>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with david feherty from the golf channel talking about the ryder cup. >> we're going to be broadcasting alongside nbc, but we're taking the world feed and the bureau will hear the european announcers and lanny watkins, myself, justin leonard, and david duval will be in the studio in orlando and able to break in at any time. it will be a split screen at times. there will be a ticker with social media, just a new way of watching. and i know that i intend to start a lot of arguments, that's for sure ( laughter ) >> rose: we continue with entrepreneur peter thiel. >> great companies do things that are unique. they answer a-- want to answer a question, what great business is nobody building? the intellectual question you want to answer is what truth do

you believe that nobody agrees with you on? and part of what i tried to do with the class at stanford and what i'm trying to do with this book is really to encourage people, think creatively, think outside of the box. >> rose: we conclude with h.d.s. greenway, and his book is called "foreign correspondent." >> and he said they gave him marijuana. and i said don't do that. come on. he said don't be so old fashioned. you don't believe in reefer madness, do you? you'll make them jolly. i said, sean how do we know jolly doesn't mean they want to eat us? >> rose: feherty, thiel, and greenway when we continue.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> believe i>> i had a flicker y about john daly and an innocent beer can. oh, my. >> it's only going to hurt for a minute. hurry up. ready? >> uh-huh. >> ta-da! >> rose: david feherty is here. he's a former professional golfer. he is now an analyst for cbs sports and the golf channel. he is the host of the golf channel's highly rated weekly

program "feherty." he will be in orlando to call the 40th ryder cup where the united states faces off against europe. it will be played in scotland. the u.s. hopes to bounce back from a heartbreaking defeat two years ago. i'm very happy to have david feherty back at this table. >> thank you, charlie, it's nice to be back. >> rose: just tell us. magic of the ryder cup? >> there's nothing like the ryder cup. i only played in one, 1991, the war of the shore. it might have been the first one that captured the attention of the american public. it was right at the beginning of desert storm, and we can cory paven and stige page with their desert storm ball caps and there was tremendous american fervor. and the perception of that particular ryder cup was that it was very contentious among the players. in fact, that couldn't have been father from the truth. this was one of the great celebrations of the golf-- it

was the greatest i had ever been involved in, even though we lost. it came down to the final cup of the final group of the final day, and the tide upon stop coming in to watch. that's what it felt like. the silence was deafening. it's what the ryder cup was all about. >> rose: do players take it differently? >> yes, no question. i think most players that play in the ryder cup will tell you afterwards that they never felt the pressure like it, not even in major championships because -- >> you're not just letting yourself down. >> exactly, you've got that flag on your back and 11 men and a captain you just don't want to let down. but there's no money involved. you know, it's for bragging rights. we want our team to win. it's like being a kid again to a certain extent and she it's the reason we all took the game up in the first place. >> rose: tom watson is the head of it this time. >> yes. >> rose: what does captain

bring to it, other than selecting pairings? >> i think experience. tom watson, a terrific ryder cup player. >> rose: yes. >> i wouldn't have wanted to play against him. >> rose: and still playing yell wl. >> oh, yes. yeah, amazing. >> rose: notwithstanding how well he did at the british open a couple of years ago. >> charlie, that would have been ranked among the greatest feats in the world of sports. >> it broke my heart. the ball kept kickinged for the last two holes. one pounce on the green, and he is the open champion. >> rose: at 60-something. >> at 60 years old to win your sixth british open. i mean, it's just-- it's unthinkable. >> rose: the ryder cup what, does it look like as a match-up? >> it looks as a match-up, i was just doing a little looking through the records. >> rose: yes. >> on the european side one player has a losing record out

of 12. on the american side, only four players have winning records. >> rose: so what does that say to you? >> well, i'll tell you what it says to me. i honestly believe that we'll win, and when i say "we" i'm talking about the americans because i'm an american. when i pledge allegiance to the flags -- >> naturalized in 2010. >> it was pledge aliege asbestos to the ryder's club as well. >> rose: you switched sides. >> i played for the european ryder cup team, but i'm an american, and i feel like an american. i support our boys. >> rose: do you think the americans are favorites? >> no, no. >> rose: because of what you just said. >> and that's the best thing they've got going for them. they are rank underdogs. >> rose: for americans who have never been to scotland, tell us the differences of those courses. >> they're playing an american golf course. they're mott playing the kings or queens. they're playing the jack nicklaus golf course there. it won't play like a typical course here. >> rose: is it long?

