>> Stephanie Merry:
Good morning. I'm Stephanie Merry,
the Book World editor at "The Washington Post,"
which is a charter sponsor of the National Book Festival. First, a word of thanks to the
Co-Chairman of the Festival, David Rubenstein, and the
other generous sponsors who have made this
event possible. If you'd like to add
your financial support, please note the information
in your program. We'll have some time after this
presentation for your questions and I've been asked to
remind you that if you come to the microphone, you will be
included in the video recording of this event, which may be
broadcast at a later date. Our guest this morning, as you
all know, is David Ignatius, a columnist for "The
Washington Post" who keeps plenty busy writing
smart commentary about politics and foreign affairs but
somehow manages to also squeeze in a career as a novelist. His most recent espionage
thriller, "The Quantum Spy," is his tenth novel and it's
an artful blend of science and subterfuge that follows
the race between China and the United States to build
the first quantum computer. And I learned so much about quantum computing
reading your book. I didn't know anything about
it and I'd love to hear sort of your background, your
fascination with the subject and when you realized that
it would make a good subject for a novel. >> David Ignatius: Let me start
by quoting Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winning
physicist who said, "If you think you
understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand
quantum mechanics." And I fear that that is true with my own non-technologist
understanding of this fascinating
but complicated area. I'll talk about it in a
minute but I just have to say to this audience, this
is a thrill for me because the person interviewing
me, Stephanie Merry, my colleague at "The Washington
Post," is the daughter of one of my wife's and my closest
friends who I've known since I started as a
journalist in the mid 1970s. We covered labor together at
"The Wall Street Journal." His name is Bob Merry. He's a distinguished biographer,
so to have Bob's daughter Steph, a great movie critic and now
book editor, interviewing me is like that's as cool as it gets. So, thanks. [ Applause ] >> Stephanie Merry: Thank you. Thanks. Yes. It's a thrill for me too. He came to my creating
write class in high school and I asked all the questions
and so now here we are. >> David Ignatius: You
didn't ask me in high school about quantum computing. So I'm going to give
the one-minute version. Every computer that we have
ever used is what we know call a classical computer and
that it's made up of bits that are either zero or one. They're on or off
and that's the symbol with those simple logic gates. A quantum computer, if it
could be built and you have to always add that, would be
made up of qubits, quantum bits, that would be, strange
as it sounds, zero and one at the same time. They'd be in that quantum state. People often liken it to
coin that you're flipping, which is both heads and tails as
it spins and it only becomes one or the other when it lands. And as we know from
our, you know, high school physics classes,
it's only when we intervene and observe that this
quantum state is resolved in one direction or another. So qubits that could have
this simultaneity that could in effect compute in every
direction would be vastly more powerful than existing
computer architectures. The world of intelligence
got interested in quantum computers
back in the 1990s, when an MIT mathematician named
Peter Shor posited what came to be called Shor's
algorithm which said that if a quantum computer could
be built with these properties, it would be able to factor very
large numbers very quickly. Basically, encryption involves,
you know, multiplying numbers to get these enormous
strings of numbers that to factor them using even
the most powerful classical supercomputers would take
hundreds of years, centuries, you know, basically
impossible time to do it through brute force. But if you had a quantum
computer, it could be done in a matter of seconds
or minutes. That's the power of it. So, the intelligence world has
been very excited about this and as I began to read into
it, I realized that we were in a race with China,
which in this area of supercomputing is really
working hard to be dominant, to have the commanding height. Xi Jinping and his big
party plenum last year, where he announced that Xi
Jinping thought was now an official, you know, up
there with Mao Tse-tung, announced his plan for
China to dominate a series of technologies by 2025, 2030 and quantum
computing is one of them. So it's one of those things like the Manhattan Project
that's sort of a race between us and other countries that
want to get there first. The prize for winning that race
is significant and it seemed like an interesting
background for this novel. The fun of the novel
I hope is not so much in the complicated
technology that you sort of kind of oh yeah, whatever. If you want to read
more about it, you can. But in the way in which the
Chinese intelligence officers are rendered. In spy fiction, we know
everything about the Russians, I mean, spy fiction, just
pick up the newspaper. You can't escape
Russian malign activity. We know almost nothing
