Bill i havent given the money away fast enough to drop out of the top 10. Microsoft is up 35 this year. To what do you attribute that . Bill the company is doing well. We have a great ceo great ceo. The importance of software has really come true. The five most valuable companies are Technology Companies. 1 6 of my time at microsoft. Said the biggest mistake you made professionally was that microsoft should have the entry technology. In the field of doing operating systems for personal computers. Were very popular. We were doing windows mobile. We missed being the dominant mobile operator by a tiny amount. This is the biggest mistake i made in terms of something that was clearly within our skill set. We were clearly the company that should have achieved that. We didnt. Motorola designed to go to android. Design to go to android. Host today, youre the only company over a trillion dollars. How much better could you have been . [laughter] bill market cap is only an indirect thing. Way it willect reflect what the company is doing. Valuable would be more with the mobile operating system cost efficient. I had a chance to interview melinda, the cochair of the foundation. She described how you met. You approached her in a parking lot. You asked her for a date. Weeks, wein three could have a date. She said, not spontaneous enough. She gave you her number and you called her right away and said, dinner tonight, is that spontaneous enough . Bill that is close to the truth. Her, lets meet after 10. It was spontaneous enough. Ost lets talk about Breakthrough Energy and what you are doing in Climate Change. You have set up a foundation. We will talk about it later. You have decided to make another effort, through Breakthrough Energy, to do something about Climate Change. Why are you so worried about it . Bill Climate Change gets worse every year. What you have to do on a global basis is reshaped the physical eshape the physical economy that we have. The greatest is suffering from Climate Change would be farmers in poor countries. Heat will cause problems we already have, malnutrition. It is a complex problem. I see myself as looking at something through the lens of innovation, the creation and deployment of products, helping to educate people about, what are the sources of these Greenhouse Gases . How do you get on a path of innovation, so that you can get Global Adoption and bring emissions down dramatically. That is a priority, along with the other two. Host are you doing this as a part of your foundation . Ll the part where you help countries through Development Aid is part of the part of the foundation, the development part. L is done directly by investments,t of including the funding i peopleed a group of 22 to put money into companies that are trying to commercialize the breakthroughs. Of 1that is a fund billion. You put in 250 million. 10 1 billion make that much of a difference can 1 billion make that much of a difference . We so far have 20 investments. Next year we will raise about 1 billion. We need to make these dramatic changes. If you said, we have to make steel with no emissions, it would cost you four times what it does today. Moreelectric bill would than double if we just take the technology we have today. Supporting those companies and drying other investors in drawing other investors in green energy didnt go very well in the first round. It looked like a field that might evaporate. Weve gotten other investors. That has gone quite well. We are committed to reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions by half a percent. Host i am the smallest investor in that fund. Am i going to get my money back . [laughter] investf the things you in, it is probably one of the higher risk things. It is being done on a commercial basis. Philanthropic in the sense you conducted can deduct it, but the timeframe of the return is fairly high. We expect to make a profit. Host why do you think some people dont believe there is such a thing as Climate Change . What is propelling them to say there is no Climate Change . It is Scientific Evidence or some other reason . Anyone, but some people dont think there is Climate Change. Bill the climate is a complex issue. Just understanding how you do it requires a lot of indepth study. In the United States, it has become somewhat of a part of the issue. It is unfortunate. It may make it harder to achieve this type of agreement that we need here in the United States. We have the people who denied climate. We have the people who think it is easy to fall. We need to help educate both of those groups. We used to be called global warming. Was it changed . The problems caused by the Greenhouse Gases is worse than just the average temperature going up. It causes there to be extreme precipitation. That is more drought. People thought just got warming please. Big deal. I will turn up my air conditioner. The idea that Sea Level Rise. Climate change is probably a better term. In history, is there any evidence that people will do things that would affect their great grandchildren but they will not see the benefit from . In other words if you try to , eliminate carbon in the atmosphere you cannot do it in your atmosphere. Maybe if we change our policies 100 years from now there may be , a reduction. Very rarely do people want to their great, great, great