cases is cases they can't even duties that would be appropriate for their skills. third, i argue the effect of back loading and this is an interaction between the targeting and the defined pension systems is what i call

crowding out the rising cost of the pension and and healthcare for public employees that is pushing so much of the compensation back into retirement has led to a squeezing of public budgets such that activist government can't do anything that they might otherwise want to. i think that i will run up here. there have been questions whether the agency provisions or other surrounding the collective bargaining in the public sector actually compromise the workers rights and that's been the subject of the supreme court litigation and high-profile recent cases, box versus sci you on whether this is actually a violation of some workers first amendment rights by organizing it this way. i guess i would just finish with the promoters of the public-sector unions haven't

made a positive case for why organizing the public labor markets in this way benefits the broader public. that it benefits the public workers themselves and it would be surprising if it didn't do that. but what benefit to the consumer's of the public services, i have not seen the strong principled case but it does do that. i have seen some negative cases that it doesn't have the negative effects but i haven't seen a powerful first principled case and i would leave it there. >> thank you. i want to thank the organizers for inviting me and thank you for the opportunity to talk about the working for an important issue. it's an important we were chatting just before we came out of that the study of the unions and have seen very little attention from the political so

this is a welcomed opportunity. i should say i'm not a specialist in the public-sector unions or debater by trade. we are going to try to play the role as best we can. i should say we are here in the introduction and the reason for the director of the center for the labor studies at the university of washington that is the current role. you may not want to sign it later. will you sign my book? [laughter] let me sign with a point of agreement. 100% agreement begins the book by saying that he is very much in favor of private-sector unions. when you come from that background and he appreciates the role of the unions that have played providing the workers a place and counterbalancing the

power of concentrated capital and promoting the conditions for safe and healthy work and raising wages, providing social security health benefits and contributing to the rise of the middle class. where we disagree is not that the public unions are different but whether they are different in a negative way in a less beneficial way. i disagree on the public-sector union inherently selfish or narrow in their goal and they are less democratic and the means by which they advance those goals and which they imposed the cost of the government and more broadly on the citizenry that squeeze out other kinds of agendas and those that might benefit the most disadvantaged. i should point out a large part of the argument is about the shortfall of attention and the

squeezing out of other kind of funding and we talked about a variety of different public-sector unions that teachers play an important role. i do hope that we get to talk about the teachers and teachers unions. so, let me start with the economic argument about the shortfalls to see what the book is all about. there was a shortfall in funding the tensions that became apparent in the last seven or eight years. the degree of the shortfall in how much of the crisis people would disagree about one of the things important to emphasize is that they are quite different in different states and that's important and what i want to say. they've covered lots of different unions and information about the union stability over time about how much the union workers make.

but what i didn't see as the causal arguments and evidence that there is a lot of assertion that unions imposed a cost that but i didn't see any clear evidence that made a causal connection between what the unions were doing and the problems that we see and the costs that they are imposing. i see the evidence of the cost where dust dates were experiencing the deficits and shortfalls and that unions are very active in terms of bargaining at the table and also the occasional election airing campaign contributions and so forth i didn't really see the evidence that there was a connection between them. there is good data that helps us test the basic thesis about the causal impact in the public-sector unions. a number of economists in

particular the character for the center of the retirement research at boston college is that the industrial relations center at the berkeley as the dean of labor economics and a number of others. so i'm not going to bore you with all of the numbers but to give you a picture because they have been looking at this issue to try to test whether this argument about what the public-sector union does. one of the things they have told us is the public-sector has been stable over a period of time and the number of public-sector workers and the percentage of the state budget, the percentage of workers relative to the population of that has been relatively stable. if it wasn't from the rising trajectory that created some sort of crisis and we also know from the date of the public-sector workers make roughly an overall of what the

counterparts do. they tend to make less wages and interest in a lot of study showing public-sector workers as a whole may vary from the particular occupation, 93 to 96% private-sector counterparts and controls for experience and skills and so forth. but they tend to have more generous pensions. when you balance the wage it is and radically different. there are the sort of examples of the public-sector workers who are retiring on lots of money but i think that's really misleading at the overall picture. the other thing that we know from these kind of studies is that there is no correlation between the union density of selective bargaining and union density in the states and even the deficits that we saw in the

states in the last ten years or the shortfalls. there is a very small linkage and the shortfalls but that is corrected wording to sylvia and her colleagues once you add in the control for the housing cost difference of the correlation though longer becomes statistically important. our public-sector unions are responsible for the shortfall and the answer is basically no. it doesn't offer an answer looking at the different variables. so the explanation of what happened with the shortfall pension one thing was the overall fiscal crisis that first kicked in in 2005 and the recession that we are just

coming out of and that of course treated massive budget deficits about 8.5% and the average on all of of all of the states if you put that together cover the states that experienced the greatest shortfall, the explanation is the crisis of those that experienced a very bad management by politicians and as managers account for where the shortfalls are. now that the data is quite consistent and quite compelling. so the aggregated data suggests you put together the fiscal crisis and that there had been mismanagement. what is the mismanagement? the mismanagement is that workers and employers and public-sector pay into the long-term pension plans but what the politicians were doing is not paying off of the money they were committed to the workers and the plans. they were siphoning off other purposes and other kinds of causes and what happens in the fiscal crisis, the deficit of

2005 2011 is all of a sudden the states are in a crisis and expose the fact and you can look at the specific case studies like kentucky which is probably the worst kentucky fried pensions. [laughter] kreis was an accountant who became a whistleblower about the mismanagement and what he shows is that the politicians only paid about 28% of the money that was committed over time and then when the fiscal crisis hits they have a massive shortfall of the unfunded liability into the plan. so other states are not quite as bad and illinois and other states not quite as bad yet still had a 50 to 60% unfunded liabilities such as massachusetts, pennsylvania, home state. some of the states didn't experience a shortfall and one

that didn't his washington state there are adjustments that were negotiated in the unions and the 100% coverage of the pension when the economic crisis hit all of the pension plans were funded at 100%. so the argument that has made a very convincingly as the other causes talk about is that it was political mismanagement. public-sector unions didn't control for. the politicians have to make the decisions. >> you are out of time. >> five minutes to respond. >> i appreciate michael's comments and i appreciate how he takes them in order.

he starts out with the negative case that the public employee unions it's not that they are good it's just they are not doing harm, which is to say that they didn't contribute the deficits during the recession ended and i cited in the book does study arguing that they are not responsible for the underfunding and i cited a study in the book which i also reviewed. however, those aren't the only studies out there and if i wanted it to even make the case stronger, that is the no harm case, i would also add today are not overpaid. so those can be the cases. they didn't contribute to the pension underfunding and they didn't contribute to the budget deficits but that isn't a positive case and it doesn't take into account the vast amount of evidence that i show the downside of in the cost.

now, i don't want to get into the war of the studies, but sylvia and alesia are not the only scholars out there and there are others out there like terry at stanford who has a good paper coming out in one of the top journals in political science that shows the public employee union using the same sophisticated technique is. we are responsible for driving up the sides of the pension and the underfunding in some of the key states. i will leave aside whether the public employee unions are responsible or the underfunding issue in some states. there are some bad actors and a lot going on. new jersey is one of them. illinois is another that isn't fairly bad shape. leaving that aside there is a good connection to show the size of the pension coming even if they are well-funded using the

current techniques that are questionable in my home state of new york for example is 100% funded if you use a government discount rate. however, the size of the pension as the public employee unions have grown in strength, the size of the pension that is the overall liability is enormous. they went from roughly 25% of the state's budget to now being the liability being three times were some cases four times the size cities are of these are much larger funds that are much riskier and a tunic of returns to stay 100% funded, a lot of them are now getting into risky investments in the hedge fund equities.

