Transcription
I'm Ken Bibbrry, the host of Coffee with Ken, a thought leadership series at the nexus of business, politics, and today, big trends shaping the world. And we are thrilled to be joined by three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman. Good to see you, Tom.
>> Good to be here. Thank you.
So, rumor has it you might be working on a book.
>> Um, well, that's your you've got good sources.
Anything you could tease out?
>> First of all, it's great to be uh here with you, Ken, and and and uh thanks to the center for um hosting us. It's great to see your father who is my translator in Albania and Secretary of State's translator in Albania.
What year was that?
>> Uh 91.
91. Hard to believe. I I really am an antique. Um, and Billy, thanks for organizing this and thanks for all for coming out. I am working on a new book. Um, uh, it's on how to write a column. Since everyone wants to be a columnist, I thought I'd write a book about it.
Amazing.
>> Uh, and, uh, the first half of the book is, uh, is basically how I write, why I write, how I learn, and what I learn. And then the second half of the book is what I saw. Because, um, uh, 2028, hard to believe, will be my 50th year. I started in 1978 on Fleet Street and I was a columnist but as a reporter and um so any journal so the second half is is what happened during those 50 years and um uh any journalist who's been on the job for 50 years is sure that he or she was uh here for the big one.
Yeah. Um World War I, World War II, end of the Cold War, rise of the internet, you know, globalization of China. Um, but we really all were here for the big one. Um, you know, Gutenberg was when when Gutenberg invented the printing press, Ken, someone was alive and some monk said to some priest, "Now that is really cool." Okay. You mean I don't have to write this Bible out longhand anymore? We're going to How did you say print it? Oh okay. Um well we are here for a similar moment.
Um, now the way I describe this is um I use the image of a phase change in chemistry. I'm going to take you all back to introductory physics but it's very useful and this is a concept I came up with my talk partner Craig Mundy former chief technology officer at Microsoft. So a phase change is is when matter changes um by an introduction of pressure or heat. Um and we know what happens when ice goes to water, water goes to steam. Well, for heuristic purposes, Craig and I divide the history of the world up into three phases just to simplify things. The first we call and humans are H2O molecules and technology is heat. So the first phase is from the dawn of uh of mankind uh to the printing press. We call it the age of ice or the age of tools. Um along then comes heat. The printing press melts the ice into water. Now ideas flow as you age molecules and ice are very slow. They they they don't they're disconnected. That's what makes ice ice. Heat technology melts the ice into water. We enter the age of information or the age of water. Ideas now flow, people flow, capital flows. We're in the age of information, the age of water. Until basically 2017, invention of the transformer algorithm, which is really what made uh AI possible. So early 2020s, we get AI now more heat and now the water boils into a vapor >> into steam. Um, and it's very useful to think of AI as a vapor because unlike any previous technology, it's going into everything. It's going into your glasses, it's going into your toaster, it's going into your refrigerator, it's going into your car, and it's going into your hip replacement.
>> So, it's going everywhere. And we are right now sitting on the cusp of this phase change. So when people ask Gregormy what time it is, we don't give them an hour. We give them a temperature.
>> We tell them the time is exactly 211.9° F cuz water boils at 212. Now, the beauty of using phase changes as a framing device is that when you're an H2O molecule in ice, you have no idea what it's like to be water. And when you're an H2O molecule in water, you have no idea what it's like to be steam because you operate in a completely different way. So, we are sitting on the edge right now. You can literally see it in the paper every day of we are water molecules who are just about to become steam and we have no clue what it's going to be like and Donald Trump is president. What could go wrong? Okay, so uh bend anybody but we're you're at a um incredible inflection point. You are here when Gutenberg invented the printing press.
Now I'll just say one last thing and then we can go on. What is this moment we're at? I call it the second big bang. So the first big bang was set up by our creator 13.8 billion years ago. God created the world in six days and he rested on the seven. We have become godlike and we have become godlike in seven different ways. We have developed an artificial brain greater than the creator endowed us to. We've disconnected human intelligence from biology. That is a godlike act.
