this is gps, the global public square. welcome to all of you around the states. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from new york. today on the show, artificial intelligence will dominate the future of the economy and china is winning. a disturbing new report from a panel of top executives says america needs to wake up. can the united states ensure

that it is the world's ai super power? i will talk to commission chair and the former head of google, eric schmidt. also, whether you are going on a vacation or a business trip, you better be ready to show a passport, a vaccine passport. want to get back to your job, be prepared to show proof that you got a jab. we'll explore the ethics of what some way is our inevitable future. and australia takes on big tech. facebook and google must pay news organizations for their stories. i'll ask that country's communication minister why his nation is taking the stand. and could this become the new global standard? but first here's my take. the biden presidency is still in its early days, but it is not

too soon to point to its most impressive accomplishment so far, one that will have major implications for years to come. the covid vaccination program has been transformed. the federal government has now established or expanded over 450 vaccination centers, and the country is carrying out two million vaccinations a day, more than double the rate when president biden was inaugurated. the president says he has secured enough supply to vaccinate the entire adult population in the next three months, well ahead of every major country except for the united kingdom. the united states has administered around 85 million doses of the vaccine, compared to about 40 million in the european union and 55 million in china. over 50% of americans have received at least one dose, which is about five times the rate in china. in short, biden is demonstrating to americans and to the world that the u.s. government can

once again work. the trump administration does deserve credit for operation warp speed, the program that helped fund the vaccines and the private sector deserves credit for the miraculous speed and effectiveness with which they developed the vaccines. but for the most part, trump left the roll-out to the states. in early 2020, with covid having turned into a massive national crisis, ron klain, now biden's chief of staff, said the trump administration was pursuing an articles of confederation response. trump did this for two reasons. first it was clear the pandemic was going to create big problems, and he didn't want to bear responsibility for them. the sentiment in the white house was, let the governors own the lockdowns. we will own the recovery. second, republicans have for years denigrated the federal government, arguing it was incompetent and dysfunctional, that washington was corrupt and that the private sector could handle everything better.

trump's initial solution to the pandemic was to line up a bunch of private companies and announce they would set up websites and testing centers and cover the population. little of that actually happened. joe biden came into office intent on reversing trump's approach. he owned the crisis, releasing a 200-page national strategy that outlined, for example, exactly how the government would use its powers and resources to ramp up vaccinations. that included ordering millions more vaccines, using the defense production act to ensure that additional production could happen fast, enlisting the armed forces, national guard, fema and other agencies to support vaccination sites and shipping vaccines directly to pharmacies, thus creating another network of vaccination centers across the country. the result, a massive ramp-up of the supply production and administration of the vaccines. government is hard. american government is harder still.

it's a political system designed to prevent tyranny, not facilitate speedy action, so power is checked, divided and shared, making it all worth takes energy, ingenuity and above all a belief in government. biden clearly learned from his experience running the stimulus program as barack obama's vice president. ron klain, who coordinated the response to ebola in 2014 and '15 is impressively focussed on execution as white house chief of staff. biden's covid-19 coordinator excelled in the private and public sectors. he may be best remembered for fixing the obamacare website. a senior white house official told me, you have to work every day at all the details, grind the stuff out, persuade, cajole and force anyone to get on the same page. the federal government has amazing people working with it. fema, for example, has some real miracle workers, but they have

to be led and managed. it can be done. the answer is not that a consulting group can do this better. for people like us who believe in government, task number one is to make government work. the contrast for trump is easy to draw because trump didn't really view his job as diligently administering the federal bureaucracy. for him it was a reality television show. but there was a broader view of the federal government that grew out of the vietnam war, watergate and some of the excesses of the great society programs, one that ronald reagan gave voice to when he said -- >> government is not the solution to our problem. government is the problem. >> joe biden can show us that reagan was wrong. it was the american government, after all, that put a man on the moon and helped create the internet. and in today's world, there are crucial challenges that only government, well-led and

