>> host: peter bergen in your new book you write americans have long tended to overestimates the threats posed by jihadist >> guest: 80% of americans are somewhat or very worried about terrorism as an issue and 24% of republicans think it is the leading political issue in the election season, 9% of democrats. and you know some of that is understandable with the attack on metro jet and the attack in paris with 130 killed people and in san bernardino, california 14 people killed by people inspired by isis. the threat from jihadist is very law in the united states. it has been managed and conta contained because of the actions in the u.s. government and the

vigilance of the american public. >> host: when you say managed and contained what do you mean? >> guest: if we had this conversation after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks and i predicted 45 americans would be killed by jihadi terrorist that would have seemed like an optimistic projection. but that is what happened and each of the 45 deaths is a tragedy but they are not on the scale of 9/11 1 or even the pars attack. you will not hear politicians saying we managed and contained the threat. you will not hear them say by the law of averages someone is going to get one through because both of those statements are correct. >> host: you write americans

suffer from historical amnesia and the golden age of terrorism was in the '70s. >> guest: yeah, there were more than a hundred hijackings and a slew of attacks by the weather underground, puerto rican nationalist, and black panthers. there was a lot of political violence in the '70s and that pretty much disappeared. >> host: this is not to say the public should overlook the dancdance dangers of islamic extremist. there have been benefits with everyone from stangers raising alarms on plots and progress to more often family and community members of radicalizing militants alerting the authorities. >> you may recall a case where

five young men from northern virginia went to join a pakistani talibans. >> how many investigations are underway in the united states? >> guest: the fbi says 900 in all 50 states. >> host: 900 separate people? >> guest: 900 investigations. we are not seeing the kind of groups like the 9/11 attackers. they are so-called lone wolf usually. married couple in san bernardino, and boston bombing two brothers.

so that is 2015 did see more jihadi terrorism cases than any year since 9/11. >> host: those 900 cases -- how do you define jihad? >> guest: the people i profile in the book say it is a war against the people of islam and another meaning that is the spiritual struggle you have internally to act in an islamic nature which is what most people chose. the minority view is the perceived wars against islam. >> host: nidal malik hasan. who is he and where is he now? >> guest: i just got a letter to a colleague from nidal hasan who is in fort levanworth. he is facing the death penalty, although it is unlikely to be

carried out, for killing 12 is civilians at fort hood. his family ran businesses and he is typical of the profile of a lot of people i write about. non-obser non-observeant muslims who came or observeant over time. they are very well educated. same average income as the average american. and the problem for law enforcement is they are regular americans not foreigners coming into the country. >> host: where did the conversion happen with nidal hasan? >> guest: his mother and father died in their early 40s and late

50s and that turned into a more fundamentalist version of islam and over time a more militant version. i interviewed his first quest n question. and it was pointed out he was unmarried, turning 40 and worried about going to afghanistan in a war zone. he was moted by islam but there were other factors. this is a personal mix of motivations. no one-size-fits-all expl

explanation. sometimes some people enjoy being part of a jihadi group. it is fun and exciting. >> host: you said you got a letter. have you had a chance to read and write him back? >> guest: i try to reach out. a lot of these people are in prison n and some of them are dead. i try to talk to the perpetrator themselves but often time they cannot. one person i profile in the book i got a hundred page letter. he is in colorado in max and you would not wish that on anyone. he is from northern virginia, high iq, converted and became a

jihadist on the internet. the english speaking jihad, which is motivating people around the united states and in the uk and australia, has been fermented by american citizens. >> host: anwar al-alaki was from northern virginia. what is the northern virginia connection? >> guest: for some people many people in northern virginia. yes, born in new mexico, spent time in san diego, being a moderate cleric. he was invited to the pentagon after 9/11 even. he became, he is the most important english-speaking cleric in the world of jihad. he was killed boy a cia drone strike in 2011 but even in death

his writings show up and his cases, inspire magazine, which was he was involved in helping published, shows up in all of the cases you look at and indeed in the boston bombing case they got their bomb making recipe in part from "inspire" magazine. >> host: you say there is no connecting thread or one-size-fits-all for people being radicalized? >> guest: islamic ideology, desire to belong to something bigger than yourself, some people are very young and it is exciting. i profile one of the first people who created an english jihad website, he is from charlotte, north carolina and was working in a call center as a computer support specialist, moved to yemen and he is part of al-qaeda.

