>> rose: welcome to the program. tonight bill gates for the hour talking about not only energy but encryption, artificial intelligence and much more. >> if government is blind, then things like tax evasion, child pornography and perhaps most importantly, terrorism enabled by new clear biological weapons, then our government isn't able to fulfill some role of stopping those things. >> . >> rose: right. >> and so it's great that people are talking more, you know, post snowden and everyone about how do you feel about those safeguards. if we can't-- if we can't as a society discuss those safeguards and build them in a way that we feel good about, then government won't be able to fulfill its function. >> rose: bill gates for the

hour next. funding for charlie rose is provided by the following:. >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services world wide. from our studios in new york city, this is charlie >> bill gates is here. he is microsoft's cofounder an cochair of the bill and me linda gates foundation. his latest mission is to invent our way out of the climate change challenge. he has gathered investors to put billions into clean energy research and development. the group known as the breakthrough energy coalition have dozens of members that span the bloab including mark zuckerburg, jeff bezos.

a particle legal effort called mission innovation commits government to double their funding. the issues were announced in november, the climate sum knit paris where 1 will 5-- 195 countries reached an agreement to lower green house gas emissions. i'm pleased to have bill gates back at this table. welcome. i read the shareholders letter which will be released tonight right after this show. here is what is interesting to me. it seems to me with all the concentration on the foundation, and all the great things that have taken place in terms of pofer ert-- poverty and health, two things have come out in watching your curiosity. one is agriculture. and all of your understanding of how crucial agriculture was, and second is energy. so you pose this question. if you could have a superpower, what would it be? and you could include anything. you could think about being able to defy gravity. you could think about being able to see through walls. you could think about everything. but you said what? >> i said energy.

that getting energy for everyone would transform their life as much as anything i could think of. the idea of flipping a light switch and the lights come on or setting the temperature and it's hot or cold, if you went to somebody in africa who doesn't have energy and said that was possible, it would seem as bizarre as somebody flying or seeing through walls. it really is a type of superpower. americans have the equivalent of 200 humans pushing an axeel on their behalf so that their lights light up and their materials get made and their food gets made. you know, it's that much-- modern life is that much about energy intensity. >> rose: in fact, you show two things that are interesting to me. one is you show a global map of the world. and you show africa at night. and the parts of africa are almost dark.

the extraordinary thing to read your letter is that 1.3 billion people, 18% of the population do not have electricity. >> in africa, unless we do better than the current expectation, 80% of the people without lech trissity will be in africa 30 years from now. so they haven't progressed that much. and when you go there at night, me linda and i were in the suburbs of lagos driving along, it's yearie because all the lighting is people burning things in big oil barrels. so you think well, this is like some strange movie, not a normal city at all. >> rose: the goal coming out for you and for others is to cut greenhouse gases by 80%, by 2050. >> yeah. the-- as long as you are emitting greenhouse gases, in particular, it stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. not all of it but most of it. the rest of it tends to go

either back in the soils or into the ocean which then you have acid if i kaition problems. but that clong time in the atmosphere means that as long as you are increasing co2, as long as emissions are above zero, then you have a positive warming trend. and that warming trend is what creates the strange weather and causes crops not to grow as well. particularly if you are in equatorial regons are you getting up to heat levels that plants and humans do very poorly at. ironically, as you go into the northern latitudes, there's actually a net benefit there. but a lot of humanity particularly the poorest live in the area where the heat will cause terrible problems. >> rose: what about the majority of the world's energy is produced by fossil fuels. >> that's right. overwhelmingly, and if you take the forcast that's made, that doesn't assume some incredible innovation, that's going to continue for the next 40 years.

the very responsible forcast on the path that we're on today is that we won't be able to make a change away from that. >> reporter: unless we do what? >> well, innovation to me is the answer to most problems, including energy. and so i think of india aspr dimatic, because they don't have electricity, they are collecting firewoods that's destroying their environment, the women are breathing smoke and the children and they get respiratory diseases, it's awful for their health even if they survive. they don't have lights at night to read. they can't keep fresh food cold so they don't get enough protein in their diet. there's every reason why india should have electricity. it's great for their people. unfortunately, their straight forward path to get there is coal. and yet india's big enough, it's enough people that if they go down that straight forward path

