tv Key Capitol Hill Hearings CSPAN July 3, 2014 9:44pm-12:01am EDT
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for american immigration reform and benjamin johnson of the american immigration counsel discuss whether immigration to the u.s. hurts or helps the country. after that, charles murray of the american enterprise institute looks at american exceptionalism, plus your phone calls, facebook comments and tweets. washington journal is live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> my first reaction was surprise, because i had worked for mr. sterling. i coach the clippers in 2000. he invited me to his daughter's wedding. i had no idea exactly what was going on. i also, because of my association, i know what he was complaining about. i was confused, not knowing exactly which set of facts mr.
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sterling stood behind. and then where his words came out, it was so obvious and shocking and just disgusting. one.hose things wrapped in the surprise of it, to find that type of sentiment and someone who relies on black americans for so much of his success and public profile is amazing. i just couldn't believe that someone who could have that much to retreat inside and think that it was ok. >> july 4 on c-span, a look at racism in sports. later, exploring the red planet with mars probe engineers and senior nasa officials, beginning at 3:40. later, discussions on gun rights and the personal recovery of former arizona congresswoman debbie giffords. giffords.
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that is according to figures released today by the bureau of labor statistics. the president talked about the job numbers and the u.s. economy at a visit to a tech startup hub in washington dc. >> this is an incubator for all sorts of tech startups. a lot of them focused on social change issues, on education, health care. we have a range of entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out how we can do well by doing good in many cases. i just have to say that the some not so, and young people, that i spoke to coming from a wide range of backgrounds, we have former army rangers, lawyers, former hr folks, transportation experts,
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engineers, all of them had the kind of energy and drive and creativity and innovation that has been the hallmark of the american economy. part of the reason i want to come here today is to focus on what has happened in the u.s. economy over the last several months and the last several years. we got jobs report today showing that we have now seen the fastest job growth in the united states in the first half of the year since 1999. [applause] also the first time we have seen five consecutive months of job growth over 200,000 since 1999. [applause] and we have seen the quickest drop in unemployment in 30 years , so it gives you a sense that the economy has built momentum,
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that we are making progress. we have now seen almost 10 million jobs created over the course of the last 52 months, and it should be a useful reminder to people all across the country that given where we started back in 2008, we have made enormous strides, thanks to the incredible hard work of the american people and american businesses that have been out there competing, getting smarter, getting more effective, and it is making a difference all across the country. now, what we also know is, as much progress has been made, there are still folks out there who are struggling. we still have not seen as much increase in income and wages as we would like to see. a lot of folks are still digging themselves out of challenges that arose out of the great recession.
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historically, financial crises take longer to recover from. we have done better than the vast majority of other countries over the last five years, but that drag has still meant a lot of hardship for a lot of folks. it is really important for us to understand that we could be .aking even stronger progress we could be growing even more jobs, we could be creating even more business opportunities for smart, talented folks like these. if those of us here in them,gton were focused on focused on you, the american people rather than focused on politics. i have given a number of examples over the last several months of things we know would we are investing in rebuilding our infrastructure. back tos engineers work, construction workers,
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landscape architects, folks who are manufacturing concrete or steel back to work. it makes a difference. it has a huge ripple effect all across economy. if we are serious about increasing the minimum wage, that puts more money in the pockets of people who are likely to spend it. they in turn are more likely to hire more people, because they now have more customers who are frequenting their businesses. if we are making sure that there is equal pay for equal work, that is helping families all across the country. if we are focused on making sure that childcare care is accessible and affordable and high-quality, that frees up a whole bunch of potential entrepreneurs as well as people who are going to work every day doing the right thing, being responsible, but often are hampered by difficult situation in terms of trying to manage parenting and families.
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there are just a series of specific things we can do right now, many of them i'm doing on my own. we have the administrative authority to do it, but some of them we can't do without congress. we can't fix a broken in it -- immigration system that would allow incredibly talented folks who want to start businesses here and create jobs here in the united states, would allow them to stay and make those investments. that is something that we need congress to help us on. we are not going to be able to fund the highway trust fund and ramp up our investment in infrastructure without ask of congress. -- acts of congress. people should look at today's news and understand that we are making strides. not seen more consistent
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job growth since the 90's, we can make even more progress if congress is willing to work with my administration and to set politics aside, at least occasionally, which i know is what the american people are urgently looking for. it is a sort of economic patriotism where you say to yourself, how is it that we can start rebuilding this country to make sure that not only the young people who are here, but their kids and grandkids can enjoy the same incredible opportunities that this country offers as we have. that is our job, that is where we should be focused. it is worth remembering as we go into independence day. thank you, everybody. [applause]
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>> what is the next step? >> for over 35 years, c-span brings public affairs events from washington directly to you, putting you in the room at congressional hearings, white house events, briefings and conferences. and offering complete gavel-to-gavel coverage of the u.s. house, all as a public service of private industry. we are c-span, created by the cable tv industry 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. in hd, said -- watch us like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. >> today, defense secretary chuck hagel and joint chiefs chairman martin dempsey discuss iraq in a news briefing at the pentagon. he talked about efforts to protect u.s. embassy personnel and assist the iraqi government. this is half an hour.
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>> good morning, happy early fourth of july. i hope you all have big plans tomorrow. i'm going to make a couple of opening comments and then ask chairman jim west german dempsey for some thoughts and then we will go to your questions. receiving have been updates on the situation in iraq on a regular basis. i would like to focus a couple of comments on iraq as i start. at dod havehere
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been focused on two specific missions. i want to lay out a bit of a framework down on what those missions are. i know you will have questions, but in a very clear and deliberate way, securing our , facilities and our personnel in iraq. second, assessing the situation in iraq and advising iraqi security forces. both of these missions are important components of the president's overall strategy in iraq. helping iraq's leaders resolve the political crisis that has enabled i s i l's advance in supporting iraqi forces. by reinforcing security at the u.s. embassy, and support facilities at the dead
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international airport, we are helping provide our diplomats time and space to work with sunni, kurd, shia political leaders, as it attempts to form a new, inclusive national unity government. by better understanding the conditions on the ground and the capabilities of the iraqi security forces, we will be better able to help advise them l forcescombat isi inside their own country. approximately 200 military advisers are now on the ground. established a joint operations center with iraqis in baghdad. we have personnel on the ground and in the field, where our second joint operations center has achieved initial operating capability. assessment teams are also evaluating the capabilities and cohesiveness of iraqi forces. none of these troops are performing combat missions, none will perform combat missions.
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american combat troops are not going to be fighting in iraq again. the situation in iraq, as you fluid.w, is complex and there is no exclusively military solution to the threats posed by l. our approach is delivered and flexible. it is designed to bolster our diplomatic efforts and support the iraqi people. we will remain prepared to protect our people and our interests in iraq. as most americans enjoy this holiday weekend, our military around the world and especially military police will stay vigilant. as we celebrate independence day tomorrow, i want to particularly express my gratitude to the men whowomen and their families
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serve our nation at home and abroad. all for what you do to keep our country safe every day. now i will ask chairman dempsey -- >> you would probably ask a rather hear from clint dempsey today but you are stuck with me. i did make note of the fact that i'm sitting next to the real secretary of defense and not tim howard. i will begin with iraq. that themphasize actions were taken as part of a broader line of effort to contribute to stability in the region. depends as much on political inclusiveness as it does on security. it will be an important factor in determining what we do going forward. we are of course, a force that is engaged across the globe. the comment briefly on my
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travels over the past several weeks and some of the insights that i have gained. in brussels, i met with my nato counterparts. preparations for the mission in afghanistan and the threat of further aggression, coercion to the east, as well as growing unrest to nato's southern flank weigh heavily on our european allies. the joint chiefs and i then met with the united kingdom's combined chiefs in london for the first such meeting since 1948. we talked, and strategic concerns and we all agree that now is not a time for business as usual in europe. i met with my counterparts in saudi arabia and united arab emirates, both strong partners in the media east region plagued with instability. i was in singapore to meet with partner nations. we had a frank conversation about north korean provocations and china's activities in the east china sea and south china sea. yesterday, i return from honolulu to china is
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participating in the rim of the pacific exercise for the first time. not the first time there've been invited, but the first relationships in the region are important. i also met with my counterparts while in hawaii to discuss the national and regional implications of north korean provocation. this was the first time in history that chiefs of defense from these three countries, myself, the republic of korea and the japanese have met together in this context. across the board these engagements re-affirm the importance of close partnerships in protecting our national interests and assuring our allies against an increasing number of threats. in every theater u.s. leadership is still regarded as the world's best hope for stability and prosperity. as we enter this fourth of july weekend i think of the extraordinary men and women who safeguard these freedoms. they are always foremost on our
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minds, as are their families. thank you. >> for either of you, i was wondering if you could give us your most up-to-date assessment of the insurgency in iraq, what you're seeing, if it's gaining strength, moving, etc. and then for mr. chairman, you had mentioned the possibility some point . at could use assets in order to go after high-value targets. i'm wondering if the military has gotten authorization to do that yet. what kind of tipping point would you want to see in order for that to begin, and would you have to at some point start communicating with iran in order to avoid any either conflict or miscalculation? >> well, as you know, i noted this in my opening comments.
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and we have two joint operation centers that are operating. these individuals who are making these assessments essentially focusing on your question, what is going on? the strength, cohesion of the i.s.f., an assessment of the strength of isil, where they are deeply embedded, all this is part of the larger sectarian dynamic that as you all know is in play in iraq. also part of what's going on is probably -- is an important process as any, and that is the process of forming a new government. that is in play and very active. they are deeply embedded. all this is part of a larger sectarian dynamic that, as you in iraq. is in play also part of what's going on is probably an important process as any, and that is the process of forming a new government. that is in play.
