the biggest issues get voice face to face with the news makers. welcome to the alone a show where look at the real headlines with none of the mercy or come alive at a washington d.c. now tonight we're going to talk about steve jobs as an innovator a businessman somebody who went with his gut and never used a single focus group and we're going to ask if other c.e.o.'s in today's business environment could take a few notes from the now former apple c.e.o. then mother jones has done an in-depth investigation into the f.b.i. use of fifteen thousand informants to spy on americans and set up sting operations but are they foiled linked terrorist plots or they just creating more of that and a number of activists have been arrested in washington d.c. this week for protesting against the keystone pipeline calling it's game over for the planet if ghana those tar sands are exploited but is there any way to actually

stop this deal from going through we're going to speak to jane hamsher and we're going to have all of that for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at what the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so hurricane irene is about to unleash on the east coast in a few days and everybody is preparing for the harsh weather there are areas where tourists and residents are being told to evacuate their safety precautions to be taken there are the weather reporters doing live shots in the caribbean right now where the weather is getting pretty gnarly and then there are moments like this. i'm standing right here at water's edge because this water is. more than eighty degrees and this is the fuel for the hurricane so you can see that there's a few people still here at the beach of occasion but it's very different it was yesterday and the coastal cupcakes gave us these today to get us through the day because we had nothing else to be done with

a little hurricane symbols on i'm going to jakes and a little hurricane flags on there so. where do i even begin here now like i said there are safety concerns people need to be alert of the third going to be in an area that's going to be hit hard and if they should leave and you know find out where the shelters are but then in that case show us a goddamn map show me a shelter show somebody how to properly board up their windows don't waste time walking on a beach showing us cupcakes from an area that two days from now will be hit i mean you've got to be kidding me right you have to waste air time by showing us the exact sand that in two days will be touched by water let me walk on the sand a few more times let me dip my foot into the ocean until you get the point now anything say about stuff or the local news there are some other stories believe it or not that affect us on a national scale and that could be squeezed into your newscast if you would only squeeze the fact guy with the cupcakes out. case in point today that environment of defense unveiled its annual assessment of china's military capabilities and

development it was more than one hundred seventy days late but today congress finally got to take a look and make a few public statements now the gist of this report basically said that china is obviously driving hard towards achieving a set of economic and military benchmarks and they're becoming increasingly confident of their position on the world stage and that they're continuing the trend of increasing their military spending this time in two thousand and ten by twelve point seven percent well they also concluded they concluded that beijing's ultimate goal is to become a world class economic and military power by two thousand and fifty really deep conclusion there how long would it take you to figure that out anyway the point i'm trying to get at is that yes china is trying to build up its military capabilities this is something of which are all well aware it's something which the u.s. should consider when it plans for the future but that doesn't mean that we need to panic and especially does that mean that we need to not cut military spending as is the plan agreed upon in the debt deal let's not forget the countless stories that we've done right here on this program detailing the wasteful defense projects that

are costing billions if not trillions. without which let's face it we would be just as safe it's the waging war all over the world that i'm particularly concerned about what it comes to the putting us in danger department but let's move on of course with the release of this report the media and congressional war hawks are jumping on the opportunity to talk about how scary this is how much we cannot cut defense spending because apparently china is building up its military and that's a surprise to us and representative buck mckeon chairman of the house armed services committee use the unveiling of the report today to make the following statement he said china clearly believes that it can capitalize on the global financial crisis using the united states economic uncertainty as a window of opportunity to strengthen china's economic diplomatic and security interests security in the pacific could be further jeopardized if our regional allies also come to believe that the united states will sacrifice the presence and capability of the us military and attempt to control its spending this is an

unacceptable outcome and such a vital region of the globe. you know it's unacceptable to me that people make these sensationalized statements they continue to make them without anybody calling them out i have to give props to think progress today for pointing out some very important facts that everybody else should also take into account yes china is building up its military capabilities but guess what else this report shows us that we still spend six times more on our military than china does six times that means that we really don't have anything to panic about and we should still cut defense spending it's obvious it's the smart thing to do it's just not what lawmakers who have their pockets lined by defense contractors want you to know but instead of calling them out for those sensationalized the mainstream media. they're happy to miss. now yesterday we found out that steve jobs would be stepping down as c.e.o.

