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Fareed Zakaria GPS

What's Happening with the World's Hot Spots?; Interview with LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman; Obama Visited Vietnam This Week. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired May 29, 2016 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:08] 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 starting with a tour of the world's hot spots. Afghanistan, where the Taliban have a new leader. Iraq where there's fierce fighting to take back towns like Fallujah from ISIS. Israel where some say the military is in open revolt against Bibi Netanyahu. And a federal court order to desegregate schools. No, this is not 1954. This is the United States of today. The return of segregation.

Also Facebook, PayPal, LinkedIn, three of Silicon Valley's most important companies Reed Hoffman has been crucial in each. The ultimate entrepreneur and investor will tell me what the future of technology looks like and how he networks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REID HOFFMAN, INTERNET ENTREPRENEUR: I'll be a janitor. I just want to work here and start working my way up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Finally, they are burning the barricades in France again. Can you hear the people sing? Well, surely you can hear them shout about what the French have been forced to do to actually improve their economy.

But first, here's my take. Donald Trump's positions on public policy have shifted over the years, months, even days, but on one issue, he has been utterly consistent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This country is utterly a hell hole. We are going down fast.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: This notion of a country in decline is at the heart of Trump's campaign and his message which is of course to make America great again. But in fact it is increasingly clear that the United States has in recent years re-enforced its position as the world's leading economic, technological, military and political power. The country dominates virtually all leading industries from social networks, to mobile telephony, to nano and bio technology like never before.

It has transformed itself into an energy superpower, while also moving to the cutting edge of the green technology revolution. And it is demographically vibrant, while all its major economic peers, Japan, Europe and even China, face certain population decline.

Joshua Cooper Ramo, the author of an intelligent new book "The Seventh Sense" argues that in an age of networks, the winner often takes all. He points out that there are nine global tech platforms. Google Chrome, Facebook, Microsoft Office, et cetera, that are used by over one billion people. All dominate their respective markets and all are American.

In a pair of essays, scholars Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth point out that China is the closest the United States has to a rising rival, but only on one measure, GDP. Brooks and Wohlforth note that half of China's exports are actually imported into China as parts assembled there and then exported out mostly for Western multinationals.

In the military and political realm, America's dominance is even more lopsided. Take the most potent form of forced projection, aircraft carriers, the United States operates 10, China currently has one, a secondhand Ukrainian ship that it had to retrofit.

In the realm of high-tech warfare, drones, stealth, Washington's lead is even greater. And perhaps most important, the United States has a web of allies around the world and is actually developing new ones like India and Vietnam. Meanwhile China has one military ally, North Korea.

The complexity of today's international system is that despite this American dominance, other countries have in fact gained ground. In 1990, China's share of global GDP was 1.7 percent, today it's 15 percent. Developing countries as a whole have gone from about 20 percent of the global economy to 40 percent in the same period. And while GDP is not everything, it is a reflection of the realty that no single country, not even the United States can impose its will on the rest.

I tried to describe this emerging landscape in my 2008 book, the "Post-American World," in which I wrote, "Washington still has no true rival and will not for a very long time, but it faces a growing number of constraints."

China has large and growing influence in the world, as could be seen by its ability to create the Asian infrastructure investment bank this past year over Washington's objections. Rising regional powers like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, assert their own interest in the Middle East, often disrupting American efforts.

[10:05:06] Even Pakistan, an ally and aid recipient, quietly defies America and Afghanistan by supporting the Taliban.

The reality is that America remains the world's leading power, but it can only achieve its objectives by defining its interests broadly, working with others and creating a network of cooperation. That alas does not fit on a campaign camp.

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

There is lots happening in the world today, we've got a great panel to talk about it.

Anne-Marie Slaughter is the president and CEO of the think tank New America. She is the former State Department director of Policy Planning. Bret Stephens is the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the "Wall Street Journal" and the deputy editor of the page's editorial page. Vali Nasr is the dean of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He was a top State Department official. And Peter Beinart is a CNN political commentator, contributor to the "Atlantic" and a professor of journalism and political science at CUNY.

Bret, I want to talk to you about a very controversial and rather graphic video that has divided and inflamed Israel. It shows an Israeli soldier fatally shooting an already wounded Palestinian man, suspected in a knife attack. The soldier's attorney say that the soldier feared for his life but an assessment by the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, found that the wounded man posed no apparent threat when the shooting took place.

