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Fareed Zakaria GPS

A Rupture Between Trump and European Populists?; Choppy Waters in the Transatlantic Relationship. Interview With China Strategies Group President And CEO Christopher K. Johnson; Interview With Signal Foundation President Meredith Whittaker; Interview With Eli Lilly Chief Scientific And Product Officer Daniel Skovronsky. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired February 01, 2026 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:52]

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, coming to you from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, how is Europe looking at the death of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last weekend? I asked Zanny Minton Beddoes and Christopher Caldwell.

Then China's top general is under investigation for violating discipline and the law. It is the latest and biggest move in a massive ongoing purge of the military's top leaders. We'll read the tea leaves on what all this means for President Xi, for China, for Taiwan and for the United States.

Finally, A.I. agents may be the future. Programs that can complete a task for you, start to finish, like plan a vacation. But are they a disaster for your privacy? That's what the president of the encrypted messaging app Signal says. I'll ask her to explain.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and other MAGA luminaries often proclaim that the grave danger facing the West is civilizational erasure, which they claim is happening in Europe. Through its dangerous and misguided approach toward identity and immigration, Europe is destroying the West's distinctive legacy.

But the West's defining character has not been tribal or religious solidarity. That describes most of the world. The West's precious, almost unique achievement has been the limitation of state power. Since Magna Carta in 1215, the West gradually placed constraints on rulers through rights for citizens, independent courts, or sovereign church, and the sanctity of private property. That inheritance is what made the West democratic and prosperous. It's

also what made it stable. Citizens could dissent, businesses could invest, and civil society could flourish because power was bounded by law.

The second Trump administration has moved sharply to erode these traditions. In Minneapolis, two people exercising their First Amendment rights were shot dead. There and elsewhere, federal officers have been operating masked, often in unmarked vehicles, making arrests without judicial warrants. The optics and the felt reality are of authoritarian policing. State power that is unbounded.

And it's more than optics. This administration has used its powers in stunningly aggressive ways, often slow-walking its obedience of court rulings, delaying them so much as to be sometimes defying them de facto.

The Trump administration has declared war on civil society, media, universities, non-governmental organizations, law firms, and even private businesses. The Justice Department's plans to investigate organizations like George Soros' Open Society Foundations, with the president describing it as racketeering, signaled something dark.

The criminalization of disfavored groups. It is the logic of Hungary and Russia imported into American politics. You don't rebut critics, you investigate them.

Then there's the legal profession. When the government threatens law firms through security clearances, access to federal buildings, and the insinuation that representing the wrong client carries consequences, it's telling the country quietly but unmistakably the protections of due process are conditional if you choose a firm that the state does not like.

Universities too have been frontally attacked and investigated on an unprecedented scale.

[10:05:01]

You do not have to love the modern American university to see the danger here. The state is using funding to compel political concessions from independent institutions.

The press, always the early warning system of a free society, has faced what can only be described as relentless intimidation. Media outlets are sued and regulatory powers used publicly in an apparent attempt to coerce owners to toe the party line. In August, a federal judge found that the Trump administration's Federal Trade Commission investigation into the left-wing group Media Matters likely violated the group's First Amendment rights and looked like political retaliation, not neutral regulation.

The administration is expanding state power within the economy. Less is a rule setter than as a deal maker and disciplinarian. There's a world of difference between industrial policy that works through published criteria and competitive grants, and a system where CEOs are summoned to the White House, punished, rewarded or encouraged to comply.

When regulators hint that routine approvals, renewals or reviews may depend on whether companies adopt or abandon certain policies, capitalism stops being a competitive arena and starts resembling a patronage system.

And then hovering over all of this is the administration's appetite for using security state tools not on extremists, but on dissidents. Consider the push to designate some antifa groups as foreign terrorist organizations, a concept so vague and ill-defined that even national security experts warned it could become a catchall.

Under existing law, knowingly providing material support for a designated foreign terrorist organization can carry up to 20 years in prison, and support can be construed broadly enough to include trivial assistance. That is how democracies decay, not by announcing that dissent is illegal, but by reclassifying dissent as something else.

