These are not normal times. Is it justice [applause] thank you, justice, for keeping hope and justice alive. A few quick administrative notes. Now would be a good time to turn off your cell phones and when we get to the q a part of the session we encourage you to come to this question as you might have noticed we do have cspan here this evening and we are also vidviding for our own company. And at the end our staff would appreciate it if you would fold up your chair at the end and lean it against something. We are really delighted to have david with us this evening. David has moved through the walls of Public Service and private business. David shifted into government during the Clinton Administration where he served was deputy under secretary of commerce and returned to the public and founded his own advisory firm. Today he is ceo and editor of the ft group which publishes Foreign Policy magazine and website and visiting scholar at carnegie university. He has also written several insightful books. They have included in 2005, the National Security council, in 2008 super class about the global power elite, in 2012 power inc about the complex relationship between government and business. And in 2014, national and security about the making of u. S. Foreign policy in an age of fear. His new book is called the Great Questions of tomorrow. This is a ted book. Ted books are published by simon and shuster and define themselves as quote small books about big ideas. Meaning they are short mf to read in a single sitting but long enough to take a deep dive into a particular topic. Those topics can range from architecture to business to space travel to love. Each ted book paired with a related ted talk. Davids ted talk occurred a couple years ago under the title how fear drives american politics. I think it is up to nearly 1. 2 Million Viewers and basically makes the point, we as a nation, especially since 9 11, have been too focused on terrorism and the way people errand the world are interacting with each other. David argues we need to do better at bringing people together who know technology and science with people who lead our government so they all start posing better questions about where they are heading and begin addressing those questions more in creative ways. In the book, david highlights some of the questions we being on the verge of change ought to be focusing on. Questions that prompt us to reimagine the basic aspects of your basics, identity, social contracts and rights, who rules us and how we work. This is clearly pretty fundamental stuff and i think we are in for a very provocative discussion this evening. Please join me in welcoming dashd. That introduction was better than the book. Thank you very much for that. It was a pleasure to be here. After you do book for a while, you go out and discover the parts of putting out a book you like and the part you dont like. The part you like is finishing the book, the part you dont like is writing the book but i only go to one bookstore now when i do this and that is here because this place captures, to me, the kind of ideal of a bookstore as Community Gathering place, as a font of ideas, and really sort of part of the intellectual life of the community. That is why i am glad you are here. I will talk for 25 minutes about the book and then we can have questions. But here is what i am not going to talk about. I am not going to talk about he whose name shall not be spoken. I am not going to talk about todays headlines because the point of my book is we spend far too much time trapped into the news cycle and in the rare moments we are not trapped in the news cycle we are looking backwards. I look at the phenomenon of american politics right now and russian politics and turkish politics and israeli politics and even chinese politics to some extent and in each case i see leaders who are the last leaders of the 21st century. I see leaders who are trying to cling do an idea of how Society Works that is old if not antiquiated. Putin wants the world to be like it was during the soviet union. The president wants it to be like it was in the 80s. They are clinging to the past. The point of the ted talk i gave was we have spent in the United States the past 16 years focused on terrorism, focused on the last threats of the 21st century, focused on real issues that are not existential issues and not driving change in a big way and do this at our peril. By looking backwards we run the risk of missing the big changes that are actually coming at us. I start the book with a little vin yet of myself when i was 17 years old and watching television and there was a Television Show about Nuclear Winter. You could see, i was a cheerful kid. And, you know, i watched this show and it said there were nuclear war, that the environment of the planet would be destroyeded and 100 Million People would die. I was kind of upset by this because it didnt seem out of the question. I went in search of my father to talk to him about it. It was a nice spring day and he was outside. My dad was a scientist and also a holocaust survivor. He saw my face looked grim and he said what is wrong and i said i have just been watching this documentary on Nuclear Winter and if there is a nuclear war, 100 Million People would die, what would be the point of going on living . And he said yes, but what is wrong . He was perverse character and trying to tweak me a bit. He was a contrarian as a scientists. And i said it would be a terrible thing. And he said 100 million have died before in the 14th century and sortly after that we have the renaissance. He said sometimes big traumatic changes produce unexpected consequences. I want to tell you rather quickly he was not advocating 100 Million People died. I mentioned this on a tv show and got tweets saying that is nazis and you are promoting the death i am not. I thought there was a useful lesson. If you lived in the 14th century you would be focused on the plague or had great schism or the ice age and might miss the fact that the result of the plague was the workforce changed and people could demand more for services because there were fewer people and that led to the advent of the middle class and there was this guy named pet rock and he started writing about classical in a that caw on and as this century of turmoil unfolded the next thing you knew you