Many of the genetically modified foods will be safe, I'm sure. Will most of them be safe? Nobody knows.

Back in the mid-1980s, congressional hearings were held after we brought this litigation, and held up the first experiment. At that time, I went in front of Congress, along with the major agencies involved with this.

I wanted to make sure that this be the first scientific and technology revolution in history in which the public thoroughly discussed all the potential benefits and all the potential harms, in advance of the technology coming online and running its course.

With the communication internet, whole industries have been disrupted. You're in the publishing industry, you understand that. Before, we had newspapers, magazines - now you're on the web. I'm in book publishing. I don't have to tell you what's happened to us. Television has taken a hit. The music industry. But, thousands of new businesses have emerged on this new communication revolution platform. Not just Google, Facebook, and Twitter. There are thousands of operations. Businesses that are doing the platforms, the apps. They're mining the big data. They're creating the connections.

Wikipedia is an amazing construct. It's a commons that works. I don't know how Jimmy Wales came up with it. I'm sure all of us would have said, "This is the stupidest thing we've ever heard of. That'll never work in a million years."

Many of the mainstream agricultural scientists, especially at the agricultural schools, but at all of our major universities, are tied into all sorts of contractual relationships and consulting relationships with the life science companies.

We need a game plan to deploy it very quickly to both move the economy forward and create the new businesses and jobs, and address climate change. It's a pretty big task. Pretty challenging.