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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired October 01, 2017 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00] TAPPER:

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm so controversial I love beautiful women, I love going out with beautiful women and I love women in general. And people would say, oh, that's a horrible thing.

TAPPER: Let's just say he didn't read it for the articles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Thanks for spending your Sunday morning with us. "FAREED ZAKARIA: GPS" starts right now.

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: We begin today's show with dangers of war and instability. North Korea's nuclear tests and Washington's bellicose response.

TRUMP: It will be devastating, I can tell you that.

ZAKARIA: Also Germany's resurgent right wing. What will it mean?

Plus, Iraqi Kurdistans' dream of independence. Could it become a nightmare? All that with a terrific panel.

Then, Microsoft seemed to have been left behind by the new titans of tech -- Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. But this man has made the company great again. Satya Nadella is Microsoft's third CEO. How do you change a massive $500 billion deeply ingrained company? And what did it have to do with his mother?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her influence has been tremendous.

ZAKARIA: We'll tell you.

And President Trump apparently isn't the only world leader who enjoys being on a TV show. You will be surprised to watch a new presidential star of reality television.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first here's "My Take." The confrontation between the United States and North Korea is in a more dangerous zone than at any point in decades. Each side has announced tough positions, issued threats, underscored that its positions are nonnegotiable. Each side is now boxed in with little room to maneuver.

So how to get off this perilous path?

Donald Trump likes to be the tough guy. Previous presidents reacted with sobriety to the bellicose statements of leaders like Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Zedong. The United States was always disciplined, cautious. It was the other guys who did the crazy talk. But Trump seems determined to have last insult.

We need to tone down the rhetoric and actually adopt a strategy. North Korea has one. Indeed, it's had one for decades. It is determined that, given how isolated and threatened it is, it needs a nuclear deterrent. And Pyongyang has made astonishing strides in getting there. Nuclear weapons are all that is keeping Kim Jong-un from suffering the fate of Saddam Hussein or Moammar Gadhafi. The regime will not give up this insurance policy.

If you were in Kim's position, would you?

The denuclearization of North Korea right now is a fantasy. It will not happen unless the United States is willing to wage a war on the Korean peninsula. Everyone knows this, but no official in Washington is willing to publicly admit it.

So the U.S. has now adopted a zombie policy, one that has no chance of success but staggers along nonetheless. It means that we cannot make any progress on what is in fact an achievable and desirable goal, to freeze the North Korean arsenal, end further tests, and place the weapons under inspection.

One way out of this paralysis would be to reframe the issue and broaden its scope. Joshua Cooper Ramo, co-CEO of Henry Kissinger's consulting film, has devised and shared with me a plan, one that has been circulating among officials in Washington, to convene an international conference on nuclear proliferation.

All existing nuclear weapons states would agree not to test or expand their arsenals for some period of time, say, 36 months. Inspectors would verify that these limits are adhered to. Other nations would affirm that they do not intend to acquire nuclear weapons.

Crucially, North Korea would be invited to sign onto this agreement as a nuclear weapon state with the idea of freezing its progress for now and aiming to later denuclearize the country.

Ramo says the advantages of this approach are that it enlarges the North Korea problem in a broader context, of global and regional proliferation, giving everyone an exit ramp so that previous nonnegotiable statements don't apply. It creates a global coalition that could be martialled to sanction North Korea if it were to renege or cheat on its commitments and gives cover to China to truly clamp down on its ally. It also deals with Beijing's core security concerns, preventing the

collapse of North Korea, and keeping South Korea and Japan from acquiring nuclear weapons.

There is no good let alone perfect policy for the North Korean problem. But the Trump administration does need to stop the insults, to get serious, and try to find some way to stabilize the situation. Otherwise we're on a road that will force Washington either to go to war or tacitly admit defeat to that little rocket man.

[10:05:10] For more, go to CNN.com/fareed and read my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started.

I want to bring in today's panel to dig in deeper on North Korea. There are of course many other things to talk about from the rise of the new right in Germany to Iraq's Kurds and their controversial quest for independence.

Joining me now Sue Mi Terry, a former official with the CIA and the National Security Council. She's now a managing director for the Bower Group Asia. Bernard Henri Levy is a French writer and philosopher. And Gideon Rose is the editor of "Foreign Affairs."