The administration talks about the West as if it were a heritage museum, symbols, slogans, identity. But the West's real genius is institutional, law that binds all, the strong and the weak. Liberty protected not by benevolent leaders, but by constrained ones. A civil society robust enough to oppose the state without fearing that opposition will be treated as a criminal act.

The West is not a bloodline. It is a bargain. Power constrained, rights protected, coercion accountable. The greatest threat to the West is not that it is becoming too tolerant or too concerned about individual rights. It is the expansion of state power making the West just like every other society in history where the strong rule the weak.

When seen in that light, we can say plainly that civilizational erasure is indeed happening. But it's not in Europe. It is here where the American government grows comfortable with unbounded power and the country grows accustomed to living with it.

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

The federal immigration raids in Minneapolis and the killing of two civilians there are sharpening a question being asked by many across the world. What exactly is happening in the United States?

For more on how the world is viewing Trump 2.0, I'm joined by a great panel. Zanny Minton Beddoes is the editor-in-chief of "The Economist," based in London, and Chris Caldwell is an American conservative author and contributing opinion columnist for "The New York Times." He's written extensively about European immigration and culture.

Zanny, I was wondering what you made of this last turn. You and I were in Davos and the last shooting had not taken place. What I'm wondering is European populist conservatives have generally been very supportive of the Trump immigration crackdown. Is that changing now because of what's been going on in Minneapolis, do you think? ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE ECONOMIST: So I think we

are beginning to see some signs of that. I mean, it is important to note that most even of their supporters are skeptical of Donald Trump, whether it is in Germany, with the AfD or in France with the RN or even Farage here. But as you say, all of these parties have been pushing for much more aggressive deportations in Europe. And so you would think that what was -- what Donald Trump was doing would be sort of music to their ears.

But I think the popular sense of revulsion and shock at what's happened is shaping the response. So Nigel Farage, for example, this week said that he thought ICE had gone too far.

[10:10:02]

Jordan Bardella, as far as I can tell, hasn't said anything publicly about it. They've been very quiet. And in Germany, Alice Weidel and the leadership of the AfD, have not said anything very much, although there are AfD politicians who have said, you know, good on them. This is robust policy. So I think they're kind of trying to thread this needle and it's come on top of, remember, the whole Greenland episode, which was also very difficult for European populist right, because they all collectively had to say, absolutely, this was not on.

ZAKARIA: Yes. Chris, do you make a distinction between -- on Greenland, they all, all of them, I think, almost actively denounced Trump on immigration. As Zanny says, they're being a little bit more cautious or careful. How do you read what they're trying to figure out? Like where -- you know, they're obviously trying to figure out where their electorates are and how to thread this needle.

CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL, CONTRIBUTING OPINION WRITER, NEW YORK TIMES: On Greenland, it's an interesting thing because populists in Europe tend to be really preoccupied with sovereignty. And Trump is now, you know, crossing the sovereignty of a major European -- of a European country of Denmark and I think that that's -- that is, even if you're not a supporter of the European Union, it is a bit of a humiliation for those Europeans who still think of their continent as able to throw its weight around on the global stage.

As far as Minneapolis is concerned, I think that nothing that's happened in Minneapolis has changed populists' wish to see a kind of a resolute and forceful move against illegal immigration, but obviously this is a very bad look. And any party that is going to have to fight elections as the, as the AfD is in several states this year in Germany, is not going to want to get behind Trump.

ZAKARIA: And Zanny, where is European immigration policy? Because in the United States, essentially the border is closed and you actively have deportations. You have students, you know, visas are down a lot. You know, Chinese student numbers are plummeting. What's the picture of what is actually happening with immigration in Europe?

MINTON BEDDOES: So the interesting thing is that illegal migration, so migrant arrivals are also down dramatically in Europe. And that is because European -- the E.U. has essentially done deals with countries like Tunisia and countries through which migrants come to give them aid and investment in exchange for those countries essentially stopping those people passing through.

