:00:07. > :00:10.The US eLection was influenced by Vladimiri Putin -
:00:11. > :00:12.the claim by US intelligence chiefs as they release their full report.
:00:13. > :00:15.There's no sign that Donald Trump will accept that.
:00:16. > :00:22.This world expert in cyber crime tells us this CIA
:00:23. > :00:24.report is the most import one in the agency's history.
:00:25. > :00:26.We'll hear the reaction to that from the former
:00:27. > :00:33.A gunman opens fire inside Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida.
:00:34. > :00:43.We'll bring you the latest on the casualties.
:00:44. > :00:46.They call it the Michael Fish moment: the Bank of England heaps
:00:47. > :00:48.scorn on the economists who missed failed to see coming
:00:49. > :00:52.How does a weatherman get blamed for what some
:00:53. > :01:00.In the last hour US intelligence chiefs have
:01:01. > :01:04.released their report on what they believe to be
:01:05. > :01:07.Russian interference in the American Presidential Election.
:01:08. > :01:10.It is as conclusive as it is damning - pointing the finger
:01:11. > :01:13.directly at Vladimir Putin - and saying he ordered
:01:14. > :01:15.an "influence campaign" aimed at undermining public faith
:01:16. > :01:22.It states their understanding that the Russian Government
:01:23. > :01:26.developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump
:01:27. > :01:28.over Hillary Clinton - and backed what private cyberspace
:01:29. > :01:32.companies have long concluded, that a Russian group known as Fancy
:01:33. > :01:36.Bear was behind the leaked emails of top Democrats.
:01:37. > :01:38.The report emerged shortly after a meeting between Trump
:01:39. > :01:45.Donald Trump called the meeting "constructive" and appeared to admit
:01:46. > :01:48.foreign spies could be behind the hacking.
:01:49. > :01:51.But he refused once more to believe the outcome of the election had
:01:52. > :02:03.This is where it all started so publicly, the Democratic National
:02:04. > :02:06.Convention in July, a chance for a presidential candidate to shine in
:02:07. > :02:11.front of adoring party conference, but Hillary Clinton's Coronation was
:02:12. > :02:15.mired by scandal, the chair of the DNC had to resign on the eve of the
:02:16. > :02:19.party convention after a league of internal e-mails showed officials
:02:20. > :02:26.favouring Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Forward six months, the
:02:27. > :02:34.leaks get worse and Donald Trump wins the election, and Barack Obama
:02:35. > :02:39.announces expulsions of Russian diplomats after what America
:02:40. > :02:44.believed is a cyber attack from Russia. It is not exactly in the
:02:45. > :02:48.interest of Donald Trump to acknowledge that he may be benefited
:02:49. > :02:53.from state-sponsored hacking, made all the more awkward after those
:02:54. > :02:58.comments back in July. Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are
:02:59. > :03:05.able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. The last 24 hours has
:03:06. > :03:08.shown the capricious nature of the debate, first Syriza tweets saying
:03:09. > :03:13.he was a big of intelligence agencies, -- a series of tweets. And
:03:14. > :03:22.then a follow-up, asking why they had not investigated Democratic
:03:23. > :03:25.computers. He has now conceded the leaks might have come from foreign
:03:26. > :03:30.enemies but insists there was no effect on the outcome of the
:03:31. > :03:34.election. Perhaps he's right, we might never know for sure, but this
:03:35. > :03:39.is no longer about the part Russia may be played in America's domestic
:03:40. > :03:41.affairs, it's about the Laois and ship the President of the United
:03:42. > :03:47.States will have with the agencies tasked with keeping America safe --
:03:48. > :03:48.the relationship. If Trump doesn't trust his own spies, the Kremlin's
:03:49. > :03:52.work is done. I'm joined now by Thomas Rid,
:03:53. > :03:55.Professor of Security Studies at Kings College -
:03:56. > :04:03.he's been looking through It is unflinching. In the way it
:04:04. > :04:05.points the finger directly at Russia and Russian hackers, and that the
