Return to Transcripts main page

Fareed Zakaria GPS

Grading Trump's First Six Months in Office; Interview with Julio Burgos; Discussion of the Situation in Venezuela; Supreme Court to Hear Wisconsin Election Case; Development of Modern Man. Aired 10- 11a ET

Aired July 23, 2017 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:30:00] JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Thanks for watching. "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS" starts right now.

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you live from London.

Today on the show, we've hit the six-month mark of the Trump presidency. How would the UK and the world grade his performance so far?

What do America's allies make of the president's relationship with Vladimir Putin? And with Brexit on the horizon, what is the future of Europe? I've gathered a terrific panel here in London to discuss all that and more.

Also, chaos in Venezuela. Soaring inflation, a crashing economy, violent protests and yet a president determined to stay in power. This week, Donald Trump said the U.S. would not let that country crumble. I'll talk to a leader of Venezuela's main opposition party.

Plus, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could reshape the American political landscape. The ruling could have a significant impact on district lines nationwide. Will the court make elections fairer?

And, finally, humans as we know them have roamed the earth for tens of thousands of years. Are we on the verge of a new kind of human? Homo sapien version 2.0. Are we ready for that? Yuval Harari joins me.

But, first, here's my take. At the six-month mark of the Trump presidency what I'm struck by is the path not taken. The lost opportunity. During the campaign, Trump tapped into a real set of problems facing America. A deep frustration with the existing political system. He embraced and expressed somewhat inconsistently, a populism that went beyond the traditional left-right divide.

So what would things look like at this point if President Trump had governed in the manner of a pragmatic jobs oriented reformer who was relentlessly focused on those forgotten Americans of whom he often speaks? We have an interesting template to assist our imagination. After

Trump's election, a small group of pro-Trump intellectuals from both left and right banded together to launch a journal "American Affairs." It's the best forum for the articulation of the ideology behind Trump's rise and there's been so much interest in the journal's views on various subjects that the editors opened the second issue with a brief summary of their editorial stance.

On the central question of domestic economic policy, American affairs seems markedly different from the current administration and genuinely populist. Taking on the subject of the center of Republican ideology, for example, taxes, the editors professed is quite skeptical of the conservative orthodoxy that reflexively prescribes tax cuts as the cure-all for every ill.

While corporate tax reform is warranted, they say reducing upper income tax rates is unlikely to address core economic challenges in any significant way. Instead the editors recommend eliminating mechanisms by which the rich evade taxation. In addition the journal denounces financial deregulation and embraces large and direct government expenditures on infrastructure and comes out openly in favor of universal health coverage.

Needless to say, this has not been the Trump agenda. But hearing these intelligent ideas raises the question, why not? All of these policies would have helped the forgotten people whose cause Trump champions.

There have been two cardinal features of the Trump presidency so far. The first is far from being a populist breakout, it has followed a fairly traditional Republican agenda. Repeal Obamacare, weaken Dodd- Frank, cut taxes, deregulate industry. The only real break with Republican tradition has been on foreign policy where Trump is pursuing a truly bizarre and mercurial agenda -- instituting the travel ban, demanding payment from allies and embracing autocrats who flatter him and his family.

The second defining feature of the Trump administration has been incompetence. As many had pointed out, had Trump chosen to begin his presidency with a large infrastructure bill, he would have put the Democrats in a terrible bind. They would have had to support him even though this would have enraged the party's base.

Instead Trump chose health care, a complicated, difficult issue sure to unite his opposition and divide Republicans. Consequently very little has actually been done. Obamacare is not repealed, no money has even been appropriated for the border wall, NAFTA is still standing and there are no tax reforms or infrastructure bills or even an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. Donald Trump could have quickly begun to reshape American politics.

[10:05:02] He discerned voices that others didn't, understood what they wanted to hear and articulated much of it. But when it came time to deliver, it turned out that he had no serious ideas, policies, nor even the desire to search for them. He just wanted to be president, meeting world leaders, flying on Air Force One, having Oval Office photo-ops, while delegating the actual policy to others.

So far Donald Trump has turned out to be something far less revolutionary than expected. A standard issue, big business Republican, although pretty incompetent one, wrapped in populist clothing.

For more go to CNN.com/fareed and read my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started.

