apologist america? or do you want to stay out front and lead like president trump is doing and asking others to do their fair share? i am confident about the outcome of this election, if people understand what is at stake. : :

♪ spirit welcome to the policy briefing a serious bid i'm tom gilligan, director of the hoover institution. it's at stanford university and one of the most preeminent research centers. for more than a century homage and has been dedicated to generating policy ideas that promote economic prosperity, national security and democratic governance. the assimilation of our work has led to sin of vacant impacts on important public policy initiatives here and around the world. we begin to take steps that will lead us of the crisis i hope you find value in these important discussions as we look forward to ways to mitigate potential effects that the coronavirus has had on the u.s. and on the world. as a reminder, we will be taking

audience questions and encourage you to submit yours using the button at the bottom of your screen. today's briefing is from larry dimon, senior fellow at the hoover institution. larry's advised the world bank, un, state department and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development. his recent books include, china's influence in american interests. and "ill winds". larry, thank you for joining us today spirit yeah, thank you tom. pleasure to be with you and all our audience. >> un experts on china and on democratic institutions around the world. let me jump right into the middle of this. several leaders within the chinese communist party have claimed that their government has performed well relative to democracies in the world and

they've controlled the spread of the virus in china and providing aid and critical supplies to other nations. has the current pandemic been a boom for authoritarian regimes like china and the reputation for dealing with pressing social problems? >> well, tom, thank you. i don't consider myself an expert on china but i have been trying to understand what it has been doing to project inappropriate power around the world and to impress its population at home but i don't thank you need to be an excerpt on china to know that the claims it is making are false and the challenges it is posing for democracy have a lot of holes in them. let's begin with how this virus started. we know it began in wuhan and it went from being a kind of early crisis that needed radical

containment to become global pandemic because china was not transparent with its own society or the world about what was happening and those that were trying to ring the alarm bell about the inception about the virus that could be dangerous to human life were punished and suppressed and ultimately one of these chinese doctors, of course, lost his life and many of them fighting the epidemic but more globally tom it's important to recognize the first of all but we don't know what the death rate in china is because we can't believe any of the sadistic six that they have used but they are all manipulated. we do know what the death rates are in democracies around the world and they are transparent in the assembling of data and in that record shows wide variation

among democracies in the world and how they are managing the crisis so in spain you had over 500 people dying from the virus in over 400 in italy over 300 in britain and nearing 200 in the u.s. and some countries have had very little impact on human life. israel has had only 25 deaths per 1 million, south korea only five per 1 million and taiwan has had under one death per 1 million. spend the greatest success story of any country in the world and managing the virus. democracy is very alive and i think the lesson here is not to just take chinese propaganda on its face but rather to look and see why if some democracies have been doing better than others.

>> [inaudible] i want to ask you what expensive variation and success across the democracies. what about china's claims of providing critical and nations around the world and what is the validity of that claim? >> they've been sending planes and personal protective equipment and facemasks and so on but it has been nothing, at the level, that they promised or the propaganda initiative and good, thank you and so on but people open up the boxes and find which is often been the case with their belts and road initiative that what they deliver is a lot less than what they promised and some of the materials have been distinctly inferior quality and people feel a little bit cheated. >> interesting. let's go back to talking about the cross country variation.

if you look in democracies and the success in forwarding the pandemic i would imagine there are some democrats or demographics variables that disclaim the variation and i want you to focus also on the differences in governance across these countries and how that may affect their ability to combat the virus. >> i think if you study what countries like taiwan and he had a very deep dive into the one week from now tom in the hoover institution will host at 9:00 a.m. pacific a really extensive of the policy taiwan experience in managing covid-19 and we will have the vice president of taiwan in the secretary of state in science and technology advisor speaking to us along with several other