it was enthralling by his own account. the more you know, the more individual each person is, and the mix of motivation is not just radical islam, or objection to foreign policy, it is all of them. lots of people have personal disappointed and objections to the american law and don't go out and murder complete strangestrang strangers like the boston bombing. they killed americans for what? it was pointless and the more you get into the why at a certain point you hit a brick wall because at the end of the day they are inexplicit. >> host: james clapper talking about isis and the threat the homeland.

i want to get your reaction. >> at least 38,200 foreign fighters including 6900 from western countries have traveled to syria from at least 120 countries since the beginning of the conflict in 2012. as we saw in the november paris attacks, returning foreign fighters with first hand battlefield experience pose a threat. iisis demonstrated attacks. isis including eight established and several more emerging branches has become the p preeminent threat. isis' estimated strength exceeds that of al-qaeda. they are inspired to attack the homeland. although the u.s. is a harder

target than europe isis external operations are a critical factor in the threat assessment for 2016. >> host: peter bergen? >> guest: those are sobering figures. the last time we heard there were 4500 westerners who had gone to syria for training and now the director of national intelligence saying 6900. the last time we had the overall number it was 30,000 and now it is close to 40,000. we significant numbers of people are going to syria for training. the good news is very few are americans. the ones going it is a one-way ticket where they get killed over there. i could only find two examples of people who trained with a jihadi group and came back to the united states. there might be more. but we are talking about handful. in paris, everybody involved in the attack trained in syria. eight people were involved in the actually attack and probably

a couple dozen other people supporting the attack in one way or the other. 1500 frenchmen go to syria to train and several hundred have come back. that is a big problem for france, belgium which has very numbers relative to its population. problem for britain and germany. every european country has had a significant number of people who have done. we the united states are protected by geography. we are also protected by the fact the american muslim community is integrated into american society. in france, 10% of the population is muslim and 70% of their prison population is muslim. astonishing high number. so a group that is pretty disadvanta disadvantaged. we don't have the same anger in the muslim american community. we have a number of cases i looked at since 9/11, a little

over 300 of american citizens or residents engaging in some kind of jihad terrorism or crime. but the volume of people who are being attracted to the city in europe is much higher. >> host: peter bergen, if you were writing this book and you called it france of jihad would you come to the same conclusion? >> guest: i think france is -- you could have a paris style attack every year going forward. the french by their own account say to follow one person they need 25 people to do 24 hour surveillance and think about the several hundred coming back from syria. they killed 12 people at charlie hebdo and four people at a jewish supermarket in the space of two or three days.

and the attack that killed 130 people in november. i think the problem will get worse. they are coming into society and fundamentally are hostile to immigration. look at the rise of the natio l nationalist parties in france or or hungry. it will create more anger and you can see how this thing develops. >> host: we will go to your calls here in two seconds. we will put up the numbers on the screen so you can talk with peter bergen. the subtitle of this book, investigating america's home-grown terrorist. you didn't use the word domestic but homegrown.

>> guest: that is the idea these people are not associated with a formal terrorist organization but radicalizing in their own b bedrooms or bases and are american as anybody who is looking at this -- listen to this show. it is an american phenomena which for most people think terrorism comes from outside because on 9/11 we were attacked by 19-arab born attackers but this is an american phenomena. the boston marathon bombers was a citizen and one a resident, san bernardino the husband was born in chicago, nidal malik hasan was born in virginia. >> host: peter bergen was working for cnn in 1977 and

produced osama bin laden's first television interview and he declared war to the western audience that year. frank is in fort lauderdale, florida. go ahead with your question. >> caller: hi, peter, your book sounds valuable and i would like to read it. i would like to tell you about an experience i had moving into miami-dade in 1976. there was a bombing at the consulate behind the building i was going to move to. i went by there at night to see what it looked like at night and there were police cars everywhere. it is not just the jihadis versus america. there is an a lot of different of opinion's between the different secretator of of the jihadi movement and take out their grudges on the streets of

america like miami-dade did. miami-dade went through something like years before what happened in fairfax, virginia which incidently i lived in for seven years. >> host: got the point, frank. peter bergen? >> guest: the caller makes a good point. there has been all sorts of forms of poall political violence in the united states that is not jihad. the first attack was in new york city on wall street by an anarchist. if you have a grudge or gripe it was easy to act out on it in the united states. extreme right wing militants have killed actually about the same number of jihadi terrorist.