:04:06. > :04:11.Russian government and at Vladimir Putin. It is important to keep this
:04:12. > :04:16.in a his topical context, a lot of the threat intelligence and digital
:04:17. > :04:22.forensic amenity have studied Russian hacking campaigns for many
:04:23. > :04:26.years, two decades, and the one thing that is crucial, they make
:04:27. > :04:29.mistakes. Again and again, and when they make mistakes we can look at
:04:30. > :04:37.these mistakes and learn from them and link attacks to each other. And
:04:38. > :04:41.to the perpetrator. You have read the report you don't think it is
:04:42. > :04:46.oversold, this understanding of Russian influence? The US
:04:47. > :04:53.intelligence committee have been tracking Russian operations, not
:04:54. > :04:57.just in computers, network operations, but Russian influence
:04:58. > :05:01.operation for many decades they have coverage through human sources as
:05:02. > :05:04.well as technical sources and we can tell from their very strong
:05:05. > :05:07.intelligence language in the report that their sources including their
:05:08. > :05:13.human sources seem to be very strong. This is a significant
:05:14. > :05:16.observation. Standing back you could say that President Obama ordered the
:05:17. > :05:19.report a month ago and it comes as Donald Trump is about to be
:05:20. > :05:28.inaugurated and it seems to favour Hillary Clinton by appointing the
:05:29. > :05:32.figure at Vladimir Putin's support for the knot on, so why would you
:05:33. > :05:38.not be sceptical? -- support for Donald Trump. Let's keep this in
:05:39. > :05:42.perspective, President Obama was very reluctant in the campaign to
:05:43. > :05:47.use the intelligence community and to point fingers at what was going
:05:48. > :05:50.on, because he, like many others, thought that Clinton would win,
:05:51. > :05:58.anyway, so it wouldn't matter in the end, but clearly that did not
:05:59. > :06:01.happen. You have traced the way... You were looking at e-mails to John
:06:02. > :06:07.Podesta and how the spam filter failed. And how the e-mails
:06:08. > :06:15.essentially leaked, but what makes you link John Podesta at one end to
:06:16. > :06:18.Vladimir Putin at the other? In that particular case, the Russian
:06:19. > :06:24.operators made the mistake and left part of the infrastructure that they
:06:25. > :06:27.used in order to breach thousands of targets, hundreds of thousands of
:06:28. > :06:32.targets and only one of them was John Podesta. Because they made that
:06:33. > :06:38.mistake with a link shortening a cat, and this is only one mistake of
:06:39. > :06:43.many, we can piece together highly detailed full resolution picture of
:06:44. > :06:46.their targeting over many months and it looks exactly like the targets
:06:47. > :06:51.set of a military intelligence agency would look like. A military
:06:52. > :07:00.intelligence agency means Vladimir Putin himself? The operation was
:07:01. > :07:03.most likely started as a bottom-up initiative and then Vladimir Putin
:07:04. > :07:07.signed off on it at some point in the middle of last year which is
:07:08. > :07:17.also part of the intelligence estimate. How do you think Donald
:07:18. > :07:20.Trump himself has handled the leaks? We know from history, and this is a
:07:21. > :07:27.very long history, Cold War history, the Russian intelligence community
:07:28. > :07:33.have honed their skills in driving wedges into the political systems of
:07:34. > :07:36.their adversary 's to multiply divisions, and first they wanted to
:07:37. > :07:43.divide Clinton and Bernie Sanders which they set seeded in doing, and
:07:44. > :07:47.now it seems they are daring Trump to deepen the division between his
:07:48. > :07:52.Administration and his own foreign policy and intelligence
:07:53. > :07:55.establishment. So by tweeting at these are unhinged statements, he is
:07:56. > :08:00.indeed doing exactly what the Russians and probably Vladimir Putin
:08:01. > :08:04.want him to do. Thomas, thanks for joining us.
:08:05. > :08:07.Former Director of the CIA James Woolsey joins me now.