And let's get right to my terrific panel now. Joining me Anne Applebaum is a columnist for the "Washington Post" and a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Jonathan Freedland is a columnist for "The Guardian" and host of BBC Radio's "The Long View." He also writes fictional political thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne. And David Goodhart, a self-proclaimed post-liberal is the author of "The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics."

Welcome. Anne, I have to start with you because you spend much of your life in Poland and it appears that there is something very big happening there. There are thousands, in fact, tens of thousands of people protesting on the streets right now. Explain what's happening and do you think that Donald Trump's visit to Poland in some way encouraged this process?

ANNE APPLEBAUM, COLUMNIST, WASHINGTON POST: Yes, of course, this is the culmination of almost a year and a half of measures that a government elected in Poland which actually ran as a very standard kind of little bit to the right government but has ruled very radically and has undermined the press, has taken over the army. Has made a lot of very radical policy choices and most recently they've enacted a series of laws, which would curtail the independence of the judiciary, essentially allow the government to dismiss the entire Supreme Court and reappoint it. And that's why you're seeing demonstrations in the street.

ZAKARIA: Did Trump have something to do with it?

APPLEBAUM: What Trump did is Trump arrived right at the moment when they were about to announce these laws. And, essentially, appeared to endorse the government. He said very complimentary things about them and he gave a speech which we all remember, in which in the U.S. was understood as a kind of pro-West speech. But in which he very carefully described the West as a civilization somehow opposed to Islam or maybe even opposed to Russia. But a civilization rather than a set of democratic ideals and principles.

And the Polish government heard that and thought, right, he's on our side. Others in Europe are very critical of us but the United States will back us and then they went ahead with this reform.

ZAKARIA: And the "Washington Post" actually has editorial, they call this the Trump effect he went to Poland and encouraged a certain behavior. He went to Saudi Arabia and encouraged certain foreign policy behaviors.

David Goodhart, do you look at this populism in government and say it's too radical?

DAVID GOODHART, IMMIGRATION EXPERT: Well, I mean, populism in Europe is mainly, I mean, 15 percent, 20 percent of Europeans vote for populist parties in most of western Europe. These parties are relatively un-influential, some of them are in government. In eastern Europe it's slightly different. I mean, the whole government is populist in some ways. And that party reflects a different history.

It partly reflects perhaps the huge, the radical effects of joining the European Union very quickly after the end of communism. But perhaps in retrospect that whole process happened too quickly. To be enormously disruptive.

ZAKARIA: So you think this may be the natural growing pains of --

GOODHART: Yes, I think to some extent and some of it is pretty ugly. But I think -- I think we do have to keep it in that historical perspective. I mean, these societies have been through huge disruptions, and the same in a way with the American attitude. I mean, we -- you know, we sort of talk about this as if it's new. But actually it reflects very much the kind of language we were hearing at the time of the Iraq war.

Do you remember? Old Europe and new Europe. And new Europe with the new guys on our side. And old Europe with, you know, France and Germany.

JONATHAN FREEDLAND, COLUMNIST, THE GUARDIAN: There's a big difference, isn't it? Because in that period, the Bush period where Bush felt he should do when he came to these countries is make the case for universal democratic norms. He understood and the American policies understood that yes, these are sometimes fledgling democracies or emerging from tyranny. That therefore all the more reason if democracy is fragile, you have to shore it up and give it support.

And I agree with what Anne was saying, that he didn't speak in a universal terms of liberal democratic norms and asserting, you know, a central character. Instead he spoke as if it was a sort of cultural or sectarian conflict in which, you know, there was Europe, sort of implied kind of Judeo Christian Europe against an often unnamed other.

[10:10:10] So partly, with Trump, I think, the Trump effect is not just what he says when he goes to these places, but what he doesn't say. He delved through the usual American president boiler plate of free press, universal human right, independent judiciary, the stuff that we used to learn to tune out because we were so used to it from every president. He doesn't say that. And so the people in those countries hear what he's not saying and take that as a cue.

ZAKARIA: Do you think Theresa May is looking to Donald Trump for some kind of support as Britain navigates its kind of post-EU existence?

