End the plague of violence that these weapons of war inflict on so many young lives. I have said this before, will not be able to stop every tragedy. We cannot wipe away hatred and evil from every heart in this world. But we can stop some tragedies. We can save some lives. We can reduce the impact of a terrorist attack, if we are smart. If we do not act, we will keep seeing more massacres like this. Because we will be choosing to allow them to happen. We will have said, we do not care enough to do something about it. Here in orlando, we are reminded not only of our obligations as a country, to be resolute against terrorism, we are reminded not only of the need for us to implement smarter policies, to prevent mass shootings. We are also reminded of what unites us as americans. And what unites us is far stronger than the hate and terror of those who target us. For so many people here, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, the pulse nightclub has always been a safe haven. A place to sing and dance, and most importantly to be who you truly are. Including for so many people, whose families are originally from puerto rico. Sunday morning, that sanctuary was violated in the worst way possible. Whatever motivations of the killer, whatever influences led him down the path of violence and terror, whatever propaganda he was consuming from isil and al qaeda, this was an act of terrorism, it also an act of hate. It was an attack on the lgbt community. Americans were targeted because we are a country that has learned to welcome everyone. No matter who you are or who you love. Hatred towards people because of Sexual Orientation, regardless of where it comes from, it is a betrayal of what is best in us. Joe and i were talking on the way over here. You cant break up the world into us and them, and denigrate, and express hatred towards groups because of the color of their skin, or their faith, or their Sexual Orientation and not feed something very dangerous in this world. If there was ever a moment for all of us to reflect and reaffirm our most basic beliefs, that everybody counts, and everybody has dignity, now is the time. It is a good time for all of us to reflect on how we treat each other. And to insist on respect and equality for every human being. We have to end discrimination and violence against our brothers and sisters who are in the lgbt community. Here at home, and around the world, especially in countries were they are routinely where they are routinely prosecuted. We have to challenge the oppression of women, wherever it occurs here or overseas. There is only us, americans. Here in orlando, the men and women taken from us, those who loved them, we see some of the true character of this country, the best of humanity coming roaring back with love, and the compassion, and the fierce resolve that will carry us through, not just this atrocity, but through whatever difficult times may confront us. It is our pluralism and respect for each other, including the young man who said to a friend, he was super proud to be latino. The love of the country, the patriotism of an Army Reservist who is known as an amazing officer. It is our unity, the outpouring of love that so many across the country that have shown that to our fellow americans that are lgbt. The display of solidarity that might have been unimaginable even a few years ago. Out of this darkest of moments, that gives us hope. Seeing people reflect. Seeing peoples best instincts come out. Maybe in some cases minds and hearts changing. It is our strength and our resilience. The same determination from a man who died here, who traveled the world, mindful of the risk as a gay man, but who spoke for all of us when he said, we cannot be afraid. We are not going to be afraid. We all find that same strength in our own lives. May we all find that same wisdom and how we treat one another. May god bless all who we lost here in orlando. May he comfort their families. May he heal the wounded. May he bring some solace to those whose hearts have been broken. May he give us resolve to do what is necessary to reduce the hatred of this world, to curb the violence. May he watch over this country that we call home. Thank you very much, everybody. Charlie joshua is cochief executive officer and vice chairman of kissinger associates. He began his career as a journalist, his new book is called the seventh sense, power, fortune, and survival in the age of networks. it explores the ways our rapidly connected world will shape the future. I am pleased to have him at the table again. Welcome. Let me ask this. Why did you leave journalism . What is wrong with journalism . [laughter] joshua i love being a journalist, i love being Foreign Editor of the times. I have the kind of personality that i wanted to go deep. I have a bit of an academic streak in my personality. As i looked around the world and saw what was going on, i said it would be fascinating to know more about china. So i moved there. I would never anticipate that i would have fallen in love with the country, and it was everything i had the chance to do. Why china . Joshua i was very opportunistic. I was the tech editor of time. I had seen what happens when you have a giant force that emerges and changes the rules of the game. Charlie as it did in technology. Joshua i looked covering that. It was an incredible experience as a journalist. I looked around the world and said, what other stories are there like this . In 20002001, it seemed like china. It has done that. Charlie youd went over there to do what . Joshua i do i wanted to leave journalism and get into the commercial world. I also knew i needed to learn to speak up language. I took a year sabbatical. I studied chinese eight hours a day. I did not know what i was going to do at the end of it. I was lucky enough to get an advisory job working for john thorton. I spent a couple of years with him. And then henry, the iconic westerner thinking about china, offered me a partnership in his firm. Since then, it has been an incredible and education. Charlie how much of your time