Transcripts For CSPAN Politics Public Policy Today 20120810

mars. for background, we do have the capability to install the software when it is on the surface and to continue to update the software. it did not necessarily have to be uploaded, but we chose the opportunity to upload the survey. as far as science goes, this is primarily an engineering activity. we're focusing on engineering and installation. >> thank you. >> ok, we're going now in front. >> hi there. i am with planetary society. were there any surprises, or is it fair to say the biggest surprise is it went better than expected? [laughter] >> there were a couple of surprises we will look into. we landed with more fuel than we expected. not a bad place to be in, unnecessarily. that is something we definitely want to take a look at. there are some of the zone indications also that seem unlikely. we want to take a look at that as well. again, we are working with 1 megabyte of the 60 megabytes -- 100 megabytes, excuse me. i think what we have right now is a wait and see approach. that will answer all the questions. >> ok. question for you, alan. you announced the curiosity landing. i am just wondering, how does this rank in your life moments? >> it is certainly right up there. this has been an amazing week. >> i have a follow-up about the defense stage. looking to the future, this seems to be a game changer, potentially. are there obvious ways you would do differently now? for instance, it seems, dare i say, over-engineered for safety reasons. are there obvious things you would do differently straightaway, and would this be a much lighter and meaner vehicle next time around? >> there are minor things we would probably change if we had to do it again. but one of the best ways to do lower-cost, more reliable missions is to stick with what works. you know, i would not say the system was over-designed at all. it was designed to allow scientists to choose where they wanted to explore on mars. they happened to pick a place that had a nice flat landing pled -- landing pad right next to. we kind of got lucky. the store the scientists wanted to go to had a parking lot. [laughter] we to the advantage of that. had we used the sky crane to it's full extent, we would have been able to use it over a much larger to rain, much larger rocks. -- much larger to rain, much larger rocks. >> go ahead. >> thank you. congratulations on a great success. would you be able to apply any of these guard it -- guided reentry techniques to the air bag system? thank you. >> i believe we could, but it would require using the steps that curiosity did to control the orientation. it would be a design change. >> thanks. >> ok, any more questions in the room? yes. go ahead. >> jonathan amos, bbc again. what is this data? >> this is the data from the heat shields that tells us what is going on. we are sending them back in real time. we are taking a look good that. i think it is safe to say we have to look through with. we have heard several times that things were pretty much going as expected. but we do not have enough yet to go through in detail about how each element performed. >> do you have a peak temperature? >> we do not. we need to look at the measurements and what those measurements were. we need to coordinate against the space trajectory data, which we're on our way to get now. >> ok, a question here. >> mark kaufman again with washington post and national geographic. you said reusing technology is the best way to cut cost. in terms of a ballpark figure, if you were to do something like that again, are we talking about half price? two-thirds? [laughter] >> i am not talking about that. we would have to look at the numbers to see what are rebuild of the sky crane system would look like. >> ok. we have project scientist -- in the room and he wants to talk more about the naming of that quadrangle. >> i want to make sure that everyone is on the same page and i will answer questions afterwards, not to distract from the great work these guys have done. this is not the name of the landing site. it is the quadrangle. the reason the scientists came up with this, in north america if you ask what is the port of call that you go on to the oldest parts of north america, it is yellowknife. you usually get picked up later on, having picked up some rocks. the mapping procedure will involve moving between these different quadrangles. we're trying to do this on mars. >> great. thank you. we have a question at the very back. >> with kabc. this happened in the middle of the olympics. new memes are popping up, animation's. -- animations. does the total love the public seems to be giving this surprise you a little bit? what are some of the more interesting things you have seen about curiosity? have you gotten any cool fan mail or reactions from people? has something to call you? >> i can say a few words about that and i will let everyone else answer, too. have been overwhelmed by the amount of social media interaction. i get questions on twitter and e-mail and facebook. it is great to be able to be in touch with the public on this. i feel like it gives them an opportunity to be connected to this meeting -- mission. it was kind of hard to follow all of these at to these -- all of these activities when you're in the control room, making sure we safely land, but it will take a few weeks to get through all the facebook posts and twitter comments and all the articles. it is just amazing army. >> i think it is great. i think it actually shows that america, the world is interested in science. i think it is great. i hope the social media keeps rolling along. it is just as exciting as edl. >> did you expect you guys would end up as such rock stars? >> i got recognized today. that was a little weird for me. as people, it is great to see that we are interested in doing this. that that is what we are about. >> for me, you know, the media attention, a social media has been overwhelming. but the biggest surprise has been the enormous accomplishment associated with the landing and how much that is amplified by having such an awesome group of co-workers. everybody has worked tirelessly with tremendous dedication. everyone here is it agreed to work with. it makes it all the sweeter to share the triumph with such fantastic people. >> all right. to we have any more questions here in the room? we have a one in the front. >> thanks. aerospace america again. how important was two years away to the success of the mission so far? >> i think it was critical. we were ready. -- we were not ready in 2009. as a mission, we were not ready. as a project, we were not ready. we were all in this together. to have the extra time give us the ability to make sure everything was going to work right. >> ok. i believe that is it. no more questions for today. i do want to tell everyone this is our final news conference for this week. be sure to follow was online. we will have updates on the next news telecon and pictures. all of that can be found at the nasa website. be sure to follow the mission. we have a long way to go. thank you so much for joining us. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> be sure to join us tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern for recent campaign polling numbers. here is a brief look. >> a lot focus groups. i care about focus groups because i think it is a great way of getting underneath what people are thinking. one of the questions i like to ask people is something that relates to their lives in a personal way. and i said, let's pick these three candidates. let's suppose they were in the fifth grade. what do you think they would have been like as fifth graders? and i put of various types of people. -- put up various types of people. i had been heard, the respected, the loner, and so on and so on. i said, who do you think newt gingrich would pay? push the button. "know what all." who you think mitt romney would be? the privileged kid. how did obama come out? teacher's pet. star athlete. you state that these are just cute, but they tell you a lot about where things -- where people are coming from. i said to them -- this was a dozen people -- i said, let's suppose you go to the ball game with either barack obama or mitt romney. 9 of the 12 wanted to go with obama. why? he would be fun. he would be easy. he would know about baseball. 3 people said they would want to go with mitt romney. why do you want to go with mitt romney? he has a limo, he will buy the beer, he will buy the soda. >> a brief portion of this program. we will show the entire program tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. after that, more on campaign 2012. of voter i.d. laws and the right to vote. then we will have a panel from the heritage foundation and we will have programming from the recent naacp annual convention. all of that tonight on c-span. >> this weekend -- >> these guys in the dorm room, they cracked the code. you do not see myspace and friendster waiting on the side of the road, not having achieved success. >> edward canard explains how lower tax rates lead to investment and economic growth. part of a book tv, this weekend on c-span2. >> as part of the response to the nuclear meltdown at the fukushima nuclear plant in japan last year, there was our recent discussion in california. the experts address the safety of u.s. plants in light of 9/11 and fukushima. we will hear from the chair of the california energy commission as well as an investigator who covers the energy issues. this is about an hour and 10 minutes. ♪ >> great to see you here. i am delighted to be here with our guests to talk about nuclear power in california and beyond. welcome to the commonwealth club. we're talking about the future of nuclear power in america. for the first time in 30 years, new nuclear plants are under construction in this country. two reactors in georgia and two more in south carolina. these plants will receive $8 million in loan guarantees from president obama for what he called "a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants." but the fukushima disaster is making new nuclear a tough sell. they plan to extend the operating life as well as build new ones. we're live here at the commonwealth club in san frown with three experts. on the right, jim boyd, former commissioner and vice chairman of the california energy commission. on his right, marv fertel, ceo of the nuclear energy institute, and joe rubin, an environmental reporter for capital public radio. please welcome them. [applause] why should the united states build new nuclear plants? >> the first reason is to make sure we have an adequate and reliable electricity supply. the other reason is, as we as a society moved to a cleaner, less admission, particularly lower cost model -- nuclear does not produce greenhouse gases. we want to move to a cleaner environment. nuclear is an important part of the mix. not the only thing. >> jim, new nuclear is intertwined with the question of extending the life of the existing nuclear power plants. what about the question of extending the licensing time frame for existing plants? >> i think primarily the safety of the public and the fact that are licensed for 40 years, the expected lifetime of the components of the plants. to extend them for 20 years, one had best dig deeply into the condition of the plant, its ability to survive another 20 years and not endanger anyone. with nuclear, it is very high rewards, but there are high risks associated if anything goes wrong. so, if you are going to do that , you need to look extensively in to the degradation of materials. the problems with the rust and corrosion. and it does not even apply to old materials. we have two-year-old materials here in california. that is the question. and we are dealing with other threats. fukushima certainly reminds us of what other threats are. week in california, and i as a commissioner, we expect to move forward. that is all we ask for in california. that is all we go to the nrc to debate about. >> joe rubin, what is at stake? what are the key issues we should talk about? >> we are a nation divided as pertains to nuclear energy. if you look at what is going on inside the nrc itself, the task force came up with recommendations to make it safer across the country. the other commissioners were on an approach that was more in the camp of nei. that completely blew up this year. the other commissioners accused commissioner yasko of bullying. he said, what we're doing is putting the safety of the public fundamentally at risk and that should not be a factor. we have of the old plants in this country. plants we've began construction before 1974. and so, it is a pretty troubled industry. and i think that there are so many -- advancements in the area of renewable, there are a lot of questions around nuclear power. >> is this true for the industry? >> i do not think so. i agree with jim. clearly safety is number one. it is certainly not a troubled industry. everything in a nuclear plant that is moving, at every ball, at ripon, every motor, it is changed out -- every valve, every pump, every motor, it is changed out. also, issues like both jim and joe mentioned, the corrosion of the reactor vessels, they were not in summoning the program. that is why they have the problem. you have got to do with. you have got to do right what you are supposed to do. when you do that, the plant is a very safe, very good operating plant. i totally agree with what jim said about license renewal. you have to make sure it is safe. to be honest, you have to make sure it is economic. you have to go ahead and do that with some of the older plants, and you may see that at some point. right now what you're doing is implementing programs to make sure that our state. >> there are other nuclear plants in the country. 71 of them -- two are under review. so far, everyone who runs a nuclear plant says, yes, we are going to run this for another 20 years because it is cheaper than buying a . >> it took the nrc about 10 years to define our renewal process. it takes three years to put you through the renewal process. also, greg, what you have to keep in mind is to get a 20-year renewal. it does not say you can operate 20 years and do what ever you want. they are still looking at everything. looking at the fukushima requirement. this is between the chairman and the other four commissioners. i think that we should to the priority things in five years. i agree completely. with the chair wanted to do, which his colleagues did not want to do -- you know what we need to do, go to with. they have the report done by seven people. there are 4000 people in the regulatory commission. he wanted it to be fleshed out a little more. that is what they have done. they have issued letters and other things. >> you were the liaison to the california regulatory commission. it changed. are they proactive as marv described? >> it is a different point of view. the nrc is not the young, dynamic organization. my concern is they do not seem to respond to issues rapidly enough or thoroughly enough. when we raised the question about -- one utility said we were going to license and the other said we were thinking about it, we were going to issue this utilizing the most current technology. the canyon went from a cost of $5 billion because they had to rebuild because of a fault they discovered. we suggested to the nrc you have to look at the seismic activity. >> is this before or after fukushima? >> this is before. >> and further, they said we consider seismic issues every day. as an ongoing licensing provision, we can bring something to our attention. what they said was -- we have been telling you for years. the commissioner was sitting in the audience. i commissioned the first study in 30 years and california. a lot of questions were raised. what more do you need to know? and yet, to me, calif. had to look at california's issues. i think industry is caught in a bureaucratic maze of rules and regulations. they have lost the useful -- youthful vigor. >> was booked shima a wake-up call? what happened after fukushima -- was fukushima a wake-up call? what happened after fukushima? >> the had the recommendations and seismic a certain part of that recommendation process. i was going to look with them about what they could do the bank what fukushima did for california was bring the facilities into seismic studies. whether nrc takes that into account, that remains to be seen. >> is the nrc on the job, on the watch? >> i think it is a big nrc. we interviewed commissioner ja czko. i think he is a believer in nuclear power. >> he is also gone. >> he is also gone. yes. being a real regulator is what will save the nuclear power industry and make it part of our energy future. i think in a bureaucratic way, he does that make a lot of a flashy comments, but i think he is really concerned. . i think it is kind of an amazing story. germany has the same proportion of nuclear power in their portfolio. they are limiting all nuclear power within the last 10 years. they are taking offline plants which are older than, i think, 30 years. they are heading in a different direction. they are important to talk about, too, because germany has such an aggressive program. nowhere else in the world has that commitment towards renewable. they had for the first time 50%. the entire nation was powered by solar power. of course, there were reliability issues with solar power. but still, it shows how far they have, and how serious they are. it is not just a simple world. we will be living in a world where we are totally dependent on gas and coal. i do not think the evidence bears that out. >> germany has great engineers. they built great products. should the u.s. do what germany is doing? >> to be honest, i think it is in the german character to do what germany is doing. pre-fukushima, they impose a tremendous tax on utilities to generate billions of euros in taxes. that is why it was politically not very attractive within their party. they lost the election after fukushima, in the made what was a good decision for germany, but certainly a political decision. they are borrowing a lot of nuclear energy from the french. that may have been the only sunny day in germany. the 12 don't spend billion, they will not be able to do it. renewable are a wonderful thing, but they do not operate all the time. we need electricity all the not all the time. -- we need electricity all the time. keep in mind how unstated is for society if you do not have electricity -- how unsafe it is for society if you do not have electricity. they do not have these lifestyles in new york, california, or even south carolina. you have to keep in mind the reason you have nuclear plants is to provide electricity. >> our guests are marv fertel, joe rubin, and jim boyd. marv fertel, let's come back to what the nrc are doing to prevent a repeat of fukushima here. >> there are three important things that have come out of fukushima. i am not dismissing the other things. did the design basis back -- right. make sure your plant layout reflects that design basis. s in a not-our deisel watertight room. even if you get all of that right, you have to be prepared to do something that could take away all the power. that is why you used to get water into the corner where the fuel is. the third thing is considered a common units are at the site. the industry and the nrc have imposed 2 waters. we think -- and i think they believe, too -- the smartest thing is to have a flexible concept where we have portable equipment, lots of it, on site to get water on to the vessel and into the pool. then we have offsite capabilities to and come and invest in the long term. what we are looking at is mobile equipment onsite. we learned this after 9/11. one of the concerns the nrc and the industry had was what if the plane hits the plant? i will put it up here and get the water from their. we did not know where the plane would hit the plant's. you did not know where the jet fuel would go. we did not do this as robustly, looking at other hazards, nor did we do it with multiple units. we're taking a lesson learned from 9/11. we are expanding this directly. >> this has already happened today. or we are going to get around to it? >> we have several pieces of equipment already ordered. we will have to order the equipment we think they will need. our goal is to have this at the end of the year, and then we are working on these regional centers, and again, i cannot want to downplay what the nrc are doing. the nrc are doing a re- evaluation of the seismic and flooding designed basis. i would actually, jim, proposed that not be a license renewal. when you get information on any hazard, a flooding hazard, and new chemical plant, and i have to worry about the chemical plant having an accident, how do i deal with that? how do i determine the significance? what time and stuff like that. what is the process? you cannot wait 10 years. you cannot wait for license renewal. >> jim boyd, california has a plant. there are some questions about new faults that were discovered. so where should nuclear, seismic issues be considered in licensing. i agree with marv that seismic should be considered all the time. our recourse was you could not go another 10, 20 years without looking at that. right now, diablo canyon is going finally through a process of getting information for these studies. you need the file to be more than 14 years. we thought that was a rush to judgment, quite frankly. , i usegot to remember analogies of three-legged stools. you have human beings, you have mother nature. you wait years for new technology. you have human beings to design, build, operate these facilities. we make mistakes as humans and then mother nature, which as been totally unpredictable throughout my lifetime, and to put those things together in a system -- you better be darn sure you have covered every single base. we have not been too good worldwide at recognizing the risk. there are payoffs, but incredible risk. if you are going to use it, you've had better make it so full proof that he make the decision to proceed. the nation has not solved the waste problem. to this day. when the nation embarked on this, the policy of the federal government was we would come up with a facility. we are keeping this on-site at the plant. some of us are uncomfortable with that. the cost of science is horrendous. you have to do cost amortization. we would provide the protection that need. that will be analyzed all at once. >> marv fertel, the retired ceo of exxon is the largest operator of nuclear power plants in the country. "let me state unequivocally that i have never met a nuclear plant that i did and like. however, having said that, let me say that building new plants does not make sense now. i am a nuclear guide." >> is he wrong? >> he is not right for the fact that we are building four plants in the south east right now. they are a public utility commission. the state legislature has decided natural gas does not want to be locked into natural gas, not knowing where things can del. they are not a merchant market. >> about half our country has a merchant markets now. from our regulator market, we have a public service commission. they said they had a rate for the residential customer, the commercial customer. it has been very -- it has very little to do with the access for that plant. it is a six-year access. you can look at. you can say, i want to have a diversified portfolio. >> this is only supposed to be a 40-year quote. joe.t's talk about that, >> for 20 years, i have been trying to figure out where the 40 years came from. the best answer i had was that was the time it would take to amortize. nothing is designed to stop working in 40 years. ok? as i said, all the moving parts are in a replacement program. the non-moving parts are analyzed based on a 40-year life. nothing is designed to fail. i am going to leave here and get on a 40-year old airplane. i certainly hope -- >> the plant which we are talking about -- it is now having a significant materials problem brought on about design. this is near san diego. >> this is near san diego. >> i am aware that for years we had safety problems in that plant. we found people dry labbing data. we found stupid things happening. i agree with marv. you have got to do it right. right now, the system does not provide for that. everyone has to wonder about what mother nature will provide. they have to wonder about earthquakes, offshore tsunami is, what have you. some of the old plants on the coast do need to worry about flooding concerns that were not even considered when they were being built. >> things go wrong. nuclear scientists came out with a report. >> misses being what? >> near misses, things that went wrong at the nuclear plants. things that they feel could have -- you know -- had been worse under different circumstances or if there were a number of factors that happened at the same time. i just want to point out a couple of things. one is, i just want to get across what a dramatic story is going on in this country in terms of our real battle -- a real battle when it comes to federal pre-emption. robert kennedy jr., who i know was a longtime critic in the environmental movement against it, but the governor of new york, andrew cuomo, his attorney general, he filed successful lawsuits about fire safety, all kinds of things. that was part of the renewal process. there are millions of dollars of improvements. the governor, the state legislature. it was recently renewed and there was a collapsing cooling tower. patrick there -- completely against the program, which was also renewed. i think this is worth pointing out. this is where we are heading in california. these are states with a 20-year renewal. you know, i think this is going to become a major issue in this state. i just want to tell you -- ca talk a little bit about my experience working on the safety board? >> what does that mean for the rest of the country? there were some operating problems right now. it is not clear if it will come back online or at a lower capacity. the city of irvine recently said nearby that they want that to not be reviewed and to be wound down. that is probably going to happen here in san diego. >> that is a good question. it may be an economic decision. nobody knows exactly what is wrong and the cost of repairing what is wrong may be rather significant, or if it is reparable, will it operate at enough of a level to generate revenue to pay off the cost? and last, but not least, we better take a harder look at the safety issues associated with old plants and associated with them. those are the generators that are built to last for 20 years. they will have to pay off. it is 1 foot in the door to get real licensing. that remains to be seen. we have also asked for the same studies to be done offshore. there is technology to discuss the faults offshore in diablo accounts -- diablo canyon. the federal agency and peony are arguing over whether it is a significant change or not. look at fukushima. therefore