the july 4 holiday, have a safe holiday. we are here all weekend here on c-span. booktv and american history on c-span3. we have turbo programming coming up over the weekend, check it out at our website www.c-span.org. happy fourth of july. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> employers stepped up niring une adding 288,000 jobs. it was the fifth straight monthly job gain of about

200,000. the best such stretch since the tech boom. over the months the economy has added 2.5 million jobs. the associated press said the dow jones traded high ahead of the jobs report. and the obama administration has called for tighter security measures at foreign airports that have direct flights to the u.s. and al qaeda is trying to develop a new bomb that would go undetected through security. there's no indication that there's a specific threat to the u.s. a pentagon briefing at 11:35 eastern. we will cover that live. we will also cover today's

white house briefing. likely to be asked is about airport security. that briefing is scheduled to begin about 12:35 eastern. t -- >> my first reaction was surprise. because ied a worked for mr. sterling. i coached the clippers in the year 2000. he invited me to his daughter's wedding. i had no idea exactly what was going on. but i also, because of my association. i know elgin baylor. i know what he was complaining about. so i was confused not knowing exactly which set of facts mr. sterling stood behind and then when his words came out, it was so obvious, and shocking. and just disgusting. all those things wrapped in

one. but the surprise of it is to find that type of sentiment in someone who relies on black americans for so much of his success and public profile. and it was amazing. i just couldn't believe hit that someone could have that much bigotry inside and think that it was ok. >> july 4th on c-span. a look at racism in sports just after 11rk a.m. eastern. later, exploring the red planet with the mars exploration. and then discussions on gun rights and the former recovery of former congresswoman gabby gifford. mit's the director of media lab and co-founder of linked in. they discuss how the internet is transforming societies in areas such as bit point and

massive online courses. they spoke about an hour and a half at a forum hosted by the churchill club in santa clara, california. [applause] >> so i thought i would kick this off with the story about how joey and i met. because actually it was a similar pattern of thinking that ended up with -- peter teal who is with -- pal said we're getting longer and longer dates of when we're going to launch. can you go figure this out and get japan launched? then i went and discovered we were doing the classic things a company does which is we hired lawyers to give us the risk factors and each week the lawyers would give us a longer list of risk factors and give us more reasons why trying to

launch paypal in japan was a bad deal and why we should not do this and i knew peter would literally go ballistic and how can i solve this problem? well, we need an entrepreneurial person and not lawyers. so i literally called every smart person i knew and said give me a list of the three best people you know who are entrepreneurs who understand japan who i could use the figure out this path. so three of them were all headed by this guy joey ito. and i was like all right. which of you has the best relationship with joey? many ok. then we emailed and got on the phone. >> because you didn't have me then, right? >> well, this is the kind of pattern. and thought it might be an

interesting product and useful to some people. so basically i got on the phone and joey at the time had started a venture firm called niotni which was an interesting firm and wonderful name. which has to do with the theory of humans and human intelligence and you can look it up later. it's not really relevant for tonight. and so i said i don't really have anything to offer you because we don't do anything with venture but if you have portfolios could you help us with this problem? he said no, no problem. >> so i think we have the right guy and i'll check in and get back to you and literally got back to us with a guy that arranged for us to get a letter from the japanese service authority that said you can launch but as long as you don't

launch japanese we won't judge you as that so you can start getting the accounts and put your product and work out the issues around banking later. it's literally the only country in the world where we got this clarity -- more so than the u.s. is going afoul banking regular salacious what i call orange jump suit time which is criminal not civil so you could land at the airport and be nut handcuffs and taken away so it was important to get this right. he was like you want to have coffee? yes. that's easy. so that's how it started from my perspective. o with that, with joey, i gave him a much simpler intro than the one you just heard. the one you just heard is accurate but my intro was

college dropout, m.i.t. media lab. so why did you take the media lab job? and how did you come to it and how does a college dropout end up becoming the m.i.t. media lab director? >> first of all, i never thought i would be in academia. my sister was in academics and i was surrounded by it and i dropped out three times and said i knew very well i didn't want to be an academic. >> and now you help people finish with their degree. >> i still think -- i failed at that. but but they called me, i mean. they asked very casually whether i would be interested. and i side of course. i'm interested in anything. but when they officially called me in, i had no idea. but it was aamusing enough that universities like m.i.t. would even consider having a

non-college graduate be the director of their lab. so it was like two days of 30-minute interviews with tudents and faculty and staff. and the quality of the conversation and the energy was addictive. nd i realized that -- this was a -- hard to explain. but that was really what converted me. so very quickly they decided i was the right person and i decided they were right. then there was a little bit of raised eyebrows as the process made its way through the interview. when i went to meet the dean the first thing she said was, i hear you don't have a degree. [laughter] in the end the bhorne had to ok it said, i don't see any problem. he is now the president of the university. but m.i.t. has turned out to be super flexible. i think i'm the first non-

-degree holder in the sciences. i think there's probably somebody else in the humanities. but -- >> one of the funniest part of that extremes was i was one of your reference calls and they said what do you think? and i said, well, i'm trying to hire him. what else do you want to know? >> right. >> but we're going to touch on this at multiple points. but what's your beginning statement about why the media lab mat centers like why is it kind of the next 10-30 years in terms of what we're trying to create in the world? that is kind of one of these fundamental and intellectual things. >> and i think it's similar. correct me if i'm wrong. but the rin got into entrepreneurship. a lot of it was to try and create impact. and to disrupt.

because i was in television and media and surrounded by big companies and trying to -- >> the specific line was i'm an antima nop list. >> yes. and me as a 20-something--year-old having come out of these large institutions where 20-something --year-olds didn't really have any leverage. internet was a great way to disrupt this. but in doing venture i felt limitations to things you could do. so there's a certain category. a profile of a good fundible startup. so there's some room on the edges. but fundamentally they have to have a certain scale and cash efficient sained there's a certain thing about it. but then when i got to the media lab and looked at what they were doing, there was a whole bunch of other stuff that was disruptive and it could be

venture funded eventually, but especially in the exploratory phase, the person who invests anytime isn't necessarily the ne who is going to benefit, it could be because it's super high-risk or takes a long time. there's a bunch of different reasons. i realized just doing venture wasn't it and the whole over problems of impact that needed to be addressed. and i knew a lot of smart people were here working on the silicon valley problem. but i didn't see. the media lab was weirdly unique. and that was for me to realize that was worth getting it. >> so one of the key things is innovation is part of the future. with the increasing law, moores law and -- to companies the question is classically

re-investal. universities and then corporate labs then startups. as you mentioned, part of the whole thing with startups. startups have this one mission, focused amount of capital. usually it's take an vengeance and go to market with it. like figure out how to build a team around it. to build something common to the platform or to do r & d and figure out something other people could use. that's not where that model goes. xerox to ch -- from the history books. and i think there's still an interesting place where corporate models have the least generated values. but one of the key things is to figure out how universities can do that. and of course classic universities go well, we're kind of separate and we're pure-thinking and separate from those considerations and

there's also a certain amount of failure. i think one of the reasons why to prompt you, the media lab was that we are actually building stuff. we're actually not just trying to do scholastic research but the things that actually bear on target. >> that was one of the actual only weird meetings. that it was -- he called me into his office and said i question the scholarship in the media lab. [laughter] i said well, so do i. best thing i've heard all day. >> but i think that's the big thing. most university departments are very focused on scholarship. and at m.i.t., which is more applied than most places. it's a an institute. you have labs that are funded through grants then academic departments that are through scholarship and a healthy kind

of church and state environment but then created a lab that also has its own academic program and we're primarily funded by companies. we have 80 companies that pay a consortium membership and so we have like three visits a day from companies and our students spend all day building and explaining to companies what they are doing and the companies are hugely, you know, across the spectrum so everything from lockheed martin hasborough to fox news to the -- foundation. >> and google. >> yes. and lg and nokia. so what's interesting is we get tons of commercial constraints and real-world input. and the other part is because we have the best academic program that's wrapped in a lab, we have different faculty

have different levels of this. but we can if we want to have less focus on the scholarship where the scholarship comes as a bipuckett of impact rather than the experiment or doing being a byproduct of the -- i call it practice over theory. i'm much more interested in things that work in practice but not in theory wrath err than the other way around which is where a lot of people from other universities have a lot of there's a that don't work in practice. i'd rather have it the other way around. >> there's no difference in here the and practice that's my philosophy. >> yes [laughter] >> so let's actually briefly detour to how do sexeans terface with -- do companies interface with the lab? >> we get $250,000 from companies that make up. that's kind of the entrance ticket.