>> it's long but it's heatingland, and there are cotton bogs and it's-- depending on the weather, late september in scotland, chances are it will -- >> rain. >> it will rain, yeah. just the off chance it might happen. >> rose: maybe windy? >> could happen, yeah. there could be sheep involved. it's -- >> yes, it could. >> rose: it will-- it will be an interesting 7 test because-- >> it will be an interesting test because of the design and the place we fiend our golf course. >> rose: jack is a good golf course designer? >> i think he'll be remembered as one of the greatests. >> rose: really? >> yes. >> rose: he's the donald ross of his time? >> i think he'll be remembered in that regard. mired field village. >> rose: that's where he's from, isn't it? >> yes, that's sort of his home course, if you like. he takes a lot of criticism from players-- and i was one of the-- you know, i hated playing jack nicklaus gowfl courses. >> rose: why? >> because they were too hard

for me. i did a lot of whining. ( laughter ) and it was only when i quit playing they really began to appreciate -- >> so when you sobered up, did you stop whining? >> to a certain extent, yes. i think you'd have to ask my wife. there's still a certain amount that goes on in the feherty household. but, you know, jack's golf coursecourses are, for the most, they're a beautiful walk, and mirfield village being a prime example. it's just gorgeous, and that's the very first thing a great golf course should be. >> rose: let me talk about the top 10 players and give me a sense of each of them, what comes to mind when i say their name. roar mcelroy. >> otherworldly. people say to me -- >> a game you're not familiar with. >> people say to me he's wonderful but he doesn't hit the spectacular shots. >> rose: he doesn't get in the same trouble. >> he keeps driving 340 yards

down the middle of the fairway you don't have to. >> rose: or bill is the same way. but he's obviously at the top of his game. >> yeah. >> rose: he's best player in the world. >> absolutely. >> rose: even if he department have those point. >> if he plays well, good luck to everybody else. good luck, yeah. >> rose: that's the way it used to be for tiger, right? >> yes. >> rose: if he was playing well-- >> nobody else could win if tiger played well. when tiger comes back, charlie, if he plays well, nobody else will be able to win. >> rose: we have to have this conversation every time, because i'm interested, and, therefore, i'm boring-- will he, in your judgment, get his body in a place so that it's not hurting that he has all the strength that he has, and all the ability to turn that he has, and the strength in his leg to take the pounding that it does? >> if he does, then-- people say to me all the time, "do you think tiger will make it back?" well you know at the time he was

number one in the world. how far backer would you like to get? you know? i mean, he doesn't have to play his best to be number one in the world. he's already proven that several times. >> rose: adam scott. continues to be at the top. >> he's the james bond of golf. >> rose: what does that mean? >> well, he's just elegant and dangerous. you know, although, he's not scottish. >> rose: he's an aussie. >> yeah wonderful player. >> rose: bond-- conroy is in favor of scottish independence? >> oh, really. i didn't know that. >> rose: how do you feel. that, scottish independence? >> i don't see the point to be honest with you. i don't know what the advantage is, except for the historical revenge aspect, you know, banac burn-- i'm from northern ireland where people fight about, you know, something that happened in scene 90. >1690. >> rose: in a very bloody way. >> i don't see the point of it,

i really don't. the united kingdom is united and i hope it stays that way. >> rose: sergio has been playing well but not quite able to get-- >> i know. he just can't get over the hump. and he's one of the players they really would love to see -- >> me too. >> love to see him do it because he's got such heart. he's the heart of that european ryder cup side. he has a phenomenon nan 16-8-4, his record. and we've got coulter on that decide who is 12-3-0. >> rose: i thought it was a great and which, when he had the ball that landed and broke the woman's ring or something like that? >> yes, i was there. >> rose: he took to to say-- he had to play the game-- make sure we get her phone number. amidst all his mind was focused on. >> no one brought it up at the time, but he just bought his fiance a ring. so, you know, how many diamonds do you have to buy?

