Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20140320

Mistake about how to organize our Digital Network and i was part of making the mistakes. So im absolutely certain there was no ill intent, there was no evil conspiracy, it was an honest mistake made with tremendous purity of heart. Rose the mistake was. The mistake was if we made information open, if everybody shared their information, if we created an informal economy for the information world, that that would make the world efficient enough that it would benefit everybody in the end and it would great a more egalitarian society. But the mistake we made is that all people might be created equal but not all computers. There are computers calculated at creating an advantage. And Nancy Strickler the shs bring creative projects to life. Its hard to do Creative Things and make art and especially because the only ideas that seem to get money are ones that might make someone else money. But a lot of great ideas in the world are just things that people want to do because theyre excited about it. The crises in crimea and the future online economy when we continue. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. We begin tonight with the fast evolving situation in crimea and the rest of ukraine. Early today pro russian activists took control of the crimean city of sevastopol. Also today Ukraine Defense Team Announced the countries drawing up plans to withdraw soldiers and their families from crimea. On tuesday crimean leaders signed a treaty with moscow integrating the peninsula into russia. That followed sundays referendum that overwhelmingly approved crimeas leaving ukraine. The west and Ukrainian Government say the lazily organized referendum boycotted by many noncrimean russian authorities was illegal and will not be recognized. Here though is what russian president putin said yesterday. In peoples minds, crimea always has been and is now a part of russia. And from generation to generation people gave the many of crimea being a russian land and any political changes and transformations in the foremost soviet union didnt change that. With such high stakes this is arguably the most serious and potentially Dangerous International crises of the post cold war era. Some are saying were now in a new post post cold era. There are Big Questions to k uw why has russia done this now, what is it likely to do next and what if anything can the United States and others do to shape its calculations. Joining me are two of this countrys leading observers of russia. Tom graham is a managing director of kissinger associates. He was the chief russia hand on the National Security Council Staff from 2004 to 2007 and served in the department of state as a Foreign Service officer. And later on the policy planning staff. And kimberly martin. Shes a professor at Bernard College and member of the faculty at columbia university. Tom lets start with you with the question, why did this happen now. Why didnt it happen six months ago. Its a confluence richard i think in both russia, ukraine and also in the west. In russia, it didnt happen a few years ago because russia was in the midst of an Economic Crises the way the rest of the world was. Its gotten past that. Even though the economy is growing more slowly at this point, the feeling is the worst is behind them. Something thats factored into their thinking. Second clearly its the return of putin. Putin did the presidency in 2012. And part of his mission, russian needed a in his mind a national indemnity. Would this happen until recently the president of ukraine would this have happened without his being forcibly ousted from the president ial palace. If youre talking about the acute phase of the crises i think clearly not. But if youre talking about the ukraine question, this is a question thats been on the agenda for a long long time. Its critical to the way putin thinks about rush area the role in the world. Its crucial how russia exerts itself as a great power. The ukraine question was always there. Yanukovych clearly thats part of it. What weve seen over the past three weeks is really an improvisation i think. I want to come back to that question but professor martin, kimberly. Lets go to putins remarks yesterday. We played the beginning of it. What was he telling us. Richard a couple things came out very strongly. The first one was incredible level of resentment and even hatred for the west for everything thats gone wrong for russia. A point of humiliation. The litany is the move by putin not there before. There are two different ways you can describe the word russian in the russian language. You can use the word that means russian citizen or the russian state or you can use the word that means ethically russian. Up until this point putin used russian citizen russian state. Last time for the first time he used the word ethnic russian. For those of us not russian language speakers, what should we draw from that . Combined with this seeing of humiliation and hatred of the west and getting back what russia lost it mean putin means a shift. Hes no longer talking about restoring soviet glory hes talking about restoring it anything russian glory and that should be disturbing to anybody whose watched international in the most decades. Something like what we had in yugoslavia. Tom you mentioned the idea you thought mr. Putin might be improvising, that he doesnt have a grand plan. This is a country thats known for playing chess. Hes got a broad idea how it should play out over the long term but hes clearly looking at events, what he plans and the next movement. Times he pushes beyond what he thought he was. I was in moscow three weeks ago before mr. Yanukovych fled. They were think of two plans. Plan a was to build a pro russian collation around yanukovych. But that turned out not to be possible then plan b was possible. This is the transeastern, you create a frozen conflict in ukraine and use that as leverage over the Central Government in kiev. What were the scenario, help again those of you who arent experts. Why is ukraine, why is crimea so important . Is this strategic, is it psychological, is it