for example the church in charleston where dylan roof killed nine african-americans trying to incite a race war. >> host: 330 americans have been charged with terrorism since 9/11 according to your books. 29 years old is the average age. 30% are married and 30% have children. >> guest: my research team and myself created this database to help make underlying claims in the book. if you look at the san bernardino case they actually perfectly match the profile. both college-educated, they were married, they had a child, he was $70,000 a year and a good job with san bernardino county. and in many respects, they accept the fact they adopted

this ideology they were very typical ordinary americans who seemed to be living the american dream. >> host: michael is in milford, pennsylvania. go ahead-on the republican line. >> caller: i think thinks in the world are simpler than anyone wants to admit. syria, allie eastern pattern. the western allies want to remove assad. in 2013, we started arming moderate rebels who were trying to remove the assed regime. now the moderate rebels with funding and weapons from the united states are no longer moderate rebels they are isis. it is the same group of people. all we are trying to do is remove the assad regime the same way we removed saddam.

it is the same playbook. can you correct me if i am wrong? >> guest: well syria is very complicated. i am not quite sure i understand the point of the call. i think our factor of position is not necessarily being the immediate removal of assad because if you look at the two most powerful players in syria other than assad it is al-qaeda affiliate and isis. our main goal is mostly trying to attack isis. russia's main goal is the pr preservation and power of assad. there are a lot of different players. the syrian civil war, there is an a lot of academic literature on how long civil wars go on and

it is 10-15 on average. we are in year five. i think the syrian civil war could go on for more than a decade. the civil war in columbia went on for five decades. and the people who could put the brakes on it don't seem inclined to do so. the iranians, the gulf states, russia, they are fermenting this. unfortunately, going back to what clapper said about the foreign fighters and the westerns going to syria, the engine that is online with all of this is the syrian civil war and i think we are going to continue seeing, thousands of foreign fighters going to syria from the arab world and many going for training >> peter bergen is an author, employed by cnn and the new america foundation where he is the national security director and vice president.

mark is in lake geneva, florida. mark, turn down your volume. we will move on to another mark and this is mark in townville, south carolina, independent line. hello, mark. >> guest: i wantsan diegos >> caller: i wanted to disgr disgrew -- disagree with the subtitle. homegrown terrorism stems from right wing activity. it is far greater than jihadi terrorism over the existence of the country. if he is talking about homegrown terrorism does he mention that in his book? does he talk about terrorism against blacks and people of color like the kkk and bombing and killing people going to the abortion clinics?

does he bring that up? is there a comparison? it is fought quite fair to talk about homegrown terrorism when you don't bring up the right wing radical christianity. >> guest: that is a good point. it is not addressed in the book as i said the 48 americans are being killed by anti-government fanatics, anti-abortion militants, and neonazis since 9/11. i focus on jihadi terrorism because at the end of the day we were attacked in 9/11 with the most devastating attack since the british burnt down the white house in 1814. that is the subject of the book. but i don't discount the fact that, you know, whether it is dylan roof in charleston killing nine african-americans attending a prayer meeting, that there are other forms of political

violence. >> host: peter bergen, do you use the term radical islam? >> guest: no. and probably in the book i talk about militant islam more. you know, the president has been careful to kind of not use the phrase militant islam or radical islam. i understand his reasoning. the more he says it the more it does play into the playbook we are at war with islam. and of course we are not. and the fact is, it is just a fact, this ideology has something to do with an islamic reading and text. the koran is the word of god. and you can cherry pick parts that talk about offensive wars. when osama bin laden declared war on the united states he cited a verse in the koran.

