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Fareed Zakaria GPS

India-Pakistan Tensions Examined; Cyber Attack on Estonia Explored; Talking about 5G; Saudi Arabia Special Report Tonight. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired March 03, 2019 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:13] 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.

Today on the show, Trump and Kim meet again and the self-proclaimed world's greatest deal-maker left empty-handed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We decided that we had to walk.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: What to make of the art of no deal.

North Korea, Israel, Russia, much more with an all-star panel. Also, two nuclear nations went to the brink this week. India and Pakistan. A 70-year-long conflict dangerously flaring up again. What's next for the warring nuclear neighbors.

And the Khashoggi killing. The CIA believes the crown prince of Saudi Arabia ordered the murder. But he was supposed to be a great reformer. I'll bring you a preview of my new special report, "SAUDI ARABIA: KINGDOM OF SECRETS." It airs Sunday night at 8:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.

But first, here's my take. It appears that President Trump decided that a bad deal with North Korea was worse than no deal. A reasonable conclusion that suggests he and his team were approaching this important issue with the seriousness it deserves.

One of the challenges with North Korea is trying to get an agreement that locks in concessions at the start, because history tells us that Pyongyang will not follow through, fully implement or honor its commitments. But in truth, the U.S. does not have a great track record of honoring its commitments in international agreements either.

It's always useful in a negotiation to put one's self in the other side's shoes. If you were a North Korean statesman, you'd truly study the last important international agreement negotiated and signed by an American president. The Iran nuclear deal. In exchange for the elimination of 98 percent of Iran's fissile material, thousands of centrifuges and its Arak nuclear reactor, as well as the installation of cameras and inspectors virtually everywhere, the U.S. agreed to waive sanctions against Iran and do business with Iran.

But even under the Obama administration, Iran never really got much access to the international economic system. And once Trump took office, his administration began actively undermining it and even violating it, lobbying European countries to boycott Iran and using the dollar's powers to freeze any business with Iran.

Or consider when Libya agreed in 2003 to disclose and dismantle all its weapons of mass destruction, which it basically followed through on. In return, the Bush administration had promised to help Libya gain security and respect among nations and pledge far better relations between the two nations. The U.S. suggested it would work to turn Libya into a prosperous country. Little of this happened, of course, and several years later, the Obama administration had toppled the Gadhafi regime.

If the North Koreans look back on their own history of negotiations with the U.S., they will recognize that they repeatedly lied, cheated and broke promises. Now Washington's behavior is not nearly as duplicitous, but did make promises to Pyongyang that were never really kept. In 1994 North Korea agreed to halt its operations at the Yongbyon nuclear facility and have its spent fuel monitored by inspectors.

In return, Washington would move toward full normalization of political and economic relations and give the North two light water reactors, plus heavy fuel oil. North Korea took most of the steps outlined, but as scholar (INAUDIBLE) points out, Washington moved extremely slowly on its commitments, never providing the light water reactors and failing to deliver the fuel on time. It took almost no steps to normalize relations.

Pyongyang made clear that if the U.S. did not live up to its end of the deal, it would renege on its own obligations. Still, the Clinton administration did not come through and North Korea began violating the accord. When the Bush administration came to power, of course, it scuttled the entire process --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, 43RD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Axis of evil.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: And moved to a much harder line against Pyongyang.

These American moves are part of the hyperpolarized political environment of the past quarter century. During the Cold War, international agreements and commitments made by one president will most likely to be upheld by his successors. Compare that with the current environment. Trump has pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He's questioned the continuing value of NATO. He has repeatedly shown that he regards every decision made by his immediate predecessor to be at least wrong, often treasonous.

[10:05:00] If you were a North Korean negotiator, you would surely be wondering if any deal made by the Trump administration would be honored or properly implemented by its successors. And you'd be right to wonder. America's bitter polarization at home now exacts a price in the nation's credibility and consistency abroad.

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

So Donald Trump was not able to close the deal with Kim Jong-un. Is that good or bad or somewhere in between?

I've got a great panel today. Richard Haass is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former director of policy planning at the State Department. Robin Wright is a contributing writer for the "New Yorker" and a distinguished fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. And Matt Kroenig is the deputy director for strategy in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a professor at Georgetown.

Richard, the premise of this deal, of this summit, seemed to be everybody else thinks we should do these summits bottom-up, you know, deputies and officials negotiating the minutia and then the formal perhaps ceremonial meeting between the two heads. Donald Trump said no, we're going to go top-down.

