Thank you for being late finding a job, running the country, and keeping your head in an age of acceleration. Tom friedman the title comes from meeting people at breakfast in washington dc over the past couple of years, and theyre 15 or 20 minutes late, they say, i am sorry, it was the traffic. One day, i spontaneously said to them, actually, charlie, thank you for being late. Because you were late, i was eavesdropping on their conversation. I connected two ideas that i was struggling with, thank you for being late. People start to get into it and they say, you are welcome. What i was sort of doing was giving myself and them permission to be late, to slow down, sit back and reflect. Charlie this is a brief against speed. Tom friedman it really is, but in an age of acceleration. The core theme of the book is that we are in the middle of three nonlinear accelerations, all at the same time, the three largest forces on the planet, which i call the market, Mother Nature, and murphys law. Microchips will double every 20 months, we put it on a graph, we know what it looks like. It looks like that, it looks like a hockey stick. Mother nature, we put it on it graph, it looks like a hockey stick. And trade, not just trade, that is actually down. But it is facebook, twitter, whatsapp, these things are flowing. You put them on a graph, it looks like a hockey stick. So we are in the middle of actually three accelerations all a time, each feeding off the other. Globalization, globalization drives Climate Change, and more solutions to both of them. I expect these are changing the world, transforming and reshaping everything. Theyre reshaping politics, geopolitics, theyre reshaping the workplace, and theyre reshaping our ethical and moral choices. Charlie so the table asked me to invite you to come here, once the book was published. Tom friedman the table said, i will be here, ok . There is only one place to come talk about a book seriously, and that is the table. Charlie put that in the context, because it is a big idea, starting with the 2016 election. Tom friedman lets talk about the geo and political impact. With these accelerations, they are actually exploding these states, and exploding the politics. What do i mean . There is a whole set of states whose borders are primarily Straight Lines. These are artificial states, more propped up by the cold war. You had two world powers throw money at them. There was no china, no robots. The cold war was a good time to be [indiscernible] now you take all of that away, Climate Change is here, much more population, china can take all your lowwage labor. What you see is a lot of these states cant make it. Somehow we shift over, we rock some different cells, you go through these different states, the borders with Straight Lines are artificial. They are like caravan homes in a trailer park. They are built on a slab of cement with no foundation. What these accelerations are, air like a hurricane going through a trailer park. I have been to niger and senegal. All these weak states, they are basically being exploded by these forces. What they are doing is charlie they have no institution of government, no law. Tom friedman they get by through the cold war. They send them money, that is all gone. What is gone on the one hand, that is changing the geopolitics. A new divided the world, because of these collapsing states, is no longer eastwest, northsouth. It is now the border of order and disorder. The dividing line is the mediterranean. You have tens of thousands of people trying to get out of the world of disorder stretching from afghanistan basically to mali, across the mediterranean into the nearest world of order, which is europe. The strong states, it is stressing out their politics, because their Political Parties, everyone their Political Parties are designed to answer questions of the cold war, industrial revolution, and the new deal. And how do you respond to these accelerations, what they are doing to your climate, globalization, trade impact, and your workplace . Because these parties really cant answer those questions in the way they are presently constructed, they are blowing up. Republicans went first, because they were the least realitybased. They have gotten the most distant from reality on things like climate and whatnot. You see what is going on. Both british parties are blowing up, because, i think, let me connect this to another point i make. When you are in the middle of Climate Change, you want resilience. That is what you want, resilience to resist this. So i thought about that in the book. But what do you do about resilience in the face of Climate Change . Then i realized, i know a woman. She is 3. 8 million years old, her name is Mother Nature, and she has dealt with more Climate Changes than anyone. I interview Mother Nature. I say, how do you do with Climate Change . She says, tom, i am incredibly adaptive. I am incredibly i love pluralism. 20 different species. I am incredibly sustainable, everything is food, eat, poop, food, seed. Whereever i see an opening, where plant or animal is perfectly adapted, i believe in ownership. When an ecosystem is in balance, it owns that space. Highly resilient to Invasive Species. The Republican Party let the garden go. And she says, i believe in bankruptcy. My argument is that parties that mirror those attributes, they are the ones that will thrive in the age of acceleration. What does it mean politically . That is why my own politics, i know we talked about once, i am a nonpartisan extremist. What i mean by that is, i am not for a third party. Who wants to be a third party between these day old parties . Im a fourth party. My politics, i am to the left of Bernie Sanders on a lot of issues. In this age of acceleration, we need to strengthen safety nets, but to pay for it under i get rid of all corporate taxes, and i really change the whole tax structure. There is a tax on sugar, carbon. We got to get radically