panelists including our own lonnie chen. but we learn from the taiwan experience, from south korea, from israel and some of these other countries like germany and scandinavia then early warning made a big difference and where countries responded very rapidly and very vigorously with public health measures in public education measures they were able to get ahead of the virus and often contain it through identifying the sick, isolating them, contact tracing thomas greening at the airport and so on. early in widespread testing made a big difference as well and another of these countries taiwan was doing testing of people in terms of their temperature and movement and so on. korea manufactured quite a lot of viral tests that they applied very early and taiwan, korea,

israel they been using big data to try and track the pattern of the virus and the countries in the democracies that have had success have other common features with strong public health systems and the populations tend to be healthier with long life expectancy and lower levels of chronic diseases. one of the things i worry about in the united states that if you look at the advanced industrial democracies in terms of one indicator of public health which is the rate of obesity, the rate of obesity is 36% which is twice the level or may be percent higher than many of our advanced democracies. we have work to do in these successful democracies were able to acquire and widely

distributed facemasks, hand sanitizer and they push the public health experts out there in front to beat the authoritative voice and coordinating a response and they elicited or started from the beginning with higher levels with public trust and confidence and therefore cooperation then in some of the other democraci democracies. >> good starting discussion. i know you are an expert on governance around the world and in particular you study the emergence or the contraption of the use of democratic institutions and countries. a few years ago you coined the phrase a recession and democracy in the kind of characterized the rollback of growth of democracy around the world. what is this pandemic doing to this constant struggle between democracy and authoritative regimes around the world? >> well, it is deepening and accelerating the democratic recession and some alarming ways

but first of all, you have authoritarian regimes seizing on the public emergency of the crisis to become even more comprehensively and persistently authoritarian. you saw that vladimir putin was to be expected that he was going to do this but he used the crisis to illuminate term limits so he can stay in power into his 80s or beyond. you have had hungry which already crossed the line to authoritarianism and passed a measure in the parliament that gave prime minister to create power in suspended parliament and by elections and the prime minister canal rule by decree and you had countries banning newspapers, arresting opponents and critics and even india has been using the emergency to prosecute critical journalists

and intellectuals, including the brother of one of our esteemed hoover fellows who [inaudible] his brother who edits a major indian online newspaper and is being prosecuted for just reporting the truth in a critical fashion so you have illiberal democracies and authoritarian regimes seizing on the crisis to narrow freedom. then there is another thing we can talk about if you want tom, it is something we all need to ponder which is the challenge to human freedom that comes from even liberal democracies like korea and israel implementing these tracking and surveillance apps on mobile phones. what happens if those don't go

away after the crisis. >> let me frame it, we're listening to larry diamond, senior fellow at the hoover institution and talking about the effects of covid-19 on democracies and authoritarian governments. the tracking and tracing that countries are using, many of us might consider it invasive surveillance with health conditions of a citizen and the imposition of restrictions on them based upon data. seems on the one hand it's sensible and makes sense to combat that health challenge but it does create problems and i know you thought about the problems like you thought about ways to mitigate those problems. could you talk about that? >> yes, i'm glad that these are watchwords and ideas defining a free society at the hoover institution and this is a pretty important problem from the

standpoint of human liberty. the problem in part is that these message work and they have helped states identify where the virus is cropping up, who has it, who they've been in contact with and then you can alert the people that they have been in contact with. it does automate and speed up the contact tracing. on the other hand governments can use them to monitor people for other reasons and what happens when we surrender our privacy, surrender our freedom from state surveillance and we don't get that freedom back after the crisis so i think we can't trust governments, even very liberal governments to surrender these tools after the

crisis is over but first of all, i think we should have a debate about what extent people want to surrender their freedoms even now but in particular after the crisis ends and while it is going on i would say we need independent review boards of respected jurors, civil society religious leaders, who can monitor what the government is doing in the claims the government is making and get authoritative information from the mobilephone companies about the how they are these applications so that we can have a full and frank discussion within the society about how much freedom we want to surrender and when that surrender should be terminated and returned to the people. >> the three democracy you mentioned has been successful in managing the south korea, taiwan, israel and at least two

of those have very aggressive tracking and tracing techniques involved. how did they navigate the civil liberties, democratic governance concerns associated with that? >> i think this is very much a matter of debate now in korea where the current president moon has a lot of popularity and at the moment strong support and in israel, israel's is a very kind of independent minded society and people are concerned that the message that has been used by the israeli intelligence organization, by the way, to track terrorists are now being used to track the virus. i think this is ongoing.