these are fundamentally religious beliefs. this has something to do with islam. but the good news is the people are most likely able to fight back because they have islamic knowledge and one of the people i profile in the book is a guy from northern virginia also and he has intervened in the cases of several young men who are becoming enamored with isis and how did he do that? he is a leading islamic scholar and makes the arguments from the islamic perspectives that isis doesn't represent a utopian version of islam. he has been successful. >> host: when you bet osama bin laden in 1997 what was your

impression then? >> guest: my impression was he was well informed. intelligent. he was talking about the leader of shin was meeting with bill clinton at the white house and he had made observations about who are you calling a terrorist? it was jerry adams. at one point he was a terrorist. it is the kind of thing most people sitting in afghanistan, someone who grew up in saudi arabia was informed about what is going on in the world and intelligent. >> host: charismatic? >> guest: i didn't find him know but the people that hung on treated him like that. he is charismatic to his followers and i am sure isis and al-qaeda are in a dispute on the

head of the jihad movement but isis is the err of osama bin laden. isis, i talk about the ideology of bin ladism and it claims to explain the future and present. bin ladenset out a series of ideas that isis is acting on which is we need to create a caliphate, do to through violence, the jews, israelis and the united states are in the way. they are the enemy. osama bin laden in death even his ideas continue to influence what is going on today. >> host: mary is out in maryland republican line. you on the with peter bergen. >> caller: good morning. i have a question about general

petraeus. what is his role in the middle east right? >> host: why do you ask that question? >> caller: i have been reading he is the one in charge. >> host: he has been gone for a while. >> guest: occasionally i am sure he advises people other than the military or white house because he spent such a long time in iraq and travels to the region frequently. right now he is working for a financial company in new york city and that is his principle -- that is what consumes his daily life. he is not running the middle east. >> host: here in our political season several solutions to terrorism to isis have been proposed. can we carpet bomb isis out of existence? >> guest: no. because isis is embedded in

mosul, the second largest city in iraq, if you carpet bomb mosul you would kill hundreds of thousands of people. and the capitol of syria is a fairly sizable city. isis is not running around in a big convey amenable to the bomb from overhead.the bombing campan going on from us two years against them. carpet bombing is not going to work. tanning muslim immigration is not going to work. the people profiled in the book are already here. to have the muslim american community on your side. you would not want to alienate muslim banning immigration, which would be illegal, and what about people

who have one muslim parent and one christian parent? it does not make any sense. host: david is in dayton, ohio. a democrat. caller: >> caller: good morning, i would like to ask the question, why weren't any of the american jihadist evert prosecuted in accordance with the constitution as traders? >> well, you know, actually there have been who it was leader, it was sort of a propaganda with al-qaeda. he was the first american in almost half a century to be charged with treason. is there have been in rare instances cases where treason was the charge but i'm not a legal expert. i think treason it's a particularly fairly high bar. treason, you face the death

penalty in these cases. it was easy to charge him with murder and he didn't contest the fact that he killed 12 people and many, many witnesses at fort hood and one civilian. i think treason per prosecutors is a pretty high bar to -- when you can do -- you know, prosecutors are looking what is the simplest charge that will stick. let's not get too complicated here.st often murder is the easiest charge to press and sometimes there isn't even terrorist charge in these cases. it's just easy to go with murder charge. sometimes there is a terrorism charge that produces longer sentences the you can have a terrorism attached to it, whatever the underlying is. >> host: a lot of ink this morning about apple phone and

encryption. a here is usa today, farook and malik coming in back in 2014, is this a valuable tool, would this be a valuable tool for the fbi, government to be able to get into our v phones? >> guest: we just don't know. i don't know what's on the phone. my opinion, and opinion is not as much as we know already. we have an extent search of the house. we have their computers, we have fulsome confession of the husband's best friend who gave him the weapons and allegedly was going to be part of the plot in 2012, also have cloud from apple from the phone that wasn't just the material that's encrypted on the phone. so my guess there isn't a hell lot on the phone that -- you

might find extra details. i don't think there's any allegation that this couple was in touch in any real meaningful isis, yes, they pledged allegiance on facebook. i don't think there's going to be a huge resellation. apple and other tech companies are concerned about market share around the world on the issue of if it's known to the u.s. government has someer back dooro their products, i'm not going to get an apple phone or google, and by the way, to some degree the train is begin to go leave the station on this point. obviously it doesn't matter what capitol hill legislated that all american tech companies have to have a back door, in that -- which i don't think it's necessarily going to happen. let's say that did happen, it

