>> charlie: well come to the program. we begin this evening with ian bremmer. >> the single thing that has the greatest impact makes the iran nuclear deal much less likely to happen because we realigned with the saudis and sighting with the sunni arab monarchies, our top priority is i.s.i.s., not getting an iran deal. iran's top priority is i.s.i.s., not getting a nuclear deal with the u.s. we only have five or six weeks to get the deal done, everything i've seen on the ground in iran, erdogan is going out. >> charlie: and walter isaacson, his latest book about

advances in technology called "the innovators: how a group of hackers, geniuses, and geeks created the digital revolution." >> let me show you what bill gates and steve jobs did and how the bell labs system led to something. i wanted to look in a storytelling. this is a narrative book. it's storytelling. it's not, you know, 12 easy lessons of innovation. because i wanted to do real reporting and say how did they make that a creative leap and do it as a team but who is the visionary that made the leap, because you need a visionary and a team. it's more about a book about real extreme who actually do it. >> charlie: ian bremmer, walter isaacson when we continue.

>> and by bloomberg. a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> charlie: ian bremmer is here, president of eurasia group at political risk research and consulting firm, has written an article in fortune magazine under new headlines "new cold war on business," looks for climate of western businesses in russia and china. crises continue to cascade in other parts of the world. i.s.i.s. threatens kobani, nuclear negotiations with iran stalled, and ebola continues to spread. am pleased to have ian bremmer back at this table. well come. >> thank you, charlie. >> charlie: turkey, a place you know really well.

turkey's inaction on i.s.i.s. dismays the "wall street journal." u.s. and turkey at odds as militants advance. most people i.s.i.s. will take kobani. >> they do. they havthey can see the flag. the turks have been on the wrong side of all the conflicts and now it's going to be hard for them to get to a place where they can line up with the americans in the coalition. that's kind of where we are now. >> charlie: so why? just because of the fear of kurdish radicals on the syrian side? is that it? >> there were big demonstrations internally in turkey yesterday. looks like almost 20 dead. and the kurds very unhappy with the lack of turkish action. you know erdogan better than most. he's not going to react to

street violence and then say, okay, now i'm going to do it. if anything, that's made it harder. secondarily, he doesn't want to be actively having his troops fighting against i.s.i.s. he's not been supporting i.s.i.s. but he's not exactly been a strong opponent. he's wanted assad to go, and i.s.i.s. has been relatively useful in that regard. certainly much more so than the ineffectual syrian rebels. >> charlie: he got the vice president to apologize for saying that he had supported radical groups like i.s.i.s. or i.s.i.s. in syria. >> a lot of people are getting the vice president to apologize. that's certainly true. biden says things occasionally that are intemperate but you and i around this table understand have a whiff of truth. it's not as if the turks were saying, here, i.s.i.s., here's money, but what biden said is the turks could have done nor to close their border and i'm sure that's true. >> charlie: i asked him that, too, everybody believes you

haven't closed that border, and his answer was we haven't closed our border with mexico either. >> sounds like he shouldn't be getting an apology, then, from biden. >> charlie: were the turks supporting i.s.i.s.? >> i think there's a difference between how far you're willing to go against them and how far you find them useful and tolerant in a proxy war that's going on. >> charlie: that sounds like syria to me. >> it does sound like syria and you hear from the pentagon today that the united states, the military brass does not believe that we have any credible partners on the ground in sir. i can't that is a very serious problem given that i.s.i.s. doesn't really care, you know, sort of -- >> charlie: no credible partners on the ground? >> not that's capable. >> charlie: that's what the president believed and why the president keeps insisting that if he had injected weapons in two years ago, everybody thinks they would have made a huge difference. he continues not to think so, because there were no credible partners on the ground. so you agree with the president? >> i do. i have been critical of the president on russian policy, as

you know, but on i.s.i.s., i think the president has done a decent job. everyone says he doesn't have a strategy. if you want to get a team together the americans aren't leading, behooves you not to have a strategy till you talk to the teammates. that's actually useful. i've spoken to a bunch of foreign ministers and they believe the u.s. has been more effective multi-laterally than before. the operation doesn't have a name, like enduring freedom. that's great for american flag waiving, but if you want it to be international, you probably don't want a name that doesn't include everyone in the region. you need to know what you're going to do after you win. the fighting on the ground is doing by many of the people in iraq the americans aren't ready to work with. >> charlie: what does this mean for the advancement of i.s.i.s.? if you cannot find a significant