fortunately, they found the stone. >> rose: so i mean, the question about him, why can't he win? a. you know, a big one. and, b., will all of a sudden that talent have a chance to surface? >> he's young enough. >> rose: he came around about the same time as tying jeer i think around 2000 at medina, the p.g.a. championship. i think he was 21, or maybe 20. and as the p.g.a. championship always has a terrific close to it for some reason. but i remember him standing on the tee at the par-3, 17th, or rather on the green, and he looked back at tiger, i think it was to tie or stay a shot behind or something like that. it was just a magical moment, and we thought that was going to be the great rivalry. you know, as good a player as

sergio has been, really shf won the open championship, and has had a number of chances. just, you know, if he could find, you know, what's in his heart at the ryder cup to do that for himself, you know, i think we'd see a kid that could still win several major championships. >> rose: the rest of the 10 is-- henrik stenson and jim furyk, justin rose, bubba watton, jason day, matt giewcher, and rickie fowler. >> rickie fowler is the american rory mcelroy. he's a very similar character. you know, it's just wonderful to be around him. he has an infectious, you know, spirit that-- a mischievousness to him that you love. and, again, wise beyond his years. >> rose: do you think if you had practiced more, had done

every possible thing to be great, had major body specimen of much admiration, had worked hard, had the right work ethic, had the right practice habit, had a great couch, that you could have been a top 10 golfer? >> no. >> rose: really. >> no, i don't. >> rose: what's the difference, because you don't have some what? >> yeah, i never had the desire to accept the responsibility that comes with being great. you have to want to be in a place where you know you're going to be exquisitely uncomfortable, and i-- there's a comfort in mediocrity, and, you know, i'm not saying that i was mediocre. >> rose: you weren't. >> i played decently and to make a living playing golf you have to be pretty good at it, and i did it for 20 years. but i was able to keep my head below that level, and people didn't expect that much of mee. and i felt like i served a

20-year apprenticeship in order to qualify for the job i have now. >> rose: it was almost like you were born for this job. someone on television who engages us as an observer of being there. >> well i think where i'm from has a great deal to do with that, charlie. you tend to see the accident from the other side of the street. >> rose: yeah. >> when you grow up in an urban warfare environment-- i didn't growum igrow up in a dangerous , but i grew up in an environment where there was danger all around, not necessarily in the area they lived in, but it was-- there were troops on the street, blockades, pom bombs that went f every night, reminiscent of what we see in the middle east every day. >> rose: would you like to do more commenting on international events and be part of that conversation as say i am, people not in the sports business but

the news business. >> in my business, you can't open your mouth about anything like that. >> rose: are yo you're interest, you're intelligent. you have opinions. you are a student of history all those are essential qualities. >> i would certainly like to wrawden my han my banded width e industry. under perhaps towards entertainment. we're going to have an opportunity to sort of do that in a small way at the golf channel during the ryder cup because of the way with the simulcast we have going. we're going to be broadcasting alongside nbc, but we're taking the world feed and the bureau will hear the european announcers, and lanny watkins, myself, justin leonard, and david duval will be in the studio in orlando and able to break in at any time. and it will be a split screen at times. there will be a ticker with social media, just a new way of

watching. and i know that i intend to start a lot of arguments. that's for sure. ( laughter ) >> rose: it's a pleasure to have you at this table. whenever you're in town. come see us. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: back in a moment, stay with us. peter thiel is here, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. he copounded paypal and the data mining company pallent year. he was the first outsider investor in facebook, and continues to invest through his venture capital firm. computer science 183 is a course he taught at stanford. a student named blake masters began posting his note on his blog making his lectures an online sensation. they teamed up to write a book, "zero to one: notes on startups, or how to build the future." i'm pleased to have peter thiel back at this table.

welcome. >> charlie, thanks for having me on the show. >> rose: this is roger parled of, fortune magazine, september 4, 2014: what do you think of that? >> that's incredibly flattering. i'm always embarrassed when i hear something like that because it's so hard to live up to. my goal is really to get people to-- when you start a company, great companies cothings that

are unique. they want to answer questions, what great business is nobody building. the intellectual question you want to answer is what truth do you believe that nobody agrees with you on? and part of what i tried to do with the class at stanford and what i'm trying to do with this book is encourage people to think, think creatively, think outside of the wox, because i think that's how the next generation of great ideas . >> rose: that's what is behind great businesses? >> i think there is always some inspiration, some very heterodock idea that people don't think make sense. they're extreme personalities, stubborn, and don't get distracted easily. >> rose: and they believe in their idea. >> they believe their idea is very important. you know, and even-- and somehow has more traction -- >> have you had those ideas in your life or have you simply supported other people's ideas? >> i was the cofounder of paid

pal -- >> that was that kind of idea? >> i think it was a big idea. it was linking e-mail and money and this was a way you could create a new online payment system. these ideas often seem quite straightforward after the fact. so it seems like a no-brainer to buy an e-mail, the basic internet application with money glfs is just happenstance that so many interesting people came together at one time or at another time in the life of paypaul, you, elon musk, reid hoffman. >> there was david sacks, who started yammer, jack hurley started youtube. a whole set of companies came out of paypal. it's hard to say. i think there was this unique constellation. it was the most successful start-up since fairchild semiconductor, the classic

