Navigating Our Revolutionary Age: A Conversation with Fareed Zakaria and Eric Schmidt
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Fareed Zakaria's latest work, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, has been called "the indispensable book for understanding the world today." In it, he traces five centuries of world history to understand what makes a period revolutionary and how societies respond to such earth-shattering changes.
Join the Institute of Global Politics (IGP) at Columbia SIPA for one of the first book talks since the release of Age of Revolutions, where Fareed Zakaria will be in conversation with former Google CEO and IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow, Eric Schmidt. Drawing on deep historical research and personal experiences, they will discuss how to navigate today's unstable and rapidly changing world.
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Zakaria argues that we are living through a concurrent technological, economic, and identity revolution—similar in scale to 1880-1920—that produces political backlash and populism when elites impose change by decree rather than persuasion, and that managing these revolutions requires institutional restraint and cross-cutting dialogue rather than tribal polarization.
- Three simultaneous revolutions (information, globalization, identity) are creating unprecedented anxiety and backlash in established democracies
- Top-down revolutionary imposition (French Revolution, Roe v. Wade) fails; bottom-up technological change (Dutch Golden Age, industrial revolution) succeeds politically
- Current polarization is driven by insecurity and cultural anxiety, not economic interest, making persuasion rather than decree the key to sustainable change
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The Netherlands was the first country to break out of millennia of poverty and stagnation because it simultaneously experienced a technological revolution (tall ships, water management), a globalization revolution (creating the first joint stock company and stock market), and a political-identity revolution (Protestant Dutch identity separate from Hapsburg Empire).
“It is the first country to experience a technological revolution, a globalization revolution that simultaneously then produce an identity revolution and a political revolution. So you start with the invention of tall ships and the ability to reclaim land water management basically which the Dutch do fantastically. Then they do incredible innovation in financial uh uh um uh kind of structure. They create the first joint stock company, the Dutch East India Company, the largest company in the world at the time. They create the first stock market and they become very quickly the richest country in the world.”
The working class in the 20th century pursued post-material goals (self-expression, identity, cultural values) once basic material security was achieved via the creation of a mass middle class, transforming political identity from being defined primarily by economic place to being defined by cultural and identity aspirations.
“the broad uh sweep the trajectory is that the working class for much of the 20th century was struggling to achieve a decent standard of living. You know in Maslo's hierarchy they were looking at food, shelter, housing, you know health, that kind of thing. And part of what happens is we create a mass middle class in the western world. And that mass middle class by the 70s starts to think about its goals as post-material self-expressive. I, you know, now I'm my political identity is defined not just by my economy, by my economic place, but by my cultural aspirations. Who am I as a as a, you know, my gender identity, my racial identity, my national origin identity, my sexual uh identity?”
America has always been tribal, with whites in the South voting their ethnic identity (and being called racist) and Black Americans voting collectively to express their collective power, but the current tribalism is more accentuated and visible because when cultural identity is layered with class, geography, religion, and politics, these cross-cutting divisions disappear and create two separate nations.
“People, whites in the south were were voting their ethnic identity and being tribal for a long time. And they were being also known as being racist. Right. Exactly. And and I can say and blacks were being tribal and, you know, in in a in a good sense like collectively, you know, expressing their their their what power they had. So we've we you know we've often had tri and and people do tend to vote in blocks...when you when I think you start to think in these cultural terms and you think of your identity as defined in those terms, culture, class, all these things layer one on top of the other. So we've become two Americas really. one that is urban, educated, multicultural, and liberal, and the other of which is rural, less educated, religious, white, and conservative.”
We must understand how AI works rather than accepting it as a black box, because AI systems make decisions without transparency about their mechanisms, and trusting a system that tells you 'you have cancer' but can't explain why requires understanding the decision mechanism—otherwise we return to a pre-enlightenment world where authority is unquestionable.