we won't meet any of our climate change goals. and yet today we have no alternative that is even close to as cheap including reliability which is always a fundamental characteristic of energy systems, you cannot power india as cheaply with the other things as you can with coal. and so only through innovation can you square the circle and say should india electrify as fast as it can or avoid greenhouse gas emission which even if they go forward, they won't emit as much co2 per person as we have for more than a hundred years. >> rose: is this your biggest passion today? >> the long lead time thing that requires so much coordination and science and politics kind of come together, i'm very fascinated by it. i have still got polio eradication. >> rose: we'll get to that. >> and our health stuff as the

things where i feel like gosh, we're on track. we know what to do. this one is in the category of great importance and if you wait 20 years to get started, then the time it takes to advance, the time it takes to change the system, you're really going to miss the window on it. so it's got a funny kind of urgency even though the damage in the next 20 or 30 years is not that dramatic. >> rose: but you've got to get it started. >> absolutely. >> rose: you believe you can get to grer owe by the beginning of the next century. >> i believe that invasion,-- innovation, there are so many paths, over a dozen different paths. and we only need one of them to work to give us this cheap, reliable energy, that yes, then you have to deploy that and get to these what are wildly ambitious goals. >> rose: and talking about innovation, what is interesting to-- you talk about an energy miracle. what would that be? >> well, anything that is half the price of today's energy,

cheaper than scoal, and totally reliability liable, doesn't depend on the wind blowing or the sunshining, that is an energy miracle. so for example, if you could take sun light and directly make gasoline from sun light, that is called solar fuels. and there are scientists who can do that. now it's about a hundred times less efficient then it needs to be to make any sense. and so that one isn't even ready for a startup company. that one still needs to be in the government labs getting basic research funding three or four times what it is getting today. and then with luck, it will get to the point where companies will get started and high-risk, high-return investors will come along. >> rose: so you're looking for a miracle. what you want to do now is to enlist both private funding, which you started, and jeff is in this and others are in this.

at the same time, you want to make sure the government has a role. >> that's right. basic research. >> rose: because of scale. >> is, their unique role is basic research. the universities, the national labs, you're not going to get private investors to fund the level of research because that's just the very beginning, material science, stronger magnets, be tense il strength, things that will be critical, just like in the medical sector. there's a great pharmaceutical industry but the u.s. government spends $po billion a year on braisk health research. and it's been fantastic for the country. it's been fantastic for the world. in energy we're down at less than 6 billion and so that's the number that i'm hoping and the commitment was made in paris by

20 governments including the united states to double their energy r & d over a five year period. and that will raise the supply of innovation and make it right for these amazing group of investors. >> the stockholders, in this letter to the foundation letter, who is it addressed to. because i had the impression you were addressing this to high-school students. >> that's a new thing for us. the two themes, the energy which i lab rate on. mel inda talks about time and how women have to spend lots of extra time more than men do in the household. the kid, a kid in high school newspaper in appalacha kentucky, great high school, asked us about superpowers. and she said time, i said energy. and that as we talked about it,

really pointed out to us that those are such basic things about the experience of poor people, and even in the u.s. people can appreciate how important energy is. and there is still a time imbalance. so those became the theme. and yet these are not problems that there is some tenure solution to. so the younger generation there voice their willingness to look at things in new ways. i hope the invention takes place and i expect it will in the next 15 years. so today's teenagers will be in their 20s and a lot of the wild thinking that drives innovation comes from that group. >> rose: what are the three crazy ideas you think might have potential? >> well, i mentioned this idea of sun being used to generate fuel. >> rose: yes. >> and that's unique because unlike generating electricity, where batteries that store electricity are superexpensive and don't last very long, storing gasoline in a big

gasoline tank you just make the tank bigger and it can sit there for as long as you want. when you want the energy, you just burn it and it's very dense. it's ten times more dense in energy con tent then the best batteries that we have today. so that really would be special. taking new clear energy and overcoming a number of problems, the cost of the plants, the safety of the plants where people worry will you have another feuk shima or even chern only type accident, that is another path that we could go down. we could take wind that's way up in the jet stream and capture that. now that requires materials that are ultra strong. which would be valuable for many things. i mean you could build bridges that would last forever. and we're really on the verge of that type of understanding. there are two approaches that

people think about. one is that you could just take solar and wind and make them really cheap. and that's problemly not too hard but then you could have a battery that's like ten or 20 times better than any battery we have today. >> rose: what is so difficult about finding better batteries. >> the problem is that it's chemistry. and the number of charges you can put into an area in those rules, there's not like some semiconductor thing that lets us jam those things in. what happens is you are going between a liquid phase and a solid phase. as you do that, the solid tends to degrade. so if batteries could last, instead of 400 cycles of charge, discharge, if they could last 4,000, that really changed the economics. but and there are ideas along those lines. i this money in many battery companies and there is a bunch that i don't. but i would say all of them are having a tough time.