everyone should be assured that you are relatively safe before the decision is made to continue operations of facilities, and that they can be operated safely so we do not have a fukushima or a major disaster. the risk is incredible. we can have some disasters. if you mess up a plant, look at chernobyl and fukushima. >> marv fertel, could it be taken offline? >> i can answer that without a lot more information. but i can say -- gemma pointed to a culture problems that were visible within -- jim pointed to a culture problems. basically, he was very clear. and think from a safety culture standpoint, the people in california should feel good about this, that there is a change in culture. it would be hard for people to say, hey -- >> take a man at his word. the second thing is, fukushima. i will not at all downplay the significance of fukushima. let me put something in perspective. there's almost 20,000 people dead in japan. there is no one injured. that doesn't mean there will not be anyone down the road. the wind was blowing off shore most of the time. what we saw here on tv the whole time was we saw a terrible accident at that nuclear plant. we saw 15,000 missing, 12,000 dead. that was the tsunami and earthquake. the stuff washing up in oregon, the stuff washing up in alaska is not fukushima. is from the millions of tons of material -- houses, boats, bodies probably -- that were washed ashore from that terrible tsunami. also, the actual fukushima plant had no problem with the earthquake. is shut down safely from the earthquake. what killed fukushima was the tsunami. ok? we had an earthquake in virginia last year. it was 11 miles from the plant. there is nothing dented, curt, or whatever. there was no damage from a safety standpoint. >> i just want to make the point -- there is another nuclear plant in japan, the world's largest nuclear plant, but suffered significant damage from earthquakes several years ago, and japan is, you know, they know their quake zone. they are designed to handle those situations. and yet, this plant suffered very significant damage. some of the units were not restarted from man's inability to get it right. jim is right. >> the seven units suffered some damage. burress tremendous damage to the village's. all of the -- there was tremendous damage to the village's. there was a lot of damage to the plant. >> i do not think this is the point. i think the point was how can we have core meltdowns? they are all different. they are all different scenarios. it is just really sobering. it has to be much quicker than the science or the nrc or people in the field say they should be happening. so, it is the concern. i does want to talk about our research into seismic safety. it speaks to the whole culture issue. this is something that has kind of a haunted me. basically, there are two fall lines primarily in place to hear. that is about four lines offshore. then there are the lines that are half a kilometer away. this was discovered by usgs scientists in 2008. what i find troubling about that -- and, jim, i would like to know what you think about that -- if the shima hadn't happened, we would not have any studies whatsoever around -- if fukushima hadn't happened, we would not have any studies whatsoever around that plant. i was there. days after fukushima. i heard the nrc testimony. they were saying the plant is safe, it is seismically safe. the nrc saysing pg&e was correct. i am holding a graph. this is when pg&e was dealing with the fall line. this started the investigation. -- the fault line. this started the investigation. >> this is what he said. "we do not think this fall line is resolved." >> he showed the slide. >> the point is -- >> the point is, the level of shaking was above the level which could potentially cause core damage at the plant. you can see clearly. he downplayed that. there is nothing out of frequency. >> so there is nothing at that plant that as a seismic risk. >> and the nrc, we talked to them, i went to texas and talk to the head of reaching four. and he said, yes, we basically rely on what the utilities are telling us. since then, there has been some political pushback. we have seen studies before. culturally, i think it is troubling. i think it is simple that at this very moment that kind of -- that plant could be a type of risk. >> jim boyd? >> i cannot answer the question about would we have the studies if there had not been of fukushima. the energy commission does a couple of them, and repeatedly the agency has pointed out these issues. there is not a lot of traction. there was not a calamity. sam blakesley, senator, ph.d. seismologist, he drove the this issue in a california legislator -- california legislature. thank goodness. i think that is all. i am not anti-nuclear. i am for what is good for my native state. in the 50-year retired public servant californian. i am waiting for the technology they have been promising all my adult life. i am waiting to see that we, as humans, do it correctly. only then will i feel comfortable in the situation. all our regulators will get in there and do what we have to do. >> jim boyd, joe rubin, marv dalton.- i'm greg i want to pick up on something marv said about the casualty's of fukushima. if you consider the particulates, the pollution, coal is much more dangerous. more people have died in coal mines and nuclear power plants. isn't coal more dangerous than nuclear? " that is a very interesting question. you will get into a debate about chernobyl. about how many people were affected by and ultimately died because of their exposure. we will not know for years what happened with fukushima and how people will be affected. we certainly know how the economy has been affected. i certainly do not agree that there is danger in every type of activity we are engaged in, coal mining and so on and so forth. so, i am certainly not pro-co al. we said that is what we want, california. we want something that is at least as clean. remember, efficiency is job one in california. reid nobles is job two. then only clean generation is the third tier. it is not a debate of the safety and health aspects of coal versus natural gas versus nuclear, and we do not know enough about nuclear, and what about the people who mine uranium and how they have been affected, and a look at what we did to all those soldiers during the years that we tested above ground and exposed them. look at the years and years of knowledge of crude after the atomics lotions -- explosions in japan, about what happens to the human species when it is subjected to this kind of radiation. do you want to take that gamble, do you want to take that risk until you're sure, pretty much 100%, that is not going to happen? >> coal is more dangerous than nuclear. >> coal is oppressive. putting aside the nuclear waste issues, i mean, it does not create -- air pollution. it is claim carbon. i mean, there is a lot to be admired by nuclear power. i am not anti-nuclear either. with i am about and what good journalism is about is making sure the public is informed so they can make good decisions. one of the things i have been looking into is we have this incredible example here in california, because we are going to have this debate over the next decade. should these two plants -- should their license be renewed or should we go another course? we have an incredible example in sacramento. voters shut this down because it is a publicly-owned utility. it was shut down in 1989. i think that smud, the utility there, sacramento metropolitan utility, pretty much everyone would like to be a smud customer because their rates are 20% lower than pg&e. i spoke to people there, and they feel that this is because we were able to get off this really troubled plant. they exceeded the level of renewable 23% in 2010, and they feel that they are on track to have 38% renewable by 2020 for the ab32 goals. they have an incredibly impressive array of biomass, solar, and wind power. in terms of your question, i think the issue is not how many people die from coal. it is what is smart. what makes economic sense? what are the real safety issues that are involved? not, you know, is coal more dangerous than nuclear? >> a final point. on the economics, marv fertel, an expert told fortune magazine recently that natural gas will be the default feel for new electrical generation going forward. the fact is that it used to be greenpeace was against nuclear. now the cost of natural gas is so cheap that it is making nuclear a hard sell. >> but it is making anything but gas a hard sell. now you have friends of the years and sierra club against gas. so we will see what happens. there is no question we're going to build a lot of gas in our country. there's also no question that $2.50 natural gas was not stay at that price. >> my name is crain and i have been pro-nuclear all my life. since fukushima, i have been paying attention about what happens. one person from fairwinds to explain what happened. he has been critical on the water reactors and maintains they should be shut down. talking california, i would like to bring into the forum santana susanna. that was in the late 1950's. i remember an early memory of mine on the tv watching one of the news caps -- newscasters is flipping the switch and turning on the lights in at more park. there were five or six reactors there between simi valley and more park -- moorpark. . the reactors had meltdowns. nobody talks about it. it was ignored in 1959, because nobody cared. but santa susanna knees to be brought to the floor, because that is where we have had significant nuclear damage. it has threatened all of los angeles in southern california and nobody knew. one hospital had an area dedicated to cancer from santa susanna employees. >> let's go back -- no, donna remembers that time. >> i have no knowledge. >> i am aware of it. i appreciate the gentleman bringing it up. it has not been on the dialogue on a regular basis. they were small and there was a dilemma. it was a long time ago. hopefully we are a lot better at doing things, but some people paid in baltimore -- paid the ultimate price for that, and there's still cleaning it up. the humboldt plant was closed down many years ago because it got old. it closed down in the nick of time when the earthquake projections show that would be a tough sell. the gen one stuff is really old, and it probably should be closed down. gen two, we're dealing with right now. and promises of what gen three and gen three plus might bring us. we learn a lot, and maybe we could do things right. >> thank you. i would like to point out that it is not technically correct that nuclear reactors produce electricity. they produce heat. the heat is used to produce electricity. >> boiling water, right. >> some people call it the most expensive way to boil water. there's one other thing that nuclear reactors produce that has not been mentioned in this discussion, the nuclear waste. it is the major part the these plants produce, and that poses a major problem. also, it is not the case that nuclear reactors are always on. after a couple of years, they have to be shut down to replace a third of their core fuel. if there is an unplanned shutdown, those plans can be offline for -- as we have seen in japan and elsewhere, for months if not years. >> thank you. we skated over the waist. we did not give its justice. it is not been solved. the federal government is not fulfilling its obligation to build a centralized depository. is the waste problem going to get in the way of more nuclear? >> senator feinstein -- elected complement her for her leadership. she has gone legislation and an appropriations bill that will definitely be in the appropriations process at the end of the year, to begin the process to move waste out of humbled, certainly from all the shut them sites quickly, and to create a consolidated storage site. the bottom-line question, we generate about 2,000 metric tons of waste from the 100,000 megawatts or so that we have. it is very toxic stuff that you have got to handle really well. it is not a lot of material to take care of. it was not for the opposition of a senior center in nevada, we might actually be moving forward on a licensing or seeing if we to license a repository in nevada, which i think most people believe probably could get licensed. so we will see. i have confidence, to be honest, that the senate, led by senator feinstein right now, will take action and get a program in place based upon his blue ribbon commission report that the president commissioned and came out in january of this year. >> quick comment. i am is somewhat of a political scientist. maybe the problem is that it was more of a political decision than a scientific decision. put it in that remote in the middle of nowhere where there is any clear facility anyway without paying attention to all the answers to all the questions, and then it nevada grew up and got powerful. they're going to start all over again, i think, in terms of finding a site. >> my name is bob gould. president of the san francisco area chapter of physicians for social responsibility. i would like to raise a few questions. some points for people to address. one thing that was said was i think minimizing with the greenhouse contributions of nuclear plants are because, although when operating you're not producing carbon dioxide, there is a great deal of fossil fuels used in the construction of such plants and we have to take a lifecycle approach towards health, including the uranium mining and more. we have to consider for the future with the impact of climate change going to be. we're already seeing in terms of the flooding that took place in the missouri river, the vulnerabilities of reactors to back up systems and the like. i also think that we also need to be able to talk about the fact that we do not have a public health infrastructure in our country to deal with disasters of recent -- of this or that we have seen in fukushima. hundreds of thousands of people live within 50 miles of nuclear power plants that our own countries adjusted would-be the appropriator evacuation zone for our own citizens and soldiers in japan. there have been a number of reports since 9/11 about laboratories being able to diagnos nuclear injury, about the basic personnel and facilities to be able to address this issue. we have to be clear about what the public health indications are. we also have to think about the proliferation issues. >> we have got a three there. thank you. we're not ready for a nuclear disaster. marv fertel? >> first, i think we're doing everything to make sure, commercially, we do not have a nuclear disaster. after 9/11, there was an awful lot of nuclear bomb discussions as well as worrying about nuclear plants. i would say, yes, we are ready, and it will be even better because you're taking lessons learned not just from the fukushima, but the commission was a head of the fukushima accident. it revised their emergency planning rule before it the law which required a bunch of new things. so i think we will be ready. but those are real issues you have to address in a meaningful way. >> lifecycle analysis, jim boyd? fossil fuel inputs. is that significant in a greenhouse gas perspective? >> it is significant. a stanford professor has raised this. the cradle to grave analysis that should be done. we are in the life cycle analysis business. we should do it to everything so you can make a fair comparison. i think nuclear comes out still the cleanest in terms of climate change but then way it with the risks. but you have to do all of it. and there are all consequences. there may be public health consequences that we do not even know the final outcome of. >> our next question. >> patricia ford. i think we need to bear in mind that so many of the earthquakes reported from all over the world by the u.s. geological survey are on previously unknown faults. >> jim boyd, is that saying that new faults appear? and marv fertel? >> no, i grew up in the central valley which i was, as a child, told they were earthquake-proof. just a pile of dirt. now i think we have discovered the hole mantle of the earth is made up of cracks in the crust and this, that, and the other. it is something to be concerned about. but the scientists understand it better, and that has improved dramatically. so you go through this process of waiting the knowledge. the key thing is to use all the technology you have got at the moment you have it. do not drag it out over time, as some people, i think, are guilty to doing. not rushing to judgment. and then make the decisions. >> should the nuclear regulatory commission pay more attention to earthquakes, make it part of planned renewal? >> one, they are paying a lot more attention to it. they probably were not in the past at the speed that jim would have liked to see. they are paying more attention. i do not care whether it is part of renewal. we have to learn to deal with new information in real time, not make it part of renewal or a 10-year cycle to do it when you get it and figure out if it is significant and then figure out how to handle it. >> if you have a plant like san onofre, can be licensed without great uncertainty about the seismic risks? >> i think they will resolve these seismic risks based upon a 3d study they're trying to do and the analysis, and i think it will go ahead and legacy whether or not -- you can have that come up the day after it is three licensed and you would want them to look at it and not care that they just had another 20-year license. >> i agree there have been a tremendous advances in seismology and we're getting a better understanding. but i do not think there will ever be -- there will always be a great deal of uncertainty around places like san onofre and diablo canyon. it becomes a question of human and political judgment as to whether or not we might want to say, ok, well, this plant has been in existence for 40 years. we probably would not have built it if we knew it was right underneath a large earthquake fault. perhaps it is good to retire it. or not. or we're willing to live with those risks. but it has to be a pretty, you know, serious debate as to whether it should go forward. >> joe rubin is here. also marv fertel and jim boyd. let's have our next audience question. >> john from uc berkeley. i am encouraged that at least one person mentioned a real concern about the waste issue and the way it is stored, because it is potentially a hazard above and beyond everything else we have been talking about. what troubles me about the entire discussion is that we're kind of embedded in the economics of electricity generation, and i think in the design for nuclear plants that was settled on a long, long time ago as the new "-- as the universal design for all nuclear plants in the u.s., there have been advances that have been promoted in france, and i have heard people come to the commonwealth club and talk about the plutonium reactors and ways maybe to generate nuclear energy in the absence of the use of water, so there are things going on, and there is very little discussion today that has any of that fourth-looking attitude towards it. >> thank you. new technologies. are we inside a box? >> thank you for the comment. the plants being built in georgia and south carolina are the most advanced technologies in the world right now. basically, they have a lot more -- if a fukushima-type accident happened with those plants, the plans would basically be able to go 72 hours with no power, keep the reactor core cool. they could go 30 days keeping the used fuel pool cool. if they had designs we're building now in our country, they probably would not admit -- were not have progressed to the accident conditions. it is because the u.s. design as the most advanced. can they get more advanced? absolutely. >> let's talk about small modular reactors, the idea of small nuclear plants. bill gates is talking by using depleted uranium. supposedly we will produce less waste. >> samara -- small modular reactors, there is a lot of interest internationally. a country without a large brick, you do not want to put a very large power plants on it. yes, bill gates is looking at a very advanced reactor. it jumps well beyond where everybody else is looking right now. but he is going to go build in china because he cannot get through the regulatory approvals and fast enough here. i am not sure that is what i would encourage him to do. and i think you're going to see in our country -- the department of energy has a solicitation out now to jointly fund -- it will not be real join. about a third of them at a two- thirds the company. two small modular reactor designs, and that is out on the street. four companies are bidding. we will see where it goes. it might be a real breakthrough for our country and as a big export market opportunity. >> i live in san francisco. maybe i missed something. i do not think i dozed. but all of the vulnerabilities that you have mentioned have been a natural in nature. tsunamis, fault lines, and more. what about us? what about people? if i were a terrorist and wanted to do serious damage as far as infrastructure is concerned, i will not go attacking windmill's. >> well, i mean, i have obviously been deep into the subject ever since 9/11. and while we did reencourage to look at design basis threads and design criteria and maybe make them at more rigid in some cases, i think the psychological threat of attacking a nuclear plant is far beyond the real threat of causing harm. it would take lifetimes of terrorists to slice through a dry faster or get into a containment building. we have worried about the pools. they seem a little more vulnerable and what have you. i am more concerned about a dirty bomb. i am more concerned about all the nuclear materials running around in our society that has nothing to do with nuclear power or military been aggregated into a dirty device than i am about a nuclear plant. if i was a terrorist, i would scare the living daylights out of millions of people at the nuclear plant, and i do not think there would be a radiation threat. that is my assessment from the years i spent on this subject to that is not the reason for attacking nuclear power plants. in terms of if we want a more do not want them. there are a few vulnerabilities. they need to spruce up the ability to repulse any kind of attack. you cannot take a plane out of the air. i do not think it is really the thing to worry about in spite of all the hollywood movies that make it a threat. >> let's wrap up on the future. four plans are underway. wilmore get built -- well more get build than those four? >> we have been saying that in our country, because of the recession, because of shell gas and the drop-off in electricity demand, we saw four plants. we were thinking four to age, but we saw four by 2020. i think there will be more in the pipeline. 10 more are getting licenses from the nuclear regulatory commission. i do not think we will see a lot more than four operating by 2020. i think you'll see more in the pipeline for licensing and construction by 2020. >> joe rubin? >> i do not know -- i cannot say what is good for america. but i think that, you know, the issues around nuclear power still exist. it still needs loan guarantees from the government. there is no insurance company that will touch a nuclear plant. the liability is limited to $22 billion which would come from the nuclear power industry. fukushima, i do not know what the eventual cost will be. some say half a trillion dollars in terms of damages. i do not know -- i will go back to answer a question from earlier. i think we are a nation divided. not surprising. we are a polarized society. some states are much more friendly to nuclear power than others. in california, we are prohibited from building any new plants here until the waste issue is solved. >> you talked about the subsidy issue, the liability shield. >> on its loan guarantees, no plant has a loan guarantee. southern company is still talking about it. it would reduce the cost of capital which saves customers money. the risk to the government is about zero. it is not project financing. it is and the balance sheet of georgia power, which has been around for 100 years and is very solid as a company. on insurance, basically you have an exemption to have to have any insurance for nuclear, because it is covered by law. you do not need it. i do not need it. joe does not needed. it is excluded from a requirement because you're covered by what we have to do under price-anderson. we need to be careful sometimes about looking at certain things and the subsidies that really are not subsidies. "we have to d it there. marv fertel from the nuclear energy institute. jim boyd from california eney commission. and joe rubin, reporter. thank you for joining us today. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> coming up later today on c- span2, we will continue our series of speeches from the national press club here in washington. today, we feature billie jean king. he talks about exercise and childhood obesity. 6:00 p.m. eastern. an hour later, q&a with the editor in chief of reason.com. 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. sunday, look for our q&a interview. and new release called "killerl -- hitlerland." >> despite all the time i spend in germany, i did not spend a lot of time thinking about what it would have been like to have been a correspondent there in the 1920's and 1930's. how would you have operated? what would you have noticed or not noticed? much less, how would you have acted? >> sunday at 8:00 p.m. on a q&a. >> the library of congress has a new exhibit called books that should america. 