“we need to understand how AI works um we it cannot just be a black box you know and the truth is most of the people working on it right now don't understand how it works. They do not understand how the neural networks get to the answers they do, what weights they are assigning, what the decision-m process is. Because if you don't, you have a black box with enormous power. And you take us back to a kind of pre-enlightenment world where in the past, you know, when it rained or there was a thunderstorm, we didn't know why it happened. So, we said God made it happen. So, now we're going to go to a model where we don't know why this is happening. AI tells us it's happening. So you know you'll you'll have somebody who will be told you have cancer and they'll say well how do you know that we don't know the box is telling us but you have cancer”
We are living through three concurrent revolutionary changes—an information revolution (replacing physical atoms with free digital bits), a globalization revolution (3 billion people entering the world economy in 20 years from 1985-2005), and a social revolution (the rise of women from secondclass citizenship to equality)—that are unprecedented in scale and velocity, producing anxiety and political backlash.
“you have the the information revolution is really I mean you're at the center of it and and and created part of it it's hard to over to overstate the importance I believe particularly socially and psychologically we can have debates about what econ what it does to total factor productivity and things like that. But think about how it changes the nature the landscape of societies...Then you have globalization. So you had in the 50s60s you had globalization expanding. So Japan came online as it were. South Korea came online, Singapore, Malaysia. And then from about 1985 for the next 20 years, India, China, all of Latin America, most of Africa, the remnants of Asia, that's about three billion people coming online in 20 years. That's shock...you know, take one that I think is in my view the most important which is the the rise of women. You know throughout history, whatever you whatever society you look at, some people were on top, some were at the bottom...But always women were secondass citizens...And then in the last 30 or 40 years we fundamentally changed that.”
When humans become insecure and anxious from accelerating change, they do not move left economically (seeking more government spending) but right culturally (seeking identity preservation, national cohesion, and exclusion of out-groups), which is a pattern the right understands better than the left.
“One of the things Tony Blair once said to me that I think is a profound insight is he said people on the left don't understand that when people get when human beings get very insecure and anxious, they don't move left economically, they move right culturally. In other words, when when you go through this kind of turmoil of change, the left's instinct is let me spend more money on you. Let me give you, you know, worker train retraining, better health care. And not that we shouldn't do that, by the way. I do think we should do that. But the real anxiety people have is my world is disappearing. The world that I knew is disappearing. and they are looking for and the people who understand this and this was true in the 1880s and '90s with people like Bismar and Israeli the the right-wing understands it better because what they say is you know you're part of one nation we believe in God we believe in family and by the way there's those others who you can you know you can define yourself by the fact that you're not these”
The information revolution fundamentally transformed the economic basis of industrial societies from making physical atoms (things) to bits and information, much of which is free, creating a discontinuity that societies have not yet learned to think about economically.
“the entire basis of of of industrial economies for 250 years had been you work with your hands you make things you make atoms and those atoms do the work you know do do things in the economy. The industrial revolution was largely an energy revolution. And here now you come along and create this entire new world of bits and bites and information large parts of which are free. Um you know how do you how do you even think about that?”
The 2008 financial crisis gave ordinary working-class Americans the feeling that the system was rigged and that the meritocratic claims about expert knowledge were false, and this loss of faith in institutions was a primary origin point for Trumpism, according to Steve Bannon.
“part of it is these things acquire a critical mass, but I do think that the 2008 financial crisis, more than we realize, had a huge impact. Uh Steve Bannon once once said to me that he thought the origin of Trumpism comes out of that because it gave ordinary people in America, working uh uh class people in America, the feeling the system was rigged. This was not the most efficient way to run it. We were all told that this was the meritocracy. These guys knew how to do what they were doing. It turned out it was all a house of cards. And when it collapsed, they bailed themselves out and left us.”
Despite improving economic conditions and the US recovering from the Great Recession better than any major economy, Obama's approval ratings flat-lined rather than improving, contradicting the historical correlation between economic performance and presidential approval.
“as the economy improved and as it became clear that we were coming out of the great recession better than any country in the world, any major economy, Obama's approval ratings were flatlining. They just were not moving. And historically, the single strongest predictor of a president's appro approval rating has been the state of the economy.”
The American Revolution was primarily a war of independence, not a deep social revolution—the southern slave economy remained intact, and the northern feudal property structure was largely preserved until the Civil War (1860-1880) and subsequent industrial revolution forced modernization.