What then happened is the series of political events which ended with the firing of the Defense minister and seemingly with some top military officials criticizing the government.

What is going on? Is there a -- you know, the way it's been portrayed is that the military, the generals in Israel feel that the government has become too kind of aggressive in its use of counterterrorism and it's willing to violate basic military protocol.

BRET STEPHENS, COLUMNIST, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, look, judging from the video, it seems clear that that soldier killed that Palestinian assailant pretty much in cold blood. And he's now on trial for manslaughter. He faces up to I think 20 years in prison. And if what the video seems to show proves to be the case, I think he should pay a very, very heavy sentence. And so that's one issue.

Now politically this issue was taken up by a number of right-wing politicians, especially the new Defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, to say, hey, this Palestinian was trying to kill one of our boys and essentially to say he deserved what he got. And of course the military is I think rightfully aghast at that point of view. It doesn't serve Israel's interests in any way.

But there's a secondary issue, which is the military's certain decision and of the former Defense minister's decision to say to his officers, you guys can say what you want in public about the political statements and moves of your civilian masters and that seems to be a very separate issue because in a democracy the principle of civilian control over the military -- of a military staying away from politics is very important. It's what Obama asserted with McChrystal. Harry Truman with Douglas McArthur and should be the case in Israel.

ZAKARIA: But what the generals, I think, would argue that the behavior of this politicians crosses a line where it threatens Israeli democracy itself, right, Peter?

PETER BEINART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right. And what's fascinating about it is really politics, really for quite a few years now is that the most powerful opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu has been not from the very weak party to his left but from the security and military establishment both on Iran and a number of very, very strong statements from former leaders and heads of internal and external security services about the path that Israel is going down because what makes the problem complicated when you talk about the military's role in a democracy is that for 49 years now Israel has been holding a territory in which Israel is not a democracy because the vast majority of people in the West Bank cannot vote, are not citizens of the state that controls their lives.

Avigdor Lieberman himself, Israel's new Defense minister, lives in a settlement. He does not live in a democracy. And I think this is the sense of fear, the erosion, in a way it's almost a parallel of what you're seeing in the Republican Party. The Likud on the Israeli right was a conservative party that had a parliamentary individual rights tradition. People like Avigdor Lieberman represents the overthrow of that but with a kind of hyper nationalist thuggish authoritarian politics so a little bit ala Donald Trump and the military is pushing back.

STEPHENS: Look, but that's all to one side. The basic issue is, does -- do the civilians control the military? Whether you like the policies or views of those civilians. And that seems to me fundamental in any democracy that the U.S. --

(CROSSTALK)

ZAKARIA: Anne-Marie --

[10:10:05] STEPHENS: Douglas McArthur was probably a better general than the people who succeeded him. He still deserved to be fired.

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NEW AMERICA: Yes, but surely the civilian control of the military has some limits. Right? If the civilian government violates the constitution, violates basic human rights, takes the country to a place that essentially upends the constitutional order then the military has the right to stand up and say that, and from what I hear, not only the military in Israeli IDF but also the intelligence community have been saying for some time wait a minute, you know, to the government, you are putting personal and political interests ahead of the national interests and ahead of the values on which Israel was founded.

VALI NASR, DEAN, JOHNS HOPKINS SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: Well, the issues that I don't think any generals were fired in Israel, but rather a politician who tried to arctic late the military's point of view was fired. And I think you can hear --

ZAKARIA: The Defense minister.

NASR: The Defense minister and here some of the issues of gays in the military or other issues that come in the military. The military usually expresses its dissent through the secretary of Defense, but you don't have the secretary of Defense getting fired for articulating the general's position.

ZAKARIA: Let me ask a question related to this. Bernie Sanders appears to have decided that he would like to amend the Democratic platform to change the language on Israel. What's going on there?

BEINART: It's a very interesting development. The Democratic Party since 2004 has said it supports the two-state solution. But it only articulates the value of that in terms of Israel's self-interest. We support the two-state solution because it's good for Israel. It is -- it does not in any of its platforms said anything about the fact that Palestinians actually have rights and that is what Bernie Sanders' representatives, the platform committee, are going to want to talk about.

That is a very important moral shift. It's particularly important in the face of someone like Avigdor Lieberman because Avigdor Lieberman would like Israel to get its two-state solution by redrawing the border and essentially kicking Palestinian citizens of Israel out of the country.