about the Chinese. There's never been a
[inaudible] like character, like Carlos who helps us
to see the operating style. So that was a lot of the
fun of this book for me. Characters that I hope you'll
come away from most interested in this novel are the
Chinese intelligence officers, the head of their
Ministry of State Security, Li Zian is my fictional
character and a young officer who works for him who
I call Carlos Wang. And then also you'll be
interested in the hero of this novel who's a
Chinese-American CIA officer. CIA as we know is a modern
diverse workforce today run by a woman. Gina Haspel is now the first
woman director of the CIA. But there are a lot of people from all the different
ethnic groups in the agency who sometimes feel
that they're seen through their ethnicity rather
than as simply as officers. And that's what happens to Harris Chang is
he's manipulated first by his own colleagues and then
by the Chinese who see him first of all in terms of his ethnic
identity and it makes him mad and so the novel is the story
of how that anger begins to play itself out as he's
dealing with this puzzle of Chinese attempts to steal
our quantum computing secrets. >> Stephanie Merry:
And Harris Chang is such an interesting character. As you were mentioning, he's
American of Chinese descent. The Chinese kind of
see him as a traitor to his people even though
he doesn't see himself, you know, as Chinese primarily. But I kept thinking how it was
interesting it added this new layer to the novel
that wouldn't be there if he looked like say Jack Ryan. So can you talk a
little bit about coming up with this character
and why you felt like it was important
to the story? >> David Ignatius: So I've been
interested since the beginning of my career as a
spy novelist in 1987 and how the CIA really
works as opposed to these fanciful
descriptions that you often read in spy fiction and
in particular the way in which this more diverse
workforce interacts. The Chinese in their recruitment
efforts historically have played heavily on ethnicity
and loyalty. They've gone to people of
Chinese descent around the world and said, our poor struggling
country, we're just trying to become wealthy enough
to support our people and we just need a little help
and this and this and this. And it often is a very
powerful recruitment pitch because you're just helping a
little and they just need help with this particular thing. There's a moment in this book where the Chinese intelligence
service is really trying to squeeze and pitch
Harris Chang in which they through meticulous research
show him pictures of the village in Southern China where
his family came from. His family came in
the 19th century, worked on the railroads, as so many Chinese-Americans
families did and they've got the
pay slips and they know where the great-grandfather
worked and they know what
happened to him and they know here's
somebody from your village and it looks just like
one of Harris' relatives. And it's an attempt -- And
they know a lot of other things about his family that
are but I won't go into because they're
more central to the plot. And it has a powerful effect on
Harris Chang but he rejects it. He's a CIA officer and his
problem in this book is that his insistence
that he is a loyal, committed CIA officer isn't
believed by his colleagues. And they begin to
doubt him and think that he's been compromised. And I think that that --
There's some real life stories if you follow this literature. Wen Ho Lee is an example
[inaudible] Los Alamos where this issue is played out. You also will know if you've
been reading the newspapers that, you know, in the months
since this book was published, two interesting things happened. One is the Chinese
commitment to beat us in quantum computing is now,
you know, front page news on "The Wall Street Journal." Believe it or not, it's
terrifying to think of, a quantum computing
caucus in the Congress. If there's one thing that could
really mess us up, that's it. And there also was the
indictment and arrest of a Chinese-American accused
of trying to steal technology, Chinese-American CIA officer
who like Harris Chang, served in the Army, who was
accused of trying to steal and betray big secrets
and that's just happened. So, you know, this is
fiction imitating life imitating fiction. >> Stephanie Merry: And
it's not the first time. I remember with "The Director,"
you were writing "The Director" in a character that was
much like Edward Snowden and then Edward Snowden
appeared, right? So you've been fairly
prescient with these novels. Is it important to be
topical with these? >> David Ignatius:
So, Stephanie, the joy of writing fiction
for me is playing in the world of fact which I explore every
twice a week in my columns against the canvas of fiction
where you can let ideas develop, give them a richness,
obviously go beyond 750 words, thank goodness. And to think when I begin
a novel, I think two years from now when people are
reading this book, what's going to seem interesting to them
because you have to sort of guess, you know, what down
the road will be of interest. And I did feel -- I was
starting the book actually, Edward Snowden, I was finishing
that novel when the Snowden, you know, appeared with all
