Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World | Fareed Zakaria November 10th, 2020 INTRODUCTION Fareed Zakaria hosts Fareed Zakaria GPS for CNN Worldwide and is a columnist for The Washington Post, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, and a bestselling author. Since its debut in 2008, GPS has become a prominent television forum for global newsmakers and thought leaders. Interviews on Fareed Zakaria GPS have included U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Emmanuel Macron, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Other past guests include military officials such as Gen. David Petraeus and Adm. Michael Mullen; corporate leaders such as Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi; and other public figures like Bill Maher and Bono. The program earned the prestigious Peabody Award in 2011 and has received multiple Emmy nominations. Zakaria has regularly hosted primetime specials for CNN Worldwide, such as “Blindsided: How ISIS Shook the World,” “Why Trump Won,” and “Putin: The Most Powerful Man in the World.” Prior to his tenure at CNN Worldwide, Zakaria was editor of Newsweek International, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a columnist for Time, an analyst for ABC News, and the host of Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS. Zakaria serves on the boards of the Council of Foreign Relations and New America. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a doctorate in political science from Harvard University , and has received numerous honorary degrees. WHY DO I CARE? I am SUPER EXCITED to have Fareed Zakaria on Hidden Forces. What an honor. I first read Dr. Zakaria’s work as a junior politics major in college. The book my professor had us read was “Illiberal Democracy,” which was actually prescient in many ways for the types of concerns it highlighted almost twenty years ago. I don’t want to spend too much time prefacing my questions today, because I spent so much time writing and thinking through this conversation. My goals in this conversation are (1) to learn some things about Fareed that I didn’t know before and that most people didn’t know about him, (2) to drill him in areas of foreign affairs about which he is such an expert, (3) hold his feet to the fire about globalism and what he believes the role of elite institutionalists is and should be and what their record has been, (4) what he sees for the future of the US & the world, (5) his views on society & culture, and (6) how he feels digital technology has changed media, what that means for someone like him, and what types of people, businesses, and forms of content will be most successful in the years to come. 1 BACKGROUND: Identity — I’m curious to understand how someone becomes a “Fareed Zakaria.” Q: How would you describe yourself, what you do, and your place in the world to someone that doesn’t know you? Beginnings — Q: Can you tell me about your early life? Q: Did you have any notion of what you wanted out of your life, what you wanted to do, and what you felt would be a meaningful life for you? Q: If you were to look back now, how closely aligned is your life today with what you had envisioned for yourself as a young man? Book — Q: When, how, and why did you get the idea to write this book? Q: What is the book about? COVID-19 & IT’S CONSEQUENCES: Pandemic’s Consequences — Q: What are the consequences of this pandemic? Q: Could we be exaggerating the consequences of this pandemic? Q: Could the Covid effect be smaller than imagined? Emotional Resilience — Q: What does our emotional response to this pandemic say about our resilience as a society? Q: Does it say anything about our relationship to death and morbidity? Transition to Digital Economy — Q: When and how did we transition into this so-called “digital economy?” Q: How has this manifested during the pandemic to enable an economy in lockdown that would have been simply unimaginable in 1918? Q: How will life and family life change post- coronavirus? Therapeutics — Q: What sort of expectations should we have about therapeutics and ways to treat this virus going forward? Q: Do world health authorities have a general idea about what it means to “live with this virus?” Q: How long is the expectation that we will need to live in this way? Job Transformation — Q: What jobs, professions, & services has coronavirus most transformed? Rise of Socialism — Q: Do you believe that the pandemic could serve as a catalyst for the rise of socialism in the United States? UBI — Q: Do you believe that calls for universal basic income, universal medical coverage, and other possible forms of social benefits will eventually become policy? Q: What are your thoughts on UBI? Post-Pandemic Cities — Q: What is the future of cities post-pandemic? Q: Why do you say that it’s a myth that cities are particularly susceptible? Future of Globalization — Q: Why do you say that “globalization isn’t dead, but we could kill it?” The Choice of a New Cold War — Q: Why do you say that “bipolarity is inevitable. A cold war is a choice?” 2 IMPROVEMENTS & RESPONSES: Symptoms of Human Scale — Q: In what ways is this pandemic a symptom of unsustainable patters of growth and human expansion into more and more of the natural world? Q: How does this relate to our “fast and open” society? *** e.g. dustbowl and topsoil Actions to Prevent the Next Pandemic — Q: What kind of action is required at the present time to stem the impact of this pandemic? Q: How do we prevent the next pandemic? Q: How do we balance speed with stability? Quality over Quantity — You point out in your book that “what seems to have mattered most in this crisis was the quality of government,” not its quantity. Q: Can you elaborate on this? Build Better — Q: Why do some states have governments that work well and others don’t? Q: What have been historical catalysts for positive change in government? Q: How do we make government work better? (i.e. book’s suggestions seem squishy) America can Learn from the World — You write that “now, America needs to learn from the world. And what it most needs to learn about is government—not big or small but good government.” Q: Can the United States learn anything from the rest of the world? (hint: good government) ROLE OF SCIENCE, EXPERTS, & ELITES: Role of Science — There is a part in the book where you discuss the role and place of science. Q: Do you feel that the word “science” is misunderstood by a large part of society, both on the ideological left and right? Q: What do you feel is the mainstream perception of science? Q: What is it in actuality? The Experts — Q: Are people justified in feeling fed-up with “the experts” given that they and their scientific credentials seem to be often cloaked with unwarranted amounts of prestige and authority? Science, after all is a mode of inquiry. Q: Is there a better way for these so-called “experts” to 3 engage the public so that when they are wrong that it doesn’t feel like a betrayal (perhaps more humility and less hypocrisy)? Q: Could it be that rather than simply make policy, these experts have sought to impose their values onto society as well, and that this is why so many people now hate them? ***Over the past 60 years, according to David Shor, college graduates have gone from being 4 percent of the electorate to being more like 35 percent. This has meant that Democratic elites can now campaign on the things they’d always wanted to, but which had previously been too toxic. This means that the divide between college educated and non-college educated people may arguably be just as powerful for determining elections as wealth or racial identity. Established Antipathy — Q: Is the antipathy towards experts the same force that is driving populism and an antipathy towards the “establishment” and the “ruling elite? Q: What do we mean when we talk about “the ruling class” or “the deep state?” Q: Is this are attempt to grasp at a powerful force that we cannot put a name or a face to? Power vs. Wealth — You quote Michael Lind in your book during a passage dealing with the subject of power and who yields it. Q: How important is the power dynamic in society today? Q: Is it more important than the disparity in wealth and income? Epistemological Crisis — Q: Are we facing a crisis of epistemology in western society, where the tools for reasoned inquiry and investigation are no longer perceived to provide access to a consensus view of truth? Q: That objective truth itself has come into question? Power of Narrative — One of the characteristics of modern society is that narratives seem to be able to spread faster, mobilize more people, and inflame passions more intensely than at any other point during my life time. Q: How has the proliferation of mobile phones, social media, and immersive experiential technologies transformed the power and ubiquity of narrative? Q: What sort of influence do you believe that narrative plays today relative to science? Q: How does this compare to other points in our history? (e.g. wartime propaganda) 4 GENERAL QUESTIONS: Bioterrorism — Q: Why do you believe that bioterrorism is the most under-discussed danger facing humanity? Q: Why are suggestions that the coronavirus was engineered in a laboratory rejected out of hand whenever they are raised? International Cooperation’s Imperative — Q: How important is it that we find ways to cooperate on an international scale? Security Guarantor — Q: Can the United States continue to play the role of security guarantor