because proving that something doesn't degrade in some physical way or 4,000 cycles, it is not something you can test overnight. it's very pragmatic stuff. and so batteries in the last hundred years haven't improved too, to make this the path we go down. now that is a very possible path we should invest in both the research and companies along that path. but that's the one most people think is going to come and it's not as easy as they think. >> so what, 50 years? >> you can't put a time on it. the only reason i'm confident is if you take 12 paths, new clear figure, new clear fusion, the battery thing we just talked about, chemicals, there is a total of about 12 including the taking-- burning hydrocarbons and capturing the carbon from the flu e, from the chim nee stack, that is another one.

if you have five companies on each of these so 60 total, and they get the basic research backing them up and they get the risk capital, even if individually there are only 20% likely, if you pursue those 60 different things, then in ak regat the chance of a success is very high. and that's what i think we should do. >> two quick questions before we turn to health and other things you are doing. number one, where, have climate deniers gained strength or are they, what, where would you put that? component of our population. >> the problem of climate denial is not a huge problem outside of the united states. and so-- . >> rose: why is that? >> that's a good question. the policy makers on many issues

like agriculture crops called gmos, europe is more sceptical of the science on that. >> rose: then we are. >> than the u.s. is. on climate change we are uniquely sceptical particularly in terms of telling policy makers, hey, luke askance at that. and there's another group that is a little bit of a problem which is people believe that climate is a problem but think that it's easy to solve. and so okay, hey, as soon as the utility guys don't stand in the way of rooftop solar, this thing is solved not just for the u.s., but the entire world, not just for the power sector but trment, industry, home, everything we need. that notion that it there are simple solutions also stands in the way. >> rose: but is that inhibiting forward progress? >> until the 2015 november talks, the idea of improving the amount of innovation, improving increasing r & d actually was

not discussed. and i am still kind of amazed at that. the 20 countries did commit there. that's good. >> rose: including china. >> including china, india, all the big ones you would want to. even i had ya, all made very-- the doubling commitment. we've always put a lot of money into the demand side for clean energy. we have tax credits. we have what are called renewable portfolio standards where utilities are required to buy a certain percentage of their energy from these renewable sources. so if you take the feblgive payments, the increased price of electricity and tax forgiveness. we put a lot into that demand side. and so does germany and japan and others. we need to have a balance where we're also driving the supply of innovation as well. >> let me turn to what we have been experiencing recently. everybody is talking about the zika virus. you looked hard at ebola. tell me where you see this and

what is necessary. and what did we learn from the ebola crisis. >> in the case of ebola, the orchestration of the resources, the private sectors ability to make diagnostics and antibodies and drugs and vaccines, that was pulled together very slowly. and there was no road map for you pay if we're moving quickly what is our liability. what is the regulatory path for these things. if there are three or four companies working on it, which ones have the best one and should go twice as fast. which one should drop out. that was chaotic. and only now or do we have these good ebola tools which if that had spread a lot faster, we would have felt terrible about that. zika is of course different. it's spread by mosquitoes, not by human human contact. and there's still a lot of measurement being done to understand is there some narrow part of your pregnancy where you

can be affected. is it required that you also had dengu e at some point. but it's a bad situation. it was great that the emergency was declared. this time understanding how we can all sit down, figure out the private secretarier innovations that could come in, and including in this case, killing mosquitoes. because this particular mosquito, lives in urban areas, mostly around the equator. and one of the great heroes of global health from long ago, frank-- said we should wipe out this particular type of mosquitoes. and he came very close to it. and now we sort of wish geez, maybe that would have been a good thing. this mosquito carries dengue, chicken gu nea and historically most pornts was yellow fever. >> so you have said i think that

mosquitoes are the most dangerous animal on earth. >> that's right. in terms of what kills the most humans. do humans kill the most humans, do lions, do sharks. the humans killing humans is a strong number two. but unless war gets extreme in some year, the 600,000 plus kids who die of mall aria which is a mosquito-caused death, that is the animal that generates the most more fallity. >> rose: animal aria. >> it's all mall aria, yeah. there are a few others. but mall aria is 95%. >> rose: so what should we do about the mosquito? >> there are a couple of ideas for changing the mosquito that we have been funding in order to

