technology has become both a tool and a weapon, benefits and challenges as well and we have to grapple with both sides of the equation. >> your book is essentially a world tour begins in quincy, washington. why? brad because it is one of the : data center capitals of the world. it is near the columbia river. data centers are being built there because it is close to hydroelectric power that is cheap and clean. we take the reader on a tour of what is becoming the infrastructure of the 21st century. these mammoth loadings. more than 20 of them filled with , thousandsgenerators of batteries, mostly server computers. everything we do almost every day is accessing or storing our data in the cloud, which really means one of these data centers. peter: you have 100 of these in 20 countries? brad: more than 20 countries, more than 100 data centers. microsoft is one of the largest but google, facebook, apple, are all building more and more of these data centers. it is where we are all storing our data. they become the largest consumer of electricity in the world. peter: if i send an email from microsoft outlook from here in the office to somebody in the office, does it go through the microsoft data center? brad: it doesn't have to. you can use it in a form where laptopre it on your own serverit on your own computer but the world has moved , to the cloud over the last decade. it is cheaper, more secure. you are always going to have the latest technology. you are not going to have to upgrade it yourself. you can rely on the microsoft cybersecurity team rather than someone in your office. so the world is shifting and most technology is moving in this direction. peter: what does it cost to build one of those buildings that you say is the size of two football fields? brad: any new data center is by definition an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. if you look at microsoft and other industry leaders, we are easily spending several tens of billions of dollars a year in building these new buildings and connecting them electrically and putting all the computers inside them. peter: what kind of investment do you make in securing that cloud? brad: it is a fascinating piece of this. it is enormously expensive. it starts with the physical security. you cannot get into the ground around these premises. the physical security is tighter than what you would see in a commercial airport, but it is the network security that is more important. we spend a billion dollars a year on new security features. that is r and d innovation. we have 3000 security engineers. the protection of this is a huge priority. peter: brad smith, you say you were searched on your way out of this facility as well. brad: yes, it is fascinating. you are not surprised when you go into a data center and before you go into their inner sanctum, the room with the servers, you have to go through a second, very airport style metal detector. you are searched when you leave as well. you go, why am i being searched to leave? it is so no one can walk out with a hard drive. the only way the hard drives leave that room at the end of their life is by first going through what is a huge machine, the equivalent of a paper shredder. this is for metal hard drives. it leaves through its own special exit. peter: you write in your book "tools and weapons" that ireland is to data what switzerland is to money. what do you mean? brad: ireland is a great place to store data. switzerland is generally regarded around the world as a safe place to store money. it is secure. ireland is a great place to build data centers. the temperature is mild. you don't typically have to turn on the heating or the air conditioning. it uses less electricity. but more than that, it has a network of laws that protect privacy, protect data, it has a stable government, it is part of the european union so it has access to the rest of the eu for moving data back and forth. it is one of the world's most attractive places for data. peter: but it is an island as well. don't you need cables to connect? brad: the irish government has had a lot of foresight when it comes to planning for its economy and thinking about technology. the american tech sector got started in ireland in the 1980's. it is where everybody manufactured cds back then. as we got close to 2000, the irish government came to us in the united states. they sell the future. they said, make ireland a place to build a data center. i said, you don't have cables to move data to the continent. and they said, give us three months, we will solve that problem. three months later, they had, they came back. they entered into a contract. the cable was about to be laid and the rest is history because ireland has really become a place where 35% of all european data is stored. peter: what is the advantage of having these data security locations, these clouds as tools? brad: as tools, they are enabling businesses to do new things, first perhaps driving down cost and enabling businesses and governments and others to rely on other people's advanced security protection. fundamentally, what all this is doing is enabling people to use technology in new ways. we have in our view entered a new era. it is an ai or artificial intelligence-based era. if you think back to the first half of the 20th century, the combustion engine changed everything, the car, the truck, the airplane. over the next three decades, ai will have a similar impact. it is already making it possible for machines to understand speech, what people say. vision, to understand faces, to recognize people, translate between languages. all that is based on several things, but the most important is this large amount of computational power, of data storage in the cloud, meaning data centers. peter: you also talk about the weaponization of data. which is what? brad: it starts with cyber attacks. it starts with hacking by organized crimes in these days, hacking by nationstates, hacking political candidates and