Return to Transcripts main page

Fareed Zakaria GPS

Interview with Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg; Interview with Michael Hayden; Interview with Michael Bloomberg

Aired November 03, 2013 - 10:00   ET

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

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. We have a great show for you today. We will start with the NSA spying and the uproar it has caused, in Europe, especially. Germany's former defense minister will explain what is going on there. And then, the former NSA director, Michael Hayden, will help us understand what America's spies are really doing around the world. Also, Michael Bloomberg has been called the mayor of the world. With the election of his successor on hand, what lessons does Bloomberg have to share with us? One of them, cities need rich people. He'll explain.

And the latest weapon against bad guys, it's not a newfangled drone or a bunker buster bomb, it's simply Britney. I'll explain.

But, first, here's my take: The revelations about the National Security Agency and its spying on foreign, even allied leaders, has been embarrassing for the Obama administration at a time when it hardly needs more bad news.

But is it more than an embarrassment? Should it raise alarms abroad and at home?

At first glance, this is a story that is less about ethics and more about power, the great power gap between the United States and other countries, even rich European ones.

The most illuminating response to the revelations came from Bernard Kouchner, formerly the foreign minister of France. He said in a radio interview, "Let's be honest, we eavesdrop too. Everyone is listening to everyone else."

Kouchner went on to add, "We don't have the same means as the United States, which makes us jealous."

America spends tens of billions of dollars on intelligence collection. It's hard to get the data to make good comparisons, but it's safe to assume that Washington's intelligence budget dwarfs that of other countries just as it does with defense spending.

It has seemed particularly strange that this rift should develop between the United States and its closest allies in Europe. But it was predictable and in fact, in a sense, predicted.

In 2002, the British diplomat Robert Cooper wrote an influential essay in which he argued that Europe had become a "postmodern" international system in which force was no longer a serious option.

Instead, economic interdependence and cooperation were the governing ideas of statecraft. And certainly when one looks at the European Union, this does seem to describe its reality. The prospect of war between France and Germany, which had gone to war three times between 1870 and 1950, seems utterly impossible.

But outside of Europe, the world is not post-modern. Cooper argues that the solution is "double standards." Within Europe, one set of rules. Outside it, he recommends "rougher methods of an earlier era, force, preemptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary."

"Among ourselves we keep the law, but when operating in the jungle, we must use the laws of the jungle," he wrote.

This is what was violated by the NSA activities. Washington was playing by the laws of the jungle, but inside Europe's "postmodern" system. Partly this is because the distinction is not easy to maintain. What if you're looking for terrorists within Europe, that is, people who still play by the laws of the jungle or even worse?

You see, America as a global power is operating all over the world, trying to tackle some of the nastiest threats out there. Perhaps it doesn't have the luxury to retreat to a garden and renounce nasty tactics.

If it did, it's not likely that China, Russia, Iran, not to mention al Qaeda would follow suit. But precisely because Washington has to get its hands dirty, it should be smart about this.

You don't stop terrorists in Europe by listening in on Angela Merkel's cell phone. The rewards of spying on friendly heads of government are probably outweighed by the risks.

And most troubling, it's not clear that many of these specific activities were clearly thought through and directed by the White House. Nor do they appear to have been vetted by Congress.

In the wake of 9/11, America got scared and dropped any sense of constraints on its intelligence activities. It is not an accident that the eavesdropping on Chancellor Merkel began in 2002.

But the fact that technology now allows the NSA to do anything doesn't mean it should do everything. We need a better and clearer set of rules for intelligence activity. And we need confidence that these rules are being followed and observed.

Let's get started.

So given those realities I just talked about, what is really going on in the heads of European officials? Is all this anger and outrage genuine? Who better to ask than a former top official who can speak freely?

That's why I've invite Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg to come on. He was Germany's Defense Minister from 2009 to 2011, before that the nation's minister of economics and technology.

He's now a distinguished statesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here in the United States.

Welcome.

KARL-THEODOR ZU GUTTENBERG, FORMER GERMAN DEFENSE MINISTER AND MINISTER OF ECONOMICS AND TECHNOLOGY: Pleasure to be here, Fareed.

So, when you were in the defense ministry, you must have seen all this stuff and you must have seen the espionage, counter-espionage. Did you assume that the United States was spying on -- in Germany.

GUTTENBERG: Well, everyone spies on each other. That's a fact. And, at the moment, we hear interesting voices (inaudible) tries to deny that we don't do it and they do it. Everybody does it.

