, well, you know, this is also going to run its course. these guys have no answers. what do you see when you look around the globe at populism? >> the two big things that aren't running their course. one, as david just said, the rise of china with a different set of norms and values and new architecture that competes with the u.s. and second, that the developed

economies, the democracies actually don't have the leaders. those leaders don't have the legitimacy. the institutions themselves are eroding. that's what the populism is all about. and for those that had hoped that people like macron in france represented a shift in tide in populist support -- his approval ratings are 23% right now, you know? i mean, let's face it, that's not where trump is today. merkel, angela merkel isn't going anywhere any time soon, but she's had to abdicate the chairmanship of her party, and see she's already essentially a much weaker leader in 2019 than she was in 2018. if you look around the world, even canada, where doug ford is the premier today. i mean, it's a softer form of populism than in the united states, but that's the second most popular position in the country. trudeau himself is weaker. it's only japan that's the exception, and that's because they haven't had the immigration. it's very homogeneous. their population is shrinking, so per capita, even though the economy's not growing, they're

feeling a little better. and their military is constitutionally not allowed to actually participate in wars around the world. add to that the lowest adult social media participation rate in all of these countries, and suddenly, you say this isn't a model that we could even try to adapt to in the united states. so, 2019's going to see a lot more populism, unfortunately for those that hope that the center is going to hold, than 2018 had experienced. >> and david, when they look around the world at the united states -- mine, you've had to do this as foreign minister of britain -- what did they -- you know, if you were advising a foreign government on how to deal with donald trump, what would you say? >> well, you'd say three things, obviously. one, this is an unpredictable superpower. we've never had experience with an unpredictable superpower. it's precisely been predictability that has given it power in the past. secondly, transactions matter far more than values. it's absolutely evident that the administration has no preference for dealing with liberal

democratic nations over autocratic nations. thirdly, i think what's interesting is that in the end, president trump wants the deal, and he often advertises that he wants the deal more than anything else. we'll see this tested in the shutdown, which is obviously in some ways a economic question. but if you think about the chinese trade quote/unquote war, if you think about the north korea example, in the end, he doesn't want go over the edge, and i think people are figuring that out. >> all right, when we come back, president trump said this morning as he departed for camp david that if anybody else but him were president, we would be at war with north korea. not quite sure why. so, will trump get a deal in 2019? i will ask the panel and will ask david miliband about brexit when we come back. after a day of chasing dogs you shouldn't have to chase down payments. (vo) send invoices and accept payments to get paid twice as fast. (danny) it's time to get yours! (vo) quickbooks. backing you. but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient

originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. ♪here you come again lookin' ♪a body has a right to ♪and shakin' me up so applebee's all you can eat is back. now with shrimp. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. i am all about living joyfully. the united explorer card hooks me up.

getting more for getting away. traveling lighter. getting settled. rewarded. learn more at the explorer card dot com.

a book that you're ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! and we are back with david miliband, rana forooha and ian bremmer. ian, just to pick up on the point david miliband was making, does trump want a deal on north korea? it seemed as though he sort of raised the temperature, took us

to the brink of war, in the hope, i think, that the north koreans would cry uncle and make a deal. when they didn't, he first sort of lost interest, and now, you know, they seem to be going through unending negotiations that are going nowhere. >> there's going to be another summit. trump is very happy about being the one leader that can say i'm the guy that's gotten through to the north korean leadership. he has a couple small wins that he can point to, like the fact the north koreans continue to not test nuclear weapons or missiles, which they were doing before, of course. but when you talk to, say, like mike pompeo, secretary of state privately on this issue, he'll say he met with kim jong-un four times. he's gotten absolutely nothing from the north korean leader and that the north korean leader, who's a smart guy, in his view, is planning to play out the clock on one full trump term. and if trump as president decides that he wants to show that that's a deal, even though the north koreans aren't moving, though they're moving a lot with the south koreans and the chinese in building their economy, then that's where we are. and you're right, there's not going to be a war. >> let me ask you about one