economic, is it political . What is this really about . Whats driving this . Its about all of those things. Its about the way not only mr. Putin, much of the russian elite thinks about russias role in the world. Now we can have arguments over the history of this, but parts of ukraine have been in the russian empire for at least 300 years. It was 60 years agree khrushchev transferred. The crimea itself to the ukraine. The way russians think about security, securitys always been about pushing the frontiers of far away from the heartland as possible centered in moscow. Russia is located in this great plain. This is strategic depth. Its strategic depth in many ways. This is what allowed russia to survive in the below ludic evasion. So psychologically this becomes an important part of the way russians think about their security and the way they think about their economic prosperity. And then of course theres the historical argument that were all slavs and the world. Kimberly youre shaking your head. Its giving mr. Putin too much to call him a chess player. Hes a judo. Hes using the populous nationalism hes stirring up in russia to get support among the elites for going forward. The reason that the timing happened now is because of the sochi olympics and the corruption. There was a big scandal about the corruption, 50 billion wasted on the sochi olympics. This is about the dog. I think it is. When he was alive often used to write a column where he put himself inside someone elses head. If bill were alive today he would be writing a column, first person column about mr. Putin. What would mr. Putins column look like. How would he see how things have unfolded. Would he be feeling good right now. Yes, hes probably feeling very good. Hes going to keep on pushing until he meets resistance. I think everybody was shocked at what putin has done so far because it seemed like taking over crimea was such a high risk endeavor with very little payoff. Stwhr isnt a lot of russian economic value. The supplies come from the rest of ukraine. For anything being shipped out of crimea has to go through ports or the straits but turkey controls. Its not a wealthy area of ukraine, supported by a billion dollars of assistance coming from the Ukrainian Government every year which means putin has to take over. Its on top of the waste of money in sochi and he has to pay for which he took over in 2008 following those events. Its taking on another burden at a time when the russian economy is stagnating. Tom, to what extent is mr. Putin less secure than many think. That he saw yanukovych get driven out of the palace in kiev and said thats a precedent im not real comfortable with. The last thing i want after the arab spring is a moscow spring. I dont want a colored revolution. This is a bit of a strategic distraction to bolster his own position. To what degree do you buy into that. I think the narrative is somewhat different on this. What putin has done in ukraine and crimea fits into a broader narrative the way putin thinks what his goals was, what his mission was. He rose to power 15 years ago. Remember what russia was like at that point. We were talking about russia being a state, the economy was in the tank at that point. And putin came to power with a Clear Mission and that was to rebuild russia as a great power. And if you look at what hes accomplished over the past 15 years he would say i took a failed state and i rebuilt that state. Created a consolidated system of government. The economy is revived under me. In the past five years i spent money on rebuilding my military, giving russia the hard power it needs to project its influence abroad. And mao now what ive done n crimea is i put away 25 years going back to the soviet period. And im telling the outside world you got to deal with russia. The period of our acquiescing is over. We are moving forward, wire going to depenn interest. And hes left that ambiguous as to where and how far hes prepared. One of the quotes from his speech, this is what i read in translation. Do not believe those who want you to fear russia. This is the people of ukraine shouting at other regions will follow crimea. We do not want to divide ukraine, we do not need that. Do either of you believe mr. Putin when he says ive had enough my appetite is sated with crimea and you dont have to worry about me. Hes already broken a promise today because the original promise was that Russian Forces would not force the Ukrainian Military out of basis in crimea. And we saw that happen with the Russian Navy Commander arrested, and the people actually being forced out essentially by gunpoint. Hes broken one promise. Maybe he doesnt intend to divide ukraine. Maybe he intends to have all of ukraine go back to mother russia. Thats one interpretation. But i think that at this point we dont have any particular reason to trust what putin says hes going to do. And i think were sort of over a barrel because lets not much that the United States or the west can do in response. The economies are intertwined, big businesses have interest in russia in particular but it really limits the extent to which sanctions are going to have any impact. What do you think, do you think basically its a crimea only policy for mr. Putin or crimea as an appetizer. I started by saying its the ukraine question, its not crimea. Crimea is the eyes part taking it back to the Russian Federation serve a lot of foreign and domestic purposes. He created this Eurasian Union and that is supposed to include all the former soviet space at a minion. Ukraines the big prize in all of that. Its the economy, its strategic location. Its economic. It would increase the population of russia. The argument that you can make is that if all you get out of this is crimea you lost the ukraine. If you bite off a part of ukraine and lose the west, hes lost the strategy. He needs all of ukraine and its all about how do i get placed in kiev a government that is going to be at a minimum in the near term not hostile to my interests, is not going to move closer to europe. And keep this ukraine in play to a point where i think i can bring the whole thing. Professor