but yet, to give everybody a sense of what it was like and i hope i did that eight times and i don't need to read it again. [laughter] >> in terms of was it hard though a lot of people i think have made the mistake saying you've been a recluse the difference between the two words. has it been hard being so public about some of the stuff? some of the stuff you write in the book and talking about bill gates are just downright like i am waiting for the hollywood version of what this is going to play out. would be hard to do that publicly? >> when you write an autobiography like this york east with the choice are you

going to tell it as you've experienced it and the highs and lows and the important parts of your life and i just chose to do that in a an unvarnished way because i thought that is what it deserved and i feel like i made some -- i had some success and things that didn't work out that well but the technology and other things that have been. but the reclusive thing i don't understand -- >> you throw parties on of big yacht. >> to meet somebody that just stays in their house. i have friends and i'm not shaking people's hands and travel the world, i don't know.

i joked last week i was going to send out a tweet saying billionaires' heads toomas adis to reenact the life of howard hughes. [laughter] >> i don't even like las vegas. >> you didn't tweet that? that is too funny not to tweet. >> the four microsoft employees like when the excerpt -- >> which ones? >> i don't think they are in the audience. but surprise that the excerpt saying why is he speaking out now and acting like -- you know, what is the point of that? what is the point of carrying out dirty laundry like that? >> there was a period in my life

where you're the founder of a company and the way that it happened at that time was stunned and so i thought it was important to tell that signature moment in my life and give people an idea of that trajectory which went from a huge lead productive innovative and from partnership to promote their at the end, and so i went on to other things since then but the was an important chapter in my life. >> it definitely reads like a book in which somebody had nothing to lose. you just kind of let it all out and that's the testament to what you've done. >> again i wrote a lot of it in those moments where i was thinking i've got to get this down and hopefully people will

get something out of it when they read it. >> did you give the current ceo of microsoft, do they get kind of a this is coming just so you know heads up? and what do they say? >> to talk to bill about the book i expect a very intense discussion. and he basically says the book portrays the recount that happens. >> no one has challenged any facts in the book. >> can we take it or something? [laughter] and see what happens. >> what channel is that going to go on? [laughter] i'm kidding. i'm kidding. >> this is good.

not to get all bill gates about this but let me ask this question, can you take us back to that moment you were in tenth grade, he was eighth grade, this was north seattle? what was it like to meet him for the -- but was the thing that you thought okayed this guy is interesting? >> there are some pictures of bill and me to get their slaving over which there are examples downstairs. >> yes, there are. >> but they are not hot. and i just remember bill used to wear saddle shoes and sweaters and he walks in very dingley young man and after a few weeks after at our high school there

were just a few of us of that were just almost building our way to get on and he was one of them and there were a few others in the that the end of the month the what kind of have a horrifying left of how much money you would want on the time sharing service. bill and i were always up there at the top and think how am i going to explain to my parents always of time share? so that was always anxiety provoking. >> how about the day he saw the article in the popular mechanics what was that -- popular electronics. u.s all in the harvard square and actually that magazine checkout the revolutionary exhibit in the museum is basically the first 2,000 years of computing. but that magazine is blown up downstairs, and what was that feeling like when you saw that

magazine? >> was a feeling of vindication because i had been telling bill for a long time we should be doing a basic language interpreter and first we actually built based on the microprocessor chip for the company to process the data produced by the traffic recorders and we used to have these webs in the street the would punch out a 16 channel coated tape. this audience i feel like they can get technical, right? okay. so, i remember one day bill and iii think we snuck down and bought this because i was convinced we can basically build our own computer with a microprocessor chip and found the guy to do the engineering

and so it came wrapped and it was stuck to this piece of plastic with aluminum foil and it cost $360 we are like this is a whole process so that's how we got our start. we learned all about the microprocessors then and i would say bill we should do the 8,008. it's too slow and it's only got a seven levels to act. it's going to be unusable. so it came out and i said bill we don't know anybody that in austin to build a computer so then i went down to the square and salles the 75 cents and ran back and showed the magazine. >> the article was the era of the computer in every home has arrived.

that is the very first sentence and i'm curious in these terms when you spent two months figuring this out what did that feel like? what were you envisioning this going when you were thinking about it? >> around that time we didn't know, we had no idea what it was like and i talked leader in the book about flying out to albuquerque. we had no idea exactly how fast home computers and personal computers would take off and how our software was going to become an amazing part of that change. so we thought if you are really successful me one day we will have 35 employees. i think microsoft is over 90,000 now. so, you have to remember back

then -- >> what was the competition? >> we were worried there was competition and i just mauney role was read every computer design. i read everything and trying to see the computer world was more about the 360 and everything else, but my job was to look out and see what could be coming and i didn't see anything of the basics from anyone else so we thought we had a head start but we were not sure. >> you probably know this but microsoft was found in the same year that gordon, the intel cofounder came up with moore's law that incorporated for approximately doubled every 24 months. does this matter to you? is it something you were thinking about the everything getting to be cheaper, better and faster? >> you could see the trend because the first ship was

before 2004 than the 8,008 of course we know to in the natural history is yemen albuquerque so we were aware that the chips were getting so much better and so much faster and cheaper, and now of course every component of a portable device for computer every part of it gets cheaper and faster every year so it's amazing and we knew that trend was happening but it was obviously happening in that way. >> this is my last bill gates question. but you have your question cards so please feel free to write questions and gather some leader. i thought the most interesting package about bill gates in the book is when you wrote, quote, i

left microsoft a quarter-century before bildt did but we both had our signal triumph but in certain respects, neither of us has been quite as good alone as we were together seven reading this and thinking to myself is he trying to say what would have happened if he'd stayed at microsoft and what how would have happened in the past ten years was been going on microsoft has gone by the wayside, not the wayside but is affecting facebook or twitter or google. do you ever think about what would have happened if you had state? >> i've thought about it. in technology which is to accomplish some amazing things yet to use microsoft language, hard core business person. it's had more charges recently but we will talk about that in a few minutes.

as capable we worked shoulder to shoulder in the code and and i like to think if i stayed there but then i left and i wasn't planning on staying. i wanted to start a new chapter in my life and i tried to retire at age 30 which lasted about 18 months. i traveled to europe a lot and try to relax and the technologist didn't want to be involved in creating something

again and equity think about through the history of the technology industry when you look at the companies that have been founded by two people. they would see the other person leave. to think about the nature of the friendship we have these kind of start-ups and to people involved >> it can depend on the personalities. >> some people are more technological and i wasn't attracted to feel the marketing and the same way to following the next microprocessor chip or the next product and those kind of questions. so over time bill was in those roads and the company was willing more in those areas.

our roles became different. i was focused on technical things and bill was focused on the whole plate of nontechnical things and technical things, so as these roles evolves over time so is the case of microsoft. >> i have to say by the way i think ever since the social network cannot everybody has been using it in shorthand for the silicon valley culture have you seen the movie by the way? >> i didn't see it until after the book to influence or i don't know, i just felt it might have some affect perhaps. it was really strange to see the echo of some of the things that happened like the hollywood square. i was there in 1974, so that was -- than some of the other things that happened, so it was interesting.

i think was very well made. >> in the but you're talking about how you sat down to eat like pepperoni pizza and would think about what if we can start a company one day. when i interviewed zuckerburg he would have the same thing sitting in a pizza place how we could start the next this or that like it doesn't really change in terms of that kind of culture. >> there's something in that. [laughter] what's the equivalent in palo alto? >> we are cool and hip and more diverse. >> you said you thought about basically retire by friday, right? i'm looking in the valley of people like zok zuckerburg leading their own companies and what advice would you give them?

as somebody who has gone through that process of starting something and like this is their life, this is what they are doing. would you tell them to take a break for what would you tell them? >> if you that influenced my departure of course is my health and i didn't know. >> there are certain things you have to be eternally vigilant about the new platforms going down the pike, and if you think about facebook and twitter, both of those could have been created earlier. there used to be a thing called my space not that long ago. >> yeah, i was on it for like three weeks. if it involves more rapidly you

have to be incredibly vigilant and hire people and retain them which in silicon valley riders often silicon valley was because bill said they would be changing jobs in 18 months that was in 1977. >> want to go outside. so, anyway. so hiring and maintaining the great people and there's the spot where you just don't see these platforms coming and companies like google and apple didn't receive the special stuff coming spec apple tried to

launch ping and i'm not sure where it's gone. they haven't quite caught on estimate microsoft sold its 36th birthday earlier this month. 36th birthday. where is it with google, facebook, apple, would you call by the way in the book what is it, the high-tech hellhounds. why do you call them high tech hellhounds? yeah, microsoft always had a lot of competition but the competition today is incredibly fierce from. you are trying to fight kind of

a multi front war and it's hard to innovate yet to get people to change their habits but the inertia is pretty strong so the different search engine has to be as good and better on the social network and mobile phone platform so they are working on those areas and i have friends over there and i certainly encourage them and try to give an idea now and then but it is a big challenge as it is for the companies for apple it's a challenge to come from not having sufficient to being a major influence in that area. that is just the way it is right now. >> does that say microsoft is behind those companies? microsoft has a great position and has some great people but

computing all those different areas that's another thing. sometimes you have to pick your spot and microsoft has platforms where -- >> connect, that's true. >> let's not let it be said that microsoft is definitely still an influential credible company that has been so woven into our lives, and i grew up like microsoft word, pc, we've forgotten that it's even there it is woven into our lives but you've written in the book what you call the breathtaking fall from grace. you wrote and i am quoting you it wasn't so long ago microsoft stood by bill and i followed at the start. we set the standards. but there is no one in redmond speaking privately and candidly who would make that claim today. >> i think i was referring to

the standards. microsoft has an amazing division, the leadership position on the pc but we are all carrying around there is a different kind of mobile device, and now tablets have taken the field, too and the incredible battle between the tub with suppliers, too. so, the platforms come down the pike it's incumbent upon you to internalize that and to keep your amazing engine going in these two areas, and microsoft has been lagging and i am very straightforward about that in my book. >> you basically said as microsoft fails to catch up it is in for a long slow slide.

