Of your new book, tools and weapons . Its Digital Technology has become both a tool and a weapon. Its creating all kinds of benefits is challenges as well we have to grapple it both sides of that equation. Your book is a world tour that starts in quincy washington why quincy washington . We chose quincy washington because its one of the data center capitals of the world if you will its near the columbia river. Data centers are being built there because its close to hydroelectric power this both cheap and clean. We take the reader on a tour of if you will, what is really becoming the infrastructure of the 21st century. These mammoth buildings filled with generators, hundreds, thousands of batteries, but of course mostly server computers. Everything we do, almost every day is accessing or storing our data in the cloud is really one of these data centers. And you have 100 of these in 20 countries . More than 20 countries, more than 100 data centers. Microsoft is one of the largest but Companies Like google, amazon, apple, amazon, we are building more and more of these data centers. It is where we are all storing our data, they become among other things the Largest Consumer of electricity in the world. If i send an email from Microsoft Outlook to someone at the office doesnt have to go through that data server . It doesnt have to you can still use our software and use it in the form that you just store your own laptop or run it on your own server computer in your office. But the world has moved to the cloud over the last decade it is far cheaper, its more secure, you are always going to have the latest technology, you are not going to have to upgrade it yourself. You can rely on microsoft Cybersecurity Team then say those in your office. So the world is shifting and most technology is moving in this direction. What is it cost to build one of these buildings at usace a size of a football field . Any time we open a new data center its by typically investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. If you look at microsoft, the other Industry Leaders collectively, we are easily spending tens of billions of dollars a year just in building these new buildings, and electrical putting computers inside of them. What kind of investment you make in securing that cloud . Its a fascinating piece of this. Of course its enormously expensive. It starts with physical security, you cannot get into the ground around these premises. The physical security is tighter than what you would see in a commercial airport. But it really is the Network Security thats more important still. So we spend a billion dollars a year just on new security features. Thats really r d and innovation. We have 3000 security engineers, just the protection of this has become a huge priority. Brad smith he said he researched on your way out of this facility as well. Yes, its fascinating youre not surprised him you go into a data center and before you go into the inter sanctum so to speak, the room with the computers and servers, you have to go through a second very tight airport style metal detector. But then you are searched when you leave as well. But youre saying why am i being searched to leave . I dont get sir charlie the airport, so no one can walk out the hard drive. Literally the only way the hard dries leave that room at the end of their life is by first going through what is a huge machine it is the equivalent of a paper shredder, but this is for literally metal hard drives and it leads to its own special exit. You right in your book, tools and weapons, that ireland is to data what switzerland is to money. What do you mean . Ireland is a great place to store data in switzerland is generally regarded across europe, across the middle east, around the world in many ways as a safe place to store money. It is secure. Ireland first of all is a great place to build data centers, the temperature is mild, you dont typically have to turn on the heating or the air conditioning, uses less electricity as a result. But more than that, what we really mean is has a network of laws that protect privacy, that protect data, has a stable government, its part of the European Union access to the rest of the you are moving data back and forth. Its one of the worlds most attractive places to store data. But its an island as well . Dont you need cables to connect . That is the fascinating part of the story as well. The Irish Government has long had a lot of foresight, i would say, when it comes to planning for its economy and thinking about technology. American tech sector sort of got started in ireland in the 1980s comets were everybody manufacture their cds back then. So as we got close to the year 2000, the Irish Government came to us, the United States based on the future they said make ireland a place to build the data center, but you dont have any cables to move data to the continent. And they said give us three months. We will go solve that problem. In three months later, they had, they came back they had entered into a contract and the cable was just about to be laid. The rest is history because ireland really has become a place, by our calculations about 35 of all European Data is stored in ireland. So what is the advantage of having this Data Security clouds as tools . As tools they are enabling businesses to do new things, its first driving down costs. And enabling businesses and governments and others to rely on other peoples advanced security protection. But fundamentally all of this is doing is enabling people to use technology in new ways. We really have an hour view entered a new era. Its an ai or Artificial Intelligence based era. If you think back to the first half of the 20th century, the Combustion Engine changed everything to the car, the tractor, the truck that airplane. Over the next three decades, ai will have a similar impact. It is already making it impossible for machines to understand speech, what people say, vision to understand their faces and recognize people to translate between languages. All of that is based on several things, but perhaps the most important was this large amount of computational power of data storage in the cloud in these data centers. Also in your book tools and weapons you talk about the weaponization of data which is what . Would start to cyber attacks. It starts with hacking by organized