martin said sanctions not able to do a whole lot for us. Whats your view do we have economic tools to persuade mr. Putin to temper. I think the short answer to that is no. Particularly were not prepared to do a lot of harm to ourselves. Do you mean the United States, europe or both. I think it has to be both. It has to be a consolidated use. And theres a lot of Economic Hardship you create that might cause putin, mr. Putin a rethink. But we would have to be prepared to sacrifice a lot on our side. As kim has said, they are intertwined. You cant hurt russia without hurting us in some way. And the problem is when you look at this from the standpoint of european interests, and american interests, that doesnt rise to the level it does in russia. So theyre prepared to withstand a lot more pain than we are. And i dont think that were prepared to do that damage to ourselves to make a point about changing orders in europe at this point. You already expressed your position on economic sanctions. If the mill tree increased collaboration with poland and others, increased Energy Exports to challenge russias advantages in that area, would mr. Putin still see this as so much tipping the balance in his favor. Well i think actually what putin has done is to provoke the west to do exactly those things. What is so amazing is that putin already had a great deal of influence in ukraine. Ukraine is dependent on russia for natural gas imports. Theres a Large Russian ethnic population in ukraine. It meant that whatever Coalition Government were to emerge over the long term putin would have influence. He was already finding contracts for Aircraft Development with ukrainian enterprises when all of this went back. So in sense, putin has brought on himself the fact that now nato is going to focus on the east west divide in a way it hasnt been doing since the end of the cold war and has certainly made it certainly that europe is going to increase its capability to accept liquid natural gas and other forms of natural gas alternatives. When this happens and the glow shall we say wears thin in moscow and suddenly the russian economys paying a price, russias even more isolated, military and natos essentially found a new lease on life, does mr. Patton start confronting as you well second guesser and say this may not have been such a good fing for us. In the short run if it helps him in the medium and long run can it come back and bite him. Hes going to blame the west that russia currently finds itself in. Whats going to make a difference is how the leaders of the russian businesses that have been internationalized recently react to this. Its becoming a prawn of the russian state and it doesnt want to do that, it wants to be a profit making entity. It will be interesting to see what the leadership in companies and other really big businesses that have an interest in nationalizing the economists. You understand russia has to diversify to have the economy proseed in the lone term. Its interesting to see if they will push back this populous movement. In you were at your old job at the whitehouse and the president said look i dont want to hear discouraging ideas i want your best ideas to get mr. Putin to alter his calculus. What would you tell the president. Two things. One is, we do have to recognize it is the ukraine question and its where ukraine is going to be located economically and geo politically over the long term. And maybe russia had influence in ukraine. But the problem with ukraine was westward. Thats what the negotiation and the agreement, Association Agreement was all about. Anyway though was still on the table even if pushed way on the back burner at this point. One of the positive things you do is try to take ukraine off the political paper at this point. People talked about neutrality, nonalignment. Can you formalize that in some way. For some period to give putin some confidence that ukraine is not going to be in play. The Prime Minister of ukraine the other day basically said we have no intentions of becoming a member of nato basically to reassure mr. Putin. This is something that then is endorsed by the United States, the major european power. Should that be something the United States is presented to do either on its own or in exchange for something else. I think its something the United States should be prepared to do on its own and its something that youre going to have the conversation with mr. Putin about as well. What about the question some have said of arming the ukraineers, the idea that the United States and the west would provide arm. I heard the other side argue thats the worst of all option because it will be slow to have a military effect and might provoke mr. Putin to do something. The problem we have is the ukrainian state and the state of the ukrainian state. When you would deal with putin ideally is to build a functioning ukrainian state. Russia moves into vacuums they dont move into places where theyre going to meet resistance. Thats the way they have operated historically. I take it from what youre saying building a functioning ukrainian state is no easy task. Look at ukraine over the past 20 years. As hard as it might be elite its probably more corrupt than russias elite. They havent grown in 23 years. We had illusions about the orange revolution, new people. And the new people came into power and they stole as much as the old people did. They didnt put their time and energy into building a ukrainian state. And thats the problem that we have now is much as you would like to help the ukraineians at this point, you have a government in kiev at this point, an interim government as opposed to the old elites. In the rest of the country its the old elites. The same people who robbed the country and not sacrificed anything is still in place. They need money. What are the assurances you give them money. What about bringing ukraine into the eu. I think thats a wonderful idea and what we should do is separate out the economic equation from the security equation. If not just ukraine its mal dough va. Weve seen rising it anything russian moved in malda va to join russia. Its having talks