i think maybe the problem is less serious in taiwan because they had such enormous success in containing the virus very early on. in reducing the infection rate to pretty close to zero and of course it is easier to do if you are in a state but it requires strong republican health coordination and early action so i think they have the compromise of individual freedom and the temporary emergency has not been such an imposition on people. >> larry, i don't know how much you know specifically about the apps and technologies that allow tracing but a couple questions that are interesting but joseph suggests that these apps or technologies could be built with self destruct system so they

would automatically expire at a certain point, six-week out, eight weeks out and wondered if you heard that discussed and has a way to balance of her liberty with surveillance issues. neville makes the following claim that the google app around contact tracing is claiming to protect individual privacy and do you know much about that and how does it protect privacy? >> i don't know how they do it but i know that they do it and i know that one way to ensure greater privacy is to use immediate neighborhood bluetooth connections to identify who you are in contact with. this is rather than the more centralized cell phone system so some of the apps are limiting the exposure in terms of freedom

by relying on more neighborhoods immediate geographic connection of bluetooth. with respect to the self-destruction i love that. i think that definitely all legal and technological steps towards eclipsing liberty have to have sunset clauses attached to them and it can be a time related one or it could just be an independent review board having the authority to order the mobile phone companies to implement the self-destruction button when the crisis is pass passed. >> rate ideas. i want to come back to the challenges that the pandemic is imposing on democracies but i've

got a really good questions about what they are doing to authoritarian regimes. james asked the following question when it comes to taking broad-based crisis such as covid-19 due to a utilitarian routine with top-down control government have an inherent advantage over countries with open decentralized government and economic structures. if such an advantage exist how can countries with decentralized structures neutralize or mitigate that competitive advantage and ramon asks, covid impacts on authoritarian regimes in venezuela have there been any and if so, what are they and how they really have tightly held authoritarian regimes in the world react to the pandemic? >> okay, well, it is impossible to claim that there is an intrinsic authoritarian advantage for managing a pandemic and you can see how democracies have done a pretty animal job of doing so and

frankly in terms of the immediate and transparent reaction to the first signs of crisis are much better job than china is done without the cause in terms of human freedom. i will say korea, taiwan, singapore and so on, countries that have had more success they did have the 2003 experience of the sars epidemic and they learn from that about the need for a lot of the measures that i spoke of. the claim of intrinsic advantage for authoritarianism simply doesn't wash and the second question again -- >> what has gone on in places like cuba and israel? >> you know, it's very hard to know what is going on with respect to covid in countries like cuba and venezuela because

we don't have honest reporting of information and because in venezuela the population has been so devastated by hunger and malnutrition that it is hard to know who is dying from what. i will say it is interesting though as you looked at these infection rates and there is a website where i have gotten the data that informs my earlier point that it is intriguing that countries in the equatorial region that cuba and venezuela are either in or border countries that are more in the hot and humid climates in the global south have not yet been hit with anything like the level of epidemic that europe, u.s. and so on have been and is that

because of their climates or is it because they just haven't been in the global transmission belt quite as much? it remains to be seen but it is noteworthy that i will say iran has been hit pretty hard by this and again, we don't know what the real rates of infection are because who would believe iranian state authorities in terms of the accuracy of reporting? >> we know there have been no infections in north korea. >> yeah, may be of the dear leader. [laughter] >> amazing. i want to get back to democracy and talk about the ways in which the pandemic are threatening the pillars of democracy. let's talk about the free press and the media. what pressures are being placed on the free press in the media and western democracy generally as a result of the pandemic and