88 books were selected by the library for their influence on america and american culture. here is a brief interview about the exhibit and how you can join in on an online chat about the library's list and what books you think should be included. >> we called it books that shaped america as opposed to other words reconsidered like changed america. because we think the book's slowly have an impact on american society. so many books have had such a profound influence on american culture and society, and indeed, the very essence of what america is. the earliest book is actually been franklin's book on electricity. of course, thomas paine's book that sparked or shaved the american revolution. novels are a critical part of american culture, many of whom identified who we were becoming or the aspirations we had as a nation. others told about experiences that we had uniquely as americans. we also thought it was a very important to look at nonfiction and books that were self-help or broke barriers of certain kinds. so many books for innovative, the kind of showed america as an innovative country, that used books and stories to inspire going into the frontier, and that could be literally or in the intellectual. >> if you would like to participate in an online discussion with his silicide librarian of the library of congress, one that we will air on but "booktv, we would like to hear from you. send us an e-mail. >> yesterday, afl-cio president richard trumka said the citizens united decision enabled the labor movement to expand and kardashian in households for the first time. he said his organization set a goal of recruiting 400,000 volunteers, focusing on a door- to-door effort rather than tv ads. this is about an hour. >> our guests today are richard trumka, president of the afl- cio and the political director. richard trumka followed his father and grandfather into the mines. he worked his way through penn state university and earned a law degree. in 1982, he was elected president of the united mine workers of america, the young this tool that position. -- the young guest in its history to hold that position. he served three terms as president. in 1995, he ran for the secretary of treasury of the afl-cio and became the youngest person to hold that position, where he served for 15 years. he was elected president of the afl-cio september of 2009. in the political team has been around since 1997. he is an expert in voter mobilization models. he became director last year. before coming to the afl-cio, he was associate director of citizen action's where he managed congressional, state, and local campaigns. so much for biography, now on to the process portion. as always, we're on the record here. please, no live blogging our tweeting. no filing while the breakfast is under way. there is no embargo in the session in except that c-span has agreed to wait two hours before airing the tape of his breakfast. with the goal of maintaining the breakfast reputation for civility, if you have a question, please do the traditional thing and send me a subtle nonthreatening signal. i will happily call on one at all. we will start off by offering our guests the opportunity to make brief opening comments, and then we will move to questions from around the table. with that, mr. trumka, the floor is yours. >> thank you. i do not know if everybody can hear me. i it seems like we were just here last year at this time and another year has gone speeding by. they seem to go buy a little quicker each year. hopefully, we can make this year more meaningful than perhaps the last year. i will be very brief. i just want to say a few words and then we will open it up for conversation and questions you might have. for the last 30 years, the economy has really been moving away from working people and towards those at the very top. that has taken a big toll on not only workers in this country, but on the middle class. that is why this particular election we are facing right now is so important for us. it is the difference between two competing visions. we are about to have at least a debate over which one of those is best for the country. we are excited that we have joined together with a number of progressive groups to endorse a and advocate a thing called prosperity economics. it offers a light at the end of the long economic tunnel. we are excited about that because we will have this debate. we are excited that in ohio, we could have a debate over collective bargaining. we can move forward and talk about what has been hauling out the country and where we go from here. our political program this year will be different. it will be more geared towards the ranking file. unlike in the past, when we started building our program 8 months before the election, this time, we have a permanent program that will stay in place. we will continue to reach out and mobilize after the election day and we will bring people in and educate them. it will allow us to do something we could not before. we were prohibited by law from talking to a non-union members. because of some of the new tools that are out there, we will be talking to non-union members and reaching out to them and immobilizing them. we are in the process of training over 400,000 volunteers. we already have over 300,000. we are also doing about 5000 pull monitor so we can monitor the polls on election day and leading up to election day to make sure that everybody's vote gets counted. this will kickoff on august 25 when we start our first national day of -- then it will expand to 50 states on the 25th of august and thereafter, we will be knocking on doors and encouraging you to participate while mitt romney is being nominated. it will be an exciting time. we are about to kickoff and we are ready. >> thank you . i will to get off with a softball question. then anybody can jump in, way that me. if you could walk into the oval office and get president obama of one piece of advice about winning over white working- class men, which is a tough demographic for him, what would you say? >> keep talking about jobs, jobs, jobs. if you look at our program, i will go through this with you because this is the difference in the last election. obama lost white men by 16 points. he won in union white men by 18 points. he lost women by 7%, but he won a white union women by 47%. he lost weekly churchgoers by 50%, but the increased the union members by 1%. the same thing goes on for gun owners and veterans and others. if we keep teaching union members about economics and to is providing the program that will help them and their children and families. my advice to him is he talking about jobs and i think he will win. talk about the of vision of an economy that works for everybody. you have a mixed vision that is more of the same. if you look at his 85-page economic program, it boils down to more tax cuts and removing regulations to create jobs. >> mike? anybody? yes? melanie put a question last friday. >> i want to ask about pensions because last year, there was a big debate about collective bargaining. it seems to me the debate might move to pensions because of state budgets. how do you defend pension programs for your members? >> i do not think we will. why should we? the american way is that we should be providing retirement for everybody. that is something everybody should have. here is what has happened over the last couple of years -- the far right has been successful in turning around the normal american way of doing things. it used to day we would say, you don't have a pension, i do. what do we do to get to one? now, they have been successful in trying to turn around to say you have a pension, i don't -- why should we take yours away? we should not take people's pensions away. that is a bad example. the rest of the world does that do that. the rest of the world has figured out how to provide a secure pension for everyone. all we need to do is give the political will and i think it will happen. >> how will you respond? >> it is not about pensions. it is a the try to weaken the labor movement. are there state entities that are hurting? yes, there are. because they do not have the tax revenue or they have had massive layoffs. do we work with them? yes, we do whenever there is a legitimate problem. take wisconsin -- they started off with a surplus. they give a major taxpayer to corporate america and they now have a deficit. they did not have to take anybody's pension. they chose. do i expect continued attack on the pension plan? >> of course. >> kevin, sorry. >> thank you for doing this. [inaudible] people think it will be a close election. how does the afl-cio feel about a second term for president obama? what does a second obamacare mean for the labor movement? what would be some of the pluses and conflicts? how do you feel politically right now about where things are going? >> well, first of all, maybe everybody could give your name and what entity you are from. i knew you two. i do think that president obama will winning reelection. i think it will be a close race because of the massive amounts of money and resources that will get pounded into this election. second of all, i think in some instances because of good luck, the senate will remain in democratic hands. i think that the democrats will pick up seats, primarily because of the obstructionism that we have seen so far and a lack of a program. the republicans have not shown any program whatsoever about job creation. they voted hundreds of times on other things. on re-production control and things like that. i think they will lose ground. what happens in the second term, some of it is determined by what happens in the election. if i am accurate and that democrats hold on to the senate, maybe they will pick up a seat or some house seats. then, i think the republicans will have a choice. they will have to offer some solutions and come up with some job creation stuff and get off of the fighting over things they used to be non-partisan. the surface transportation act, the faa, the clean water act. we never used to fight over those things because they are necessary for the u.s. government and our economy to go forward. now we fight over everything. it is foolish. it reminds me of nero. the second term will be some of the same. we will have to continue to fight. we will organize around the hacker reports so that progressive communities will be behind that. if you look at it, it says we should be investing a minimum of $250 billion in infrastructure to pick up the deficit. that will have a job creation. that or make us more affective and efficient. we will organize around that. >> thank you. it is fair to say you think democrats will pick up a seats, but maybe not gain control. >> i would not rule that out, but i am not going to predict. we will see what happens. >> i was going to add that except for the extraordinary amount of money going into the house from outside groups, this would be another wave election for the democrats. if you look at the normal indicators before citizens united, in wave years, that 50% of folks said most members of congress should not be reelected. right now, it is at 76%. the republican rage for congressional approval is at an all-time low. that has to go up against the fact that we worked 2008 to 2012 as a democratic house, $100 million less than they did in 2008. the republicans have $100 million more. i think it is pretty clear that the public is completely dissatisfied with the republican obstructionism in the house. it will be a test as to whether or not that much money can keep the house republicans. >> david grant from the christian science monitor. >> whenever somebody says he will raise all this money, -- will you address the paradigm? we are going to be even-steven at the end of this, maybe. can you compare what you do in take on this conflict that the labor union is doing the same thing. >> we turn out people at the grass-roots level, something they cannot do. this time, we will do even better because now we will be able to talk to non-union workers. there used to be 500 houses in a small community. if 100 were union, we had to skip 400 houses. now, we can go to them and talk to them about the issues. get information to them about the issues that they find important. we will also be doing a couple of other things differently. we will energize our volunteer system a whole lot more actively than we have in the past. last election, we had about 300,000 volunteers on the ground. this time, we are shooting for 400,000. we might exceed that. you will not see us doing the advertisements for feel good america or the other groups they put out there. we will be doing the ground waves. we will see what happens. >> i find what they say is laughable. they are saying that organizations that support business should be treated equally with the labor movement, which has 15 million members. and conveniently ignore the fact that americans for prosperity, all the different business groups on top of that as though there should be some equivalency between one group on the right and the entire labor movement, which is just preposterous. if you go to the senate for responsive paulat -- center for responsive politics, you see the margin of spending -- they dwarf what we spend. it is disingenuous. >> can you introduce yourself? >> thank you for doing this. we were talking about the president's union advantage. i was hoping you could talk a bit about president obama as a candidate, specifically for unions and union members as opposed to the working people. i think when you talk to a lot of labor leaders, you say there is disenchantment with the president. some people say he has not done everything he can. i wonder if you sense and enthusiasm problem with the president? if you feel like you can make a strong case that he has done everything he can for the labor movement -- >> has he done everything he can for the labor movement? that answer is simple. nobody has ever done that. no president has ever done that. has he done a lot? absolutely. has he done a lot for working people? absolutely. let us take a simple guy that goes to work every day, whether you are in a mine or an auto factory or go to school or are a janitor. under george bush, the occupational safety and health administration was nonexistent. they start it of resources and turned it from an enforcement agency into a consulting place for companies. more people were being injured. less people coming home from work that did not have health issues. now, you have workers being protected. this guy has fought for jobs. the last guy came in and had an economy that was blowing off the charts. it was growing. he leaves office 8 years later with fewer jobs than when he came into office. every american was worse off. our pension funds have been ravaged. lost money because of the deregulation is that he has given and then to people. this president has created 3.5 million jobs in the worst recession we have seen since the great depression. with an obstructionist house and republican senate that has tried to stop everything he has tried to do. he has worked hard. has he done everything? of course not. he works hard to get us health care. we try for 60 years to get health care for every citizen in this country. every other civilized nation has figured out how to do it. they provide health care for their citizens. he finally got that done. despite the obstructionism that we have seen on the other side. are their pockets of workers who say they should have done more? of course. when we compare them, what mitt romney intends to do and what barack obama intends to do when it comes to working people, there is no contest. barack obama is more for working people than mitt romney. mitt romney is for the very rich. he does not identify with us. does not understand what we go through every day. he does not understand the decisions we have to make. he doesn't understand it. you should not be cutting aid to colleges or pell grants or anything. you should be increasing them for the good of the country. >> i am with "the washington examiner." i was curious exactly how much money was spent in the wisconsin recall election. >> the afl-cio? less than $500,000. >> do you believe it was well spent? >> absolutely. we took back control of the senate. scott walker cannot do some of the nonsensical foolish things that he tried to do. he cannot continue to make war on his employees. now, he will have to try to create jobs because we will have jobs proposals put up in front of him and he will either support them or not. >> could the president have helped by showing up and being more engaged in the race? could he have made a difference? >> that was debated back and forth underground. people did not believe this, but people on the ground were really making the calls in that recall decision. if things were different, we might have made different decisions. they decided they wanted to keep it about what was happening there and they did not wanted to become a national issue. i think he probably honored that. he was not interested. >> you are not disappointed he did not go up there? >> i do not think the people on the ground were disappointed, either. he responded as the people on the ground felt was best. >> all right. johnnie? >> johnnie diamond from bbc. can you tell me why you think you lost the overall arguments in wisconsin? can you give me more detail as to how you think he will fight back on pensions? there is a sustained effort around the country in many big cities. how will you persuade people to get public sector pensions? >> let me go back to the first part of the question. when you look at what happened in wisconsin, the election degenerated into an election between scott walker and barrett. in ohio, it was a clean decision and discussion over collective bargaining. should they have collective bargaining or not? 60% said all workers should have collective bargaining. in wisconsin, it became between tom barrett and scott walker. millions of dollars of advertisements saying what a great person scott walker was. in the end, even our own memberships, of the 25% that did not come a 40% of those said they were not going to vote against him because they did not think recalls should be used for policy decisions. it was an election between people. it was not about collective bargaining. if it had been, i think we would have won. the stuff with the pensions -- people are getting tired of that. talk to people in the little town that i grew up in. say hey, we better take away those pensions. what does that do for me? i still do not have a pension. now, neither one of us have a pension. what happens to the economy? the economy cannot survive without medicare and medicaid. we are giving them fact and it is starting to tackle. we will have a debate around this for shared prosperity. we will let the american public decide. i think they will go with shared prosperity because that is the better avenue for everybody. >> i want to ask a slightly different question about president obama. what has he done for organized labor? >> what has he done organize labor? i'm going to answer it the same way. it is not just what he is on for organized labor, it is what he has done for workers. he helped us get a health care bill that will bring health care to everybody. he stood up for social security and medicare and medicaid. he has helped us with occupational health safety. he is a policy right now that is geared towards bringing manufacturing back to the country. punishing -- dashon that's it punishing. not awarding those for taking jobs offshore. he has enforced a trade act. he has saved detroit from bankruptcy. people are being hired. they are being hired because he saved the auto industry. all of those things. >> was it worth the $1.2 million that afl-cio spent in 2008? [laughter] >> i will answer that. of course. for us to play in the system of democracy, to educate our members and immobilize them and get them involved in the voting process is always worth it. everybody ought to be encouraging them, unlike what we see right now from the republican party, where they are trying to discourage people from playing in democracy. i think that is inexcusable. >> i am with the "washington times." how much do you expect to spend on the election? >> we will have ample resources this time. we have more in our superpac to be able to talk to non-union workers. if you want a figure, i will not give that to you, because that is the only store you ever write. ask us how many people we are organizing? over 400,000 activists are trying to get votes. and that is where we will shine. >> how can citizens united help? >> we think it is corrosive to the system. since it is there, we will use a small part of it. we have a superpac and we will use that to be able to adopt a non-union workers. the law prohibits us from talking to them. we will use the money we have to be able to talk to them. >> i am with bloomberg news. i have a question about foreign direct investment. there was an announcement that a chinese company plans to purchase a majority stake in a battery maker, a123. it has got some support from the government. this follows the news from last week. as we think about creating jobs in the u.s., what are your thoughts on chinese investment in the u.s.? how much should there be? how many deals should we have? >> it depends. i think foreign investment can be a good thing or a bad thing. i will give you a couple of examples. a number of years ago, five or six years ago, under george bush, we used to make magnets in two places. one in indiana and one in illinois. they are used in misdial spent a things like that. the chinese got an exemption from the bush administration. six months later, they close the plants down and move them to china after they learned the technology. that was bad. that for national security. that for what we are doing. if they are only investing in battery making so they can gain the know how to transferred back to china so they can also decide to use a bunch of things that violate the international trade rules, to gain the market like they did with windmills and other renewable, that would be a dead thing. we should monitor that. we should not allow those types of things to continue to drain us of the resources that we have had. we have lost 50,000 plants in this country since 2000. 50,000. with them not only when the manufacturing process, but also the r & d. china says we will buy their planes, but there is a catch. if you want us to buy boeing planes, you have to make them in china. the engineers are working on other project. that is bad. we should not allow that to happen. other countries do not do that. why we allow that to happen is beyond me. i think we should look at our own best interest. there is a guy who did this tremendous study that says that 50 years ago, the interest of corporate america and the country coincided. they thought about what was best for their communities, stakeholders, state, and the country and made decisions along that line. somewhere since then, the interest of corporate america has diverged. they will do what is in their best interest and to spend billions of dollars to elect politicians that will do what is in their best interest regardless of the interest of the country. our biggest challenge as a country is to try to realign those interests so the interests of corporate america and the country: side again where we can both win. >> [inaudible] >> we should look at all foreign investment in the same light. we have such a massive deficit in china and they have violated the trading rules so we should be paying very close attention and trying to get them to comply with international norms. look what happened when we do that. the president took a case up on steel pipes. we won in front of the wto. we created many jobs. the same thing happened with rubber tires. >> all right. >> could you talk about the two political conventions that are coming up? what will the presence of the afl-cio be in tampa? who are the republicans he would like to talk to? [inaudible] >> people in north carolina are pretty feisty. they are pretty tough. the conventions this time are unlike the past. everything is pretty much already decided. i think it is a little anticlimactic for everybody. i think there will be great issues that will be talked about. i think you need to look at those things because i think the platforms of both parties speak volumes about who they are and what they are. you know, we will have labor activity -- i looked yesterday at the labor festivities around the country. there will be constructing in north carolina and some stuff elsewhere. the president will be wherever he will be. we will be participating. this saturday, we have the second bill of rights today. we assessed the democratic chairman and republican chairmen to sign the second labor bill of rights. the labor bill of rights has five points. if they will sign them, great. if they don't, they don't. we will know who is with us and who is not. in the union, we charge people $50 -- [laughter] the right to full employment and a living wage. the right to full participation in the electoral process. the right to a voice. the right to a quality education. the right to a secure health and future. i do not know how are you could oppose those things, but we will see. >> you are not going to go around like grover norquist, are you? >> some people might. that is not our intention. it is part of the bigger thing of having the debate over the american middle class and workers and the shared prosperity. it is part of that. it is a continuation of calling attention to that so we can continue to have the debate. if you say i will not sign that, the question is why? what do you oppose? i would assume that mitt romney says i oppose the right to a voice at work. i would say ok, that is your decision. who opposes the living wage? nobody. it will be fun. it will be part of the debate and the bigger issue getting people to talk about a different type of economy that works for everybody in forcing them to say these policies work into these do not. >> getting back to tampa -- are there any republicans who he will be recognizing as pro- labor? >> yes. there are fewer. the stronger the tea party gets, the less likely there will be any more candidates because they have people -- hatch was too liberal in their eyes. there are fewer and fewer. the ones that we are really able to work with our getting be because they are not right- wing enough. there are many who have stood by us and we will endorse. the more moderate ones are sort of falling off. the viciousness of the politics is driving people away. the best and brightest are not going into politics. that is a wash for the country. >> michelle? >> have you asked president obama to sign the second bill of rights? >> we sent a letter to the head of the democratic national committee. nobody can say we did it to favor one or the other. we sent one to the republicans, too. we sent word to the president that we wanted him to sign it. i have no reason to believe he will not. all of those things are in his policies, anyway. >> robert? >> on the elections, what does obama need to be doing better and what is the romney team doing well that has surprised you? >> the president is making the case right now that he should be making. this is about two different types of economies. mitt romney has made -- everybody calls them gaffs, but i do not consider them that. --wife drives two cadillac's that is his life. take the stuff with the tax returns. when mitt romney was trying to be vice president, he gave mccain 23 years of tax returns. now, mccain saw something and picked sarah palin instead. he does not want to give returns to the public and it is not just about transparency, it is about mitt romney. it is about him saying, i am special. i do not have to play by the rules. every other candidate has to give their tax returns, i do not. i don't have to play by the rules. when i was at bain capital, i do not have to play by the rules. it is him being elite. i think he has to break out of that because as long as people think he is an elitist and he is standing with the elite, the public will not identify with him. >> do you think the obama campaign is doing a great job and there is no way to improve? >> he has to keep talking about the economy and his vision. i think he