or that you get a right to our property is we had -- not our primary focus to generate i.t. but when you're in a meeting and can generate you know you can go home and then we have two annual meetings where it's like the grand ball where all the demos are running and you get to see the updates. but the companies interact and some companies will fund some students and some projects but it's sort of hard to say on the record. but it's true. that's because the core funding, we don't have those moves. most of my faculty don't have deliverables. they try to create things that they have not thought of yet. and the math works out to for the cost of a fully-loaded engineer you're getting about

400-500 scientists working on 400-500 projects that may not have value for you right away. but the -- like the japanese were focused on high definition for a long time and then they showed it's going to be digital not analog. so then they said, oh. so there's ink created for the kindle. and some of the companies get inspired and do their own things. some companies like samsung hire the people that work there and google hires a lot of our people. so a lot of that goes out that way. then companies network with each other so it's kind of like a club. and some companies just come in when they have an innovation surge when they are trying to be innovate they is bring in

all their senior management but some companies like toe shiba have been members for like 29 years. >> but it's like an interacttive model as opposed to a lab. >> right. so we definitely do do what you tell us to do. >> i think that's almost by deaf physician. >> and there's a certain category of company to pay and come to the show but then they have a brand thing where a couple of the senior people come and they get some value out of it. but they are actually the ones that fund the other categories of companies that come in and engage aggressively. what's interesting is it's a competition of ideas. if you come in with some interesting data or an idea you will get a whole bunch of people working on it. so the real cool companies end up getting an unfair share of the attention and the cool thing about cool at the lab is

not what you would think. an accounting company could get a swarm of scientists so you have hundreds of nerds interested in book keeping so all of a sudden they want to meet accountings so for me to look at what companies are doing well with ideas is to see the sort of things kids wig out on. so one of my students, just biggest nerd in the world. was hacking on a volkswagen and they got so excited by this two-day hackathon thing they gave him a free audie and he is driving around fully ensured and like you got a car, you know? [laughter] but that's what's interesting is when the companies bring a toy in and let the students swarm over it.

and the key point about the lab is because it's undirected, no one asks permission. there's not a single power point presentation. everybody just does stuff so as soon as there's interaction, they maycom in the next day and it's done so they are then like what do we do next? so that's sort of what you're looking for. >> so let's shift to the views of the future. when joe and i were chatting about what would be interesting, one thing to realize was looking over it, the media lab, one of the things you're saying in a would be interesting for us to pay attention to is? >> well, i think if you look at what was it the book about regional advantage about why silicon valley grew? and the loop failed. i think a lot -- >> loop is a road ining a gra bayh. >> yes.

>> it's -- in the old days, create figure. like a video tech system that would be in the version of the web before we had the web would have cost like about 100 million. so in order to build out something like that, would have to cost so much money that you would have had to have really planned it so you would have had an m.b.a. write a plan and a company would fund it then you would hire the engineers and everybody would build the thing. for the internet, distribution, collaboration costs nearlyly zero and computations nearly zero. so suddenly what happens is the cost of trying something. so if you had done a google or facebook or yahoo before the internet, it would have been an $100 million up-front venture. so first you raise the money

and then come up with a plan so it used to be m.b.a., money, engineer. now it's engineer, money then m.b.a. if you need to go public. >> sometimes. >> styles. >> and i love the m.b.a. as a service. yes. ha ha. but i think what's important -- so that we know happened. and that's -- what happened is it pushed innovation out of the institutions with the authority and money into dorm rooms and startups. so that happened with software and internet services. i think that's happening in hardware where you're seeing the costs now the manufacturing costs. companies like p.c.h. international that basically do supply chain are now open for business for venture and a.q.s. all these are starting to open up manufacturing and then interesting events like kick starter that quickly change the

cash flow model that also screwed up. think they got 3 million in orders from kick start. so normally that would be the weird big chunk of hybrid companies. if you get away from that first then -- there's things that make hardware ventures important. but since you have to build it into an ecosystem of hardware and software services there has to be more hardware because traditional companies like h.p. are having the harder time than the people who think like software. so the big software giants, googlals, microsofts obviously getting into hardware. but the more interesting component for it for me are -- so i think m.i.t. and the east

coast tend to be good at that but i remember in silicon valley always used to say we have to do hardware. they used to do hardware and then they started to focus more and more on software. nd software is the low-hanging fruit from the profiles point of view but i think we have regional advantage in boston because we have a lot of that. but i cecil con valley picking up and catching up. but there's a similar advantage with bio tech. and i can go into details if you want. but the cost of designing and deploying and innovating on that's ike memories and another thing that in the boston area, we had a lot of expertise. but it's not going to be exactly the same. but the diminishing of cost pushes innovation to the edges

which changes the architecture of innovation, and somebody that's really good at it. i think boston had some expertise in some of these areas. this her we collaborate and so i'm really interested to see where that goes. >> well, you might to describe the how computation is being directly -- i mean the cybernet i you're taking to entirely whole new levels. i.e. s is partially the antibecause the interdisciplinary is where you get a byeologist and chemical engineer working together. that's great but doesn't work that well because they all use -- what's really funny is science lab thing is funny when you walk into -- they all are looking at the same thing, but

-- all byeologists and look differently and can't talk about it in the same way. when you're trying to -- we all have a mission. so hewlett is trying to make bio -- and -- trying to understand the brain so we have a guy who does come putational objects and does the light trick stuff. so all those guys that work on come putational optics think about cameras. turns out there's a problem or interesting thing which is the s a nemetoad to have your honors mapped, because it has a small number of neurons. but what you really want to understand when you're looking at a brain is not how it's connected but what's going on in it.

so i google map a snapshot but you really want to know who is driving and what are they drive? and what are they drinking? so you have to look inside the ells to see what's going on. of in the next media lab. one of the guys says why don't we see if we can make a light field microscope to to look at the neurons to then image the brain in real time so we invented the first light field microscope and applied it. usually the best optics guys in the world don't hang around with the best brain guys in the world, and now we're trying to get the old circuits and trying to put them into the brain and what's the best funky thing is there's elements in the brain and stuff you might see lally and there are researchers doing

the pieces of it but you're starting to see a hibernation where the interesting solutions require understanding electronic come putations and byeology and it's starting to become funageible, so there's -- george churchill's main position was at harvard but has the position -- you may have seen his demo. he encoded the whole book he wrote into a gene of a gene bacteria. a which -- and you can read the book. well, it turns out chromosomes are higher density than hard disk and lower power. so our companies came and said can you do video? maybe. ok. so now he is designing a microbe that takes light,

converts it into pro theen then takes a base pair and stores it. what they are going to do is create a bye logical video a kivel system that all you have -- but sequence the then we have other people in the lab saying no. we're going to use biology to make computer chips. so what gets interest fur trying to attack a particular problem, the approach which sed working on which is to use this expression to create a photo to not to t sin netically, -- a virus injected. you can build a robotic eye. or you can -- but what's

important about this is that it doesn't work when you have these disciplines. you really have to break these disciplines apart. and the key is to not allow it to be called interdisciplinary. this is to contrast it. [laughter] because i love these. the d school is having people in their disciplines come together in an interdisciplinary class to learn and then go back to their disciplines. so what we do is we make people leave their disciplines. they may publish papers and things. but they become antidisciplinary and -- i don't do this. but everybody codes. everybody has to hold this. -- which is, anyway, i have went off on a

tangent. >> part of the the thing is i think you're right. the future is engineering and design put together in a multidisciplinary/antimulti -- yeah. but where it's integrated. for example when you were talking about the nba. i remember whenever i get to talk to mba's i say two negative factors that have to be explained away is one is the m.b.a. and the other is management consulting. because it's innovation or what's the product that makes them that way. it's not -- it's how do you solve this problem and what are the different kinds of resources that cause the right con crepe actual map and -- that's the reason why like i remember having my mind-blown by going into there and, like,

oh, my god your tying computational stuff directly to the mouse's brain? >> yes. turns out the brain throws off a lot of -- so it suddenly helps to have the storage unit of toe shiba as the sponsor. >> exactly. >> so let's look at the hardware briefly. one thing that's also interesting. what's happening is the software is infecting everything. biology and hookups and everything from building computers by logically or build -- ogical computers solving it's also hitting hardware. e've touched on it briefly

with p.c.h. one thing i think that would reflect a little bit on what you see. >> one of the first places i'm trying to build a solid presence -- and the have been last year in january i sent a bunch of students along with betty wong for if you don't know he is the one who hacked -- and i d protected him so he is endebted to us. be he learned shenzhen when he -- and what happened was amazing because they went there and turns out all the factories that make it adidas and iphones are all sorts of aunts and uncles together with these networks that run these factory it's.