Bernie Sanders is the kind of an accidental candidate on this issue. He didn't start talking about this but it seems to have gained steam inside his campaign and it's a sign of how the Democratic Party is shifting.

ZAKARIA: What do you think Hillary's reaction will be? The former top adviser to her.

SLAUGHTER: Well, Secretary Clinton is clear about her support for Israel's -- extraordinarily strong support for Israel, but she's been very clear about the value of a two-state solution. And I think she would say it's in Israel's interest because it is consistent with the country that Israel was founded to be and Israel's long-term stability and security. So I don't think she'd have any problems talking about Palestinian rights but the point is that's still in Israel's interest.

ZAKARIA: When we come back, we're going to talk about the rest of the world. And I will ask the hardlined conservative Bret Stephens, "Wall Street Journal" editor page guy who he's going to vote for in November.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:17:10] ZAKARIA: And we are back with Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bret Stephens, Vali Nasr and Peter Beinart. Vali, Afghanistan, leader of the Taliban killed, new leader in place.

You handled this issue for Richard Holbrooke when he was the special representative. Is there any hope here? I mean it seems like you wouldn't be killing people you thought you could negotiate with, so it seems that we're just in this unending military campaign.

NASR: Well, I think at least there has been sometime where there's a war in Washington that Afghanistan is going the way of Iraq. In other words we withdrew and reduced our presence, and it's not going to go smoothly and it may very well collapse. And I think there's a fear that we're going to have a Mosul moment in Afghanistan. So the administration first tried to slow down this withdrawal, then it tried to push very hard for reconciliation, reconciliation didn't happen. And I think there's an element of desperation here because the administration essentially escalated the war with the Taliban and then declared that it's extending the territory of the war now into Pakistan proper.

Not with the CIA but actually with American military. And it's moment to see whether this is a bluff and the Taliban and the Pakistanis will call the administration's bluff, or that the administration is really willing to reengage in this war the way it has reengaged in Iraq. But I think on the ground it was a very successful clinical strike. It was done well. But in reality actually shows that there's a huge hole in the administration's strategy and a lot of worried (INAUDIBLE).

ZAKARIA: Anne-Marie, that does seem right. At the very least it seems like it suggests negotiations are at a standstill. And you're going to have to ramp up and you're ramping up in a circumstance where you've also alienated Pakistan. I don't think there's any alternative, you know. It's worth noticing when the United States killed Osama bin Laden he was in Pakistan. When Mullah Omar died, the former leader of the Taliban, he was in Pakistan. When the current leader is assassinated, he's in Pakistan.

SLAUGHTER: Yes. This was a very clear signal to Pakistan, I think in many ways. Independent of their actual goal of killing the ahead of the Taliban, which is to say we are going after our enemies, the Afghan government's enemies, where they are, no matter.

ZAKARIA: No matter.

SLAUGHTER: And I also think you have to read this together with an extremely important announcement this week between India and Iran and Afghanistan, to build up an Iranian port, to provide India access through Iran, to Afghanistan and into Central Asia. That's essentially saying, look, you know, to the Pakistanis, you can cut a deal, we can make peace, there can be regional arrangement, or else you and China are on one side, India, Iran, Afghanistan on the other and we are going to take out our enemies wherever we find them.

ZAKARIA: You want to do a bit -- keep going on the tour of -- it seems the Iraqi government is now gearing up to try to take Fallujah, maybe even take Mosul.

[10:20:10] It's still not clear to me how well that's going to work because somebody has to then govern those lands and the Sunnis don't like the Shia government in Baghdad running them.

BEINART: Right. I mean, it seems like we're doing better militarily, the amount of territory that ISIS controls is smaller, the amount of revenue they're getting is less. But right, ultimately, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, you don't have a functional political compact to take advantage, even if you are to get military victories. And so it seems to me that ISIS, as horrible an organization it is, in some way it's a symptom of the larger problem, right?

You don't have a political contact there. You don't have a legitimate leadership from the perspective of the Sunnis. And the United States probably doesn't have enough leverage over the Iraqi government to be able to force the Iraqi government to do the kinds of things that it would need to do to gain more credibility with the Sunnis.

NASR: The Iraqi political leaders are under tremendous pressure from their base, not to appease the Sunnis, not to provide governance to this areas but essentially protect them and to punish them for this -- for the amount of suicide bombings that are happening in Iraq.