started that last labor day. remember, we were in here before last labor day and i was -- i said the president is making a strategic mistake. he is talking about deficit reduction. as long as he keeps doing that, he is losing ground. i will not say "i told you so" but last labor day, he started talking about jobs in the economy in a different way and he has not let up on it. if he stays on that vision, i think mitt romney has to stay on his, and i think he will lose. i think the american public is tired of the old economy. they see through it. they do not want the economic winners to be able to make the economic policies that will continue to stop them and their kids from getting ahead. >> introduce yourself. >> i am with talking points. i have a question about collective bargaining. it seems this issue is at the forefront of the conversation. everybody was invested a couple of years ago. the president very rarely mentions collective bargaining. mitt romney does not bring it up all that often, either. are you surprised it has gotten less attention? >> mitt romney does not bring it up because he wants to destroy it. i think the president talks about it. he talks about a voice at work here he talks about the right to a union. does he talk about it every day? why talk about it in every speech. i am talking about the economy, i bring it up. it will be part of this election, i am sure. we will be able to get the shared prosperity out. read it and see which when you think would be better. >> i am with the "l.a. times." could you comment on who mitt romney would pick as a running mate? who would light a fire under organized labor? i'm wondering if you could reflect on the role that vice president biden has played. has he been a voice for you? >> i will take the second part first. vice-president biden played a very constructive role over the years with the president. we have a great relationship with him. he understands working people. he comes out of a blue-collar family. i think he has been a real plus. people say he does this or he does not do that -- i think you guys do, too. i think he has done a great job. he is a good human being. he cares about this country. i really have a lot of respect for him. i do not know who mitt romney will pick. he cannot take any of the ones -- the fire they will light is to energize our side, not extinguish the energy on our side. it is his call the a will be his first major decision. we will see what happens. >> there is no one candidate he might pick that you think will -- [laughter] >> if he picked sarah palin -- [laughter] >> todd? >> [inaudible] could you assess the obama trade policy? republicans have complained. >> if you look at the architects of the american trade policy, not just obama, but the american trade policy, under bill clinton -- it has not been really good. it has not been the thing that people want. this president has spent a number of years trying to fix the three agreements that were signed. do i agree with them? no, i think they do not go far enough. they are to slanted. that is what i will say. let us look at what he has done elsewhere. he has enforced the law, unlike george bush who never would enforce any kind of trade laws. this guy has taken trade case after trade cases and won. winning those cases have put china back at bay, stop some of the illegal practices that they are doing. it has also put people back to work in this country. now, a trade can be a very, very positive thing. the regime that we saw over the last 20 years has not been the trade policy this country needs. this will be the first time the president gets to do one of his own. we will see what happens. it can be good or bad. [inaudible] >> i have a close relationship with him. i disagree with his trade policy, but i think he is a fine that. >> paul? >> "the examiner." i have been digging about 2016. we will have new democratic nominees. do you want biden to run? >> that is up to him. if he makes that decision, i am not going to wait until 2016. i am worried about 2012 and what happens in 2013, 14, 15. he can either help his chances or lessen them by what happens in between. i am not going to 2016 when we are here at 2012. >> what states are you guys focused on? where will most of these offers be? what will they do? do you have a percentage on the amount of growth you hope to move in obama's directed by having such a big group of volunteers? the non-union members -- do you have a percentage you would like to grow that on? >> first of all, there are 20 battleground states and those volunteers will be in all of them. there are six corestates that we may have more in. pennsylvania, ohio, michigan, wisconsin, nev., and florida. those are the six corestates. we already have full-time staff in those states. we will keep spreading. they will do everything. they are at work sites, talking to the union and non-union workers, and getting back to non-union workers on the issues they say are important. >> is there a certain amount of the vote you hope to move? >> 100%. [laughter] we are not saying there are three and i do not want to talk to you. we will try to get all of them. we will see what happens. >> i am from "the financial times." what do you make of the blame on romney for killing -- >> i really haven't seen the ad. what he was saying is bain capital took away my job. they encouraged outsourcing. you know what they do. they buy a company, they loaded up with debt, they use the debt to pay themselves back, the debt service is too big for the company, so it collapses. or they transfer it overseas. he lost his health care. he said that his wife died several months later because he lost his health care. if you lost your health care and your wife was sick, they would not take you if you have a pre-existing condition. you can still get health care now. they cannot drop you when you hit the max. >> the cycle of advertisements from the super packs are more and more negative. >> that is the byproduct of citizens united. it is corrosive to the democratic process. whenever you are pumping in $3 billion in advertisements, they will not even tell you who is doing them. that is not good for democracy. we should change the system. you have a supreme court right now that encourages free-speech. i do not believe that when jefferson and adams and been franklin were together in drafting the constitution, one of them said, you know, you have a thousand dollars out there so you get $1,000 in free speech, but i have $10,000 so i should have 10 times the amount of free speech that you have. i do not think that is part of the original equation. the supreme court says money = free speech. except when it comes to unions because they have said that you can limit the free speech of unions, although you can not limit the free speech of corporations. we will be testing some of those in the near future to find out if they do mean what they say in citizens united. >> ok. one last question. >> rich, assuming president obama thus get a second term, what do you think the prospects are for the keystone pipeline? >> i do not think it is keystone -- it is about job creation. if he gets a second term, it is about job creation. i think you will see stuff in the hacker report. if we can invest $250 billion to $400 billion in infrastructure, you'll see job creation. you will see things done correctly. a lot of people try to say it is either-or. either you do the project or destroy the environment. there is a way to do things both ways. you can do things without destroying the environment. we should be looking at that. doing things in a sustainable way. that project has every chance of success, doing it the right way. we want to see more job creation under barack obama. with mitt romney, it will go right back to where we were geared more tax breaks for the rich. letting in trickle-down. it does not trickle-down. it got us into the mess we currently find ourselves in. >> all right. thank you so much. see you in the year. >> we will be back. >> thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> be sure to join his tonight at 8:00 for a look at recent polling numbers. >> the question that president reagan used so effectively in 1980, are you better off than you were four years ago? that is what we should be asking. i disagree. to be betterpect off? been to use think things would be different? -- didn't you think things would be different? it plays on the expectations. he would be right on the bubble, a 47% is a precarious position. this is an election in north carolina, virginia, iowa. the job approval numbers are negative in 10 of the 12 target states. it is where he is in terms of the intensity of his approval. that drives turnout against him. if the direction of the approval rating, look at these numbers from a year ago. president obama was less -- was much worse than a year ago. he has a little bit of momentum. >> that is a portion of the event looking at recent 2012 polling numbers that we will show you tonight at 8:00 eastern. after that, we will stick with campaign 2012 programming with a pair of programs on the voter i.d. lost. we will have a panel from the heritage foundation. that is all tonight on c-span. this weekend, on american history tv -- >> who will start the bidding? $1,300,000? clacks the christie's auction of george washington's act of congress. along with the constitution, a draft of the bill of rights. it includes his own handwritten notes. also this weekend, more from " the contenders," r series of looks that key figures who ran for president and lost. >> as it had been said, in the interest of times, a great people must do the best of things and let us do it. >> former u.s. senator and lbj vice-president hubert humphrey. american history tv this weekend on c-span3. >> a group technology experts recently sat down to discuss the history, evolution, and future of the internet. the panetta institute for public policy as to this discussion in monterey, california. this is just under two hours. [applause] >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the monterey conference center for the final event of the 15th anniversary season of the panetta institute lecture series. as you know, this year, we have been discussing the revolutionary changes that have affected our nation in this new century and have been reflecting on what the transformations' mean for our democracy and for the future. we discussed the arab spring in the middle east and the hope for peace and democratic reforms in the wake of some much turmoil. we heard the long and short perspective on economic changes that impact our future. and we look for inspiration from our founders and past presidents and as we witness the changes in the role of the presidency as the electorate appears to decide again who should lead our nation. throughout each of these discussions, there has been a common element that has touched each topic. from the uprising in the middle east, to the crisis in the global economy to the ability presidents and candidates to communicate, the way we live our life has been transformed because of new technology called the internet. when we announced this lecture series 15 years ago, did we have an idea that we could watch archived version of our programs on their phones? were that a firm would launch a multibillion dollars ipo based on electronics friendship and family photographs? what we have been able to foresee that this technology would become the primary means for young revolutionaries to communicate with one another and the outside world? the internet ships technological innovation and grabs the hottest sound bites. it has a tremendous impact on society. it has had tremendous impact on government. it has had tremendous impact on commerce. and it has had tremendous impact on other institutions and has changed the way we live, the way we work, the way we learn, the way we profit, the way we govern, and the way we communicate. but in the wake of such progress, repair for the unintended consequences that have come with the dizzying speed -- are we prepared for the unintended consequences that have come with the dizzying speed of technology? are individuals in our nation's officially protected? how are cellphone, blackberries, and this topology changing the way we communicate? we will discuss the consequences of the internet with three experts. their combined been set touches on almost every aspect of this diverse subject, including technology, security, safety, politics, economics, communication, and culture. our first guest is vice president and chief internet evangelist @ google and is widely known as one of the fathers of the internet. he is the code designer of the tcp ipp protocols of the internet and was awarded the national medal of technology as well as the presidential medal of freedom and recognition -- in recognition of his achievements. please welcome dr. bensonhurst. [applause] our second guest this the chief of a know well huffington post -- aol huffington post media group and one of the authors of one of the frequently cited media brand on the internet, "the huffington post." de internationally syndicated columnist and author of 13 books, she has written extensively on the development of the internet and the need to include an engagement, to include trust, and to include authenticity and new forms of media appeared please welcome arianna huffington. [applause] our third guest is a journalist and internet safety advocate who has been following the development of the internet since its early inception. from 2010 to 2011, he served on the president's own mind safety and technology working group where he chaired the educations of a committee and wrote the education section of the group report to congress. presently, he reports daily for cbs news and kcbs appeared please welcome dr. larry magid. [applause] incidentally, before i forget, please remember that our program this evening runs until 9:00 p.m.. it usually ends at 8:30 p.m., but we have two full hours of these wonderful speakers. leading the discussion is an experienced journalist and moderator who has been at the forefront at the city of new media and its impact on journalism appeared he is the founder of the public affairs project at the center for innovative media where he is launching an election-year project called "face the facts, usa." a former actor, white house correspondent and interviewer post for cnn, he now serves as director of the school of media and public affairs of the george washington university. please welcome frank sesno. [applause] >> how are you? good to see you. thank you very much. i am happy to be back to host this wonderful series on the revolutions of the 21st century. the internet and social media represent the most remarkable and transform a technologies we can imagine, certainly since the creation of the automobile, the telephone, the light pole, the newspaper, just about anything we can imagine. in a few short years, it has become impossible to think of life without these technologies. they have become utilities in our lives. what lies ahead? where is this all taking us? where might we end up? i'm here with three guests who studied this topic and committed this topic on just about every angle, from communications, journalism, security, safety, commerce, innovation, and on and on it goes. we will get started. it is great to see you all. it is a pleasure to be here. i thought we might start with our audience. it is a good place to start. at home, you can play this game, and to, a little bit of of its participation. [laughter] how many in the audience on and use a smartphone? richer hands? wow. how many of you use a smart tablet? how many of you get news, information, whether, the stocks online? just about everybody. how many of you don't do anything on line, but you subscribe to newspapers and that is how you live? all right, there are a few. [laughter] i want to start the conversation with the subject, the revolutions of the 21st century. is this a revolution or an evolution? it is both. any evolution starts small. getting that first airplane off the ground is not the same thing as flying a jet at 50,000 feet. internet is a revolution. it took a technology that was considered crazy of the time but the traditional telecom people and made it work for computers. there could not have been a better choice. but it has evolved over the last 40 years since that first idea was put on paper. >> i see a revolution that has to evolve. that means that it starts as a revolution and then it becomes an evolution. >> what makes it in your mind a revolution? >> the previous communication technologies would not have served to allow computers to completely interact with each other at the skill and speed that they do today on the internet. >> first of all, it has given voice to millions and it will soon be billions of people who otherwise would not have a voice. and what are the implications? for politics? for the way we live our lives? for good and for legal? for good, in that, it is like saying that it has amazing mines who otherwise would not have had a seat at the table. and now you have 3 billion additional people will have smart phones and some commit to the internet. ollie's people, these billions of people, will have a seat at the table. -- all of these people, these billions of people, will have a seat at the table, potentially contributing. >> maybe it is revolutionary because, before i came out here, i treated in this event and now i live in a 140-character world. i don't even conjugate verbs anymore. >> when i think back to the gutenberg bible, he has made it possible for the common person with the priests and the pundits and the gurus had to say. the internet makes it possible for everyone to join the conversation. finally, after the 20th-century commit to look at radio, television, newspapers, magazines, they were pretty much all the same model that could convert started. but today, we have a model for you don't have to have the priest to have a voice. and that is a revolutionary change in the whole history of humanity. but some might say, yes, there's true, but some will say that we're dismissing everything faster. there was no printing press or television. >> dead wrong. this thing does allow for group interaction. you don't have to know who they are to interact with them on line. this is a very different kind of a collaborative environment that we did not have been many other media. >> all in good thing? >> no. [laughter] >> it is this amazing new chapter in our history. in human history. if you think of adam and eve in the garden of eden -- [laughter] >> they didn't tweet. >> we are living in a garden and we are living in a time of transition. [laughter] darlings, we're living in a time of transition. but there are snakes. we haven't -- we have identified two snakes and that the garden of eden. i would say the first snake is the danger to hyperconnectivity. we are connected now practically 24/7. it is very hard for me to convince them not to sleep with their smartphone. i used to tell them not to sleep with guys. [laughter] >> what about people who cross the street slow while their texting? >> there is a town that will give tickets for texting while walking appeared walking. >> the second snake, something going viral, and something that is trending on twittered, can we stop and say if it is worthwhile? >> i have no idea what you're talking about. [laughter] >> i leave the tv on mute when i am in my office. the other day, i looked up and there was donald trump endorses mitt romney. really? is that news? news would be if he endorsed obama. >> the analogy of the garden did even is interesting. the engineers are adam. no, no, we don't to go there. [laughter] it is when the general public uses the internet that that we go from lead into something else. because it is the whole range of him an incentive and everything else and some that are inimical -- an amicable to society. -- in amicable -- inimicable to society. >> this is a fascinating idea could this is trending, follow this, follow that. >> we all watch paris hilton and lindsay lohan become major celebrities. and now anybody can create a youtube video and sell or tweet something that millions of people will see it. i agree with arianna. garbage in, garbage out. do we have the filters to only pay attention to what is likely to be important and relevant while, at the same time, not having such fine filters that block out everybody's opinion? i want to know the information, but i don't just want to know about the echo chamber that i live in. there are also criminals on the internet, whether to harass people or to enter into relationships with people that they might not want to be entered into. there are all sorts of stuff in the internet. >> you are worried about your safety and security. >> we help parents to understand internet safety. but the fundamental issue is that we worry about bullying, but the vast majority dolefully -- the vast majority don't bully. you have to exercise a certain amount of street smarts to exercise your show. -- to protect yourself. >> i think about tweets that told us that osama bin laden was killed. i think about a article that told us that the article by dan rather about george bush was wrong. we did not have this in human history before. >> the moment that our political system has become so dysfunctional, and away, what is company in terms of participation and engagement is that they go hand in hand. it is the one power that we have appeared at a time when super pacs can influence elections, when power can drive an entire economy, what is it that can counter that? it is just the fact that millions of people are engaged, involved a man participating. -- involved, and participating. >> when you got into this, did you think that the pipa and sopa reaction online was another example being heard? >> absolutely. that community turned congress around. it would criminalize allow the government to shut down certain websites. the people who were against that got congress people who sponsored the bill to actual come out against the bill. it was enormous. millions of people signed an on-line petition. we know people who were flabbergasted by the response as a result of that campaign. >> could you ever in your wildest imagination have imagined that we wouldn't appear, with instant communication around -- that we would end up here, with instant communication around the world. >> of course. the whole thing is unfolding exactly the way we planned it. [laughter] first of all, it is wrong to say just no. we really did appreciate how powerful this could be. we made a couple of decisions in the engineering design that were intended to give this thing future-proof live. number one is that it was not designed to do anything in particular. it was designed in little bits from point a to point b. that is all we ask in the underlying system. everything else is a layer on the protocol stack. it doesn't do anything in particular, but it does everything. these little bit didn't need to know how they were being transported, whether it was a satellite link a fiber or mobile fax. that allows every technology from 1973 to the present could be swept into and be absorbed and used by the internet. those things were at the top of our heads, trying to make this thing has adapted as possible. we thought we would publish this. anybody who wanted to could build a piece of the internet. then it would begin to grow organically. i would say that is exactly what has happened. >> really amazing. i know you have drawn and the distinction of information, knowledge, wisdom and how the system, connecting or not, those things. talk about that. >> knowledge has three stages. science, opinion, and alienation. we have information about everything instantaneously. we also have opinions on everything in real time. and then we have what we can call with them. everyone has to agree on that -- what we can call wisdom. everyone has to agree on that. the leader in every field with a great degree is and making decisions several times a day. you look around hand you think is anybody home? [laughter] my point is that why are we making such terrible decisions that such a critical time in history when we need something better? the hyperconnectivity, the power is always on line. but we never really have any time to connect with ourselves. the story of any great innovator, look at steve jobs. he talked about the problems of solitude. he talked about having come up with innovative ideas. >> but it is not just a generation growing up -- i have watched you. your texting constantly. >> the hard way i learned -- we started on this journey of recovering addicts. [laughter] >> i think we have a tendency to sell short our young people. it is so true that they are tweeting and facebooking and building content. but it can be acknowledged that kids are smarter than they used to be. we have smarter novation. -- smarter and innovation. they are acquiring knowledge. we will always have people who will fail to be analytical. that information has been out there for a long time. it does not as if our journalists are the first ones to come out with inaccurate information. we have seen it many times. the financial crisis, sure, i worry about it. but i also see the potential of kids being click on their feet. and they're doing well. >> i had lunch with him a year or two ago and he was very unhappy. he thought people, especially young people, were too satisfied too quickly with small amounts of information. this is a man who writes 700- page books. but there is an issue there that the instant gratification and instant satisfaction may actually work against this notion of critical thinking and the willingness to find competing -- i worry that we will not in view young people and the rest of us with the consciousness -- will not embew young people and the rest of us with the consciousness for critical information. >> because of the diversity of information, so much coming at us, that is probably the most important thing that colleges and high schools and elementary schools and parents to be teaching young people. they check multiple sources and beyond that to realize that, just because it is on the internet, that only does not mean it is true, but it the duty to dig deeper. >> how many of you go to google once a day? wow, thank you. [laughter] how many of you go to google five times a day? how many of you who will something more than five times a day? there was a famous piece called "is google making a stupid?" but the the issue really was are we becoming too reliant on this tool? does it affect your memory? is it our first refuge? >> @ think the problem is when -- i think the problem is when we take this tool and we make it a master. we need to learn to disconnect. there is something that is extremely important and that is sleep. sleep is affected by the fact that they go to bed with their devices. they keep them charging by their bed. the greatest thing that happened to me this year was that i was invited