hello, everyone, and welcome to "amanpour & co." here's what's coming up. >> it's getting pretty dire. >> the pain of the federal shutdown intensifies. security at airports gets worse, just as security is in the news again, with a deadly attack on american troops in syria. i'll speak with the top republican congressman and -- >> no one cares because we were black girls. >> r. kelly, one of r & b's most successful singers faces a reckoning. over years of alleged sexual abuse of underaged girls. i speak with the founder of the me too movement tarana burke. plus, does facebook need to be broken up like a 19th century oil monopoly.

why they say big tech's time has come. uniworld is a proud sponsor of "amanpour & co." bae tollman is synonymous with style. so when she acquired uniworld, a boutique river cruise line inspired by her ash ford castle, she brought a similar style to the rivers, with a destination inspired designed for each ship. bookings available through your travel adviser. for more information, visit uniworld.com. >> additional support has been provided by rosalind p. walter, bernard and irene schwartz, sue and edgar wachenheim iii, the cheryl and philip milstein family, seton melvin, judy and josh weston, and by the jpg foundation, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you.

thank you. welcome to the program everyone. i'm christine amanpour in london. is american government broken? consider this. the generosity of the celebrity chef jose andres was once reserved for victims of natural disasters. he fed the people of puerto rico after the devastatingly 2017 hurricane. but now, he's helping out in a manmade disaster. feeding people who have good, jobs, full-time work, and good pay. but they work for the federal government and they've gone unpaid for nearly four weeks. so they're lining up at food banks and on the brink of financial ruin. >> there will be no back pay for this. this is unpaid time off for me. so that's definitely not ideal right now. just coming off of the holidays and also i recently got engaged. so was trying to save for the wedding. > i don't understand why we as government workers are being

penalized for a wall that we have nothing to do with. >> now, unlike the previous 20 government shutdowns since 1976, we're learning this week, as well that this one is having a big and serious impact on the economy. and neither transportation security agents nor air traffic controllers have been paid in nearly four weeks either. they secure and land the tens of thousands of flights every day in the united states as you can see in this sped up animation. government missing in action when it is needed most. even in the midst of crises and danger overseas. of course, isis has claimed a suicide attack that killed at least 14 people this week, including four americans. that was in syria. adam kinzinger is a republican congressman from illinois. he sits on the foreign affairs, energy & commerce committees and is himself a veteran of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. congressman kinzinger, welcome

to the program. >> thanks for having me. >> so let me just ask you first because we saw this animation, and that really goes to the heart of what many, many people can understand and relate to. people who fly every day for business or meeting their families or whatever it might be. i mean, how dangerous is it right now? these air traffic controllers are not being paid. it's such a stressful job. >> yeah, i don't know about the danger of it because they're going to work and they're being good people and doing their job. but they're not getting paid. but they're not getting paid they will be made whole but. people live paycheck to paycheck. this is stupid. this is the dumbest way for government when we take an issue we disagree on like immigration that is easy to solve. it's going to take both sides getting something they want and something they don't want to get this done. instead we pout and there's a lot of people that are you know casualties of this, not getting paid.

it's dumb. this is where the american people have to demand more of their leaders. compromise is not a dirty word. >> you say that, but there is this unbelievable impasse. and a lot of fingers have been pointed towards the president's own party of which you are a member. but you have broken with sort of the monolithic votes of your own party on certain issues that could keep certain parts of the government open. do you not think it requires you know, you say the people but representatives and senators, as well to step up to the plate of getting back to governance? >> yeah, absolutely. it's going to take you know, not staring at the polls and wondering if you're going to lose a primary if you do something. it's going to take doing the leadership that frankly people invest in us to do here. that means taking some votes that may not be popular but you know it's right for the country. i voted to reopen all the parts of government that have nothing to do with the disagreement and i'm calling on both sides, my own party and the other party to

get off our intransigent positions where we're not willing to move, come and find a solution that 80% of the american people would agree with when we're done. we'll take care of the daca population, increase border security, which will be a wall in some places, not from sea to shining sea. i think we can get this done and the american people will be like, what was that 30-day shutdown about. it's disappointing. it's not fun being out here during this process. it's especially not fun for those 800,000 people that need a paycheck. >> exactly. you can relate a little bit in some aspects. you yourself are a pilot. you were in the air national guard. you served, as i said, in military interventions overseas. it is extraordinary you know, that some of these people who put their lives on the line are having to do so in the most stressful way possible and that's not knowing whether they can meet the needs of themselves and their families. and so i wonder what you make of what the president said. he said now, you know, in a phone call to supporters this