of apple and a letter to the apple community jobs wrote i have always said if there ever came a day when i could no longer meet my duties and expectations as apple's c.e.o. i would be the first to let you know unfortunately that day has come as bad with pancreatic cancer as well as other health problems along the public although with this note there were no specific details given now immediately we saw apple shares tumble immediately we've seen questions arise as to what the future of apple will be how much does a c.e.o. really matter will the company be able to hold onto that second most valuable spot in the world and let's take a moment to reflect on what it is that made jobs himself stand out what made some call him the edison of our time is it a rare stroke of genius that can't be repeated or is there something that today's business culture could really learn from jobs to help america innovate and create more jobs or discuss this with me is derek thompson senior editor at the atlantic thanks so much for joining us. steve jobs let's talk about what it is that made him

who he is mean do you think that this man really is some kind of a genius or is it that he also just went with his gut. he was not afraid to make mistakes that if he had no idea he went through it didn't worry about focus groups and kept pushing i hear evidence is pretty clear he is the greatest most important c.e.o. of our generation and that sounds like a huge creeping statement but it's actually it might be understating the case he might be the greatest c.e.o. of the twentieth and early twenty first century is we're talking about a guy who came into his company after a quarter where it lost money it is now the largest company in the world by market share. on par with exxon and then once we heard the news that he was resigning it last about ten to seventeen billion dollars equal to the g.d.p. of some small countries this is this is the greatest c.e.o. of our time and i think what made him that it will be debated and we you know history will be the judge i think what it is is it's his austere sense of simplicity if you look at these these products the i pod the i pod the i pad and

they are incredibly simple and this simplicity extends not just to the products but also through the showroom like retail centers where you buy these products and through the advertisers where any that's apple's brand and should say right there when i wrote this piece today calling in the edison of our time people said oh but edison invented things and steve jobs just took ideas edison took ideas too he didn't invent the light bulb he didn't vent a lot of a lot of the ideas that that we consider him being the first to come up with and steve jobs was similarly a genius in taking ideas that existed and perfecting them and marketing them for a mass audience you just did it better and you think he did he just did it better but i mean is that why you think why are people willing to pay so much money to buy an apple product when you can get the exact same thing for cheaper it just might be . a different laptop out there might be dell or something why are people willing to pay so much more just because it looks good. looking good is an important thing in part of this might be sort of conspicuous branding for yourself you want people to see you with an i phone you want people to see with an i pad but beyond that i

think this doesn't sound terribly intellectual but. it just they just work better i phones just work better than a lot of joy and the i pad works better than the playbook from blackberry this is something that the critics say again and again the products just work better and they work better because they have a vision of simplicity and the ease of use it's associated with everything from the i pod to the i phone to do they also work better because steve jobs is willing to take certain risks right a number of people today were decided that hey why don't we focus on some of steve jobs failures rather than his successes to find out what kind of a man he really was and you could talk about that one the apple two which there are only a couple of hundred they really failed you could talk about the least and he had to go through a lot of ups and downs first and i'm just wondering you know do you think that in the business environment today people are more afraid to take those kinds of risks they're more afraid to fail or in silicon valley is that still very much the norm in silicon valley you know there's a culture of failure it's the kind of place where if you fail starting your first

company it's ok people actually want to hire you because they say now that you've learned what it means to fail we think you'll be more successful i will say this about steve jobs he's been on a run in the last ten years that is just unprecedented we're talking about a guy who ten years ago invented the i pod it's sold three hundred fourteen million three hundred fourteen million devices the i phone itself is only four years old if a child was born on the day the i phone came out that child wouldn't be in kindergarten and yet there's an entire economy actually their quarterly revenue statements are just astronomical we're looking at a company that's still going to move into china and india as a rising middle class you know get makes money is that they can buy i pods and i pads and i phones i think the future this company's extremely bright but predictably i think another company is probably going to come along and conquer it and conquer google we just don't know what i guess we have we're going to have to wait and see it's an exciting world that we live in but i think that we know one of the questions we also should ask is there are a number of other countries out there that are trying to replicate silicon valley how do we also replicate that across the rest of america how do you have this culture of failure rather than too big to fail banks too big to fail auto industry