would be kind of moot because isis has moved because of the concern of the issue that are not american made. >> peter bergen is that nadal hassan had been tracked by the fbi, by the government prior to what happened in fort hood. >> guest: he was living in yemen, when you look at the emails they look pretty dye tushing, they're about suicide attacks and conducting suicide operations and a attacking fellw soldiers and san diego field office who was tracking was flagging this to washington field office, to the fbi and was very concerned. they were concerned because he was in contact with the two 9/11

hijackers. this guy is an army psychiatrist. these are consistent to what his workload is and they blew san diego off. so the fbi, i mean, it's unfortunate one part of the fbi was concerned of this guy and another part sort of just didn't -- didn't do due diligence. katie, silver springs, maryland. >> caller: thank you, expect. i guess the question comes from watching tv at night, i have parities of the daily show and receipting -- [inaudible]

>> caller: i wonder if that has anything at all with the topic of discussion? >> guest: the question then is does it have any with isis recruitment efforts? >> host: is that what you were going? >> caller: media form for devices even if it's -- >> guest: twitter closed down 120 proisis accounts which is i think is a large number. so,ni you know, isis is social media. isis is probably not a group that does much irony. these are american media forms and isis is very much benefited from this, social media companies like twitter are becoming much more aggressive in terms of use. you can't putke messages on twitterr that insight violence and much of what isis does is

insight violence. as to the question of sattire. it's a good way to attack isis. this is a group that it claims to be creating eutopia and yet it's sort of enslaving millions of people. that's a pretty rich topic for saphire and pretty way to undercut them. >> host: peter bergen, what's is new america? >> guest: founded in dc. we have a tech policy practice, big education practice and national security practice, we hope to advance big ideas about how tocu change, you know, the united states for the better and do it in ways that are interesting to read engaging to the public and we're not a waiting as many think washington are. you know, we are trying to put big ideas into the public square.

>> host: and is there a connection to eric schith. >> member of the board. >> caller: yes, thank you very much. does mr. bergen see any similarities and comparisons between the so-called patriot movement of which we had a great example in january right there in oregon and the jihad movement. my thinkingg is such that if you were to strip away any references to the constitution, et cetera, in a literal interpretation and insert anything that has to do with the karan, they're really one and the same. i would like to get his intake on that. >> guest: i don't disagree at all. there was an attack by a neonazi and killed three people and

shouted hitler as he was taken away. what was a pretty big news story would have become a much bigger story. attacking civilians at the end of the day there are a quite a different motivations for that and we see neonazis and we see antigovernment fanatics who, you know, attacking police officers, sometimes they're violent, they're killing people as well. >> host: who is dr. mark sageman. >> guest: lives in washington, d.c. area. he wrote a very influential book about jihad looking at the number of different cases. and his first book made the interesting observation, true observation that a lot of this, when you look a lot of the

groups have formed to do terrorist attacks sort of a social movement and social bonds over important family ties, you join jihad. 9/11 hijackers. he wrote a second book, the main problem of the united states and the west was going to be these groups that didn't -- these people that didn't have links to former terrorism groups and radical rising in the internet. that's going to be a problem. isis attack in paris was directed, trained, financed by the isis terrorist organization. it was not a bunch of lone wolves who got together and did the attack. the good news is, is that the threat in the united states is mostly now almost entirely lone wolves,ti and that's good news because there's a natural sealing to what one or two

persons can do. it was an organized group that did the attack. you know, magnitude difference between what a very large organization can do when it trains peopleis and what one person can do when he or she is radicalizing really in their own house because of what they're reading online. >> host: boring file clerk tweets, how would you go about defeating isis? >> guest: that's a great tweet, handle, though. there was no demand signal from the american public for what -- if you want to really defeat isis you would send 200,000 men and women army into syria and iraq. i mean, when we had 150,000

american servicemen and women in iraq 2006 we were containing the iraqi civil war. if you're really serious, you can actually do. the only republican candidate thatep said what would do is lindsey graham. he would send 20,000. onee saying is the american public is not demanding a major ground war again in the middle east. in the absence of that, we are left with whether it's president hillary clinton or president donald trump or whoever comes into office, my guess is they would do something similar to what president obama is doing. attacking the money supply, trying to cut down ona recruitment by enlisting turkey to stop people transiting from turkey and syria. basically an operation to kind of squeeze isis over time that will take several years because