week, we're going to stay out for a long time if we have to. does that look like someone who is looking for a way out of the impasse? >> not really. it's like the people around him, there's some good people that are trying to say let's find a solution. and then there are some people that are not so good that are saying you need to have other side you capitulate totally. the only thing that gets us to a point where one side capitulates is not a realization that somebody's done a better job in the shutdown, it's that the disaster in this country will get so bad. there's going to be such an impact that that happens. ultimately, nobody wins from that. in politics, whether in politics here or anywhere around the world, the idea that the other side has to totally lose for us to declare any kind of victory is problematic for the long-term health of this political system. >> it really is, but it is the sort of motif, if you like, of politics today in so many places. just before i get to what you're

saying, additional impact and long-term impacts, i want to ask you, what -- is it the fact you've been in the military? is it the fact you served overseas? what gives you the political stomach to go against the president? >> it's that i don't need this job. i'm glad i'm doing it, i believe in what i'm doing, but i don't think -- this isn't the last job i'll ever hold in my life. i'll go on to do something else. at the end of my life, i want to look in the mirror when i had this power and built that i did what was right for as many people as i could. people disagree with my political positions that's fine. but ultimately lives is the biggest thing that matters and quality of life and american leadership around the globe. i'll stand strong to that no matter what the consequences are because it's the right thing to do. my military service had an impact, my background and family had an impact on that. i think ultimately people don't put us out here to play games. we have to lead and tell them what will leadership is. >> you're a republican in the

president's party and there hasn't been that much willingness to buck the trend that you're showing right now. so now let me ask you about a very serious impact taking even the white house by surprise. and that is practically doubling the estimate of the economic impact on growth in the country. i mean, it looks like it's going to be pretty bad and dig right into the predictions of economic growth. >> yeah, and this is at a moment when some people are predicting global economic slowdown. we're kind of an example of the opposite of that. we're in a great period of economic growth, low unemployment. this isn't the time to mess with that. this has an impact on the debt and deficit, has an impact on jobs and bottom line. as much as just even the actual impact of not getting paid and all that that comes with it, there's the psychological impact. all an economy is is human interactions. it's an idea and when people feel confident, the economy grows. this is not giving people confidence. when their leader is out here,

this isn't a massively mind-blowing issue we're shut down over. this is an issue du jour we're not going to remember in 20 years. we're doing damage to ourselves out of pride. it's did you mean. both sides this is as much for the democrats as republicans have got to put something on the table they don't like to get to the end of this. >> do you have any idea of what needs to be put on the table? what would you, your side put on the table and the other side? >> well, neither side is putting anything out there. it's hard to say. i would like to see the money for the wall and then also daca and dreamer population taken care of, the people that were brought here as young kids that know no other country. we have to deal with this. the democrats want to deal with it, too. maybe not everybody likes everything in the bill but i've learned in my eight years in congress if you have something both sides are ticked off about, usually the american people like it. >> here's the thing. there was a time when it looked like a deal on all these issues

would be made and then hard liners in your party who the president actually listens to, not even elected officials, but people in the social media and that sort of sphere, boxed him back into the corner and he said no, no, i can't do this. it's not even just you and government. >> yeah. i mean, that was very disappointing when that happened on our side. i'll also point out too the new democratic party has a lot of new people that say they'll never talk about building a wall. and that's not a good starting position either. that's why i said if we sit back and say this side's more to blame than the other side, only god can judge who is actually more to blame. we look at this through our opinions. the best thing to do for the health of the country is say let's both come off of our positions including the people talking to the president like steven miller that keep backing him off of this or ann coulter and let's get this done. we can be happy. get it done and move onto the next crisis we create out here every two days. >> interesting that you call out

names. i find that very interesting. those are the names we all hear and you can add a whole load of other radio hosts and others who are sort of sniping and attacking from the sidelines. let me ask you this. obviously, secret service is involved. all sorts of people who secure and otherwise work where you are now on capitol hill in congress. you've obviously heard the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi, has sent a letter saying to the president, consider delaying your state of the union till the government's open or deliver it by letter on the date that you've chosen. what do you make of that? is there a legitimate security concern with all of you under one roof and you know, this situation continuing? >> no, there isn't. i mean, the capitol police are being paid. they have appropriations. secret service is working. obviously the president's secure right now. i actually thought that it was pretty petty to pull the invitation of the state of the union. i think really what it comes

down to is she didn't want him to have that forum in front of the american people. i understand her not wanting him to have that. but he's president. i also think when she came out and said it was a security concern, it was disingenuous. she's the speaker of the house. they're in the majority. i'm not going to argue she doesn't have the right to do that. i think from a political perspective, it was petty and kind of appears that way. >> you know, we were talking about the military and sort of other aspects of what's been going on amid this government shutdown. we've seen there's a terrorist attack in syria where isis claims to have killed you know, 14 or so people including four americans. we've seen what's happened in kenya with al shabaab claiming and american citizens and others have been killed in that, as well. the president still insisting that he's going to pull out of syria, afghanistan, et cetera. i mean, given your military background, what do you make of this? because we understand that the

