60 Minutes - 03/19/2023: The State of the Navy and Only in America

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Norah O’Donnell is aboard the USS Nimitz, a United States Navy aircraft carrier operating southeast of Taiwan and China in the Western Pacific. She reports on the state of the Navy amid threats of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan - an important American ally - and speaks with the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Admiral Samuel Paparo at sea. Florence’s ACF Fiorentina soccer team hasn’t won a championship in decades. The club’s fans ran their last owner out of town, but Rocco Commisso says he’s here to stay, on one condition – “I control, or no money from Rocco.” Sharyn Alfonsi reports. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What are the stakes between the U.S. and China right now? There are few places better than the Western Pacific on board the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz to find out. Is the U.S. Navy ready? We're ready, yes. I'll never admit to being ready enough. Tonight, the commander of the United States Pacific Fleet talks about the state of the U.S. Navy, China's growing fleet, and new long-range missile systems,

and what our top gun pilots are seeing in the sky. How aggressive has China become in the air? Aggressive. Is it your hope that the power of the U.S. Navy, the forced posture of the U.S. Navy, will deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? It's not my hope, it's my duty. Rocco Camiso doesn't suffer fools. But like most Italian soccer fans, he does suffer. Three years ago, he bought the team in Florence, where game day is filled with more agony and ecstasy than

a Puccini opera. When Camiso bought Fiorentina, it ticked two boxes. First, it was a bargain for a European club. Second, it met the demand by his wife that if he insisted on buying a team, it had to be someplace nice. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Nora O'Donnell.

I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. The United States Navy helped secure victory in two world wars and the Cold War. Today, the Navy remains a formidable fighting force, but even officers within the service have questioned its readiness. While the U.S. spent 20 years fighting land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon watched China, its greatest geopolitical rival of the 21st century, build the largest navy in the world. China has threatened to use that navy to invade Taiwan, an important American ally. As tensions with China continue to rise,

we wanted to know more about the current state of the U.S. Navy and how it's trying to deter China while preparing for the possibility of war. The Navy's always on alert. One-third of the Navy is always deployed and operating at all times. The Navy's mustering right now about 300 ships, and there are about 100 ships at sea right now all around the globe. Admiral Samuel Paparo commands the U.S. Pacific Fleet, whose 200 ships and 150,000 sailors and civilians make up 60 percent of the entire U.S. Navy. We met him last month on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, deployed near the U.S. territory of Guam, southeast of Taiwan,

and the People's Republic of China, or PRC. You've been operating as a naval officer for 40 years. How has operating in the Western Pacific changed? In the early 2000s, the PRC Navy mustered about 37 vessels. Today, they're mustering 350 vessels. This month, China's new foreign minister, Qin Gong, delivered a stern warning to the U.S. He said that if Washington does not change course in its stance towards China,

conflict and confrontation is inevitable. This past August, when then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi became the most senior U.S. political figure to visit Taiwan in 25 years, China called it a blatant provocation. The People's Liberation Army fired ballistic missiles into the sea around Taiwan and encircled the island with aircraft and warships. So are Chinese warships now operating closer to Taiwan after Nancy Pelosi's visit? Yes. The best guess anyone has about China's ultimate intentions for Taiwan comes from the CIA. According to its

intelligence assessment, China's President Xi Jinping has ordered the People's Liberation Army to be prepared to take back the island by force by 2027. And if China invades Taiwan, what will the U.S. Navy do? It's a decision of the President of the United States and a decision of the Congress. It's our duty to be ready for that. But the bulk of the United States Navy will be deployed rapidly to the Western Pacific to come to the aid of Taiwan if the order comes to aid Taiwan in thwarting that invasion. Is the U.S. Navy ready? We're ready, yes.