there is no appetitesq in this country for something much bigger. i mean, there's really -- when the republicans critique president obama they don't say anything they will do. >> host: to go back to where we started, you talked about managing, are we in a new normal? >> guest: i think we are in a new normal. it's a low-level persistent threat. we have management contained. let me give you two examples. on 9/11, 16 people on no-fly list. try to get on american plane, i mean, that's just one of many things that have increased defensive capabilities and also, you know, al-qaeda central has basically more outside of business, unfortunately there's a new with isis, but the new normallist willus see, i think,

more large-scale attacks in europe, like the kind of thing weck saw in paris. we will see isis-inspired attacks in the united states. many will be disrupted by the fbi by some of them will get threw. san bernardino attack, where we saw in garland, texas. that kind of thing will actually continue. >> john is calling in from north port, florida. >> caller: hello, peter, thank you for listening, i really appreciate the way you're speaking and everything. the only thing i have to ask a question is why are you not talking about the country of turkey? the reason why i say that, i grew up in pennsylvania, i live in florida now, but i grew up in pennsylvania and three minutes from a town called seila in

pennsylvania. he was putke back in 1999. robert armsterdarm. there's an investigation because of charter throughout the united states that he's under investigation, he's considered a terrorist. which the country of turkey put him in terrorist list and the country of turkey hired robert -- >> host: john, this is getting real complicated and real deep, where do you wanting to with? >> caller: is he familiar with the fanula and are funding terrorists into syria. >> host: thank you, sir. >> guest: i'm not familiar with the case.

beginning about early 2015 isis began complain about the fact that the turks had been much less sympathetic to turkey through syria that are being recruited by isis. turkey has begun to crack down on that. they're overwhelming going through turkey. turkey let's say fair position on this issue is being pretty aggressive by sending people back or arresting people, making it much harder to transit turkey, if you close down the root, you're left with it's a lot harder to get from syria from other the countries that surround it. you know, people that are in the immediate time of the prophet mohamed and followers, there are tens and millions of people around the world much of saudi

arabia, gulf states. jihadi terrorists but most jihadist terrorist, almost everybody who attacks an abortion clinic is a christian fundamentalist. >> host: democrat. >> caller: hi, i have a cousin who is now dead and he was an alcoholic and worked in iran prior to their takeover by the islamic in iran and it just seems to me that sets the stage for all of this. when he went to iran had to go 12 miles out and openly drink

his six-pack of beer but when he left iran, he could drink anywhere he wanted but he was dodging his bullets. >> guest: i think the caller is correct. they overthrew in 1979, it was the most important moment for many jihadi people like ben laden even though this was a shia revolution in iran. for a lot of people like bin laden it was a significant event. we can have revolution overthrow back whether saudi arabia and whether it's egypt, for people like ben laden, the leader of al-qaeda, iranian revolution was sort of a model for them of what they hope today achieve.

>> host: peterho bergen, how hae we change it had tactics over the years? >> guest: he started a week before 9/11. he started saying we believe it's al-qaeda, here is the evidence with the fact and here is what we are doing to kind of solve the crime and here is what we are doing at the crime scene. bob, that's what the fbi has been doing. your job is to prevent from this ever happening again, and that was really huge shift to the fbi. there was a debate about whether we should have a domestic intelligence agency like the british, the fbi has become domestic intelligence agency. there's a huge analytical and

people incline towards terrorism and the fbi is in the business of trying to prevent attacks before theyy happen which is obviously they did some of that before 9/11 but not in this much more intentional way. >> see something, say something, has that been an effective campaign in anyway? >> guest: occasionally. the fbi has done a study of a number of terrorism cases since 2009. they have comey. up with some vy interested report on the book, so the people often with the they come up with interesting reports. the people with the most useful information our peers and they are the most likely to come forward. family members are more likely to come forward, the most likely people to come forward are strangers. they have the least useful information.

