amendment and the u.s. supreme court said no, no it's not cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a young man to life imprisonment for a first-time drug offense. universally known with the country in the world does such a thing. so we have got to end this idea that the criminals are them, not us. and instead say, there but for the grace of god go i. all of us have made mistakes in our lives, taken wrong turns but only some of us have been required to pay for those mistakes for the rest of our lives. president barack obama himself has admitted to more than a little bit of drug use in his lifetime. he admitted to using marijuana and cocaine in his youth. and if he hadn't been raised by white grandparents in hawaii, if he hadn't done much of his illegal drug use a predominantly white college campuses and

universities, if he had been raised in the hood, the odds are greater that he would have been stopped, he would have been frisked, he would have would have been searched and he would have been caught and far from being president of the united states today he might not even have the right to vote depending on the state he lived in. cpu can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org. >> googles eric schmidt and jared cohen lay out their vision of the future world in which everyone is digitally connected. this event is a little over one hour and starts now. >> welcome everybody. leave it to eric schmidt and jared cohen to draw a crowd like this at the aspen institute. their book is "the new digital age." eric schmidt is a software engineer by upbringing, was

chief technology officer with microsystems and the ceo of novell. he has for those of us who love the digital age and even the old digital age as well as the new digital age, he has a nice -- of having worked at the labs and xerox park places back in the old days when corporations had wonderful retreats for places like that, helped invent some of the great things for the digital age from the transistor to the graphic user interface. he became the ceo of google and is now the executive chairman of google and it's been a long time friend of the aspen institute. thank you for being here, eric. jared cohen, jared growing up when he was a student and graduate student went wandering around iran. god knows they have got that

visa. >> they wondered the same thing. >> that's right. he went to palestinian refugee camps and saw children of the jihad. it put him in the intersection of youth culture, geopolitics and technology and in a very smart move to secretaries of state have jared on the policy planning and state appointed by condoleezza rice and one of the few if only people reappointed or re-opt by secretary hillary clinton. he now runs and helped found google ideas based in new york which really applies technology and other things to the geopolitical issues. for example very recently they announced that human trafficking databases around the world, 60 or 70 of them, google gave them technology to figure out how to

connect them all. their book "the new digital age" and i will start with eric, and i will say baghdad, how did that happen? >> let me start by saying that it's at the center of ideas that affect the technology center for at least two decades of life for the privilege of working with walter but also with charlie firestone in the new society program and now with her standard interest many issues so it's great to be here. we met it has various of us decided to visit the rock to see what it would look like if the fighting had ended. what does it look like to rebuild a society and as part of that i met jared on the trip and i have taken a lot of video of baghdad and they played it back. all i heard was jared's voice. what were you doing in baghdad jared?

back in, this was 2000 we began reaching out to ceos in silicon valley to start to have a conversation with them about how technology was transforming places that bordered all of their immediate corporate areas, the places where an extraordinary impact on technology was really being felt and iraq was certainly on that list. syria was on that list and parts of russia were on that list. and so eric was, i think the very first fortune 100 ceo certainly from a technology company that landed in baghdad and this was a very big deal for us. we were trying to connect the world of expertise around the technology and the world of expertise around geopolitics to see what would happen. >> what was interesting in our initial conversation the u.s. spent a trillion dollars in baghdad. when we invade countries would

build cities but where does the money go? it goes to that sort of thing. we didn't until relatively recently rebuild the communications networks of the country. it made building cell phones illegal so by the time we got there the networks did not work and they were not cross connected. they were used for -- and in hindsight the most important thing to do from the standpoint of a conflict situation is to rebuild communications he can get the good guys and empower faster and that was sort of our conclusion. in fact at the time one of our first observations was that the number one threat against americans were ieds and the ways to deal with with the ied solution as part of wi-fi towers which have ownership along with the local people with cameras on them to see where the ieds were going. the lack of ideas which is well

meaning doesn't understand what you're during this new technology to provoke this collaboration i think. speak to. >> to what extent do you think that technology will undermine -- in the future? >> one of the challenges that dictators in the future will have and we like thinking about dictators in the future having a dilemma is let's take a country like iran, 72 million people roughly 25% of the population connected to the internet. when everyone in iran is connected and everyone has an e-mail account and cell phone working account and everyone of us has voice-over ip services that they use the population of iran in the physical world may be 72 million people but in the virtual world they look more like half of billion people. this presents a serious challenge are the regime in tehran which is how do they account for 500 million voices on line coming from the same 72 million people? >> there's also a possibility for overreaction. one of the things about the internet as three people can

sound like they are 10,000 people. 10,000 in a social network is a big thing. now you have these three people and you attacked them and some brutal way because you are an evil dictator and all of a sudden now you've got a rude problem because they got press. you have now created a resistance movement that didn't exist before. >> the smart opposition group as we have talked about can use all of this and on line activity to hide so all of the on line voices can tremendously benefit the physical movement trying to stay outside. >> how important was digital networking? >> where given the book that in the future revolution will be easier to start but harder to finish in that captures what we mean which is technology is very useful for forming weak ties on line that can turn into medium-sized in the streets here technology is very good for

organizing around the lowest common denominator which is to get the dictator out of power. what technology can do is create leaders overnight. what technology can do is create institutions that are not there. the challenges of technology as it increases expectations. people expect to finish it and what we argue is all of these heroes and celebrities from the arab spring countries is phenomenal but what happens over the next 10 years as some of them will back fill their celebrity with their leadership. 10 from -- 10 years in a number of them will run for president or parliament in the communities but go back and figure out which -- so celebrity will matter. >> i'm not sure if you want to be the first leader of the country because if other thing that happens when everyone gets connect it everyone's expectations are rising. you are residing over this country and everyone is interconnected and they expect modern governance à la europe

and america and so forth while you are still trying to figure out who works for whom and who is essentially not corrupt. >> i just read a book that was quite similar to your book called unhcr hill. it was a history of 1775 and 76 basic way, how the american revolution started and i was sort of struck at the fact that the committees of correspondence were like the book and paul revere was like twitter and he had characters left over after his ride. but, and we could go on. even the hutchinson letters were a bit like wikileaks. but what struck me was the revolution was started by people who had the social networks but it was taken over very quickly by militias who went out of control. those who put their bodies on the line end up taking over

revolutions that have started by social networks. is that still true? >> is interesting you mention it as we throw around the term cyberdissidents and we apply it to anybody who tweets. to to me the term dissidents still applies to somebody who is willing to assume some degree of rescue in the physical world and they bumping up everyone together as a cyberdissident and some respects is real opposition groups. we were in libya about a year ago and our observation was this entire place seems to be run by militia who in one catalytic moment can essentially turn this whole thing upside down of course that is what happened. >> we were told that it was really good that we didn't come there the day before because the militia that had supported that director had been overthrown by the other militia and there's a