I'll never admit to being ready enough. President Biden has declared four times, including on 60 Minutes, that the U.S. military would defend Taiwan, which is a democracy and the world's leading producer of advanced microchips. To reach the USS Nimitz, we first traveled to America's westernmost territory, the island of Guam, in the middle of the Pacific. Guam was taken by Imperial Japan two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. U.S. Marines recaptured it two and a half years later, and the island, about the size of Chicago, became an indispensable strategic foothold in the western Pacific as it remains

today. From Guam, we boarded a Navy C-2 Greyhound. A Cold War-era transport plane takes people and supplies back and forth from land to the carrier. It was a short flight to the ship and an even shorter landing. Incredible. First cod landing? Yes. Oh, very nice. Before Admiral Paparo rose to lead the Pacific Fleet, he flew jets and graduated from the school known as Top Gun. When you talk about ships, what's the most powerful in the U.S. Navy? It's an aircraft carrier, and its air wing is capable of 150 strike or air-to-air sorties per day, with, at its surge levels, the ability to deliver 900 precision guided munitions every day and

reloadable every night. So even though China now has the largest navy in the world, they don't have anything like this in terms of aircraft carriers. They do not, but they're working towards it. And they have two operational aircraft carriers right now. That's China's two diesel-fueled carriers, to the U.S.'s 11 nuclear-powered ones that can carry a total of about 1,000 attack aircraft, more than the navies of every other nation on Earth combined.

I'll tell you this. We are here to stay, right, in the South China Sea and in this part of the world. And I think that's the message that we really want to convey to not only China, but the entire world. We will sail wherever international law allows. Lieutenant Commander David Ash flies an F-A-18. Do you get briefed on China's growing military threat

and the progress that their Navy is making? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely we do. And they are making great progress in a lot of key areas. The Chinese. The Chinese are, from a military standpoint. This video from Weapons Systems Officer Lieutenant Commander Matthew Carlton shows his F-A-18 strafing ground targets with a machine gun on a U.S. weapons range near Guam. The pilots on the Nimitz also conduct air-to-air combat, or dogfighting drills, daily. How aggressive has China become in the air? Aggressive. And just some examples include unsafe, unprofessional intercepts where they move within single digits of feet of other aircraft,

flashing the weapons that they have on board to the air crew of the other aircraft, operating in international airspace, maneuvering their aircraft in such a way that denies the ability to turn in one direction. If they're safe and professional, then there's no problem. Everybody has the right to fly and sail wherever international law dictates. But the Chinese are pushing that. They are pushing it. China's increasingly aggressive moves in the Western Pacific, encroaching on territory, illegal fishing, and building bases in the middle of the South China Sea have pushed nations like Japan and the Philippines to forge closer military ties to the U.S. And this past

week, Britain, the U.S., and Australia signed a landmark deal to jointly develop nuclear-powered attack submarines to patrol the Pacific. This is how China and Taiwan appear on most maps. This is how the Chinese Communist Party sees the Western Pacific, including the South and East China Seas from Beijing. Taiwan is the fulcrum in what China's leaders call the First Island Chain, a constellation of U.S. allies that stretches across its entire coast. Control of Taiwan is the strategic key to unlocking direct access to the Pacific and the sea lanes where about 50 percent of the world's commerce gets transported.

China has accused the United States of trying to contain them. What do you say to China? I would say, do you need to be contained? Are you expanding? Are you an expansionist power? To a very great extent, the United States was the champion for China's rise. And in no way are we seeking to contain China. But we are seeking for them to play by the rules.

China's navy, a branch of the People's Liberation Army, is now the world's largest. China is also using its 9,000-mile coastline to rewrite the rules of fighting at sea, as these images from Chinese state media show. Its military has invested heavily in long-range precision-guided weapons, like the DF-21 and DF-26, that can be used to target ships. China's People's Liberation Army Rocket Force calls them carrier killers and has practiced shooting them at mock-ups of American ships in the desert that look a lot like the Nimitz.

Since the United States has been operating in the Western Pacific, China's backyard, they've been developing missiles to attack our assets, haven't they? Specific missiles. Absolutely, yes. First, I'll say the United States is also a Western Pacific nation. So it's not China's backyard. It's, you know, it is a free and open Indo-Pacific that encompasses numerous partners and treaty allies. And yes, we have seen them greatly enhance their power projection capability.

How much do you worry about the PLA rocket force? I worry, you know, I'd be a fool to not worry about it. Of course I worry about the PLA rocket force. Of course I work every single day to develop the tactics and the techniques and the procedures to counter it and to continue to develop the systems that can also defend against them. About how far are we from mainland China? 1,500 nautical miles. They can hit us? Yes, they can.

