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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Interview with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan; Interview With New York Times Opinion Columnist David Brooks. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired December 22, 2024 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:36]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (voice-over): Today on the program, as the war in Ukraine approaches a grim three-year anniversary, as hopes for a hostages or ceasefire deal in Gaza increase, and as the Trump team prepares to take over, we look at the Biden administration's foreign policy record in an exclusive interview with National Security adviser Jake Sullivan.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Diplomacy is back.

ZAKARIA: Also, David Brooks on the divide over Donald Trump.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT: They love me and I love them.

ZAKARIA: Why do so many Americans see him as a hero while many others see him as a zero? We'll explore.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

As Joe Biden's presidency enters its final month, one way to assess his foreign policy legacy is to look at how America's adversaries are doing. And the answer almost overwhelmingly is poorly.

The axis of upheaval, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, is in much worse shape than it was four years ago. Some of this is good luck, but some is the product of good strategy and painstaking work. In any event, this new reality offers some real opportunities for Donald Trump to make significant gains over the next year.

Iran may be in its weakest state in decades. During those decades, the Islamic Republic developed a careful and complex asymmetrical strategy to undermine the American-led security system in the Middle East. It funded and supported a series of militant groups from Hezbollah to the Houthis to Hamas, as well as the Syrian government, to keep Israel, Saudi Arabia and other moderate Arab states on edge. That strategy is now in tatters. Israel's attacks have devastated

Hamas and Hezbollah, and weakened Iran. Without those pillars of support, along with a distracted Russia, Assad's regime collapsed. Israel claims to have destroyed many of Iran's air defenses and ballistic missile capabilities. Rebuilding air defenses may be difficult because the most advanced ones come from Russia, which is itself bogged down in Ukraine.

Iran's economy has been battered by sanctions, and inflation remains high. The supreme leader is now 85 years old and in poor health. And the president is not a man whom regime hardliners or the military trust.

Russia's weakness is also increasingly clear. Something I discussed last week. Many of its sources of revenue are declining. Defense production is not able to replace what it is losing on the battlefield, and inflation has also remained high. It can only recruit young men to the army by offering them wages that are around four times Russia's average income. It has had to rely on North Korea for weapons and even men to keep going.

The China story is more complicated. China is still the world's second largest economy, but it is clearly facing a series of huge problems. A collapsing real estate market, which has underpinned economic growth in that country for decades. A huge overall debt load, slowing productivity growth and very low levels of consumer confidence.

Jonathan Cheng, the "Wall Street Journal" reporter, recently tweeted, "Recent trading in the country's bond market is screaming the D word, as in depression." Meanwhile, Ruchir Sharma notes that no country with demographic decline of the kind that China is experiencing has ever had sustained rapid growth.

China's malaise goes beyond just economics. Its army seems rife with corruption, as the latest of many crackdowns attest. Xi Jinping's foreign policy has been largely counterproductive, alienating countries near and far. As Stephen Hadley, the former National Security adviser, put it, it increasingly seems to be heading an axis of losers.

[10:05:02]

How much of this can the Biden team take credit for? A fair amount. They rallied the world to oppose Russia's aggression in Ukraine and put in place sweeping sanctions against it. They have supplied Ukraine with weapons and encouraged the Europeans to do the same on an unprecedented scale. They could have done more, but they did a lot.

In the Middle East the Biden team has supported Israel more strongly than many realize, even as they often cautioned it to be more discriminating in its actions. The U.S. actively participated in the military defense of Israel against two Iranian missile attacks. It responded to the first one by also getting countries in Europe and the Arab world to join in that defense. It urged Israel to focus its attacks on Iran's air defenses and missile facilities, leaving the Islamic Republic vulnerable to further attacks. With China, the Biden administration has brought both European and

Asian countries together on a converging policy towards Beijing. It's sometimes forgotten that Europe had agreed in principle to a trade deal with China when Biden entered the presidency. The Biden administration brokered a rapprochement between Japan and South Korea, which has helped to solidify the balance of power against China in Asia.

And it has revitalized the domestic manufacture of high end computer chips, making supply chains more secure in that critical area of technology.