>> Second, we have created a planetary nervous system. We aren't omniscient like God, but we're getting there. We now have a planetary nervous system where we can hear each other whisper from one end of the world to the next. Third, we're the first species to change the planet. We're the first species to drive itself out of one geological climate era, the Holocene, which we've been in for 11,700 years, into the Anthropocene. Fourth, we created a new galaxy called cyberspace where we're all connected and no one's in charge. Fifth, we split the atom and we are the first generation of Homo sapiens who can actually destroy the world the way God did with no. Sixth, we created deep learning. So deep learning is back in 2012, IBM, I wrote about this in a previous book, wired Lake George in upstate New York. So they put sensors everywhere in the muck, in the mud, in the shore, in the bottom, in the middle, on the waves, everywhere. And then they fed all that into big data at the time, 2012. And Rensselaer Polytechnic studied it. At the time, a man named John Kelly, who ran IBM research and was a friend of mine, gave me my all-time favorite quote. 50 years, something has to be your favorite quote, Brad. Okay. Um he said to me, "Tom, the world has been speaking to us all these years. We just couldn't hear it.
>> And now we're going to be able to hear it." People focus always on microchips, and they're obviously important, but before microchips are sensors. Sensors translate the physical world into the digital world. Now what's going to happen is we're going to take that sensing from Lake George and we're not going to feed it into big data so Rensselaer Polytechnic and stuff here. We're going to feed it into AI and we're going to understand things at a depth. We're going to understand this table. We're going to understand your shoes. They're all everything is about to start speaking to us. And lastly, this is coming. It's not here yet. I call it our true genesis moment. When we combine three things, your body is way too complicated. Human biology is way too complicated even for a supercomputer. But it's not too complicated for a quantum computer. And when we combine quantum computing with fusion energy with AI, we will have unlimited compute with unlimited clean energy with AI. And that will be a genesis moment because we will then be able to make anything from the atomic level up just for you and a warranty. So we have become godlike in seven different ways. Just one problem. We now have the power to part the Red Sea. But without the Ten Commandments, it's going to be a real problem. And now we don't just need 10. We need 20 commandments. 10 for us when we become so super empowered and 10 for the new species we've just spawned, the AI. So, um, that's how I see the moment. That's what the second half of the book is about.
>> So, technology has been obviously a large part of your writing. Let's just stay on this thread for a little bit longer. With everything you've just said about technology and AI, has it now become more consequential than just traditional state power and talk a little bit more about how governments leaders are supposed to adapt to this new reality and and time period we're entering into?
>> Well, you know, it's a very good question. This is, you know, that's why I wanted to start with I mean, because >> there's a lot to adapt to.
>> Okay. Um and uh because just in the realm of AI, who develops the leading LLM? Which country?
>> Sure.
>> Which country applies it to its economy most efficiently? Who can develop it but not apply it also? You know, um uh and which country learns to govern it um is going to be very very important. So again, we are basically steam molecules with a government that's trying to manage us with an ice tray. Good luck with that. Okay.
>> So, there's a complete mismatch today between the way we govern things um uh and the world we're going into. And um you know, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. And so, you know, there was a there was a hearing in Congress, gosh, this was may have been 2013, where Senator Orrin Hatch was interviewing Mark Zuckerberg.
>> Yeah.
>> And he famously asked him, Mr. Zuckerberg, if you can give Facebook away for free, how do you make money? And he said, Senator, we sell ads. So today the regulator has no clue how the innovator even makes money and that was with the internet.
>> Now wait till we get to AI. So we at the New York Times we did a big investigative story a while back on Boeing Max after the crashes >> and we got a hold of a huge catch of IBM internal emails >> and there's one in there. I built a whole chapter around it because it's um it's my second all-time favorite quote.
>> It's a Boeing engineer talking about his FAA regulator and basically says my regulator is so clueless about what I do that watching him watching me is like watching a dog watching television. Okay, watching dogs watching television. That's pretty much what's going on at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Um, not to compare them to dogs, of course. Um, but you get the point. Um, uh, there's a I mean, I have to study every day to write this book. I have to learn every day.