what is, what do you think strategy wise could they do with windows to get it out in the same -- the market share is nowhere near blackberry in terms of the software for the blackberry or the iphone or the android. what do you think microsoft can do? >> they are challenged from coming behind on a platform like again you have to note the capabilities and then have some things that are persuasive to get people to switch because they won't switch unless something is dramatically better. you look at the sable of google there was a time there was, i don't know, they're must have been five others and then they came up with something better. to take back huge chunks of the market share. the best people, agility and

focus, a lot of focus. >> you said that steve has one of the toughest jobs in the world right now. if you could give him advice, what would it be? >> i've given him advice. [laughter] >> such as? >> private conversations. >> it's okay. [laughter] >> i thought c-span was here. >> it's just something else. >> i'm curious, what was the advice? >> the kind of things we've been talking about, what areas to improve on the product sand you start talking about tablets. >> where is microsoft on the tablet? >> you should talk to someone from microsoft. they are on that plan don't want to speak on the broader strategy. >> and curious from an investment perspective i was doing some reading on you and

you suffered from a sort of investor attention deficit disorder. there was one point that you invested in more than 100 internet media communications company said the missteps and calculations have been costly. what has been in your mind from the investment standpoint and don't worry i'm calling to ask about success so i'm not just bring to ask you to talk about -- i'm curious from your perspective what has been the biggest failure for you? >> i felt that cable was a new platform because they were going to have pipes and millions of homes which back in the didn't and now they do, but cable is very slow compared to anything else. so the set top boxes and take advantage of those capabilities but the actual delivery of data

into the people's homes has been successful. the main problem is the amount of leverage, which was too high. >> in terms of the breath of things -- >> you made money off that. >> invested in aol, price line, many other things and started espn, sold that. so many success along the way but to invest during internet mobile or something, mobile to mobile so everyone can get -- >> so i tried to do many different things and had great successes and the big ones, the big bad ones and the big good

ones are mostly in the book. >> would you consider that a part of it? >> lolly brooke mentality of microsoft just to give you an example microsoft if we made a mistake or missed a trend or whatever when i was there held we miss that, are we going to catch up in hollywood this movie is not that great and they said another will be coming out and so it's not -- don't have the post analysis that you have in high-technology companies, so i was a bit of a fish out of water in that world. i try to contribute a few things

like one of the few things i talked about in the book this is the level of the fact i had. i said when you what the ground doesn't deform, there is no dust and your brain says something is wrong but, you know, but you don't know what it is. we are going to fix it it will cost a million dollars. so that is the kind of affect -- >> i'm sorry, a million dollars, you say? >> so i don't know what gentry films one is the global health but very proud of our documentary work. >> what has been for you the best investment so far?

>> a few years ago i invested some people convinced me to invest in the oil and gas pipelines. >> yes, i read about that. go on. >> it turns out a lot of people need oil and gas. and so i did very well on that investment. but it's not one of those things you know most enjoy the technology person you can add some value and but it's not really rewarding it's going to do great. again, just pure investing some are still being picked up out

there. >> have to ask you this question, last year you filed and refiled a lawsuit basically against the entire internet >> all successful, yahoo!, facebook, google, aol, e day, am i missing somebody? for the copyright infringement. so, for the patents. >> it's got a notice on the individual involved and a research company here in the valley years ago called interval research and it might be some people -- >> it's not around anymore. >> they come out very modest

success. there's the litigation that you mentioned and the attention has come about on the individual because everybody knows every other big hellhound as far as i can tell often >> that's what people talk about and -- >> i am. >> from your perspective was it basically to say that, you know, do you think in many ways that you have been i had? >> you can be too early so if you are early and say wait a minute nobody else is doing this sometimes inherent in whatever

the technology may be worthy reasons the early idea is not going to take root, you are just way too early. you have to be cognizant of those factors. >> which companies by the way in the valley would you invest on a few could? >> they are so high. >> know they are not. >> yes, they are. what would you invest on? >> again, i don't want to comment on those i think you just do your best due diligence to make sure there is something really new indefensible. i've had a few ideas in the last couple of years and i always say what if you do this with this, my best ideas or a combination of the six triple whatever and i say what about that and then my staff would say well, there's 20 companies doing that.

okay, well, so it's very crowded right now, so you have to be super aware of the competitive landscape and whether someone else has more. >> i should point out by the way that when i was writing this out, this idea of owning a football team, the seattle seahawks, what is the score by the we looking at the score, so i think they were down or something like that. you founded the first privately financed rocket to outer space and you found your own guitar that jimi hendrix played at woodstock and the chair that captain kirk sat at in the star wars movie, is that true? >> not as impressive as --

>> there was a for injured 14-foot yacht. >> are there any of these that he would want to do that you haven't actually done? >> we haven't talked about the brain yet but you start talking about the scientific problems or challenges and the fact that the space ship one succeeded nobody knew that. nobody knew that was going to happen so you start by being ambitious and try to accomplish some of those same things sometimes you feel and you never succeed to win a prize but it's the ambition, the tribe a great team of people, that is just enthralling. so there are many challenges out

there. i'm excited about anything where the brain keeps doing with artificial intelligence i still have always had a nagging interest trying to get some attraction there so i think that you are talking about more things more related to -- >> talking about sheer fun and was just in antarctica a couple of months ago and you slowly crews of my sleeping whale or something, wonderful, then the signs say here is the day that you are in and here's what it was like 20 years ago and was full of ice, there is no ice, it is almost gone. so the global warming stuff. there's a chapter in the book about the adventure and some of the thinking there was inspired

by seeing jacques cousteau when he was a kid. i had a wonderful experience trying to explore and i think that it's incumbent on all of us in technology to think how we balance our lives between the styling of like i can fix that last one. verses media should go home and spend more time with my family or go bowling, what ever. music for me is a big fashion. back to the brain because there was a report that just cannot about the landmark map the human brain why is it so groundbreaking this is of course from the alan institute, why was that so groundbreaking? >> we are doing things that industrial scale so basically to get human brains and, slice them

up and then look for all 25,000 plus jeans in the human brain and put the data on line for the scientists in the world to use on their research and so it's no individual lab could do it to the level i think the quality and multiple brains it takes an approach like was used in the human genome project so we started with the developing human we worked on autistic brains, it's just endlessly fascinating to me because the way the brain works is we are starting to see the outline of its we're starting to get a sketchy idea and there is so much work to be done and each part was designed by evolution for windows in particular, so

it's pretty much a regular structure. the brain every little bit if it is optimized to do its job so it is endlessly mind blowing. >> i think i'm going to get to more questions now from the audience but we have a question here from ed here tonight. the company that you and is supporting and managing one of the best artificial intelligence projects some on the one hand we are trying to understand how -- ultimately we would all love to know how does the brain work? and then for the degenerative diseases like alzheimer's which my mother has, how can you make those treatments have an

earlier? so, i'm fascinated by all of that work on the brain when you've got artificial intelligence with blank sheets of paper and say okay we don't know how the brain works but we want to do something similar. so we have a team in seattle initially it is a biology textbook and we put all that knowledge in the software. it's super hard to the knowledge representation as i'm sure he can describe in better links than i can its super hard to do that in software because the real life reasoning in false probability, and things that are still research areas for the artificial intelligence. so we are moving down that path of and to kinsey ten, 20, 30 years down the road maybe we

will have something really significant there, but in the meantime we are concentrating on the text inside the computer software in a way that you can ask questions and give a coherent answer on the software so it's really some ground-breaking work in seattle managing it and we have done the work at sri and other places to do that work. seabeck would you say that project halo, are those the two that you're the most excited about right now? >> i have a couple of little internet things, but the brain and a.i. alone you could spend many lifetimes trying to figure out ways to accelerate progress. so i just excited to be involved in those areas and by looking

out for other areas and things. so in philanthropy it is a wonderful thing. to be involved and to be about to get back. >> gandy pledged last july -- >> i always intended to give a majority of my assets to philanthropy and a bill called the band said what. and he has done so many -- she's taken on very tough problems in the global health. and education if you do your own from interview to say what, you know, what appeals to me. where can i make a difference. i'm really focused on the brain right now. >> i'm going to ask some questions from the audience. >> it's benefited nearly a

billion dollars i think an investment and philanthropy in that area. so who is your mentor? is it important to have one? >> i think that through your life you have a series of people that have influence on the chance to succeed. my parents who talk about a lot in the book basically, you know, my father was a letter in and buy mother spent so much time are not books and so in the stacks of the university of library and so then when i got to high school obviously we were self-taught but there were a bunch of staff for people with the computer center that was giving away free time but we got hooked up with. did you make it? anyway, steve russell who did