president was told when he went on his last surprise trip to iraq that isis was still much stronger than he had believed. and you know, saying that it had been defeated is not quite what's the case. >> right. yeah, look, i agree here that and i think he moderated his position a little bit and rand paul gets in his ear. rand paul with no foreign policy background. he's a libertarian which the libertarian party gets about 2% in every national election for good reason. it's a legitimate viewpoint, but most americans reject it. the idea we can leave syria because isis is defeated we saw is not the case. doesn't mean we need to stay there but it we need a plan against terrorism and isis. but also what i call a second level war on terror which is soft power. 7, 8, 9-year-olds in camps right now that look at assad who killed their family and look to isis as potentially the only alternative to the misery

they're in. when people have hope, they cannot be recruited in a terrorist organization. when they're hopeless, terrorists organizations can recruit them at record pace. >> i just pointed to what one of your colleagues, lindsey graham in the senate said about the situation. >> my concern by the statements made by president trump which has set in motion enthusiasm by the enemy we're fighting. you make people trying to help wonder about us. and as they get bolder, the people we're trying to help are going to get more uncertain. i saw this in iraq. and i'm now seeing it in syria. >> so i mean, i don't know whether you think that's coded language but he seems to be setting up the president for some blame over this latest isis attack. just like you mentioned iraq which is obviously the criticism he had of president obama pulling u.s. forces out of iraq prematurely. >> yeah, i don't want to go far to say that the president's to

blame for yesterday's attack. that was obviously a very bad person and we don't know if that attack would have gone forward anyway. the senator's correct. i mean, the reason we won in iraq with the surge was not really the addition of 20,000 troops that was helpful. but it was when the president at a time when everybody was telling him to leave said not only am i not going to leave, i'm going to double down and we're not going to be defeated. you had a massive shift in the enemy to become allies because they know you'll never defeat the united states of america on the battlefield. your best hope is to defeat our will. when the president says we may reduce in afghanistan or may not pull out of syria, that emboldens the enemy to recruit because they say they may have pushed the caliphate back but we'll come back bigger. it's a really big boon to recruiting and it's the wrong thing to do. >> so i want to ask you about some reporting that's been done from the pentagon where it appears that certain number of military personnel and uniformed personnel and the civilians

there are getting kind of nervous about this president and about the potential of using the military for political reasons. and they are trying to figure out whether this is a threat, whether they're going to have to deal with this and some are concerned that by calling out the military already to have patrolled the border, you know, over what wasn't a military threat, that that red line has been crossed. where do you stand on how a president uses the military of the united states and do you believe the president crossed a red line? >> no, i don't. i actually disagree a lot on the issue of using the military on the border. in two weeks i'm going to the border as a military officer to do border duty. that's through the national guard. i do think that title 10 active duty forces can play a role. there's legal implications in terms of what they can doing with powers of arrest or can't do. i'm not against that. i don't want the president to send military to the border as a political stunt.

but if he has a legitimate reason for them to be there to embolden the security of the border, i'm for it. but i do think the broader concern in the pentagon about the nervousness i'm hearing is related to the constant change in policy for instance in syria and the idea that a senator with no foreign policy experience is advising the president and has his ear. i think that makes a lot of people nervous. >> really, really important issues. now, let's just again talk a little bit about some of the positions that the president is trying to fill. notably for the attorney general and there were hearings on capitol hill. capitol hill this week. this is the nominee bob barr. he's been questioned by the democratic senator dick durbin in this to and fro. >> a number of my colleagues on both sides have asked and i'll bet you'll hear more, questions along the line of, what would be your breaking point? when would you pick up and leave? when is your jim mattis moment when the president has asked you to do something which you think is inconsistent with your oath.

doesn't that give you some pause as you embark on this journey? >> it might give me pause if i was 45 or 50 years old. but it doesn't give me pause right now because i had very good life. i have a very good life. i love it. but i also want to help in this circumstance. and i am not going to do anything that i think is wrong. and i will not be bullied into doing anything i think is wrong. >> of course, i got his name wrong, it's william barr. i misspoke. what do you make of that? it's kind of extraordinary language to talk about being bullied into doing something wrong. you get the sense that whether it's in the pentagon, you know, now the departed general mattis or here, that everybody's trying to protect and prevent the president from doing anything extra constitutional.

