Your book is a world tour that begins in quincy washington my coauthor and i chose quincy washington because of the Data Center Capital the world its near the Columbia River are being built there because its close to hydroelectric power that is cheap and clean, we take the reader on a tour of what is becoming the infrastructure of the 21st century, the mammoth buildings, more than 20 of them filled with electrical generators, hundreds, thousands of batteries but of course mostly supercomputers, everything that we do, almost every day is actually accessing or storing our data in the cloud which is in one of the data centers. Your 100 of these and 20 countries is that correct. More than 20 countries, more than 100 data centers, microsoft is one of the largest but cavities like google, amazon, facebook, apple were all building more and more of these data centers, its were restoring our data they become among other things the Largest Consumer of electricity in the world. So if i send an email from a soft outlook to somebody at the office, does have to go through the data center. It does not have to, you can still use our software in use in a form restore on your own laptop or run on your own server computer, or in your office. But the world has moved to the cloud over the last decade, its far cheaper and more secure, youre always going to have the latest technology, youre not going to have to upgrade it yourself, you can rely on microsoft Cyber Security team rather than those in your office, the world is shifting and most technology is moving in this direction. What is the cost to build one of the buildings that you stays the size of two football fields . Any time we open a new data center, by definition its an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars, if you look at microsoft, if you look at the other Industry Leaders collectively we are easily spending several tens of billions of dollars just in building these new buildings, connecting them electrically, putting other computers inside them. What kind of investment do you make in securing that cloud. Its a fascinating piece of this, its enormously expensive, it starts with the physical security, you cannot get into the ground around these premises, the physical security is certainly tighter than what you would see in a commercial airport but its really the Network Security that is more important. So we spend a billion dollars a year just on security features, that is r d and innovation, we have 3000 security engineers, just the protection of this has become a huge priority. Brad smith, you say you were searched on your way out of the facility as well. Yes, its fascinating, for sure not surprised when you go into a data center and before you go into the intersanctum, the room with the computers, the servers, you have to go through a second very tight airport style metal detector. Then your search when you leave, and you wonder why am i being search when i leave, i dont get search when i leave the airport, so no one can walk out with a hard drive. The only way the hard drives leave that room at the end of their life is by first going to what is a huge machine, the equivalent of a paper shredder, this is for literally metal hard drives and that it leads to its own special exit. You right in your book, tools and weapons ireland is to data what switzerland is to money. What do you mean . Ireland is a great place to store data, sertraline is regarded across europe, across the middle east, around the world in many ways as a safe place to store money, its 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 airconditioning, uses less electricity as a result. But more than that, what we really mean is it has a network of laws to protect privacy, the protect data, has a stable government, as part of the European Union so has access to the rest of the eu for moving data back and forth, its one of the world most attractive places to store data. But its an island as well, do any cables to connect. That the fascinating part of the story as well. The Irish Government has had a lot of foresight and would say when it comes to planning for its economy and thinking about technology. The american sector got started in ireland in the 1980s, its where everybody manufactured their cds back then. As we got close to the year 2000, the Irish Government came to us, the United States, they saw the future and said make ireland a place to build the data center. But they said you dont have any cables to move data to the continent. And they said give us three months, we will go solve the problem and three months later, they had, they came back, they entered into a contract and the cable was just about to be laid and the rest is history because ireland has been become 35 of all European Data stored in ireland. Brad smith whats the advantage of having the Data Security locations, the clouds as tools. As tools, they are really enabling businesses to do new things, first of course driving down costs and enabling businesses and governments and others to rely on other people with advanced Security Protection but fundamentally what all of this is doing is enabling people to use technology in new ways, we really have interview entered a new era, its an a. I. Or artificial intelligencebased 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, the team, the airplane, over the next three decades, a. I. Will have a similar impact, authority making it possible for machines to understand speech, what people say, vision to understand peoples faces. To recognize people, to translate between languages, all of that is based on several things but perhaps the most important is a large amount of confrontational power, data storage in the cloud meaning the data center. You also in your book, tools