If they've got the targeting in place, they could hit this aircraft carrier. If I don't want to be hit, there's something I can do about it. U.S. Navy planners aren't just plotting how to evade China's rocket force, but also how they could effectively fight back. From the vicinity of Guam, none of the aircraft on this ship has the range to approach Taiwan without refueling in the air. Ships like the U.S. destroyer Wayne E. Meyer, part of the Nimitz strike group, would need to sail much closer towards China

to fire their missiles at any force invading Taiwan. Meyer, part of the Nimitz strike group, would need to sail much closer towards China to fire their missiles at any force invading Taiwan. One naval scholar we spoke to likened it to a boxing match in which a fighter, in this case China, has much longer arms than their potential opponent, the U.S. I'll give you a lot of examples where a shorter fighter was able to prevail over a long-arm fighter by being on their toes, by maneuvering. And we can also stick and move

while we're developing those longer-range weapons. There is another area of modern naval warfare where the U.S. had a head start and retains a deep advantage over China. I just noticed out of the corner of my eye. This is a 688 class, a Los Angeles class attack submarine. This is the most capable submarine on the planet. You know, with the exception of the Virginia class, our newer class of submarines.

The exact number is classified, but our best estimate is that there are about a dozen nuclear-powered, fast-attack submarines patrolling the Pacific at any time. They are difficult to detect and track, something China is trying to solve. How much more advanced is U.S. submarine

technology than Chinese capability? A generation. A generation. Generation. And by generation, I think 10 or 20 years. But broadly, I don't really talk in depth about submarine capabilities. It's the silent service. Since Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, China's military leaders have themselves been mostly silent

and ignored efforts by the U.S. military to keep the lines of communication open, even when a Chinese spy balloon breached American airspace and was shot down by the U.S. If the U.S. and Chinese militaries can't communicate over a Chinese spy balloon, then what's going to happen when there's a real crisis in the South China Sea or with Taiwan? We'll hope that they'll answer the phone. Else, we'll do our very best assessment based on the things that they say in open source and based on their behavior to divine their intentions, and we'll act accordingly. Doesn't that make the situation even more dangerous if U.S. and Chinese militaries

are not talking? Yes. Several sources within the Pentagon tell 60 Minutes that if China invaded Taiwan, it could very well kick off in outer space, with both sides targeting the other satellites that enable precision-guided weaponry. Cyber attacks on American cities and the sabotage of ports on the west coast of the U.S. mainland could follow. One recent non-classified war game had the U.S. prevailing but losing 20 ships, including two carriers. Does that sound about right? That is a plausible outcome. I can imagine a more pessimistic outcome, and I can imagine a more optimistic outcome. We should be clear-eyed about the costs that we're potentially incurring. There are about 5,000 Americans on board the Nimitz.

The ship is nearly half a century old. Given the Navy's current needs in the Pacific, and because there's fuel left in its nuclear reactors, the carrier's life at sea is going to be extended. Is it your hope that the power of the U.S. Navy, the force posture of the U.S. Navy, will deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? It's not my hope, it's my duty,

in conjunction with allies and partners, to deliver intolerable costs to anybody that would upend the order in violation of the nation's security or in violation of the nation's interests. The saying, which is, si pacem para velo, which is, if you want peace, prepare for war. As China's President Xi prepares

for a state visit in Russia tomorrow to strengthen that alliance, we look at critical questions about the state of the U.S. Navy and its readiness when we come back. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a

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Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. 60 Minutes has spent months talking to current and former naval officers, military strategists, and politicians about the state of the U.S. Navy. One common thread in our reporting is unease, both about the size of the U.S. fleet and its readiness to fight. The Navy ships are being retired faster than they're getting replaced,

while the Navy of the People's Republic of China, or PRC, grows larger and more lethal by the year. We asked the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Samuel Paparo, about this on our visit to the USS Nimitz, the oldest aircraft carrier in the Navy. We call it the decade of concern. We've seen a tenfold increase in the size of the PRC Navy.