joining the European Union. Becoming more involved with the European Union is not making a choice between u. S. And rushing. Its too much putting it either you go with the u. S. Or you go with russia and maldova has to do both. Let me ask about u. S. Russian relations. The administration famously called for a reset. The reset now is going to be reset and i would say its almost time for a rethink and u. S. Russia. Do we go back to containment . What is the nature of u. S. Russian relations at a time that we have these profound disagreements here in europe. On the other hand, we still need some russian help for places like iran, syria, north korea where economically you yourself said enter twine. Whats the approach we should be thinking about now taking for u. S. Russian relations. I think putin has made it clear that his greatest respect goes to those who demonstrate strength and so i think its important that cooperation doesnt become rolling over and playing dead. And so i think that a show of strength is something that is important but you have to walk that fine line between strength and provocation. Theres not another reset during the time putin is in office. Which could be a long time. Which could be a long time although with the russian economy really stag noting and russia taking on economic burdens make it more possible that putin will not be able to last as president. I want to push it a little bit. Whats the line fine showing strength and not being provocative. You said you dont have to have the security relationship extended to ukraine. Whats your sense would be a message mr. Putin would receive. I think the message is to continue to build all forces in poland and the Baltic States to continue with the exercises that were already planned in ukraine as part of nato working with all members of europe regardless which block youre in and the economy question is in ukraines interest and maldova interest and United States standing behind the ue to make sure the relationship is stronger. Where should we go with this bilateral relationship. First were entering a new era. In putins mind this is a period of geo political retreat. They wanted to be treated as a different power. The homes that we once had integrating them into the west are gone. Its going to be big power to have the tools to protect its interests. Everybody has problems at this point so we shouldnt exaggerate that. We have to build this relationship around interest and we need to have a deeper understanding of how russia defines its interest. Not simply because were going to look for overlap but to see how we manage this relationship to advance our own interest. Now i agree we need to show strength, we need to know what we want and thats on a range of issues but its not only europe. Were going to be finding, were going to bump up against russia that broader middle east. There are going to be players of some sort out in northeast asia, there are going to be players in and around afghanistan. Whats the worst that could happen in this crises . Nobody controls the events on the ground at this point. And we dont know what would happen, what the reaction would be, particularly if theres a massacre of some sort. Either of russians or ethnic ukraineians somewhere in Eastern Ukraine where russia does feel obliged to send the troomtion over the border. Crane yuntz resist. Whats your i think if russians forces move any further into ukraine theyre going to face a ukrainian insurgency. There are historical memories in ukraine of the insurgency against Russian Forces and its immediate aftermath. If that kind of ukrainian insurgency would start up poland would feel obliged to support it and nato could potentially involved in whats happening. Here a hundred years after a great war started in europe both of you can see a chain of events that could actually be can set in motion what could be if you will a first order crises. Absolutely. But heres one final point on this. We need to see this in a much broad context than simply the european context. And theres a tendency in a lot of commentary here and in russia talking about a cold war. The world is radically different and we need to think about russia, china, india, europe, United States. Its a different technique. Tom you get the last word, thank you tom graham, thank kimberly martin, its been a wonderful conversation. Jared lanier is here, hes a computer scientist, a musician and an author. Hes worked for Microsoft Research since 2006. His latest book is called who owns the future. It investigates the effects of the Digital Economy on the middle class. New york sometimes de scribes it as the most important book. Im happy to have jaron lanier back a this table. Thank you for having me back. Rose so who owns it. This is up for grabs. Right now if things keep on going the way they are, it will be whoever is the closest to owning the biggest computers. Rose right. Thats what its like now. Its really an amazing thing. 20 years ago if you said who were the most influential people, there were the people who controlled the oil field, the shipping lines. Now its whoever has the Digital Networks. All of the richest and most influential people in the world are somehow close to one of the big networks. It might be for finance, it might be for social networking or Something Like that. It might be for intelligence, it might be for insurance. Rose are we talking about companies or individuals. You know, the distinction is blurring. I mean facebook is a Public Company but its controlled by one person. The ownership of these things is becoming more and more narrow. We saw recently with whats up being acquired, 15 to 19 billion. You have a few dozen kids starting this thing and good for them. I bear them no ill will. But were turning this society into an all or nothing game where all means that you get to be close to the big computer thats calculating advantages over everybody else. And nothing isnt quite nothing but its very thin, this thing called the long tail which is everybody else who is being calculated about. Rose the thesis here is what . The thesis is that we made a mistake, an honest mistake