will the free press continued to say vibrant and an important part of democracies? >> i think what we are finding now is a heightened need for an effective, vigorous, independent press. now, we would like it to be one that doesn't further feed our political polarization, right? we want pluralism of ideas and we want a contest of perspectives and we will have media, print media, online media, television media that will have different editorial orientations perhaps but pluralism is crucial and what we don't want is government threatening the pluralism or threatening investigative reporting with laws like what hungary has passed that threatens five year prison terms

for any quotes, false reporting of the covid-19 pam beneke who the hack is supposed to determine what is false reporting and what inconvenience faxed the government and especially authoritarian or liberal governments don't want their people to know and again, i will say india has become, i think, and importance friend of the united states and the relationship with india and president trump's trip there was a positive step for the united states but we do need to be careful, not to give prime minister of repass while he intimidates critics and tries to suppress media independence in this crisis and that is a very dangerous potential trends that could develop. >> let me ask you one more question about the media.

i asked george osborne that the other day because he is an editor, one of the responsible acts of the media in these circumstances is to moderate the dissemination of scientific information. this is about health consequences and the policies that can mitigate or affect the development of those consequences. our free societies better able to manage that then authoritarian societies or how does you balance the need for accurate information and consistent information with the need to have a pluralistic kind of wild west discussion about what is going on? >> well, i think that our major publications, whether they are editorial line is in one direction like "the wall street journal" or on the other direction like "the new york times", they've done a reasonably good job of trying to inform their readers of what is

in the realm of scientific possibility. we did not know about hydrochloric wine until recently the evidence for it does not look very promising but you know, media reporting properly identified it as speculative at best. okay now we are hearing the reporting that this antiviral drug is showing some very promising health effects. i think the media has been pretty wise and responsible in reporting the range of possibilities when we might have a vaccine to dampen public expectations but allow for the real prospect of a hopeful and early breakthrough. the problem with authoritarian regimes is any reporting that is

inconvenient, any reporting that could cast them in a bad light is suppressed and when you start suppressing reporting you actually handicap your ability to fight this virus and this is why, well, try not you take for granted that this is the way they operate in the world is paying the price. i think germany is not going to wind up suing china or damages but, you know, a certain moral respect i think the whole world has a right to do so and whether the virus emanated from wuhan what market or whether it escape from wuhan institute of virology lab, either way, china's incompetence and suppression of the truth from the beginning contributed to the spread of the virus. i would just say this because it has been so important in the

success story of the democracies like taiwan, korea and israel transparency, transparency, transparency. early, truthful authoritarian native reporting of what is happening and intelligent responsible interpretation and they can question it if they want but moderation of it by the media has been very crucial in battling this virus and tom, that brings us to the social media where it is much more the wild west and here i have some hope that facebook is going to be more responsible and vetting and some of the information on its website and facebook is moving ready soon and now toward the creation of an independent

review board for some of its editorial decisions and i think that could help and moderating this content. >> david asked the question are you concerned about the data the private companies like youtube and facebook will be censoring actual useful information as opposed to conducting legitimate editorial activities. >> this brings us to the independent review board. let's say facebook decides to take down some posts, challenging scientific claim by the government or floating a scientific ideas that facebook decides is quack so they take it down. the thrust of david's question is isn't that dangerous. the value of where we are headed not with facebook's voluntary decision to create this independent review board is that the facebook user, if they have the material taken down, could

file an appeal to the new independent appeals board and then they would assess it and there would be a noncorporate body of individuals weighing the evidence in making a decision. >> interesting. let's move on to another important pillar of democracy and that is voting for it obviously the pandemic has effected our physical ability to conduct fair and voting and elections. i have a question from michael which is are there best practices for conducting elections during this public health emergency? >> i think that the clear best practice that is at hand and that most election experts think we should help to rapidly develop in terms of support, technical and financial support, for state and local election