“The American Revolution is basically a war of independence. Well, if you look at it from deep social revolutionary terms, nothing changes in the south. The structure of southern the agrarian economy and political structure with so with with slaves stays entirely intact. Even in the north the essentially feudal structure where a small number of of uh aristocratic whites owned property and control over the economy and thus political influence was largely kept intact...the real changes in America happened in my view 1860 to 1880. The Civil War which breaks the back of of of slavery and then the industrial revolution which produces a whole new elite the so-called robber barons”
AI will create massive employment disruption because most AI applications enable doing the same work with far fewer people, and while new jobs may be created in the long run, the transition period could be very disruptive.
“I think the scale of AI, the disruption as Eric is describing is just going to be huge. And I think there's no getting around the fact that it is going to be very complicated from an employment point of view that that the fundamental thing that AI is doing right now in all these programs that they do using is you can do the same work better with fewer people many fewer people and you can see this in almost every experiment they're doing. So you know I know that in the long run you know we create new jobs and new and new opportunities. I I hope it's not the too long run because it could be very disruptive.”
The Arab Spring failed to produce lasting democratic change because social media activism and online organization are not sufficient for genuine political power; successful revolutions require hard work, suffering, sacrifice, and confronting power with force and truth, as exemplified by Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
“I think that what social media has shown actually is the limits of its power in terms of in those in the revolutionary sense. So, it may have incited or allowed the Arab Spring to kind of bubble up and spread a little bit further, but don't forget every country that had an Arab Spring is now firmly under the control of a dictatorship. So, the Arab Spring is largely notable for its complete failure. And what that reminds you is that it's not enough to like something on Facebook or even to retweet or you know th this is not social organization. This is not political power. When you think about the movements that changed societies, you know, Gandhi, uh Martin Luther King, there's a lot of hard work and suffering and sacrifice and getting out there and confronting power with with force and truth.”
The French Revolution was a top-down failure because the French political elite tried to impose modernization on a reluctant, largely agrarian population without economic or technological foundations, producing chaos and ending in Napoleon crowning himself emperor—the opposite of what a revolution designed to create democracy should achieve.
“the French revolution is a perfect example of not a not a bottoms up revolution, not an e a revolution of economics and technology modernizing a country which then modernizes the politics but rather a political elite deciding we are going to modernize the country. France was a completely uh agrarian uh rural economy, largely extractive, no real innovations taking place at any of the levels I was talking about with the Dutch. But they had a very educated elite that you know thought of they were going to and you know conceived of ideas like the rights of man and liberty equality and decided they were going to impose it on a very reluctant population and and the result was complete chaos and by any standards the French Revolution fails. I mean it ends in Napoleon crowning himself emperor. So you can't possibly imagine a a revolution designed to create democracy ending in an empire is is a success.”
The US is attempting something historically unprecedented: creating a universal nation where people from all ethnicities, religions, and political affiliations can live without suppressing their identities, representing a thrilling adventure with real costs and benefits.
“What we're trying to do in this country and in the western world more generally is something very unusual which is to create a universal nation to create a nation where people come from all parts of the the the the world uh have all kinds of ethnicities all kinds of skin colors all kinds of religions um all kinds of you know uh political affiliations and and they're all represented you know that's what's different this everyone can no one has to suppress their identity no one has to hide No one has to stay in the shadows whether you're gay or straight or uh Latino or white.”
Irvin Kristol's observation that fellow Jews 'live like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans' illustrates that Jewish voting behavior is driven by historical memory of oppression and commitment to helping vulnerable groups, creating a cross-cutting identity that doesn't align with their economic status.
“one of my favorite lines Irvvin Crystal the the neoconservative intellectual once said I he became conservative and he said I'll never understand about my fellow Jews. They we live like episcipalians but we vote like Puerto Ricans. And and his point was you know where that and I think the answer is Jews have always known what it's like to be at the bottom. And so they will that memory stays very very strong uh for Jewish Americans.”
The closest historical parallel to our current revolutionary era is 1880-1920, a period of electricity, cars, telegraph, telephone, and nationalism that produced communism, fascism, and World War—suggesting our current disruptions could similarly produce violent or authoritarian political outcomes.