>> I am not dialing for dollars from, you know, morning till the evening. I'm actually talking to the best, smartest people I can, integrating it, and it's changing every day, you know. Um, and so if you're not doing that when the pace of change is this fast, you're going to get completely disconnected and you're not going to be able to make good decisions at all. Um, or you'll be manipulated by the technologists for their personal interests because this is a scary moment. We are developing nuclear weapons only. When we did the Manhattan Project, it was a government project.
>> The people developing these technologies are all private companies. Um and they have private interests.
>> Um one of it which is to not be regulated. And so the regulation issue and again circle 2026 on your calendar. This is the year AI hits everything from the workforce to government to geopolitics. You can you can see it already in the first month of the year. So by the end of the year we're going to be having a completely different conversation. Um, but you really you've got to be totally up on these things to to understand what's going on.
Now, I was a speaker at the China Development Forum last year, which is kind of China's Davos, but it's very different. It's very small. It's invite-only, but it's it's their sort of big international economic conference. And at the end, they asked me if I would stay and talk to a group of Chinese economists. I said to them, "Guys, my name is Thomas Friedman, not Milton Friedman. I'm not an economist." Said, "No, I'm a If you want me to stay, I'll talk." And so, um, I got up and I I said, uh, I made this up. I said, I I, ladies and gentlemen, I had a terrible nightmare last night. I dreamt it was the year 2030 and all that China could sell America, all that, excuse me, America could sell China was soybeans. And all that China could sell America was soy sauce. Now why is that? Because again that's why I started with phase change in vapor. AI is going into everything. And when AI is in everything, everything becomes TikTok. You notice that little problem we had here with TikTok. Who controls the data? Who controls the algorithm? Where is it stored? Who's in charge? Well, what happens? Ken, when everything is TikTok, okay, and you go into your doctor, your orthopedist, and he tells you, Ken, you need a new hip. You say, "Doc, who makes the best hip replacement?" He says, "Ken, it's called Shanghai Hip Replacement.ai." Okay? And we're going to put this baby in you, and it's going to be broadcasting 24/7. It's going to be optimizing your hip, by the way, 24/7 unlike nothing you've ever seen. They have your whole physiology, your biology. Um, all data of course will be stored in Shanghai at Shanghai Hip Replacement.ai. Well, if we don't have a shared trust architecture for the use of AI with China, you're going to buy that hip replacement. Now, what happens when that's your next Chinese EV, your next Chinese cell phone, your next Chinese laptop? And so we're about to have a huge trade crisis with China of what we can sell them and they can sell us if we don't have a trust architecture for AI when AI isn't everything. And you are sitting across the table from literally the only person in Washington DC thinking about this.
>> Okay. I will say >> well that's why you're here Tom.
>> What do you think this is? I mean >> I literally know this. Okay. Because literally the government our whole government set up around who hates China the most. So there's a whole group of people at the Pentagon who got their job today because they hated China the most. Okay. Now you again it's a phase change. The things completely shifts, you know, and you have to rethink the whole problem. And so there's a whole bunch of people going to be either out of jobs or out of sync, >> you know. And so um this is going to get very very interesting. And so I come along and I make this argument and they say, "Friedman, you're so naive. I mean, trust architecture with China." Um, baby, call me anything, but not naive because you tell me how this is going to work without it. Now that's naive.
>> Okay.
>> So, um, uh, you know, we're we're in the middle of something really really big.
>> So so much of this conversation >> every morning. Yes. I um I I uh I can do I do weddings in Vermont. So just talk to Billy and um I can ruin any dinner party. Go ahead.
>> So so much of um the conversation around AI today, especially in Washington, is framed around this narrative of speed. We got to beat China. We have to be first with AI. We've been having a lot of conversations and we had one last year with the author of Apple and China. I don't know if you've read that, so I'm not going to push push. But what was staggering in that book when I read it was literally the investment Apple made in China to create this manufacturing over the last 15 years. And the US during the Biden administration created the Chips Act, which was a $50 billion investment in chips and semiconductors over 5 years. A revolutionary act of investment. Apple has invested $50 billion a year in China in manufacturing and technology. So while the tone and framing is we're against China etc. Have we not done this to ourselves in a large degree by making so much of the investment from the private sector in the United States and globalization? So how is your framing of globalization in your view over the last 20 years of what so much you've written about kind of now coming to a head with AI in China?