Technically speaking, the Chinese now have the largest Navy in the world in terms of number of ships, correct? Do the numbers matter? Yes. As the saying goes, quantity has a quality all its own. At some point, are they going to reach numbers that we can't prevail over? I'm not comfortable with the trajectory. If you look at a map at the Indo-Pacific,

one thing becomes clear. There's a lot of water on that map. And so ours has to be a maritime strategy. Republican Mike Gallagher and Democrat Elaine Luria served together on the House Armed Services Committee in the last Congress. What is it about the U.S. Navy that has allowed the two of you to find common cause? I think we share a sense of the urgency of the moment. We see increasing threats from China in particular, in the Indo-Pacific. We feel like we're not moving

fast enough to build a bigger Navy. Congressman Gallagher is a Marine veteran who represents Green Bay, Wisconsin. He chairs the new House Committee on China. He's concerned that under the Navy's current plan, the fleet will shrink to 280 ships by 2027, the same year the CIA says China has set for having the capability to take Taiwan by force. So we will be weakest when our enemy is potentially strongest. China's increased rhetoric and potential aggression against Taiwan. We're going to have to be ready to respond today with the forces we have today. Former Congresswoman Elaine Luria represented Virginia Beach until this past January. An Annapolis graduate, Luria had a 20-year naval career before being elected to Congress. What would you say the state of the U.S. Navy is today?

I think the Navy has not received the attention and resources that it needs over two decades. I mean, I served on six different ships. Every single one of those ships was either built during or a product of the fleet that was built in the Cold War. Both Mike Gallagher and Elaine Luria have lobbied for government money for the shipyards in or near their districts. But they say this is less about jobs and more about national security. If we don't get this right, all of these other things we're doing in Congress,

ultimately that might not matter. If you think about what a coherent grand strategy vis-a-vis China would be, hard power would be the most important part of that, and the Navy would be the most important component of your hard power investments. Over the last two decades, the Navy spent $55 billion on two investments that did not pan out. The first was a class of destroyers known as the Zumwalt. The futuristic fighting ships were supposed to revolutionize naval warfare.

32 were ordered, but only three were ever launched. The cost of each ship, by one estimate, was upwards of $8 billion, making them the three most expensive destroyers ever put to sea. Another example is the Littoral Combat Ship, or LCS, designed to be a fast, all-purpose warship for shallow waters. $30 billion later, the program ran aground after structural defects and engine trouble. Within the Navy, the LCS earned the unfortunate nickname Little Crappy Ship. The Navy's last few decades have been described as a lost generation of shipbuilding. Is that

overly dramatic? I don't think so. We're still struggling to build ships on time, on budget, and that's something we absolutely need to fix going forward. This past week, we spoke with Admiral Mike Gilday at the Pentagon. He is the chief of naval operations and is responsible for building, maintaining, and equipping the entire U.S. Navy. Is the Navy in crisis? No, the Navy's not in crisis. The Navy is out on point every single day. Is it being outpaced by China? No. Our Navy's still in a position to prevail, but that's not blind confidence. We are concerned with the trajectory that China's on, with China's behavior, but we are

in a good position right now if we did ever get into a fight against them. How would you describe what China has been able to do militarily over the last 20 years? The most alarming thing is the growth of not only their conventional forces, but also their strategic nuclear forces, their cyber capability, their space capability, and how they're using that to force other nations, navies, out of certain areas in the South China Sea. Instead of recognizing international law, they want to control where those goods flow and how. What lessons did the U.S. Navy learn from some of the shipbuilding mistakes of the last 20 years? I think one of the things that we learned was that we need to have a design well in place before we begin bending metal. And so we are going back to the past, to what we did in the 80s and the 90s. The Navy has the lead.

There is a tendency among the great powers to look at each other's naval buildups with deep suspicion. Toshi Yoshihara of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments may know more than any scholar in the West about China's navy. China will have about 440 ships by 2030, and that's according to the Pentagon. Why is China able to build more warships more quickly than the U.S.? China has clearly invested in this defense industrial infrastructure to produce these ships, which allows them to produce multiple ships simultaneously, essentially outbuilding many of the Western navies combined. China's navy piggybacks on a booming commercial shipbuilding industry

kept afloat by generous state subsidies, inexpensive materials, and cheap labor. In the United States, it's a different story. After the Cold War ended, the shipbuilding industry consolidated, and many of the yards where ships were both built and maintained closed down. What do you see when you see China's shipbuilding program? It's very robust. Do we have enough shipyards? No. I wish that we had more commercial shipyards. Over my career, we've gone from more than 30 shipyards down to about seven that we rely upon on a day-to-day basis to build