What does this tell us? The failure of the summit, what does it say?

RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, it says bottom-up doesn't work. Top-down also doesn't work, although for different reasons. It doesn't help when the president has too much confidence in his personal relationships and chemistry. Foreign policy at the end of the day is not about -- is not about chemistry. There wasn't enough preparation. Summits at most should do the last 10 percent of the deal so he left way too much up.

Actually there's something more fundamental at work here, Fareed, which is simply I'm not sure there is a deal. If the goal is to get North Korea to denuclearize, not just rhetorically but in fact, they're not going to do it. They have concluded that nuclear weapons are essential for their security and for their position as a country. So either we have to give up on that goal and accept lesser outcomes, or think about another policy, whether it's the use of force or the use of economic sanctions, all of which have major shortcomings.

But if we think we can negotiate our way to a North Korea that gives up nuclear weapons and missiles, we're kidding ourselves. So the real question is whether we're prepared to accept lesser outcomes.

ZAKARIA: Robin, to illustrate that point, you're one of the few journalists who has actually been in North Korea. I remember reading something you wrote after -- maybe it was Madeleine Albright's trip. And you talk about the depth and complexity of the North Korean program, both missiles and nuclear. Just describe what -- you know, what we're talking about here. ROBIN WRIGHT, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Well, North Korea

began its program after the 1950s. We're going back more than seven decades. After Dwight Eisenhower warned North Korea as well as China that he was prepared to use a nuclear weapon against them if they did not return to peace talks to end -- formally end the Korean War. And the North Koreans did return to the negotiating table, but all they managed to agree on in what was the longest Armistice negotiation in history was a temporary truce.

And that truce has lasted for 70 years. So the issue is not just the denuclearization of North Korea and elimination of its other chemical, biological weapons of mass destruction and its intercontinental ballistic missiles, it's also how do you ensure that there is no conflict in the future.

And North Korea has this deep-seated fear that now dates back three generations of the Kim dynasty about what U.S. intentions might be and what they might use to force North Korea to do something. And so Richard is right. The fact that the prospect that they are going to give up all their nuclear weapons, all their ability to defend themselves against major powers is an illusion. And it was certainly an illusion to go to Hanoi and think that you were going to get a major breakthrough.

I think the big question now is, is it even possible for Donald Trump to get some kind of agreement before the 2020 election. This is a drawn-out process that involves incredible details of inspections and setting up an apparatus to go in and look at what the North Koreans have, which they haven't even declared. And then --

ZAKARIA: And then just on that part, Robin, what I was talking about is what they have is you're -- we're talking about underground tunnels that go on for hundreds of miles.

WRIGHT: Yes.

ZAKARIA: Planes that are in those tunnels that can be -- you know, that can taxi in the tunnel and then come out of missile. You know, are there facilities we don't know about yet?

WRIGHT: Absolutely. There are three tunnels that are believed to have air strips underneath them so that the plane can go full down the runway and take off as it leaves the mouth of a tunnel.

[10:10:05] There are believed to be thousands of those. And President Trump made a very interesting revelation yesterday when he said that the United States had indicated or had found recently new covert facilities. And the question is, if North Korea even gives us a list of what it has, whether that's the truth. And how do we figure out if it is.

ZAKARIA: Matt, let me ask you. When you listen to all this, fundamentally though, Trump at the end of the day did the right thing in walking away from a bad deal.

Is that a sign that he is now being advised by people like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who are serious adults and that he's listened to them? What lesson should we take from that?

MATTHEW KROENIG, SENIOR FELLOW, ATLANTIC COUNCIL: Well, overall, I think Trump's approach to the North Korea problem has been pretty reasonable and really more consistent with traditions and U.S. policy for dealing with rogue states.

We have this kind of bipartisan consensus of pressure and engagement. So it's the Bush and Obama approach to Iran and it's the Trump approach to North Korea. Increasing the economic, political, military pressure on North Korea so long as it continues this nuclear and missile program. But then holding out the possibility of negotiations if they're willing to come to the table.

Since it's Trump, though, it's done with his distinctive flair. So when it's pressure, it's maximum pressure and threats of fire and fury. And when it's time for engagement, it's maximum engagement with head of state leaders. So it's a hard problem, as everyone has pointed out. But I think this approach has at least as good a chance of working as what we've tried in the past.