1960s company out of which all the semiconductor companies came in the late 60s and 70s in silicon valley and paypal was the most successful one since then. one of the lessons people learned at paypal that was very valuable. you can succeed in business but it's hard. you have a lot of ups and downs and work at it and you can have a successful outcome. that is not the lesson you mostly learn. you mostly either learn that's that it's impossible because you're in a business that fails, and you conclude it's impossible to do something. and you're in a business that succeeds quickly and well which is probably true for microsoft and google. people coming out of super successful companies learn it's too easy, and people who come out of failed companies learn it's impossible. and paypaul was probably right in between. it was better the experience for starting new businesses. >> rose: is creating a successful new business prose or

poetry? >> it's more poetry -- there is apple and samsung, both in the hardware business-- and software businesses. they're companies creating similar products. >> i would argue apple is vastly more successful than samsung it has a product people want someone sma more-- are willing to pay a lot more for. has a better brand. >> rose: nevertheless, samsung is a very successful company.

>> absolutely. you can have more than one company do a certain thing. the-- but in most of these sectors, i would argue, you end up with one company that sort of comes out way ahead of everybody else. >> rose: and because of that technology and software they get such a lead. when you talk about this idea of what important truths do very few people agree with you on, how many of those ideas have you had? >> well, i give quite a few ideas like this in my book. and i spend a lot of time thinking about that question. it's a hard question to answer for two reasons. first, because it's not always easy to come up with new truths. but secondly, if you think of it literally in the interview context, you're telling someone something they don't want to hear. it's often uncomfortable. it's unconventional. and so it's always a little bit hard to sort of get at and motivate people around these things. but i think there are-- i think

there are a lot of truths like this. i think there are a lot of great new technology companies that can be invented. >> rose: in an essay-- i'm turning to monollies in competition-- you say contrary to popular belief, capitalism and competition are opposites. >> yes, yes. >> rose: monopolies are not a bad thing always. >> they're a bad thing if they're like the parker brothers board game where you just have fixed properties and they get shuffled around and you're just a rent collector. they're a good thing if you invent something new that people want. so apple had a monopoly on the smarted phone for many, many years when it came up with the iphone first, and consumers lined up around the block to buy it. so that was a monopoly that did not artificially create scarcity but created plenty. i think in a dynamic world you want these wraek through monopoly business and they're protected by the government with intellectuaintellectual propertt

ents and things like this. >> rosethis. >> rose: in a with the journal piece you wrote: >> yes. well, you-- it's again, this is the theme that competition is greatly exaggerated. if you want a competitive industry that's very uncapitalistic is a restaurant ps. if you open a restaurant in new york or san francisco that's super competitive, you're not going to make and money. google is a phenomenal 1 of a kind business. they've had no serious competition in search for something like 12 years. so i do think-- i do think-- i think there's something about competition where we overvalue it as a society. you know, we -- >> you prefer the dominant

company that owns a huge market share? >> i think it's true in business. i think it's it's also true in your personal life. we track people from kindergarten to 12th grade. we tell people to compete for the same smallest of ivy league schools to get into. we tell people to try to compete for the same short list of jobs, and i don't think that's actually the best way for our society to function. it shouldn't just be that you go to yale or you go to jail. >> rose: a nice phrase. but at the same time, there's the question of you and arguing some people shouldn't go to college period. >> i don't think everybody should do the same thing. i think that-- i think that-- i think there are a lot of talented people who aren't necessarily that academically suited. and who much rather do something in a business context. i think there are -- >> that would be bill gates, i assume. >> bill gate or zuckerberg-- quite a large number of these founders. >> rose: who should drop out of school?