administrators to make more broadly available to the public is vote by mail. just think about it logically. if we are going to have even if we make progress which i believe we will in slowing or containing the virus in the coming months, if we are likely to have a resurgence of the virus in the fall of this year as we did during the great influenza in the fall of 1918 a lot of people will be afraid once again to go outside their homes and we will be a short poll workers like we were in wisconsin and even in cities like milwaukee where they reduced the number of polling stations by over 95% so if people can vote by mail absentee from their homes and put their ballot in a pre- stamped

envelope for free postage and, you know, have the mailman pick it up or put it in the po box it will be a lot safer and a lot safer. and so, a lot of people will want to do that. at a minimum i think it is very important that we give the states and localities the assistance they want and need to ramp this up as an option for their voters if they want it available and five states now will vote purely by mail in november of note this year. three, colorado, oregon and washington and they will be joined by two others, hawaii and utah. utah is an interesting case because of course, it's a deep red states, pretty faithfully republican but the county by county they have been phasing in universal vote by mail and the

voters have liked it and it has worked out well and they decided to adopt it at the state level and our political science colleagues who have evaluated what happened when counties in california, washington and utah switched from voting mainly in person to mandatory vote by mail and what they found is, i think, encouraging for the current moment. there was no partisan impact at all. that vote by mail had no effect on the percentage turnout of democrats versus republicans that had no effect on the average electoral results in terms of the balance between the two parties and it seems to be partisan neutral so it is partisan neutral we can all get behind it and improve our safety and the security and legitimacy of the election by having more

comprehensive vote by mail. >> michael asked a question about fraud associated with vote by mail but how do you know the person that check to the ballot is the person who is entitled to make the vote. how does one protect against noncitizens voting by mail? >> well, they will not get eight mail ballot. i don't think no one is really raise that as a significant concern. i think the greater concern is very, very subtle. that there could be households i don't -- i don't dismiss those where you've got a kind of authoritarian figure in the household and maybe a kind of traditional father or strong-willed other individual and they say i will tell you how you will vote, give me your ballot. but i think it will be, you know, in a way you weighed the downsides of every other option

and so the downside of that, i think, is pretty low risk compared to the risk of many people feeling like they can't vote or maybe they are exposing themselves to greater danger by voting in person as seven people at least who voted in wisconsin came down with covid in the april primary. >> larry, maria wants to know why can't we just vote or why don't we just go to voting electronically via the internet? >> well, good. i think there will be growing supports for internet voting, senator bob carey authored an op-ed in favor of that and the answer is very simple. the technology simply isn't there. the technology isn't there to ensure against fraud and subversion and, you know, contamination of the votes.

it is too easy to hack any internet system, even what we thought would be a very secure one just as the pentagon and the best computer scientist in the world and in the united states have a very clear stand here and it's in two parts, part one is don't ever pull a vote of consequence that cannot be audited or recounted by paper trail and of course, internet voting can't do that. you have to sacrifice the secrecy of the ballot in order to do that. therefore, number two, don't institute internet voting until we have some technological breakthroughs that is not on the horizon. >> yeah, larry, let's talk civil society. if every democracy depends on a vibrant civil society of people

who concern themselves with public issues and engage in voting and discourse to try to solve pressing social problems in many ways the predicate of a civil society is freedom to assemble, freedom to associate with whom you want and in this pandemic it has limited in many significant ways those basic ideas. how do you see the pandemic under mining the civil society necessary for a vibrant democracy? >> well, in several ways tom, first of all, there is the danger of legal action by elected and nonelected leaders who want to heighten their power and diminish freedom so that they don't have to suffer criticism and oversights. secondly, i am really worried about damage to the resource base of civil society organizations, nonprofits institutions. if i may say so, including think