ZAKARIA: But, Richard, there is one problem with the maximum on the side of maximum friendliness, which is he seemed too eager to make this work, which might have given Kim Jong-un the idea that he could ask for a lot.

HAASS: Well, absolutely. One of the biggest mistakes I think you could probably find in the "Art of the Deal" is to want an agreement too much. You can't signal that, because the other fellow then -- the person on the other side of the table gets the leverage.

It's one of the great ironies. That was a principle criticism of what the Obama administration did with the Iran deal. Now you've got this administration wanting an agreement too much, talking about Nobel Peace Prizes, talking about denuclearization, so they've raised the stakes. They've raised their ambitions, which I think actually makes it easier for North Korea to do exactly what they did, saying, well, we'll give you some things. We'll get rid of this facility, this enrichment facility. But first you've got to do an awful lot of what we want on sanctions and none of that is connected to the idea of full and complete and verifiable denuclearization.

ZAKARIA: All right. Stay with us. When we come back next on GPS, an embattled leader is fighting back against the left-wing. The press, the prosecutors, who seem to be closing in. No, not Donald Trump, but his good friend, Benjamin Netanyahu.

We'll talk about Bibi's troubles in the Middle East when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:17:18] ZAKARIA: On Thursday, Israel's attorney general announced that Prime Minister Netanyahu would be charged with bribery and a breach of trust, pending a hearing in the matter. In less than 40 days, Israelis will go to the polls. Netanyahu had for a time looked like he might be a shoo-in for a fifth term in office. No longer.

We are back with Richard Haass, Robin Wright and Matthew Kroenig.

Richard, this is seismic. What does this mean?

HAASS: I think it's going to be awfully hard for him to get re- elected. I think he'll have this election, this new centrist coalition will get a plurality. But as always been the case in Israel's history, no party has ever gotten a majority. You've got to cobble together a coalition.

I think the most interesting thing, Fareed, would be this new centrist or center-right coalition will negotiate with Bibi's own party minus Bibi. And I think their best chance --

ZAKARIA: But they'll we'll go into coalition with you but you've got to dump the prime minister.

HAASS: With little coup, but now you have to dump the likely to be indicted prime minister. If I were going to put my money down, that's what I'd put it on.

ZAKARIA: Matthew, when you look at this, does it feel to you like this -- does this matter to U.S. policy? Has Bibi -- that relationship between Trump and Bibi, Jared Kushner and Bibi, seems to have been so crucial in the U.S. thinking about the Middle East. Does this change the way Trump looks at the Middle East?

KROENIG: Well, it's important to point out that these are only allegations at this point. Bibi hasn't been found guilty. And it's impossible to say how it will affect the elections. It likely doesn't help Bibi. There may be some defectors from his coalition. But it's possible that he could still emerge as the candidate best able to form a coalition after the elections. But even if not, I think the U.S.- Israel relationship is strong.

The center-left coalition also strong on national security. I think we'll also have good relations with the United States. So I think it's certainly important. Bibi is going to be fighting for his political future and maybe even for his freedom. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's going to fundamentally affect Israeli foreign policy or U.S.-Israel relations.

ZAKARIA: Do you think there's a chance for the great Middle East peace plan that Jared Kushner has been pushing? You've tended to be somewhat sympathetic at times to the Trump administration. But where is this peace plan and what is the peace plan?

KROENIG: Well, that's a very hard problem. I think it's going to be difficult for the Trump administration to get Middle East peace as it has been for many administrations before. But I do think the overall approach in the Middle East has made sense. They've focused on the priority, national security issue, which is the Iranian nuclear threat. They've brought together a coalition to put tough sanctions on Iran and to push back on their behavior in the region.

[10:20:02] And so I think the peace plan is going to be difficult. But overall, I think it was a helpful reset to focus more on supporting U.S. allies in the region, Gulf states, Israel and countering Iran's maligned activity.

ZAKARIA: Peace plan, Richard Haass?

HAASS: Not going to work. This whole idea of an outside-in using the Sunni Arab states to somehow deliver the Palestinians is not going to happen. And the fact is, it's still not clear in Israel and with the Palestinians you've got actors who are both willing and able to make the necessary compromises for peace. So color me skeptical.