difference vice different vice president in charge. the previous militia formed with another blushes to attack the first militia and put the person we were meeting with back in power. this is the reality of the militia led groups. what i like about what jared said about dissidents, there are always people with courage. we went to china right after north korea. we heard that chinese for whatever reason and their culture don't seem to have a lot people -- soap brutally repressed. the people are unwilling to have their children be killed by environmental pollution and the current environmental movement is image deeper threat to the legitimacy of the government then we as americans might think. in particular people are willing to put up with the corruption in the craziness and the lack of democracy but they are willing to take pictures of the

environment at tremendous personal risk. of course the internet has perfect memory because they are terrified. they have one child and that child is everything in their culture. >> tell me about googles dealing in china. you know how you felt. >> china is the only current country and in the book we argue that china will actually get into the business of exchanging censorship tools for minerals because they are creating everything else. they are the only current country that does act of censorship and by that i mean you get a phonecall. it's illegal to discuss what they take you down but it has to do with the falun gong or a criticism of the senior leadership. it became so possessive than we thought it was so modest transition within the government. they are terrified of the series

of revolts and i suspect the truth about what is going on that they became oppressive for that reason and because we were attacked della tara laid by clice and also because of the tracking they do of their dissidents across the world for those three reasons google move moved to hong kong. my favorite joke of the chinese is -- because we like the hong kong system better. [laughter] >> you think the china system is eventually doomed? >> a lot of people debate that all the time especially in beijing and depending on which group you talk to you get different answers. a reasonable assumption is that you have got to address the things that are affecting the lives of middle-class people. in the book we talk about the train accidents where train accident and people are killed

and there is a cover-up by the government. it was minor and their twitter equivalent eventually the guy running the train system turns out to be highly corrupt and is in jail under a death sentence. so they are willing to act based on that and i think if they are able to correctly handle, use a modified version of the dictator's handbook one which allows a certain amount of freedom and allows us to address that, they can survive. if they can't for whatever reason, they will be in big trouble. >> china has another dilemma too which we try to talk to people about when we were there and for whatever reason is avoided it and he can probably guess why. a country with 1.3 billion people and they're probably 609 people connected right on this sentiment people connected our chinese living in the major cities. they are rural and ethnically

diverse and there in the western province. nobody really knows what happens when all the people come on line. when people talk about dictatorships and their ability to manage the cat and mouse game they point to places like syria and places like china but the reality is no dictatorship is fully connected. tuckers the in the world is fully connected its own reality we don't know how they will handle it reads the what of the great subject in the book is what happens when the next 5 million join us? 30 countries have wandered around over the last 30 years talking to this people and they are just like us by the way. they have the same wants and needs. they are trapped in a bad system so when they get connected they will behave like we would had we just got in connected. that puts enormous pressures on the government, the government who are often not legitimate. they are not democracies or have

a lot of favoritism or what have you. the government is going to react to the citizens as they get empowered. they will become one of the major stories over the next five years. in the book we conclude that this empowerment, what's new, right? this lack of empowerment to core level empowerment digital technology and digital devices, this is a one-way street. the governments will adapt in the citizens adapt and all of us will have a bigger market and we will become savers result. >> when i was in china about 10 years ago i was in the western province that you are talking about and they are really separated from the western country and in a small coffee shop i noticed three people at a computer. they were on the internet. i tried to get into cnn it was

blocked. cnn pops up. they said we go through a process in hong kong that the centers are clueless about. do you think that china can continue to stay a step ahead of those in the center's? >> will definitely be a cat and mouse game that will continue. one thing that the attackers is in the future of will not be able to continue is blackouts. they just won't work with all the microblogs and people with camera phones and even if you shut down the internet mobile and confiscate everybody's phones once you turn it back on which you have to for the economy, you can prevent those things from eventually seeing the light at day. they will have to exist in the new reality where there are no news blackouts. >> the technology they use is a form of encryption that keeps the data secret from the

firewalls. there is new technology in china that actually looks forward as part of the streams and blocks them. in the book we speculate that as long as the number of such dreams is small the government can actually block it because you can find, just like you give a million people and thousands of them are behaving differently than the others he can take her out who those are but as the technologies breads it's much harder. the moment the people in china say that the government has gotten pretty good at whack-a-mole and mining these things. whack, whack but the citizens of gotten good at switching moles or whatever metaphor you wish. >> is googles policy and philosophy to be on the side of the mall's? [laughter] >> while it's clearly our policy to not, to fight censorship hard and when we are willing to take significant business hits and

revenue hits and so forth to do so and we are celebrated everywhere except the country that we are taking the hit in. i would say we are and the core value is the power of information. one of the sort of harshest lessons for me in the last 12 years is that not everyone agrees that all the world's information is useful in any basic way. information is incredibly frightening to establish institutions of government and business which don't really want to be receptive to change at their own level of internal dialogue of corruption and so forth in power. >> do think there's information that might not be useful or ideas that might not useful including the holocaust denial? >> well, google, first of all we are not talking about personal information. we are talking about -- we are

trying to be very precise. think of it as broadly defined political including factual based, fact-based and so forth and people would argue that is pretty good that everyone gets a chance to see that. i guess our overall value is more information solves more problems. >> privacy versus security, how will that be balanced in the virtual world? >> you have a nice way of describing it. >> when we set out to write this book, we wanted to look look at the ships shih tzu privacy and security not just in the context of the skill and people who are already connected but in the context of the next 5 million people who will be joining us on line. what we found is when you go to places like myanmar and indonesia and pakistan, people don't seem to have any distinct understanding of privacy as opposed to security. the two become intertwined so we returned with a profound sense

of a desire to link these two together. we viewed it as the ultimate responsibility. companies have a role to put tools in the public domain and make them readily available and easily understandable for individuals to safeguard their own privacy and security and governments obviously of a role but i think the most important solution we came to us parents and we talked to parents everywhere in saudi arabia. our view was no matter what society you go to kids are coming on line faster and younger than any other time in history in history and they're they are coming on line so fast that what they are doing far outpaces how physical parents are there so or view his parents need to talk to their kids about the importance of on line privacy and security. >> you know, we talk in the book at some length about the question of is there it delete button and we conclude that there is not.

this sets up some serious problems. i think the way we describe it, these examples violate the american business -- conan example would be a high school commits a minor crime in america goes to juvenile court. they have their sentence. they become adults and they behave well. they commissioned the court and they say i would like to have my conviction expunged. the simeon the court agrees they can truthfully answer when they say would you commit a crime in which every employer now asks, they can say no. so they do an internet search and immediately says that -- sees that the person is a liar. somehow that violates that sense of justice. have we given up this juvenile forgiveness?