of his secrets and I thought, oh my gosh, real life is
so much more interesting than the book I wrote. Let me, you know, madly
scramble to try to do it in a way that's more interesting
and that gets the way in which the Russians
might've been involved in this Wikileaks underground
as we read increasingly it seems to have been the case. Madly rewrote the first draft
that I'd written of this novel, showed it to my wife, Eve,
who's sitting in the second row, you know, just wanting so much
for her to say, oh, David, you know, it's so much better. And Eve, thank goodness, said,
I don't think it's there yet. And I always say, you know,
that is the greatest gift that anybody can give
a writer is, you know, the person whose judgment
you trust, you know, person you most want approval
from withholds it and says, you can do better than this. So I thought, you know,
you're right, Eve. Here's the book I
wish I had written. I only have six weeks left. And she said, well,
write that book. [inaudible]. So I did madly and that
ended up being a book that looks prescient but it was because of a desperate last
minute attempt to make it fit with what we were understanding
in the real world was happening. >> Stephanie Merry: And
touching on this sort of fact and fiction blend, there are a
number of moments in the novel when one character
says, everyone's worried about the Russians but we
should really be worrying about the Chinese. And there were a couple
of times where I thought, is this repartee or is
this David Ignatius trying to tell me something. And I wonder if you
are kind of, you know, delivering messages here. >> David Ignatius: Well, I'm
trying to capture what's real in my fiction but as you know
if you read the recent columns of mine, just in early
August was with a group of very senior former
government officials listening to the top technologists
in our country at something called the Aspen
Strategy Group that I'm a member of and I describe this as a
sputnik moment for this group, former secretaries of state, former national security
advisors, as they listened to people say from
the technology sphere, it's top people who are
speaking off the record, if you knew what I know, you
would see that in every area that matters to my company
and to the United States, the Chinese are ahead of us. They are prepared to
capture this space. They are prepared to
capture this market segment. They're just -- And it was
a wakeup for everybody. Artificial intelligence in particular is an area
that's going to be so dominant, you know, I mean I hate
to say it but it's going to transform every
aspect of our economy. It's coming at us and
the Chinese for all sorts of reasons appear to have the
lead in some areas of this and so, you know, was for
me, it was a wakeup call. The book is in part about that. I do think just thinking
about, you know, Chinese economic
growth, Chinese miracle which we has been the story of
my, you know, all of our lives, seeing this country come out
of poverty, become on the way to being wealthy, on the
way to being our equal. You know, it's a great story
in a humanitarian sense. So many people coming out of terrible poverty
into a good life. But there is a national security
aspect to this that we do have to think about and so I'm
trying to do that both in my fact and fiction. >> Stephanie Merry:
And you mentioned that there's a fair amount of
secrecy we don't know a lot of what's happening behind
the scenes but there were so many scenes in
the novel, you know, between the intelligence
officials in China and the military officials. And how much of that was just
kind of you had to invent it out of whole cloth and how much
of it were you able to sort of research and find out? >> David Ignatius:
So I researched -- I hate making things
up entirely. I'm not very good at it. So it's a fact that Xi Jinping
has over the last five years, when he's been president
of China, replaced an entire generation
of leadership in the military, the party, and, most
interestingly, the intelligence service
and installed his people. And he's used what he calls the
discipline inspection commission as the tool of what is
really a political purge. So, you know, in the
previous generation, there wasn't the
Chinese party official, general intelligence officer
who didn't have something going on the side, through his
family, through somebody. The country is just getting
so rich that everybody had that bank account overseas, that
apartment or home in Vancouver or Montreal or Australia. And Xi, through the
discipline inspection process, began to just use that and fire
people, bring criminal charges, and as I say, wiped out, there
isn't a senior general left in the Chinese military who
wasn't hit by this process. The intelligence service had its
whole leadership team wiped out and so this novel opens with
Harris Chang, my CIA officer, using information he has about
a Chinese intelligence officer who is corrupt, who has been
on the take, and saying, here it is, here's the file. Unless you help us do what
we need, this file with end up with the discipline
inspection commission in a week. Okay, make up your mind. And I'm sure that in real life
there have been many similar situations where
vulnerable military officers, intelligence officers, you know,