and weapons talk about the weaponization of data which is what. Amy to is many things but i was a cyber attack, starts with hacking by organized crime, starts now these days unfortunately with hacking by nationstate, hacking of political candidates and campaigns and think tanks and the like, and includes diffs Information Campaign and it includes a potential hacking of voting in election, it includes a variety of other challenges that may not be weapons per se but when we think of the impact of all of this technology on our jobs, what is it going to mean for our jobs, our children, their jobs, all of these are the challenges, that technology is created. That takes us on her tour to north korea, russia and china doesnt it . It absolutely does as well as a run, we are seeing certain governments around the world be particularly aggressive, we measure this every day, we see the attacks that are taking place, we have been public in saying that we see 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 honor electoral processes in particular. What is microsoft business interests when it comes to chi china. I think we want to serve our customers when they do business in china. China is not a large market for us as it is for some other Tech Companies, china has 18 of the world people, it accounts for 1. 8 of our revenue. But for an American Company that 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. If there are consumers in china who want to use windows on their laptops, office, to write their documents to send their emails, we want them to be able to do that. So we want to participate in the economy, wanted to produce bait in the Global Economy in a thoughtful way in a way that is focused on u. S. National security and the protection of human rights but also serving people who need to be served but in tools and weapons you talk about the fact that microsoft does judge and nations on the human rights core. Before we open a data center in a new country, we evaluate many things. Do we have access to electricity to water that is needed for a data center, do we have concerns about corruption risks and the like, and evaluate human rights. We use that human rights evaluation to make decisions, there are some countries where we wont place the data center because we feel that once the data is in that country, we cannot protect peoples rights the way they need to be protected. There is other countries where we 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 a name, we dont offer in china because we dont feel we can strike the balance that we want to strike in terms of protective right. With the social Credit System that theyre having, are we in danger of perhaps having to world wide web, to internet. I think over the past decade there has been a trend in that direction, i think that once these two countries in the world today that tend to be producing the most leaders crude its United States and its china. You see less American Technology in china and Less Technology in the United States producing different pause in different public policies, to some degree even some distinction in business practices, then you see competition especially in places like europe when they decide who theyre gonna buy from. Brent smith you call for regulation in this book and in fact bill gates points out the anomaly of a Business Leader calling for more regulation but your writing that you need that, you need to have that regulati regulation. I think we need two things, we need businesses in the tech sector to step up and exercise more selfregulation and higher commitment to responsibility but we do think that 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 to go over to the Pharmacy Department and by a product, you dont worry about the safety of it because its regulated. When you get into your car, comprises certain Safety Standards, the same is true as an airplane. The basic point, Digital Technology has gone longer with less regulation than almost any Technology Since the middle of the 1800s. We think that the market, customers and even the industry itself would be better for the longterm with a different balance. That takes us to washington, d. C. Because bill gates took a lot of time in fact that microsoft did not have a d. C. Office for a long time. Bill points out in his forward that he did take pride in that and then he learned there was probably Better Things, they were clearly Better Things in which he can take pride and we are here today, were actually in 56 capitals around the world. You conclude your book by saying Technology Innovation 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 people 15 years ago here did not understand technology, i think many times today they often do, they understand it much better and i think to some degree politicians get a bad rap, i think journalists look for the opportunity to point out heres a politician that they didnt have to write a question or a politician that did not ask the question the right way and i think thats frankly a mistake, i dont think its accurate and you dont serve anybody 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, suitable products, we have people today that regulate airplanes that are basically computers with wings, they regulate the Safety Standards for cars, theyre basically computers on wheels, we know people who are perfectly capable and washington, d. C. Of regulating computers that dont move at all, they sin the data center and i think is a country in the world, we need to strike a balance with a healthy dose of regulation. When it comes to privacy, what would microsoft look like. We would like to see a Strong National privacy law in the United States. Weve been advocating for that, i personally have been advocating for that