to attend the harvard school of sleep edition. [laughter] you cannot have recharging sleep if you have the devices charging beside you. how many of you are compelled to look at the day you wake up? you see, that is not good. even if you go back to sleep. how many of you cannot go to sleep now without a sleeping pill? my point is that we have these growing stresses in our lives. paradoxically, we call it gps for the soul. it has a stress sensor. you'll be able to programs app for the things that give you stress. whatever it is, you can tell the app, i at 5 minutes. -- i have five minutes. you will tell it what will help you. then it feed that back to you. -- then it feeds it back to you. young people who have stressed will go to that and will help begin to identify stress. >> larry, will you do this, too? >> it will tell me to call my wife to tell me that i'm distressed and she will yell at me. [laughter] >> this sounds very buddhist to me. it makes me think of robin williams when he goes to new york to buy a honda and he says make me one with everything. -- to buy a hot dog and he says may be one with everything. let's a dive into summer meticulous about this thing we call the internet and how -- into some of these things we call the internet. he was able to mobilize some people, to give them their time and their money and their commitment. has this changed politics? >> i do not think barack obama would be president now without the internet. they organized around the internet. i remember going to chicago and we had arranged to meet in a hotel. i looked around and looked around for a couple of minutes because i did not believe that that kid sitting at the table could be him running the political campaign. but that was something that inspired the that relationship. first of all, he made a terrible mistake of abandoning them. the dnc is used basically as a fund-raising tool. you have to have a dynamic and engaged relationship. >> has this means of communication changed the way people run for office and the way we are governed? >> sure. first of all, they got check it if you make any kind of mistake at any point in your life -- they got you. if you make any kind of mistake at any point in your life, we have this gotcha world where you are always on call in your always accountable for review. but the fact that there can be a -- when done right, you can have a conversation with the voters in your constituency and you can go back to that comment we had during the founding of our country and the early democracy and we still have them in small towns where people are actually involved. >> so it improves our democracy and our ability to connect and participate. >> when you have a discussion, when somebody can blog and there is a thoughtful discussion -- an unfortunate, it is often abused feared their people the trash anything you say. -- it is often abused. there are people who trash anything you say. they are trolls. but i also see it used very effectively. and smart politicians can benefit from it. also, politicians can use it -- >> i don't see people on the wide -- on the sidewalk saying that politics is so much better because of the senate thing. -- because of this internet thing. but the premise that the president would not have been elected without the internet is an interesting assertion. if the internet hadn't been there, there is a good possibility he would have been elected anyway because of other methods of campaigning. with regard to the net as a tool, ivory tool has uses and abuses. we're still learning, i think, what those various uses and abuses are and how to deal with them it will not make politics better or worse. it is yet another medium that the debate can happen. earlier, i panetta institute lecture dealt with the presidency. how do you think of the presidency has been changed by this instant communication? the president does not have to hold a press conference anymore. he held a google town hall meeting. are people listening? our people participating? >> one of the great things about the internet is that it recognizes inauthentic communication. and it responds to authentic communication. it is not enough to manipulate communication. it is almost always with few exceptions manipulated. there is always some other reason. they want to present whatever is going on. there are these rare moments when it happens. but when it is not authentic, it will not create this incredible movement. >> there is the difference between the public announcement of -- public pronouncement of the president. they're people want to rent facebook -- i have facebook friends to express their political opinions. my friends tend to have some of the same attitudes that i have and there is a bit of a problem there. that will divide the debate that goes on with people are on par with on the committee and around the world. at the end of the day, they don't have the controls to tweet and put on facebook. >> the most impact is where your information comes from, if it is a credible source. so a friend texting you saying check this out, that has a different impact. that is a big change. >> i don't know whether the rest of the people in the audits have had the same experience i do, but i find myself drawn to pay attention to things that other people point me at. i get e-mails saying please look at this or take a look at the facts. that particular fact is important because there are things that happen in the world the detention of policy making faster because the pop-up on the internet. youtube videos have had a huge impact on policymaking and awareness of the events in the world. that is different. this two-way ability to communicate, this horizontal method, as opposed to hierarchical, and your way to react. you did not better or column of some sort and some of it is crazy, but an awful lot of it is thought provoking it is stuff that you not normally would have seen. >> it is amazing how your voice can be amplified. the airline made the mistake of having wi-fi. i have been mistreated at the airport. so i tweeted it. by the time the airplane landed in san francisco, they had a guy in a red coat there to take care of me and offered me a ride home. admittedly, have more twitter followers than the average person. but the fact that it was amplified probably -- >> i think the lesson here is don't make larry angry. [laughter] a very nice to him good that is interesting. that suggests that someone was following you. >> even if i was an unknown person, it still would have gotten attention. >> they are now recognizing that they can no longer hide behind the glossy ads and disappear. they need to enter the arena. that is why online advertising will continue to grow. the first time we had what we call sponsored blogs, the first one was a big hotel chain. from day one, we had pre- moderating. >> what does that mean? >> that means that nothing can appear that has not gone through the moderator's. >> how many comments? >> we have had 150 million comments. it is easy to get a story and a blog and get thousands of comments. these are comments that you not believe. you may disagree, but basically, they are interesting comments. the best comment -- about this hotel company, it was a negative one. the head of marketing went berserk. they wanted to withdraw the campaign. our advertising person said to them, you're in the arena. they will go to facebook and tweet it. the client -- the bottom line is that there was an entirely positive experience because they are is engaged. you can no longer with the drop. it is better to stay there and have a conversation -- you can no longer withdraw. it is better to stay there and have a conversation. >> 24/7. >> no, eight hours of sleep. [laughter] >> want to come back and talk about the snakes in the garden and talking about politics and how this has changed their lives. imagine what life would have been like if, in the middle of the constitutional convention in this country, alexander hamilton, john jay, madison, they are working on the federalist papers. thomas jefferson is sitting in the back of the room tweeting. [laughter] this was an incredible exercise. i went back and thought about this. what about john and abigail adams, the incredible letters that they wrote to each other. on march 31, 1776, abigail adams wrote "remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. if particular care and attention and not paid to the ladies, we're determined to rebellion and we will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." that was in 140 characters. [applause] >> no problem. she could have put it on her facebook. >> if we think about the kind of communication we have had through the ages that is enshrined and has held up. but the library and see shakespeare's original works. i worry about communication that is so temperate, gone. >> they would have been a lot shorter, i suppose, but it would have been a much broader conversation, theoretically one that did not just include the leak appeared that the average -- include the elite. that the average person in the colonies would have participated. i don't know. we may have been worshiping the sovereign and sipping tea. even today, still, primarily, the elite are dominating the conversation. how can we change that power structure so that the average person to be is part of the conversation? >> let's look at news and information. newspaper ad revenues down in 2011 more than 10%. the enormous times tribune recently announced it will only published three days a week. you have an army of bloggers that you do not pay. are we worried that credible, careful, check-information is becoming another endangered species in this country? >> i am very sad. i think that is an amazing paper. i saw a column in a " the new york times" today. that is sad. it is part of the culture of the city. there are casualties of the new technology. but in journalism is not a casualty. journalism can be practiced anywhere. we now have 500 reporters, editors, full-time salaries, and we have a platform. there will be a journalistic enterprise and the platform that provides distribution to tens of thousands of people. they can write or not right. they can take the advantage of it or not take advantage of it. but most of them take advantage of it because it helps amplify their voices. it is amazing how many of our young bloggers get paid attention to. the become known. >> are u.s. optimistic debt -- are you as optimistic? >> i think "the huffington post" is a wonderful platform. it is the local reporters at city hall that don't get the economy of scale on the international or national level, i don't know how we will pay for them. i know that television and radio has traditionally lean on the local newspaper. somebody has to pay these people. it is not the printing press that costs money. it is the time. there has to be a way to do it. and i am not sure what will take its place. >> you have local journalists and the community involved in what is happening but in newspaper after newspaper, in city after city, editors' jobs have been cut, circulation is way down and it is a question about who will report that the lettuce at the supermarket is bad or that the mayor is abusing your tax dollars? this is not a crime in some sense. it is economics. the of economics of paper are very different from the economics of digital. you get a larger mass of information out to a larger number people. they wanted to know what was new. because of that, they subscribe to the newspaper. but then you had people taking an advertising because they could see their ads while they were reading. suddenly, more people have the ability to speak and it is faster. you don't have to wait for the paper to be printed. the article goes out as soon as the editor says is ready to go out, assuming there are still letters. on top of that, the ads in the newspapers were fixed. the ads in the online ad averment can dramatically change depending on who is reading. google and others have done well with advertising. the question in my mind is whether we can find business models that will support high- quality journalism which i think is essential. >> are you making more money, enough money with the advertising to hire the investigative journalist who can spend three-six months on a private, to hire the journalists and others who will travel around the world to tell us what is happening there? >> i think there will be many different models. and our case, david who won the pulitzer for will be on the battlefield" spent eight months -- for "beyond the battlefield" spent eight months. it had great photography and it invited our readers and their lives and their communities. that is what is so unique about the internet. the conversation does not end at the end of the article. it adds to the story. every story has a list of things. it does not and the people sang oh, how terrible. it provides an outlet. >> i was pleased and proud to see that "the huffington post" won a pulitzer. i remember when you started publishing. the joke at the time was, they will win the pulitzer for the best investigative paragraph. [laughter] and then it would further for the most investigative sentence. >> that is what is unique about the internet. in a sense, when you think about traditional journalism, mainstream media, they often suffer from atv. they -- from add. we take a story and we stay on it. -- we suffer from ocd. we invite our readers to add to it. it has photography, etc., etc. a story is ongoing. the big stories of our time, unemployment, foreclosure -- >> the question is -- we talked about the revolution and the revolution really is that coming in the old days, the news came to you. the paper came to you. there were the gatekeepers who said you need to know this one and this one and this one go on the front page. now you go to it. but the question is do you go to that which makes you uncomfortable are unfamiliar or do go primarily to your hardison story is? >> 18 years as a print syndicated columnist, i don't know whether we got 100,000 readers are 20 readers, but we were doing something we thought was important. today, there is an incentive and there are blogs that pays the journalists by the click, by the view. it is not an incentive to wrecie the most important stories in the world, but just to get the view. you're absolutely right. there is a big danger of people who do what people used to do in print you used open the paper at the business section or the sports section and use it to the front page. somebody is making that decision. online, it is possible to skip right past that and it is easy to skip right past that and get an echo chamber, both in the interest you have or the policies you care about but i only care but democrats. i only care about republicans. and that does worry me. >> back to the garden of eden, the snake we haven't talked about, we will call it the cyber security snake. the snake and that could disrupt a lot of our commerce, open floodgates on a ban, could disrupt electricity. how much do you worry about that? how vulnerable are we? >> we are probably less vulnerable than many people say. but we are more tolerable than we should be. there are things that are happening right now to deal with these -- but we are more vulnerable than we should be. there are things that are happening right now to deal with these issues. we also have to pay attention to the fact that the things that you and i do are often -- often create vulnerability. we put information on the net that we probably shouldn't. people use it for identity theft in getting to your accounts and they do their thing. that is partly our fault. we use passwords that are too easy to guess could believe it or not, they're people who use the word password for their password because it is easy to remembered. -- because it is easy to remember. there are things like that and other things that can make the system lot more resilient. that is a process that is ongoing. >> what do you worry about most? >> i think i worry the most right now about viruses and trojan horses that we in just into our computers through our browsers because, when you go to a web page, you are downloading a file that would be interpreted by the browser. when it was first created, the only thing you were damning was taxed, imagery, and some layouts. -- that you were downloading was text, imagery, and some lay out. the problem is, some of those are malware that when executed by the browser -- >> what can this do to us? >> once your machine is compromised, it becomes a zombie. then someone else has control over your machine. it is like leaving your keys in your car. someone can use that machine to launch service attacks are generate spam or see what the bank accounts you are using. those of the things we need to defense against. >> [unintelligible] >> i do it. bottom line, you go online, bad stuff comes on to your computer, and someone can do something. >> win to an index of the world wide web -- >> i cannot lose control. we need to take audience questions. this is a moderated conversation after all. >> too bad. >> i will present questions to our speakers. please hold your applause until and introduce the whole group. fran is an attorney. doug is a reporter. kate moser is a reporter. thank you to all of view. -- o fyou. [applause] let me go to the audience questions. what did think of newspaper site paid subscriptions? the way the new york times is doing it? >> what worries me is that every newspaper that is on payroll will be sitting there making payment after payment, what i am looking for is some kind of syndication program where i pay a reasonable fee, if i have to pay a fee, that covers everything. personally, i wish i did not have to pay for ""the new york times"." but it is very viable. >> can you keep giving us stuff for free? >> absolutely. is "the new york times" fine for them? instead of growing profits, have a certain revenue aligned. we want to grow traffic. if "the new york times" did not do that, others would have taken them. at the same time, revenue line will be through an app. much people are used to ipad apps. a new magazine app will be coming out. it is beautifully designed. 1500 stoires per day. >> 1,500 stories. >> yeah. we pick the best stories every week. that is something we will be charging. that is a different thing. if you want to read everything in a beautiful app once a week -- >> she told me not to take my device to bed. [laughter] >> you can make exceptions. [laughter] >> i ge tit. > >> i ge tit. -- i get it. >> it seems that there are alternative models. one is sponsorship. subscription is not the only way. >> here is a question. how did you get people to click on online ads? google is successful. >> yes, it is. unless someone clicks on an ad, we do not get any revenue. >> they are not randomly placed. >> clearly not. >> ads will be useful to people because they care about it. google generates billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue. >> i want to know why she keeps digging ads for wrinkle creams. she is very upset about that. >> one of the interesting things about ads is personalized ads. you will start showing up in the ads that come to your computer. an ad showed up. his picture was in the ad from a soccer game that he attended. is this the future? >> i think there'll be hundreds of different kinds of advertisements. brands are beginning to get used to having real and measurable results when it comes to advertising. for years, they have made clear. they did not know which 50% of advertising was wasted. for me, one of the most exciting advertising revenue models, the one that we will be doing is sponsored sections. sponsored sections around because. a big part of our dna is making a difference. we have a section called impact. it glorifies people not for profit, but because they're doing something good and we want others to get involved. at the same time -- an example, johnson and johnson. we have a section that is sponsored by johnson and johnson. it has news and a blog. it can be a section on a cause. at the same time, a lot of brands want to have a way to distribute their content. >> larry, be a critic for a minute. is there anything in this equation -- big corporations like "the huffington post"? >> they have a very clean wall. it is something that concerns me, the notion of a sponsored. it creates a chilling affect bank. if wanted to do a critique on johnson and johnson, they might think twice about contributing. i do worry about the idea of a corporation sponsoring an entire page. at the same time, companies have to figure out a way to be created. that will thing is changing. it has to adapt. i've looked at this with an open mind, but i will also look at it with a bit of concern to make sure that you and your blockers and your advertisers -- blog gers and advertisers do not mess the model up. >> will make it clear that do have many different sections. there is no way that -- i think that is key. advertising can exist provided there is transparency. it is clear who is writing what. >> are you ok with this? >> as a journalist, i enjoy having a clue will be writing in the paper. if i knew apple would advertise every time i wrote an article, i would write hard to make sure that it would favor apple. it is a pressure that john journalists can do without. >> this is an interesting question from the audience. can the internet ever fail or go down? >> the answer is yes, but not the whole thing all at once. it never has since we turned it on. the net has never totally failed. for those of you who watched the egyptian revolution that the internet were shut down in egypt, my prediction is that if that had gone down for much longer, people would have figured out ways to use wi-fi and satellite links to generate some kind of connectivity to recover from that. it is persisting system. it has never totally stop since turned down. >> how about you in china? the government is working to create a great fire wall in cases to restrict access of their citizens to the internet. >> they are not the only ones. there are 40 countries right now that have interfered with various kinds of ability to reach. >> there is a center in china. -- sensor in china. >> what have you done? >> we have not done anything. people who want to get around the censorship can get around in many ways. we are expanding internationally. june 6, i am going to brazil, japan, etc. i would love to be in china. this is definitely an issue of censorship. >> you might be interested to know that the state department has sponsored technology to help people break their way through the censorship. there is a system that allows you to do that. there are ways to get out of this. not all people on line no about them. >> people in egypt were using old-fashioned dial up modems to dial internationally. people do find a way around this. >> how can a consumer yvonne way to the information that is on the net? -- how can a consumer evaluate the information that is on the net? >> if you see something on line, i do not care where it comes from, you need to look at it. you need to look everything with a degree of skepticism. you need to look for the credibility. for example, if an organization who is normally trusted, the new york times is a very reputable -- there are some situations where they have been let down. any time something is too good to be true, it is too good to be true. and one for zero well-meaning campaign about the war lord was killing people in uganda, the way it was presented turned out to be a bit misleading. a lot of people have to rethink what appeared to be an apple pie sort of story. everything you look at these to be left with a certain degree of skepticism. i do not a generation of cynics, but i what i generation of people who stayed in and look out for multiple truths. >> that is hard for the average citizen to do. how can someone here who is hecking on ththeir device checked 12 sources to make sure it is right? >> how many times have you received an e-mail saying do not click on this and blah, blah. there is a website that is well worth spending a moment to go on there. type in whatever that have line of the mill was. by and large if this is one of those silly things, they will tell you it is nonsense. once in awhile it is, but most of the time it is not. it does not take long to figure out if you have a piece of bogus information. >> in your opinion, should there be any expectation of privacy on the internet? >> again, this is a combination of two things. what to put on line on our facebook or what to tweet about and what not to. it took awhile for my daughters that what they put on facebook is not private. but it is private, mommy. it is only my friends. no, it is not private. that takes a bit of training. beyond that, there are many ways for information to be retrieved or used. we are entering a new world. it is uncertain. we do not know where it will end. >> i will ask the audience a question. on the issue of privacy or the internet is concerned, how many of you are worried about your privacy being compromised online? ok. that is profound. what do you say to them? >> we are living in a world that we have never lived in before. people can put information on the net that you did not have anything to do with. you happen to be caught in some one's picture. >> what can do about that? >> they can do anything. it is easy for anyone to take a picture and put it onto the net. you may not know that even happens until someone taps you on the shoulder. i have this happen. i was going from the airport to a hotel. someone told me to take a helicopter. i took a helicopter. 