crime these days unfortunately the hacking nationstate. Hacking a political candidate and think tanks and the like. It includes disinformation campaigns. It includes potential hacking of voting and election. It includes a variety of other challenges that may not be weapons. Se but when we think about the impact of all this technology on our jobs, what is it didnt mean for our people, our jobs, their children their jobs . All of these are challenges that technology is creating. That takes us on a tour to north korea and china, absolutely does as well as iran. We are seeing certain governments world be particularly aggressive. We measure this every day. We see the attacks that take place. We have been public and saying weve seen the most attacks over the last few years coming from russia, north korea, and iran. Especially attacks that tend to be more focused on our civilian infrastructure or on our electoral processes in particular. What is microsofts business interest money comes to china . We want to serve our customers when they do business in china. China is not as large a market as it is for some other Tech Companies. China has 18 of the worlds people. It accounts for 1. 8 of our revenue. If an American Company wants to go to china to sell coffee, we wanted to be able to use our services in china the same way it does everywhere else. There are consumers in china who want to use windows on their laptops kino office to write their documents, to send an email, we want them to be able to do that. So we want to participate in that economy, we want to participate in the Global Economy in a thoughtful way. Annoyed focuses on u. S. National security and the protection of human rights. Also serving people who in our view need to be served. Tools and weapons you talk about microsoft does judge a nation on its human rights score correct . Before we open an data center and a new country, we evaluate many things. Do we have access to electricity . Do water . Do we have concerns about corruption risk and the like . And we evaluate human rights. We use that human rights evaluation to make decisions there are some countries were he wont place a data center because we feel that once the data is in that country, we cant protect peoples rights the way they need to be protected. And theres other countries or he will put data, china is one of them, but we wont put our consumer services. So we have for example a Consumer Email service outlook. Com is its current name. We dont offer it in china because we dont feel we can strike the balance in terms of protecting human rights. In china moving toward the social credit system, are we in danger of perhaps having to world wide webs . Two internets . I think over the past decade there has been a trend in that direction. I think once these two countries in the world today that tend to be producing the most tech leaders. Its the United States, and its china. You see less American Technology in china less Chinese Technology in the United States. You see different awes different public policies, as anything to do with distinction business practices. You then you see competition especially places in europe where they decide who you get a bio you gonna buy from. You call for regulation in this book, and affect bill gates on his forward points out the anomaly of a Business Leader calling for more regulation. But your writing that you need that, you need to have that regulation. I think we need two things. We need businesses in the tech sector to step up and exercise more self regulation a higher commitment to responsibility. We do think we need more regulation of technology. Think about how we live our lives. If you go to the Grocery Store and you pick something up off the shelf, you will read the nutrition label knowing that its standardized and accurate because of regulation. You go over to the Pharmacy Department and buy a product, you dont worry about the safety of it because its regulated. When you get in your car, it complies with certain Safety Standards and its driven airplane. Our basic point is Digital Technology has gone longer with less regulation than almost any technology in the middle of the 1800s. We think that the Market Customer and even the industry itself, would be better served for the long term of the different balance. That takes us to washington d. C. Because bill gates took a lot of pride in the fact that microsoft did not have a d. C. Office for a long time. And will point that out he did take pride in that and then he learned they were probably some Better Things clearly some Better Things to take pride in we are here today. We are in 56 capitals around the world. We conclude the book is Technology Animation is not going to slow down. The work to manage it needs to speed up. We really do believe that governments need to speed up. I used to come to washington and we had people 15 years ago didnt understand technology deeply. I think many times today, they often do. They understand it much better, and i think politicians get a bad rap, i think journalists look to point out heres a politician that didnt ask the right question or heres a politician that didnt ask the question the right way. And i think thats frankly a mistake. I dont think its accurate. I dont think you serve anyone well, whenever you criticize them for asking a good question the wrong way. The truth is, we have regulators and politicians today that have figured out how to regulate very complex pharmaceutical products. We have people today who regulate airplanes basically computers with wings they regulate for cars are basically computers on wheels. We have people who are perfectly capable and wash and tea d. C. Who regulate computers that dont move it all. They sit in a data center. I think as a country, is a world, we need to strike a balance with a healthy dose. What it comes to privacy what would microsoft like to see . We would like to see a Strong National privacy law in the United States. We have been advocating for that i have personally been advocating for that since 2005. You can see how little impact we have had in washington d. C. Over the course a decade and a half. Its actually a good thing that california adopted a strong privacy law last year we think its a good thing that is now bringing the debate to washington d. C. I think the american public, consumers and