there . Heir . Joshua it is down to 40 of the time. I still have that feeling. I never feel like i do not want to get on the plane to china. It is the most interesting place in the world. Charlie it has not changed . Joshua that level of interest. As you know, it is much more interesting as a story now. It gets much me interesting and complex. Before i moved to china, someone gave me advice. They said as important as being bilingual as it is being bicultural. That is true. Every time i go back there, you feel you are reentering this incredible puzzle that is fascinating. The emergence of a new superpower is kind of a once every 200 years or 300 years phenomenon. It is not clear how this will work out. Observece to sort of that from zero to distance range is really special. Charlie it is an interesting point. It is going to be disruptive, but we do not know what the ramifications are. Joshua thats right. And i think we dont have an intellectual muddle. It is wanting one thing to think about, people compare it to the emergence of germany and britain a few years ago. The industrial world rules of power are very different for the information world. We can not analogize. There are things we can learn, but the background in which this is happening is not an environment where nothing is changing. Possibly part of the largest revolution since the industrial revolution. The information revolution. It adds another level of complexity. Interesting of the things, you talk about cultural differences. Your closeness to henry kissingers. He always emphasized to me, emphasizing a cultural place that political leaders come from. Joshua absolutely. I never found someone as a more acute student of psychology than henry. That was one of the things when i started working there that was surprising. The amount of time we spend trying to understand, what is the landscape, the historical landscape, intellectual and Cultural Landscape in which someone operates . Its important from his diplomatic perspective, because the stakes are so high. But it totally changes the way you look at a problem. You do not look at a commercial problem, because ours is a commercial firm. You try to understand the concept in which it is and that it. It turns out, that is the key to success for any likely to succeed commercial China Project in china. Charlie what is the product of your firm . Joshua i think it is helping people navigate, particularly in china, complex commercial transaction. It is, as you probably know charlie to understand dynamics. Joshua yes, and to figure it out structurally. It is a dynamic, rapidly changing environment. To find ways to have commercial that arents of scale, longterm sustainable, and benefit everybody, it takes understanding from partners and of the environment. It takes understanding of tactical issues. Like what is going on in tax structures and regulations. But it is part of the process of the chinese evolution. I do not think there is any more interesting way to kind of take the pulse of the country than to be doing deals there, and having watched a decade and a half of the evolution of what a transaction in china looks like today, as opposed to 15 years ago. Charlie more open today . Joshua yes. In certain areas, much more open. I think you are seeing the emergence of chinese firms and Business Executives who are much more capable of operators of businesses when i moved there 15 years ago. Just the general maturity of the system is growing. Having said that, it is in the midst of the most complicated Economic Reform Program in human history. Having lifted 400 Million People out of poverty, they have this problem of how do you get more and more people into the middle class . Charlie they bring with them demands that drives the economy. Joshua this is one of the interesting things about china. The minute you get out of shanghai or beijing in particular, and you see what is going on in other parts of the country, and watch the seeds of reform trying to come out of the ground and grow. You really get a sense of both the potential of the economy, but also the incredible challenges that lie ahead. Charlie tell me about your book. The subtitle, power, fortune, and their survival in the age of networks. We have gone to the industrial, informational revolution, therefore it has created new shaping institutions, alliances, and relationships, which have more impact, you argue, than any other sort of element. Joshua i wanted to try to understand. The question i was interested in is, what is the scale of what we are going through . Coming from the world of journalism where we have seen the incredible upheaval in that space because of technology, and you look at so many different worlds and see them being , changed by conductivity, but i wanted to understand what was going on inside the systems. Why was it that some people have the ability to see the dynamics . A network of any kind is any set of connected points. It could be people, voters, citizens of new york businesses , that operate in bitcoin. We live in a world where youre seeing an explosion of these interconnected linked meshes. Charlie the mutuality of interest . Joshua in some cases, with different interests. The idea is you have many systems operating together. They often create surprising results. If we sat here are year ago and said, who is most likely to be the republican nominee . You would have thought, the guy with two president s in the family, and for decades of political experience. Charlie jeb bush. Joshua exactly. As opposed to the guy with 5 million twitter followers and a reality tv background. That connect to networks. Charlie so if you want to explain Donald Trumps success in the republican primaries, you explain his reliance on twitter as a means of communication, because it created its own Trump Network within twitterdom . Joshua exactly. Not just that, but we know that networks crave certain things. We are all now constantly checking email or the. If we think about financial or facebook. If we think about financial markets, they move instantly. Charlie