visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] susan: our guest on "newsmakers" this week is utah's governor gary herbert. the nation's governors are meeting in washington this week for their semi-annual confab and the governor is the vice-chair of the organization. this summer you will be taking over the gavel. before i introduce our two reporters, you announced to your reporters at home that your focus, when you take over the chairmanship, is going to be federalism. can you tell us what that concept means to you in 2015? gov. herbert: well, we are partners in sharing the responsibilities of government. the federal government with the states. it has always been envisioned that they were equal partners. states should not be subservient. yet we see with this continued growth and expansion, the federal government encroaches, i believe, into the responsibilities of the states. and that is not a partisan issue, that is a -- democrat republican, independent agrees that the government is taking over too much. so let's get back to the concept of responsibility as defined in our constitution and what we've always known as called "federalism." susan: well, i am sure we will be hearing more about that

practically with questions from our two guests. so, let me introduce them. reid wilson is at "the washington post." he's the govbeat reporter. he is following policy details with the states and federal government. james hohmann is at "politico," and he's a political reporter there. we're going to start with reid wilson. reid: well, governor, let's talk about federalism for a second. a huge percentage of utah and most other western states are owned by the federal government. what challenge does that pose to you trying to govern a lot of land you do not have control over? gov. herbert: well, you can appreciate how it would be if someone was telling you how to manage your backyard, sometimes you agree and sometimes you don't. we have the bureau of land management land in our state. nearly 70% of the land mass is controlled or owned by the federal government. that is a lot. you know, it is designed to be multiple-use. we understand that concept with utah, there shouldn't be multiple use. our farmers and ranchers have the ability to use that land access the water and so on for their agriculture.

also, natural resource extraction, energy development tourism and travel -- all of those things should be working in harmony and and we think sometimes it gets out of balance in the west and the concern we have because of that imbalance is a that it creates a lack of opportunity for everybody. we are trying to bring back a little balance in utah. i think that is exemplified in many of the western states today. reid: do you want to see some of that federal land returned to the states, and how would you do that? gov. herbert: you know, utah has always been a public land state and it will continue to be a public land state. the question is, who manages the public lands? is it the federal government or the state or a combination of both? i think the answer is it should be a combination. we have been concerned about the lack compatibility as to optimum use of some of our public lands. some lands ought to be preserved and protected and others ought to be developed. we sometimes think the east, particularly washington, d.c.,

is out of touch with the reality of the western lifestyle and what we're trying to do to contribute to energy development, for example. i applaud the fact we have one of our congressmen, rep. rob bishop along with congressman jason chaffetz, trying to resolve some of these conflicts that have been going on for 25 years in utah with what they call a "public lands initiative," which will resolve 18 million acres of utah to say, "this should be developed, this should be preserved and protected, this is for farming and ranching, this is for energy development." so, i think we are on the right road to resolve it and i think it should be a shared responsibility. james: i would like to ask about medicaid. your legislature, speaking big picture and then looking at the specific situation in utah, i have been struck by the dynamic that we have had several republican governors push for expansion of medicaid and their republican legislatures have blocked them.

it happened earlier this month in tennessee with bill haslam , and in wyoming with matt mead. john kasich in ohio had to go around the republican legislature. rick scott in florida wanted medicaid, it was dead on arrival with his republican legislature. why do you think there is this disconnect between republican chief executives who want to figure out a way to expand coverage and republican state legislatures which seem diametrically opposed to it? gov. herbert: well, i cannot speak for other states. i understand the concept that the governors have to take a broader view. it may be the 30,000 foot view that people talk about, to look at what is the best interest of all the people they represent in a state. in utah in particular, you know, the thing that is kind of peculiar is that we really do not in large support the affordable care act. i have been critical of that and led the charge in opposition.

we sued. we ended up going through a process where we lost in the supreme court. where, at least on the constitutionality of the affordable care act, because the supreme court said that under the taxation clause of the constitution, it was ok to have it. but they kind of changed the dynamic and said that medicaid expansion and medicaid itself is voluntary. well, i understand that, but here's the problem. the taxes to pay for medicaid expansion and medicaid are mandatory. so in our state of utah, we send about $800 million a year back to washington, d.c. under the affordable care act and we get no benefit unless we find some way to do that. so, we do not want to expand medicaid in utah. we have a different program called "healthy utah," where we take the money back -- it's our money -- and puts it back, into a better program than medicaid which includes different co-pays, and not as much assistance for those on the upper end, more skin in the game for the recipient, higher cost