which, i think at least on the substance, i'm somewhat sympathetic to trump, even though the manner in which he did it, i think he gets failing grades for. the question of syria. what exactly was the u.s. doing in syria? we weren't winning. assad was more comfortably in power and consolidated. is he right to say, look, if it's not clear what exactly you're doing there, just staying in there unendingly doesn't make sense? >> he's certainly right to say that the fight is against isis, and that's what congress approved was a fight on terror. the idea that we're there to defend the kurds, that's not a legal military intervention, and that's not what the american people ever signed up for. now, i do think that having 2,000 special forces on the ground in syria, it's not like we're sending enlisted men and women. these are people that are signed up for that kind of action. they actually are kind of into it, and they're providing a lot of intel in what's happening on the ground -- hezbollah, other militants -- for the united states and our allies.

we will lose that when we pull these troops out. but i am sympathetic to the idea that trump pulled the wool off and, hey, assad won, and assad won this wore not because of trump. assad won this war because at no point did the americans have the interest on the ground that the iranians and turks have had. >> there are 213 international rescue committee staff on the ground in northeast syria, another 200 or 3 hundr00 in ita which is a province of 3.5 million people now. the u.s. presence on the ground was undoubtedly up holing an uneasy balance of power. and it's a five, six-way balance of power, but the battle against isis is not over in northeast syria. we shouldn't believe that. and the danger, obviously, is either that you have more in the northeast or there's a deal where the northeast is given over to the assad forces, but then in idlib, where you have these 3.5 million people and there are isis presence as well

as the vast predominance of civilians, that you have some trade-off that allows for a fight there. and that creates the danger of refugee crisis going into turkey or worse. so, i think this was a decision that does bring greater instability at a time when there were two parts of the country that still had the hope of being places of relative calm and stability, and even in the case of the northeast, the place where the refugees would go back to. >> if i could add in one point to this, too. you know, trump has obviously added a tremendous amount of this instability, but this is not -- the idea of the u.s. pulling back from the middle east is not just a trump phenomenon. if you look at it economically, the u.s. was the number one global producer of crude oil this year because of the shale revolution. that's galvanizing a lot of people on the right and on the left to say, hey, maybe we shouldn't be as dependent on the middle east, and i think that's going to create a certain amount of isolationism that goes beyond the trump administration. >> and of course, the problem is that the local actors become more prominent there and they're not particularly wise or strategic. rana, speaking of instability,

one of the five largest economies in the world, i think, britain is on the precipice of brexit. what do you think that means? >> it's a real disaster for the uk, and it's something, frankly, that the leadership on both sides, on both sides of the political spectrum, has yet to kind of fully grapple with. i think that there's a lot of willful blindness still amongst the british elite about the idea that there couldn't be a good deal. in some ways -- nobody likes the current deal. that may be postponed, as david is suggesting. i think the possibility of a crash-out is a possibility. it's a real possibility, whether that happens in january, whether that happens in july. because you have to grapple with the fact that europe cannot really give the uk a great deal. it simply cannot allow there to be hardship in relationship to winning. >> there is a game of chicken going on with mrs. may, with her inadequate deal, the brexiteer

ultras who are saying let's crash out. there's a further middle group who is saying let's have some kind of soft landing with the safe harbor and the norway option. and there is a fourth group, including myself not just as an observer, but as a participant, for saying look, the deal promised for brexit in 2016 is not on our front. and just as when you buy a house you do a survey and you're not bound to buy the house until the results of the survey come through, so when you decide to leave the european union, the people should be given a chance to affirm their support for the deal or not to go ahead, buts it is a game of chicken and -- >> if there is a second referendum as you're advocating, would you go to britain and campaign? >> i would certainly campaign more than last time. i did some campaigning, but not enough. and i think it would be a moment of national mobilization. but here's another point, it would be the moment when the populists would have to be taken on, because remember, the brexit referendum happened before president trump was elected, and it would be the moment to confront the delusions, the