:08:08. > :08:10.He quit the Trump transition team this week - as - he explained -
:08:11. > :08:13.he didn't want to fly under false colours as a senior
:08:14. > :08:25.Thank you very much for joining us. Have you read the report before it
:08:26. > :08:35.was released? Do you agree with what it says? I had not read it before it
:08:36. > :08:44.was released, and it seems to me that it sounds like a Saudi done
:08:45. > :08:52.report. -- soundly done report. It makes several ports, several points,
:08:53. > :08:58.the Russian effort is wide reaching, the Russians call it disinformation,
:08:59. > :09:06.otherwise known as lying, and they target institutions in the West, any
:09:07. > :09:11.institutions in countries they are concerned about or interested in,
:09:12. > :09:18.they have been doing this since the 1940s, maybe the 1930s. And they
:09:19. > :09:24.have done it of course until very recently without using cyber but
:09:25. > :09:30.using other devices, forged documents, doctored photographs,
:09:31. > :09:35.except you. Hundreds and hundreds of people, thousands of people,
:09:36. > :09:41.according to defectors who had gone into this in some detail. That is
:09:42. > :09:49.apparently confirmed by the report. And I think it is good and sound for
:09:50. > :09:53.Americans and the rest of us to understand that the Russians operate
:09:54. > :09:55.this way and they have operated this way for many years and they are not
:09:56. > :10:03.going to change under Vladimir Putin. It also seems, the report
:10:04. > :10:10.seems to say, that whatever the Russians did, it does not seem to
:10:11. > :10:13.have influenced the outcome of the election, that is not just something
:10:14. > :10:21.Trump is saying, that is something the report says. And something Jim
:10:22. > :10:25.Clark has said, as well. They would have needed to do that, they would
:10:26. > :10:29.have needed to have got them into the voting machine and the counting
:10:30. > :10:36.process, which we have got to upgrade in the United States. Can I
:10:37. > :10:39.just come in, you have said this is good and sound, and we know Donald
:10:40. > :10:46.Trump has refused to believe that it had any effect on the election
:10:47. > :10:56.outcome, what do you read into that? No one else I know has charged that
:10:57. > :11:02.it has had an effect on the outcome. I don't believe the intelligence
:11:03. > :11:08.organisations or the FBI or anything I've read, suggests there was any
:11:09. > :11:12.effect. It is something which one needs to fix because if it is not
:11:13. > :11:19.fixed and the voting machines are not perfect, there could be an
:11:20. > :11:25.effect Sunday, but I don't know of any authoritative statement which
:11:26. > :11:29.says it affected the counting and the models, the counting of the
:11:30. > :11:34.ballots. What is your message to Democrats tonight who hear this
:11:35. > :11:38.report which points the finger at Vladimir Putin leading a campaign of
:11:39. > :11:45.influence over the election and must be feeling outraged? Well, I would
:11:46. > :11:51.think that all Americans, Democrats and Republicans, ought, if not to be
:11:52. > :11:57.outrage, to be somewhere between outraged and highly concerned, that
:11:58. > :12:01.the Russians, by continuing to do what they have done for many
:12:02. > :12:06.decades, and doing it with advanced technology, could have an effect the
:12:07. > :12:13.next time, a real effect, not just a theoretical one, be out, of
:12:14. > :12:17.elections. Britain's elections, our elections, other elections. We need
:12:18. > :12:23.to get in control of our own systems and counter what the Russians are
:12:24. > :12:28.doing. Can I journey suggest that some might here that is rather
:12:29. > :12:31.naive, we understand there are reports of senior Russian official
:12:32. > :12:35.celebrating a Trump victory and we know that Trump himself seems to be
:12:36. > :12:40.very friendly with Russia and he has refused to point the finger at the
:12:41. > :12:43.state himself or stop what more evidence do we need that this is
:12:44. > :12:50.Russian influence working on American politics? If the Russians
:12:51. > :12:54.had real elections and there was one between Vladimir Putin and
:12:55. > :12:59.Gorbachev, there would be celebrations in the United States
:13:00. > :13:03.and Britain, that Gorbachev had won, even if we had not gotten involved
:13:04. > :13:05.in doing the kind of things that the Russians do, with respect to
:13:06. > :13:13.interfering with voting and so forth. One of the things we are
:13:14. > :13:24.seeing here, Americans comes slowly as a nation, taking effect, posing
:13:25. > :13:28.and fighting something which are challenging and we are still at the
:13:29. > :13:31.beginning stages of this was Churchill said the Americans always
:13:32. > :13:33.do the right thing, but unfortunately only after they have
:13:34. > :13:38.exhausted all the other possibilities. You have to realise
:13:39. > :13:43.we are exhausting possibilities now, give us time, and I think we will
:13:44. > :13:49.organise things in such a way that we protect our ballot and help
:13:50. > :13:55.others protect theirs. Take us inside the mindset which you know so
:13:56. > :13:58.well of senior intelligence chiefs, the CIA, who have heard their
:13:59. > :14:02.commander-in-chief reject the explanation that they have offered,
:14:03. > :14:08.what kind of relationship lies in store for Donald Trump and the CIA
:14:09. > :14:12.now? They are big boys and girls and they take a lot of criticism, it is
:14:13. > :14:16.very popular in the United States politically, if anything comes up
:14:17. > :14:23.that remotely deals with intelligence, to find some reason to
:14:24. > :14:31.criticise the CIA... Publicly? Often, often. I have seen that
:14:32. > :14:34.coming at me when I was director of Central intelligence, demanding that
:14:35. > :14:38.I do impossible things, such as fire people who were already retired.