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and very active. as you know, i think the next time they meet is july 8. now, that said, both the chairman and i are getting some assessments back, early assessments through general austin, who, as you know, is overseeing all of this. we won't have the full complement of all those assessments for a while. but that is in process, ongoing. and you know that we have -- as i have noted here and general dempsey has and i think admiral kirby has given you some numbers on where we have additional people, airport, eabs, so on. so all -- embassy, so on. so all that is essentially getting to your questions and answering your questions or a realistic assessment so we can
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therefore be better prepared to advise the iraqis on what we think they need to do and the different dynamics that are presented there on the ground and how they can best use their forces. >> if i could briefly, i think you asked me four questions. state of the insurgency, state >> so, you asked four questions, state of the . s. counterterrorism spreads, as you know, from beirut to damascus and out to baghdad. secondly, the islamic state of
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iraq and goes by other names, but they are a regional threat today that, over time, could become a transregional and global threat. so that's why we're there. and as we do, the actions we've taken fall into two bends. one is, we're protecting our personnel and our facilities to preserve options, and we're assessing to develop options, ok? early indications -- you asked me about the insurgency. the insurgency, after some initial gains and collaboration with other sunni groups in northern iraq made some pretty significant and rapid advances. they're stretched right now, stretched to control what they've gained and stretched across their logistics lines of communication. the iraqi security forces are stiffening around baghdad. i don't have the assessment
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language, am's exact but some initial insights are that isis are stiffening, they're capable of defending baghdad. that they would be challenged to go on the offense, mostly logistically challenged, and that the call that the ayatollah sistani put out for volunteers is being answered and it complicates the situation, frankly, a bit. the reality of the assessments is that it's being done in a dynamic situation, and it's important to note, the assessment is being done as the political situation unfolds. and they will affect each other. the ability of the iraqi security forces to act on behalf of all iraqis will be affected by whether the government can form a government of national unity. so our expectation is that we'll continue to gain insights, we'll be able to establish trends, we'll be able
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to measure some tangibles like logistics and intangibles like leadership, but it's very dynamic. as for your question about strikes, that is one of the options that will -- that we will continue to develop pending the assessment and pending the iraqis' political process. >> for general dempsey to begin with, sir, at the beginning the pentagon said one of the objectives was to break the momentum of isis. so my question is very specific. what is your measure of success in doing that? how do you know that -- how much do you break the momentum? how do you know mission accomplished this time, that you can say to the president we've achieved those objectives? and is it enough for the iraqi forces to be able to hold baghdad? is the measure of success that, or is it the iraqi forces able to go north and regain this massive territory that isis has
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right now? are you -- is the united states military prepared, if they have to, to defend baghdad and defend the airport? >> so the questions get more and more complex as we go. >> we haven't seen you in a long time. >> well, you know, it's impossible to wrestle the podium away from john kirby. [laughter] i don't think you've ever heard me say that we would break the momentum. >> actually, admirable kirky did. >> well, you know, that's my problem, so -- [laughter] the issue has been for us to determine the ability of the i.s.f., after having suffered some initial setbacks to be able to stabilize the situation and eventually go back on the offensive to regain their sovereign territory and what will he be willing to contribute to that cause? and that's not a question that we're prepared to answer just yet. in terms of -- you know, you mentioned the airport and you mentioned our intentions. remember, the phrase i used was
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we are protecting that which would allow us to preserve options. in the airport, not the entire airport, but that part of it that we need for logistics resupply and potentially for evacuation, we are protecting that part of the airport for that purpose. it really business deliberately first preserving options, and then developing options. and if you're asking me, will the iraqis at some point be able to go back on the offensive to recapture the part of iraq that they've lost, i think that's a really broad campaign quality question. probably not by themselves. doesn't mean we would have to provide kinetic support. i'm not suggesting that that's the direction this is headed. but at any military campaign, you would want to develop multiple action is to queeze isis. you'd like to squeeze them from the south and west and from the north and from baghdad. and that's a campaign that has
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to be developed. but the first step in developing that campaign is to determine whether we have a reliable iraqi partner that is committed to growing their country into something that all iraqis will be willing to participate in. if the answer to that is no, then the future is pretty bleak. , general dempsey, what you just described sounds like an open-ended commitment or omission for the u.s. military. a stable iraqi, an inclusive government, the ability to them into some sort of retreat or submission. sounds like a long-term effort. what is the end game? when will the president be able to say let's bring our boys home? >> well, first of all, this is not 2003, it's not 2006. this is a very different approach than we've taken in
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the past. i mean, assessing and advising and enabling are very different words than attacking, defeating and disrupting. we may get to that point, if our national interests drive us there. if they become such a threat to the homeland that the president of the united states, with our advice, decides that we have to take direct action. i'm just suggesting to you we're not there yet. in terms of the open endedness of it, jim, you've heard me say before that the ideology that stretches from south asia across the arab world and into south africa, it is an anti-western, very conservative religious and, in some cases, radically violent ideology. we're stuck with that for the foreseeable future. a generation or two. it doesn't mean that we have to throw that rock in our rucksack and take it on by ourselves. in fact, it should not be that.
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and what we owe the president of the united states over time, in combination with the explanation to the people of the united states is how we can deal with this long-term threat without having to repeat what we did in 2003 and 2006. >> dave? >> you said the advisors would not be involved in combat. general dempsey, you have raised the possibility that those advisors could be used as forward air controllers in the event that you called in air strikes, which i think most people would regard as being involved in combat. so which is it on that? and second, you mentioned that the iraqis, to go on the offensive would most likely immediate help in logistics, which sounds like a prescription for sending in ore u.s. sizors, troops, opening up supply depots.
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is that on the table? >> there's a tendency to think of this as kind of industrial strength, you know, where we're going to put a mountain of supplies someplace and that's going to require us to protect it, and then we've got to move it forward into the hands of the iraqis to ensure that they use it and use it responsibly and effectively. that's obviously one possibility. but it's not one that personally i think the situation demands. i think the situation demands, first and foremost, that the iraqi political system find a way to separate the sunnis who have partered now with isil because they have zero confidence in the ability of iraq's politicians to govern. if you can separate those groups then it's manageable and understandable and allows us to be in a position to enable iraq not with a huge industrial-strength effort, but rather, with the special skills, leadership and niche capabilities that we possess
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uniquely. and there's no daylight between what an advisor will do. right now as we sit here, the advisors are categorically not involved in combat operations. they're literally assessing. that's their task. if the assessment comes back and reveals that it would be beneficial to this effort and to our national security interests to put the advisors in a different role, i will first consult with the secretary, we will consult with the president. we'll provide that option and we'll move ahead. but that's where we are today. >> you said you will not be involved. >> i think the chairman made it very clear. these are assessment teams and that's their mission. their mission is limited. and it is a clear scope of what their mission is, and it is to assess. it is to come back with their assessment of where they believe we are regarding i.s.f., isil and all the other dimensions and i -- let me
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finish. and i said advisors are what may come as a result of any assessments as to what they would come back to general dempsey with, or general austin, and eventually me and then eventually the president. i don't know where they're going to be. but their mission today is making those assessments. so i think the general was pretty clear. >> but [inaudible] >> well, that wasn't your question. we have one mission today and that is assessment. i don't know what the assessments are going to come back and say or what they recommend. we'll wait to see what that is. what general austin and general dempsey then recommend. but that's the whole point of assessments. >> i just want to add, because this is an important point. i watch television. i know that's a shock to some of you, and i won't tell you what stafplgtse but i do watch television and there's narrative mission creep. that's the wrong word. the word is match. we'll match the things that apply and the authorities that
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go along with them based on the missions we undertake, and that is to be determined. >> can you explain what this joint operation center in the north is doing? how many u.s. troops have been sent there, and what is the purpose of it? and general dempsey, back to iran, what is your assessment of iran's strength inside iraq right now? what have they actually sent militarily? are you going to have to deconflict inside iraq? also, what they sent over in recent days, is that breaking international sanctions or were those old iraqi planes? >> can we trade questions? >> well, first, on the two joint operations centers, you need centers or some kind of center to have a component of organization and focus on mission and what you're going to do.
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and in baghdad, the first one that we had up, we have iraqis in that mission with us. we're further behind in urbeel, which i just announced, and we will coordinate with iraqis, as we put our assessment teams out, as they are out on their mission, their focus, and we get better information, if we have cooperation and coordination from the iraqis. so that's essentially they will have that mission as a centerpiece. but it will also include coordination as well. >> on iran, look, anyone who served in iraq through the years knows that iran has been active in iraq since 2005. so the thought that they are active in iraq in 2014 is completely unsurprising. now, it's probably more overt than it has been up till now.
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and as you know, they, too, have come over to, in some ways, advise this call for young shiah men to rise in the defense of their nation that sistani made. when sistani made that proclamation he talked about an iraq for all iraqis. i hope so. we'll see. that is a question yet to be answered. but the iranians are there, as you know. they're also flying unmanned aerial vehicles and they have provided some military equipment. i don't know whether it has violated any security council resolutions. that will have to be determined. in terms of whether we intend to coordinate with them or not, we do not intend at this time to coordinate them. it's not impossible that in the future we would have reason to do so. in terms of deconflicting, let's take the air space. that's soverage iraqi air space. so the deconflict shown of our i.s.r. and their i.s.r. and our flights and their flights,
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that's an iraqi responsibility, which they are capable of fulfilling. >> tony? >> questions, going back to the efficacy of air strikes issue. a couple of weeks before, senator feinstein asked but the issue and you made a pithy point that it's not like looking at an iphone video of a strike. you need better clarity on the ground. two weeks later with 24-hour coverage, the clarity in effect is there, the president says i need options to strike. can you strike given what you know, even today? >> we have a much better intelligence picture than we did two weeks ago and it continues to get better. the complexity, though, is the intermingling of sunni groups that had formerly opposed the iraqi government in any case. they have intermingled with the isil groups in particular, and that's going to be a tough
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challenge to separate them, if we were to take a decision to strike. now, you might say, does it matter? they're attacking baghdad. does it really matter? i think it does matter for the future of iraq, which allows me to roll back to the place i continue to start, unless the iraqi government gets the message out that it really does intend to allow participation by all groups, everything we're talking about makes no difference. >> this will be the last question. >> the united states has spent $25 billion building up the i.s.f., 250,000 army as we left and another 600,000 security personnel. they're going up against a foffers like 10,000 isil. the public might be asking you, what did we get for our money? did we leave a house of cards there that's just collapsing? >> well, the collapse of the i.s.f. in the face of this radical extremist group called isil was -- occurred over time.