>> who did drop out of school. >> rose: exactly. well, they they worried in each case that they had come upon an idea that had such potential, that it demanded 100% of their time. >> yes. >> rose: and that it was leaving the station and if they didn't do it somebody else would have jumped in to do it. >> i think if gates had finished college he would have missed the train on microsoft. >> rose: and facebook? >> probably the same. >> rose: when did you make your first investment in facebook? >> in summer of 2004. and start the in february of that year. >> rose: you do have a remarkable sense of being able to pick out people with potential. >> it's always-- you sort of know it when you see it. it's a combination of talent -- >> you can smell it. >> it's already get something traction. fab had 100,000 people on it. they only needed money to buy more computers there was so much demand. that was a pretty good sign. >> rose: what is it when you look around you? do you worry about a tech bubble? >> i worry that even though

silicon valley is doing very well and there's this incredible amount of innovation around computers and internet and mobile internet that somehow there's a sense of stagnation in the rest of our society. there's a sense the younger generation -- >> it's only silicon valley that's not stagnant. >> the younger generation does not think they'll be better off than their parent. >> rose: is this the essence of this book? >> yes. i would argue the critical thing in this country is for to us have more innovation, more technology -- >> a start-up mentality. >> in areas outside of computers, as well as in computers. we need innovation in energy. >> rose: health care. >> we need innovation in health care, in biomedical, transportation, so there are many different areas we could be innovating. technology used to mean all these things and today

technology is computers. >> rose: will we lose our scientific lead and technology lead to china not because they have certain inherent social limiting factors? >> i think -- >> or political. >> i think it's a big mistake to underestimate china, and i wouldn't say there's anything in the chinese culture that means they're uncreative or can't innovate. i do think the kind of problems we have are very different from china. china need to, for the next 20 years, just copy things that work. and that's true of all the developing nations. they can skip a few steps. they don't really need to innovate in the developed world, in the u.s., western europe, japan -- >> because there is so much room for penetration of the things that already exist. >> if they copy things that work they'll be able to improve things tremendously. we need to do new things in the developed word. >> rose: you said in the "new york times" last week:

>> my thesis is that we have a lot of great ideas of what we can do, and then there's always the question of why don't they get implemented? i think there are these sult ways people get discouraged from them before they're even fully formed. and so my colleague at paypal, saifd sacks thought creative people were mutants, missing the imitation gene. >> rose: they didn't know how to imitate. >> they were socially awkward, didn't pick up on all the cues of people around them. i do wonder if there is something people are discouraged from being creative in many normal contexts. >> rose: on google you say, a grad student at sanford wrote that advertised funding search

engines -- which made them billionaires-- will be inherently biased towards the advertisers. >> yes. well, it-- it has worked for all parties involved at google. it's what's inspiring about it as a business is, you know, there's certainly parts they iterated and changed over time. but the core founding vision i would argue has stayed there from the beginning, which was to organize all the world's information. that was the dwoolg pitch back in 1998. >> rose: like so many companies, they have used that revenue stream to go into all kind of businesses. i mean, a ton of different businesses that have nothing to do with search. >> it's self-driving cars, it's health care at this point, many, many, things. i would argue search is still the dominant -- >> , of course, it is, but they've gone on to other things. wasn't steve jobs, the first thing he did when he came to apple the second time was restrict the number of products? >> yes.

>> rose: tim cook was sitting at this very table lasted from saying you could put all apple's products on this table. >> yes. >> rose: that there is a thing important to stick to your knitting, so to speak. >> you want to-- you want to be-- it's a balance you want to strike. you want to be focused, but you don't want to become complacent. and this is the challenge someone like tim cook has today where in a sense, there's a straightforward plan for apple to continuityerating on its cell phone-- make a phone with bigger screens, and it will make tons of money doing that over the next few years. >> rose: in part, that was a response to competition. >> in part that was a response to samsung. at the same time, there's always a sense maybe you have to try totally new products. do you do a watch, do you do tv? >> rose: treerl those are two things on their agenda. the watch is done, and the tv when they figure out how to do it amazon has the same philosophy. ond, they want to sell

everything to everybody. ond, they want to be in enterprise stuff and doing almost everything else, including hardware. >> amazon has been phenomenal, started selling books, and then books and cds, and everything -- >> morphing out. >> morphing into cloud services and all that stuff, yeah. >> rose: of all the new app companies, who do you like the most? >> of the next generation i like air b & b most. >> rose: because it's the economic model? >> it's the economic model. it makes sense. fundamentally, there's all this inventory in terms of space underused where people can make more money subletting rooms or their homes, and it enables people to travel far more cheaply than they otherwise would. i think it's creating a giant new market by in a sense freeing up all this inventory that didn't exist before. it's like e-bay times 10. >> rose: when you look at groupon, what happened there? >> that's a tough question.