unborn grandchildren. How will you motivate people to do something. The United States has been veryng to take on difficult problems like cancer and make gigantic investments. Knowing that the real payoff would be many decades down the road. When that was first being pushed, people were saying that was important. Climate change is like that. You have got to take a longterm perspective. Government at its best is what it is taking that longterm perspective. And funding the basic r d and the policies that lead to deployment. If we do nothing, where the will the oceans rise up . If you have oceanfront land is , it going to be under water in 20 or 30 years. The uncertainties in these models are still very high. For example, by 2100, the question of if we have one meter of Sea Level Rise or two meters. That is within the level of uncertainty. Those numbers have gone up. They only took the most concern conservative view. Now, the understanding is that is at least a meter. Significant possibilities that is two meters. A large part of the carbon we have in the atmosphere is caused by the electricity grid. 24 comes from agriculture. That causing such a big degree of carbon . The math category is a variety of things. When you clear land you are , taking the carbon stored. You are releasing all of that. Another thing, the grass eating species have a digestion system that emits methane. Methane is a very powerful Greenhouse Gas. Cows alone account for about six 6 of global emissions. We need to change. Cows alone. However going to do that . Actually, of all the categories, the one that has gone better than i would have expected five years ago is this work to make this meat. You have people like impossible. Or beyond meet, both of which i invested in. You go to burger king and buy the impossible burger. It is slightly healthier for you in terms of less cholesterol. It is a dramatic reduction in methane emissions. Animal cruelty. Manure management. The pressure that Meat Consumption puts on land use. The main reason we need to increase the output of the rest of this entry is not the population increase. It is that as countries get richer, they eat more meat. Is a very inefficient way of creating calories. It is super helpful. With respect to solar, is it a solution to our problems . It is part of the solution. If the sun was shining 24 hours day, somewhere, that 25 you , have a solution. Wind and solar are very helpful. The price has come down quite a bit. People may think that is a total solution to that electric sector. But it has to be reliable. Has to work during the 10 day time that tokyo would use 23 gigawatts of electricity, you would have no solar and no wind for 10 days period. The need to have baseload generation like nuclear or others, or to have a miracle in savege so that you can that energy is very hard. The final solution to Climate Change, when we get to zero, a lot of things that use will shift over to use electricity. One of the necessary elements to get electricity to zero. The electric sector will have to more than double in size. Transportation and buildings and industrial applications that have used hydrocarbons correctly will shift over to electricity. Electrical grids that has , been in the news lately. With respect to what we may have done in russia. Are you worried that the United States could be subject to being locked up by some type of cyber terrorism . That is even proved today. They are things like the internet and the electric good that modern society is very dependent on. As we grow the electric sector, will have to take that very seriously. The u. S. Is not built to withstand the transmission. Even some very obvious projects for highvoltage lines. That would take it into tennessee. There is a real policy problem with transmission. Is a necessary piece of the solution. You have been an investor in the new technology. Is that the solution better , Nuclear Plants . It is the many locations an important part of the solution. To have energy that is available on demand. Todays Nuclear Plants, the safety characteristics. They just do not make them competitive. The 2 being built, that would be a very expensive thirdgeneration is way too expensive. The question is, can we create a new generation of advanced nuclear whose economics are twice as good. Safety is much better. The answer is, yes weekend. Yes, we can. We have a much better understanding of how to do that. Whether the United States will step up is the question. What about fusion . Fusion is very exciting. Fusion is very exciting. It is very difficult to do. There is about seven companies that are messing around with fusion. New energies put money into the mit related one. That technologically is very difficult. No one has gone to the energy break even when you have to create 10 million degrees of temperature. In order for the reaction in the sun, the fusion, to take place. To do that and get the output is a huge scientific challenge. It definitely should be funded. Unlike fusion that require straightforward engineering, it does not require intervention. What about electric cars . Absolutely, if you look at the transport sector, passenger cars with about two or three in battery improvement which is possible, the mainstream capacitor cars can become electric. You have to make that transition. You