about how to organize our Digital Networks. And i was part of making the mistake. So i am absolutely certain that there was no ill intent, there was no evil conspiracy. It was an honest mistake. Actually made with tremendous purity of heart. Rose the mistake was. The mistake was that if we made information open, if everybody shared their information, if we created an informal economy for the information world, that that would make the world efficient enough that it would benefit everybody in the end and it would create a more egalitarian society. But the mistake we made is that not all people might be created equal but not all computers. There are Certain Computers that are better at calculating an advantage. So there are few examples i can give because i would like to make this concrete. A really good one is Health Insurance in the United States. So as it happened, i was a consultant to what i wont mention which place it was but i was a consultant to what was at that time the largest Health Insurance company in the u. S. And i was present at the moment of the transition. So the ceo was a meeting with computation, data and networks and gathering information and calculating things. He suddenly had this revelation. He said wow our business just turned up side down. Before now if i wanted to make my business more profitable, if i wanted to grow it, i have to ensure more and more people. And i was trying to get people that my competitors didnt get on my rolls. Now, since i can start to correlate data with people individually, my best bet is few people as possible, insure people who need it the least. And thus we had the beginning of this crises that has led most recently to the obamacare controversy. But this was an effective big data. This same sort of thing, the strategic reversal that seems too good to be true at first. Seems like the midas touch like computation gives you instant and infinite wealth but eventually turns around and fails. That same effect has been visible in industry after industry and also in government. I would say it happened to the nsa in fact. But the thing is when you first get one of the biggest computers in the world to to help you by gathering all this information and allowing you to calculate an advantage for yourself, its so powerful. Theres this rush. But its ultimately always turns out to be an illusion. Ri7h is this in any way a political manifesto. Not yet. I would say. Its a premanifesto in that i dont want to major the mistake that i think many have made before of imagining they can solve the world in advance. I think one of the big mistakes that we, if i can speak for my colleagues at the digital word, one of the mistakes we made is that we were so certain we knew how to design Digital Networks perfectly. We just had these ideologies ad we werent looking through the impurities of the real word. Im not certain the ideas here are good. Im proposing experiments. I wanted to be an engineer this time and not an idealogue. If we can start to get enough results that we feel we have something thats working better then we can write the manifesto but not yet. You also said so called Artificial Intelligence is a mash up of work done by real people who made anonymous and are not paid, who have been made anonymous and are not paid. Yes. Thats how it seems to me. Heres a little bit of history that can explain that. The example i with like to use is natural language translation. Although there are many others. If you go back to the 1950s, a lot of people thought you just write a magic formula to translate between english and spanish and that would be this magic little mathematical gem. We searched for that for decades and it turned out the only way automate is to grt millions of languages from real people and matching up terms or phrase that have been translated before in context and then you turn on the this new thing. But heres the tricky aspect of it. In the most, you would hire translator to translate a memo. Now what i hear from the Translators Association is that theyre losing work, theyre losing prospects just like musicians. But theyre still needed. The whole artificial, socalled artificial translation scheme would fall awe water without these very same people and theyre still needed and now theyre not worth anything economically because theyre supposed to share. Theres been a kind of a fake form of automation. Now i think what we built is better than what we had before. I think its great to be able to automatically translate a memo. But we have to acknowledge that those people are still needed. Let me talk about three big areas of data you look at and identify three of the biggest problems weve had. One obviously is the crises of 2008. Thats one. The other is nsa and snowden and all of that. And the third is the kind of problem weve had with healthcare. Com. These are all issues of data. To me they all have a similar quality. So is it okay if i just get slightly technical. Rose yes, please. So statistics work. Statistics are real mathematics, theyre correct. But the problem is that statistics dont fully describe our world because our world is made of the structure. So lets say statistically im counting my finger and i chart its supposed to hit the table but if all im looking at statistics it should go through the table. But our world is made of barriers and boundaries and what we call conservation principles and so it stops. The reason im making a fuss about that is if you can gather enough data of the world, you can plot not my finger but you can plot what kind of ad will make somebody buy something, what kind of pitch will make somebody vote for the candidate that you want. What kind of pitch rose dont we have that now. We have it. But heres the thing, and it works. The thing is in the distance between my finger and the table, it always works for a little while. Theres always some gap during which it seems to be perfect and the big computer seems to give you infinite power. But then you hit the real world and something will break. And so one example, i mean in finance, it keeps on happening and we dont learn the basic math. It happens with long term