there isn't a causal connection i find that interesting if one lays out the evidence for how much power in state and local government of the employees are exercising the amount of money they are contributing and spending is a causal connection between that and search and a certain pay raises and certain work rules that were negotiated and if one had reversed it and provided that same evidence wherever it at the public-sector unions and corporate business i think partly that can be kind of an ideological point which is to say social science is a causal connection and we can make our best judges but even the most sophisticated empirical technique will still be a delicate question whether you have an ironclad causal connection. but i think there you do see

some this is about as strong a connection that costs are being driven in some of the effects that i have layout are driven in part by or in whole by public employee unions. >> i think the politics of it are very important in 2010 and the 2011 defeat .5% on average around the country and we have the shortfall in the number of states and politicians trying to deal with the crisis. one thing it doesn't provide is an opportunity for political leaders. are we the ones that mismanaged and therefore no, they have to

find somebody to blame. then they find the public-sector union. they are the ones to cause that and that's part of why we see all this attention of the public-sector unions because they are the ones that caused the crisis even though i would suggest that the data that we show there isn't even rejected by the primary people that study that. that's the first thing. second, a lot of public-sector unions give more to democrats, give it to republicans. so scott walker who makes his challenge or attack on the union what does he do he upsets police and firefighters because he supports republicans or they are more divided in their support. as a graphic of the teachers and that is what happens in a number of the states where there is an effort to scape goat the workers and it isn't entirely

republicans against democrats supporting that it is mostly exceptions like that and we do mention the general but she's very divisive in the democratic party and making a bad. this isn't addressed in the book at all there is an opportunity for the financial investors. in the 1970s and 80s the private pensions were replaced by the four o. one k. investments which most are in the effort to the primary argument we need to replace the pension with those schemes and there's a lot of people pushing that for the private investor the same private investors that got us into the economic crisis to begin with and what they want to do is they want to push the governors and the just leaders to make the workers pay for the cost of the shortfall in terms of the higher contributions that would benefit the lower wages in washington state.

and then to turn over the investment plan to the hedge fund brokers who are going to invest that and make tons of money in their fees and break up the unions that is quite a deal. that is a pretty shocking story. in the book about the politics and the direct interest in pressing for this financial shift reform and they are at the border of the manhattan institute and i understand there is a connection. okay. quickly, quickly the positive case for the union if you take what i just said the public-sector unions teachers, and please firefighters less democratic than the managers that want to take over the

$2.6 trillion in funding and one of the planes is that it is as if the counterbalance to the owners and employees and private sector of course they are because a lot of this is pushing the agenda that is about raising the wages and increasing in the public-sector but they are working together with all kinds of alliances in the public sector and private sector union. the last point i want to make is one of the arguments is the bargaining table and legislation but people do that all the time. i contribute to the interest groups and partisan politics, i argue and debate in public forums like this because they are pushing to increase democracy and they do it increasingly with the alliance of the private sector for the great many underpaid workers. >> this is getting good.

rather than throwing some questions to permit off track, i would like to have you respond particularly on the last point, you say that the public opinions have two bites at the apple and michaels is look around it's being placed in a lot of areas. i guess i wouldn't start there because that isn't in the same way if you take two bites of the apple the public employee unions are the only ones that get to negotiate with the government or their employer for salary benefits and working conditions but can also lobby the same employer through the political process for that now. many of us participate in civic life and i assume many of you are subject engaged and may contribute to the sierra club or the nra. you may get to protesting rallies. but those groups have to get people who are interested in diamonds and the environment they have to organize to make

the case. they don't get to bargain with the government to. they get to collectively bargain with their employers for paid benefits and working conditions but they do certainly participate in politics but politics the private sector union participation in politics is for in a sense a broader set of agendas not necessarily for things that are going to immediately affect the likelihood of the members. they may in the the long term improves society and improve things for their members to do much more long-term project and say lobbying the government for the pension that is going to change the formula and allow people to benefit. so i would come back on a couple of points. i think that he's being a little uncharitable to say that i am not fighting the most sophisticated and period studies. i think that they are in there and i think that there are other

studies than the ones he wants to look at and i tried to parse them as carefully as possible in the chapter on compared to pay but if you look at the premiums for when the comparable workers and public and private sector when there is a premium if you look at the state's premiums are the largest, they are also correlated strongly with the highest union percentage of states so there is an empirical connection. i think i do also in the book on lobbying look at the way that some of the public employee unions have gotten into bed with some of the big financial interests that michael decries in the sense that they are very much involved in big hedge funds and interested in managing the money of these pension funds and have sometimes lobbied for the pension along with the public employee unions because it would be more money for them to

manage. i think on the political side i didn't get to it in my initial remarks but i would come back and say one of the big problems that comes out of this on the political term is that the rise of the unions into the and the way they've driven up the cost and created the problem or contributed to the problem of crowding out has created a huge political conundrum for democrats and divided the democratic party and you can see it whether you look at rahm emanuel in chicago or rhode island on the one side and then say my home city or other politicians and the illinois democratic state legislature on the other side. and this is a divide in the state populace and a centrist wings of the democratic party about how to handle this problem because if you are a democrat and you really believe or a liberal and you believe the government can do a lot of good for people and for society, you know you are seeing a rock and

hard place with the a hard place with the rising pension and liabilities which are very large as i mentioned it because because they are squeezing out what you could spend to do on other things. they are cutting into library hours. that's who ran for office in the first place when she saw the bus service in rhode island and saw the library hours being cut in order to pay these back pension liabilities. i will leave it there is to make one more question and response into the microphones are were open and i hope you will bring your own questions. let's say that you're right that the public unions have an unfair advantage but maybe such an unfair advantage that it outweighs the benefits they provide to the public if that is so what is to be done? that is a huge question, one that i usually try to duck. to analyze this phenomenon but i

think we both agree hasn't been studied as michael mentioned and he is right there is an enormous amount of variation about the state and local governments and states and cities and lots of variation in the country. so some places have big pension problems and they go to illinois, new jersey, other states have big premiums. my home state of new york that is part of the equitable private sector. there are different solutions but in the states where the public employee unions are very strong and that there can be different things done i think it will depend on a the culture of this particular places. >> what are your concerns about what should be done if this takes on an unfair advantage and

move forward? >> the whole premise is i don't agree to have them pose this question. >> two bites out of the apple. one thing the two forums for the legislation of collective bargaining tend to deal with every issue by and large and this has been well-documented. those are different venues. they can to bring the collective bargaining about the pension issues. so right there i don't understand. the second thing about that is when they participate to try to influence legislators they are only one small piece of the overall picture. they want to have the limited number of voters and they give a lot of money for certain kinds of policies that there's a lot of other people and big business and financial interest in almost every case getting more money when there is something at stake