administered, can solve. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my washington post column this week. and let's get started. ♪ artificial intelligence first beat a human in a chess match 24 years ago. it is driving cars and diagnosing diseases. it can write news articles and create artistic masterpieces. it can fight the enemy on a battlefield. in coming years, it will do nothing short of reorganizing the world as we know it. but america is at great risk of falling behind china in the race to dominate this realm. that last part is according to the national security commission on artificial intelligence. it is a blue ribbon panel of top thinkers who just sent their final report to congress and the

president. the chair of the commission, eric schmidt, joins me now. i should note i am an unpaid adviser to his organization, schmidt futures. wel welcome. let me ask you first, do you agree with that characterization that artificial intelligence will be sprinkled or coursed through the entire economy of the future? >> thank you. extremely well said. what we now know is that ai will be the basis of pretty much everything you deal with over the next five or ten years. it will be present in your informations base. it will be present in your medical care. it will be present in how your car works. over and over again, ai is going to be an essential part of the world and in particular the united states. >> and are you confident in saying that right now your fear is that china is actually ahead? >> we were constituted two years ago -- this is a bipartisan

group of about 15 commissioners to look at this question. we came to the conclusion that the united states is today ahead, but may lose our lead fairly quickly. the reason is that china has decided to focus on leadership in ai by 2030 and is doing the necessary steps to provide that leadership. we believe that it is a national emergency, literally a threat to our nation, unless we get our act together with respect to focussing on ai in the federal government and international security, and we make hundreds of recommendations for the among and the white house to follow. >> but right now, eric, you do point out in the report china has twice as many super computers as the united states. you point out that it's 5g program or the outlook is much, much stronger. you point out that the chinese use more data. they have four times as many people. all this -- i mean, this sounds

like it's already happening, that they are moving ahead. >> they are planning to move ahead. we have a chance to save it. we continue to be the innovators globally. we continue to have the strongest and best companies. china is already a lead in facial reck mission, no surprise there, as well as in electronic commerce. they aspire to be leaders in synthetic biology and they're almost certainly very far ahead of us in 5g. they are a significant global competitor to the west and to america. they're organized in a central planning way. and ai tends to benefit from having large sets of data and lots and lots of money. america is not organized that way. our recommendations include a top-level panel that would be convened under the vice president to focus on technology competitiveness and global competitive. it also includes very significant increases in r and d funding and an awful lot of training. the government is not today

prepared for this new technology. they just don't have the skills inside of it yet. >> you have talked about the importance of getting the government involved. i mean, you're a private sector guy, a silicone guy, an entrepreneur. you don't worry about the government investing industrial policy, you know, all those fears that the government will waste the money? >> you know, we have a competitor in the form of china who has an industrial policy who has much more money, very smart people and global ambitions. we need a strategy to win against that. one of the things in our report is we list key technologies that will be the platform drivers for the united states in the future. we estimate that winning the ai battle is a $50 trillion business over 20 years or so. so the amounts of money at stake here are huge, and we're not prepared. we need to double our r and d spending in our universities.

we need to make sure we have a research firm for startups and technical groups to build the next generation of ai. the ai winner is not yet determined. it's the next great challenge. >> how much money and dollars do you think the united states should be investing in order to compete with china? >> in the report, we suggest a doubling of basic r and d every year, which we think is about as fast as we can absorb it. we estimate that number should get to $30 billion. $30 billion seems like a lot of money, but when we're playing with trillions of dollars of industry profits, growth and value, you can see. imagine the worst case, which is we don't do this, and the great next companies all come out of china and that the fantastic technology companies that have been built in the united states which comprise 20% of our stock market value end up being in another country and not under our control. there is national security concerns and also, by the way,

there is values concerns. if these things were built in china, for example, they are not necessarily going to follow our privacy rules, our respect for ethics. they're going to have their own rules, which are not ones that any of us want to be subject to. so we have to be careful to win this battle. there are five or six core platform battles that america is in the process of facing that we may lose. i mentioned two. energy is another one. autonomy in robotics is another one. additive manufacturing is another one. these are all areas china prioritized in their 2025 plan, and they're known to put their money behind their central planning. they intend to win. we have to respond competitively. this is not a war. this is a competition that we can win if we get ourselves organized. i'm worried that, because of the structure of china, they're going to move quicker than we are, even with the great things that we are as a democracy.