So, Sue, tell me, you were the CIA's really lead analyst on Korea. What do you think -- you told me you thought that the threat in the short term is not great from North Korea but there is a longer-term danger. What is it?

SUE MI TERRY, FORMER CIA SENIOR ANALYST: Well, the longer-term danger is once North Korea goes nuclear and has the ability to attack anywhere in the United States with a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile and we have to live with nuclear North Korea, we're looking at a whole host of problems. We're talking from nuclear proliferation. We know North Korea is a serial proliferator, proliferates everything for money.

It has not yet proliferated nuclear technology or fissile material but they could always do that, if you continue with sanctions. There is also a concern that North Korea's -- it's not only about reaching survival, but after they have this power or this capability to attack us with a nuclear weapon their eventual goal is to push out all the U.S. forces out of the Korean peninsula and unify on its own terms, because they're banking on United States not coming into aid of South Korea because we don't want to risk San Francisco for Seoul.

ZAKARIA: So a kind of nuclear bad blackmail that eventually unifies the Koreas under North Korean terms.

TERRY: Right.

ZAKARIA: This is something terribly different from what we always thought, it's been the other way around.

TERRY: Right, because North Korea thinks under sort of America first policy or even just -- maybe not today but once they have this capability, will Americans really get back in there to save South Korea in coming to an aid of an ally? So that's what they're banking on eventually.

ZAKARIA: Why is the administration seemed to have sort of -- want to go beyond diplomacy? They're seemed frustrated by diplomacy. They're sort of trying everything other than some kind of diplomatic path.

TERRY: Well, what they're not doing diplomatic path right now because they've tried for over two decades. I mean, it's not true that we have not pursued diplomacy. Right? We have an agreed framework with the six-party talks. We have many, many m agreements with North Korea.

It's not about getting to an agreement, because we have agreement, but every single agreement failed because over verification, because North -- and today honestly I think we're at different stage. North Korea is not going to give up nuclear weapons. They're so close to completing and perfecting their nuclear arsenal, having this capability to attack mainland United States with a nuclear weapon, why would they give this up now?

I mean, they said over and over look at what happened to Gadhafi. He gave up nuclear weapons and he's dead. This is the only way for the region to survive.

ZAKARIA: So what does the United States do in this circumstance?

GIDEON ROSE, EDITOR, FOREIGN AFFAIRS: You know, in the movies you used to have what's called a Mexican standoff, when everybody was pointing guns at each other and no one knew what to do. For 60 years we've been in the same situation on North Korea. The North has its gun at the head of the South, and always has. Now it's with nukes and also with artillery, experience with artillery.

We have our guns pointed at the North and the Chinese have guns that are not pointed at nobody but know it's there, the Japanese don't have guns but are watching, they have a gun shop in the basement. They can make guns in a second.

Everybody is watching everybody else and everybody has their guns trained. In the movies that only ends in two ways. Everybody calms count and agrees to walk away and kick the can down the road for another day, or there's a big shoot-out in which everybody dies. And the thing that is puzzling most national security analysts is why in god's name the administration can't recognize what everybody else does, which is those are the only two options.

And so some kind of climb-down from the crazy rhetoric, we used to have one reckless dilettante making crazy comments on North Korea with his finger on the nuclear button. Now we have two of them. The challenge now is to get back to discussions to deal with the real problems that Sue was talking about, which are not good, not easy, and not easily fixable but are better than anything resembling an actual Korean war, which we all have to just basically put out of the picture and move on.

ZAKARIA: So we need something like what Kennedy did with Kruschev in the Cuban missile crisis which is sort of find some way to get to yes. [10:10:07] ROSE: Exactly, to muddle through, to create some kind of

deal that freezes things where they are in return for not going further and us not attacking them. You want to stabilize deterrents. Deterrents has worked on the Korean peninsula for six decades. It sounds bad and everyone doesn't like this, but the fact is North Korea has been North Korea, it's going to be North Korea.

South Korea is different, has been South Korea, it's held for six decades. It can continue going if we keep deterrents working, but that's a difficult thorny problem that professionals like Sue really know how to deal with, not what the administration is doing.

ZAKARIA: Does this worry you, watching from Europe? Do you -- I mean, when the Cuban missile crisis, that standoff happened, the whole world was scared. This is a much smaller country, North Korea, but does it worry you to watch this kind of -- this trading of insults?

