Bill Gates On Egypt: 'It's Not That Hard To Shut The Internet Down' (VIDEO)

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates spoke with Katie Couric about the Egyptian government's decision to cut off the country's access to the Internet.

Couric asked Gates whether he was surprised that President Hosni Mubarak had been able to impose a complete Internet blackout on the nation.

"It's not that hard to shut the Internet down if you have military power where you can tell people that's what's going to happen," Gates said. "Whenever you do something extraordinary like that you're sort of showing people you're afraid of the truth getting out, so it's a very difficult tactic, but certainly it can be shut off."

He noted that information from Egypt has still be able to get out. "Now we still have handheld video cameras and lots of coverage coming out, so there's an awareness," Gates explained.

So just how does a country turn off the Internet? Check out our explanation here, then see ways to help Egypt get online here.

View an excerpt of Couric's interview with Gates below, or watch the full interview here.

WATCH:

Comments

[Bonez1]

08:20 AM on 02/02/2011

What a smart smart smart man!
maybe Bill can pay off some of,if not all of our deficit!?
please, Bill? you will still be left with gazillion afterward?!

[harlequin115]

10:27 AM on 02/02/2011

wtf? How does this article have anything to do with the deficit? Your whole comment is a complete non sequitur.

Also, no. He wouldn't have a gazilion afterward, and no, he couldn't pay off more than a few percentage points of our annual deficit. One man is not a government in this country. Gates is doing his best to give most of his money to his philanthropic efforts, and he advocated letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire--that's pretty much the most you can expect.

[Nick Berry]

03:59 AM on 02/02/2011

It looks like just over 5 million people in Egypt have lost access to their facebook
accounts with the recent shutdown.

http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/february12011/index.html

Up until this event, facebook registrations were growing
rapidly in Egypt (doubling in the last year).

[Moritz Reiter]

08:25 PM on 02/01/2011

Can Bill come over and fix my copy of windows so I have that power

[Max Shaw]

04:54 PM on 02/01/2011

Egypt must be operating Windows Vista or something I guess.

[Bonez1]

08:14 AM on 02/02/2011

hahaha smart...

i actually have windows vista and it works great...of course my
laptop is terrible and it's fairly new but the desktop works fine:)

[agxphoto]

04:14 PM on 02/01/2011

The Internet was built and installed, cable by cable, switch by switch. While large and complex, it's not hard to believe that it can't be dismantled.

Notice also what "down" passes for; it may not require a complete and absolute disconnection; instead, it may only mean that the average person can't load a web page that's sent from beyond a certain switch. This happens in heavily trafficked nodes all the time. Get two million people trying to send cell phone pictures right now, with the network closed to less than 60% of its normal capacity, and it'd be easy to begin that phase of cascading failures that would make it yet easier to shut down communications further.

The more people would try to get connected; the more they would create their own traffic jam; the easier it would become to shut down a switchboard.

[Michael Mouton]

03:27 PM on 02/01/2011

I bet Steve Jobs could've explained this better.

[jgeurian21]

03:51 PM on 02/01/2011

LOL.

[MaxPowerXP]

12:06 AM on 02/02/2011

Doubt it, since it's not something he can market to hipsters.

[G Lang123]

03:03 PM on 02/01/2011

all that is missing from the headline and photo is "It's not that hard to shut the internet down, muhahahahaha, muahahahahaaha, muhahahahaha...............

[Checkpoint Charlie]

02:52 PM on 02/01/2011

Bring back the BBS! jk

[PresidentRobertBooth]

02:46 PM on 02/01/2011

Internet Shut Down = End Of World.
 
 
 

[Bonez1]

08:23 AM on 02/02/2011

ya...good thing Bill is not as insane...i hope!

[SaskiaVanderVliet]

02:39 PM on 02/01/2011

Here in Europe virtually all commerce and banking is done online now/

Shut down the Net you shut down business worldwide.

[HappyMarsden]

10:12 PM on 02/01/2011

I've always wondered.... where does the cash come out of when you need to a withdrawal transaction online? The CD drive? The floppy drive?

[MaxPowerXP]

12:06 AM on 02/02/2011

You mean you haven't installed a cash drive yet? Man, join the 21st century

[Hollywoodsman]

02:38 PM on 02/01/2011

This heartless mega nerd is the poster boy for the term Blue Eyed Devil. Here's a link outing the unsafe vaccine population control agenda. Must read.

http://www.naturalnews.com/031173_vaccines_science.html

[Joshua Hansen]

04:36 PM on 02/01/2011

That's not an overwrought propaganda piece, not one bit.

[hypnotoad72]

06:02 PM on 02/01/2011

He's not a nerd.  He's a marketer.  Most nerds don't have the pied piper savvy, or ability to smoothtalk and con.  Amongst other things. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcWjOodAtoE  

http://mydd.com/story/2007/2/7/184312/5388  

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/07/23/100134488/

Hundreds of web sites have pointed out that guy and his company over the years.  He's a businessman first and foremost.   

Good link, BTW.  I think a similar link was brought up by somebody else from this thread the other day:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-gates/vaccines-save-lives_b_815814.html#comments

[RedDogBear]

07:17 PM on 02/01/2011

While I agree that Gates is primarily a business man and marketer I think he is also, or at least was, a nerd. I used to go to the Microsoft Developer conference every year (not for any love of MS technology but because my company was making lots of money consulting for clients who used it) and I was always amazed at the depth of Gates' knowledge. After he gave the keynote speech he would take questions and while he had several technical people up on the stage with him he seldom deferred to them. He could answer some of the most complex questions about the underlying MS technology with amazing depth.

The difference between Gates and Balmer couldn't have been more stark. Balmer was purely a marketer. He got up and did his little clown act and then left all the questions to the people that actually knew something.

[pfz]

02:33 PM on 02/01/2011

lol...thanks god we had Bill Gates to explain the obvious, the obvious carries so much more weight when Bill says it.

[rray]

02:23 PM on 02/01/2011

Their already on it Bill.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/kill-switch-obama-administration-fears-egypt-style-revolt-in-u-s.html

[brux]

02:17 PM on 02/01/2011

Yeah ... he means "it's not that hard to shut down the Internet" ... IF YOU"RE USING A WINDOWS PC! ;-)

[thismachinekillsfascists]

02:01 PM on 02/01/2011

Wow, where did the writer of this story learn to speak English?

[theoffender]

02:05 PM on 02/01/2011

There working under one of Microsoft's H1-B visas.

[drumz]

03:45 PM on 02/01/2011

LOL

[RedDogBear]

07:20 PM on 02/01/2011

Normally I don't take cheap shots at people for grammatical errors. But since you are taking cheap shots against people with Hi-B visas (who in my experience usually speak English better than most Americans) I think you meant: "They're working under one of Microsoft' s H1-B visas."