force on the ground, especially p syria? this add vansment is in syria. >> that's right. >> charlie: they're opening up a route to aleppo, aren't they? h. >> the fact that the united states is not out in the lead with the strategy, boots on the ground, means it's going to take a hell of a lot longer even to contain i.s.i.s., never mind to ever functionally destroy them. that's certainly true. at the same time, principal challenges being posed to i.s.i.s. are not to the united states. they're countries in the region and the europeans. if you have the countries most affected not prepared to take a broader role, that tells you how important it is to them. >> charlie: it tells you it's not important to them. >> it's not urgent, it's not a crisis. >> charlie: do you think it's

a crisis, the advancement of i.s.i.s. and offering possibly a safe haven to significant groups of terror? >> i think it's a sufficient crisis that the united states is right to be working to contain them. i don't think it's a sufficient crisis that the u.s. should be putting troops on the ground because i don't think it's sustainable. >> charlie: you don't think troops on the ground will do the job, combined with american air power and air power from other countries? >> no, that's not my point. >> charlie: okay. i do they they would do the job but not maintain support from the united states, which we'll get criticism internationally. you need comfelicity. cooperation is easy going up. what happens when it starts to go wrong, when the civilians start dying and you lose a couple of battles? then the fact the saudis have an air force involved, it's not they're being so helpful to the americans, but their governments

can't say we're doing things wrong because they're complicit. >> charlie: we need for the world to know it's not just the u.s. versus muslims. >> exactly. i think it's a big win for the u.s., obama and kerry to actually have some of the gulf states flying right was there because it means if this war is going to go on for years, and it probably l then most to have the countries that are relevant around us will be forced to support the u.s. wosition. >> charlie: how serious do you think it is, the threat of i.s.i.s.? >> i believe that i.s.i.s. is the best-funded, most well-armed terrorist organization in the history of the world. i believe that. so it's clearly a very big threat. but i also think that they're very bad strategically. they have institutionalized themselves. they have territory, they've declared a state. they have to in some way proximally govern it. that requires a hell of a lot of attention and resources to be devoted to that territory,

something terrorist organizations should never want to do. when they took the dam at mosul, right, they didn't mine it and say, u.s., if you hit us, we're going to blow it up. they didn't do that, thank god. we removed them quickly. didn't think that through. >> charlie: what do you mean, didn't think that through? >> maybe they should have waited till they could have done something. people said the dam would fall apart by itself if it wasn't fixed in weeks. if you're i.s.i.s. leadership, isn't that important? the fact the kurds took more territory and stuck themselves -- we mow the peshmerga has the best fighting force in iraq and overextended themselves. they're clearly fighters that are willing to fight and they have a lot of american material and ammunition, but strategically, thus far, they have been making a lot of mistakes and, ultimately, given that this is going to be a long

war, that is to our benefit. >> charlie: is it a immediate threat to us? how would you measure it other than their training ground for jihaddests who have american passports and can come back and perhaps wreak havoc in a small way? >> i hate to see this kind of brand that has the ability to get lots of people excited about violence, radicalism against the west. you never want to see that because a whole bunch of lunatics in other countries irrespective of having any connection to i.s.i.s. or not are going to take advantage of that. were it not for i.s.i.s., would some wacko in oolahoma decapitate a co-worker? i doubt it, frankly, right? so that does affect the united states, and there's no question that americans have gotten incredibly concerned about this and it affects our travel patterns and our willingness to spend -- >> charlie: can it affect the order in the middle east? can it threaten our friends?

>> i think the single thing that it has the greatest impact on in the near term is it makes the iran nuclear deal much less likely to happen, because we have realigned ourselves with the saudis and we're fighting together with the sunni arab monarchies. it is our top priority now is i.s.i.s., it's not getting an iran deal. iran's top priority is i.s.i.s., not getting a nuclear deal with the u.s. we only have five or six weeks left to get the deal done. everything i've seen on the ground in iran is are yo rue r k anyone smart in iran now is saying they don't think the deal is going to happen, you have to prep to get the thing done. i don't think the will is there. >> charlie: does it ruin their chances in terms of getting a nuclear weapon? >> they have the breakout