BERNARD HENRI LEVY, PHILOSOPHER, WRITER AND FILMMAKER: It's decayed since we did not take seriously enough the threat of North Korea. So now we wake up because we are at the edge, at the verge of the abyss. It's a little late.

My feeling, I'm not a specialist as you are, but the one who has the key of this situation is probably China. China is aiming to have a real world influence. They are probably ready if there was a real agreement with America to fulfill the standards which are required in order to be a real superpower.

They cannot afford to have such nuts ally as Kim Jong-un. They have the key. Obviously, Donald Trump does not have the key. He does not -- he does not have the slightest idea of what the diplomacy is. You cannot make diplomacy by saying I'm going to destroy the whole North Korea, tyrants and slaves, dictators and people. You cannot say that.

China has a more diplomatic tradition. They could probably deal with that. They have certainly the key.

ZAKARIA: So it's gotten to this, that a Frenchman is hoping for Chinese restraint in diplomacy --

(CROSSTALK)

LEVY: By all Chinese tendency.

ZAKARIA: We will be back in a moment. When we come back, last week the Kurds in Iraq voted for independence in a nonbinding referendum. The world reaction was swift, the move was condemned from almost all corners. But not by Bernard Henri Levy who will explain when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:16:48] ZAKARIA: And we are back with Sue Mi Terry, Bernard Henri Levy and Gideon Rose.

So, Bernard, this is something that everybody disliked. But the Kurds decided that they were going to have a road to become independent, you know, huge majority was in favor, everybody has condemned it, including the United States, which has been the staunchest ally of the Kurds. Why is it a good idea?

LEVY: This is so sad frankly. And such a miscalculation, America and France. We have people there who is our natural ally who proposes to build a true democracy. It would be or it will be the second democracy in the area, and we are shy and we say don't, and we support this failed state, this no state, which is Iraq, and we embolden Turkey, Iran, and Iraq to take strong steps against this little Kurdistan.

It is frankly a shame. And for the West, it is a huge mistake. And I was in Irbil day before yesterday. I was there. I was one of the international observers for this referendum, which by the way was a good referendum. According to international standards, it was a fair vote. And from inside, it is so impossible to explain.

The situation of the Kurds today somehow reminds me of Israel in 1948. Seven million people besieged by 160 millions of enemy, of big empires, of rogue states. Iran, as far as I know, is still not a democracy. Turkey is less and less a democracy. The Turkey of Erdogan. And no one supports them.

This loneliness of the Kurds is frankly for me and for any Democrats who listen to us should be heartbreaking.

ZAKARIA: And you have a great film about the Peshmerga, who have -- the fighters who have fought against ISIS with the United States.

LEVY: They fought for us. The Peshmerga, they wear their shield. They wear the sword, they wear the rampart of the West, and as a reward for their sacrifice, we just closed the door to them when they want to come in the club of the democracies.

ZAKARIA: So anything that Erdogan, the Iranian mullahs and the Iraqi Shia hate, there must be something good about this.

ROSE: I think Bernard is correct about the tragic history of the Kurds and the bad treatment they've gotten in the past, and you know, just world they would deserve a better life, a unified political community, and their own state. But the world doesn't necessarily run according to ideals and the fact is they're scattered among several different countries which --

(CROSSTALK)

LEVY: No, no, no. We are talking of the Iraqi Kurds --

ROSE: Iraqi Kurdish independence creates a potential problem for all the other countries that --

LEVY: Why? Why?

ROSE: Because they feel that their Kurds will either want to secede and join the new Kurdish state or get more powers and autonomy inside. [10:20:05] ZAKARIA: So you've been in the National Security Council.

What -- this is a debate where, you know, the realists will say you piss off all these countries around, the idealists will say give them a chance, who's going to win?

TERRY: I say realists, I'm sorry.

(LAUGHTER)

TERRY: And particularly this administration, I think it has to be realists winning over the idealists.

ZAKARIA: All right. Bernard --

LEVY: If the realists win they will win because realism is a side of the Kurds.

ZAKARIA: All right. Another question for you. What does it mean that the alternative for Deutschland, Germany's far-right party, that openly praises some elements of Germany's World War II past, has gotten this very large percentage? It is the third largest party in the parliament now.