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this wasn't isil decided to drive across the border and everybody collapsed in front of it. they had infiltrated into western iraq, into most ul. if i -- most you will. if i know anything about their tactics, which i do, they bought people off, they threatened the families of others. they reminded everyone that central government of iraq was not operating on their behalf and they undermined the i.s.f., the iraq security forces in northern and western iraq, they undermined it by stripping away their will to fight for a government that didn't support them. and at that point it wasn't a fight. they didn't collapse in the face of a fight. they collapsed in the face of a future that didn't hold out any hope for them. it's different than collapsing in the face of a fight. what we're seeing now is that the remaining i.s.f. is fighting, and that's the most important signal we can get that this might actually stabilize. >> thanks, everybody, appreciate your time. thank you.
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[captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> so i tell this story about how i, every aspect of whose ite tee is in one way or another a threat to israel at my -- my gender is male, my religion is muslim, my citizenship is american, but my nationality is iranian, my ethnicity is persian, my culture is meester. everything about me is -- sends off all the warning signals for israel. o the experience of an iranian-american single man trying to get through the airport in the 21st century is a reminder to everyone that despite the way globalization has brought us closer and has diminished the boundaries that separate us as nations, as ethnicities, as people, as cultures, despite all of that, all you got to do is spend a few minutes trying to get
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through this particular airport to remember that those divisions, those things that separate us, are still very much alive. >> best selling author and professor reza aslan will take your phone calls, emails and tweets on islamic fundamentalism, the war on terror and the current instability in the middle east live for three hours sunday at noon eastern on "book tv"'s "in-depth," part of a three-day holiday weekend of non-fix books and authors starting saturday on c-span2. "book tv," television for serious readers. now part of this year's new york ideas festival with discussions about business and the economy. you'll hear from the know ban any c.e.o. about how he created the popular yogurt brand. also a discussion about bitcoin and the future of money and crowd sourcing for business start-ups with the c.e.o. of kickstarter. this is just over an hour.
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a guest lukaia came as of a guest at dinner at my house and lo and behold i had chobani yogurt in my refrigerator. he is the most interesting person, who has revitalized a whole section of new york with his wonderful product. he will be interviewed by steve clemons, who one of these days you're going to open your closet and there's going to be steve clemons, the ubiquitous cleave clemons. >> thank you very much. don't be shy for those of you standing in the back. don't worry about the cameras. aggressively ram yourself through those aisles and get a seat because it's worth it for the lineup we have today. hamdi, thank you so much for joining us. you're a young man growing up in turkey. you came over here to study business and you said, aha,
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feta cheese. and we're not even at the yogurt story. but you were going to make your fortune in feta cheese. i need to know why feta? >> well, two things. one is, i came to learn english. i didn't know a word of english. >> and feta was a great english word. >> actually, we don't call it feta, we call it white cheese. [laughter] the reason i came up with that idea is my father came to visit, and the cheese, the white cheese, is very big in our breakfast dishes. when i brought the cheese i couldn't find in the supermarkets my father said, is this it? i said yes. he said why don't you make some. i grew up in turkey, in cheesemaking, yogurtmaking. so basically my father not liking the cheese that i brought for him for breakfast made me go into the cheese business. >> now we need to jump to the real story here. how many of you have lots of
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yoplait yogurt in your refrigerator? how many of you are danon consumers? how many of you are chobani consumers? this was not set up. i had no idea. i thought it could go really badly for you. [laughter] i just didn't know. but you moved into yogurt. and the story is fascinating. i'd love to tell you -- tell us the story real quickly, not about why yogurt, but tell us the story about why "entrepreneurship" and how you saved the town, how you saved the factory. >> well, i was to make the story short, i started this cheese business. it was very small, you know, struggling with language, with running the plant, trying to sell, all the small -- all the big issues that small businesses go through every day that i did. and i was going through my junk mails one night in in my office and i saw this ad and it said
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fully equipped yogurt plant for sale and there was a picture of it on the front side of it. i continued to throw it into the garbage can, still smoking my cigarettes and making garbage. about a half an hour later i went back to that paper and took it. now it's dirty and -- yogurt. was a kraft i didn't even know that kraft made yogurt. >> it was a brand called breiers. didn't even know it then. but when i went to visit, this was about a 90-year-old plant. they were making yogurt and cheese. actually, they said it was the original plant that they invented philadelphia cream cheese. >> wow. everybody knows that. >> i know. so i couldn't believe the price that they were asking for it. i thought they were missing one zero. it was like $700,000 or $7 million. i was afraid to ask one more time. didn't want to look so surprised, so cheap. >> maybe you should have asked
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if you knocked off another zero. >> on my way back i called my attorney. i said, i just saw a plant that i want to buy. he thought i was the craziest guy ever. and he told me a million things why i shouldn't get it. one, it was the largest food company, that it was getting out of the category. this was a plant this they were selling as is. that means all the mistakes and crimes and everything that's been done in this plant, it was on this turkish guy's shoulders. and then he said s -- i'll tell you one more thing, the biggest problem, you have no money. [laughter] you haven't paid me for the last six months. >> ah. >> it was true. i hadn't been paying him. so that was the thing. and i figured it out with a small bank. >> did you finally pay him? because this is on the record that it could be used against you, a confession. >> yes. he later said, i wish i was a partner with you then. so the first day i bought the plant with an s.b.a. loan,
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small business administration, was august 15, 2005. hired five people that kraft let go. and there was a bar across the street and people who were coming to that bar were bikers. i had only seen them on movies, and they're scary. [laughter] and when i saw them -- >> they said, hamdi, come on over. >> if i had seen them before, i probably wouldn't buy it. but that was the first day. and those five people and me and, you know, i could not describe how scary it was and how lost i was, and everything that the attorney said, it was true at that moment. i did something really, really crazy and i didn't know what i was going to do next. so my first board meeting with , mike, e people, they
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rich, maria myself and mustafa and frank. they said, what are we going to do next? and the first thing that i recognized from the picture and when i went there the first time is the wall outside. it was white, maybe 15 years ago. no longer. it was horrible. and i said let's go to the ace store and let's grab some white paint and let's paint these walls. and mike said he was retired, and then came back to the plant. he's been in that plant for almost 25 years. he said tell me you have more ideas than this. [laughter] >> well, you know, i just want to -- i mean, we just had brian greene up here. he's one of the most cosmic conceptualizers and thinkers. did you think the universe of yogurt was just a universe of -- i mean, at the time -- i mean, again, you're clearly
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successful. but one of the questions is, i remember the yogurt. i liked yogurt then. i remember greek yogurt coming online and taking on more and more. it is interesting that a turkish guy is making greek yogurt. >> only in america. [laughter] >> yeah, only in america. you go back to istanbul and -- does that play well in turkey? >> no, no. the turks are angry, the greeks are angry, the turkish are angry -- >> we were going to come out here and take a selfie with all of you and then tweet everyone. but in any case, it is a big thing. but i mean, when i began thinking about talking to you today, i didn't know, where did you steal the market from? when you look at the absolute dollars out there for this sort of product, there's some finite null. i didn't know whether you were displacing velveeta cheese or displacing yoplait or whether the universe was getting bigger, or have you made the
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universe bigger? >> you summarize the the whole thing. actually, all of it. >> it was an accident, if i did that. >> all of it. we created a market. some of them came from the other categories and some of the people started eating more. but when we started, there was greek yogurt by a company who brought from greece 10 years before me, 10 years. i mean, you're talking 11 years actually. so they created this buzz of greek yogurt in the specialty stores and some fancy places, but not in the mass market. but someone who grew up with yogurt, yogurt was the simplest thing that you had. it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, lived in the city or not, it's the simplest, purest food and you should have access to this. i couldn't understand why you have to go to new york city, a specialty store, and pay $3 to get a good cup of yogurt. so i worked two years to make that, and when i made it, i said i'm going to go to the
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mass market first. so my first store was shop-rite. my buyer went there and said, well, we have five know ban any's we want to put on your -- chobani's we want to put on your shelf. it's $30,000 to $50,000 to put on the shelf. he said we need that money to be paid. we didn't have that kind of money. we said, what if we paid with the yogurt? so then you sell, you can take some of it and for the weeks, we can pay it off. and then the guy asked a very nice question. he said, what if it doesn't sell? and we said we'll give you the plant. we literally said, well give you the factory. but that guy -- >> did they want the factory? >> no, he sold it. he sold a lot. actually, he called me two weeks later, he said i don't know what kind of stuff you're putting into this cup. i don't want to know. but i cannot keep it on the shelf. from that moment on, i knew this wasn't going to be about selling, it was going to be about, can i make it enough?