20 minutes later, someone told me i was on youtube. it turns out somebody's on a helicopter landing. thought it was cool and videotape it with his phone. i remember thinking -- the point is that there is not much we can do in the world like this where it is easy for anything that you receive on the net, you can capture a screen shot and put it back up. >> we cannot control what other people post about us. in a way, that is a good thing. i am sure obama and romney would love to delete any bad things that people say about them. but we can control what we post about ourselves. first, we cannot posted. second, we can put up privacy controls knowing that the are not foolproof. there are privacy controls. people who worry about the privacy do not take the time to learn about privacy controls whether it is on facebook or google+. >> what do you worry about? >> i do not really worry about my privacy. companies worry about what people could do but, especially google. google has all of my e-mail and my health until i dropped that service. i wonder what a government can do about google. >> do you worry about your privacy? >> i a understand the concerns of everyone. they are very legitimate. i personally feel in my internet world, i want us to be very aware of what is happening in the ways you can circumvent or invade people's privacy. i personally do not worry about it. partly because i am 8 feet to list fatalist. i cannot worry about things that are not in my immediate control. >> can i go back to what larry was worrying about? i am somewhat less worried about what someone posts about me and more worried about information of substance like my financial or medical information being accidentally released because someone put it on in memory stick and lost it. accidents and mistakes or maybe a business decision, which is harmful because of business police it could be monetized. i worry about those things. >> back to national security. this quote comes from a pbs documentary. here is what was said, "during the cold war, we knew with the bad guys were. it was a finite group and there was a deterrent. now anyone can buy a computer for $200 or $300. these individuals could have a weapon of mass destruction sitting at their desks in their bedrooms." if he is right, we should be more worried. >> i am wondering what he meant by a weapon of mass destruction. did he mean a nuclear weapon or a cyber weapon? >> i am sure he meant a cyber weapon. >> first of all, it is not true that the nuclear threat is over. it is not true that it was only a finite group. nuclear weapons are much easier to find, hide, transport. that is not like we're done with the nuclear threat and now we're dealing with the cyber security. my point is, there are global threats like that. global threats -- [unintelligible] there are major threats like that. in a clear threat remains. -- nuclear threat remains. oh whole spectrum of things. >> if anyone is looking for something to major in, the came from the cyber security conference. they say they will need 100,000 cyber security professionals in the next few years. there is a huge industry of people who will try to deal with this. it is a cat and mouse game. the good guys and the bad guys get better. hopefully we are not too many steps behind them. >> here are a few more questions to be more difficult. there is no name here. is it possible for google not to be evil? [laughter] >> the answer is and we are not. >> too and intrusive? know too much about me? >> we don't care too much about you or google. what is of interest to us is not persons, but patterns. we're interested in patterns of behavior and the patterns that we find in your e-mail to figure out if there is an ad we can assure you that you might click on. but is always going on. it is a computer. some people have a feeling that there are people at google who are looking after in and try to figure out which add to put on there. it is a computer algorithm that we are constantly adjusting to try to learn what to react to. if you do not click on anything, the me know that none of the ads we have put out on a the right ones. this is about patterns. perhaps it is interesting that someone would ask that question. dd is seen as a great and wonderful new invention. -- google was seen as a great and wonderful new invention. >> when it went public, it was a company that everyone loved. i think i pretty much agree with him. i'm not worried about google being evil. i am worried about what some of the present government can do with the data. google as in the business of trying to get us to click on ads. >> let me comment on the ads thing for a minute. one of the things that the panetta at series has been doing is looking at the revolution of the 21st century. connect the internet and business for me and for us. play out that revolution. in the fourth quarter of last year, there is billions dollars worth of the commerce online. it was up 14%. it has been up and up every year. clearly that is the future or part of it. what is the revolution as you see it that internet has brought to our economy? >> first of all, we know from every betty's practices at how much shopping we do online -- muchbody's practices how shopping we do on line. amazon sells books. i was at the microsoft conference a couple of weeks ago. something was said that was interesting that ties everything together. he encourages people at his company to try things that may not work the first time. companies will be more successful in terms of business if they have that kind of culture. that is how big innovations happen. to tie in the need to disconnect, he made the point that you need to disconnect yourself and go off completely for two or three days at a time. that is one of the most innovative ideas have come from. it all kind of comes together. it is like we are dealing with a brave new world. we do not know all of the repercussions for the unintended consequences or the stakes in the garden. we need to be alert and vigilant. that is one of the best things about the culture. it is not like we have this product forever. the same applies to how you monetize it. there'll be new ways of monetizing that go beyond how the internet started with the big ugly banner ads. remember when shift has happened. at the beginning of the internet, the idea was how to get as many people to come to your website. that is gone. that is no longer the problem or the objective. now it is how many people can you get to take what ever you produce and posted on whatever they have -- their site, facebook, tweet about it. ubiquity is with the new exclusivity. >> next question to the audience. >> i am sorry. can i pick up one thing? >> absolutely. >> this one has to do with the fact that we mostly talked about consumer interactions. but business to business interactions are taking off. those can be even more automated. it into automatic billing and fulfillment. we have not seen anything yet when it comes to the massive amount of business that will be conducted over the internet business to business. it will solve the consumer business. >> most of the internet business will not even be people. it will be machine to machine interaction. >> what do you mean? >> i mean machines talking to machines. the coke machine letting the other machine know that it is to be refilled. parking meters interact with a service center. machines exchange information with each other in. all of that will take over. >> cars are >> cars are not cars anymore. they are rolling computers. the greatest thing is next bus. there is a gps device on everyone in the city, and it tells me how many minutes the one is from my stock. it is an amazing thing. works about 50% of the time. [laughter] so it is almost there. but you strive for perfection. i wanted to ask the audience how many of you are engaged in some form of social media? linkedin? twitter? facebook? google+? a few hands. >> you can use my news app. >> i tweeted just before i got on stage. >> i invented google.com. >> how does it affect business now when people are communicating directly with one another? they are praising, reviewing, in gauging themselves? >> i gave the delta example, and i had a recent example with chase where i griped about it -- >> do you say nice things online, too? >> i recently said something nice about amazon. i had to return something, and some human being who spoke perfect english solve my problem -- solved my problem. [applause] >> i think the big news of the night is you got through to a human being. >> how does that happen? i think it is what you said earlier -- businesses have to pay attention to people. people might be complaining and telling their next-door neighbor about things, and now you can go on twitter and facebook and actually get some attention. >> i think that is incredible. it is one of the most in powering things that the internet has made possible and social media has made possible. also, that is how we started this conversation. now, the question is are we using this new power to bear witness, to complain effectively, or are we using it to be massively distracted? >> one of the things we are -- we have not talked about and should spend more than a couple of seconds on is how technology is affecting the way we learned. education, teaching, the absorption of education. we have seen suggestions of a revolution, but not the real revolution yet. is one coming? >> i think what is in the process of happening. just as napster disrupted music and just as huffington post and other destructive journalism, we will see technology disrupting education. universities had better be thinking about how they will adapt to a future where not only do we not need them to learn but we also do not need them necessarily to credential us. i pointed out that there was a company where you can document what you know at what you can do. i am a good plumber. i know how the program in c++. if i'm looking for a programmer, rather than go to stanford or anywhere else, maybe i could go to this web site and find a competent person. universities have to figure out a way to cash in on that and adapt to that. they have to figure out a way to deal with it, or they will find themselves maybe not doing so well. >> you have some real experience. >> two guys at google, the one that designs our cars to drive themselves, and the director of research -- they are adjunct professors at stanford and decided to teach a class in artificial intelligence, and they decided to do it online, and the thought maybe 500 people would sign up. 150,000 people signed up. first reaction at this point is -- now what? >> that is a lot of graduate assistants to great. >> the developed a class that could be taught entirely online. all the questions that were asked could be automatically checked by computer, it was multiple toys. the top 160,000 people over the course of several weeks. 20,000 actually passed the course. i did some back of the envelope calculation, and i think that is more people than have ever taken artificial intelligence classes in its history. >> i had 800 people in my class, and it would not have bothered me if there was another 159 people in the room. [laughter] >> can i come back to your question? it occurs to me, to try to sum this up, gutenberg's invention gave people the incentive to read and to learn to read. it pushed literacy. internet gives people the incentive to write or to produce films or to do all these other -- to express. i think that is a dramatic difference. we are now people will generate as well as people will absorb -- people who generate as well as people who of sort -- people who generate as well as people who absorb. >> do not just consume it. we share it. we pass it on. it is a much more active environment. as they said, it is not even consuming. it is expressing ourselves. self expression is the new entertainment. i think those in the mainstream media who do not recognize that are still bothered by the fact that so many people are producing content for free. they do not get it. it is what nobody is making them do it. nobody ever asks why they are not sitting on a couch for seven hours a day watching bad tv for free. why is that entertainment? or updatinglogging with the pds -- wikipedia or facebook if that is what you want to do -- this is the story of our time. >> i agree with you. nobody forces you to blog for free, and it is an amazing revolution of communication and democratization of opinion. i think that is generally a positive thing. >> but i think this is no -- by no means taking the place. it is just that we are all the calibrating. >> it is thriving, but there is another snake -- "newsweek" is sold for a dollar. people are self-publishing, and hard-cover books for $37 are becoming a thing of the past. people download their books to their readers or whenever they are using. the music industry is not a record store. >> it is better than what it was a record store because it can go online and listen to a sample and say that i will buy that song and not the whole album. >> my son is a musician, and he will not make a lot of money selling records. his cd will market his public appearances, concerts, other activities. i think people are having to find ways to create new business models themselves. i worry with journalism a little bit because there is a theoretical purity that journalists are not out there hustling and compromising themselves, so i am worried -- i am not terribly worried, but i do think things have a way of working out. at the end of this ugly process, something better will emerge. >> we talked about the revolutions of the 21st century. one of the other ones we looked at was the middle east. if we think about the world, this leads to the next question from the audience -- the recent arab spring uprising was largely coordinated via the net and twitter, this person writes. some dictatorial regimes try to control these events and sensor them. how can the internet support and enhance freedom and democracy in developing nations? >> in some sense, it already has. i was pointed out that revolutions do not always turn out the way you hope. tunisia's worked out pretty well. egypt is still not so clear, depending on how the elections go. libya is a whole other example, and syria is still ongoing. i will say there's something important to recognize about the influx of mobile and to our communications environment -- it is more dramatic in many ways than the internet. this is the fastest-growing phenomenon -- 5.5 million mobiles are in use today. not all of them are smartphones, not all of them are internet enabled, but at least 25% are, and that percentage will go up over time. what is important is that the mobile is not only a programmable device -- what is important is that it can communicate with the rest of the internet. when you tweak, you send one copy of a quick to a computer on the internet, and it generates copies that all of the internet -- when you tweet, you send one copy of a tweet to a computer on the internet. i believe that the combination by itself is going to help spread democratic things around the world. >> let me point out that the internet is a tool. before we had the internet, we have bullhorns, and before we had that, we had other ways to communicate, and there were many revolutions throughout history, many of which happened before we had electricity. it is a tool. i spent a fair amount of time in the middle east, and everyone says that the conditions on the ground were what caused the revolution. in a facilitated and perhaps sped up the process, but it did not create the process. >> of course it did not create the process, but the acceleration is incredibly significant. the fact that you can so much more easily organized by using twitter -- more easily organize by using twitter. modern expansion, which is much more significant around the world. >> the revolutionary elements is the everybody to the everybody, not the one to the masses. the paper to the masses, the president to the masses -- >> although we can do that, too. >> he argues that the internet for the first time as the everybody to the everybody. >> that is the empowerment. that is the fact that it is much harder to be an oppressive tyrannical regime. after the iranian revolution, the green revolution when social media was so important in disseminating information around the world, why cnn and others were being censored by the regime, and china had an uprising. it learned from what the iranian government had done, and it backed up a little bit. instead, they invited a dozen well-known journalists to the place of the uprising to basically explain them in the traditional, oppressive regime way. it is not really a great model. an oppressive regime is much easier to screen a couple of dozen journalists. going back to the way that they manage to feel, so many credentialed journalists. it would have been much harder to fool an entire population of people with mobile phones, guys, and years. >> i am going to ask another question that leads to another question from the audience -- how many in the audience have written a letter -- you know, with handwriting and a stamp -- have written a letter in the last two weeks? >> look at that. >> obviously this person did not have that in sight. the question is -- is the post office obsolete? >> no. >> somebody has got to deliver those amazon.com purchases. [laughter] >> this is great. i did some research on the post office before coming here. in the mid-1700's, when the republic was first being established, it took about two weeks, as much as 14 days, for a letter to go the 109 miles from new york to philadelphia. it would take months for ambassador jefferson to send a letter from france back to washington. if you were overseas i wanted to send a letter back to the states, you did not know if it would make it on the ship. the post office museum says people would write five letters and send them on different ships so they know it would come back. it was expensive, and the typical american colonists received a letter a year. >> wow. >> and now -- how many e-mails do you get in a day? >> actually, the day that they are following me around, i think it was over 500? >> 500 in a day. which is why sometimes you cannot respond instantly. what does that do to us? how do we deal with all this in coming -- anybody here suffer from e-mail overload? >> i have become famous among friends and family for not responding to e-mail, not because i do not want to, but i missed it. i literally do not see it. in the enormous quantity of things that come at me, accidentally ignore important messages. >> what effect does this have on us as communicators? >> that is precisely why it is so important, again, to compare it to the post office, the fact that we sometimes think that we have to respond to each e-mail as we get it, which is the equivalent of sitting in your office and your home and a dog running when it is the postman. you sit there to go get the letter, open the letter, and reply to the letter in real time. we never do that. of course, what has happened now is if you really want to send somebody and agent communication, it has to be texting, not e-mail -- if you want to send somebody and urgent communication. people at work if they're really want to get my attention, they have 300 e-mails i have not even looked back -- at. >> you cannot possibly respond to that many. >> i do. >> when you read and think, and when do you absorbent attachments? >> that is a very good point. anything that has an attachment, or every week i get updates from the editors who report to me -- i just e-mail it to another blackberry. [laughter] i read them what i have time. my instant communications are instant. -- i read them when i have time. that is why i have four black very -- blackberrys. one of them is just for my daughter. they have a number so that if something happens, people can reach me. it is funny because that is one of the excuses people give. if somebody wants to reach me, i have to be by my phone. get a special number for them. the other excuse is i need the phone of the blackberry -- i need the phone or blackberry by my bed as an alarm clock. get a beautiful, vintage-looking alarm clock. >> promise not to tell any of my tech friends -- i actually had a land line. [applause] i keep it around for a lot of reasons. >> you mean a telephone? >> it has got a wire, yeah. >> people do not call any more. >> yes, they do. thank god for caller id. [applause] the fact is -- >> one thing has not really been touched on, generally as a culture, is the impact, the fact that people do not call any more, do not answer phone calls from numbers that they do not recognize. what effect it has on poland. it has not addressed the question how it can give us the same people -- who are the people left? i think it is actually a very small minority of lowly americans. >> i know a little bit about this because i am in the middle of doing a poll, and we have talked about doing it online. the polling industry and the academics that did it have had to rethink strategies. >> first of all, because people do not have landlines because of the way they used to, and secondly, they do look at caller id and do not pick up if they do not recognize and no. they do not know. -- i did not recognize the number. if you pick up the phone and there is not somebody there right away, you hang right back up. i do. pulling has become much more difficult. is it less reliable? >> it is different. they have had to rethink the science of polling. >> when you are doing yours, how you get to people who otherwise would not pick up? >> there are a number of companies out there that have online panels of individuals who had agreed to participate in these things, and i am trusting that they are doing it accurately, but they are stratifying the samples in such a way that they are getting what they claim to be representative samples of the population you are trying to pull. that is one strategy. i do not know how perfect it is. even though in many years ago got a graduate degree in the field, that was long before internet technology. >> i have a question from the audience. i invite the other panelists to enter it. can libraries get passed copyright issues to digitize books and check them out? >> libraries have already shown an ability to cope with some of that. recall the big fights over the ability to copy portions of printed material led to the notion of fair use, which is unique in the u.s. i'm not sure many other countries have their use laws. the libraries were fought. a lot of the publishers said it was a terrible idea. people would buy one book, and then nobody would make anything out of it. libraries would still have the problem we have at google when we started making arrangements with libraries to scan books and to optical character recognition so they could be discovered. our purpose was to allow computers to find books that had information you were looking for. it was not necessarily to make the book of it -- available the way. it was make an discoverable. libraries will face the same arguments we have had to cope with. the general argument i would make is copyright in its current form is way too restrictive. the creative, as idea and other ideas like it opened a broad range of alternatives -- the creative commons idea. it strikes me that we should be stepping back now and thinking more about how first of all to allow officers to choose how they want to share their material, not be confined to current copyright arrangements. the other problem we have run into is -- and anyone else would -- is that books that are no longer in print are very difficult to -- it is very difficult to identify the holders of rights to books that are not in print any more. they are not registered. it is not required to register these works in order to validate copyright's under the conventions which we adopted in 1976 that says basically any time you create something, you have instant rights to it, even if nobody knows that. we have the problem of not knowing where to turn for books that are out of print. we need to fix that, and i think a better regime is to use electronic registration, not only for the primary registration of the work, but also transferring rights to that work. it would make it so much easier to find a party that should be compensated if they wish to be compensated. >> we have just a few minutes remaining, and here's a question that i think has help us bring this conversation full circle, look ahead, and to a close, a question from someone in our audience here. as a high-school teacher, was the most important thing i should be teaching my students, presumably, about this digital internet world -- what is the most important thing? >> i mentioned critical thinking, to begin with. the other thing is to realize that specific content is much less relevant than the ability to acquire knowledge and to interpret knowledge. facts are a commodity. part of critical thinking is the ability to look at the information around you and make some sense of it. and also to be a player, to be a producer, so that in addition to consuming information, go out there and set up your blog. submit something to happen to post -- huffington post. whatever it takes. schools need to encourage social media so that it is not simply relegated to outside the classroom, and teachers need to find ways to embrace this. again, do not check out. just because you think the kid may be more tech-savvy than you are, you have some wisdom. give that to the kid. >> i would like each of you to give a shot at what you see on the horizon. the next big thing that this digital connected world holds. >> first of all, more mobility, higher speed access, more use of artificial intelligence for translation, and a 4 -- we are going off the planet. there is a interplanetary internet already in operation. next is an interstellar mission to the nearest star, and darpa is supporting a mission to do that. [applause] >> top that. [laughter] >> it is a perfect segue. i think the next big challenge is going to be side by side. i think there are multiple universes' inside ourselves, and we need to remember to look at them and remember not to be distracted by the glories of the internet. >> i think it gets back to a machine to machine communication. instead of machines telling you what to do, they are just going to do it for you. >> bottom line -- this revolution has been a revolutionary, and it is only just beginning. >> thank you all very much. [applause] our wonderful audience, and as always, good evening evening [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> in about half an hour, it is "q&a" on c-span2. taking a look at our prime-time lineup here on c-span, it is a discussion looking at campaign 2012 poll numbers. on c-span2, we will have a series of speakers from the international aids conference. on c-span3, we will show you the recent democratic nomination platform meetings. all starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern. this weekend -- >> i think we have this myth that it is two guys in a dorm room. they cracked the code, and it all falls into place, and you end up with facebook. you do not see friendster, and all the 500 winklevoss twins lying on the side of the road not having achieved success. >> looking at the market economy, the causes of the 2008 recession and how lower tax rates lead to economic investment and lower growth. part of "booktv" this weekend on c-span2. >> an international economist says india's economic model is unsustainable long term. his comments came during an atlantic council event focusing on the economic challenges today. he is a senior fellow with the peterson institute for economics and the center for global development. he also advises the indian government in a number of capacities, including as a member of the finance minister's expert group on the g-20. this is just under 90 minutes. >> good morning, everyone. i am the director of the south asian center at the atlantic council, and on behalf of president fred kent and my colleagues at the center, i would like to welcome all of you, and thank you for coming in despite the weather -- on behalf of president fred kemp. we are delighted to host arvind subramanian today to speak on india's economy. maybe he will be able to spend some time helping us understand the uncertainty, but i cannot think of a better person to do this. i would like to welcome him also as a former