tanks, universities and oversight organizations as a result of the economic pain we will be going through and the third thing is a lot of civil society organizations prosper from face to face interaction and interpersonal meetings, community action and, by the way, not just to defend democracy but how about to just hand out food to hungry people, one of the great crises the food banks are facing right now is not only a shortage of the money to buy the food and to distribute it but it's also a shortage of volunteers who actually hands out the food because people are afraid of getting sick so all of these, i think, are dangers to civil society and our community spirit. >> yet, have you seen any new displays of civil interaction

that give you some optimism about the future of our democracy? >> yes, i have. we are all seen them, some of them involve these from a distance celebrations of the amazing work of our medical care professionals and first responders who are being treated like the battling heroes that they are and when people come to their balconies or play music or applaud them or sing to them or so on and the musical tributes including the amazing musical tributes that cnn hosted a couple of weeks ago, and tom, i have to say, i think another reassuring thing is we have not lost our sense of humor. some of the best humor that i

have seen political humor and just frankly, almost infantile humor has been generated during this pandemic and if i could just share one example, i think we need a light moment amid this grim challenge that we are facing. the new yorker had a cartoon, many of us are dog owners so i think we will identify with this. they had a cartoon of a bunch of dogs seated around a board room with the head dog in your role as director and a cat at the other end of the board room and the director is saying to the other dogs our covid-19 plan is working and the humans are staying home. [laughter] the cap pipes up, why was and i consulted about this.

>> that's great. that was appropriate for the times two. course, you neglected to mention the greatest social innovation of our time and that is the virtual cocktail party that everyone is attending at least on friday afternoons. i have well enjoyed those. >> mine is on thursday afternoon so i will savor it at the end of this day. >> great. larry, great conversation and thank you for joining us this morning spent thank you tom, thank you all. >> our next insider policy briefing will be tuesday may 5 at 11:00 a.m. pacific and 2:00 p.m. eastern with doctor scott alice and the economist john taylor. then we will discuss covid-19 and the reopening of the economy. it should be an interesting discussion. just to remind you doctor scott alice of the david senior fellow at the hoover institution and for coming to hoover full-time he is a 25 year career in tertiary care medicine in the top medical centers in the country and served as chief of

neuro- radiology at stanford university medical center. john taylor is the george p scholz senior fellow in economics and stanford university. john served as undersecretary of the treasury for international affairs under president george w. bush. i'm looking forward to my discussion with the preeminent medical doctor and economist as we examine the salient questions surrounding reopening our economy in a safe and productive manner. you can join tuesday's briefing at the same link you signed and on today. you will find the hoover institution online@hoover .org and on twitter, facebook and instagram. i want to thank you all for joining us today but please stay healthy i look forward to seeing you next time. >> friday night on book tv, a look at bestsellers and award-winning books beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern. eric larson discusses the splendid and the vile that looks at prime minister winston churchill's leadership during

the london blitz. then james patterson and his latest book, on the politics of the kennedy family. later the announcement of the 2020j anthony lucas prize, the winners announced during this virtual event include carrie greenidge and her book, black radical. and an american summer pit watch but to be friday night and over the weekend on c-span2. >> having lived to a loss of confidence in our institutions away from cynicism that is left us unable to trust what we are told by anyone who calls themselves an expert it becomes difficult for us to rise to a challenge like this. our first reaction is to say no, they are lying to us and they are only in it for themselves and a lot of our national institutions have got to take on the challenge of persuading people again that they exist for us and that they are here for the country. >> sunday, june 7 and noon eastern on in-depth, a live

conversation with author and american enterprise institute scholar and his most recent book is a time to build, other titles include the great debate, the fractured republic. join the conversation with your phone calls, tweets, text and facebook messages. watch in-depth on book tv on c-span2. >> hello everybody. welcome to tmp life, i work in events for politics and prose but we thank you so much for joining us in this or match where we continuing to bring you the authors you love and books to our community. at any time during the event tonight you can click on the big green button below and purchase tonight's book on website. we are currently offering reduced shipping as an incentive especially as the physical stores are closed. [audio difficulties] tonigh