capital management, it happened with enron, it happened with the mortgages. Its about to happen rose and it is . And it is when this perfect machine making infinite wealth forever hits some barrier because of the real world that cant be represented by statistics, see. So the thing is it is good for a while. All these things seep to be like the midas touch at first but then they break. It happened at first for the Health Insurance companies. Wow, we can just become sort of arbitrarily profitable by not insuring people. But the problem is in order to do that youre affecting the world in hoping the thing will break. Thats a bit of a different discussion. I think the nsa had exactly the same illusion. They were starting to say wow if we can calculate the whole world we can have sort of push button security. But in fact what you can calculate in a server is not complete enough to give you that. So you fall prey to the in substitutional illusion of more benefits than you can really have. Rose you believe that michael pain is part of the solution to some of the problems we have economically. Micro payments is one way out and its one ive been looking at the most. I think its the best solution on the table. Heres how it works. Any time you contribute in your little way to the socalled automatic or artificially intelligent systems, if youre a translator, when your translations are read into the databases that allow other automatic translations to be made, youd start to get a little bit of money on the basis of your contribution. Now what would happen is that most people would not make much money in most ways. Like its going to be very rare for somebody to make a living from any particular form of this. Only exceptional translaters would do very well but most people would find something. And i have evidence for that which i can go into but before i go into the details of how it works, i just have to point out that the very first conception of Digital Networks, the origin point was precisely this. If you go back to 1960 when we saw the first proposal for Digital Network for people to use, it was ted nelsons work at harvard. And he was proposing a universal micro Payment System and for exactly the same reason. Because if you dont do this, then as you have more and more machines able to do thing, as you have robotic nurses and automated factories and automated cars, you throw some of your people out of work and you have a social crises. And then youre forced into some sort of marxist redistributionist scenario which i think wouldnt work. But some people like that idea. At any rate, if were just honest about the fact that people would still be needed to make these Information Systems work, that behind the veil of automation theyre still people. If we can figure out a way to send them money that theyve actually earned by propping the whole thing up why not allow that to happen so people make a living with dignity even in a super advanced technological age. That was the origin idea for networking itself. Thats where it all started. Rose who prepared it. Ted nelson in 1960. Before packet switching work which is the technology that runs the internet. The very first origin idea, yes. Rose this is all very exciting. Well. Rose where its normal to find success. Yes. I think a lot of folks these days are making the mistakes of believing that personal wealth or you know riches mean anything absent a society around, you know. Like you can only, the only way that your wealth can mean anything is if youre part of a functioning society in which theres a lovely Civil Society people to buy your products, things for you to spend money on. If we try to enrich ourselves or concentrate so much the whole thing is falling apart in a huge slum which is happening in my view. Even our own wealth is not real at the end of that process. Rose what do we have to do to pull out of that . Well, what im interested in is finding moments when we connect periment with alter nut models. Let me give you an example of what i mean. Recently a technologys become popular at least for hobbyists and starting to go mainstream which is 3d printing. Its look this box that makes objects. And theyre Pretty Simple these days. Theyre usually just plastic shapes or something but theyre Getting Better and better. Some day youll be able to print out your new computer or something. Rose or your new gun. Absolutely. So theres huge questions about it. But the way that this has been propagated is on the linux or up model where everybody shares their design. I think theres a world of other systems like in the book i talk about kind of a little bead that tattoo that would synthesize drugs for you on your skin. There are all kinds of other technologies. Every time these things come along instead of doing it where we have been where somebody shares some big computer so somebody has an advantage where they own the computer, instead of that model we can try a model where everybodys paid and its more distributed and we bring people into the formal economy instead of the informal economy. And as soon as we try that experience, then well start to see if it works and if it works once we can try for the next thing and the next thing. I think we can create a middle class that will no matter how the robots persist. Rose a into called who owns the future. Yancey strickler is here. They cofounded and launched a company in 2009. The idea was to create a tool available to anyone to help bring creative projects to life. In just five years kickstarter has helped fund more than 50,000 projects ranging from the worlds first public space telescope to an oscar winning film. Earlier this month the company surpassed one billion in pledges. Im pleased to have Yancey Strickler at this table for the first time. I appreciate it. Rose for the benefit of late night folks, tell me what is kickstarter. Sure. Kickstarters a website where people go and they make all sorts of Creative Things. If you went to kickstarter right now you would see people making documentaries, restaurants, video games, pieces of design, plays, dance performances, basically anything you can imagine. Each of these