APPLEBAUM: Yes, I think Theresa May fears very much being isolated and looked initially to Trump as a kind of -- she was one of the first -- I think the first actually European leader to go to Washington. And she was looking for a trade deal, a comment, something that would give her government the appearance of having allies somewhere else.

That's backfired a little bit here because he's so unpopular here. He's openly attacked the mayor of London in the wake of several terrorist attacks a few weeks ago. And, you know, she's now in a very odd position where he's her only ally but she doesn't want to talk about it.

ZAKARIA: Do you think he'll come to visit?

APPLEBAUM: It's hard to say. I mean, it's true there would be demonstrations here if he came.

FREEDLAND: He's made the condition of coming that he wants to only come when he's guaranteed a popular reaction here which is party again shows a lack of understanding about democracy and democratic societies will work. I think he wants it to be like Saudi Arabia where I want you to fix it so there are no banners on the streets.

Now the second thing is if he's seriously only coming when he's popular, then he should put a date and mark never because he's not going to get an appointment here. That's -- he's held himself into a position where, unfortunately, I think he may have a very long wait.

ZAKARIA: David?

GOODHART: And I think Theresa May has actually played a relatively good game. I mean, don't forget, I mean, if Hillary Clinton had been elected, which everybody assumed she would be, we would now be very isolated after Brexit, presumably Hillary Clinton taking the same line that Obama took. You know, you're at the back at the queue for any kind of trade deal.

So it has been very important having Trump there for UK interest, I think, and he has been talking about, you know, being the first in the queue to do trade deals with Britain after we leave. And I think, as Anne Said, it's tricky for her because he's so unpopular not just in Britain but across Europe. But she's played, you know, that old British game of trying to be the British who act as the bridge between, you know, the rather unruly Americans and the kind of more civilized Europeans.

And she did when she had that first visit she did get some language out of him about NATO, the Article Five, which he hadn't said before and I think that was quite reassuring. And I think, you know, just imagine the situation which everybody in Europe, including the Brits, were against him. You know, you wonder then whether actually if things would have gotten even more unstable.

ZAKARIA: We've got to take a break. When we come back, we will discuss more about populism, upcoming German elections but also Charlie Gard. Who should decide what happens to a child in desperate conditions? When we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:17:28] ZAKARIA: And we are back in London with Anne Applebaum, Jonathan Freedland and David Goodhart.

Jonathan, let me ask you about the view from Europe. It does feel as though Europe is healthier, more vibrant, and is it fair to say as a European friend to me said that Donald Trump has been able to do something that Vladimir Putin was not, which has seemed reunited the Europeans?

FREEDLAND: It's true. I think about that point about unity that there is a common adversary and people like that, and you saw that I thought really clearly at the G-20 where the United States was isolated on climate change. And there was another example of that where it's 19 against one with the one being the United States. That's serious business incidentally for the United States to lose that kind of soft power.

I think friends of America should be aware of that, that American influence has rested, yes, on military force and hard power but also on its power of sort of moral authority and that soft power is draining away every day Donald Trump is in the White House.

People observe these stories, they're amused by them, Sean Spicer and tweets, but as an underlying trend the current which says America is less to be listened to in the world. It will come back under different leadership, but, for now, that is the feeling. And that has helped unite Europe and the other thing that has done that is invigorated leadership in Paris.

Emmanuel Macron has suggested the country that previously was often the (INAUDIBLE) in terms of decline is kind of back and Angela Merkel is still very strong and established as the ruling, in some ways the most stable leader in the world, actually. And the two of them together has made Europe I think more with a spring in its step, a bit more confident. And again as a reading from London, which is with Brexit, because part of Brexit was let's leave this sclerotic structure of Europe there in decline and actually look at the economic numbers and it's Britain that is lagging behind and actually Europe that looks as if it's got some new confidence.

ZAKARIA: So, David, you wrote this wonderful book about people, the somewheres and the anywheres, the populism and Brexit. Does Trump follow the same pattern? Is he a break from it? And --

GOODHART: Yes. I mean, I think my book essentially about the value divisions in rich democracies and the large number of, you know, quarter of populations, perhaps almost a third, who tend to be highly educated and mobile and value openness and autonomy.

ZAKARIA: And you call them anywheres because they can live anywhere.