What I didn't know and I didn't have an idea of the level of (inaudible) spies. So we wouldn't have made the decision to spy on the top level of alliance partners, of allies.

That was -- that's definitely a new dimension and that's probably one of the main reasons for the outrage in Germany at the moment.

ZAKARIA: Let me ask you, does the German government not try to get information on what the president of France is thinking?

GUTTENBERG: We have close relationships and the first thing to do is usually to pick up the phone and talk to your partners and not to tap the phone. So there's -- there are steps you usually should go and we were not interested of spying on the top level of other partners.

ZAKARIA: So what do you think that this means for European- American relations? How serious has the breach of trust been?

GUTTENBERG: It's rather serious. It's something new. We've had misunderstandings on one or the other side. We have different perceptions on certain issues, namely Iraq, Guantanamo, or even climate change and other things.

So but we also had a pragmatic way to reach out to each other and to find a solution. Now, we are at the level that European leaders don't only lose faith in a partner, but also their face.

So the face-losing aspect of it is actually that you've -- take the example of Angela Merkel. She was defending the NSA program this summer. She was publicly defending it despite being in an election campaign.

It was not very popular, as you can imagine, but she, as a committed Trans-Atlanticist, she defended the NSA program. And, then, to learn, two or three months later, that she personally was tapped.

And, then, to learn that actually the American President knew about it already in summer, that's one of the moments which I could consider as being face-losing relevant.

ZAKARIA: And you know Angela Merkel well. You served as her defense minister. How angry do you think she is?

GUTTENBERG: She is, I think, really disappointed and she is a very analytical person, but she shows lots of emotions when it comes to the Trans-Atlantic friendship and partnership.

And to have someone on the other side of the Atlantic who is not willing to communicate at the moment when you need to talk to each other, such things can be resolved, and someone who is not willing to send some over to Germany to explain what is happening or to Paris or to other places.

But to wait up until the moment a German delegation comes to Washington, I think those are tiny, little diplomatic steps that would be incredibly helpful if they would be installed in the right place.

ZAKARIA: Pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much.

GUTTENBERG: Great to be here. Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Up next, the other side of the story I think. I'm going to speak with the man who both ran the National Security Agency as well as the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Hayden, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: And now for the American side of the story.

I welcome General Michael Hayden, who ran the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005 and then ran the CIA from 2006 to 2009.

He is now a principal with the Chertoff Group.

Welcome back to the show, Michael.

MICHAEL HAYDEN, FORMER CIA AND NSA DIRECTOR: Thank you very much, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: So let's focus in on this issue of eavesdropping on senior officials of allied governments, because I think, you know, there is this distinction about collecting metadata traffic and phone calls and e-mails from across Europe.

Tell me, how would it work if a -- if the National Security Agency were -- were tapping the cell phone of a senior leader of an allied government?

Who would have made that decision?

How -- what would the process have been?

HAYDEN: Well, it depends on the senior leader. It depends on the intelligence requirements. I mean very often, Fareed, what you get are very specific intelligence requirements from our National Command Authority and they are laid out to the intelligence community. And then the intelligence community goes forward and lays out a collection plan, the best way to get that very needed information.

Occasionally, Fareed, occasionally, what you have is political guidance kind of being placed on top of your operational planning. I had political guidance while I was director of NSA. I had targets. I had legitimate needs.

But I was told, frankly, back off. That target is too sensitive. I don't want you doing that at this time for this purpose.

ZAKARIA: Does that mean that somebody in the White House very high up would have had to say, in 2002 -- so this is the George W. Bush White House -- somebody would have had to say it is OK to spy on the chancellor of Germany, that the NSA would not have done that without such authorization?

HAYDEN: No, and I don't want to talk about anything specifically, Fareed. I just -- I'm just not able to do that.

But I would say that the political guidance was very often by exception.

But there was a broad understanding that of the things you were being tasked to do, you would be led to certain kinds of activities.

Look, Fareed, I listened to the -- to the minister and he gave a very powerful argument as to why activities like this could sometimes lead to damaged relationships. Now, let me give you a sense of my world, because what we really have here is worlds colliding.

When the president, President Obama won the election, I mean he was addicted to his BlackBerry. And he wanted to keep his BlackBerry.

And, boy, we were really nervous about that and suggested he not do that.