>> eric schmidt, a very important message. thank you. >> thank you. next on gps, australia's new law that forces facebook and google to pay for news. i'm talk to paul fletcher, australia's minister of communications, about whether his nation is paving the way for others to do exactly the same. back in a moment. brought to you by dana farber cancer institute. pd-l1. they changed how the world fights cancer. blocking the pd-l1 protein, lets the immune system attack, attack, attack cancer. pd-l1 transformed, revolutionized, immunotherapy. pd-l1 saved my life. saved my life. saved my life. what we do here at dana-faber, changes lives everywhere. everywhere. everywhere. everywhere. everywhere.

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we will keep trying. in the meantime, the government of italy announced thursday it had blocked a shipment of about a quarter million doses of the astrazeneca vaccine that were destined for australia. italy is currently in the midst of an uptick in covid cases and rome didn't want to sent this liquid gold to a nation that had zero cases since october. is this the vaccine nationalism that many had feared. joining me is the editor in chief of the economist. let me ask you the broader question of why has the european union, which is the biggest, richest, economic block in the world, why has it sort of bungled the vaccine roll-out where the europeans are way behind the united states? >> well, you're quite right. they are way behind. i think the main reason is that the european commission is inexperienced at this. health policy is usually the purview of individual countries in the eu.

but this time they decided to club together and do the vaccine purchases together through the european commission. but that led to all kinds of bureaucratic hurdles because each different country had to sign up on the contract. the european negotiators, perhaps because they were so inexperienced, pushed the drug companies hard on liability, on price. they didn't want to be seen to overpaying. that also showed things down. unlike the british and others, it wasn't going to rush through emergency approval. so all those things meant the thing got off to a very slow start. they then had some bad luck. they bet heavily on a vaccine that had delay. in the last couple of months they added more errors themselves. firstly, there are several countries in the eu, notably france, where people are hesitant against vaccines. they had a roll-out scheme that went slowly. european politicians poured cold

water on the et ka of the astrazeneca vaccine. so that even as europe, as you say, is way behind others, they are not using doses of the astrazeneca vaccine they have. so add all of that together, it means they are incredibly slow. there is a lot of anger in europe, but it is really incompetence and inexperience. >> so that leaves them in this extraordinary position where they are putting embargoes on the vaccines. how is that going to play internationally, do you think? how is that playing in europe? >> i think it will play extremely badly internationally. its practical consequences are relatively modest. as you say, the italian government's decision won't have an a huge impact in australia because they have few cases. but the significant it sends about the reputation of the european union which always prides itself on being this bass yan of the international system

is looking like an inextreme. it is very global, everything from viles is produced in other countries. we would have terrible trouble vaccinating the world. so there is a huge reputational risk. entirely within the eu, there is just a kind of growing view for every country for itself. from denmark to the check republic, countries are trying to get hold of the vaccination themselves. >> from stunning failure to stunning success, britain is the world's leader f. you take israel and the uae out, which are tiny nations, britain has vaccinated significantly more people than the united states. why? what went right in britain? >> well, you're right. it's been a huge success and something everyone in britain is immensely proud of. i think there are four reasons. two are the first order ones.

britain started very early. we formed a vaccine task force to find one and buy them in april last year. money was no object. but thirdly and perhaps more importantly it was an example of really effective work between government and business. the vaccine task force was chaired by a woman who is a venture capitalist in sciences, really knows this area. it is an area where britain has long been long and the government went out of its way to make britain an attractive place to sell their vaccines. they helped with trials. they helped to smooth red tape. they made it as easy as possible. the national health service was immensely useful because it is a central health care provider unlike the u.s. and the european union. that made it easier to organize an effective distribution scheme. yes, britain has been remarkably successful. >> and finally, zanny, why is it