if you use the emergency room than you would have under medicaid, and a work requirement so that when you enroll as youth you get health care and automatically enrolled into a work program to help you get off of government assistance. you are there in the first place because you are not making enough money. so, if you are able-bodied and unemployed, we want to get you a job. if you are able-bodied and underemployed, we want to get you a better job. so, we think this is a better use of spending the money and i think we have a chance of kind of finding a new pathway here. >> healthy michigan, healthy indiana, you hear a lot about that. one of the substantive concerns about medicaid expansion is that states are going to be left holding the bag. the federal government is making this promise. two, three years, 100%. and then, all of a sudden they have given coverage to all these folks, and then you are on the hook as utah to pay for it and you will have to find new ways to get the revenue to do it. do you think the government is

good for the money? gov. herbert: well -- [chuckles] i do not like the way they manage their budget here in washington, d.c. they don't live within their means. contrary to what states typically do, certainly utah, we do not spend more than we take in. we don't have unnecessary debt. we save for a rainy day. we try to build the economy. but, the government itself, that is why we developed in utah a pilot program. if they renege on the premises if they do not complete their part of the bargain, then this program will be modified or eliminated. when you sign up for health utah you have to acknowledge that. you sign up knowing that this is a pilot program that can be modified or eliminated based on what we find going forward. that is why it is a pilot program. i do not know what the future will bring us as far as the federal government keeping their part of the bargain, but if they don't, as has happened in many

states, as part of the medicaid expansion, they have said, if it doesn't happen we will get out. we've had the same provisions in our healthy utah program. again, we'll see what happens. i would hope they would keep their part in the bargain. medicaid in utah has been there since 1966, 1967. they have always made the payments on the 70-30 match. going forward, i expect they can. they should. there are a lot of ways to cut the fat in washington, d.c. and find more efficiency so they can pay their bills. so, it is the law of the land. until that law has changed, we have to deal with what is the reality today. reid: let me ask you about the next challenge to the affordable care act. matthews v. burwell, the case that is before the supreme court right now. if the court rules against the affordable care act and says that healthcare.gov states aren't eligible for the subsidies, how are you going to react in utah? you have suddenly got hundreds of thousands of people who

thought they were getting subsidies and now get no subsidies. >> again, that is part of the flaw in the affordable care act. the act was flawed. it has certainly been too partisan. it has divided the country. there is a lot to be critical about with the affordable care act. i am one of them. that being the case, i'm happy to deal with what the reality is. if the law changes because of king v. burwell, we will react and adjust to that very situation. if it tumbles down the affordable care act, i say great, we ought to go back and start over. in my case, if the act fails that means the $800 million we were sending to washington will cease to go there. frankly, a good rule of thumb for most of us as governors is do not take the money from us in the first place. you know, you do not need to take more money to develop one-size-fits-all programs for the state. if we want to develop a program, we can do it ourselves. we are the laboratories of democracy. so, don't take it from us in the first place. if you take it, give it back.

give it back as a block grant with maximum flexibility. we will find better, more efficient ways to take the responsibility. reid: i'm sorry, i cited the wrong case. thank you for correcting me. if the king v. burwell case goes the other way, in the more immediate sense, you will suddenly have thousands of people who do not have care and get the subsidies. is there an immediate answer you can come up with or does it have to be that sort of long-term re-think of health care reform? gov. herbert: it is always tough to give answers to hypothetical questions. we know there's potential out there, we have certainly talked to the leadership in the house and the senate about what might happen. is the court going to give us some time? i expect that the court will make a decision by the end of the year and make a judgment. we will get together with our legislature and our medical community and the people of utah and decide how to deal with that and what is in the best interest of the utah taxpayer.

i expect other states will do the same. hohmann: can i ask a political question? utah, always an interesting state politically. you toppled an incumbent governor as a lieutenant governor on the ticket back in the day. mike lee is going to have a convention next year. do you think he is vulnerable to a challenge? do you think he will win reelection? gov. herbert: maybe i misunderstood, you said i toppled an incumbent? hohmann: i'm sorry, when you ran for governor. gov. herbert: yes, i ran for governor. there were seven or eight of us who ran for governor. i ended up partnering with gov. jon huntsman, former ambassador of china, and he ran for president here in this last cycle as you know. he and i joined together. in utah there is a partnership. governor and lieutenant governor run as a ticket. it was a great time. a good run for us. it led me to have the

opportunity to be the governor of utah and i have run and won my own term now. but you know, dynamics of politics are sometimes hard to predict. utah has always been a pretty red state. we are conservative. we have been consistently conservative over a long period of time, and i would say that is has been one of the secrets to our success. the predictability. the policies. smaller government. healthy economy. more empowerment in the private sector. our unemployment rate is 3.5%. our growth gdp is twice the national average, 4.1 percent growth now in utah. our system, our policies, our values are working very well in utah. senator lee reflects a lot of that. certainly he has been a conservative. maybe a conservative's conservative. i think he got a bad rap with the federal shutdown. got more blame than probably he deserved. his polling was in the low 40's, now it is in the low 50's, he is certainly coming back.