And he, frankly, told us we're going to have to pry it out of his hands. So we limited -- he voluntarily limited his use and NSA put a few more security enhancements in it.

But, Fareed, let me give you the backdrop to that little vignette. We were telling the most powerful man in the most powerful nation on Earth that his personal communications, inside his own national capital, were going to be attacked by a variety of foreign intelligence services. That's my world compared to the world you just heard from the minister.

ZAKARIA: But the point he was making was that you wouldn't do this to the head of an allied government that is one of your, you know, a treaty ally of the United States of six decades that with whom you have a deep understanding.

You know, why wouldn't you just call Merkel?

HAYDEN: Well, I mean, look, there are a variety of questions. And here, Fareed, I'm just being illustrative. I mean I've not been in the room.

But I mean, when we decided to intervene against Gadhafi in Libya, the Germans were very much opposed. They didn't participate. And I'm sure a very legitimate intelligence question would have been do the Germans oppose us so strongly that they are willing to break consensus in Brussels and therefore deny you a NATO validation for this?

And then finally, again, I'm creative enough to think of Tim Geithner at some meeting in the last two or three years turning to his intelligence guy and saying, you know, I really need to know, in their heart of hearts, how far are the Germans going to go with the Greeks in preserving the Eurozone?

Now, those are all very legitimate questions. We could get an answer by direct dialogue. And I'm sure we did.

But, you know, sometimes there would have been more to the story. And I can imagine circumstances where, what I just described, those are legitimate intelligence issues.

ZAKARIA: Do you think that the Germans don't spy on the French at this senior level?

HAYDEN: I --

ZAKARIA: That is the level of president of France?

HAYDEN: I don't -- I don't know what another service would do against another friend. It's not something we look into. But I would suspect that Germany and France and a whole bunch of other countries would do what they considered to be in their national interest.

Now, Fareed, to be very fair, in your national interest is not alienating a friend on whose cooperation you rely. And so, you do have this very serious trade-off.

And I think the minister hit a very, very good point here. This wasn't just a matter of preserving faith, it was a matter of protecting face. I mean, whether or not we did this, whether or not the chancellor already believed we did this, frankly, whether or not the Germans even knew about this, that's not the issue.

The issue is that it's very public and is embarrassing the chancellor.

ZAKARIA: What about the issue of whether or not the White House knew, whether or not the president knew?

Dianne Feinstein claims that she didn't know.

What troubles many of us, Mike, is not the actual activities here but the idea that they are happening in some kind of strange gray zone where it's not entirely clear who is authorizing this stuff and whether it is being -- whether it is being overseen in an appropriate manner for a constitutional democracy.

HAYDEN: Yes. Here's how I would look at it. If the president says he didn't know, he didn't know. I just take that at face value.

If, however, Fareed, we get sentences like the White House didn't know or the administration didn't know or the National Security Council didn't know, boy, I've really got problems accepting that.

What is it they thought we were going to do with those intelligence requirements?

And where did they think this stuff was coming from when we answered those requirements?

ZAKARIA: In other words, they would -- they would have given general directives and they should have been smart enough to realize how that stuff was being collected?

HAYDEN: At -- Fareed, at a minimum, at a minimum.

ZAKARIA: But that -- but that is -- is that a little bit like, you know, the famous case in British history of the -- of the king of England saying, when he wanted the Archbishop of Canterbury assassinated, he said, will someone rid me of this meddlesome priest?

And that way he has plausible deniability?

HAYDEN: Actually, Fareed, it's funny you bring that up. That thought has occurred to me in the last 48 hours while watching all the press coverage.

No, it's not that. General Clapper and General Alexander commented in their appearance before the House Intelligence Committee about the national intelligence priorities framework.

I mean, Fareed, you huddle in the West Wing, in the Sit Room, at the Cabinet level, every six months, hammering out intelligence priorities, countries down the side, topics are on -- across the top and where those two vectors meet, you put a number.

And if the number is one or two, that's a really high priority.

And so everyone knows what's going on. If -- look, if you give a requirement like that a high priority, you're telling the intelligence community to embrace some measure of risk in order to get that intelligence for you.

ZAKARIA: All right, a final thought, Michael Hayden, what would you do now?

HAYDEN: Well, right now, I think we've got to necessarily -- and I don't mean to demean this, Fareed -- we've got a fair amount of political theater. Our good friend, the chancellor, is and has to act enraged. And our president really -- and for the benefit of the public -- has to go and, in essence, step back.