capabilities. >> charlie:. >> charlie: what is breakout capabilities? >> developing a nuclear weapon without consequence of strikes. breakout capability means, beyond this point, they don't have a nuclear weapon but you can't functionally stop them. >> charlie: so they could have one if they wanted in a matter of weeks? >> i'm not inside the intelligence. i've heard different things from the israelis, the americans. it's months, not years. >> charlie: within months? i believe that's true. >> charlie: and you believe the president of the united states would strike if he believed they were soon to have a nuclear weapon? >> i think there would be a discussion inside the white house. >> charlie: do we do this or not? >> i think it's hard to imagine the americans would engage in

preemptive strikes to stop the iranis from having a weapon. i do. there are lots of difficult questions like that. i mean, what would happen if there were proximally russians supporting their brethren in estonia and it got violent but weren't troops that actually went in from russia, would the united states intervene to support estonia? i don't think there would be a discussion. >> charlie: that would be n.a.t.o., wouldn't it? >> the americans will be making the decision, not the germans. if you ask will the israelis strike if they know the americans won't, it's clearly a closer call, but i don't think they will. i don't think they will. >> charlie: even if they know the americans won't? >> i don't believe so, no. i think it's very important for the israelis to make us believe that that is absolutely what is coming, but that has nothing to do with what they actually do, that's just the diplomacy. >> charlie: they wouldn't do it because? >> i think the knock-on effects for israel would be significant. iran has a real military. i think that israel, they say

it's an extensional step. their slappings with the west would be very seriously damaged. there would be massive calls for boycotts among key european states, for example. i mean, it's not as if israel is replete with international -- >> charlie: so they don't want to do it? >> i don't think they do. if you ask me is it bad for iran to have nuclear weapons, of course the answer is yes. i'm not sure if i'm worried more about that than pakistan or north korea. there are a lot of things we say -- >> charlie: is it more reasonable? >> not that they're more reasonable. i guess -- i think they have slightly more capability of holding together as a state and maintaining control. >> charlie: they're within six weeks, say, breakout capability, producing enough nuclear fuel to have a nuclear weapon. , if in fact, they are at that point and getting closer, it's

unlikely that the israelis would do it. >> right. >> charlie: it's unlikely the united states will take it out. >> i think that's true. >> charlie: so therefore the iranians will have a nuclear capacity. there's no other way. >> if the deal falls apart, iran will have nuclear capacity in relatively short order. i think that's probably true. >> charlie: what do you think is saudis will do at that moment? >> i think the saudis have been supporting a plutonium project, in pakistan. so if they need to have nukes, they have -- there's a very big difference between the iranians having nuclear capacity and actually developing and/or testing a nuclear weapon. like so many things we've seen in so many conflicts in this world, where you decide to draw or not draw that line allows war and peace. >> charlie: i can ask a better question. >> yes, i bet you can. (laughter) >> charlie: what if, in fact, they do have a nuclear weapon? what if they tested and have it.

do you believe the u.s. will strike then? >> if they have to, the answer is clearly no because the rabbit is out of the hat. then the saudis have to react and that sets retaliatory, escalatatory steps. >> charlie: if i was sitting in iran, i believe the iranians could safely say we could have a nuclear bomb if we wanted. >> i feel confident the iranians don't need to be listening to me to have that understanding of the white house right now, first of all. >> charlie: the iranians know that the president would not strike? >> i think they feel cold frontful the americans would not strike preemptively. >> charlie: does the pentagon? the pentagon's belief is that the white house has been very reluctant to provide them with options and levers to use force or to threaten to use force. they absolutely believe that, almost across the board they believe that. >> charlie: the pentagon believes the white house is

reluctant to give them instructions to have military option? >> option that. optionality. why would you preemptively take the option of boots on the ground off the table? if china has problems with a country, they don't say, by the way, no matter what, tanks are not going to roll. i've never heard a chinese leader say that. have you? >> not even congress hong. certainly not hong kong. in hong kong, the chinese negotiation says that -- >> charlie: i think they've handled it well. >> they have massive support in mainland china in the last couple of hours, i heard the hong kong chief executive, apparently news he's taken money from australian organizations might be illegal and the timing

of hat is very interesting. maybe the chinese want to find a way to get rid of this guy. >> charlie: i'm not even sure they know what that means. talking about that region, on cbs this morning as we taped this on wednesday afternoon that the leader of north korea has not been seen. >> for a couple of months now. >> charlie: yeah. where do we think he is and why do we think he's missing? give me a scenario. a likelihood. >> you know it's a bad week in geopolitics when the best news you have is from north korea. >> charlie: i'm not sure it's good news. >> i think it is. usually uncertainty is bad news in north korea, you're right. but in this case, at the same time he's not been heard from, and the official north korean media, which we should put great stock in, as you know, that he is experiencing discomfort. i don't know about you, but i would not want to experience discomfort in north korea. that sounds like a bad place to experience discomfort.