I think partly the problem is that we look at Iraq from the way we want to look at it. The Iraqis are not in this fight in order to put Iraq back together. They're really in this fight to protect Shias from what they now see as an enormous, you know, Sunni onslaught. And I think it was very key. He was also blamed on Iran but he was popular with the Shia militias to put the picture of this Saudi-Shia cleric that was killed on all the missiles and their military hardware that was shooting. The message is very clear, that this is a Shiia- Sunni fight, it's not about bringing Iraq back together.

ZAKARIA: So, Bret, I have to ask you. You have written eloquently against Donald Trump from the beginning. The rest of the establishment has pretty much collapsed and surrendered and entered his not particularly warm embrace. Are you going to vote for Donald Trump in the fall?

STEPHENS: I most certainly will not vote for Donald Trump. I will vote for the least left-wing opponent to Donald Trump and I want to make a vote and make sure that he has -- he is the biggest loser in presidential history since I don't know, Alf Landon or going back further.

It's important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this kind of ethnic, quote, conservatism, or populism be so decisively rebuke that the Republican Party and Republicans voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way shape or form.

So they have to learn a lesson and the way perhaps Democrats learned a lesson from McGovern, in '72 George Will has said let's have him lose in 50 states, why not Guam, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, too.

ZAKARIA: And will "The Wall Street Journal" editorialize to the same effect?

STEPHENS: The "Wall Street Journal" has not endorsed a candidate since Herbert Hoover and we will not repeat that mistake.

(LAUGHTER)

ZAKARIA: Bret Stephens, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Vali Nasr, Peter Beinart, thank you all very much.

Next on GPS, if you thought segregation in America was a thing of the past, you would be dead wrong. I will give you the data when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:27:14] ZAKARIA: Now for our "What in the World" segment. A federal court ordered a Mississippi school district to desegregate its middle and high schools.

No, this is not a headline from 1954. This ruling actually came down recently on the eve of the 62nd anniversary of "Brown versus Board of Education." That is of course the landmark Supreme Court case which deemed that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

It has been six decades since the Supreme Court declared that separate education was inherently unequal. But amazingly, since the 1990s, a complicated tangle of laws, discriminatory practices, gerrymandering and demographic shifts have led to a very real resurgence of segregation in America.

Let's start with education. Pro Publica calculated the number of so- called apartheid schools across the nation, schools with 1 percent or fewer white students and found that these schools had more than doubled since the peak of interrogation in 1988. In 2011, there was 6,727 apartheid schools in the United States.

A newly released Government Accountability Office report confirms that in recent years American schools have become ever more segregated. In the 2000-2001 school year, 9 percent of all K-12 public cools had extremely high percentages of poor, black or Hispanic kids. By 2013- 2014 according to the GAO that number grew to 16 percent.

Students in these largely poor and minority schools were offered less math, less science, less college prep courses when compared to their peers and other schools. They were also disproportionately mostly poor or minority. These students were offered less science, less math and less college prep than other schools. They were disproportionately more likely to be suspended or expelled according to the GO.

There is also a growing divide in America's housing. The Rutgers University professor, Paul Tractenberg says that between 2000 and 2013, the number of Americans living in high poverty neighborhoods has nearly doubled from 7.2 million to 13.8 million.

That income segregation looks a lot like racial segregation. Rucker Johnson notes that nationwide, more than one in four poor blacks live in extreme poverty neighborhoods compared to 1 in 13 poor whites. And children are the most economically and racially segregated of all group. This is a tragedy and we have lots of Dana that shows that separate is indeed unequal.

In one illuminating study Berkley public policy professor, Rucker Johnson, follow the life trajectories of American adults who attended court ordered desegregated elementary schools between the 1960s and the '80's. Johnson found that blacks that attended desegregated elementary schools were more likely to graduate and 22 percent less likely to be incarcerated as adults. Blacks who spent five years in desegregated schools saw their health improve to a degree that was the equivalent to being seven years younger.

This group also earned on average 30 percent more annually than their cohorts that who did not attend desegregated schools. What is more, Johnson found that the narrowing of the achievement gap and the increase success of black Americans did not have any negative effect on whites on any metric.

This all reminds me of something the great Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "it may be true that you cannot legislate integration but you can legislate desegregation. So while the law may not change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men. And when you change the habits of men, pretty soon hearts of men will begin to change and attitudes will begin to change."