have to make sure electricity is zero emission. But for trucks and planes, there is almost no chance the batteries will be good enough. There you will still need to create liquid fuel. Either with electricity or biofuels. Fuels are amazing. The Energy Density of gasoline is 30 times the Energy Density of the best better we can make. If you look at a container ship, that crosses the ocean, having your fuel be 30 times less efficient would mean that 90 percent of the weight youre caring would be the batteries instead of the cargo. So trucks and planes and boats electrification is unlikely to work in those cases. So we need ways of making fuels carbon. When you talk about this, they said we were happy to meet you . Did they really do anything . What he tried to get them to in to do . Paris Climate Conference one of the things , that was missing was the focus on art and d. This and we want that to be for the first time. A real issue that gets discussed. It was called mission innovation. The Prime Minister got to pick that name. That idea, the commitment of over 30 governments to double the r d was a significant milestone that came out of that conference. In order to get that commitment, i had to make a commitment there will be Breakthrough Energy. It would help get them into the marketplace. There has been some progress. Climate is complicated enough. You want a broad set of people to understand the complexities. In terms of the work that needs to be done, it is unlikely to happen. So much of the worlds capacity to do that innovation is here in the United States. The United States more or less pulled out of the paris accord. Is that a concern to you, and do you think this is going to hurt the effort around the world . Yes, it is a huge step backwards. Even if you meet all the current , in that climate accord, you are still went over to degrees. Most countries are behind the commitments they made. Those were a set of reductions. Comparing your omissions to 2005 2030 emissions. There is a little bit of that that is easy. It is a onetime thing. It is a lot of that. Yet, the world is falling short. To have people like the United States say that it is even unimportant. It shows you how daunting this is going to be. There is no way will get there without them coming back. You think if you met with President Trump you could convince him on paris, or is that beyond your capabilities to do that . That. Eone else should do [laughter] let me go back for a moment. You famously dropped out of harvard. You then started your company. I think you said that she you thought the computer revolution was occurring. You actually were wrong. If you had stayed at harvard for another two years or so it would , made a big difference. Is that right, or not . The urgency that i felt. That somebody would do a great job. That probably ended up not being true. I could have waited two or three years and the opportunity to do microsoft would still have been there. But anyway, i felt a sense of urgency. I still get to take courses and learn things. Things like the learning company. It is not like i missed some of my education. New dropped out, your father and mother said are you sure you know what you want to what would you say . I would have to say yes. The dropping out is not a not an irrevocable decision. If you start a company and it does well. If you do not have kids that you need to support, it is a very low risk thing. Particularly in the culture of the United States. Trying to start something and bailing out is not a black mark for the rest of your life. When you are starting microsoft there was a lot of other software companies. You are not number 1 at the beginning. What was it that enabled you to beat everyone else in the Software Business . Bill gates or someone else . What was the main factor that made you the most successful. We were actually the first. There were companies. They were all single product companies. They got ahead of us in terms of sales. By about 1991, we did become the largest. We were an engineering company. How you use tools to develop proper. We were not about a single product. They did so well with the product. Wordperfect. The gross sales but ours. Rivaled hours. As soon as the interface caught on, it was windows, we became far larger than the other Software Company. Subsequently, google and apple. Amazon had become also extremely successful. In the 90s, we were the the Largest Companies in the United States Technology Companies. Do you worry there is too much power and too much data in the hands of these . Are you surprised the government has not done more about this . It has become so simple. Government has to think, what is that mean about elections. What does it mean about bowling. About . Ing . Bout bully for years, i bragged to people that i did not have an office in washington dc. Eventually i came to regret that statement. It was kind of almost like something washington dc. Now, the Technology Companies because of the left of microsoft, they could have seen that lesson through at t or ibm or a lot of innovators as well. They are very engaged. The will be more regulation of the tech sector. There should be some sort of regulations that relate to that. The fact that this is the way people consume media has really brought an end to a realm. We need to separate so the