“Have we ever gone through anything quite like it? I think the closest would be um you know 1880 to 1920 electricity, cars, telegraph, telephone, nationalism. But think about what it produces. It produces communism, fascism, world war, you know, so that's the scale of the change.”
The United States is the largest oil and natural gas producer in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Qatar respectively, and is beginning to dominate green energy as well, making it the dominant global energy superpower.
“we are the biggest energy superpower in the world. We make more oil than Saudi Arabia. We make more natural gas than Qatar. And we are basically beginning to dominate the green energy space as well.”
Per capita GDP was essentially flat-lined at around $400 inflation-adjusted for approximately 1,750 years until about 1750, when it started to edge upward, and then became a hockey stick after the industrial revolution.
“if you think about per capita GDP, average income throughout history, there's this wonderful graph that Angus Madison has that I that I borrow and put in the book. It basically we can go back. We have good we have decent data going back about 2,000 years. And if it's flat lines, it's about $400 per capita GDP inflation adjusted until about so for 1750 years is basically flatline and then it starts to edge up and then it is a hockey stick after the industrial revolution.”
Amsterdam was four times richer per capita than Paris by the end of the 17th century, despite Paris being the richest city in Europe under the old model because it was a large agricultural country with vast estates, whereas the Dutch represented power defined by technology and urbanization rather than gold conquest from Latin America.
“by the end of the 17th century, Amsterdam is four times richer per capita than Paris, which was in the old model the richest city in Europe because it was a big agricultural country, vast estates. So the Dutch represent this extraordinary rise of technology defining power, urbanization defining power, not you know how much gold can you conquer from Latin America and bring home in bullion.”
The Civil War and industrial revolution (1860-1880) forced the creation of a national government and economy through mechanisms like the interstate commerce clause, nationalizing an economy that had been previously decentralized—a transformation that was largely unconstitutional but necessary.
“the real changes in America happened in my view 1860 to 1880. The Civil War which breaks the back of of of slavery and then the industrial revolution which produces a whole new elite the so-called robber barons which you know kind of force forcibly modernizes the American economy and nationalizes it. you know, you have a national economy and now the you're forced to create a national government with things like the interstate commerce clause which allows you to say okay we are actually one economy and taxes and things like that and which is all people forget this was all largely not not done I mean it was unconstitutional in many ways”
The Netherlands has been in the top 10 countries of the world by economic performance for 500-600 years despite having only 17 million people and being a small land area, demonstrating remarkable longevity of national success through technological innovation.
“you know for 500 100 years they've been in the basically in the top 10 countries of the world. Not not a bad not a bad achievement. You know who the so the largest agricultural exporter in the world of course is the United States. Do you know the second largest agricultural exporter in the world is Netherlands with 17 million people that do you see my point and on that tiny plot of land how you know how do they do it?”
The Republican Party has been taken over by a family cult where there was no party platform at the recent convention except a statement that whatever Trump says is the party platform, no former presidents or presidential nominees were invited, but five Trump family members had prime-time speaking slots, which is abnormal and will probably not last.
“at some level, the Republican party has been taken over by a family cult. I mean, think about the last Republican convention. There were uh there was no party platform. It just there was a one paragraph statement that said whatever Trump says is the the party platform. Uh there were no former presidents who were invited. There were no former presidential nominees who were invited, but five members of the Trump family had prime time speaking slots at the at the convention.”
Every rich country in the world will become a retirement society (like Florida) except the US, because the US takes in 1 million legal immigrants per year while the rest of the OECD combined takes in fewer, giving the US a demographic advantage over Europe, Japan, and China.
“every rich country in the world is basically going to look like Florida except the United States. I I don't mean aesthetically...I mean demographically. Every rich country in the world is becoming a retirement society except the US because we take in more immigrants every year, 1 million legal immigrants than the rest of the OECD put together.”
Decentralized systems like the Dutch and British institutional structures enabled innovation because everyone had to compete and collectively figure out solutions, whereas large centralized economies of Europe like France and Spain were unable to innovate.
“The Netherlands benefits enormously from being decentralized. The large centralized economies of Europe, France, Spain were not able to innovate. the Dutch were able to innovate because they had this completely decentralized structure where everybody competed with one another and everybody had to kind of collectively figure out ways to do things. Um the British have a similar structure.”