i think he will be hard to -- if anybody has an idea, there is a lot of speculation and rumor out there. not a lot of substance. i think he would be hard for anybody to topple if they decided to challenge him. reid: let me talk about an issue that is huge in the west that i don't think gets much coverage east of the mississippi. there are 11 states in which a bird called the sage grouse has habitat. the department of the interior is considering listing that bird as an endangered species and that has the potential to lock up tens of millions of acres of land. talk about the challenge you face in utah and sort of how you are trying to protect the sage grouse on your own. gov. herbert: well, we have had a plan in place for some time, and we started working on that a number of years ago. we care about the sage grouse and we do not want to see it listed. i think others out there have

their own agenda. they do not care about the sage grouse but they want to use it to stop energy development. coal extraction. natural gas. oil drilling. that is the political reality in the marketplace. that being said, we have developed a plan based on input from all of the stakeholders , from the business community to the industry, business leaders and community leaders and the environmental community and came up with a plan that protects 94% of the sage grouse habitat in utah. the good news is for the sage grouse is it is working. we had it increase significantly in the last couple years and in fact just this past year, we have had an increase in the sage grouse population approaching 40%. so, our plan is working. i also created an executive order that i signed here just a few weeks ago to put in place these management plans we have been working on to protect the sage grouse. so, we are a little concerned that the federal government has not embraced what we are doing

as wholeheartedly as they should. they asked us to do this and now they are being standoffish as far as embracing and approving our plan. i am concerned about a species that is prolific in nine states that people are saying is somehow endangered. i mean, that seems a little bit odd. at least from a utah perspective, we're doing everything we can to protect the sage grouse and we see our efforts taking shape. reid: do think you are actually getting a fair shake from fish & wildlife, the department of the interior, the people who will make this decision, or has the decision all ready been made and they are moving towards it? gov. herbert: i feel like we are coming together on this. i think they see we have made a good-faith effort. it is hard to argue against results. i think there is been a concern that the science the federal government is using is not accurate and has been suspect. again, they do not seem to be willing to go back to review the science.

when they are called upon, it seems a little bit weak when you look at the science of the sage grouse. but i am very comfortable we are working together on this and we will get the right outcome. the western governors association, which i'm the past chair of, is doing a great job at bringing this together. we're periodically meeting with the interior and fish & wildlife and i am hopeful we'll get this resolved. susan: you have nine minutes left. james: let me ask you about what conservatives see as overreach by the federal government, immigration. utah is one of the states that has joined the lawsuit trying to stop president obama's executive action on immigration. this past week, a federal judge temporarily halted implementation of the executive order. where do you see this case ending up? what will be the disposition? is this something that is clearly so unconstitutional that federal courts will intervene, or do you think it will happen

even if a lot of states have signed on to this suit trying to stop it? gov. herbert: well james, you make me think of the old saying by yogi berra, "i hate to make predictions, particularly about the future." who knows where it is going to end up and where it's going to be resolved. but, immigration is in emotional issue. i am sure it is not unique to utah, but we have had a lot of frustration because of the lack of action on the congress's part. it is their responsibility to resolve this issue and to do something. "do" is the operative word. something can be defined as a little or a lot. but do something. we finally got so frustrated in utah that we decided to try to make our own policies as a state and we said we're going to enforce the laws you are not forcing. everything should be based on the role of law. we wanted to see if we could, in fact, find a better way to solve the problem. we got challenged in court by the obama administration saying,

"well, you cannot go around the congress. this is their responsibility not yours as the state of utah." and although we won on some points in court, we lost on the bigger points where they said this is a federal responsibility. well, guess what? we were frustrated with the congress, now we have the president frustrated with the congress and he says, i am going to go around the congress. and we said, wait a minute. [laughter] we have already had this debate and discussion. you challenged us. not fair. what is good for the goose is good for the gander. so now we're suing him. saying you have overstepped your executive authority and you cannot go around congress, either. and frankly, it is not about the results he is trying to get, it is about who has the responsibility to put policy in place. well, it's the congress. we called on the congress to immediately do some immigration reforms. do something. even if it is just as minimal as securing the border. everybody agrees.