>> yeah, i don't know if that's the case. mr. barr is a great man. i fully believe what he said. i also think it was a little tacky honestly of senator durbin who is my senator to set the question up with in essence give me hypotheticals. because that's not something you can do. if mr. barr would say look, if i was asked to do something that was illegal or wrong, i would leave or take whatever action i need to. that's a correct answer. look, there's a lot of -- president trump is very different than any president we've ever had. i think there are some people that in the white house kind of tiptoe around and some people that don't. and however that dynamic works, what we've been watching. for mr. barr specifically and i didn't watch all the testimony because we had other stuff going on, i think he will be a good attorney general and expect rgin. get confirmed by a large >> great. just before i let you go, back to the shutdown. can you put a predictor on that? do you think it's going to go for another whole week? >> i don't know. i mean, i've tried to predict

this before and i've been wrong. another missed paycheck is going to be a big problem. that's probably a week away. i hope to god we get this solved before that. but i'm an optimist that's proven wrong 87% of the time. >> representative kinzinger on that note, thank you so much for joining us. >> good seeing you. >> progress may be slow in ending this devastating shutdown, but there's been evidence of long-standing allegations of sexual abuse against run one of r & b's most celebrated stars. ♪ i believe i can fly ♪ i believe i can touch the sky ♪ >> so that's r. kelly. is he responsible for some of the most enduring hits of the '90s. but for two decades, he's also been accused of sexual misconduct including sexual abuse of minors.

charges that he's also categorically denied. african-americans have largely felt left behind in the me too movement. but a new six-part series called "surviving r. kelly" is bringing victims' stories front and center for the first time. civil rights activists at a tarana burke founded the me too movement more than a decade ago, long before it was a cultural game changer and she's joining me now from new york. welcome back to our program. >> thank you for having me. >> on this particular issue, with all its ramifications and multiple layers, how do you perceive this series "surviving r. kelly" perhaps being a game-changer in bringing to account somebodies who had so many accusations leveled against him? >> well, what the documentary has done has brought into the mainstream what we've been talking about on social media, and our private lives in various journalistic efforts for the last two decades.

it's finally brought to light these allegations all in a consolidated way so people can see them. i think the reaction is that people are appalled and surprised there hasn't been more attention paid to these women who have come forward over the years to talk about these allegations. now we're starting to see a shift in the conversation and starting to see people talking about accountability both from r. kelly and from the people that support him. >> so let's just put out a few issues, a few of the accusations. for instance, you know, he once called himself the pied piper of r & b. obviously pied piper is a character who lures children with his music. he titled his protege aaliyah "age april the nothing but a number," and tried marrying her when she was 15 years old and 12 years his junior. how was that allowed to happen? there are plenty of other allegations that one writer has said indicts not just him but

the society around him, the society at large that allowed to continue in plain sight? >> well, it's allowed to happen because people again are more invested in the bottom line and in money and in fame and proximity to fame than they are in people's lives and the lives of black women and girls. and so the 100% of the women and girls accusing r. kelly are black and latina. we have seen historically that our claims particularly around sexual violence and physical violence are often falling on deaf ears. i think it's multilayered but the main reasons why it was allowed to happen is that particularly at the time when around aaliyah in the '90s and and early '00s, this is somebody who was a very successful r & b singer who brought in a lot of money for his record label, beloved in the communities and who was abusing a group of people who generally get left behind. >> so he's obviously strongly denied it. he has settled many, many of the

accusations against him over these last few years. now we understand that since the series, law enforcement in both in i think in chicago and also in georgia. >> atlanta. >> yeah, in atlanta, they're looking into it and asking more and more people to give them any evidence if they intend to pursue a case. but and here's where the race layer comes into play. i want to get your take on this because he has talked about it being in part of his denial statements nonetheless an attack on him as an african-american. a sort of a lynching as many of the others who have been accused whether it's bill cosby, whether it was clarence thomas, they used that very charged language to describe what they consider unfair allegations and attacks. start from the alleged perpetrator using that language.

>> so my response to that is always that this is something that we have to parse out. right? there's definitely a very real history of black men in this country being falsely accused of sexual violence, being framed as predators and perpetrators of sexual violence particularly against white women. we've seen it from emmett till to the central park five. that's something that can't be denied and we know that to be true. we also know it's true that black women and girls have a large rate of sexual -- there's a large rate of sexual violence in our community amongst black women and girls and that's happening largely at the hands of black men. this is not an indictment of black men. it's not to say we have any kind of special depravity in our community because it's the same thing in every other community of color. you can't just claim race and say this is as a lynch mob because if we're trying to protect this black man which we

should protect black men from false allegations and stereotypes that allow them to be railroaded by the black justice system. who protects then black women and girls? that is happening in our community. >> many girls have said perhaps if we were white girls and women being attacked, we would have been taken more seriously. here's a clip from, i'm going to play it in a second from "surviving r. kelly" and involves essentially a sex tape that surfaced in 2002 and it allegedly is r. kelly having sex with a young teenager and it's pretty vulgar. there's a difficult moment in the series when a former protege, sparkle, discusses being shown this tape by the "chicago sun-times" which was doing an investigation at the time and recognizing her niece who would have been 14 at the time. here's the clip. >> i could hear things. but to see it visually, and for her to be so young, [ bleep ] me