for them to do that but that doesn't begin to get at the end that wins that exists because of the dependence of the state and cities and corporations who provided the provide the employment and sometimes provide the taxes. anybody in the state of washington knows they don't have to spend in lot of money on lobbying they just say we are going to leave if we they don't get billions of dollars in subsidies. but there is some sort of public sector union that's all they have. the only thing the public sector unions have that is even like that is to strike but they are outlawed in most states and those that are allowed in this context where the unions are being stigmatized which they didn't, they are likely to go on strike because that is a very bad situation to do that. so i don't think this addresses the issue of power. to come back to the positive

issue, they contribute to a equity and public sector unions relies on them all the time. i've been very attentive to and participating in the local minimum wage campaign. that was pushed by the public sector union in the community groups, state groups, other unions it was a public-private union sort of a mixed project and that's become one of the primary causes of the country's wage for everybody not just unionized workers that everybody for the programs that will benefit working people that have been taken away. to make the case that they are undemocratic on either means, the primary standard for the buck and this is true in the talk is about markets and the way markets work. in many ways what this is all

about is contributing to projects of privatizing the government and the pension plans which isn't something that i would equate with democracy but that is and when that really is and when that really countries to equity. feeding into the equality between the concentrated wealth and concentrated work for capital. >> i would like to open up to those of you that have a question if you would step up to either microphone comest up close unlike what i'm doing so they pick you up on c-span. say your name into the microphone and give us your question. >> my name is steven miller and stephen miller and folders closure, i am a teacher. i will get to the question but i want to help with the debate.

i appreciate that they were able to hold the state for the largest tax cut ever in u.s. history by the state government. biting the apple that's quite a big bite they took but he claiming the public unions to the budget crisis is the equivalent of saying the titanic sunk a cause they had waiters and maids working on the titanic that day. let's work with a simple concept using economic principles. you want to know what unions do to create a positive impact. so would you agree how your wages for the average worker provide higher wages and benefits for most workers in

washington state is a great example because we have the highest minimum wage in the country and the lowest unemployment. and they unions played a very keen role waging the want to be because the six raising the wages. >> let's start with you. >> [inaudible] [laughter] spirit iowa to start by correcting the record i don't argue in the book that the public employee unions were the cause of the great recession or are the single cause of the pension crisis across the country or that they caused higher deficits. i don't argue those things. i do argue that the state, and again i draw for the empirical data the states with stronger public unions tend to have higher levels of public debt. that is different than the deficit and the different than the recession. if i don't argue that in the buck and if anyone got that

message here take that away. so the gentleman's question but i do find you raise an interesting question and there is an old economic that is caused threat effect. if one company firm is unionized and raises wages around the firms, we need to match and in hopes of staging of the union drive. so those union threat effect where the private sector unions could not only help the workers for one plan to that surrounding workers to my knowledge no economist or very few economists found threat effect in the public sector so they can raise wages and benefits but it tends not to have any effect on the surrounding labor market and this goes back to the point that michael is a little confused about that there is a deep connection between the negotiated collective bargaining and pension and any pay raises factored into the pension formula. so, the connection there and there is often a at least anecdotally when you do

interviews you discover this public managers often say we can't do anything for you because that is factored in the current budget that we can do something on the pension longer term and that will be pushed off later and you can get that compensation in return down the line. so, to pay question is very much connected because any pay raise is going to be factored into how they are calculated and what people's final average salary is serious >> we can go to another question. >> on the asp point that is precisely what you explained that the politicians say we can't really give you the wage rate right now but we will get the pension down the road or vice versa that is what it means by mismanagement. there is the the center for politicians to not worry about down the road but to say we will give you this to siphon the

money off that is in the public sector unions fault. they are not making those decisions. they are victim because they are the ones that are losing the benefits and security down the road and making the concessions to pay for the politicians responsibility. exactly what is argued as the problem. about the impact of the raising wages of the public sector that's wrong. if you were raise the wages in the public sector i wrote about the gender-based pay equity so this is unions over 120 around the country that studied almost 30 in-depth and spent a lot of time there and this is where the unions worked with local civic groups to organize women who were not unionized in the public sector to file lawsuits on their behalf and then to take the lawsuits to bargain to raise the wages because the women's work was systematically underpaid. this is the same issue that martin luther king went to fight for the sanitation workers when he was assassinated which was to

do certain jobs in both public and private sector systematically on the race and gender. the public-sector unions what happens is the worst sophisticated economic studies in the area because there is a major pay equity activity when you raise the wages of the clerks and secretaries and nurses in the public sector that raises the wages of everybody else as well. it has a kind of ripple effect. it isn't consequential that the wages of women in the 1960s on average was 59 cents to every dollar that men made for a variety of reasons. it had a significant part but of the gap closes from 59 cents to about 99 cents per dollar. the downside is that they were actually dropping so it is not entirely good story but that is just one of the ways the public

workers and proved the conditions and sometimes they are just local but if you do that and lots of in lots of places you get a lot of markets. but fighting for the cause of minimum wage is something that isn't something the public-sector workers it's aimed at raising the wages for everybody. >> what is your name into question. >> my name is john and my question is for michael and it might imply that i'm sort of unsympathetic to public unions but the office i'm sympathetic and supportive but my question deals with process and it is my understanding in washington state that when the unions but when they unions negotiate the wage and benefit packages the general structural auto is that the representatives meet with the governor and the region agreement that go to the legislature.

the washington state model was sort of replicated reasonably uniformly across the country or are we sort of a standout in that respect into second do you support the basic process by which the union contracts are negotiated at the state level? >> i am not an expert in what is happening at washington state for that level of negotiation. i do know the pension issue is that the fundamental trade-off of a little. they do present a case at the governor presented in the budget of the voters which are which often means there is ongoing negotiation after that in changing the overall budget which means that -- i'm sure there's lots of room for talking about is that a fully transparent in the process.

but that is different than undercutting public-sector unions and politicians are the ones that determine what the nature of the process is. as of again i would turn it back to a political question and not something that is the liability of the public-sector union. >> let's bring it back over to decide. your name and question. >> full disclosure i'm a member of the community college teachers and of the federation of teachers. so there's a little context for you. [laughter] >> i'm a long-time activist in my union. my experience is different than what you are stating in terms of the role of unions in looking out for their own interest and as opposed to the collective good or public good and while i make no apologies for unions looking out for the interest of their members as working people it is also the case that my

union and i think this is true of many have actually led the charge to protect the people that we that reserves of community we serve so community college students -- >> what's your question clicks that i'm getting to it. >> the teachers and state workers have taken on a roll so i'm curious if you could elaborate on your thinking around about lack of the benefit for the public good in terms of the union role. >> i am glad you raised that question in putting forward a positive case which is if you think about the act typically -- the activity to invest time energy and money on there is nothing wrong starting with their own interests in let's say the union leadership winning the best deal for their membership

it would be surprising if that wasn't agenda item number one. if it wasn't, that union leadership is often in the democratically. if someone would say we can win a better benefit or better working conditions so that will be agenda item number one. going out from there the public employee unions and this is connected to the private sector unions and somehow supporting they are the heart and soul of the labor movement today. so michael is right about that however if you look at private sector unions in many places, governor walker in the last election where the public-sector union went with their opponents there are fissures in the labor movement between the public and private. beyond that kind centric circle the public employee unions as i briefly mentioned are deeply embed to the larger democratic party so they adopt at least