The challenge for Donald Trump, as Thomas Friedman has noted, lies in handling our adversaries' weaknesses, not their strengths. Is there a way to keep the pressure on Iran but also to offer it incentives to cooperate to cap its nuclear program and lessen its support for militias? Can Russia be pressured to take a deal that allows Ukraine to thrive as a pro-Western democracy, and yet allows Russia to save face? Can China be weaned off its closest alliance with Russia?

These are all difficult tasks, but Biden's achievements do provide Trump with opportunities. The president will not get a thank you from his successor, but perhaps he will be treated better by history.

Go to CNN.com/Fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week, and let's get started.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine. October 7th, and the war in the Middle East. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria. These are just three of the monumental world events that the Biden administration has had to respond to.

The man leading those responses has been Jake Sullivan, the president's National Security adviser. He joins me now for an exclusive interview.

Jake, to begin, you heard what I said. I'm not going to ask you to confirm the good things I said about the Biden administration, but do you agree that it provides Donald Trump with some real opportunities?

JAKE SULLIVAN, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: I do. I think what we're handing off is a very strong hand from the United States in terms of our national power, in terms of the strength of our alliances, and in terms of a key point that you made in your opening statement, which is that America's competitors and adversaries are weaker and under greater pressure than they have been. All the while, we kept America out of war.

So that kind of hand allows Donald Trump to come in and do two things. One, work to continue to improve America's strategic position vis-a- vis our geopolitical competitors. And two, try to shape a world that is consistent with the interests and values of the U.S.

Now, it's going to be up to him how he plays that hand. But I'm proud of what we're handing off. ZAKARIA: But he does have an opportunity partly because of the Nixon

going to China phenomenon, right? He can reach out to Xi Jinping and not be accused of being a lover of the Chinese Communist Party. He can reach out to even the Iranians he's talked about, and he has some political flexibility there.

SULLIVAN: Yes. And also, he has shown over time that he's willing to be, for lack of a better term, heterodox. He's willing to do things that are unexpected. He went, of course, to meet with Kim Jong-un. So if you look at these countries that you talked about in your opening, Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, Iran and China, actually, to me, present opportunities not just for deterrence and pushing back, but also for diplomacy.

With China, diplomacy to manage the competition effectively, to try to come to a better understanding so that as two large powers we can live alongside one another. And with Iran a genuine opportunity, in my view, given their weakened state to work with the Europeans, the Arabs and others to get a nuclear deal that puts Iran's nuclear program back in the box.

[10:10:01]

Now this would be kind of interesting because it was Trump who pulled out of the last nuclear deal, but maybe he can come around this time with the situation Iran finds itself in and actually deliver a nuclear deal that curbs Iran's nuclear ambitions for the long term.

ZAKARIA: He reversed himself on bitcoin so he can reverse himself on Iran.

What are the -- you know, there are obviously opportunities in the Middle East, but it's also a pretty dangerous situation. Turkey might invade parts of Syria. The Israelis have taken a beachhead. When you look at Syria now, what are you worried about?

SULLIVAN: The single biggest concern I have is the resurgence of ISIS. ISIS loves vacuums. And what we see in Syria right now are areas that are basically ungoverned because of the fall of the Assad regime, and ISIS is doing everything it can to try and take advantage of those, to regrow its capability, to threaten Europe, threaten the United States, threaten Americans all over the world.

But each of the pieces you just described are connected. So, for example, if Turkey attacks the Kurds -- the Kurds are our best partner to fight ISIS. They would be distracted from that fight. The Kurds are the ones who are guarding the prisons where there are thousands of ISIS fighters and tens of thousands of ISIS radicalized family members currently being held in detention. If all those folks got out, you'd be talking about a serious threat to the United States and our friends.

So our goal is to ensure that we support the SDF, the Kurds, and that we keep ISIS in check. And that's why President Biden, right after Assad fell, ordered airstrikes against ISIS positions, because we are determined not to let them reestablish the kind of position they had 10 years ago.

ZAKARIA: Iran is now weak, much weaker than it's been for decades. But that produce -- that could produce a kind of defensive mentality that it's not, you know, dealing with countries that are weakened can also sometimes be a tough problem. What is your view of where is Iran and what are its likely actions?