Up next on GPS, billionaire entrepreneur investor Reid Hoffman have been visionary enough to get in on the ground floor on companies like Facebook, Paypal and LinkedIn. He'll tell me what he sees as our high tech future.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: My next guest is the serial entrepreneur Reid Hoffman. If his name is unfamiliar to you the companies he has been involved with certainly are not. He's best known perhaps as the co-founder of the business social networking site LinkedIn, where he is today is the executive chairman. He is also of the so called Paypal mafia, a group of early employees of the payment site, and he invested early in Facebook. Hoffman also happens to be one of the most thoughtful and intelligent people I know in Silicon Valley. We met at LinkedIn headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Reid Hoffman, pleasure to have you on.

REID HOFFMAN, CO-FOUNDER, LINKEDIN: Great to be here.

ZAKARIA: You must get asked this question a lot. What does the future of technology look like to you right now?

HOFFMAN: So, I think there's three broad things going on. So one is, there's this thesis, a market recent has software eating the world. I prefer transforming. I think of it as more genetic transformation rather than consumption. It's like software is now becoming part of everything. And I think that changes the role which bits shift that destinies of atoms, like so to be very specific you say, well we're beginning to personalize medicine, we actually have your genetic code.

ZAKARIA: Or a simple example would be the bits of software is transforming the taxi industry by Uber right? So the bits are changing the atoms as it were.

HOFFMAN: Exactly, and so, I think that continues. I think the next part of it is, is, what again people will usually refer to this as big data, I think of it as human index data. And that's because we can build new kinds of application based on the massive amounts of human data that are available. Right. So a simple one is like, do you use traffic ways, like okay how do I get here and how do we get around the traffic. But all of human life is thought of as navigation. You're navigating a career. You're navigating an education. You're navigating a personal life. You're navigating entertainment.

At all of that navigation can now use this human index data to build entirely new kinds of, like navigating health, entirely new kinds of navigation. The third one is what we're beginning to actually get some very interesting direct connections between, you know, software and data and biology. Right, so the cost of sequencing the gene ohm is coming down faster than Moore's Law. Right. Crisper, we're beginning to be able to rewrite geometrics in living organisms, so for example, if you have a specific genetic condition that is like a few genes, you might be able to save the child's life and actually have a filling (ph) adult by changing that.

That's already in line of sight. It's like all technology, it's scary, but also amazing opportunities.

ZAKARIA: One of the things you have often talked about is that Silicon Valley and the United States has a unique advantage but not in start up culture, in what you call blitz scaling. That it's not just having the idea, but actually being able to take it to a wide number of people. Explain that?

HOFFMAN: So, if start ups were the only thing, which is usually a story you get from Silicon Valley people, it's a nuclear failure, technology, technology universities and companies taking risks. There would be companies all over the world but and yet, when you look at the majority of the super interesting tech companies that are created in the world. The west coast and the majority of those are in Silicon Valley.

And there's a bunch of very good ones in China as well, but that's where it is. So why so many here, in an area with the population, total population 8 1/2 million, 25 square miles, you know why Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, eBay, I mean the list goes on and on. And the reason is, is what we have learned is not just start up but also scale up and scale up at speed. So I'm borrowing with some chagrin the German blitzkrieg metaphor, because it actually applies, which is the Germans invented the changing warfare so you don't just advance to your supply chain, but you go all in and get the location, you carry enough munitions for one battle.

So you either win or lose big. Silicon Valley has learned the same thing by scale up, by essentially global product market fit, how to scale operations. Like a simple one, back from the first internet boom, was we won't do any phone customer service. We'll do it all by email, because that allows us, that's the equivalent of we'll leave the supply chain behind us and will run very, very far fast out, in order to capture the market share and establish our businesses.

And the techniques are in hiring, the techniques are in management, the techniques are in international expansion. The techniques are in customer support and we have kind of a living network of knowledge about what the new current techniques for that. And that's one of the reasons that Silicon Valley continues to create these massive technology companies, even though there's technical talent everywhere, there's venture capital everywhere. There's appreciation of entrepreneurship and risk everywhere, and yet the vast majority of these companies happen here.

ZAKARIA: That's fascinating because what you're not saying is because the venture capital firms are close by and Stanford is close by. You're talking about a kind of unique set of ideas almost.