and get that to come into the rest of our society. so we can actually start innovating again right right will it's tough you know back to actually have to lot of people a lot of columnist for the atlantic have written about what's the secret of silicon valley and it's tough to put your finger on but i think one of the pieces is a culture of failure and a culture that says you know entrepreneurs are big they grow up the cash out they make their millions or billions and then they say you know what we want to do we want to reach back down into the next generation and help hold them up it's an incredible culture of collaboration that invites failure and says it's ok if this project doesn't work out then why was it last minute to be investing his five billion dollars somewhere else maybe not bank of america right now but we're going to talk about has a lot i mean a lot of different thoughts are jack thank you so much for joining us and here. now still to come we have the do not call list to block telemarketing calls but if the do not track list on line really work find out in just a moment and the f.b.i.

has made counterterrorism one of their top priority since nine eleven but i think entrapping innocent people are parents an associate director at the center for investigative reporting i think diversity of california berkeley joins me in just a moment. to the. box of the lost city. box of them. maximum d.c. should see. someone over ability. to denmark's my skills. on technology update here on along we've got the future covered.

well by now it's no secret that the internet wants to know everything about you not only your sites figuring out what you like and what pages you visit they also want to know where you are at all times but in two thousand and eleven a bill was introduced by u.s. representative jackie speier to stop the behavior of ad trackers in in their tracks . the do not track me online act of two thousand and eleven hopes to protect consumer privacy by providing an option that is said to be equivalent to the national do not call registry off lie. however that bill was never actually made into a law so some web browsers took it upon themselves to give users an option firefox internet explorer and safari of all an act of the do not track internet setting option on their browser of course since google loves to cross that creepy line anyone who uses chrome they're just gonna have to forget about having that choice

and we should know the do not track internet setting came from a regular guest on our show christopher so going in and the idea was that the setting is like a user signing a petition sending a clear sign to add companies that you not want to be tracked and the feature is very similar to the do not call list which ideally would be great for internet users except there's one little problem since this setting has no legal backing and advertisers think that they need to keep tabs on how you surf the web they just ignore it if that issue we've discussed on the show several times before and here's an interview from back in april there are concerns about liability with with firms obviously they're very concerned that if the they are found to be in violation of consumers privacy that this could be something that spirals you look at some of the social networks the millions of users so if if a user agreement or for user information is found be using correctly what exactly the scale of any awards judgment remains to be seen and. so needless to say many people have concerns including the government and in fact republican congressman

thomas roche has called on the f.t.c. to require all advertising networks to disclose what they do and even brings up the possibility of requiring those companies to explain under oath their practices now i think is a step in the right direction but i have to say i do worry that until internet users fight back against the intrusion of their privacy in the same way that they fight against solicitor phone calls interrupting their dinner well we're going to have to continue to see internet companies hoarding our personal data without any recourse. now think of a few of the foiled terrorist plots that we've spoken about before on the show the newburgh for the portland christmas tree bomber or the new york subway bombing plot they all have one of very big elements in common they were sting operations cases where f.b.i. informants it worked with the convicted or accused cases the f.b.i. labeled as a success but which others might call entrapment and it makes you wonder if since nine eleven when the bureau changes focus so heavily to counterterrorism if the f.b.i. is really stopping terrorists or creating and egging on more since nine eleven

counterterrorism now makes up a three point three billion dollars of the f.b.i.'s budget and that's the lion's share now mother jones has an in-depth investigation in that massive network of informants unveiling of the bureau currently maintains a roster of over fifteen thousand spies most of them tasked with infiltrating muslim communities and for every informant officially listed in the bureau's records there as many as three unofficial want the mother jones examined prosecutions of five hundred eight defendants in terrorism related cases and found that nearly half involve the use of informants sting operations resulted in prosecutions against one hundred fifty eight defendants and of that total forty nine defendants participated in plots led by agent provocateur who were an f.b.i. operative instigated terrorist action and that all but three of the high profile domestic terrorist plots that we've seen over the last decade those were f.b.i. stings so let's find out more about how this network of spies works and whether or not we can come to