And secondly, the E.U. has got much tougher border enforcement. So the numbers are dropping substantially. And this is really interesting, I think, for the politics, because just as Donald Trump to hit the very large deportation figures that he's promised to reach has to go right into the heartland of America. He can't do it simply by picking up hardened criminals, as he says.

So the populist right in Europe, if they want to have, quote, "a mass deportation scheme," as some of them say they want to do, or the Germans call it remigration, the AfD, they are going to have to similarly go and find these people. And so I think there's a parallel what's happening in Europe, but it's not to the same extreme degree as the United States, where, of course, as you say, the border is completely closed in effect.

ZAKARIA: Chris, what does this do to the politics of the far-right? Because it has all been fueled by this, you know, overwhelmingly by this one issue. And I'm just wondering about this, even in the United States, as these numbers fall in a strange way the problem kind of dissipates or, you know, not quite goes away. Does the anger stay? Does the, you know, or is this likely to mean there is less of a market for, you know, kind of right-wing populist politics because the problem it was protesting is kind of going away?

CALDWELL: Yes. I think that -- I think that Steve Bannon, for instance, has spoken about deporting all 10 million people who arrived during the Biden administration, assuming that's an accurate number. That seems quite unlikely to happen. For one thing you don't really need to have remigration to have some of the positive things happen that Trump has promised. I think that deporting, you know, people who have got into trouble with the law since migrating will help crime. We have seen drops in crime.

Simply not adding to the labor force is going to tighten the labor market and probably will do good things for wages among the, you know, lower earners.

[10:15:08]

So you don't have to get to 10 million to really solve a lot of the problems that you got elected for. And I think that there will be the pressure for more robust enforcement will dissipate.

ZAKARIA: Stay with us. When we come back, I'm going to ask our panel what the actual future of U.S.-European relations are now that, you know, the Greenland issue does seem to have blown over for now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: I am back with Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor-in-chief of "The Economist," and Chris Caldwell, who's a conservative author and contributing writer for "The New York Times."

[10:20:08]

Zanny, it's, you know, I can remember for much of my life being told the Atlantic relationship is in crisis. And if you look back historically, I mean, there are periods of extraordinary crisis. I mean, Suez, when the U.S. used its economic power to essentially strangle the British and French economies, forced them to withdraw their troops from the Middle East. Or, you know, in the '60s, France leaves NATO entirely.

Is this, you know, truly a as seismic a break as people have been making it out to be? Or will there be a way for the Atlantic alliance to muddle along as it has for 80 years?

MINTON BEDDOES: So I think it is a big break. But I think it doesn't mean the end of the transatlantic relationship, but I think it means awakening up in Europe that this is a different kind of relationship, and it needs to be a different kind of relationship that fundamentally Europe has to be much more responsible for its own defense and its own security.

And I do think something in the last year and indeed the last three weeks, you and I were witnessing the whole Greenland debacle, which, you know, I will wager will come back because I actually don't think this has gone for good.

ZAKARIA: Chris. and what about the president at Davos again alluded to this whole issue that in the National Security Strategy document is called "civilizational erasure." The idea that Europe is sort of undermining core Western values. He says that. Vance says it. Many, you know, Tucker Carlson says it. What is going on here? Is this -- is this foreign policy? Is this an ideological, political attack? Why are they doing it, I guess is my question?

CALDWELL: I think it's actually -- it's a mix. It's an explanation of an ideology that has a foreign policy consequence. I think that the Trump administration actually meant this as a compliment to Europe. It's saying that we considered Europe a living civilization. And we have been drawing a lot of our, let's just say, we've been taking our bearings from the ongoing European civilization.

And without it, it creates a kind of a shortfall in our ability to even envision ourselves in the world. I think that sounds a little airy, but I do think that that was what was meant.