:14:39. > :14:47.LAUGHTER We are not always at our best in the
:14:48. > :14:50.initial stages of something, it took three years to get into World War I
:14:51. > :14:55.and two and a half years to get into World War II while Britain held
:14:56. > :14:56.Germany at bay, and sometimes we don't respond as quickly as we
:14:57. > :15:02.should. Thanks for joining us. A gunman opened fire
:15:03. > :15:04.in the baggage claim area at the Fort Lauderdale airport
:15:05. > :15:06.in Florida, killing five people and wounding at least eight before
:15:07. > :15:09.being taken into custody. The attack sent panicked passengers
:15:10. > :15:11.running out of the terminal One man, believed to be
:15:12. > :15:20.the shooter, is now in custody. Our correspondent
:15:21. > :15:29.Barbara Plett Ussher There was a lot of confusion around
:15:30. > :15:35.what was taken onto the plane, whether the shooter was a passenger,
:15:36. > :15:40.whether he had carried a gun, what more can you tell us? Police have
:15:41. > :15:43.not clarify the question, whether he came into the baggage claim area
:15:44. > :15:46.from outside or whether he arrived as a passenger but the county
:15:47. > :15:50.commissioner has said that he had been told that he came on a plane,
:15:51. > :15:56.that he had checked his gun in the luggage and that he picked it up on
:15:57. > :16:00.the baggage carousel and took it to the bathroom, where he loaded it and
:16:01. > :16:06.came out shooting. It is legal to check a gun, to put it into checked
:16:07. > :16:09.luggage, in the United States, under certain precautions and those
:16:10. > :16:13.precautions were taken. The County Commissioner initially said that he
:16:14. > :16:16.had come on my flight from Canada, that is something Air Canada and the
:16:17. > :16:19.Canadian embassy have looked into and they have said, there was no
:16:20. > :16:23.evidence that he had any connection to Canada and since then, reports
:16:24. > :16:26.that he flew in from Anchorage, which is also the place where he was
:16:27. > :16:33.last known to have lived, Anchorage, Alaska. Has there been much reaction
:16:34. > :16:39.from political figures in America this evening so far? You have that
:16:40. > :16:42.statements of condolence from the president, and something similar
:16:43. > :16:46.from the President-elect, who takes the opportunity to comment on public
:16:47. > :16:53.events through his Twitter account. He did that as well. One thing that
:16:54. > :16:57.people will be asking, how could this happen so easily in an airport,
:16:58. > :17:03.where you are supposed to have tight security. He seems to have brought
:17:04. > :17:07.his gun in with him but the fact is that it took place in an arrivals
:17:08. > :17:12.area, in domestic flights, in the United States, these areas are not
:17:13. > :17:14.terribly secure, people can walk in, picked up family members, drivers
:17:15. > :17:18.can pick people up at the baggage claim. It is possible there may be
:17:19. > :17:22.some discussion about whether these areas need to be further secured
:17:23. > :17:25.just like the areas where you go into departures for aeroplanes.
:17:26. > :17:29.Thank you very much. There is a certain irony that
:17:30. > :17:32.even when economists are attempting to take the blame,
:17:33. > :17:35.they end up using poor old weather forecaster Michael Fish
:17:36. > :17:36.as their whipping boy, and headline synonym
:17:37. > :17:38.for a forecast gone wrong. The Bank of England admitted that
:17:39. > :17:40.economists were facing after their dire predictions
:17:41. > :17:45.of a post-Brexit downturn proved unfounded in
:17:46. > :17:48.the first six months. The Bank of England's
:17:49. > :17:51.chief economist Andy Haldane said his team were now
:17:52. > :17:54.facing having to predict how despite unknowable outcomes
:17:55. > :17:57.of the Brexit negotiations. So can economists tell us anything
:17:58. > :18:13.more than Paul the Octopus, Earlier on today a woman rang the
:18:14. > :18:18.BBC and said that she heard there was a hurricane on the way, if you
:18:19. > :18:22.are watching, don't worry, there isn't. VOICEOVER: As economics had
:18:23. > :18:25.its own Michael Fish moment, that is what the chief economist at the Bank
:18:26. > :18:32.of England said this week. Very similar to the sort of reports
:18:33. > :18:38.central banks, naming no names, issued precrisis," there's no
:18:39. > :18:44.hurricane coming, it might be very windy in the sub-prime sector...".
