U. S. The rhetoric came days after the u. N. Security Council Agreed to sanctions. Joining me is david smirler. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me on. The Defense Intelligence agency has warned President Trump that north korea could master the technology to deliver Nuclear Weapons targeting the u. S. Within a year. Based on your research, how reel is the threat that those weapons could reach california and other parts of the west cost . North korea is saying they have the capability as early as last year and they showed a series of signs and tests that would be supportive of the assessment. The number ive seen thrown out is these missiles could have a range of 6,500 miles, if thats true it puts california but also possibly denver and chicago in range, is that correct. Thats right. The last test on the 28th of july indicated the one they launched on the fourth of july had significantly longer range. So having the capability is one thing, using it is another. What are the chances you think north korea would launch a Nuclear Strike against the u. S. North korea developed its program to fend off conventional conflict on the Korean Peninsula. Theyre aware of the military supporty of the united states. They developed this program to throe another calculation of any idea of removing the kim regime through military intervention. They fdesigned it to fend off a invasion theyre not going to use it unless they feel theyre being invaded. Can you tell us how theyre getting their materials. The Weapons Program started a while back. If we go back to the original, older piece of the program they got their first Ballistic Missiles from the russians in the 70s. And it was then a series of networks that went from pack stan to iran that developed the program to where it is today. Weve seen the rhetoric President Trump has said military solutions are locked and loaded. Whats your reaction to his warning that the u. S. Is ready to use military action. That is expected. Coming out of the president s office that is something i think were all starting to get used to. I dont think it helps constructively in any way. The North Koreans developed this program because they were afraid of military intervention on the Korean Peninsula and using rhetoric like this is not going to help at all. As tensions continue to mount, whats the big risk here . It could take one miscalculation to throw things to the brink of war. The North Koreans are aware how dangerous the u. S. Military is. So using reckless terms like locked and ready to go and flame i forget what the president said exactly but something along those lines it only elevates tension along the pen nins la. They come on the heels of a new round of sanctions. But previous sanctions havent stopped north korea from developing Nuclear Weapons do you think this latest rounds are going to hurt. Sanctions take time but ult plait the program was developed under heavy sanctions. It may slow the program down a little bit but north korea has reallocated funds to their project. This will hurt but it wont stop the development. China wants to preserve peace in the region. Some are calling for its assistance to put pressure on north korea to put a stop to all this. What is chinas role in all this and what is it likely to do, do you think . I think china is interested in the status quo, north korea is the buffer state. Theyre one of the main suppliers and trading partners with north korea. With that said theyre not interested in the situation on the Korean Peninsula escalating. Theres a common misconception that china needs to do one thing and this goes away. Its going to take multiple parties. China has a role but its not up on them. What is the option to contain north Koreas Nuclear threat. Theyre not going to give up their Nuclear Weapons program. They developed it for a reason. Its going to take years for us to even reach that conversation. However we can try to have conversation and negotiations to stop further development of their Weapons Program to prevent them from becoming more dangerous than they are. What does that conversation look like . Is it a deal with north korea suspending their tests, what does it get from the u. S. . They want policy against north korea to cease. That probably wont happened. Outside of the wmd program theyre notorious for human rights abuses. In exchange north korea want it is end of military exercises in south korea. So how a negotiation would take place im not sure. But in order to start that process and see where each party has wiggle room you need to start some preliminary conversation. And that would be the most constructive path. Do you think kim jongun is open to that. Hes 33 now, took over when he was 27. Is he reasonable . I think again in order to feel out the waters, you have to start some type of conversation and as long as there were no preconditions to it, im sure the North Koreans would be willing to have a conversation. All right. David with International Studies at monterey. Thank you for joining us. We turn to Silicon Valleys struggle with diversity. James damores 10page manifest toe argued that the low number of women in technical positions was the result of biological conditions he also said womens knew rot schism might make them less likely for coding jobs. Joining me now to discuss this further are google zaire engineer courtney marshall, Senior Editor of Silicon Valley desk key nakim and jonathan tower. Welcome to you all. You work at google, courtney, youre here in your own capacity not representing the company. There was supposed to be an allhands on meeting yesterday with the ceo, it got