illusions, the blindfulness -- >> the willful blindness. >> -- that you rightly referred to about how a medium-sized country can have influence and security in the modern world, versus the delusions that say we can throw ourselves at the mercy of the markets. there are three regulatory e, a european one. and if you're britain, you have to choose between the three and that's why the stakes are so high. >> the tri-polar world. >> we hope we will launch david mill brandt into a british political campaign, which would lead who knows where. many people hope to the prime ministership. next on "gps," china was atop the news for at least two reasons this week, its moon landing and its hand in making apple miss its targets. what is going on there? i will ask the man who donald trump calls the leadk authority on china. th the grandkids every minute counts. and you don't have time for a cracked windshield. that's why we show you exactly when we'll be there. saving you time, so you can keep saving the world.

>> kids: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace ♪ (gasps) for real cold and flu protection. with lysol, you can help protect them from a real cold. lysol disinfectant spray kills the #1 cause of the cold and clorox wipes don't. lysol. what it takes to protect. and back pain made it hard to sleep and get up on time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a safe sleep aid, plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve.

i'm back. aleve pm for a better am. and the golden retriever er are very different. they eat, digest, and process energy differently. at royal canin, we developed over 200 precise formulas to transform every cat and dog into a magnificent animal. royal canin

♪ [ dobaxter.ng ] it's bedtime. peace of mind should never be out of reach. [ voice command beep ] xfinity home. xfinity home connects you to total home security you can control from anywhere on any device. and it protects you with 24/7 professional monitoring. i guess we're sleeping here tonight. xfinity home. simple. easy. awesome.

call, go online or demo in an xfinity store today. jade rabbit 2. that is the name of the chinese lunar rover that landed on the far side of the moon this week. the landing was seen as a big step for china's space program with the nasa chief calling it a first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment. and as it was having its triumph in outer space, china was bringing apple's stock back down to earth. the tech company took a huge dive between wednesday's close and thursday's open after apple

said it would miss its revenue forecast in a big way, all because of weak sales in china. so, how to think about china and its relationship to the united states? joining me is michael pillsbury, the hudson institute's director for chinese strategy. president trump has called him the leading authority on china, as i keep saying. michael, pleasure to have you on. >> thank you. >> i also have to say, i also really enjoyed your book. it's called "a hundred-year marathon" and i advocate people read it because it's a very thoughtful book about what chinese intention raze in this longer term. >> yes, thank you. exists in chinese translation, but they classify it in china so only party members and military officers can buy it. >> i see. >> yes. >> they want party members to know what china's plan is. >> well, yes, because it's sort of an inner history of u.s./china relations over the last 40 years and i reveal quite a bit from declassified american documents about the level of our

quite intimate cooperation with china. >> right. let me first just ask about the space program. >> sure. >> do you agree that's significant? what is the nature of china's space program? >> well, china's space program in many ways is a micro example of their overall strategy. they borrowed heavily from soviet russian technology. many of their components look just like a soyuz. they are not supposed to cooperate with nasa. it's against american law. a lot of human rights issues were brought up, so the chinese can't be part of the international space station. so, they did acquire american space technology. now, that doesn't take away credit from them for some innovation. the exquisite control system, to be able to maneuver a landing on the far side of the moon, it's extremely impressive. so, it's the three components -- borrow from the russians, steal from us, and have your own scientists, many of whom have american ph.ds. >> what i'm struck by is, unlike the u.s. program, it is an entirely military program. >> and they're proud of it.