campaigns and think tanks. it includes disinformation campaigns. it includes the potential hacking of voting and elections. it includes a variety of other challenges that may not be weapons per se but when we think about the impact of this technology on our jobs what is , it going to mean for our jobs, our children, their jobs? these are the challenges that technology has created. peter: that takes us to north korea, russia and china, doesn't it? brad: it absolutely does, as well as iran. we are seeing certain government around the world being particularly aggressive. we measure this every day. we see the attacks taking place. we have been public in saying we have seen the most attacks in the past three years coming from russia, north korea and iran, especially attacks more focused on our civilian infrastructure or electoral processes. peter: what is microsoft's business interest when it comes to china? brad: we want to serve our customers when they do business in china. china is not as large a market for us as it is other tech companies. china has 18% of the world's people. china accounts for 1.8% of our revenue. if an american company wants to go to china to sell coffee, we use ourto be able to services in china the same way it does everywhere else. if consumers in china want to use windows on their laptops, office to write documents or send email, we want them to do that. so we want to participate in that economy. we want to participate in the global economy in a thoughtful way, a way that is focused on u.s. national security and the protection of human rights, but also serving people who need to be served. weapons, youls and talk about the fact that microsoft judges a nation on its human rights score, correct? brad: before we open a data center in a new country, we evaluate many things. do we have access to electricity, to water? that is needed for a data center. do we have concerns about corruption risk? and we evaluate human rights. we use the human rights evaluation to make decisions. there are some countries where we will not place a data center because we feel that once the data is in that country, we can't protect people's rights the way they need to be protected. there are other countries where we will put data. china is one of them, but we won't put our consumer services. we have a consumer email service, outlook.com is the current name. we don't offer it in china because we don't feel we can strike the balance we want in terms of protecting human rights. peter: with china moving toward this social credit system they are having, are we in danger of perhaps having two world wide web's separate? brad: over the past decade, there has been a trend in that direction. one can see two countries in the world that tend to be producing the most tech leaders. it is the united states and china. you see less american technology in china and less chinese technology in the united states. you see different public policies and to some degree, some distinction in business practices. you see competition, especially in places like europe when they decide who they are going to buy from. peter: brad smith, you call for regulation in this book. and bill gates in his foreword points out the anomaly of a business leader calling for more regulation. but you are writing that you need to have that regulation. brad: we need two things. we need businesses in the tech sector to step up and exercise more self-regulation and more responsibility and we think we need more regulation of technology. think about how we live our lives. if you go to the grocery store and pick up something off the shelf, you will read the nutrition label and know it is standardized and accurate because of regulation. if you go to the pharmacy department and buy a product, you do not worry about the safety of it because it is regulated. when you get into your car, it complies with certain safety standards. the same is true of an airplane. our basic point is that digital technology has gone longer with less regulation than on most any technology since the middle 1800s. we think the market, customers, even the industry itself would be better served with a different balance. peter: that takes us to washington, d.c. because bill gates took pride in the fact that microsoft did not have a d.c. office for a long time. brad: he did take pride in that and then learned there were clearly better things in which he could take pride, and we are in 56 capitals around the world. peter: you conclude your book by saying technology innovation is not going to slow down. the work to manage it needs to speed up. brad: we really believe governments need to speed up. i used to come to washington. people 15 years ago here didn't understand technology deeply. many times today, they often do, they understand it much better and to some degree, politicians get a bad rap. i think journalists look for the opportunity to point out, here is a politician who didn't ask the right question or didn't ask the question the right way. i think that is a mistake. i don't think it is accurate. you don't serve anybody well whenever you criticize them for asking a good question the wrong way. the truth is, we have regulators and politicians today that have figured out how to regulate very complex pharmaceutical products, we have people today that regulate airplanes that are basically computers with wings. they regulate safety standards for cars. they are basically computers on wheels. we have people who are perfectly capable in washington, d.c. of regulating computers that don't move at all. they sit in a data center. and as a country and a world, we need to strike a balance with a healthy dose of regulation. peter: when it comes to privacy, what would microsoft like to see? brad: we would like to see a strong national privacy law in the united states. we have been advocating for that. i have personally been advocating for that since 2005. you can see how little impact we have had in washington, d.c. on