do it, then. do it. james: how much blame do congressional republicans deserve for the failure to pass immigration? this is kind of both sides have mud on their hands here because it has been politicized or is it the way the obama administration in the way that they approached the issue? gov. herbert: well, there has certainly been a lack of leadership. leadership will bring people together and find a compromise point. we have found it in times past and can find it now. there is probably blame to go around for everybody, but really the buck stops at the white house. you have got to bring people together. that is part of being president. i have to do it as a governor bringing my legislature together. for most of the legislation we have, we have 85-90% of our legislation has bipartisan support. almost passed unanimously. we bring people together. i meet with the democrats probably once a week in my state. i meet with the republicans also.

we talk about issues and try to bring people together to get things resolved on behalf of the taxpayer. that should be happening in this town, too. reid: let me ask about another issue that gets heated. that is common core. developed in part by the national governors association which you will be taking over later this year. what is it about common core that makes conservative activists so angry? and do you support education standards that are higher than those that were in place before common core? gov. herbert: i think it illustrates the challenge we have in life. that is lack of good communication. we do not understand each other. we talk past each other. we have different agendas, and maybe that drives our lack of understanding. i think everybody wants to have higher standards. when we look at a country that is 25 or 26 in ranking order around the world as far as educational achievement, we have a problem. we cannot sustain growth if we

do not have skilled labor and that comes with education. i think everybody wants to have higher standards. the common core was designed to do that. to get everybody together on the same page as a minimum high standard. higher standard. so, if you graduate from high school in mississippi, idaho california, you have some kind of a minimum proficiency. in the process, somewhere along the way, we did not communicate well. there is concern that the federal government and the department of education on the federal level took over responsibility. that they in fact say, if you do this, then we will give you money. the strings attached. and for some, that is a misunderstanding. in utah, we have gone back to say look, let's review what has taken place for our state. make sure we are getting higher standards than we had before which our education people said is true. let us make sure that utah is somehow not inadvertently or intentionally ceded authority

for their education to the federal government. it is their responsibility and their dictating to us. that should not happen. they found that we have not ceded that authority. the local authority to the school boards for curriculum not to be confused with the standards, but the curriculum sometimes are used interchangeably. there is again miscommunication. but every state should be doing this. make sure you have control of your own standards. they are where you want them to be, higher and better standards. you are in control of your curriculum. your textbooks. your resource materials to fit in with your values and what you think should be taught in schools. should corrode you should control your testing and making sure the tests are right and appropriate. and data collection. the concern about collecting data from the students. one concern is it might be inappropriate. and once collected, what do we do with it? do we push it out to arenas that

might not be inappropriate? that is what we are doing in utah and other states are trying to follow suit. susan: we have two minutes left. governor, i wanted to ask you about wildfire management. the climate scientists are predicting it is going to be a tough several years ahead. for western states particularly. i am wondering about your satisfaction level with government response on wildfires and also what it is doing to your own state to plan for this. >> we have not had wildfires to the extent of some of our neighboring states like colorado. part of this management concern we have with the federal government is the lack of understanding that we need to replace the grass, which is like a fuse that burns rapidly. we need more fire resistant grasses for grazing for sides of hills and mountains are rain. the management aspects of that we would like to have improvement from the federal government. we have not been able to spray for the broader bark beetle, so we have had stands of trees that

have died. we have a lumber industry decimated because of poor management of our forests. there are areas that we can work together on. i think we are getting better with working with the federal government. certainly the drought that is taking place in the west is not helping. we are taking steps to deal with that and i anticipate will find better ways to manage so we minimize the effects of the drought with forest fire. >> as we close here, we know you are meeting with the president and governors at the white house on monday. i wonder if you will tell us, to get his ear, what is the message going to be? >> to give the states flexibility. again, they talk about it. maybe every administration talks about it. sometimes they are not good at doing it. maybe some of it is reluctance to give up control. i think some of it is a lack of trust. the lack of trust in the states doing it right. i have spoken to cabinet members, saying why are you doing this to us? and they say they want to make sure we are getting it right.

and i say, you don't trust the people those with children who live in the state? we are the laboratory for democracy. let us learn from each other. we are a great resource for the people in washington. we come up with great programs. we find successes from successes. we can improve when we see failure. my words to the administration is trust the states. give us flexibility. let us have our sovereign opportunity to direct our own affairs. susan: thank you for your time. gov. herbert: thank you. >> newsmakers is back after gary herbert, a republican vice chairman of the national governors association. the governors are in washington this week, and they do this twice a year, with a get

together and talk about mutual interests. what about his frustrations with washington? would you talk about this white house and its view of federal -state relations and how it might compare to a previous administration? >> democrats take a more national deal things. there is less flexibly granted to the states, at least in the last couple of administrations. that has been the criticism from republican governors. the obama administration has had a lot of opportunities to negotiate some big things with the states, whether it is how the going to design medicaid expansion or create the state health-care exchanges. there have been some serious mixed results. given the administration that the administration is so interested in expanding medicaid in the states that have yet to expect that expansion, they are loosening up.