SULLIVAN: You know, it's interesting and you made this point in your opening statement about, you know, dealing with strong enemies is one thing. Dealing with weak enemies is another. And what I found over the last four years is that when good things happen, like Iran being weaker than it was before, there are frequently bad things lurking around the corner. One of those things is, if you're Iran right now and you're looking around at the fact that your conventional capability has been reduced, your proxies have been reduced, your main client state has been eliminated, Assad has fallen, it's no wonder there are voices saying, hey, maybe we need to go for a nuclear weapon right now. That to me is the --

ZAKARIA: There are voices in Iran saying that.

SULLIVAN: They're saying it publicly. In fact, they're saying maybe we have to revisit our nuclear doctrine, a doctrine that has said we'll have a civilian nuclear program and certain capabilities, but we're not going for a nuke. That is a real risk. It's a risk we are trying to be vigilant about now. It's a risk that I'm personally briefing the incoming team on.

I was just in Israel consulting with the Israelis on this risk. And it's something that is the consequence not of Iranian strength, but of Iranian weakness. And that's the kind of thing that in a dynamic and challenging Middle East, American statecraft is going to have to account for.

ZAKARIA: Next, on GPS, we will dig deeper on both Russia and China with the National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:17:55]

ZAKARIA: We are back here on GPS with the president's National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan.

I've said over the last few weeks, including this week, Russia is weak. But what about -- let me play devil's advocate. What about those who say, look, the Russians are still advancing in Ukraine. The sanctions don't seem to have stopped the Russian war machine. You watched Putin in that -- in his press conference. He seemed perfectly at ease. No signs that he's softening or weakening in any way. Maybe the Russians are stronger than we think.

SULLIVAN: Well, let me give you a hypothetical. Let's imagine three years ago, Joe Biden had gone on television and said, I'm going to take Ottawa, Canada, the capital of Canada, in a week. And then three years later, the American military was grinding it out in the wheat fields of Manitoba, having suffered 600,000 dead and wounded. Inflation at 10 percent, interest rates at 21 percent, mortgaging the economic and technological future of the country. Having to rely on soldiers from other countries to fill the ranks.

Would you be telling me America was stronger in that circumstance? No way. Russia failed to conquer Kyiv. It's bogged down in Ukraine. Its economy is under massive pressure, and it is essentially putting itself in a position where its economic growth is stimulated entirely by the continuation of a war that is sapping it of an entire generation of young Russians.

So, in my view, Russia is in a weakened state, and there is no better evidence for that than the fact that they could not come to the aid of their main Middle Eastern ally, Bashar Assad. Assad called out for help. Russia couldn't answer that call because it's weakened and distracted, and Assad fell, shocking the Russians. And now they're trying to figure out if they can even stay in their bases in the Eastern Mediterranean.

ZAKARIA: To get some kind of a deal, Trump is going to have to put pressure on Russia.

[10:20:01]

I mean, he already has all the leverage he needs to put pressure on Zelenskyy. You just say, we're not sending you weapons. The challenge is how do you get Russia to the table and make -- to make concessions? What do you think was the most effective way to do that? And isn't this too central to Putin's sense of his own survival for him to really concede the whole game?

SULLIVAN: Look, we've all heard President Trump raise his concerns about continuing to provide military support to Ukraine. But we've also heard over a much longer timeframe Donald Trump's belief that he should get a good deal for America and a good deal for America means we need leverage. And that leverage is continued military support for Ukraine. So I think the most important thing is for Donald Trump to send a message to Putin, the United States will keep backing Ukraine, Europe will keep backing Ukraine, until and unless you accept fair terms for a just peace.

Putin has shown in the past he's willing to do deals as long as he feels he's under enough pressure. So I think Trump's got to keep the pressure on. And then I do believe a deal is achievable. But if we pull the rug out from under Ukraine, if we say we're not giving them anymore, if we accept whatever terms Putin offers, I think that that would end up harming America's interests in the long term in a profound way.

ZAKARIA: On China. Trump now says, you know, maybe Xi will come to the inaugural. I think if we could get on well with China and solve some of the problems of the world, this would be a great thing. What's the upside here? What is -- what does a U.S.-China deal look like that would be worth having?

