Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen debate the global reach of technology and the implications on countries such as China and Iran.
Bio
Jared Cohen
Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the co-author (along with Google executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt) of The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. Previously, he served as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff and as a close advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.
Cohen has conducted research in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and throughout Africa. As part of his research, he has interviewed members of Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the Taliban. He is the author of the books Children of Jihad and One Hundred Days of Silence. He co-authored (with Schmidt) "The Digital Disruption: Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power," which appeared in Foreign Affairs just a few months before the Arab Spring. 2013's The New Digital Age offers a vision of our increasingly interconnected future, answering the question of how everything in the physical world will change over the next decade as five billion new users enter the digital world. Among Cohen's additional publications are Diverting the Radicalization Track (Policy Review), Iran's De Facto Opposition: Youth in Post-revolutionary Iran (SAIS Review), and Passive Revolution: Is Political Resistance Dead or Alive in Iran (Hoover Digest).
In 2011, Vanity Fair named Cohen a member of the "Next Establishment," The Washington Post and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government named him one of six "Top American Leaders," and Foreign Policy listed him as one of the "Top 100 Global Thinkers." He was named by Christian Science Monitor as one of the "Top 30 Under 30"; named by Business Insider as one of the "20 Brazen Young Professionals to Watch"; selected by the Huffington Post as one of "100 Game Changers"; and chosen by Devex as one of the "40 Under 40." He also won the 2010 and 2011 Tribeca Film Festival Disruptive Innovation Awards for his intervention in Iran's Green Revolution and most influential article of the year, respectively. He has been awarded the Secretary of State's Meritorious Honor Award twice, once by Condoleezza Rice and once by Hillary Clinton.
Jared Cohen currently serves as a member of the National Counterterrorism Center's (NCTC) Director's Advisory Board. He received his BA from Stanford University and his M.Phil in international relations from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
Richard N. Haass
Richard Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the preeminent independent, nonpartisan organization in the United States dedicated to the study of American foreign policy. Until June 2003, Haass was director of policy planning for the Department of State as well as US coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan and US envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process. He was also special assistant to President George H.W. Bush and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council from 1989 to 1993. Haass is the author or editor of eleven books on American foreign policy, including War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars and one book on management. He is a Rhodes Scholar.
Eric Schmidt
Eric E. Schmidt is executive chairman of Google. Since joining the startup in 2001, Schmidt has helped grow the company to be a global leader in technology. As executive chairman, he is responsible for the external matters of Google: building partnerships and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership, and advising the CEO and senior leadership on business and policy issues. From 2001 to 2011, Schmidt served as Google’s CEO, overseeing the company’s technical and business strategy alongside its founder. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its product offerings while maintaining a strong culture of innovation. Schmidt is a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council in the UK. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006 and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a fellow in 2007.
Somebody from the CFR needs to explain aahhh to their President aahhh Richard Haass that aahhh when public speaking aahhh one really wants to aahhh avoid continuously breaking up their sentences aahhh with "aahhh."
I became so agitated I nearly decided to type out the transcript with all the "aahhh" in the setup for the discussion as proof. I hope someone from the CFR will make him listen to himself and help him out.
The topic of this discussion really appealed to me but I'll have to go calm down before I come back to it.
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