up. it really did. like it's over with. but it still haunts me, you know? i hate this [ bleep ] that it happened. it shouldn't have happened. i should have never introduced her to him. i should have never introduced my family to him. how dare you? how dare you? >> she's so tormented and feels so terrible about all this. in any other circumstance, it might have been a moment of reckoning but it wasn't for r. kelly. describe what happened, even when he went to trials and courts he had legions of followers supporting him there. >> yeah. i think one of the most telling things in the documentary is

when they interviewed the jurors who were presiding over his case in 2008. and there was one white male juror who said he didn't like the way the girls sounded. he didn't like the way they dressed when they came in the courtroom, so he didn't believe them. it's also true that the young person who was alleged to be in the video refused to testify. and so although members of her family and her close friends and associates testified confirming that it was her on video, she herself would not testify, nor would her parents. it complicated things. all through his trial, he had legions of fans outside. in fact, he selected one of his next alleged victims from this crowd of people outside of his trial. she's also featured in the documentary. so even while he was on trial for having sex with underage girls, there was a hunt for more underage girls happening right outside the courtroom. it's a phenomenon that i can't

understand, i don't understand how people can see these years of evidence, see the videotapes, hear the testimony from these women and girls and still continue to support him. i don't know how to explain it. >> and clearly, i assume you are questioning why people in his own business don't stand up against it and call him out. some have. some have. but is there any backlash? i know there's a movement called the hashtag mute r kelly to try to silence his music on the airwaves and things. he's really, really popular. but is there a backlash or how do you think this is going to be resolved in this case all the time saying that he denies it? >> well, the backlash has been swift and it has been really vicious. there's been a lot of vicious attacks, some of us have been threatened personally. there's been a lot of people who feel very connected for some reason to not just him but his music, and to bring up the thing

that you just talked about where people are bringing race into it a saying this is an attack on a black man again forgetting that survivors are also black and brown girls. if we're protecting black people, who protection them? the backlash has been really difficult. and i think -- the difference is, there are lots of people throughout history particularly in the music industry who have been accused of having sex with or doing sexual things with underage children. that's something that has -- we've seen it from jerry lee lewis and whatever. there's numbers of people. the difference with r. kelly i think is he is still actively doing this or actively accused of doing this. so money that goes to him from his music is going to we can safely assume it's going to support this activity he's being accused of. the mute r. kelly campaign, our efforts to cancel him are about making sure he doesn't have the resources to commit these acts

that he's been accused of. that's the backlash is unfortunate but we're still pressing forward. because i think it's really important to set an example because r. kelly it's not just about him being a superstar. he's representative of the coaches and teachers and neighbors and whoever in our neighbors who are doing the same kind of thing with a similar power dynamic. >> so you have called for his record label to drop him? you're one of the major voice who have called on the record label to drop him. what do you think it will take for the community -- let's see the music community, his record label, what will the red line be? >> christine, i wish i knew. i just think if you can watch a grown man have sex with a child on video and urinate on them, a 14-year-old, and that not be your line, i don't know what your line is. if you can watch these girls and these women, person after person go into great detail what their lives were like under this man's influence, i don't know what the

line is. but i know the line for us, those of us fighting, we've crossed it a long time ago. we'll continue to press forward to make sure that everybody knows that this is not okay. that not only would we not accept it in the music industry but we won't accept it in our community. >> getting back to the history of the african-american community, the idea which is totally legitimate that they're often wrongly accused, wrongly imprisoned. victimized by the system over and again to the point i've also read some african-american women who are abused by their husbands or their partners and who had great big shiners and who may have been at risk of being killed still didn't want to go to the police because they didn't know what the police would do to their husbands. there's all this victim of the victimizers and all the rest of it. so that tied into the issue here apparently r. kelly suffered major abuse as a child. grew up being raped as a child.

and allegedly is perpetuating that cycle of abuse. i mean, this isn't particular to the african-american community. but i mean, there is this bit, as well. >> well, and i think that's an important point you bring up because i don't think we can ignore the fact that he has a history of abuse as well as his brothers and his family. but we also know that i'm a survivor. there are millions of survivors out here who are not abusing other people. there are millions of survivors who have taken control of their lives and gotten the help they need and gotten therapy and gotten whatever they need to start a healing process so that this doesn't become a toxic thing that takes over their lives and manifests in ways that look like abuse to other people. so in all of these years, we've heard these stories over and over again about kelly's abuse. we haven't heard what he's done to do something about it. he's been in the public eye for almost 30 years. in that time, we haven't seen

any outward-facing effort to do something about these issues and so we should not mistake the on conflate the fact that he was a survivor of sexual violence to him being a predator now because that doesn't automatically mean that you become a predator. it certainly could have some influence in it but we have control of our lives and he should be seeking help for that, not using it as a reason to excuse his behavior. >> and just beyond what you see in the press or what you see in the activism, i don't know whether you talked to your friends, your group about this, and about the series, what do people say about it? are they pleased the series is out? do they think it's an important wake-up call on this issue? which speaks to the broader question of, does the public have a responsibility also to say, look, we're not going to listen to this guy's music? >> this is always a complicated question for people. what's our responsibility. so first, the reaction has been great. i think that a lot of people who were either on the fence or heard a couple things or saw