But, Fareed, we've got to be careful here not to overachieve. We had a crisis of conscience in the '90s and we told our human intelligence collectors to stand down and don't talk to bad people. And we suffered for that.

We could also suffer if we overachieve now and tell our electronic intelligence folks to stand down and never listen to good people.

So we've got choices to make, too.

ZAKARIA: Mike Hayden, always a pleasure.

HAYDEN: Thank you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Up next, What in the World. It's not just France and Germany. For a different reason Saudi Arabia is upset with the United States. But, this time, Washington may actually be doing something right. I'll explain when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, ANCHOR: I'm Candy Crowley in Washington with a check of the headlines.

There are new details about the shooting rampage in Los Angeles International Airport. Federal authorities say suspected gunman Paul Ciancia shot TSA Officer Geraldo Hernandez multiple times at point blank range, went up an escalator and then returned to shoot Hernandez again.

Earlier on CNN's State of the Union, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul described what police found on the gunman as a suicide note and said that mental illness was a chief reason behind the shooting.

The 23-year-old Ciancia is currently hospitalized in police custody. He is charged with two felonies, including the murder of a federal officer.

Terminal 3 at LAX is open today.

Secretary of State John Kerry is in the Middle East for meetings with U.S. allies. One of Kerry's key missions is to smooth relations with Saudi Arabia which is upset about U.S. policies in the region.

Kerry's first stop today was Egypt where he told the foreign minister that U.S. ties go deeper than aid. It was Kerry's first trip to the country since the U.S. suspended significant military aid to Egypt over the bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Those are your top stories. Reliable Sources is at the top of the hour, but, now, back to Fareed Zakaria, GPS.

ZAKARIA: Now for our What in the World segment. America's Middle East policies are failing, we're told, and the best evidence is that Saudi Arabia is furious.

Dick Cheney, John McCain and Lindsey Graham have all sounded the alarm about Riyadh's recent rejection of a seat on the U.N. Security Council. But whatever one thinks of the Obama Administration's handling of the region, surely the last measure of American foreign policy should be how it is received by the House of Saud.

If there were a prize for Most Irresponsible Foreign Policy it would surely be awarded to Saudi Arabia. It is the nation most responsible for the rise of Islamic radicalism and militancy around the world.

Over the past four decades, the kingdom's immense oil wealth has been used to underwrite the export of an extreme, intolerant and violent version of Islam preached by its Wahhabi clerics.

Go anywhere in the world from Germany to Indonesia and you'll find Islamic centers flush with Saudi money, spouting intolerance and hate. In 2007, Stuart Levey, then a top Treasury official, told ABC News; Brian Ross, "If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia."

In a December 2009 cable, leaked by WikiLeaks, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed that Saudi Arabia remained a "critical financial base" for terrorism and that Riyadh "has taken only limited action" to stop the flow of funds to the Taliban and other such terrorist groups.

Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries in the world to recognize and support the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan until the 9/11 attacks. It is also a major player in Pakistan, now home to most of the world's deadliest terrorists.

The country's former Law Minister Iqbal Haider told a German news agency that there was no doubt Saudi Arabia was supporting Wahhabi groups throughout the country.

Ever since al-Qaeda attacked Riyadh directly in 2003, the Saudis have stamped down on terrorism at home. But they have not ended support for Wahhabi clerics, centers, madrasahs or militants abroad. During the Iraq War, much of the support for Sunni jihadis came from Saudi sources, a pattern that continues in Syria today.

Saudi officials have expressed dismay at President Obama's policies in Syria and Iran, but its objections are not framed by humanitarian concerns for the people of those countries. Instead, they are rooted in a pervasive anti-Shi'ite ideology.

Remember, the House of Saud is Sunni. Riyadh has long treated all other versions and sects of Islam as heresy. It has condoned the systemic oppression of other groups.

You see, the regime fears that any kind of empowerment of the Shia anywhere could embolden the 15 percent of Saudi Arabia's population that is Shia and happens to live in the part of the country where most of the oil reserves can be found. That's why the Saudis sent troops into neighboring Bahrain in the Arab Spring of 2011, to crush the Shia majority uprising.

Saudi royals have been rattled by the events in their region and beyond. They sense that the discontent that launched the Arab Spring is not entirely absent in their own population.