who were, you know, could get, could be destroyed if some
information were shared that that vulnerability
has been used. But it's, you know,
China, Stephanie, is a country we know still so
little about in these military and intelligence areas. The last thing I want to
do is encourage people to get all hysterical
and oh my gosh, you know. We just need to be more
realistic as we think about them, understand,
you know, their ambitions to be a great power, understand
the particular ways in which that might be threatening to us, to understand the many other
ways in which it isn't. >> Stephanie Merry: In order to
show sort of an authentic story, it occurred to me that this
took a fair amount of research. I mean, you were talking
about quantum computing. You were using Chinese
slang, things like that. Do you have people sort of
on speed dial that, you know, you can run pass, like this
is how I'm describing quantum computing, does this sound
right or how does that work? >> David Ignatius: So
with each of my books, I try to assemble
that speed dial list. In this case when I was
beginning work on the book, I went to Craig Mundie
who was one of the most senior
technologists at Microsoft and I said, Craig, I need help. Would you introduce me to
the people at Microsoft who are really thinking
creatively about quantum computing. And needless to say, they
had some absolutely brilliant physicists, a man name Michael
Freedman at the University of California at Santa Barbara, a woman named Krysta Svore
who's writing a language for a quantum computer
that doesn't yet exist. Their idea of how to
do this is with sort of braided nano wires that,
you know, encode the qubits that she's writing, if you could
imagine this, a braided language that will give instructions,
it's just wow! So, you know, I spent
time with them. I went to see a company
in Vancouver that claims its already
build a quantum computer that has 200 qubits. Now I think actually more
than that called D-wave and saw how they just to say one
more word about the technology. The problem with these qubits that can do fabulous
computing is that they only stay
operational for milliseconds. And so the enemy of the quantum
computer is what's called decoherence in which these
qubits just stop having, they lose their quantum state. And so you want to keep them
coherent for as long as you can. Even a brief instant, you
can do an enormous amount of computing if it's done right. So these quantum chips are in cryogenic super-cold
environment, just above absolute zero. I went to the lab where D-wave
has its quantum computer. The guy said -- The founder
of the firm said, David, I'm going to show you the
coldest place in the universe. And he meant it. And he took me to the
refrigeration sort of scheme. It looks like kind of upside
down ice cream cone on top of a chip and they bring this
down in stages using chemical down to literally just
above absolute zero. I mean, I watched it go
down to like 13 millikelvin, which is in fact the coldest
place in the universe. Deep space is about twice that. And it was just extraordinary
to see, you know, not just the technology but
the pathways to the technology. It turns out cryogenics sort of
super-cold environment is useful in all kinds of computing
applications. So that's a long answer to
yes, I did a lot of research. The University of Maryland
has what it hopes will be one of the world's leading
centers for quantum computing. I spent a lot of time there. I spent a lot of
time with [inaudible] and his program managers
who were talking me through what they're funding,
what they're not funding, and when they should decide
to make something classified. That's another fascinating
puzzle here, what do you keep open so
the whole world can share it and work on it together
and what do you bring in to our veil of secrecy. So that, you know, for me,
Stephanie, the fun of working on a book is getting
to do this research. I love going out and
finding new things. I, you know, I try to start with
something new with each book and in the end I did
send each chapter that I had something really
technical to the person that helped me and said,
"Am I going to make a fool out of myself with this?" And somebody said in a
review, this book is better than it deserves to be
[audience laughter]. >> Stephanie Merry:
That's a compliment. >> David Ignatius: It is. That means it was a close
call [audience laughter]. >> Stephanie Merry: It
sounds like you do as much if not more research
for your novels than your journalistic work. Is that fair to say? >> David Ignatius: You know, I'm
always doing them both together. I am not a technologist but
I can see the obvious fact that technology, the businesses
that surround technology, the national security
implications of technology are the
drivers in our world. And so I need, if I'm going to
pursue the mission that I chose when I began writing fiction,
to write realistic spy novels, I've got to understand this
stuff enough to have it in the background of my novels
because it's in the background of all the intelligence
work that's done out there in real life. And I hope other people making
all of us more comfortable with the intersection of
traditional espionage and, you know, the world
of the Internet, the world of technology,