SULLIVAN: I think this is a very hard question to answer. I've heard about, can't there be some grand bargain between the U.S. and China? I'm personally skeptical of the idea of a grand bargain, because I think there are inherently competitive aspects of the relationship, and we need to continue to take steps to strengthen our competitive position, not sell China advanced technology that can be used against us or our allies.

Push back against China's economic practices that hurt our workers, push back against China's military aggression that's pressuring our allies. I think we're going to have to do these things over the long term, and there's not some grand bargain that's going to alleviate that. But what I do think that diplomacy between the president of the United States and the leader of China can do is create more stability in the relationship and create space for us to work together on issues that are in our mutual interest.

Stopping the flow of precursor chemicals for fentanyl into the United States from China is one example of that. President Biden has made big strides. I think President Trump could carry that forward. Reducing some of the economic frictions between our countries to the benefit of our workers. That's something you could put on the table and deal between Xi and Trump on. President Biden has taken good steps to protect our workers. President Trump could build on that.

But at the end of the day, the right recipe for U.S.-China relations is compete vigorously, keep open lines of communication, and then try to work together where we can and not let competition veer into conflict. That is the charge that we have carried these four years. That's what we're passing off. And that's what I think the Trump administration needs to carry forward.

ZAKARIA: What's the one thing you learned in this job that you -- that surprised you, that you you've been around these jobs for 25 years being right in the cockpit. What was the most surprising thing to you?

SULLIVAN: I don't know if it's the most surprising, but something that really stood out to me when I arrived in the job, America's defense industrial base was in an incredibly weakened state. We were not producing the munitions, the submarines, the ships, the military technologies that we need to have effective deterrence and power projection around the world. And what surprised me is how hard it is to cut through all of the different obstacles, to be able to put our defense industrial base on a long-term trajectory of good health.

We have taken a lot of steps over the last four years. We've arrested the slide in the defense industrial base. That was 40 years in the making, but it's going to take quite a long time through the Trump administration to get us back to where we need to be.

ZAKARIA: Would you tell Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to take a hard look at the Pentagon when they're thinking about reforming government?

SULLIVAN: I certainly would. I think there are areas within the Pentagon budget, given its sheer size, we're talking now, it's creeping up towards $1 trillion a year as you look out over the next few years, where I think we can continue to find government efficiency. Now, I don't know exactly how they're going to structure what they're doing, but I believe that on the objective question of, could we be doing more with the dollars we have in our defense budget, as in other parts of our budget, the answer is yes.

[10:25:02]

I think we've taken strides on that, but there is a lot more to do. And that really, truly should be a bipartisan issue.

ZAKARIA: On that bipartisan note, Jake Sullivan, always a pleasure, and we hope we'll see you back in private capacity.

SULLIVAN: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, why are so many Americans not bothered by Donald Trump's frequent violation of norms? Why do they indeed even celebrate that?

David Brooks says there is a key to understanding this puzzle.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Why are Americans so divided over Donald Trump? Why do some deem him morally disgraceful while others laud him as a hero?

"New York Times" columnist David Brooks says it depends on your worldview and whether you're an institutionalist or an anti- institutionalist. He discussed it in a recent New York Times column, "The Moral Challenge of Trumpism."

[10:30:00]

David joins me now. So, I want to start where you did, where you make a very interesting distinction between Mitt Romney and Donald Trump. Most people look at Mitt Romney and they think this is a standup guy. You know, he's honorable, he's decent. He does -- he never tells lies. He, you know, follows the rules.

He seems to have managed his family in an exemplary manner. Still married to the same woman he was 45 years ago, whatever. But you say that there are a lot of people who look at him from the sort of world of Trump, and they see a different picture.

DAVID BROOKS, OPINION COLUMNIST, NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, I see a wholesome family guy who's really a good father. They see a conformist to bourgeois old fashioned values. I see a guy who served the country running the Olympics or serving as governor of Massachusetts, or in the United States Senate. They see a guy complicit in the power structures.

I see a guy who's self-disciplined and restrained, and sometimes he voted against -- to convict Donald Trump in the two impeachment trials. So, somebody who has his own mind. They see a guy who's complicit in just the rotten way society is run.

And so, I'm an institutionalist. I think we're born into a society with institutions. There's the constitution. There are churches or synagogues or mosques. There are companies. I work at The New York Times.