They fear the rehabilitation of Iran. They also know that the United States might very soon find itself independent of Middle Eastern oil. Given these strands, it is possible that Saudi Arabia worries that a seat on the U.N. Security Council might constrain it from having maximum freedom of action or that the position could shine a light on some of its more unorthodox activities or that it could force Riyadh to vote on issues it would rather punt on or ignore. It's also possible that the Saudis acted in the sudden fit of pit (ph). After all that it had spent years lobbying for the seat. Whatever the reason, let's concede that yes, Saudi Arabia is angry with the United States. But are we sure that that is a sign that Washington is doing something wrong? For more, go to cnn.com/Fareed where you can read my "Time" magazine column this week. Up next, my conversation with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: On Tuesday, a smattering of Americans will go to vote. It obviously isn't a presidential election year. It isn't even a regular Congressional election year.

But there are mayors and governors and other officials who need to be voted into office.

One of these elections takes place in New York, to replace Michael Bloomberg.

He has famously served three terms as mayor in a city where two used to be the limit.

But his time has now run out.

I sat down with the mayor at the recent Clinton Global Initiative conference and I asked him to reflect on the past and the future.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: What do you think, coming out of the business world, what is the main thing you've learned about being mayor?

What's different?

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (I), NEW YORK: Well, basically, there's an awful lot more similarities than differences. The objective is to get the great people, give them authority to go along with responsibility, have their backs, get them the resources, make them work together. And that's true whether you're running a business or a city or a state or a country. And if you can attract the best and the brightest from around the world, they'll come up with the ideas. The executive's job is not to do that. The executive's job is to find the people.

ZAKARIA: Do you think the American system is resilient enough to withstand what is happening in Washington these days?

BLOOMBERG: Yes, sure. I mean the good old days were never the good old days. We've had partisanship. We've had parties go out of business. We've gone through crises. And as Winston Churchill said, you can always depend on the Americans to do the right thing after trying everything else.

(LAUGHTER)

ZAKARIA: We're currently in that phase.

How do you make a city thrive and survive in today's economy?

With all the challenges that the economy has today, what do you think the key to the success of a city is?

BLOOMBERG: It has to be open to everyone. A very diverse population really makes a big difference. You have to have a raison d'etre. The city has got to have a spirit and a reason why people want to go there and live there.

And one of the problems with Washington, DC is everybody lives there, but they look out. They never think they're going to stay there for the rest of their lives. They're always waiting to go home.

New York City or other great cities, people want to come there. And today, there are many people that are moving to New York City than leaving for the first time in decades. We have more tourists than ever before. More people have jobs than ever before.

And that creates a dynamic place where the best and the brightest want to be.

And if the best and the brightest want to be there, they'll create and generate a tax base so that you can take care of the less fortunate.

But the real key -- and it's not a populist thing to say -- not popular to say, because it's not populist, but you have to have the wherewithal, those people who are willing to think out of the box try new things, start new businesses, take risks, if you're ever going to have a future.

Otherwise, you do the same thing. And if you do the same thing, we know where that ends, not prettily.

ZAKARIA: You've also talked about how it's very important for a city like New York to have a bunch of very rich people so you could tax them...

BLOOMBERG: Sure. Sure.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

ZAKARIA: You are...

BLOOMBERG: A very small...

ZAKARIA: -- unapologetic about that.

BLOOMBERG: No, very small -- well, the fact of the matter is a very small percentage of the people pay the preponderance of the taxes. And if you don't want the tax revenue, then you can lose those people. But if you want to have the ability to go and invest in infrastructure, invest in cultural institutions, have social programs that can really help people who are less fortunate, you have to have the dynamic drive, the people that are creative and the revenue. and that comes from people who do well. And in our city, the poor actually are a little bit better than the poor in other big cities. But the real reason for this great inequality, as people describe it, or gap in income, is we have been very successful in attracting the very, very wealthy. Those come here and they spend money and they create businesses.

And they can go elsewhere, as they are very mobile. They're the one group that has the resources to go.

But interestingly enough, if you were to take the top 20 percent out and look at just the 80 percent that's left, the income or net worth is 100 percent correlated to academic achievement. And more and more, we are going to be facing the fact that the demands for society are greater and perhaps greater than we can teach or the average person can learn.

And how that works out, I don't know. But it is -- it is clear that if you have a better education and if you can be more creative, you will do better. And if you don't, then, unfortunately, we'll -- you're going to be struggling.

ZAKARIA: What are you worried about when you look at New York after Bloomberg?