LEVY: Germany, alas, is joining the club of the European countries with a populist ultra right. Germany was a little back because of the past, because of the guiltiness, because super ego which was on the head of the German people. Today, probably with the refugee crisis, which was so well-led by Mrs. Merkel, she saved the honor of Germany and of Europe, but there is a backlash, and there is this reaction. So Germany is aligning with France, with Poland, with Hungary, with England, the UK, who have these sort of powerful extreme right. And this is rather concerning and sad for us.

ZAKARIA: What does it mean for Europe?

ROSE: You know, Macron was in America last week and he was talking about the problems not just of France and of Europe but about the West in general, and he made this point that until we have policies that give the broad middle classes in the advanced industrial countries a sense that they profit from and benefit from the globalization era, we're going to have deep political problems.

And so right now we have a system in which because of refugees, because of economic stagnation, rising in equality and a variety of other things, we have a sense in a lot of countries that this system isn't working well and the mainstream parties who have backed the system are losing ground in England, in Europe, it's happening in Germany, too. He held on, Merkel held on, she held on, but the country is in a little bit more trouble.

ZAKARIA: And you see that in the United States as well where congressional Republicans have now a 15 percent approval rating.

We have to close it on that. This is a fascinating conversation. Thank you all very much. When we come back, sanctions. They brought Iran to the table for

nuclear negotiations, but could sanctions work against one of the most heinous crimes out there? Human slavery. I'll explain in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:26:47] ZAKARIA: Now for our "What in the World" segment? In reaction to North Korea's latest provocations this past month, President Trump issued a new executive order, adding to the sanctions against that country. And in another move the Trump administration warned Iran that it would re-impose economic sanctions if it determined that country had not met its nuclear deal commitments.

Both moves are controversial and it remains unclear whether they will have any effect. But there's one area in which economic sanctions would be uncontroversial and highly effective -- human slavery.

That's right. Human slavery. If you thought slavery was eradicated around the world and is something consigned to dusty old history books, think again. According to a disturbing new study just released by the United Nations, on any given day last year there were more than 40 million victims of modern slavery around the world.

UNESCO identifies slavery by an element of ownership or control over another's life, coercion and the restriction of movement, and by the fact that someone is not free to leave or to change an employer. Of that 40 million, 25 million fall under the category of forced labor. These are the people we might never see who perhaps prepare our food, make our clothes, or clean the offices or homes we live in.

The report goes on to say of that 40 million, 3.8 million people were victims of forced sexual exploitation and most disturbingly in addition one million were children under the age of 18. The vast majority, 99 percent of those who were sexually exploited, were female.

And America is not immunized from this scourge. The National Human Trafficking Hotline, a resource center which is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says it fielded calls from 4,522 human trafficking victims and survivors in 2016. That's up 29 percent from 2015.

According to (INAUDIBLE) there are no less than 26 bills up for consideration in Congress that are intended to end human trafficking and sexual exploitation in the U.S. Many are bipartisan. Mostly to close legal loopholes, bolster prosecution or put checks on the use of technology.

But I want to draw your attention to another tactic, perhaps a better one. It was highlighted in a little-noticed $586 million settlement Western Union made with the U.S. government back in January. Western Union admitted it was engaged in money laundering activities and the FTC said that half a billion dollars settlement was necessary to prevent those engaged in fraud, terrorism, human trafficking, drug dealing and other crimes from using companies like Western Union to further their illegal activity. And I believe this will be one of the most effective ways to

successfully fight back against the perpetrators of human trafficking. Hit them in their wallets. As a recent report from a U.N. think tank points out, human trafficking is a big business with annual revenues from forced labor alone hitting at least $150 billion.

The report argues among other things that financial institutions should use the tools at their disposal to disrupt the flow of money from the human trafficking industry. For example, both Thai and Czech authorities recently seized millions of dollars' worth of assets from suspected traffickers. In 2005, Brazil created the national slave eradication pact, which publicly names companies that profit from slave labor. To date, hundreds of companies have been put on the list for a temporary two-year period. But when a company is listed, it can't get loans from the government or private financial institutions.

Those examples and Western Union's half-billion-dollar fine should serve as a warning. Regulators in the financial sector are finding new ways to score victories in the global fight against human trafficking. Closing off the financial system to traffickers is a smart way to begin unlocking the chains of human bondage.