work dillinger and i would literally die in an dumpsters to get these listings and coffee stain listings and i can smell the coffee today. [laughter] and we would go my gosh i don't know what it's doing but it's beautiful. [laughter] as you go along the way. the active mentoring, the teachers you have in the school like shakespeare, what ever, it's important. i've enjoyed having a well-rounded life for so many different things and i try to debate a little bit in the book but -- >> ratings you did. >> but there are so many things that are unbelievable lee fascinating in the world whether it is literature or art or, you

know, the oceans. you can keep going on and on forever. so, any of those you can get drawn into if you've got somebody that shows you excited about it or the experience of project seattle we deliberately tried like this to show young people that, you know, you can try playing a guitar and make a couple and maybe learn how to play guitar and do the same thing i think we are hopefully doing more of things here to get young people interested. >> another question. what do you see as the next big thing and why? >> that's a hard one. i think eventually some of the a.i. systems and recently we saw jeopardy and some of those things eventually those things are going to be so much better, the understanding will be so

much better but in terms of things happening in the cloud or whatever. >> paul, at an early age you achieve fabulous wealth which enables you to recreate your life in any way you wanted to, was that the breeding more horrifying? >> but to then you were a steward of those assets of that reversal you just feel awful so you have to be very careful and you know all of the, you know, the resources that i have they are going to go to philanthropy,

so there is that realization you have to keep that in mind. >> one question here please describe -- >> please describe with ibm late 70's that is the pc merged. >> microsoft you said we are not going to wear ties like the ibm people. >> the first meeting in boca he forgot to bring it tyson he had to bring one. >> in seattle it was just -- the basics we were doing were going to go on memory and i was just so afraid there were going to be bugs in a which there were a

couple so i put these hooks so i could replace in ram and those turned out to be invaluable. the basic thing about ibm like when you are doing dos there's a story of the book were billion by arguing about the fact that dos 2.0 was delayed and i thought this thing should be in dos 2.0 and ibm wanted partitions so to get the structure directory i can't claim the credit for they were part of the unit back in the day they were like we are happy with partitions. and of course the power got delayed and there was a bunch of back-and-forth about that. but they were basically, you

know, they basically came to us and said we want to do a pc and by all of your software. you know, where we get an operating system, your language is great and anyway, the rest is history so as kids in our late 20s, you know, we knew was going to be big but we had no idea how big and it turned out everybody wanted -- >> we have a space question. what do you expect from space ship one, a true commercial space flight company may be in early boeing or lockheed? >> well, richard branson has already taken the patents in the license for the space ship one technology and not long after

they start flying to the passengers in space and goes straight up and back down in the period of about half an hour for about five minutes. so that's going to be exciting. if something is wrong i will get an error message. [laughter] if something goes wrong with a human being inside it's bad. i have a history of this in the retrospective here. there has to be the three seats in the space ship one to be capable of flying white or all

of the test flights only one person and they said in case something goes wrong. [laughter] >> yeah. so when those flights were happening, i was so nervous and just so happy when they got back on the ground. >> please come and speak a little bit about judgment day, intelligent design. >> that was a documentary that we did following up on the evolution document where we talk about a court case that happened about the textbooks and it's interesting the recommend people see it but basically there's this theory of intelligent design that people that try to justify the intelligent design say there aren't these intermediate forms or something like that there's no way that

have been created other than by intelligent design. and yet, biologists, you know, put hydrologists on the witness stand they say with a minute this fight intermediate forms and it kind of devolves into well what about between those forms and you say wait we found this one. you know, so it's -- basically there are the intermediate forms through all these things exist in some ways. so in my opinion. so that's what it is about. >> we have a question asking for advice for the programmers. creative trend what is the future of the programming? >> i feel a bit of bad because i used to just in the programming language i would just get a manual -- of course now you go on line and look at the pdf. i would read the manual and that's really cool but the other stuff over there that's like worse than the language i've

ever seen. so there are so many new languages that come down the pike and the object since i was programming than the last time my program them -- 1980 -- >> eda-what? >> seven. >> i was six. [laughter] >> i'm just saying. >> i was the only person in the company that knew how to write the code that they could call, so if it's fun just to pick the right language if your lawyer lets you pick the language and you see companies like google

still trying to innovate the languages and so, would put in the end you can do all you wanted these tools in just a matter of how fast can you get there and sometimes you get so caught up in the tool itself and picking the right tools that you lose three months on your schedule but the programming is great and sometimes i will be talking to one of my project teams and say we have these periods of legacy. >> what was that? >> that was the factoring. [laughter] what was like to face your

mortality and as you think i want to bring up -- in the book you actually thank to of the doctors come right? basically you were diagnosed and recovered from cancer twice what was it nearly 30 years was the time difference. same doctor. >> i mean, you said when you are first diagnosed the first time that it was a wake-up call. estimate it turns out the alarm can go off. >> the first time when i had hodgkin's the treatment that i developed, in fact i was just in stamford, i love the bookstores, the stanford bookstore today and there was a book about i think was dr. henry kaplan that developed a treatment for the radiation treatment for hodgkin's disease.

and so, they tell you when you get this radiation, we are giving you the amount of radiation that the body can stand and did some period or time maybe 20 or 40 years there may be repercussions of having that radiation. but, you know, when you are off 30 and you have a life-threatening illness it is just shocked. you can't believe it and it takes awhile to realize you'll have a chance to be okay. at least i had that chance. this last situation i just knew i was really sick and it advanced. >> stage for, right? >> stage four. they first called me and said okay we found some bad cells and that's the moment your blood

runs cold and then you meet with the oncologist and he says actually the call it the garden variety, whatever, and he says it's progressed, the bad news is it is curable so i consider myself very lucky. >> and going to ask one more question from the audience how does your attitude towards winning life reflect your battles of mortality? >> again i will get back to the balance point. i think you have to think about all the things you do to enjoy a work and creating things but there are so many other parts of life that you need to do justice to and explore and so to find that balance is such an important thing and when these things happen you realize the importance of friends and family

if i only have limited time which will focus on. so you go through that process. >> wanted to go back to the lakeside school when you were in what coveted great, if great comedian or what, dumpster diving. if that were to have been like now, 2011 in this age of applications at mobile devices and twitter and google and everything else, what do you think is an eighth grader and a tenth grader would be looking for in that dumpster and what with the bill? >> i'm not sure how many people make. but i think today the rate at which the young people adopt new technology is breathtaking and we were talking earlier about how do you get them excited about becoming programmers were developing things.

there's so many kids today that are excited and i was on line pleading this where this first person shooter i was interested in how anything works inside a internally and the graphics and those are the engineers in the future so we have to put on our thinking caps and how to get the kids today excited about being creators of tomorrow. >> i think i'm going to invite john appeared. i should say by the way i grew up here. unlike a few blocks from here. what's interesting is going to the museum down the stairs and in the first 2,000 years of the computer. for me, like you were there during the birth of the personal computer revolution. i'm somebody that has treacly benefited from the revolution and has been able to basically create a life for myself because

the internet and computing was the way to go. i just wanted to personally thank you for that. >> thank you. [applause] >> ..óyóyiiqqy]u1yy9y >> the president obama nominated allen krueger to be the chairman of the white house council of economic advisers.

ellen crigger previously servedm the obama administration as assistant treasury secretary. if confirmed by the senate, krueger will succeed austan goolsbee in the white house economic post. [inaudible conversations] >> good morning everybody. this morning we are continuing to deal with the impact and the aftermath of hurricane irene and as i said yesterday we are going to make sure folks have all the support they need as they begin to assess and repair the damage left by the storm.

that is going to continue in the days ahead. it is going to take time to recover from a storm of this magnitude. the effects are still being felt across much of the country, including in new england and states like vermont where there has been an enormous amount of flooding. so our response continues. but i'm going to make sure that fema and other agencies are doing everything in their power to help people on the ground. now, even as we deal with this crisis of the moment, our great ongoing challenge as a nation remains how to get this economy growing faster. our challenge is to create a climate where more businesses can post job listings, where folks can find good work that relieves the financial burden they are feeling, where families can regain a sense of economic security in their lives. that is their urgent mission. that is what i am fighting for every single day. that is why today i am very please to nominate allen krueger

to chair the council of economic advisers. come on down here, allen. allen brings a wealth of experience to the job as one of the nation's leading economists. for more than two decades he studied and developed economic policy both inside and outside of government. in the first two years of this administration as we were dealing with the effects of a complex fast-moving financial crisis, a crisis that threatened a second great depression allen's council is chief economist at the treasury department proves invaluable. so i am very pleased to appoint alan and i look forward to her king with him. as i told him it is going to be tough to fill the shoes of austan goolsbee who has been a great friend and adviser who i have relied on for years but i have nothing but confidence in alan as he takes on this important role as one of the leaders of my economic team. i rely on the council of economic advisers to provide

unvarnished analysis and recommendations, not based on politics, not based on their interests, but taste on the best efforts, based on what is going to do the most good for the most people in this country. and that is more important than ever right now. we need folks in washington to make decisions based on what is best for the country, not what is best for any political party or special interest. that is how we will get through this period of economic uncertainty and that is the only way we will be able to do what is necessary to grow the economy. so it is that spirit that i'm going to be calling upon in the coming days. next week, i will be laying out a series of steps that congress can take immediately to put more money in the pockets of working families and middle-class families, to make it easier for small businesses to hire people, to put construction crews to work rebuilding our nations, roads, railways and airports and all the other measures that can

help to grow this economy. these are bipartisan ideas that ought to be the kind of proposals that everybody can get behind no matter what your political affiliation might be. so my hope and expectation is that we can put country before party and get something done for the american people. that is what i will be fighting for. we have got to have a good team to do it so alan i appreciate your willingness to take on this assignment and i'm looking forward to working with you once again. >> thank you very much. >> thank you so much. thank you everybody.