ZAKARIA: And, Zanny, there are people who say in Europe that if you listen to the populist right in Europe, at least, and maybe this is not explicitly said by the Trump administration, but they don't like Europe because it's sort of like America's Ivy League universities, too woke, too liberal, too, you know, too multicultural. And what they like is Russia, a white, conservative Christian nation that is very traditional and, you know, anti-gay and anti-abortion and et cetera, et cetera. Does that make sense?

MINTON BEDDOES: Well, first of all, I just have to say to Chris that if it was meant by the Trump administration as a compliment to Europe, I'm not sure very many people in Europe took it as a compliment. I think we feel that this is an administration that belittles Europeans, that, frankly, has on many things there's a grain of truth to what the administration is saying, but that it revels in, you know, basically belittling and putting down Europeans and is quite contemptuous of them.

So that's the -- right or wrong that's the view we have here. I think there are some in the administration, of course, who have this view that, bizarrely, that Vladimir Putin is somehow closer to the values that they hold dear of a sort of nationalist, ethno-nationalist view. I mean, I think they probably don't know Vladimir Putin and how he runs things very well, and certainly that view is not -- is sort of completely gets Europe wrong.

This idea that we live in, I mean, I live in London, that London is a kind of, you know, hellhole, which is, you know, large parts of which are subject to Sharia law, and you can't go anywhere without being mugged. It's just nonsense. I mean, we have a whole series of pieces this week in "The Economist" explaining why this is nonsense. You know, it's just not true. It's very effective for a certain kind of meme and certain kind of narrative. Some members of the administration might want to put forward.

But yes, there are too many restraints on free speech in certain areas of U.K. I mean, I'll give them that. But broadly, this idea that Europe is a civilizational wreck is just rubbish, honestly.

ZAKARIA: Thank you both. That was a terrific conversation. Really appreciate it.

Next on GPS, could the ouster of China's top general spell danger for Taiwan? That is how some people are reading the news.

[10:25:01]

I will ask an expert.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Last weekend, Chinese authorities announced the ouster of China's top general. The news sent Western analysts into a spiral of speculation over both the reasons and the implications of the shocking purge. One word consistently on everyone's lips, Taiwan.

Here to unpack what an ongoing purge of top military officials reveals about Xi Jinping's leadership is an expert on elite politics in China. Christopher Johnson is the president and CEO of China Strategies Group and a former CIA analyst.

Chris, welcome. You really were the top guy in the CIA to understand this kind of elite maneuvering. And so I have to ask you, why has Xi Jinping fired this guy? And more broadly, I think he has fired now, like something like the eight top generals in China, right? What's going on?

CHRISTOPHER K. JOHNSON, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CHINA STRATEGIES GROUP: That's right. Well, I think there's a number of reasons why he chose to do this now. I think the first is that he quite simply got tired of all the corruption within the top leadership of the military. You know, this is something that's been unfolding, as you point out for quite a while now.

This current cycle started with some dismissals in their strategic Rocket Force about two years ago and just culminated, as you said, with the purge of the highest ranked uniformed officer. I think the second point is his relationship with President Trump. The stare down, if you want to call it that, from last year's trade war with President Trump using that rare earth's card to capitalize on that and get a trade truce with Trump, that probably gave him the confidence to take on such a big internal move.

And I think third, and finally, it does suggest to us that despite the fact that Xi Jinping seems to be around and wants to be leader forever, he is starting to think about the succession. He does feel the sand running through the hourglass on his time in office. And I think he wanted to start creating the conditions for him to be able to start thinking about that.

ZAKARIA: So you're right that we've often heard that the PLA, the Chinese army, is corrupt, and it kind of makes sense in a system where that much power is concentrated. Presumably they have huge budgets that have been increasing. What does it tell us about how effective they are? This is something we've all tried to figure out.

And I remember Jim Mattis telling me about how he had a meeting -- when he was secretary of defense, and Trump won. He had a meeting with China's top military leader, and the guy was boasting about how effective China's military was. And he said, but you guys haven't fought a war in 50 years, except for that, you know, small one with Vietnam. I don't know how you could know how effective you are when you've not fought wars.