since the year 2005, you can see how little impact we have had in washington, d. C. And the issue over course of a decade and a half, but we think it is a good thing that california adopted a strong privacy law last year, we think thats a good thing that is bringing the debate to washington, d. C. , i think that the american public, consumers, can customers, even Tech Companies will be well served if theres a good privacy law, a strong privacy law on the United States, i think for the next decade what we really need is a global privacy contract, data moves around the world, you dont actually want and protection of peoples privacy to constantly change every time data crosses the border and will only get that woman bring governments together. When you think of the european gdpr. Were pretty enthusiastic and we have long been more enthusiastic about the tech sector. I think were not as focused on monetizing dating and i think it reflects own experience with laws and regulation in cases that we learn from when they unfolded in the 1990s and the early 2000, i think in some respects, it reflects the belief that a market will work best in the companies that participate in it will succeed the most for the longterm of consumers having confidence. Mr. Smith, whats the current status of International Cooperation on these issues. I think there are signs of progress in the lot ahead when. You see signs of progress on cybersecurity, on issues like digital safety, weve seen some really impressive leadership, last year by the french government, this year by new zealand Prime Minister in the wake of the Christ Church terrorist attack to bring companies and governments around the world to advance digital safety and i think thats crating a model that we can look to more broadly but of course were 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 a book is a call for governments coming together with companies, with Civil Society in a multistakeholder approach, we dont see any other effective alternative for addressing the challenges of people care about. Crites Church New Zealand take the partner book to. It does. By coincidence really, we were in new zealand 12 days after the christchurch attack, during the course of the day Prime Ministers Office Reached out, we heard that she wanted to meet with us, course we did. It was a fascinating conversation, she said look, i dont want to see whats happening 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 were not careful so lets see what we can do together and thanks to her leadership, more than any single thing, she got on the phone, she called her tech leaders that we work with others across the tech sector in atlanta what is called the Christ Church called, was signed in paris by september in new york at the un there were more than 50 governments that had signed up as well but i had facebook and google and youtube and has amazon, twitter and microsoft. And we have all committed to take some concrete steps that make it harder, certainly harder for any terrorist to do what was done in christchurch. How often do you find yourself, this is something you write about, working with the federal government and or suing the federal government. We work with the federal government every day and we probably sued 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 that a real principle is at stake, we have not litigation several times, both to stand up for what we believe are important privacy rights for customers and during the last couple of years as well is to stand up for employees who are protected by daca, we have 66 employees who are dreamers so we thought that was another important case to bring so we did so. When it comes to privacy what other cases that you pursued. Most of the privacy cases we pursued have been about giving people, business or individuals more knowledge or information about when the government are hitting your data. So this started in 2013 when we argued successfully that we had a First Amendment right and start to publish data about how Many National security orders that we received, one issue that we continue to litigate, the right that we believe businesses have so when the federal government wants their data in the vast majority of circumstances, we believe the government should go to the business and not come to us for some of the Cloud Service providers, thats the way this country works since it was founded and until the cloud was created, if you ran a business and if you had emails or documents that the federal government wanted, had to go to court and get a warrant and served on you, therefore you knew about it, you might have to turn over the information but then you can go to court to protect your right, what we do not want to see is a present or future where the government only comes to us and you dont even know that the government has your information, you cannot stand up for yourself and defend herself, whenever we see cases like that and we see them periodically, we try to negotiate an outcome with the department of justice and if we feel and believe the facts are on our side we go to court. Mr. Smith, edward reviewed quite a bit any features in your because well. Was the government stealing microsoft information surreptitiously. I would never use the word stealing and i would 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 and that might even be appropriate in certain respects when it comes to National Security and 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 and suggest that the u. S. Government either by itself or with the British Government was tapping into cables potentially undersea or landbased cables to access data that it may have been happening outside of the use of warrants and therefore there y rule of law, we were