>> coming up next, booktv presents a after words, an hour-long program where we invite guest hosts to interview authors. this week former u.s. secretary of state henry kissinger and his new book, "on china," the diplomat who accompanied president nixon to the communist nation presents his thoughts on the history of china's relationship with the united states and its current influence on american politics and monetary policy. he shares his perspective with former nixon aide and "fox news" contributor, monica crowley. >> host: dr. kissinger, great to see you, sir, as always. so nice to see you and

congratulations on your extraordinary new book, which is called quite simply "on china." i can't think of anybody else i would rather talk to about china. china has gone over the last few decades from being a very important concern for the united states to an important, urgent and primary concern for the united states and there are so many layers to this sino-american relationship that we are going to get into it is a thank you for being here. let's begin with how china sees itself, and how it is traditionally seen itself regress i was making my way through your book you write that both the united states and china believe that they represent unique values in the world. and you say that the united states believes it has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world whereas china acts on the thesis of basis of its singularity and that it is expanded for what you call cultural osmosis. tell us what you mean. >> guest: america believes

that its values applied everywhere, that any society can adopt them and that our institutions can be spread everywhere. the chinese believe that they represent a unique civilization. you can't really become a chinese. you have to grow up in its cultural environment. you can't really naturalized as a chinese. so, as a result, -- composed of more or less equal societies and the concept of sovereignty to go with it. the chinese, till the end of the 19th century, thought of the world as tributaries to what they call a celestial empire. chippy teres didn't mean that they had to pay tribute. they had to bring -- it was

expected they they bring symbolic gifts but they were often given bigger gifts in return. what it did mean is that they indicated respect for the nature of chinese society and chinese supremacy in its region. so, chinese relations with other nations are based more on mutual respect than on a concept of equality. but the chinese, as we do, believed that their values are unique and it makes them even more sensitive than we would be to outside pressures telling them how to redo their society. >> host: it is it a superiority? do the chinese, when you say --

>> guest: does not necessarily a sense of personal superiority. >> host: you also write that when europe into the modern age it had a tremendous experience in diversity by then and you have these princes and cities across europe that govern themselves and you had an entire political philosophy built on that concept, that is liberalization, right? you also say when china enter the modern age it had been a fully functioning imperial bureaucracy for 100,000 years. tell us what you mean about imperial bureaucracy? >> guest: china, the modern china, default about 2000 years ago and when china was unified, and then it was discovered -- at bureaucracy that was elected by competitive examinations, so in that sense it was more modern at

that period. bot, china had a governing philosophy which was confucianism and a governing bureaucracy which operated on a national basis, and therefore when other societies -- location when china was -- by its neighbors but they didn't know how to govern it and they needed the chinese bureaucracy. so on at least two occasions in chinese history, foreigners came in, conquered the country, used the chinese bureaucracy to govern it and became signed if i themselves. so china expanded sometimes by the opposite of western ways, not by conquest but by being conquered and then segment find

the conference. the mongolians on one occasion and the manchus from the north in the netherlands. >> host: it is a much more efficient way, isn't it? you also say that because china was never really forced to engage with larger civilizations in the world, it remained basically insular, but because of that is also considered itself the center of the world. is that still hold true? >> in a way it is still held true when nixon and i went to china. this conduct of mao in the first revolutionary leaders in china still was influenced by the chinese. for example you never had an appointment with mao. you were summons to see mao and

that was also the same of any foreign envoy that came. there was a british, at the end of the 18th century, david berger sent an envoy to beijing and he wanted trade and diplomatic relations and everything that europeans were familiar with. he was marvelously received but he couldn't get an audience with the emperor, and it took him three months before he was summonsed. and then, they said you have nothing we want and we have nothing you should want. therefore trade is not possible, and we don't receive ambassadors because anyone who lives in beijing has to wear chinese clothes, live in a chinese house and can never leave china.

so, your question is do they still do it this way? of course not exactly this way, but with globalization of the economy and with daily contact, there is still a tendency to sink in kingdom terms though it is much attenuated in the modern period. >> host: you mention mao tse tung, of course the father of the chinese communist revolution. you knew him. you worked with him or you spoke with him. >> host: i met with him five times, three times alone. >> host: what was your impression of him both as a churchy jig leader and as a movement leader? s. go first as a movement leader, one has to understand in the tens of millions of people

were killed and the reason for that was in part because he wanted to complete the communist revolution in his lifetime. he knew that in chinese history the leader he respected the most was an emperor or unified china, and then 20 years after his death, all of the vestiges of its rule had disappeared except the unification. so, he for example organized what was called the great leap forward in which china was supposed to move from total under development to a steel production at the level of great written in three years, and in order to do that they had to take resources from the countryside and they melted down all of the steel implement.

the result was a famine in which as many as 40 million people may have been killed. 10 years later it started the cultural revolution which was another producer of another huge quantity so on the moral ground, he was an enormous cruelties and disasters were inflicted. at the same time as the ruler of china, he had to maneuver china among a whole host of other countries and a china that was poor, underdeveloped, not very strong militarily and had just emerged from a century and a half of colonial degradation so

degradations on that strategic level he was a leader. he had an enormous guilt and strategic analyses and he maneuver china or golf course the only major communist country that survived the collapse of communism, and he managed to switch from the communist side to the winning side in the cold war without missing a beat. so, from that point as a strategic analyst, which is how we got to know him, he had extraordinary abilities as you would expect from somebody who started and unified a huge society and fought a decade-long civil war. one cannot forget the suffering he caused.

hosley imagined that he met with him a total of five times, three times alone, one on one. what were your impressions of him as a man? >> guest: it was never totally one-on-one but i was the principle. i didn't have to deal with him on a written level. i think it is -- how these meetings came about. as i said, your chinese escorts would take off always in chinese cars to where he lived. he undoubtedly had many places where he lives. one they showed foreigners was a regular soviet style -- none of the majesty of say european

palaces. the first time i saw it, the anti-room had it a roundtable annette and he had received in his study in which -- were scattered all over the place and he sat in the middle of a semicircle. he had a very symphonic manner. he did not as almost every leader i knew would do, most leaders would say i have five points to make in here are my five points. mao wouldn't do this. mao would begin his conversation, what is your consideration of? and then he would pose an issue. then he would say, whatever he

wanted to say and then he would say, but have you considered the following? and every once in a while he would make an interjection. at one point, we were discussing the contribution europe could make to the common defense, and he had said they remind the of swallows who fly up into the air at an approaching storm and flap their wings. but you professor, and i, will know that the flapping of the wings does not affect the coming of the storm. so he achieved in that sentence to things. one, he gave me equal status with him as sort of a philosophy

and then he had this metaphor of the. and this is how he would conduct a conversation. sometimes, it would get pointed at it was hugely in an indirect way. but very forceful. when he spoke, you knew that his boys was. he vibrated physical, almost a dominance. the last two times i saw him he had great difficulty speaking and he had to croak out his sounds and china being a tone language, the interpreters had to hold up what they understood him to say before they could interpret it. but even then, he conducted a

meeting of over two hours with all his physical disabilities. so he was obviously was a formidable to us. was koets talk about 1972 and that dramatic diplomatic breakthrough conducted by you and president nixon of course. it is interesting because president nixon told me in the 1990s that the thing that brought the two of you together, china and the united states, was a major should t.j. concern over the growing soviet power and the chinese moved across the border and saw a growing soviet assertiveness and an accelerated soviet nuclear buildup, very concerned so they approach the united states and you approached china. you came together for strategic reasons. could you describe the strategic dynamics at the time that allowed the kind of triangular diplomacy that you and president nixon were trying to develop?

>> guest: as you say we saw the growth of the soviet power and the soviet union in the space of 10 years 10 years had occupied hungary and subjugated poland for the second time. it had occupied czechoslovakia. now and december of 69 we were getting the buildup along the chinese border and a series of military clashes between the two sides. we were sort of watching this and then the soviets made a mistake that accelerated our situation. the mistake was they sent in their ambassador to brief us periodically about clashes with the chinese. they did that probably because they were considering attacking china and they wanted to prove

that they had a good reason for doing it. it had the effect that i created a map for nixon and me and our staff to look at of the location of these incidents, and then we called in an expert and said if they are incidents in these places, what would that suggest to you? who is the attacker? and that experts said well, this is all close to soviet supplied and pretty far from chinese supply ports. therefore it is unlikely that the chinese if they wanted to attack, would do it from such a posture. then we picked up a few other signals. and then nixon made an unannounced but important, and

most important decision, which was this. we discussed, assuming there is a war, what position does the united states take? and we concluded that it was against the american interest to have china defeated even though we had no contact with them, and so we decided that in case of a war, we would be technically neutral but tilts towards china and try to give it as much ability to survive as we could. we didn't communicate that to the chinese because we had no way of communicating with them but what we did do is to step up the statements that we would not

be indifferent to such a war, and we had director helms, the cia director, make a speech. i think it was too political science associations, something that we knew would leak and in a low-key way he made that point that the deputy secretary of state. and then we began looking for channels into china at the same time and we did a number of little things. for example in retrospect, it looks very miniscule. the chinese -- no american could write chinese goods anywhere, and so we lifted that restriction so that as a tourist, he could buy chinese