you can buy anything and talk to anyone and get anything done. but what the main thing is that every single kid whose parents have enough money like have a successful and the cell phone design is designed to if you go cell of and so they make phones like kids will make -- and what's also interesting is they don't sit there in a design room and design it. they sit there on the factory floor designing on the manufacturing equipment. so unless you have -- under your nails, you're not the designer. and every week they come up with another model. 2450eu go downstairs and solve and compare with each other and come back. and they don't call it this but this is a.d. testing and they make hardware like we make software. and what's also fascinating bout this they do have a

university that can be solved with blue toorkts everything, right? and the only way you could make that if you look at it, because there's no scruse. but it's design bid somebody who stands in front of a manufacturing line all day long thinking about how can i get this to do what i want? and when nicholas nick row ponty founded the lab he said e are demo or die. and he would say your demo only has to work once. i changed it to -- or die. you have to actually take the stuff and send it out into the real world. in the old days because the cost of doing things was so high we would inspire these companies to create kindle or

guitar hero but we wouldn't actually manufacture this stuff but now with shin zen, i realized we don't have to sit there with one prototype but make thousands and give them to people and say go out and do stuff. so it's natural as hardware so i'm also trying to get some kids from shenzhen to come to the lab. because i think there's also this interesting thing where apple i think primary has cracked down on a lot of the pirates, and a lot of these kids end up in jail because there's five businesses making fake aye phones or when you flip it, it's an android and turn it and it's something else >> we don't realize that they are actually extremely far ahead of the rest of the world in innovation so i want to be sort of bring them in and

working with us. >> obviously there's a bunch of stuff from the hardware, software stuff valley has been looking at. obviously there's been wearables. a bunch of touch points from the lab. there. and i actually think one of the other things that you've only begun to see on the fringe of it is special purpose hardware design. ke one of the but i've know that a reminder of how hardware specific it is to touch this. and i think we're going to see a lot more of that. it's win of the ways in which principles of open source apply to software now often becomes applied to hardware and how innovation works because once you can begin doing testing and ok, i lost that and i can do it

cheaply. ll of a sudden the repid did -- repit did goes way up. and that's one of the things that i think will get added. i'm not positive. we tend to be. it's very close to software. we tend to be most close to where gravity is. >> but then 20 fidels and it's also a software view of the world. taking on hardware is going to be ultimately successful. >> i think hardware is key for example, more less the way we look at this is we say we divide the practice of consumer enterprise and software and we can do anything where inter prize is part of it. we can do toy talk which is trying to make your toys talk to you. but as long as software is the

key element of it, because that's where the moores law and similar things in terms of biology. >> you touched on something that i think is fun. and silicon valley -- so what is this m.i.t. bit thing and how did it become sex >>i >> well, the bit coin thing is actually a student -- some students made the m.i.t. bit coin club and last time i checked they had $500,000 from atlanta pists and were going to give $$100 to every student in the club to do whatever they wanted. the idea is -- so to me bit coin is a hack on book keeping really. it's taking a ledger-based book keeping system and making it feasible for the first time in it's current fortunately because of the encryption. it's clever.

but it's basically converting a bear-based currency of cash into a learninger system. the only reason i'm untouched by this is because my friend was one of the first people you met that was one of my friends. but he was an indian genius. the bank of japan he was able to cut the cost of japan by 80% by completely redoing all the systems. the only have been he is an accounting genius and computer science -- and the interesting thing is he told me his story that he was in school in india and he was a whiz and so he didn't study for his accounting class and it was the first class where he didn't -- where he failed or didn't do well and then he realized you cannot underestimate accounting.

everybody thinks it's boring, but it's actually really hard so now he is obsessed about accounting so he and i would sit around and he would talk to me about accounting and the fact that no one else nerds out as much, it has deputy financial services business so behind. we have banks and stuff that are designed and no one hacks them, right? >> well, not that way. >> good hooking. so to me bit coin is successful for a lot of reasons but -- interesting for a lot of reasons. but it's now driving a lot of really smart people to start thinking about basic book keeping problems, which i think is going to be the beginning of a fundamental change in the atomic unit. because anybody is -- let's assume standard accounting systems. what can we snack so options so all the rocket sciences went into hacking a system on top of

something that was actually pretty old. kind of like when you look at the computer chip companies. let's supposed it's crystal and wafer. most of the chip guys don't even know the physics. and the phenomenon bhained they look on anymore. they are few but so accounting and book keeping is kind of like material science of money that a lot of smart people hadn't been focused on but i think now that they are i think there are going to be a lot of huge waves and to have a length of time of m.i.t. undergrads messing around, because problem is if you come from the old financial world, it's hard to -- who builds up re-invented the platformist

ledger and that, that ledger now can be build on. and that accessibility then allows the designers and engineers to begin and that's what opens up innovation. is that what it is? or is it something else? >> well, there's bit coin itself possibly evolving into something else that could be a platform. but it's also just kind of focusing a lot -- it's like the brain. so the brain when we were growing up, no one studied the brain. the brain was one of the most underfunded things ever, considering how important it was. considering how important it is for us, no one really spends money on funding it. but now it's the thing. obama's talked about it. but it's when you get a lot of smart people geeking out on something it creates a lot of critical mass and smart people want to hang out with smart

people. nothing against account nts. but the image of an accountn't firm is not where you're like the image where you're like the will s math kwan bhorne want to go there. and there are those who do the quantum accounting. but the general undergraduate students. >> i'm not even sure i know what quantum accounting is. >> ok. [laughter] >> can you measure it? vote to inninger's book. - strotinger's book. >> but also because a lot of innovation comes out of trying a lot of things. so to me bit coin is bringing attention to an area that's sorely needed. a lot of brain power attention. because i think ooh lot of stuff that's screwed up whether

it's network security or fridge i willty -- and i'm on the auditing -- of "the new york times" which gives me whether it's viewible or non-vuble our system is so when people start saying why don't we just start doing this? >> well, i agree with everything you said about bit coin. but one thing i think is important to add to that view is part of the notion is that if you can create an effectively network-distributed trust system where the trust redecides in the network and all the network, not just one node of authority. that allows a lot of new innovation. now ledger is one absolute -- but bit coin you think about how d.n.a. should work. did a bunch of potential unlockings by having the network be the authority. >> yep. and i think that's right.