ships. One of those yards is run by Huntington Ingalls Industries, which built the state-of-the-art new Ford-class aircraft carrier. After controlled explosions in 2021 to prove it could withstand combat, the Ford got closer to deployment, six years late and billions of dollars over budget. The Navy's not just struggling to build new ships on time. According to the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, there's a multi-year backlog repairing the ships in the fleet. Our maintenance backlog is one of the primary things that I'm working on to correct. So just three years ago, we had 7,700 delay days, that is, extra days in a shipyard by ships when they weren't operational. We have cut that down to 3,000. We are not satisfied.

Maintenance delays mean sailors can't come home because the ship that's supposed to replace them is not ready. It means longer deployments. It means away from your family more. That's a big strain on the workforce. The more ships that we can have available to send at sea alleviates many of those problems that you pointed out. Sailors join the Navy to see the world. And so it's my job to make sure that those maintenance delays go to zero and we can get those ships to sea as quickly as possible. In the last year alone, at least 10 sailors assigned to ships undergoing maintenance or working at maintenance facilities have died by suicide.

It is a problem that we're taking very, very seriously. And down to every leader in our Navy, everybody has a responsibility to look out for each other, take care of each other. There is no wrong door to knock on when you need help. Admiral Gilday says the U.S. Navy's main advantage over China is America's sailors. His goal is to modernize the U.S. fleet and have those sailors serving alongside hundreds of unmanned vessels by 2045.

I think unmanned is the future. And so I think that some 40 percent of our fleet in the future, I believe, is going to be unmanned. Are these like underwater drones? Some of them are highly capable, capable of delivering mines and perhaps other types of weapons. Admiral Gilday is talking about the Orca, an extra-large unmanned undersea vehicle. Can you say what it will do or is that classified? Well, at a minimum, it'll have a clandestine mine lane capability. So it'll be done in a way that is very secretive, but very effective. But the GAO reports that it's already a quarter of a billion dollars over budget and three years behind schedule.

That particular platform is behind schedule. It's the first of a kind. When it delivers, I see a very high return on investment from that particular platform. Because? Because it will be among the most lethal and stealthy platforms in the arsenal of the U.S. military. The Navy's total budget request for fiscal year 2024 is over a quarter of a trillion dollars, an $11 billion increase from last year. The focus is on China. The U.S. defense posture is viewed as aggressive by the Chinese. The foreign minister just said, look, stop the containment. This may lead to conflict.

Perhaps the Chinese minister doesn't like the fact that the U.S. Navy is operating in collaboration with dozens of navies around the world to ensure that the maritime commons remains free and open for all nations. The Chinese want to dictate those terms, and so they don't like our presence. But our presence is not intended to be provocative. It's intended to assure and to reassure allies and partners around the world

that those sea lanes do remain open. The global economy literally floats on seawater. Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale expertise and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. Tonight, we're going to tell you one of those only in America stories, but this one begins and ends on the other side of the Atlantic. Rocco Camiso was 12 years old when his family moved to the United States from southern Italy. With the hustle he learned on the streets of the Bronx and exceptional timing,

Camiso built a cable TV empire and a net worth of $8 billion. So what did he do with his made-in-the-USA fortune? Rocco Camiso returned to the land of his birth and bought a pro soccer team. You've described yourself as a hustler. What does that mean? Well, always in the good sense of a hustler, because it could have a terrible sense, right? A hustler has never, you know, always tried to find a way to achieve a certain objective. Hustle, hustle. Don't give up. Don't take no for an answer.

I've heard that you have no tolerance for people you call spinners. Right. What's a spinner? A spinner is a bull artist. I know plenty of those guys. I have a pretty? A spinner is a bullsh** artist. I know plenty of those guys. I have a pretty good idea of how I'm dealing with. Did you learn that in the Bronx? No, my mother gave it to me when I was born. Rocco Camiso doesn't suffer fools. But like most Italian soccer fans, he does suffer.

Three years ago, he bought the team in Florence, where game day is filled with more agony and ecstasy than a Puccini opera. We watched as the city's diehard fans called the Tifosi endured a collective 90-minute long breakdown. I don't speak Italian, but I think I know what they're saying. Camiso, who is 73, knows the Tifosi follow his reactions. So he tries to keep a poker face as he chews wads of nicotine gum. How many of these do you go through? A game. 15, 20.