Tim Geithner said 'We saved the economy, but we lost the country' because saving the economy required bailing out financial arsonists while ordinary people's mortgages went unpaid, creating an asymmetry that destroyed public trust even though the bailout was economically necessary.
“Tim Gner, who was first at the Fed and then at Treasury, I think did an amazing job at bailing out the economy. But he himself says, 'We saved the economy, but we lost the country.' Because the only way to save the economy was to was to really bail out the arsonists, right? Because you needed to get money pumping through the economy and the financial system are the arteries of the economy. So, you had to get that money flowing, but in doing that, you were bailing out the arsonists and and there was no way around it.”
The 2024 US election is one of the most consequential in American history because Trump actively tried to thwart the peaceful transfer of power and got a majority of House Republicans to vote against certification of Biden's election, which would have prevented Biden's certification if Republicans had been in the majority—a fundamental threat to liberal democracy that distinguishes it from Cold War elections.
“it's the essential question. I I to me this feels like one of the most consequential elections in American history...Trump does represent something that is he's fundamentally critical in a way of the kind of entire liberal democratic project and the constraints on power that it places...let's not forget this is the first American president in history to actively try to seek to thwart the peaceful transfer of power and forget about inciting the crowd outside the the capital. What he did inside is even more important, which is he got a majority of House Republicans to vote against the certification of of Joe Biden. And if they had been in a majority, the Biden would not have that would not have been certified that election. Uh that's a big deal.”
Social media has been largely negative for political organization because it silos users into tribes, makes them feel self-righteous, and algorithmically boosts the most emotional and extreme content, driving underlying dissent and tribalism rather than enabling meaningful political participation.
“social media has been largely negative for in in political social organization. I worry about um algorithmic boosting. I'm strongly in favor of free speech, including hate speech, and in particular speech I disagree with...these systems are organized around boosting the most emotional, the most extreme, and that they are the um the sort of core driver of the underlying underlying dissent and anxiety and tribalism that we feed.”
There cannot be 'wrong answers' in a university, yet some departments (like gender studies) function as though there are correct ideological positions and tenure is withheld from faculty who disagree with the departmental consensus.
“There are these departments, I have to confess that I worry a lot about where there is only a right answer. Oh, yeah. You know, I'm all in favor and I, as I said, I think the emancipation of women has been the most important thing we've done, but a gender studies department, can you have a tenure faculty member who says, 'Actually, in this case, I don't think gender discrimination was a big deal.' No, that's that is the wrong answer. There can't be wrong answers in a university.”
Affirmative action should have had an agreed-upon end date that could be renewed, which would have moderated political opposition, but advocates who feel strongly about their identity-based causes are unwilling to accept limits or endpoints because their advocacy is their identity and daily work, creating governance and human problems.
“You could have imagined affirmative action with a with an agreed upon end date and then then you could renew it. Right? So part of the political problem is that advocates who feel strongly and in many case rightly are not willing to moderate their claim. You know it's what they do every day, their identity and so forth.”
Congressman and congresswomen who become famous on Twitter by being extremely oppositional (rather than governing) have perverse incentives because they benefit personally from confrontation even when they have only a small legislative majority that requires compromise to accomplish anything.
“there's about 25 of them, younger fresh, you know, congressmen whose goal is not actually to govern the United States. Their goal is not to arrive at at legislation that solves a problem, even a problem like passing a budget. Their goal is to become famous on Twitter and Facebook and raise funds by doing that. And by that logic, they're succeeding admirably.”
Trump's presidency would lead to real liberal democratic decay through institutional erosion and norm degradation, though not the end of the world, and would encourage global authoritarians like Orban and Modi to cite American precedent for illiberal governance while undermining America's position as 'city on the hill' for liberal democracy.
“if Trump gets elected, we do end up in a situation where there is real liberal democratic decay. Institutions decay, norms get eroded...So I think it has a huge follow-on effect...American supporters of his will say when they when you talk about the way in which they're politicizing the judiciary or politicize look at America look at what you know we're ly doing what the Americans do and America is meant to be the city on the hill as far as liberal democracy is concerned”
Large language models will move from language-to-language models to text-to-action models, where users can say what they want and the system writes code (typically Python) to execute it, enabling anyone to build custom search engines, applications, and software without coding knowledge.