goods. the chinese intern released some people that had strayed into chinese waters and they were the occupants. anyway, they had been captured and so we had these signals. but we found it hard to establish contact because for example, we sent some messages to romania, or rather we told the romania's. we chose to remain because nixon had been in romania and the romanians had been the most independent of the east european communist countries. so, we thought they might have the most credibility in beijing. the problem was that the chinese

communists didn't trust any communist, so they were reluctant to be very specific through romania. finally again on the trip around the world, nixon talked to the pakistani president and that established a contact which we then use. post to let me ask you about the media backdrop to what you were doing with the opening to china which was the vietnam war. we talked about the strategic dynamics between the united states and the soviet union which was growing and based on strategic terms and china. talk a little bit if you would about how you expected the opening to china to affect the war in vietnam. >> guest: one has to remember that nixon didn't start the war

in vietnam. there were 545,000 americans in vietnam, and we had just gone through the tet offensive, which is a -- by the vietnamese and we had riots in the streets in this country against the war in vietnam. at the same time they were the country in which the security of almost every region of the world depended. and nixon felt even though he had not made a commitment, he would not abandon the people who had reliance on american promises and stake their future on cooperating with us. so the nixon decided to withdraw from vietnam but to do it anyway by which the people of south vietnam would be given the

opportunity to develop, to choose their own fate. one condition he would not meet is to turnover the vietnamese population to the communist. he wanted a free political process and when people say he could have ended the war more quickly, ever tell you how because if you look at the record of negotiations you will see that every other condition we were willing to make -- now the vietnamese approached negotiations with us was to try to break our spirit and -- to paris to negotiate on behalf of nixon and the united states, and they -- their strategy was to

outwit us by opening to china. we had to follow. at first of all change the debate. which showed that nixon who had been vilified as being opposed to peace in vietnam had actually a large almost grandiose conception which included the whole world. and so, at the same time it isolated the vietnamese because it meant that they would leave them the most nearby allied that was willing to deal with the united states without informing them and to some extent to their disadvantage because it interrupted the psychological risks that they thought they had to establish. so that was an important aspect.

>> host: any national security and foreign security calculus there is always a american domestic opinion which any great leader knows how to change, how to persuade, how to move. >> guest: sometimes you can and sometimes you can. >> host: exactly. and you think about the opening to china and détente with the soviet union that you conducted as well, was that part of a strategy to signal to the american people that while we were fighting this hot war in vietnam but this administration was also seeking longer-term pieces with china and the soviet union? >> guest: it was not done as a political maneuver. it was done because we believed it to be right and we believe it to be that. it had the practical effect of telling the american people not to be obsessed with events in one part of the world that we had in fact inherited and would

try to liquidate. to look at the overall design which put china, the soviet union, europe into a pattern that could be grasped in time by public opinion. >> host: taiwan. the united states in china still have widely divergent views about taiwan. how the president nick senn and mao tse tung move past that? >> guest: well, for 20 years, the negotiation between china and the united states followed the course. the chinese negotiator would say, we won't do anything else until you have turned taiwan over to us. when we turned that down -- the american negotiator would say, we won't do anything else until you give us a place of peaceful

attitudes. so there was an absolute -- so even before i got to beijing, and in their first communication to us the chinese invited us to discuss the -- to china. we replied that we were willing to talk about the issue of taiwan but only in relation to all other issues of aysha and in the world. the chinese accepted that, so that was already a huge concession before we ever got there. then, one has to remember the united states under president

roosevelt in the declaration of 1943, had declared that the united states considered taiwan to be part of china, so the fact that taiwan belong to china had never been revoked by any american president. the only condition was that the takeover should be peaceful. so, we got around this problem by signing a communiqué in which each side stated its own views. we stated our view that the chinese people on both sides of the taiwan straits assumed there was only one china.

the united states would not challenge that proposition. so that was a way out except in one china, but we still did not recognize beijing as the government of china so nixon was in the capital of the country. he did not recognize it as the capital of that country. so, if you look at the 40 years, both sides have finesse the taiwan problem on the page is really of three principles, that the united states accepts the principle of one china, that the united states strongly insists on the need for a peaceful solution. and that the united states warns

each side plus the taiwanese not to take precipitous action and to consider that this has been carried out for 40 years. it is quite remarkable. now today there are many heroes of retrospective diplomacy who say what nixon might have done and what nixon might have extracted. we didn't hear from any of them at that time. >> host: of course not. the framework that you put in place in 1972 has been remarkably durable to this very day. >> host: through eight american administrations of both parties so it is one of the most continuous american foreign policies. >> host: dr. kissinger please stand by. we are going to take a sharp break in lomé come back i would like to move into more current affairs in the united states relationship with china economically, strategically and

in terms of human rights. regard to cover all of those issues with former secretary of state henry kissinger and his new book "on china" when we come back.

>> host: we are rejoined by former secretary of state dr. henry kissinger who has a masterful new book out called quite simply "on china." dr. kissinger let's talk about more current events, particularly as it relates to the united states relationship with china. it is very complicated now. i remember when i was working for president nixon in the early 1990s hercules idiot oman i get is interesting because when kissinger and i opened relations with china in the early 70s it was all of us should he take issues with we talked about before the break. he said now in the early '90s, he said notice almost all about economics. i think now in the 21st century it is a combination of both, strategic and economic.

when you look at china's incredibly rapid economic rise, are you stunned, are you surprised or not at all? >> guest: i am surprised and so would nixon be. anyone from the original group that opened to china. when nixon -- when i had been to china but before nixon went, nixon invited the french -- who had been in china to see what we could learn from them and monroe said china is a desperately poor country in the blows that you could do for them is to it give them economic aid. mao did not want economic aid and he did not want china connected with the rest of the world at all. china was so poor at the time that when nixon went there, they

did not have telephonic equipment with washington in a way appropriate to the president. so, we brought in a conversation and technically sold it to the chinese. at any rate, we would have been amazed at the rapid progress that was taking place which really couldn't take place until mao had died. >> host: after mao he was succeeded by issuing -- hsing powe chang who revolutionized the chinese economy because he began reform through agriculture. he began agriculture reforms that had laid the framework for what we see today. >> guest: right. forum for mao everything was ideology.

he said i don't know if it is lack or gray, as long as it catches mice. anything that worked was acceptable, and he liberated the energy of the chinese people. one has to remember that over the last 2000 years, in 1800 of the last 2000 years, china has the largest growth of domestic product in the world. in the 19th century they fell apart because of the impact, but the chinese economic -- didn't take place until about 30 years ago. >> host: how would you describe chinese capitalism? would you describe it as managed capitalism? >> guest: i would describe it

and call it, what would they call it? i think a market economy. with chinese characteristics. but it is market economics, but guided by strategic decisions from the center, which helped establish priorities. so far, it has worked amazingly. you have a growth rate of eight to 10% over a 30 year period. it is an extraordinary achievement. >> host: even during times of global recession. >> guest: even in times of global recession and of course they could do things that week couldn't even think of. i was in china in 2008 record talk to the mayor of the city and he said they had about

5 million unemployed transients in that city. so, i asked him what he was going to do about that and he said well they all go home for the chinese new year. we will only lead about a quarter of them come back so they use the chinese family tradition of taking care of their people as their family as a social security network. but on the purely economic level, it is a combination of market pulse and central management. it is not a planned economy in the soviet sense. >> host: theirs and major point of contention between the united states in beijing over the chinese manipulation of this currency. how is this draining the relationship and how should the administration be dealing with it? >> the argument that is made is

that the chinese are manipulating their currency at low levels which gives them an advantage in exports and therefore improves their balance of payment to give them greater economic financial reach. my view is this. some of that deficit is caused by our own actions. some of it is caused by chinese actions. it is caused by her own action because as long as we are financially -- and as long as we had run a huge deficit, deficits in our current account are inevitable because we have to borrow from abroad to meet our

deficits. so, we need to work on our own problems first and where the chinese take unfair advantage, we have to raise the issue. the way that it is usually done is to arrange for a balance of penalties and rewards that achieves this. >> host: it is striking to me that just about every time the chinese leadership meet with the american leadership whether it is president obama, secretary of state clinton treasury secretary geithner they never miss an opportunity to lecture us on this very critical issue, or spending levels, deficits and are dead and it strikes me as very ironic that we have chinese communists lecturing the american capitalist.