were in the renaissance and if you were not prepared for it you would have fallen the chapter in the book is called before the renaissance. I am making the case we are in that situation now. Every so often in Human History there are containings that are so sweeping they leave behind the institutions that can keep up with them. When we change that rapidly it causes disruption. I dont believe you can study Human History and not be an optimist. If you are vigorous you have to note that people live longer now than they ever have, they are healthier than they have ever been, they are better educated than they have ever been, they are wealthier than they have ever been, have access to more art and culture than they ever have. We are in a remarkable time and see progress going forward. But when we get these moments of disruption we have upheaval until we adjust. You have the 30year war, the revolutions that came with the Industrial Revolution and i am concerned that we are going to miss out on preparing for the changes that are around the corner. I think those changes are of a once and every two or three hundred year level and they will actually happen in the next 1020 years. For the first time in Human History every person on the planet will be connected in a man made system which is to say the internet. The poorest people on the planet, the richest people on the planet. What it means is everybody anywhere can reach out and touch anyone anywhere else any time. We will all for the first time in Human History be in one single cultural ecosystem contained with borders. This is a great opportunity for us to enrich ourselves but it will also produce backlash and one of the reoccurring th theme is the books is the profound technological changes coming have upsides and downsides. We have to prepare for them. When we get to these moments of upheaval, the questions we ask have to become more fundamental. We are at at point that is so great that some of the questions we will be confronted with are who am i . We are honoring this role in the most nice we are going to have to ask how we define ourselves and if we one thing that comes out of that is what is the nature of the community if is not defined, it goes across borders and then what does that mean . Ask de now malt make them pay in the same way that we dont have the words and vocabulary and they would look at me like i was rain man. It is not just conflict, it is economics. Think about it. 20 years ago, Allen Greenspan was referred to as the most powerful man in the world because he controlled the big monetary tools. That is how we control the economy. But i think we will look back as the Jurassic Period of economics. When you go into the big data era, they will give real time information on Economic Activity down to the block level and the front versus the back. I can come up with new stimuli and i can do it in real time. One of the Biggest Technology is in new york city they introduce something called the police Data Tracking system. It took three days to determine when there was a crime and you can redeploy people and in my opinion it in the butt. We can do the same thing economically. We dont have to wait three all of the things that i just talked about. And i find that most academic the part of history that is interesting to me is the disruptions. The ones that are like this. Whether it is the Industrial Revolution where the reformation and is a different level. Im interested in hearing this. They are changes that occur across all areas of society. In the underlying philosophies of life. There are moments like that were everything connects across. I think we need to stop and ask questions about what might happen tomorrow that is different from what happened yesterday. It seemed to me from your presentation that you were identifying Electronic Technologies as the main drivers of this very rapid change that we are experiencing. Is that the case and if not what are some of the other major drivers of rapid change that you had identified in your work. Clearly, biological changes in neuroscience we are about to enter an era in which our understanding of how the brain works. And how we have the genetic science and how we can have a certain kind of disease. It would change the nature of life in very profound ways. The average 10yearold american has a 50 chance of living to be a hundred years old. When you talk about what is a profound change in society. For almost all of Human History in the workforce there were two generations of people. And we are about to enter a time with four generations maybe five generations of people. Thanks to information informationtechnology people wont retire. The big debate that took place in washington in the 80s or the lockbox. We were worried about how we were going to pay for retirement. But i think what we may discover is that we are can actually be able to hunters harness the most expertise population using new technologies. To keep them economically liable for much longer. That is going to make their lives rewarding but its also going to create economic growth. I think the changes in biosciences may be bigger than the changes in information technology. More profound. And you know. When someone comes up to you and says i can give you a pill that will make you feel what you feel like when you fall in love because i understand the blame chemistry of love is going to change a lot about our philosophies of life. A curiosity question. A lot of the ideas are applicable and perceivable for while invoked areas. The major cities in capitals for smaller rural areas were less developed areas do you still see the impact because a small town in america or overseas they may not had the Technological Access or other things. Its very interesting. The reality is because they are phone size in many countries in africa had 80 cell phone penetration at this point. In and more than half of all of the cell phones sold everywhere in the world are smart phones right now. You are now getting applications that allow a goatherd or in goat herder in kenya to understand the price of goats in different markets and bring things to market better and you also see leapfrog of technology. You may have heard of mobile banking where there are 1. 