that's what real life is about and I hope novelists
will do that. >> Stephanie Merry: I know
that a lot of people that come to the Book Festival have,
you know, a novel idea or a novel draft sitting in
a desk drawer or someplace and you have managed to make
it work and you're prolific and I don't even know how
you're able to produce so much. What's your secret? Do you have a certain
number of words or hours that you force yourself
to work on this a day? >> David Ignatius: So
just to say two things. I'm sure that what
Stephanie said is right and that there are many
novelists in the audience. I think the first thing I say
is we should write fiction for the pleasure that
we get in writing it because you never know. It's such a crap shoot whether
anybody's going to read it or indeed if it'll
even be published but I think the pleasure
of inventing this world in your mind and then
having somebody, you know, even if it's just a
family member read it, you know, that's the payoff. My first novel, "Agents
of Innocence" which everybody celebrates,
oh my gosh, you know, I couldn't get that
book published. I had lived through
something in Beirut. I had lived through the story
that that book describes, how the CIA recruited
Arafat's chief of intelligence and ran him as an American asset and then how the case
officer [inaudible] was killed in the American embassy. I lived through that. I lived that whole story. I had published it
on the front page of "The Wall Street Journal" and
I just I knew so much about it that I was certain
there was a novel there. I sent it -- When my
children were young, I'd go to their schools and
I'd bring along a big book bag and I'd say, you know, well,
so, you know, I really want to publish this book and I
sent it to a dozen publishers which is true and they all
said no and [inaudible], oh, and then, you know,
and I'd read one of the rejections
notices, you know. Dear Mr. Ignatius, you know, how
interesting that you imagined that you could write a
novel, but we're sorry. That was, I mean, literally
every publisher in the country. So kids -- Finally, one
publisher, W. W. Norton, still my publisher, said
we're not sure we're going to publish the novel but
we'll give you an advance against a later work
of nonfiction and we'll publish
the novel, you know, to get you to write the
book we do want, not -- So I went back and I rewrote it. And with that vote
of confidence, I made it something really good. So I'll say to the kids,
"so, it was published" and you know here's the English
and then it got published in French and then in German
and then in Serbo-Croatian and then pretty soon there's
this stack of books resting on the rejection notice and
I think that's the, you know, if you can finish the book
and stick with it and be lucky as I was, you'll end
up having a readership. So long as you just don't count on that readership being
huge or making much money. I mean, I'm glad I never
quit my day job because I -- >> Stephanie Merry: So that
aspect of it got easier in terms of selling the books. But do you feel like
you've evolved in certain ways as a novelist? Has it gotten easier? >> David Ignatius: It
doesn't really get easier. What I have realized is that and
this is the genre fiction room, that it's really important if
you're writing genre fiction, in my case a spy novel, that you
understand and accept the limits of that genre, which is to say that you understand
the expectations that readers have reading
their book, that they want to be surprised, confused,
taken on a journey. They want to feel that they're
in the hands of an author who knows where the
plot is going even if the reader's confused. You need to keep in mind
the experience as a reader, like what is it that makes
you read on more chapter, what's that thing that this
kind of book is doing for you. In some of my earlier
books, I forgot that. And I didn't stick
closely enough to the demands of the genre. I wrote one book that I'm very
proud of called "The Sun King" and I got a note, Eve has
heard me tell this story but somebody sent me an email
that said, Dear Mr. Ignatius, I read your spy novel "Body
of Lies" and on the strength of that, I bought your
novel "The Sun King." I want my money back
[audience laughter]. Because it's a novel. It's not a spy novel. It's a novel novel. It's about people
and love and ambition and kind of self destruction. It's a novel. But that's not what it
turned out most people wanted to read from yours truly. Okay, I got it. And since then I've
stuck to my genre. >> Stephanie Merry: I want to
make sure that we have some time for questions from the audience. So if you would like to come up, we have microphones
here and here. >> The Chinese supposedly
have a quantum satellite, do you believe, and
your sources believe it and how worried should
we be about it? >> David Ignatius:
So they have -- One of the things the
Chinese are working on very, very hard is the
ability to, you know, in effect have quantum
effects at some distance. And, you know, that
are coordinated. When you say "quantum
satellite," I think that's what
you're referring to. And I do believe that. The Chinese also are
said to be experimenting with what they call
quantum radar which again uses
quantum properties and if it's successful