(laughter) >> charlie: is that what they're saying? he's experiencing discomfort? >> yes. i love the vagueness of that. there are so many ways to experience discomfort. >> charlie: it's dark and cold in his cell. >> it's possible. (laughter) but the leadership of north korea outside the military leadership went to south korea for the closing ceremonies of the asia-pacific games last week, and not only were extremely solicitous of wanting to engage with the south koreans but set a date to get the countries to start negotiations. now, i have to say, in any condition, if kim jong-un is out, the worst thing that could happen is lots of internal fighting and maybe the place implodes. you couldn't do that south korean mission in that case. the first case, the military leaders wouldn't leave the country. the worst thing to do is leave

the country when that happens. so i'd say either kim jong-un is out and the transition is handled and solid, which is good, or he's still in, actually is experiencing some mild heartburn, and he wants to show everyone he's still in charge so he's continuing and making a bold move. but either way -- >> charlie: what's the bold move? >> sending this big delegation to south korea. that's the biggest opening we've seen between the countries in years, at the same time he hasn't been heard from. >> charlie: how long will we take to find out? >> how long do you think? they might never tell us. it's north korea. >> charlie: what if he makes an appearance? >> what if he's dead? we wouldn't know if he's dead. we wouldn't know. it's one place we can't analyze. >> charlie: he could be dead. he could be dead. >> charlie: he could be in custody. >> yeah. >> charlie: or he could be leading the country in a most

brilliant step to take his country on a direction none of us fathomed him doing. >> we have no meaningful way to say what the hell kim jong-un himself is doing, but at least we can say -- the thing that should bother us most about north korea is the destabilized or not, does i it -- might it implode, we don't know. >> charlie: what do the chinese say? >> absolutely nothing. which is a good place to be. >> charlie: if anybody is going to be concerned about disorder in north korea is the chinese because they don't want people coming across the border. >> and the south koreans because ththey would implode. >> charlie: where does putin stand? has the united states convinced him no more? >> no, but the fact it is is

last thing you're asking me about in this interview i think is indicative of the broader issue which is a lot has really sort of run past russia in the priorities of the white house now. we didn't talk about ebola. but you look at that, i.s.i.s., china, hong kong. so the fact that the russians are still in ukraine, their troops are still in ukraine, the cease fire is at best marginally holding, but the europeans, it's getting colder, russian gas is going to start becoming important in a few weekso the europeans, and many european states are now saying, you know what? we want to talk about reducing captions, removing them, as long as they keep the cease fire. not pull troops out, not come to a deal with the ukrainians, not give back territory, just keep the cease fire. so i actually. >> charlie: who's saying that? the french. >> charlie: germans? no. the french, slovacks, finns, others, the hungarians, that are

under pressure economically. the germans will under less pressure economically. the germans and the brits are strong on this, too. and the last thing is we have questionable cyber attacks on a bunch of american banks. >> charlie: among the people you know, is there a conventional wisdom about who's doing it? >> that it's from russia, the country of russia. that the attackers have links to the russian government and that there's no idea why not the russian government is behind it. but i absolutely am concerned -- there are two reasons why the russian government has not engaged in major cyberattacks against u.s. financial institutions in the past two years is because of

do with the technology, they're not competitive in any way, shape or form. but they do engage in cyberattacks to support russians strategically. we've seen it in estonia and georgia and the f.s.b. that's where the cyberattacks come from, not the russian armed forces. so it is consistent, especially after the u.s. has threatened stronger actions against the financial institutions and we've with said we're going to make putin hurt personally, well, putin makes these decisions personally and he's not happy about that. so i think there's greater risk around russian retaliation against the u.s. in this type of

way than there would be in china. >> charlie: in terms of cyberattacks? >> yeah, for example. >> charlie: do you think he takes n.a.t.o. seriously and takes the united states seriously so that he knows, yes, he may get away with something in ukraine, but no more? >> you know, he's blown through every red line the u.s. placed on him over the past month and i remember during the n.a.t.o. summit a few weeks ago, basically everyone got together, we invited the ukrainian president, and said we're not going to help you militarily, ukraine, but be clear, russia, if you touch a n.a.t.o. ally, our hair will go on fire and we're taking you on. two days later the russians smoke grenades across the astonian border, radio jamming go across and an duct an astonian intelligence agent. >> charlie: what did n.a.t.o. do? >> the n.a.t.o. had a great deal of concern. a ban ki-moon impersonation.