they've actually told us that their nasa consists of a sign board, instead of offices, whereas their space infrastructure is all military. and they've actually joked with americans, including myself, why do you have two separate programs in america, the air force and the military, and then a separate nasa? and our concept goes back to president kennedy, that the exploration of space should be peaceful and done by civilians and mainly for scientific reasons. the chinese say, yes, but your first astronauts came from the marine corps -- john glenn -- and they sort of have us on that. yes, we did borrow. >> so, let me ask you the big picture. >> sure. >> as you point out, your book talks about this 40-year history -- it's longer -- but when the united states was trying to integrate china into the american or the global system or the western system, what do you think china is trying to do? what are china's intentions? >> well, they've outsmarted us is how i would summarize my book, over and over again. they're much more knowledgeable

about american politics, american technology, american science than we are knowledgeable about them. part of their approach has been to get what they can through the front door for free, a whole series of national foundation agreements that required us to within 30 days transfer all new american scientific discoveries to china, a government agreement. it began with jimmy carter. never changed until fairly recently by president trump. that's part of it. part of it also has been to not be ashamed to have a predatory economy, to not be ashamed of getting $3 trillion in foreign reserves, to behave as though the 17th century is still fashionable and a country should build up its economic power, and frankly, rip off its neighbors and its biggest trading partner, us -- >> and yet, as the second largest economy in the world, they have a very small military budget comparatively speaking. >> yes. >> is that because they think asmetically and they're doing things in space, in cyber -- >> yes, they even have a term

for it that means assassin's mace. hard to translate, but it's a secret weapon like james bond opening up the briefcase when the kgb guy's about to murder him. assassin's mace concepts are very cheap, the antiship cruise missile, the one that can kill an aircraft carrier within ape few thousand miles. these are cheap, a few million per missile compared to the billions for an aircraft carrier. that's helped with their grand strategy of keeping economic spending in the forefront, science and technology the most important, and then military spending last. a low percentage of the gdp. probably 1.5% i'd say of their gdp compared to 5% of our gdp goes for military spending. that makes a huge difference over 40 years. >> and the spending they do on economics has helped enormously -- science, technology, infrastructure. >> yes. their military strongly support this strategy. in my book i talk a lot about the 100-year marathon as perceived by the military, the hawks in china.

they're quite enthusiastic because they want to get weapons that will work 10 or 20 years from now, not buy old-fashioned tanks and artillery. >> so i've got to ask you about your number one fan -- >> yes, sir. >> donald trump. >> i'm a fan of his, too, on china. >> so, there are people -- there's a debate, i think, within the administration. >> yes. >> and i've heard this debate between people who say let's just get -- let's scare the bejesus out of them and get a good deal. >> yes. >> then go back to normal. and then there are people who say, no, we need a fundamentally different strategy. we have to decouple our economy from china -- >> yes. >> we're too inter dependent. this has to be a kind of new cold war. where do you think the president is? >> the president has made his views clear long ago. he wrote a book in the year 2000. it's kind of a famous book, because at the end, he says if i run for president, i'll pick oprah winfrey as my running mate. in that same book, he has a long chapter on china. they're the greatest challenge. they're smarter than we are, they're better negotiators. so, he's thought about china, at

least 18 years, if not longer. his view is closer to the lighthizer/navarro view. yes, we should get a deal, but it should be enforceable, verifiable, let's not get tricked again. the chinese know all this. they know about the two factions. it's in their newspapers every day. they copy the "wall street journal" reporting on it. the chinese view is let's make a low-ball offer that will please steve mnuchin and larry kudlow and exacerbate the split between these two groups, see what happens. because others and probably myself would not like an agreement that's like the old salt agreements that, you know there was no verify. just trust. >> do you think trump will be tough? >> if his books are any guide from the last 18 years, he'll be tough. he's closer to lighthizer and navarro than to steve mnuchin. >> a pleasure to have you on. i hope we can have you on again. >> thank you. next on "gps," tiny bhutan may not have a high gdp, but it

doesn't really care. what the kingdom strives for is a high gnh or gross national happiness. which matters more? those or any other acronym for measuring a country's success? i'll tell you. okay, i picked out my dream car. now's the really fun part: choosing the color, the wheels, the interior. everything exactly how i want it. here's the thing, just because i configured this car online doesn't mean it really exists at a dealership. but with truecar, i get real pricing on actual cars in my area, i see what others paid for them and they show me the ones that match the car i want, so i know i can go to a truecar certified dealer and it'll be right there waiting for me... today, right now. this is truecar.