rhetorically lots of the main issue positions of the coalition. they often underwrite activist groups on the left of the political spectrum such as the teachers unions for example have bailed out a couple of points the naacp financially so in that sense it becomes not only a principal case why this is better for everyone it just becomes a partisan case which is is a support of liberal politics, public employee unions are the money and manpower today behind the coalition so therefore i support them and that is in a sense the broad principled argument such as that goes. >> i'm going to take one more question but i'm sure both daniel and michael will be around afterwards if you would like to ask further questions. your name and question? >> has there been any analysis in the outcome of scott walker's union legislation fiscal data or

county level or education out comes of impact of other services of the state or local level? >> there has been some analysts. the biggest act has been to reduce the union membership with the job growth that wasn't as good as walker promised college he deserves the credit or blame is always the subject of the debate. some counties and cities most notably milwaukee itself were able to use it to balance their budget in the ways that they couldn't have done before in terms of longer outcomes on some of the questions that you mentioned on the classifieds. there are journalistic reports but not any studies that i would say for some of those empirical questions to be answered.

>> i want to thank both of you for this enlightening conversation. i've enjoyed it. [applause] you can see all of this again online at c-span.org. the justice department today announced it has invited a minneapolis man for trying to join isis. the 19-year-old was going to fly to turkey with three other men. border agents took him off the plane before he departed and he has been in custody since february 5. president obama says the idea that a group like isis represent islam the religion is false. the president was speaking at the closing session of the white house summit on violent extremism from 65 countries.

here's a portion of his comments. >> terrorists are desperate for legitimacy and we have a responsibility to refute the notion that groups like isis somehow represent islam because that is a falsehood that embraces the terrorist narrative. at the same time, we must acknowledge that groups like al qaeda and isil are targeting the propaganda to the communities particularly the muslim youth. the muslim communities including scholars and clerics therefore have a responsibility to push back not just on the twisted interpretations of islam but also that we are engaged in a clash of civilizations. that america and the west are at war with islam or seek to suppress muslims or that we are

the cause of every ill in the middle east. >> data narrative sometimes extends far beyond the terrorist organizations. >> that narrative becomes the foundation upon which they build their ideology and by which they try to justify the violence and that hurts all of us including islam and especially muslims who are the ones most likely to be killed. obviously there is a complicated history between the middle east kaaba west and none of us should be any of them it be any from the criticism in terms of specific policies. but the notion that the west is at war with islam is an ugly lie. and all of us, regardless of our faith and responsibility

rejected. at the same time the former extremists had the opportunity to speak out to speak the truth about the terrorist groups. and oftentimes often times they can be powerful messages messengers in debunking these terrorist ideologies. one said this isn't what we came for to kill other muslims. those voices have to be amplified. and government has a role to play. at minimum as a basic first step countries have a responsibility to cut off funding that fuels hatred and corrupts young minds and endangers us all. we need to do more to help lift up the voices of tolerance and peace especially online. that's why the united states is

joining for example with the uae to create a new digital communications hub to work with religious and civil societies and community leaders to counter the terrorist propaganda. when the u.s. government efforts will be led by the new coordinator of the counterterrorism communications, and i am grateful that my envoy to the organization of the cooperation has agreed to serve in this new role. the united states will do more to counter the hateful ideologies and today i urged the nation to join us in this war. they join a discussion on providing the groups. link back

>> the memories come flooding back for so many people who until today had lost to such a big part of their childhood. then he released after the warsaw the memories and with it the history of the camp. now more than 60 years later. >> the only family in the camp during world war ii at the crystal city in texas and what she says is the reason for the camp. >> the government says we have a deal for you. we will reunite you with your family in the family internment

camp if he will agree to go voluntarily, then i discovered what the real secret of the camp was. they also had to agree to voluntarily repatriate to germany and japan if the government decided they needed to be repatriated. so, the truth of the matter is that the crystal city camp was humanely administered by the ins. but the special divisions and the department of state used it as roosevelt's primary prisoner exchange in the center of the prisoner exchange program. >> eight eastern and pacific on c-span q-and-a. >> lares as we are in the second generation of the digital revolution where home thermostats, dryers, doors and car locks can be controlled through a smart phone and he

talked about data technology and electronics at the club in san jose california. this is about an hour. >> i'm the chief economist for the consumer electronics association. probably best known as the producers of the small show in las vegas. we are just at 2.2 million square feet 170,000 at the nearest friends so i'm sure that we will be talking about that today. this is my oprah moment. we've given you all a copy just published yesterday. it is a history of how we ended up here but also to paint a picture of what the implications are when everything becomes digital and connected. we see the world that starts to

impact every experience that we have. perhaps you can spend a minute to introduce yourself. >> thank you to the center and congratulations on your book. i had the privilege of reading it in manuscript. so i can say with confidence it will be a success. i think that it encapsulates a lot of the same kind of technologies that i have been looking at and that is in the basis of the book last year and it is just more of the same and we can talk about it this year since the two of us were there. but one of the things i want to look at is what we think of as

the second generation as a result of the revolution so 20 years ago when i first started writing about these trends the industries that were effective immediately where the obvious ones, consumer electronics, computing, communications entertainment and media the ones using the technology all the time. what we found in the research and big bang disruption is now we are entering a stage where all of the other industries that were not as transformative the first time around now it's their turn and a lot of interesting reasons we can talk about why some of them have been slower than others and faster than others. but all kinds of amazon, napster, all the same things that happened to the first time around are starting to happen have been in the industry that had very little impact last time. and that has created an

interesting set of threats and opportunities for the businesses and startups and investors and other interested parties. those are the technologies that i think you write about so well in the book and we will talk about as many of them as we can. >> in the global industry that serves around the world at the epicenter for nearly two decades and one of the privileges is that i get to work with exciting clients and i've been working about for the last couple of decades and it's interesting when napster hit them, the response or lack thereof then

i've done a little bit of work over the last three generations of those that we know and love today and it's been kind of interesting from the digital disruption perspective because unlike the smartphone that we throw away every couple of years, the consul, the likes of playstation and xbox have been lost in much longer. no of time so the strategy and the digital decisions that you're going to make and how you want to them and how them and how they work through the generation is different from a lot of the consumer electronics that we see today. those have been lucky enough to work with the providers on the crowds and that is interesting because you are making decisions that are quite often looking at

things like network technology and that is a two decade investment if you are looking at. then if you look at the other work it's much softer development if you look at the results just amazing developer and over the past year. bringing a closer call i started my career back in europe on the electronics and they worked back in 95 with virtual reality. it actually works. 20 years ago it didn't. i think what is interesting as we look at the digital discussion at the pace that we

see and everything is changing really fast but there have been cycle developments around the development around the virtual technology. actually it underpins the structure that we see right now. although you look at the description and say what is happening right now a lot of the foundations that allow that disruption to her are actually over a decade or so. so congratulations. >> both of you talked about signing and it's something i talked about in the book as well. we tend to think of these moments, these moments where innovation is binary but really it's part of this evolutionary path that plays out over years or decades and that's what we

see in the trend we talk talked about today in the connections and we started first with the devices that were owned in high frequency. television was one of the first to become digitized, 98% of the households have them. you take them in and start from there and so we have now gone through over the last 15 years all of the devices that we have and we are starting to now spilled over into the adjacent spaces in the second order effects. what does this start to look like? we've come to the end of the story where everything is impacted. that is an easy job. what is the sequence of events do we see from now until the end if you will? >> one of the things we found in the research is it sort of happens there's a famous quote from ernest hemingway another

character how did she go bankrupt and he says two ways by gradually and then suddenly he that is exactly what we found in the industry that we looked at it as you see a long period of gradual change where the incumbents say okay this new technology is coming and eventually it may affect our customers and products, but it is happening and it's sort of an incremental way and almost a predictable way and we don't really have to worry. then one day some event happened for critical masses reach a product or somebody finally gets the right combination of technologies or business model and they put it together and they let it go and it's facebook. ..