>> charlie: that's all the u.n. does? >> that's all ban ki-moon does. sometimes outrage when he gets really angry. that's it. i think if tanks come across the border, they will be met with seriously. the russians know there's a slay mammy principle here and they're prepared poslice. i think putin moved beyond that. >> charlie: what's his objective? >> to tell the americans stop pushing me around, i am not a pip squeak you can just stuff my face in the sand and i think that builds his patriotic support domestically. lord knows it hurts american companies trying to do business in country. >> charlie: that's a very big point you made in your article, american companies are hurt in russia and in china because of -- >> for different reasons. >> charlie: for different reasons. >> in china because the chinese are engaging in economic reform and transformation hurting

chinese firms so they're using leverage to make sure the western firms are taking it, too. and in russia, response to russian sanctions, rungs nationalism making it a difficult environment. so two of the bricks, both authoritarian states, both state capitalist economies, both of which are basically saying we're not really that interested in american investment as much as we used to be. >> charlie: thanks for coming. my pleasure. >> charlie: ian bremmer, back in a moment. stay with us. walter isaacson is here, the author of best-selling biographies, iconic visionaries, his book ex explores advances in technology dated back to the 1930s. it's called "the innovators: how a group of hackers, geniuses, and geeks created the digital revolution." it explores the power of collaboration and the impact of the arts and humanities on technology. very pleased to have walter at the table.

>> great to be back. >> charlie: let me tell you about. this i love this book. >> thank you. >> charlie: i love the subject matter, b, i love your narrative skills and you introduced people you didn't know. ida lovelace, i had no idea about her. >> the people who invented the computer and internet, leaving aside the al gore jokes, these are absolutely wonderful and creative people and we know nothing about them. we use their stuff every day. to me, it's, like, let's figure out the people who did the digital revolution. >> charlie: tell me about the beginning. you set out and thought about writing about the internet, period, then had a conversation with bill gates. >> right. early on, i was in charge of digital media for time,, inc. in the 1990s. i had a boss that said, who owns the internet.

i decided to find out how the internet came to pass. when i interviewed bill gates, he said the combustible mixture was the combination of the internet and the personal computer. they both come up together, they finally join, you should do all the pioneers of the revolution. >> charlie: what's interesting, it's the innovators but also the power of collaboration. this is not one more book about the lone genius achieving great success. >> those of us who write biographies, we don't like to admit it, but we distort history a little bit. we make it look like a light bulb gal or something that thinks up something. most of the good ideas in our lives actually come from collaboration, teamwork. when i did steve jobs, he's the

ultimate of this great visionary. and he's a strong cup of tea. had a great interview with tim cook and he explained the core of steve jobs. but tim cook is good example. steve knew how to create a team around him who were incredibly loyal. enthough we think of steve jobs as this lone visionary. i came to see he created a loyal team. >> charlie: collaboration is the essential element to achieve, what real innovators have been able to achieve, ada lovelace -- >> the only legitimate child. her mother had her tutored in mathematics as if it was an

antidote to becoming a math metation. ada lovelace realizes if you join poetry to technology, it was the same as the weaving looms coming mop the industrial leaf resolution that used punch cards to make beautiful patterns. she said we can use punch cards to make anything. she comes up with the concept of a punch card to connect humanities and arts to technology. >> charlie: you see that with steve jobs and johnny -- >> yes, but steve jobs in his first long interview i had with them said, i was an electronics geek as a kid but loved the humanities and arts as well. that's when i realized that standing at the intersection of the arts and technology is where you will create great value and that's what i put in the dna of apple. you remember in the product launches, he always ended with a slide of the liberal arts and

technology as a street sign and said, that's where we stand. >> charlie: you talk about that in the first biography. alan touring, his new movie is called the imitation gang, tell me who he is and why he's part of the book. >> alan touring is so fascinating, he worked at bletchly, the secret facility in england that broke the german war-time codes and he comes up, based on ada lovelace, whom he read, the notion of a general-purpose computer. >> charlie: they called it a machine. >> right, it was a universal computing machine he does, and now we call it a touring machine, which can do any logical sequence. but he and ada disagreed. they're a century apart. he's exactly in the 1940s, a century after ada lovelace but he has what's called ada lovelace's objection because she said machines will do everything but think, humans will have to be the creative once.