now for our "what in the world?" segment. we start with a big question -- does being richer make you happier? the answer for individuals and countries seems to be the same -- no. the world happiness report asks people across 156 countries to rate their level of life satisfaction. the united states, for example, has the largest economy in the world, but since 2015, it has been only the 18th happiest country, beaten by essentially all of northern europe, but also by australia, new zealand, and even costa rica. so, money can't buy you love or happiness. this actually highlights a problem with public policy. governments do everything they can to maximize gdp, gross domestic product, but taken alone, gdp is a deeply flawed metric, because everything that is produced in a country and bought there, no matter what, it counts all government spending

as additive, no matter how the money is spent. in his book "the growth delusion," the journalist david pilling reports that the gop writes many things people would consider negative. in colombia when the cartel reasoned supreme, cocaine was 3.of its gdp. if the u.s. builds new prisons in response to crime, that's a positive for gdp. mafia money actually gooses the gdp of italy. so, policy wonks are looking for a better way to measure a nation's success or failure. take the oecd's better life index, which measures 11 indicators, including health, education, and work-life balance across countries. the economist joseph stiglis recently wrote that such an index could have a huge impact on redirecting public policy to outcomes that improve well-being and happiness, not just economic output. for example, had american

policymakers been paying attention 20 years ago to the rising mortality of middle-aged, white, working-class americans, which is caused in part by the opioid epidemic, they might have acted on it sooner. that might not help gdp, but it would help human well-being. there's also the genuine progress indicator, a version of which is used in a number of u.s. states as well as japan and finland. it includes gdp but incorporates house work, volunteer work and national assets like wetlands. then it subtracts for a number of indicators like pollution, crime, and underemployment. this chart maps gdp and the general progress indicator for 17 countries, showing that sometime around 1980, well-being ceased to rise with economic growth. there's one country that has allowed well-being to shape policy for years, a tiny country, bhutan. its gross national happiness index has 33 indicators stressing things like cultural and environmental preservation, values that are enshrined in its

constitution. so, what index should we use? well, possibly none. according to the epidemiologist kate picket and wilkinsen, there is one proxy for well-being in countries that most governments already measure, inequality. in "the inner level," they eing. take a look at this chart measuring inequality in a sampling of rich countries against rates of mental illness. the authors argue that this isn't a da vinci or a correlation. inequality stresses societies and reduces well-being. don't forget, gdp is not some kind of god-given statistic. it's a recent idea born in the 1930s when national economies were largely industrial, trade was limited, and even in the west, millions were desperately poor. a new world, a new era might need a new measure. next on "gps," it took months and months of investigation,

deliberation and consideration before president obama made the ultimate decision to go ahead with the bin laden raid. the best-selling author steven johnson will tell you what everybody, including our leaders, can learn from that decision-making process. ♪a body has a right to ♪and shakin' me up so applebee's all you can eat is back. now with shrimp. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. make yourself comfy. it's the biggest streaming collection of british telly ever. enjoy loved classics from the bbc and itv and discover exclusive new shows fresh from the uk. very good. brighten your new year with a britbox annual plan and get two months free. are you kidding? bring it on. this year, escape to britbox. sign up for an annual plan and start your free trial at britbox.com.

who doesni do.ve a deal? check out the united explorer card. savin' on this! savin' on this! savin' in here. rewarded! learn more at the explorer card dot com.