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i'm this tiny little guy in upstate new york who worked two years to make this cup. now it's selling and i'm going to make the big guys wake up at one point. so this is the destiny of every small food setup. you have a dream, you work hard, you don't sleep, you have neck pain, back pain, all kinds of pain, right? [laughter] you don't go to bahamas, you don't do anything. [laughter] >> yeah. he was in the bahamas last weekend, so don't feel sorry for him. >> i was there for two days. >> i was trying to track him down and he was telling me about the roosters on pink beaches. so he was doing fine. you then moved -- you've got another plant in twin falls, idaho. are there similarities between this he had misston, new york, which is -- chuck schumer loves you for saving this town and these people. tell me about twin falls. we have a lot of cover. i've got to get to vladimir
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putin and whether he either chobani. >> what happened is from those five people i launched the brand in 2007. this is something that people need to know what happened. the magic really happens in the new towns, like upstate york. with those five people we created a brand that became number one in five years. and from that five, we have right now 3,000 people. in 2012 -- from 2007 to 2012, within five years, we went from zero to $1 billion in sales. [applause] and this is -- some people said, and i haven't seen anything otherwise. some people said this is the fastest growing start-up ever, including all the technologies. but one of the most amazing things is until 2012 -- 2013, actually, we all did it independently. so we stayed independent. and we invested in that factory that i bought from $700,000,
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almost $250 million. and then we built a factory in twin falls for $450 million. and we built it in one year. i and all the people working the company had never had this kind of business experience before. we were never marketers, finance people, operators or anything like that. so we figured it out along the way. and you know what the secret is? not a big deal. [laughter] it's not a big deal as much as people try to make it a big deal. what they do, when you talk about these things, it sounds like, oh, you have to go through some kind of schools or you have to get in with the big corporations, you have to have this kind of disciplines, you have to know all the textbooks and everything. b.s. you need to really be there and along the way, you figure it out. >> what was the biggest mistake you made at the beginning? [applause]
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what was the thing -- obviously you got beyond your biggest mistake. or maybe you're perfect and you've never made a mistake. but what was the biggest mistake you made from what you thought you would need to do and you changed course? >> the biggest mistake i made is a human mistake. it's towards -- as the business kept growing, you know, 500, 600 million, two brabbeds and a plant in australia -- brands and the plant in australia, the people that you start with is your friends. you share the dream together. and as business grew so fast -- >> those dreams become complex. >> and the capability of being able to handle that kind of business is a different one. so you need to change the skin and you need to bring more people, different people. and, you know, i struggled with it. i should have done it maybe a year or two years earlier, including myself, you know. i could have brought some different people in. these are the entrepreneurs and people like us struggle a lot,
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and i think all the issues are human issues, mistakes that are human mistakes. but i think i've done or we have done together, we've done more good moves and redistricted what was going to happen in two years or three years. so these are way overshadowing the mistakes that we've done. and i kind of try to keep it simple. but it became really big that it wasn't as simple. so we're trying to put a structure on it and make sure chobani goes on for a long, long time. >> before you answer this question, i was in a green room last week with a young man, he's an entrepreneur out of washington. i don't know if many of you are familiar with sort of the 15th and u street area in d.c. there's a place called cake love. and this guy created something. he brought in people from the neighborhood and he's just
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created a big thing and he was out there talking about his new product, which is cake in a can, which he's supplying to some various large chains now. it was interesting. i was thinking about the fact that i was going to be seeing you here. and he's really moving forward. he's struggling. he's not a billion dollar company but he's worked hard in the community. i was going to ask on his behalf, what is the biggest thing he can do to get on a road to more dramatic success? other than appearing on msnbc? i'm not sure that helped him. could hurt him with a lot of consumers out there. >> you really have to have a great product. i mean, i worked two years to -- people said, this is good. i said not enough. then they said, this is -- >> did it used to be crappy? >> it was good. then we made it the first month, it was still better than what it was in the marketplace. but my expectations are really, really high. and the cup, i mean, there's no yogurt cup left in the world that i haven't seen. when we launched chobani there
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was five bags of cups from china to colombia that they took off from my office. -- once ally have to the product is perfect, then the rest is really your capability. i mean, there's a lot of stuff that you can do right. >> get it out there marketing. >> yeah. >> did vladimir putin not letting the official yogurt sponsor of the u.s. olympic team getting in, did that help? because we're all talking about it. it turns out that most of those people in sochi are sanctioned now in the united states and europe. >> we were really heart broken. the olympians were eating chobani when they were training in this country. it was in their kitchens, it was in their smoothies. they came to the plant. it was like a festival day. all the community farmers, the kids, everybody in the factory, we all made this palate together. we did this in 2012 after london and we were hoping this was going to go and, you know,
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it hit the wall. >> there was a lot of speculation that the change of the uniform from the under armour uniforms affected the performance of some of the athletes, but it was really the absence of chobani yogurt. >> that's right. we believe in that and we were sad. but the next olympics we believe we will do it. -- you know, it is food people forget a simple cup of yogurt or a simple loaf of bread or whatever you get from the store, it's available when you're in turkey, greece, italy and in your city. but you've got the supermarkets in twin falls and in new york, it's a shame what is in the supermarkets. and the manufacturers, they could definitely do better. they can do better. they can take the preservatives out, they can take the colors out. >> talk about that. we've got a minute and 22 seconds. i went on -- if any of you haven't done it, i'm not advertising for him, but you have a really great web page. i went on my iphone.
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you have this thing called "how matters." tell us about how matters. and about the issue of ingredients. can we really walk away from all the preservatives and everything out there? because i think it's interesting, because when you go through the stores, there aren't that many foods, i think, that i'm eating that are probably along the lines of the ingredients that you have. i'm pretty much of a bad eater. but you're telling me i can get on without all of that. >> yeah. and it's your choice. maybe you live in washington, d.c. you could, if you wanted to -- >> i need stuff that will survive a month in my refrigerator, maybe two. >> >> availability to good food is a human right, it's a basic right. who's going to make this? everybody wants better food, but it is too expensive, and it's not there. so guys like us, the big guys, they have to put the human in the center, meaning somebody is
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going to eat this, somebody's baby is going to eat it, somebody's friend is going to eat it. that's what how matters, how you make your food matters. and it goes beyond that, that when i started with those five people in that community, the culture of chobani became that everybody came to work and go back to their home and said they've done something amazing today. and then the promise that a certain portion of the profits go back to the community, first in our own community and then expand. so i believe business is the best vehicle to solve issues in the community and society, and it's the vehicle that is sustainable because it's a business. but the business has the right mindset that not only the founder or the c.e.o., but everybody in there, that when they walk into the plant or the offices, that they're going to do something right. and the return that comes in, it will go back and do something more right. and it will be the effect of going on and on and on. i'm proud that chobani, every
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act that everybody does every day -- they're not perfect, but we have the right mindset. we're not perfect, we're trying. >> well, before we thank you, we're right at the end. you just got a $750 million loan to expand. which food company out there should really fear you? >> big guys. i love fighting with the big guys, you know. i think one thing that -- message to people in the food world is when they tell you, oh, these are people, they have a lot of marketing money, they have a lot of plants, they have a lot of people, you will find out that the big size that they have is actually becoming an advantage for you to be fast and smart, and it's really fun to play with them. [laughter] >> ladies and gentlemen, hamdi ulukaya. everybody wave. we're going to do our selfie. everybody waving? yeah?
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say hi. hold on. i'm going to send this to turkey and -- [laughter] here we go. >> send it to greece, steve. >> there we go, there we go. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> only in america. my favorite line. and you can walk into my house one night and i can serve chobani. it was great. thank you. next, we have david kestenbaum of npr. he's going to tell us what's happening to our money, where it's going, how we're going to spend it, how we're going to pay for things. with jeffrey alberts, phillip bruno, and nicholas carrow, c.e.o. of block chains. welcome. [applause] >> i'd like to tell you a quick story. a few years ago, a colleague of
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mine started hearing about bitcoin and i said let's go eat lunch with it. people are saying, this is going to be the future of money. we thought, great, we'll go buy lunch in new york with it. it turned out to be incredibly difficult. it took two weeks. you exchange dollars with bitcoin, got hacked and had to shut down. they doubled from $12 -- >> the ultimate high was about $1,000. >> it was a long time ago. we had to find a guy who had bit coins, happened him dollars cash. he gave us bitcoins, and there was only one place in manhattan that took bitcoins and it shut down. so the question is, where are we now and whether it was legal as currency, or what it was. so could you just sort of quickly -- maybe each of you could bring us up to date on one little part of that and tell us how far we are now. >> sure, i can speak just on the extent of the law that relates to bitcoin.
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and the short answer is, it is legal. but regulators are all still trying to figure out exactly what it is and how it can be used. you can use it legally and illegally. >> buying drugs is still illegal if you use it with bitcoin. >> afraid so so you've had some regulators come out and make statements about certain legal compliance. the i.r.s. has had certain rulings. >> and bernanke said the word. it's all significant. it is legal, but i think it's going to be a couple of years until people kind of figure out how all the pre-existing regulatory mechanisms are going to apply to it because it's constantly changing. >> nick, can i buy lunch in new york? >> a lot has changed since you went and tried that. i live my life 100% on bitcoin. my company pays all of its employees in bitcoin and we're a bankless institution. we have employees on four continents and there's an unbelievable amount of human and financial capital pouring
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into bitcoin projects. from the last year, just in our company alone, we've seen growth from 100,000 users to over 1.5 million. i think it's really important to remember that outside the confines of even this room, bitcoin is an absolutely global phenomenon. for example, in argentina, there are probably 400 or 500 times more restaurants, bars and services accepting bitcoin than here in new york. that's because there are real fundamental reasons there for why it's more interesting and an approachable financial solution for the people than maybe in the united states. >> is there a restaurant in new york that takes them? >> there are several. there's a bar not too far away from here called ever. the crep rein brooklyn and everal others. >> i think what's interesting ere is bitcoin is a currency or a store of value, so we're seeing some interest in that regard. >> explain what those two are. >> so a store of value is, do
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you want to hold your life savings or some portion of it in bitcoin as a means of keeping your money? the other is as a medium of exchange. so that's for like buying lunch and doing other things there. i think what we really find special, though, is thinking about it as a network, as a way to transact and to send money point to point without involving a financial institution or an intermediary. because most things up until now have been set up as these hub and spoke networks, where there's somebody in the middle and all the transaction goss through that. but this new phenomenon is a way to transact that doesn't involve those intermediaries and doesn't involve any of the fees associated with it. so it's incredibly low cost. >> in other words, these are kind of two visions of the bitcoin future. one is that it's a real currency. everyone talks about how much they have and they use it to buy lunch. and the other people hold on to the bitcoin. the other is that it's a way to send money from one place to
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another in a cheaper way than the credit card system or the banking system, right? and you're saying the second one seems like more of a go than maybe the currency. is that right? >> i don't know how to handicap these, but i would put more currency on the second one, which is the ability to have it as a low-cost exchange vehicle. and as a network. and, you know, it's interesting. i interviewed 20 years ago one of the founders of visa. this is when i got into the payments industry. and he said, look, the internet is going to revolutionize payments and we're going to be able to do point to point trance ookses -- transactions. we're coming into that right now. >> one of the criticisms of bitcoin is that it's basically digital version of gold. and economists left, right and center will tell you that the gold center was a bad, stupid system to have, mainly because you can't adjust the amount of money. there's no central bank that can say we can extend the
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supply. there's no way for the cash in the system to increase with population. so you get what's called deflation, which means that every day that goes by, what you're holding is worth more. that may seem great but it's also a disincentive to spend. if you say, well, why buy the car today? it's going to be cheaper tomorrow or the next day. in fact, bitcoin has gone up in value. if you were stupid enough to buy a pair of alpaca socks, which were some of the first things that were for sale, you basically spent millions of dollars for what's now a pair of socks. so why hold on to it? how big of a problem does that seem to you, that it's finite, it's sort of digital gold? >> look, i'm not an economist, but there's a couple of responses to that. one is that, i think i have the same general instinct that phil does, that a primary value of bitcoin is as a means of payment. so the criticism that you have is more focused on its value as a potential currency.