15, 20. Depends on the game, right? Yeah. When Camiso bought Fiorentina, it ticked two boxes. First, the $170 million price was a bargain for a European club. Second, it met the demand by his wife, that if he insisted on buying a team, it had to be someplace nice. When I landed in Florence, outside the airport, there were a mass of people there. And the first words that I used, call me Rocco. Because over here, titles are very important.

I don't need titles. You don't have to call me mister. Just call me Rocco. And today, they call me Rocco. Fiorentina, which is nicknamed La Viola or the Purple, has not won a league championship since 1969. The Tifosi got sick of waiting and ran the previous owner out of town. The Tifo, the fans, first they're everything. But they could be nasty if you don't win. The highs are high and the lows are low, it seems like. But they can't kick Rocco out of here.

They think they're going to criticize him and kick me out. No, that can't happen. Rocco's a little different. How are you different? First of all, there's not been anyone here that's put in the money that I put in in a short period of time. And I go back to the Medici from 500 years ago. If I lose $500 million, $400 million, I'm not going I go back to the Malicis from 500 years ago. If I lose 500 million, 400 million,

I'm not going to go and wash the dishes again the way I did when I was a young man. So watch out what you do because you don't know what's going to come next. Franco Camisa's journey to the owner's box in Florence began here by the subway in the Bronx. His father, a carpenter, and his older brother came to the U.S. in the 50s to escape poverty. A few years later, they sent for Rocco, his mother, and two sisters.

When we came here in 63, my brother bought the house. God bless him. And this was like a luxury to us. And we lived upstairs on the second floor. Camiso's English was terrible, but he played a mean accordion. So at age 13, he cut his first deal. Rocco agreed to perform for free at a Bronx theater if the manager helped get him into the Catholic All Boys High School, Mount St. Michael Academy. It is still a launching pad for young men from immigrant families.

Even though I had not taken the test to get in, I asked the manager to please send a recommendation letter. He did, and they admitted me. So you never took the test, but did you have to play the accordion? They didn't let me play the accordion. The band did not have the accordion.

Okay. But just on your accordion skills alone, you were given entrance? I got lucky or hustled, whichever way you want to call it. He kept hustling. Every day before and after school, he worked at his family's luncheonette near the subway station to pay his high school tuition. So I used to get paid $1 an hour, and through that $1 an hour, I paid four years of Mont Saint Michael schooling. Now, it didn't cost a lot of money then, but it was still something. Camiso wanted to be an engineer, but a dollar an hour wasn't going to pay for college.

So Camiso hunted down a scholarship for a sport he always loved, soccer. Never mind that his high school didn't have a team, and he'd not played much since coming to America. And somehow, you end up with a soccer scholarship to Columbia. How does that happen? Hustle. I needed money to go to school. So I asked the gym teacher to go and call the NYU coach. The NYU coach puts me in the American Czechoslovak team in the German-American League, sees me play six games, says, yeah, I like

the kid, so let me help him get into NYU, which he did, and they gave me 50% scholarship, but that was not enough. So I then told the gym teacher, go and call the coach at Columbia now. In the space of three to four weeks, they give me admissions to Columbia and a full scholarship. Had they seen you play? No. I asked that question after they admitted me. I said, but let me ask you, you give me all this money

and you don't want to see me play? I said, Rocco, if you're good enough for NYU, you're good enough for Columbia. Camiso became team captain and led Columbia to its first NCAA tournament. After graduation and an MBA, he made his way to Wall Street. At night, though, he was helping his brother run a disco. Rival clubs played the Bee Gees, but not Camiso. He chose to play pop music from Italy. I was really into Italian music and came up with this idea

that by specializing in something as opposed to being just like anybody else, you know, we could do well. And nobody could touch us in terms of the competition because nobody had it. Camiso became an executive in the cable TV industry just as it exploded. Then in 1995, he decided it was time to start a business

he named Mediacom. Like the disco, he designed a plan to seize an opportunity others had missed. It was an eight-page paper that talked about what I foresee in terms of the cable business. What did you foresee? And what I foresaw is the fact that sooner or later we're going to get deregulated, and there's a great opportunity to do well in the smaller markets of the U.S., the rural markets, largely because nobody wanted them. Rocco Camiso believed those small markets hid buried treasure, 600,000 miles of cable used to carry computer data

