Getting ready for a global pandemic is every bit as important as nuclear deterrence and avoiding a climate catastrophe.

If you rely too much on the people in other countries and other companies, in a sense that's your brain and you are outsourcing your brain.

It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.

Depending on how quickly you get ocean rise, you have people who live in river deltas [at risk]. Bangladesh is largely a river delta, and the rising sea level means that when storms come in, the human sanitation is backing up, the ability to farm, it's destructive-type situations like you saw in New Orleans with Katrina. You're increasing the frequency of that stuff in low-lying areas fairly dramatically.

The greatest thing you can do for your competition - hire poorly.

It's fantastic that Microsoft in the cloud space is one of very few companies that's got the critical mass, the particular emphasis on helping business customers get up to that cloud with all the unique requirements they have. It's very exciting.

The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.