there are many recent examples in the press where people are initially charged and it's all over the paper. charged falsely. even the boston bombings there were people charged in the press who are now going to have a great deal of trouble getting their reputation back. this is not by the way new problem. the atlanta bombing, we were talking about this, so in the system how does fairness work in a world where the internet behaves like this? >> in your book you talk about the internet does not have it delete button. it's very interesting but it's basically saying that it's not so much that the internet doesn't have delete button but that search engines don't. if you are in "the times picayune" at age 17 having done something that is irrelevant unless a cool search will find it. is it possible to put google, to have a way to say you will

delete certain types of searches? >> is absolute possible to do that. let's describe earlier in the years of google, how would we then decide who has legitimacy on such a request? to use a current example there are movements afoot in europe for the right to be forgotten. it's a pretty good idea for a lot of people especially for people who want to be forgotten for good reason like they are criminals. who decides? google ultimately decided that we could not systematically or algorithmically decide to do that. that a good person who made a legitimate request based on judgment and so forth but a bad person could easily mask themselves as good person and what would clearly be a request which should be --

>> could there be a court order way to do that? >> in europe there is an attempt to write legislation to do that but it's impossible to define the criteria. it's important to say that google is subject to the laws of the country they operate in so if there were in the united states a question of law which of course britney spears would be the first user of, somehow the law would have to be applied uniformly and some kind of a legal -- fisa is a secret word. secret court. i can imagine it would have secret court for this. >> a secret court will be useless. >> secretly you are trying to take something down that is starting now. ultimately we are describing china. it's highly unlikely that the united states is going to adopt the chinese evil pattern. >> when you talk about privacy and think sometimes that word is

a useless anonymity. we love privacy but i'm not sure everyone deserves to be anonymous to everything they do. when i was growing up if i that i went to the local drug store and bought a pack of barbara rolls, you couldn't be anonymous in a small town. do you think the internet would be better off if it had less anonymity? >> i think our view by the way, on the same thing as we talk about human judgment and all of it. there are wonderful things about us being connected in the future and lots of people talk about cybersecurity and it's a very important conversation to have a more connectivity does not absolve us of the responsibility to exercise good judgment in the president in the future. that's the important thing but also the theme of technology is that empowers people for good. there is a bias towards empowerment and this whole question of you know whether people can be hidden or not, you can look at it in the context of

trying to everyday lot but also criminals and terrorists and violent extremists. they were pleased to see that there was no fema. it allowed the entire published in the people with smartphones to collectively press rewind if i can take a term from the analog. >> either way back to the anonymity question. anonymity is a relatively new concept. you are quite the historian. >> goes back to my childhood. >> you are not that old. >> 100 years ago people lived in small villages. [laughter] people lived in small villages in two or three cities in america and the rural part and everyone knew everyone else. everyone knew who the criminal was and everyone knew who had the good behaviors and the bad behaviors and society policed itself that way. with the development of modern

anonymity had a number of benefits and particularly allowed americans to overreach the u.s. government. it also served as a harbor for bad things. ultimately a couple of things, first food will always allow for anonymity and even if a majority, if you opt in to identify themselves which is their choice, it will be important for us to preserve anonymity and it will be very important but it's also important that legitimate police actions be able to pierce those fails and a pro. in legal situations where it comes to safety issue. for example they are court orders that are possible in america which is well established now. when you have someone hiding behind a wall of anonymity and doing things that are clearly a crime. >> you know and at the aspen seminar plato -- mcafee put the

ring on your invisible. you are anonymous and you can do anything. would you be moral, would you'd ever steal anything if you are invisible were invisible and never would be seen to do it and plato being a bit of the pessimist in that part of his life said that would be bad to have that total anonymity. do you think there should need a part of the internet for people like myself who might feel safer that would verify identity? ..

our reasonable for the internet, but a second is to view it the way google views it as a ranking problem. relatively easy to detect such a person and just essentially puts the down. so, you can get verify the identities by simply saying that verify the identities are another ranking signal for quality. and you will see this today. if you look in facebook, twitter, amazon, google plus you have verified at entities as well as anonymous identities, and verify that it is a much more likely to be people who are not crazy, not spending you and say things simple paragraphs. >> so should there be a world in which you could exist on an internet in which everyone who says something says, i just lost my wallet in nigeria, simply send me money. >> you are a victim, too.

i think when you think about a closed internet, you think of the cubans of koreans with their intranet. one of the things that we talk about in the book is, you can imagine -- i think we talk about this in the context of saudi arabia. you can imagine parks that are essentially connectivity say sounds where if you @booktv is alito's take pictures of anything. place where individuals can congregate and have lunch and interact and essentially be kind of off the grid of being photographed, you know, being documented. obviously not in back alleys. we are talking of this basis. talk about how even doing something like this would be extraordinarily difficult because was so many people having connectivity, these things become difficult to enforce. >> a reasonable expectation is that society will develop some new social etiquette. maybe people will decide to turn off their devices during dinner or, perhaps, there will decide that a signal of using a device during dinner is that you're

born with that dinner conversation. a simple and mild example of this in google over the years is that i try to enforce something which we called 60 minutes, and that for one and 60 minute timeframe per week you had to turn off your computer and me and looked at each other and run the company. of course people would have their mobile devices and indeed the table typing away. we would try to police that with a fine. we basically gave of. >> wow. >> today when you go to a meeting in google, the majority of people are meeting, but there also typing away at their computers, and that is a socially simple behavior. and other people as they're saying, oh, my gosh, there are so rude, but our society evolved that way. >> i tell you, i have been at google for two and a half years and try this outside of google and people get very offended. tell them that this is how we do that work, and they're still offended. [laughter] >> tell me about google and how

you think -- you talk about a park where people can take pictures. if we have a world in which people can be recording everything in front of them, how will that change the world and what you think about that? >> of course you could do that already with a camera and microphone that is it not your body are on the outside the body such as where we are right now. and i think we would answer that by saying, this technology is incredibly powerful an incredibly interesting. we have been distributing it of the last week artur to people. but we are also being extremely careful about that. so we have registered developers. these price are going to developers. reticulated the applications that the bill for precisely these concerns and others. >> give me an example. >> again, you see what comes back in terms of application. you can imagine, applications predicaments applications and probably not such a good idea. kristine example of an application that would not be denied the. >> are issues around privacy.