>> Well, the best way I can answer you, Ken, is with the next chapter. Okay.
>> So um uh I was born in the Cold War. I'm 72. I was born in 1953. Um and uh had a lot of my career in the Cold War. Um uh and then as your father knows I I really had most of my career as a columnist in the post-Cold War.
>> Yeah. That was a great time to be a world was open. Got to Albania with Secretary of State, you know, it's really cool. Um
>> and it was really fun. Everything seemed to be coming our way, you know, and the world was coming together. And then the post-Cold War ended. um wasn't like a moment but US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russian invasion of Ukraine, the rise of China, we're not in the post-Cold War, this moment of great American hegemony anymore.
>> So I sat around thinking like uh where where are we you know cuz that's my job. I got I'm a foreign affairs columnist like what do we call this era you know and I was been really jealous of one of my predecessors Walter Lippmann who in 1947 did a 14-part series called the Cold War. M
>> so he actually named the Cold War. Um and I thought, God, wouldn't it be cool to name the new era, you know? I mean, that'd be really cool >> on Coffee with Ken. I mean, that'd be incredible happened right here, you know. So, so anyways, I started uh uh on this journey to do this. I I'm blessed with a a set of amazing original thinkers who I've cultivated and and we've nurtured each other um from around the world. And so um and so I am I am not very smart. I didn't score high in my SATs, but I'm a really good acorn collector and I see things and I collect acorns and then I sit down with my thought partner >> and we we do jazz together. we we break the acorn, you know, fine. Yeah. Whatever. So, anyways, two summers ago, I'd be in Colorado for the summer and my AI teacher, Craig Mundy, came and actually gave me my first tutorial on AI. I didn't really understand it, you know. And he explained to me that the goal of AI is to produce polymathic artificial general intelligence. So polymathic artificial general intelligence is an AI system that's mastered chemistry, biology, physics, material science, Mozart and baseball. Okay. So, and he can reason across all of them at a high-dimensional rate and no human could. That's polymathic artificial general intelligence. I I really like that term. Yeah. Literally a week later, my climate tutor calls and Johan Rockström, who runs the Potsdam Institute in um uh in Germany, amazing Earth system scientist. He says, "Tom, I um uh I have a new book out and would you come to New York for Climate Week and do an event with me on my book? We'll get a lot of attention for it." I said, "Yo, for you, anybody, what's your book called?" Said, "It's called Polycrisis." I said, 'Isn't that interesting? I've just been with my AI tutor and he's talking about polymathic artificial general intelligence and now my climate tutor is talking about polycrisis. Well, I also at the same time was giving a speech on foreign policy for Billy um and which began um uh in a way that Secretary of State Tony Blinken started quoting and the speech began like this to an audience like this. I want to talk to all the parents in writing this. Mom, Dad, if your son or daughter come home from college and say, "Mommy, daddy, I'd like to be the US Secretary of State one day." Tell them, "Honey, anything but that." Worst job in the world. You can be Secretary of Commerce, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, but promise Mommy and Daddy, you won't try to be Secretary of State. Why? Well, let's the way I explained it was let's think about two October wars in the Middle East >> and two Secretaries of State. >> October 1973 and Henry Kissinger, October 2023 and Tony Blinken. Henry Kissinger to produce the first disengagement agreements in the Middle East between Israel and Egypt, Israel and Syria needed three dimes, an airplane, three months and Kissinger magic. And he produced the diplomatic equivalent of tic-tac-toe across Egypt, Syria, Israel. He needed a dime to call Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, a dime to call Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, a dime to call Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, three dimes fitting magic. Tic-tac-toe. Now fast forward to Tony Blinken 50 years later. Tony Blinken sees double and triple everywhere he goes. Um, he's got to deal with inside Hamas and outside Hamas, political Hamas and military Hamas. Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. In Lebanon, he had to deal with Hezbollah, Iran, and the Lebanese government. In Syria, he had to deal with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Syrian government. In Iraq, he had to deal with 18 militias. In Yemen, he had 18 tribes. And Israel, he had 18 partners. He was not playing tic-tac-toe. He had a Rubik's cube and he was trying to get all the colors aligned on one side of a Rubik's cube. Now, if you've ever tried that, it's really hard. Promise, Mommy and Dad, you won't guard the Secretary of State. His world had become polyamorous >> and polymorphic. Last point, I'm over at Oxford with my economics tutor, Eric Binhawker, runs a new economy institute at Oxford and we're talking about Trump's tariffs and how stupid they are. And the way he explains it is he holds up his iPad and says, "Tom, you realize no country in the world can make this device because this is a complex device." Complex devices solve complex problems. But it is so complex that its both idea supply chain and material supply chain spans six continents. This is the product of a polyeconomic global knowledge and material supply chain. If you come in with tariffs in the middle of it, you completely interrupt the whole thing. So basically I had a lot more experiences like that. Um, I'll just share one more with you, which is that when I was growing up, my dad had friends who bet on the Vikings game after Minnesota, where I'm going in an hour. Um, and it was a very simple thing. I want the Vikings to beat the Bears inside the spread. Totally binary. It was just the Vikings, win or lose. Today I can bet on whether the field goal will go inside the left mark or inside the right mark. Okay, I can bet on every play, every player's performance. Where do I bet on that? On Polymarket. Well, by now I'm sure you see the pattern. So I came back to Craig and said, "What is the name of this era?" And he said, "It's obvious. We're in the Poly-cene. C-E-N-E. We're in the Poly-cene. And the Poly-cene is the product of everything because of the big bang. Everything gets sharded into little pieces. Every piece now has a voice and they're all connected. And that's why in the Poly-cene you don't want to run anything, especially a university, because now everyone has a voice, is empowered and connected. So governing anything in the Poly-cene is hell on wheels. Yeah,
>> that's when you let's stay on foreign affairs for another moment. When you look Yeah.
>> So when you look at Ukraine and the war in Gaza, are these isolated conflicts or systems of a broader unraveling of global world order? I mean,
>> well, you know, I saw Gaza and um Ukraine relate because basically what was going on in the world in um 2022. What was going on in the world was that Ukraine was trying to join the West and Israel was trying to join the East.
>> Ukraine was trying to join the European Union. Um, and had Ukraine been able to join the European Union, it would have been the biggest expansion of a Europe whole free since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ukraine is a big powerful important country. We would be 98% in the Western Balkans to a Europe and free. Um, in the Middle East, the Biden administration was trying to forge an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. They were trying to get Israel and Saudi Arabia to normalize relations. Um that would have been the biggest expansion of a Middle East whole and integrated since Camp David and Iran stopped the second and Russia stopped it first because Russia knew it would be completely isolated in a Europe whole and free and Iran understood it would be completely isolated in a Middle East whole and free. So both regions were trying to get toward greater inclusion and integration and um these basically outlawed powers who understood they'd be isolated moved not in coordination but each in their own way moved to stop it and we've been dealing with the implications ever since.
Let's come domestically. We're here at the Center for Study of the Presidency and Congress. Uh let's talk about American democracy. How do you look domestically, internally? How healthy are we as a democracy here in the United States, our role abroad retreating? Where do you see the United States over the next 10 years, both domestically >> as a health of our democracy and our role overseas?
>> Yeah, I'm I'm very worried um because um governing again in the Poly-cene is is very difficult. Um, and um, you know, my personal politics, if you follow me, you know I'm I'm I guess would be called a conservative Democrat, >> radical centrist. Is that >> a pro-business, pro-globalization Democrat? There like three of me left in the zoo. Okay. One is called Michael Bloomberg, you know what I mean? Like, and who was the person I actually endorsed in the last campaign. So, so what I'm about to say, I'm not like a political person in particular, you know, I mean, I write about politics. I think about politics and >> but um you know, we've got a radical presidency, right?
