Hillary Clinton: The Re/code Interview

Hello. How you doing? So I interviewed President Obama last week, and I'm very eager to interview another president. So I want to ask the big question, okay, iPhone or Android? iPhone. Okay, in full disclosure? Blackberry. And a blackberry. And I think the president told you the same thing. Yeah. So I think he really loves his. Well, you know, it is, there are reasons why when you start out in Washington on a blackberry you stay on it in many instances. But it's also, I don't know, I don't throw anything away. I'm like two steps short of a hoarder. So I have a, you know, an iPad, a mini iPad, an iPhone, and a blackberry. You know, if you lived in, I go to Washington a lot lately, my kids are living there, and you think blackberry was the biggest company in the world from all the people there, because everybody uses it. But what about the president thing? Look, if you don't tell anybody, I am obviously talking to a lot of people, thinking through, because here's my view on this, Cara. I just think that we have so many big issues that we have to deal with that unless we really can come together and have a national conversation about those issues, we're not going to make the progress we make. And there are a lot of things that I would love to see our country do. I'd like to bring people from right, left, red, blue, get them into a nice, warm, purple space where everybody is talking and where we're actually trying to solve problems. And you know, that would be my objective if I decide to do this. Why wait announcing? This is all these women here in Silicon Valley, which is an anomaly. This is an anomaly, let me tell you. Well, all in good time is sort of my response, because you know, there's a lot to think about, I have to tell you. I don't know how many of you are list makers, you know, and so I have a very long list. I'm going down it. I'm very, you know, I'm very committed to go down it, but I haven't checked off the last couple of things here. So I guess if I ask you Queens or Brooklyn for the announcement, you're not going to tell me, right? Okay. If you were to run, what would be the central parts of a campaign for you? You're talking about a lot of things, the purple thing, I get that, but what would be the central thing that you'd want? Well, let me answer it this way by saying whoever runs, here's what I hope the central thing is, because we have to restore economic growth with rising wages for the vast majority of Americans, and we have to restore trust and cooperation within our political system so that we can act like the great country we are. And those two things, it seems to me, are actually related, because, you know, there are some steps that business has to take. You know, we heard Renee talking about what Intel's going to do. I talked about, you know, Google, and we have to have businesses take a hard look, like how can they expand opportunity, be more inclusive? That's part of it. But we also have to figure out how we can have a foundation in our economy again that makes people feel that their hard work and effort will be rewarded, because productivity is actually up. People are working longer hours than many had to work in the past, but there's just no increase in their wages that demonstrates their respected, appreciated... What could a supposed president do to fix that? Well, I think that, you know... Actually, I'm going to call you the alleged president. Well, I mean, this is, you know, this is where I'm supposed to say stay tuned, you know. But what I would say is this is why we need to figure out how to go after this problem, and some of it is a bottom-up issue, like the minimum wage. Some of it is a fairness and equity issue, like equal pay for equal work, like paid leave so that people can actually stay in the workforce. Women are not because they want to, but because they have to, dropping out of the workforce in many instances, thereby, you know, diminishing their income. So there are certain steps that a government can and should take, and in the past, you've seen a government sort of shore that up. And then there are ways that we have to recast our thinking. You know, so much about the rise in productivity without the rise in wages has to do with decisions that businesses are making, and a lot of businesses say to me, look, we are under tremendous pressure, quarterly pressure. We have to meet certain targets, and we just don't have the leeway. And my response is, well, then we need to create that leeway. How do we look at what's happening in corporate governance, in how the incentives work within, you know, the corporate world today, and figure if there is in some way we can help the good guys so that they can actually do more for their employees. And, you know, I'm looking at a lot of different approaches. Can you actually create jobs? Because you referenced it, and many Silicon Valley people referenced it, is that there are going to be fewer jobs, and that things become automated. Well, let me give you two quick examples. One, look at the enormous numbers of jobs that technology created starting in the 90s, right? I mean, it was a huge explosion, not just in tech companies, but across the board. And now we've got to figure out, are we hitting a ceiling because with increased innovation, automation, we're not able to create more jobs, or is there more that we can do in order to promote job creation? But it's not just job creation. It has to be with a rising wage, an opportunity ladder. Energy is a huge opportunity. Energy efficiency jobs are woefully underrepresented in the economy. Now, there are things that both utility companies and governments at local, state, federal level could do to encourage more jobs that would move us toward more renewable energy. We've done a bit of it, but we haven't done near enough of it. And so there is an area where it's sitting right there, and we're not doing everything we could. We don't have a level playing field. We still highly subsidize non-renewable, non-clean energy. We should have a much more open, competitive field so that energy