GOODHART: Yes. Yes. And they said so -- they tend not to be very rude, they tend not to have strong group attachments, whereas somewheres, half of the population, tend to be less well educated, tend to value security and familiarity, and they do still have strong group attachments. So --

[10:20:03] ZAKARIA: And they do derive their identity from the place often.

GOODHART: Yes.

ZAKARIA: The geography they're living.

GOODHART: Exactly. And --

ZAKARIA: So you say they call them somewhere?

GOODHART: Yes. And there's no question, the Brexit vote was partly a revolt of the somewheres in some ways against the politics that for more than a generation has been completely dominated by anywhere priorities, in a way. And the same I think in America. I think with Trump who drew his support very much from people that came from those left behind communities.

And I think, you know, you do see this kind of bigger picture playing out in the European Union. The tensions are merging in Europe. The European Union is a very, very anywhere institution. And for the first 50 years of its existence, it enormously outperformed expectations. It was extraordinarily successful.

In the last 20 years it's been a very, very different story. I think you could say from the mid-'90s all of the big projects have failed to some extent. The euro, the political role of an economic euro has been a disaster in much of the continent. Yes, there's a cyclical upturn in the moment. But it is a very short-term thing.

ZAKARIA: Migration.

GOODHART: Enlargement with unqualified movement has not been successful in some ways. The refugee crisis. You know, not to mention second order things like Ukraine. The European Union and that is partly because it is partly a post-national kind of institution at a time, in an era when people still looked at the nation state first. That tension hasn't really been able to accommodate.

ZAKARIA: We have to go to this Charlie Gard story because I'm fascinated by it because it has crossed the Atlantic. So this child who is in very bad condition has his doctors at a British hospital, the Great Ormond Street Hospital, who say you should not move him. Let him die in this hospital.

The parents have raised money through a campaign by the "Daily Mail" and such to move him to America. A court is going to decide this this week. What should happen?

FREEDLAND: Will, I think, I'm not a medical or legal authority. And yet that has not prevented many people from weighing in on this debate. And I think one thing that's from the starting point, a terrible tragedy for that family. And yet what's so noticeable is how it has become, as you have been saying, immediately politicized and it actually maps a bit -- what David was talking about.

You have a whole lot of people who are defending the family's rights to decide against the establishment, against the experts, against those wagging their finger and telling us what to do. There's some overlapping fact even in the personnel of the campaign with the parents where UKIP, the anti-European and populist party. So it's part of this overall mood which is a sort of flap from science and data as if that's unfeeling and what matters more is what people feel and what people's emotions are.

ZAKARIA: Anne, 30 seconds.

APPLEBAUM: So my main takeaway is that it's extraordinary how this very British story has been interpreted in the American context as an argument about our health care system. You know, Americans always see the world through their own eyes and through their own politics. Just another example of it.

ZAKARIA: And Anne, it was really about how in Britain with the universal health care --

APPLEBAUM: Evil, evil state institutions against the values of the private family.

ZAKARIA: NHS, the government is deciding rather that parents --

APPLEBAUM: Right. Very super simplification of a complicated story.

ZAKARIA: And what's interesting is in Britain people don't think of the NHS so much as the government.

APPLEBAUM: No.

ZAKARIA: It's more your doctors are deciding. All right. We've got to quit at that.

Next on GPS, this week Donald Trump said the U.S. will not stand by as Venezuela crumbles. What did he mean as Venezuela's president takes steps to rewrite that country's constitution. I will talk to the leader of the main opposition party when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:27:56] ZAKARIA: Violence has fled in Venezuela amid a worsening economic crisis in recent months. Political unrest has intensified as President Nicolas Maduro persevered with plans to rewrite that country's constitution.

This week Donald Trump weighed in accusing Maduro of having dreams of becoming a dictator and threatening U.S. sanctions if he continues with those plans.

But Maduro's government has vowed to proceed with a schedule July 30th vote to elect a special assembly that will rewrite the constitution.

I'm joined exclusively by the leader of Venezuela's parliament which is controlled by the opposition.

Julio Burgos, welcome. Can you explain to us how likely is it that President Maduro will succeed in rewriting the constitution? JULIO BURGOS, VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION LEADER: Well, listen, one week

ago we had a huge and beautiful demonstration from Venezuelan people. 7,500,000 Venezuelans go to the streets in a very peaceful way in order to cast a vote to say to Maduro's government and to the world that we don't want a constitutional assembly called unilateral by Maduro. So what we want right now in Venezuela is very simple but very deep.