Next on "GPS," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on how he's doubled the company's stock price and how his personal life has affected the direction he's set for America's iconic tech giant.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Microsoft made Bill Gates the world's richest man by putting its operating system in every personal computer and then by trying to ensure there was a PC in just about every home, certainly in the developed world.

Then came the Internet, smartphones, the world of apps, and Microsoft seemed to many lost. So what to do with a massive company that needed a new direction?

That was the challenge before Satya Nadella when he took over the company in February of 2014. I'd say he's done pretty well. The stock hit its highest-ever price just last month, nearly doubling the company's worth to over $500 billion.

Nadella, a soft-spoken engineer and an Indian immigrant, faced the uphill battle of changing a company that was still under Bill Gates' enormous shadow. So what did he do? He hit "refresh." That is also the name of his terrific new book.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Satya Nadella, pleasure to have you on.

NADELLA: Thank you so much for having me, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: You say that qualities like empathy, concern, mindfulness are going to be at the heart of Microsoft winning the next wave of technology battles and, you know, kind of, becoming -- or maintaining its role as a technology giant.

It's a strange thing for the CEO of a technology company to do. So I want to start by having you explain personally how you got to this point of understanding it. And tell me about your mother, who was not a technology person, not an engineer, not even an economist like your dad was, but she was a scholar of Sanskrit and had a very different outlook on life than one thinks of when one thinks of the Indian driving, achievement-oriented parent?

NADELLA: I have learned the power of empathy. It is not some innate capability that I had, but it is life's experiences, whether it was my mother -- quite frankly, now I see more clearly her influence -- or the birth of my son. In the case of my mother, you know, my dad was this, as you said, was an economist who was in love with ideas. Every...

ZAKARIA: Ironically a Marxist economist?

NADELLA: A Marxist economist.

(LAUGHTER)

And he would be always in love with ideas. He had intellectual curiosity and ambition. My mom, who herself was an academic, was more about "Stay calm; absorb what is happening; be mindful." In fact, she would always ask me, "Are you happy?"

And it was not a banal question. It was like, are you truly able to take it all in?

And, quite honestly, growing up sometimes I would even get irritated, and only now I realize, as I grow each year, that the lessons she tried to teach me throughout are the more enduring ones. And so her influence has been tremendous.

ZAKARIA: I mean, it's an important point, again, from an immigrant background, because I think of my father, who was a very driven, self -- self-made man. I think if you had asked him "Are you happy," he wouldn't have understood the question.

NADELLA: Right.

(LAUGHTER)

ZAKARIA: You know, the point of life was not personal happiness. The point was achievement, success, right?

NADELLA: That's right. And sometimes that's how I interpreted it -- like, how can I be happy? I have to be impatient; I have to go on to the next thing.

Her thing, I think, was to remind me that you don't do your best work if you're waiting for your next thing. You've got to do your work today and enjoy it, and if you don't enjoy it or have meaning -- which came much later, in fact, from another very interesting source, Doug Burgum, who is the governor of North Dakota now, once looked at me and said at work, saying, "You know, you are going to spend more time at Microsoft than with your children, and so you better figure out a way for this work to have more meaning."

That was one of the other moments in -- you know, it was perhaps in my mid-30s -- and I realized, "What is he saying?" But it struck me as the most, best advice that I've gotten.

ZAKARIA: You had another occasion to be shocked into -- into finding empathy with the birth of your son. Explain what happened.

NADELLA: You know, I was 29 years old. Anu and I were only children of our parents and so this was our first son and we were all very excited, the entire family was. And even a few hours before Zain was born, we were mostly concerned about is the nursery going to be ready or how is Anu going to go back to her job as an architect. And those were our concerns. And then of course life changed that night. And the first...

ZAKARIA: And he's born -- explain what happened.

NADELLA: He -- he -- there was in utero asphyxiation and he was born with severe cerebral palsy and he's quadriplegic. Today he's 21 years old.

The first couple of years, Fareed, I must say, I struggled. I struggled mostly because I felt something happened to my plan, my ideal -- a lot of questioning "Why me, why us?" whereas Anu, right off the bat, was all about, look, oh, driving Zain from therapy to therapy and making sure he got the best shot, the best chance -- and, without schooling me in particular, I got schooled. Because I saw her and her approach and then I realized that nothing happened to me; Zain was the one suffering and it was my responsibility as a father to see that through his eyes and do the best I can.