and touring said, how do we know machines will never think? he came up with the notion of artificial intelligence. so he comes up with a test to say how would we define a machine that could think? we say, you put a machine and person in a different room and feed them questions and after a while if you can't tell a difference between the machine and human then you have no reason to say the machine is not thinking, that's called the touring test. the movie is great. here's the thing about touring, his life was almost a recitation of the notion we're no different than our machines. he was homosexual, quite up front about it, but he had to keep it secret when breaking the german war-time codes. he gets arrested for gross indecency, finally. he's given hormone treatments and it's really bad. he seems to ride with it for a while, but after he's written

this notion of the itation game of the computer, a few years later he bites into a cyanide-laced apple to commit suicide. is that something a machine would do? it almost helps you realize the emotions that come with being human. a fundamentally different these days than what a machine does. >> charlie: steve jobs apple has a bite ut of it. >> early on my daughter said to me, when i was thinking about working with steve jobs, she says, the apple logo is a no mag to alan touring. i said, i didn't know that. i said, steve, is that the case? he e-mailed right back and said, i wish we had been clever enough to think about that. i think about that all the time now but when we first did it we didn't think about the connection of alan touring. >> charlie: true story your daughter came home having written an essay about lovelace. >> it was her college entrances

say. my wife is, like, why haven't you done your essay yet? you're a senior? betsy comes down and says here's my essay, it's on ada lovelace. i knew who ada lovelace was but i wasn't sure what she had done. i said, what did she do? she explained, and that became the framing device of the book. the concept of the general purpose computer, the one tied intimately to humans as opposed to artificial intelligence enthusiasts would have it replace humans, that's what ada was about, so the last chapter is called aday forever, is about how everybody from alan touring to sergi brennan or wikipedia it's timed intimately, computers, putting it on your list, your eyes, like google. so to me the ada lovelace vision frames the book. >> charlie: who do you think we are in terms of artificial intelligence and the development of artificial intelligence?

>> i think we're always 20 years away. in 1957 they started the percentron that would mimic the human brain and announced it. the stories in the newspaper said they unveiled a computer that will think about the human brain and be conscious and recognize people, et cetera. every near, almost, from 1957 17 including this year, people have written the stories saying we're a few years away from artificial intelligence. when, in the mean time, the ada vision or the vision of steve jobs and others, that you combine the talons of computers with humans, that keeps growing by leaps and bounds. in fact, that's what they're doing with watson who, you know kind of could win at jeopardy, but to make it really powerful, i.b.m. is now sort of pairing or partnering it with intelligent

humans. >> charlie: my impression is that the vie los the of change -- the velocity of change toward developing artificial intelligence, whatever level, is increasing dramatically because of how much stride we are making in understanding the human brain. >> yeah, but it's like there's an old saying -- >> charlie: (indiscernible). right. and bill gates said we could reverse engineer the human brain and do it in a carbon-base instead of silicon. he said that would be cheating, reverse engineering what nature did, but said it wouldn't work either. but there's a joke that artificial intelligence has been growing by leaps and grounds every year and about to reach its infancy. (laughter) i went to applied minds in lamb l.a. they have a robot that can go across the room but can't pick up a crayon or write its name. in manhattan to the domain

awareness, it can't pick out a mother's face in a crowd. what about all these things, who can do those? a 3-year-old or a 4-year-old can. so i don't think artificial intelligence how our holy grail. sure, we'll get closer, especially when we get good speech recognition, better than siri, where you can really have a conversation, like the movie, as to posed to siri. but i don't know that that should be our holy grail. i like what google is doing which is making machines more intimate with us, what apple is doing with the watch. the holy grail should make a partnership with humans and machines. >> charlie: the interesting thing is the people running the companies, especially google, those guys are scientists, those guys are engineers, those guys are people. >> that was one of things steve said to me when the marketing or finance people take over the country, it no longer innovates. he was criticizing microsoft and steve ballmer at the time.