and, you know, i argue that and to -- the new entity will emerge, as i use the example before, about how one deals with this new technology. but it is important not to up prematurely judged these technologies. we did that -- i mean, think about cars because are terrible idea because they could cause accidents and kill people. so we should have invented driverless cars first. so there is this instead to be concerned about new technology rather than to allow it to come out in an innovative way and try to understand what is good for. also you how to use it, it's phenomenal stuff. very, very powerful. >> why? >> you talk to it. talks back. you can see it. tracks with you in new ways. it is really a new experience. >> in some ways, though, it will change all public spaces,

wanted? >> depending on what the social and tickets are, the implications are, how is priced. >> already you see this. which is, you know, if you are -- take out names of actors to tweet on airplanes and play games on their plans, but if you do something socially unacceptable, boom, it is all the play's run away. >> but that is not -- you are saying that it will improve people? >> i am on the side that anonymity is not the world's greatest -- >> is not, so you would be opposed to more anonymity. you little less? >> i think plato and i would say that less anonymity makes you better behaved. am i wrong? >> that would be your position. [laughter] >> and you ask, one of the things you can imagine taking place, saudi arabia, were you have these police you are running around trying to prevent women from basically doing anything. imagine a situation where maybe

it is, you know, maybe it is a watchers something elsewhere in saudi arabia women develop an anti app. literally allows them to attract nike would taxis. and when they are nearby women are able to send upholsteries other. by the lake made is easy to tell these people law because there were not fit. >> a very strange outfit. >> how close are we to official recognition technology? so, i look there and say, okay, that is dave jackson. he used to be, you know, the btr time magazine, and just know everything. why don't we have is a recognition that? they can do it. >> there are reasons why the human brain is still more powerful than the sum of all of our computers. we are working on it. we have been doing this for decades, walter. it is called computer science and visual intelligence. the human brain is the most extraordinary thing ever invented, and we did not

invented, think of this. >> is a it harder to do? >> it is extraordinarily difficult. of inactivity and parulas and, we're still probing the structure of the brain and our processes really work. there's a lot of progress. there will be awhile before we really know. in the book we talk about asia recognition and rough to present the following argument. if there are a fair number of fronts on pictures of you, you know, looking right at the camera, the technology which uses is a serious set a feature vectors and mathematical computation is pretty accurate. a problem, of course, is that in general, police workers as across example, in general, you don't get the perfect my shot, you know, the person that you're looking for previous itouch and so forth, and the technology today is much less accurate. there are people working on various out rhythms that were allowed you to take a side fun of lipid so it looks like that

and then did a feature factor, but that technology is still at the age permit a level. it is true, a typical example is if you take the best known example, take a stadium and a very, very high-camera and that everyone looking straight at it, you can begin to identify people in the stadium. when you reproduce that in real stadium people are looking straight the camera and does not work as well. >> what about voice recognition? >> much, much better now. and, again, the technology has just moved toward to the point where it used to be the you had to change your specific voice. now with the new algorithm. >> well let me? beckham this walk into my office and say, give me jared's bio as opposed to having to type it in? will we have a all new natural interface with our devices? >> the numbers, as i recall, our summer between 20 and 30 percent of the query is immobile fasano was activated. it's a convenience. cool voice, that could be

boosters, by far the best technology in this area. when you talk to it, the level of accuracy, it really does work, and encourage you all to try it on your and our phones. [laughter] >> what sort of quirky things in the book amuse you the most? >> there are a lot. we keep coming up with more everyday which is, perhaps, some kind of strange epilogue. are the things of we talk travis people being able to, let's say you're walking down the street and don't feel well, you can literally swallowed bill that charles rodgers of the taurus system. why fis was doing on to your phone, which then analyzes it, makes a prediction about what might be wrong, sees what doctors are in the area that have upon is that are available. by the way, not a replacement for a diagnosis, but since we also tightness anyway before we go to the doctor, this will just sort of action that the process. >> why is you go to north korea? what did you find there? >> you have no shortage of

states and diplomats are trying to articulate an alternative political path for an austrian regime. nobody is such today the alternative technological path. so we said, let's call the north koreans. you want to talk to the of the virtues of free and open internet and see if they give us a visa and let us into the country and actually show up. they did, and you wanted to make the argument that they cannot continue to survive, even in their current state of the don't open up a little bit because you cannot grow your economy in this world if you do not at least allow for some degree of access. now, number three is a bizarre place tonight and probably illustrate with one question here which is, by show of hands of many of you have been to a broadway play was in the movie the german share? you know what austrias like of which is basically some combination of those two things. what we did learn memoriter is, they have wi-fi access. it just unshared with a population. there are a million phones, a 3d capable, but the date is not

turned on. they have three seats -- they have three television. there until to the internet connection. is the classic case of a new type of corruption, which is the has the best technology and then they ought to offer themselves of the expense of the rest of the population. >> the point is that the internet could easily reach the elites anyway a mockery of if the government would simply allow it. it is actually possible for the government to not allow the internet and to shut it off. various -- in the book we talk about -- even worse outcomes for the revolution. north korea we believe that a tremendous improvement in the safety of the world would be to allow information to flow into the last closed society on earth. it is remarkable to think about a society with no personal music, no personal sources of formation, no on filter box, two television channels, one of which plays the dear leader speech over and over again, respectively. the other one place catchy

patriotic music. and imagine such a closed society. just a few ideas in their would significantly improve, and our view, the safety of the world. >> and if they opened up the internet one day, how many -- how long with the regime last? >> of course no one knows. the korean culture is different from other asian cultures. it is hierarchical and patriarchal and the gentleman who founded the modern rock three minutes to kill and execute all the leaders of the religion and put himself in charge. the it -- it is perfectly possible that the number three does not become a democracy on day one. it is arrogant of americans to think that somehow democracy occurs in one day when it's a very long time. in america, it was formed in a unique way because everybody was a refugee from other places if the indians. so the fact of the matter is that it is possible that you can see a transition not unlike what

sub three went through. south korea was poor, relatively run by a strong man, relatively unfreeze and over some number of decades became much more free and democratic. >> but the technology eventually make democracy inevitable? >> one of the observations that we came away with actually came from me in march. so we are there a little over a month ago, less than 1 percent of the population has access to the internet up until 18 months ago, it was one of the worst dictatorships in the entire world. allen is in some kind of transition. still very much speculation about whether the democratic position. what was interesting about me in more and perhaps something that shocked even us is less than 1 percent of the population has access to the internet, everybody had heard of it. and so they and as to the internet as a set of values, a concept, and an idea, even before they experienced it as a user as a tool. and they're understanding was not based upon the chinese interpretation of the internet, not based on an autocratic