>> guest: for the greatest part of the relationship the chinese basic attitude was this. they thought the sum of our political enthusiasms, well they have various adjectives for it. some of them were amateur but they had huge respect for economic capacities. they thought we were on to the management of the world financial system from which they could learn a great deal so they send students over here but they sent capitalist over here to learn our banking systems and american investment banks and so forth. than in 2000, late 2007 they

learned that the americans didn't know how to run their economy very well either. that caused a tremendous loss of prestige, both for us, but also for those chinese who had been associated with the reform, with the reform program and some of the difficulties that followed afterwards in which it is claimed correctly in some respects, that the chinese were too assertive. go back to that period when that occurred. >> host: the chinese are at biggest foreign creditors. how much of a threat to us is that? >> guest: it is a very confiscated issue because on the one hand you can say, if they exploit their position, they could make life very difficult for us. at the same time, it has been said if you over $100,000 to a man it is your problem.

if you owe 100 million two-way bank it is their problem. so the creditor suffers enormously also if the several trillion dollars that they are holding of american money became relatively -- as a result of their inheriting us. that would be a huge blow to them so we have the kind of a mutual suicide. >> host: there was a high-level member of the chinese military who said last year, he began talking about the united states in terms of economic warfare, not military warfare but economic warfare. how big of a concern should that be for the united states? >> guest: what i say in the book is this. we are the two most powerful countries in the world today. there is a whole series of issues, environment, proliferation, energy.

these are unique problems. they can only be solved on a preliminary basis. secondly the european experience when a rising germany and an established britain had to deal with each other and didn't manage to do it the result was world war i. i often ask myself if the leaders that went to war in 1914 had known what the world would look like 40 years later -- four years later when the war and it would they have done it or would one or the other have made accommodations? what i say in the book is we ought to approach foreign-policy vis-à-vis china with that in mind. we ought to look for opportunities of a cooperative relationship. at the same time we defend our interests and if the chinese

approach the problem in the same way, then i am hopeful that the ingenuity on both sides will find a way through. but those sites have to have this attitude. the united states and not do it by itself, and i think this is the greatest challenge to peace and the greatest test to whether progress is possible. >> host: let's talk for a moment about the strategic challenges facing the sino-american relationship. there is a lot of concern in the united states about a chinese military buildup. i would like for you to comment on that, how worried should we be about that, but growing chinese assertiveness in asia, in the region and globally as well? its ability project -- to project power in chile they do anything to shore up our allies in the nation, south korea, japan and others who are increasingly worried about china? >> guest: well, as china grows

economically, their military capacity is bound to grow, so that is inherent in what is going on. what we have to -- what we have to watch is at what point does the chinese military capacity go from beyond inventing its country to a capacity to intervene all over the world and challenge existing institutions? at that point we are in it period of potential confrontation and if -- then it could slide into a confrontation. they haven't yet reached the point, but they certainly are increasing their military capabilities. we have to be sure that we

maintain the edge or the balance that has characterized the situation. now, if they'd -- we should have a clear notion of our national issues and our national interest is challenged by assertive or unassertive -- we will take measures to protect it, and so, when the chinese conduct security foreign policy, with all my commitment to cooperation, i would have to say american interests come first. if the chinese conduct an open-minded policy, then we should have a discussion of positions and see where progress can be made.

but, it is always necessary with any foreign country meeting with us should understand that we protect the interests and strengthen our relations with korea, india and japan. it is absolutely essential that america remained a -- and america maintains its relationship in the asian world. we cannot do at the same way it was done in europe because in europe there was a net and ex-attentional threat so that the relationship with europe took on a heavily military -- and in the relationships between japan, korea, the united states in india the economic social factors play a huge role. the practical consequences very

to show that america's committed to the independence of key countries. but i wouldn't object on some of these projects in which the chinese participated so long as they are not the hegemony of power of asia. >> host: talk if you would about china's role in nuclear proliferation. there is a big concern that china is working with world powers like north korea and even pakistan to some degree to share nuclear technology with the iranians come a perhaps the syrians and perhaps venezuelans, all opponents and enemies of the united states. what can we do to try to rein china and on the proliferation area? >> guest: well, on all issues except north korea, i think the chinese national interest is very parallel to ours. neither of us can be interested in the proliferation of nuclear

weapons because of nuclear weapons spread to countries that cannot have the same technological powers us and they do not understand the age of modern technology, the danger of a catastrophic conflict or even of an outburst of terrorism are overwhelming. so i am quite hopeful that we can get gradual chinese support. the major hesitation the chinese have is they are always reluctant to agree that outside forces compel a country internally but globalization will come to that point a complicated issue. on the one hand, it is not in

the chinese interest for north korea to have nuclear weapons. on the other hand, the chinese believe that it is also not in their national interest to have north korea collapse and then base the prospect of a large country on its border which may even inherit the north korea nuclear capability. so i think china has been going back and forth on the north korean nuclear issue and is really has really made a decisive move. i think it would be delighted if these weapons would go away. but they don't want to do what is required to make them go away, so they bear responsibility for the consequences. now, they themselves have not been active in nuclear proliferation because it would hurt them more, but north korea

has because north korea has its -- and just about the most oppressive country in the world. sooner or later the other countries have to place the issue of what happens with a rogue nuclear country continues to operate and that is an issue before us with iran and it is an issue also, even in a more complex way, with north korea and it can't really be salt solved as an isolated problem. needs to be a security concept developed for all of northeast asia that other nations can join. and maybe under that system, north korea will be denuclearize.

>> host: human rights. realpolitik dictates that we should not be all that concerned with what goes on internally within a country that we should only be concerned with their external behavior and that guided american foreign-policy are quite a while but over the last two decades, i would say the united states has concerned itself with what goes on inside of china. there's a lot of talk now, a lot of worry that the chinese are now free trenching and that there has been an escalation of the detention of dissidents, those who are out there arguing very publicly for democratization and liberalization. journalists being detained and religious minorities and catholics and so on. what do you say to the chinese when you talk to them about their human rights record? >> host: let me say a word about realpolitik which is a term i've never used. it is it is a termite critics use if they want to be able to

see -- and this is not an american concept. even though he lived in germany as a child, is part of a persecuted minority so that in the school to which i had to go, they were not exact day studying realpolitik. putting that issue aside, the fundamental necessity of a peaceful world has two elements. i have been preaching at all my life. on the one hand you need equilibrium, a balance of power. white? why? so that the strong cannot simply dominate the weak. ..

and human quality. weekend these principles and other countries should know it makes a difference to us how they conduct themselves on the human rights issue.

the more, the question is what do you do beyond this, how many sanctions and to what degree do you a search you can tell other countries what domestic institutions they should have? and that their point there is a difference of opinion. >> some people almost every american's president i believe that through engagement one can move the chinese better than the confrontation of all the memories of the history and which the of always resisted. when clinton was president in the first years he adopted a policy of confrontation and

after three years he gave it up. whenever i am an china and every president if we are aware of the individual cases in which the human rights have been violated we often speak to the chinese and so there's no disagreement about the importance of human rights. there's no disagreement about role of america. there is a disagreement on whether this would be done best by public demonstrations or by diplomacy. >> host: we just a few minutes left, dr. kissinger, and i want to ask when you look at the geopolitical landscape today, when you survey the world what worries you the most, what are the threats looming out there

that concern you the most? >> what worries me is that you have upheavals in every part of the world happening, all of that simultaneously but the clear guiding principles where they are going to go it is one thing to say that to be fairly enthusiastic like the arabs bring but one notes the revolution but the period in which they are being sorted out. on the technical level what worries me is the spread of nuclear weapons and in the way of nuclear technology because as the weapons spread and if any of them never get used, the casualties would be so unbelievable that it would affect the human sense of

security and political system that cannot prevent this so these are the key issues that worry me. >> host: dr. kissinger it has been a joy to talk to you in on a personal note your one of my heroes and i have known you for my goodness, 18 years now, i think i am dating myself and it's been an honor to get to know you and it is such a pleasure to talk to you today and it is a privilege to call you a friend as well as a mentor. >> guest: i've watched you over the years and have been impressed and amazed at the tremendous achievements. >> host: thank you. former secretary of state henry kissinger whose masterful new book is called on china on alana monica crowley, thank you for joining us today.

>> adam talks about the history of world war i. his book is to end all wars a story of loyalty and rebellion 1914-9018. he spoke at the brecht forum and in new york. this is one hour and 15 minutes. >> it's a pleasure to be your back at the brecht forum, and also to be talking to an audience on c-span3 these cameras here. i am going to tell you a little bit about this new book of mine and do so by showing you some pictures. this is and music, music stand it's just some notes for me. i think that it's very much a

matter of falling in love session and figuring out just why you are obsessed by something. and for me i have all my life had an obsession with the period of the first world war as long as i can remember it is something that has fascinated me. as i grew older and started to read history, i realized that there are good reasons for being fascinated with the first world war. it left some 20 million people dead, military and civilian. six times, more than six times the casualty toll of in the previous war that europe had never known and they were the next largest. it left an even larger number of wounded soldiers behind and left large parts of europe in smoldering ruins and in a way

that that continent hadn't known before whereas the armies retreated on both sides they left scorched were behind them. now when this one to launch a subject however the ever arching political there is something personal as well and in my case is an uncle of mine by marriage fought in the first world war, that's him there in the center of the picture and the squadron of the imperial russian air service. if any of you read my first book have the way home he will have met him in those pages that cross around his neck is the cross of the order of st. george which is the highest decoration of the russian empire and entitled to a private audience with the czar anytime day or

night, a privilege which wasn't much use after 1917. [laughter] now, there is another reason why the period of first world war i think has drawn me and other people to study and learn about it which is 1914 marked an air of that came to an end, and the era of embers and empresses. there were no emperors' in europe after the war ended. this is keyser on the left and his sons marching in a parade, and somehow to me the era is symbolized by the hats that mcveigh or. here is the & her daughter. i can't claim that after 1914

nobody wore hats like that, but certainly the world that created such cats died with the war of 1914, 1918. now, another thing about this war like many that is so haunting is that it was a war of multiple solutions. the first was that it would be over quickly and easily. these are berlin students marching off to enlist in 1914. here are german soldiers climbing into a car and if you look closely is written to paris. here are troops marching off with equal enthusiasm also getting into the trains and written on the side of the train is to berlin and here are