cancelled what happened . The town hall was cancelled because of fears of employee safety being violated. There are people leaking information about wear employees live. So people dont want to make a statement and then have somebody knock on their door they dont know. As i understand, isnt there a board that you have where people can ask questions that you want to have at the meeting. Exactly. The questions are being leaked and thats part of the whole conversation is that these its set up to allow people to have a conversation and some kind of vote on topics that they think are interesting. And when you cant do that knowing that its going to be protected, then you feel nervous about even making a statement. What is your reaction and opinion to James Damores memo . In my opinion, it is a rebuttal to the Diversity Efforts that have been going on in the sense that its scared about change. It doesnt want to see the landscape change from a place of empowerment from a white Software Engineer feeling the system has worked for me all these years why do i need to change it to a system thats going to work for everybody. So this engineer was fired following the leakage of the memo. I think the firing, was it designed to tamp things down, calm things down, but instead it is a fire storm especially with right conservatives. Theyre saying his free speech was violated, saying he had a right to say what he wanted to say. It is true that the government has to respect your First Amendment right to free speech but a corporation doesnt. If you Say Something that doesnt align with what your Company Believes they can fire you. If theres an engineer at google who said i think technology sucks and we should work to dismantle google, as much as he might be the best engineer in the world if hes going out and telling people that, then they can fire him. I think what was not teased out is theres actually liability for google if they had kept him because, as i understand it, google has this system where engineers are their promotions as well as pay raises are decided in part by their peers. So if this guy gave a woman a bad peer review and she didnt get a raise or a promotion, she could say this was sexist and the legalo nus would be on the company to prove no it wasnt because he was sexist he gave you this bad review. So i feel they had a fiduciary duty to get rid of the guy because it opens them up to lawsuits. You were at google yesterday, and the ceo made his first public appearance. What he d he say. It was an event for girl coders that had long been planned. He was not scheduled to speak there but i think he felt compelled to come out and talk. It was that these girl coders had a place in Silicon Valley and a place in google. His line was dont let anybody tell you you dont. He didnt mention the memo orda moth orda more. I think he wanted to make a stand that google does stand for gender equity in the work place no matter what fire storm it might be setting off. What do you make of the decision, jonathan, and how does it impact you from a vp standpoint. My impression of the decision, i think you put your finger on it before, what was his objective . Was it to tamp down the controversy, that didnt happen. Hes a cause celebrity for wings of the right. I dont think that was the objective as well. I dont want to put myself in the shoes of the ceo there were lots of things going on. But there clearly could have been been different decisions made, he could have been removed later on, perhaps for cause later. But the way to let him go, was not what the ceo had in mind. You guys are venture capitalist, you fund startups. How do you address this . Where do you fit in in the echo system. We have to be able to, for lack of a better term, see around corner. Develop what we think are going to be the emerging technology of tomorrow. One cannot do that unless youre a diverse organize naigs in terms of perspective around the table. If theres five people around the table and were all 45yearold white men were not going to have the diversity of opinion. Its important to us to have the perspective to think about the technology of the future. The industry has come under criticism as well for not giving Women Entrepreneurs opportunities. Its found that women got 5 thats a jump from a decade ago when they got less than 3 . Still its a minuscule number. Its hard to pull a piece of data out and extrapolate on that. I dont know how that was associated with who was seeking funding. So how do you tees it out and say it was because it was a female founder. I think thats merky. I think we are Getting Better as an industry. And youre seeing it through more partners in top tier funds. I think youre seeing more females coming out and starting businesses and being funded. Its a slow moving process, but im optimistic in the industry getting ahead of that. Courtney how do you think the industry is doing in terms of diversity . Do you think theyre doing a good job. I think the industry is trying and i think its important to the industry. Its still aspirational. Its not actualized yet. I think the success will come this is one of those long tell things. Its going to come in years to come, but we have to put the energy in it now. It is more critical to business now because of things that mentioned about appealing to a more broad audience. This is a Global Community were dealing with. I hear what youre saying but why is it so hard for Silicon Valley to achieve diverse si. I think because its been successful without it. Its hard to have a conversation with people who feel weve been doing it this way for this long weve made so much