And so, we get hired by these institutions. We try to rise to the level of excellence as defined by these institutions, and then we try to pass the institutions off better than we found them. And that's one way of looking at the world.

But the MAGA worldview is very different. It's the institutions are inherently corrupt. So, what I see is prudent restraint. They see as complicity and corruption.

ZAKARIA: And so, when they see somebody like Donald Trump who -- you know, who violates all kinds of norms. I mean, norms that you would think that these people who admire him actually uphold in their own lives, or at least honor, you know, don't -- don't lie, don't cheat, don't -- don't cheat on your wife, don't commit adultery. I mean, all those things, why do they do they -- do they excuse them? Is it that they like him despite all that? Or is there some part of it that they actually think, yes, he's -- he's burning down the house?

BROOKS: Yes. He's -- they show he's the guy whos going to do what we hired him to do. And so, he's the guy who is indicted. But that's a sign that he's -- he's trustworthy because the criminal system is unjust. They see all these appointments he's making who have sex abuse scandals, but that's a sign they're transgressive, that they're willing to break the rules. And there are large majorities in this country, not just Republicans, who think the systems are fundamentally broken. We need somebody who's going to come in and break the rules. And so, for Trump, when he appoints all these people who have all these scandals, that's a virtue, not a vice, because if they have scandals, that shows they're rule breakers.

ZAKARIA: So, you know, if you look at the way in which so many people have transferred their allegiance from the Republican Party, an institution, to Trump personally. To me, that transformation has been stunning. If you look at the last Republican convention, there was no former president who was invited, no former vice president, not even Trump's own vice president.

BROOKS: Right.

ZAKARIA: But Trump -- members of the Trump family were center stage.

BROOKS: Yes. And sometimes outsiders think, oh, he's just corrupt. And that's a problem. But the corruption is the virtue.

And so, it's not just he's -- he's a hypocrite. He's not a hypocrite. It's -- it's what the philosophers call a transvaluation of values, that the whole value system is quite different.

And if you look, go back to George H.W. Bush to take a classic example. He was a total institutionalist. He served in the military. He served in the CIA. He served as president.

And the role that he sought-- and frankly, every previous president, I'm not -- I don't own the presidency. I am the steward of the presidency. And so, there's a clear distinction with what's in my personal interest and what the office demands. And pretty much all our public servants believe that that I'm just here occupying the role for a short period of time. Ronald Reagan will always put a jacket on before going to the Oval Office.

But Trump, in the first term, treated the presidency his own personal property. He really saw the presidency more the way a king would see his office than the way an elected official would see their office.

ZAKARIA: What do you think it says about America at this moment, that people want so much transgression, they want so much violation of norms?

BROOKS: Yes, I think for the last 30 or 40 years, and this is both a left-wing thing and a right-wing thing, the establishment is awful. The establishment needs to be destroyed. And that started on the left with, you know, Abbie Hoffman in the 1960s. And it happened on the right. Even the Reagan revolution started. We need to drain the swamp.

And so, it became sort of a destructive mentality. If we tear it down, then what's going to come is bound to be better. And I'm a student of a philosopher named Edmund Burke. And his central rule was, if you tear it down, what's happening is going to be a lot worse.

[10:35:02]

And so, it's two radically different views of how social change should happen. I think it should happen gradually, incrementally, building on the strengths of what we've been lucky enough to inherit from our ancestors. But the populist strategy is just a very different strategy.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, David will be back to explain why Ivy League admissions are the root cause of so many of our problems these days When we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:06]

ZAKARIA: Last month's election revealed a stark diploma divide. The vote showed Democrats once seen as champions of the working class, performing far better among college educated voters, while Republicans dominated among those without degrees. So, what explains the split? The New York Times columnist David Brooks is back with us. He breaks it all down in his must-read Atlantic cover story, "How the Ivy League Broke America."

OK, for those who are not going to read it, tell us -- summarize, you know, why was -- why is it that as you see it, the college admissions process is actually so central to what has gone wrong?

BROOKS: Yes. Why do we see this diploma divide? Like why does going to a four-year school make that big a difference? Because it makes that big a difference in life.