:18:45. > :18:48.It was a huge shock to economists, in 2009, 49 countries had
:18:49. > :18:57.year-on-year falls, in economic activity, but as late as September
:18:58. > :19:02.2008, no major forecasters foresaw that. We failed to appreciate the
:19:03. > :19:06.damage that a relatively sub-prime bass malt sub-prime mortgage market
:19:07. > :19:09.in the United States, loans to fairly poor people who cannot afford
:19:10. > :19:14.the houses they are trying to buy, would do to our financial sector
:19:15. > :19:18.because we did not realise just how interdependent the whole sector had
:19:19. > :19:21.become. There were views that the financial sector was able to manage
:19:22. > :19:26.risk much more effectively, than all this all sort of -- with all this
:19:27. > :19:30.computerisation and self reporting and it turned out not to be true.
:19:31. > :19:34.The financial crisis was not the only bad weather that the economists
:19:35. > :19:37.missed, ever since then, the British economy has consistently
:19:38. > :19:42.underperformed what the economic consensus has suggested. There is a
:19:43. > :19:46.storm that they predicted that never came, the "Brexit" referendum did
:19:47. > :19:56.not lead to an immediate contraction. Those two misses were
:19:57. > :19:58.not the result of complex mass mistakes but relatively simple
:19:59. > :20:05.judgment call that went wrong, on how the economy would respond to two
:20:06. > :20:11.historically unprecedented events. Economists have struggled with
:20:12. > :20:15.forecasting recently because the economy is very weak, after a very
:20:16. > :20:20.unusual event, the financial crisis, we do not have many of those to go
:20:21. > :20:26.by. Most economists are still glum about Brexit but lots got the timing
:20:27. > :20:29.of any trouble wrong, all the evidence suggests that the
:20:30. > :20:33.withdrawing of the suggestion that we withdraw from the European Union
:20:34. > :20:40.will be bad for long-term growth in the UK. But what went wrong,
:20:41. > :20:44.perhaps, was suggesting that those effects would be brought forward,
:20:45. > :20:50.and lead to more savings and less demand in the economy in the very
:20:51. > :20:55.short run. It's worth remembering that as bad as things have been in
:20:56. > :21:00.spotting crises coming, economic policy has got better at responding
:21:01. > :21:06.to crises, we may not have very good forecasts yet but we have much
:21:07. > :21:09.better umbrellas. You can see that most clearly in what happened after
:21:10. > :21:13.the financial crisis. The lessons that had been taken from the great
:21:14. > :21:17.depression were put into action with all policy leaders in many countries
:21:18. > :21:21.around the world being put to the purpose of preventing another great
:21:22. > :21:26.depression from taking place. That is how economics contribute, we
:21:27. > :21:31.learn from our mistakes in the past, we learn from economic history, and
:21:32. > :21:35.we make the best use of the evidence available. Most of the strong winds
:21:36. > :21:41.will be down over Spain and across into France. Since the financial
:21:42. > :21:42.crisis, economics has been a victim of the unprecedented financial and
:21:43. > :21:50.political climate. STUDIO: Joining me now is Guardian
:21:51. > :21:52.columnist, Simon Jenkins, and Vicky Pryce from the Centre
:21:53. > :21:57.for Economics and Business Research. I'm going to leave the umbrella
:21:58. > :22:01.aside for one moment and look at just the rain, is it useless, trying
:22:02. > :22:05.to predict what is going to happen, if they cannot see a financial crash
:22:06. > :22:09.which turns into the worst one for 80 years and then they go on to make
:22:10. > :22:13.further mistakes five years later, what is the point? The first thing
:22:14. > :22:17.to say is that it is not true that nobody was forecasting at the time
:22:18. > :22:23.that things were likely to turn really nasty, the fact that it was