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the second is that i think we are so far away from the notion that bitcoin would actually be like a foundational currency for a country or a large percentage of people, that the deflationary aspect of it is not likely to be terribly relevant. it would be have to be a high percentage of the economy deflationary aspect -- you would see negative effects. >> one is that you can't have a central bank for money supply and the second one is built-in deplagues because you can't create more, right? that would still be a problem. you've seen the value of it shoot up just for different reasons, right? >> i would actually challenge this, because some of the research has been conducted on the block chain itself. so we can actually study transaction velocity in a way that's impossible -- >> a block chain is whenever you do a transaction, this is what records it. >> a professor at stanford has looked into this very carefully. interestingly, about 50 years of this kind of thought of deflationary currency would
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cause people not to spend it as quickly is possibly inaccurate in the context of digital currency. i believe that is from the reduction in friction and the payments themselves. what we've witnessed is that the transaction volume and the speed at which the money is moving in the bitcoin economy is at parity with the u.s. dollar. if this holds true, the research will most likely be incredibly informative as more currency innovation comes forward. you know, i think the other thing here is we need stability in the value. right now there's been some estimates that 80% of the transactions are actually more speculative in nature. and i think this has to get to a period where we don't have 10% swings in the value a day or even more over the period of a week, that people are going to trust it as a store of value. and to get from there to something that is less speculative and much more for currency and commerce is going to be a messy process to get there. but that's the bet that you
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would make if we were to see it to be a store value in the future. >> bitcoin can be used as an investment or currency. what we're witnessing right now, if you believe that payment network is valuable because it allows you to transact anywhere in the world instantly basically for free, in order to ride those rails you have to have possession of the currency, the bit coins themselves. so you basically need to buy some of those credits in order to play in the game and it's a little bit like -- imagine if we were having this conversation in 1970 and a bunch of people were sitting around the room and saying, man, i have this idea. we're going to revolutionize the postal system. we're going to let people send messages to and fro each other instantly for free. people said it's crazy, but we did it, and everybody uses email every day and they don't understand how it works under the covers. but it lets us crend with our families and lets us send messages for free. that's the concept of the bitcoin. imagine in 1970 if you had the opportunity to invest in the credit system that lets you use
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email every single day. that's kind of what's at take with bitcoin. that's why there's a lot of speculation in it right now. it's totally yawning experiment right now. i wouldn't advise anyone throw their life savings in it, but go study it. to be ignorant would be like putting your hand in the sands of the financial future. >> there are plenty of counterarguments that turned out to be stupid. but we'll move on. can i ask a question? it's hard to see with the lights. how many of you have actually used bitcoins to buy something? just raise a hand. >> for me, my credit card works really well.
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my credit card works fine. i don't notice it as a consumer. what is going to push me to deal with the hassle of bitcoin? >> i think you're bringing up a great question. the target example, there's protections. no one lost any money. except for some of the financial institutions that issued it. so it's great. bitcoin is irrevocable, the money is gone. that's great for certain transactions. you know, what you look for is around use cases. why is it good for you? and personally, i used it when i needed to move money to rent -- to rent a vacation house and i needed to transfer the money to sterling, it's great because there's less friction and it's cheaper. >> tell me what you did again. >> just to rent a house. so renting a house, they needed the money. i moved it to the real estate agent who was in the u.k.. >> who accepted bitcoin? >> yeah.
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>> there's a phrase i like, which is the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today. i think you just need to recognize that there's a lot more at stake here than revolutionizing shopping in new york city. when you think about the 2.5 billion people on planet earth that don't have access to a financial system that's completely ignored them, then today there's an opportunity for them with, a smartphone, to put a bank in their pocket, a bank that lets them interface and interact with each other and around the world instantly for free, basically. that's a really powerful thing, if you think about it. let's put aside the shopping portion of this as well, because there's a lot more that we can revolutionize around the world with this type of technology. and people have been ignored in a lot of ways. so that's something else to consider. >> so one of the concerns most early on was that of the people wanted to be
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anonymous, because they thought they were doing something illegal. and in fact, they shut down silk road, a big online drug site. do we have any information about that, about what fraction was through silk road ? it's hard to tell from the data who's buying what we shut down one big company, but can we tell how many people were buying drugs from silk road? >> i actually don't know the percentage. but it was a very large amount of money. >> so silk road was in a marketplace where people could exchange and buy things from socks to narcotics. it was shut down by the u.s. government. but the interesting thing is that it was shut down by the u.s. government and immediately afterwards everyone called for the demise of the bitcoin and journalists said it would never survive and it was only used for bad things. two weeks later it started its fastest runup in value in its
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entire history of the it's been called a bubble and it's been called dead before, and that's just, i think, the challenge that we all face in the industry is to continue to communicate the value that it serves and we're still here. we're building and innovating and there's more money moving into bitcoin-related projects. >> what can we tell about what people are using bitcoin for? you can see there are jumps in traffic, say in china, which you assume is people trying to get around currency controls. or they can change it for bitcoins and switch them out and put it into dollars. for those people, that's serving a real need. they're not using it to buy lunch, but it's serving some need. how much do we know about what people are using bitcoins for? >> i'll try and talk about it just a little bit. so people with tag addresses in the bitcoin network. it's a way to verify that transactions are going where you'd like.
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if you're into doing donations for a charity, you can made immediate international transactions happen without having to take fees for a cause, for example. if you are doing payments for vacation homes and things like that, that's a >> i think remittances will be a big story later as more systems come online to replace the networks that are being run by companies like western union. >> i assume banks and regulators. i understand you can't name names, what is the feeling there? there is a great deal of interest in this.
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financialy institutions are in the mode of just studying it right now. this is not just something in passing. they are very serious about it. i've talked to some regulators around the world and central banks that are really looking at this. is looking less from a currency standpoint as from an pay.ation of how to it is a little too early to go design adopt this and t a payment system to run a nation on. >> is not just a better way to send money from one bank to another, but a way for anybody to send money to anybody. >> they're looking for not just a way to design a payment system , but also how do they reach other areas, what is the social impact that you have from getting into the banking system.
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how do you think about making that more advantageous? example, when we see paper payment, cash and check, go electronic in the traditional sense, we have seen some -- countries add to their the growth each year. there is impact we see there and can we make it even more efficient through something like this, and within the even more impact on gdp growth globally. in terms of an everyday tonsaction, like if i were do this instead of a credit card fee, wow much cheaper would this be? what theends on merchant fees are. right now they are quite high for except the record, but there are certain use cases.
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isa typical credit card fee between 1.5-2 percent for the physical world. the institution has to stand in and make the payment. >> if i buy a cup of coffee and it is two dollars, they pay for sense. how much cheaper would be with bitcoin? >> the fee is less than 1/10 of a penny. the payment was in silly to the merchant. they can spend that money right away if they choose to. ok cupid, overstock.com, that will be a story that continues all year long. we you will see a lot more online merchants accept that point. they can do it without taking any of those fees.
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overstock.com has not had a single fraud case related to bitcoin. >> they probably spent years in rooms trying to figure out how to save a few percent. if they're going to hold on to bitcoin, the coin are very volatile in value, much more than the dollar. yes, the transaction costs are lower but they are taking on this other risk. >> that can convert the transaction or they can choose to keep it. , is thee witnessed store is different outside of the u.s. than it is internationally. i met a woman who is in shanghai who accepted bitcoins and does not accept credit cards because it is too slow. there are lots of examples like this where they are keeping it.
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it is a different way and they believe in it. still shut itment down if it turns out that most -- >> iraffic is not don't think it would be possible for the u.s. government to shut a practical or legal perspective? >> i don't think they have the practical ability to do it. so much of it functions outside of the united states. criminalize use of it, but they could not stop the network due to its decentralized nature. by the way, if you are using bitcoins, here's how you should treat them when you file your taxes. you must to that now, right? they acknowledge that it exists. are obviously responsible
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for your taxes wherever you live. i pay my taxes. you have to do it based on property rights. every time i buy a copy -- a couple of coffee, i have to talk to light my capital gains. bitcoin is tricky. sometimes it looks like a new digital commodity and sometimes it operates a lot like a digital currency. sometimeslight it is a particle and sometimes a wave. but they are at knowledge and the working. expect more thought as it goes forward. to build a safe home for people to explore that. that is what we are looking for in the industry.