efficiency, solar, geothermal, wind, all of that is on a stronger foundation, and we will create more jobs. Why do you think we need a woman president? I'm just curious. Besides, she'd be better. Again, speaking hypothetically. We can say President Warren if you want. I think whoever it is or should be, we need to make sure that all the talent in our country is represented. Would there be a different president being a woman? Well, I can only speak both for myself and for my experience, but having been in the Senate and having seen the difference that women in the Senate made, the most famous example, and it's literally hard to believe right now, but in the 70s and 80s, women were not used as subjects in clinical trials by the National Institutes of Health. In fact, big trials on breast cancer did not include women patients. It's so sad, right? So along came somebody like Barbara Mikulski and others who were determined to lead on, and they changed that. Now, that's a specific example, and there are many others, where the experience of being a woman, the ability to see what others might not see as either gender discrimination or marginalization, gives us a chance to speak up, to be heard, and to make changes. You know, when I was First Lady, I worked with a lot of the breast cancer advocates to continue on breast cancer because it was one of the most egregious examples, and we kept seeing how research for the causes, prevention of breast cancer kept being cut, and so I worked with a lot of these advocates, and we put a breast cancer research program into the Defense Department budget because it wouldn't be cut. Now, we had to keep saving it because people found it and tried to cut it, but that's the kind of difference that when you sit and talk, and this is bipartisan. You know, women on both sides of the aisle, they have these views, and we had some of the best times. We had dinners every month together. They were totally off the record. They were not political. We would say, well, what are you working on? How can we help? And so it was what you would hope your elected officials would do together, and I think there's a lot more of that, and, you know, women in public life do bring that perspective, which we need. What do you think? Let's get to Silicon Valley. You talked about Roseanne Arquette's statement at the Oscars, the wage inequalities. Those numbers you coded for Google, it's every single company in Silicon Valley. It's essentially white dudes and a couple of ladies. Right. How do you—what do you think about that? This is supposed to be our most fast-forward industry, the one where all the jobs are, but it's completely— Yeah. Well, you know, I've thought a lot about it, and I think, you know, I'll overgeneralize, but three big reasons. One, this pipeline problem. You know, when you had more women getting computer science degrees in the 80s by a factor of two-plus than you do now, that kind of lets people off the hook. You know, why aren't more girls and women going into this field? What was different about being a high school or college student in the 80s than it is today? And I think we need to unpack that, and we have to do more to create opportunities for girls to have access to computer science, programming, coding experiences to kind of light those interests in them. And then secondly, I do think you have to recognize that, you know, in technology, which has just exploded over the last 20 years, it's been a very almost Wild West environment. And I think a lot of women find that, you know, distasteful, unappealing, to be in a situation sort of resembling a locker room in some ways, where you just feel like you're—it's hard to get, you know, your voice in. It's hard to be heard. It's like that classic tale where you say something in a meeting and nobody pays attention, and then 20 minutes later a man says it and everybody thinks he's a genius. And I've had that experience a lot of times. And you just have to—you know, you have to kind of gird up, and you therefore need support systems like the Watermark or like this conference, because it's not easy if you poke your head above the parapet if you're in technology, politics, and a lot of other areas. And the third thing is I think that, you know, companies should be held to account. I mean, you need shareholders and executives and customers and others to say, hey, you can do better than 83 percent male. How do you do that? Right now there's a trial going on at Open Today, a big Silicon Valley venture from Kleiner Perkins, a lawsuit about gender discrimination. Very tough case. Both sides not settling. How do you call—how do you stop the systematic and the environmental qualities that create that locker room? And how do you imagine that shifting? Because everyone says, oh, we shouldn't have it, and then there it is. Or the women are not on the boards, or women are not— Look, I think that it requires both men and women to speak up and speak out about this. And I think for, you know, for men, it's always fascinating, you know, when you talk to groups of, you know, men in tech or any other industry, it's almost inevitable in my experience that some of them will tell me how great their daughters are and how well their daughters are doing and what their daughters hope to become. And I always say, well, don't you want your daughter to be able to go as far as she can go in whatever field she chooses? Oh, of course. Well, you're a, you know, you're a bank, you're a big corporation, you're this, you're that. You better pay attention to the kind of environments that educated young women are going into and maybe raise questions about it. So men have to be more sensitive to, more interested in creating this environment. And if you can't get them on the daughter side of the argument, you know, try to get them on the fact that we now are amassing evidence that corporations with women on boards actually do better. They have a higher ROI. They are consistently, you know, more successful. And so we have some both personal and some statistical data to back it up. But then I think for women, that's why I ended by talking about how we