version of the internet. they understood it in terms of its western values of the free flow of affirmation and civil liberties. what that means tests is 57 percent of the world population living under some kind of an autocracy. what happens when the regime tied to create an autocratic internet? it does not correspond with their democratic understanding of what should be. what does that glass look like? and we all know the answer to that yet. >> and to finish, so this would be a wonderful experiment for all of us to watch. eighteen months ago that generals for self interested reasons our public policy reasons open up the country. bailout the future leader of the country. and they have now taken a lot of press restrictions off. so now all the sudden the underlying his intentions in this society, which they had barely repressed for 50 years

which are primarily religious in nature and are quite violent have become a past. so what will happen? as a society works through these tensions, well the hard-liners come back? for example, over the next month will vote on a sort of press freedom watch that looks an awful lot like a chinese edition law, which is a problem. so it is not a no-brainer that these countries immediately adopt the western notions of openness, criticism from all of those kinds of things. maybe there is an alternative path. >> the what you're saying is it is not inevitable, but they quickly adopted. is an inevitable that they eventually adopted? >> it is inevitable that they adopt a system which work well for the middle class of the country. because the middle-class is empowered with these devices commando class will define what it wants. we will ask board. may not look like the kind of free and now we have, but it will be a lot more free than the way these people have been

operating in town now. >> hi. thanks. a bit more about how the u.s. government leverage its technology to foreign policy. i just found it interesting that the obama campaign hired 380 analyst to look at who is a messenger, what is the policy, what platform. and if you look at the state department and the national security council, i think there is zero or a handful of the analysts. so does it look like our ambassadors are like campaign managers for the deaths were saying, this is the policy, this is the messenger, this is the platform that we should use. so, could you go beyond social media and soda share your thoughts on how to leverage data to form foreign policy? >> the current problem is still -- the good news is the foreign policy apparatus gets the boards of technology. the problem is, we still view in foreign policy technology to the

lens of public diplomacy in communicating, and i am not discounting the importance of public diplomacy and communicating, but that is just one instrument of statecraft. the bigger sort of role that technology can play is in how it empowers local entities and individuals to address local challenges. there is a huge role that technology can play around analyzing and correlating data. we will give you one example. at google ideas we look a lot at how we use data to map expose and disrupt illicit networks. arco traffickers to organ harvesters to organized criminal networks, human trafficking networks, terrorist organizations. when you look at how these things are organized in government, they're deeply silent. some people working and unit trafficking, that typically falls in the human rights area. people working on narco trafficking, that is the da area. and so we silo these things because we look at them through the lens of their functions rather than through the lens of data.

now, all of these organizations work with each other. take money laundering. if you can follow the money you can trace the money back to all of these different organizations to be gutted not realize this until i got to google any start talking to engineers about these problems. and engineers look at them, they don't let them to the lens of one faction or another. they want to see the data. what actually correlated. and when i have realized is demanding is of tremendous silo busters got tremendous silo busters. and this week cap -- this is me to believe that one of the biggest problems we have is, how do you convince students of computer science to back out the convince electrical engineering students that it is in their interest and relevant to them to serve and the public sector? i am worried about a crisis of my generation were in some respects your more connected to more entrepreneurial than any other generation, yet we're less want to serve and in the a generation. police and the public sector, and we have to fix that. >> a quick word from our sponsors.

this is the book series. want to thank them. [applause] >> thanks. i would like to come back to something and you mentioned before about technology making the rebellions easier to start but harder to finish. what you think that is? is this somehow, for example, it almost seemed like it was a disconnect between the power that people were getting through social media and the reality. is there some kind of a disconnect? people's hopes raised what technology meet the reality on the ground? >> so i think there are couple of issues. i think that technology can give people and places a false sense of how things are going to is because they're is a crowd that is articulating something. there is a lot of momentum and noise online. may not translate into the streets. we may see this next month.

you're starting to see expectations raised on line about doing something similar to what they did in june of 2009. my guess is because they crushed the green revolution soberly and rigid out all the leaders that we should not expect something. i think that the challenges, it comes down to. it took decades for these guys to emerge as leaders and then eventually it became public figures. so we just reversed the model. you have public figures first you may become leaders. that being said, and any of these societies, there really are true leaders to have the credibility to take their country forward, technology can find that. so in that sense you have a level playing field, but it cannot do it overnight. >> again, and the book you talk about building of the credentials eventually. new leaders. but it is different and a virtual world that is in the

physical world. >> i think we came to this conclusion. it is easy to sit technology will drive all these changes, but the essence of human the years is still very hard, very important, very person dependent, very much dependent upon the charisma, the ability to get people excited and motivated, and those are skills which will take a long time for computers to get to. >> assuming your right as opposed to plato. walter, about an anemone. >> bad assumption, but okay. [laughter] >> so, anonymities estate. what does that say about cyber crimes? the victim of it. company, so forth. do we have to a completely separate the networks that have to be secured by controlling nuclear power plants? >> i selling out the nuclear power plant control rooms are

separate from the internet. >> that's right, but it is a much bigger than to separate all the things that we would like to be completely safe from potential attack. i mean, is that feasible? >> again, let me just tell you a little bit about the system. the most concerned about, life safety things, data systems, can control systems. and they are typically not connected to the internet. it is alleged that the israelis and the americans actually attacked one with the iranian reprocessing maneuver by cicely getting a virus into those machines. you will see if that is true. to get tremendous amount of work to do that. they're not supposed to be connected and indeed in the united states i can say that the critical military networks and the command-and-control networks are all highly separated and highly secure and it is highly illegal to move your computer from one to the other. they have done all right things there. so i don't worry as much about those as i worry about the

increasing reliance of business systems that are mission critical on the public internet that are subject to denial of service attacks. we talk about it in the book is some light. and to net this all-out, the simplest thing for you all to do is remember two things. make sure you are not using a common passport across all of your accounts and make sure that password is hard to guess. the fellow who was running the ap twitter account just learned that lesson. to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in losses from someone. the second is, don't to download now where which is off for the you don't know and make sure you're always running the crown browser which is, of course come from google and free and it is the only one that has not been broken. the combination of all those would give you a very high degree of safety and security. if you run a company, the government, business, make sure you're running the most recent versions of software. almost all the tax are ones

where the attacker finds a downward of computer sitting in a clause of the people forgot him has not been updated with the latest into security patches and so forth. and the rest of the attack. >> we would go back to you next. i think there was -- yes. we will travel around here. >> in your world information is an agnostic. the internet operates on passion and waves. and yet when those waves overwhelmed sizes self based on scientific tax decreases with climate change by technology, it goes against technologies that can actually help the world. and in a world of information that is agnostic how you deal with those things? >> i guess there are a couple of ways that we look at this. you know, the theme of the book is the next 5 billion people. so i like the alternative. the alternative is a world where every generation after the next

is being essentially socialized and trained based on motivation. and what they're memorizing is often factually inaccurate, distorted, delusional, whenever other adjective you want to use. ultimately i believe in the power of critical thinking. we write about the power of critical thinking in the book. imagine 5 billion people connected to the internet. think about how many of those people are young. the vast majority of them. so these young people with mobile devices in their hands, whether the teacher says of the school are not, their to to memorize things as : not, ultimately that mobile device is the best vehicle against a world that is incredibly influenced by rote memorization. so, you know, it is not ideal and it is not the perfect answer , the power of critical thinking is important. >> i agree with all that, and people can be frightened incorrectly and manipulated by, for example, business interest. say you're busy selling something that hurts people. go back to the sitter -- cigarette example.