things is proposed by the person making them. Heres the thing i want to do and the public has the opportunity to get involved by contributing to it financially. And in return they get to see what happened and get a copy of what was made. Rose the return is not some value in the piece of the equity of whats created the return is this the psychic income of knowing that you were contributing to something that you admire. Thats right. There is no financial upside to these things. Its not an investment. Instead if i support you in making your documentary i get a copy when its done or maybe my name is on the credits. Something veronica mars, things like that. Its more imaginative than a financial return. Rose has the mandate how do you mean. Rose the mission statement, the purpose. No. We actually are very fortunate of that. The original idea that my partner perry had in 2001 has been consistent throughout. The idea was always that it was too hard to do Creative Things and to make art. And especially because the only ideas that seemed to get money are ones that might make someone else money. But of course a lot of the great ideas in the world are just things that people want to do because theyre excited about it. Because they have passion for it and kickstarter is the place. Rose i assume somebody who supports kickstarter, kickstarter project would make that contribution because they may imagine that there are other people like me would enjoy this. Unless we participate, we wont get the food service. Yes. Were making a better world. Were creating the culture that we want to see rather than accepting the one we already v the billion dollars is coming from people around the world largely in 25 increments. Its not like people are spending their life money. Its a big difference to bring something to life. Rose you just passed 1 billion the mark of the financial size of the pledges. Right. Rose 1 billion. Yes. Rose is that a milestone of significance. I guess so. Its certainly a big number. I dont really know what to think about it except that it shows that a lot of people around the world care about bringing things to life and care about Creative Things. This happened mind you in the most five years during great economic duress. At the same time were being told money should be used for very utilitarian things and things like arts budgets have typically been cut by budgets around the here. But here the public stepping up and supporting the creation of often idiosyncratic or quick automatic things but theyre supporting their friends and their heroes. Theres a lot more energy in support of creativity than people might imagine. Rose you supported the documentary square. Yes. Square was a documentary by a woman who made control room which is also oscar nominated and square was oscar nominated this year. And its a documentary about the revolution in egypt. And its one that they were shooting in the square jihan and five other journalists roaming around. Thats one we were part of early on. They raised 100,000 through kickstarter a little over a year ago and i got to see that project happen and all the backers. This was incredible. Thats an historical document well have 50 years from now. Rose whats the dollar a for one project thats possible. The average project is 500,000. They range from a hundred bucks. But the average project is five grand. Rose any idea what you might do with kickstarter, do you want to sell it, take it public, do you want to just grow it and see how far, wide and tall it can grow. The latter of those options. From the very beginning, we decided, my cofounders and i we would never the sell the company, we would never go public we viewed kickstarter as a public trust. This is a place of opportunity for anyone to make their thing happen. And its our jobs to be the stewards of it and to honor it. For us were looking at growing this to a living breathing Cultural Institution thats there to represent the interest of everybody. So we think the best way to do that is to be a privately held independently controlled organization and thats exactly what we are. Rose you just took over ceo from perry chen the cofounder. Thats right. Rose whats the significance of that. The significant is perry and i have been partners on this for nine years. Were best friends. He was ready to go on and do art and a lot of other things he was doing before kickstarter. This is a pretty seamless transition for us. He and i see the world in the same way so business as usual. We have the injection of new energy and theres a lot of things going on. Rose this is what you have said, you have said about kickstarter. Its the kind of thing that seems as natural as air. The structure of the system how it works and feels. The fact it exists at all but its a product of years of thinking, collaborating building and guessing by a hand full of people. The original thought doesnt seem very original. It very much was. So its like. Yes, it is. I mean i think any great idea once you see it seems natural like why wasnt that there before. First you have violent resist exand you acquiesce to it and its like it wasnt so great anyone could have thought of it. Theres a long history to this. Something like the first translation of the iliad by Alexander Pope he funded by getting money from 700 people to translate 6,000 lines of greek poetry. Thats the but it sore of went dormant for a hundred years as we had movie studios and giant corporations subsidizing art. Rose most of the majority of the projects that get kick started are for music or art. Thats right. The most money has gone to film and games. The most albums made of any sort of art form. But there are 13 categories. Theres been about 500 restaurants created through kickstarter. And so the variety is really off the charts. You mentioned the publicly funded teleskype at the telescope at the beginning putting the robot on mars and now they have a publicly controlled telescope. The limits are pretty much limitless. You can have anything you can imagine on there. Rose what kind of projects satisfy you the most . I like the weird ones. I like the strange idea that maybe doesnt seem