that issue over a decade and a half. but we think it is a good thing california adopted a strong privacy law last year. that is now bringing the debate to washington, d.c. the american public, even tech companies, will be well served if there is a strong privacy law in the united states. for the next decade, what we really need is a global privacy compact. data moves around the world. you don't want the protection of people's privacy to constantly change every time data crosses a border, and we will only get that when we bring governments together. peter: what do you think of the european gdpr? are: on balance, we enthusiastic about it. peter: is that because you do different things? bread: to some degree, you could say we do different things. we are not as focused on monetizing data through behavioral advertising, but antitrust cases that we learned from when they unfolded in the 1990's and early 2000's, i think in some respects it reflects a belief that a market will work best and the companies that participate in it will succeed the most for the long-term if consumers have confidence. peter: what is the current status of international cooperation on these issues? brad: i think that there are signs of progress and a lot of headwinds. you see signs of progress on cybersecurity, issues like digital safety. we saw impressive leadership last year by the french government, this year by the new zealand prime minister, in the wake of the christ church terrorist attack, to bring companies and governments around the world to advance digital safety. i think that is creating a model we can look to more broadly. we are also living in a time when multilateralism is less popular, certainly less popular in the united states than perhaps any time since the 1930's. in part, our book is a call for governments coming together with companies and civil society in a multi-stakeholder approach. we don't see any effective alternative for addressing challenges people care about. peter: christchurch, new zealand takes a part in your book as well. brad: by coincidence, we were in new zealand 12 days after the christchurch attack. during the course of the day, the prime minister's office reached out. we heard that they wanted to meet with us. of course, we did. it was a fascinating conversation. she said, i don't want to see what happened in christchurch repeated. what happened there was different from other terror because the attacker used the internet as a stage. it was streamed live on facebook. it was uploaded probably millions of times on youtube. gets the kind of thing incentivize terrorism if we are not careful. we said, let's see what we can do together. she that on the phone. she called other tech leaders. it led to what is now called the christchurch call. it was signed in paris. moreptember, there were than 50 governments that were signed up. youtube,cebook, amazon, twitter, microsoft, and we have committed to take concrete steps that make it harder for any terrorist to do what was done in christchurch. peter: how often do you find yourself working with the federal government and over -- and/or suing the federal government? brad: we work with the government every day and probably sue the government on average every year. , that is the balance. when a lawsuit starts, you have to finish it. we never sue the government without a lot of thought and without believing a real principle is at stake. but we have brought litigation to stand up for privacy rights for customers and to stand up for our employees who are protected by daca. we have 66 employees who are dreamers and thought that was another important case to bring. so we did so. peter: when it comes to privacy, what is one of the cases you have pursued? brad: most of the privacy cases have been about giving people or businesses more knowledge about when the government is taking their data. this started in 2013 when we argued successfully that we had a first amendment right to publish data about how many kinds of national security orders that we received. one issue we continued to litigate is the right we believe businesses have so that when the federal government wants their data, we believe the government should go to the business and not come to us or some other cloud service provider. that's the way the country has -- that is the way the company has worked since it was founded and since the cloud was created. if you had documents that the federal government wanted, they had to go to court and serve a warrant on you, and therefore, you knew about it. you could then go to court to protect your rights. what we don't want to see is a present or future where the government only comes to us and you don't even know that the government has your information, you cannot stand up for yourself and defend yourself. whenever we see cases like that and we do see them periodically, we try to negotiate an outcome with the department of justice. if we fail and believe the facts are on our side, we go to court. peter: edward snowden revealed quite a bit and he features in your book as well. was the government stealing microsoft information surreptitiously? brad: i would never use the word stealing and i would be quick to add, even six years after the snowden disclosures, there is a lot we still do not know and there is a lot we may never know. that may even be appropriate in certain respects when it comes to national security and state secrets. we do talk in the book about the coverage of the washington post in october 2013. we do talk about the reports that suggest that the u.s. government either by itself or with the british government was tapping into cables, potentially undersea or land-based cables, to access data that may have been happening outside of the use of warrants, and therefore, the rule of law. we were explicit that that was something that concerned us. we were explicit within the white house and president obama in saying, look, there needs to be some reform. there has been some