have to support each other more. And this is a constant challenge, and we need to be willing to stand up for other women, to raise questions about how other women are being treated. I remember all those years ago when I was in this law firm, around 3 o'clock, every secretary, every administrative assistant, every woman paralegal would be on the phone trying to make sure their kid got home safely because the kids were coming home. They were what we called then latchkey kids, and they wanted to make sure their kids were safe. And they were whispering in the phone because you're not supposed to make personal phone calls at business. And I finally went to the partner and said, this is absurd. You should have a window of opportunities. Women work so hard. They're great, you know, members of our team. So you need to pick up on what's happening, and not just among your peers, but, you know, women who may not have the power and position you do. And then finally develop a thick skin. I mean, you know, my favorite predecessor, Eleanor Roosevelt, you know, said that women in the public arena have to grow skin as thick as the height of a rhinoceros. And you have to be prepared, you know, try to think ahead of the smart thing you'll say if somebody makes an offensive comment to you instead of what we all do, which is you sit there shocked, and then in bed at night you think, oh, I wish I'd said this. Sort of have a stock of those that you kind of carry around with you and throw out and, you know, kind of say, oh, take that. You know, you're pretty good at that, actually. Well, you know, I've had a lot of practice. I mean, I start, I mean, really. But would you put this idea of child care at the center of an administration, a real center and not a sort of side way? No, look, I think. Did you do enough in the last campaign to bring it to the center? Many say you didn't. Well, you know, I've heard that, and I certainly am trying to learn from what I did right and what I didn't in thinking through doing this again. I think that the family issues, sort of putting families first, creating more supportive work environments so that if you do that, what people find, I mean, is that women who get treated well are such loyal employees. They will stay with the company. They will work double time. They will do everything they can to make the enterprise that supported them successful. So this is not a nice thing to do. This is a win-win. So I think that child care, these family issues, are now bubbling to the top of the list on people's minds. So let's talk a little bit about some of the issues around the tech sector. We talked backstage. Net neutrality, they're going to vote on it Thursday. The president's been rather aggressive about making it a utility. Do you think it should be a utility? Well, here's what I think. I think that for the FCC to do what they want to do to try to create net neutrality as the norm, they have to have a hook to hang it on, and so they're hanging it on Title II. Do you like that hook? Well, it's the only hook they've got. Yeah, but what hook would you like? Because your husband's administration and the Bush administration before were much hands-off in that regard. Well, you know, you see how things develop. I mean, it wasn't really a threat until relatively recently. I think I gave my first statement about net neutrality about eight or nine years ago, and we know how important it is because of concentration and, you know, the industry and the like. But I think that if there were another hook, it would come out of a modern 21st century telecom technology act, and we don't have that, and we're not likely to get it. Should this vote happen that way? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Would you vote for that? Yes, I would. That act, but what about the one the FCC is about to do? I would vote for net neutrality because, as I understand it, it's Title II with a lot of changes within it in order to avoid the worst of the utility regulation. So it's a foot in the door. It's a value statement. I think the president is right to be up front and out front on that, but it's not the end of the discussion. I mean, we need to do more about how the spectrum is allocated. We need to do more about how we incentivize more competition in broadband. We need to figure out how to treat, you know, connectivity as an infrastructure development. There's a lot of other aspects, so it's not just net neutrality, standing alone, end of debate, and that should be part of a really smart legislative endeavor, but I don't think people believe that can happen in the short term. Okay. What about encryption? Right now, Apple and Google are fighting the government. Do you have a side in this? I mean, the president was sort of, I was for it until I was against it kind of thing. Where do you feel on encryption? Do you feel these companies should be able to encrypt these phones? Well, I think that you have a classic hard choice. You know, I wrote a book called Hard Choices, and it's not a dodge or a feint because I think that what we're missing is people are kind of in their corners arguing about, you know, liberty versus security instead of saying, look, we all want to have privacy for the end user. That's what the companies are responding to. They're trying to be able to tell their customers, we're going to protect your data, but we also don't want to find ourselves in a position where it's a legitimate security threat we're facing and we can't figure out how to address it because we have no way in to whatever is holding the information. And we also are not operating in a vacuum. We know that other countries are taking their own steps to, you know, monitor the Internet, control the Internet, which, you know, which we're not. But what we've got to figure out is how you get the right balance. So encryption is a part of protecting people's legitimate right to privacy. How would you address Google and Apple if you were the president? Well, I've talked to some of the leaders in technology, some of the executives of these companies, and I think that's the way to start, not a, you know, a