benefits outweigh the negative. Is that when facebook was coming is that when facebook was tried to buy you facebook. Do you regret not paying a higher price . We bought a small part of facebook. That was a super successful investment. What mark did was not within our ambit. Unlike mobile operating systems, because of our engineering culture, we were destined to be the leader in that. Now we have linkedin that is in a strong position and has a lot of growth opportunities. There is a Company Started in seattle. A Company Called amazon. There were supposed to be selling books. The started web services business. How did microsoft miss that business . Were you surprised that you were kind of beating to that game by company that was not really a Software Company . The natural companies to do the cloud would have been the classic enterprise vendors. Oracle. They really are not there at all. It is a surprise. It is a huge credit. That they got out in front. They did the best product. Today, microsoft is a strong number 2. A huge distance to number 3. It is a source of strength for microsoft. But yes there are Many Companies , including microsoft she felt bad that the did not get ahead of if you were 28 years old today and you want to start a new company today. What area would you want to in. Would you want to start it in . This is a great time to be doing innovation. There are lots of things in biology that are very interesting. Given my background, i would ai Company Whose goal would be to teach computers how to read so they can absorb and understand all of the written knowledge of the world. That is an area where they have yet to make progress. It will be quite profound when we achieve that goal. Are you worried about the power to disrupt our the increased our civilization and put people out of work, those kind of things . The increased productivity that will come will create dilemmas. About what should people do with that extra time. You have to consider that a good thing. Even though it will be interesting set of adjustments that have to take place. Most people over the last 200 years, whoever the wealthiest person was, they do not usually work that hard when they got to be 60 or so. You sent to be working pretty hard. What motivates you to work so i to work so hard . I love my work. I get to meet scientist. I get to go out in the field. I do think your habits are sort of set in your 20s or 30s. I do not believe in weekends back then. Not to mention vacations. I am very lazy compared to myself in my 20s. I was a true fanatic. All i believed in was working on software. Night and day. For that my 20s i was perfect. I do not have a wife or family at all. I am very lucky that my foundation or the parttime work i do, i see that extending for decades into the future. Having an understanding of innovation, i think shaping innovation in many of these areas. There is a unique role that i help play. Pretty famous of the last quarter of a century. Can you go to a restaurant and people not bother you . People are pretty nice about that. Especially if im with my family. Do people stare at you . Sure. That is ok. You sport now is tennis. You play with some of the best players . Roger federer and others. Do you get a lot of points off those players . Not if they are playing full out. Not a chance. You have given up golf. That is one of your other sports. Are you still a big bridge player . I love playing bridge. Is a game that the players are aging quite a bit. It has not caught on. It is unfortunate. Since it is a great game. When you want to go purchase into ang, can you go Department Store and purchase anything . For a while, but did not do that much. It is something one of my daughters enjoys doing. Helping pick close for me. We go out and go shopping together. She has good taste, so it is a neat activity. Your wife tommy when you dropped her daughter off at college, she is graduating now. The roommate did not know that she was going to be the roommate. You went to lowes to purchase things. Wasnt unusual for you to going to lowes . People stare at you . It was kind of hard to assemble some of the stuff. I wanted augmented reality to help show me how to put the pieces together properly. People are very nice. When you are relaxing today, is it to go on a trip with your family . Quotes traveling, and i get to do quite a bit of reading. You read how many books a year . 50. Do you comment on those books, you recommend those books . Probably 15 per year under serious reviews of. There are so many fantastic books. I have one coming out, would you review that . I will. Lets go back to your foundation. I ask people all the time. Assays opposing had a problem with bill gates. You have 100 billion. Then you say i give you 100 billion and to go purchase a yacht or plane. Have 9. 