a conclusion about busting terrorists versus leading them joining me to discuss this is trevor aaronson associate director at the center for investigative reporting at the university of california berkeley arch i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and obviously in every sting operation you need an informant and so what we found out here from this investigation is that the f.b.i. actually has fifteen thousand of them do we know if all fifteen thousand of those are used for counterterrorism or are there other operations going on as well. right there are fifteen thousand total informants within the f.b.i. not all of them are necessarily working counterterrorism but i think it's important to understand the historical context of informants within the f.b.i. right after cointelpro in the seventy's the f.b.i. had fifteen hundred formants today they have fifteen thousand which is a ten fold increase a lot of that increase has to do with the two thousand and four presidential directive or george w. bush assigned the f.b.i. or task the f.b.i. with increasing what they term as confidential human sources the term for

informants and the main reason for that was the f.b.i. is increasing push into counterterrorism so while we can't say for sure how many of the fifteen thousand working counterterrorism many of these informants are in fact doing that work in counterterrorism investigations ok so when we say an increasing push to get more informants how exactly they had so many people to sign on and want to help the government i mean is it always just hey would you like to help lend us a hand or sometimes is there you know more dirty practices involve maybe some blackmail involved. sure there are some informants who will volunteer to work for the f.b.i. but they are by far a minority the the way that the f.b.i. is able to get informants is using criminal prosecution against them if they find someone who you know was committing some kind of crime they can use that against them and say hey if you work with us we can make this crime go away but you do for the most part of the muslim community the united states or affluent law abiding communities so it's very hard to get a substantial amount of people on the phone from mobilizations so what the f.b.i.

has turned to is a partnership it has with. immigration customs enforcement or ice where they're able to use immigration violations against people to get them to use as leverage to get them to cooperate with federal authorities now you also write about here that the f.b.i. now has realized that perhaps they don't have to be so worried about another massive attack the scope of nine eleven happening that they need to focus on lone wolf terrorist so when they actually start looking for just a lone wolf or a random person is that always legal or do you think of there are also areas where the line gets a little blurry where perhaps innocent people are spied on and thrown in under this umbrella. that's certainly one of the concerns that for the most part the f.b.i. is concerned with someone who will go on to an online message board and become inspired to commit some kind of act of terror and finding that person is incredibly difficult so what they do is they use this network of informants to inform on whether someone is saying inflammatory things are saying they want to commit some

kind of violent action and if they if they do find someone like that they'll usually sign another informant a kind of operator who will go and offer them a plot so for example if someone says they want to go bomb a shopping mall they'll often provide the means for them to do that one of the constitutional concerns is whether in doing this the f.b.i. is essentially spying on people that it has no reason to believe are up to any kind of criminal activity ok so now of course the biggest concern here is people have to wonder whether this is somebody that would have been pushed over that edge on their own whether they would have gone on you know for on their own or whether they were just egged on once the f.b.i. comes over and somebody whispers a plot idea and he or somebody says i'm going to offer you all the weapons all the money that you need in order to help that can you think of some examples you know where you felt like somebody really may have been entrapped. sure you know that is significant you know whether these people really have the capacity to commit these crimes were it not for the f.b.i. an example of that is

a man in illinois didn't care if sharif derek was broke he was working at a video game store he didn't have a place to live as his car was broken down an informant came to him offered him a place to live offered him use of his car and over the course of weeks the informant and derrick talk about a plot to attack a shopping mall in illinois and of course eric didn't have the means to do that and so an informant introduced eric to an undercover f.b.i. agent who was posing as an arms dealer the arms dealer offered to provide grenades but derek didn't have any money to buy the grenades so instead they agreed derrick would trade stereo speakers for their needs that they would then use to attack shopping malls and that transaction was enough to prove a terrorism conspiracy against eric sharif and he's serving thirty five years in prison for that i think the questions that certainly raise nutcases whether there could have gone forward with any plot given that he didn't have a place to live and have a car and he certainly didn't have any money. ok so after spending so much time investigating and looking through many of these cases did you come to