So, high school educated people die eight years younger than college educated people. They're much more likely to die of opioid addiction. There are five times more likely to have a kid out of wedlock. They're much more likely to divorce, much more likely to be obese.

And the one that kills me is that people with high school degrees are 2.4 times more likely to say they have no close friends.

ZAKARIA: Yes.

BRROKS: They're less likely to go to a park, join a hobby.

ZAKARIA: And even when you think about the prohibitive cost of a college education today, it is still true. In fact, more true that your lifetime earnings with that four-year degree are way higher than if you don't have that four-year degree.

BROOKS: Absolutely. And so, we've got this chasm. But it's not only a chasm, it's an inherited caste structure. And so, what -- when the people designed the admissions officers at universities did not understand is that they thought if we -- if we do it by grades and GPA, that will be universally distributed, we'll have a broad-based leadership class. But it turns out rich people can rig the game.

So, by preschool families of rich kid -- kids of rich families are much more likely to be in preschool. By eighth grade, rich families, four grade levels higher in reading and math by 18 --- SAT scores hundreds of points higher. And so, the gap between --

ZAKARIA: And this is because extra classes, extracurricular, being in a family that emphasizes reading --

BROOKS: They invest -- you know, they invest in oboe practice, SAT prep. They take you on vacations to Europe. You have all this cultural awareness. So, you're just -- you've got all these advantages built in.

ZAKARIA: And when -- you when you think about it, as you say, it came out of a good intention, right? I mean, this is the famous James Conant at Harvard saying, I don't want to have an aristocracy. I want to have a meritocracy. So, we're going to -- were going to admit people not on the basis of what prep school they went to, what -- you know, whether their family came over on the mayflower, but on how well they -- how smart they are.

BROOKS: Yes. It was supposed to move us from bloodlines to brainpower, and it was well intentioned, as you say. The problem was in that era, and this is like 70 or 80 years ago when this happened, or even more, they had a series of assumptions that we no longer know are true.

And the first of that is, they didn't believe rich people will be able to rig the system. They thought it was all genetics, but there's no such thing as pure genetics. It's how you -- it's environment.

But the second mistake they made is they vastly overvalued intelligence. They thought if you measure I.Q., then I.Q. is really what matters. And I.Q. matters. If you want to be a neuroscientist, I recommend that you have a high I.Q. But it's like -- crudely, I'd say it's 30 percent of what matters in a person.

What really matters in a person is are they curious? Are they good teammates? Do they have a passion that will allow them to drive through difficulty and achieve their goals? You know, those things.

Curiosity, just a sense of personal mission. Franklin Roosevelt was quite a good president. He would not have gotten into Harvard today because he was not a good student and he didn't really care. But he had a first-class temperament that made him an outstanding president.

ZAKARIA: And talk about what you think -- so you have some solutions in the Atlantic article. That's what I like because you can rail against a meritocracy, but we don't want to go back to bloodlines and birth and an aristocracy. So, what's the -- what's the solution?

BROOKS: So, for example, one of the problems of the meritocracy is we train people at school and we use it to predict how they're going to do in life. But school is not like life. Like I'm an adult, I don't spend a lot of time sitting in a classroom listening to lectures. School is about individual achievement. Life is mostly about teamwork. It's working on projects with other people.

And so, I want school to be more like life. So, we'll train the abilities that are more like life. So, for example, there's a kind of school called project-based learning where kids aren't just sitting in lectures, they're creating projects together as part of teams. So, you need kids who can think of all the different solutions, how to clarify thoughts so we can illustrate it this way.

And so, it rewards a wide variety of ability. And when people leave project-based learning, they have grades and they have SAT scores and they do perfectly fine on SAT scores in the schools, but they also have a portfolio of this is what I've accomplished. And so, you get a fuller picture of how what the human being is, not just a transcript.

ZAKARIA: And all this then relates to solving the problem of this great divide, right?

BROOKS: Yes. Well, I do think if we -- if we select people at these schools by kindness and friendship and curiosity and drive, those are more democratically distributed.

[10:45:07]

Moreover, what we need is what they call opportunity pluralism. Right now, there's one way to get to the top in America. You go through these little -- 34 of schools and then you can branch out and go into finance and media and --

ZAKARIA: Who will select you on the basis of how well you -- essentially, how well you do academically between the ages of roughly 15 and 18.