work on dengue and mall aria. one idea is that you actually put a bacteria into the moss quit called wolbatch ya, into the mosquito and then it doesn't carry the parasite hardly at all. we have done field trials on that. and it appears that also duz work for dengue. it appears it also works for zika. that may get rolled out more quickly. an even more powerful tool that spreads faster but more controversial is to take our new gene editing technology that people call crisper, and have male and female mosquitoes pass along either something that prevents them from carrying the virus or something that kills the progeny, those are both approaches, but use again editing in a thing called gene drive that means that all of your children, both male and female inherit something even if only one of your parents have

it. that it's dominant into that generation. either to not survive or not carry the bad virus. >> rose: if you were coming out of school today, you have been asked this question before, i asked it ten years ago. if you were coming out of high school today, knowing what you know about what is happening in terms of again omic, and just mentioned gene editing and at the same time what is going on in technology, which field would you enter? >> it's a hard choice now adays. >> rose: because the other has gotten so much more exciting. >> yeah. the digital stuff in terms of vision and robotics continues to be very exciting. not without challenges as it moves at full speed, but mostly positive enablement. so that's a wonderful field. and will generate tons of jobs that people should want. biology, all the medical work is also an incredible thing. understanding how these genes

work and actually in some cases, you're having to use the digital tools to track the genes and understand them. there are companies working on robotics assisted surgery that could raise the quality and lower the cost. >> rose: coming together of againomics and technology. >> exactly. >> rose. >> so we have stem cells, genetics. so the field of biology is so amazing. and if a kid has interest, the chance that they could lead huge breakthroughs is gigantic there. but i also want to say energy because we need bright minds to drive all the ideas there as well. >> rose: and the minds we may not have access to because of not having energy, they will not have a full development. >> right. fortunately, that's a great thing. as we uplift more countries than they get more educated and contribute more. the u.s. leads in science, but countries like china now will

also contribute. >> rose: and you have mentioned in the letter and i will mention it again, the idea is clean energy. it's not just they have energy, but they have to have clean energy. >> that's right. the greenhouse gases constraint t would be nice if it was only a 20% reduction. but the fact that it is essentially eliminating it from rich country energy systems, that is dawnting. but necessary and that is why all this parallel work is needed. >> rose: on the digital side you mentioned artificial intelligence. part of that has to do with robots and finding out what does that mean in terms of job and what does it mean in terms of population that may not have a job. and all those kinds of questions about how we spend leisure time and the rest of that. but there are also things that concern you and other people, just you. what is your concern about artificial intelligence? >> in the long run,ed scale of the intelligence is unbounded.

and nobody knows-- . >> rose: you don't know how smart it can get. >> no, it will get a lot smarter than us. it is so smart that we'll have to ask it. hey, how smart are you. and it will el it us. so the near-term problem that is predict ability in the 20 year time frame is labor subsidy teution, not labor intelligence. >> rose: labor subsidy teution. >> right. where that's kind of an embarrassment of riches problem, where you should free up people to help every school kid, kid in school, every handi cap kid, every elderly person. you should be able to reallocate that hey what, if you're not needed to work in that warehouse, get out there and do other things. >> rose: in a way this dove tails into what me linda says about time. >> that's right it will free up time doing the drujery things. and so all the things about spending time with the kids and being more connected socially,

we should be able to do more of that. >> rose: she tells a wonderful story in her part of the letter where she says i guess a family in africa, i think. and the wife spent all of her time going to get water and bringing it back. and finally she was about ready to leave for the marriage. he comes home and the bags are packed. and he says what can i do. i'm parra phrasing. and she says i'm doing all this stuff. i'm doing everything. all the stufer at home. and you you need to help me. and he agrees, so he starts taking the water himself. they split that. and all of a sudden he gets involved in that. and they determine that there are smarter ways to do this and start collecting rain and doing other things so they have-- her point is freeing up people to have time to participate in all the issues jointly. >> yeah, and that was interesting. because when he first helped out, he was ridiculed by the other man. >> and he was like well, no, i'm going to keep doing this. and what they told melinda is

that that had set an example for that village. we have a tiny case of that where i was driving when i was c.e.o. of microsoft, our children to school quite a bit. and apparently, i don't know for sure, but other wives used that to encourage their husbands that they couldn't say they were too much more busy than i was at that particular time. >> rose: back to artificial intelligence. so what is the time frame on this. >> for the labor subsidy teution, it will be substantial in the five to 20 year period. warehouse, security, things that the exeutders used to not-- the computers used to not be able to see, and we are really good at physical manipulation, making a bed, cleaning up a room, carrying a patient upstairs. the amount of adjustment and