a conclusion because you asked the same question right at the very beginning of your pieces is the f.b.i. actually foiling terrorist plots here or are they just helping create more of them where that threat may have never existed what's your take the vast majority of the cases we looked at the five hundred cases and in particular the sting operations that we looked at most of these men did not have any capacity to commit the crime and where they where this gets into question is when you mention entrapment it's important understand that the legal definition of entrapment is often different from what you and i would think of us in trouble so when we read these cases an average person might say yes this this person was entrapped but in united states the legal definition or meeting the legal definition of a treatment in court is incredibly difficult if not impossible for the best defense attorneys so well in some of these cases i think an average person would look at them and say this is an entrapment case so far the courts have not found that and these cases have proceeded toward convictions ok of us now to get some of this information of course you interviewed a lot of f.b.i. officials or perhaps veteran officials in the f.b.i.

do some of these people there also feel like what they're doing is wrong like perhaps they're trapping people into these scenarios that maybe they're crossing a line when it comes to civil liberties and surveillance. i times of obviously the f.b.i. has to walk a very thin line between in place of crossing civil liberties as if they don't want to do that but what they're what they're trying to do is prevent the next attack they've they believe their single purpose and their greatest priority right now is to prevent that attack and so when i have asked f.b.i. agents that specific question on a common answer is well what would you have us do this person says he wants to attack the united states if you've got access to weapons he certainly seems capable of doing that so the f.b.i. is policy then is to intercede to prevent them and use the only method it has to take these people off the street which is criminal prosecution and so in the f.b.i. from the f.b.i. perspective bay believe that they are preventing terrorist from staying on the street who would commit acts of terror were they given the opportunity by actual

terrorists by someone who would provide them with a bomb or the munitions that an f.b.i. agent or a f.b.i. informant is actually providing now do you think the majority of americans actually feel the same way right because that's one of the decisions you have to make is what's worth it and i think that's something that we've seen happen throughout this country of the last ten years since nine eleven very slowly but surely they've been encroaching on many of our civil liberties taking away many of our rights we have an increasing surveillance state but a lot of people think that if that's what keeps me safe if that will find that lone wolf and maybe if you innocent people get caught up in the mean time that it's worth it what are the responses they have been getting. i think that's a very interesting discussion for the country to have is whether you know in order to keep us safe we're treading on civil liberties i think there's also a discussion to have about whether we're willing to live with a certain amount of risk i mean going to a shopping mall anywhere in the united states you run the risk of someone walking in with a gun and shooting people no matter what you do in public life there's always going to be a certain amount of risk in federal law enforcement agencies only have the ability

to mitigate that so much and so i think we need to determine as a nation how much of this surveillance is keeping us safe and how much we we need it in place in order to keep us safe or are we willing to live with a certain amount of risk that someone holed up somewhere is willing to do violence and isn't telling anyone and is possibly able to do that and any time that that could happen no matter how much surveillance the f.b.i. puts in place why i think that what we need in order to have that conversation are more pieces like this right more information for people to actually be able to see the proof in their own hands and more investigative work which you don't see enough of in today's media environment trevor thank you so much for joining us tonight. thank you. fire thursday edition of show and tell is just ahead and there's been an ongoing protest an arrest here in d.c. over plan a pipeline from canada to the u.s. so tonight we're going to dive into that topic with jane hamsher founder of firedoglake.

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because i see coming to you live from moscow to headline. isolated head to fighting still reported in tripoli as the hunt continues for criminal khadafi in while the united nations is set to vote another freezing one point five billion dollars of seized funds. while the u.n. the u.s. push for harsher sanctions against syria's president assad twenty five people are reported to have been killed by security forces but some journalists question the footage he used to highlight the government's violent crime down over the last five months and say it might have been staged. and the search and recovery operations underway in eastern russia policy then months faced that failed to reach its orbit and crashed back to. go back to their own show in our.