russian troops celebrating in anticipation of an early in the an easy victory and of course those early and easy victories did not come. there's a second illusion about the war which the best way that i can express it is the illusion you can go to war and the enemy, the other side would not be shooting at you. how, otherwise, can you explain the fact that literally millions of the troops come in tire infantry went into battle dressed like this. think of what targets that made for the sharpshooter who is bright red parents, bright blue jacket and they died by the hundreds of thousands partly as a result of that illusion and they were not the only soldiers dressed that way. the hungarian calvary also was

very fond of bright red and bright blue and in fact didn't abandon the uniforms until two years into the war. yet another illusion i think was that something like the calgary itself could play a role in this war. these are french calvary, all the armies have them. in the in calgary that the british brought all the way from india to the western front. the famous lancers from germany. if i could get a glass of water or bottled water or something if there is one. when the germans invaded france in 1914, they did so with eight calvary divisions, 45 horses, and you can just imagine how little chance a massive calvary

charge option had in the age of modern weaponry. nonetheless everybody practiced for the great, free charges like this british soldier who was naturally here. the anticipated a war that would almost be like knights in armor like a jousting competition. the idea of the war -- thanks. the idea of the war was closely aligned to the images of sport like this one. in fact, the first correspondent that the london daily mail sent to the front in 1914 was its sports editor. and of course when they tried to do these massive charges they came up against broad wire, not to mention the machine gun. and of course these ended the

days of the massive cow free charges for ever. and as a result of those to weapons, but barbwire, the defensive and the machine gun, the western front where most of the bloodshed took place was an essentially frozen in place along that line for more than three years budging barely more than a few miles in the destruction. the entire year 1915 for example which saw the allies launched several massive assaults. they were probably altogether more than a million casualties on the western front from both sides killed, wounded, missing. the allies gained exactly eight square miles. and instead of these glorious calvary charges, they found themselves fighting in an absolutely devastated landscape more than 700 million artillery

shells and mortar rounds landed on the western front france and belgium during the four and half years of the war and they left the land of looking like this. soldiers found themselves living below ground and trenches, sharing space with corpses and rats. they found themselves -- they found themselves very often fighting knee deep in the mud. , and they found themselves facing all kinds of horrifying new weapons that nobody had anticipated like a flame thrower for example. and of course when one side invented a new weapon like this, the other side very quickly copied it. same thing with poison gas. experienced for the first time

as they used against the russians in 1914, and against the western allies the following year and a strange looking gas. hundreds of thousands of people were injured by gas and some of them blinded like these british soldiers in this particular photograph. enormous numbers of soldiers were wounded in other ways as well. all you have to do is sort of imagine just one of these soldiers and then multiplied that by 21 million, which is the number of soldiers who were wounded in the war. the tremendous toll of the war in the dead and the wounded gave us a profoundly darker and more

cynical view of the world that in many ways has stuck with us ever since. the cartoon appeared during the war itself and this attitude of some of the greater cynicism about the human nature in general i think continued ever since then. there is another thing about this war was very different from the war for example that we are engaged in today. these are officer cadets that eat in the most exclusive private school drilling in 1915. now, one of the things about the war that we have gotten accustomed to in this country in the recent years, vietnam, iraq, afghanistan, is that they are fought mostly by the poor. very few among the dead and the wounded and of war of the sons or daughters of the ceos,

senators, members of congress, anything like that. it was the exact opposite in the first world war. the death toll actually fell proportionately higher on the upper classes, and the main reason for that was that it was customary for the sons of the upper class is and the aristocracy to have military careers. and i think a major reason for this is that the armies are not only there to fight the war against other countries, they're there to maintain order at home. the 19th century was a very tumultuous time in europe, so was the early 20th century. many of the european armies were used to break strikes or the british army put down the of rebellions in ireland, and so therefore the officer in the army is something the was

generally reserved for people in the upper class is. this meant when the country's went to the war in 1914, these upper-class is suffered an enormous toll. for that sample, more than 30 graduates eaten were killed in a single day, the first day of the battle of 1916. the men who graduated from oxford in 1913, 41% were killed by the end of the war. a few sort of specific examples, the long one of the great british country estates, queen elizabeth ii spend part of her childhood on this estate and it was along the seat of the aristocratic family. the patriarch of the family, lord salisbury was the prime minister of england for some years of the turn of the century. he had ten grandson's, five of

them were killed in the war, and one of them, george come is a character in this book to read a tremendous toll among the children of the political and military leaders. the prime minister of england lost his son, so did his counterpart, chancellor of germany. the menem middle of this picture, the general sir herbert lawrence who was the chief of staff of the british army on the western front, lost two sons. his counterpart in the french army, the general now lost three sons. so part of what i want to explore in this book is the mentality of such men. how could these generals and primm ministers and cabinet ministers year after year send

their allin sons into battle? their own sons charging out of trenches and to the machine gun fire and into a hail of fire that lasted week after week, month after month, year after year for four and a half years? so that was something i really wanted to explore in the book. now, the ferry insanity of this war need me equally interested in another type of person. those people, and the assisted on both sides and of a country's who recognized from the beginning that this was madness that it wasn't worth fighting, people like debs for example, the great american socialist leader spoke out loud, repeatedly against the war, was sent to prison by woodrow wilson's administration and

while still in prison long after the war ended in 1920 he received more than a million votes for president on the socialist ticket. another american descender was the social work pioneer which ann adams. emma goldman's also went to prison for her opposition to the war. more than 500 american companies objectors were jailed during the war like these men at fort riley arkansas. in germany the great radical luxembourg went to prison for her opinions. in france and a staunch opponent of the war which was coming and spoke out repeatedly as he saw during the close was the socialist leader who was assassinated by the right-wing nationalist three days before the war began. in england, the country's leading philosophers bertrand

russell was to my mind the most eloquent of all of the war opponents, and i think what i like about russell so much is that he was so honest about the conflict in his own feelings. let me read you something where he describes his state of mind as the war began. he describes himself very poignantly as being, quote, portrait by tate patriotism. the defeat is as ardently as any colonel. it's the strongest emotion that i possess and it's at such a moment i was making a very difficult renunciation but as a little truth the national propaganda of all of the belligerent nations sickened me. as a level of civilization the return to barbarism appalled me. as a man of the thwarted feeling of the massacre of the young one

my heart. he spent six months in prison for his opinions. someone also also went to jail for six months was britain's the five greatest investigative journalist edwin dena if you read my book you will remember him as the man who exposed the brutality of the congo in his term was extremely harsh and broke his health and he died not long afterwards really as a result, very brave man. in all these countries, all the different countries the war opponents like this were up against an unceasing barrage of propaganda. here's a recruiting poster from the period typical of the kind of things one salles on both sides. a german poster with god for king and fatherland.

some of the pro war propaganda had an edge to it. you would be letting down the women if you didn't fight or perhaps you were eating your responsibility. and worse yet, if you refuse to fight your may be a feminist. so there was a nasty edge to the patriotic fervor that was in the air. as i mentioned, there were more resistors and all of the countries that were fighting. but for the various reasons, the sharpest conflict between those who fought the war was a noble and a necessary cause and those who fought that it was absolute madness and not worth all these

millions of lives took place in england. more than the 20,000 men of military age refuse to go into the british army. now, some of them accepted service alternative as a conscientious objectors, which meant you could drive an ambulance at the front or work in the war related industry like these men working at the query in scotland. but as a matter of principle refused alternative services will and were sent to prison. more than 6,000 young englishmen went to prison during the war. the largest number of people to that time ever in prison for political reasons and the western democracies serve their sentences in places like wandsworth prison in the photograph here in southwest london you can see the of netting stretched across the

opening to prevent people from committing suicide and the prison conditions were extremely harsh. prisoners lived under what was called a rule of silence where you were not allowed to talk to your fellow prisoners. they found ways around it of course having on sold walls and listening to people and what not. but they live several years under those conditions with tough. the dhaka it was terrible, there was a shortage of coal, the prisons were cold. many people died in prison. so i was fascinated by these histories. for the longest time, i could not figure out how from a story telling point of view i was going to get the resisters and the generals into the book. i didn't want to do just a series of portraits of one or the other come and then a clue

came to me one day when i was reading a very boring scholarly article about elon and pacifist. she was an opponent of the war, route the single best selling peace during the brereton war, traveled up and down the country, visiting the conscientious objectors in the presence listing the families as speaking out again and again against the war. some rallies were shot down by the police. she was also involved in many other radical causes of the day, strong supporter of independence from ireland, for india. before the war meant she had been active in the suffrage movement and had gone to prison four times. in this article about her, the writer just made one passing comment, one sentence.

naturally these activities were deeply upsetting to her brother and gave the name come sir john french which i immediately recognized as the commander in chief on the western front. so, i thought that's going to be a relationship which is going to be interesting to write about, and indeed it was because this brother and sister of the diametrically opposite views were nonetheless personally quite close. she was eight years older than he was, this was her beloved little brother. they tout the all vote when he was small, they remained in touch throughout the war and salles each other frequently. they stopped speaking to each other only win in 1918 the british government sent him to buy your went to be the vice of ireland in charge of suppressing the nationalist revolt against the english rule.