ability, it's quite incredible. but one software achieves those things, then it's kind of unbounded. so like sorting parts, in a warehouse, picking things out of a bin, computers are just now getting to human level. the problem is, ten years from now they will be at three or four times the human level and the humans aren't on that same type of improvement curve. and so it's like farming. it's like saying oh, tractors are going to destroy the world. well, because that took generations, people did adjust. here the speed, it will come a little faster. and some people sort of almost don't think it will happen because we've sort of been famous about what hatched-- saying it would happen before it did happen. and they are like oh, they've been saying that. and it's true. we cried wolf, wolf, wolf. and next thing we know there's a dal wolf.

>> rose: but on the more concerning side, in terms of intelligence, is there a breakthrough necessary or is it so under way that it's just time and the coo accumulation of technological advantages. >> i think on the labor piece, hardly any of the experts in the field would disagree that that is coming. on this piece about ry best people in the field the and half would say i don't think that will ever happen. or i think that will take forever. i'm amazed that it's so-- it is not a subject of which there is consensus. and even whether to be afraid of it. >> rose: where are you. >> i'm worried about it. >> rose: but are you as worried as elan musq is. >> yes. >> rose: who says it is more dangerous than new clear catastrophe. >> yes, because-- . >> rose: potentially more dangerous than new clear. >> if this happens, it changes

life as we know it. so life is changed for the entire population. >> rose: what is that scenario? >> that the machine is far more intelligent than-- . >> rose: and therefore they control us? >> and therefore our sense of purpose and the notion of which humans are in control of it, or are humans in control of it will have profowngd consequences. >> rose: and how long before that happens? >> that, when people answer that question, they are a little bit guessing. i don't think it will happen in less than 40 years. >> rose: 40, 40 years. >> i can't say for sure it will happen in less than a hundred. >> rose: 40 years is 2056. >> it's no time at all. >> rose: i know. >> that's no time at all. >> rose: this is in the lifetime of your children. >> even if it's a hundred years,

the idea that-- the thing about this one is not to panic. >> rose: machines could be smarter in 50 years, machines are smarter than humans. >> because humans created them, yes. >> rose: but if they're smarter, then they will determine the future of the world, not. >> or the humans who control them. >> rose: or the humans who control them. because humans can decide what goes in and what comes out? >> really, certainly the likely-- . >> rose: there will be some subset of humans who control those machines. >> rose: and who are they? >> the private sector is doing more state of the art, artificial intelligence work than the public secretarier. companies are talking about this. >> rose: the greats advances including the internet came out of the defense department. >> the early stage, yes. and then it had contractors bike

bbn. and then eventually the infrastructure on the private side. the it revolution has largely moved to be private sector funding. >> rose: i understand that. but it started there. you say it's no longer happening there in terms of artificial intelligence. it's all in the private sector. >> the best stuff is in the private sector now. >> rose: and what i'm finding out is that people who are hedge funds and a lot of other people in venture capital are pouring money into it because they believe it will unlock some kind of future. >> right. and even if you focus on it as a narrow thing like hey, what stock should i trade, you may be creating a general capacity for intelligence. >> rose: there's a lot of that now even. >> right. >> rose:s as you would know. >> so it's a thing that we ought to-- a discussion and debate ought to begin. it's not like banning that

research would be a good move. cuz that just pushes it to less visible locations. >> rose: speak of a public debate that ought to ingo, let's talk about security versus privacy. encryption, apple, the fbi and the federal government. where do you stand? >> well, it would be valuable if the safeguards that the government had in terms of information that was acquired, and when it would go for that information, how we deal with it, that people felt comfortable with that. because if government is blind, then things like tax evasion, child pornography and perhaps most importantly, terrorism enabled by new clear biological weapons, then our government o isn't able to fulfill some role of stopping those things. >> rose: right. >> and so it's great that people are talking more, you know, post snowden and everyone, about how do you feel about those safeguards.