:22:24. > :22:25.not put strongly through the media and people were not necessarily
:22:26. > :22:33.listening is something that we should not forget. People were not
:22:34. > :22:38.particularly, they were not indicating it strongly. The
:22:39. > :22:42.overwhelming view was that we could probably carry on because we had
:22:43. > :22:48.settled macro. People said we had settled it out, we no longer have
:22:49. > :22:51.boom and bust, Gordon Brown was saying that particularly, and we are
:22:52. > :22:56.really safe and many think that would happen. What people forgot,
:22:57. > :23:00.just as we have been hearing, interconnectivity across various
:23:01. > :23:04.countries particularly one of the national sectors and globalisation
:23:05. > :23:07.has been an important part, making it quite difficult for an individual
:23:08. > :23:10.country to isolate itself and forecast exact to what is going to
:23:11. > :23:14.happen. INAUDIBLE I thought the whole point of
:23:15. > :23:17.economics was you can predict these things, otherwise don't make
:23:18. > :23:21.predictions, you assume that when you can... Is that for you what the
:23:22. > :23:26.study of economics is, predictions? No, it is about studying human
:23:27. > :23:30.behaviour, it went all wrong, when it went the up the backside of
:23:31. > :23:35.mathematics, using models that were fallacious, they got two huge things
:23:36. > :23:37.wrong, crash and now "Brexit", and I say people employed by the
:23:38. > :23:42.government to get these things right, they don't pretend, they say,
:23:43. > :23:45.we think this is going to happen, they say might, possibly might, but
:23:46. > :23:52.the fact is, they are making predictions. They were massively on
:23:53. > :23:55.one side and wrong. What is suspicious about it, they are people
:23:56. > :23:58.hired by the government and the suspicion is that this is not an
:23:59. > :24:04.independent profession, as we would like to think it is, it is them
:24:05. > :24:08.saying what governments wants them to hear. We should say, on "Brexit"
:24:09. > :24:12.so far they have proven wrong, we are in early stages... You can
:24:13. > :24:16.always say that, it is like saying there will be a war one day, you
:24:17. > :24:20.want to know when, the point about expertise is that they should tell
:24:21. > :24:25.you when. -- the point about experts is. There should be an enquiry, if
:24:26. > :24:29.this was a professional mistake in engineering or medicine there would
:24:30. > :24:33.be a public enquiry. Economists... This is a Michael Fish moment...
:24:34. > :24:40.This is what is going on right now, the experts have been ridiculed by
:24:41. > :24:46.some members of Parliament. As you know. And yet, if you had heard what
:24:47. > :24:50.Simon was saying, this was all coming from people who work for the
:24:51. > :24:54.government and therefore, they are not independent, it has been the
:24:55. > :24:58.overwhelming majority of economists, independent economists, working for
:24:59. > :25:05.banks and think tanks, and have nothing to do with politics, who
:25:06. > :25:09.were all believing that leaving the EU would be bad news for the UK, not
:25:10. > :25:13.all agreeing that the shorter in fact would be bad but that the
:25:14. > :25:17.medium and long-term impact would be resulting in lower growth in the UK
:25:18. > :25:21.economy. They said something quite specific, there would be an
:25:22. > :25:24.immediate crash. They are not pretending they didn't, they are
:25:25. > :25:28.trying to say that it was a weather forecast which went wrong. These
:25:29. > :25:32.things really do matter. It is not a weather forecast that went wrong, is
:25:33. > :25:35.something had been that there would be the triggering of Article 50
:25:36. > :25:41.immediately, basically what people had been told to expect if there was
:25:42. > :25:45.a vote. Therefore, the impact would be quite substantial, and there was
:25:46. > :25:53.a huge impact on the markets. A full in the pound and a crash in shares.