What are you worried about being undone or a legacy that, you know, of government that will be perhaps eroded or atrophied?

What...

BLOOMBERG: Well, I think most of the things we've done, hopefully, if we've done a good job, will stay in place. Yesterday, I was in London. The weather was nice, so you think better of any city when the sun is shining. But London is a real competitor to New York.

And we've got to understand if I we were to stop improving, stop diversifying, stop investing, we will get pushed back and other places will take over. I was in Paris the day before and I had dinner with some people, all of whom talked about all their friends moving out of -- out of Paris and out of France because the tax rates are so high.

Those are the people who are going to create the jobs and pay the taxes down the road.

You can't -- you can't hold the waves from coming in. You've got to keep making your society open and you've got to keep providing opportunities.

But if you start to focus on equal results rather than equal opportunity, unfortunately, you start to dumb everything down. And if you do that, you're going to get hopelessly left behind.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

ZAKARIA: Up next, one year after Hurricane Sandy, more from Mayor Bloomberg and others on what cities can do to deal with the effects of climate change.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: One of the big trends of the last few decades has been the growth of cities. More and more people around the world are moving to urban centers. And with that, cities have grown in power and importance. But what can a city do to combat something even bigger, climate change? I had a great set of panelists recently at the Clinton Global Initiative. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, Judith Rodin, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation and Jim Kim, the president of the World Bank. Listen in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: One of the big trends of the last few decades has been the growth of cities. More and more people around the world are moving to urban centers. And with that, cities have grown in power and importance. But what can a city do to combat something even bigger? Climate change. I had a great set of panelists recently at the Clinton Global Initiative. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, Judith Rodin, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Jim Kim, the president of the World Bank. Listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Jim Kim, sketch for us the broader issue of resilience. You have looked at cities all over the world. You are doing work at the World Bank trying to help these cities. What do you think is the challenge they face?

JIM YOUNG KIM, PRESIDENT, WORLD BANK: Cities are responsible for 70 percent of the carbon that goes up in the air. So we have to think about how cities are structured and how they're built. Because first of all, the future of the planet really depends on how we build the cities. But at the same time, we see that disasters have been increasing. And so cities have to build in a kind of resilience to be able to respond. Mayor Bloomberg certainly did this after Sandy.

But the numbers are really kind of staggering. 70 percent of all the carbon emissions, China itself by in the next 20 years is going to have a billion people living in cities. So one country will have a billion city dwellers. And if you look at how they're doing planning, in some places, cities are well planned, cities go forward, but in the vast majority of places, cities don't even have the capacity to begin planning for resilience, to begin thinking about their carbon emissions. Only about 20 percent of all the major cities, including in developed countries, can measure their own greenhouse gases.

In the developing world, what's really difficult is that cities are not creditworthy. So in -- of the 500 largest cities in the developing world, only 4 percent are internationally creditworthy. Higher percentage that are nationally creditworthy, but they need the financing, they need the technology, they need the sort of know-how to plan and build cities that will be cleaner and greener, more livable, and at the same time, make the contribution they need to make to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

ZAKARIA: Judith Rodin, when you look at this at the Rockefeller Foundation, what do you think is the key to building this kind of resilience?

JUDITH RODIN, PRESIDENT, ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION: Resilience is about the ability to rebound more quickly and more effectively after these shocks and stresses. So we need much more robust systems. We need better building codes and land use planning. Obviously technology because we have to get real-time information and real-time decision making, but we also need to build community capacity and social resilience.

The mayor talked about education and the education gaps. It's interesting if you think about Medellin, for example, that they decided that the way to combat the drug cartels and the terrible violence they had was really to build social resilience, to build a much better education system, to build a community fabric. The response in various neighborhoods in Chicago to the 1995 heat wave, which was totally unpredicted, had to do community by community equally hard hit by the kind of social and community fabric. So resilience is really about all of those elements and more than climate change. The next shock could be terror, it could be an economic crisis.

ZAKARIA: Mike, you have tried both before but even after, particularly after Sandy, to lay out a plan for New York in terms of investments that would make it even more resilient. It strikes me that you run up against two big political problems. First there is still a big debate, certainly in Washington, as to whether climate change is real and man-made, and secondly there's not an appetite for big public investment.

(CROSSTALK)

BLOOMBERG: The problems with big public investment is the payoff is down the road. And we live more and more every day in a me, now, I want it kind of world. And we're unwilling to make investments for our grandchildren and we're getting to the point we're unwilling to make investments for our children.