larry page says it and i quote it in the book in my interview with him, he says the reason we can innovative is that our engineers and product people run the company. that's one of 30 rules i extract from the book is make sure product people run the company. that's even true at amazon. you know, tim cook was more of a manager, but he really has good product people around him. >> charlie: and is able to create the culture of collaboration that steve did and continue it. >> absolutely. >> charlie: when you think of the word "innovation," it's like one more article in harvard business review. >> yeah. >> charlie: when i first saw this, i thought, where is walter going? your mean something different. >> innovation is an overused buzz word. it's been sapped of a lot of its meaning. so my point was let's not talk about innovation in the abstrafnlgt let me show you exactly what bill gates, steve jobs did, what the people who invented the transistor at bell labs did and how that system led

to something. so i want to look in a story-telling. this is a narrative book. it's not 12 easy lessons of innovation. because i wanted to do real reporting and say how did they make the creative leap and do it as a team but who was the visionary that helped make the leap? because you need a violationnary and a team. so it's more of a book about real people who actually do it, and i'm trying to residue word -- i mean, innovation is such a was word that people always think they'll do a web site explaining innovation to you. i'm just saying let me report it and show you what happened through google and wikipedia and the things we have today. >> charlie: who are some of the interesting people i meet here? >> well, the people you would know because you, i think, know all of history, but the people most people would know who are hugely important, j.c.r.

lickwider (phonetic), he helps create an air defense system for the united states because they need a psychologist who works with the engineers and he needs it to be total quick, interactive screens, so you know what the blip is doing. if a console jockey doesn't have that, we might get attacked by a missile. secondly, he's got to network 23 different air defense system stations together, so he creates a concept of the intergalactic computer network. so he's inventing, graphickicle user interfaces. he liked to share credit more than claim it as well as creating what is the basis for the internet then goes to work in washington and becomes the person who funds arpanet, which is the backbone for the internet. so i didn't know much about liquid glider. alan k. we all hear about because he was at xerox park, but his genius in creating real

really personal computers you can take out to the woods with you. that forms the basis for what apple does. >> charlie: we live in a global world. when you look at china and other places in the world, for a long time we always took pride in the fact that the googles and the i.b.m.s and xerox and apple all came out of silicon valley and out of the united states. i.b.m. didn't come out of silicon valley. and the other countries could not create a silicon valley. is that still true? >> it's still true. we have to be a little bit cautious. take google. sergei bren, his parents are in russia, they're brought to maryland, he studies math and becomes co-founder of google. we need to keep the immigration system fix sod we get the best and brightest. >> charlie: so the best of the

united states is we get all the smart people from other countries? >> it's not bad to be a brain magnet to have all the smart people from other countries. russia or china, people don't feel comfortable with the free flow of information, when you see what's happening in china this week. i think we feel comfortable sentence days of ben franklin and thomas payne with handing out pamphlets and the free flow of information. we have to preserve that as well. take gene jennings bayhtech, she was from a town of less than 200 people, but goes to missouri state college, wants to become a mathematician, and programs with five other women imiac. she paid $78 a year to go to college. that college is 14,000 a year now. we have to make sure we have anen education system that

attracts everybody. >> charlie: the book was a quote from you about the quality of opportunity, that we lose that. >> right. >> charlie: unless we make sure we capture that because differences in education and things like that are creating an inequality of opportunity. >> you know, the digital age and technology revolution has a couple of things to do. it could help improve education worldwide. secondly, it could either equalize the opportunity of people everywhere to have access to information including people who aren't in great schools in the country or widen the digital divide. i don't think technology has its own personality. it's only as good as the way we use it. i hope that the next wave of the digital revolution is dedicated to being inclusive to making sure that the prosperity to have the digital rev solution is open to all. >> charlie: one thing that the book points out is there have been a lot of women who have

made real contributions and not necessarily recognized for it. >> women were more recognized and made contributions in the early days of computing partly because men were all obsessed with the hardware, there were a lot of women ph.d.s in math in the 1930s and 40s that came during the war. grace, when pearl harbor happens, leaves her job teaching at vassar and joins the navy and pieo neared the mach 1 in harvard. >> charlie: steve jobs hero was robert oppenheimer. >> he liked the fact oppenheimer could make a team work together to create the atom bomb, the manhattan project. it was putting the best people together and made them all work

together not for any glory because it was in total secrecy, and that was the ultimate collaboration of teamwork. when steve talked to me about that, that was one of the things that made me think, okay, that's why i need to do a book on all the people of the digital age, not just another singular biography. >> charlie: didn't you test chapters of this book on the internet? >> that was something, i was writing one night about the early internet and how it was used for collaborative research. that's why they invented the thing. and i said, why don't i try to do that with this book, use it for collaborative research. >> charlie: right. and back in the early days of the internet, there were a lot of bulletin boards and news groups and things, it wasn't like just web sites. i said, well, where's a place like wikipedia i could put something up and other people could edit it? the one place i liked most was medium which was created by ev williams who was a blogger and co-founder of twitter.