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>> there is a certain extent to which it is a vote of confidence, simply to issue regulation. they may be good and bad, but they decreased the risk for major financial players when they're thinking about moving in to the space. there is no regulation, they have no idea which way it will go. there's a certain value to that. one of the related developments we have seen over the last year is major financial players have started to move into this. they bring their background at knowledge of people from the banking industry who know about customer regulations and anti-money laundering regulation. they bring that knowledge to companies that have incredible coders that think creatively about compliance. if you bring these more sophisticated players in, you will see a lot of development that will rapidly expand the industry. feel if the you
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system decided to offer bitcoin banking services? >> i would be thrilled. i think that would mean they have discovered a reason to be innovative again. i think the challenge is on everyone to build better systems. , hope they get involved because they're been working in finance for 50 years and we don't know everything. do you see any interest in anyone doing that? >> no, it. -- no comment. they're all looking at this and trying to figure out what to do. it think there are any commitments at this point on what to do with it. inre is old technology
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cards. that technology does nothing for an online transaction. this is also a solution for the online space. >> when i think about the disruptions over the last 10-15 years in technology and the digitization of things, we used to send mail and now we send e-mail. we are to buy records and now we download songs. to not expect the digitization of money would be a little naïve. >> some small part of the money exists in forms of paper and coins. >> i think one of those questions you asked earlier is that we get to watch this money supply grow constantly. sure, there's an argument that maybe that helps control the deflationary cycle, but the money supply grows every single year and we get to spend less of that income.
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bitcoin can be spent different ways. i don't think that is a big problem. i think people have to vote with their confidence. >> recently, we moderated a bet between two people on bitcoin. one was a columnist for reuters who was betting that bitcoin was going to die and no one would remember it in five years and the other is a venture capitalist who is very bullish. they bet that in five years time , one in 10 people polled would say they bought something with bitcoin. i want to ask all of you which side of that that you would take. do you think that five years from now if we did a poll of americans, one in 10 would've bought something knowingly with bitcoin. i think your caveat is 10ortant, because one in will have spent some form of
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virtual currency. it might not be bitcoin. it might be bitcoin and they don't know it because they deal with an app with which they buy things online. i think speculating about whether they know how the guts of the transaction is going to work is hard. meant literally like them thinking of it as a currency. >> i think it will. how widely known bitcoin is now. >> yes, within the previous month. >> the other part of that, the common part is really important. in al, which is come up serious way to transact, it has about 80 million accounts now in the u.s.. it,many people really use 15%s really important and
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plus of e-commerce transactions. that is only a small part of everyone's life. ?> five years would you take the bet? tight. is a little atif you look at the speed which the growth is happening, it is absolutely hockey puck and it is growing faster. hockey stick, sorry. >> thank you very much, this has been fun. [applause] thank you, guys. i am holding on to my wallet. thank you for coming. next up, we have the founder and ceo of kickstart her. i could make a lot of jokes
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about what we are going to kick start, but i think you have already heard all of them. byis going to be interviewed andrew sorkin of the new york times. to him when hes completes the interview. cronuts. your kr high yancy, how are you? have --l go quick be because i have a lot of questions. understand what this whole kickstart a thing is really all about. point?s the inflection what was the thought that got this to happen? what was the story behind kickstart her?
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>> kickstart or the website is five years old as of a week from yesterday, thank you. it was launched in april 2000 nine. the original idea was eight years before that i might our dinner. -- before that by my chen. he wanted to propose a concert to people. it was a way to test an idea publicly and allow things to only go forward if there were people who would support them. he had that concept and didn't know what to do with it. he was working as a recording engineer and a preschool teacher and a waiter. he moved back to new york in 2005. i was a rock critic at the time and he was a waiter at a restaurant in brooklyn. we met there and became friends.
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who is at in a friend designer and tried and failed to make this website for four years because we were a waiter and a rock critic any designer. [laughter] aen we finally managed to get group of technical people to work with us and then in 2009 the site was finally launched. it was a long journey and just a lot of guesses and mistakes, but somehow it managed to come out. >> who is it for, though? there are probably people who get e-mails from friends and others to try to get them to give them money. who is supposed to be using it on one side and what sort of base case is there for me to actually hand over the dough? this point, 100 50,000 people have lunch projects with kickstart her. they have been supported by 6 million people from 218 countries and territories around the world. it is very global.
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if you went to kickstart her now, you'd see people making movies, starting restaurants, making comic books, pieces of design, putting on plays, , anythingeserves creative for you or making something to share with other people. we don't have any sort of demographic box that we put people into, it in fact we have demographictic -- info about the people who use kickstart her. it is a canvas for people who want to create something with the support of other people. >> it is not an investment. oculus just sold itself to facebook for $2 billion. these are goggles are you aware in the future. we won't even come here, we will just wear goggles. that started on kickstart her. there are people today who gave pissed, them who are
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right? >> i will respond to that. a lot of really cutting edge stuff that is happening in society is starting on kickstart it. people here are funding the future. you're getting a glimpse of two or three years from now and crazy things that may or may not happen, just like really wild ideas. who'syesterday a man trying to build an underground parking new york city. there are people trying to build a pool but you can swim in the east river. they are saying it will be there in two years. the future is what happens here. oculus rift is a virtual reality that was started by a 21-year-old kid named palmer lucky. i couldn't make it up. he basically put up the project saying he created his goggles brought virtual-reality to a height.
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you could get an early prototype for 300 bucks. they raised $2 million from kickstart her and it started to take off and became the people's tech, the internet's favorite thing. people will go to videoconferences and lineup for an hour and a half. they would throw up and be blown away. it is totally worth it. it is incredible. so it got bigger and bigger and they raised a bunch of venture capital money. building hardware is expensive and hard. ,hen about two months ago facebook had bought them for $2 billion. >> so if i give them money, how my supposed to feel about her? >> i gave them money. i gave them $25 because i thought it seemed really cool. i thought this is awesome and it should exist. and now it does. for me, i supported because i thought the world do -- would be a lot better if oculus rift was real.
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i don't want to wear one all the time, but if i want to wear one it would be great. it gets complicated when you have facebook involved and huge sums of money. what i thought when i was watching the debate was nirvana. i used to be a rock critic. music was my primary love. felt ifed how it you you bought the first seven inch and then suddenly smells like teen spirit happened and its on mtv. myn you think, wait, that's band. what does that mean? is a complicated thought. there is this thing of cultural ownership or emotional ownership. those feelings have largely gone away. most tweeon makes the movies ever. we have just given up on this.
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the grant machine of capitalism has won. and yet, you see the same notion come out about a piece of technology, something made in a plant in china. design is where the culture has shifted. i don't know that they would've been successful if they were trying to raise money from investors. they came to kickstart her because he wanted to take an idea to the public. >> does that make kickstart a form of charity? to some degree, you aren't happy when people try to sell things on the site. on the site.ewards different kinds of ways like credits or passes or stickers. but it really is charity. >> there is a mantra that we say a lot is that kickstart it is
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not a store. righttrying to set the expectation for backers. your supporting expectation of something, you are not buying it. you are the reason why it is going to happen and you're going to learn about it and see videos from the factory or in the lab and exotic. you get the relationship with the. it is about expectations. there always is a return. generally a return is a copy of the thing being made. the question of what kickstart it is is very interesting. it is not directly one-to-one. i don't think it is charity butuse there is a return, there are elements of altruism, absolutely. it has similarities to investment and that the money is upfront and it is going to create something later, however,
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there is no financial return. be ank it ultimately might -- way of transacting. i think this way is distinct and it is ultimately about creating a human relationship and money serving as a mechanism of that. about fostering something new, but really doing it out of a desire to shape the world into what we wanted to be. there's a really pure spirit to it that we try to uphold and on her as best as we can. >> so far, we have talked about startups. people who didn't have much and had a vision for something and people got behind that. not start withd success. increasingly, you see people the spike lee, zach braff, people who decided that they wanted to have a tv show or movie and they want to get funding. there's been an argument that the bigger names to some degree
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have even begun to crowd out the smaller names. what do you make of that? last year, spike lee, neil young have launched er.kstart he it is strange when i see kickstart are listed on a video. great that that happens. this is a tool for people to take an idea, share it with the world, invite people to become involved and go through the process of creation according to their rules. you do if you are spike lee and have made to thing and malcolm x , you still have to answer to somebody. when somebody writes a check, there are demands it and with it. sometimes it doesn't fit with someone wants to do. at that moment we are a great opportunity. if you are zach braff and you
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have a rabid fan base on the web, go to them and say let's make this movie together. first,t to see the movie they get to be an extra in the movie, they get all these cool things. can you imagine martin scorsese letting you visit the set for 500 bucks? that is awesome. that is not scorsese begging you for money, that is him giving you the opportunity to be harder some anger you love to do. i think a lot of the cynical respective's seem to think that audiences are sheep. but i think audiences are smart. these are things they would always have liked to have, but the entertainment industrial complex to not allow. it was about moving a singular product. a movie is 120 minutes of a moving image on the screen. i think it is shifting that. see exactly the opposite. this is bringing tons of new
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audiences to kickstart her, tons of new creators supporting the project. the platform grows it is benefiting everyone involved. >> was the most amount of money so far the people have raised a kickstart her? sitting in the honest right now and i have a brilliant idea, what is the chance that i'm going to succeed? >> it is 100% for all of you fine, beautiful people. date, it is a billion dollars that have moved to the system. days about $1.5 million a that gets pledged on kickstart her. that is a thousand dollars a minute. the largest single campaign was something called the pebble which raised $10.2 million. that is a smart watch, the first smart watch out there. on my walk here i said to people wearing them.
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that has been the largest project in terms of money raised. the very first project raised $35 from three backers. for was called trying dollars. the guy said i want to draw a picture of something. give me five dollars and i will do it for you. that is still the essence of kickstart her. pebble is just a version of that. the way our system works is that money only changes hands if someone has reached their funding goal. there is a massive vetting of the public of every single object which is really kind of amazing. it is this incredible safety mechanism where the collective intelligence of humanity says this is cool or this is not cool. it helps sift out a lot of stuff. 44% of projects reached their goal. over 90% of all the money goes to those 44%. you really make your goal is you get very little.