customers, even Tech Companies will be well served if there is a good, privacy law, strong privacy law from the United States, for the next decade what we really need is more of a global privacy compacts. Data moves around the world, you dont actually want the protection of peoples privacy to constantly change every time data crosses the border and we will only get that when we can bring governments together. When you think of the european gdp are . On balance we are pretty enthusiastic about it. We have long been more enthusiastic about it than most companies in the tech sector. Is that because you do Different Things . I think to some degree we do some Different Things, we are not as focused on monetizing data through behavioral advertising and the like. I think reflects our own experience with laws, with regulations, the antitrust cases that we learn from when they unfold in the 1990s an early 2000s. In some respects it reflects the belief that a market will work best, and the companies that participate in it will succeed the most for the longterm if consumers have confidence. Mr. Smith, what is the current status of International Cooperation on these issues . I think there are signs of progress and a lot of headwind. You see signs of progress on cybersecurity, on issues like digital safety, weve seen some really impressive leadership blaster by the french government, this year by the new zealand Prime Minister in the wake of the christchurch terrorist attack to bring companies and governments around the world to advance digital safety. I think that is creating a model that we can look to more broadly, but of course we are also living in a time when the multilateralism is less popular, certainly less popular in the United States than perhaps any time since the 1930s. And in part, our book is a call for governments coming together with companies, with Civil Society in a multi stakeholder approach, we just dont see any other effective alternative for addressing the challenges people care about. She met Christchurch New Zealand takes partier book two. It does by coincidence really we were in new zealand 12 days after the christchurch attack. During the course the day Prime Ministers Office Reached out, we heard she wanted to meet with this of course we did. It was a fascinating conversation she said look, i just dont want to see what happened christchurch repeated. And what happened there was different from other terrorist attacks. Because the attacker really use the internet as a stage. It was streamed live on facebook, it was uploaded probably millions of times on youtube. Its the kind of thing that can incentivize terrorism if we are not careful. And so we said lets see what we can do together and really thanks to her leadership more than any single thing, she got on the phone, she called other tech leaders, we worked with others across the tech sector may lead to whats called to the christchurch call. It was signed in paris, by september new york at the un, there were more than 50 governments that is signed up as well it has facebook it has google it has youtube it has amazon has microsoft. And weve all committed to take, now some very concrete steps that i think make it harder, certainly harder for any terrorist to do what was done in christchurch. How often you find yourself working with the federal government and or suing the federal government . We work with the federal government every day and we probably sue the federal government on average every year. So thats the balance and of course once a lawsuit starts you have to continue it. We never sue our own government without a lot of thought. And without believing a real principle is at stake. But we have brought litigation several times to stand up for what we believe are important privacy rights for customers and during the last couple of years as well as to stand up for our employees of who are protected by docket we have 66 employees who are dreamers and so we thought that was another important case to bring so we did so. When it comes to privacy what is one of the cases you pursued . Most of the privacy cases we pursued have been about giving people businesses or individuals more knowledge or information about when the information is getting their data so it started in 2013 we argued successfully we had a First Amendment right to publish data generally about how many kinds of National Security orders we receive. One issue we continue to litigate is the right that we believe businesses have so that when the federal government once their data, the vast majority of circumstances we believe the government should go to the business and not come to us or some other Cloud Service provider. Thats the way this country works since it was founded and until the cloud was created. If you ran a business, and if you have emails or documents that the federal government wanted, they had to go to court and get award and serve it on you. So therefore you knew about it. You may have to turn over the information but then you could go to court to protect your right. But we dont want to see is a present for our future where the government only comes to us and you dont even know that the government has your information. You cant stand up for yourself and defend yourself. So whenever we see cases like that, and we do see them periodically, we try to negotiate an outcome with the department of justice and if we fail and we believe the facts on our side, we go to court. Mr. Smith, Edward Snowden revealed quite a bit any features in your book as well. Was the government stealing microsoft information . I would never use the word steel and ill be quick to add that even six years after the disclosures, there is a lot that we still dont know and theres a lot we may never know. That may be appropriate in certain respects when it comes to National Security and state secrets. But we do talk in the book about the coverage of the Washington Post in october of 2013, we do talk about the reports that suggest the u. S. Government either by itself, or with the british government, was tapping into cables, potentially under seas or landbased cables to access data that it may have been happening outside the use of warrants and therefore the rule of law. So we were explicit then, that that was something that concerned us we were explicit with the white house and