the latest proposals that have come out of the very states, whether it's indiana or some other states, utah, wyoming, the proposals on the table look a lot different from some states that have gone with just a more traditional medicaid expansion the department of health and human services has said that that is ok, go ahead and do it your way as long as people get covered. >> we covered health care, immigration, and land management. >> does a lot more flashpoints with the western states. you talk about federalism, the majority of your state is owned by the federal government. the land issue is huge. we heard about it. it is a very important issue. it's having an effect on a lot of these states and their access to being able to drill, energy would be another big one that is a flash point that sort of ties into that. the ones that are the hottest

issues and will be big issues in the upcoming presidential campaign our immigration, he talked about you tell warning to fashion this approach. i thought his expedition of that was very effective. it is a good x nation of the rationale for the lawsuit that is more than just anti-obama. now on health care issue. the obamacare brand is so classic, you definitely have seen a loosening of the willingness of the hh as to give waivers -- the hhs to give waivers. every republican has their own plan. they don't want to call it medicaid expansion or they don't want to call it obamacare. they have all their different words we heard. the utah version of that here.

they are deathly trying to make it work with a really unpopular president. >> you pressed the governor on this, but if the supreme court does in his review of the affordable care act overturn that aspect of the law, are the states prepared for the consequences? akrevoe >> not at all. if the court's gives them time to come up with alternatives that will give them a little bit of time. on the medicaid expansion side, it's medicaid expansion by any other means. you are seeing the same thing in common core, where the moment president obama and the federal government got involved through the department of education and some race to the top grants, became a toxic program in the states, especially among conservative activists. how are these governors going to approach having to offer subsidies or reform health care

in a way that doesn't smell like obamacare, in a way to doesn't look like something the came out of the white house document of washington? is going to be a massive challenge for them. there's almost no consensus within the republican party or between republicans and democrats on how to move forward. >> the republicans dominate the executive mansions around the country right now. what is it look like for them in 2016? >> they have a much higher watermark anyone expected. this year, there is three governors races, republicans hold two of the three. the whole of the mississippi will end up holding louisiana, and that the governors race is in kentucky. there is a popular democratic governor. there is a contentious republican primary. they will coalesce behind the attorney general. in 2016, a presidential year, it's bad for senate republicans

because they have to defend seats in illinois, pennsylvania, new hampshire, but exactly good for republicans. the republicans lost a lot of governorships in 2012 that they should of one, and they have a couple of pickup on opportunities west virginia, montana, or the democratic governors association, missouri, were jay nixon's leading after two terms a lot of democrat, so this a lot of governors races where if republicans have a good year in 2016, they can end up with 32, 33, 34 governorships. democrats are on defense at the state capital level. >> is it is fair to say politics is not far from their minds? >> thank you. >> thank you. >> the guard towers are gone, but the memories come flooding back for so many people who till today had lost such a big part

of their childhood. released after the war, some very the memories, and with it the history of this camp, no more than 60 years later. >> the only family and turn it camp during world war ii at crystal city, texas. what she says is the real reason for this camp. >> government comes to the father's and say we have a deal for you. we will reunite you with your families and the internment camps, the family internment camp, if you agree to go voluntarily, and then i discovered what the real secret of the camp was. they also had to agree to voluntarily repatriate to germany and to japan if the government decided they needed to be repatriated. the truth of the matter is that the crystal city camp was

humanely administered by the department, but the special war divisions and the department of state used it as roosevelt's primary prisoner exchange, the center of his exchange program. >> tonight on c-span's q&a. >> the president's tax force on 21st century policing will audit second public meeting tomorrow. the task force established by executive order after a fatal police shooting in ferguson, missouri, six to improve the relationship between law enforcement and local communities. that is live on c-span3. >> the academy awards are tonight. we have been looking at some of the stories featured in this year's nominated films. next, a discussion with george

dyson. the movie is nominated for seven awards, including best picture and best actor. >> finally, before get started i do have one very special introduction tonight. i would like to recognize akrevoe emmanouilides. she was hired as a secretary at the age of 16 to work for herman goldstein. when he moved to work directly with john von neumann, he had a very distinguished career. doing far more than being a secretary. she was there for the creation