and i put up chapters on medium. there's a whole section about dan brooklyn and how they created visicount. why? because i put up the software chapter and he and a few others said this is what we did when we created the first application software which is a spread sheath software. i said, that's interesting, so i put that in the book, and i hope some day we'll have a way where we can collaborate on looks online where somebody like an author would maybe rate it and d then we can divvy up the royalties so you can have collaboratively created books. but this book is informed all the way through by posting chapters and allowing people to make comments. >> charlie: you've talked about technology and the humanities. bill buckley said to me once, talking about having run once for elective office, that he thought people needed to be

observers. have you ever been motivated to try to create something in collaboration is other people beyond media which is your home? >> yeah. no, i've done a lot in media, and i guess i'm more of a story teller. i mean, when i grew up, preachers and story tellers. but also i like bringing people together. as you know, we've done a lot of things together, starting with time 100 in the 1990s, let's bring people together. so i don't know that my talents are as a manager or somebody can execute. you know, i ran cnn, and i must say, i wasn't the best at being a tough executive, and, so, you know, i think you deal with -- >> charlie: what was left when

they came out of that experience? >> well, i think you learn that you have different passions and talents. yours has not been let me run, you know, p.b.s. yours has been let me bring people to this table. i think you have to hearne, you know, that was a learning experience for me that sort of being a heavy-duty manager and boss wasn't my passion. my passion was kicking around ideas with people, trying to get people to do some good things. it was fun, at "time magazine," when i was there, because that was a smaller place, i knew everybody. so i thought, okay, i'm going to the aspen institute where i am now which is smaller and bring people together and work on certain ideas. you have to learn what your passions are and storytelling, to me, is the greatest fun i have because i think you can sort of bend the world a little bit by saying, let me tell you a story, and that's what the book is about. >> charlie: aspen and the

aspen institute is sort of the founder, it seems to me, of the idea of bringing smart people, interesting people together, not only because of the cross fertilization or the networking but also you will hear interesting ideas at these places. it seems they're happening everywhere. you can't pick up a newspaper anywhere without seeing "the new york times" or others are doing it. what is the essence of that? >> one curious thing is we thought that the internet, you know, with its networks would allow us to network virtually, have friends on facebook, sort of convene and google chatrooms. one of the lessons of this book is that you've got to get people together, that collaboration and creativity happens in person, that googleplex beats google hangouts. when you get people together in

the flesh, they're able to do things. that starts in bell labs but goes through googleplex and yahoo and others. with this ability to have friends around the world on facebook and communicate via twitter or whatsapp or anything else, it increases our desire to get together physically, not decreases it. i think it probably goes back to aristotle who said man is a social animal. so it's noting new. even the internet is being used for connectivity, but then the web -- we all thought we were going to live off and telecommute from montana. people move to san francisco, new york, boston, new orleans and they want to be around other people in the flesh. i don't think that's ever going to change. what i've seen in the aspen institute and what you've talked about, it sort of whets the

design when you've done something online to then sit around and discuss it in the flesh. >> charlie: in "vanity fair," you wrote a piece about collaboration works best in person. vision without execution is hallucination. tell me about that. >> so many people starting with john vincent who had a vision for a computer but couldn't put together a team and execute it all the way through william vonmeister who started a whole lot of internet companies in the '70s including aol but they all went down in flames until aol were able to execute it. even google had great vision but bring in eric schmidt in the early period of the company when they needed to be able to

execute. so if you go around all the conferences you've talked about, everybody is going to show you the really cool vision. i say, well, let me pull out my iphone and use it. no, it's just a vision at the moment. and they don't create teams. >> charlie: it has to be on the basis of technology. >> right, i want to pull it out and them to show it to me on my machine. >> charlie: and man is a social animal, which we've talked about. a great book, walter. the innovators, give you real insight to being an innovator and also life itself. thank you. >> thank you. >> charlie: subtitle, how a group of hackers, geniuses and geeks created the digital revolution. walter isaacson, thank you for joining us, see you next time. >> charlie: on the next charlie rose, conversation with

comedy central. visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib. brought to you in part by. the street.com, featuring stephanie link who shares her investment strategies, stock picks and market insights with action alerts plus the mul multi-million dollar portfolio she manages with jim cramer, you can learn more at the street.com. going, going, gone, the dow turns nev s negative for the ye s&p 500 logs its worst week in two years, what is the best way to protect your portfolio now? searching for stability in the uncertain market. our guest says he has a list of stocks that can help you find it