it would be everything is connected. everything you saw was connected to everything else one of the things that struck me they now have a partner program. and the list of partners initially seemed completely bizarre. the car companies the lot company -- i am trying to remember some of the other.

what do those have to do with the thermostat? well, the dryer, whirlpool was part of it. your dryer is now talking to your thermostat. what it is telling you you get in the car well if the the cartels that the thermostat, there's nobody home. they turned off the heater turned on the air conditioning. and not coming back to muscle slowdown the cycle or two minutes before they arrive/turn it back on or when you put your key in the smart lock it says oh sean just walked in the house. this house. this is the temperature he likes. adjust the setting accordingly. these are connections that initially seemed quite bizarre, but as you work your way through it you realize that it makes a lot of sense. of course, these are totally different industries. they don't normally seem

like people who would be partners or things that would go together, but once you get to that incredibly low price.and show a sensor a sensor dozens of sensors and everything, suddenly these connections become possible and the idea of industry the very idea of industry starts to fall away and you see these very strange -- >> one of the things that happens in technology is we have these periods where we move from scarcity to a surplus. i think about the 60s and 70s where computing power was a scarcity. we used it very sparingly. it's might have been a mainframe that people would sign up for time. and then around 84 we take

those scarce resources and it becomes an abundance. restart to waste it. mcintosh the 1st computer to use a practical user interface we would have never wasted computing power on rendering an aggressive user interface because it was essentially a redundant feature. they tried to aggressively use the interface and 81 but it wasn't successful. you were having to pay a premium. a premium. i feel like the sensors are there today where it's gone from scarcity to a surplus. it creates this knew opportunity, opportunity, these knew marketplaces. i think about image centers on phones. we used to only include one. then we started to include a 2nd. now we are including multiple ones. it changes our behavior introduces the self he and we can argue whether that's

a good or bad thing. >> the word of the year two years ago. >> we deployed sensors on the front of that mobile device. and so i think if you're at an in an industry you need to think about the deployment of sensors and the experience at the end user has which is a great example of the gradual phenomenon's. one of the things that is driving a sensor position of everything is the unexpected event, the smartphone revolution. a billion plus smartphone devices. what that has done is created this secondary market for all the parts. if you take a commercial drone in a 3 d printer, most of the things if you literally take them apart what you find is most of the pieces in the are smart

phone pieces. often the last generation of smart phone pieces because they have been made in such an incredible volume. get a gyroscope and accelerometer the displays the chipsets themselves are being made at such incredible volume just for the smart phone market that his bills over into these other industries and what might have been years away is now happening overnight. >> as you look at core technologies, i like to think the device level level, huge advances, like you say at the sensor level the network the connectivity and arguably it is not moving as fast as we are seeing the devices. you have the clouds unlocking incredible creative things. i am struck by at a technology level there are

three things that i think are almost as vital. the reason we're seeing the explosion of creativity is not only the technology development but also the fact that they are opening ecosystems for development. if you are a small start up today you can now conceivably go into the hardware space, work with different players. you can actually get into the hardware space the software space. you you can stand on the shoulders of giants. the other thing you can look at the smart phone and the user the financial power of that user. with android and ios just take those two and that is 1 billion customer accounts,

1,000,000,001,000,000,000 paying users that you as an individual developer can access. well, that is that is unique, something that has happened over the last few years. and back to your world the continual rise in consumer electronics. the enterprises consumer electronics and what is fascinating in that space is not only are we spending more on consumer electronics at the expense of other categories, products like the tv is costing less. you kind of have a hedge opening up. that kind of fueling is just phenomenal. and it comes to the., how many units of the apple watch. what is your proxy for how many apple watches we will be sold. there is such a huge amount that is opening up these devices. i fully agree, we are in an amazing time of creativity in the digital space command

it is almost as if this moment where we are just seeing the proliferation of so many different products as evidenced. the interesting thing we will be which ones survived which ecosystems we will survive. and to your.about how they interact, it's a good question which services we will be the kingmakers in the platform that everything we will congregate to. ios, to. ios android, some knew company that we haven't thought of. absolutely absolutely fascinating time and an incredible amount of change of the next few years. >> the standards, to. seeing this now on the internet of things, there is not yet a kind of dominant standard for how these devices we will share data and interact. interact. they're are three four, maybe five competing once it's. i wouldn't predict which one

is going to win, but we found in the research that is typical in an emerging knew ecosystem that you we will see -- in fact it is a sign of maturity when you see a fight among different possible standard providers and eventually it gets worked out, but until it gets worked out it is chaotic and right now both of the internet of things solutions 's,'s but most of them are kind of.solutions. this this is the smart baby monitor, the smart electric grill the smart yoga mat. they are really aimed at a particular solution for a particular audience. they're not really part of some whole that you can see is kind of groping toward that end we know that it will happen but as you say, we don't know who is going to

make the market. >> what we are doing is building up the notes of the network and the nodes of the network five years ago were a couple a couple of core devices, primarily pc, mobile phones, tablets but we have changed the structure of the network making the mobile phone the center. and so it becomes this device for all these. and if you look at those devices that are launching connecting to the internet they don't have an interface the interface is the smart phone, the viewfinder. i look back 15 years ago. our digital existence was different from our analog existence. we would go online. we we even talked about going online or logging online. review those as distinct identities and see that boring with the mobile phone becoming the bridge that allows us to toggle between those two identities which were once very distinct and now are quickly merging.

>> which may not necessarily be such a good thing. >> that's an interesting premise that social norms we will start to set in and apply social norms to what we want to have digitized and what we don't want. the question now is not can we. and that used to be the focus the technical solution. now it is should we and if so how do we connect it? directly use bluetooth some other type of communication protocol? and ultimately the use case scenario becomes the paramount question, what does that use case scenario look like? >> so one of the positive side effects of all this is you do get a thousand flowers blooming and people experimenting.

you source the parts, can build stuff over them and everything can be done in such a virtual way that you can be in the hardware business even if you are one person. the risk is because they're is no head is one of the big problems we are already seeing concern about privacy and security which is know surprise. a lot of the folks at going into the business they may literally be startups. so they don't understand concepts like privacy by design, think about encryption what is the risk case and not so much even the damage but the bad puerto rico that causes when somebody hacks the smart baby monitor and starts talking to somebody else's kid which is so creepy the

people step back and say maybe their should be some central authority. clearly not the way things happen in the united states. it is one of the downsides to our open-ended permission lift innovation culture. >> it interesting, you mentioned the data sets being built. one of the things we're seeing this data being built up by multiple different players. and in fact over the last few months i extracted all the data i could for every single digital service that i use. i went to google, facebook. you look at these sources and pull the data and the reality is what you realizes

there is an unparalleled connection for instance the learned that my average altitude was 102 feet. but i am just struck. what i am intrigued by his you can look at that as all of the security threats, threats, the trust issues the privacy will put that to one side the opportunity of that data being connected and where will it lead and how will the data be brought together? a nice example of that is in our personal memory space our photos and videos. if any of you are like me you have your photo stored in a variety of different places and videos.