>> talking about the war portraying the conflict between those who believe and those who didn't throw looking at the divided families, and of course there are some echoes in our own time because in the vietnam era the question is something that divided many families in this country. so i went looking for other divided families at that time and i found some. 1i assure you know the famous painters family of the british women's suffrage movement. the mother shown under arrest here prior to the war and her daughters were the leaders of the most militant wing of the british woman suffrage movement. on the eve of the war she was

arrested for literally throwing a rock through the window of ten downing street, the prime minister's residence and at that time the first shots of the war were fired she was a fugitive from justice living overseas. the moment the war began, she seized all of her political the activity, came back to england, put herself at the service of the british government which were on the speaking tours throughout england to the united states and in fact an early 17 senator to russia to rally the women for the effort. meanwhile, her daughter, sylvia, who worked closely with the mother before the war became an ardent opponent of the war, published of the leading antiwar periodical in britain throughout the conflict. several issues were suppressed by the government, and was a

very strong voice for peace for ending the conflict. sylvia was also having a secret love affair with the founder of the independent labour party and a predecessor of today's labor party and also an extremely strong opponent of the war who was absolutely crushed when it began and i think as much of grief over that as anything else in 1915. another divided family that i followed was the hot house family. one member, emily, was a spoken pacifist who did something quite remarkable. in 1916 she traveled without government permission, without proper passport and visa and so forth, traveled from britain

through france into switzerland to germany, went to see the german foreign minister whom she had known before the war, talked about possible peace terms and asked him what might be in terms of once germany appeared to peace, talked to other people in the government, went back, saw people in the british government, tried to suggest peace terms to them. it was an impossible lone wolf mission of the diplomacy that failed but over the course of the four and a half years, the worst conflict the world have seen had left 20 million dead she was the only person in europe who literally traveled from one side to the other in search of peace. she had great influence on a cousin who like hers, stephen, in this picture he's much older but during the war much he was a military age and refused the

draft, was sent to prison and thrown into solitary confinement because he was leading a protest against this rule of silence. i'm going to speak to my fellow human beings whether they are prisoners or guards whenever i feel like it. no one can stop me and they threw him and saw what their. he had three brothers in uniform, two of them were of the front, one of them was later killed before he was killed he sent a message back to their parents telling them tell steven not to lose heart, a very interesting relationship. just to make things more complicated, a very close friend of the family who had actually acted as the godfather at his baptism, a man named welford was the minister of the war.

now there are various other characters in this book as well. some of them are people that you know such as the writer who was of course a tremendous drumbeater for this war as he was for every war that britain was ever engaged in. he cultivated a love of things military and his son about 4-years-old in this picture with a rifle and the encouragement set his sights early on a military career had a great trouble getting into first the navy and then the army, kept getting rejected because he inherited his father's eyesight. when you see pictures he's always got the is very thick glasses on. finally, his father polls strings, went to a field marshal that he knew, got john a commission as an army officer and in 1915, he went into action

at the battle the end was never seen again. his father of course was completely devastated. some of the other characters in this book i think our people who would be less familiar. one of them was a man who was the editor of the newspaper for the war went to prison as a resistor and in prison he continued to be a newspaper editor putting out a clandestine newspaper for his fellow prisoners on toilet paper. it was published regularly twice a week for a year until the authorities discovered and punished him by putting him on restricted diet and solitary confinement. and incidentally copies of some of these clandestine newspapers, there were a number of them, survived. another character in the book, one of my favorites is a man named john s. clark who was born

into a circus family, grew up in the surface service. he went in as the youngest lion tamer in great britain. subsequently, she got involved in radical politics. when the war broke out he was tipped off by a friendly police man that he was about to be arrested. he went underground and throughout the war was the editor and writer for the socialist anti-war newspaper that of the authorities kept trying to suppress the never found where it was published. after the war he came back aboveground again, was a labor party member of parliament for a while then spent many years on the council and when the circus came to town he went back in and was the oldest line in teamer in great britain.

though war that people like this resisting and protested against caused absolutely unprecedented suffering. it left a huge cities destroyed in a way that europe had never known before. these are the ruins of a 15th century cathedral in belgium. there were so many soldiers killed that by the end of the war, england was drafting 17-year-olds and germany was taking soldiers into the army who were still under. and still, the carnage went on and on and on for four and a half years. by the time it was finally over, there were more than 9 million military dead and an estimated 12 to 13 million civilians dead. and of course the war not only

left the scars from this but because of the way that it ended and in terms of the peace treaty that followed it, it set the course of future defense in which of course the man on the far right in this picture with his world war i unit played a crucial role, and 20 years later he would lead the world into an even more destructive war and the holocaust to deutsch. when we think back on the first world war, we will remember not just the politicians, and not just the generals, but some of those who try to stop the bloodshed even though they were in vain including some of the people in the book.

we will end by playing use some music and explain what comes from. it's a song some of you may know the greenfields of france composed by the scottish songwriter eric come and he was inspired to write it when he visited one of the vast military graveyards and there are hundreds of them that spread across the area of the old western front in northern france and belgium. he noticed the name of an irish soldier, mcbride on one of the tombstones, and it is addressed to him, a share by john mcdermott. while the song is playing, i am going to show you some old vintage footage from the first world war but i want you to listen to the words of the song.

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glad to hear them. [applause] >> sorry. >> aside from these articulate and a brave and well-connected individuals who oppose the war they were also be be for large parties that claim they would reject this in the name of international solidarity with a very working people. are they just quickly swept away in the patriotic enthusiasm or do they require a lot of suppression of the kind that you've described? >> well, all of the left-wing parties were divided really in

britain, germany, other countries there were divisions in the socialist party is. you know, in whom britain the bulk of the independent labour party which is the most important of the parties stock with its leader in his stand against the war but many of their members of the collision parliament went over to the government side. in germany the social democratic party which was by far the largest and most powerful socialist party in europe had something like 40 or 45% in germany powerful newspapers and other institutions they divided and there were a small number and think about a dozen of the 120 or the 130 socialist deputies who voted against extending the credits which they

asked for on the eve of the war. the tragedy that one feels looking at this period is i feel all these people initially before the war would have the right idea. they thought was important to feel solidarity with your human beings on the left struggling for the social changes then it was to feel allegiance to the nation state. but once the war began, that a lower of tribalism, that powerful, powerful drive the people seem to have with them and that we all have somewhere within us prove to be more powerful. amazingly, there was a demonstration against the coming war of 100,000 people in berlin just i think four days before the first shots were actually

fired. but after the first shots were fired, even the german peace society issued a statement in favor of the war as did a huge number of intellectuals, even those on the left. russia signed a pro or statement. the only way i can explain it is that that a lower of tribalism is a very, very powerful thing. and it is still very much with us. i mean, roll the clock back a week or two we were all probably glad to see the end of osama bin laden but i must say it made me feel creepy to see all those people out in front of the white house shouting usa, usa, usa! >> [inaudible] >> i think they have to bring the microphone around here.

>> i liked for your talk -- like this? >> in of a sense that i was listening to you, i like your presentation and of session and at the same time one becomes the case who writes about the persistence of the regime as the that kind of resonates with few. i will lose the lead to use that

aristocratic away until 1914 and all that is fine but i would say that one has the mass participation of the people in the war to the nationalism that's one thing and that nationalism may be positioned against the failure of the international socialism in the late 19th century early 20th century. it's one reason why also i would argue that the production of the 1917 revolution did not really succeed in its international forum, the international revolution that the bolsheviks

had that wasn't a large reason because there was no support from the rest of less in europe on the democratic party's and actually opted for the war. the nationalism or tribalism of -- the story of the first world war and so many others in a sense is the triumph of nationalism over the reason over human solidarity and over much else. you are right to mention the russian revolution which in many ways is a direct result of the first world war. by the time of the revolution russia suffered some 6 million casualties, dead wounded prisoners who were missing and during the year 1917, it's estimated that more than a million russian soldiers simply left the front and walked home

which is what we would wish people to do in all those times i think. the russian revolution even though i think fairly quickly it meant a rise in some horrible ways, nonetheless when it happened in 1917, it was created with tremendous enthusiasm by the anti-war leftists in other countries and it's very moving to read the accounts of the british resisters who were in prison as they broke the news from russia that all were convinced and hopeful that this was the beginning and would be a revolution would spread to other countries but it did not and the war went on. you've got the microphone, okay. >> i regret i didn't hear everything that you said that considering the library is full of books that now exist that is

access to so many documents we did not have access to at the time of the war right after. with the lines of historical hindsight, do you think of war was inevitable or could it somehow have been prevented. the inevitability is obviously in other words i'm asking if you think that in the end of lenin and trotsky and luxembourg were right that it's the logical culmination of imperialists and so on. but considering how calamitous it was in the images you have shown are in this comprehension and a hold generations walked away and there are cemeteries in belgium and so on. i hope somewhere such a thing couldn't have been prevented but i just wanted to know your stand

on that. >> it's a good question. i.t. so war was not inevitable. this is one of those things historians argue over endlessly of course. i think it wasn't inevitable because true, there were tensions in europe, there was a naval arms race between britain and germany for example. but we had 40 or 50 years without the two countries going to war. there were, as of june, 1914, there were no outstanding boundary disputes in europe, no country claimed part of another's territory. there was imperial rivalry but we have a lot of imperial rivalry in the ball right now between the united states and china and other ways it appears as well. there was in africa but the countries are effectively divide

the africa among themselves in the years previously. once the war began, then of course all of the imperial rivalries can to the surface and in africa britain and france on one side in the germany they were seizing control of each other's colonies. no one but the victory would go over the spoils but despite the tensions in the air i do not think the world of the inevitable. >> you didn't talk more to become very much about the american anti-war mac feeling. it was less radical and off dropped out and succeeded that i know some people like carl

sandburg the u.s. would support the role. islamic people from the left. [inaudible] the fact that germany sinks some boats but it was the war against the european and poverty.