colleague at the imf. arvin is currently a senior fellow jointly at the peterson institute for international economics and the center for global development. he is the author of a book called "eclipse: living in the shadow of china's transformation." turn:o wrote "india's understanding the economic transformation" in 2008. foreign policy named him one of the world's top 100 global thinkers in 2011. "india today" magazine nominated him as one of the top intellectual masters of the mind over the last 35 years. that is a very heavy burden that he is bearing extremely well. he has been research director at the international monetary fund, and he has also worked on the year great wound up trade -- a round of -- the uruguay round of trade negotiations, and he contributes frequently to the "financial times" and other groups, and he is educated in india and taking his master's and ph.d. from oxford. with that, we expect nothing but the best from him. i am sure that all of you will have many questions. i am going to request to speak for 20 or 25 minutes, and then we will have a conversation with him. i would request the conversation is on the record, and i would request those of you that had cell phones to please switch them off. we are also delighted to welcome the c-span audience. this event is going out live, so we do not want any undue interruption. with your help, we should be able to begin and end on time and in an orderly manner. welcome. the floor is yours. [applause] >> thank you for that very kind and generous introduction. it is a great pleasure to be here at the atlantic council. august is generally not the most heavily trafficked month in terms of talks and events in d.c. i am delighted to be here. i suspect some of the interest in india now is because of the black out we saw a couple of weeks ago. i will talk about that in passing as well. been since i have only 20, 25 minutes, and i have a rather long part, let me get straight to it. this is very much an economist perspective on india. politics and security are basically above my pay grade. but hopefully it will not be just economics, but economics with some political, political economy background as well. about the politically -- the uncertain fast -- about the uncertain future, i do want to stress that there is a certain continuity and in some sense, the uncertainty and challenges come from india is unusual economic past. just a bit of self-promotion, that is might india book. that is my recent china book. the more i talk about india, there is this implicit kind of in everyone's mind, the contrast with china. i have a book on both countries also. i do want to emphasize that there is an interesting contrast with china that i think should inform us. i am going to spend the first half of the lecture talking about what i call the unusual economic model, which i call the precocious india model. what i mean is that india has been doing things that it is not meant to be doing at this stage of its development. it is doing things that country's normally do which are much more advanced in terms of development, and there is a plus side to it, but there is also a kind of drag that comes from this, which is going to inform my assessment of the challenges going forward. we can talk about the challenge, and i want to spend a couple of minutes on the big picture -- we can talk about the macro challenge. normally, when i present something on india, i begin by emphasizing something that i think people overlook. this is a graph which shows in the agee -- india's gdp per capita. the first phase, we call the hindu rate of growth. india grew about 3% per year for about 20 years after independence, which is about 1.8% per capita. we call that the hindu rate of growth because people thought indians are not more obsessed with the hereafter than the here, and therefore, india can -- that is what supposedly hinduism teaches one. that is utter and complete nonsense because beginning in 1918, the economy turn around -- turned around. i want to emphasize because many people think that growth took off in india after 1991. it is certainly true that reforms took off in india after 1991, but growth took off and accelerated around 1979, 1980, so india actually had 30 years of fast economic growth. the contrast between india and china is not the china began in 1978 and india began in 1991, but that both countries began at the same time, except that china did everything at twice the pace that india did. for about 22 years, we had 5.5%, 6% growth. between 2002 and 2008, 2009, 2010 -- even 2011 -- we had this rapid pace of take off. there were chinese-style growth rates. that is what i think created this buzz about china and india the last seven years. one can argue now, which i will later on, that the question is -- are we actually in the fourth phase which makes the third phase look like an aberration and that india is actually doomed because of all it has been doing, to slightly slower growth rates over the medium term? that is just my way of background. the first aspect of the precocious india that everyone knows and talks about, but i just want to highlight that if you pick democracy against development, india is just a massive allied air on the right side, and china just a massive allied air on the wrong side. -- in massive allied air -- india is just a massive outielir on the right side, and china is just a massive outlier on the wrong side. india would rightly claim this as an achievement, but this is something i think needs to be highlighted in terms of how precocious india has been in its political development. the point i want to emphasize next is back in it -- that in terms of economics, what is unusual about india is that it has been a skills-based model of development rather than an unskilled-based model of development. india like china has an abundance of labor supply, and said, and it has not used it. it has intensively used skilled labor, which creates a number of complications. for further manifestations of this, it is not that india does more services than manufacturing, which is true, and certainly much more services than manufacturing than china does, but within manufacturing, too, india does much more skill-based manufacturing than most countries at comparable stages of development. here is a chart i want to show. i do not know where the pointer is, but i wish i could show you -- the graph on the left is for india. the right is for china. it is broadly on the same scale, but you can see where manufacturing in india is way below that of china, and services is way above china. this is one example of the precocious india phenomenon. what i find even more unusual is that i think what people do not realize is the most striking aspect of this skill-based development is the fact that india exports skilled labor internationally. thinking about the division of skilled labor, it was meant to be that rich countries produce skilled technology, and driven to, and finance, and the four countries produce the labor, but india has been defying that consistently. countries like india and china are meant to import it, not export, but india exports much more fdi as a share of gdp than china does. normally if that is the case, chinese fdi -- a lot of it is resource-based to africa. it is downhill. it goes from rich countries to poor countries. indiana fdi is what i call up hill. it goes from a poor country -- a lot of it goes to the advanced countries, which is not meant to happen, and it goes in a highly specialized and skill-intensive sector. this was not meant to happen in the we thought about the world economy, but this is what is happening in india, which is that this is very, very unusual. india has comparative advantage in some of the things that advanced nations have in things like still, entrepreneurs, and so on -- on for print your ship -- entrepreneurship, and so on. i am sure people will be interested. unlike china, we have a domestic demand-based model development. but that is not particularly precocious. some poor countries do that. some richer countries do that. but india is different from china. also in terms of integration, india is much less integrated than china, although it has been growing very rapidly, and india found out that it, too, was much more integrated on trade and finance than many people in india believe. on the social indicators, india is actually not very bad on inequality. for its level of development, india is much less unequal than, say, that is. it is about par on life expectancy, and it is horrible on malnutrition. i say all these things because on the social outcomes, there is no consistent pattern about india. good on some, not so good on others. but these are just general characteristics, not characteristics of a precocious india. i think there are two major near-term challenges, which is that at the moment, india is macro economically very vulnerable. amongst emerging market countries, and he has the highest and most persistently high inflation. inflation has been at, above, or close to double digits for two years or more. its external position is becoming more vulnerable, and it faces very high fiscal deficits. these are the macro economic vulnerabilities that all of you have been reading for the past almost 68 months because the rupee has been under pressure, orders have been fleeing -- the past almost six to eight months because he really has been under pressure, foreigners -- the rupee has been under pressure, foreigners have been fleeing. it is almost u.s.-level fiscal deficits. the point i would make on the fiscal deficits is that it was a tragedy -- almost a policy catastrophe that in the years of high growth when india was growing -- [laughter] i am terribly sorry. the catastrophe was in the rapid growth years, growth was very high. interest rates were very low, and yet, we did not consolidate sufficiently. that was a major policy error on the fiscal side. now i want to go through the growth challenge. i think it is the most interesting picture. in some ways, one could argue that in the last two or three quarters, india's growth split from the chinese-style 89% to about 6%, 6.5%. the question is -- what is going wrong? how do we respond to that? one could make the argument that in fact, the 89% years were the aberration and in some ways, india did not deserve to grow at that rate, given all the things that india has not done. here is something really important to remember. if you look at any measure of policy reform, any measure of policy reform for india and china, either in absolute terms or in changes across time, india and china are laggards. the countries that did the most policy reform are those in africa and in latin america, and yet, china and india grew much more rapidly than all of these countries. i want to be careful here. it is not that india did not reform, but the magnitude of the reform and how controlled and closed their economies are -- it does not compare to china and these other countries, which leads to my contention that may be at india did not deserve to grow that much in the first place -- maybe india did not deserve to grow that much in the first place. this could be a signal that supply capacity in india is not keeping pace with demand. i would argue, and this is why i spent a bit of time on the precocious indiana model -- one could make the case that this is because india's precocious model is unsustainable. what do i mean by that? we have developed based of -- we have developed this base of skilled labor, which is actually very scarce. skilled wages have been growing in dollar terms at 14% or 15% for 50 or 20 years. we have a completely dysfunctional system of higher indication, which just does not elicit the supply that the economy needs. the fact that we used extensively is running into capacity constraints -- the factors that we used extensively are running into capacity constraints. there is very little chance going forward that we will be able to use the rest. we have a situation where scarce social capital -- we call them public institutions. call it governance. call it corruption, whatever -- that is getting eroded. the big governance problem of india is being undermined through corruption and criminality. what is happening is that land, which is meant to be relatively abundant in india, have now become the focus of corruption in india. we have a situation where if you take these four factors from a development perspective, what we are using intensively, we are running out of it. what we do not use intensively, we have abundant amounts of it. important governance and land are becoming sources of corruption and the problem. here is a chart that people have been using a lot. looking at power losses in india, which is a kind of metaphor or proxy for not just what is wrong with the power sector in india, but governance more broadly -- this is a measure of transmission losses as a percentage of output, and india is way above any emerging market country. india is five or six times as inefficient and corrupt or weekly government in power then china is or even brazil and south africa. this is in a way in metaphor for the governance problems. one can summarize the challenge in terms of two themes -- we have fiscal populism. the notion that we need to give away goodies and freebies in the form of subsidies. we have oil subsidies, food subsidies, power subsidies, fertilizer subsidies, and in the last seven or eight years, the government had this ruling employment guarantee scheme, so the notion that fiscal populism is an electoral vote winner in india -- it kind of has a lot of holes. that is contributing to the macro economic challenges of india. what is also happening from a growth point of view -- we have moved from one of india pose a great states. i think now, some of the things have come down. i said kind of facetiously there are three kinds of grants -- an achievement, spectrum allocation, absolute disaster, the source of corruption, the biggest scandal india had ever had. land has become a source of corruption. the allocation of land is a big source of corruption. that comes in a way of example of a striking coal, which affects power and infrastructure. and then, we have subterranean rents where we cannot get access to call because the mining rights again are really a disaster. in the medium term, fiscal populism and these rents are a serious impediment to growth in the medium term. but then, you know, you wake up and say that there is the other side to india as well, and i can make a case -- how can you keep india down? india will actually grow at 8% to 9% over the next 20 or 30 years. what are the counter arguments? india is still actually very, very poor. it is about 8% of u.s. per capita gdp. the cost of catching up to the economic front here is just enormous. you have to do very little, and maybe india has crossed the threshold of having done the minimum, and you have a big market and so on, so maybe we will have rapid growth going forward. everyone talks about the demographic dividend, which is a social climate as of -- social dynamism in terms of labor force. what is happening in india is that although there have been no serious reforms, the way the indian economy is doing -- has been doing well is because of what i call a growth be getting growth dynamic -- be getting -- begetting growth dynamic. my favorite example is it look at the elementary schools of india, a teacher absenteeism is on average about 50%. 50% of the time, teachers do not show up in elementary schools in india. but what has happened over the last 10 years is that because of growth, the demand for education has risen so rapidly that even in these rural areas, private schools have come up. not the best solution necessarily, but exactly in this districts and states where the public education system is the most dysfunctional is where you see the most rapid rise of private schools in india. that is a response to growth itself. not that there have been independent reforms, but growth begets reforms. finally, what i really think the promise for india allies is twofold -- the combination of the dynamics of competition between states. take power, for example. very bad on average, but some states are doing very well. that creates both a demonstration effect and, you know, capital enabling a move in a way that puts pressure on other states within india. it is not just that there is a dynamic of competition, but that can -- that is increasingly being combined with i recall the most -- the phenomenon is that politics at the state level is responding to economic governance and economic delivery. in the long run, i of democratic politics could reward economic governance, that is india. indians are very wistful about we wish we could have chinese centralized decision-making authority. i say that is nonsense. i believe in the donald rumsfeld will that if you go to bat with a political system, you will not have the political system you wish to have. if -- with true democracy itself can overcome some of these economic governance problems, that is the role, and in the last two election cycles, you have seen more and more broad governance being rewarded through reelection at the state level. there are many examples which we can go into. and all that translates into the fact that the private sector is doing well, skilled labor in scarce supply, but of course, you get this response of skill. maybe unskilled labor -- there is a demographic dividend. even in terms of governance, if you find this response of party, maybe some of this can be partially overcome. we have a vibrant civil society in india. that is kind of the positive spin on the medium term challenge. i am completely agnostic about whether i believe in the pessimistic view in india. we can talk about that in the discussion. i want to end -- i think i am sooner than my time limit -- speaking about the longterm challenges. i think -- i mean, i have alluded to this so far. i think there is a race between rock and reach generation, and i do not know which will win -- between rot and regeneration, and i do not know which is going to win. political systems are deteriorated in very disturbing ways, but i can also give you examples regerations happening. in some ways, this is the big long-term challenge. in politics can respond, there is some chance of overcoming a serious situation in economic institutions. the other way to think about india in a very kind of broad picture sense -- i think india -- what is unique about india is that we have many, many more taxis of difference and discord than your average developing country. you have the class separation, which is true in many countries around the world. inequality is accentuating the source of discord, but it is not very interesting because i think many countries have that. we can talk about the inequality problem, but if you look at the other apps, language is more an axis of the score. i think india has by and large overcome this problem. this is not a serious issue any more. castes -- horrendous axis of discord. but i would make the case that at least india is finding a way of overcoming this because -- simple. electoral politics and numbers mean that the backward castes have acquired political power. lots of cost to this, but they have also found economic opportunity. they have found a lot of subsidies and so on, but they have found a way of overcoming partially all the baggage that was put upon them by the historical hierarchy in india of castes. so just the numbers have worked in their favor. while i do not mean at all to suggest that the cast problem in india is over, all i'm saying is that the water level is rising -- while i do not meet at all to suggest that the caste problem is over. the two axes of discord we have not solved our religion and what i would call the geography and tribal problem. if you look at indicators, i think the hinduism problem -- i think the economically -- economically, i think they are seeing improvements in the standards of living and so on. we do not see that to the same extent for the muslims, and i think that is an axis that i think is a potential source of problem always in india. finally, i think the big one we have not crack is the trouble problem. most of these people live in a in easternested band india where they are basically tribal. they have actually not participated in the market economy. of so 80 -- 20% to 25% of india does not run. these people are mar january liesed and therefore always a source of a problem for india. i had this big -- the security angle, you know the whole south angle. but i do think a big long-term challenge is resources especially water which is becoming scarcer and scarcer. there's a political angle with china. there's the climate change angle. i think water is going to be a real source. let me end by saying that, you could wake up on any one day and put on the optimistic hat about india or the pessimistic hat about india. my favorite quote, she says, i think india is like a sand script word and apparently every sand script word means itself and its opposite. but every sand script word also represent as god and a position in sexual intercourse. so that in some ways is what i think about india thats the position. [applause] >> thank you very much. as promised i knew you would deliver with wide-ranging talk. i'm sure it will be questions that i'm sure you'll have answers to. i'm just reminded after your last few comments about whether the glass is half full or half empty. the ambassador for pakistan once described that he was talking about pakistan when we were discussing the future of the country and he said it's not a question whether the glass is half full or half empty. the question is whether the glass is too big. i'm wondering whether the glass in india is growing too fast to keep up with. one of the points that you mentioned at the beginning was the fact that india is a domestic model which is what the organizations have been pro vaying to the world for decades. i'm wondering what you see as the one or two key elements in that. will there need to be a greater infrastructure investment? will they need to have foreign investments? >> so, you know, india has shown that a country can grow rapidly without being an ex- manufacturing model. i think the big difference between india and these other countries has been as i said we've used labor. we've not done manufacturing exports but by and large it's not been based on foreign investment and not been based on foreign markets. now, i think that this model is sustainable. i think going forward is not the case that you know we necessarily need lots of foreign investments and so on. but i think, let's take infrastructure which is a good example and take power in particular. now, it bothers me that routinely people say india needs $500 billion for intrastructure and that most of it has to come from abroad. i don't agree with that because for one thing china has shown that all of the infrastructure has been on the public sector. china has foreign infrastructure but it has been domestic. the reason i get a little irritated with that is because, you know, one plays into this conventional washington consensus view where we need foreign investment when, in fact, the problem of infrastructure especially in india is simply a governance problem. let me make it very, very simple. you know, people don't pay for power in india. that's the bottom line. and if people could be pers waded to pay more, public, domestic and foreign would come rushing in. at the moment when it comes in they guarantee because people don't pay. we have the whole enron problem where the guaranteed returns were given. and the whole thing blew up. i think it's basically a domestic governance and a political problem where the notion that every politician of any stripe routinely the first thing he promises. why is it that people buy this promise? it's a history of no power and uninterrupted -- interrupted power. so why do -- why does politics not change? the opening that i see now is that as more and more companies start delivering, you know, power, you know, with payment and -- people then say, so much for the model. in fact, one of the really interesting experiments is there are two choices of two sources of power. you know, cheap power, no guarantees on realitybility -- realbility. we shall see. so coming back to your question, i don't think that it's globalization and inadequate globalization that's holding back growth infrastructure. it's something in the political and the governance issue. the solutions to which are entirely domestic. >> arising out of this, a lot of people say that india has an insatiable appetite for energy and it will need every ounce of energy that it can get. particularly in the medium term if india is unable to make this shift in governances that you're suggesting. is there a possibility in taking a regional approach having a different set of relationships regarding water, with its neighbors all around, not just to the west, not just to the north but to the east as well? >> i think that's an excellent point because i do think that on energy and power, i think apart from whatever india needs to do domestically just to give you an example, the fact that power subsidies in india has meant that water table has basically -- is dropping tremendously. and i do think that they have a solution that india has, pakistan, china, and all the country there. i think one has to have regional solution. for two reasons, one, of course is that china controls the wear table and increasingly they control the -- you know, the water table -- water's becoming scarce. that element has to be. and then the other element, of course, is that many of these states in pakistan have a big potential in hydro base power which i think yained should use in substitute for its own coal base. so both of the climate change problem, security base problem, and for the water problem, i think we need a more reergenally cooperative solution to this problem. >> thank you. i'm going to open it up to the audience. i request you to be patient. i will recognize you as i see you. and if i miss you, please be patient with me. please wait for the microphone, identify yourself an then ask your question. we'll start here, please. >> thank you. taisy schaefer from brookings. i wanted to extent the first question about the appropriate model for india's future economic growth. you suggest that the precocious india model may not be sus tainable. i think reading between the lines of your presentation, i think the conventional model where you flip flop to structures and textiles may not be adequate for india's size. although india's an important sector. are we looking at a time when india's going to have to look at other approaches or of perhaps more fundamentally of follow the logic of what works in an economy where the private sector has already begun doing more and use that to drive india's future development while concentrating on things like governance and education? >> two