4 billion people in the world who dont have a bank account. But in tanzania and kenya they are now over 50 Million People who do their banking on their cell phone. I think actually the breakthroughs that theyve made in mobile banking are to come to us when we are going to embrace some of these things. I was talking to someone not too long ago who was dealing in rural most africa they would look at the soil and now they find out it determines whether the soil is being fertilized properly. And if its not they then fedex to those people there are the applications that are happening and those parts of the world as well. How bad do things are getting it. On what level. I was not prepared for that. Dont buy the book. They had been kind of shocking. We can get those changes. A lot of what you see in extremism in the middle east as a reaction to this kind of connection. I think we see some emerging tensions and i will just tell you about one and of them very interested in right now. Between globalist and nationalist. Im happy to talk to you about mobilization later on. I dont think that is a divide. The real divide right now. They went another way. The intro lands hinterlands went another way. Even when they have that. The rest of the country when in went in different directions. The cities are actually the places that are globalizing the fastest. Because they are hubs with the technology capitalization. And then that draws good people. I think is weakening national government. Each had 90 plus populations. They are true book dash make truly global cities. With the hong kong. 60 Million People. This is essentially an urban area that is the size of what most Major Companies in europe were. I think we are entering a time where some of the fault lines are going to be unexpected fault lines and we will have to figure out how to reconcile those. It could be pretty rough. Having said that. Look at europe recently. They saw where we went and they are now reacting to that in a way that has to see that as fairly positive. Mediumterm and longterm optimistic. Thank you for coming. You touched on what you would call the political economy of automation and you talked about the great benefits of being able to write poetry but he also mentioned that might mean that income is accrued to those who on the capital in the machines. When i took it took about these issues maybe we ought to be cracking open and thinking about that. I wonder that would be a great world if we could distribute the income enough that we could all enjoy the leader and my question is do you think we have the social complex Strong Enough and if not what do we do i am a capitalist but i do think they said a couple of things right. You have a big advantage. And then when you take them and you see them technological and they dont actually need people anymore which is a new part of this thing. They sound very familiar with what they are doing about distribution of income. I dont think we understand how we would want to distribute income. There are other societies that do it better than we do it. The book i wrote. One of the complaints of the book was we thought the end of the cold war meant the end of history. And what had turned out. And some of the other one of them one of them was gm and the other was stopped. Data system for retraining people and taking care people in the first safety net was much stronger. So it happened. If the bailout gm and they let saab a fail. So which company is more capitalist. The one that let the market take its course. Because they have built the social safety net because they couldnt do it. I think we are going to see new models emerge when the senate it was in europe for a while the gravity is shifting. I think with to be open minded that many of the answers to these questions are going to be the transverse pacific intellectual component to them. And those are can gonna sound different from the ones we are used to. Thank you very much. This is so interesting. I completely agree with the idea that we need to be looking forward and i know you said were neck and talk about he who must not be named. Where in a very interesting time where we are having to explain some of the principles that we have no in the rule of law attacks on the press and all of these things. And forcing us to go back to some of our basic principles and explain this in a way that my generation has not had to grapple with before. How do you reconcile the two and you have any insights on how we can speak to some of those. Giving the thesis of wanting to look ahead. I think its important to say were having two different discussions. The discussion about the massive social and technological and Scientific Institution changes that are down the road. We have a leadership that wants to turn the clock back. But having said that the political crisis that we are in is a country right now is separate from these discussions in many ways. Honestly i said i would avoid it. I think were in a political crisis right now. I think leadership in the white house in the hill are not showing sufficient appreciation for the Constitutional Responsibilities for separation of powers. For a whole host of other things that i think will produce a crisis. I think theyre going to be very rough in politics. We grow from these things also. And the genius of the american system into the airs constitution is that it is designed to refresh itself. At small, lean and flexible. But when we confront these kind of issues we grow from it. We were strengthened by at the end of the day. I remain optimistic. I dont take its it can be easy to get from here to there. And the one thing we mustnt do is normalize what is happening. And i worry about that. The president will go off to saudi arabia and he will sign a deal. But if he does that and he does the other things that he is doing thats not normal. It is adding the trappings of normalcy. Over something is much more disturbing and dark. The greatest genius of the United States is that we reinvent ourselves all the time. There is no stigma. You can try something and you can fail. I think politically because of the way our elections work in the system has checks and balances. I think at the end of the day we will end up stronger on the other side. [applause]. Book tv recently visited capital help to ask members of congress what they are reading the summer. I highly and strongly encourage people to read. It opens up this expansion. It does not necessarily