“The power is when you can say what you want and the system can write programs to make it happen. And it's likely that in the next four or five years, every human on the planet will be able to say roughly into their phone what they want. It'll get transcribed into their language. That language will get translated into code, typically Python, and the Python will then execute whatever they want. It's likely, for example, that you can say, 'Hey, I don't really like the way Google works,' which I obviously do. I want my own Google. I want you to build me a search engine, and I want you to organize the data this way, and I want you to have my prioritization.”
The indicator of modern power is technological leadership, and there have been only three technological superpowers since 1880: the United States, before that Britain for 150-200 years, and before that the Netherlands.
“the the the way to tell modern power is who is the lead technology power in the world and he says there have only been three from 1880 it has been the United States before that for about 150 to 200 years it was Britain before that it was the Netherlands”
The broad trajectory of the Industrial Revolution would not have changed significantly depending on which individual leaders came to power; while some leaders (Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Napoleon) clearly mattered as unique figures, most historical change is driven by structural forces rather than individual agency.
“Now there are moments in history where clearly leaders matter. Lincoln, Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, Napoleon, those are unique figures. But you know the the the the broad trajectory of the industrial revolution was not going to change depending on who came in power.”
When Oliver Wendell Holmes said 'taxation is the price of civilization' during a period when the income tax was 1%, the scale of acceptable taxation has since grown enormously, raising questions about how much redistribution modern democracies can sustain.
“people often quote uh Oliver Wendell Holm's famous line taxation is the price of civilization um which Jeffrey Saxs associated with this with this university has used as the title of his book and I always applauded it. I I was uh I was amused to note that when Oliver Wendel Holmes said that the income tax was 1%. So we've come a long way.”
Europe is more politically liberal than America but more socially conservative, with less female representation on boards and fewer minorities in positions of power and establishment roles, suggesting that America has made more progress on inclusion despite greater current polarization.
“you if you look at Europe, it's still maybe politically more liberal than America, but socially Europe is a much more conservative place. when you look at and you can see this in female representation on boards.”
Populists have no solutions to real problems, and in the long run liberals (defined as people who believe in liberty, rule of law, and free speech) will ultimately prevail, but the left must avoid pressing too far too fast and using illiberal means to achieve liberal ends, as this provokes backlash.
“I think that at the end of the day the populists have no answers to the problems. you know they don't actually have a solution that is going to work the pe and liberals and I've been my liberals broadly people who are believe in liberty and rule of law and you know free speech and things like that and I think that encompasses a lot of Republicans these days ultimately that will prevail but they but the biggest thing the left has to understand is you can't overdo it you can't press too far too fast and you can't use illiberal means to achieve liberal ends.”
The Tea Party movement was motivated primarily by cultural issues (immigration, multiculturalism, 'woke agenda') rather than government spending, and this cultural backlash against post-material values became the foundation for MAGA and contemporary American populism.
“I started to think about it Really, I remember the rise of the Tea Party making me realize something different is happening in in American politics. And Theta Scotch Paul, scholar at Yale, wrote this wonderful analysis of the Tea Party and pointed out that in fact, while they talked about government spending, what they really cared about was immigration, multiculturalism, what we would now call the woke agenda. So, it was all cultural issues that they were motivated by.”
Trump's campaign message reduced to four core claims: 'The Chinese are taking away your factories; the Mexicans are taking away your jobs; the Muslims are trying to kill you; I will beat them all up'—which had nothing to do with traditional Republican economics and was fundamentally about cultural anxiety and out-group identification.
“think about Trump's message when he starts campaign It's the basically if those hourlong campaign speeches you could boil down to four lines. The Chinese are taking away your factories. The Mexicans are taking away your jobs. The Muslims are trying to kill you. I will beat them all up. Right? And and it's it was nothing to do with the traditional Republican message of economics. It was fundamentally about culture.”
Racial equality should be achieved through persuasion and political process, not by decree or forced integration, with the goal being a colorblind society where Hamlet can be played by a Black actor and Othello by a white actor without racial identity being a determining factor.