5 billion left. You have that problem. You assess the two most urgent issues. How did you pick those 2 . Did you make progress on any of 2 . It is our biggest area. It has been really unbelievable. Not just because of our work. Our partners. The u. S. Government spending. The european donors. They really stepped up on this issue. One of the metrics of importance as the number of children in the world who died before the age of five. When we got started, that was over 10 million per year. Now it is about 5 million per year. It is just mind blowing. People are not as aware of that issue. Because of giving out vaccines and understanding a bit more about nutrition. They have been cut half. Now it is to cut them in half again by 2030. We do have a pipeline of new vaccines. New tools. Particularly nutrition. Our Global Health work because , of the hardships we have had. Because of the innovation. They have been more successful than we expected. Our educational work. It is not just k12. And includes Higher Education as well. They are the team metrics. The dropout rates. They have moved essentially not at all. Even if the u. S. Is spending more resources on education. We spent far more than any country in the world. Yet they are quite a bit worse. Almost all the rich countries. Even some middle income countries. Even vietnam. They are passing us in terms of their mass results. Did not have the impact we have for. Part of what you have tried to do is have something called common cord. That is very controversial. In the United States, there were some very strange things. Our textbooks were twice the size of the other countries. Three times the size of singapore. That came about because of this process with the companys always one adoption of new textbooks. Anyway, they just got thicker and thicker. The u. S. Would tend to try to teach too much instead of really cementing the basic knowledge. The idea was to say what math did you learn in which various grades. Make sure my high school graduation. You have reasonable math skills. So it became more rigorous. It has largely succeeded, almost as a subtle thing. Warren buffett, can you describe your relationship with him . Is a little bit older with you, and then you develop this close reputation with him. Then he gave you a large part of his fortune. Were you just brought it surprised that he did that . He is an amazing person. Hims lucky enough to meet in 1991. I do not think i wanted to meet him. I did not think of buying and selling the stocks as a value added. I am were involved in the innovation. When i met warren, the fact that he had this model of how the world work. He just asked me, why cant i input you out of business. It was a very smart question. Because of the time was 10,000 times our size. Yet, we would go on the software to surpass ibm. It was the dominant computer company. When you develop the software, they should have it from you. That would have helped them. They will not have really change things. What has happened in computing work are really thinking about the microprocessor. Very different ways they did with the mainframe. It is kind of innovative. Looking at computing personal computing. Technologies that came out of that not dominate everything. He developed a relationship. He became a bridge player. I have an extra hundred billion dollars. Im going to give it to you. What would you say . It was unbelievable. That he chose a substantial part. That he is giving substantial money to. A High Percentage that went to our foundation. And basically doubled our ambition. Going after medication. We added sanitation. Because of the incredible resources. We asked them. He said no. He is it unbelievable person. I have learned immense amount people come to you all the time for money. By the way i have this thing you should invest in. A couple things you should invest in. How do you resist . Do you do that . Once you pick what you care about, somebody has something that can make a difference, we are super interested. We have staff of 1500 people. Some of those people come out and talk to see what those innovations are and how we can partner with you on that. Is clearly in our area. It is something that can improve education. We are going to be very interested. People are asking those things. Force me to say no. Focus is too. People recognize over the year. She famously said if you mess up raising your children, nothing else matters. You have three children. You have kept them out of newspapers and so forth. How do you do that . We should take all of our money and put it against u. S. Education and Global Health. I think that is a huge problem. Obviously our kids have vacationsfrom having and the opportunity to travel. Making sure there is visibility is not natural. There are some challenges that come with that. So far they have handled it well. Melinda deserves almost all the credit for the kids so far, doing very well. I were kids, we have said to them that the money is going to the foundation, so they dont think of themselves as aristocratic, or whatever they say. Something . t ask for they will get a little bit. But are they going to be involved in the foundation . No. Why not have a perpetual foundation . Warren has influenced my thinking on this quite a bit. Our guess is aimed at affecting yours, to make it so that where you are born and your chance of survival and living a long, healthy life, or equal throughout the board. Achievable. Be have 60 years to solve those problems. That is doable. We should take all our money and put it against u. S. Education and Global Health. There will be problems in the future that i will not understand very well, and there will be rich people in the future. More rich people than there are today. They should use their intelligence and understanding. Trimming apollo of my money left over to go after those funds just is not make any sense. Next how much has your Foundation Given away to date . 