:25:54. > :25:58.-- fall in the pound. I remember, waking up in the morning. What about
:25:59. > :26:07.this Tom this victim of unprecedented times, do you allow
:26:08. > :26:10.some leeway? This -- this, this phrase victim of unprecedented
:26:11. > :26:14.times. They come up with phrases and then they say, this might happen. In
:26:15. > :26:17.terms of forecast you would have thought they might say, on one hand,
:26:18. > :26:22.on the other hand, but there was a universe analogy of this, they were
:26:23. > :26:27.saying, and I have to say, I cannot believe that it was... -- there was
:26:28. > :26:34.a universe yellow tea of this. If we never asks economists, then is it
:26:35. > :26:38.still a useful tool, does it still give us something? They look at what
:26:39. > :26:42.has been happening in the past, history, what does it tell us, does
:26:43. > :26:47.it give us an understanding of how people behave, that is the most
:26:48. > :26:50.important thing, so... You could say the same thing with politics and
:26:51. > :26:57.clearly it does not. You can run your models in a good
:26:58. > :27:01.way when things are normal, and we have good predicting records but
:27:02. > :27:07.what is much more difficult to do is if there is a shock, political
:27:08. > :27:15.shock, the economy will go into all sorts of... Spasms. Of this sword,
:27:16. > :27:16.yes. This is the dodgy dossier, they're ready should be an enquiry
:27:17. > :27:24.into it. -- spasms, of a sort, yes. If you havent met Alexa
:27:25. > :27:27.you probably will soon. Standing, quietly like a wallflower
:27:28. > :27:29.in the corner of a room. Or perhaps, in the early days
:27:30. > :27:32.of courtship, centre stage She's a sleek robot,
:27:33. > :27:35.the brainchild of Amazon, and she responds only when you start
:27:36. > :27:38.each of your questions She can turn your music up,
:27:39. > :27:41.turn your heating down, and answer questions on just
:27:42. > :27:44.about anything she understands. But are you quite ready
:27:45. > :27:46.to welcome her into your home? David Grossman reports on the advent
:27:47. > :27:56.of the automated house guest. VOICEOVER: It is only because we
:27:57. > :27:59.have always done it this way that we consider typing the natural way of
:28:00. > :28:05.communicating with computers but it is not, it is far more natural to
:28:06. > :28:11.speak to them. Alexa, tell hive to put the heating on. All right, what
:28:12. > :28:19.temperature would you like. Alexa 20 degrees. Sure, your heating is now
:28:20. > :28:22.set to 20 degrees. Voice control technology is seen as the next
:28:23. > :28:27.frontier in personal computer in, it might not be that we are sitting
:28:28. > :28:32.around typing on keyboards as much in the future or using input devices
:28:33. > :28:36.but we use our voices to control a lot of the stuff we need to get done
:28:37. > :28:43.on computers. In a sense, the future has arrived, but as ever, concerns
:28:44. > :28:53.about privacy and security abound. So, in my Christmas stocking I
:28:54. > :28:57.received the Echo, and I was reluctant to turn it on. I have not
:28:58. > :29:02.used the product yet, because I do not know what will happen to the
:29:03. > :29:09.data, and it is Big Brother to think that Alexa or anyone is collecting
:29:10. > :29:13.information about my household activities that can be used for
:29:14. > :29:18.personalising my shopping experience, to be sure, but also
:29:19. > :29:24.means that someone has knowledge of what is going on in my home. The
:29:25. > :29:28.Internet of things, the big data movement, it is one which I think
:29:29. > :29:32.consumers should give more thought to, do we really want to have
:29:33. > :29:36.unknown third parties with access to personal information? For a start,
:29:37. > :29:39.unless you disable the microphone, it is always on, always listening
:29:40. > :29:44.and always recording what is being said in a room. However, Amazon say
:29:45. > :29:48.that nothing leaves the premises, nothing is sent to the clout, for
:29:49. > :29:57.processing, unless you use the wake word, " "Alexa"... Law is still
:29:58. > :30:01.emerging in this area, police in Arkansas full-back recording from a
:30:02. > :30:09.device may be able to shed light on a murder. Amazon have declined to
:30:10. > :30:13.hand them over. -- cloud. United States, the courts could Sabine
:30:14. > :30:16.almost any thing of a soul, people should not be comfortable with the
:30:17. > :30:21.thought that Amazon can protect me from having the government access my
:30:22. > :30:32.information. -- in the United States, the courts can
:30:33. > :30:42.subpoena almost any thing of a sort. You need butter to make the
:30:43. > :30:45.pancakes, milk, and egg. It is eight trade-off, we allow in the
:30:46. > :30:52.microphones for the convenience. Are you my friend? Of course we can be
:30:53. > :30:59.friends, you seem very nice. But, however amiable R friend sounds,
:31:00. > :31:07.it is not clear who is side she is on. -- amiable our new friend
:31:08. > :31:12.sounds. They want to control everything that we listen to and
:31:13. > :31:17.what we buy, and that is extremely valuable information. Alexa, are you
:31:18. > :31:28.the beginning of the end of Western Seville is Asian? No, you're... --
:31:29. > :31:36.are you the beginning of the end of Western Seville is Asian. --
:31:37. > :31:40.civilisation.