i think one of the early warning signs at groupon was the customer satisfaction levels were really low. there was a lot of the small businesses that went on it, and they felt that they ended up losing money. they knot customers in for deals, but the customers wouldn't come back. so the businesses that were using groupon were quite unhappy with it. even though it was growing super fast, if customers don't like you, that's an early warning sign. >> rose: was there a way they could turn that around? >> their probably was but they were somehow-- they were probably too focused on growth and lost sight a little bit of the quality of the product. >> rose: you have said about twitter, it's a fantastic communications tool but it is not enough to take our world to the next level. >> we have a tagged line on the founders fund web site, "they promised us flying cars all and all we got was 140 characters." it's not meant to be an anti-twitter comment but there

is always a sense, even though it's a great new communication platform by itself, it's not enough to take our civilization to the next level. it's the idea that we need to do something both in the world of computers and bit but also in everything else, in the world of atoms, energy, transportation. >> rose: what do you think of bitcoin? >> i think bitcoin is a-- you know, paypal tried to create a new currency and all it succeeded in doing was building a new payment system. bitcoin is the new currency we envisioned we were going to build at paypal but so far it's only working as a speculative currency because it doesn't have a payment system. you can't actually transact with bitcoin at least for things legal to buy. that's the weird thing. so i think they need to get the payment system to work better for bitcoin to really take off. it's gone far further than i thought possible. >> rose: are they going to eliminate all the po-- are all the potential pay system going to eliminate credit cards? >> i think credit cards are not going away request time soon.

they work pretty well. we can envision payment systems that are seamless and work perfectly, but in many cases we have things that work, you know, pretty well, and when you have something that works pretty well, it's often really hard to go to something that's perfect because there's just too much friction to adopting something new. >> rose: what do you look for in philanthropy? >> the same contrarian question eye look for unpopular ideas. i think popular causes get enough money. i think it's unpopular causes that are underfunded. and i look for things that don't confer status or prestige, so substance over status, and things that are somehow mertors but unpopular. >> rose: does our university system and undergraduate system, k-12, swz our university system, which is much admired around the world, does it breed people in a

conforming attitude toward life, or does it, in a sense, do that, but also, because of the power of learning, gives momentum to those who hear different music? >> it does different things for different people. the trick is say one thing about the tens of millions of people who go through the u.s. college system. it has, i think, changed in some ways from the time when you or i went to college to the way it's being experienced today, where people are-- students are massing vastly more debt so the questions being asked are very different. when i've been a critic of the education system, people in the baby boom generation, think it's crazy. colleges were great. people in the millennial generation, it resonate a lot more because they're experiencing all the student debt, and they're asking much tougher questions about exactly how does it help them in our

society. >> rose: pallent year. tell us about the company. alex carpenter has been here. >> and we were friends for 20 years. >> rose: and it's a magical company for people who know a little bit about it. >> it was another thing that came out of the paypal mafia. and it was basically involved this computer technology where analysts could visualize patterns. we had a fraud problem at paypal, and the solution was not to get computers to find fraud nor to get humans to do. humans couldn't do it because there was too much data. the computers could be the do it because the fraud patterns constantly changed. the solution involved getting the right division of labor, getting the computers to do parof the problem, getting human analysts to do the other part. we applied that sort of methodology to the national security context of terk rism, national security. >> rose: so now they do work

for the c.i.a. >> lots of the three-letter agencies. it's incredibly powerful what it can do. it's been used in counter-terrorism, in new york where a lot of the insider trading case where's you can basically map all kinds of relationships you-- that would never have been possible before. >> rose: back to the internet and where we are. do you worry about a bubble? >> everybody worries with it some diswr. >> rose: they've seen it. >> we saw it in the 90s and it was excruciatingly painful how it ended. the years afterward were really bad. it's certainly nothing as korea as the 90s. the companies look more real. and i think that all these bubblebubbles are psycho-soarm phenomena, and we don't have a bubble-- the ieched p.o.s are

happening late. there were 300, 400 i.p.o.s a year in tech companies in the late 90s. there might be 30 or 40 now. and the public is just not involved. and i think you can't have a bubble without the public being involved. >> rose: edward snowden. >> i think he's a hero and a traitor. >> rose: hero because he exposed things we shouldn't be doing? >> we need to have a debate about the n.s.a., and it is a problem there were no internal checks and without snowden we would have never had this debate. >> rose: how do you want us to measure your impact? >> it's hard to say. >> rose: is it in fact your participation in the public debate, public intellectual, or is it that you will in a sense support ideas that are transformative? >> i want to work on as many of these breakthrough technology efforts as i can in the decade