>> investigating america's home grown terrorists. brand n >> television for serious read ers. >> mark zuckerberg is the ceo of facebook is in the record saying

something like the following. the world's 500 million people richest people have way more wealth than the remaining 6 billion combined. you saw that by getting everyone online. oh so his claim that inequality can be addressed by spreading more of the internet. now you might say, well, he's a tech-tycoon, he's obviously going to say that about technology but there's many serious leaders like hillary clinton that i believe in the same way that technology is going to change the world. in 2011 while she was secretary of state she announced a foreign policy called internet freedom. basis by spreading the internet throughout the world and making sure that it was free on -- free to communicate on, that it would allow citizens to keep their governments accountable, and that's been a strong part of the policy of the state department every since then. secretary of education ernie

duncan who is also on the record that technology is a game changer in the field of education and a game changer we desperately need to improve achievement for all and improve equity. these are all claims by prominent leaders. they make the claims casually and the general population doesn't seem to think that they need to be contested, but i'm going to suggest that they do. i'm going to draw on my personal experience, i used to work at microsoft. i was there for 12 years and the last fife years or so i went to india to start a new research lab from -- for the company. computer vision to which i looked to different ways to look at digital technology for poverty alleviation of various kinds. india is a unique place, thriving it sector, india being an it superpower, many of -- much of the software that we use

every day had some portion of it written in india and so forth, but at the same time country is extremely poor by the standards of the united states. 2 u.s. dollars per day and they get their livelihood in some way connected to agriculture, and so this is a country of extreme contrast, and what i found that working in that kind of environment actually helped me see the situation with technology and society here in the united states as well. so i will give you an example of the kind of projects that we were engaged in. at one point we worked with a sugar cane cooperative a network of computers that were internet connected and agriculture to farmers and healthcare to medicine and education for the kids in villages, but when we got there several years after the projects had started, what we found that most of the computers were in disrepair and

the primary use of existing computers was for farmers query how much of their sugar cane was harvested and sent to the coop rattive and how much it weighed and how much it ultimately received. we thought that there was a simple fix to the situation, you know, the computer maintenance costs were rising and the coop rattive was shutting the whole system thing and could send text messages and get the results back. we did a pilot in seven villages and we found that the farmers reallien joyed the interaction. they like the fact that they can do it privately on their own. and overall we estimated that if the cooperative were to use the system in all 54 of the villages it operated in it could save $25,000 a year, which is not signific-- not dramatically but

it would change the way to the factors. there was political rivalry with the people that we worked with and the managing collector. it seemed like he felt some kind of threat, you know, technology that was being promoted by the it department. now, you might think that that's a kind of exception, this is a situation where the technology solved the problem at hand but there were some institutional dysfunctions that did not allow the technology to work. there are -- in other projects, i found, for example, education where we had, again, interesting technology projects but as we try to rule them out beyond a research pilot, we ran into very, very common and stubborn problems of administrators not being carrying about additional instruction for the students, teachers being undertrained, teachers being afraid of the technology, often times they're not being sufficient budget to actually provide any kind of i

to the best of my recollection maintenance. so here is another context where the technology that we deviced worked very well but they do not actually have much impact. similarly a kiosk for women to search for jobs where they were employed as domestic laborers in public household. we set up a terminal in which the system was designed to be without any context so the women that were nonliterate can navigate. getting the employers to sign up the system and providing the kind of training that women needed to qualify for jobs was ultimately was a much, much bigger task. so here we had working technology that addressed a

particular kind of problem but didn't handled the end-to-end issues. over a little over five years i worked on 50 or more projects in india all of which were applying some kind of digital technology to the problems of health care, government, agriculture and so forth and very, very often the situation was exactly like i described where we would design a technology solution that worked on research context and as soon as we tried to sent to larger scale it failed to have impact because of institutional deficienties or individuals were unable to make use on their own. so you know, i'm a scientists by training and so i wanted to find out, you know, why this was the case, why is it that things that we had spent a lot of time trichothecene well and where research showed that there was

some positive impact did not actually have an impact on larger scale and the ultimate conclusion that i came to was a very simple premise was that technology in and of itself only amplifies under human forces. so what that means wherever the human forces are positive and capable, you can use technology and things get better. be where those human forces are indifferent or possibly corrupt or fundamentally unable to take advantage of technology, no technology turns things around. this goes in direct contradiction with earlier quotes that i mentioned where people believe that technology in and of itself causes social change that we are looking for. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. ..