ZAKARIA: Robin Wright, let me ask you one question before we go back to North Korea. The president says that he trusts Kim Jong-un when he says -- when Kim says he didn't know about Otto Warmbier. It strikes me -- it's a very small and very repressive police state in which it's highly unlikely that Kim would not have known about an American who was kept -- you know, captivity and then tortured.

WRIGHT: You're absolutely right. And it's astounding that President Trump would make that allegation. But he has done that before, whether it's dealing with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin Salman, or in talking about Vladimir Putin in Russia. He seems to be willing to trust these dictatorial regimes. And there is no question that in North Korea, Kim Jong-un knew exactly what Americans have been detained, how they were treated, and would have known the nitty-gritty details about the condition of these people. After all, these are in some ways pawns in international diplomacy, as well.

ZAKARIA: Thank you all. Fascinating conversation.

Next on GPS, India and Pakistan, neighbors and enemies. Is this current flare-up of tensions over or is it just beginning?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:25:47] ZAKARIA: Kashmir, one of the most beautiful places in the world. For 72 years India and Pakistan have been fighting over this mountainous region. Each country controls a portion of it, each country would like to control all of it. Over the decades the two nations have fought two wars over Kashmir and tensions flared up again this week in a very serious way.

In mid-February, terrorists from Pakistan claimed responsibility for an attack inside India. On Tuesday, India said its air force had struck those terrorists in Pakistan. On Wednesday, Pakistan said it had shot down two Indian aircraft then released a video interview with one of the pilots. On Friday, that pilot was sent back across the border.

So are the two nations back from the brink?

Joining me now here in New York is Ravi Agrawal, CNN's former India bureau chief and now the managing editor of "Foreign Policy." And Mosharraf Zaidi joins me from Islamabad. He's a columnist for the "News International."

Ravi, let me start with you. It feels like this kind of thing has happened in the past. Terror attack originated from Pakistan in India. The Indians got upset. What's different this time?

RAVI AGRAWAL, AUTHOR, "INDIA CONNECTED": What's different this time, Fareed, is that India has responded in a more muscular way. And it's done so because in part, it has elections coming up, but also because it isn't seeing this attack in isolation. It is looking at the last 20 years of attacks on Indian soil emanating from Pakistani territory. There was of course the 2002 attack on the Indian parliament. There was the Mumbai attacks in 2008 which killed nearly 200 people and then attacks in 2016 as well in Kashmir.

So for -- if you add all of those things up, the Indians will say that they've shown remarkable restraint thus far and that this time enough was enough. There was a lot of goading from the Indian media for muscular action and it seems Modi has responded. And it's important to state here that this is the first time since 1971 that India sent fighter jets across the border.

So this is an escalation on the Indian side. And if anything, if both sides can now see this as a victory of sorts, where they can tell their people that we've been muscular, we've done well, Pakistan can say that it has acted statesmanlike in returning this pilot, then we may be nearing a de-escalation at this stage.

ZAKARIA: Mosharraf, what does it tell us that this terror attack happened, assuming what -- you know, as I said, the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed seems to have claimed responsibility for it. It doesn't seem like a moment where the Pakistani military, which tends to have an influence with these groups would want to sour relations with India. The prime minister seemed to be looking for good relations.

Does it mean that there is something else going on? That the Pakistani military does not have as much control over these groups as we think? Or is this a random one-off?

MOSHARRAF ZAIDI, COLUMNIST, THE NEWS INTERNATIONAL: Fareed, you know, one of the questions that's been asked here in Pakistan repeatedly is what benefit does this offer to Pakistan in any way whatsoever. You know, the accusation or the claim about Jaish-e-Mohammed being behind it obviously is backed by the video that the terrorist left behind. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, we have an army chief that's been working behind the scenes to deescalate with India.

In the run up to the Pakistani election in July of 2018, there was a substantial -- I would say a dramatic reduction in the violations of the line of control that tends to flare up whenever there is trouble between the two nations. And then you saw the prime -- the new prime minister in Pakistan reach out to Narendra Modi not once by twice after being -- after taking office.

So I think given this background and given the unique nature of the February 14th attack, there is definitely something that doesn't quite fit. And then, of course, as Ravi said, everything is sort of -- you know, I think the norms and the rules of engagement between the two countries have substantially changed as a result of India's attack in Balakot and Pakistan's response. ZAKARIA: Ravi, there is a mystery here. But, you know, even with the

Indian response, what exactly happened? So the Indians claim that they destroyed all these terrorist camps. The Pakistanis actually say you did nothing. There was no damage. The videos the Pakistanis have released seem to -- to reinforce or confirm that view, and their two medias, on both sides, have completely different narratives about what happened?