think about think about that, what you did last year, where you were. some of it is shown on facebook. i'm just fascinated by how that data set gets harnessed and combined and draw insights and improve our life's. the business world business outcomes, we are in this interesting time when things are really talking to each other. creating this proliferation of data but it is yet to be harnessed. when technology finally catches up my 40000 photos you no interesting things we will happen in the future >> will we start to move to predictive recommendation engines.

the number of steps you took took the movies you've watched but we don't do a great job of predicting a recommendation, especially when it deviates. there is know reason that somebody's fitness devices couldn't also look at my calendar and say your not going to hit your goal today unless you deviate from your course. it's you could easily imagine vacation recommendation engines that look at where you have been and suggest places you haven't been or hey we see you have done a lot of beach photos. and it really then connects with this, i don't know in or enjoyment that we have that we didn't may be fully recognize. i thought i i like the beach. i didn't realize quite how much. these vacation these vacation recommendation engines are saying, i can check out these beaches.

one of the big struggles for companies today is figuring out how much do i tell the customer about themselves. they no a tremendous amount and are hesitant to be two's over-the-top. they don't bother to tell you what your average is because they don't want necessarily to freak you out but when that becomes a useful data source data by to inform and to predict something that you might be interested in that is where you start to really see it. >> and how you drive usefulness out of it. the tile app. and, you know it is tracking my location. i location. i am fully aware of it. it's also the reason that when i go to a concert and park my car it was able to

guide me in the rain and dark back to where my car was. sans happy to have that trade-off. when events like that happen that are remarkable when they occur. >> you are both talking about kind of the misuse of big data for personal enlightenment. then, of course, there is the collective enlightenment 's. i heard a story about the testing source, 23 and me. they already built up a pretty substantial database. with the permission of there members they sent the data set of 5,000 sets of this information to pfizer to use in research on future lupus

treatments and lupus drugs. so in some ways there putting all the information about you being more valuable. even more abstracted and use it for something completely different than what it may have originally been collected for. of course, again, as as soon as you start talking about those uses the creepy factor. sending data to drug companies. that sounds awful. okay. they have permission. it's for research. it may improve health outcomes. you have to start making trade-offs. sometimes they are implicit and sometimes they are explicit that we will make more of them as these data sets start to become connected or connectable and we see these possibilities and realize the good news is x, the bad news is why. >> interesting, it is kind of an incremental set of jobs.

one of one of the things that i just find amazing what a blast couple of years three years or so they're has been lots of talk about when we would use the cloud as our golden copy for our data. it has been talked. the internet space technology space bar years. if any of you when you bought your knew iphone and had your old one and you wipe your old iphone and then connected your knew iphone to all cloud and all your photos got downloaded to your phone most people did that. most people didn't do it through itunes. in that one case all of your personal data was in the cloud. your golden copy was in the cloud and your phone became secondary tier golden copy that sitting in the cloud. i think that happens and that flip from being stored

locally in all of your personal memories being stored locally to now the golden copy being in the cloud is something that has happened to us, and most people don't really realize that that massive shift occurs' but there are incremental jobs happening. you know i think back to one of the earlier comments. each one of those might not seem so big but it takes you so far. in the golden globes richard linkletter one for boyhood, this amazing film where he shot three days every year for the last 12 years. one of the things he did great interview with the economist, and he made sure every shot they did from every shoot they did each year they included some technology of the day in the shop so that you can see the advance that had occurred because he was insightful enough to understand that of all the things that will change over the 12 years, 11

of the things that would impress upon people was the change in technology. and indeed, that is what you see. every 12 years the technology being used was remarkable. and so i think they incremental jobs. >> the phones get smaller and smaller's. it's fascinating how it changes in the short space of time. much more qualified to talk about this than i am, but that change in smart phones all having small ones and then they came out that was the norm to within two years small ones feel weird. so i think change can happen. behavioral change can happen very fast. i think we are all shifting

very rapidly. >> and i think that is the experiment taking place now. it is no longer a technological question about if but is it technologically meaningful. and when i look at something like the apple watch or really any smart watch what we are looking at is, does the internet makes sense on the wrist? if so, what are the use case scenarios? payments make a lot of sense on the wrist. we will and power payments on the wrist. wrist. but at the fundamental level that is the question we are asking everywhere. as the internet makes sense in a yoga mat? is the internet makes sense in your vehicle? does the internet makes sense here, they're? that is the question we will be asking for the next three to five years it's. then you start to say, does data elsewhere make the internet in that yoga mat a better experience? and then you start to tie the data streams together.

so if i can take information hear and influence this decision over hear with this experience, and that, to me, is the ultimate test. something happens in the physical world, we digitize it it connected since rising and that is kind of the easy part. the real question is do we close that feedback loop and get something to then change back in the physical world? if it is a fitness device, now digitize the level of fitness the steps cause me to eat differently, to sleep differently, to do different things, to change my behavior. if it doesn't that is where things start unwind and i i think that is some of what will start to set and. or the use case scenario is isn't that rich and so i'm going to keep my analog whatever because knowing that i have payments on my wrist to and really influence. whatever it is. >> but with technology prices collapsing so fast do you actually even need to make this decision?

the question is everything we will be digital and is just a question of whether it's on or off. like the yoga mat example. i'll be going to get to the.where the sensors -- we are already getting to that. they are so inexpensive. it is just going to be implicit in most products over a certain value. >> i think yes but i think the bigger question is is does it provide a meaningful experience for the user? if it doesn't really provide a meaningful use case scenario that it really doesn't matter whether it's digital connected, since her eyes. if it doesn't really change what's happening. i think you already see that in some states and you look at the way we greet each other. we still do that in a very analog way. digitization has really impacted that yet. and and so just because

digital can be doesn't mean that it will be. >> but to me the secondary effects can be and often are even more dramatic and more important from an economic standpoint than the questions you are asking. is this valuable for me? the more importantly, you look at the whole range of health and fitness related iot devices and all the different types of biometrics that are being tracked in you start to kind of again imaginal world as you do in your book's. you put those things together and collect that information in some standardized way it tells you information about yourself and phrases to for changes your behavior. i'm more interested in what effect that has on the healthcare industry. we have, you know 100 plus years of a model where

they're is a professional class of doctors and healthcare professionals who are the only ones who have that secret information and the ability to tell you your pulse in your blood pressure in your glucose level. and that in some ways is how the healthcare industry for better and often worse has been structured. now suddenly as an accidental consequence of all this cheap technology you can imagine a world a world in which every patient has that information about themselves. they collected, analyzes get feedback, change the behavior as a result. how does that affect the healthcare industry and its model of both delivery and training of professionals and so on? that's what i what i think of as the 2nd order effects from an industry standpoint that can be much more devastating wisely because it was unintended or unplanned, the ones that can catch the incumbent by surprise's in an exciting way depending on which side of the equation your looking at. >> and if nothing else it