We want free elections according to the current constitutions and what we want is that Maduro have to respect the current constitution. Maduro is out of the constitution right now and the whole world and the whole Venezuelan people is pushing him in order to follow the rule of law, the check and balance and the values of democracy in Venezuela.

ZAKARIA: It has seemed to me that while Hugo Chavez, his predecessor, was able to rule with a certain kind of populous charm with a lot of (INAUDIBLE), in those days oil prices were high. Maduro has ruled much more using force, using the army.

[10:30:00] Are you worried that there could be some kind of an almost civil-war-like atmosphere developing in Venezuela?

BORGES: Well, I don't think that we are close to a civil war in Venezuela because a civil war is supposed to have two equal or more or less equal bands. That is not the case in Venezuela. What we want in Venezuela; what we have in Venezuela right now, is the whole country, the whole democratic people in Venezuela, which is 90 percent of the population, against a minority who is in power right now and it has no respect for the law, has no respect for the economy, has no respect for human rights. So there is no divided society in Venezuela right now, and it was when Chavez was alive.

Things have changed in Venezuela dramatically. What we have right now is the whole country looking for democracy, looking for an open economy, looking for social justice. And this is, right now, what Maduro wants to stop in order to be in power all the time that he can, to be in power, without rules and with no control over the -- over power.

ZAKARIA: What would you like to see from the United States and, specifically, from Donald Trump?

BORGES: Well, we have been calling to the international community, not only the United States, Latin America, the European Union, the Vatican, the United States -- the whole democratic community in the world, and we are calling for, this week, which is crucial for Venezuela, in order to go with us, pushing Maduro in order to stop the constitutional assembly -- in order to stop the constitutional assembly in order to open a space for a real and deep negotiation with the participation of the international community and -- and to build a real agreement in which we can go to the people in order to ask for a new government, a new -- even a new parliament, whatever it means to go to real elections in Venezuela and to go out to this crisis, to this violence that we are living in right now. ZAKARIA: One of the tragedies that I've been watching is that you

have millions of Venezuelans, maybe tens of thousands, at least, hundreds of thousands, fleeing. And you have the strange example of Venezuelans migrating to other countries. I say strange because, as you know, for many, many decades, it was people from all over Latin America who would flee their countries and come to Venezuela; they would flee a bad -- oppressive or populist regime from other countries and come to Venezuela. And it's now Venezuelans leaving.

Do you worry that the economy is in such bad shape at this point that it's in a kind of free-fall?

BORGES: Yeah. What you're telling is real -- very important, because Venezuela is not only a Venezuelan problem right now. It goes abroad our borders and it's a regional problem. We have almost half a million Venezuelan people in Colombia. In the case, for example, of (inaudible), in the election that we made last Sunday, almost 300,000 Venezuelans voted. There were voting Venezuelan people all over 300 cities all over the world. And we -- we have become, unfortunately, a country that is expelling out Venezuelans to other countries.

And this is part of the -- the theme that we are not only a regional problem but a global problem and we need the help of other democracies in order to change where we are living right now in Venezuela and to become not a second Cuba but a mother country open in a democratic way with very -- social justice and with opportunity for all.

ZAKARIA: Well, we wish you all the very best, sir. We wish you all the best.

Next on "GPS," the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could change the political landscape in this country. I'll explain when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Now for our "What in the World" segment. In June the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case about gerrymandering, Gill v. Whitford, which could literally reshape the American political landscape for generations.

I'm not exaggerating. The case could be that monumental.

A little background: In 2010, Wisconsin Republicans and their newly elected governor, Scott Walker, wrested both the legislature and governorship from the Democrats. They quickly took advantage of that opportunity and, behind closed doors, came up with a scheme to gerrymander Wisconsin's state assembly districts to ensure future Republican control, according to the Washington Post.

The plan worked. During the next election held in 2012, Republicans received only 48.6 percent of the vote, but they managed to gain 60 of Wisconsin's 99 state assembly seats, a huge majority. This led to charges of a rigged election. And now, five years later, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. A decision by the Supreme Court could have significance far beyond Wisconsin's congressional and state assembly districts. It could impact how state and congressional districts are apportioned all across the United States.