What's your sense? How effective is the Chinese army?

JOHNSON: Yes. Well, the real answer to the question is we don't know how effective they are because exactly they haven't had to demonstrate their combat effectiveness in that long period of time. And what we've seen over the last couple of decades is a massive campaign, obviously, to modernize the Chinese military, make it more effective.

Xi Jinping drove through some very important force structural changes about four or five years ago that were designed to allow the PLA to conduct integrated joint operations. Did that very much on a model of the U.S. style of combatant commands. So they made a lot of the appropriate changes, and there's no questioning that their hardware, the kit, if you want to say, is very shiny, very effective, and even has some capabilities that the U.S. military either doesn't have or doesn't understand how some of that Chinese gear works.

The real problem that they've had in their military is what we might call the software. That ability to conduct integrated joint operations, which would be absolutely essential to any Taiwan campaign. And there's no way really to know until you're in combat how well that's going to work. ZAKARIA: And how much of what Xi is doing is trying to ensure that the military is effective for this goal that he has supposedly set out, which is by 2027, he wants the Chinese military to have the capacity to dominate in Taiwan, which, you know, my Chinese friends tell me does not mean that means they want to, they are going to invade. They just -- that is the goal for the military to be prepared. Do you think they are?

JOHNSON: Well, I think this is why Xi Jinping decided to move. They're clearly not ready. Since he came to office his bumper sticker, if you will, for the military has been he wants them to be able to fight and win wars. And implicit in that is the judgment that he doesn't think they're able to fight and win wars at this particular time.

You're right, 2027 is not a deadline or a go date for an invasion of Taiwan, but it is a mandate for the PLA to be capable of doing so at that time. And I think as Xi Jinping looked around the military in these cases continually unfolded, he discovered that officers were spending way more time lining their pockets than they were increasing the combat capability of the PLA.

ZAKARIA: So Xi has backed off on some of the kind of more assertive power plays that he's done with the private sector, in particular. Is the fact that he's now going for a big power play against the PLA, say, the kind of, you know, the bossy Xi Jinping is back and do you imagine we'll see him crack down on the private sector again?

JOHNSON: My sense is this is happening within the military exclusively. However, I would say that it kind of boils down to the private sector themselves, right? The message here in this purge is very much Xi Jinping's version of one of President Trump's favorite sayings, FAFO, which is flank around and find out. And I think Xi Jinping was demonstrating that in this case.

[10:35:00]

And if the private sector decides to fool around, then they might see that.

ZAKARIA: Wonder what the Chinese version of that would sound like. And you could probably tell, because you're fluent in Mandarin. Chris Johnson, always a pleasure to hear from you on China. Thank you.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, A.I. could soon be booking you a hotel or even your entire vacation without you lifting a finger. But could that come at a cost? My next guest, Meredith Whittaker, the president of the messaging app Signal, warns of the risks when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:13]

ZAKARIA: As A.I. continues to reshape our lives, my next guest is warning that such progress could come with a stark tradeoff, our privacy. Meredith Whittaker is the president of the Signal Foundation, the nonprofit behind the encrypted messaging app with about 70 million active monthly users. She's become a leading critic of how agentic A.I., an emerging type of A.I. that can carry out tasks with little human involvement, could put our personal information at serious risk. I spoke with her at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Meredith, pleasure to have you on.

MEREDITH WHITTAKER, PRESIDENT, SIGNAL FOUNDATION: Wonderful to be here. Thank you.

ZAKARIA: So, Signal thinks a lot about privacy and security of data. When you hear about A.I. and the way in which A.I. is developing by hoovering up vast amounts of data, what are you -- how worried should we be?

WHITTAKER: Well, I am worried, and I'm worried not necessarily because A.I. has to be inherently privacy undermining or insecure. There are many different techniques to build A.I. in many ways to think about using data to model reality, to find patterns, to do cool things.