changes the dialogue that we have with these professional services and ultimately it changes the experience that we have. we already see that taking place. you look at look at the digitization of entertainment, one thing that it did it allowed us to break apart the own measly you saw the explosion of singletrack experiences which continued on the streaming services and other elements. it's fundamentally different than it was prior to digitization. >> and now it's happening with video. >> right. it's happening with video it's happened with books the breakdown in books or amazon has kindle singles, something that fits into a smaller space. when i look at the digitization, sensitization and other spaces it has the ability to influence the experience we have. we talk about autonomous vehicles. you don't need a steering wheel seats that faced

forward, you can do anything you want, but beds, couches, a hot tub. it is a fundamentally different experience because of those building blocks. you can change everything. if you are in and experienced industry's you need to think about how that experience changes once it becomes connected and digitized and centralized, especially when it's coming from left field, all these other devices that have know intention of disrupting you. collateral damage. >> more connected but regulation health, driving mentions drones. as you look at all of those, regulation plays a massive part in the ability for businesses maybe not consumers, but for businesses to be able to be some of the you no, novel use cases. >> well this is a big part

of his work. i think that was what i i mentioned before, some industries are affected at a different pace than others. one of the big determinants is the degree to which it is already protected in some ways. existing business model healthcare in some ways protected from transformation by a vast regulatory space. in some ways they complain about it, but now in some ways it becomes their protection and a weapon. you see this very publicly and how the taxicab companies are responding to things like huber the huber the hotel industry is responding to things like air b&b. we have to live in this highly regulated world.

he did do it a lot differently but that's not the conversation we want to have. you have to stop these guys working because they don't have to play by those rules. they can deliver these things are lower cost's. and the regulation becomes the bludgeon with which to slow or change the pace of disruption often for worse, sometimes for better. in many cases it really becomes than the gating factor, what we refer to as the bullet time the matrix with a can use it to slow down what would otherwise be a much faster disruption. i no you have a lot of thoughts about this because we work very closely together. >> definitely, and definitely and it is setting up a series of hurdles that inhibit the spread of technology. so let's now open the conversation more broadly to q&a. they're may or may not be microphones. feel free to join our

conversation. >> one comment up here that i see. it's the station back there. >> thank you. you guys are talking a great deal about consumer electronics. is this change driven by consumer toys? industrial applications? >> i think it's both. they are happening at the same time. again as the question of where does the internet make the most sense? i think we are at this time we're moving into the next phase. the example i like to give

is in 1995 the homepage for the internet's is something like yahoo putting additional information on a single page. then with the explosion of websites were moved to something like a search engine and with a further explosion of internet property we start to move to something like reddit i curated experience. we are now moving as we go from 2 billion smart phones in the world than 1.7 billion pcs to 50 billion objects, moving to the next phase of the internet where we are redefining the homepage. what is happening the both moving in that same direction. the fundamental question is does the internet make sense? and so that is the enterprise side's. ge calls that the industrial

internet. cisco cause of the internet of everything. we we will just call it the internet. we don't talk about the mobile web very much. it's just the internet. the same thing we will happen with the internet of things. things. in 15 or 20 years it will just be the internet. >> both are happening, but they're is but a fundamental shift toward consumers taking the lead. when i 1st started looking at disruptive technology the model we always has was it starts in the military applications, applications, moves to the business application and finally to the consumer. now it is clearly the other direction. and that is something that is just spreading. they can experiment and communicate about knew stuff much more effectively than enterprises can, and so they do so and become the sort of

lab rats for moving the other way. >> i think just the barrier, everyone has access to this technology. far lower. so i think invariably consumers or end-users are where things that 1st. and i think also you mentioned regulation. regulation slows down a lot of commercial application. so then a great example naturally big infrastructure takes a while to employ technology. so i think consumer leads and also the buzz the brand >> next question. >> way in the back. >> good morning. this is for you.

speaking about a macro environment with the information, what companies or technologies do we need to foray, to be like a conduit? what repositories can we develop off of this? who will lead the way? >> i think we have most of the core technology in place the cloud the high-speed networks. a conference made last year. they are even crazier. the standardized data. you is going to lead is a a much more interesting question. you can make the case economically that it could be the providers, the network, engineers, engineers, the sort of erickson's or the verizon or it could be the information experts. i think all of those are plausible probably some

combination thereof. and what ends up happening in this world of exploding opportunity, opportunity exploding data, exploring technological devices and innovation is we go through these periods of chaos and try to organize it and have chaos in a way to organize it and you can see that if you just look simply at the web will resort to move to other things, try to curated. you have this constant cycle of explosions of information and then generation that tries to apply order. and i think you want to look at whichever companies are trying to create order. it's it might look like aggregation, insight cure ration but look at the companies that are trying to apply order to the chaos that is unfolding. >> also you talk about in

your book network book, network effects, who is going to create the network effect that drives the most value and lots of certain ecosystems. >> and that is why they're has been so much focus on platforms. platform businesses today are trying to create that order. next question. >> what knew business models to use the emerging? take for example a couple of things. ge doesn't sell jet engines anymore. they are basically renting the rotation of the rotors. if you take the driverless car, you build a whole knew industry. what do you see emerging as new business models that are going to result from that? question number two, aren't you guys a little bit afraid of what the ultimate

solution to the? we talked about singularities. singularities. if you watch these tv shows person of interest where they're is a master computer that basically directs you to do certain things and you have google doing that already. aren't you worried that at some juncture we are just you know not the card -- at the director but just a a coggan some big you no some big thing. it's. >> i i think you hit on a peace of it which is this idea that capital becomes more productive. one of the things that we have seen over a long a long time is that we have replaced labor with capital or we infuse labor with capital. we give our workers pcs heavy machinery and the next stage of that is that we give them sensors and sensor data and that is one

way we will make them more productive. areas we will we have large pools of labor and your already starting to see the infusion of capitol. so i looked at leisure and entertainment, hotels that have crews that go around and clean the romans. today they rang the doorbell wave, ring the doorbell again, knock and eventually opened the door and inevitably someone is still in they're it's. hotels use infrared doorbell so that they can just tell they're is somebody in the room and they become more efficient. your getting uber, air bmb this was taking capitol that was being underutilized and applying it in a more useful, more productive way that using a lot of capitol.

any signs or any empirical evidence, but i have always been very optimistic about the likely impact of future technology. they're are two possible outcomes. you have you have the united federation of planets were aboard cooperates the ability to achieve their own personal enlightenment and there own personal death's or you have the board where everybody is nobody and it's just one giant collective. these are two very different futures that come from the same set of technologies. i am just always imagining that it would be more like the federation. >> that question i think you could look at the

negative. i just think think there are so many exciting problems that need solving. half the planet for basically the home level not connected to the internet. they're are so many big-ticket problems that will be solved over the next few years. i think it's usually exciting. and the progress that is being made already. you mentioned the change in the automotive space. the number of people killed on the road things like that being driven down to the ideas that our kids we will speak to their children and talk about a time when 30,000 people got killed on the road. they're are so many of these really big-ticket items to get solved's. it's -- i'm really

optimistic. >> and i'm looking at the way we toggle between the physical real world and our digital world. we used to view them as separate identities. then they started to blend. we are constantly going to the mobile phone. over time as technology becomes more pervasive and seamless that it becomes less intrusive much more natural. go back in time. things we didn't understand if you looked at it. computers computers understood and over time we move them along this continuum to where it is a much more natural conversation similar to what we might have with another person.