40 billion. We are up to giving 6 billion a year. Thats pretty good. [cheers and applause] aboutyou have any regrets not retiring earlier . Until the year 2000, i had not done significant philanthropy as a percentage of my wealth. I hate given a he a few hundred million dollars. In 2011, i put 20 billion into the foundation. That is when we got serious. I was part time on the 2008,tion part from 2000 when i retired from microsoft. Then i flipped so that i was fulltime at the association and part time at microsoft. That has worked out well for me. Some of these issues, i wish we had started sooner because we would be further along. The timing has worked out well. Have you worked out well . You have a happy family, great marriage, business success, it makes us feel good by saying you have done something that we did not work out. Tell us something that is bad that you have done or that you feel inadequate about. I am super lucky. Married melinda, the experience at microsoft, it is phenomenal, the work of the and i would not try and go back and change anything. Example, the antitrust lawsuit against microsoft was bad for the company. Distraction. Lot of but in a way, it was a lesson for me. It probably accelerated my attornment by five or six years. Overall, it was probably was a good thing. I do not think it was a principled set of activities. That is another story. The greatest pleasure of your life is, when you are doing what . Other than being interviewed by me. The greatest pleasure of your life. Time with kids. Time with scientists. Time when i am reading and things are making sense. Going out and seeing the impact of the foundations work. Meeting with scientists who think we can make breakthroughs to help solve climate. These are super interesting problems. Having a broad set of system thinking applied to these problems, is going to be necessary to orchestrate the resources and policies behind them. I love my work. Your children are not married, i think. You look are, do forward to having grand children . Absolutely. Will you teach them software . I do not think of microsoft as a dynastic organization. If people are watching now and they say i want to do something about Climate Change, but i am one person and dont have the resources. What can an average person do to have some impact on Climate Change in your view . Certainly, they as a consumer can take things like these new Meat Products or how they buy electricity. And they can help drive up the scale of the green solution. The most important thing at this stage, is their political voice. There is going to be a need to put substantial resources into this effort. We will need a bipartisan solution. And to send the right signal to the market, if you just win one year and it gets repealed, that does not help at all. The key is, what people see, the policies will be over the next 30 years on a consistent basis. That means its a higher bar than just a onetime victory. You started the giving pledge with melinda and warren buffett. Right now if you were to convey one message to people about philanthropy, what would you ask the average person to do . The best thing is to pick a couple of causes that you believe in deeply. And find organizations that you can get involved in. The social services and local communities. Charter schools in local communities. A host of high impact things. The dollars you give to global needs actually will have substantially more impact per dollar. You can save a life for 1000. If you fund measles or polio eradication, those things are pretty mind blowing in terms of the difference they can make. Philanthropy is not based on comparing every cause and picking the most impactful. It has to be something that connects with you personally. Even the climate area, whether its advocacy or high risk investing, there is lots that people can do. That will increase the chances of success. I want to thank you for taking time. We have two gifts. One is this. We know you are a puzzle fan. We had a puzzle made up of washington, d. C. [applause] thank you. [ applause ] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] cspan washington journal. Live every day. With news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up monday morning, we , and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise institute. And Stephen Hawkins talks about the new report on Political Polarization and the Perception Gap between partisans. Watch monday morning and join the discussion. Tomorrow, democratic president ial candidate Amy Klobuchar holds a meeting greet in iowa. Watch live on cspan, online, or listen live on the free cspan radio app. For 40 years, cspan has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington dc and around the country. So you can make up your own mind. Created by cable 1979. Unfiltered view of government. News headlines reported on the president s reef visit to north korea. The Washington Post reports, trumper is the first president to set foot on north korea. The leaders met in a spontaneous summit at the Demilitarized Zone dividing north and south korea. They went 20 steps into north korea. Heres what the moment looked like. You will hear camera operators and security personnel throughout the video