If you don't visit a bad neighborhood, it might visit you.

I think no country is going to be immune from the Arab awakening because the Arab awakening is driven by deep human longing for dignity, for justice and for freedom. I think that applies to young people in Saudi Arabia as much as to young people in Egypt, Tunisia, or Yemen, or Libya, or Syria. If I were in Saudi Arabia, I would be getting ahead of this and looking for ways to appreciate those aspirations and align my country with them.

I don't think that stability and the status quo go together at all, not in a flat world where people are integrated, where women are assuming new roles, where young people want to be consulted and participate. I think the trick is to open up, move down the path of reform, do it in a way that is consistent with your own society's stability and culture, and just don't think you can do nothing.

Saudi hijackers first came into contact with al-Qaeda and went through Terrorism 101 when they signed up for the jihad in Afghanistan.

I think there are different kinds of elites. I think there are venal elites, and self-interested elites, and selfish elites, and I think there are visionary elites.

The financial crisis just made the hole deeper, which is why our stimulus needs to be both big and smart, both financially and educationally stimulating. It needs to be able to produce not only more shovel-ready jobs and shovel-ready workers, but more Google-ready jobs and Windows-ready and knowledge-ready workers.

Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home.