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10% of money goes to projects that don't make their goal. that says that collectively we as the public are sniffing things out. we are up people or ideas that we like and think are worthy of support. i like that. i like that there is a clear difference between what gets done and what doesn't. seeing a lot more competitors in the market. you became a ceo how many months ago? >> january 1. you just spent the afternoon ursus manta spent an afternoon with the ceo coach. when you think about the competitive landscape and what this will look like in the is a one platform is kickstart her? or is it going to be a fragmented thing where charities will go to one place? how you investout crowd sourced
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ments where people will have equity on the other hand? end? on the other >> our goal is to help people create things, help people make stuff. we don't support charitable fundraising. we will not support investment. we are very focused on a single thing which is honestly just where our hearts lie and where we originated and what we still care about in the thing that we pursue with a lot of love. i think there is a pretty good chance that if we were different people running this week could try to be the walmart of crowd funding. i don't want to do that. it doesn't seem very interesting to me. it is not what we care about. there will be other things. there will be platforms focusing on investment. that is fine. , there were platforms
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existed before us. they have all copied us since. the original crowd funding campaign was alexander pope's translation of the iliad from greek to english. he found support from 700 subscribers who gave him money and took in four years translating 16,000 lines of poetry. their names are in the first edition of gilead, this is still the version we have today. we have mass media and large companies subsidize in our. there is a long history of this and there's a great future for this. it is still very early on. , harmonious and claims to kickstart and all of the platforms combined. i do think that will always be the case, but i think that this market will continue to grow and interesting things will happen. >> he said that you won't sell the company, you will go public.
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what does this -- what will this look like in 10 years, mr. ceo? >> well, andrew. we try to take a long view of what we try to do. we want to be a cultural institution. we exist so other people can do things. i'm in service to for people who work with me in kickstart a. we believeidea that in very deeply and i feel like we are trying to shepherd into the world. help of this -- health of this mission is important and we think being owned by giant company would be best for that, is that we imagine very traditional things like profit-sharing to make sure that the value we create get shared with our community. >> we are out of time. what does the ceo coach tell you? [laughter]
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we talk about the challenges of the job. it is a strange job. some of my friends who are ceos talk about the pressures and the crushing weight you feel the fear and terror and the thrill and excitement of responsibility. i couldn't imagine anything better to do with my life than this. >> thank you very much, we appreciated. e it. [applause] congressional hearing on the search for extraterrestrial life. an interview with the commander of the international space station. >> author allan hoffman shares a tale of two mississippi's as we visit aspect hill and jackson. >> prospect hill was founded by isaac ross who was a
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revolutionary war veteran from south carolina. he realized that he was going to die and the slaves would end up being sold or would just become common slaves, he wrote in his will that at the time of his daughter's death the plantation would be sold on the money used to pay the way for the slaves to integrate to liberia were a free slave colony had been established by the american colonization society. they call it read patri nation and a talk about them going back to africa. you have to understand, these people were americans and had been here for three or four or five generations. it wasn't like they were just going home. they're going back to the continent that their ancestors originally inhabited, but it was .uite a risk so they took their culture that they knew here, there. some of them took the bad aspects, two.
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one,build houses like this because after all, they're the ones that built this house. there were a lot of greek that the slaves built in mississippi. louisiana. river was as a george, a virginia, a kentucky, a maryland county. all those people came from those states in the u.s.. >> explore the history and literary life of jackson this weekend. sunday at 2:00 p.m. on american history tv on c-span three. >> columbia university professor brian greene is the author of the books fabric of the cosmos, the hidden reality, and the elegant universe. walternstitute president isaacson recently talked to him
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about the origins of the universe and the latest breakthroughs in physics research. from the new york ideas festival, this is 25 minutes. >> brian greene has written "fabric of the universe," i mean fabric of koss months -- cosmos," which i love and hidden reality, trio of books that deal with multiversus, fabric of commose, relativity. we're supposed to in 18 mings give you the whole story of thes could mows. let's begin in the beginning. how did it begin? >> how did it begin? good question. we don't know.
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it is an idea called inflationarry cosmology, which tries to answer a refind version of a very how did it begin, what was it that caused space to start swelling in the first place? we believe the universe is expanding, observations support that. what got the expansion started? the infligsarry theory said gravity itself is the culprit. even though the gravity we're familiar with in everyday life is attractive, pulls things tgget, einstein's theory shows in certain exotic circumstances gravity can be repulsive. >> so you have a repulsive first that pushes things oufment does it create space and time as well as particles and matter? >> it's again a hard question
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but our best answer at the moment is space and time needed to exist already for this phenomenon to take place. but what inflation does is it leverages the pre-existing space and time which could be a tiny little nugget and turns it into a large cosmos. so it basically takes space and time as an input very small, yields big space and time and matter and energy as the output. >> so if time already existed when this happened, what happened the day before this happened? >> yes, i knew you were going there, which is why i played defense here and said i don't know five times already in the first two minutes. so we don't know but we have ideas. one notion is a con stheapt doesn't make sense when it comes to the giving of the universe. a good analogy is think about
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the concept heading northward on earth. if you're head northward you pass by and say point me in the direction further north. you point, continue to walk. they point you in the northward direction but when you get to the north pole itself, if you ask somebody there how do you go further north, they throok at you sort of odd, quizically, going further north than the north pole doesn't make any sense -- >> going back in time doesn't make sense. >> that's right. going back in time like the north pole that may be like the concept of time only comes into play and there's no notion of before when it comes to the beginning. >> how do we get from general relativity to figuring out both mathematically and theoretically the notion of a big bang? >> that's an exciting and curious story. einstein himself after he fashioned the equations of general relativity, which people can read the wonderful history of in your book, he started to apply the theory to a variety of
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circumstances. the orbit of mercury being one famous one. bending starlight by the sun. but he also note fundamental he applied the equation to the whole universe, it gave rise to an unfamiliar, unexpected result which is that the fabric of space itself should be stretching or contracting. the universe couldn't be static. and that cut against the philosophical perspective of the time including einstein. so einstein changed the equations to ensure that, that result wouldn't come out, that the universe could be unchanging on the largest of scales. then fast forward to 1929 when edwin hubbell turns powerful telescope to the sky and sees the distant galaxies are all rushing away. the universe is expanding. sign stein kind of euphemistically smacks himself in the forehead and says why did i change the equations when i could have predicted this amazing fact about the universe, just from my own mathematics.
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>> he calls it his biggest blunder. then they walk the cat backwards, so if it's expanding, had to evolve in this single point. >> that's right. basically in the hands of a belgium priest was the first person to articulate this most precisely, he used einstein's mass, face value math, not the math einstein mangled to meet his philosophical prejudice, he used the math to turn the universe cosmos in reverse continue gets smaller and smaller and smaller and therefore he comes to a prime or thal nugget in which everything emerged. he called it prime ordinarily atom. the name big bang came later on. it was a radio interview i think with fred hole, this was a critic of the theory, talking about it on the radio, big bang, derogatory description but, of course, name that stuck and it's our best understanding of how things started. >> and you mention they got to
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it by walking the mathematical equations. it's sort of what you do. i don't think people know you're also a professor of mathematics and in some way mathematics is now your guide post to figure out this is how physical reality is. is that where math takes over and becomes the guide to physics? >> yes, the one lesson we learned from isaac newton is for reasons that we can't fully yesterday understand, math seems to be the right language for describing phenomena in the universe. math is the shining light that can lume nate the dark corners of reality that we have not been able to access directly. we can't literally see the beginning but we can use the math to peer back using the equation to get some understanding of what happened at the beginning. >> but don't we need to at some point have some evidence from physical reality? >> no. [laughter] no, we do. it's absolutely crucial.
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without that we're just sort of speculating. the evidence comes from so many places. first einstein's mathematics makes predictions about teams we can directly access, like bending the star light by the sun, which is tested in 1919 during a solar eclipse. just as sign stein predicted, the stars were slightly shifted in the sky because of the sun's presence. you know the story well, but perhaps not everybody does, einstein gets a telezpwram alerting him his ideas were confirmed through observation and somebody asked him, professor einstein, what would you say if data showed that theory was not confirmed and he said i would be sorry for the dear lord because the theory is correct. this is how certain he was for these ideas. but that's just one example. when it comes to cosmology and the big bang, we can use the equation to make predictions for how much residual heat should be left over from the big bang today, so-called commozzic
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microwave background radiation. and make predictions on how the temperature of the heat should vary from one location in space to another. and do measurements and measurements agree with the theoretical prediction to fantastic accuracy and that is breathtaking confirmation mathematics is not just speculation, the math is actually aligning with how the world works. >> give me an example of that measurement of the commozzic back commozzic radiation? they go to the north pole or south pole? >> there are many ways to access it. you can access it it through satellite-bourne telescopes such as will conson background radiation probe, which has done a fantastic job measuring microwave background radiation. but the recent one i think you're referring to is biceps two experiment down at the south
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pole where for three years a team of astronomers pointed the telescope at the patch of the southern polar sky and extracted information about the microwave background radiation that again bears out a more subtle prediction theory. >> this is radiation that emanated from the bang? >> yes. so in the beginning it was really hot. and as the universe expanded, the heat diluted and it cooled down. you can calculate how cold it should be today. 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. that's the temperature of deep space, not when there's sources like stars nearby but if you're in deep, empty space that's the temperature but you can go one step further and not just calculate average temperature but calculate how temperature should vary place to place and math shows it should vary on the 1/100,000 of a degree,
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tiny variation. and do precise measurements and indeed temperature variation in just the pattern that the athematics predicts. >> what do you mean when you call something the fabric of the cosmos. >> that's a hard question. is space really a thing or is it just a uneful concept in order to organize our perceptions of reality? you're over there. you're further away in space. your table is yet further. is space merely the vocabulary that allows me to articulate locations or is space really a thing? nobody fully knows the answer to that but in einstein's general relativity and different people interpret it differently, i see space as a thing in einstein's theory. >> space meaning fabric of space and time together. >> that's rifmente space and time are stitched together -- >> and they would exist even if nothing else existed? >> that's right. that's right.