entrepreneurial over here in order to pay for, i think we have to have Better Safety nets and trampolines in this age of acceleration over here. Why cant the parties . You have to be ready to be agile. What does Mother Nature do . She lets things coevolve that should coevolve. Certain bees and flowers. These parties cannot do that. So Bernie Sanders, you can never be for unleashing entrepreneurship. You can only be for a safety net. If you are a wall street editorial page, you are not interested in safety nets, only entrepreneurial spirit. These parties for raising money, and identity, and station identification need to have these very defined features that let things coevolve the way nature does, which is what we have to do to manage the acceleration. Charlie we have gridlock. Tom friedman we have gridlock, and worse than that, we see parties collapse, basically. Charlie and in the Democratic Party tom friedman the republicans went first because they were like an untended party, basically. And donald trump was an Invasive Species that came in, because the gardens went fallow. They rented out theirself to whoever could energize their base. So sarah palin or whoever came along to energize their base so they could get elected in order to be in power to get elected. They completely lost their way, in my view. If a party can declare moral bankruptcy, they would be chapter 11, there is no question in my mind. The democrats are broken up in a certain way too. Bernie sanders is essentially independent. Now we see the British Labour party and the tories both blowing up. I think we are at the beginning of an incredible reshaping. Charlie you think it will be the reshaping to lead to fourth parties, people who try to build a new constituency . Tom friedman i think we are in the beginning of that. These accelerations are the heart of what is going on now. If you dont design policies that give the best out of them and pushed out the worst, you will not survive. Charlie who is going to do what, who is in fact in touch with the age of acceleration . You suggested people get it. Tom friedman what i did, it has been fun talking to mutual. Been fun talking to mutual friends. Charlie Mother Nature is one. Tom friedman she is a good friend of both of ours. I talked about the universal law chapter, i took the computer, and it physically said, the computer has five parts. The cpu, storage, sensors, a camera. It has got networking, software. What i want to do is really go through, and i kind of built each section around a person. The storage of built around doug cutting, the founder of duke, which is been a prime mover of big data. Chris winstruck, open source commercial software. The network is built around irwin jacobs, and the storage, the sensing was built around general electric. And my view is all five of these, charlie, kind of melded together, right around 2007 into something we call the cloud. But i never used the term cloud because it sounds so soft, so benign, Something Like a Joni Mitchell song. This is what microsoft calls a supernova. It is an incredibly big release of energy. Energy in the hands of human beings, it is one of the greatest ever. It has changed the power of one. One person can do now to make things or break things like never before. Charlie like orlando. Tom friedman they changed the machine. It changed the power of many. We, as a collective, are now a force of nature. We have a geological prophecy being named after us. A man named in a geological era, we are defining it so much. And the power flows, ideas now flow and circulate at a pace and scale we have never seen before. Barack obama was elected, he was elected running saying marriage is between a man and a woman. Ideas that were solid for so long are now melting at a pace we have never seen before. Charlie i think about that statement by ash carter, transgenders in the military. Somehow they are rebuilding the body of politics. That forces politicians. Tom friedman you know the Confederate Flag . Flying over North Carolina for so many years, and one guy shoots up a black church, and it is gone. Just gone. This new kind of power, they are really reshaping the world. It is going to require us to reshape laws, regulations. Charlie the age of acceleration is happening. On the other hand, you have conflict and release, which is as old as time itself. And you are suggesting that it is not so much over there. It is not so much all the institutional divides. It is saudi versus iran, saudi versus shia. Tom friedman the old conflicts are not going away at all. They will get sharper because these people are fighting over shrinking [indiscernible] when fast gets faster, slow is really slow. Flow is moving, you start to move behind, you really fall behind. So that is what is terrifying to me. The tragedy of syria has so many dimensions to it, but when its simply, syria kids have not been in school for five years. In an age where death already has two iterations charlie [indiscernible] tom friedman so how we manage this, one of the big dilemmas we have, this widening world of disorder. We have it in terms of latin america. They are not usually one that got refugees. We have 52,000 orphans. Over 50,000 are from honduras and guatemala, where parents sent their kid out of the world of disorder to our island of order. We got over 50,000 refugees who basically walked, biked, hiked from eritrea and ethiopia. It has been a big problem, they dont know what to do with it. They come in, they are trying to pay them to leave, but wherever there is an island of order, people from the world of disorder are coming. This is the great migration. In an earlier period of history, material power would have come in. Alexander the great, the british, the french. But today, no one wants to come in. There was a time so we are in a time where we have never been. This widening disorder, a highly interdependent world, nobody wants to come in and lay hands on it. Charlie