if we can't as a society discuss those safeguards and build them in a way that we feel good about, then government won't be able to fulfill its function. >> rose: so therefore if you are responsible for the decision as to whether apple should allow the government one time only to come in and provide in their labs software so the governments can then try to have access, are you in favor of that? are you in favor of a private company in this circumstance, apple, in the secret of their own lab and their being able to destroy whatever they create, after they do this for the government one time only, should they do that? >> well, in every case up until now when the government has come in and said what's the banking information, you know, banks like to keep their customer's information private. but no bank has ever, defied the

government. i think apple at the end, they're just forcing a complete judicial process. i don't think apple is saying that when the court, you know, say it goes to the supreme court, i don't think they're saying they will defy the government. they're just forcing-- . >> rose: they're saying right now they're not going to do it, so it will be a peeped-- appealed. i'm just asking you, what would you do if you were the executive, would you do the same thing that tim cook has done. >> i think they're saying hey, as a society, we think this discussion of safeguards is important. i don't disagree with that. i think at the end of the day-- . >> rose: nobody disagrees with that. >> at the end of the day we want a government that has visibility and we trust it to use that visibility on our behalf. that is where in order to stop innovation in biological weaponry from being turned

against humanity, you really need government's to have a role of trust. >> rose: to have access. >> his dor-- historically governments, the fbi in some cases, and they vntd always earned that trust. but i claim it's important for the public that we figure out what structure would put us back into a situation where the u.s. government has the safeguards and we do trust it so that if the courts rule against apple on this, we're not saying that is a terrible thing. >> rose: i do not understand what you would do. and you are-- as versed in all of this than anyone i know. >>ed only choice apple has is to comply with the lower court or wait for the higher court ruling. they've chosen to wait for the higher court ruling. which-- . >> rose: which? >> over time i think the government will decide not to be blind. and it will exercise its sovereign power not to be blind. but there will have been a

debate about what visibility should have. >> rose: are you okay with tim cook waiting until it walks its weigh through the judicial process? or. >> because is it possible to do a one-time only in this case of this one computer, and this one iphone that belonged to a terrorist. >> apple agrees it is possible. >> rose: they do agree but. >> but by doing it proves that they can do so. but they've already admitted they can do so. they can do so. your bank can take your banking information and give it to the u.s. government. they have that ability. your phone company can take your phone call and give it to the u.s. government. >> rose: but they have an encrypted iphone that does not allow them to do that. >> no, that's false. the information that the government is seeking is not in the security processer. and the logic about challenging

the security processer with the pin is not in the security processer. so anyone way, it's no-- there is not a technological question here. >> rose: what is the question. >> the question is what will the final kowrtd rule on this issue. that is really the only question. >> rose: but i mean why is it so hard to get you to say yay or nai, because mo of silicon valley is supporting what apple is doing, not on the idea that we want to wait and see what a judicial body says, they are saying we don't think that the government should be able to. >> a discussion about-- . >> rose: access an encrypted phone. and apple says we don't know how to do it but now we know they do know how to do it reasons quite. and the endorsing-- endorsing the idea of all the government's behavior with accessing information in the past, nobody would want to do that. because there are cases-- . >> rose: this comes out. >> where the government

overused, well, more j edgar hoover. is i think more clear. >> rose: absolutely. >> the, and so its idea that you are forcing the discussion about gosh,-- gosh, what would it mean if you can't trust the government ever to get banking information or call information or iphone information. you know, it would be great if we could agree on what safeguards would get us back to saying at least this government is working on our behalf when it's trying to track down terrorists. >> rose: apple muses have known this was coming because between ios7 and ios8 you are presented with a very different situation in terms of encrypted phones. yes or no? >> the information on that phone is accessible to apple. >> rose: right. >> if anybody was confused about that now, they're not. this information is accessible

to apple. that's i tech technological-- it doesn't really matter but it's like your bank saying oh, we can't possibly access your account information. your bank can and they can resist court orders if they choose to as well. >> rose: i mean this is a hard case, i assume because of terrorism. because i mean there's no violation of-- i mean the person who had the phone, two people are dead. >> right. so the issue is the presidential fact. is this a government who >> an why you have the democracy that sits and debates about what should the patriot act version one, two, three, four look like.