ahead. i think that's what's critical to our society. i don't have to be the person who is building these companies directly, but i want to help finance people, support the people who are doing this. >> rose: and when you fail, why do you fail? >> you fail because it's always-- it's always subtle things that go wrong. the technologies don't work. the people blow up internally. so it's the-- these are always teams. it's nuft-- it's rarely an individual. it's always a team of people, and it's a high pressure cooker situation. >> rose: what comes after the internet? >> well, i think the internet is going to keep going for quite a long time. we're nowhere near the end of the internet. but i think the kind of thing i would like to see is us using these computational approaches in all kind of more real-world

context. the self-driving cars. we have computer technology embedded in-- or turning biology into an information science, which is what the promise of genomics is, apply the computer science techniques to domains like biology, can we develop personalized medicine where we can read your d.n.a. -- >> we know we can do all those things. it's simile the question of how long it is going to take and what combination of things will happen to create the best result. >> i think it's also a question of is it something we really want to do or not? you know, the example i always give is one out of three people at age 85 in this country has dementia, and this should be like a national health crisis. yet, we do not have a war on alzheimer's like we had a war on cancer in the 1970s. so i do think there is a question whether we have the will to do enough about these things. >> rose: finally, you're

alishitarian, it is said. >> that's not inaccurate. >> rose: meaning what for you? rand paul is a libertarian. >> well, meaning in-- meaning politically that i would be socially more liberal, fiscally more conservative. would be somewhat less interventionist on foreign policy. >> rose: less government. >> less government in general. but philosophically, it means that also somewhat more skeptical of how much politics can do. and so even though i think that rand paul will run and i think he will raise many important issues, at the end of the day, i always think technology matters more than politics, and that that's how we can really change our country for the better. >> rose: when you like at isis in terms of noninterventionist, is it a problem we have to solve? >> there are many organizations in world that are just as bad as isis that we don't do things

about. there were three million people killed in the 1990s in the congo in a crazy civil war. so i think the -- >> this one is not different from many of them, even though those were directed against gaining power in a state? this one seems to have more of a jihadist-- not only create an islamic state, but also to expand it and in a sense to take on the western world. >> that's-- that's-- that's the rhetoric. i would say -- >> that's not true? >> it's true, but the question is how-- there's so many other groups-- if you listen to the rhetoric in iran, we should be bombing iran. if we listen to the rhetoric from russia, maybe we should be bombing russia. >> rose: we shouldn't take them as such a large threat that it demands our own efforts to stop them? >> i would say if we're going to stop them, if we're going to intervene, we should win. we should only go to wars that we should win. >> rose: and do we want to pay the price of winning? >> and if we don't want to pay

the price of winning, we shouldn't get started. >> rose: so how does that calculus figure into how you feel about what the president should do? >> if we're going to do it, let's go in and let's actually win. >> rose: okay, that's fine. that means boots on the ground. that means whatever it takes to win. >> if you held a gun to my head and said which way do you want to go, i would say i would be against doing anything because i don't think the american people really want to win. >> rose: the book is called "zero to one: notes on startups, or how to build the future." peter thiel with blake masters. thank you. back in a moment. stay with us. h.d.s. greenway is here, a former correspondent for the "washington post" and "time" magazine and foreign editor of the "boston globe." he covered the vietnam war, the end of the soaf empire, and the first of the two gulf wars. he shares those stories and more in a new book. the new book is called "foreign correspondent: a memoir." i am pleased to have him back on

this program. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: what do you want to come away from this the joy of being a journalist and especially being a foreign journalist? >> yes, i think so. and some of the more amusing stories. but the theme of the book is that we have constantly made these foreign interventions, and so many of them have turned out badly. >> rose: from vietnam. >> vietnam, iraq, afghanistan, all these times that we've -- >> so what's the principle that emerges? i think the principle of what emerges would be if you're going to do something like that, take a leaf from george herbert walker bush's play book. do what you have to do quickly. get out. but don't try to instill them with american values and change the people into little americans. which usually almost never works. >> rose: were you drawn to cover war?