AGRAWAL: Yeah, the correct answer is we actually don't know what happened.

(LAUGHTER)

Because the place that India claims it has bombed, journalists don't have access to, in Pakistan. So unfortunately, where we're stuck is having statements from both governments and medias on both sides that believe those statements and are very willing to, sort of, parade those statements to the public and have the public believe in it.

That isn't a bad thing. I mean, if that is what is going to lead to both sides feeling like they have achieved some degree of success, then that will allow them to save face in a way. So, you know, absent American diplomacy, absent other global ways of mediating this conflict, it seems the media and social media has played a very powerful role here. That's not entirely bad.

ZAKARIA: Mosharraf, it seems to me, just from the politics of it, it does look like Narendra Modi was very anxious to respond in a very tough way, because he has these elections coming up. It plays to his coalition perfectly to be tough on Pakistan. And Imran Khan, the new prime minister of Pakistan, seemed quite statesmanlike and trying to diffuse things.

Do you think that the Pakistanis will understand that Modi was playing politics and that there will still be a possibility for a real rapprochement?

ZAIDI: I think so, Fareed. I think it's really clear from the conduct of the prime minister in Pakistan -- and as you know, you know, the -- even in the best of times, or the worst, the military is a significant -- plays a significant role in these kinds of dynamics and the question of how to deal with India.

But it seems, from every statement and every, sort of, move from the Pakistani side, that there's a real appetite, whether it's before the election, which I think is impossible, given everything that's happened -- but certainly after the election, I still anticipate that there will be a big push by Pakistan to reach out, as it has been even in these -- in these quite difficult times.

So I think, you know, Pakistan seems genuinely interested in shifting the needle with India. And how much Narendra Modi is able to resist his instinct to rile things up for the sake of an election, I think, is a question that will be answered over the next two and a half months, as India goes to the polls.

But -- but if we can get there without any further damage, then I think the prospects for a summer of peace will -- will be good.

ZAKARIA: Well, let's end on that hopeful note.

Gentlemen, thank you both very much.

Next on "GPS," tiny Estonia's secret weapon against its bullying neighbor, Russia. How this digital nation found a way to fight back, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Now for our "What in the World" segment. There's a national election happening today, and many of the people who turned out to vote didn't actually turn out at all. They voted from home. I'm talking about parliamentary elections in Estonia, which in 2005 became the first country in the world to open up online voting nationwide.

The Baltic nation of 1.3 million people has fashioned itself into a kind of digital Mecca, where citizens can vote, check their medical records and pay parking tickets online without any paperwork at all, using encrypted digital IDs.

But this digital world, especially Estonia's free and fair online elections, could be a giant target for neighboring Russia. And so Estonia also took an early lead in cyber defense. The government got serious about cyber in 2007, after it decided to remove a Soviet-era war memorial featuring a statue of a Russian soldier from the center of its capital.

Almost immediately, Estonia was under online siege. Estonian web servers were flooded with traffic from outside the country, causing many of them to crash. According to Wired magazine, a national newspaper was forced to disconnect from global networks.

The attack lasted for three weeks, targeting many private and public sector websites. Russia has always denied involvement, but the attack gave Estonia a clarity of purpose. The next year, along with six other European countries, it established the one-of-a-kind NATO cooperative cyber defense center of excellence in the capital city of Tallinn. That's where each year the Estonians host the massive Cyber war games Locked Shields.

Last year, according to The Washington Post, representatives from nearly 30 countries convened in Tallinn and fought an imagined attacker wreaking havoc on cell phone towers, power grids and drones. Estonia is said to finish near the top. At the games in 2017, Estonia came in second place. The Americans finished 12th.

The Estonian ministry of defense has also set up what it calls the Cyber Defense Unit, a volunteer army comprised of I.T. professionals, lawyers and economists who are tapped by the government to respond to attacks, according to Wired.

Monica Ruiz of the Hewlett Foundation points out, this solves a big problem facing the field of cyber defense globally. How does the relatively poorly paid public sector leverage private-sector talent? And Estonia has a plan in case of another wide-ranging attack. The

government has signed an agreement to back up its databases to servers in Luxembourg. With sovereign control over its data abroad, an Estonian government under attack could continue to operate from hundreds of miles away.