because they are also finding limits to their own power. Building something tom friedman that is why i said the central, and what about in the chapter on geopolitics, the central geopolitical question of our time is, what do you do when the necessary is impossible, the impossible is necessary . We know that Relationship Building is possible. If you dont do it, in the old days, what would happen . Somebody would get a live concert in the park, they say, we took care of the profits. On the refugee trail, two months ago, they dont want any live concerts. And they have a cell phone. They are in desperate straits, and they are going to come. It is a big problem. Charlie it also propelled the arab spring. Tom friedman all these same forces. Charlie they knew there was a better life somewhere. They wonder why the government stood in the way of a better life. Tom friedman these are young people who realize they live in the context or they could not live their full potential. Charlie we go straight to american politics and then back to the middle east. Donald trump, how do you explain the phenomenon . Notwithstanding he had a bad month, look at the polls. Tom friedman polls tell us a couple things. Charlie 4240. Tom friedman that tells you the deep polarization in our country between democrats and republicans, no matter who runs. It is a deep polarization. And i will never have my kid marry a republican, that is crazy. Obviously, there are a number of people who, in this age of acceleration, are finding it hard to keep up. They feel deeply let down by politics. Politicians have not told them the truth, they have not, but the right remedies. Charlie and they think politicians are taking care of everybody but them, in terms of finding opportunities, giving them a sense of participation in the country. Tom friedman i reflected a lot about this personally. I always been for free trade, more trade agreements. I was affected by a study that came out from m. I. T. And others that showed how in china, they joined the wto in 2001. There are a certain very specific set of communities in the country. They were really devastated by that. People like you were saying, when you do have retraining programs, help for these people. But it didnt, we did not really deliver. Charlie we did not retrain, we did not do a range of things. There was no commitment in washington. Gridlock. Tom friedman so what happens, basically, there is a giant acceleration around 2007, and then 2008 came along, we were looking the other way. Got the great recession, washington went into total gridlock. So the Conveyor Belt suddenly sped up. In that disjunction, you have a lot of trouble. Charlie as technology has moved forward on them, taken from you, politics, technology has moved forward in the age of acceleration. Government has not been able to keep up. We are in this place where this is going here, and government, for all kinds of reasons, whether it is gridlock, new dilemmas, and problemsolving necessary, has not addressed some of the moral and ethical questions as well as reality of the whole new range of people have new powers. Including them is productivity and efficiency, which means there is a digital disruption in communities around the world. Tom friedman and itss going on everywhere. We also know, just under 5 of Unemployed People are getting work. I was at the world advertising i went with the new york times. Charlie telling the times. Tom friedman it was so interesting to me, all this talk was about how to do it, blend Virtual Reality into advertising. If you want to be a marketer, one of the first questions you apply for a job in the Ad Department in the new york times, they will say, are you up to speed on Virtual Reality . The good news is i mean charlie i know what Virtual Reality is. Tom friedman the point is, new jobs are being spun off all the time. But there is one common denominator, they all require more skill. And they all require you to learn and relearn. And that is really [speaking simultaneously] charlie it is harder the older you are. Tom friedman a lot of people are caught in that dilemma. Charlie is that is what is propelling the trump tom friedman it is all part of it. It is not any one thing. It is a reaction to the political crisis. We see it on college campuses. Anything as big as trump that comes out of leftfield has to be said economic disruption, political correctness, frustration. Charlie and with the brexit, he has made it an antiglobalization crusade as well. Tom friedman which is crazy. My friend and i used to say, in a connected world, the dumbest thing you can do is disconnect. The connection is not going to go away. If you google globalization is dead, that is globalization is dead since 2001 these things are going to keep going, whether a change will be done. The question is, do you mock this . If you want to stop facebook from adding users, stop twitter, stop google, i dont think so. These things will drive the flow. The question is, how do we make them work for us . Charlie are the people that work google and amazon and microsoft and apple, the most powerful people in the world . Tom friedman they are pretty powerful. Charlie they are at the center of change. Tom friedman they are change. They have these giant platforms where, if you want to have a skill for your voice, you really need to leverage it. Charlie you learned to leverage or not. Let me go you learn how to leverage or not. Let me go to donald trump. Whatever the forces that put him in the position, he is one of the two people most likely to be president of the United States, a very powerful job. Do you find him prepared, equipped . Would he handle the job, all that . Tom friedman from every thing i have heard him say, i would say hes the least prepared person to run for president in my lifetime. In this sense, charlie, you could have any position you want in globalization. I have no problem with that. Before whatever you want. But just