And that, I think, when I look back, was probably one of those moments of "hit refresh" that really helped shape who I am, at work, even. And it's not that, you know, that was the only incident, but I think that's where I'm now a firm believer that your life's experience is what's going to help you develop increasing levels of empathy for more people. And that's what's going to make you a good leader, a good colleague, and a good innovator.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: I'll be back in just a moment with much more of my interview with Satya Nadella. He's bullish on artificial intelligence and the like, but I asked him what he would say to the millions of people around the world who worry that machines will soon put them all out of work.

(voice over): Don't forget, if you miss a show, go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my iTunes podcast.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Back now with more of my interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the author of a new book, "Hit Refresh."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: So you have transformed Microsoft, and the conventional wisdom would be you took a company, extraordinary technology giant, but that was foundering, had lost its way, had missed the Web, had missed a lot of the -- you know, mobile, things like that. Did you have to incentivize compensation? Did you have to give a lot of speeches?

How did you actually make -- how do you turn a ship around?

NADELLA: I think -- you know, it's all the levers, right?

I mean, leadership is one of those things where there's multiple things that you've got to do and get them right and continuously cultivate. One of the first things I worked very hard on is, when I joined the company in 1992, we used to talk about our mission is to put a PC in every home on every desk. It was clear. It was so tangible.

And by even the end of that decade, at least in the developed world, we more or less achieved that objective. And then, you know, we said, oh, what next?

So that's when I said, OK, we've got to go back and have a sense of purpose and mission as a company. Because, in order for us -- we can't be looking with envy to what the competitor is doing for inspiration. We have to truly say, "What is it that Microsoft can uniquely contribute in a competitive marketplace?

And so I went all the way back to the first product of the company, which was Paul and Bill creating the BASIC interpretor for the Altair. And right there in the story of our birth is what -- who we are at our core, which is we create technology so that others can create more technology. We are a toolmaker, a platform provider. That's who Microsoft is. We're not just a -- we're not a consumer Internet company, but we are a platform company and a tool maker.

And so I said, OK, let's now capture that in words, you know, which is we talk about our mission is empowering people and organizations all over the planet to achieve more. And each one of those words is key to us.

ZAKARIA: If there's so much data out there and so much computing power that can analyze it, there are some dangers, right?

I mean, we've seen it in the last election, the ability to collect data which tells you how people are leaning in terms of their votes, what they might be influenced by, how you could suppress their vote, how you could encourage their vote.

Obviously this is done with retail customers all the time, in terms of what -- what choices are provided to them in terms of what they buy and sell. I can think of ways you could manipulate the stock market by putting fake news in front of people that causes a stock to move down and then somebody's profiting off that.

This seems to me a brave new world.

NADELLA: It is a brave new world. And I think, as I've always thought about this, is the key for us is let us -- like with any new technology -- when the telegraph came, wire fraud, and we had to deal with it.

So the question is how do we take the good? To give you an example, A.I. is one of the big benefits one gets if you have data. Your ability to reason over data gives you artificial intelligence.

To put it in tangible terms, in fact, one of the colleagues of mine whom I worked with when I first joined the company who is still there, Angela Mills, was recounting this story. We launched a new app called "Seeing AI," which is available in the app store.

What it does is it takes some of the cutting-edge work from computer vision, makes it available for someone with visual impairment to be able to see. And Angela has visual impairment. So for the first time, she was telling me, she can go into our cafeteria, read the menu, order the right food, walk into the right conference room knowing that it's the place where her meeting is, fully participate, in some sense, at Microsoft, because of AI.

The same thing happened when we put learning tools into Word. People with dyslexia now can start to improve their reading because of the assistance of AI. So I believe we should first grab onto all of these opportunities to enhance the human experience with AI, while being very clear-eyed about all of the implications, whether it's automation that leads to jobs displacement; whether it's cyber threats. And these are all going to require not only companies like ours doing their best work, taking a principled stance in terms of how we design things, and ultimately even governments, in the legislative process, looking at how do we make sure that the unintended consequences of new technology are not causing us harm?