and i think a lot of us have thought. i was on the board and we thought a lot about d.n.s. and trust. but it's -- it definitely lights a fire under it when there's more money under it. so bit coin is -- fanning a lot of the really important flames that need to be fanned. so -- >> let's shift to -- and you know in a few minutes. by the way, i will be asking questions. and the audience as well. and the questions can come back to us about anything the whole roup would be interested in. and one of the things that the means that go around silicon valley is we disrupt industries and the -- you take $10 of what is revenue and g.d.p. and place $1 then that becomes a platform

to enable other things and part of the reason why the disruptive cycle creates obstruction. and obviously people have been kicking around a lot of stuff. u got core sarah and media and m.i.t. has its own. m.i.t.x. and stuff. so there's been a lot of thinking about what the future of the university is going to be. what are your, you know, at least partial perspectives on that at least from the media lab and other? >> so -- there's a future of education, which is a broader thing in which the future of the university is part of. >> and i think -- and it ties to your book as well. i don't think we're preparing people to be fully functional. ecause and i think you can blame it -- you can go through the carnegie but also the

companies that are hiring people because they have degrees or grades because that drives a testing culture to make sure people feet in requirements for the degree and the tests are usually about you as an individual. so it's not that much about collaboration. it's literally a test of skills and knowledge which is great if you're in a factory or if you're stuck on top of a mountain with a number two pencil and a mobile phone but in most cases you're going to have a mobile phone and wick media and your vicks is going to be how can youful people with the knowledge when you need it and turn it into something valuable and the ability to produce and ask questions and think which is not a good assessment. but when i do a tenure case. i'm hireing a faculty member. it's -- but this paper has multiple authors. how do we know it was this

person's contribution? sit this person that was heavily cited and what does this person do by themselves? so it's not about networking and it's sort of networking but in a one-dimensional way, so to me, the preparing people for assuming they are network and assuming that skills and knowledge are less important than the ability to gain those skills and the knowledge when you need them rather than degree them -- because to me the university feels like ok, you have to memorize the encrike la media before you're allowed to go out done and something. but it's the opposite. because tough encrike la media in your pocket. that to that shifts away from having knowledge in your brain to being creative. and it makes sense because in a society where machines and computers are not yet strong enough to do the repetitive task humans are able to do in

an industrial way, -- today when robots and computers are doing everything that is repeatible or that they can do, you don't want computers tra computers bots and which is something universities try to create. that's the big problem and then there's a whole bunch of stuff. >> do you have any suggestions on what the mods are? because most dialogue i see happen within the university system is kind of like armuke sufficient. at the time of the degree of course they are not sufficient but one innovation along the-foot -- how do we change e outcome of broken -- and results? > i think mukes are a better

and more skilled -- >> they will argue if you make that part more efficient. you have time for more stuff. the word often use asked called a flip classroom. instead of sitting with butts in the seat listening to lecture, you watch the lecture at home and come and interact when you're in class. that sort of makes sense although i would kind of argue that having said that you're spending all your money and energy in to building a knowledge delivery system but don't sit around talking about now that we have the time in class what do we do and how do we make that more effective in? we're doing more peer learning online. so we did this thing called creative leanching where we said we're not going to teach you anything. you're going to teach yourself and 5,000 people showed up 10,000 stayed and didn't give

any degrees or point and halfway through they started making their own software. when you look at open software, people teach each other and everybody knows you learn more when you're teaching. so this master-apprentice -- i think 7 billion teachers is a much more interesting goal than one person teaching 7 billion people which is kind of the music model. think there's a role for them, but i think the social behavior of learning and teaming is also important, because i still think especially in the developing world everybody wants that degree and to get that job. and it all goes back to jobs. and you will spend a lot of money getting your degree. that's the whole point so get out of here. get my degree and get out of here.

but what about -- so for my first-year ph.d. students which are the ones we get for four years. i say imagine i may take your degree away when you're leaving and say, psych. i want you be able to look back and say, it was still worth it and think of the degree as a scaffolding for you having an amazing time and having learned stuff. because then i don't want you here. i want people here who don't want to leave. >> so i think we will shift to questions here. i still have a stack. and i think -- all i'm supposed to do is say, next question, and the folks here will tell me, so are you selecting or am i selecting? >> we have here. >> ok. > so just thank you for that slide presentation. i had the pleasure of sitting with my niece and telling her all about it and how she should

figure her life bout those slides and got up to slide 100-something when she started getting board so, thank you. but the question i have is we talk about bit coin and we talk about trust. and we talk about all these issues that are, you know, almost transnational that the point, is that right and as we google came out of left field. how are these -- this community of entrepreneurs go to confront some of these fairly complex national issues where they do have a real cause for concern? so any thoughts on the bit coin angle from both of you? >> happy to. is e of the things that

wondrous and complicating and hopefully not terrible about being more and more in the networked age which is what i refer to as the network essentially getting inherb shea and a life of its own is that things can happen which aren't under a national or state control and bit coin is one of those things. because if you look at the vast majority of -- that's one of have s that countries historically worked is that the banking system is a tightly-regulated country and there's a structure that causes it very difficult to drive -- and part of the question will then be -- i think it's going to be very difficult for government folks

to figure out how should modern treaties be expressed? should they be expressed in code? what are the kinds of principles are not? which is one of the reasons joey is on the -- i'm on the corporation board of mow stilla. so in terms of entrepreneurs, it's a question of saying well, understand that part of it is technology is changing the world. that there will be friction points with regular thration there will be friction with government. and you have to have that as part of your thinking. about what your startup plan is going to be. what you're going to be doing. and so what i do personally there is is i look at whether it's bit coins in financial services or air b and b and zoning regulation. because i go, ok.

what should the mature design of the ecosystem be? why is that better for all the individuals? why is that also better for society. and then how do you step in the way of doing that and recognizing there will be a number of places where you will be reconciling changing the system sthuled happen? so you can say it's better for a bunch of individuals so people can sublet rooms or apartments in ways that often create experiences and income for themselves. that kind of income creation is valued for the region and for service and individuals and then also for travelers they get a unique kind of experience. so it's valuable for both in terms of how it plays and that's the kind of things. there's regular tori issues for people in the cities and transnational. this could be a subject of an entire hour of talking so i'll stop there. >> i would say i'm a little disappointed by the lack of

creativity in institution hacking. by people who should be -- partly because silicon valley exists in a slight bubble and exists because they were able to ignore a lot of institutions by being out here. you see a lot of interesting hackers who hack their way into a funny situation in government in the military in large institutions and ultimately you see a lot of -- some of them are not here. but who are very creative whether it's figuring out how the overthrow governments to figuring out how to do something creative. but you see google hiring the same as at&t and i realize they don't have time to be innovate in that state but i wish there was a little bit more energy. but i think partially, you a lot of money

do g an -- hacker but you in ing -- a lot of kids specific media spend their whole life trying to 23ig is out how disruptive ways to do that. maybe that's something. but i we could do more of that. >> next question. >> hi. good evening. wonderful conversations. really enjoyed it. i was very -- i guess, excited about the conversation about the university and how you need bring the element of social element of cooperation into that. you remind of the conversation i had with one of the professionors at stanford in the department of education we

were talking what is really needed is teach people how to connect the dots and how to synthesize tons of information coming at them and picking up the right thing and connect the dots. one thing that was very interesting was i remember the leadership class i took 30 years ago at h.p. they gave different information to five of us without knowing it and said come up with an answer and we were fighting with each other. one of us finally said, let me see your information that you have. and they were trying to teach us to communicate. my question, i guess, is -- how do we test that ability of people who can communicate, connect the dots and get that? because i've been -- since my conversation about six months ago with this university professionor, i've been really -- professor, i've been really struggling, how do we define?

forget about something of the past, sit on top of the mountain and with a pencil try to answer it. my proposal is allow people to bring their laptops, bring their friends. if they can con five of their friends to sit there, it says they have leadership ability and make sense. i don't know if that's realistic or not. do you guys have any comments on that? >> great question actually. i'm working on an essay on network literacy in terms of how to think about -- for example, as you go through different phases of the information age, different kinds of literacy that's important, not just reading, writing, language, research literacy. network literacy that's becoming -- everything from a literacy of how do you search networks and how do you network within people? i'm not for that, answer.ave a good

>> linkedin is a version of this. your references is a test. >> yeah. >> it defends pends where you are in your career. you are not going to do with a 10-year-old. as an adult, the network you created shows both your test and your aptitude. i think that there was an interesting article i think in february by "the new york times" -- a great newspaper, by the way. >> one that you happen to be on the board of. >> it was a google h.r. person, grade point average has no -- was saying it has no statistically -- is not statistically relevant in how the well the person does. now some teams in google have up to 14% college dropouts which is a departure from the .p.a. stanford degree-driven hiring. i don't think how they figured out how to change it.