through places such as the Corn Belt and Deep South. He risked his life savings to buy up the small systems. Again, timing and luck were on his side. Today, Mediacom provides broadband in 22 states, and Rocco Camiso's net worth is $8 billion. It's a private company. Catherine Camiso, Rocco's wife of 47 years, works there. So does his sister, Italia, and his son, Joe, on the left. Outside Mediacom headquarters in upstate New York is a bocce court. Inside, espresso flows. Miso told us he had a streak of 25 years

of profits and has never laid off workers. I have heard so many people say it's not personal, it's business. That's crap, you know. I think the personal, frankly, has a lot to do with why companies fail or succeed. Unfortunately, unfortunately, there's no one like me in our business. And I'm talking about the media, newspapers. But I hate to destroy people's lives because I have to go in and make an extra million dollars. Camiso made a point to us that he does not own a yacht, a mansion on the beach, or a private jet. Of course, we had to point out he did buy an Italian soccer team. When I came here, I used three things.

Fast, fast, fast. That the coast will be okay, you know, within my means. And control, control, control. I control or no money from Rocco. That's the way it works. What's harder, running a company like Mediacom or running a soccer team? This is significantly more difficult.

I get more criticism here than in 1,500 communities in the U.S. The American owner is under relentless scrutiny by Fiorentina fans who demand that he shells out whatever it costs to bring in stars and end their 50-year championship drought. Then there's been times when he's lost it with the unforgiving Italian press. Have you ever thought, what have I done? What did I get myself into?

No. It's a lot of aggravation. But that's not me. No, I made the decision. I'm going to stick with the decision. True to Rocco's way, he's playing the long game by spending $100 million on this. It's called Viola Park.

The Camisos showed us around what will be one of the largest soccer facilities in Europe for developing young male and female players. But this is Italy. You see that opening there where you have the two Vs? Yes. Right in the middle? We had to break the building apart because there's a Roman wall there, rocks. Stop it. You hit a Roman wall?

Yeah, so we had to uncover it, cover it up, Because there's a Roman wall there, rocks. Stop it. You hit a Roman wall? Yeah. So we had to uncover it, cover it up, but break the belt. We could not build on top of the Roman wall. Despite the agita and a so-so season, Rocco Camiso still seems to love this business. He's become one of the most famous Americans in Italy and adores his players, some who look like Michelangelo himself may have carved them out of marble. My job is to hug them, kiss them, put my arms around them, and hope that they do better the next time. New tough talk? You know, they get the message indirectly, you know, that things got to change here. How do they get the message?

You know, they get the message. They don't mind. And if you're wondering if Camiso still plays a mean accordion, here's your answer. Our visit to Florence ended with dinner and a serenade by the billionaire from the Bronx. Do you think if you had stayed in Italy, you'd have been able to achieve the success that you have today? No, no way.

This is truly the land of opportunity. He gave this poor soul, okay, yeah, the opportunity to become something, somebody, and that's the beauty about America. You still believe in the American dream? Absolutely, yeah. There's the last hope in the world. Vermont provided me a phenomenal education. Rocco Camiso has given millions to his alma maters and has contributed to scholarships for nearly 3,000 students across the U.S., including many first-generation immigrants like him.

I just want to be known as the guy that nothing, success never changed him. Just Rocco. Just Rocco. When the FDIC seized Silicon Valley Bank and New York's Signature Bank over last weekend, it was a reminder of how fragile our banking system can be. Fourteen years ago, at the height of the Great Recession, we witnessed how far the federal government will go to protect bank depositors.

Scott Pelley and 60 Minutes followed a federal deposit insurance team, led by Cheryl Bates, as they seized and then reopened a failing Illinois bank overnight. We have accountants, we have asset specialists who specialize in loans, we have people who specialize in just the physical facilities, and we have a group of investigators that come in and do a review on the reasons for the bank failure. Really, your whole team could come in and run the bank. Yes. No depositor lost a penny. The FDIC spent this past week looking for buyers to take Silicon Valley Bank and Signature off its hands. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.