>> well, i suppose-- i did volunteer to go to vietnam asking "time yes magazine if they wouldn't send me, because i thought it was going to be the story of our generation. and how could i miss that? and, you know, there is a certain excitement in these extreme cases that i won't deny. >> rose: a classmate of mine at duke university was sean flynn, early flynn's son, who dropped out of college after his first year and went to vietnam as a photographer. >> yes. >> rose: and you knew him. >> very well, yes, yes. >> rose: tell me about the guy in vietnam. >> well, he was always very striking, and he would-- he would like to go out on long-range patrols that lasted weeks and weeks. you might call it embedded now. we didn't use that word. he was, as you remember, a very attractive, dashing --

>> dashingly handsome. >> lots of fun. i tried to-- i went to new guinea with him, and we -- >> he was a stringer for "time" wasn't he? >> he was. we were going to do this for "life." he was going to take the photographs and i was going to write the article. it never got done. >> rose: because? >> there wasn't any real reason. "life" just never got around to it. >> rose: it wasn't that you two were having too much fun? >> we did have a good time together. we walked up from the airstrip and found a community where there was no metal, except for the head man's belt. and he was the only one wearing trousers, so-- it was as remote a place as we could find. and sean had brought some marijuana with him. and he said suppose they smoke this rough tobacco called shag. he said suppose we gave them

marijuana. and i said oh, sean, don't do that. come on. he said, no, no, don't be so old-fashioned. you don't believe in reefer madness, do you? it will make them jolly. i said, "sean, how do we know that jolly doesn't mean they want to eat us. if you're going to do that, give me a day's head start out of the valley." so i walked down and got on the airstrip and flew away. and then i ran into him afterwards. and i said, "how did it work out?" he said, "it was terrific. i stoned stoneage men and they were jolly and singing louder. they never had a better time. everything went fine. >> rose: you also took john lochre around when he was writing "the honorable schoolboy." >> yes. and the amusing thing there was he was taking photographs. he considers himself a pretty good photographer. and he said, "well, how am i going to explain myself traveling around with you if you're talking to some source."

and i said, "look, you have these cameras. why tonight you take photographs. no one notices photographers. you could be interviewing a source and the photographer is wandering around and snaps his pictures and he he can hear everything. no one pays attention. will be a perfect coff for you. and we did. why not send the pictures into the "washington post." and then they started to publish his photographs. and the "post" wanted to know what's the credit line? who is the photographer? and i stayed, "what are we going to do now?" and he said, "let's have a play on words of john lecarey. let's change it to janet leigh carr. all of a sudden the credit line started to appear, janet leigh carr. and i got a wonderfully stuffy note from my boss, lee lescos, the foreign editor who knew my wife before i did and was feeg a

little protective of her. he said, "davidic don't know who this woman you're traveling around southeast asia with, but she's certainly not a photographer." >> rose: that's a great story pup were there for vawp during the last days of saigon. >> yes. >> rose: we just had rory kennedy here who made a very good do you wantary, i think, capturing it in terms of recollection and video. >> i'm dying to see it. she concentrate on the end, doesn't she? >> rose: she does. what do you remember? >> that last day we heard-- we all had these little radios that you could pick up communications exr the embassy. you could buy them for 20 bucks in hong cock. woe heard the embassy talking to the marines at the airfield, and they were under heavy fire, and two marines were killed. those are the last two casualties of vietnam. so it was pretty apparent to us

that this was the last day, the the evacuation was going to come. we behind up on the roof and she saw an airplane shot down with a heat-seeking missile, made us a little nervous. if the north vietnamese resisted the evacuation, they could have shot down a the lo of helicopters. they didn't resist. they let us go. but a huge panic broke out in saigon, and thousands and thousands of vietnamese pressing against the gates of the embassy and trying to climb the wall, and marines trying to beat them back. and a general, terrible panic. and when the last helicopters-- as night was falling, phil macoombs, and i, the other "post" guy, decided it was time to leave. and we could see the rain of falling on sigone. we could see these ammunition

dumps blowing up in the distance. across the coast we could see a huge number of small boats, the beginning of the boat people, people fleeing from down the sigone river to the sea, and the american fleet was waiting for us. and south vietnamese helicopters were flying out from bases and landing like dragon flies on the water and they threw the helicopters overboard because there wasn't room for them. >> rose: do you still feel the clarion call of being there where the action is? >> sure, i don't think that ever leaves. >> rose: where were you last oversees, i was in afghanistan in 2010. how do you think that's going to work out? >> well, i'm a little pessimistic. basically, we just switched the power structure. he pushed out the pastoons, who

had always ruled, and put in the minorities. the same thing in iraq. we push out the sunnis who had always dporched iraq. when you do that, you upset things in enormous ways. >> rose: congratulations. there's always been something romantic about foreign correspondents. >> yes. and i do think it gets addictive. no do you about that. once you've tasted that, it's hard to do anything else. >> rose: "foreign correspondent: a memoir," h.d.s. greenway, thank you. >> thank you. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh

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