and has traveled to be here for this program. would you please stand up? [applause] you are so tiny, i saw people in the back trying to see you. we are delighted to see you. if you would like to ask some questions of someone who worked directly with the legends please feel free to pass those . and now on to tonight's program. the world inhabited at princeton university and alan turing and john von neumann, and yet george dyson's brilliant new book "turing's cathedral: the origins of the digital universe", makes it as vivid and relevant as today. indeed, it can hardly be more relevant. the world we inhabit, the cathedral, described by alan

turing, is governed, howard powered and driven by new variations on the code that they envision and build. it would be simplistic to say that in john von neumann leiby case, the stories are important, because as dyson writes, the digital universe and hydrogen bomb were brought into existence by the same team. von neumann's team. at the institute for advanced study at princeton. the story deals with this in much more detail. the story deals with this in a much more center of john von neumann, inventor, teacher towering intellect. the physicists describe him in this way. if a mentally superhuman race ever develops, its members will resemble john von neumann. this is not george dyson's first

attempt to help us understand at both a technical and human level the way that we coexist and cocreate with computing. he is the author among darwin of the machines as well and two other books also and he writes frequently on the subject. this is not totally his day job. as you may know, he is in addition to being a scientist, a historian, and author, a builder and designer from his home in bellingham, washington. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming george dyson. [applause] >> thank you very much. >> it's great to have you here. >> thank you. >> welcome. so glad to have you here george. >> this is a fantastic exhibit. incomprehensibly good. >> thank you very much. we are delighted you are here. you are among friends. these are your people, george. we are going to have some fun tonight.

let's talk about the practice of writing the book. you have an intensely personal connection to princeton and the institute of advanced study because your father, freeman dyson, and your mother -- talk a little bit about that, what it was like to grow up and be among people there. >> i have to be careful what i say, but for a child -- a young boy, it was not that interesting. it was populated by theoreticians who would work on pencil and people all day and go out into the woods and talk about physics. the most exciting thing was the chalkboard. they still use chalkboards at the time. there was no powerpoint. but there was this out building in the back where julian bigelow was building this machine. that is what interested me. i spend a lot of my time poking around in taking things apart

that were discarded as scrap from projects. >> there is a famous story about your babysitter being einstein's secretary. >> yes, people behind every great man, there is somebody who keeps track of things. that was helen dukas, who was a fantastically intelligent woman. she was einstein search engine. [laughter] when he needed something, helen knew where everything was. but she didn't have her own children. she grew up in a family, i can't remember -- i think with 11 children, a huge number of children in her family. she missed that. so she adopted our family. i had four younger sisters, she was really their babysitters. my job was to make life difficult when she was trying to babysit my sister's. but i over a tremendous lot --

because i was really being difficult one day and she said why don't you settle down and read a book? i said there were no books because i had read all of them. she went to the shelf and pulled out a book and give it to me and said read this. that was the first adult book that i read. that changed my life. >> that really did change her life? >> yes, it did. i think she saw that. she was going to give this kid this book. >> as a kid, to become a natural thing for you to be curious about who they were and about von neumann and the meaning of computing? >> yes, that came later, thanks to esther, my sister who has such an influence on the community here. thanks to esther, i started going to her technology conferences in the early 1980s and i saw this whole world -- the world of personal computers,

it was flourishing -- then i realize that that came from this out building behind where i've grown up to i wanted understand that. that is why i became interested in finding out what really happened. i have to say outright that i am less interested in who was first, but what really happened. >> you specifically say the that that this is not about the first. >> it was not the first high-speed computer, it is not the first program computer at best you can almost say that maybe it is the first computer with a fully random access memory. but even there could've been a couple for us. it was the ancestors and was the one that got copied, just like you know, newton was the first iphone, but it didn't become the iphone.

>> we have learned the hard way between the word first and computer there are 19 adjectives. [laughter] you told me a fascinating story about the treasure trove of papers you were allowed to get access to. some that have not seen the light of day since the mid- 1940s. can you talk about that? >> yes, the reason the book exists is because people were kind enough to let me into their garages and their basements and in the case of the institute sort of their own archives. the institute had been very protective of their privacy. they are a private organization. thanks to charles simoni, was one of your benefactors, it was charles who pushed the door open and said let charles in and have access to this stuff. i found unbelievably amazing things. for someone like me, it was