BROOKS: Right. Somehow, they think they can find whos going to be a significant person by what they're doing at age 17. I guarantee you, that's not the way I was at 17. And so -- but if we had a plurality of opportunities, so we're not just one mountain top, we're a whole bunch of mountaintops. So, you could do vocational education where people who are good with -- with good with their hands or good with spatial intelligence, the ability to rotate objects in your mind or caring. And so, what we've done over the last 50 years, we've sucked the prestige and status out of people who are like master technicians, and we've invested in people who are master consultants or investment bankers. And we basically redistributed respect and status in this society from the masses of people to a small group of people in a very small number of cities.

ZAKARIA: David Brooks, always a pleasure.

BROOKS: Always good to be with you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next here on GPS, I'll tell you which country is the most innovative in the world. Hint, it's probably not the one you think.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:51:05]

ZAKARIA: And now for the last look. On Monday, in his first press conference since winning the election, Donald Trump vowed his tariffs would make our country rich.

In fact, America is rich and has gotten considerably richer than its peers in recent years. U.S. companies tower over the world. Its growth in recent years has outpaced other rich countries, and its productivity is rising.

But bigger isn't always better, and Trump, along with many other world leaders, might take some lessons from a new report on the global economy that shows us just that. The global innovation index, published by the UN's intellectual property agency, ranks how innovative countries are using measures including scientific publications, high tech exports and R and D spending as a percentage of GDP.

You might think that the U.S., home of the world's biggest tech companies, would top the rankings. But while doing very well, it comes in third place. The index says the most innovative country in the world is Switzerland. It turns out the alpine nation of 9 million people ranks highest in the world for patent applications relative to GDP.

Switzerland has top notch universities and strong links between universities and businesses for research and development. Unlike the U.S., Switzerland has low levels of public debt. Its government spends money carefully, but it still manages to offer high quality universal health care and education. It has strong infrastructure and a highly diversified economy.

Singapore, fourth on the list, earns top marks for its high-tech manufacturing, its skilled labor force, and its open trade policies. Now, Switzerland has been successful for centuries, but Singapore shows that young nations can move up.

China ranks 11th on the index. No other middle-income country is even close. That's a reminder that whatever its current problems, China's achievements remain real and impressive.

It's encouraging to see that two relatively poor countries have a much higher ranking on the index than their per capita income would suggest, Vietnam and India. I'll start with Vietnam. It ranks 133rd in the world on per capita income, but it's 44th on the index in terms of innovation, with good marks for high tech imports and exports and labor productivity growth.

It has a skilled labor force that has lured foreign investment, and it has steadily developed its infrastructure. Then there's India. It has an even lower per capita income than Vietnam, but it ranks 39th on the innovation index. It's a leading exporter of I.T. services.

It has tech hubs in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai. It attracts a large amount of venture capital funding.

Other countries have surprising strengths as well. Malaysia has the most graduates in science and engineering as a proportion of people who've gone on to post-secondary education. Namibia spends the most on education as a proportion of its GDP.

In terms of a global outlook, this report contains some notes of caution, science and innovation investments slowed down after the pandemic. And with higher interest rates, their future is uncertain. We need faster progress on developing environmentally sound policies and technologies.

Still, it's impossible to read this report and not feel a certain sense of optimism about the future. The big story is really about the spread of technology and the diffusion of knowledge more broadly. As the innovation report notes, technology is advancing rapidly everywhere. Computing power is growing. More people are buying electric vehicles and using robotics. The cost of sequencing a genome has fallen from about $100 million in 2001 to just over $500 in 2023.

[10:55:03]

In 2023, 5G coverage expanded to about 38 percent of the world's population. Today, 95 percent of the world is covered by at least 3G. It's easy to observe the state of the world and despair, but there are enormous leaps in human progress happening all around us if we just remember to look for them.

And finally, if you are looking for a last-minute Christmas gift for a friend or relative, I have a suggestion, my new book, "Age of Revolutions." To put it simply, if you want to understand the persistent appeal of Donald Trump and populists around the world grounded in history, read this book. Go to your local bookstore, or find it online.

Thank you. And thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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