like it could happen any other way. So one that i particularly love, theres a project called trash dance. This is a ballet that happened in austin and this was a ballet featuring sanitation workers and garbage trucks. This choreographer put together this great production that involved trucks dancing and people sliding trash cans across a big parking lot. Theyve done several performances on that. Thats the sort of thing thats so imaginative and really beautiful. Rose real people being real creative. Absolutely rose how do you see it growing. Here it is five years in. April will be our fifth birthday its a billion dollars so far and the life continues to grow. Over a Million Dollars a day moving through the system. One of the ways were growing is expanding to more and more countries. Right now were primarily in English Speaking world stha that will be changing this year. But often seeing a growing based on projects that come in. Neal young wants a project two days ago to make basically an mp3 player. Its a very high quality audio file np3 player. So neal young using kickstarter is going to open this up to a bunch of people who didnt think of it before. Rose thats interesting because i assume hes got a lot of money. You would think so. Rose but kickstarter in a sense makes it a different kind of project than just using your own money. For someone like neal young, hes working for validation that this is something worth doing. Hes putting it out there in the public saying heres the thing ive thought about for years, what do you think, do you want it. Its an invitation to participate. For me ive been a neal young fan all my life and the chance i do interact with him is incredible. The fact that money is involved is almost secondary to the relationship that gets made. So somebody who is a bigger artist, neal young, spike lee, these are some of the great artists andvq;jn im given the e to have some sort of interaction with them. Thats a privilege, an exciting thing to do. Rose how do you spread wings horizontalally. With kickstarter. Were up to green point. We have this community for millions of people now. For me becoming the new ceo im serving those people, the 80 people at kickstarter and the Million People part of it and ultimately we want to bring people into the fold. There are 50 Million People who learned this and can teach other people about the system and how to make stuff. Heres how you make a restaurant or a short film. Theres this Great Community i think we can build off of. Rose its sharing the knowledge as well as sharing of ambition and aspiration. Yes. I think that were building a community of people who are really very actively trying to reshape the world. And kickstarter plays into our better angels in the sense that its like what can we do for each other, what is it we can create. Rose what can we do together we couldnt do alone. Yes, absolutely. Rose so somebody wants to get on kickstarter, what do they do . You just, its pretty easy. You go to the site and click start and go through the process of building a project. We have people there who will thank you to you if you have questions. But you know, i think the kickstarter is that thing that can unlock your ideas. So i think a lot of what happens is that we think of ideas and we toss them aside. Rose at the end of the day your idea was molded and shaped in a way you might not have imagined. I think its always your vision. Our thinking is that this is your platform to do whatever you want. But certainly will help you think about i dont know how much money you might need or basic things like that. Rose what is kickstarters role. What is it they call the makers movement. Well i think that there is a real change happening and how we appreciate where things come from. I mean this is what a lot of food have been about recently. What you see through kickstarter is a real revolution and manufacturing in how we make things. So if you think about, when you look at a kickstarter project you see how this thing comes to be. Youll get a visit to the factory. You get a sense what the Global Supply chain is. Right now we might look at a project as something that thats plucked off the tree and delivered to you by amazon in 48 hours. All of that is hidden behind the curtain for a long time. Whats happening through kickstarter and i now see giant companies emlating it is this entire process is transparent and you see how it is the thing came to life. You see that even a physical product has an author or has many authors. And so the exposition of that and the sharing of that i think really raises the education level, awareness level of everyone and maybe gives people a sense that you can do this too. So we really like that as a cultural change and i think its one that i think happened pretty quickly over the past five years we become very accustomed to and im eager to see where it goes. Rose who are your heroes. Thats a good question. I would think of a few things. Harry smith in folkways. His mission was to respect all aspects of sound. Kanye west is a hero of mine. Hes just fully himself. Hes just a very self possessed artist. Hes not afraid to be vulnerable in front of millions of people and i think thats an admirable trait. I look at him at a hero actively. Another person is ian mckai is who is a singer for a publicking band. Me showed foes for 5 or 10. Theres a code that really drives what he does. But those people ive always looked up to. Rose yancey, glad to have you here. All right. Rose yancey strictland, kickstarter. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org this is ni report with Tyler Mathisen and susie gharib. Brought to you in part by thestreet. Com. Featuring stephanie link who shares her investment strategies, stock picks and Market Insights with action alerts plus, the multimillion dollar portfolio she manages with jim cramer. Learn more at thestreet. Com nbr. Once you do wind down the bondbuying program, could you tell us how long of a gap we might expect before the rate hikes to begin . So the language that we used in the statement was considerable period. So this is the kind of term its hard to define,