But the current paradigm is often being rushed out in ways that are, frankly, just very insecure and undermining privacy. If these systems need access to your life, access to your most intimate information, your movements in order to make predictions about you, or even make a restaurant reservation on your behalf, then you are creating a system in which you are undermining privacy at the level of the A.I. infrastructure.

So, let's take an example. In order to book your birthday party, invite all your friends and confirm the reservation at the restaurant, you tell an agent, hey, you know, do this. Right? And that's fun. You can go walk down the promenade at Davos. You don't have to think about it. You have a robot butler living your life for you. How great.

But to do that, it needs access to your calendar. It needs access to your credit card. It needs access to your browser. And in the case of this hypothetical scenario, it would need access to your Signal account, access to your Signal messages, your contact lists, the ability to message your friends, say, hey, what time are you free?

Take all of that data back into its big data context window, mix that around in order to determine the time to book the restaurant, to plan your little event with your friends. And that's what we call breaking the blood brain barrier between the operating system, which developers like Signal need to rely on, which users need to rely on. That's the water that we all swim in in some sense, when we are using our devices, and the application layer where signal sits and where signal provides robust security and privacy that has become the core infrastructure for secure communications for militaries, intelligence agencies, governments, human rights workers, and journalists like yourself and everybody else who understands that there are sometimes a life or death difference between secure and insecure communication. So we're talking about fundamentally hollowing out the ability of applications like Signal to provide privacy and security with integrity.

ZAKARIA: So what can we do about it?

WHITTAKER: I would encourage the A.I. companies, who are the ones who really have control over this, particularly the operating system vendors and those who have platforms where they're integrating these services in the browser or in the application --

ZAKARIA: That's like ChatGPT, Anthropic, Google.

WHITTAKER: You know, Windows, Android, Mac. And I would say we're going to have a catastrophe, whether it's a corporate data breach, whether it's a government data breach, whether it's the inability for Signal to continue to exist with integrity as core infrastructure that you rely on if you don't walk back these reckless deployments.

ZAKARIA: Isn't that the classic case where you need government regulation then? Because of course, these guys aren't going to self- regulate because they're in a mad competition. They're in a race. They don't want to tie one hand behind their backs.

WHITTAKER: I think - you know, look, I'm a technologist. I'm pretty laser focused on my lane. But I would say government regulation is one tool we have. Governments can say, this is the baseline within which you all need to play. And that's kind of the role government regulation has played.

But absent government regulation, we need some internalization of the deep responsibility that these companies have taken on by claiming to restructure our social, economic, and interpersonal relationships by the deployment of this technology at this scale.

ZAKARIA: I got to ask you, what was your reaction when you discovered that Pete Hegseth had set up a Signal chat to discuss war plans?

[10:45:01]

WHITTAKER: I think I read that article at my kitchen table. I got up and I got some water, and then I had to read it again because WTF was what went through my mind. Now we know that, you know, all governments use Signal. Signal is the core infrastructure for private communication.

Now, they don't usually, as far as I know, use it in place of a SCIF. But that's a -- that's another matter, right? Part of what Signal is, is an organization built not to know those specifics, because we never want to be forced to turn over data so we don't collect that data.

And then I spent a week explaining to journalists that maybe weren't so familiar with the technical reality and mathematics of end-to-end encryption, what had happened there, why Signal can't actually be responsible for what people do with their thumbs, why Signal was robust and, you know, maintained its integrity even if someone made a mistake and who they added to their group text. And after sleeping maybe four hours and four nights, I had a nap and was glad that we came out of it robust.

ZAKARIA: Meredith, pleasure to have you on.

WHITTAKER: Such a delight. Thank you, Fareed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, the popularity of GLP-1s, like Ozempic and Mounjaro, is exploding in America. I talked to the chief scientist of one of the leading manufacturers about what other uses these drugs might have beyond obesity.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:51:04]

ZAKARIA: The blockbuster injectable medications, known as GLP-1s are booming in America. They're transforming obesity management and are increasingly being used to treat a range of related diseases.