“If you want racial equality, you don't thrust it down people's throat, you don't do it by decree, you try to do it by persuasion, and you don't start to use race to combat racism. You know, ultimately we should remember even something like affirmative action is a path to a colorblind society. We don't want a situation where everybody is constantly divvied up and counted and and tabulated on the basis of of their thesecriptive qualities. Okay, we we have to deal with with injustice in the past, but the goal is that, you know, Hamlet can be played by a black actor and Oll can be played by a white actor. That should be our goal.”
DEI bureaucracies, though created with good intentions to address marginalization, become institutionally self-perpetuating because their existence depends on proving that marginalization continues, and they segregate campuses into tribal affinity groups rather than integrating them through shared interests.
“the issue of polarization about what about students getting outsider silos and the echo chambers that you were talking about? Well, this is where I think universities really have to recommmit themselves to a fundamentally open space where, you know, I think my colleague Van Jones at CNN put it very well. I at universities, you want students to be physically safe and intellectually unsafe...look at universities all the DEI bureaucracy that has been built comes out of a very good place. It comes out of trying to take people who are excluded and marginalized but in my opinion at least when you have these bureaucracies they exist to make the case that people are in marginalized excluded and you know at some level they can't take yes for an answer because that means they should be funded less. I when I was a on the Yale corporation, I used to argue that it's fine. Every time there was a problem, every one of these groups would ask for more money, you know, African-American, Latino, G, you know, and my point was this further segregates the campus and makes people think of themselves in tribal ways.”
Roe v. Wade was a top-down decree that prevented the gradual liberalization of abortion law that would have occurred through political persuasion across states, and most European countries now allow 12-15 weeks of abortion without such a decree, suggesting the political outcome would have been similar if abortion had been left to democratic process.
“Abortion was getting liberalized in the 50 states and if you had gone through a process of political process of argumentation of persuasion, America would probably end up where Europe is uh today which is no there was no con there no Roie weight but Europe most European countries have roughly speaking as I understand it about 12 to 15 weeks is the is instead what we ended up with was this decree from on high which largely fueled the right particularly the Christian right led to decades of, you know, conservative governance”
The US information space should not be given complete control to tech companies ('tech bros') because the economic interests of tech platforms in maximizing engagement are misaligned with the interests of democracy and national security.
“the systems that affect the information space should not be given complete control to sorry wrong sentence but you shouldn't let the tech bros control the US information space.”
Universities must commit to being 'physically safe and intellectually unsafe'—spaces where students encounter dangerous, radical ideas and must think through them and engage with people who hold different views, rather than remaining in comfortable bubbles of self-congratulation.
“the issue of polarization about what about students getting outsider silos and the echo chambers that you were talking about? Well, this is where I think universities really have to recommmit themselves to a fundamentally open space where, you know, I think my colleague Van Jones at CNN put it very well. I at universities, you want students to be physically safe and intellectually unsafe. It should be an unsafe place. It should be a place where you encounter dangerous radical ideas that you have to then think through and you have to talk to the actual human being who who holds these ideas.”
There is nobody like Fared Zakaria in France, meaning people who are brown-skinned Muslims from immigrant backgrounds do not hold prominent establishment positions in France the way they do in the US, illustrating America's superior inclusion despite France's political liberalism.
“I remember going to to France and talking to a bunch of French, you know, brownskinned Muslims and one of them said to me, 'The simplest way to explain the difference between France and the United States is we have the same number of people who are who look like us in both countries, but there's nobody like Fared Zakaria and France.'”
Wikipedia receives 5 billion visits per month and replaced the Encyclopedia Britannica (which sold 110,000 copies per day), illustrating the scale and speed at which the information revolution replaces old institutions.
“You take something like the encyclopedia bratannica right there were 110,000 copies sold every day. Now you have Wikipedia which I think gets 5 billion people visiting every month something like that you know.”
The United States is more dominant in technology power than it has ever been, with all top technology companies being American (unlike 1980 when Japanese and European firms competed), and the market capitalization of the seven big tech companies exceeds the combined GDP of Britain, France, Germany, and Canada.