could shred our advantage in stealth technology which is
really important in our ability to penetrate and
deliver weapons. So I take some of that -- Some of the other claims that
they make about their advances in quantum computing, I think
are hype and I don't think that they're there yet. And I should just say, everybody
that I talk to who really knows about the subject to the point that they can't tell me
everything they know says the most sophisticated applications
that will involve decryption, Shor's algorithm are
the farthest off. They're a lot of
things that are closer. Some real close, pattern
recognition, other, you know, kind of optimization
problems can be done very, very fast it seems
with quantum computing. So the -- I think the
concern that I hear is more about Chinese domination
of AI in part because the Chinese have access
to so much structured data. You know, data is what AI
machine learning learns on, that's the fuel for
the AI machine. The Chinese have the fuel. We really don't and
that's one reason that they have a huge advantage. Yes? >> A related question. A number of people have written about the existential
threat posed by AI, including Stephen Hawking. I have trouble believing this but would quantum
computing finally make that a real problem? >> David Ignatius: Quantum
computing would allow anything that involves enormous amounts
of computation fast enough that it would be feasible
where today it isn't feasible and there's some sublime benign
consequences of that in terms of drug design, in
terms of simulation, in terms of material science, the ability to create
wonderful new things that will have beneficial
effects for humanity. So there's a very positive side that people get enthusiastic
about. I think the AI worry that
vexes people is when you get to generalized artificial
intelligence, machines that really can think,
do they begin to think in ways that we can't control
or aren't aware of. Will they explain
themselves to us as they solve problems
or make decisions? I mean, transparency of the
AI solutions so you, you know, the AI system figures
out how to cure a disease but it doesn't tell
you how it did that. Is it able to do that? I think those are
some of the problems that people are interested in. You know, to take one
that's fascinated me that I just reference
in "The Quantum Spy," so as you design the
driverless car, how do you deal with the problem of whether
the car should swerve to avoid hitting the deer
that's crossing the street if that will bring
it near a pedestrian or suppose the driverless car
is approaching an intersection where on one side
there's a baby carriage and on the other side
there's a senior citizen. How is the machine programmed
to deal with that issue? Well, obviously it's
a nightmare. You don't want the
programmer to play God as between the baby
carriage and grandma. But, you know, those are I
think when people get worried about an AI world, magnify that
kind of decision, you know, into national security into
it said that for example that although we always talk
about having humans in the loop, that's the phrase
that people use to reassure themselves
about an AI world. Well, we'll have
humans in the loop. Well, that's just not realistic. You know, in the times that
you'll be reacting to cyber or other attacks in which
satellites will be disabled, you know, whole tiers
of satellites in space will be knocked
out, there won't be time for a human to make
the decision. So humans need to be
in the loop right now as the systems are designed
thinking about the kind of issues that Hawking raises,
that thoughtful people raise so that the systems are designed with the wisest most ethical
guidelines we can have. But once we're in the world in which those systems
will be used, the idea that humans
will intervene I think is completely unrealistic. >> I've read and loved
all your spy novels. Every time I've read one, I've
asked myself, have you worked in US intelligence for the CIA? I'm sure you've been
asked this before. But I don't know the answer. >> David Ignatius: So that's
an easy one to answer. The answer is no. I had been fascinated by this
since I grew up in Washington. The world of the CIA was all around in my neighborhood,
you know. A lot of the parents had
worked for the agency. So it was like just a
kind of omnipresent thing. I wanted to be a journalist
from, you know, tenth grade. I used to sneak into the Howard
Theatre and stayed back stage and interviewed the
Temptations and Junior Walker. That's all I was good at. Happily, it is a violation
of law for the CIA to recruit or use American journalists
for intelligence purposes and I think the bright line that
divides the two is appropriate. I am fascinated by this world and over many years I
have internalized a lot of what people think about but
that's an easy one to answer. >> Hi. I really enjoy
watching you on Morning Joe a
few times a week. So I enjoy that. In the context of what
you're saying about China and the challenges that
they pose to the US, could it possibly be one element of current administration's
let's say, I don't know, fixation on Russia is perhaps
looking over the horizon to trying to use
Russia to contain China? >> David Ignatius: So that's