that europe has had such a nasty wave recently? even the countries that have managed to handle it well like germany saw huge uptick. in many cases it has come down. but i was wondering if there was some reflection. it seemed like even if you are good state, if the society of people just get fed up of the social distancing rules, you see these spikes. or was there something else? >> i think it's a good of that. it's a bit of bad luck. what you see happening now in france, in germany, the check republic and others is kind of what happened in britain in november and december. particularly in december. a new variant suddenly takes hold, much more transmissible. that's what's happening now in europe. at the same time as there is lockdown fatigue. and the european union have much, much looser lockdown regulations than we do in britain now. britain has become one of the most severe regimes globally,

even as the vaccine is successfully being distributed. with the result in the u.k., we're on a road map to lifting everything. whereas in europe, they are contemplating tighter restrictions. they have new variants. they're more transmissible and they have weaker lockdowns. >> you always explain things to succinctly. thank you so much. >> thank you. next on gps, the next battle on the covid-19 front. vaccine passports. you may need to show proof of vaccination to cross borders, walk into a theater, even go to work. what are the ethics of all of this? we'll explore when we come back. e versus the other guys. ♪ clearly, velveeta melts creamier. listerine® cleans virtually 100%. helping to prevent gum disease and bad breath.

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i may see your papers? i don't think i have them on me. in this case, we have to ask you to come along. >> from "casa blanca" to today. producing personal documents can be uncomfortable. but post-pandemic it is likely we will all have to get more comfortable with. we will have to show proof in order to get on an airplane or go back to work. joining me is a professor at nyu, arthur kaplan. so explain why you think, basically, that this is the future and we should be comfortable with it. >> well, i'm sure that the future holds vaccine passports for us, partly to protect against the spread of covid, and it rebounded.

there are many countries, as you were discussing earlier, that have low rates of covid, australia, india, nigeria. come countries improving fast. other countries lagging and trying to do lockdowns as vaccines become available. the best way to control the spread, the best way to control new outbreaks and perhaps even new variants is to demand proof of vaccination before entry. you know, it is not a new idea. we have it for yellow fever. there are more than a dozen countries that say you can't come in if you haven't been vaccinated against yellow fever and many others require you to show proof of vaccination if you transit through those countries. >> what about the concerns that many people have about privacy, about the privacy of their health data. that is, is there a slippery slope here? okay, i'm comfortable telling you whether or not i have covid, but do i -- does that mean that it becomes okay to ask about

other things? >> well, there is always a danger of a slope. but i think here what's different is traditionally we want to protect health information because if someone finds out you have an illness or a disease, they may discriminate against you, they may penalize you. they may say you can't get a job, insurance, life insurance. with a covid certification, you will gain freedom. you will gain mobility. and i'm going to suggest that you will probably get certain jobs. if you want to work on a cruise ship, i can't imagine they will be advertising that everybody who is on the staff and the crew is vaccinated, so come on back. so the difference, if you will, is it often is the case that health information, when released, threatens to harm you. in this case, being vaccinated threatens to benefit you. it goes in the other direction. >> what about the effect on inequality? i want to talk about it in two

ways. first, there will be an inevitable inequality that there are even within countries where things are going well, like the united states. there are going to be people who don't have the vaccine. sometimes that will tend to be people that come from poorer communities to get vaccinated. and secondly, of course, the rich countries are hogging the vaccines. and, so, maybe appropriately because they paid for them. but the point is you are going to exacerbate the divide between the rich and poor around the world. so, you know, first within even the united states and then the rich -- the west versus the rest, if you will. >> well, remember, vaccine passports or even vaccine requirements do depend on access. it is hard to impose anything unless you are pretty sure that somebody can get a vaccine. so i think it will be a little while before we see this, let's say, within the u.s.