they have data that shows that just focusing on g.p.a. isn't right. i think everyone's struggling a little bit with the assessment. it was funny. there was a company that does do assessments and the head of assessments in h.r. was at the media lab, gave her a demo and she talked and she came back, i only found eight people i wanted to hire. how did you decide you wanted to hire them? did you give them a test? no. i knew right away they'd fit in perfectly. ha. she goes -- her whole job was trying to quantify the assessments. i think the hardest part is really going to be, how do you scale it? if you come to the media lab, we have gone through hundreds of applicants to narrow them down to a couple dozen. we then work on them so your return is pretty high on your investment of talking to kids. but if you're getting a million applications, how do you sort for the first bunch? because i do think -- i think there was an i.b.m. study, at least i heard this.

this is now foggy memory so don't quote me on this. there was a study on who did the interviews and how well the person did later. the more senior and sort of so-called wise but probably looking at different things, the more senior the interviewer the more likely the person being hired have that aptitude. people tend to not want to hire people who were more senior than themselves and things like that. the interview process i think has a lot of human nature in there that figures this stuff out. i think the harder part is, how do you do that? i think google has -- in that article it has, we ask these kind of questions. it's a tricky way of figuring out if people is a thinker. they have to filter in the -- >> next question. >> hi, reid. hi, joi. i guess in a world where there are so many more things than there are people now and our

identity is becoming sort of a function of linkedin and a variety of other things, how do you think -- do you think we're going to have our own personal network that we take to somebody else's house or to work or to a hotel? what do you think of this whole concept of taking your network with you and having some kind of security and private is i and identity around that? >> just a refinement. do you mean network as in people or network we will be wearable in cybernetics? >> more your identity. for example, in our house we have on ssid, which most people have. i think we are going to have to have more than that because we're going to have guests and our finances and health. as we move forward, you know, we become a function of this sort of network identity and around our network is the function of things we have. there must be some thought around i.o.t. and identity

going on. >> do you want to start? >> sure. i think this is the problem, right? i think talking about trust, trust networks, identity within the trust networks, what sort of identities and identifiers are necessary to complete the right transactions? but i think in the world of big data, the idea of, like, for instance, you know, if i'm going to a library there's no reason the guard at the library has to know my name or where i live. they just need to know this person's face links with the membership to the library and should be allowed access. there is this fundamental thing where there should a minimum amount of identity to complete any necessary transaction which is what you are forced to reveal. i think that the -- the architecture of identity is going to have to change to be focused more on what is necessary to complete this loop of trust in order for something to happen.

and that's going to change eventually because i think the market's going to demand it. but just like spam and just like security and everything else, it will only change -- because we all know private enhancement technology is something i've been working on since the internet started. nobody will buy it because nobody wants it. i think it's like spam. it has to get really painful before people are willing to say, i'm not going to use this anymore. we introduced this and spam destroyed it. the company fixed it. i think with a lot of the identity stuff, what happens is people will start getting hurt. it will get worse before it gets better. when the -- once it gets better version i think will have a lot more prnlized identity with a lot more control. i think the other important thing is transparency of those who use your information because you're going to get it collected anyway. to me the worst thing in the world that stresses me out is, what is the model that they have about me? like right now, i can't get

t.s.a. i went through every single find k i could possibly and it turns out the lawful database, there is a glitch and so that's why you're not getting to so stop trying to fix it. but then my wife got it this morning. go figure. to me, i don't want to end up on a no-fly list where they have information that's wrong about me and i think the ability to go and change that i think will be key. >> i agree with the principles. the other two things to add is obviously the bar is moving relative to what's the amount of publicity about my identity that provides valuable services to me? >> think about the google ruling. >> which one? >> the one in europe that made it -- that said google -- >> forget -- the forget ruling. i think generally speaking i

think that's a good thing especially as it applies to companies. i do think that one of the -- kind of the nuances is is so, for example, you have to -- you always have to look at the ecosystem design of unintended consequences. for example, people trying to hack financial systems and, you know, you want to remember information in order to have -- so you have to have some kind of -- there's always a principle kind of balance in terms of how you construct it. i think one of the things what happens is frequently when you frame privacy things and you say, we're going to take this data and do something you don't know about it. it sounds terrible. we will provide this service that you like. this is a little bit like the facebook thing. your friends will upload pictures. other friends will tag them and shown to all your friends before you can get a chance to stheem, you can kind of redact that. what do you think about that? it sounds a little scary to me.

everybody uses facebook. it conducts a live stream of actually moments that mattered to me. the system self-regulates. the bar shifts is one thing. the other thing is it gets a issue on the other identity is there's a lot of things that group patterns that identity will actually seriously help the overall efficient of society everything from medicine, kind of genetic coding and these sorts of things to traffic patterns and how do we sort out individual rights versus collective rights there is kind of seriously interesting. to give you an example, one of the things -- and in is not quite the identity question. when joi ito and i were driving around 101, we thought self-driving cars will change things. one of the things that joi put forward which i am thinking about, if your car knew that by doing this and driving this way

would kill you but would save two other lives, what should the car do? [laughter] >> i was like, oh, complicated question. those are the kinds of questions we'll get into. >> i think bioengineering -- so one pro-tip, bioengineering is dropping in price at six times more than any of the other areas. so personal gene sequencing will be like probably within a couple years you'll probably want to do it. and then a new protein technology that you can go in and edity very cheaply your genes -- edit very cheaply your genes. we'll modify our genes and our children to start to eliminate certain things. >> quite scary. >> and he's also starting to research personal biospheres ecause he feels that extinction threat by a teenager is a threat.

>> because of hacking biology. with that, next question. >> ok. i come from the world of digital fabrication and advanced manufacturing. i want to know y'all's advice for those bringing innovation into industries where you'll have a serious restructure of skill sets for people who are normally very hesitant toward change. >> so i think one of the -- a pair of m.i.t. professors, eric and andy, who also worry about this topic. and their general worry is with the changing disruption, you know, how do you have the right kind of ability for labor force to retool and stay employed and i think the broad level answer to this is taking the same kind of techniques for transforming how ongoing education goes, how an ability to kind of do continuous learning throughout your career, not to have this

old industrial model because it's like, well, i had the student and now i'm in the factory or i'm now in the field. it's like, no, no. you have to be learning every year and that has to be an ongoing pattern is part of how we're all kind of -- i think all modern careers, especially professional careers are turning to. the notion of ongoing education and constant retooling is important. and so i think you have to then figure out how do we deploy these technologies in order to help with that as the outcome for people who are in the work force? i don't know if there's anything you'd add to that. >> yeah. it is going to be harder for the more senior and half retired people who don't want to -- or don't have the incentive to put the investment into trying to retool. but for the young kids, i know like ben jones and others are doing the code. a lot of the less advantaged neighborhoods, learning to code provides a tremendous opportunity and it's a market

failure where we don't have enough coders and learning to code is actually possible. it's -- it turns out it's not that hard. you can also -- again, with the peer learning, there's a sell lahr division model. if you teach people how to do pair programming, you can people who are less experience in scales, you don't need tons and tons of infrastructure to do that. i think teaching kids to code -- it's interesting. the workshop that they start to do have been extremely successful. it's not like the intuitive thing to do but it's the obvious thing when you look at the numbers. and so i think that's -- i think that's going to be a pretty successful initiative. >> hey, gentlemen. so in the last century, a fellow named karl marx suggest it would be a withering away of the nation states which didn't happen in how he stressed it. when you talk about network networks and what george is doing with biology tends to think that institutions won't

keep up, and we talked a little bit about the university and so forth. what do you think can happen to enable them? what len able us when we have food trying to take the government trying to take on the chinese and maybe there might be a little bit of back and forth on that? what do you think will get us beyond or transcend some of those issues to help the institutions keep up with what we're doing? >> josh, the managing director has a book called "age of the unthinkable." >> awesome book. >> he's now at the helm of really thinking about international relations. he's one of the key experts on china. but he's doing like ultimatum theory game theory analysis. the problem is international relations and statesmanship is still in the dark ages and what it is is now it's happening in a world of extreme complexity.