a fascinating question. Is Donald Trump in some way
trying to do what Kissinger did, which was to triangulate these
three powers to, Kissinger and Nixon in the opening
to China in part wanted to get leverage against
Russia but at that time was threatening, is
Trump trying to get leverage against China that's
potentially threatening by being friendlier with Russia? Well, you know, some evidence
that he may have that in mind. And, you know, I've written
often enough that I think that -- I write often. I think the idea of
not talking to Russia, just being totally
obsessed and crazy about the subject is a mistake,
that it's important to talk to adversaries as harmful I
think Russian actions have been, as destabilizing as they
are for our country. You know, there's never time
to stop talking to anybody. So I'm personally
supportive of that. You know, these larger
issues that I'm going to wait for Robert Mueller to explain
to me what he could prove in a legal case as he did in the
indictments, the two indictments that involve Russian nationals
before I make up my mind about those ultimate questions
but there sure is a lot of evidence on its face that the
Russians directly engaged people in the Trump campaign,
during the campaign to try to do what our intelligence
agency say was shape the election in favor of Trump. The evidence is --
There's stacks of it and that's already out there. >> Another quasi-political
question that I think you'll have
some familiarity with. In your research for
your book, can you talk about the difference of the
Chinese central planning system and their ability to
really direct their assets versus for example Microsoft or
a private company or something like that comparing and
contrasting our two systems and do you think that gives
the Chinese an advantage or are they going to kind of
fall under their own weight like Stalin did with
the heavy industry? What do you think,
thinking ahead two years? >> David Ignatius: It's a great
question and it's the kind of classic dilemma
of central planning. Obviously, there are
advantages of central planning. The Chinese Academy of
Sciences, the Chinese government and party structure can direct
effort to these technologies that thinks they're crucial, AI and quantum computing are
the most obvious examples, and make sure that there is
an enormous flow of resources. The problem is that in doing
that they have to make choices about which pathways is best
in terms of their funding. And, you know, direct more to
this single ion trap approach to isolating qubits
than to this, you know, Microsoft's braided, what
are they called, fermions, and who knows what the
right answer to that is. So a centrally planned system
where somebody's going to try to pretend they know
the answer may well make significant mistakes. In our system over time, you
know, where people experiment, fail, try again, fail, finally
get it right and the market, you know, pretty reliably
pushes money toward the people who have the successful
ideas historically has been most beneficial. There are certain advantages
that the Chinese have. I mentioned the one that
actually worries me the most. It's weird. But the ability to have
structured data so that, they have data on every single
thing that human beings do because they collect it
about their citizens. That gives them an enormous
advantage in designing systems that will have generalized
artificial intelligence. So, our companies are going to
need to have access to some sort of structured data in
ways that make us nervous from a privacy standpoint
but there's got to be some consortium that helps
them have some raw material to work with. I don't know how to do that but I know people are
thinking hard about it. I just think it's a
fascinating question, planning versus un-planning. >> Stephanie Merry: We have
time for one more question. >> Yes, thank you for
coming and thank you for taking my question. In your book, you
have a character who was Chinese-American
whose loyalty to the United States
is questioned. Over the years, there have been
a number of real-life cases in which Chinese-Americans
who've worked in the Department of Energy and other agencies
have had their loyalty questioned and have been
charged with espionage. I was wondering if
you researched any of those real-life cases
and were familiar with them in building your character? >> David Ignatius: So
the case of Wen Ho Lee, who I think you're
referring to, the Department of Energy employee
who was subjected to the most intensive
investigation because people were
convinced, it appears, wrongly that he had done things at Los Alamos is the
most obvious case. There are other cases and
what deeply vexes my hero, Harris Chang, is that
at the end of the day, his colleagues do not see
his service to his country. You know, he's a veteran of the
Iraq War, among other things so much as the color
of his skin. It's a classic American problem. And it haunts Harris and
I'm sure that for Americans of Chinese descent who have
faced similar questions, it's a haunting problem. >> Thank you. >> Stephanie Merry: David will
be signing books at 1 o'clock. If you have not read "The
Quantum Spy," you must. It is on sale here. David, thank you so much. >> David Ignatius: Thank
you, Stephanie [applause]. Thanks.