president obama's decision to send s.e.a.l. team 6 into a compound in pakistan surely

wasn't easy. what if the target, osama bin laden, wasn't there? what if there were casualties among the special ops soldiers? what if one of the helicopters went down, as of course, ended up happening? what if pakistan retaliated in some way for america's violation of its sovereignty? but the big decision to do it, and all of the smaller decisions on how to execute it, were made meticulously. can we take this model and use it to make decisions in our own lives? my next guest, steven johnson, does just that in his newest book "far-sided: how we make the decisions that matter the most". so, you argue that, basically, we're making decisions all the time, but we don't think about it systematically. and as a result, we're probably doing it badly. >> yeah, the question is, when you come to an important decision in your life -- like there are everyday decisions we make minute by minute that aren't that important that don't require this level of process. but when we we hit moments where

we're trying to decide whether to take a new job or launch a new product or move from the city to the country, whatever it is, those are the kinds of decisions that i argue that we need to have a process in making the choice. and in the case of the bin laden raid, we tend to celebrate the results of great decisions, right? we celebrate the heroism and the bravery, and you know, the daring of the raid itself. but actually, what made that particular success story a true success was this nine-month process of deliberating, first, is this person really osama bin laden, and second, what should we do about it, if we determine that it is bin laden? and as a society, i think we don't celebrate that decision process because it's slower and more contemplative, and that's what "far-sighted" is trying to talk about. >> you contrast the bin laden raid with the iran rescue, and how that went awry and you say

it was very poorly designed in terms of the decision-making. >> when they were actually deciding on the bin laden raid, they had a number of different kind of past decisions that had gone awry. there was the iran hostage situation. there was the weapons of mass destruction during the iraq war. all the way back to bay of pigs. and they looked at the kinds of processes that went wrong in those situations, the confirmation bias and overconfidence, and they really tried to challenge their assumptions at every step of the process, and that's the kind of thing that i think we can apply in our own lives, right? we tend to go with our gut. we tend to go with our first impression of the situation. and we actually need to take time, imagine alternate scenarios, challenge our assumptions. that's the kind of exercise that i write about in the book. >> and you talk about how it's important to imagine what things will look like two years, three years, four years out, not just tomorrow. >> so, in some sense, a big life decision or a big corporate

decision is on some level a prediction about the future, right? so, one of the things i did in the book was i went back and looked at people and the science of prediction, like where have we gotten better at making predictions, right? what can we learn from the studies of people who are good forecasters? and one of the things we've learned -- this is from a famous set of studies from a guy named philip tetlock, is that people who are good predictors of the future have a diverse set of interests, right? they don't just have a single, unified theory of the world, right? they're interested in lots of different things. and those are the people when they're trying to forecast events in a complex system, those are the people who end up being smarter and more far-sighted, basically, in the judgments they make. >> there are some people who do approach their decision-making in exactly the kind of analytic way you want them to. charles darwin. when he was deciding how to get married, what did he do? >> this is actually the seed of this book for me. years ago i was writing about darwin's notebooks during the

1830s when he's coming up with the theory of evolution. and there's a very funny, in the middle of all of his scientific jottings to himself, all of his fascinating kind of intellectual things on evolution, he takes over two pages in notebooks and he creates a pros and cons list for getting married. and the list is kind of one of the things he's concerned about if he gets married is he will give up the clever conversation of men and clubs. but what struck me about it it is the pros and cons list is the one technique that most of us learn for making complex decisions. so here darwin was doing it 170, 180 years ago. surely the techniques have advanced. really, there are more tools than just making a pros and cons list that we can use in making a decision like that. >> so all the things you say go into making good decisions,

listen to the strongest case against your idea, imagine alternative scenarios that are not your preconceived notions, take in outside information, take in information that may contradict what you're looking at. run out what this will look like going guaforward. it seems to me that we in the united states, when we make political decisions as citizens, we do everything wrong. we listen only to one side of the story, we reinforce our biases, we never look at the alternative. is it fair to say that americans' civic decision making is politically broken? >> this book does feel like a book that's useful to read right now at this particular moment in time. i think we don't have enough deliberative decision making in terms of the electorate and in terms of some of our leaders right now. but a key point, actually, that is a theme that runs throughout all of "farsighted" is point of diversity in making decisions.

this is one of the great findings of the social sciences over the last 20 years, that diverse groups make better decisions, more original decisions collectively. and that diversity can be measured in terms of age and ethnicity, gender, but also intellectual diversity, people coming from different perspectives, different fields of expertise. i think that's one of the reasons we try to celebrate diversity in terms of social tolerance, in terms of equality of opportunity, but we should also remind ourselves that when we have diverse leaders, for instance, when congress gets more diverse as it is happening right now, we can expect that group to actually make better decisions. that group will be collectively smarter. >> as long as it functions as a group. >> right. figure out a way to communicate, share ideas and collaborate with people who have different perspectives, that's clearly going to be crucial. >> stephen, obviously a good decision to have you on the show. thank you very much.