president obama and saying there needs to be some reform, and there has been summoned for engine important reform in the sixyear sentence. So i actually think that it is good that generally speaking we learn more, the world learn more we could address perhaps a bit of an imbalance. Do you feel that microsofts management of data is secure today . I do. From prying eyes like that . I would say the answer is yes. And the reason i would say the answer is yes its in part because of technological changes that microsoft and others in the industry had made. One of the responses to those disclosures was to deploy stronger encryption basically comprehensively so it means whenever data is moving between data centers its encrypted. Whenever data is stored on our servers it is encrypted. So if any government, and this is not by any means a question that anyone should think is complying to the u. S. Alone, if any government tries to tap into data it is highly unlikely to be able to read even what it obtained. But more generally, i feel more confident not just because of these technological advances in Cyber Security protections, but because of the legal reforms that have been adopted in the United States. Similar legal reforms have been adopted in other countries and i think thats a good thing too. And we have not even cracked the code when it comes to regulation or looking at ai and facial recognition technology. This is one of the Big Questions for the 2020s. We suddenly live in a world where a government candidate once, use cameras and computers and facial recognition to identify everybody who walks down the street. We are seeing this in some parts of the world. We do believe that we need to put in place controls, we do as a company so this isnt used in ways in which we believe conflict with human rights in countries where human rights are not protected adequately. But we need laws as well. We think a very important question even in the United States is when should lawenforcement be able to use this technology to follow you everywhere you go. We would say probably the way it goes and gets access today by getting a search warrant from court. But thats a debate we need to start having in the United States and we need to Start Talking about what this technology means. We saved values that are really timeless, brad smith dear president of microsoft, microsoft also has a ceo bill gates. What are your duties . I play several rolls in the company but i think one of the most interesting certainly is to really be on point for these issues were Technology Meet society. There are so many issues today, sustainability, privacy, security comedy responsible Artificial Intelligence, digital safety, where the world has a different set of expectations of us. Then it did a decade or two ago. This requires that we bring people together across our business because we need to intubate in the state but we also require that we connect with the rest of the world, with people in government and elsewhere. Because this is a journey we are all on together. And it requires not only action by companies, it requires new steps by government. You joined microsoft in 83 93 sorry about that how is the Company Changed since then . When i joined microsoft that just over 4000 employees that today they have a hundred 50000. The first thing you see is everything is bigger. When you are big, you have to find ways to move quickly in a new form. Because obviously moving a big group of people is a lot harder than a small group of people. When i joined in 1993, technology was not something you read about every day unless you are a techie geek or an intellectual property lawyer. Obviously, it has become perhaps the single most defining element of our times, we live in technology era, it means that the world has questions and we need to answer them. It means people want to understand Technology Without having to get a phd in computer science. Part of what i need to do, part of what a lot of us need to do, we have a great team that does it. His serve as translators both to help people understand what the issues are, and to help our engineers understand what is on peoples mind. Youre joining us here in washington where the jedi contract by the pentagon has been awarded to microsoft but there is a challenge by fellow Seattle Company whats the status . Microsoft and amazon and other companies were competing for what is clearly a very important contract for the future of the pentagon. To help its enterprise, architecture, and data moved to the cloud. We were delighted when the pentagon awarded that contract to us. Amazon, has filed a protest which is not unusual for people who live in washington d. C. And this was from washington state. Protest, i think barely make it into the newest they are so common. For us, we have a job to do. One thing i say to our own employees is every contract is important, and some are even more important than others. It is hard to imagine a contract that is more important than this. Because now, we have a high responsibility to help the military protect this country. So there was a protest, they will be more work for lawyers, but we need to focus on is doing our job in building the infrastructure that the pentagon is purchasing. Smith is a Company Microsoft he along with carol and brown his written have written this book this communicator and all others are available to podcast. Tonight on book tv in prime time historian fergus argues that congress led by the Republican Party played a vital role in the Union Victory in the civil war. University of texas journalism professor kate winkler looks at the life of americas first forensic scientist. Former u. S. Assistant of ed education and the Bush Administration Diana Ravitch argues Public Education should not be privatized. Syndicated columnist cal thomas offers his thoughts on whether the United States will remain a superpower. And Time Magazine National Correspondent reports on how millennials gain leadership roles at the local and national level. Check your Program Guide for more information. Michelle sullivan is with us today courtesy of she recently retired as director of corporate social innovation and president of the caterpillar foundation. The philanthropic arm of the 46 billiondollar manufacturing giant caterpillar
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