unbelievable to go there. my daughter came with me, and we had a year. she knows that every day i would poke around the documents all day and then come home and go back in the morning. i would normally work in archives where i have 48 hours and i'm sleeping on someone's couch. i have to beg a photocopy. it is amazing to have that access. >> you write about an amazing piece of paper you found which , looks like it was torn from a notepad and crumpled up and thrown away. but then somehow, retrieved and un-crumpled talk about that. >> this was an wasn't in the institute, this was in the papers that julian bigelow, who is the engineer, who is like most engineers -- he saved things. he saved a lot of papers. when he died, his family allowed me to search and go through his papers. in there was a scrap of paper

on the top -- with the word for it d. that is like 1946. forty binary digits, command and an address. ten bits for the command and 10 binary digits for the command and for me that is like the tablet of moses, sort of let there be the command line. [laughter] the rest of the world came from there. where did these things start? tomorrow, so that he will say i have a piece of paper in my basement that could be from 1943. it certainly did produce the idea earlier. >> lots of amazing things come out of basements and garages. >> yes.

>> this is the last question about the process. you encountered an amazing number of people you wanted to talk with as original sources. >> i was a little late. i should've done this 10 years earlier. there were still enough people to let me get some firsthand. i relied on some of the oral histories, nancy stern, a number of people who were thinking about this 20 or 30 years ago in gathering this oral history. >> turing's cathedral is a metaphor. i want to talk about von neumann, but let's talk about alan turing for a moment and specifically, the title of the book and how you came to call this book "turing's cathedral." >> yes, ok. for context, imagine it's a

hundred years ago. his wife is five months pregnant. young alan is about to come on the scene. one of the good things is that the left very few papers. you can read everything that he he wrote. i read everything that alan turing wrote, and in 1950 he wrote this tremendously famous paper, as famous as his 1936 paper on universal competition. it was a paper about artificial intelligence. you could see the critic coming , intelligent design and you are playing god and you shouldn't go there. he made the statement then when we create these intelligent machines, we are no more

grating souls then we are in the process of creating children. we are creating mansions for the souls that only he can create i . i love that. i love that phrase. when i went to 2005, i went to google. that was 60 years since this project began. the engineers there gave me a very deep inside to her as to what was going on. when i walked out of there, i was stunned. they were really truly doing everything that he had imagined. they were building a machine that wet answer all questions that anyone can ask in a nondeterministic way. i thought that this is not turing's mansion, this is turing's cathedral. that is the phrase that became the title of the book. the second level is simply that the kid cathedral is not

built by large numbers of anonymous people whose names are not remembered, but the cathedral remains. >> over many years. >> those are people like [inaudible name]. >> turing and von neumann overlap that their time at princeton. for two years. how much is known about their interaction? >> we know how much they interacted -- this is 1936 to 1938. at that time, the institute, which is part of the whole thing, it has nothing to do with princeton university. people say, at princeton, you think it is the university, the like the hoover institute at stanford. at that time, they didn't have a building from a survey made a deal for the institute to

actually be turing on the math department. even though turing was at the university, they have a lot of contact. that is where he corrected the final proof of his grades papers. what we don't know, what sort of dark is what happened during the war. von neumann went off to england to work with the british and turing came to america to work with the americans. that part is still a black hole. in large part it may be taking just a long time to come out. >> you have any suppositions about that? >> i think that von neumann was working on the nuclear work in england because the british made a lot of contributions to los alamos, and he ran over to to jumpstart some of that. i think that von neumann was so good at everything, i can't believe they didn't bring him into the cryptography question and he came back. one of the forgotten things that von neumann said.

he actually credited as his ideas to a laboratory in england. he says that in writing. he does not mention any of the enigma work, of course, you wouldn't mention that. >> there are a couple of exchanges in the book were you cite discussions that von neumann is a part of what they are at -- with colleagues at ias. he was aware of turing's theories because he was working on a seminal paper. it was already -- the implication is that it was already having some influence on his thinking about this. >> yes, he was a mathematical logician and he followed it very closely. i decided to do a little physical research rather than speculation. i went and found von neumann's

copy of turing's papers. it is in the institute now, one of the shelves that have those cranks, and there they are all in there with perfect bindings and there is one volume with turing's paper in it, and if you take it out, all of the pages fall out. it is completely disintegrated from being read so many times. that is pretty good evidence that they read that paper. [laughter] >> let's talk about von neumann. well educated in budapest. goes to berlin, joins the academy. is a professor. the nazis began to dismiss him from german academy. he is appointed to the faculty at princeton. and as he goes to the ias, he encounters a remarkable group