i spent time in the middle east. it's as complex -- it's so complex that you can't really parce it. it doesn't solve. it's like a -- it's like in hyper space. it's not in the including space. so i think what needs to happen is just like every other industry that had, you know, physicists and people who understand math jump in and try to model things in a different way. i think the military and the international relations needs that. the problem is there isn't a strong flow of people into that sector because of the way that the institutions are set up. so to your point, i think -- when i think about the institutions, i think about programs like code for america and others. at the municipal level you see some trickling in. it's how do you do impact? i think n.g.o.'s and nonprofits can help. at the media lab i see physics nerds getting interested in

international relations, getting interested in solving a theory and modeling those as physics problems rather than text. i think it will take a while. i think part of it will be coming up are with the right model and having enough senior administration that can parse it. right now -- we see this failure already starkly in cybersecurity where the senior people just don't use computers so they don't understand kind of emotionally what's going on and the fact, you know, a bunch of teenagers could actually, you know, cause a lot of havoc and don't because they don't want to kill their host. that's the power of today. get used to it. you don't have control, you know. >> so two things to add into that. generated k pinkis an idea, create a digital west point because you need to have

more engineers or hackers or geeks, nerds as actors within these institutions. and so typically one of the problems is the way a programmer is thought of in institutions which includes government. well, i'll write out exactly what to do and then you go do it. no. you have to figure out how to treat these things more organ inc. systems. you have to figure -- organic systems. you have to figure out how to hack them. that was part of the throwaway comment i made earlier about, you know, what happens if you can write treaties in code or should treaties be in code? for example, if people want something to think about when itcoin is an international network ledger, what you can do is articulate financial penalties in bitcoin that would automatically be triggered. so if i did something that

bitcoin essentially as a country they would be transferred as posed to the way the system works today and say, no, i'm not going to pay it. that sort of thing. there are interesting ways to hack it. the second thing is i think it's extremely important -- this is one of the reasons why level organizations like the churchhill -- churchill club to understand where the future is going and part of -- one of the things i've told a number of u.s. politicians is, it's stunning to me how many times -- the ratio of foreign politicians i host here in silicon valley relative to domestic ones. like -- it's like, guys, come out and talk. it really matters. -- look at it this way. the chateau chancellor of the -- the chancellor of the czech of the u.k., the shadow

chancellor at the time, george, spent a week out there to know how to help the u.k. that's a great thing. that sort of thing is one that will be a partial answer. >> next question. >> how you guys are doing? i think you guys are both great. i have a question to mr. ito regarding the silicon valley model of putting something up and then trying to find a business model for that. richard branson wrote an article on linkedin, invading the model. does anybody talk about hacking the business moldle at the media lab and are you concerned going forward in terms of the money we spent in terms of invading without real business models going forward? >> well, i think reid can answer better than me. i have don't think that not focusing on revenue is not having a business model. think the idea that distribution and scale have tremendous business value and are the harder part of the

problem. and that once you have distribution and scale it's easy to get meetings, it's easy to generate cash. the traditional obsession, the so-called business model which is actually roughly translated by some people into the wrong thing which is cash flow, it's a shortsighted focus. you know -- and so to me i don't think it's these companies like twitter and others aren't focusing on a business model. it is a business model to focus on things like scale. i think at the media lab, we tend not to focus on -- we focus on impact. we want to hit the real world, but a lot of our stuff intentionally is answers looking for questions because sometimes you'll discover stuff that wouldn't normally be allowed to be searched for if your focus was on something with utility from the beginning. and so i think at the media lab we're sort of more discovery and search oriented than

silicon valley. do you want to talk about this model? >> business model hacking is one of the things on the startup and venture side than university side. we have a much better understanding of how the ecosystems come together than almost anyone, even in even advanced places in the academy like the media lab. we have a much better sense of that. i do think everything you said is right which is one of the things that happen in consumer internet is get the scale first matters. sometimes different areas. that's a hard irproblem -- harder problem than the business model problem. one of the things that's interesting is frequently what happens is people get the scale for consumer internet and then they forget there is additional business model invasion you can do. that's the thing -- innovation you can do. that's the thing that made google a powerhouse. it's not like we have x page views it's we have a business model. you spee similar things

happening now with the kind of the news feed, sponsored update innovations which are kind of new iterations in the product. i think what google is doing with true view is interesting. to think about business model innovations and hacking is part of the entrepreneurial process. for consumer internet investments frequently it's irrelevant unless you get to hundreds of millions of people. if you haven't figured out your distribution like when entrepreneur comes to me and say, what should i focus on first? focus on distribution. do think about lacking the business model later -- hacking the business model later. >> i do think, though, the place where we do get to hack a little bit is there's this certain kind of scale that you need to be at before you can hack a business model in a certain way. >> yes. >> you have to have at least one user. so -- >> usually more than one. >> the thing we get is we get 80 companies telling us their deepest darkest secrets about

where they think they're going to die. and then we get to sort of say, what about this, what about that? so -- and they'll test it. even at "the new york times" we'll test things. so there's a certain kind of business model hacking you do once you got a platform or brand that you can't do if you're a startup with, you know, just in the early, early phase. >> yes. long conversation. i think this is the last question. >> we have one here. >> a moment ago you can't make money from hacking regulations. i know that's not true because i've done it. there's been an explosion of law-related startups that are trying to hack regulatory anomalies, friction, that kind of thing. what i really noticed coming from east to west is that people don't care. they don't care about things that are outside their bubble. they don't care about hunger, human rights. that's not as true in the east. you guys are uniquely

positioned to talk about social innovation in the bay area and how to do that. so how do you burst the bubble and get people in the bay hacking sort of big social problems that are global in nature? >> let me shift your question slightly -- although i will answer the full thing. because this is -- on a board of nonprofits. i had paul farmer. what i realize in terms of the valley's focus, the valley is about technology and entrepreneurialship. a japanese word for obsessive geek. what i found the way to get resonance on whether it's hunger or education -- some are interested in talent -- international relations is to put it -- to make it somewhat navigable by that skill set. how does that skill set or how

do those things, entrepreneurship and technology apply to this. then it starts getting interesting. it's a strong interest on those two things. they aren't saying, oh, i'm trying to solve world hunger. they say, i have these tools that are really interesting and you can disrupt this massive breakout thing and this is how you apply them to this. for example, if you go to people and say, well, you know, micro finance. ok. that's kind of interesting. tivo, that's really interesting. that's the kind of pattern that requently happens and that would be one part. >> i think that's right. i think that maybe there's some east coast-west coast bridging that could be useful. i think a lot of the -- like, mccarthy foundation, we fund a lot of startups that have a really interesting social mission but don't have a lot of nerd firepower. i think the success of things like club for america where you go out and suddenly you realize

that you walk into an environment where your skills are able to completely change a city or to completely change a whole bunch of people and then you get addicted to it. it's like the modern version of the peace corps. i think if we send some of these geeks out for just a year, take a break, go out and do something interesting, go to africa and come back, they may get the bug. i think a lot of it has to do of being in an environment where you're pretty safe, where you don't have to focus on the world news. i think it's a little bit about getting out more. >> geeks get out more, that could be a tag line. i think that's it. >> reid and joi, want to thank you so much. you've been so generous with your time and with your thoughts and we really appreciate it, right? [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> here in washington the day before the fourth, two briefings coming up. we'll bring to you live in about 15 minutes at 11:45

eastern, defense secretary chuck hagel and joint chiefs of staff general martin dempsey. and then before the house pro forma at 12:30 eastern, the press secretary josh earnest. one thing to talk about is security. u.s. and intelligence officials are concerned that al qaeda is trying to develop explosives that could go undetected through airport security. there is no specific threat. but secretary jay johnson saying in part, quote, i have directed t.s.a. to implement enhanced security measures in the coming days at certain overseas airports with direct flights to the united states. we will work to ensure these necessary steps pose as few disruptions to travelers as possible. >> remind your children in this bicentennial year when we are the first generations of --

generation of americans who have attacks on the continental united states, we are the first generation of americans to have felt to have our government buildings attacked. remind your children that freedom is not free. that's what the star spangled banner is about that's what this commemoration year is about, to tell that story and to lift every voice and to sing. >> a three-day fourth of july weekend starts friday on "american history tv," including the 200th anniversary of the star spangled banner. friday at 8:30 p.m. eastern. saturday night at 8:00, visit the college classroom of joe howell talking about radiation experiments. and sunday, a preview of jeffrey engel's manuscript of george h.w. bush and the peaceful end of the cold war. >> defense secretary chuck hagel and joint chiefs of staff

general martin dempsey briefing reporters at the pentagon -- at the pentagon in a few minutes. that's coming up at 11:45 eastern here on c-span. while we wait, a discussion from this morning's "washington journal" on the latest developments in iraq. >> host: we want to welcome ambassador james jeffrey, a 35-year ambassador of the state department and now a visiting fellow at the washington institute of eastern policy. thank you for joining us. >> guest: thank you for having me. >> host: what do you think iraq is going to look like years from now? >> guest: we'll have the islamic state covering parts of syria and iraq and a very autonomous kurdish entity in the north. >> host: how will that function? >> guest: it won't function very well. all three entities will be at

odds to one another. the other alternative is to try to find a way to unify the country through the parliamentary system and have all forces directed at retaking the territory from the isil. that's the best plan but it's in trouble right now. >> host: i want to begin with news on this thursday morning and the reporting of the "washington post", the full story available online, prime minister nouri al-maliki trying to prevent the break-up of iraq by heavily armed insurgents who already declared an islamic state stretching across iraq into syrian territory. but the threats are many as the kurds prepare to vote on the independence to the north and the shi'ite dissatisfaction bubbles in the south. prime minister maliki yesterday offering an amnesty to sunni tribesmen to join the insurgency, his latest attempt to claw back control. will it work?