money, convince me it needs to be different. Thats why people have done the study to say more diverse teams create more profitable companies. But its still hard to tell people at the ground looefl. I think leadership understands that. Now you have to get it down to the rank and file. Youre hearing from the women in Silicon Valley that this memo tells you why its difficult for women to break through because there is a pervasive maybe not pervasive but there is an attitude in tech and women would say this wasnt totally surprising. While it was offensive that these views are still being perpetrated in Silicon Valley spop i think theres an element of that, too. And the u. S. Department of labor is investigating google for pay disparities. And now dozens of former and current women employees of googles are looking at a lawsuit. Google is a federal contractor so because they do business with the government, they have to go under audits to see if they are abiding by fair employment laws, not discriminating against people. In the audit the dol found there were discrepancies in every job category and the chances of that happening is Something Like one in 100 million. So they came this came out because so theres a civil rights attorney here in San Francisco who this sparked his interest. So he put out an add saying have you worked at google do you feel like you were discriminated against, and i guess Something Like 70 women have responded saying yes, they believe that they have. So thats sort of where that came from. Jonathan you touched on this earlier when you talked about the sporns of diversity how you need to be able to see around the corner, see what technology is coming. If we dont diversify, whats the downside . As we move into Artificial Intelligence where there are al go rhythms for everything in our life, what happens . I think the quality of the products suffer over time and the companies that are not diverse are going to pay the price for that. So again, we are our firm invests internationally, we have diversity in your bloodstream because we look for it around the world. We understand whats going on globally, not just the Silicon Valley bubble. I think if you maintain a perspective, which is an argument here tonight that there are certain types of engineers that are going to have the privilege of maintaining their job and not including other opinions, its going to come out in the products. So again its a threat for us to not be diverse, i think technology will have the same fate if they dont get ahead of it. I think theres this notion, because you hear this, diverse teams create better products, better results. That miss the point. Youre asking people to give up power, right . And thats a whole different ball of wax. There was an article that came out that said the only way to really change that dynamic is to have these class action suits because, you know, i think the studies have shown, yes, divers teams make better products but people dont want to give up the power. And that hasnt been happening so maybe the government needs to intervene or some legal remedy. People need to understand these companies are micro kos ms of the societies we live in. We are going to have to leave it there. Thank you all. Now to diversity in another profession. Asianamericans have made strides in the Legal Profession. They represent 5 of all attorneys in the u. S. Yet they still face a Glass Ceiling in law firms, cooperatio corporations on the bench. We talked to one of the reports coauthors a California Supreme Court justice. Scott schaeffer has that interview. Thanks for coming in. Pleasure to be here. It looks at law schools, law firms, government attorneys every place that asianamericans would be in the system. What were you looking for . What were you hoping to find . We found that Asian Americans were the Fastest Growing group in the last several decades. They work and pop late every legal angle. What accounts for that and whats the significance of it. Some of what we found was there were a lot of perceptions having difficulty making contacts and networks and getting mentors. So a lot of the stuff that leads to promotion and Good Business relationships, a lot of the informal mentoring and networking that happens in these environments is something that Asian Americans identify as a big big challenge. A barrier to career advancement. Is there racism at play do you think. I think racism is a strong word. We did a survey of over 600 asianamerican lawyers, which is more than 1 of all the asianamerican lawyers in the country. What they said was in terms of incidents of overt discrimination, very rare. But when you ask about implicit bias, the numbers go up significantly. We asked another question is whether they thought members of the Legal Profession perceive them in a certain way. It is very much i think this will resonate with asianamericans not just in law but all walks of life. But the adjectives most commonly associated were things like they were very logical, careful, very hardworking. But then the adjectives were things like efrp thet ik, creative, assertive. So when youre before a Promotion Committee or when the senior partner is thinking about who are they going to bring to go to the client meeting, these intangible qualities like who has presence, who has a credible demeanor before a client, those are things that are hard to measure and thats where asianamericans report challenges. If justice is blind what difference does it make what color or gender or situation orientation the judge is. I think Justice Oconnor said it best, she said one of the most important things we can do in ou