>> i have a.to make. hundreds and hundreds of great ideas, and what struck me was the ability to get past the early adopters and the gadgets to make use of these things. we used to laugh at her parents. today we have over half the returns a best buy and amazon the product works. we have a real problem problem with going from early adopters to mass market for these consumer-products the matter how sophisticated. how do we get past that. >> i think we're moving into an environment where we have what i i refer to as fragment and innovation. we focus thus far on the products that are widely owned 80, 90 percent of households but very few products are actually owned by 80 80 or 90 percent of households, 64 percent actually on their home. i think were going to start to move in to niche markets

where the saturation is 40, 50 percent, 30 percent. we start to identify. the ideas are really well-defined discrete problems. you offer a solution to that and then you start to, over time pull those together to create this much more holistic experience. getting there by solving these very well-defined discrete problems, parallel parking parallel parking assist, falling asleep all your driving lane assist approaching a vehicle while you have cruise control engaged, adaptive cruise control. all of a sudden each one of those starts to look like a discrete autonomous autonomous experience. you put them all together and end up with the full autonomous driverless car experience. we start to define these and solve these really well-defined problems that may only be applicable more

of interest to 20% of individuals, 20% of households. i don't think were going to necessarily see mass-market adoption of connected yoga mats because not everyone does yoga. that is probably not applicable to everyone. >> because the cost of experimentation is so low what you see is a thousand experiments, 999 of them fail utterly but when consumers got something right consumers essentially tell each other is not broadcast marketing like it used to be.

social media based. this is the one that works, the right television, the right smart phone whatever the consumer product is consumers figure out the winner and that winter is very much a winner take all. essentially one experiment or a couple of experiments succeed. the rest fail. the investors investors are willing to keep the system going. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> former officials from the obama and george w. bush administrations join the discussion this afternoon on countering violent extremism including groups like isis'. live coverage at 530 eastern

at about the same time the three-day white house counterterrorism conference with delegates from around the world wraps up at 545 eastern. national security adviser susan rice provides the closing remarks on building a global partnership against terrorist groups. introduced introduced by attorney general eric holder. you can watch that live. traveling the us cities to learn about there history and literary life. we have partnered with time warner cable for a visit to greensboro north carolina. >> after months and months of cleaning the house charles halpern was making one more walk-through. he looked over and saw an envoy with a green seal on it and walked over. 1832 document.

he removed a single mail from a panel in an upstairs attic room and discovered a truck and books and portraits. this was this treasure. we have had this story available to the public but trying to include her life story to her death in 1849. some of the items that we currently have on display carved ivory calling card case that have a card enclosed with her signature. small small cut glass perfume bottles and a pair of silk slippers that have tiny little ribbons that tie across the arch of her foot. and the two dresses are the

reproductions of peach silk gown that she wore early in life than a red velvet gown which is intrigued both that it has lasted and she was part of a collection and there is also a legend that accompanies the stress. >> watch our events. >> former defense secretary and us senator discussed america's security challenges and the impact of budget cuts. he addressed such national security issues as combating isis syria, the nato alliance.

>> good morning and welcome to the center for american progress. a conversation with former us secretary of defense bill:. last year was a turbulent one for national security. russia's aggression in ukraine, extremists nationstates widespread refugee refugee crisis, the collapse of libya and yemen and ebola and the pandemic crisis. domestically the fracture is political order make tough choices on defense difficult raising the risk of the ongoing sequester and

misalignment of us strategy with resources and investment. yesterday a knew secretary of defense took the oath of office and is now at his desk at the pentagon. he inherits an inbox filled with some of the most complicated challenges and not much of a honeymoon. as this debate on all of these issues heats up we are glad hear at the center of american progress to welcome the former secretary of defense for a wide ranging discussion on the future of american defense and how we manage difficult politics at home to global areas of crisis to juggling long-term strategic priorities and making smart investments. the conversation we will offer insight into the way forward for america's national security during these turbulent days. now, a couple of things and

a little bit longer introduction on secretary:. first, chairing we will be catherine blakey, our defense policy analyst you're the center working on her phd, working on the final part looking at the military in energy consumption author along with the senior fellow here at the center on a recent paper defense budget déjà vu published last week and is available here. i also no in a former life kate was the senior budget analyst for defense of the congressional research service in the library of congress'. the pesky sequester has impacted some of the most capable and rising stars on the federal side.

we are lucky to have her as our defense budget expert. now let me more formally introduce william s cohen currently the chairman and chief executive officer of the cohen group in washington dc but with an inbox that extends to almost every capitol of the globe. a couple of things, things, we know he served on the judiciary committee in 1974 during the nixon impeachment hearings as a varying number as a house member in 1974 he traveled to thailand to reassure an ally following the us military withdrawal from vietnam. it turned out especially in the democracy that the politics of exiting wars is every bit more complicated than getting involved in the 1st place. dealing with dealing with an ally in the war zone is trickier than it seems. 1978 he 1978 he was sent to the senate can serve in the armed services committee and

then also chaired the government affairs committee or computers were one of the early issues of inquiry. we live in a world of cyber the news media sony pictures all deal with the security of there computer networks but the cohen clangor klinger act was one of the 1st that dealt with the high-tech sector and tried to move us into the 20th and the 21st century. also served on the select community, and then in the late 1980s as the council on foreign relations he chaired the middle east study group certainly a critical task.

but just as he was looking forward to the university of maine and other pursuits pressing clinton in january 1997 asked the senator to come and service secretary of defense. in a gesture of extreme bipartisanship reminiscent of arthur vandenberg crossing the aisle to work with harry truman in the late 1940s bill: stepped bill: stepped into the pentagon during a challenging time for the united states. his three goals for his tenure were succeeding in the modernization of the military and maintaining its readiness to fight. successors at the pentagon inherited a military that was ready to go. dealing straightforward with recruiting and retention problems and making sure we were bringing in the most capable people taking care of the quality of life and

making sure that they had a first-class housing to live in and then strengthening security relationships with countries around the world. i was honored to be a part of that team both as undersecretary for personnel and readiness and later deputy secretary of defense. but it was clear that the secretary was engaged. he made some of the most important missions to the middle east. the 1st senior official of the us government to meet with him as he took over syria in a straightforward dialogue that reminds us of the challenges facing syria then and now. he is also in his spare time the author of 13 works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. his poetry. his next book will come out on june 30 and we will deal with asteroid mining's. giving his work on computers a decade ago we will be

interested to know where the asteroid issues take us. now us. now that we are capable of landing on asteroids. i would be remiss if i did not say he is a member of the new england all-star hall of fame for basketball players, the great sport of his career. had he not been a public servant who may have been a professional basketball player. after 31 years of public service he has really left a a record of unparalleled the compass map integrity, respect and brings to this program and discussion and unrivaled knowledge, reputation command relationship across america and around the globe we are happy to have him today for this program on us national security. thank you very much. [applause]

>> sec., thank you so much for joining us today. i won't belabor the. .. >>