>> guest: that won't work but the efforts under way with the kurds, the sunni arabs, the parliamentary meeting which wasn't successful two days ago, but nonetheless they will meet in less than a week. there are efforts to bring this together. it's very hot with prime minister maliki because most of the kurds and many of the shia parties have rejected him as prime minister. but he's holding on to power with every bit of strength he can muster. >> host: and this is from "usa today" isis poses a threat beyond iraq. he says the u.s. is not doing enough to protect jordan. >> guest: he's absolutely right. isis is not only a threat to the region but it's a threat to us. we now have a state comparable to the taliban in afghanistan in the center of the middle east, not far from some of the biggest oil wells in the whole region. this is a real threat for all of us.

>> host: where were the mistakes made on behalf of the u.s.? >> guest: we can go back over 10 or 12 years and look at iraq. the most important mistake was not to engage in syria. with the moderate opposition three, four years ago, when that fighting began. the second mistake and very specific was when the isis people took over fallujah, some 40 kilometers to the west of baghdad back in december, the iraqi government and all of the iraqi factions asked us for help. we promised help and gave them none in the face of this and that led to the disaster in mosul. >> host: if you're interested, go to the national geographic website and they took a look at the areas. we're going to look at how this has changed. over the centuries, the region once known as the cradle of civilization has seen incredible

changes. you can see how it's evolved from the empire and what iraq looks like today. a 7th century split with an islamic cell between sunni and shi'ites will only grow wider as the centuries wore on and the region known as iraq was traded by a number of great powers. the question is getting into iraq by president bush and getting out of iraq by president obama, tell us about that. >> guest: it's clear that we can't do social engineering on the backs of 150,000 american u.s. troops in a place as volatile as the middle east. that's a lesson we made the hard way. president obama made no real mistake by pulling us out. the iraqi people didn't want us to stay on. they're probably thinking

differently today. >> host: we welcome your phone calls. the line for republicans is (202) 585-3881 and (202) 585-3880 for democrats. you can also join us on our twitter page at @cspanwj. can iran be a viable partner? >> guest: here again, the administration has a right, at least what i hear them say, and that is we share certain goals with iran. in making sure this isis state doesn't survive. we don't share the same interests or the same basic approach to the middle east. the more iran gets engaged in iraq, the more difficult it is to ever poll the sunni arabs back into a union. they see that as turning themselves over to iranian dominance. they will not do that. >> host: can prime minister maliki survive the summer?

>> guest: i think it's quite unlikely, but i wouldn't rule it out. people have named former deputy president mahdi from the supreme islamic council. maliki's chief of staff. there's also his national security adviser. and there are other figures out there. there is no dearth of people who could possibly lead this country. the question is will maliki step aside and can they get him out? >> host: hearing president bashar al-assad is doing, he's looking back and watching this all unfold. what do you think he's thinking? >> guest: he's thinking i'm benefitting from this. essentially, the tactic to portray the sunni majority as a

terrorist attempt to overthrow legitimate government seems to be working. i've got the russians and the iranians backing me. the americans are focusing on isis. isis is a terribly dangerous threat for us and the region. but no less of a threat is iran, hezbollah, syria and russia together, winning a victory in the middle of the middle east. we have no good options. we have a set of foes, all of whom are fighting each other and threatening our allies and our interests and this shouldn't have been allowed to get this way. >> host: saddam hussein was able to maintain control in the country. what was he able to do that his successors are not? >> guest: i would challenge that. first of all, he faced repeated uprisings which had to be put down by force. we intervened right after the first gulf war so the kurdish

area was protected by the u.s. air force and to some the shiias as well. this is not something that began in 2003. >> host: his days were numbered had he not been forced out? >> guest: absolutely. >> host: let's get your calls. we have a call from philadelphia. good morning, john. >> caller: good morning. my comment is when the republicans stole this election with gore, it told me one thing, they would steal the children's and the sunni war to get to the treasury. you can connect the dots now and look back. elections have consequences. that's what i wanted to say. >> guest: i have no comment on that. >> host: let's go to matt in concord, new hampshire.

good morning. >> caller: good morning. i hope the fourth of july is wonderful for everybody in america. i have a brother who serves. so i have great interest in this. when you opened your show up, ambassador, you stated bush signed the status forces agreement. i keep reading on this and getting conflict. could you explain that a little bit, please.

>> to allow our troops to stay on is that it was not quite finished in 2008. president bush needed to acknowledge that we would withdraw our troops by 2011. earlier in 2011, after taking advice from his military commanders, president obama decided we should keep a contingent on beyond 2011 and e they did not want to give the troops legal immunity. president obama was following my advice and advice of everybody else in this regard and decided we could not keep troops on under those circumstances. we tried other ways to provide

security assistance. they were not very successful. this comment from edward perkins. you can share your thoughts on our twitter page. let me go back to another story from "the washington post." sticking with iraq, kurds -- the kurdistan region is pursuing two different paths to the future. one as part of iraq and one as an independent state. how would that work? guest: only in the complicated way that things work in iraq. they are committed to trying to make the parliament terry

y -- they want more rights, what they call a confederation rather than a federal system, where they would have total control of all kurdish lands. they would have total control of oil and say in their international relations. whether iraq is willing to give them that or not, we will have to see. he believes the party, primarily sunni-arab will rise from the ashes. he took over the position of the minister of defense and commander-in-chief. he selected that leaders. he did not continue the outreach we had done to the tribes. there was no big thing you can point the finger to. there were only really bad

incidents where his troops fired on civilians. i standards of the middle east, it was not unusual. signalcally sent out a that he was not about inclusive government. he was not about sharing power with other institutions. they sensed spending more than three decades, including serving as our ambassador to iraq. now he's affiliated with the washington institute for near east policy. u can see his work online at washingtoninstitute.org. kirk from hamilton, montana. good morning. thanks for waiting. caller: good morning, sir. i was a contract engineer in iraq for a company.