but there are going to be communities and areas of the country where it starts to make sense due to high available of vaccine to say, you want to come back to work in person? got to show me a vaccine certificate. you want to go in a bar or restaurant? got to show me a vaccine certificate. i think there will be some inequality within the u.s. but hopefully it will wash out quickly as the supplies increase very rapidly, and i think they are going to. it gives you an incentive to overcome zac seen hesitancy. if you promise people more mobility, more ability to get a job, more ability to get travel, that's a very powerful incentive to actually achieve fuller vaccination. internationally, those problems are there. there is no denying it. there will be countries way behind in terms of having access to anything. i am going to predict that the world won't wait for vaccine passports until everybody is onboard. i think you will see some in place, despite the fact this

will isolate some countries and perhaps even cause them economic damage. it is just the better off and the lucky in a certain sense not wanting to wait for everybody to come onboard. >> let me ask you about the ethics of a test applied by an employer who says, in order to get this job, you have to be vaccinated. are there legal ethical issues in terms of the fact that you will be favoring one person or one group of people over another? >> well, there could be. and i think we'll see that happen. that's more mandating a vaccine for the right to work, if you will. some jobs do that now. the militaries around the world will quickly be saying as soon as the vaccines are licensed, which they're not yet, but once licensure occurs, i think you will see everybody required in the military to be vaccinated to be in the military. but in the private sector, some

jobs have high contact. you're dealing with a sales force that goes out and sees a lot of people. you have a lot of people coming into the office for one reason or another depending on the line of work. there i think you can say for safety and the integrity of the business and being able to work the bids, we've got to ensure our clients that everybody is vaccinated. so as long as you don't discriminate and say we're only going to vaccinate older people but we don't require this of younger people or, you know, we don't require people who live in rural areas to prove it, but we do urban. discrimination is what the employer will have to watch out for. they can't do that. but if they put on blanket protections and say it's to protect us and to keep the business going because otherwise our customers won't trust us, i think they will be able to do it. >> professor kaplan, a pleasure to have you on. thank you so much. >> thank you so much. >> next on gps, a seismic relig yog event.

the head of the catholic church meets the head of shee yat islam. we will explore this extraordinary occasion and what it means when we come back. let's listen to this. louder. take these guys? i mean, there's room. maybe next time, fellas. now we're talking. alright. let's. go.

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dawn powerwash. spray, wipe, rinse. pope francis arrived friday in baghdad for a historic visit to iraq. the first ever for a pope. the trip comes amidst heightened violence in this war torn nation and amidst a global pandemic. the remarkable journey was made more so when the head of the catholic church made with the head of shiite islam. joining me now is ben. the pope offered a mass earlier today. good to have you on, ben. first explain why the pope is in iraq. what is striking about iraq and much of the arab world has been the disappearance of christianity and christians through people fleeing through

persecution, often violence. >> reporter: yeah. that is the prime reason of pope francis' visit here, is to express solidarity and support to the christian community in iraq, which has dwindled from around a million and a half back in 2003 to perhaps 300,000. today he wanted to reassure them that the catholic church cares about them, wants them to remain in iraq to the extent that they can. so that was really the prime mission here. not that necessarily a four-day visit by pope francis is going to change the mind of almost everyone we spoke to in the christian community who said given the opportunity we will leave. and, in fact, you will not find one christian family that doesn't have a relative who has immigrated to the united states or canada or australia or sweden

or somewhere else. the second mission that he had here was to meet with grand ayatollah to continue this outreach to islam, keeping in mind that he did sign this document with the grand imand who represents the sunis. not officially, of course, but he's seen as much. now he had this opportunity to meet with a leading cleric i don't think the shiite. shiite islam does not have a hirer arky like the catholic ch church. but certainly it is important. i'm looking down below right now. the pope's convoy is leaving at the moment and heading to the airport and back to baghdad for

what so far has been a trip very, very well received by iraqis regardless of their religion. fareed? >> let me ask you about that last point you made. he is very careful with whom he meets. i know this because i was scheduled to meet with him once. i think it was in 2003 or '04, right after the iraq war, and at the last minute i got a message saying he will not meet with an american. for some reason he thought that perhaps i had a non-american passport or something like that. he's careful about the similar bow lis m of who he meets with. is this a sign that that kind of ethnic chauf nichl that seemed to control iraq is waning and the people really are nos stol