In 2026, GLP-1s are likely to reach a wider demographic around the world as the major manufacturers develop them in pill form. Eli Lilly, the maker of Zepbound and Mounjaro, anticipates its pill to hit markets later this year. I spoke with Eli Lilly's chief scientific and product officer, Daniel Skovronsky, in Davos.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Welcome to the show, Dan.

DANIEL SKOVRONSKY, CHIEF SCIENTIFIC AND PRODUCT OFFICER, ELI LILLY: Thank you. It's great to be together.

ZAKARIA: So when you look at the GLP drugs, the suite of drugs that Lilly has and frankly that others have as well, we all know what we think of them. But when you look at it, what is most promising to you about them? What are the kind of diseases that they are curing? What's the thing that you're most excited about?

SKOVRONSKY: Yes, and this is an incredibly exciting moment in the history of treating chronic disease, because so many chronic diseases are underpinned by obesity. And so for me, I think the huge excitement now is we're at this moment where these drugs have gone from kind of a few people using them to an opportunity that we hope can be used broadly around the world and ultimately eradicate obesity. And with it, we hope prevent diseases like type two diabetes and heart disease and help people live longer healthier lives.

ZAKARIA: So in order for people to trust this, I think, it's always important that they understand something about it. So --

SKOVRONSKY: Yes.

ZAKARIA: -- for a layman, how would you explain what is it that GLP does that causes you to lose weight?

SKOVRONSKY: Yes, this is really amazing science and basic human biology. When you eat food, your stomach needs to tell your brain and the rest of your body that we just ate. It's time to stop being hungry and it's time to use those calories in a productive way.

And the way that your stomach and your intestinal tract tells your body this is it secretes hormones called incretins. And this happens every time in every person when they eat. And it's why you feel full at the end of a meal. What we've done here is we've taken those hormones and made them into medicines that you can give, and they mimic the effect of having just eaten.

So your body now, instead of being hungry and wanting to think about food and find food and digest it, is now thinking, how can we use that energy in a productive way and store it?

ZAKARIA: Do you think it's associated -- is it possible that obesity is actually associated with even more conditions than we think about? You know that -- because, I mean, my mom had, you know, was overweight and she had arthritis. She had like -- there are all kinds of things that end up being part of the package.

SKOVRONSKY: I think that's right. And obesity causes disease in different ways. It puts strain on your body. And because of the physicality of it, the weight on your joints, for example, but also fat, adipose tissue, when it's deposited in the wrong places in your body, it's dangerous, it's inflammatory and causes inflammation.

So we've started testing what other diseases are improved as a consequence of treating obesity with GLP-1s. So, for example osteoarthritis. We just had a trial with our latest obesity agent that showed we could dramatically reduce the pain that people have suffering from with osteoarthritis.

We did a trial in obstructive sleep apnea when people can't breathe at night, their airway closes. That's related to obesity, not the obesity that you measure on the scale in your arms or legs or belly. But actually fat deposition in your airway. And the drug had a profound effect on that disease. Heart failure, another great example.

[10:55:01]

ZAKARIA: When you think about how widespread this could be and you look at the side effects and things like that, is this likely to be as widely used as statins? Maybe even more, because after all, I mean, I don't remember the numbers, but I think 40 percent of Americans are obese.

SKOVRONSKY: Yes.

ZAKARIA: Should 40 percent be on these drugs?

SKOVRONSKY: Probably and then some, actually. We want to turn back the clock on obesity and actually treat patients before the disease is fully developed. If people are overweight, which is not as severe as obesity but they also have other comorbidities like high blood pressure or hyperlipidemia, high cholesterol, they should be candidates for treatment as well.

So, it is a significant fraction of the population. Around the world we see up to a billion people who could benefit from these kinds of drugs. That's not a trivial undertaking, but it's one of the reasons we focused on the pill. It's easier to make and distribute and use for people, and I think we can provide it at a price point that actually can be affordable for individuals who don't have insurance. But more importantly, for governments and health systems.

ZAKARIA: Dan, pleasure to have you on. Thank you.

SKOVRONSKY: Yes. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

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