and what is trending today. Joshua we dont mean just the internet. Networks of dna, networks, finance. These Networks Want is constant updates. Trumps ability to be in the headlines always is a property of a network. To use twitter to constantly be in the news. That is an example of a network. Charlie interesting now, because in the last couple of days in the polls, there is a growing gap between secretary clinton and donald trump. Joshua and it is what is going to make the election so interesting. As you start to see networks growing opposed to the Trump Network, it is a battle of networks. One of the things people say about networks, it takes one to defeat another network. You cant go after a network with a hierarchical system. One way to understand this election is, what are the various networks and how are they interacting . That is part of the idea of the book. Charlie i assume it is also about numbers. You could argue part of that women the ascending , democratics. Latinos, women, young. She doesnt own all of them, but more than he does. Joshua right. And you can watch when the remarks about the judge can out, you could see the other network beginning to grow and form in opposition. Network scientist tells us a tremendous amount. Charlie what is interesting also, i mentioned earlier, i was at the China Development for him forum, and you were as well. All they wanted to know was american politics. Specifically donald trump. They created a session for me to do, just to talk about donald trump. It is amazing. How did they see him . Joshua the first question is also, why does american politics matter so much in china, or the rest of the world . This is another network property. One of the things that happens in networks, there are certain systems become essential for the operation of the network here it. They often have a lot of concentrated power. If you look around the world there are eight different connected systems with more than one billion users, facebook, youtube. They have a unusual property, which is the more successful they get, the more of a monopoly they become. Theres no set in place to face the. There is no secondplace youtube. The centrality of these powers, it turns out everyone thinks the networks distribute power to everyone. Charlie its democratizing. Joshua and at the same time, creates incredible concentration. All of those platforms are american. If you begin to analyze the world in network terms, not just internet platforms, currency trade, all of these things, the u. S. Turns out to be essential for everywhere in the world. Not only in industrial terms, because it is the Central Network node. What the chinese understand is the issue of the importance of how the United States operates. I think there are a few reasons they are fascinated. One is this one, they know that so much of the International System depends on the healthy functioning of the centralized system. The second, like everyone, they are trying to understand what is happening with u. S. Politics. Charlie they think it influences them. Joshua it influences them, and there is a deeper question. Get at that in the book, which is, what is the future of the United States in the International System . Will it continue to be a superpower with a dominant position, or in fact are we entering a period, where there is a theory in International Relations where every 100 years power is handed off. So the dutch handed to the spanish. Charlie the rising power joshua that is an accurate discussion of the last 500 years of european history. The u. S. Took over from the british. People wonder, who takes over for the u. S. . Of humanok at all history, particularly from a chinese perspective, youve dined there are countries and there are countries systems that dominate for hundreds of years. A core question of the Chinese Philosophy is, where is the United States . Is it a declining power . The interesting thing about this also, in the last week, as a commercial transaction, microsoft bought linkedin for 26. 2 billion. What does linkedin have . It has 320 Million People who are part of the network. Joshua right. Charlie that network, linkedin. But either people in brin business and enterprise. Not like facebook, which is every teenager and everyone else. Joshua what it has is data. That come in the future turns out to be valuable. What is the next of these billion user platforms. We know that the more people that use facebook, the better it gets. We will see that happen in the world of Artificial Intelligence. That is probably the next great platform. Linkedin, in that world, suddenly becomes just a wonderful data mine for how people are going, where they interact, how they think. Charlie you also say anytime you plug something into the network, you forever altered its nature. Joshua you are what you are connected to. The main example for all of us now, we see this now with this horrible domestic activated terrorism in orlando, is that the minute you connect to the world, you have no idea what you are connecting to. It brings risk back at the same time it brings opportunity. You have to accept it. Charlie and you have no idea. I was just struck by the language of the gun man in orlando. Saying he had been inspired and influenced by, i think he said one term, he was connected to isil. Joshua right. Connection. That is the ability to my last book, i began with spending time with the chief Technology Officer at hezbollah, if you think about the evolution of terrorism from hezbollah to al qaeda, to isis, you are mapping the technological elements. Charlie the scary thing is we know this because of what has happened in San Bernardino am a and also in paris am aware they are using paris, where they are using apps that are encrypted, providing a huge new problem for law enforcement. Joshua it changes all of the technology. Charlie and bad guys use it the same way good guys do. Joshua right. We will have issues with drones, all these things. It changes the fundamental nature. Having said that, if you think about the longterm position of the United States,