was a ll you 1991, i seeking advisor. asked me put me -- about iraq because i was not there anymore. he whole desert storm war, i was successful because all the targets were the targets i told. [inaudible]

basically the success was , arning from a german general he german general -- [indiscernible] operation freedom they called me back because i knew the guys. -- 're asking me how we can [indiscernible] i can tell you three days after the phone conversation there was a time where they found saddam. one was found in downtown baghdad. host: kirk, thanks for the call. thanks for sharing your own personal experiences. let me go back to his final

point of trying to track down saddam hussein. were you part of that effort in the foreign service trying to figure out where he was? guest: no. at that time i was ambassador to albane the gentleman from i was a few months after saddam was there. your caller brings back the point there was tremendous resistance and opposition to saddam by the entire -- most of the iraqi population, way back well before twee. host: this question from another viewer, what's yours best theory of why we fought this war in the first place? iraq did not attack us. guest: my theory is that the many people, both in the administration, in the think tank and academic community in congress believed that that's true. but that the middle east attacked us on 9/11, that the dysfunctional situation in the middle east, where american forces had to have been engaged by my count, some 20 or 30 times before 9/11, was the underlying problem and the hope

was that saddam was not only a real threat. people actually did believe he had weapons of mass destruction. i saw all of the intelligence. this was not cooked up to justify an invasion. but having the problem of weapons of mass destruction, people thought that this would be an opportunity to transform the middle east the way eastern europe had been transformed in 1989. they believe if you get rid of the evil leaders such as saddam hussein, the people would embrace a western liberal, democratic agenda as the people of eastern europe by and large did after 1989. i was in europe at that time and i spent much of the succeeding 20-plus years in the middle east and i can tell you the differences in culture, history and attitudes toward the west and the united states could not be more different than, say, between poland and iraq and that was the major mistake made. host: ambassador jeffrey, this was the story inside the "washington journal." another court appearance. the benghazi suspect to be held

without bail. the wall street journal saying the suspect ordered without bail after hearing in a federal courtroom that offered glimpse for the high-profile terror trial. michelle davis who is the defense attorney saying, quote, there is no evidence, no comprehensive evidence of what happened in benghazi. i mentioned that headline because of this from james who said, please ask ambassador jeffrey to give us his thoughts on the security situation in benghazi on 9/11, 2012. guest: there was a commission headed by former ambassador pickering of the foreign service and former chairman of the joint chiefs, admiral mullen, that they have to look into the deaths of americans. it's called the accountability review board. i have met with both of them. i have gone through that very, very closely. i talked to others involved in that and the basic problem was the state department bureaucracy, not the leadership, did not put

adequate security into that installation. why that happened i can't rein, but like in all institutions on a given day a lot of people are making mistakes based upon priorities. essentially they put lots of security into places that didn't need it and the place calling out was the most dangerous situation we had anywhere in the world. they had three security officers. only by chance when ambassador stevens arrived that day did he bring two more. that's way below the minimum standards for a place as dangerous as that. host: john is joining us. alexandria, virginia, republican line with ambassador james jeffrey. good morning. caller: good morning, gentlemen. ambassador, good morning to you. thanks for coming on the show. it's a great addition to the conversation. my question and my point is -- in 2011 when the mandate was turned over from d.o.d. to the department of state, and i believe it was october, 2011, that that happened, the united

states poured billions of dollars into iraq, not only in construction of the embassy but also in foreign military sales and the weapons sales which were all under title 22 authority. this was all department of state-run programs. i think -- i know this year alone it was $47 million, and that was not including the funding that was going in the f-16 aircraft. so my simple question is, why were we on pace, why were we scheduled to sell prime maliki and a corrupt noninclusive iraqi government f-16 aircrafts without any conditions for political outreach and more inclusivity? guest: that's a good question and there's no easy answer. first of all, one thing that is important, while we continued giving the iraqis what we call f.m.s. fund, which is a form of foreign assistance, to purchase a small part of their weapon systems, almost all of this was purchased with the iraqis using

their own funds because, of course, the iraqis are earning a lot of money from their oil exports. but in terms of why we provided that assistance to iraq, the reason was we weren't all that enthused with prime minister maliki. but i've been involved over 30, 40 years with allies around the world. aside from those in western europe and off the coast of east asia, most of the countries that we have security relationships with are less than perfect democracies. iraq was a less-than-perfect democracy. but, maliki was not an overtly oppressive leader. he was just not a very efficient one. he was not inclusive. there were many characteristics that we saw in him that we saw, for example, with the taiwanese, with the south koreans, with the filipinos, with the thais and those are the kind of leaders you get in that part of the world. we either don't have particular security relationships with them or we wind up having to

deal with folks like that. host: joe from north carolina, good morning, independent line. caller: good morning. i just got a couple questions. number one, what makes everybody think that because of these people from the mess poe taintians to the -- mesopotanians to the ottoman empire to the british getting thrown out that these religious people and these tribal people will shake hands and kiss in the morning because they hate each other from the day they are born until the day they die? guest: that's a good question. it's one we asked ourselves many times. the answer is under various regimes for many years in lebanon, although not very successfully right now, at times over the past decade-plus in iraq and other circumstances, including when you have a very strong leader, desperate religious and ethnic groups can more or less work

together. it doesn't work very well. it doesn't work even in europe where you saw the czechoslovakia broke up even both groups had almost the same religion and same language. we saw that in northern ireland for decades. it's a real challenge for diplomats and american security to try to preserve a reasonable, rational, peaceful complex h a set of struggles at the subnational level that cover much of the world. host: this tweet from william mills who says -- the whole war in iraq was about oil. ush made it up -- made it up about iraq and sadly we got no cheap oil. looking back, many people say we should have asked this question or we should have done that. looking forward, what questions should we be asking as we determine our policy and the role of the u.s. military in iraq? guest: the first question americans need to ask is, is

president obama right? can we tolerate an al qaeda state in the middle of the middle east, bordering our nato ally, turkey, bordering on our key regional partner, jordan, close to israel and close to the iraqi oil fields? my answer is no, but the american people are going to have to think this through because this may require use of force. host: good morning, democrats' line. caller: hi. mr. jeffrey, you do actually sound like someone with a lot of integrity. but i disagree with the first question which i just formulated when listening to you. can we at some point recognize that, number one, we didn't even mention saudi arabia who funded both isis and al qaeda and/or the sunnis that live in saudi arabia and that this is about american business doing business with oil and with arms? and if we redirect a

significant amount of our energy to producing solar energy that would not require anything like what we were doing right now in capturing other people's property in order to burn it in our fire -- you know, in our air-conditioning plants that we could actually reshape the world for both ourselves and other people without the violence that we're creating here, in latin america, with our sale of guns, we are creating all this violence with our arms for the sake of gaming the oil. is that not correct? guest: it couldn't be less correct. let me go from the topdown. first, the saudi state is not funding isis or al qaeda. where you're right -- and this is a tragedy -- is that many saudi citizens and many citizens from the gulf and elsewhere in the middle east are funding these people. they have a lot of money on their own. i would personally agree with you that if we went to

alternative energy this would be much safer world and it would be a much healthier world as we look at global warming. but i don't see that happening, not just here in america but not in china and almost nowhere in the world other than germany. so sadly we have to deal with the world as it is. the world as it is operates on oil. this isn't american oil. it is globally traded oil. most of it is held not by oil companies but by nation states. it is a market commodity. it has market set prices. nobody's squeezing the market to do this. if there is such a thing as an open and free market it is unfortunately oil and it is very expensive because there is tremendous demand for it. that demand does drive a lot of foreign policy, i cannot deny that, but if you see the reaction in the united states to a 20 cent tickup in the price of gasoline, you know why politicians react to this. host: ambassador jeffrey, you answered in part of this. but jan has this tweet.

you left iraq when they wantedous -- wanted us out. was that too soon? guest: i think it was too soon but it was a conundrum. frankly, our activities around the world -- some of you may disagree with this but i was on the ground on many of them -- had as part of its purpose, not just american security but promoting democracy and helping people establish constitutional systems. if you do this then you have to listen to the people and their elected representatives and when their elected representatives say we don't want to give you special legal status and when a maximum perhaps and all the polls i saw 16% or 18% of the population wanted american troops to stay, it was very hard to keep troops on. we tried. the iraqis, against the will of their own people, said ok the troops can stay, some 5,000 of them, but we won't give you special legal immunities. president obama then, with the

special advice of many people, including me, we can't work with that. we have to try other ways through the embassy and through one of your call remember said title 22, essentially foreign affairs authority and programs was not very successful which is where we are now. host: to our listeners on c-span radio, heard nationwide on x.m. channel 120, our conversation is with ambassador james jeffrey, who served as a member of the u.s. army in germany and in vietnam. he's now affiliated with the washington institute for near east policy. andy from brevard, north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning. the coincidentally read reuters article that quoted ambassador jeffrey extensively and was really impressed with it and got up this morning and turned on c-span and there you were.

the >> i was an instructor in iraq most of 2009. and host: what part of the country? aller: kirkut. host: and you were working with what organization? caller: teaching iraqis how to fly. bring to wanted to this discussion, i have communicated with some of those former students in the last few days and one of them relayed the fact that he had lost everything and had to send his family out of the country and they were experiencing pure hell.