“If you look at technology I don't have to tell you the US is more dominant than we have ever been. If you had asked in 1980 what the the top technology companies in the world there would have been a bunch of American companies. There would have been a lot of Japanese companies on there...Today it's all American, right?...they call the seven big technology companies in America. You take their market cap and it is larger than the market capitalization of the entire countries of Britain, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada put together.”
To manage AI disruption and create positive change, one should found companies and implement solutions rather than merely discuss and analyze problems, because action creates actual change while intellectual analysis and writing, though valuable, do not translate into material change.
“My answer is found a company to change something you don't like. And um and you may disagree, so I'll say something obnoxious. Um thanks to Freed and a bunch of other people, I hang out with all these foreign policy people. Yeah. And they're so much better spoken than I am, and they write so much better. And I listen to them and I go, 'You go. You're right.' And nothing happens. Okay? And then they write another book and another book and they analyze it and they're so impressive and I just love it and nothing happens. So find a way at whatever scale you can operate at to change something.”
Despite serious political dysfunction, the United States holds a stronger hand than any other nation in the world when considering technological dominance, energy dominance, financial system dominance, and demographic advantages, making it well-positioned to manage current revolutionary changes.
“So you put all this together and yes, I know the big limiting factor is our politics is totally screwed up, but it's very hard to see a better hand that anybody has to play than the US.”
The goal of racial and social policy should be integration and reminding people of what they share in common rather than funding separate group identities, and universities should create institutions that bring different groups together rather than perpetuating tribal separation.
“my point was this further segregates the campus and makes people think of themselves in tribal ways. Why don't we create more money to integrate the campus to make these groups talk to one another to remind us what we share in common? But of course you've created an institutional bureaucracy that has to keep going in this direction.”
Young people today, despite being called coddled and woke, will solve major problems because they are exceptionally smart, and past generations (e.g., Maoist sympathizers in the 1960s) also seemed radical in college but became functional adults and productive workers.
“I have I have three kids, so maybe I have a biased uh view on this, but I think, you know, one of the things that I that that the memes that is out there that I really disagree with is that this generation is all coddled and woke and they they don't want to work. I you know, I think look, there's a certain amount of silliness that always happens in college. When I was in at college, there were bunch of people who were mauist revolutionaries...these are all now working in New York in they're all working they're all working for you or Goldman Sachs...they all the people now, you know, and young people today, they they say all this stuff and then they go out and what where do they apply? McKenzie Goldman and Google, you know, so it's not, you know, these are not people who are trying to burn the house down.”
Nothing lasts forever, including current political problems like Trump, so people should not become so traumatized by the current moment that they cannot imagine a different future; historical perspective shows that extreme figures and movements are often temporary.
“I think the most important thing is to remember you know it's a little bit like raising children. It's never as as great as you thought it was and it's never as bad. So whenever there's a problem just remember you know it will pass. So you you know don't get so traumatized by the current moment that you cannot imagine a different moment because you know what think nothing lasts forever”
A young computer scientist stated her plan for founding a company is to be the only employee, utilizing AI agents to handle most tasks, because directionally the technology is moving toward eliminating the need for traditional employees, even though the technology isn't quite functional yet.
“I was meeting with a a a young woman who's a computer scientist and I said, 'What is your plan?' And she said, 'I'm going to leave and found a company.' And I said, 'What's it going to be about?' And I said, 'I know one thing. I'm only going to have myself as the employee.' And I said, 'Really?' Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I thought that's I mean, think about that, right? you found a company and and technically they'll do it with agents and the agents can do a lot of different things doesn't quite work yet so she's still working on the computer science but directionally freed is correct”
Young people in universities today are exceptionally intellectually capable, so much so that seeing them makes Eric Schmidt 'almost cry' because they are 'literally...ready to get their Nobel Prize...at 23 years old.'
“when I spend time with the students, they're so smart I almost cry, right? They're literally they they're they're sort of ready to get their Nobel Prize and they're 23 years old. They're that good.”
Immigrants are drivers of innovation and success, as referenced in the Hamilton musical's line 'immigrants do it better,' and immigration is therefore a key source of American advantage globally.
“Just remember in the Hamilton play it says immigrants do it better. Immigrants.”