So what lessons does Estonia's example hold for the rest of us?

Well, it's a small country, so it's not clear that all these strategies would work abroad. And as the New Yorker notes, experts have cast doubt on the security of the Estonian online voting system. But the spirit of what Estonia is doing, bringing NATO countries to the table on cyber defense and leveraging the private sector, is inventive, even visionary, and ought to catch on elsewhere.

Up next, 5G. Many say this new mobile technology will usher in the world of the future. Will it? And what happens if a Chinese company is allowed to play a crucial part in its rollout? Can Beijing browse your text messages?

I'll get into all of this with the CEO of Cisco, an American company that is heavily invested in the new technology.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SEN. TOM COTTON (R-ARK.): Will you please raise your hand if you would use products or services from Huawei or ZTE?

None of you would. You obviously lead intelligence services, so that's something of a biased question.

Raise your hand if you would recommend that private American citizens use Huawei or ZTE products or services.

None of you, again, are raising your hand.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Stark disapproval from America's top intelligence officials for two of China's biggest tech giants at a Senate hearing a year ago. That might have been the first that many Americans heard about Huawei, but it certainly wasn't the last.

And it's not just American citizens that the government has warned to stay far away. According to The Wall Street Journal, American officials have been telling many of America's closest allies not to use, in particular, Huawei communications equipment, because of the security threat it may pose.

At the heart of the issue is 5G, the next generation of wireless communication technology. So just what is 5G, and what threat might Huawei pose?

I had a chance to talk to the CEO of another huge player in the 5G space, Chuck Robbins of Cisco.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

Chuck, pleasure to have you on.

CHUCK ROBBINS, CEO, CISCO: It's great to be here. Thank you.

ZAKARIA: So first of all, explain to everybody why is 5G such a big deal?

I mean, we've had 3G and 4G. People are talking about it as some kind of a huge inflexion point. Is it?

ROBBINS: It is. And, you know, 4G was really about, just, connectivity. And 5G is really about transforming experiences. It is -- it is one of those technologies that is likely going to live up to the hype, which is always good to see. And it's really going to enable...

ZAKARIA: And just to be clear, it's 100 times faster than 4G?

ROBBINS: It has the capacity to be 100 times faster. And so, I mean, the speeds that you'll have -- and this is -- there will be some benefit to a mobile phone, but the real interesting applications are going to be, you know, connecting machines in cities. We talk about smart cities and being able to process real-time information, which you need to be able to process. If we're going to fundamentally change how our traffic systems flow, you need real-time data that's analyzed immediately, and decisions made. And this kind of connectivity is going to enable that.

ZAKARIA: So in a sense that traffic lights will be able to talk to each other?

ROBBINS: That's right.

ZAKARIA: If you're looking for parking, the meters will be talking to your phone and telling you...

ROBBINS: Exactly.

ZAKARIA: ... here's an empty parking spot four blocks away. And that can all happen because of this lightning speed?

ROBBINS: And this thing called latency, which is basically the time it takes to get the communication back and forth -- not only just bandwidth, but how quickly you can do that.

There are other great applications, like we're going to be able to connect people around the world who -- the thought of a terrestrial connection is not possible, whether they're in rural mountains or villages. We'll be able to connect them now. And we'll be able to deliver health care there. We'll be able to deliver education there and give them an opportunity to actually connect and then become educated and perhaps participate more effectively in -- in the global system.

So there's lots of great applications. ZAKARIA: What does it mean when people talk about who is going to own

the architecture of this 5G-powered Internet, because the whole issue is, is it going to be Huawei, the Chinese, or is it going to be companies like Cisco and Qualcomm and, you know, Nokia and Ericsson?

So is there something to that, like, does it matter who actually builds the innards of the system?

ROBBINS: Well, it's funny, because I hear people talk about the race to 5G. And I actually ask them, "What do you exactly mean," right? Because you could say who is going to have services out first or who is going to own the underlying technology?

And I think, much like all the technologies we've seen to date, there is not going to be one manufacturer that's going to be -- I'd love to think that would be us. But it's not going to be. And I think that -- primarily because we don't even play in all the spaces that you have to play in to build an end-to-end 5G network. So companies like Nokia, Ericsson, even Samsung, play in the macro-radio-space, and we play in the core networking space and in a lot the other areas.