That's why the case could send shockwaves across the American political landscape. Just look at some of the most egregious examples of gerrymandering in Texas and Pennsylvania, Illinois and Maryland. And even though both parties do it, gerrymandering has been one of the more compelling explanations behind the Republican control of Congress since 2010.

If we look at all the actual votes cast in the last three congressional elections, we find that Republicans have won a lopsided number of seats when compared with the actual votes they received. In all the congressional elections in 2012, the Democrats received 1.3 percent more votes than Republicans, yet the republicans somehow gained a 7.8 percent majority in Congress. They wound up with 34 more seats than the Democrats.

Two years later, in 2014, Republicans won 5.8 percent more votes, but they overpowered the Democrats by taking in 13.6 percent, or 59 more seats, than the Democrats. And in this last 2016 congressional election, Republicans won the total number of votes by a narrow margin of 1 percent and yet managed to walk away with almost 11 percent more congressional seats, 47 in total, than the Democrats.

These numbers show there is a significant electoral bias towards Republicans in Congress. And according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, a sizable portion of the pro-Republican bias likely stems from deliberate manipulation of maps, and that gerrymandering is a strong contributor to the current Republican majority in the House. However, many in the GOP say it's not about gerrymandering at all but rather that the Democrats have painted themselves into a corner by clustering in cities.

Republicans say they can command more congressional seats because their numbers are spread out in more rural areas across the nation. And there is some truth to that. So the question then becomes, how do we better balance urban and rural Republican and Democratic voters to create fairer congressional districts?

Well, some states are getting it right, California and Arizona, for example. They've taken the politics out of congressional redistricting by creating independent, nonpartisan or bipartisan redestricting commissions.

Another solution might rest with a computer programmer cited in a Washington Post article who created an algorithm to more equally distribute congressional districts. In his simulations, oddly shaped districts become more balanced and optimally compact like these.

And there's been much talk about two scholars who have come up with a workable metric called an "efficiency gap" to determine when a congressional district has, in essence, been gerrymandered.

What all of this means is there are more objective balanced and nonpartisan ways to bring some fairness back to Congress. The Supreme Court could well rule on Wisconsin's redistricting case in its upcoming term. Let's hope they vanquish the loathsome gerrymander once and for all.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: The last time I interviewed President Obama in the White House, I asked him for book recommendations. The book he waxed most passionately about is called "Sapiens," by an author named Yuval Harari.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FORMER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It's a sweeping history of the human race, from 40,000 feet, and it gives you a sense of perspective in how briefly we've been on this earth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Now Harari has written a sequel to that first book. The new one is called "Homo Deus."

Welcome, Yuval Harari.

HARARI: Well, it's good to be here.

ZAKARIA: Your last book was really about the three big revolutions that produced the -- the modern human being, the cognitive revolution, how the brain developed; then you had the agricultural revolution; and then the scientific revolution. So that, in a sense, brings us to here.

But now you seem to be implying that basically we are going to become post-humans, or we are going to become more powerful than human beings with the aid of computers and computer technology.

HARARI: Yeah, not just computers but also bioengineering. But in effect, if for thousands of years, we have gained control of the world outside us, of the animals, the forest, the rivers, now what we are trying to gain control of, the world inside us.

ZAKARIA: And you see this -- I mean, in some sense, we've been doing this for a while. We've been using medicine and various ways to strengthen the body, strengthen the brain. You see this in the physical realities of human beings today. Why is this an inflection point?

HARARI: First, the aim changes from healing yourself or healing the body to upgrading. For thousands of years, the main ideas was we have this normal human health, and if you fall below the norm, we give you a push to get you back to the norm. Now the idea is let's go beyond the norm and start upgrading.

ZAKARIA: But are these really -- is this really an upgrade, or are we using machines to enhance what we do?

So, so much of what has happened so far is some kind of very fancy, prosthetic limb or an enhancement to muscle power. The computers, after all, are still, at this point, assisting the human being in various senses. Do you see us moving to the next phase, where we are in a sense becoming fused with the machine or the machine is actually taking over?