important reform in the six years since. i actually think that it is good that we learned more, the world learned more, and we could address perhaps a bit of an imbalance. peter: do you feel microsoft's management of data is secure today from prying eyes like that? brad: i would say the answer is yes. the reason is in part because of technological changes that microsoft and others in the industry have made. one of the responses to those disclosures was to deploy stronger encryption, basically comprehensively. it means that whenever data is moving between data centers, it is encrypted. whenever data is stored on our servers, it is encrypted. if any government -- and this is not by any means a question that anyone should think is confined to the u.s. alone -- if any government tries to tap into data, it is highly unlikely to be able to read even what it obtains. more generally, i feel more confident not just because of these technical advances, but because of the legal reforms that have been adopted in the united states. similar legal reforms have often been adopted in other countries. i think that is a good thing. peter: we have not even cracked the code yet when it comes to regulation or looking at ai and facial recognition technology. brad: well, this is one of the big questions for the 2020's. we suddenly live in a world where government can, if it wants, use cameras and computers and facial recognition to identify everybody who walks down a street. we are seeing this in some parts of the world. we do believe that we need to put in place controls. we do as a company so this is not used in ways we believe would conflict with human rights in countries where human rights are not protected adequately. we need laws as well. i think a very important question, even in the united should is when law-enforcement be able to use this technology to follow you everywhere you go? probably the way it goes in getting access today, by getting a search warrant by a court. that is a debate we need to start having in the united states. we need to start talking about what this technology means for values that are really timeless. peter: you are president of microsoft. microsoft has a ceo, bill gates. what are your duties? brad: i play several roles in the company, i think one of the most interesting certainly is to really be on point point for these issues where technology meets society. you know, there are so many issues today. sustainability, privacy, security, responsible artificial intelligence, digital safety. the world has a different set of expectations of us than it did a decade or two ago. this requires we bring people together across our business. we need to innovate in this space, it also requires that we connect with the rest of the world, with people in government and elsewhere. this is a journey we are all on together. it requires new steps by government. peter: you joined microsoft in 1993. how has the company changed since then? brad: well, when i joined, microsoft had just over 4000 employees. today, it has 150,000. everything is bigger. when you are big, you have to find ways to move quickly in a new form. because obviously, moving a big group of people is harder than moving a small group. when i joined in 1993, technology was not something you read about everyday unless you were a tech geek or intellectual property lawyer. obviously, it has become perhaps the single most defining element of our times. we live in a technology era. it means that the world has questions and we need to answer them. it means that people want to understand technology without having to go get a phd in computer science. part of what i need to do, part of what a lot of us need to do -- and we have a great team that does it -- is actually service translators, both to help people understand the issues and help our engineers understand what is on people's minds. peter: you are joining us in washington, where the jedi contract by the pentagon has been awarded to microsoft. but there is a challenge by a fellow seattle company. what is the status? brad: microsoft and amazon and other companies were competing for what clearly is a very important contract for the future of the pentagon, to help its enterprise, architecture, and data moved to the cloud. we were delighted when the pentagon awarded the contract to us. amazon has filed a protest, which is not unusual. for people who live in washington, d.c. as distinct from washington state, protests barely make it into the news, they are so common. for us, we have a job to do. one thing i say to our employees is, every contract is important, and some are even more important than others. it is hard to imagine a contract that is more important than this. now, we really have a high responsibility to help the military protect this country. there is a protest. there will be more work for lawyers, but we need to focus on doing our job and building the infrastructure that the pentagon is purchasing. peter: brad smith is the president of microsoft and he, along with carol ann brown, have written this book, "tools and weapons, the promise and the peril of the digital age." this "communicators" and all others are available as podcasts. ♪ c-span, your unfiltered view of government. in 1979 andble brought to you today by your television provider. ♪ iowa caucusese tomorrow, senator bernie sanders spent time with voters by hosting a meeting greet event at his cedar rapids campaign office today. according to an average compiled by real clear politics, he's pulling in first place in the state. >> bernie! bernie! bernie! sen. sanders: thank you. and we even have people up on the snow bank. [applause] sen. sanders: let me think all of you for coming out. let me think senator lena turner. senator turner has not just been active in iowa. she spent all over this country, rallying people to stand up for justice. senator turner, thank you so much for all that you do. [cs

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