rumors are putting it together by seeing the documentary and saying, oh, my gosh, this is really what we thought it is. that's been an effective tool in that way. there's also been backlash with people saying he's being attacked and falsely accused and a number of things. i think it's landed pretty well and it's given a snapshot of what the lives of these women have been like, not just the sexual violence but intimate partner physical violence. that part has been good. i think that we can use it as a tool because it also has provided us an avenue to start talking about the reality of sexual violence in the black community. and the reality of the lived experience of black women and girl survivors. that's been an important point for me because it's something that has been at the center of

my work for so long and so i've been able to use this documentary to talk about the broader issue of sexual violence before i let you go, quickly, given the fact you are the founder of the me, too movement, in the broader me, too sense, what grade would you give the situation right now more than a year after the floodgates were opened? >> i think the dust is settling now, and people have gotten accustomed to the idea that we're going to talk about sexual violence, we're going to confront it and deal with it head on and work on solutions. i think we're settling into the work of it. our organization has started to form now and we have a team and we're building out programs and things so we can support the people who actually say me too. tarana burke, thank you very much indeed. and we turn now to another prominent plague defining our time. that's massive corporate monopolies. big industries dominated by just a few giants. take tech, for example, where facebook increased its market

share by buying its competitors, what's app and instagram. according to our next guest, we have abandoned regulation laws to the public's detriment. tim wu is a legal powerhouse and author of "the curse of bigness." he told our walter isaacson, we don't need to fix facebook. we need to replace it. >> tim wu, welcome to the show. >> a pleasure. >> you just wrote a book on the curse of bigness. how does that apply to the tech industry? >> well, i mean, where do you start? i think the tech industry as you know well used to be one of the most competitive, open to anybody kind of industries. today it's dominated by three or four big players. it's completely changed. look at a company like facebook, every day, there's some new revelation of them being unable to control what's happening, new privacy violations. we have a bigness problem in the tech industry. >> we used to have a lot of competitiveness in the tech industry, but that came about because of three really big anti-trust cases

against ibm, at&t and microsoft. did we really knees those cases? those three companies stumbled on their own, didn't they? >> those cases were seeks to the tech industry's openness in the early thousands and its vibrancy over the '80s and '90s. when you think about it, at&t had a chokehold on telecom. ibm had mainframes. microsoft had operating systems. te fact that the anti-trust division challenged them hard each of them, in at&t's case broken them into nine pieces, made a huge difference in the openness of that industry. >> the microsoft case they didn't totally win, did they? >> they didn't break them up. bush administration, they were out to break them up. bush administration decided not to. >> but the anti-trust in this country has a long history, more than a century ago, you had the big trusts jpmorgan and andrew carnegie. then they get broken up in the era of teddy roosevelt. what was the theory behind anti-trust law?

>> you know, back when it was first enforced, i think it was a mixture of not only economic ideas, they're choking the economy, but also political ideas, a sense that companies like standard oil, jpmorgan saw themselves as above the law. they wanted to dominate politics and wanted to run the country. when roosevelt broke up all these companies, he did it because he said we have to prove the government rules this country. it's not just run by a bunch of companies. >> this was teddy roosevelt. and he does it in a period called the gilded age because these big companies had created great multimillionaires of wealth. that disparity of wealth leads to some political problem. do you see an echo of the gilded age in the present? >> yeah, we're in a new gilded age. we've abandoned enforcement of the anti-trust laws and a lot of economic regulation and the unsurprising consequence is we

have the same wealth disparities we had 100 and something years ago. we have this enormous concentration where most industries are either oh i goneplies or monopolies. we re-created the gilded age and you have the same politics, as well. more and more extreme politics. people getting angry, demanding more extreme leaders. >> it was teddy roosevelt who breaks them up and lewis brandeis who comes up with a theory of anti-bigness when it comes to both government and corporations. it wasn't sort of a liberal conservative or democratic republican thing. it was against big government, big corporations, explain bran dice's philosophy as you do in the book. >> sure. lewis brandeis is one of the heroes of the book. he is very fixated on what the economy does for ordinary people. what it means for the nation's soul. he wanted the united states to

be a place where people could flourish, become who they might become. he thought that the economy had so much to do with that. just take one thing, your career, your job. do you have steady work? do you have vacation time? are you sort of worked like a slave or are you unsteady, always worried you'll get fired? these factors he thought determined what kind of republic this was. and he believed that citizenship depended a lot on economic conditions. i think we've lost that today. we just sort of think of the economy is the dow up or down. democracy is voting. but he had a much deeper conception i think of the way that economics and politics were linked to create a citizen and create a republic worth living in. >> you used to be in government. would you have allowed and do you think facebook should have been allowed to acquire whatsapp and instagram? >> no, i think the government, i was in it actually around that time. made a pretty serious error. facebook in retrospect was concerned about competition. it was worried it was going to become the social network of the past and it bought off all its most dangerous competitors.