under explicit then that that was something that concerned us, we were explicit with the white house and president obama insane there needs to be some reform and there has been some important reform in the sixyear sentence. So i actually think it is good that generally speaking we learn more, the world learn more and we can address a bit of an imbalance. Do you feel that microsoft management of data is secure today . From prying eyes and set. I would say the answer is yes, the reason i would say the answer is yes is in part because of technological changes that microsoft and others in the industry. One response to the disclosures was to deploy stronger encryption basically comprehensively. It means whenever data is moving between data centers is encrypted. Whenever data is stored on our servers it is encrypted. So if any government, this is not by any means a question that anyone should think his complaint to the u. S. Alone, if any government tries to tap into data, its highly unlikely to be able to read even whatd obtained but more generally i feel more confident not just because of these technical advances in cyberSecurity 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 to. We havent even cracked the code when it comes to regulation or looking at a. I. And facial recognition technology. This is one of the big question for the 2020. We suddenly live in a world where a government, and if it wants to use cameras and computers and facial recognition to identify everybody 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 is not used in ways that we believe would conflict with human rights, saying countries where human rights are not protected adequately but we need laws as well, a very important question, even in the United States, when should Law Enforcement be able to use this and follow you wherever you go, we would say probably the way it goes and gets axis today by getting a search warrant from a court, thats a debate we need to have in the United States and we need to Start Talking about what this Technology Means and values that are timeless. Your president of microsoft, microsoft 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 be on point for the issues where Technology Meets society. There are so many issues today, sustainability, privacy, security, responsible artificial intelligence, digital safety where the world has a different set of expectations of us than a decade or two ago. This requires that we bring people together across or business because we need to intervene in this space but it requires that we connect with the rest of the world with people in government and elsewhere because this is a journey were all in together and it requires not only action by companies and requires new steps by government. You joined microsoft in 93. Sorry about that 93, how has the Company Changed since then. When i joined microsoft it had just over 4000 employees and today has 150,000. So the first thing you see everything is bigger. When you are big, you have to find ways to move quickly in any form because obviously moving a big group of people is a lot harder than moving a small group of people. When i joined in 1993, technology was not something you read about everyday unless you were a tech geek or an intellectual property lawyer. Obviously it has become perhaps the single most defining element of our times, we live in a technology era, it means that the world has questions and we need to answer them, it means that people want to understand Technology Without having to get a phd in computer science. So part of what i need to do and a lot of us need to do, we have a great team that does this is actually Service Translators help people understand what the issues are and to help our engineers understand what is on peoples minds. You joining us in washington where the jedi contract by the pentagon has been awarded to microsoft but theres a challenge by a fellow Seattle Company what is the status. Microsoft amazon and other companies were competing for what is a clearly important contract for the future of the pentagon, to help as enterprise, architecture, data move to the club, we were delighted when the pentagon awarded the contract to us in amazon has filed a protest which is not unusual, i think for People Living in washington, d. C. From washington state, i think they barely make it into the news there so common, for us we have a job to do. One thing i say to her own employees, 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 really have a high responsibility to help the military protect this country, there is a protest, there will be more work for lawyers but we need to focus on doing her job in building the infrastructure that the pentagon is purchasing. Brad smith the president of microsoft and he along with carol and brown have written this book, tools and weapons, the promise and the peril of the digital age. This communicators and all others are available as podcasts. The senate comes in today at 3 00 p. M. Eastern for legislative businesses under social distancing and health guidelines, today senators will resume debate on the nomination of Brian Montgomery to be deputy housing and urban development secretary. Fi 30 eastern delta vote on whether to advances nomination. Also coming up this week lawmakers will take up reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act law set to expire this coming friday, when the Senate Returns at 3 00 p. M. Eastern, live coverage right here on cspan2. Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar of minnesota and oregon ron wyden discussed voting amid the rotavirus pandemic over the next hour they talk about voting by mail and what Congress Needs to do to make it nationwide. 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