>> Um and Trump one was surrounded by buffers and Trump two is surrounded by amplifiers. That's the central truth of what's going on now. So in Trump one, he would go to the Mar-a-Lago bar. Some guy will sit down with him say, "Mr. President, I've got a great idea for you. Let's make Gaza into the Riviera." Say, "What a great idea. Go right to the Oval Office, sit down with General Kelly. Kelly, we're going to make Gaza into the Riviera." Kelly would say, "Boss, what an amazing idea. Why didn't I think of that?" Okay, let's have Mattis study it. We'll do it, do it and and they would deflect it over here. Now it goes from the Mar-a-Lago bar to the Oval Office to the world completely unbuffered whether it's taking over Greenland um or um telling Zelensky you got no cards. So nothing is run through a deputies committee, nothing is run through any traditional governing process. Look what happened. The the the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs. Within hours the president announced 10% tariffs and then a day later 15. Okay. Why one not the other? Did they get together the Secretary of the Treasury, the banking system, Secretary of Commerce? Did they do a study? What is the implication of this for the allies? Where we want to go on AI? What will be the implications? Nothing. So it's not only that these decisions are unfiltered, but there's no process behind them to implement them. Yeah. And so we're trying to bring peace to Iran, to, you know, Russia right now with the president's son-in-law and a real estate guy. And God bless them. They actually be the best people to do this. And they're not stupid. Okay. But what's behind them? There's no NSC. There's no State Department. There's no Voice of America. There's nothing. And so when this stuff even gets done, how is anything followed up on? So that's what I I find again it's not right or left. I supported what the president did on bringing about the ceasefire in Gaza was amazing. I said if you continue this I will nominate you for the Nobel Prize. It's just business for me.
>> Okay. But if if we behave in extreme ways um that blow up our alliances and what's scary about what's going on now, this kind of radical move in American foreign policy where we break the Atlantic alliance, which is what we're doing, these kind of radical moves are only associated with wars or economic huge economic disruptions. And this one is based on the whims, superstitions on uh and fantasies of a single person who is completely unbuffered by an accident of history that his party controls the Senate, the Congress and the Supreme Court, and none of them excluding the Supreme Court just of late is ready to stand up to him. So we're having a warlike departure um without any study. Where is the study that says that we should break the Atlantic alliance, you know, and and show me why that's going to be good for us? Because I'm kind of old-fashioned. I happen to believe that the last 80 years of world history, we're the most peaceful and prosperous on a relative basis, absent great power war, than any period, any period of modern history. And there is a reason for that. The world was the way the world was because America was the way America was and America was the way America was toward that world. You changed that.
>> You changed that without any clue or plan or just cuz your gut instinct or your biases or because the president of Switzerland wasn't nice to you. He gave you a low five, you know. Um you change all that and you change the world, >> you know. So this is not funny. Um, and this stuff was built up over 80 years and you destroy it, um, uh, you are going to end up with a much less prosperous and a much less stable world.
>> And that's not Republican or Democrat. That's physics.
I want to close out with a media question. We've been layoffs at the Washington Post. Uh you alluded to Voice of America and the administration's um, you know, shutting it down. What's the state of investigative journalism, accountability, and free press in the United States?
>> You know, it's um I'm blessed. I I work at the New York Times. We have 13 million, you know, um registered paying, you know, users. So, I work at one of the few newspapers that's like doing really, really well right now. I'm just really glad I had my career when I had it and with the people I had. What's going on at the Washington Post is a travesty, a great newspaper, so necessary for the nation's capital and and being gutted, you know, by its owner um apparently for political reasons. Uh that will be a that's a shameful thing, but um is, you know, on the one hand there's no Washington Post, but there's Coffee with Ken.
>> There we go. You're telling the voice big lane. I I I mean that both, you know, in a fun way with us, but it's actually true. I mean that just that there's it's not like there's no journalism app. It's just exploding now from the bottom up, >> but you have to find it and you have to learn to trust it, you know, in in um who's really trustworthy in all this. And so, um that's going to be a real we're just in the middle of this revolution. And I I can't tell you how how it's going to end. I can just tell you I'm really glad. Why work? Yeah, Thomas Friedman, ladies and gentlemen, >> thank you very much.
>> Thank you.
>> Want to thank Billy Hick and CIA Speakers again, Glenn Nye and the Center for Study of the Presidency and all of you for being here. Uh Tom Friedman, it's always a joy having you engage in these conversations, your clarity, your vision, your honesty. I think we're all enthusiastic about your book and would love to have you back on Coffee with Ken to talk about it. Until next time, coffeewithken.com. Thanks, folks.