and the congress could decide. no, the government never gets to see bank accounts. they gefer get to see travel records, they never get to see anything. that is all political. the statutes in question here were enacted by the united states congress. turns out they are using one that is from a long time ago. but eventually as it has been with the patriot act, this will all be subject to democratic scwution. it wongtd be corporations in the end. although they can talk to congressman just like everyone else. >> rose: i don't understand this. this is one thing i don't understand and you can help me understand it. obviously apple knows that they can do it if they are directed to do it. all all the way to the supreme court and the supreme court says the law of the land is you have to do t and they will do it they say they are fighting it because there is no such thing as a one-time-only fix. that if in fact they do this for the government, that all the people who have bought iphones under the assumption that they were protected, that they will come after them, district

attorney here in new york said i have 120 cases in which about encrypted data and an iphone. and every one of them i would like to see opened up because it would be evidentiary, important to me. apple says china, we sold those phones. people bought those phones because they thought they would be safe from challenge. and now they believe that you can't have a one-time only solution here. that in fact if apple does this, that what their business model was about, what their marketing was about, what their relationship with their customers was about will be voided. are they right or wrong? >> they can access this information. >> rose: i know, you said that three times. i know that. >> and-- the-- . >> rose: but they're saying if they access it for this case, then everything that we have been. >> just like your bank, just like your phone company, that's right. anyone who says they can

override a sovereign may in the end not be able to do that. >> rose: here's be easy question. how is mierk soft different. >> all the tech companies are insisting that the government have really formal orders for anything that they do. no tech company is ever going to volunteer information. >> rose: i understand. >> there is still some discretion about do you force it do go through the whole court prosesms the basic deal with it is this say political decision about when governments can access information and what those safeguards look like. and i would say the tech companies are for god reasons and saying hey, let's really have this debate about safeguards. because in the digital world, the amount of information about your behavior that somewhere is

larger now in some cases like in london where they have cameras, they drop crime rates and various things. and you know, is that okay. well, in the u.k. they have decided that the net benefit of that is them. and countries are going to have different rules about these things. >> rose: okay. i'm asking this because i'm trying to fully understand this. cook said they have asked us to build a back door. is that what the government is asking? a back door. >> in the same way that when the bank looks up bank account information, they have to type the password in. in this case the password is a piece of code. >> rose: right. >> that says allow an arbitrary number of pins to be entered. so yes, apple has to do something just like the bank has to do something. >> rose: that is the interesting part of this. they are asking apple to do something. >> just like they ask a bank to type in the account number and print the thing out. >> rose: and deliver us the documents. >> yeah, that's doing something.

>> rose: max helpchin who you and i both know and admire said that apple should, this is what i was trying to get you to say. apple should offer the fbi the exact data. but they should not offer them a master key. >> yeah, that would solve this particular case. >> rose: is that what they should do then, offer this exact data but not a master key. >> the only discretion apple has is whether to go through this whole judicial process or not. i'm not going to sit here and say no, they should stop right now and not go through the judicial process. because i do, i do view the discussion about hey, isn't the government on our side. wait a minute, why are some people so reluctant for the government to have access and what does it mean about there's quite a variety of governments. what does it mean about that. >> rose: and you value your

own privacy. >> sure. >> rose: and so do i. >> but the notion that of what is absolutely unaccessible or not, people also should, you know, be kind of educated about that. >> rose: i want to talk about some other things too. you said some really fun things. you talked about the role that music has played in your life. and you talked about the fact that when you got married, linda loved willie nelson and wiltie nelson was in. and you talked about one, i think did you the thing in london. >> exactly. >> rose: what did you choose as the music that you would bring to the island. >> well, there is the willie nelson song that i had him sing when she came down by surprise. which was called blue skies. >> rose: oh yeah, she didn't know he was coming. >> no, i gave her that surprise. and she did a custom spoof

version of the economist where all my friends wrote articles, was her equivalent gift to me. >> rose: you also talked about richard fienman as sort of the teacher that you most might have loved to have had. we all know him because of the spaceship disaster. he kind of figured it out. what was so great about him? >> he was so tough on himself in terms of whether he understood things that he understood physics in a deep way. and so his lectures explaining physics that he gave in the 1960s, i still consider the best way for somebody to learn why physics is interesting. and why it was confusing. and how they stritenned themselves out. and what it means to run experiments. >> rose: he was with kal tek. >> this lecture series was at columbia. then he goes to caltech and he does the most grueling freshman

physics course ever done, that even he thinks man, i made it too hard for them. and that leads to the fienman lectures on physics. it is a high bar to read those but they're extremely well written. if you want to test your physics knowledge or refresh it, there's nothing better to read. >> rose: did you read them? >> yes. but slowly. it's the slowest thing i've ever read. >> rose: do you really regret not learning a foreign language? deeply. >> yeah, i feel like some isolationist, ladsy-- lazy person. >> rose: then why didn't you? lazy you are not. >> i got fanatic about software. and kept putting it off. and still to this day i'm hoping to get around to it. french is easy enough that i should just do that. now mark zuckerburg went and