you could imagine using the profits of the corporation to try to spread false the spirit and you could make a pretty good go at it, but it would be true today that an alternative group would amass a pretty big group saying, hey, guys, this is crazy. first you would see them as choices and seconds, the ranking algorithms would eventually sort out which ones. so i think we have a pretty good answer that the more information , even with sponsored and we call it is this misinformation copy will try to manipulate you, that that's sorts of a ranking of rhythms get better, and my general message is that when you see something that does not quite make sense, check it. so, for example, there is a site , and every day i get a message, and it is not quite look right to mandela's check and see if this director not. the internet is full of this. and we may be going through a time in society where we went from having just a source of

information to possibly tested source of information, and one of the core conversations that we have to have this country, as a society is to check every so when you watch television and you are maybe being a little bit manipulated, rather than just believe it, check it. your honor website that looks a little the promotional, maybe you should check it. kugel is available. [laughter] >> i wonder if you could say a little bit more about the use of technology and get organized crime. and now you have been looking into drug trafficking, and i wonder if you could talk a little bit about the concrete on more promising applications that you have seen in the degree of corporations with the u.s. and mexican government. we will have obama going to mexico, and this is one of the topics that i am convinced that we have really not use technology to the degree it we could. >> well, let me start with an observation. eric and i took a trip to juarez.

sometime of last year. and we were startled to find that all of the police officers or wearing face masks. imagine living in a city that is already very dangerous buried is so dangerous that the police were there to supposedly protect you don't want anyone to know their identity. that was even more extraordinary about this is while the police are busy hiding themselves, the population is busy using their real identities to essentially crowd sores where the violence is their using various micro blocking platform that social media platforms. so there is a virtual kurds that is emerging as a result of so many people coming on line and places irs. will we find interesting, and write about in the buck is a challenge that the inmate is not unique to mexico, but it is best illustrated by mexico, which is when you talk about free expression people always talk about it in the context of a run in north korea, cuba. the state is actually doing the.

in mexico, you know, by all accounts the mexican government is a democracy, yet it is a very sensitive society, and it is censored because people some sense out of year, none of the government, but out of not state actors, in this case the various cartels and violent criminal networks. how you solve the problem of removing fear through technology and so we look at this in the book and explore various ways to encourage an honest reporting, a confidential report networks, and i would be sort of lying if i said there is a silver bullet answer, but this is a great example of what we were saying before. engineers levees as the problems >> think of as a problem of anonymous reporting an anonymous responders. can you construct such a network so that all the players cannot police the situation when the police themselves and corrupt? there's a technical way to do it. is very hard to do. we did see something called a private farm in mexico which is a reasonably secret location in mexico city, which is sort of

underground and the whole bit where they build a data mining system so that when they apprehend somebody; traffic stop the configure router they are. our immediate reaction were those of americans which is, think about the possible civil liberties possible leveraged violations. a country under such terrible, terrible attack from, in this case, criminal gangs might stoop to building an infrastructure which a subsequent government might then ms. use against a law-abiding citizen. this is the trade-off. and it is not obvious where will go, but i will tell you, the situation in mexico is very severe. >> so, this question also as a mexican connection, and, by the way, i agree that there is now the lead but none internet. however, companies and including your own have terms and conditions in community standards. i don't know if you saw this or that cannot of the bbc yesterday about to viral videos depicting decapitation us. apparently in mexico which one viral in my daughter's eyes cool

apart from other places as well. the beginning of the day facebook was standing by saying, even though it was showing graphic violence, it was in the public interest. and yet, by the end of the day having on my petitions and a number of those weighing in, they decided to take them down. somehow leave as decide what is in the public interest and not? >> youtube has a five page document which you can read which defines precisely. i have not seen that video, but i would be extremely surprised if that passed our test, that we would allow it. >> i just read a magazine about facebook, youtube, go. each of them having almost a committee. does that work? >> every company has a set of rules about this. for example, for the web google is a search index. we'll have an ability to take these things down. if we did commit would be by the form a filter which we don't do. however, you to where we hosted

content we do have terms of service. this is also true. i am assuming that twitter and facebook have analogous policies, but they may not have the same criteria or rules, and it is up to the company. >> bit point. digital payments. >> obviously, for those of you that don't know, it is a virtual currency which is bin in the news a lot lately, particularly unregulated in the value of between rises and falls based on demand. what is interesting about it is that the problem is the virtual wall of. even -- the number of instances where they have been hacked. they cannot protect the virtual

wallet. you will see more movement into a virtual currencies and virtual goods as well, but there are some serious security challenges that come with it. >> when we move and, whenever devices is, all transactions will have it. >> we are in the process of doing that, except it will never be all. there are many reasons why people want to use cash for convenience or what have you, but all of the technology firms have various forms of digital wallets. much more efficient. the phones have something called the nfc chip which allows you to go to up at a news is white and the charges. and so it is going to happen. >> but why don't we have something very simple from google like an easy pass or if i'm going around the web and want to buy the new york times or by, you know, something, i know of virtual all attended hat, but i can, you know --