real conversation where we say, look, here's our problem. If you were sitting in my seat, if all of a sudden some president said, okay, Mr. or Ms. X, we want you to be the head of the counterterrorism or the new cyber warfare, something that takes advantage of your expertise. So you're sitting in these meetings that the president and I and others have sat in, and we can see the sequencing where we know people are in contact and where we have both human intelligence and some technology-enabled intelligence, and we know there's something going to happen, and we're trying to figure out how to get through the door that has been locked. So I think the conversation, rather than, you know, you don't understand privacy and you don't understand security ought to be, okay, let's figure out how we're going to do this. So I don't have the answer. I would be the first to say I don't have the answer. I think there are really strong, legitimate arguments on both sides, and what I would like to see is more of the kind of brainstorming that I've had the good fortune to do. Another issue of contention was the NSA. Would you throttle back the NSA in the ways that President Obama had promised and then hasn't come to pass? Well, I think the NSA needs to be more transparent about what it is doing, sharing with the American people, which it wasn't, and I think a lot of the reaction about the NSA was people felt betrayed. They felt like, wait, you know, you didn't tell us you were doing this, and all of a sudden now, you know, we're reading about it on the front page and we're getting hammered by our customers and by, you know, other countries that I would say very hypocritically are going after our companies because, you know, I know for a fact that there's not a country out there that doesn't do anything they can do to get an advantage, and they do things we would never do, like industrial espionage, like stealing intellectual property, and so there's a lot that's going on in this space, and so when you say, well, would you throttle, I mean, the NSA has to act lawfully, and we as a country have to decide what the rules are, and then we have to make it absolutely clear we're going to hold them accountable, and what we had because of post-9-11 legislation was a lot more flexibility than I think people really understood and was not explained to them, and, you know, I voted against the FISA amendments in 2008 because I didn't think that they went far enough to kind of hold us accountable in the Congress for figuring out what was going on. So by flexibility, you mean too much spying power, really? Well, yeah, but how much is too much and how much is not enough? I mean, that's the hard part. I mean, I think if Americans felt like, number one, you're not going after my personal information, the content of my personal information, but I do want you to get the bad guys because I don't want them to use social media, use, you know, communications devices invented right here to plot against us, so let's draw the line, and I think it's hard if everybody's in their corner, so I resist saying, you know, it has to be this or that. I want us to come to a better balance. Do you think Edward Snowden was a traitor in revealing this? I can never condone what he did, and I think he, you know, he stole millions of documents, and, you know, the great irony is the vast majority of those documents had nothing to do with American civil liberties, privacy, or anything affecting us here at home. They were about information we had vis-à-vis China, Russia, Iran, others. And then he fled to China, then he ends up in Russia. So, you know, the president had given a speech before Snowden's disclosures laying out some of these issues that we needed to address. So people were beginning to take a deep breath after, you know, a decade of 9-11 reaction, and the president was sort of leading that, and then along comes Snowden and, you know, puts forth information into the public domain that people are entitled to know, but I think it's fair to say a lot of it was nothing to do but the subject we're talking about, but very damaging to our national security vis-à-vis countries that do their very best to gather information about us. All right, two more, a couple more topics. ISIS, disturbing videos. They're using social media, creating terror there. Has the administration done enough to tackle the problem, and what would you do more to deal with it? Well, you know, again, how much time do we have? I think not enough. As much as you want. Yeah, you know, look. Okay, then let me start with this. ISIS is the manifestation of a movement that is incredibly fueled by an obsession to control territory, to reestablish, as they say, a caliphate that would be governed by people with a very retrograde view of everything about women, everything I care about, everything about due process or rights or anything. We know that. So why did they get a foothold? Well, first of all, they are the successor to what was called al-Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Qaeda in Iraq was an al-Qaeda affiliate that was based in the Sunni regions within Iraq and was fighting the Shiite forces in Iraq during the American involvement in Iraq. They were so brutal at that time that it provided the opportunity for a lot of the Sunni tribal sheikhs and community leaders to band against them, to come together to try to drive them out of Anbar province and out of the Sunni-dominated regions, and they were successful in doing so because they finally decided that the enemy of my enemy is my friend didn't work because these people were so brutal, so beyond the pale. So they effectively squashed them, and then the United States turned over Iraq to the elected leadership of then Prime Minister Maliki, and he proceeded to alienate all of the Sunni leaders and citizenry, purged the army of Sunni officers, generally behaved in a sectarian, exclusive, oppressive way. And so these chutes that had been suppressed began to pop through the surface. Meanwhile, next door in Syria, you have all kinds of extremist groups taking advantage of the vacuum there, and