>> thank you. next on gps, we want you to take everything you just learned from stephen johnson and make some of your own decisions and predictions about what will happen in 2019. will you predict the major events of the year correctly? stay here to find out how you can tell us your global prognostications. i wanna keep doing what i love, that's the retirement plan. with my annuity, i know there is a guarantee. it's for my family, its for my self, its for my future. annuities can provide protected income for life. learn more at retire your risk dot org.

i am not for just treating my symptoms... (ah-choo) i am for shortening colds when i'm sick. with zicam. zicam is completely different. unlike most other cold medicines... ...zicam is clinically proven to shorten colds. i am a zifan for zicam. oral or nasal.

amazon prime video so when you say words like... show me best of prime video into this... you'll see awesome stuff like this. discover prime originals like the emmy-winning the marvelous mrs. maisel... tom clancy's jack ryan... and the man in the high castle. all in the same place as your live tv. its all included with your amazon prime membership. that's how xfinity makes tv... simple. easy. awesome.

so how good are you at predicting what will happen in the world? you might remember that this year we've been partnering with good judgment open, a platform that allows everyday people to predict the future. some 6,400 of you went on line to predict our global challenge of 2019, making 35,000 forecasts. here's what you predicted. in november, of course, america held its midterm elections. we asked whether democrats would win control of the house but not the senate, and while you said the likelihood was about 20% in the beginning of the year, the numbers rose steadily throughout the year until election day when gps prognosticators saw a 61% chance of a democratic-led house of representatives. not all predictions were that accurate. after school shootings in florida, you were asked of the

likelihood of bump stocks by the beginning of the year. people became skeptical that the trump administration could make a bump stock ban by year-end. they gave it a 7% chance. by the end of the year, they announced the ban. would mueller cease to be special counsel, whether by ending the investigation or by being removed from the position? odds never went above 50%. but what happened right before these spikes, giuliani announced that trump reimbursed michael cohen for payments to stormy daniels. and here the justice department inspector general released a lengthy report critical of the fbi's investigation into hillary clinton's e-mails. and this one, attorney general jeff sessions resigned. it felt like a volatile year, but the forecasters provide a relatively stable view of some geopolitical hot spots.

while the war in syria raged on, forecasters were confident that assad would remain president, giving him an average of 95% chance throughout the year. it doesn't mean it's time to throw caution to the wind. the contestants in south and east china seas, the wisdom of the crowd held that a legal confrontation there was unlikely, with a stable probability of 5 to 15% over the course of the year. accurate? yes. but very near enough. remember in october a chinese ship came within 45 yards of the u.s.-guided missile destroyer, u.s.s. decatur. do you want to try your hand for predicting the future for the coming year? go to gjopen.com/fareed. will the president be impeached? will mark zuckerberg remain facebook's ceo?

will the new brexit have a referendum? will there be a recession in the u.s.? stay up to date on these questions and more. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. hello, everyone. thank you so much for joining me this sunday. i'm fredricka whitfield. the u.s. government now shut down for 16 days. so far what we've seen, plenty of rhetoric, political bluster and fingerpointing. what we haven't seen? any signs of real progress. now president trump is warning he will consider declaring a national emergency to build the border wall based on what happens over the next few days. he's meeting with administration officials in camp david right now. and vice president mike pence is having another meeting with capitol hill staffers after talks yesterday for about two and a half hours went nowhere. sources tell cnn today the