learned chien ease, gave a lecture. >> rose: and answered questions from the chinese. >> he did it. and my chinese speaking friends say it was very, very impressive. so hey,. >> rose: there's still time you're 50 something. >> no, i should do it. >> rose: and he's 30. >> not chinese though. i'm too much of a wimp. >> rose: i saw something the other day where you acknowledged that you had hacked into computers. >> yes. that was between age 14 and 16. we had limited access to computer time. so the only way-- . >> rose: at school or a library. >> there were time sharing systems. computers were super expensive. so people used phone lines to dial into a big expensive computer. and would you have like 50 people all dialed in at the same time. computer time was rare and scars. and you know, i knew where on the university there were a few computers. and i would get up at 5:00 mt

morning, if they had a half hour free i would go and use it. in a few cases we figured out how to get on to computers that we wouldn't generally have been given access to. >> rose: software is the second love of your life. >> i was obsessed with software from a very young age. so yes, i, you know, my 10,000 hours was devoted to learning how to write software. >> rose: and was that your core competent tense, writing software yns yeah, math helped me learn software. >> rose: and you loved math. >> i got so deep in software that it later helped me with math. but the thing you do obsessively between age 13 and 18, that is the thing you have the most chance of being world-class at. and i only have one thing that i did obsessively from 13 to 18 and that is write, try to write good software. >> rose: try to write good software. did you write good software? >> it was fascinating. i thought i was really good. and then when i was 15 i got to work on this project and i

realized oh, this guy is et abouter than me and critiqued me. it happened a year and a half later, and i got critiqued again. and i thought oh no, this is better. and so that was superhelpful to have my come up ans about okay, how did my code compare to other peoples code. and then eventually i was a bit on my own, but yeah, i had to be pretty tough about how good can you get. >> rose: but my impression of you is that you did pretty much what you wanted to as a teenager. >> after age 13,. >> rose: that's when teenage begins. >> i had a-- my parents were reasonable. and you know, they were fairly busy. i had a very good deal as a teenager. >> rose: yes, you did. >> they sent me to a private school. there were lots of smart kid there. >> rose: a therapist too. >> yeah, well, that was my real

transition where i was thinking that fighting with them was something that i could really prove something. and they were smart enough to send me to somebody who said that was kind of a war that i had every advantage in. and so it was just a waste of my energy. and i wasn't really going to prove anything because it was almost unfair. and he got me to set my sights on okay, what am i going to do after high school. and my parents really were more of allies than my barriers in-terms of think-- in terms of thinking of that framework. he encouraged reading in areas that i hadn't done, like freud and psychology. >> rose: what are you reading now that you really like. because you write these book reports. and you-- it is said that you read two or three books a week. >> i try to. i end up on average reading one a week. i just finished sapiens which is quite good.

i read this one that is only for old men called younger next year. which is-- . >> rose: what did you learn from that? >> it really beat you up about don't kid yourself. if you don't exercise like mad and eat well, you are in decay. but on the other side it says until your '80s, if you exercise six days a week and eat reasonably, nothing heroic, then your decline from age 60 do say 85 with any luck will be very, very modest because you're telling your body to maintain your bone strength, your muscle strength. so i found it very helpful. >> rose: and you're listening to that. >> i have never done strength training. and it says you need to do that twice a week. and so i have taken a vow to do it but ask me next time i'm here whether that will take. i've done zero days of strength

training as of today. so you can see what the result is. if i come in looking-- . >> rose: buff. >> buff, you will know that this book had a profound impact on my behalfier. >> rose: but you write these book reports. and you say you read the books even though you may not like them but you finish the books you don't like. >> yes. i don't give myself-- . >> rose: you write in the margins. >> i don't give myself permission not to finish a book. >> rose: great to you have here. >> thanks. >> rose: bill gates for the hour. thank you for joing us, see you next time. for more about this program and earlier episodes visit us online at pbs.org and charlie rose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> rose: funding for charlie roases is provided by the following: and by bloomberg, a provide are of multimedia news provide are of multimedia news and information services

man: it's like holy mother of comfort food.ion. kastner: throw it down. it's noodle crack. patel: you have to be ready for the heart attack on a platter. crowell: okay, i'm the bacon guy. man: oh, i just did a jig every time i dipped into it. man #2: it just completely blew my mind. woman: it felt like i had a mouthful of raw vegetables and dry dough. sbrocco: oh, please. i want the dessert first! [ laughs ] i told him he had to wait.