HARARI: Yeah, I think we'll see that humans fuse with their smart phones, with their computers, to the degree that they cannot be separated, not even physically.

We will also see -- we are already seeing -- authority shifting away from humans to external algorithms. For thousands of years, we have accumulated more and more power in human hands. Now it's beginning to change and power and authority shifts away from us to -- to these algorithms, because maybe we are just no longer capable of making sense of what's happening in the world. There is just too much data, too much change. We don't even know the most basic things about how the world would look like in 30 years.

Of course, there was always things we didn't know about the future. If you lived in the Middle Ages, maybe in 10 years the Vikings will invade; maybe there will be the Black Death and a third of the population will die. But about the basics, you knew that, even in 30 years, most people will be peasants and men will dominate women.

But 30 years from now, nobody has a clue how the job market would look like. We have no idea what to teach kids in school today so that they will have the necessary skill -- skills for the world of 2040. We keep teaching them the old stuff. I mean, most experts agree that this will be irrelevant by the time they are 40. But nobody really knows what to teach them instead.

ZAKARIA: So compared to somebody like Peter Thiel, who says that the promise of the scientific revolutions of today has been vastly overhyped, that actually, you know, we were expecting flying cars and all we ended up with was 140 characters. You say that, when you look at these -- these revolutions in biotechnology and in artificial intelligence, it's actually the opposite problem; it's going to be so profound we don't know what's going to happen.

HARARI: And it's not -- I mean, it takes time. People especially, you know, in the industry, they think in terms of months, and then you don't see much change. But if you think in terms of decades or in terms of a century or two, I think it's very likely that we are one of the last generations of homo sapiens, and that within a century or two, we will be replaced by something profoundly different.

ZAKARIA: Actually not homo sapiens?

HARARI: Not homo sapiens. If this succeeds, in a century or two, Earth will be dominated by entities that are more different from you and me than we are different from Neanderthals. So just as Neanderthals, I mean, couldn't imagine Wall Street or the capitalist system, so we cannot imagine what might be in 50 or 100 years.

ZAKARIA: There are a lot of people who would say Wall Street is Neanderthals.

(LAUGHTER) But let me ask you, finally, does this all scare you?

HARARI: I think it should scare everybody and not just me. I mean, of course, there are also very positive potentials for all this. You could have very cheap health care on your smartphone for billions of people that today don't have health care almost at all, once you have A.I. doctors.

But there is also very dangerous potential. I mean, in the past, we used our power over the world outside it -- outside us -- to manipulate this world. But because we didn't really understand the complexity of the world outside us, the result is ecological collapse, which we are now facing. We may do the same thing when we gain control of the world inside us. We'll try to manipulate our bodies, our brains, our minds. But because we are very far from understanding the complexity of our internal ecological system, the result might be an internal ecological disaster.

ZAKARIA: On that sober note, we are going to have to -- to end. Come back. This is fascinating.

HARARI: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on "GPS," one country's crude oil exports are skyrocketing, and it may not be where you'd expect. I'll explain when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company, is gearing up for an initial public offering that the kingdom hopes will value the company as high as $2 trillion. It brings me to my question. Which country is expected to become a top 10 oil exporter by 2020, joining Saudi Arabia on that list? Is it China, Qatar, Mexico or the United States?

Stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer.

This week's book of the week is a terrific new book on India, "Superfast Primetime Ultimate Nation: The Relentless Invention of Modern India" by Adam Roberts, who spent the last five years as The Economist's correspondent there.

There have been many such books on India by Western reporters dazzled, bewildered and amused by its chaos and color. This one captures India today best, with all its promise and pitfalls, an easy, breezy read.

The answer to my "GPS" challenge question is D. By 2020, the United States will export 2.25 million barrels of crude oil per day, up from this year's average of 940,000 barrels a day, according to the forecaster, S&P Global Platts.

The U.S. is now the third largest crude oil producer in the world after Russia and Saudi Arabia. But historically, most of America's production has been consumed at home. After President Obama signed a bill lifting a 40-year ban on oil experts in 2015, American overseas sales skyrocketed. And now...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP: We will be dominant. We will export American energy all over the world, all around the globe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Well, with this president and his former Exxon Mobil CEO secretary of state, perhaps the answer to my question was not so surprising after all.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. And I will see you next week.