>> we have google was. >> yeah, but -- >> first, -- >> it sounds like a simple proposal, a simple product. of or just for a long time, these are very complicated systems. they're subject to many regulations. there are all sorts of fraud issues. paypall, of course, is the company and faces the most. others have as well. and so you just to find a particular kind of wallop, one which you are going to lose the money in which most people would not agree with you one. they don't want a wallet which is okay to lose money in. you have to figure out. you still do not have a single sign on across all these sites. facebook and google and others tried to promote that. so we will get there. we will do it in different ways. >> certainly helped the journalism industry if people could make quick, easy -- >> the technology around micro payments which is sort of -- has

been around for a very long time. is not a technological problem. is a system provisioning skill problem. >> yes, ma'am. and then way back. i am trying. >> i think we all appreciate what you did in connecting the human trafficing data because of making it more efficient for access and for searching for that information, but there are so many examples where it reconfirmation is locked up in data silos. i am very interested in uniting our best databases. there are too many of them, and the passage across the mouth you're looking for something. is google doing more in this area? >> we have roots that reach out to these closed communities. is important to know that it is their data and not ours and it is their decision to make available. and the largest trove of useful data that is not available tech google is that in federal, state , and local governments. enormous databases that were

built in archaic architectures. and that information should be public. it is regulated to republic. it is of interest to the public. it will not cause a huge conference yell the problem to make a public. the government will run much more efficiently when that information is generally known. you can see what the government is up to. i think this is a good thing, so for the reason that you said and so forth, we are working on it, but the core message is that if you are -- if your job is to publish information and you don't publish it on to the lead in such a way that search engines like 80 confined it, you're not really doing a job. indeed, our respect something call robust which says don't call me. so if you talk to one of these firms and say, okay, you have a public sight. do you have a tax that prevents google and competitors from getting information? you may find that they actually have one. >> an electronic medical record? >> that is a whole our

conversation. but let me summarize by saying that there -- under the bush administration the government did a very good job of promoting interoperable the standards for medical records. technically a set of standards which will allow these captive records to be exchanged with each other. that is the state of the art. no computer scientist with ever designed the record keeping a way that it is now evolving. makes no sense whatsoever. that is why it is so difficult. it will eventually of immersed, but it will be very slow. >> way back. >> there is a pretty brilliant report coming up today from david robinson on technologies in china. it is called collateral freedom. >> where will it be posted? >> they are seriously putting a bullet right now which i will pass on. >> who is a from? >> it is from harlan un david robinson. robinson you is there firm, and a survey of $0.1,175 a share

evasion technology users in china. this is a one-of-a-kind thing. they are not using the taurus, but they're using, like he said, vp and. there up pending the lack a model. china knows where the malls are, they're not liking them. disrupting the technologies would disrupt all the business users are making lots of money nearby. is that something the u.s. scene in china or other countries where it is stopping right before it hits the ball because it was growth the economy or other parts of society? >> that is a specific technology used to do contributions. most notably used in wikileaks, although there are many places where it is used. bp in technology like dow was referring to, the kind that you're describing dollar you essentially have a proxy the you go through so all of the edge of the evidence that we have is that they continued to use the

services and are able to get there. g male is blocked on the order of half the time for reasons that we can never quite tell. our search efforts are blocked periodically for reasons that we cannot quite tell. my guess would be that the report is roughly accurate, but we have to take a look at it. >> last question. >> a comment on your observations. can you comment on your observations that women in technology? any aspect of it. use a technology in developing. >> i would start by saying that we and i am enormously proud of this next generation in technology. we are seeing extraordinarily talented, very, very smart, very driven people driving businesses to new heights. it is exciting guy and it is exciting that it is occurring in

an industry which is a stir nearly male-dominated. >> the point that i would ask. this book we talk about people coming on line, the majority are women. and our observation, we travel around the world. they do better. a lot of the society's women have been held back. the men sit around playing video games and working for the government. you know, finally started to happen. some of these middle eastern countries, a% of the male population march for the public sector. so the combination of women you are already moving forward from the bastions of society, it will be extraordinary. >> and on a very serious about the empowerment of these technologies allows the very local nature of her for crimes against women to be recorded and police to. and there are so many examples.

revisited one which i don't think we will ever forget. we visited pakistan, a group of women who have acid thrown on their faces. i cannot describe to you horrific this crime is. and there were using the internet to recover their identity because on the internet no one knew that they had been so victimized. building businesses, achieving their objectives in a society where the shame was such that they could not go out of their home. there were also trying to use the internet to pressure on the accused who inevitably were known but not prosecuted for one of the worst crimes in humanity. so, i felt that if they're is a reason that we should do what we do, it is for that reason. >> and i will end by saying, education around the world will be transformed, and the people who have leased benefited and parts of the world from education have been girls and women, and i hope that will be a major transformation of the 21st century.

this book is about to make the transformation of the 21st century. and it is alleged. the seller is first week out. our friends in politics to keep it there. go by the buck. go by the buck. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> is there a nonfiction author are but he would like to see feature on book tv? send us a new belt. or tweet us. >> what happened in minneapolis in april 1999? >> i start the book with that meeting because it is so informative of the industry's attitude and strategies. 1999, the obesity epidemic was just beginning to emerge, and it raised concerns, not only among consumer activists and nutritionists, but among people

inside the process food industry they gathered together for of very rare meeting, ceos of some of the top manufacturers in north america who got together at the old minneapolis headquarters, the old pill's barry headquarters in minneapolis to talk about none other than this emerging crisis really for the industry, and up in front of them got none other than one of their own. his name is michael mudd. he was a vice-president of kraft he was armed with 114 slides and late at the feet of the ceos and presidents of these largest food companies responsibility for the not only obesity crisis, but he cited the rising cases of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease. even lift their foods with several cancers. and he pleaded with them to collectively start doingmethings

michael mudd knew that the competition inside the food industry. you walk inside the grocery store, and it seems so tranquil periods of music playing, doing everything that they can to encourage. the food industry is intensely competitive. he understood that the only way to move the industry toward a healthier profile other product would be to collectively do something. the ceos reacted defensively and so we are already offering people choices. we have low-fat this commotion your fat that. if they really want that they can buy those alternative products. we are beholden to both the consumers and our own shareholders. they left the meeting basically going back to what they have been doing and continue to do

which is having a deep reliance on salt, sugar, and fat. >> what are processed foods? >> you know, and i am mostly looking at what people like to call all alter processed foods because, look, even a baby carriage can be defined as a processed food because it does not grow that way in the ground. it is a regular carrier that gets shaved into the baby form. but typically, i mean, from my sense processed foods of those things that take natural ingredients and highly refined and, highly process them, and the formula to put a price that i am writing about in the book are incredibly dependent on salt, sugar, fat, and it is not a mystery. you can pick up the label as the , thanks to some government regulation that we have and labeling, you can see the amounts of salt, sugar, fat in these items, and it is rather extraordinary. across the board at the grocer's torque just how reliant the industry is on these three ingredients, not just for

flavor, but for convenience because they can act as preservatives. also for low-cost because they can help the industry avoid using more costly ingredients like fresh herbs and spices. >> are you interested in being a part of the book tv online book club? this month we are discussing salt, sugar, fat, how the food giant tractors. we sat down with book tv at the l.a. festival books to discuss the book. you can watch the entire program on line at booktv.org. as you read the book this month and a poster thoughts on twitter with-tag be tv book club and right on our facebook page and then on may 28 at 9:00 p.m. eastern join our live moderated discussion on both social media sites. have an idea for next month? send your suggestions on what -- which puts you think we should include in our online book club. you can e-mail us.