ZAKARIA: A final question: When you think about AI, supercomputing, all these extraordinary technologies, I think now people, at the back of their minds, think, "This all sounds great, but what will I do?"

Does this -- what do you say to people who look at AI and, you know, the driverless car and say, "Yeah, but 3 million Americans, mostly without college degrees, drive a car, bus or truck for a living and this wonderful technology might be great for the economy in some abstract sense but is going to put 3 million people out of work?"

NADELLA: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a -- I think it's a real issue. So here's -- multiple things. One is, on the practical side, I would say let's not fall complete victim to this "lump of labor" fallacy.

ZAKARIA: "Lump of labor" fallacy being -- what you're saying is there's actually lots of new work and new jobs and new industries that will spring up?

NADELLA: That's right. That's one. So then -- so that's, you know, having said it abstractly, then let's even go to work on, in fact, disproving the "lump of labor" fallacy, which is to say people-on- people jobs. Can we have an economy that -- where there is a lot of surplus being created by automation create, in fact, great wage support for people-on-people jobs? In fact...

ZAKARIA: Like what? Give me an example.

NADELLA: Health -- I mean, elder care. And, in fact, in my own case, if I look at -- I would say what are all the services that could be available for some children with disabilities that not just someone like me can afford but broadly can be afforded?

So I think that there is a role -- in fact, in a world where there's a lot of artificial intelligence, what's going to be scarce is real intelligence, or human intelligence, the innate qualities we have. How do we create markets for them, I think, would be one of the more interesting challenges in the future.

ZAKARIA: So in a sense, the challenge is for human beings to figure out how to be more human?

NADELLA: That's correct.

ZAKARIA: Satya Nadella, pleasure to have you on.

NADELLA: Thank you so much, Fareed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on "GPS," the president of the United States is apparently not the only world leader who also fancies himself a TV star. When we come back, I'll tell you about a new role on the small screen for China's president, Xi Jinping.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: In Hillary Clinton's newly released memoirs, she reveals that she almost ran on a proposal for a nationwide universal basic income -- in other words, automatic and unconditional money for all citizens. But on his blog, former Vice President Biden came out against the idea, writing that, "Instead of such subsidies, we must build a future that puts work first."

It brings me to my question. Which of the following countries already instated a nationwide basic income: Norway, Iran, Rwanda, or Russia?

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

This week's book is a television documentary. Like many of you, I've been watching Ken Burns' and Lynn Novick's majestic series on the Vietnam War. Burns' work is much praised and that praise is much deserved. The series is a masterpiece, delving deep into the human tragedy of that war, while presenting history and analysis fairly and intelligently. The footage, the music, the sheer cinematic artistry is dazzling.

And now for the last look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: It's November the 15th, 2012, a day that will go down in the annals of history.

ZAKARIA (voice over): Over the last few weeks China's government has released a series of English-language films titled "Major-Country Diplomacy." The main message, as The Economist reports, is that President Xi is responsible for a new, successful, powerful Chinese foreign policy.

ANNOUNCER: China has the confidence to assume responsibility for solving major global problems.

ZAKARIA: The filmmakers went out of their way to highlight Xi's positive relationships with many world leaders. And the almost five- hour-long film series covers a myriad of topics, from the Iran nuclear deal to Beijing's friendship with Moscow, to China's version of the history of the South China Sea.

The not-so-veiled message is that China will lead the world.

ANNOUNCER: Chinese diplomacy is revealing strength, courage and a sense of responsibility.

ZAKARIA: And while the government and filmmakers may have lacked a certain amount of humility throughout this epic series...

ANNOUNCER: As this country's president, Xi Jinping has displayed his personal charm during numerous overseas visits.

ZAKARIA: ... perhaps we should remember what they are up against.

PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP: People love me, and you know what? I've been very successful. Everybody loves me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: The correct answer to the "GPS" challenge question is B, Iran. While countries like Finland, India and Canada have recently experimented with smaller programs, Iran launched a nationwide cash- transfer program in 2010. Each family was paid what at the time amounted to 29 percent of the median household income by drawing from that nation's oil revenues, according to the Economic Research Forum.

As the price of oil has dipped, though, so too have the number of subsidy recipients in Iran. However, Tehran still reportedly pays the majority of its citizens something.

That is all for our show this week. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week.