who were already there, and really a remarkable intellectual atmosphere. oppenheimer called it an intellectual hotel. talk a little bit about the ias as von neumann would've experienced it. >> the thing we forget, most people remember the ias because of einstein and nuclear physicist, and the string theorists, and mathematicians -- people forget about the institute had a very strong school in the history of art and the school of classical epigraph he and greek epigraphs archaeologists, all of this other culture there. of course, acramone can tell you. he was the model for raiders of the lost ark. all these people were there. it wasn't just math and physics. it was a very rich place. oppenheimer comes in and he invited t.s. eliot. the position i had was created

for t.s. eliot. the strange outside artist who is allowed to come in and do something that doesn't belong to one of the schools. and now they have a school of biology. it was a rich place. von neumann coming in the first place -- he didn't come alone. he came went eugene regner. at that time, they were not hiring jewish professors. so they couldn't really higher von neumann flat out, but they found a loophole. there was no problem. they could hire to hungary and's halftime. they could not hire one hunger and gary and full-time, but they could hire to halftime. so they offer them this half-time position which is 10 times you could make in europe that is how they got both of those guys at once.

>> we are going to skip ahead to just slightly, because i wanted to talk about how he wound up in los alamos. >> everybody wound up in los alamos. [laughter] there was a train from new jersey to los alamos. he didn't stay there. he was transient. he had so much going on. if you went to less elements, you did not leave until the war was over. they could not have people go and leave. if you went, you brought your family. von neumann had this special path where you can go in and out, and you had a tremendous -- he was the prototype of all these great look for tories. laboratories. there was a deal made that i think was very explicit.

a deal that oppenheimer made. we will build you this bomb, but you have to let us -- we won't tell you how to use the bomb you don't tell us how to do science. we will be free to do all the science we want in our spare time. and that is why so much good science came out of los alamos. >> and he was incredibly challenged and invigorated by the intellectual process of trying to think through the very complicated problem, but he was also increasingly, as the project move forward, deeply troubled from an ethical standpoint as well wasn't he? , >> von neumann? yes, that is what i discovered from the most remarkable body of documents, in von neumann's basement next to the filing cabinet. those papers went to library of congress, but his filing cabinet didn't go. in the bottom drawer was all the handwritten correspondence between him and his wife.

it gives you a day by day, first-hand picture of what people were really thinking at the time. >> he was using that as just a means of getting this out. is correspondence with her? -- his correspondence with her? >> it was like e-mail, but he would have a full day of meetings and solving problems and still write 16 pages in fountain pen to his wife. they had a difficult marriage. they were always in different places because she was doing the coding for these early bomb calculations. she might be working on something in aberdeen, and he was in los alamos or oak ridge. these letters would go back and forth. they were half in hungarian. my friends translated the hungarian to english. >> did you know about the secret trove of letters? >> i could not have imagined. the most interesting period of american history, to me, is just

before world war ii until after sputnik. after sputnik, we have a very good record. but there is a period there we are not clear what people said. the oppenheimer trial was very interesting. they had people under oath and they had everybody testify. that was not what people were thinking at the time. they described the day that when you got everyone's reactions. what everybody's reactions were that day. you're not going to get that anywhere else. >> how did you come upon that? >> thanks to mrs. von neumann. i was doing this project and she said well, maybe you should come here to ann arbor and look at this stuff. to her, it was awkward, because this is the woman that her father left her mother for. she didn't really want to look. it was very personal, very personal letters. but you just she trusted me to go through them and take out what was useful for the history

of computing, and it brings the book to life. i don't think there would be a book without her voice. something about having english as a second language. he gets invited to give lectures in seattle. in 1940, they drove across the united states. it was route 66, she recorded that -- stopping at the gas stations. it is all there. >> her personal accounts are just riveting. they really are. >> she committed suicide at the end. she kept a journal right to the very end. she deserves a book of her own but it is not for me to write. >> so in this incredibly peripatetic life that von neumann is leading in 1944, he

encounters them and they work on the back for the first time. talk about that encounter and then what happened. >> they were way ahead. they had built the eniac. there was no one that argues whether they built it or not the eniac is a clear case of something that was first, even though it can be traced. it can be traced other people and that the eniac was a pioneering thing. because he was scientific advisor to the ballistic research board, he got to see it. when he sought he immediately saw what to do. i think part of that is visual. when the eniac is running, you're seeing the bits, the lights moving around. you can see the numbers and you are within the computation. and he had that kind of mind.

i think the moment he saw that that he could see all this other stuff coming. >> by the way, the eniac was physically built you are , literally standing at the it was like 16 cores on a chip. where you divide the competition into parallel paths. >> herman goldstein, who was instrumental working with them, says that when he saw it for the first time, the eniac, it changed his life forever. >> certainly. >> are there von neumann's own words that express what he was feeling? everything that had been theoretical for him now becomes physical and real. >> yes. there are words.