HOFFMAN: Yes. And in particular, venture capital, capitals global, there's a lot of capital here, there's a lot of capital in the rest of the world. Look, Stanford, I'm a graduate, awesome influence in the valley, very much helped Silicon Valley get created. Is a great source of talent and creativity but it's actual impact the network of all the talent that comes here and learns how to do this.

ZAKARIA: And when you look at that, that ecosystem. Do you worry that that ecosystem can be easily replicated in terms of, after all the ideas you're saying them now, you're writing a book about blitz scaling. Why can't people just copy the ideas?

HOFFMAN: Well, in a sense, I would like them to. I'd like there to be more Silicon Valleys. Actually every time that a reasonable, kind of government leader comes through town and wants to meet with me, I actually try to change, if I'm in town I try to meet with them.

ZAKARIA: You mean a foreign leader who's - -

HOFFMAN: Yes, we've had everything from French ministers, British ministers, Singaporeans, you know, Chinese, the whole group saying what so we learn from here and what do we do. And the reason is, I think the world's better off. The more of these we have. So yes, it might make competition from Silicon Valley a little harder. But actually, in fact, one of the things that's really great about Silicon Valley is the network is very, kind of, both cooperative and competitive at the same time.

ZAKARIA: Up next, how the ultimate LinkedIn guy Reid Hoffman networks himself. And why this billionaire feels that he still needs to hustle. Lessons for all of us when we return.

We're back now with more of my conversation with Reid Hoffman, co- founder of LinkedIn, earlier employee of Paypal, early investor in Facebook. That is a resume that has made him worth almost $3 billion according to Forbes. But he didn't set out to be an entrepreneur, listen to his fascinating story.

I heard Bill Gates on day, somebody asked him, why did you decide to become an entrepreneur and he said I didn't decide to become an entrepreneur. I was fascinated by software. I thought it would change the world. I wanted to do something with that. It's not like if I didn't have that passion and obsession, I would have started a restaurant business, you know, I was not trying to be an entrepreneur. So you were similarly motivated by the substance of it.

HOFFMAN: Exactly. And actually, that's funny, I haven't heard that directly from Bill. The, very similarly, I only realized the word entrepreneur applied to me when I was in process of starting my second company. I was like, oh right, they call like me entrepreneurs. Right. So I think it's extremely important for society, it's how we adapt to the future, it's how we created prosperity. But for me, no, no, I'm trying to do this thing to help, help humanity evolve its scale and how do you help it evolve in a good way?

And if you can change the medium, by which we communicate, we collaborate, by which we value each other. Like, for example, you know, part of the conceptual thing at LinkedIn, it's very easy to do reference checking. Right. It's very easy to do, like, OK, like, my dream is when people will start telling me, I'm reference checking perspective bosses before I go work for them. And then I will know that I have provided a network age tool.

ZAKARIA: One of the things that is clearly happening with technology and is particularly helping, as software begins to massively improve productivity of almost everything, is your needing fewer people. And what do you think is going to happen to people, the human talent, this is something that you centrally deal with?

HOFFMAN: So, I think it is behold on. So the classic economist answer, which you are very familiar with is, look we create new instruments of productivity and then jobs shift but new jobs are created. It's happened in previous, like the industrial revolution and everything else, so we anticipating it happening now. And hopefully, that's simply true - -

ZAKARIA: In the long run.

HOFFMAN: In the log run. We want to, there are arguments that maybe it's not as true this time right? Artificial intelligence and - -

ZAKARIA: The scale and speed of both technology and globalization.

HOFFMAN: Yes. Exactly. And the pain of translocation could be very serious. So I think we as entrepreneurs, we as technologists and we as, kind of, influencers within our society should say, look it should be an all hands on deck about how do we create the right incentives for entrepreneurs to create new businesses that create interesting jobs.

Right. And one of the ways that I think to look at this is, not just as job creation which is very important, but also work creation. Where work is, the person, like, you might have a lot more entrepreneurial individuals, who enabling individuals to be small businesses and entrepreneurial. That kind of thing might actually allow work creation that creates meaningful work and economic remuneration. ZAKARIA: You're last book was the Start of You. You always thought about the individual and how he can best navigate this world. What is your advice to somebody that's listening? What should they be doing to enhance their talents and enhance their opportunities?

HOFFMAN: So, the central thing, this is one of the things that I learned very, I was lucky to have gone to Stanford and I would have not thought of this whole path if I hadn't gone to Stanford, is connect yourself with central nodes of the network. Right. So do whatever it takes to say, look, this is the direction I want to go. How do I meet some interesting people? Like if I look back on my career and I say, what do I wish I'd done differently? I wish I'd begged my way, I would have volunteered to work at Netscape right?