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and there's been a lot of debate about this. if you're to remove everything from space, the moon, the sun, earth, everything, what would be left? would you have an empty universe that still has space and time or would you have nothing? a good analogy is if you take an alpha bat and start to remove desserts z and x and a and b, when you remove that last letter, what's left? is it like an empty alphabet? not really. it's like nothing because alpha bat comes into existence with the letters that make it up. is that true of the universe? does it come into existence only when there's stuff populating it or can there be an empty stage cause space time that could exist even in the absence of matter? i think it's the latter. >> there's a wonderful thought experiment, which you deal with i think in your first book, newton's bucket. >> yes. >> explain how that helps think there's a fabric of space. >> this is a thought experiment isaac newton came up with when he was trying to understand
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basically if space was a thing. and he imagined taking a bucket and filling it with water. he noted that as you spin the bucket, the water climbs up the sides of the bucket. i think even kids do this at the beach, right? you spin it around and climbs up the side. >> we would call inertia? >> that's right. so the water has intrinsic quality called inertia that causes it to resist that motion and when it resists, it kind of gets pushed out and goes up the sides. so you can you imagine doing that in a completely empty universe? there are some issues about that because gravity is part of what makes shape so we imagine now taking two stones, same idea, connecting them by a rope and spinning them around. would the rope pull taught? to newton it was obvious the rope would pull tauth, even in empty says so he said therefore was say rope and rock spinning with respect to? nothing there, no urge, no sun, anything, therefore the rope and
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rock must be spinning with respect to something called space. space itself must be setting the benchmark, the reference with respect to which that motion is happening. others came along and said no, we disagree. we remove anything from the universe and take your spinny rock and ropey thing and it will not pull taut t. will just kind of stay complete limp and it's still an issue people debate. >> is there any evidence we can find one way or another? >> it's very hard to remove everything from the universe, right? that's kind of what you would ike to do. what you do is try to find alternate implications of one perspective or another. i would say today, most people -- i haven't done a survey but most people would say would pull taut, space time does set the reference frame for certain kind of motion, accelerated motion but other who are holdouts and disagree with that.
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>> what have we learned from the latter? >> we learned a lot. we learned thousand build the biggest experiment our species has ever embarked upon. these are really fantastic temples of the 20th, 21st century. they are our pyramids in a sense. in terms of the science we extracted, most important thing boat on the iggs higs particle. people know about the higgs, right? there was a particle predicted mathematically in 1964 by peter and many others who really deserve equal credit for it but it's just a mathematical idea that was a solution to a puzzle, how do particles get mass? how do they resist being pushed when want to speed them up or slow them down? and the idea was space is filled with a kind of molasses-like substance called now the higgs field, like a steam bath we don't see that's all around us
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and -- >> and that gives mass to particles. >> that's right. as particles try to move through the steam bath, they experience roughly speaking drag force -- >> what is the relationship to the higgs field to the matter of space time? >> if the higgs idea is correct there would be virtually no distinction between them. this substance would fill every nook and cranny of space and in a sense it would be unremovable unless somehow you can re-create temperatures of the very early universe. analogy i think sort of capture that's idea is, you know, don't know if you have any tattoos? [laughter] ok. good. i don't know where you were looking and i'm not going to ask. but imagine that you start to have more and more tattoos and ultimately if you cover your entire body, the distinction between your skin and tattoo becomes kind of meaningless. you are the illustrated man at
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that point. you're completely covered with tattoos. similarly space is completely filled with this higgs stuff and if you can't remove it, there's no distinction between space and stuff that fills it. >> what if they hadn't found it and found that there is no hig field? does the entire standard model of quantum theory go out the window? >> that would have been far more exciting for a theorist. less exciting for peter higgs and others -- >> would we have loss mass and loss weight? >> i don't think anybody cares much about our understanding of the universe. would have shrugged it off, silly little humans. but the wonderful thing is to the theorist, we would have been sent back to the black board to answer these deep puzzles, where does the heft of the fundamental constituents come from? that would have been enormously exciting for an idea that we thought was the answer to be proved wrong. it's not a misperception that physicists or scientists
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generally get stuck on an idea and they become so wedded to it they will hold on to it even in the face of evidence that suggests contrary. no, it's completely opposite. we love it when ideas that we cherish are proved wrong. this is the biggest opportunity of a lifetime to try to come up with the next new idea that will take its place. in this example, it was a wonderful triumph mathematics and experiment where the idea was confirmed. >> now, mathematics has led you to super strength area, which you are very associated. explain why the math led you there. >> well, since the 1960's and '70's, people have tried to put together einstein's gravity, general relativity that we have been talking about, together with the another theory. theory of the small ingredients, quantum mechanics -- >> einstein, on his death bed, he was doing that. >> sort of. einstein was trying to put gravity together with electromagnetic theory to build
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a unified theory thinking that he could do an end run around the uncomfortable feature of quantum mechanics he didn't like so much. he was hoping in some sense to go this way and do that to quantum mechanics. that seemed not to really work out. so we're trying the more straightforward approach and putting gravity and quantum theory together and standard odel of particle of physics, particularly higgs particle, successful, unable to put gravity and quantum theory together. that leads us to a new approach, at least on paper, super strength theory does put gravity and quantum mechanics together. >> is there anything coming up in the next five or 0 ten years you would say would help give you a physical test of what you're doing there? >> no. i wish the answer -- i can go speculative here. speculation on speculation. which is an uncomfortable place to be.
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just to say, we don't believe any of these ideas until they make predictions they can test. let's be real clear, if you ask me do i believe in strength theory, the theory is absolutely no, i never have and i never will until there's experimental data that supports it. having said that, it's the most promising and i have to tell you mathematically compelling approach to putting gravity and quantum mechanic together and that's an important puzzle to solve. that drives us to continue working on it. in the best of all worlds, turn it back on in 2015 strks possible some of -- is it possible some of these ideas will make contact with observation? possible. we could see evidence of exdimension. particles slam together, some of the debris get knocked out of our dimensions according to the math. we would recognize that by loss of energy. people are looking for this. whole class of particles called super symmetric particles that theory predicts we haven't yet seen. we can see microscopic black
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holes that would decay into a spray of other part acalls. all of these things are possible but i don't like to place hope on them in that i consider them long shots. so when they don't come through, i don't want it to be hey, you guys predicted that would happen and then it didn't. no. it's possible but unlikely. > is it inevitable and super strength theory there are other universes? >> it's not inevitable. it's one of the very controversial developments over the last years. >> would you believe it's true? >> again, believe is a funny, funny word. do believe in other universes? absolutely not. do i find it a compelling possibility and can i see how the math naturally suggests it, and does that compel me to work on it? it does. but until there's observation or experiment to support, i don't believe anything. >> and i guess einstein once said that one of the grand questions was, did the good lord
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have a choice in the way he invented the universe. explain that and answer it for us. >> for einstein. so einstein asked a very important question, which is could the universe about on otherwise? could the mass of the particles be different? gravity behaved differently? did god, did the lord have a choice or is somehow that dictated by logic and mathematics alone? and we don't know the answer but if these ideas of other universes are correct, then it's completely opposite. it may be that every possibility is played out on the grand landscape of reality. rather than one unique universe, it might be all possible universes. the truth is probably somewhere in between. >> we have run out of time lut butt let me hit you with a couple quick things. one of which is why does this all matter? >> if you ask my mom, it doesn't, right? >> she wanted you to be a doctor. >> exactly. gives her a headache, all of that kind of stuff. but i think it helps many people
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get a sense of how we fit into the larger picture. how we're part of this spectacular cosmos. i don't consider it making us somehow small and insignificant, although we are, but take into account these little tiny creatures walking around the surface of the earth can figure out what happened a billionth of a bilge of a second after the beginning and what things will be like a hundred billion years into the future, that to me is an amazing story. that is the most exciting drama discovery we have ever been engaged with. that's why it matters. >> so people want to hear more, there's a world science festival . your wife is doing. and world science university. give it a quick pitch. >> yes, world science u is a new online platform that we at the world science festival developed to try to get these ideas out to the general public but not just the level we're talking about it here, which is exciting but real math behind it in a highly produced, highly visual way f
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>> that is the chance you take. the committee on space and technology will come to order. welcome to today's hearing. astrobiology and the search for life in the universe. a couple of the preliminary announcements, one is that i want to thank c-span for covering this hearing today. that shows the importance of the hearing in a lot of respects. i want to thank the students from herndon high school. you could attend any hearing you wanted to and you chose this one because you thought it was the most interesting.
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actually, that is one of the purposes of today's hearing. that is to inspire students today to be the scientists of tomorrow. who knows, we may have some of the scientists in the audience right now who will be inspired by what they hear, to study astrobiology are some of the other sciences as well. we appreciate your attendance. i will recognize myself for an opening statement, and then the ranking member, as well. as we discover more planets around stars in our galaxy, it is natural to wonder if we may finally be on the brink of entering the question, are we alone in the universe? finding other senti and life in the universe would be the most significant discovery in human history. scientists estimate that there are 80 billion stars in the
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milky way galaxy. than 1700 nearby planets have been found by the kepler space telescope. last month, astronomers discovered the first earthlike planet orbiting a star at a distance where liquid water could be present, a condition thought be central to life. the planet is only 10% larger than the earth and about 490 light-years away. xo planet survey satellite that will launch in 2017 and the james webb space telescope launch team in 2018 will help scientists discover more planets. the united states has pioneered the field of astrobiology and continues to lead the world in this type of research. a sample of professional papers published in "science" magazine between 1995 and 2013 illustrates the significant growth and growing popularity of the field of astrobiology. between 1995 and
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