>> what it is is a memoir, first of all. a little bit of a more. it is my travels to russia. memoir of the number of people who are in the book. we have gone through 20 years together, so it is a memoir of the last 20 years as the soviet union fell apart. it is a history. is a history of the oil industry, also in parallel is a history of russia these past 20 years. the initial collapse in the 1990's and the gradual recovery the decade after. so we end up with the russia that we see today after this long cycle, the russian oil industry has gone through the same cycle. is a biography, multiple biography of a number of people, but in particular of the plan that emerged in the 1990's from the city of st. petersburg. and came to moscow with prudence

in the year 2000, and you could sum up the last 20 years of russian history by saying that this is the revenge of st. petersburg over moscow as the clans from st. petersburg takeover and r largely without much exaggeration in command. this is very much a st. petersburg crowd. it is a history of the emergence of that crap. this is the latest chapter in the 300 year rivalry between the two capitals. it is a tale of two cities. it is a murder mystery, but i cannot give you the names of the guilty ones. you can draw your own conclusions. there are some marvelous unsolved mysteries. it used to be set in russia in the 1990's the could tell the business was profitable from the

trailer bodies the lead to the front door of the business. there were no bodies. it was not worth paying attention to because it could not possibly be profitable. i'll leave it to your imagination why, for example, the international red cross was highly profitable by that measure in the 1990's. the subsidies they you could get is even a science fiction story. will we are dealing here really when you come right down to it is the meeting of to alien civilizations after 70 years of the soviet. the oil industry in particular group in almost completely -- complete isolation. so west. and this is virtually a unique

case. other cases with the industries have grown up. national companies. in almost every case, in fact in any case these industries were first founded by four errors and then were taken over. not so in the case of russia where from the 1920's on at any rate for all practical purposes the oil industry was home grown and developed its own culture, it's on civilization, even as the soviet union did with its own language and its own culture . i sometimes like to tell my glasses that the story of russia and the 20th-century is very much that of the people decided that capitalism did not work, so it is as though they all piled into a space capsule and took off and landed on the planet mars and started a completely different civilization in which the market was thrown out and prices and profits and private ownership and built that civilization and actually made it run for nearly six, seven

decades. now well, but it ran. and then they decided that it was not working particularly well, so they all piled back into their space capsule and came back to earth, which is something remarkable. this is something the russians do every so often. they will conduct these massive social science experiments on themselves. this is not the first time they have done it. here they are back on earth again, and the oil industry suddenly faced the world. and so the book is very much of these two civilizations have come to terms of one another, which has not been easy because these past 20 years have been a time of revolution in the global oil and the street. and so suddenly you land on earth and you suddenly find yourself at least in the highland street faced with a race. the question is how of the russians done in that race? talented will people that they

are, talented engineering culture that they are. as part of the story. the book is -- it has tragic heroes and tragic into euros, one of whom is in jail. and i wanted to avoid making this the story of me gile. yet in the end, this man who was briefly the richest man in russia who went on the most successful private oil company in russia at the time of his arrest in 2003, this man has been in jail now for nearly ten years. october 2013, he will have been in jail for ten years. this very much is the result of a blood match with his nemesis.

the big question is what he did. there has been a great deal of coverage. and i did not want an end to that whole literature. but what have tried to do is to go into is company, and that have had interviews with a number of the players in that company to try to find out what was unique about that company that he built, what was unique that enabled it to double oil production within four short years. how was that done? and so you will find a chapter on that side of the story, and then lastly and have to say that this is a story of guilty love which i will come back to. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org. >> not joining us on the campus of stanford university at the hoover institution, a familiar face a more familiar name.

what do you mean when you talk about civil war? >> nothing is over until was over. there are situations when people collectively are saying, it was a bad deal or we cannot win or did not turn out like we thought it would be, and yet there are people who, in peacetime, not necessarily spectacular beckham out of the shadows, so to speak. they are the military versions. and they have a particular profile throughout history and a look at the war differently than the majority and say, you know what come aid is not lost and we can win it, but they have hard time convincing people to give them the opportunity because by definition they are eccentric and their personalities tend to alienate people.

they're not team players. >> those are three of the generals. you're the other two? >> an obscure man who had the idea that they could restore the entire roman manchurian empire. and then my favorite of all of them, 100 days in korea. we took so free and got back up to the 30th parallel and never once to evacuate and go back. >> did you have to narrow the list? >> just a mite it. >> ready to start? >> i had people. i had people as diverse as the spartans ... ahead richard the lionheart. the duke of marlborough, curtis lemay's all sorts of figures. then i thought, rather than trying to be systematically chronological every 500 years july will be impressionistic and pick what i thought were the most interesting, ben ami, controversial and then use them

as a template in the conclusion to say there are applicable to other people across time and space. >> save your generals, you write save your generals, not near cowboys. most are keen students, even scholars of for that guard little notice and nevertheless used their time in obscurity to systematically review contemporary tactics and strategies of an ongoing losing more. >> well, matthew is on the cover of time magazine, and they call them all land to it. he as a grenade here and the medical pac year, and it's not -- they did not realize that he had been studying late-night the strategy, tactics, history, language of korea. you take someone like sherman, while the uncle billy sherman delores ellen all of that. he was a magnificent student of history you understand the psychology of the southern plantation owner. and when he said, i am going to make war, he really had bought

in advance. so a good example they tend to be flag mons to candles as far as publicity goes. they are serious students. part of our popular culture from 2007-8, but for 50 years he was up phd. he was a serious student. tactics, strategy, political science. and yet the popular personal was not a little eggheads dollar. they had -- the adoptees personas that are necessary and sometimes fool us into thinking, they just came in and shot the place up and left, but they were not. they're waiting there all along. >> they are live mons to a flame >> and even their careers may be because they do burnout.

committing suicide. sitting athens for the persians. ended up as a beggar in the streets of constantinople. to really bad time. people were calling him a terrorist with in the year. in november. of a sudden fits the profile. >> victor davis hanson, were general patton -- was general macarthur on this list? >> no. one of the reasons that they were not is that everybody knows of macarthur. everyone knows. and i have in the past written. when you mention the name

themistocles people don't know who you're talking about. i think the service for ridgway, died in 98, 1993, no one knew who he was. you in the military of this man more than any other. nobody had really known what happened to him. he just sort of faded away. i tried to bring public attention to people that are out of the collective attention span. >> that is just a little taste of victor davis hanson's newest book, military book, to save your generals is the title. if you go to booktv.org you will be able to read see many videos with victor davis hands and talking about his books, as well as a longer version of him in fresno talking about this book. you're watching book tv on c-span2. book tv ..