analytically distinct questions and they're both very good questions. let me take the latter one first. that india has adopted this usual precocious model for a number of historical choices, right? would it be desirable to use our unskill label more intensively? i think it would be because i think that's where -- that's where the needs are, employment and so on. is it going to happen? i don't think it's going to happen because you know, the pattern of specialization is like a titanic. it's not easy to change that. just to give you an example, routinely now as you go to manufactures in india, you will find a situation where they're thinking of substituting robots for unskilled labor. and there are several examples of that. much as you think we will be able to accommodate unskilled labor, i just don't think as a matter of history that that's going to happen. the sad, unfortunate and unsaid tragedy of that is, we're going to continue with this model development and hopefully india's skill level will catch up. but the consequences that a number of one or two cohorts of unskilled labor will not benefit from the opportunities of growth that -- that's just a sad and inevitable crobry of this pattern of development. my plea would be that i hope we improve labor laws but given a choice, i would focus much more on getting skills in the economy, improving our education because that's where is the demand is going to be going forward. so that's on the economics of this. on the private sector on the market base model or government base model, here's my, you know, slightly controversial take on this. i think people forgot that, you know, growth requires a healthy public sector which performs all these basic functions an a dynamic private sector. india has achieved the latter. the problem is that the public sector is a drag on india. the reason i feel pessimistic is because i feel that in the long run history and experience -- the history of economic development teaches us that it's much easier to create a private sector than it is to create and maintain an efficient public sector that delivers the basics, the basics of maintaining law and order, the basics of stabilizing the economy and the basics of legitimizing the economy by transfers, etc., etc. these are all very demanding attributes but very important attributes. western europe and the united states took a long time but they achieved that. and that is in some way the basis of prosperity. there's much entrepreneurship in mumbai as is in california. there is markets for flesh, for wastes, you name it. but we don't want to live in the mumbai slum because the basic infrastructure that governments provide, you know, law and order, etc. is missing mumbai. that is eroding in india and it's much more difficult for us. that's where we stand. the private sector will do well in india as it will do well in any part of the world as is that basic provisioning, that the public sector has to provide that's a much more social worry for india going forward. >> interesting in my visits when i talk to entrepreneurs, the one thing that they say in both countries is that whatever they've achieved, they've achieved in spite of government not because of government. and they want government to step out of the way. but, i think that -- that, to be totally candid, i find that a little bit, you know, self-serving -- as they say because they rely a lot on what the government does and does not provide. the company doesn't provide social stability. i think that's exactly the kind of discourse and conversation that i think bothers me about what's happening in much of the reason that the government's the problem. of course it's been the problem. and in the past the government has been overbearing and over intrusive. but the government should do a few things but do them really, really well. and in india, that's not happen. if you look at the judicial system, the courts are backed up 30 years. >> we have a question here. >> thank you. >> on this issue of governance which i agree is the key issue in india today and tomorrow -- >> could you identify yourself? >> sugit mansing, american university. wouldn't you say that the discourse within india today is, in fact, focusing on these things? that there are a lot of people i could name them, friends of mine, who are recording the provisions of the constitution -- who are recording what was achieved by the government in the 1950's in the face of enormous tragedies and challenges. and so as you pointed out in your talk, the demand for good governance is growing. and i agree with you that the whole discourse on private vs. public, i mean, we probably have to go back to poliani. >> see, that's why -- there is a race between rot and regeneration. i think the regeneration is partly because of what you said -- governance increases as people become rich other and demand more. the other reason about being hopeful about regeneration is the fact that india's so open and transparent. the problem is that all these things come to light. but nobody's ever done anything about them. enforcement never happens in india. >> as more an more good governance gets rewarded, i think that's the regeneration part. but as i said, both are happening in india. >> i'm sorry, i missed the lady in the back. i want to get to everybody, not to worry. >> holly norton, independent consultant. i wanted to ask two questions. one is to what extent do you think the export of investments by the high end india companies function of push rather than pull? obviously, they calculate their relative opportunities in economic terms but to what extent is there a governance issue here? it makes more sense for them. it's more secure and predictable in other venues. that's been going on with some of india's best corporations. the second part of my question is what role do you see for popular anti-corruption movements in the transformation or, we hope, future transformation of governance in india? >> again, both excellent questions. on the export of f.d.i., it's troo true -- and this is something happening in china where because of uncertainty of the domestic regime, the notion that adds that kind of insurance and push. it's only partly true for india because the period over this actually surged this phenomenon appeared in which india was growing rapidly and foreign capital came flooding into india. so i think now things are changing because of all the uncertainty in india. until very recently over a 10-year period, most of it was because indian management and entrepreneurs showed they were cable of running world class companies not just domestically but internationally. i would say ha the push factor has been relatively muted until recently. and therefore -- on the popular -- i am not an expert but i think the pattern is that -- i think what -- i mean, the fact that there's so much mobilization i think it's unambiguously good. the point is how does it get commannelled accidentally. the fact that we don't actually see concrete manifestations of that is a bit discouraging and the fact that they started a political party. people are not sure that that's the way forward. i often say in india you get episodic accountability. you don't get ongoing accountability in india. i wish it would get translated more into basic structures an institutions changing that we can can get more ongoing accountability. >> good morning. my name is walter. a member of atlantic council. it's a quite interesting debate i wish i could have more time for you to discuss. the question for you is -- question and comment. global village and corporate control and then you mentioned many times segregation between skills and unskilled workforce. why do we have to concentrate on that? i believe that every individual has some kind of skills. we should go from the transition from unskilled workers to skilled workers. not everybody is going to go to college. but maybe they would have an interest to go to college. and other comment and question for you. why can we not create stronger partnerships in those countries including india which is very critical? thank you. >> i mean, i don't wish -- mean to, you know, in some ways say that, you know, make a judgment about skills is good and unskilled is bad. i just think that the way modern economy functions and the way that india in travel, you know, the demand in the economy is for skills. not that much for unskilled people. >> the question is how do you address that? one way is to do what china did is you know, the pattern -- demand more unskilled labor which the country has an abundance. that india's case, that's the case. do you make it and turn around or do you upgrade skills? i think in india's case i think one would have to upgrade skills. the same governance problem wes have in the private ecksor. that's a dilemma and that's the kind of value of skilled and unskilled. on public-private partnerships, it's a become one of these terms that you know, or things -- it's become almost a fad. i don't really know what it means. what does public/private -- every economic business is a partnership. essentially what it's become is basically the government saying, look we'll give you land and we'll look after the land problems that we have, and you know, the rest is yours. now, if that's the way of going forward, i'm all for it. but certainly in the india case that's not been that successful because the whole allocation of land has been such a source of corruption that you wonder is this desirable or not? so i'm all for p.p.p. i just don't know what it means. >> in many case this is the government keeping the rent seeking. maybe that's a way to describe it. the gentleman in the striped shirt. >> morning. i'd like to draw your attention -- >> if you could identify yourself. >> my name is munir sheik. i would like to draw your attention to the electricity sector. blackout is on everybody's mind. was it an accident? was it expected to happen? knowing about the electricity problems in india, i knew for a long time that the intriguity of the electricity grid was an issue. there were large frequency isolations from getting the power from the east to the west and it was alarming. and so where do you -- if you were to -- there was a need for infrastructure development to support the network and it didn't happen. where do you assign the blame or where do you think the problem occurred? looking back at the california power crieses and new york power crisis. there were some problems. we just never paid attention to it. so could you please comment on the blackout in india? >> first of all, i'm not an expert on the technical aspects of the power grid. i don't have much to say by way of -- i only know as much as you know in terms of the proximate causes for this problem which seem to be, you know, that some states overdrew because of the drought and because of the fact that the water table had come down, the monsoon had failed this year. the demand of power had come up and the supply had come down. >> the governance problem comes back here in a sense that technically there are limits how much states can draw on the grid. clearly those were flouted and those were flouted probably in connivance with the public officials. so i don't, you know, apart, that's all i know. i don't know very much more about that part of india. to me, the much bigger problem as he was saying, i mean the amazing thing is that it got fixed compared to the petco problem. but i don't think that's the real issue. the real issue is the chronic undersupply and governance. and i think that'ses the bigger problem of power in india. >> thank you. >> gentleman in the white shirt. >> yes, i'm a doctor with the american league. the answer is very simp to the power shut down. you just save it for the -- and it should be much easier. anyway, you mentioned so many things that it was very lightning for me. how far successfully india is managing this population? because the pressure on the infrastructure can become very burdensome. and it gives tremendous difficult for one to take off. and the other thing is what is the number of people in india who are below poverty line? and the national security is nothing but a deflection of the economic strength. and the defense budget in india , and india reflects a softer image. wouldn't it be helpful to improve the quality of life, living conditions and future generations? thank you. let me take these in order. population pressures, you see -- the world over there's been a big shift on the conversation -- population. in the 1960's and 1970's we spoke about it being a problem. with the east-asian miracle, the whole question became can a certain structure of population actually be a source of dine mism. so the focus was shifted from the level of population to the structure of population and that's the sense in which people are saying that india has a demographic dividend because it has a young and growing labor force which you'll save more, keep it competitive and that's what happened in east asia. that's what happened in china. now it's happening -- conversely aging is a burden. if it's an old population it's actually a problem. and that's what looms ahead for china. and i think in india we have the same situation where i think that going forward, i do believe now that there's a huge source of sources coming from india -- in fact, it's going to have a younger population. but that is as much a statement about potential because the fagget that you have the capacity for dynamism opportunity mean they'll have the resours to facilitate that. the government still has a big challenge ahead to convert opportunity to action, jobs and employment and so on. but i do think it's a source of pressure. the other thing that's not recognized about india, is that india is very, very different dem graphically in india. you know, much of the demographic is going to be -- the most populace part of india will generate the biggest increase in this population and the other states are going to start aging soon. so ind yeah has a very interesting -- india has a very interesting mix -- poverty, i would say that india's poverty has come down a lot. you know, it's a very controversial, the numbers. i would say is there something about the 20th to 25th% in india. it's a substantial reduction buzz it is not as big of a reduction given how india has grown. and the experience of the 1990's and the 2000's has been not as good as the experience of the 1980 's when positive -- poverty came. and the developing question, i mean, i think in an ideal world, yes, you know, if all countries could do, could convert swords into cow shares. but we don't live in the real world. there's a whole question about what's the external environment. are there security issues in the region. can you do this? whether you have to do it this way in concert with other countries? i would certainly be, you know, because the problem in india just to be a little bit controversial is that in india and the need to kind of cheap up with that. so i don't expect india defense spending to decline over the next few years. quite apart from the india pakistan issue. you know, the big question is whether china is making its budget bigger. i'm not optimistic about much as i would think i would hope that that's the way all countries would go. i don't think india will go in that direction. thank you. >> we're all in the policy business. and i wonder if you talk a little bit what importance episodes of policy change have in spurring growth and also retarding growth in india. and if policy episodes are important what is the scope for policys that could lead to sustained growth over a reasonable period of time? >> let me be provocative. you know, monte calvalio often says, when, you know, u.s., you know, often even for example, the i.n.s., they go to developing countries change policy. very important. they have the nike code, just do it. when you talk about equivalent reforms, they say you've got to understand we have a very complicated political economy here. all those issues are real. and in a country like india, those are absolutely in a country like india. why i do -- i am a complete believer in the neatful policy reform. i think just because you said policy is that way. they have to make them electorally popular and positive. i think, you know, to some extent it's happening. and to some extents they are happening. i take the view just as you said govern governance is putting a setting. the degree of maneuver for leaders inner india to kind of unilaterally and quind of from a top down is not as great as you know, outsiders might think. and that's in the understanding that people will have to have a country like india or even numb like china. even china is not subject to increasingly to public opinion and so on. i think it really is a complicated business, poll -- policy. it's as provocative in india as sts in the united states. >> there are countries in which growth slows substantially. it seems to be associated with episodes of policy change. and the real question for all of us in this business is how do you get there? how do you get tote a period where you raise the growth rate. development rate and sustain it over time. it may be that policy is indodge nouse. but if he is, then they >> there is no doubt. the question is how many independence keeders have do pull? you can either despair because of you know, water's happening and i think that's the reason for despair or you could say that -- as i was trying to sigh that you know, as more as more states in india. they're doing better coverage innocence that's the ours and the demonstration it took frk that. there independence yao being a common nrkt. i think that the sentence of optimism. change this and change that. you -- >> i think you're pointing to the political science. yes. behind mr. shay. they're saying from the independence ca ned cal -- medical out sode. i came to listen to you because i -- you know do point out some very thought-provoking things. and actually are based on questions you said. you said low tote. jubak. in novation and then somebody would have paint it and it's just a way of looking at it. so is jaban not a form instead of barack obama -- back. you will ridicule the road of him. is india not a democracy? unlike some of this neighbors and india cannot accept a man in the secret to making or proposing laws. so d man has to get into the political system. >> so on the point about, you don't like that. i was trying to use oit in a completely disscriptive sense. the history of the united states from after the several war. i went to work in 1940 reese. the ugs was a nation of hustlers. ai think the thing to record about it's a world and the be one. i believe they should placed that. and but people are cravet enough to overcome them. i done mean it in that sense at off. i think hustling -- it's a good thing. i mean, whatever-even though it may have some dents in the ix i think it's a -- can those people wrant to fall for a particular power trying to respond as to whether i think it will be effective. that's my comment. will we at this because it becomes sustainable lucy. and believe -- by the way all that i've said i police all my hopes in democratic and policies in india. >> thank you. the gentleman who has its hands raised. >> thanks. thank you for a very interesting and eliminating presentation. on the topic of political reform -- >> could you identify yourself. >> on the point of political reform that bop. i would say that you see it everyone more. you have growth and there are you can make changes. you need to have a response because the circumstances are such that you need to do something. those are preps -- two questions for you. one on the low-level skill, at the same time, the country is largely based an domestic demand. there would seem to be for the lower level to for sats. what extent do you see that? and to cha equity tent given that d different manufactures dumped labor supply. that's -- that doesn't really happen. the second question is on the international sex. at a.b.b., we have supporting conversation and in some squares they make it. south asia is one of the reason why will receive slower projects. and i would appreciate the abuse whether that is also your accessment. thanks. >> just i want to ask you two more questions. i would add a town 20k. one is a cry consistent, >> two -- growth takes off the demand for edge cal intreeses so that's the die ma'amic as well. on the know -- dynamic as well. on the know clsh one thing that zruck me is i've always thought of yaineds as a place because, you know -- in some of my -- i was presenting some things in london last year. with ron would be in the audience. i was telling them, i think the fact that one of the under was once you idea the political india. what's the one economy benefits of that sp by we sustainable proposition. people don't realize that this no. he began his lafe as >> slily i know when the time was used it was a problem. but i think because the idea of india has been established, i sni that's less of a frab now. and therefore my fishing as a bay situation for >> us sane as i said, one of the basics would could experiments, draveling or gets replicates. people move. we saw that. but now it's happening more an her what's surprises me is how little migration we've had in london compared to china. chow has bln a charge ni factor i think part of that by plain nation is that, in china because both rathes so ra did, that it increases gl -- together. when you grow at 4% 235%. when you do it at 95%, then that's why i think it's have to have lynn del -- india. i've seen suddy after city. east asia has integrated. when you grow randedly that's going to been indill consequence on the there's not that much policy integration as well. 2s just the. supported by some policy majors i mean, so in south asia you've not head that ropid growth, you know, and the second thing is pakistan. it's simple is that. i want to find way to develop the corporation win way or the other. we have two questions. >> yes. >> ken dillon. what halings does climate change pose to the india economy? and how do you see india responding? >> so, i mean, i thought i ashrewded to that this is a big challenge because of the whole water situation. what is going to be -- it's a viking horse, a squarey -- now, how is india responding? i think yained is not responding very well. a number of things basically the water we'll use. we use it as opposed to how we are and the subsidy, you know, we it's not just here too. but an additional arrow. it's called the warming. so you guys are not responding very well. the standard explanation or excuse will be that we're still a poor country we need energy nfert my next book are on clitemaling changes. i think water's a glrge of hope. fkts does the china issue with water, three years ago a river just kind of clanged course in such a dramatic fashion that it dropped home to a positionity makers. and so the awareness india i think that's gaining more attraction in india. oy think that reese gifpke to be the next biggest step. >> duh. , in adie. >> if you could keep it short, please. i want to make it. >> more power to you. i'm making a long the lines of labors. i'm thinking spervingically of the legal market. and i wonder can you give us your thought obs the potential it -- it's a question, that yes, it is a drag but is the first part of your question relayeding to the fact that you have foreign inches combing to india. india's very protection nat on that. there's a supreme court case on this, butter -- but it is a problem. there is closed. i would more optistic on that, because you know, in all of these things when a country recognizes itself has an interest that exchanges our neighbor. he will also have to shift people abroad. the more the pressure on india to kind of open up. and i think that -- a lot of this comes from the protection. but i think the demand for skills is going to off strip their supplies. so that's what we do. >> thank you. fist, let me congratulate you for the newer prospect. i'm an india journalists. both are questions. he's coming back this whole governance issue. to get the price is right, to use about olds term. the question is how? i was wondering will the physical paperwork is thill in pro-. do we needs something like the finance that and raise their own make their pooling much better. it becomes much more manufacture. it's a great question because me -- this is what i say about india. the advantage of having established the idea of india, then you can let states go. because the basic frame worning is not threatened in my you know, the whole state delings with watered. that's exactly what you said. that you need to fed rised and i see india as a mo dole for where the basis for dyanmism is actually decentralization. it's a very contrast with europe. in yurem are europe all the tendencies. yained is where the united states was maybe 17 to 100 years ago in a a decentralized fashion. but never the trick in the united states you need as a frequency that will not be sletnd. the idea is unleash, horses which means a fiscal competitors. >> ins is where india has to go. >> so the bottom line is the option go to be to do del threw? that how does that affect the battle against the population or is the option going to be to make those boll -- so you can then go up and challenge economic. i think mogget is going to happen in yained out of the most countries it will be trial and but a trial and murder truly reads, you know, if we have that balance. one could hope for it. there there will but i don't. there's a lot more school and i think that basic dine masme -- kind. and we always end up with wendy daniger yune know. everything is true. thank you, again. good way to end this. wonderful to talk. i want to thank my league that helped put this thing together and to make it run so smoothly. i thank the audience for being an important part of this conversation. >> do i not envy the drowsy harmony of the republican party. they screll. debates. we welcome -- they squelch debates. they are uniform. we are united. the choices this year are not just between two different personalities or between two political parties, they're between two different visions of the future, two fundamentally different ways of governing. their government of pesimism fears or ours of hope, confidence and growth. >> c-span has aired every major party convention since 1984 and this year watch the republican and democratic national conventions live on c-span august 7th. >> sunday his new release is hitler land. >> i had no idea of the experiences of the people who were my predecessors as correspondent or dediplomats. i wonder what it would been like to be a correspondent inner the 1920's and 1930's. what would you have noticed or not noticed much less how would you have acted? andrew nagorski on c-span's q&a. >> next the discussion of. the heritage foundation on state foter i.d. laws. after that an

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