gik for that multi-ethnic iraq that existed? >> i don't think they ever were opposed to it, by and large. keep in mind, for instance, when you wanted to meet the grand ayatollah back in 2004, 2004, that was after the american invasion. it was a much more sensitive time. but, yes, by and large the ayatollah is very careful about who he meets. for instance, recently the chief justice of iran wanted to meet with sistani and he turned him down. the fact that he was willing to meet in a private meeting, it should be stressed, with pope francis is significant. and hugely significant. we don't actually know exactly what they discussed. afterwards, for instance, sistani's office said that he stressed that christians in iraq should enjoy peace and security

with full rights under the iraqi constitution. pope francis expressied his association for the ayatollah's role for protecting christians in iraq. beyond that, if you want to get into the sort of trees of shiite pot politics, you have two main trends. one represented by the supreme le leader of iran. they believe in the rule of the juris prudence. in other words, clerics should be involved in the nuts and bolts, the daily running of the country. that's what we have seen in iran. in iraq, the ie toely believes perhaps the clerics should express their opinions, but they shouldn't get involved in politics. >> i got to let you go, ben.

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rely on the experts at 1800petmeds for the same medications as the vet, but for less with fast free shipping. visit petmeds.com today. now for our what in the world segment. it has been less than two months since joe biden assumed leadership of the country. we all watched the return to regular press briefings with profound relief. american democracy, as biden put it in his inaugural speech, appears to have prevailed. if that's true of the worldest oldest democracy, in the world's biggest, it is a different story altogether. the nonprofit freedom house put out its annual report this week. and india's status has fallen from free to partly free for the first time in 30 years.

india's slide has been sleddy and now swift under the prime minister. over the past few years, india has clamped down tightly on freedom of speech. police have filed criminal charges against activists, journalists and opposition politicians for merely criticizing the government. last month, a climate activist in her early 20s was arrested on sedition charges for doing nothing worse, it seems, than drafting and sharing a document in support of the ongoing farmers' protests. the document was later tweeted by gretta thurnburg. according to the research group article 14, more than 7,000 people have faced sedition charges since modi was elected in 2014.

the press has been under relentless attack and intimidation. "the new york times" reported in april that modi used the pandemic to harangue media outlets into providing favorable coverage. they have pressured journalist and to suspend features that critiqued it, the paper re reported. a spokesperson responded to the downgrade on friday saying india has robust institutions and well established democratic practices. we do not seen sermons, especially from those who cannot get their basics right. singling out india's muslim minority. in december of 2019, the government passed the citizenship amendment act, a law which allows a path to citizenship for migrants belonging to six different religions from nearby countries. the one group it does not set a

path more, muslims. and there are hints of more discrim nar policies to come. they have spoken of instituting a national citizens register in which every indian would have to establish proof of their place of birth. it is difficult for many to furnish sufficient proof in india, but muslims would be disproportionately affected by such a register. and then there is cash meal, india's only muslim minority stake. i say was because in august 2019 the central government hurriedly passed legislation that stripped cashmere of its state hood and status under the indian constitution. thousands of people in the state were preventively detained. freedom house tallies it separately than the rest of india. in 2020, the score plummeted. currently it is rated as not

free, on par with dig take tor ships and police states. a recent article shows the beauty and radicalism is that it was not tied to any single faith or language. it exalted in india's diversity. india has fallen short of its democratic ideals but rarely has it fallen so far so fast. the country is not yet lost as an anchor of democracy in the world, but it could be as it continues that slide, a result that would be catastrophic for it but also for the world in which india has always stood as a shini shining beacon. that almost any country, india has affirmed the idea that democracy was a universal right of all human kind.

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hey. i'm live in new york, and this is "reliable sources," where we examine the story behind the story and try to figure out what is reliable these days. the chilling prosecution of a journalist on american soil. a top news executive the here to call attention to the trial. plus, dr. sanjay gupta like you have never seen him before. behind the scenes of pandemic era tv news.