that is supposed to be illegal under the anti-trust laws. we don't just let people buy their competitors. that's what standard oil did. in the 19th century. we can maybe fix it. allowing them to buy off competition was a huge mistake. >> but the anti-trust laws has one test which is does it harm consumers. in some ways, these are free services that might help the consumer. it's easier to move back and forth from instagram to facebook. should there be and has there been another test which is just you shouldn't stomp out competition even though it might be cheaper for the consumer if there was no competition? we like competition because we like free markets. if so, why? >> what we need to understand is the anti-trust laws defend the competitive process, defend the system of competition which has been the american tradition most of our history. we've narrowed this idea are

things going to be a dollar cheaper or not. that's not the right question. the question is does a company like facebook, like google, an industry like the airlines are they destroying competition which is supposed to bring benefits for us as citizens, consumers and employees. >> you think competition has benefit even if it's not just cheaper pricing as the benefit? >> that's right. i think of facebook a competition from instagram and what's app, it couldn't have racked up these privacy abuses or if it had people would leave. you hear the latest privacy outrage with facebook, what are you going to do? you quit. say good-bye to your friends or go to instagram which they own, whatsapp, which they own. people are stuck here. and that's what it feels like when you don't have choices. it's about freedom actually. it's a fundamental matter. do you have somewhere else you can go if you don't like the way things are? and you know, a lot of areas you

don't. >> is there any public sentiment for breaking up google and facebook? >> i think there is i think you have a sense that thing are out of control. it's not only tech. the pharmaceutical industry and the pattern of price rises, about the airline industry, think about cable. all across the economy, people feel kind of trapped. and you know, you talk about you sense an anger and a desire for something different. anti-trust is an american tradition. it's an american invention. and i think it responds to something already real which is a sense of powerlessness in the face of an economic force far greater than you. and people are asking for new answers. they don't want socialism, they don't want anarchism. i hope they don't want fascism. this is kind confident american compromise as we challenge the and restore this kind of open up economic order. i think if we don't do

something, we're going to have continued election of extreme leaders around the world, not just in the united states. of this pattern of economic anger generating very dangerous totalitarian tendencies. >> and facebook actually seems to be a platform that amplifies that rather than brings us together. what is fundamentally wrong now with facebook? >> i think it's two things. first, it's the curse of bigness. way too big way too fast. lost control of themselves while at the same time, having this obsession with growth and money. frankly, which has just in my mind blindsided them to the dangers they were creating. i don't think facebook sat down and said let's let the russians hack us and influence the election. but they were so obsessed with this business model of

engagement, of time on site, making sure billions of people spend as much time as possible on this product which is as addictive as probable that they let everything else go to the wayside. and have really created dangers for this democracy. >> if facebook wanted to, it could stop trolls and bots and russian internet research agency people in st. petersburg from posting fake news if they tried hard enough. do you think they should be required by law to do that or pushed into doing that? >> i actually have a different view. i think it's almost out of their -- they could control it but i think they are so genetically now predisposed to this model of just trying to get people engaged for as long as possible. we need to replace them. social networking is a noble undertaking done right. you're trying to connect people, see friends and family. but when you have tied to it the idea that you're going to constantly maximizing the time and ad revenue and so forth it leads in very dangerous

directions. i think they're cursed by their makeup, by their leadership and it's almost irredeemable. >> what do you mean cursed by their leadership? >> i think mark zuckerberg is not an ethical person. i think he might suggest that ethics are important if it sounds good, but i do not in his core believe that he has shown the traits of an ethical leader. and he is in a position of so much power over so much information, that i think we cannot have a person like that in charge of so much that matters in the world. >> that's a pretty stark charge. and i mean, i would think that mark zuckerberg probably tries to be ethical. he thinks he's doing the right thing. is there something pushing him the wrong way or do you think he doesn't care? >> when you look through the history of facebook carefully, there are signs of a lack of ethics that are glare, a sense

that if you apologize, you can get away with almost anything, a sense that they are above the normal rules of ethics or law. you know, i worked at the federal trade commission when we did what we thought was a strong order to prevent them from violating privacy. they showed no signs of having reached consciousness. i won't go so far as saying he's evil. but i will say he does not seemed bound by the normal ethical constrains that would cause a person to ask whether or not they're creating a danger to democracy, whether or not threw -- they're breaking the law. >> do you think cooperate leaders should do that? i think they should. there's no choice. i'm with the american framers in the sense and someone like john adams who says no matter what safeguards you have, i can't really replace virtue. you know? it comes down to whether the people in positions of power are good people or not. and corporate leaders are incredibly powerful.

this idea that them thinking about shareholder welfare will about shareholder welfare will generate a kind of republic you want to live in? i think it has proven a farce. you know? we need a new generation of people who actually are what the romans would consider people of virtue and ethics and good leadership. and you know, we dress it all up with separation of powers and you know, they're a corporate leader. when it comes down to it, what are the people really like? >> who's doing it right? >> that's a great question. one example is jimmy wales started wikipedia. could have made himself a millionaire, easily. he realized if he ever took ads that wikipedia would become a travesty. so he said we're not going to take ads. we're going to be a nonprofit. we have to structure it carefully. most of the leaders in silicon valley thought that they could have it all. they thought that they could be good people. i'm thinking of google now, larry page, sergei brent.