ZAKARIA: What about climate change? Because you have gotten into trouble for your views on climate change.

BLOOMBERG: I would argue, don't make the argument that the world is going to be different 50 years from now. Nobody cares about 50 years from now. It's like Congress saying we're going to have some standards that have to be met by the year 2050, which is only, you know, 37 years from now. Nobody is going to be around. Not one person in Congress is going to be in Congress then. So you can't hold their feet to the fire. You have got to make it for me, my kid, now.

ZAKARIA: Do you look at a place like Singapore or Chinese cities and say, these guys are planning for the future?

BLOOMBERG: There's no question about that. We had 20 odd mayors from Chinese cities in the other day in city hall, and all of them were talking about plans they had, and they are actually going ahead.

It's not to say that I'd rather live in China and have China's form of government, but there's no question that China is going to be the next big country that has a very big environmental agenda. I know they are still building a carbon-fuelled power plant every week, but all of a sudden they have got the following problem. They brought 150 million people into the middle class. Those people don't want to breathe air they can see. They don't want to drink colored water. They want to be able to get to work and get home. They want to be able to be healthy and live longer lives, and the Chinese government is a very responsive government. They've got big ethnic problems in the west, and this is another problem they don't need.

And so I think you will see them change the whole economic development at any cost, environment notwithstanding, to all of a sudden environmental things.

And what Jim said is he saw that already. And I see it at C-40. They are starting to send mayors or the mayors come -- and they don't do that without permission from the central government. They are -- we sit around and we complain about the Chinese. We should look in the mirror. It's America that is where the people don't believe in climate change, or some. It's America where they don't want, because for political reasons, don't want to make any long-term investments, or when they do, they are so responsive to the demands of a handful of companies that want to enhance their profits, they don't do what's right.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: That was Michael Bloomberg, Jim Kim and Judith Rodin at the Clinton Global Initiative.

Up next, it might be music to your ears, but to the bad guys it's like kryptonite.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Sunday morning at 2:00 A.M., time in most of North America fell back an hour marking the end of daylight saving time. The extra hour of sleep has me thinking about time and time zones and it led to our question of the week. What is the largest country in the world by area that operates in a single time zone? Is it A, China, B, Brazil, C, Australia, or D, India? Stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer.

This week's book of the week is "If Kennedy Lived" by Jeff Greenfield. On the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, this is the book to read. An intelligent, often haunting book about what America and the world would have looked like if John Kennedy had lived. Spoiler alert, according to Greenfield, no Vietnam, but no Civil Rights Act either. It's a clever, moving book.

And now for the last look. Last week a U.N. report suggested that piracy off the coast of Somalia has dropped to the lowest level in seven years. Ban Ki-moon credited the decline to improve the international policing and prosecution as well as better security and information sharing. One Scottish merchant Navy officer reported this week that there might be additional reasons for the drop. Britney Spears. The officer told a U.K. paper that blasting songs like Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time" and "Oops, I Did It Again," is effective in deterring approaching pirates. This isn't altogether surprising. Loud noises have successfully fended off pirates in the past and repetitive music has been used as an interrogation tactic for years. One operative at Guantanamo reported that among others ...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I love you. You love me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: "I Love You" by that cuddly-purple dinosaur named Barney was used in interrogations at the Naval base there. A prisoner detained in Kabul told Human Rights Watch that Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady" played for 20 days on end. And in 1989, the U.S. Army played music to smoke out Manuel Noriega from the Vatican embassy in Panama City, while in the 1990s, the FBI used Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walking" to try and force cult leader David Koresh out of the Waco compound. Somali piracy may be at a low, but just last week the White House said it was concerned by a disturbing increase in piracy on the other side of Africa after two U.S. sailors were taken hostage in the Gulf of Guinea. If pop music is at all a useful tool go ahead and as Britney Spears says, hit them, baby, one more time.

The correct answer is A, all of the clocks in China are supposed to be set to China standard time. Until the 1940s, the country had five time zones, but that was changed to one when the Communist Party took power in 1949 for the sake of efficiency, of course. That makes for another time superlative -- the biggest time jump between adjacent countries in the world occurs at the border between Afghanistan and China. 3.5 hours. So perhaps you can have dinner in China, then step across the border into Afghanistan and there's still time for a late lunch. Anyone know a good lunch spot in the Hindu Kush? Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week. Stay tuned for "Reliable Sources."