ZAKARIA: Explain to people what that means, is you build the wires that go to the cell towers. Then the signal that goes from the cell tower, maybe Ericson or Nokia has some patents around?

ROBBINS: That's right.

ZAKARIA: So what does Huawei do?

ROBBINS: Well, they do the radio networks and they also do core networking, as well.

ZAKARIA: So they do both?

ROBBINS: And they do handsets and they're in a lot of businesses we're not in.

ZAKARIA: And the question, I guess, everybody wants to understand is, if Huawei is one of the dominant players in this space, I think almost everyone agrees, if the Chinese government said to Huawei, give us the data, they would have no option to do it. But is that meaningful?

Would Huawei be, you know, sort of, so dominant that it can -- that it can suck away all this data from every -- you know, everybody in the world and give it to the Chinese government?

ROBBINS: So I have no visibility to the answer to that question.

ZAKARIA: But there are two different questions. One is, you know, if the Chinese government asked Huawei, would they do it -- and I'm saying to you, you don't have to answer that. I am going to say, most people would think the answer would be yes.

But the second question is, does Huawei technologically have the -- have the ability to be that dominant that this would be a scary prospect? ROBBINS: Well, I think that, if you look at our share today in the

markets where we compete globally, we have -- we're number one in most of the markets that we compete in. And I believe the innovation that we're bringing forward right now, and many of my competitors probably believe the innovation they're bringing forward is going to position them to actually win and gain share.

The current infrastructure around the world is built on a combination of -- of communication suppliers from Europe, from China, from the U.S., everywhere. And I think that, despite everything that we hear, I think that's going to be the case in the future, as well.

ZAKARIA: Chuck, pleasure to have you on.

ROBBINS: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: And we will be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: CNN will premier my latest special report tonight. It's called "Saudi Arabia: Kingdom of Secrets." Now, it's not just a place of secrets. It is also a kingdom of contradictions. Take the young crown prince, whom the CIA believes ordered the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He has also pushed through big reforms in the kingdom.

Or take the fact that this important ally of the United States was also the birthplace of so many of those behind 9/11. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (voice over): In 1996, Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States. "These youths love death, as you love life," he warned. "These youths are steadfast at war. They will sing out that there is only killing."

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from one country, Saudi Arabia. The man who led them, Osama bin Laden, was from Saudi Arabia. ISIS and other terrorist groups killing Americans have been filled with recruits from Saudi Arabia.

How did one of America's closest allies become the home of its most bitter enemies?

To understand, we have to go back almost 300 years to the 1700s. Two men formed an alliance in the Arabian desert, a cleric known as Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, and a warrior named Muhammad bin Saud, the patriarch of the Saudi royal family.

Al-Wahhab and his followers were the ISIS of their time, preaching strict adherence to the Koran on pain of death. Their puritanical faith became known as Wahhabism. And it is that creed that governs Saudi Arabia. (UNKNOWN): Authorities in Saudi Arabia have executed...

(UNKNOWN): Wahhabism starts from a principle that I as a Muslim can determine if another Muslim is a good Muslim. And if he or she is not, then I can proclaim him or her a heretic and that person is subject to the most drastic penalties, including death.

ZAKARIA: Wahhabism was only a minor sect of Islam for much of its history. The Muslim world was shaped far more by large, diverse societies like Egypt.

(UNKNOWN): Oil in commercial quantities...

ZAKARIA: Then Saudi Arabia struck oil.

(UNKNOWN): ... 200,000 barrels a day.

ZAKARIA: With mountains of cash, the Kingdom eclipsed other Muslim nations and spread its version of the faith everywhere.

But in 1979, Wahhabism turned on the Kingdom itself.

(UNKNOWN): Armed religious fanatics today seized the great mosque in the Moslem holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia and took hostages.

ZAKARIA: The attackers were extreme religious conservatives. They were appalled by the unholy Westernization that the riches of oil had wrought.

(UNKNOWN): They broadcast their message that the Saudi ruling family are drunkards, gamblers, people who have taken Saudi Arabia away from the true Islamic faith.

ZAKARIA: Saudi forces were so ill-equipped that French commandos had to be called in to help. After two weeks, the rebels were finally captured and beheaded.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Please don't miss my important special tonight, only on CNN at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. We dig into the Khashoggi killing, the Kingdom's relationship with Trump and much more. And I'll see you again back here on "GPS" next Sunday. Thank you so much for being part of my program this week.