>> don't be evil. >> don't be evil. we're going to be a positive force for human change. but we're also going to be billionaires. we're also going to adopt the standard corporate form and promise we're going to double our profits every year or so. those things don't work well together. >> but can you be a for-profit company as opposed to a wikipedia and not fall prey to that? you believe in free markets, free corporations, don't you? >> i think -- no, i absolutely do. i think you can. i just think this blind adherence leaving no room for anything but the per suit -- pursuit of profit has led us into some very dangerous ethical territory. i mean, larry page had good intentions. i think they mean well. but i think this deal they made with advertising has come back to bite them.

and has damaged their product. so that it's actually a worse product than it was five years ago. >> you say that corporate leaders should have that higher yeah. . >> but that's exactly what google had. when they did their original public offering. >> yes. >> they said we are not going to be totally driven by quarterly shareholder returns. >> yes. >> and then they put in it, don't be evil. >> right. >> what happened? >> you know, i went back and read that recently. they've made a mockery of it. i think they didn't realize they were dealing with something much more powerful than themselves. they thought, like many people do, you know, am a good guy. i'm not going to get warped or obsessed with the quest for power or money. i'm different. and i think that is sort of the original sin of silicon valley. so they went for these standard corporate models.

it made a little bit of difference, but cosmetic. they had to do something much stronger. if i look back at silicon valley early thousands and think about the mistakes all of us made, i was also there, it was this sense that we could just trust a couple good people to be good as opposed to create a sort of constitutional institutional structure that forces you to be good. that's the difference between wikipedia and let's say google or facebook is they set it up so that this would be a different kind of enterprise for a long time, not just five years. >> if you don't cater to the advertising revenue and keep increasing it, what's your revenue model? will consumers have to pay for it? >> look at wikipedia donation model. they make more money. >> that's not going to work for a google or facebook. >> for google, it would be challenging. i think they can have an advertising model but if they're not bent on constantly needing to increase revenue by such numbers, they make enormous sums of money. they could run google on $50

million. they have to keep going, that's what the markets and investors want. i think it's trapped them. frankly, i think the founders of these companies sometimes i wonder, how did i get in this position? i wanted to build a great product and here i am degrading my own product because of the demands of investors. that must be an uncomfortable thing to think about as you go into your later years. >> tim wu, thank you for joining us. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> maybe a vision for a better future there. before we go tonight, we want to tell you about a remarkable man who was among those killed by terrorists in nairobi, kenya, this week. this man, an american citizen, jason sped ler, was an investment banker getting his start in new york. that sunny morning september 11th, 2001. he was late to work and he emerged from the subway as the first tower of the world trade center came crashing down. but jason ran towards it.

and he helped pull victims out of the rubble. later, he went on to change his career. focusing on helping others through socially conscious enterprise. nearly two decades later, the job would take him to kenya. and it was there on tuesday, that he would once again come face-to-face with terrorists. this time though, they took his life. jason spendler was one of at least 21 people killed by the somali based al shabaab militants who stormed a business and hotel complex in nairobi, kenya. next monday would have been his 41st birthday. that is it for our program the only thing. thank you for watching "amanpour & co." on pbs and join us again tomorrow night. uniworld is a proud sponsor of "amanpour & co." ebay

when bea tollman founded a collection of boutique hotels, crewsline inspired by her ash ford castle, she brought a similar style to the rivers with a destination inspired for each ship. bookings available through your travel adviser. for more information, visit uniworld.com. >> additional support has been provided by rosalind p. walter, bernard and irene schwartz, sue and edgar wachenheim iii, the cheryl and philip milstein family, seton melvin, judy and josh weston, the jpb foundation, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. you're watching pbs.

>> announcer: this is "nightly business report" with sue herera and bill griffeth. stocks surged. the market heats up on a new report that the trade war with china may be thawing. forgotten middle child. investing for the long term? why midcap stocks may be your best bet. stressed out? how to make sure your investment decisions are not as volatile as the those stories and much more tonight on "nightly business report" for this friday, january th good evening, everyone, and welcome. as you know, the market loves hearing about progress in trade negotiations with china, and today that's exactly what it got. there are reports that the