one of them morphed into ISIS and was able to recruit former officers in the Saddam Hussein army as well as foreign fighters, as well as very hardened combat-experienced jihadists, and were able to gather up a lot of resources by breaking into banks and stealing everything in them, by stealing oil and selling it on the black market, etc. And they did something that up until now no other extremist group has done as effectively, and that is use social media. So all of a sudden it wasn't just like, oh my gosh, those people are killing each other over there again. It was, oh my gosh, they are threatening us. They are recruiting kids from the United States, Canada, Europe, elsewhere. They are threatening to expand their territorial grasp. They are really a metastasizing danger. So therefore we have to work with our partners in the region to try to diminish and eventually eradicate the threat because it does affect us. But how? Do you think enough is being done? Well, I think that it's a very hard challenge because you can't very well put American or Western troops in to fight this organism. You have to use not only air force but also army soldiers from the region and particularly from Iraq. And so what Americans are doing now is helping to retrain the Iraqi army after it was really decimated by Maliki, trying to get leadership back in within the Sunni regions, trying to integrate them so the Sunnis feel they have a stake in the future, supporting the Kurds because the Kurdish Peshmerga are right now certainly the best fighting force. It's like three, four, five-dimensional chess. So yes, I think a lot of the right moves are being made, but this is a really complicated and long-term problem because remember, we've got al-Qaeda in Yemen, we've got Boko Haram in North Africa, we've got terrorist groups from the Sinai through Libya and south into Mali. This is a long-term struggle. Are you sure you want to be president there? Well, you know, every time has its own problems. So these happen to be some of ours. Two more very quick questions. If you could wave a wand to change anything about this country, what would it be? One thing. That's so hard. And not another season of Downton Abbey or something like that. Well, I hope that happens without me waving a magic wand. That we could get back to working together cooperatively again, that we could get out of our mindsets, our partisan bunkers. We've come so far. We still have lots to do on ending sexism and racism and homophobia and all kinds of really bad issues that we've had to confront, and we have work still to do, but we're making a lot of progress. But nobody wants to associate with anybody who doesn't agree with them politically. I mean, you can't have a conversation. People won't listen to each other. They listen to different media, and those different media tell different stories about the very same thing that you're watching unfold in front of your eyes. You cannot run a great country like that, and this is the greatest country, and we need to start acting like it and working like it again. Do you think you've become less polarizing? Yeah, obviously I think I have. I mean, I think that I was a little bit surprised. When I was first lady of Arkansas, I worked on a lot of really controversial issues in education and health, and I worked with people across the aisle, worked with people of different philosophies because within the Democratic Party in those days there were lots of very conservative Democrats. And then I go to Washington, and all of a sudden it's considered just an incredible shock that somebody like me who's been an advocate, been involved in so many movements for so long, would actually have an opinion about something like health care for everybody or whatever it might be. So I think there was some back and forth there that I had to understand better, and I certainly tried to do that when I ran for the Senate. That was something that I stressed, and when I worked in the Senate, I was very much somebody who would work across the aisle, look for opportunities to do that, because I don't think I have all the right ideas. I don't think my party has all the right ideas. I think there are good ideas in lots of places, but if you don't talk to each other, you don't listen to each other, and in Washington you don't spend time with each other because you fly in, you vote, vote, vote, and then you fly out to go raise money. And I'll just end with this because I know we're running out of time. I was so proud of my friend, Patty Murray, the senator from Washington, who when the government was shut down a year or so ago, she was the chair of the Budget Committee. And so they shut the government down, and then they reopen it, but they basically say we have to pass a budget. And they turn to Patty and they say, okay, well, you're the chair of the Budget Committee. Go work out a budget. So Patty worked with Paul Ryan, the former vice presidential nominee for Mitt Romney, congressman from Wisconsin, and they actually talked to each other. They didn't show up at a big conference table with phalanxes of true believers on each side of them with notebooks filled with argumentation. They had breakfast together. They had lunch together. They'd sit and talk about what each of them wanted, knowing that they couldn't agree on giving each other everything, but how could they make enough decisions to reach a consensus? And they did. So it's possible, and it requires relationship building. You know, a lot of people that I have really serious disagreements with, I found ways to work together and I got to know better. And, you know, that's kind of lost. So this is, as you can tell, one of my pet peeves here. So my last question, I asked this to the president last question, if you could have a hashtag for the next few years, and you can't do grandmother knows best. You've used that one. That's such a good one. But you could do Hillary 2016 if you want, but just offering a suggestion. I love hashtag, I love selfies, whatever. What would it be, your hashtag? Oh, my gosh. Lead on. All right. Thank you. That was great. Thank you.