It was one of the central internet companies and I should said to them (ph) look I'll be a janitor. I just want to work here and start working my way up here because the center node of this new, you know, technology and commercial ecosystem of the internet, and so find your position in the network.

ZAKARIA: And then, how do you make sure that you get out there? In a way that people see this.

HOFFMAN: So some of this stuff that I said in the Start up of You, I present one of the things that I did when I was at Apple, which was like kind of my first real job, was I volunteered for work. Like I thought, oh, maybe I shouldn't be a user experience designer which as I started. I should be a product manager, it's a better fit for my skill set. So I walked over to the product manager group and I said, look, I have a couple ideas for projects that we should be doing. I'm going to write up the description, and if you like them, all I want is some instruction. Like what could I have done better, how would I do this, and how do I learn it?

And they were like, oh, this bright kid has volunteered to give us some ideas on how we could look at - - sure, look because it all committed, like I will go work on those ideas. Internships are valuable in that context. You know, you go to the smartest people you know and you say, like who do you know who I might be able to meet or might be able to do something for or build a relationship with? You start by saying, I'm not just asking. I'm building a relationship. I'm trying to give as well, those are the kinds of things to think about.

ZAKARIA: You still think about networking about putting yourself in the middle of interesting information for those people, even though you are one of the best connected, most successful people in Silicon Valley.

HOFFMAN: Yes. Absolutely. Because that's the nature of the age.

ZAKARIA: So you're still hustling?

HOFFMAN: Yes. Always.

ZAKARIA: Reid Hoffman, pleasure to have you. HOFFMAN: Pleasure.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, the French are at the barricades again., protesting the unfairness of their working conditions. I'll explain the whole mess when we come back.

President Obama visited Vietnam this week and while he was there announced an end to the longstanding American ban on arms sales to that country.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States is fully lifting the ban on the sale of military equipment to Vietnam that has been in place for some 50 years.

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ZAKARIA: It brings me to my question of the week. How much did trade increase between Vietnam and the U.S. between 1995 and 2015? Five fold, 10 fold, 50 fold, or 100 fold, stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer.

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ZAKARIA: This week's book of the week is actually a movie, HBO's "All the Way". This maybe the best political drama I have ever seen on screen. It is certainly the best performance by an actor of a historical figure. Bryan Cranston becomes Lyndon Johnson, in speech, sense and soul. The movie that centers on Johnson's passage of the Civil Rights Bill is really about power, how to yield it, how to compromise, but above all how to get stuff done.

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BRYAN CRANSTON, ACTOR: You're not running for office. You're running for your life.

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ZAKARIA: And now for the last look. A fiery blaze, police uniforms, general chaos, looking at these pictures you might think that you are looking at a terror attack. But this is actually an angry clash between police and workers who are blockading an oil depot in Northern France. Strikes at refineries around the country have caused nationwide fuel shortages. France even had to dip into its oil reserves this week. One in three gas stations is short of or even out of fuel, according to French media.

And these are just the latest in a string of protests around the country. So why are the French so fueled with anger? Union leaders are protesting the proposed labor law that allows companies to reduce over time pay and increase over time hours and some employees will have to say au revoir to the 35 hour work week. Sacra de bluer. Citizens feel betrayed by President Hollande socialist government, they feel that an end run to push this law through. But many experts, including the IMF, believe that these reforms are crucial, noting France's high unemployment rate of more than 10 percent, double the United States as well as its huge public debt.

They said the reforms will make hiring and firing easier in this country that is desperately in need of a dynamic labor market. For now, Hollande faces an election next year so he's running out of time to push through these crucial economic reforms. Not to mention, running out of gas, literally.

The correct answer is D. Bilateral trade between Vietnam and the United States increased 100 fold between 1995 and 2015. From $451 million to $45 billion not adjusted for inflation. Trade between the U.S. and China by comparison increased a little over 10 times but from $57 billion to almost $600 billion. It increased less than five times between the U.S. and Mexico, from $108 billion to $531 billion.

Just one note for our loyal viewers who caught our segment about Sweden's so called minister of the future last week. We were surprised to learn that a cabinet reshuffle has made that position, well, a thing of the past. Who could have predicted that?

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